Radish cress, Microgreens

While I spoke about Red Cabbage cress in my last post here, I laid my hands on a tray of radish cress from Krishi Cress who grow them at a farm in Chattarpur…It is such a pleasure to pluck these tiny greens from the tray, wash and just throw them in salads, soups, sandwiches and so much more! An edible garden at hand…what more can a food lover ask for? Freshness and flavour! 
Radish cress will make you feel you are eating radish without actually eating it. Radish cress has sharp, pungent notes. It accentuated my Labneh and tasted great in a no-oil tomato-apple broth.
Below, I photographed the young and wilted greens. My tray lasted me one whole week lending an opportunity for many a experiments in the kitchen.
The no-oil sweet tomato and apple broth was enlivened with the sharpness of radish.
Trays of Microgreens at Krishi Cress ready to be delivered to restaurants on demand.
Radish cress sits pretty on the dining table.

Trendy Microgreens

New things on my plate eliminate the mundanity of table regulars. Stuff, that we eat daily. As a child I often used to wonder if our life would ever move ahead of the normal dal, roti, peas, carrots, rajma, aloo and so on. Will there ever be born again vegetables? My wishes were heard, a little late in life, but they were. Growing up I discovered foods that I had not eaten earlier. And as late as now, I also discovered microgreens. 
Let me begin from the beginning. A few years ago, I was introduced to exotic salad leaves like Rocket and Arugula, which are now quite common at Delhi dining tables. Recently, I discovered many chefs were using mini greens or micro greens to enhance the flavour of their dishes as well as add a charming visual appeal. Mostly, I’ve seen chefs using microgreens to add a curious, visual factor while plating their food. And very often, I find myself being ‘educated’ that I have microgreens on my plate. So, it would only be apt to talk about them on the blog. 
Microgreens are nutrient dense and are typically sown and harvested within 7 to 14 days. There are quite a few of them available on supermarket sheleves. They come in varied colours and flavours like Radish cress, Cilantro cress, Arugula cress, Mustard cress, Lolo Rosso, Beet cress and so on. Microgreens are grown in plastic trays and need good monitoring, the right amount of sun, shade, air and basically quite a lot of care. Some, use sprouting pads to grow them (mostly outside India) and others use cocopeat. I’ve got some Red Cabbage Cress Microgreens to showcase. They have a red stem and green leaves and could make for many a pretty plates. They taste like well, cabbage, and are as crunchy. I planted them in my hummus pot to up the visual factor. Have a look and stay tuned for much more, pretty soon! 

Haak – Kashmiri greens recipe

There’s so much comfort food that winter brings in, that one is spoilt for choice. Soups, stews, noodles, rice, rustled up with lots of fresh veggies. The sabji mandis (vegetable markets) are filled to the brim with fresh produce. One would get every shade of green and every year I discover some or the other vegetable that has not yet seen the light of my kitchen. While I enjoy what is left of Delhi winters, I’d like to share this simple recipe of Kashmiri staple Haak saag, cooked using a few basic rules but not any Kashmiri recipe in particular. Haak goes best with steamed rice and believe me you, this would be the best kind of saag you’d have ever tasted. 

Recipe:
For 1 medium bunch of Haak: Wash the leaves well. Look out for worms. I put them in salted water for 30 mins, rinse and then use. Snip off the ends and use the leaves as well as the tender stem. Heat mustard oil in a wok. Add 1 or 2 whole red chillies, depending on the quantity of your haak. Chop a fat garlic clove and add. Immediately thereafter, add 1.5 cups of water and let it simmer. Now add the whole Haak leaves and salt to taste. Let it boil for 7 to 10 minutes or till the leaves wilt a little. Enjoy Haak hot off the wok with steamed rice. Bliss!

 ‘

As mentioned earlier, I don’t follow any typical Kashmiri recipe mentioned in recipe books and sites, but do follow some basic rules: 
Use whole leaves and some stem.
Keep spices minimal to bring out the flavour of the haak well.
Do not overcook.
Ideally, do not reheat and make it 15 mins prior to serving.
Serve hot with steamed rice.

