BandhaKopir Tarkari -- a quick cabbage stir fry

For the better part of the last 7 days I have been home and so has the kids. That meant almost no computer time and no blog hopping either. Who would have the heart to keep sitting at the computer when the wireless mouse has been carried off by the little kitty ? And who would dare to open the laptop when one remembers what happened with endless plugging in and unplugging of the former ? The littlest one seems to have a penchant for doing everything that needs to be reprimanded with a big "NO" and then that doesn't stop her either, it just diverts her to doing the next.

By the time they went to bed it would be very late and the precious little me time I had there after, I spent reading Ruth Reichls' "Garlic and Sapphires", a charming read about her life as a food critic for New York Times, more precious because I could savor only a few pages each day. Something that she said in the first few pages of the book had struck a chord and remained with me.

"There is no right or wrong in matters of taste", she says " It's just a matter of opinion. And in the case of restaurants an extremely subjective one, given that no one has the faintest idea if what you taste when you bite into an apple is the same thing that I do." -- Ruth Reichl in Garlic and Sapphires

Isn't that true ? While I may praise the steamed Hilsa and prostate before it, you might find the pungent mustard smell disgusting. While you may be thinking Curd Rice is the ultimate in good food, I might think "blah" ! If we still narrow it down to two homes from the same region and same culture, I might think the cabbage dish with potatoes and spices that I have had since childhood is the only decent way to throttle the suffocating cabbage flavor you might say that the way cabbage was at your place, lightly spiced was the best.

When I had posted BandhaKopir Ghonto last time, a reader wrote in saying he had found the dish more spicy than he is used to. Perfect, that was his opinion. In the same post there was a comment by Eve's Lungs about a Bandhakopir Tarkari( a Cabbage Dish) done with the minimal of spices. I loved her recipe for its simplicity and yet was not sure if I could endure cabbage with so less to camouflage it's true nature. It turns out her cabbage dish is another favorite in Bengali Kitchen and my friend N vouched for it too.

So I went ahead and made it, I had little to lose, it was very simple to make anyway. The simplicity of this Cabbage dish floored us. To my utter disbelief, I loved it. The husband again said, this was like the cabbage dish from his neighborhood picnic. He had said the same thing about the BandhaKopir Ghonto, remember ?And I realized I have no idea what he is tasting when he is taking a bite of that cabbage and that a lot about what you are tasting has to do with the memory you are matching it up with.


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Bandhakopir Tarkari -- a cabbage stir fry

What You Need

The Vegetables

Cabbage ~ about 6-7 cups chopped in shreds
Tomato ~ 1 whole chopped small

Spices

PaanchPhoron ~ 1 tsp
Dry Red Chili ~ 2-3 whole
Roasted Cumin Powder ~ 1/4 tsp (optional but good)
Red Chili Powder ~ 1/4 - 1/2 tsp according to taste

Salt ~ to taste

Oil ~ for cooking

How I Did It

Chop Cabbage in fine shreds. You can also use the packets of coleslaw. I had about 6-7 cups of shredded cabbage. Soak the chopped cabbage in water for 10-15 mins and wash well.

Heat Oil in a Kadhai/Saute pan

Temper the oil with 1 tsp of Paanch Phoron and 2-3 Dry Red chili

When the spices sputter add 1 whole juicy tomato chopped. Saute till tomato softens and has no raw smell

Add the cabbage, a little at a time. As you add the cabbage saute and fold in with the spices.

After you have added all the cabbage add salt and Red Chili Powder to taste, mix and cover. Intermittently take off the cover and saute. Covering and sauteing helps in cooking the cabbage faster and also requires less oil I think. You may need to sprinkle a little water while cooking or the cabbage will stick to the pan and char.

When the cabbage is almost done, add 1/4 tsp of Roasted Cumin Powder (dry roast whole cumin seeds and grind to fine powder) and mix.

Once the cabbage is done adjust for salt and seasonings. If you want you can add a little lime juice to the end.

