Passing It Down

My mother-in-law cooks traditional South Indian fare. My mother cooks traditional Upper Midwestern fare. South Indian cookery is based on rice, lentils, vegetables, and spices. Upper Midwestern cookery, from what I can tell, is based on a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. South Indian food is delicious. I can not tell a lie—food made from a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup is also delicious. My mom's cheesy potatoes and green bean casserole are standard holiday fare, and both, I believe, contain a can of the famous condensed soup.

I can't eat this food more than once a year (or I would be substantially heavier than I am now), but I do have a cake recipe from a cookbook my mom gave me years ago that I can eat several times a year. It comes from the "Taste of Home" series (and by "taste of home," they mean the taste of home if you grew up in circumstances similar to mine). My tastes have expanded widely from the first tastes of my childhood, and I don't often revisit them, but when I do, it's almost always dessert. I will eat homey dessert with any type of food, and I feel much better adding ungodly quantities of butter rather than a can of condensed soup, with modified food starch, MSG, and all that. (Though I do remember reading a recipe somewhere for a chocolate cake that called for a can of condensed cream of tomato soup. Scary. But who knows, maybe it's delicious.)

The other issue that separates my family from the traditions of my elders is our predominant vegetarianism. My husband was brought up vegetarian, so there is no separation from his side. But I was brought up believing that for any meal to be complete, there should be a big hunk of meat somewhere on the plate, or at least mixed in little bits into the casserole dish. That makes it hard for my mom to pass on tradition, when for the most part we can't eat it. And that also ratchets up the importance of sweets and dessert. There's no meat in pie (well, unless you use lard for the crust), just lots of butter and sugar. I'm not going to stop eating that.

I first served this cake as a dessert to follow a grand South Indian feast for the man who is now my husband. I made dahi vadai (fried lentil dumplings in a yogurt sauce) for the first time. The vadai were uncooked in the middle, though still fairly tasty. However, the cake rocked his world. And it was a lot easier to make than the vadai. At least, it was for me. My mom did teach me how to bake, though most of it was through osmosis.

It's just a simple upside down cake, with gingerbread for the cake part, and apples on the "upside down" part. I like cake gingerbread more than gingerbread cookies, because cookies often end up too crispy, and I like my baked goods soft, moist, and warm, especially gingerbread. The apples end up tender and slightly carmelized on top, when the cake is flipped out of the pan. Serve it with a dollop of lightly sweetened whipped cream, and you will have perfection. The recipe makes a small cake, so you would do well to make two, because you could easily polish this thing off in no time, unless you are not like me and actually have willpower.

Upside Down Apple Gingerbread (adapted from Taste of Home)

Ingredients
For the apple part:
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 large apples, peeled and sliced (I like tart apples like Granny Smith the best, but any apple good for baking will do.)

For the gingerbread part:
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 cup hot black tea


For the apple part, pour the 1/4 cup butter into a 9-inch square baking pan, and evenly distribute it over the bottom of the pan. (Pyrex works well for me.) Sprinkle 1/3 cup brown sugar over the butter. Lay down the apple slices in an attractive pattern in a single layer over the sugar. Set the pan aside.

For the gingerbread, cream the butter and brown and white sugars together in a large mixing bowl. The sugars should be thoroughly incorporated into the butter, and beaten so that the mixture is fluffy. Add the egg and beat, then beat in the molasses. In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, then add them to the sugar mixture alternately with the hot tea, beating well after each addition.

Pour this batter over the apples, and make sure to level the top (which will become the bottom after the cake is done). Bake at 350° on the center rack of your oven for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool the cake for 10 minutes, then flip it onto a serving plate. The best way to do this is to first loosen the sides of the cake away from the cake pan with a butter knife. Then place the plate upside down over the top of the cake pan. Then, holding both plate and cake pan tightly together, quickly flip the whole thing over so that the plate is now on the bottom. The cake should slide right out onto the plate, and the apples should now be on top. If a few apples get left behind in the cake pan, just pick them out and put them back on the cake.

The Perfect Remedy

If you are Indian, then there's a good chance you have a periamma. (Literally "big mom," it means "aunt." I like this way of saying aunt—"big mom" just sounds so warm and comfortable, especially compared to a homonym for a little biting insect.) However, I am probably in the minority of Lutheran girls from Minnesota who have a periamma, and I count myself fortunate. Because if I didn't have a periamma, I wouldn't have had someone to come into my kitchen for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning and make us several day's worth of delicious food.

