Recent Garden Posts

… with Pongal (Savoury Rice and Lentil Pudding) and a Peach.

These are based on a traditional Maharashtrian recipe for Stuffed Chillies (Bharleli Mirchi) from A Mad Tea Party. Peppers are stuffed with a spiced chickpea flour (besan) mixture and cooked to spicy, tender perfection.

I made this recipe thrice recently ‘cos it’s quick and easy, especially when you’re dealing with big batches of peppers. The fact that it’s incredibly tasty is a bonus. It’s true, I no longer can look at a plate of food without delving into its biochemistry and being a persnitecky pain in the ass, but then I’ve become largely impervious to how food tastes. I’m more concerned about how I feel once I ingest it.

… with Hawaiian Black Lava Salt.

If you are from Mumbai or anywhere in western India, you’ll probably have a sweet cherubic Gujarati neighbour who’ll stuff you with theplas, daal dhokli, shrikhand, aamras. When your guard is down, she’ll proffer these green grenades “to spice things up a bit”.

Gujaratis (from Gujarat in Western India) use it as a condiment with rice, snacks, anything they fancy to add a zing to their meals. In Gujarati, rai = mustard, marcha = chilli.

This is one of those dishes that turned out really delicious, but we wouldn’t deliberately set out to make again. It’s got too many ingredients – something we made to clean out stuff in the fridge. It’s one of those fussy concoctions that doesn’t really gel with the minimalist approach we have adopted to food.

Back left: Anaheims and New Mexico peppers
Back right: Green Cayennes
Front Left: Super Chili and Thai hot peppers
Front right: Jalapenos

J, the Garden Gnome, has been dumping baskets of produce all around the house. He expects it all to magically get chopped, cooked, processed and transported to the recesses of the fridge/freezer/belly through the good graces of the Kitchen Fairy.

We preserved over 100 pounds of peaches this year. Based on the stage of ripeness, we employed a variety of methods.

… with carrots from our garden.

Vegetables are no longer “side dishes” on the menu. They are the centerpiece, with each of us averaging 2.5 to 3 pounds a day.

Two days ago, I dropped by to check out the giant closeout sale at Borders bookstore, which is going out of business. Despite our embargo on adding to our cookbook collection, I couldn’t resist picking up Nigel Slater‘s Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch.

It’s an insight into a sensitive mind that “thinks” about food – not merely as an artefact showcased in a recipe, but as a labour of love. It is a process that begins as a seedling in the dirt, unfolds over a season, and winds its way through the grower to the table. The means matter as much as the end.