Now for the extra crunch, I crushed about 1/4 cup of dry roasted peanuts and added them to the dish. This step is optional and NOT part of the traditional method. Note: This adding peanut thing is totally my idea and I liked it since of course it was my idea :). Add peanuts at your own risk.

Enjoy by itself or as a side dish with rice and dal for lunch

Haat e Bajar e -- to the Market(The Roundup)

I am very happy with wonderful response that the Haat e Bajar e series got. My Dad is sure in seventh heaven that his pictures have been much appreciated. Thanks to all of You. Mucho Gracias to the few who took time to dig up pictures and archived posts of more colorful and vibrant local markets from different corners of India. If any of you have any more to share please drop me a line or leave a comment. I am particularly intrigued by the Allepey stores on water that Happy Cook had mentioned.

Read Part I & Part II of this series

Today will be a round up of the markets from my fellow bloggers and readers.


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We will start off with a lovely Guest Post and Pictures by Sra of When My Soup Came Alive. The local market she visited in Pune will come alive through her words and pics.

A few months ago, I was assigned to visit Pune for a day. It was a field visit, almost literally. Part of my job was to visit the wholesale market there. After a sumptuous meal the previous night, which consisted of endless platters of kababs and ended way past midnight, we were woken up early in the morning and taken to Gul Tekdi market yard.



As with most markets, it was bustling with activity even at that early hour of 7 a.m. Lorries full of produce, with brightly coloured tarpaulin on them, had already rolled in and were in various stages of unloading. Our hosts led us through to the office where our meeting was being held, but not before we took some time to look around the place. This is a typical Indian vegetable market, and for those who do not know what to expect, can be quite an assault on the senses at this scale. There is much dirt, many tomatoes squashed under the feet of those in a rush, hay, cabbage leaves, cauliflower stalks and other vegetable refuse strewn around. The elements act on all this to produce a pungent and acrid smell that can be quite unbearable.


Sometimes, you can smell the rain in the soil that clings to the roots and stalks of produce that just that morning has been wrested from the earth. For good measure, you can see cows feeding off mounds of this green debris, and where cows are, manure shall follow. Of course, the cows (and sheep and other animals) are not peculiar to markets, though. They are everywhere in our country. Many years ago a city bus driver, I seem to recall, sacrificed a few lives, maybe even his own, when he swerved sharply and fell into the river, trying to avoid hitting a member of the bovine breed that ambled onto the bridge, directly in his path. Like this. But I digress. The vegetables are spread in heaps on sacking, and merchants frown on customers picking and choosing good specimens. The wholesale customer from the neigbourhood markets spread across the city, or the buyers for the restaurants and hotels will not bother with that, but if it's you and I shopping there for a good deal, we will have to be content with only the financial advantage. Some sellers use the traditional balance, some use modern electronic weighing machines. Some dispense with the sacking for plastic crates.




Some vegetables do not get the courtesy of even a gunny bag on which they can be spread, they are piled on the ground, as you can see in this picture. The greens here include fenugreek (foreground), coriander at the far back, amaranth (green and magenta) and dill.



See the stacks of huge leaves in this picture . I think they are arbi (taro root/colocaesia) leaves, used to make the wonderful patra (patravade, patrode), a steamed and fried delicacy that consists of besan paste rolled up in these leaves, popular along the Konkan coast right up to Gujarat. I've only ever had it thrice, once inviting a rather serious glance when I asked for a third piece, and most recently, about eight months ago at a friend's place in Queens, bought from an Indian grocery in Jackson Heights, thawed and microwaved and eaten to heart's content.



You will also see people hauling loads on their heads, and vendors from around the city coming here with their carts, filling them up with a variety of vegetables which they will sell for a profit in other localities for the next few hours. In any Indian market, there will be much shrill and spirited bargaining. (next few images). In this particular Pune market, vegetables and fruit come in from a 100 km radius, and the early morning's din evens out to a more measured buzz by noon, when, I remember being told, the market is closed for the day.


