Tag Archives: Parsi

No Meat Feat

9 Sep

Hands up those who’re related to well-meaning but bumbling folks who amuse us with their follies. Yup, totally expected that forest of waving arms. I’m no exception, and my community even has a special phrase to celebrate mix-ups, boo-boos, or whatever you want to call ’em.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting:

“Ghotala-ma-goas“, n. a big bungle

Pronounced: gho-taa-laa maa go-s

Direct translation: Meat in the mess-up

 

If you know anything about the Parsis, you will be aware that we’re a bunch of obligate carnivores. Mutton is our Mecca, our Holy Grail is the holy grill and many, many childhoods revolved around the thrill that was the arrival of the Chick Van.

Just like we break an egg on near everything, meat–good old goas–is dunked and simmered in dals, vegetables, rice, and ice cream. Okay fine, maybe not ice cream. So we have paapri-ma-goas, masoor-ma-goas, papeta-ma-goas, tamota-ma-goas, cauliflower-ma-goas, bheeda-ma-goas, and sakarkand-ma-goas, in addition to meat-specific dishes like kid goas (served at our wedding dinner), salli boti, chops, and cutlets.

Now that you have this introduction, you won’t be so surprised to learn that a bungle, in Parsi Gujarati, is called ghotala-ma-goas. Why leave the poor errors out in the cold while we feast on tender, juicy, fall-off-the-bone meat?

Let’s practice with an example:

They landed up at Eros instead of Sterling for the movie! Tsk, tsk. Such ghotala-ma-goas.

You try it:

These people OJ knows fed the same dog twice and starved the other one for 2 days straight. Now that’s a ghotala-ma-goas if there ever was one.

Your turn now: What legendary ghotala-ma-goases have you been a part of? C’mon people, get sharing! Let that be your Parsipanu pound of flesh. 😉

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Happy Hausfrau Series: Key Lime Tart

11 Jul

Greetings from the home of the happy hausfrau! Don those aprons and follow me into the kitchen, chop chop.

Remember my aunt who hung out with Freddy Mercury in her late childhood/early teens/whocareswhen,shegottohangoutwithFreddieEffingMercury? Yup, that one. Not only did she shoot the breeze with an international rockstar, she is one herself–in an arena lit up with the warm, flattering lights of two microwaves, one stove and an oven. And on our visit to her gorgeous home last year (where the chocolate-and-steel-blue bedclothes matched the bathroom linen and I was in color-coordinated heaven), she fed us a zesty tart for dessert one night, made from the key limes in her garden. Not only were we fed multiple helpings of dhansak, kebabs, assorted side dishes, dessert, chocolate, and 75 things for breakfast the next morning, she bade us goodbye with a bag of those precious key limes and a quick and easy recipe to churn out the good stuff. So this recipe comes to you all the way from San Diego. Oh the places I trudge to for you guys!

First, let’s get our Border Patrol ready. And pardon the poor picture quality. The resident photographer decided to go for a walk at the precise moment I was baking. (Which goddess had a gazillion hands, by the way? Indian mythology is not my strong suit.)

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Back row, left to right: Tony tart-shell (readymade, from good old Safeway’s freezer section, and pulled out to room temperature 20 minutes before bake time), Daniela sour cream (whose yankified name is Daisy), and Miguelita the namkeen item commonly known as salt.

Front row, left to right: 3 limes called Lupita (key limes are ideal, but any other type will do, including lemons), our good old eedas three, and a can of Sweet Caroline, I mean condensed milk. Sorry, I have a Neil Diamond hangover.

Invisible (and also optional): A sprig of mint leaves for garnishing.

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Pre-heat the oven at 350 degrees before you begin to assemble the ingredients. Oooooooh, there’s a GHOST IN MY KITCHEN!!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAJust kidding! It’s called a camera flash. :mrgreen:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERANext up, break a leg. I mean an egg. Then, repeat twice until all 3 Humpties are floating on a serene ocean of whites.

