The Book of Gold Leaves and a small rant

I just finished reading Mirza Waheed's The Book of Gold Leaves (no points for a forgettable, pointless title).

I read The Collaborator earlier in the year and thought it was lovely. This was also. I spent four days in Srinagar one summer some years ago, and I wished it could have been longer. I also spent a couple of days in Kargil. Just enough to have developed a taste for Tabak Maas (ribs), not long enough to have made friends or gotten to know the place.

The odd review had white women, reading this as art of a book club, no doubt, complaining that there wasn't enough explanation of the context, or that the names were all too similar for them to keep track. I didn't think either of these were pertinent. 1. Use Google. 2. Literally every second white person is named Jack or John or Jason. Somehow the rest of the world is managing to keep up. Don't be so fucking lazy. As if anyone really uses that gigantic list of names at the beginning of War and Peace. You blunder through until you learn who is who, or you give up half way and miss out on one of the loveliest books written.

There were just enough references to food in The Book of Gold Leaves to keep me hooked. It was a very moving description of people trying to live their lives in a really complicated situation. I want to find more books set in Kashmir, and a decent history of the area. I hope I can go back some time, and travel more in the region. The Himalayas are really incredibly beautiful. 

Apple cake

German apple cake- Apfelküchen

This is perfect for days on which you do not feel like shopping for specific ingredients. Chances are everything you need is already in the pantry.

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 tsp almond extract (optional)
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract 
• 2-3 apples (I used Gala), peeled, cored and cut into slices
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease or spray a 9" tart or cake pan. 
In a small bowl whisk the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a stand mixer, or with a handheld mixer, cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy- about 2-3 min.
Prep the apples.
Add the eggs, one by one, and mix.
Add the vanilla extract, and almond extract if using.
Turn the mixer to low, and slowly add the dry ingredients. Mix slowly till well incorporated.
Transfer the batter to the prepped pan. It will be sticky, and will need smoothing out with a spatula.
Arrange the apples on top.
Mix the last 1/3 cup of sugar with cinnamon in a small bowl and sprinkle it on top of the apples.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, or till a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Notes
It might look as if the top is browning too fast but do not cover the top. A few dark bits are better than the whole thing going soggy.
If in doubt about whether it is done take it out after 40 min- it will continue to cook a little longer in the pan.
I'm not sure what makes this cake German but that's what the recipe said so I'll go along.

Source: Eva Bakes
Be careful if you hit that link. You'll get a great food blog but also unending Republican ads about how a vote for Clinton would be a vote against Modi's government (if only we were so lucky).

Skinny Broccoli Gratin

Makes 2 generous serves.
280 calories per portion.

Béchamel
Garlic- 1 small clove
Shallot- 1
Nutmeg- one small pinch
Mustard powder- optional- I used this because I saw the Colman's sitting in the pantry looking neglected
Milk- 1 cup, 240 ml- I used skim
Butter- 1 tbsp
Flour- 2 tbsp
Cooking spray, or a couple of drops of oil

Bake
Broccoli- 4 cups frozen, 400-450 gms
Onion- 1 or 2
Mozzarella- 28 gms

Salt and Pepper to taste.

• Heat up a small saucepan and put in a few drops of oil. 
• Put in the chopped shallot, and 2-3 min later the chopped garlic. 
• Keep on heat till you can smell the garlic cook. 
• Put in the butter and lower the temperature to keep it from burning.
• Add the flour and cook till it stops smelling raw- 4-5 min. 
• Add the milk mixing as you go. I did it in two rounds and settled in for a lot of stirring, but you can be more elegant about this and add the milk little by little. 
• Add the nutmeg, mustard powder and some salt. 
• Keep stirring, seek out the lumps and eliminate them. 
• This should thicken in 5-10 minutes, over medium heat. 
• Add water if needed and bring to a boil. 
• Add salt and pepper as needed and take off the heat. I made sure there was enough sauce to cover the vegetables that I had put out in a glass baking dish. 

• I used frozen broccoli- which I steamed for 2-3 minutes before setting aside. 
• Mix the chopped onion with the broccoli, and a little salt before putting into a glass baking dish. 
• Cover with the béchamel and bake for 20 minutes at 400F. 
• Pull the dish out, add the mozzarella to the top and bake for another 15 min at 400F.

