Wok Work

Wok -> Link

Today's meal:

Noodles and a kind of sauce made from carrots, capsicum, garlic, chilies and tomato ketchup. Interesting to make and eat.

The view outside from my bedroom's window looked great today thanks to all the fancy firework.

Happy new year!

Feel-good cooking

I am not talking about feel-good meals, though today's meal does fall into that category:

Chapati and tomato 'gojju'. A friend of mine famously hates this word, along with the name 'Pushpa', no one knows why. I think Pushpa is a perfectly good name and the Gojju is one of the best dishes ever invented on earth, even if the name itself doesn't sound so great.

What's in a name? that which we call Gojju,

By any other name would taste as great!

(Ahem, sorry Bill! <-link)

I felt good cooking today because the smell of the cooking food reminded me of familiar smells back home.

Yesterday's meal however was a big disappointment and a tragedy in itself, of more epic proportions than the afore mentioned R&J.

Upma. The best dish if made well and a horror story if not. I am convinced that my method of making was perfect, but the rava used to make it was not too good - a little too old probably. I had to camouflage the taste of the upma with large spoonfuls of pickle. The severe shock of the episode held me and kept me from writing here.

If you haven't already noticed, I am feeling very theatrical today.

Swimming in oil

I didn't know it at that time, but my potato fry started out with a few spoons of oil more than what it required:

Chapaties and baby potato fry.

Today I came home to my dear plant drooping to the ground. It had been fine in the morning when I left home. It is a "peace lily" and I read online that it was supposed to be watered once a week. I was watering it more often than that, so I decided to stop. I guess I stopped its water supply longer than needed. I was so terribly scared that my plant was going to die. Just an hour later my plant was almost back to its normal state! If I had taken a photograph of it every minute, I could have made a great animation out of it.

Smells great

Today's meal:

Rice, dal, pepper, cumin seeds and sweet smelling butter - pongal. The whole house smelled great after this!

The sky's view from my room looks new every day, every time I see it. That's today's best sight. I hope I have something new to see tomorrow!

Repeats

Today's meal:

Macaroni, red bell pepper, carrots and olives.

Today's best sights were a gloriously sunny day and a glorious sunset and family.

Maybe we need some more experimentation with food.

Net Blackout

By afternoon today I began to feel that a power shut down would not have been felt so much. I did not have internet starting 7pm last evening up until 7 pm today. I clicked a few pictures, played with them and then watched the sun and snow chase each other ( the weather alternated between blindingly sunny and thick sleet/snow, amazing to see the transitions), day-dreamed a bit, and read some Sherlock Holmes to pass time. Life seems to be empty and without hope when there is no internet. Isn't that terrible.

Today's meal:

Vermicelli, tomatoes, onions and red chilies.

The Return of the Solo-Cook

I am cured of the aversion I had to the idea of this blog as a chore. It is not and my love for cooking has brought me to it again.

Today's meal:

Macaroni with carrots, capsicum, olives and cheese. The meal had absolutely no oil. The vegetables were just cooked slightly in water.
It was fun making this.

In the past few days, when this blog was not being written, I kept cooking interesting meals: chapatis, quite a few times, various rice dishes and on one day aubergines after a very long time. I tried a vegetable called courgette or zucchini. It looks like a cucumber and tastes a bit like ridged gourds -raw. I liked it.

Today I saw a lady walking a tiny dog on leash. I wondered why such a little thing should chained and tugged along - till I cycled close to them. The creature got into such a vicious barking fit that I was very glad that it was tied! It was both comical and scary to see it - the confidence in spite of its size!

Chores!

Writing here feels like a chore nowadays. I would like it to be fun. In fact cooking feels like a really big chore these days that I would rather not do.
Today's meal:


Cabbage, rice, red chilies and salt - pressure cooked. With potato chips.

Today I was amazed to see a starry sky. It was cloudy when I was returning home and I also felt a few drops of rain. As I reached home I just happened to look up and saw a dense cluster of stars. I have not had the chance to observe the constellations here because I have seen stars so rarely and almost never on consecutive nights.
People say they are depressed because of the lack of sunlight. Who needs sunlight if you can see the stars!

Desperate Measures

My worst experiments are when I try to do something new so desperately that it no longer is something pleasurable. Today's meal bordered on that:


Macaroni, raw tomatoes and green grapes with a mixture of curds, salt, sugar and garam masala. The saving grace here was the sugar without which I couldn't have eaten the meal. It was not too bad.