She made us non-Brahmin sambar, garlic rasam, and garlic pepper kuzhambu (despite how it's spelled, to my non-Tamil ears it sounds like korumba). I'd like to specifically talk about the garlic pepper kuzhambu, since it is perfect for winter, which officially started yesterday, and also perfect for the season of colds, flu, bronchitis, and so on, which has been with us for a few months already. This kuzhambu is a common South Indian cold and flu remedy—much better than Vicodin-laced cough syrup. Well, OK, maybe not better, but definitely better-tasting. It is sour, savory, and spicy enough to clear out your sinuses quite nicely.

I tried to pay attention to what periamma was doing, but forgot half of it, so then I asked my mother-in-law. And I forgot about a quarter of what she said, so I then filtered everything through my own personal cooking sensibility. This is the version I came up with. None of the amounts are set in stone; it just depends on your own personal taste. However, there's really no point in doing this if you're not going to make it SPICY. (As an aside, if you are going to be making a lot of Indian food, it pays to go to your local Indian grocery. You can get all the spices, rice, lentils, and everything you need very cheaply. And of course, the regular grocery might not even carry some of the things you need anyway. And also of course, it is really a lot of fun walk through aisles the Indian grocery and impulse purchase fiery hot salty crunchy snacks, and mango pickles, tea, etc...)

If you don't know what some of these ingredients are, and want to know, feel free to ask me. Any Indian grocery will stock all of these ingredients.

1/24/10 update:  My future sister-in-law made this recipe today, and two hours after consuming it, her tastebuds were still on fire. So I feel I should append a warning here: this kuzhambu is really, really spicy. It is supposed to serve a medicinal purpose, that purpose being to thoroughly clear out your sinuses. But feel free to greatly reduce the amount of black pepper and/or red chilies if you are not a glutton for punishment. Because as the recipe stands, it will punish you. Severely. In a good way, if you like that sort of thing.

Poondu milagu kuzhambu (Garlic pepper gravy)*

Ingredients
For the spice mixture:
1/2 teaspoon of oil
2 whole dried red chilies
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 tablespoons toor dal (yellow pigeon peas)

For the rest:
2 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon urad dal (black gram)
8 cloves of garlic**
1/2 teaspoon asafoetida
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 tablespoon tamarind paste (also called tamarind concentrate)
2 cups of warm water
Salt to taste


In a heavy skillet, dry roast the spice mixture ingredients in the 1/2 teaspoon of oil. The spices should give off a fragrance, and be toasted but not burned. Grind the contents of the skillet to make a smooth paste. (I have the Indian grinder known as a Mixie, which is kind of like a blender on steroids. If you are using a regular blender, it's OK to add a little water to the paste to help it grind better.) Set the spice mixture aside.

Dissolve the tamarind paste in the water and keep aside. In a heavy bottomed large saucepan, pour in two tablespoons of oil, and heat mustard seeds, fenugreek, and urad dal until the mustard seeds sputter and pop and the fenugreek has turned a dark, reddish brown. The urad dal should also be a toasted light brown color. Turn down the heat, quickly add the asafoetida, turmeric, and 10 cloves of garlic. Saute the garlic for a few minutes, then add the tamarind water and the spice mixture. You can add salt, but not too much, as the kozhumbu will boil down and become more concentrated. Simmer until the liquid has reduced to make a somewhat thick, syrupy sauce, and the garlic cloves are soft. If it's not thickening as you'd like, you can add a little chickpea flour and it will thicken right up. At this point, you can taste and add more salt if needed. Then you're done. Serve mixed with ghee rice. Or, my mother-in-law says, for a balanced meal with a protein source and everything, make toor dal chutney to have with the rice and kozhambu. I am visiting with the in-laws as I write, and we have tentatively planned to make the toor dal chutney tomorrow. I'll report back on that. In the meantime, this recipe will give the general idea. I had actually never heard of toor dal chutney until I spoke with my mother-in-law about it today. It sounds like an unusual and simple way to add protein to a meal.

*I don't know why kuzhambu translates as "gravy," because gravy in this context sounds kind of gross. Trust me, it's not.
**Garlic is optional. Some Brahmins swear off garlic, as it is said to bring out one's "animal instincts." Apparently this is something to be avoided. As someone who was brought up Lutheran, I can certainly understand that sentiment, but personally I think a little animal instinct never hurt anyone. And I also wonder what foods Lutherans abstain from in order to avoid arousing their animal instincts. I'm guessing the answer is anything with flavor or spices in any form. So if you're Lutheran and don't want to be overcome with raging animal passion, leave out the garlic, chilies, cumin, tamarind, turmeric, fenugreek, asafoetida, and pepper. Ha ha. Just kidding. Probably the turmeric is OK.