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Ready for the bidaai? Hold your tissues, now! Separate the yolks and the whites to background cries of “Nahiiiiiiiiiiiiin!” from the dulhan-ki-maa. Does that really happen, by the way, all the sobbing? Parsi brides are only too happy to run off into the night and get down to business.

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Next up, let me tell you a wee story: a few months ago, the Boy baked me a brownie cake. It was delicious, and as we ate the whole thing with fork and hammer, he may or may not have mentioned that our whisk’s motor burned out during his enthusiastic endeavor, and I had the pleasure of discovering it mid-bake. So to make up for that little episode of intentional forgetfulness, he surprise-ordered me a replacement. With a heavier motor this time. IN PINK! How much do I love this man.

Stop standin’ around, y’all! I haven’t all day, ya know. Git to work!

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Beat them eggs. I can’t even go all Paula Deen on you guys now. ‘Tis not appropriate.

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Sigh. Stand back and watch magic happen as the cascading condensed milk folds creamily into the frothy eggs and Carlos Santana’s ‘Maria Maria’ plays in my head:

Tartina, Tartinaaaaaaa……….!

She reminds me of a key lime story

Growing up in San Diego

She’s livin’ the life just like a Parsi star!

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Now comes the hard part. Zesting the limes.  It ain’t over ’til the fat lady grates. This step can be done at any point in the process. Sometimes I do it right at the beginning, and at other times halfway through. Us hausfraus need variety, you know.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThat is the zest of two limes. Guess who got lazy and ‘improvised’. Wait, are you guys looking at ME?? 😯

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Juice the limes. If you squeeze all 3 like the recipe suggests, you should have half a cup.

“Juice, Rahul, juice?” Name that retarded movie. Or stand in the rain in a wet saree and pretend you love a stuttering ham, whichever’s easier.

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Add the zest of 3 limes, the half cup of lime juice (thanks for the catch, Alice!), two tablespoons of sour cream, and a pinch of salt to the egg-condensed milk mixture.

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Blend for about 1 minute. Not blend in, which is entirely different. I’m so glad we had this English lesson.

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Pour the mixture into the tart shell. It will look like this. And yes, the blended mixture looks lighter in color, so don’t worry you’ve done something wrong. (What’s that? You don’t worry? It’s just me then? 😦 Sigh.)

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And the dish should look like this. If you’ve used the finger-to-mouth technique I shared with you in this post. This step is optional.

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Pop the tart into the oven in its baking tray. You may want to put another baking sheet under it for ease of operation and in case of spills. I usually do. Set the temperature to 350 and the timer to 24:30. Why 24:30? Because I said so. Man, I love the dictatorial control I have over your pie destiny right now. :mrgreen:

A word on the oven settings: each oven is different, so you may want to bake for approximately 17 minutes and then check for doneness and add minutes accordingly. The crust should look like its sallow Brit limbs spent a couple hours at the beach.

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Pull the tart out of the oven when done. The lime mousse consistency should be somewhat firm, but not immovable. Which is an excellent parenting strategy as well, but ignore me.

Let your child tart cool for approximately 30 minutes and then stick it into the refrigerator. 2 to 3 hours is recommended, overnight is ideal.

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Pull it out of the refrigerator right before serving and stick a sprig of mint in the middle as a garnish.

In an act of poetic justice, I served this tart 2 weekends ago to my aunt’s son and daughter-in-law, right after a meal of….you guessed it, dhansak. 😀

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Enjoy, my friends. And don’t forget to tell me if you liked it!

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Suffer the Fuffer, Darn the Kaan

26 Jun

This morning, as the Boy threw clothes into our laundry hamper, it keeled over and descended on him from atop the dryer. Exclamations of annoyance emerged from the laundry closet, somewhat muffled by soft cotton undershirts and delicate unmentionables, which, 1) reached my kasaari-na-kaan in the kitchen, and 2) had me asking him “Why are you doing fuffer-chattuk?”