Next is beautiful Pictures of Mysore Market from Asha of Foodies Hope



She says "When I was in India last year, I went to see the Mysore vegetable market as it holds many memories of childhood strolls there with my parents and that little bakery where I used to savory snacks and that little bookstore I used to run to buy story books". The Mysore Market sure looks clean and colorful, a place that I would have cherished similar memories of.


Pictures of her home town local grocery seller from Swagata, a reader who took time to send me these photos by mail. Do you see the bicycle laden with tender coconuts in the second pic ? I love that one.








Kalyan of Finely Chopped shares his Mumbai Fish Market stories. He writes "Then I chanced upon Pushpa (barely visible behind a cutomer in the picture) and her mother (in the dark sari in the picture below) at one corner of the market. As they say, when it comes to fish it is all about finding the right woman. And I did! Pushpa and her mom sell some of the best fish that we have bought." Read his post for a thorough guide to buying fish in Mumbai. Some of his are pics here







A beautiful Photo Essay of a vegetable market from Kolhapur home of Nupur of One Hot Stove.She says about a smiling old lady posing with a cauliflower, "That beautiful, bright and huge cauliflower certainly deserves to be shown off! Selling vegetables is hard work and a business with a very low profit margin and no retirement plan; this lady is still working when she looks like she deserves to retire and get some rest." The post has some great pictures, head over to see what it looks like to be in a local market in the west coast of India.

Haat e Bajar e -- to the Market (II)

The Smiling Vegetable Seller

As we moved places the character of the haat changed, some places they were more sunny and open air, at others they were very clean and neat but their very basic underlying characteristics remained same. They also gave way to more local bazars, vegetable sellers sitting at residential road corners with their vegetables was a common sight.

Flowers for Prayer share a spot with Vegetables for Mankind

My Baba now preferred them than going to the haat. He would get everything he wanted right around the street corner. These small vendors did not have a complex supply chain system. The farmers in the nearby villages and suburbs took the early morning local train and brought their produce to a nearby train station. The neighborhood vegetable sellers sourced the produce directly from these farmers and sold it to the customers.


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The Not too Happy Fruit Seller

With the IT boom pushing middle class Indians towards more prosperity, the retail industry in India slowly started changing. Organized retailing, though late has started encroaching the Indian market and more and more air conditioned super markets selling grocery and vegetables are sprouting in the metros. Interestingly Nilgiri's Super Markets are the oldest retail chain in India, going back as far as 1904.

The Fish Guy by the Road

I myself hadn't seen an air conditioned grocery market until I moved to B'lore in the late nineties. I was so taken by them that I would go to Nilgiris or Food World just to pick up some small stuff. Vegetables there were too expensive by my standard but I loved their ambiance as did many of my generation. For the freshest of veggies we would make once a week trip to the Madiwala Bajar on weekends which had the same character and earthiness as the haat of my childhood but only in Kannada.

The Push Cart Vegetable Vendor or the Thela

Convenience shopping in the form of Supermarkets must surely be a boon for a lot of the urban Indian population who want to shop in luxury and comfort. They might not be the best thing for the small farmers, the kirana stores(local grocers) and the fruit & vegetable seller at the corner though. With big names coming in to the retail grocery chains they are able to support a more elaborate supply chain management system which pushes the customers still further away from the producer.

Following are some pics of a wholesale bazaar that Sra of When My Soup Came Alive sent me. Most of the vegetables sold here come from a 100km radius, she says.

Birds Eye View of the Market

In spite of the big names of the retail chains, my Dad and most of his generation will still think twice before paying for a bunch of Asparagus at Reliance fresh. He prefers the vegetable seller round the corner as do 60% of the Indian population living in suburbs and villages.

What do you prefer ?

Further Read on Organized Retailing in India

Photos courtesy of my Dad from India. I guess these are his favorite sellers.