If the cheese seems too meagre you could increase the quantity, or add some flaked almonds to the topping.  I ate the almonds before they could get to the dish, so had none to put on, and it worked fine anyway.
I ate this over some plain pasta, but can see it going very well with warm bread.

Kale Palak Paneer

Some weeks ago we bought a bag of kale, thinking that we too should get with the times. Kale is terrifying, and I don't know too many ways to make it palatable, having failed more than once. Using it in Palak Paneer worked out well and here is the recipe.

Spinach leaves- I used 1 cup of frozen spinach to one handful of fresh kale- 2-3 cups
Kale- take it off those awful stems2-3 cups
Ginger- by eye- approx as much as the garlic
Garlic-not crazy amounts
Green Chili- I like lots
Cream- I add this tbsp by tbsp, and find myself adding 4-6 before I am happy.
Onion- who has time to cut more than one?
Tomato-chopped fine
Cashew nuts- one small fistful
Paneer- as much as you have. I'd use at least 400 gm
Coriander Powder
Amchur
Garam Masala
Anardana
Cumin
Oil
Milk- one cup (maybe)

Heat the oil.
Add Cumin.
Add the Onion- cook till soft.
Add the chopped Ginger and Garlic- cook till this stops smelling raw.
Add all the spices except for the Amchur and cook roast off.
Add the Tomato, Green Chili, Spinach, Kale and Cashew nuts. Add some milk to help things along.
Cook all of this till the Kale is softened and the Spinach cooked. This should take 10-15 minutes. Make sure it doesn't get too dry by adding milk.
Turn down the heat and transfer to your food processor in batches to blend. Kale has a very odd texture, and I did my best to get rid of this by pulverising it.
Add a little bit of oil to another pan, heat up, and brown the cubed Paneer. (Don't do this if you like the Paneer to stay soft)
Add the Amchur, Cream and Paneer to the pan, with the kale-palak mix, and bring to a boil.
Keep adding Cream and Salt till happy.
Finish by stirring in some Amchur.

I have no measurements for the spices. Just go with your gut, and be generous with the Amchur. It fixes everything. As does Cream.

Je ne regrette rien

Asparagus- so wonderful in the eating, so unpleasant the olfactory aftermath.
Oh well.

Tragic realisations

I might have to come to terms with the fact that I do not like Japanese food.

I have a very dear Japanese-Swiss friend. We used to go to a restaurant called Sushi-train, in Geneva, about once a month. There I ate rice, with fried bits of fish on top, and rice wrapped in seaweed with cucumber, and let myself think that sushi was something I could do. And Claudia, twice as polite as everyone else, on account of being both Japanese and Swiss, left me my illusions.

Now I am in the U.S, and living with another sushi enthusiast (C and I were joined at the hip for 4 years), but this one will call me out. We've tried a whole host of Japanese restaurants in the area. J has a dear friend whose father was born in Japan to an army-dad. J himself enjoys fishy foods of all descriptions. So we find ourselves eating sushi a lot. And it always leaves me with a very odd feeling.

Branching out to other kinds of restaurant-Japanese fare has not been successful either. I do not like cold soba noodles, which appear frequently on menus. I like warm soba noodles, when made spicy and with peanuts- so basically Thai style.  I do not like miso soup- it is so odd. I do not like tofu- though I know I must learn to love this, as a mostly vegetarian person trying to get by in the U.S without dying of boredom. I do not like soups with raw, or semi-cooked eggs in them. I thought I loved ramen but I do not like broths where I can smell the fish above all other things, and soy to me is not a flavour. I have not tried chawanmushi- an egg custard with bits of fish and scallions, but I hope to next time. I want to love edamame, but eating more than 2 (one edamame, two edamame?) leaves my head throbbing. Teriyaki chicken leaves me cold, as does hibachi- neither is interesting enough for me to use up calories over them.

I do like gyoza- but you have to be a monster to deny a pan-seared dumpling. Shumai, again a dumpling. All dumplings are amazing, and I don't know if loving these is enough.

I don't like Japanese food. And I am sorry to have to admit it.