Today's image was a beautiful frozen lake with beautiful iced trees on the side, like icing on a cake. The fog froze mid-air and settled on all objects - gave white hair to people and white streaks to clothes.
This is wonderful weather to whistle in. I came back cycling home whistling some old songs and I had a tough time keeping the volume down. Cold air allows an excellent, sharp whistle.

Dinner at 10

While my breakfast and lunch time is governed by my schedule, dinner is something that I can afford to have whenever I want. Most of the time, my hunger does not allow dinner time to go past 8. Today, filled with coffee and junk food and a lot of laziness I dragged dinner time to 10.

Here it is:

Tomato rice and chips.

Ever since I started writing about the most interesting image of the day I look harder at everything around me and what would I describe each scene as. It works like a kind of exercise in keeping my thoughts focused on the present while allowing me to absorb as much of the beauty of the place as possible. I have been recommending blogging to many people around me. Use it as a diary, a collection of thoughts, a message to the world and what not. It is a process by which you can help improve your creativity while also documenting its growth.

Today's image was not in what I saw, but what I didn't see. The whole place was shrouded in a thick fog and the visibility was about 15 meters. I usually time my cycle trip by a large clock on a very tall building that I can see while riding. Today I couldn't see this building till I was at the very foot of it. Fog always reminds me of bus trips to school in winter at 7.30. I remember our funny blue scarves and pigtails peeping out from under them.

Sunbeam

Today's best image was of the ice melting all around me and of a strong beam of sunlight after days.

Today's meal was quite a bit of work:

Chapatis with curry - carrot, cabbage and peas with chili powder and coconut milk. The chapatis alone took me close to 2 hours to make - counting the time for which I let the dough 'settle'. Worth the trouble. It was such a lovely feeling to see the chapati puff up on the pan and it tasted great!

Almost burnt

Spatial intelligence is an excuse for being too lazy to measure things. But it is the better way to cook.

Today's meal:

Rice and peas cooked with chilli powder and coconut milk. Salad with curds and tomatoes.

The water in the rice was a little too less, causing the bottom of the cooker to get slightly charred. But I could salvage almost all of my meal except for a few spoons of burnt rice. The problem with burnt food is that the smell permeates the entire dish, even the unburnt part and tastes horrible. I stopped the process just in time. This has to be my first burnt meal here.

Today as I was idly watching the snow and admiring the smooth uniformity of the snow deposit on the ground, I saw a family of three having a snow fight. Had to laugh at them and wish I could be outside doing the same. I rolled up some ice collected on my window sill and made a ball out of it and dropped it on the ground. It made a hole in the spot where it hit the snow covered ground. The hole stayed on for at least an hour after that. Yes, I checked periodically. Hee hee.

Starry eyed

I always dislike the flash in the camera. I think it makes images look unnatural. But today I saw this amazing effect of a camera flash on snow. I got a picture that looks like a starry night sky.

Today's meal:

Noodles with cabbage, peas and carrots. This is getting a bit boring now.

Macaroni and peas

Today's meal - macaroni, peas and carrots. Frozen peas were really sweet.

Today's most interesting image was a very small dog wearing a sweater while scampering around. His red faced keeper was having a hard time keeping up!

I read somewhere that the sense of smell is really important for tasting our food. That is why food tastes bland when we have a cold. (That solves one of the greatest mysteries I have ever come across!)

Wimpy's Treat

Today thing-I-saw was my poor potted plant drying up while the world outside suffers and lives at -6 degrees. I have been feeding it with water and lots of attention. There's no reason it should die.

Today's meal: sandwich in burger's clothing.

On the inside it looks like this:

A half-slice of cheese, some carrots and brussel sprouts (finally the last of it) chopped and cooked soft with sabji masala and salt between toasted-till-crisp halves of a bun. I toasted the bun with the cheese slice on it, causing it to melt just enough to make cheese threads when bitten into. Making it was as much fun as eating it. My sister loves to eat this stuff, I get the idea for the 'recipe' from her. She however, would not settle for the duplicate. She makes a proper burger out of boiled potatoes, mashed and made into a cutlet and shallow fried in oil to get a crisp coating on top. Slurp. And I do Wimpy's job.

Vegetable choice

Today's very boring dinner: radish, carrots, onions and garlic cooked together with chilies and salt.

My last vegetable shopping was not very well thought out. I guess I could have chosen vegetables that would go better with my stash of semolina and macaroni and basmati rice.

There are certain vegetables that go very well with South Indian food stuff like sambhar and curries. And certain others that go well with noodles and pasta. Some that must be eaten fresh and raw, some that have to be cooked for a long time.

