Bombay Street Food at Home
My childhood reminds me of eating Sunday specials like special pulao and curries which bordered more on the Bombay cuisine than south Indian food that we used to eat on a daily basis.
South Indian food department belonged to my mother (she is resting in peace somewhere in heaven)
Sunday special usually belonged to my older sister who is a happy and contented grandmother to her lovely grandson Divit. She used to fry and mix masalas I had no clue of as a young six or seven year old, but the curries tasted like heaven with her custom made chapatis which till date no one in our family has been able to master--palm sized, paper thin yet soft. This sister, let us call her V, made bharli vangi so good that the taste is still lingering in my mouth. Wow, wish I could just run home to my family in Bombay (Mumbai) and have home made food cooked by my sisters.
After this sister got married and left, my other sister, let us call her M--introduced our family to Maharashtrian dishes like usual, matki chi usal was/is her signature. She used to make a potato salan with tomatoes and onions and come green chillies, and garnished it with some fresh coriander, yum, yum, with chapatis, (all chapatis were home made, unlike their lazy sister who buys them readymade from grocery stores in Canada).
The difference between V and M was, M also made excellent spicy tamarind curry. Which is a traditional southie dish, white pumpkin kootu was another of her mouth-watering standards so was her bisi-bele-bhaat.
But one thing for sure, no one could beat my mother's typical Iyer rasam, arrachu vitta sambar and her katturikkai kari (eggplant curry).
If these two sisters were good at routine grub-stuff, my eldest sister, R was a festival or bhakshanam specialist.
She was the the one that made laddus, wheat halwa my brother (resting in heaven somewhere now) used to help her stir the pot for the halwa. Home made jangris, murrukus, uppu chide, a kara vadusal, vella chide. She made different sweets depending upon the festivals. Oh god and did she have a passion for crafts? She used to make quilts, crochet curtains, knit sweaters, make dolls with beads, rags--super talented bunch by siblings are/were.
We siblings sisters and brothers share one common love--singing and movies. We all can sing in rhythm, perfect tune, lyrics and the emotions that go along with each number.
We siblings have offsprings that are super talented bunch--one niece runs a dance workshop in Amsterdam--http://www.navras.eu
Another one has an art gallery in Raipur and holds a Phd in Linguistics
J is a homemaker but has twinkling toes and you will find her dancing even when she is cooking.
S is a super brain and is an engineer with Maersk
M is a VP of a bank...
My son is into music and has made a 14 min docu and writes scripts.
Well, this nostalgia moment was triggered after I made usal, a Maharastrian dish usually made by my sister M.
I used green mung. soaked it for a day and chopped onions and green chillies and tomatoes.
Fried the onions and chillies and added tomatoes and kokum and salt and added Bedekar's special Sunday Masala and Goda Masala and pressure cooked it. I tried eating with steamed rice...
lacked the M punch totally.
Maybe, a request for her recipe will help me...
Ranga Rajah
August 7 2013
Image courtesy--http://farm1.staticflickr.com/32/44238665_17e05c1abd.jpg
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