Hoysala

The most satisfying dinner that I have had in the US so far was in Hoysala, this quaintly (but aptly) named Kannadiga restaurant in Somerset. It was a buffet dinner, where they serve you one portion of dosa and uttappam and the unlimited portions of the stuff on the sideboards.

The thing about this place - it was totally authentic and pandered to no firang tastes. Little wonder then that the clientele was 100% desi.

The food was very good. The dosai, for instance, were perfect! Crisp yet thick, sour and adequately grainy on the tongue.

Here's the entire fare ...


















A small incident about Hoysala. We had to make three visits before we got anything to eat. The first time, it was 9:30 PM and the usher said that many of the items were not, 'in enough quantity' and the potato sabji is, 'over'. So we left fuming and hungry - only to get into a frightfully revolting place called Pooja. The next day we were again there, only to see the dark doors staring back at us. It said, 'Monday Closed'. By this time, we ought to have given up. But somehow the place kept calling us, and we went next week.

It was worth the trouble.

Stuffed Green Tomatoes

Made on a whim. There were green tomatoes and they were priced decently (didn't need a mortgage like it does to buy some of the other veggies nowadays) and Robin had remarked in an offhand way that it was his favourite, absolutely the bestest and favouritest dish. So obviously I forgot all about such trifles. Till that day when I saw them nested next to lemons and I thought that I have never seen lemons of that particular greenness. Lemons, BTW, are in the Cadillac range just now - Rs 4 per. Ridiculous! To cut a short story, shorter, I bought 7 medium, tight and hard green tomatoes and made this dish...

Ingredients

1. Green tomatoes, small to medium, firm and round. Three per person is a reasonable portion.
2. Freshly roasted and ground coriander powder, 2 tsp per tomato
3. Red chili powder, 1/2 tsp per tomato
4. Freshly roasted and ground jeera powder, 1 pinch per tomato
5. Mango powder, amchur, 1/2 tsp per tomato
6. Salt, 1/2 tsp per tomato
7. Refined veg oil, 1/2 tsp per tomato

In case you want a gravy, here's what you could use:

1. Onions, 2 medium, for every 6 tomatoes
2. Fresh green coriander leaves and stems, 1/2 cupful for every 6 tomatoes
3. Tomato puree, 1 tblsp for every 6 tomatoes
4. Fresh ginger, 1/2 inch for every 6 tomatoes
5. Salt, to taste
6. Refined veg oil, 1 1/2 tblsp

Get going

1. Wash and dry the tomatoes, green coriander and ginger
2. Remove the brown tops and cut a thin slice from the bottom of each tomato so that it may stand straight without lolling around in the pan.
3. Make a cross cut over each tomato so that you have the quarters that can be forced apart but are not deep enough to cut the tomato into quarters. In case you are wondering why such intricacy, well, between the spaces of the quadrants you will stuff the masala. Duh!
4. Set the tomatoes aside and mix the coriander powder, the chili powder, the mango powder, the jeera powder and the salt together in a bowl. Mix well.
5. Force each tomato open along one and force a teaspoon of the mixture down to the centre. Do the same for the other cut. So you are stuffing in 2 teaspoons of masala in each tomato.
6. Once done, set the tomatoes aside for 30 minutes.
7. After 30 mins, once the tomato juices have absorbed much of the masala, stuff in the remaining masala equally on all the tomatoes. Use your fingers this time.
8. You are now ready. The cooking will require 30 minutes on medium-to-low flame. Give yourself 15 minutes for the gravy. You can also do the gravy while the tomatoes are simmering.
9. To cook the tomatoes, heat a flat bottomed large pan, add all the oil. Let it heat on medium flame for a minute.
10. Slide in the tomatoes one-by-one on the pan. Huddle them around in the centre for best results.
11. Cook them for 3-4 minutes. Then turn each of them gently in its sides and keep turning each tomato 90 degrees every few minutes to ensure it is uniformly cooked.
12. Once all the tomatoes are done this way, cover the pan and let is simmer on low for 10 minutes.
13. In the meantime heat up a kadhai, add the 1 1/2 tbslp oil and let it heat up for a minute.
14. Add the onions and stir gently at medium heat. Add the salt. Once translucent, add the coriander stems and the ginger. Stir gently for a few more minutes.
15. Dilute the puree and add it to the kadhai. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add the remaining coriander, stir and turn-off heat.
16. Place the gravy on a flat dish with raised sides.
17. Place the tomatoes around. Sprinkle with coconut and coriander

Goes well with Fulka and daal. The tomatoes should be cooked but just a touch crunchy. By some good luck, hopefully they will not be too tart. In case they are, you might want to let go of the mango powder. This means you'll need to taste the tomatoes when raw. I don't mind them when tart. I just add a dollop of unhealthy salt!

