One Masala Sprite Please

This is just a "Hello" post with no pics. I haven't had any time to post and my Bhai Phota(Bhai Duj) post is languishing in the draft dungeon. I will be back soon, maybe in a couple of days.

Meanwhile have been eating a lot, a lot. That is what happens when you have too many festivals all conveniently scattered over a single month. Back from a Diwali party of Chole-Puri, Pav-Bhaji, Rasmalai and assorted tid-bits late Saturday night, Sunday we were all ready to go to a lunch spread of Cholar Dal, Enchor-Chingri, Maacher Kalia, maccher matha diye Bandhakopi and the works. Then Sunday evening was a birthday party. This one was special because the hostess is a super cook. Her mutton biryani is US famous if not the world. It was only sheer gastronomic power that made me down two plates of that heavenly biryani even after a late lunch. I couldn't even look at the numerous other items on the buffet table.

What helped afterward is her Masala Sprite, a lovely drink which makes you feel it is digestive(?) and triggers your brain to eat more biryani.

To make Masala Sprite, is very very difficult. It is not everyone's "dayen haath ka khel". Follow the instruction below carefully to prepare a glass of super zingy Masala Sprite

First know what is Sprite. You might have been born to someone like me who deprives their child of such pleasures.

Buy Sprite. A case of canned sprite or a bottle will work fine

Pour sprite carefully in a glass. This can get tricky. Too much will cause overflow and too little dissatisfaction.

Now add a dash of chaat masala, little salt and lime juice and mix well. You have to experiment to get the right proportion. Do the experiment before hand, do not take sips from glasses served to the guests

Have a drink

And lets raise a glass of Masala Sprite to Desi Pundit. I have been invited as a community member to their community -- "a community of top-notch desi blogs, based on consistently creative writing, distinct opinions, and user-friendly design" and I will share some of my selected posts with them in the future. Thanks to Patrix and the team at Desi Pundit for the invite.

Happy Deepavali and Food Memoirs

May the lights this Diwali banish Darkness from our lives

Happy Deepavali
This Diwali I don't have a recipe to share with you, instead what I will share is ahem knowledge, about food and memories
Nupur's this post had opened up the beautiful new world of Food Memoirs to me. And I couldn't think of a better opportunity than Sra's The Write Taste, to share these gems with you.

I am not much of a cookbook reader. Cookbooks are too much of a burden, they make me feel very, what do you say "lacking". I cannot read a cookbook at leisure, I feel I need to get up and stir something up from the book, I feel I owe that to the authors and that takes away the charm of relaxed reading.

The food memoirs on the other hand are simply beautiful. You get to delve into food intertwined with life and that is like sitting by your grandma, listening to her stories while she kneads the dough, rolls it out, stuffs it with spiced pea mix and fries up puffed karaishuti'r kachuri while all you do is take in the smell, the taste and the stories without lifting a finger.

It all started with Ruth Reichl's "Tender on the Bone". Honestly I hadn't heard of Ruth Reichl before and when I turned the first page there were no expectations. The first page after I was a huge fan and had researched her head to toe on the internet.To read more about this famous food persona go here. I will leave you with an excerpt.

"Most mornings I got out of bed and went to the refrigerator to see how my mother was feeling. You could tell instantly, just by opening the door. One day in 1960 I found a whole suckling pig staring at me. I jumped back and slammed the door hard. I had never seen a whole animal in our refrigerator before, even the chicken cam in parts. He was surrounded by tiny crab apples and a whole wreath of vegetables.

This was not a bad sign: the more odd and interesting things in the refrigerator, the happier my Mother was likely to be."

Next was Madhur Jaffrey's "Climbing The Mango Trees". Now Madhur Jaffrey I knew, from movies and from her cookbooks. Only I hadn't really thumbed any of her cookbooks. This book however is a beautiful read, you are transported into pre-Independence era Delhi and Kanpur and you get to peep into the life, times and food of an Indian family heavily influenced by the West and yet firmly rooted to the Indian culture.

Following is an excerpt from the book where she describes the Lady in White who would arrive with her wares, "daulaat ki chaat" at breakfast

"The Lady in White was the color of milk. What mattered most to us, though, was not her milky color but the milky ambrosia that she carried on her head.