Free Food

My husband and daughters found these pecans on the terrace of the local Irish pub. They gathered twice as many, but we ate half of them immediately. They are much better than the pre-shelled pecans you buy at the store—sweeter, buttery, with a hint of maple. There are so many pecan trees around our home, whenever I go out walking and I see one, I make a mental note (with the squirrel part of my brain) so that we can come back in the fall and scrounge. Usually the squirrels beat us to them (since they are much better climbers and we are forced to wait for the nuts to fall), but occasionally we hit the jackpot. My girls really enjoy the thrill of the hunt—for nuts, that is, not squirrels.

Speaking of squirrels, it is actually true that until fairly recently they were considered a valid dinner option. I've got a recipe for squirrel in my 1964 edition of The Joy of Cooking, along with opossum, bear, raccoon, woodchuck, beaver (separate recipe for beaver tail), peccary, and wild boar among others. I'm not really sure when they phased them all out, though I noted with interest that Ms. Rombauer recommends serving the squirrel with polenta. To me that seems remarkably ahead of its time for 1964.

But back to pecans—another great thing about them, aside from being free and delicious, is that they are native to the South, growing wild in the deciduous forests here for thousands upon thousands of years. So when you gather them, you are really being a "gatherer" in the historical sense of the word. Strangely, I often feel a bit like a "thief" when I am gathering the nuts, even though they are in the public domain. That's a sad commentary on the state of our society, when we equate the acceptance of nature's bounty with stealing. (What's next? Paying for water? Oh, well, actually...) For me, each nut is a tiny message in a shell, reminding me that we are not far removed from that life, and that food can still be here for us, free for the taking. As for roast squirrel, I know that's free for the taking, but... I'm not quite ready to go down that road yet. (However, this person was.)

Waste Not Want Not

I am a waster. As an American, I simply can't help it, even though I think it is wrong. Until I met my husband, I never thought of myself as wasteful, but compared to him it turns out that I am. One of the first inklings I had of this was early on in our relationship. I was trying to squeeze the last glob of toothpaste out of a seemingly empty tube. I looked at it and said, "I think it's empty." My future husband walked over, looked at the tube, and said, "It's not empty." I asked, dubiously, "Are you sure?" He looked me straight in the eye and said, "Trust me. I'm Indian." That tube of toothpaste lasted me another two weeks. Perfectly good toothpaste I would have thrown away had he not been there. It totally blew my mind how he made something of what I had thought was nothing (I know, just more toothpaste, but still...), and I took that lesson to heart, though my practice of it has been less than perfect.

One of my problems is that I'm an overly ambitious vegetable purchaser. I've never been one of those people who makes a list and then goes to the store and buys, dutifully, only what is written on the list. I go to the store with the aim of buying whatever looks good to me in that moment, and of course that is too much. Then I find myself at home feeling guilty every time I look at the fridge, thinking how I'm never going to be able to cook everything before it goes bad.

At any rate, with much effort through the years since the toothpaste episode I have gotten better about not wasting. To that end I have devised a couple of strategies which I am now going to share with you. The first strategy has to do with herbs like parsley, cilantro and basil. So many times I have a big bunch of an herb like parsley, and I only need a small amount for whatever recipe I've planned. Then the rest turns to slime at the bottom of the drawer. Basil is easy -- you can just make pesto, and it lasts much longer that way. Well, you can do the same sort of thing with parsley and cilantro. Just puree parsley or cilantro with some garlic and olive oil (add a little lemon zest if you want), add salt to taste, and keep in a jar in your fridge. It will last a really long time. You can add the purees to soups or beans, or pasta, rice, eggs or whatever. It is also good on top of cheesy toasts.

The other strategy I'd like to share is also simple: lentil soup. Lentil soup is delicious, and you can use the leftover dregs of your vegetables to make it, instead of throwing them away. (Or composting, right? At least the worms will be fed.) I made lentil soup this week with brown lentils, an onion, two cloves of garlic, a handful of grape tomatoes that had been sitting for about two weeks, and three abandoned carrots that had been in the bottom of the crisper drawer for more than a month. Toward the end of cooking, I added about a quarter of a bag of frozen spinach I had sitting in my freezer. Then I added a dash of sherry vinegar to brighten all the flavors. When it was done, I put a handful of leftover cooked rice into my bowl, ladled the soup over it and mixed with the rice, and then I garnished my bowl with a spoonful of yogurt, some of that parsley mixture (which is technically called gremolata, I believe), and a dab of Huy Fong Foods chili garlic sauce. (If you don't know about Huy Fong, follow that link. You need to know.) Here in Decatur, I get my Huy Fong products at the DeKalb Farmer's Market.