Today's most interesting sight was a globule of water running on an onion, like on a lotus leaf. It ran off too soon for me to admire it enough. Second was a snow flake that floated into my hand. I could see its hexagonal structure. A true marvel.

Shiny White

Today, I witnessed snow. I looked out of a window sometime in the evening and saw that it was white all over. I stepped outside to see little frozen pieces of water floating down. Walking on the ground felt like walking on a slippery beach. I made a few circles with my shoes, turning on my heel in five millimeter layers of snow. The flakes were shiny against the street lamp and stung my eyes when I tried to look up at their source. The whole thing felt surreal but beautiful. That was my sight of the day. Could easily qualify as the sight of the year, or lifetime.

Today's meal:

Macaroni, carrots, brussel sprouts, red chilies and coconut milk. I put in too little coconut milk, so it did not have an effect on the taste at all.

Battle against self

Last night's battle against lethargy and me was won by the former. I made myself a good dinner, but just could not motivate myself to post it. Noodles with broccoli.

Today I managed to win over:

'

Jeera rice and a curry made of broccoli and brussel sprouts. I managed to put in too very much of salt in the curry. So much salt that it was sweet! Happily, the Jeera rice had lesser salt and so I could spoon out more of rice and less of curry and eat it without tasting all that huge amount of salt. Towards the end of the meal, I had very little rice for a lot of the curry, which I managed to eat very quickly and wash down with a large amount of water.

Today's most interesting sight was a white ground. Last night Jack Frost paid us a visit, and managed to magically sprinkle the whole Earth with crisp, white dust. Looking forward to some white precipitation as well tomorrow. Though I have watched snow in movies, I don't think movie-makers think it very interesting to film an expanse of ice-caked land.

Lights, sounds and smells

Today I saw a pattern of lights in the apartment complex I live in. The lights were from inside apartments. They formed a diagonal line across the building - one lit room per floor. I don't know how but the diagonal was perfect, no rooms that were not a part of this pattern were lit! Strange, but nice to see.

Today's meal:

Mint and rice. I was going to make some vegetable side dish with this, but I was too hungry to work any more on that. So I settled for just plain mint rice. Tomorrow I am going to do some serious compensation for that. The smell of basmati and mint again. Delicious. I do need to make sure that my meals are had a little earlier than today.

I also hear something interesting today. It sounds as if one of my neighbours is having a party and suddenly realized that his pipes need mending. So it seems like while the rest of his guests are listening to music, he is hammering his taps! Or may be one of his guests decided to do him a favour. I hope he doesn't decide to make an album with his exquisite sounds.

The world from above

Today's menu was a repeat from 2 days ago:

Tomato soup, rusk and some cooked vegetables-radish and brussel-sprouts. Nice meal, made with very little effort.

Today's most interesting sight was one from the 15th floor of a very tall building. It was a clear day without fog. There were several smoking chimneys that I could see, mostly factories and workplaces. The smoke from all these chimneys, at least 40 in number, was spreading in one direction, uniform, indicating the direction of the wind. At first glance, no one would notice something like that, because it is so natural and unremarkable. But once you do acknowledge the sight, it is the most captivating thing. I felt like looking at the miniature-like world for ever. I wish I get an office overlooking a view like that.

Dilemma

I don't know which to choose as my interesting-sight/scene-today - the lights I can see from my window lighting up the horizon like a row of dazzling gems, or the richness of the green and how great it looks with white rice in this picture:

I feel hungry all over again looking at this picture.

Broccoli with sabji masala and salt. Rice, coriander and salt.

My whole house was filled with the smell of Basmati and coriander mixed. I wonder if it just happened that our food tastes and smells so well or did we evolve to like them.

Moon at dawn

Today, I start a new custom on my blog: to write about one interesting thing that I saw today. Today's most interesting sight was the moon at dawn. It was a large, beautiful yellow disk last night and I woke up this morning to see it outside my window, peering through grey clouds, looking very white.

Today's meal: Fusilli and cheese, followed by roasted Brussels sprouts.

I was not very happy with the sprouts, they were a bit too chewy. I will not make this again. And I guess I did something wrong. Because, it is now 3 hours since I ate dinner and I feel slightly queasy. Only a little, not to worry much about. There is not much a harmless vegetable can do to make you sick.

Tip of the day: Don't try this combination. Wait till next time for further information on what is causing this queasiness.

Life's good

when there's good stuff to eat:

Tomato soup and rusk. With boiled radish and Brussels spouts with garlic, ginger and pepper.

The red one is radish! Brussels sprouts taste just like cabbage, but are a little less chewy. It took very little time to cook them.