Movies one weekend in November

One of my New Year's resolutions is to write more. So am cleaning up old blog posts and letting them loose into the world. Also I may not watch or read anything without leaving at least a line or two about it. So prepare for many opinions in 2016.


November 2015

I have a paper due in a week. Procrastination in full swing. I have baked two batches of muffins, and watched several movies. The first batch of muffins was excellent- Banana Double Chocolate Chip Muffins, no butter or oil but applesauce instead. I was suspicious of applesauce- seemed like a bizarre American ingredient to me to begin with, but now I am a convert. I boiled up a bunch of apples that were going bad, because J is always buying too much fruit in the hope that I will help him eat it. He is not in luck. I eat fruits when they are cut and served to me by adoring grandparents after dinner, but not otherwise.

The second batch of muffins was supposed to serve as breakfast- so they had oats, bananas, cinnamon, cashews and applesauce. These did not turn out so well. They were far too runny, and deflated a bit while cooking. They were also weirdly grey. The almond extract I threw in at the last moment made the whole thing smell ever so slightly artificial- not because the essence was off, but because not even almonds smell that strongly of almonds. I gave up on these, but J has already eaten more than half, so despite their shrunken grey form I assume they are acceptable. Also he does not know where I have hidden the chocolate ones.

This weekend we started Lamhe (1991). J gave up rather soon, when Sridevi launched into her second dance, so about ten minutes into the movie. This film is nearly four hours long, and most of it is songs. Endless painful songs that do nothing to advance the plot. The creepiness of this man who falls in love with a woman, and then her daughter 18 years later was too much for us to handle. Anupam Kher is spectacularly annoying in his buffoonery, and Sridevi's high-pitched chirping was intolerable. As were Anil Kapur's sweaters, even if it was the early 90's. I did not finish this, I wanted to, but some time after watching Waheeda Rehman get on a roller-coaster with these mad hatters I gave up. Painful.

Humpty Sharma ki Dulhaniya (2014) was a more successful foray. Despite being ill-disposed to Varun Dhawan I found him quite tolerable. J lost patience with the Alia Bhatt character, but returned to watch every song, and practice his dance moves. I enjoyed some parts of the movie very much and was troubled by others. What did this girl study and what was her plan for after she got married? Big blank considering how smart she seems to be. Ashutosh Rana as the dad was most attractive. The sub-plot involving the plan to trick the fiancé into confessing his homosexuality was very nicely done. I was not expecting anything good to come from that set up, having been burnt by countless homophobic jokes in Hindi movies before, but this was a delightful change. For this alone I exempt the movie of criticism for the ridiculous plot and exasperating conclusion. And then there was Humpty's English poetry. In that moment I was in love too.

Nosferatu (1922)- we watched this on Halloween at a little local theatre, where they decided to allow the movie to be accompanied by an orchestra, performing music of their own composition. The music destroyed the movie, was completely off time, and included random bit of sentences, like "Beware the furry one" and "Aaaaieeeeee". I'm sure if there had been silence in the hall the movie would have been a lot spookier, as it happened, it was just tiresome. We did eat dinner in a great Chinese restaurant afterwards though. The waiter was high, and kept hiding J's beer bottle from him at the table (v bad at hiding).

Save the Date (2012) stars Lizzy Caplan. She is wonderful in everything, and even though the movie is a bit of fluff it is fun, and doesn't have the single cringe-inducing moment. Alison Brie is great too, and I look forward to seeing her in more things.

Heartlands (2002) was my find of the week on Netflix. I love Michael Sheen, almost as much as I love Lizzy Caplan. I loved them both before Masters of Sex, and so much more since that show. He was also a most excellent guest on Craig Ferguson's show, where they talked about medieval theme parks, and the importance of living without irony. Michael Sheen plays a man who learns his wife has taken up with the captain of their darts team, hops on the road to Blackpool, and has adventures on the way. The darts team captain was a familiar face as well- Jim Carter/Mr Carson from Downton Abbey. I would watch this again, when looking for a pick-me-up.

Procrastination

I have a deadline coming up. So have been doing a vast amount of cooking.