So gather around, my lovelies, for today we decode 2 more Parsi-isms:

1) Kasaari-na-kaan

Pronounced: kuh (like duh)-saa (like maa)-ree (like see)   naa (like paa)    kaan (like paan)

Translation: Insect’s ears

Meaning: Ears as sharp as an insect (some argue that it isn’t just any insect, specifically, it is a cockroach, but let’s just keep things all-around pleasant, shall we?)

Now sharp eyesight may not be my thing, and my Parsi nose is mostly for show, but ears, ears I have, and they do a stellar job to make up for my other not-so-efficient senses. A sniffle in the next room? I’m on it. A click in the house next door? I heard it. Volume, frequency, tonal quality, no problem! My kasaari-na-kaan hear it all. So each time I pick up on something the Boy doesn’t, he looks at me in awe and says, “Whoa, kasaari-na-kaan!” and now you can use this quirky Parsi phrase too. Just try not to throw it at your stone-deaf granduncle Cawas.

Example: Tehmi Fui has such kasaari-na-kaan! She could hear the girls giggling at the other end of the house.

2) Fuffer-chattuk

Pronounced: fuff (like stuff)-uhr (like sir)      chut (like hut)-uk (like luck)

Translation: Grumbling and fretting

Meaning: When someone throws a mildly grumbling hissy fit of a non-violent nature, they are doing fuffer-chattuk. Mostly harmless, fuffer-chattuk implies grumbling under one’s breath while banging pots and pans in the kitchen. Or stomping around, complaining about all the extra work one has to do once the guests leave.

Example: I asked the cook to make 3 side dishes for the party and her fuffer-chattuk went on all day.

Extra: “Bubber-fuffer” is also a phrase in the same vein, and means pretty much the same thing.

 

So tell me, what do you do fuffer-chattuk about? And who in your family has kasaari-na-kaan? And who are you going to try these Parsi-isms on? 🙂

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Just Add Fruit

30 Apr

The Boy (idly wondering): You’re not allergic to any nuts, right?

Me: Honey, I’m Parsi. We invented them.

 

 

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Sasoo Na Aansoo

20 Mar

Contrary to what you’ve heard, I haven’t run off to perform item numbers in Bollywood (although refusing stampeding hordes of directors is tiresome, ohhh my throbbing temples!)  My online silence stemmed from an inconvenient brat called Life who sometimes demands our exclusive attention.  Posts will be skimpy for a while, so bear up, will you? But now that I’m here, and with Naurooz/Jamshedi Navroze right around the corner, let’s revive our Parsipanu section!

Today’s phrase, uniquely my community’s and one that amuses me most is:

“Tohri sasoo kanda khai”

Pronounced: taw-ree saa-soo kaan-daa khaa-y

Direct translation: May your mother-in-law eat onions.

Mrs. Kandawalla

[Credits: Picture by Robert Recker/Corbis. Located on Google Images.]

Why onions? Who knows. Perhaps we secretly love to see our mothers-in-law weep. Maybe the speaker wants all the eeda to herself and so wishes the humble onion on the sasoo. Or it could be that feeding one’s mother-by-marriage stinky bulbs is a legit way to stay away. Whatever the motivation, this phrase is used as an exclamation when one has done something foolish, best said while slapping palm to forehead.

For example:

Oops, I added salt twice to the chicken gravy!

Tohri sasoo kanda khai! Now throw in a few potatoes to absorb the excess.

 

So this Navroze, wish someone’s mother-in-law a mouthful of onions—but be sure to keep yours happy with a box of mithai. 😉

Navroze Mubarak, people. This Spring, may we look at life anew, and kiss second chances full on the mouth.

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Happy Hausfrau Series: Lagan-nu-Custard

14 Jan

Greetings from the home of the happy hausfrau! Don those aprons and follow me into the kitchen, chop chop.

