Paapdi Chaat is one of the most colourful of Indian snacks and I have a string of nostalgia attached to it.
I made it for the first time , five years ago, while I was a teacher . Once the school closes in March for three weeks, teachers would be engaged in evaluation of term examination papers . The 8 hour long working days without students often had team building and fun activities .
Making Paapdi Chaat was one of those activities. All the ingredients were brought from home according to the quantity assigned to each one and the platter was laid out and relished aacompanied with laughter and natter.
The recipe requires a lot of preparation, which includes sweet paste, spicy paste, boiled potatos and chickpeas etc . This version of the recipe by Neha Mathur is similar to the one which I made.
Now when I look at the picture, I see the absence of purple colour and next time , I am thinking of adding finely grated purple cabbage along with the pomegranate seeds.
Like everything else, there are many culinary traditions of my generation, which are extinct or on the verge of extinction.
I consider myself lucky to have spent first 8 years of my life in a joint family with my maternal grandmother. Our home was the ancestral one, which we call Tharavadu with its low ceiling and woodworks. It had a long history of being an abode to generations of the family and my grandmother’s bed-time stories were filled with narratives of the exploits of our great great grandfathers.
The tharavadu was demolished without any second thoughts to make way for a concrete bungalow which tried to be a modern substitute with its wood worked front doors and dome shaped roof.
It did nothing to negate the loss . But the greatest forfeiture would be our failure in preserving the glorious pieces of copper utensils and stone appliances which were windows to the history of that era. I do not know what happened to all of them and it is too late to go searching for them.
All I can do is brag about my turn in acquainting all those stone ancestors of our modern day mixer grinder. I used them for years and can proudly say that I used to be something close to an expert, managing them with practised grace.
Searching the web yielded pictures of those stone made gizmos, the most frequently used being, arakallu. Kerala cuisine is rich in dishes with coconut based gravy. Before the advent of mixer-grinder, this stone contraption was the one which faithfully ground the grated coconut to a fine paste, for all gravy needs.
I have learned how to use it, under the guidance of my mother and we had an arakallu, till I was 16 or 17 years old.That was when my father bought us our first mixer-grinder and the arakallu was discarded as a now useless piece of polished boulder. I didn’t think about its impending role as a historic keepsake then.
The best part of this nostalgic souvenir, follows the grinding of coconut chutney. Before cleaning the arakallu, mom would bring a handful of cooked brown rice which she would roll on the remaining chutney, thus scraping even the last morsel from the stone. If I close my eyes, I can taste that spicy, tangy, ball of rice which my mom would place in my mouth. You can have a whole plate of rice with just this red spicy coconut chutney.
Another contrivance was the ural, which is a taller version of the mortar and pestle. This was used for grinding all spices and condiments to powder form. Chilli powder, coriander powder, rice powder, chutney powder and all other sorts, were made in the ural, by the rhythmic up and down motion of the long wooden pestle, by strong and graceful female arms.
Dry coconut chutney powder was an inseparable part of our school lunch box. It was ground in this ural and kept in glass bottles which would stay fresh for weeks. This process too followed the practice of rolling rice balls in the remnants of the chutney powder which was savoured with relish.
The final implement in this list is the aattukallu which was used for making liquid batter for idlis and dosas. The grinding was done, with one hand rotating the stone pestle while the other pushed the batter towards the centre . The movements required both rhythm and expertise or you would end up grinding your finger tips along with the batter.
Here is the recipe for my favourite Dry Coconut Chutney Powder which I now make in dry grinding jar .
INGREDIENTS 2 cup coconut, grated 7 dried red chillies handful curry leaves ball sized tamarind asafoetida - 1 pinch ½ tsp salt INSTRUCTIONS In a large kadai add grated coconut and roast on medium flame for 2-3 minutes. Add 7 dried red chilli and handful curry leaves. Continue to roast until the coconut turns dark golden brown. Cool completely and transfer to the blender. Add ball sized tamarind, pinch asafoetida and ½ tsp salt. Blend to coarse powder.
This is now on the list of my nostalgic soul foods.
Only a Keralite knows what Puttu means to him/her.
Since it comparatively easy to make, and can be relished with spicy curries or bananas, it often claims the breakfast table of every Kerala household.