Yes, balanced there, on a round brass tray, were dozens of mutkainas, terra-cotta cups, filled with daulat ki chaat, which could be translated as “a snack of wealth.” Some cynic who assumed that all wealth was ephemeral must have named it. It was, indeed, the most ephemeral of fairy dishes, a frothy evanescence that disappeared as soon it touched the tongue, a winter specialty requiring dew as an ingredient. Whenever I asked the Lady in White how it was made, she would sigh a mysterious sigh and say, “Oh, child, I am one of the few women left in the whole city of Delhi who can make this. I am so old, and it is such hard work. What shall I tell you? I only go to all this trouble because I have served your grandmother from the time she lived in the Old City. First I take rich milk and add dried seafoam to it. Then I pour the mixture into nicely washed terra-cotta cups that I get directly from the potter. I have to climb up the stairs to the roof and leave the cups in the chill night air. Now, the most important element is the dew. If there is no dew, the froth will not form. If there is too much dew, that is also bad. The dew you have to leave to the gods. In the early morning, if the froth is good, I sprinkle the cups with a little sugar, a little khurchan [milk boiled down into thin, sweet, flaky sheets], and fine shavings of pistachios. That, I suppose, is it.”

Those cups were the first things placed before us at breakfast that day. Our spoons, provided by the Lady in White, were the traditional flat pieces of bamboo. Heavenly froth, tasting a bit of the bamboo, a bit of the terra-cotta, a bit sweet and a bit nutty—surely this was the food of angels."

Thanks Nupur for the wonderful reads and thanks to Sra for an opportunity to share. Looking forward to reading more of Ruth Reichl over the next months only my reading is hugely slowed down by lack of time and I keep on renewing these books over & over. In the process I keep coming back and re-reading them again but the charm is there each time, every time.

What are your favorite Food Memoirs ?

Shubho Bijoya'r Priti o Shubhechcha

Bijoya Greetings to all my Readers

Durga Pujo in our area

So there Durga Pujo is over and this is how we wish each other on Bijoya Dashami, the tenth day of Durga Pujo, the day the Goddess supposedly returns to her abode in Kailash. To accommodate the laid back Bongs, Bijoya is not restricted to one day alone. You get time till Kali Puja to wish your fellow bongs "Shubho Bijoya".

In the US, Ma Durga does not go home, she just goes back to the basement until next year. So we are not allowed to put sindoor on her, instead there is an alias, the Ghot

The day of Bijoya Dashami, you bid adieu to Ma Durga, offering her sweets and sindoor after the symbolic Bisarjan is over. The mere mortals, mostly women, are allowed to touch the Goddess's idol on this day to shower their love & respect and they do so with full enthusiasm. Married women smear sindoor on Ma Durga's forehead as well as on each other's and it becomes a mini Holi with only red color.
Strangely though our highest respect is for the female power, Shakti, women play only menial roles during the actual 5 days of Pujo. I have never seen a female priestess doing arati or the actual puja ceremony, women are mostly on the periphery. The only day they are allowed to touch the Goddess is after the Bisarjan on Dashami.

No pandal hopping, one is enough

Back home from the mandap you touch your elder's feet, embrace your peers, bless the little ones and then do what Bengalis love most. Eat. You eat sweets and nimkis and naru's, you eat more to forget the sorrow of Durga's as well as your vacation being over. But then you can't just restrict it to one day, can you ? No. So you apply for a few more days of leave and then each of those days morning and evening you set out to pay respect to all your elderly relatives in town. Maybe you have no contact with them throughout the year but You must do Bijoya so you hail a taxi and go. But before that you make a chart maybe be an excel sheet, you order relatives by their cooking skills and start by visiting the ones whose naru's have achieved world fame, saving the ones with hard naru's and watery ghugni's for the last.

Ma Durga, we had a lovely Pujo. Big Sis S thoroughly enjoyed herself. Baby A was not at her best but that's ok. The bhog was good, the weather on Nabami bad.The red in my hair from sindoor khela is still there, I need to shampoo better. Come back next year, till then have a blast.

By the time your palate abhors any more Naru or nimki it is almost Kali Pujo, officially Bijoya is over, the last relative in your list may as well throw the hardened naru to hit you hard.Now is the time to bit adieu, to wrap up all your festive spirit and revel in the luxury that at last Pujo is over. But wait, isn't Pujo coming again, yeah next year, asche bochor abar hobey.

More Pujo Reads:

Narkel Naru for Durga Pujo

2007 Durga Pujo

2007 Shubho Bijoya