Starting November and lasting all the way through February is the season for Parsi weddings and navjotes. The highlight of these events that host anywhere between several hundred to a few thousand guests, is the sit-down, four-course meal, served on banana leaves and rounded off with our recipe for today–lagan-nu-custard, which simply means ‘wedding custard’. A Parsi wedding is a not-too-frequent occurrence, and many a gourmand attempts to wheedle an invite, openly citing the cuisine as their reason for doing so. Now, whether you’re invited or not, you can make authentic lagan-nu-custard in your own kitchen!

First, the colony of characters:

colony ni gang

Starting from the left, top row: Mr. Makhania, Coomi Condensed Milk, Darabshaw Doodhwala, Vinifer Vanillawali, Safed Khansaab

Starting from left, bottom row: Ms. Skinny Badaam, Messrs. Edulji Eeda, Eski Elchee, Jerbai Jaiphal

Sigh. You need their passport names, don’t you?

Oh alright.

Here we go:  Butter (just enough to grease the baking dish), condensed milk, full fat milk (you can even use low-fat, like I did)-half gallon/1.89 liters, vanilla essence, white sugar, sliced almonds and/or pistachios, 5 eggs, powdered cardamom, powdered nutmeg.

Now, pour the milk into a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Like so:

dairy queen

Switch/ pull off the heat.  Next, open the can of condensed milk and get down on your knees.

Coomi

For what we are about to receive

Let us be truly grateful.

And for what we are about to do

Turn the world momentarily blind.

Cue finger-to-lid-to-mouth technique.

Pretend you didn’t just read that.

Continue.

slurp

Turn off/remove from the heat and pour Coomi in. I once had a neighbor with that name. She married a man from Herzegovina and adopted his unpronounceable last name. Don’t you love how I’m so generous with other people’s lives?

Moving on….

soogar

Dunk 300 gms of soogar into the saucepan.

Soogar is swit and I’m a twit.

Give it all a big stir and turn the heat on. You can pretend you’re Gloria Estefan while doing this next step.

stir the heat around

Turn it up, turn it up, not upside down

Turn it up, turn it up, not upside down

Stir the heat around

Got to make the custard

Stir it round and round

Love to stir it

Love to stir it….

*waits for you to finish waggling rear end*

Now mi amigos, if the milk is slightly thicker and ivory in color, pull it off the stove and let it cool. And get to work greasing a baking dish with a stick of butter.

buttah

Like so. Ignore the chef’s desperate need for a manicure. She’s like this only.

Next, whack each of the eeda into a bowl….

edulji eedaVegetarians don’t look!!! Oops. Too late. 😳

5There were five in the bed

And the little one said

Move over, roll over!

And then there were four in the bed.

You can take the teacher out of school, but you canna take the school out of the teacher, no ma’am!

whack! biff! thwack!Beat the eggs and beat ’em good.

Once frothy, pour into the cooled milk (or the milk into the egg dish, whichever is larger)…

pour

And add the final touches to your piece de resistance…

viniferVanilla essence, 1 tsp. That hand model should be sued.

Eski

Powdered cardamom, 1/2 teaspoon.  Or edited out of the frame.

jerbai

Powdered nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon. Or made to wear gloves.

box

Whew!

Now get rowdy and beat it all up again.

dhishoom

If you’re OCD like someone I know, shudder at the splatter.

If you aren’t, proceed to the next step.

almonds

Add sliced/slivered almonds to the mixture and pour it all into a baking dish.

unbakedEet veel luke like thees.

Then, get ready to say your goodbyes.

adieu

There, there. Here’s a hanky. It’ll be back soon. In 45 minutes, to be precise. All golden brown and tanned at 350 degrees.

finale

And voila! Cool and chill in the refrigerator overnight. Serve cold the next day.

And remember, before your guests gather to devour, call out a resounding “JAMVA CHALO JI!!”