Puttu is steamed rice flour, which is first fried to a particular texture. It is generally made in a tubular contraption called puttu kutti and steamed .
My mother gifted me one of those during the early days of our marriage . I must have made it a few times and then discarded it due to the availability of easier breakfast options .
My husband loves Puttu and he got a smaller version of the puttu kutti which can be used over a pressure cooker. So finally, today we made puttu.
Puttu lights up my husband’s face like a child who received his Christmas gift. The reason being, it is one of the cooking skills which he learned from his late mother. You can see him in blissful nostalgia, reminiscing those times spent with his darling mother, sharing stories over a Puttu maker.
It is a work of art. The mixing of rice flour has to be perfect. Then you fill it in the tube, reddish brown rice flour with snowhite flakes of grated coconut in between. Not overstuffed. Just the right amount. After steaming , you tenderly force it out . There, on the plate you can see your work of culinary art. A perfect cylinder of brown and white .
Puttu can have multiple partners . Chicken curry, black chickpeas curry , eggs curry etc or if you like it sweet , then mix it with little sugar and ripe bananas.
I always have it both ways. First I indulge my spicy craving with chicken curry.
Then another serving, with sugar and banana. It is finger licking delicious.
I was talking for onions !!! Though I genuinely wish I could say that about myself.
Women are like onions, you have to pull us back one layer at time to find the beauty underneath all of uneven things in our lives. Also to find out who we are for what we truly are and what we wanna be known for. –Susan Johnson
In India, we use onions extravagantly in all the dishes. Chopped, raw paste, cooked paste, crushed shallots..in all forms you can come up with.
I came to live in Mumbai during the summer of 1999. My taste buds had its first encounter with the raw onion and chappathi partnership, when we went out for dinner at a local eatery. In Kerala, onions are eaten raw, only when they form part of a salad.
Even though we had succulent butter chicken gravy to drown the pieces of the chapathi, I watched my husband squeeze lemon into the bowl of raw onion, then take a piece and relishing it with his chapathi.
I followed suit and it was a wonderful culinary discovery, a match made in heaven. Now I also add pickle along, even though some people may consider it as an offensive third wheel.
It uses chopped raw onions, mixed with finely chopped green chillies, garlic, ginger and coriander leaves, the quantity according to one’s palate.
Rest of the spices like red chilli powder, chaat masala, and salt is added only when the onions are placed in the dough before rolling them out.
The recipe insists so because, mixing chopped onions with salt and spices will leave out the juices and the onion mixture would turn watery.
I tried mixing all the spices together and then stuffing them in the dough. It took 30 minutes for me to cook 9 paranthas and still the onions were dry enough though not as dry as it would be if you follow the original recipe.
Important thing here is to slow cook the paranthas. This will release the flavours into the bread . I have it with yogurt and sweet lime pickle and the taste is divine.
Some Onion Facts
Onions are eaten and grown in more countries than any other vegetable, with at least 175 countries producing an onion crop. And unlike wheat (the largest global crop by area harvested), the onion is a staple of every major cuisine. – Source
2.Onions are the only commodity banned from futures trading in the United States. The Onion Futures Act was passed in 1958 after two traders cornered the onion market in Chicago controlling 98% of all available onions. – Source
3. A one pound onion has 191 calories, a Blooming Onion from Outback Steakhouse has around 1954 calories. – Source
4. As a form of birth control, the Egyptians applied onion juice to the tip of the penis before coitus. – Source
5. In the Middle Ages, onions were such an important food that people would pay their rent with onions, and even give them as gifts. – Source
6. Cutting an onion from pole to pole rather than along the equator influences flavor. Specifically, cutting an onion from pole to pole will result in a less pungent taste/odor and more mild and sweet flavor. – Source
7. Onions are poisonous to cats and dogs. – Source
8. In 2010, India experienced an “onion crisis” and the cost of onions is a significant political issue in India. – Source
9. Cutting Onions make you cry because they produce the chemical irritant known as syn-propanethial-S-oxide. This chemical irritant stimulates the eyes’ lachrymal glands so they release tears. – Source
10. South Koreans Costco cafe customers consume 20 times the amount of onions as their American counterparts each year. – Source
11. If you place your spring onion cuttings in a glass of water, they will regrow. – Source
Musings of a Wandering Dryad 