In the last few weeks I have made

1. Paneer from scratch, several times
2. Paneer paranthas
3. Quiche with paneer in it, and a base made from scratch
4. Fancy khichdi with many bits and bobs
5. Less fancy khichi
6. Sambarshadam
7. Chow mein like the LSR cafe
8. Lobia
9. Black dal
10. Orange dal
11. Mattar paranthas
12. Aloo paranthas
13. Aloo-gobhi-mattar paranthas
14. Gobhi paranthas
15. Puliyogare
16. Baked french fries
17. Hasselback potatoes
18. Potatoes Dauphinoise
19. Lamb meatballs
20. Chicken meatballs
21. Beef meatballs
22. Cashew celery soup
23. Endless salads. Admittedly J makes most of the salad dressing. But I find all the other bits and bobs to go on.

Of all of this I have only one picture- of the quiche- but here it is. It was better than my photography skills.

Now I am tired. I have run out of things to cook before this paper. Must write the paper in a rush of activity and can then return to my customary sloth.
Sloathe

Summer fun

I just had my first mango of the summer. I look forward to more tomorrow. 

Food notes after 2 months in North Carolina

I would have said the South, but the South is big. And Alabama is very different. See- I am assimilating- I am taking on the disdain of a native North Carolinian for her less advanced neighbours.

Here are some assorted notes on the food from here (not comprehensive in the least). Some of it is delicious. Some of it is inscrutable. Most of it is very bad for you. All of it will make you miss a good hit of sour like in a good kadhi, or sambar. It is very much like Punjab here- a purely butter based civilisation. The predominance of vinegar in meat preparations does not count, it leaves an anaemic tang in the mouth that is far from satisfactory.

i) I have been introduced to pork ribs. We ate them dry rubbed St Louis style (which apparently means something specific because every city has a style and they all compete with each other about how much sugar to put in their food- St Louis mercifully puts very little) and they were fantastic. I am now a convert, even though I approach most barbeque with suspicion. I do not think people should get points just because things have been cooked over charcoal. I am from India. This lack of modern equipment does not impress me much.

ii) I have eaten fried chicken. Chickens here have breasts bigger than many humans do- and you have to worry about this, but it is all the same after a good frying. And fried chicken is very good.

iii) When Southerners say sausage what they mean is spiced pork made into a patty of any shape, called a sausage just to cause confusion as there is never any casing to be seen. They eat these frequently, often on a biscuit- also called so to cause confusion with a native English speaker (ha! see what I did there?). Here a biscuit is not a crisp thing to pick up and dip into tea but a fluffy mound of cornmeal, butter and cheese that disappears easily in the mouth, only to appear almost instantly on your electrocardiogram.

iv) Pecan pie. Now as a woman in a bar in the middle-of-nowhere Georgia told me- it is not pe-can like pee-can which is a thing that sits under your bed, but pay-Kahn like the Dominique Strauss. How ever you say it pecan pie is wonderful. Red velvet cake, key lime pie, pound cake, brownies and blondies, something with funfetti because the stuff is everywhere, will also often show up on the same dessert table, but the pecan pie is best.

Now a small note about pound cakes. This is not a sponge cake. It is a plain cake, with flour, butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. I have not understood why this cake is so beloved.  My husband and his parents think it to be the height of culinary achievement, and they are not alone in this. Nothing in which you put equal parts sugar, butter and flour can fail if you ask me. Most American baking has so much butter and sugar that it must be very hard to make it taste bad. To me pound cake seems the most boring thing. It is not sublime in texture, it is not a showcase for excellent vanilla like an ice cream can be, it is not a particular test of skill, but it often inspires a devotion that is difficult to comprehend for those of us coming to this food in our adulthood. It will send grown men into raptures, and is more mystery than food.

Kaju katli is very hard to make.

Thai Villa

J and I like Thai food. Or rather J likes Thai food, I dream about it on a near daily basis and love it beyond all reason. One particular lemon fish that I ate as a 13 year old in Banglampoo before the mall burnt down and had to be rebuilt will forever be my most perfect fish.

I am in the process of moving to North Carolina and we have not discovered our go-to Thai restaurant yet. We have this kind of pan-Asian fusion restaurant around the corner, Tasu, and the food is a lot better than that shady description makes it sound. It is not identifiably Chinese, or Thai or Vietnamese, but their wonton soup is a thing of wonder, and everything they send out is delicious. I love it, but it is not where I would go if I wanted Thai food.