Enjoy. 😀

(Pictures courtesy the Happy Hausfrau’s direct beneficiary, a.k.a. the resident photographer, a.k.a. the Boy)

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New Year, New Section

8 Jan

While driving to Southern California this past Christmas, we were stalled behind a particularly snail-like vehicle that would neither speed up nor let us pass. The Boy was at the wheel, and while he is typically patience personified, I could sense the situation was pushing some buttons. “Dheero dhurpuch!” he grumbled aloud, and my brows shot up in amusement. In five years of knowing me, our man is spewing Parsi-isms like he owns them.

It formally began with the installation of a little whiteboard in our home. Primarily put up to bear reminders, lists and the odd story idea, I found myself inscribing definitions of typically Parsi words and phrases, just for fun. Like so:

dholio, n.: bed

dheero dhurpuch, adj.: slowpoke (masculine)

I regard my mother tongue with equal parts of humor and fondness. Borrowing heavily from Gujarati and retaining its script, Parsi Gujarati is a bastardized/hysterically funny adaption of the original language, depending on the way you look at it. With only a 100,000 of us left in the world, and fewer still speaking the language, only a handful of you will encounter it– unless you live in South Bombay, around a Parsi colony / the community in  Toronto (second only to Bombay), or in a Gujarat town/city still populated by my people.

But guess what: I wouldn’t let you miss out! Starting this year, you’re going to find the odd phrase, the quirky word, and the unfathomable saying, all right here on WWNP. Here’s your chance to access a little-known language and either impress that one cuckoo Parsi in your life or seek one out if you suffer the misfortune of knowing none. 😉

Ready? Practice this phrase and I’ll be back with more. Chop-chop now! Can’t do to be a dheero/dheeri dhurpuch!

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Dragonworks

31 Dec

And so it is that we come to another end. Symbolic, obviously, for a shift occurred a while ago and the earth changed, and I with her.

2012 was all about peaks and troughs. Of extremes, learning, and deep realization. A momentous year, of change, insight, and revelation. Like a train changes tracks mid-route, but not quite as seamlessly, I halted, regrouped, and reassessed. Was aided in startling ways by unexpected travelers. I discovered who my very own jedi were, and who wished me harm. Other people became surprisingly irrelevant as I turned inward and focused on my own growth. In the finals weeks of these months of tailspin, more curtains parted than ever before, a path confirmed its existence, and the knowledge I bear became surer, firmer, and better defined.

Gifts abounded. Some were snatched away, others atrophied, yet others morphed into opportunities to burnish the self.This has been less a year and more a journey. And, just as a road has mile markers, today is merely one such in the hike I started longer ago than memory permits.

I leave it to an all-time great to tell you how I feel:

And since we’re on the subject, and not because I wish to boast, oh no no, not at all, listen to this:

Three days ago, I stood in my aunt’s inhumanly immaculate kitchen in San Diego as she flung a casual hand out and asked, “Who was that English singer? The one who died?”

“Cliff Richard? Engelbert?” I asked, trying to rifle through memory for singers from her time.

“No, the Parsi one,” she persisted, “He was quiet, and lanky, with buck teeth.”

“Wait…you mean Freddie Mercury?”

“Yes, that’s what he called himself later, isn’t it? I knew him as Farrokh. We used to play together in Panchgani, and he went to boarding school there.”

“You hung out with Freddie Mercury?”

“We were just 11!”

“YOU HUNG OUT WITH FREDDIE MERCURY??????”

“Look, here’s a picture.”

And so it was, that with a clap of thunder and a strangled scream, this gentle lady with whom I share our fathers’ bloodline, watched me yell for the Boy, disintegrate on her marbled floor, and call out “You knew Freddie Mercury!!!!” until the men in white coats arrived to haul me away.

Happy 2013, my friends.  Don’t stop me now. Much lies ahead.