Looking for the perfect dosa

The Dosas in Mumbai restaurants are sweet. The sambhar is also sweet, or bland. The chana-coconut chutney is tasteless and often watery. Of course, very few serve gunpowder (malagapudi) here; one has to ask.

Lets start with the dosa. Instead of letting the daal and rice batter ferment on its own, the restaurants, especially the Udupi ones, add yeast immediately after making the paste. As we all know, yeast is more the bread kind of thing, it produces glucose as an end-product of fermentation, sweetening the batter and giving it the rose-like fragrance which is wholly inappropriate for dosa. Dosa needs that tangy, sour smell of fermentation, and a sour and sharp taste.

Now the sambhar. They make it mostly with tomatoes here, with tamarind making a guest appearance, or not at all. And the masala is not quite OK - too little dhania powder and hing, too much of chili powder and SUGAR!! OMG! Its terrible, the sweetness of it all!

Chutney - well! the word itself a touch of onomatopoeia about it - chhhhuttt- nee! the chhhhutt is the mouth-watery click of the tongue against the back of the teeth. And look what we get - the blandest possible paste of insipid nothingness - no tang of the green chillies, no back-of-the-throat sensation of the ginger, no roundedness of the coconut milk and the faint nuttiness of ground chana daal.

The tiny joint on Dadar TT, a few shops before Parsi Dairy makes it the way I like it. Crisp but thick dosa, made from proper sour and salt batter. The sambhar and chutney come in small bowls. The moment you finish any, the waiter will replace it with another. You suddenly feel that the sambhar and the chutney are precious - not to be lavished upon yokels. The sambhar is not the best (you can have better in Radhakrishna in Andheri West opposite Shopper's Stop); but the chutney!!! Ooooh! exquisite! The consistency is just right - a bit of the solids and enough gravy to soak your dosa into. The coconut is not ground down mercilessly into a gooey paste, but retains the granularity and hence the juices. There is ginger and green chillies - plus a hint of garlic and tiny bits of coriander stalks. Its just perfect! Try it.

Pat Style French Beans

It started off when we saw this mound of shiny and tender french beans in the thela last week. So we selected the best from the heap and then wondered what could be done with them that was different from the usual (the usual is to stir fry it for a Hakka noodle or blanch it in salt water and dress it for a salad). I remembered a beans sabzi with fresh-coconut in Mangalore. It had a little gravy and also had some kokum, if I'm not mistaken. The sabzi that I made that day turned out to be an eclectic mix of styles. And Robin loved it. Then I made it again last Sunday, and my bro, bhabhi and my niece loved it. 'Hey!', I thought, 'Hey! let's post it; maybe some more people will like it..." So here goes...

Ingredients

1. French beans - 250 gms. Take the trouble to pick tender, green ones.
2. Onion - 1 medium, red.
3. Tomato - 2 medium, red, firm.
4. Dry Coconut powder - 2 tablespoons + some more for the decoration
5. Jeera - 1 teaspoon.
6. Kasoori methi - three pinches.
7. Tomato puree - two tablespoons (for the tartness and for a touch of thickness of the masala).
8. Salt to taste.
9. Sugar - just a little, to round off the tastes.
10. Vegetable oil - 1 and half tablespoons.

Get Going

1. Pare, wash and dry the beans. Chop them into tiny cylinders of half centimeter.
2. Clean and chop the onions fine.
3. Pare the top off the tomato and chop it fine. If if find the tomato skin annoying, do take the trouble of removing the skin. I leave mine in.
4. Roast the Jeera in a kadhai, wait till it browns evenly; then add the oil. Once the aroma starts to waft, put in the onions. You must have noticed that I have put no chillies. Yeah, strange, but true...
5. Stir till translucent, add the beans and put in some of the salt so that the colour is retained. The kadhai is to be kept at medium heat throughout. As the water dries off, and the beans still look green and crunchy, add the chopped tomato.
6. Stir in the tomato till it becomes mushy. Add it the salt and stir it till the tomato becomes part of the gravy. Keep tasting the beans - they should be crunchy, yet cooked. It should not have the rawness, say, that is desirable in stir-fried beans.
7. Add the puree to adjust the tartness and the consistency of the masala. Remember this dish is not intended to have a 'gravy' but will have some nice masala. around the beans pieces. This should take 8 minutes.
8. Add the coconut powder and the kasoori methi and work it into the sabzi.
9. Adjust the salt and the sugar to your taste
10. The sabzi is ready. Keep it in the kadhai as the beans sweat and cook a little while not losing its crunchiness.
11. Serve in a bowl and sprinkle more coconut powder on it.
12. It goes well with phulka and daal

Pat's Baingan Bharta

Winter brings the most luscious, lightweight yet firm aubergines blushing a radiant purple on the market stalls. With tender peas and garlic greens also making an appearance, it is the right time to cook-up a bharta!