So we decided to try something new, and ventured into Thai Villa, in Cary. Only 3 tables were occupied, which is not the best sign, but it's kind of hidden away in one corner of a strip mall, so we shrugged that off. Big mistake. On entry the place looked promising. There wasn't a single tv, which has been my major grouse about most American restaurants- why must people always be watching sports? Even when out to dinner? And why do you need a 5 screens per room to watch them on? Anyhow. The lack of screens and the friendly service were a good start. But it was all boiled socks from there.

J ordered the Chicken Tom Yum Soup and Rainforest Curry with chicken. I ordered Glass Noodle Vegetable Rolls and Kapow Chicken (chicken with basil, red chilli paste and green peppers). The soup looked and tasted as if it came from a Knorr soup cube that hadn't even been brought to the boil. The chicken smelt bad. I would find that all the chicken they served that evening was really really smelly. The vegetable roll was a small limp thing with little to recommend it. Both the chicken main courses had the flavour of nothing so much as the boiled socks of a teenage boy.

The chicken was rank, but even worse was the criminal way in which they dealt with the curries. We decided not to stay, and that's never happened before. Neither of us has left a table at a restaurant after just a few bites convinced that the meal is beyond saving.

I've been to Thailand several times, and I don't expect the food to taste like on the streets of Bangkok. It is really painful though to encounter something so rank that calling it Thai would be insulting to the cuisine, and calling it food would be an unfortunate mistake.

Ennui

Today I went to the store, bought myself a big box of sushi and ate it by myself in the cafeteria. The fish felt weird but good. I read the bridge column while I ate. Then I thought a little about the eyebrows of the new intern, they are very Tom Selleck and so I heart him already. After this I went back to work and promised myself a cup of tea in a couple of hours.

Movies during the week

Beastly was a waste of time. I watched it because I watched Craig Ferguson chat with Neil Patrick Harris about it and I was charmed by their camaraderie. This is not enough of a reason to watch something. The film reaffirmed my opinion that anything with Vanessa Hudgens in it is a terrible mistake.

Happythankyoumoreplease was another one that I learnt about from Craig Ferguson, this time in a chat with Josh Radnor, who directed the movie. It was marginally better than BEastly. But this is not saying much. I was bored.

Angel was delightful. It was macabre, over the top and crazily fun. I like Romola Garai. I loved her in Atonement. And Dirty Dancing 2 is a guilty pleasure. Though I have to say the charms of the lovely Cuban boy in it had eclipsed hers for me. Until now. I ow want to watch many things wit her in it. I also want to watch the other stuff by the director Francois Ozon. I liked Swimming Pool quite a bit. He looks like fun.

Love's Kitchen was ghastly. All things with Gordon Ramsay are doomed.

Soul Kitchen, another film about cooking and rescuing a sinking restaurant- this time in Germany, with Germans. The film was full of people saying "so-oul kitchen munn" (man) in the peculiar sing song Germans get/do when they're being all hard rock about things. It was ok as films about food go, but this is because so many others are so spectacularly terrible. Like Love's Kitchen. Love's Kitchen made all of 121 pounds on its opening day. Which does not surprise me.

In other news my obsession with Craig Ferguson continues. As does my addiction to Master chef Australia.  But more about Craig Ferguson in the next post.

Procrastination 2.0

I have a paper due tomorrow- on Maoist movements in India and Nepal. This is why I am now going to tell you about what I ate for dinner.

On my way back home I stopped at a farmer's market the other day and bought lots of fresh vegetables. Having bought them I found I had no will to cook them. So on day one of the vegetable explosion I made guacamole pasta. I diced one avocado, a quarter of an onion, one tomato and squeezed the juice of one lemon in before adding  a tiny amount of pasta. Because the avocado was really ripe it made a sort of sauce for the pasta, but the whole thing was more like a salad. I dislike chopping onions though.

Dinner on day two had fewer ingredients.

I cut half a pod of garlic and sauteed it in a teeny bit of oil before adding one medium sized aubergine, one tomato and half a teaspoon of chilli powder. I kept the heat high and let some bits of the sliced aubergine char before pouring in a bit of water and cooking the whole thing down. Right at the end I added some chopped basil and salt.