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Cook Like You Mean It, Feed The World Your Love

5 Nov

While the Boy and I were dating, I cooked for him exactly once. Dumped a packet of readymade Parampara masala into a pressure cooker with some mutton, and dished it up with rice when he returned from a business trip. “Parsi women don’t cook,” I said in an off-hand way, and we moved on to other topics of conversation.

I wasn’t lying. I grew up in a home with family cooks since my great-grandfather’s time, where both Nana and Mum made the sourest of faces when said cook took a day off, and have cousins who engage a caterer to supply their meals on a daily basis.  And, worried that his beloved daughter would have to enter the kitchen, my grandfather sent along a cook with my mother after marriage. That’s right. Other people give their daughters furniture and jewelry. My mother brought along her very own cook. “Slaving in the kitchen,” I was informed by the women in my father’s family, “is not for us.”And so it stood, not questioned or even considered.

The first time I cooked a meal, I was 23 and fresh off the boat in America. Painstakingly referring to my mother’s handwritten recipe notebook, I curried eggplant for my flatmates. It didn’t taste bad. It just didn’t taste of anything at all. “This is shit,” laughed a new flatmate, as I struggled to keep my face composed. I shut the book firmly and put it back in the suitcase that had traveled across the oceans with me. It was the last time I referred to it.

I was clueless. I didn’t know how ingredients blended together, what spice played off what herb on the palate, and which vegetables took longer to cook. Breathing deeply and refusing to be disheartened, I tossed out all written rules and lunged at cooking with my gut. I got creative, I improvised. Rarely measured, and went with what felt right. In a month, my flatmates were marveling at my rapid improvement, and the woman who’d called my food shit was eating second helpings, along with her words. Some months later, I was hosting a lunch for 20 hungry students (who, agreed, will eat anything), whipping up batches of freshly fried fish for 4 non-stop hours, all by myself, and reveling in my newfound skill.

No deaths were reported that day, and from then on, there was no looking back. I fed myself and my friends many hearty meals in the years that I lived in America. When I moved back to Bombay, my kitchen activity churned to a grinding halt. Home claimed other parts of me, and I didn’t care about mucking around in the kitchen when my childhood cook was at the ready, serving up all my old favorites. It was no wonder then, that the Boy realized with delighted surprise only after we moved to California, that his spouse could throw a meal together and he didn’t have to pretend to love it.

The last year and nine months have been a journey of elaborate, made-from-scratch home-cooked dinners to throw-something-together-after-12-mindnumbing-hours-at-work meals. I have ground and peeled and grated and stirred, pureed and sautéed and infused and simmered. Concocted my own potions, and experimented with the tried and tested. Alongside my steadfast mission of honoring my roots, I have expanded my repertoire of recipes, scouring cookbooks and aunts’ memories, discovering food bloggers, and calling my mother at odd hours to ensure that exact taste of home. I have delighted in the heady scents of spices, the delicate notes of lavender and lemon, the more temperate palate of soups and bakes, and the kick of fiery Thai curries. The Boy devours it all like he was born to it, wants dhandar and fish every Sunday, recommends my dhansak to anyone within earshot, and is wowed by all the things Parsis can do with the humble eedu.

I cook for friends. I create for family. I conjure with all my senses and rejoice in feeding people. And today, I take a moment to acknowledge the amazing lady from whom this love of food and its preparation is inherited. Born on November 5th, 94 years before this one, my Granny left us many years ago, but in so many ways lives on. A sorceress in the kitchen and puppeteer of an intricate ingredient minuet, her food—comforting, flavorful, hearty, deceptively simple, nutritious, and madly scrumptious—was the stuff of my childhood dreams, and I am so, so glad her love of the culinary arts skipped a generation and was bestowed on me. (Also inherited were the chubby genes and the ability to be a human pillow that annoyingly skipped a generation too, but never mind that. 🙄 )

I do not aim to match my grandmother’s skill, for that is the stuff of family legend, with relatives traveling miles out of their route for a taste of her good stuff. I only wish to be the flag bearer of her passion for the things that nourish our body and spirit. George Bernard Shaw was bang on when he said “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” And I know he and my mum’s mum are having an agreeable chin wag about that wherever in the firmament they are.