It was a good and enjoyable meal. It was nice to have a spoon full of soup and vegetables followed by a bite of rusk. So there was a variety of tastes and textures to the whole meal.

The radish reminded me of the images of the dish Ratatouille in the movie of the same name. I have often wondered how that dish would taste.

While my experiments with food continue, I am still looking for some innovation on the blog. Ideas?

Mash of flavours

Fusilli with garlic, mint and cheese. Strange combination. But it really works. Each ingredient added a great flavour and the end-product tasted great while filling me up.

Mint leaves always remind me of trips to the vegetable shop when back home. We would carry back a large sack full of various vegetables enough for almost 15 days and stock up the fridge. The smell of mint was there throughout the session. I love the smell of mint and its unique taste. My mom makes an unbeatable mint chutney that is just out of this world. I would like some now.

Need some change

I need to reinvent this blog. Any ideas?

I say these are bad pictures.

Basmati mint rice and some kind of curry with carrots, garlic, onions and coriander.

Shop spree

Lots of new stuff today:

Jeera rice with fresh, fragrant coriander and cashew nuts. Side dish - cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, mint leaves and garlic with sabji masala.

Had great fun buying stuff and a better time cooking and great time eating too. Lots of good stuff.

I had jalebis this afternoon. Life's good!

Small Change

Carrots, beans, cheese and fusilli and pepper. Tasted good. Would have been better if there had been some chili to go with.

The size and shape of vegetables has a huge impact on the taste of the dish. Try cutting your vegetables different from the way you usually do and see if it makes a difference or not. Today's fusilli had carrots and beans cut long so they got fried and cooked just enough.

Tip of the day : When bored with the same ingredients, but stuck with a lot of them, innovation in the way you cut the veggies, the order in which you put them into the pan, changing little details could make food taste very different.

When life gives you...

...cabbages, you have a lot of options. I chose to make some cabbage salad.


Rice with beans, carrots, red capsicum and cashew nuts, with cabbage salad and curds. I had intended to put in some chillies into the rice, but forgot about it. So there is nothing in the dish to make it hot. It doesn't matter much, still tastes interesting. And man! look at those colours.
A lot is said about the ability of good food to affect a person's mood, but I think not enough is said about the ability of the process of cooking to do this. I have experienced the worsening of a bad mood and the bettering of a good mood while cooking.
Tip of the day: This one is my dad's. He gently suggests that eating raw uncooked vegetables late in the night isn't good for you. These should be eaten atleast 12 hours before you wake up the next day. If you intend to wake up at 6AM, take raw food no later than 6PM the previous evening.
Hmm, was that a tip really?

Routine

Noodles with cabbage.

Routine is something that eases solo-cooking.

Impulsive Cooking

I didn't know what I was cooking till I closed the lid of the pressure cooker today. I had no clue what I was trying to do. Went purely by 'instinct'.

Some kind of fried rice with beans and carrots. A salad of cucumber, red cabbage and curds, garnished with some salt and garam masala.

Tastes great.

Hunger is a great motivator.

Solo-cooking takes away the pressure of making the food taste good. Which means that your food turns out good with very little effort - twice the advantage!

Desperate Measures

The red cabbage has been in my fridge for close to a week now? I have to resort to desperate measures now. It would mean some cabbage soup one of these days.

Noodles with red cabbage and red capsicum, red chili sauce. Came out too dry.

I am seriously thinking of shifting to noodles and pasta as staple food. Simple food, hard to goof up and fun to eat. But I am pretty sure I will get bored of it soon. So while it lasts, it is going to be pasta night for a few more nights to come I guess.

Stone Soup

Some times you don't prepare for what is going to be offered to you. Sometimes it does you good, sometimes it is terrible to you. But one thing is for sure, you can't just get rid of it. You need to find a proper way to deal with it. Like the guy who had to trick the miserly old lady into making "stone soup".

I didn't have to do much to get my onion, carrot, noodle soup, with a few cabbage "strands" thrown in. But I would have had to do something about it if it had not come out well.

That is one bad thing about solo-cooking. You have to bear bad cooking all by yourself, because you cannot bear throwing it away for all the work that went into it.

Almost Blown Away

It was that windy.

Here's today's meal:

Vegetable fried noodles. Boiled noodles, set it aside. Then I boiled carrots and beans that I had chopped thin and long. Once these were cooked just enough, I fried the veggies and the noodles in a teaspoon of oil. Finally added salt and pepper. A soothing meal on a crazily windy day.