Tomorrow I shall make myself beans with just a little bit of butter and lemon. There by bringing down the number of things i put into the vegetables down even further. This is a game I will play until my paper deadline has passed. Or until the vegetables finish.

Belgrade

I have been in Belgrade for 3 days now. I love the city. From about ten minutes into it I felt like I could live here and be happy (except for all the smoke, but we shall get to that later).

It has been cold and rainy since my arrival, and it fits every notion I had in my head of a the beautiful grey bleakness of Eastern Europe. I arrived at the Hotel Excelsior, which is where my ex-diplomat boss likes to stay, and found that it stands bang opposite the National Assembly which is in an ex-Palace and looks like this (but without the snow).

This part of town is full of hangovers from a greater Yugoslavic past, lots of imposing buildings with fountains in front and wide roads. I love the rain. It fees delightful to be sploshing across puddles, while not freezing away. It is May, so everyone from Belgrade that I have spoken to is peeved about it, but since I just escaped an unusually unpleasant summer in Bangalore, I'm not too unhappy.

Prices in Belgrade are a relief from the unrelenting ridiculousness of Switzerland. Everything seems reasonable, and I had the most wonderful dinner, with drinks and dessert, at a very lovely restaurant for the amount I spend on a general- bought on the go from a supermarket- lunch in Geneva. And the food- day 1: bacon wrapped chicken breast with a spicy cheese salad and chips. On my second day I returned to the same restaurant and asked the waitress for something light with vegetables. Looking thrilled she said, leave it to me and marched away, only to return with 5 bits of fried aubergine and an enormous piece of chicken schitzel covered with a mushroom and cream sauce. She scowled when I wasn't able to clean my plate, and went off in a huff when I told her I wasn't able to deal with Serbian portions. She was mollified later, when I ordered a glass of rakia (a sort of fruit brandy- that is usually 40-50 % alcohol), and stayed to chat with me about things I should do while in town. After three sips of the stuff I stopped, and this time she laughed at me, because i was beginning to drop thing. Even on a full stomach quince rakia is too much for me.

The workshop I am here to attend is held at the Police Academy. Like so many other college messes the food here is not so bad that it is inedible, nor good enough to inspire you to really want to eat it. There are 25 other people who go to lunch with me, and this is what most of then eat: 2 or 3 hunks of bread, a bowl of soup, a plate of leafy salad, a plate with sides- usually mashed potatoes or chips and boiled veg, two medium sized pieces of meat or one large piece stuffed with cheese, and a slice of cream filled cake for dessert. And this is just the average. Most of the men eat more. A few of the women eat less. There is also no way to tell the women at the counter to give me a small serving of anything. Even when I say this in Serbian they look at me blankly and then move on. So when I waste half or more of the food on my plate my worried hosts keep asking if they should get me something different, but the problem is not a lack of things to eat, it is the excess.

This evening I shall go to a restaurant inside a converted opera house. Will report on this tomorrow.

Hitting stuff

So today I went to a self-defense class. I learnt lots of useful things, like how to extract your wrist when someone is grabbing it really tight, and how to deal with someone who is trying to choke you. It was unnerving. Hitting people is harder than it seems. I found it difficult to muster up the aggression to deal with a pretend attacker. Then I came home and ate dinner. Which looked like this.

As you can see this is going to turn into an exercise and food blog. Because I really seem to think about very little else.

Fish

So on my last visit home my orthopaedist uncovered a pretty glaring vitamin D3 deficiency, and made me pledge to drink milk every day and eat fish at least twice a week. Yesterday I decided to conquer my fear of dealing with raw fish, and marched off to the supermarket with a friend in tow- she once fed me the most delicious baked salmon, I would count on her to guide me through this confusing shopping experience. We picked out some salmon, and this afternoon when I cooked it. Margo was at the library, so after some frantic texting I left her to her books, and got on to the fish prep on my own. With some olive oil, garlic, onion, fresh herbs, salt and a squeeze of lemon it turned out like this.

It turned out pretty well I think. Next time I shall be adding some ginger and a tiny bit of soy sauce.