Happy birthday, Granny. In these delicious ways, may I continue to honor you.

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Happy Hausfrau Series: Akoori

14 Oct

Greetings from the home of the happy hausfrau! Don those aprons and follow me into the kitchen, chop chop.

This blog has given me many things. But since my last hausfrau post, its greatest gift has been the realization that you guys are kindred spirits. You love eeda. I love eeda. Ergo, TrueLuv4Evah. We’re twin flames! Yolkmates from lifetimes past! With the crack of each shell, our karmic connection  (and LDL) grows stronger! And in celebration of this life-changing event, today we make akoori: authentic Parsi scrambled eggs.

Joining us on this journey of Higher Learning are:

Clockwise, from top:  Salt, cooking oil, 2 medium onions (preferably red), fresh cilantro/coriander, the 3 Magi of Indian spices: coriander, turmeric, and red chilli powders, ginger-garlic paste, 2 medium tomatoes (no, you aren’t seeing things, I substituted), and 4 eeda.

Why are the eeda white this time? Because we’re an equal opportunity household and value diversity.

Start by pouring some oil into a pan and remembering to turn on the heat.

Drizzle and then sizzle. Oh yeah.

While the oil’s getting all hot and bothered, turn your attention to the onions. Onions, I’ve always felt, are the classic middle children of all god’s creations. Put to work, but not really acknowledged. Hands up if you’re a middle child. *keeps hers smugly lowered.* :mrgreen:

Peel and chop the onions into fours. The reason you’re being spoiled with so many pictures today is because we had a guest photographer in the house kitchen. I hereby dedicate a song to him: I love yoooooooou, You pay my rent.

Hit that ‘chop’ button. GRRRRRRRRRAAWWWWR!!!!

Once the onions are soft and translucent, add a teaspoon of ginger-garlic paste and order them to assimilate. They’ll meekly comply if you threaten to share the Parsi sugar-in-milk story.

Next, your tomatoes do the bump-and-grind routine. In red spandex. And leg warmers.

Add them to the pan and give everything a big stir. Oh you rabble-rouser you.

Next, add a flattened teaspoon of turmeric. …..

A heaped teaspoon of powdered coriander…..

And a flattened one of red chilli powder. You can substitute this with 2 green chillies if you wish.

We 3 kings of Orient are

Adding heat to OJ’s eeda

….and so on and so forth.

Dust the mixture with salt and stir, stir, stir.

Add chopped kothmir and stir, stir, stir. If you go all North Indian on me and call this “dhania”, this is all you deserve: 🙄

At this point, the akoori base starts looking decidedly green. In my mother’s kitchen. In mine, it stays red. But you know what Michael Jackson said. It’s what you are on the inside that matters.

Ready to crack your eeda?

Why do I have such gnarly fingers?

Oh look at that cozy family of four, the resident photographer gushed. We’re still humoring him. Because he pays the rent.

The resident photographer would like you to know that this is when you pop your waffles in the toaster.

(Pssst! English muffins/rotlis/toast will do just fine.)

He also thinks it imperative that you know the perfect heat setting to gently scramble the eeda.

I don’t eat no butter, he proudly proclaims.

(I get all my cholesterol from eggs.)

Scramble away, but ensure the eggs are still moist and slightly runny. They’ll continue to firm up after you pull them off the heat, and you don’t want them too dry.

Ladle the akoori onto the waffles and serve right away. And before you dash off, here’s a nugget of trivia: The Bollywood movie ‘Being Cyrus‘ was first titled ‘Akoori’, except there were concerns that the general audience wouldn’t know what that was.

Wisdom Wears Neon Pyjamas: educating the world, one clueless blog reader at a time. 😎

Jumjoji!

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