Potatoes and celery would be good additions as well, if you have them around. I can't really write a specific recipe, because the quantities all depend on what you happen to have. For a general method, this is what I did: boil the lentils (maybe about a cup and a half) separately, until soft, but not totally mushy. Saute in separate pot in a generous amount of olive oil the chopped onions and garlic until they are slightly soft, then add chopped carrots and tomatoes. Make sure to salt them. When the vegetables have softened slightly, add water to cover, and a little more salt. Cook until tender. When lentils have finished cooking and the vegetables are pretty much done, add the lentils to the vegetable pot. Add the frozen spinach, cook for a couple of minutes, and add more water to reach desired thickness if needed. Add more salt to taste. Add a dash of sherry vinegar (not too much -- you don't want to taste the vinegar, just a subtle brightening effect) and some fresh ground black pepper. You can garnish as I described above with the yogurt, gremolata and chili garlic sauce, or whatever you can think of that might be good. Maybe even a gently fried egg with a very runny yolk? I haven't tried it yet, but I've thought of it.

By the way, my five-year-old was convinced she hated this soup until she tried it. Then she tried it and declared she wanted to eat it "for breakfast, lunch and dinner." And she did. That made me so happy.

Starting with the Basics

I thought it would be fitting to start with something basic. And baby food is food at its most basic and pure. I'm not talking about the nasty jarred stuff  -- I'm talking about the kind of baby food my Indian mother-in-law taught me how to make. Basically, it is nothing more than mashed up rice and lentils, with a little salt, and the one key ingredient -- ghee. I remember being so anxious for my older daughter to eat when she was a baby. And I would make up a big bowl of this stuff for her, hoping she would eat it and my body would get a break from nursing for a little while. Sometimes she would eat it, a whole two bites. And the rest would be for me. Oh well, it was actually so good, I was always a little glad she left most of it for me. Eventually she grew to want a lot of it, and so did her younger sister. And we all still like to eat rice, lentils, and ghee to this day.

Ghee is butter that has had all the milk solids and water boiled away, leaving just the butter fat, and it has a subtly sweet, nutty flavor. The dish is OK with just plain old butter, but you need ghee for it to taste really, really good. The more ghee you add, the better it tastes. And it's OK to add a lot, because as my in-laws say, ghee is "good for health." The problem is, if you buy ghee in the store, it is obscenely expensive (and it doesn't taste as good, either). So I make my own. It takes about 45 minutes and you have to keep watching it, but if you make a big batch all at once, you have enough to last a long, long time, so it's worth it. And it makes your kitchen smell really, really good too -- like you are being cozied in a blanket of soft, warm, sweet buttery goodness.

How to Make Ghee
Ingredients
2 pounds of unsalted butter

Place the butter into a heavy, large saucepan, and melt under medium heat, turning heat down as needed to keep butter from boiling too much. Keep it to a steady simmer. After the butter has melted and started to boil, a white foam will rise to the surface. This is the milk solids separating from the butter fat. Skim off what you can, and the rest will sink to the bottom and brown eventually. In about 30 to 45 minutes, the foaming will stop and the boiling will be steady, with only a few occasional "hiccups" --  these hiccups are the sound of water escaping from the butter. When the foaming and hiccups have pretty much died down, and there is just the sound of a steady boil, and a sweet, almost carmelized smell emanates from the butter, it is done. Turn off the stove and remove the pan from the heat. The milk solids on the bottom of the pan should be dark brown, but not black. Let the pan sit for a few minutes to cool, then very carefully pour the ghee into a container that can withstand the heat. The liquid should be clear and golden. Be careful not to disturb the milk solid sediment on the bottom of the pan. You don't want the milk solids in your ghee. If you want to be extra safe, you can use a couple layers of cheese cloth to filter the ghee as you pour, but I don't bother. I just pour my ghee into an old jam or spaghetti sauce jar. Let it cool with the lid lightly resting on top. When thoroughly cooled, screw the lid on tightly and store in the fridge or in a cabinet. If the milk solids have been removed, the ghee should not spoil.

To make rice and lentils with ghee: Cook rice, cook lentils. Mix desired proportion of rice and lentils with salt to taste, and mash slightly. Add desired amount of ghee and mix. Eat. (It is best to use lentils that mash easily, like red lentils, or moong dal.) If you are making this for a baby, you can really mash it up, and add water to get it to the right consistency and texture.