Ingredients

1. 1 large, firm, light, non-wormy aubergine (while looking for larva, check for tell-tale perforations on the green stalk as well) with a long enough stalk (so that you can hold it over the fire).
2. 3 large, firm, red tomatoes (Remember Penelope Cruz in Woman on Top?).
3. 3 medium red Indian onions.
4. Handful of fresh shelled peas.
5. A bunch of clean garlic greens.
6. 10 pods of large fresh peeled garlic.
7. 4 firm and hot green chillies (all wimps can choose less, I suppose).
8. Quarter inch piece of fresh, mature ginger (the young, pink variety has a fishy taste).
9. 4 tablespoons of mustard oil (choose Engine or Mastan for the best results).
10. A large bunch of clean, dark green and fresh coriander stalks and leaves
11. Quarter lemon if the tomatoes don't lend enough tartness.

Get Going

1. Roast the aubergine (after having cleaned it and checked it thoroughly for larva) over a gas flame. Start from the end and slowly work your way up to the stalk. About five minutes into the roasting, the aubergine will start becoming limp and drooling juices. At this stage you may want to support the end of the damned thing with a steel implement of sorts - this will allow you to roast the veggie nicely. Don't mind the puffs of steam that will come out of sudden cracks to the skin of the eggplant. Once the top part is also uniformly cooked (about 10-12 odd minutes), rest the roasted aubergine on a plate and incline the plate gently so that the juices run clear. I like putting the juices back in the bharta. Let it stand for now; go back to the rest of the veggies.
2. Cut the tomatoes in half, remove the top ugly centre, chop the nice parts into 1 cm cubes. For this to happen, your knife needs to be sharp. Retain the juices that run from the cutting and put them in along with the rest of the tomatoes.
3. Chop the onions into small pieces - the way you would do to onions in bhelpuri.
4. Chop the garlic greens and the garlic into as tiny bits as you can.
5. Skin and chop the ginger as fine as well.
6. Chop the Coriander stalks fine; keep them separately from the finely chopped coriander leaves. Stalks go into the cooking, the leaves are for the garnish.
7. Break the chillies into halves.
8. By this time the aubergines would have cooled enough for you to handle it. Remove the burnt skin by picking chunks of it with your fingers. Leaving some in lends a nice smoky flavour. With most of the burnt skin off, caress the now naked and fleshy lump from the top like you would a lock of tress. A rope of tender meat will come away and reveal clusters of seeds. If you think they are a bother, remove as many as you can. If the aubergine is young, the seeds will be soft. Some people find the seeds itchy while chewing. Do this 'combing' to the rest of the aubergine. Once you have deseeded, wrench the stalk off to leave just the fresh, smoky, trembling flesh.
9. Heat up a kadhai / wok with 1.5 tablespoons of mustard oil. Let it smoke, then cool it and when you are sure it is cool enough to not burn what you put in it, put in half the garlic, half the ginger and two pieces of chillies. Stir for 10 seconds; put in half the onions and all of the peas. Stir till onions are translucent. Put in all the tomatoes. Stir till tender. Check if its becoming dry, if it is, add some oil. There should be a nice sheen over the cook-up. Keep stirring till the tomatoes are nicely mushy. Add the coriander stalks and stir some more till you are convinced that the tomatoes and onions are well cooked.
10. If you do not like the starkness of this dish, add some turmeric. I know of itchy-fingered Moms who add turmeric no matter what. Desist, if you can, else its OK to succumb by a pinchful of the yellow powder.
11. Now assuming you are ready to eat, continue with the rest of the steps. Else, switch off the gas and wait till you are famished.
12. If you are restarting, then wait till the cooked mess is hot and sizzling. Add the remaining onions, garlic, ginger and chillies. Add the roasted baingan. Switch off the gas. Now it is all about mixing.
13. Tease the aubergine flesh into the rest of the masala. The raw onions, garlic and ginger will sweat a little in the heat and provide a wonderful crunchy texture. Work in the rest of the raw mustard oil. Add the chopped coriander. Serve with fulka.

The traditional way is to cook the aubergine in the kadhai. I find that cooking it further makes the aubergine lose the wonderful smokiness and texture. Adding the raw onions, garlic and ginger brings a touch of adventure and un-tamedness to this rough but satisfying dish.