I have begun trying to make as complex meals as possible just to convince myself that my efficiency gets better that way. Whether I make something as simple as rice and Rasam or as complex as chapati and kurma, the effort that goes into cutting, cleaning and washing seems almost the same! So why not just eat something exciting.

On some days my posts don't reflect it, but it borders on depressing to think about what to cook and how to start working on the huge heap of vessels that get collected.

But then the stomach gets the better of me and I go waltzing down the kitchen like a whirlwind.

The Pasta Postulate

Picked up some "fusilli" from the supermarket today. It is a kind of pasta made of wheat flour.

The recipe was simple but exciting:

One red bell pepper, some finely chopped ginger and some red chillies, a few spoons of curds and a very little bit of oil. Boiled water, then added fusilli and stirred a bit. Instructions said 7 minutes, but I think it took more than 7 to cook. Meanwhile I chopped the bell pepper, ginger and chillies. Put on a pan, with some oil and put all these chopped things. Once they looked a bit cooked, I added curds and salt. Then the fusilli went in and things got merry.

It has a slight chili flavour and is sweet because of the red pepper and curds. So a delicate blend of flavours although it was not planned out. The curds went in only because I realized I wanted to have some kind of sauce like thing to go with the pasta and I was tired of ketchup.

I really haven't tried pasta outside home, so I don't know what it really is 'supposed' to taste like.

Tip of the day: Pay attention to the ingredients of the food that you eat. When you cook yourself, you can then imagine how you want the dish to taste and then add those ingredients that you know will give that taste. This will give you freedom from fixed recipes and methods and allow you to experiment.

Rasam Rice

Tastes delicious. As usual !

Lovely warm feeling as it slides down the palate. Perfect remedy to tiredness, headaches, stomach troubles, none of which I have right now. Still is great.

Hot Lentil Rice..

does not sound as lovable and tasty as Bisi Bele Bath.

Carrots, tomatoes and beans with rice, toor dal, chili powder and salt, cooked soft together, best eaten with boondi. The colour in the picture comes from using haldi of course. My mother uses a special mixture of spices that she and she alone knows. It is her well-protected secret.

Tip of the day: Find ways to induce mothers to part with their secret recipes. And don't listen when they say 'there is no secret ingredient'. There always is.

Patience and Pepper

Noodles with slow-cooked-till-soft vegetables: red cabbage, beans and carrots and a little ketchup. It is a treat to eat, though (as usual) it wasn't actually planned this way. I left my veggies cook on low heat on the stove and went to pound pepper with my pre-historic method and came back to see that my veggies were cooked soft - something that I had not intended to happen. But to my delight:

I could see a few stars in the sky today. Nice change from pitch black.

Tip of the day: There is a specific amount of ketchup that you can add to noodles to give it a nice taste, make it really smooth and not make it too sweet or sour. Try and find that amount and you can be in noodle heaven. Requires patience.

Chapatis!

The real ones, made fresh at home! For the first time in my entire lifetime of eating chapatis that I made the batter myself! The batter making is the toughest part of it. Inaugurated my new rolling pin. Very happy with it. Almost forgot to take this picture out of happiness !

Side dish - beans, carrots and red capsicum in some ready made coconut paste that I bought today. I didn't like it much. The paste was too sour.

There was an interesting sunset today. My room was filled with a beautiful golden glow.

Noodle Nuances

Red cabbage, capsicum lightly fried with noodles and pepper.

Makes a very interesting combination. Red cabbage is crisp and sweet and has that cabbagey taste that green cabbages have with a shocking colour, so with salt, ground pepper and capsicum, the dish was really enjoyable.

While I could eat the same dish every single day when I was buying them, I find it extremely difficult to motivate myself to eating the same food everyday. Makes the job of solo cooking so much tougher to eat the same stuff. Solo-cooking has to be done with enthusiasm.

Tip of the day: Buy a liter of enthusiasm at your next fuel stop.

Haldi Heights

This is not the sickeningly sweet dish called the kesaribhat served aside the 'kharabath' that I used to have back in my last place of residence. That had little pieces of pineapple, and smaller bits of cashew and raisins.

This is upma with potatoes in it with Haldi. This is like the ginger affiliation that I had a few days ago. All my dishes are going to be yellow.

It is so windy outside today that I am sure all the remaining leaves are shed. I am surprised buildings are still standing. Wind speed is said to be around 50 kmph. I don't know if that is some kind of a storm already?

All those wind noises outside make me feel cozier indoors.

Starchy Slurps

Puliyogare and potato curry. Mom's recipe. She makes the best potato curry.

Oh and this is the picture of the potatoes chasing each other around the pot. They just aligned themselves like this.