Korma, Kheer & Kismet- an escapade to Old Delhi by Pamela Timms

Korma, Kheer & Kismet by Pamela Timms
A familiar welcoming air, blaring horns, human jams, rickshaw jams, electrical wire jams overhead, howling porters and the one providing you most extraordinary yet humble street food is how Skeeter would describe her Old Delhi. A city in its own right, studded with potholes, covered with grime, buzzing with noise, it is Skeeter’s Hogsmeade in her own backyard. 
From the time fellow blogger Pamela Timms signed a book deal on Old Delhi with Aleph, to the poll for the best name for the book and the pre-book era when Pam would wander, hog and write about her experiences on her blog: Eat and Dust, Skeeter has been following it all. There are two reasons for the same: 1.Pam’s guide to Old Delhi’s best is Skeeter’s idol as well. For, without Rahul Verma’s columns on Old Delhi Street food, Skeeter would’ve had lesser culinary revelations. 2.To read about your beloved through another’s eyes makes you fall in love all over again.
Korma, Kheer & Kismet by Pamela Timms
The book: Korma, Kheer, Kismet-five seasons in Old Delhi
This is not really a book review. Here, Skeeter speaks more about what she liked than what she didn’t as there was hardly anything that Skeeter didn’t quite like except maybe the choice of cover photo and one missing line that could’ve revealed what happens to Daulat ki Chaat after the ‘right amount of dew’ graces the bowl it is set in. However, the not-so-pleasant details of how and where it is made in Old Delhi more than makes up for it. Pamela even parted with Rs 5000 and braved her way (alone) through the kuchas to see it all with her bare eyes on an early winter morning and shared it with readers. Pamela Timms has recorded an year’s worth of eating in and around Old Delhi, with a trip to Amritsar to dig the secret of the flakiest kulcha she’s eaten at Baba Singh’s shop: All India Famous Kulcha and another, to Madhya Pradesh where she got versed with some age-old Diwali rituals around food, dairy and more. 

Korma, Kheer & Kismet by Pamela Timms
Korma, Kheer, Kismet begins with what was the Gali-Mohalla gossip about Ashok and Ashok in Sadar Bazaar. They sell the best Mutton Korma in Delhi, according to Pam and hence the name Korma, Kheer, Kismet. Pam reveals how she cracked the mystery of the lineage of Ashok and Ashok and when she was happy, her bubble was burst by someone who debunked her theory and had a different tale to tell. 
She describes early morning business at Khari Baoli beautifully and is “mesemerized by the magnificent Mahyem of the spice market.” She also writes, “A common souvenir of a trip to Old Delhi is a set of bruises from collisions with market porters.” This is something any Old Delhi lover would undoubtedly have to sport.
pakoda
Pamela’s narrative wades between seasonal produce (her tryst with jamun, falsa, shehtoot and so on), seasonal chaat (shakarkandi), festivals and festive food (Eid, Ram Navami, Diwali) as well as her endless efforts to extract recipes of some of her favourite dishes. She is aware that the people who share recipes give it all except one key ingredient. This book is no ordinary documentation of food through the eyes of an expat. It is abound with love, nurtured with experience and an exploratory spirit. Pamela rightly traces the food and its prices to labour class toiling hard for a measly sum and then spending a little out of it on a plate of chaat that would provide them nourishment (kulle for fibre, ram laddu for lentils, alu tikki for winter warmth, kulfi to deal with atrocities of summer). The spice enlivens the meal and prevents them from eating more and satisfies them as well. 
Pamela traces some bakeries making rusks and explores their British connection and gets thrilled at sighting macroons in Old Delhi. She also visits the Walled City at odd hours to see people making some of her favourite foods. Daulat ki Chaat and the unhygienic conditions it is made in being the most dramatic one. She’s no stranger to Delhi’s history of ice-cream as she writes about transport of ice from the hills to the capital for the Mughal rulers’ pleasure. Many establishments still use ice instead of freezer to chill stuff like malai and prevent it from going sour.
Korma, Kheer & Kismet by Pamela Timms

The recipes
Sheer Khurma, Shakarkandi, Tikki, Tamarind sauce, Ashtami chana, halwa, Old and Famous jalebi recipes laboriously collected by Pamela maybe well worth trying at home but as the author concludes at the end of her book that the “hath ki baat” and the perfect taste is reflected in your cooking after making the same thing day in and day out a several thousand times. She also shares Akbar’s Kabab and Biryani recipes from Ain-E-Akbari. 
Korma, Kheer & Kismet by Pamela Timms
Korma, Kheer & Kismet by Pamela Timms
From getting excited on spotting an elephant on roads on touchdown in Delhi in 2005 to sampling Korma and Kheer and bagging culinary invites from Old Delhi’s most reputed, her Delhi sojourn has brightened Pamela’s Kismet.
P.S: Here are some links to places in Old Delhi that are mentioned in the book and Skeeter has previously blogged about:

Of family kitchens, heady aromas and The Sood Family Cookbook

Skeeter loves browsing good books. Cookbooks are Skeeter’s best friends. Leave her in a mall and you will invariably in a store buying or admiring cookware or browsing cookbooks. The average cookbook with a collection of 50 or 100 odd recipes duly classified as snacks/mains/desserts is the most boring thing ever!
A long while ago Aparna Jain wrote on a social networking site that she’s putting together a family cookbook: The Sood Family Cookbook. When Skeeter finally laid her hands on the book it was all that was promised. A true family cookbook in soul and spirit. For one, it covers not only the nuclear family but also the widespread global family. An aunt in the hills, a cousin abroad, a baker niece and others have pitched in to send recipes which Aparna asked for and that enabled her to compile this cookbook. The book is dedicated to a brother who’d need recipes that would remind him of home every time he decides to cook in his kitchen in another continent. The family is a good mix of Kashmiris, Malayalis, Mangaloreans, Assamese, Sindhis, Punjabis and more. Hence, the diverse flavour of The Sood Family Cookbook. The book was first self-published by Aparna in a three ring binder before being formally published by Collins.

The look: The cover is a very simple, thought provoking bayaam/bharani, which is a ceramic pickle jar in an off-white colour with mustard stripes on the mouth of the jar. It is a heavy duty jar that Skeeter often spots in Punjabi households in North India as also in South India. One look at this cover image hits you with nostalgia. Moving on, the book has broken many a bar and gone for illustrations rather than some drool-worthy photography. Works likes a charm! A welcome departure. Sample this: Images of a bharte wala baingan being roasted on the gas burner directly, a fondue pot invoking warmth, the quintessential Indian pressure cooker, a kashundi bottle reminiscent of the Bengali love for mustard, old thick bottomed kadahis making you reach out for the forgotten one in your store, graters of various shapes and sizes and Skeeter could go on!   
The recipes and usage: The book is reader friendly, with the numbering of recipes indicating a colour for its type: Red: Non-Vegetarian, Yellow- containing Eggs and Green for Vegetarians 😀 The 101 recipes are classified into Comfort food, Light and Healthy, Sood Grog, Anytime eats and so on. 
Try making the Sindhi Sael Dabroti, the fiddlhead ferns (Skeeter was scouting for a recipe once after purchasing lingdu, the local name for fiddlehead from the hills and had no clue what to do with it), the khatti daal, the 80-minute kaali daal, Hanoi inspired salad, Chilli gulabi guava, Berliner spiked hot chocolote and many more! A few recipes are so simple that you’d question why were they included in the book? The answer is simple: It was written for people who would one day have no choice but get into the kitchen and cook!
And finally here’s what Skeeter did with The Sood Family Cookbook 
Skeeter was about to use her mom’s recipe of the Sindhi kadi and found the recipe in The Sood Family Cookbook strikingly similar with a few changes. And it turned out well. Also, the Pahadi Hara Namak is a revelation and is the most easy peasy thing you can do to enliven a simple, casual meal. 
Price: Rs 899 on cover. Amazon price: Rs 492. Go pick!

A wild and leafy summer: Olive

There’s something about Olive that keeps drawing Skeeter to the place time and again. The ever-inviting ambience? The pleasant and smiling, unpretentious staff? Aye! But more than that the skilled chef! For without good food, a place like Olive at a location like Mehrauli cannot continue to be a crowd puller. Chef Sujan Sarkar bowled Skeeter over with some of his finest creations. He admits that preparing a vegetarian menu which is neck-to-neck with the non-vegetarian one is no simple task. But he takes up the challenge and how! P.S: Chef Sujan Sarkar is sneakingly suspicious of guests that come asking for Pizzas. Agree Olive pizzas are good, but once you move beyond cheese and tomato there’s a whole new world to discover.

Here are Skeeter’s favourites off Olive summer menu. The amuse bouche (above), a pumpkin cracker, slathered with soft goat’s cheese and topped with semi dried tomatoes and garnished with mini sorrel sprouts made for a pretty plate. Up next was the Salt baked beetroot with goat’s cheese, wild rocket leaves, orange and apricot puree. The picture below does no justice to the beauty of the plate and marriage of flavours. In India, we are so used to cooking and overcooking our greens (thing what poor sarson ka saag and palak are subjected to: boiling, pureeing and frying!), that we’ve actually forgotten to keep it simple. Take cue!

The Charred baby gem and summer vegetables came with savoury granola, smoked goat curd, and pickled palm hearts. Fresh, summery and very indulgent. Skeeter could have had many helpings of the charred baby gem, but then there was other delicious food calling out to her. 

A simple palate cleanser: Yoghurt sorbet (below).

On to the mains. There was Fettucine topped in a simple sauce topped with super crisp Zucchini fritters (pic below). There was a decent Green asparagus and broad bean risotto. But what stole Skeeter’s soul was a wonderfully crisscross grilled baby Zucchini and creamy polenta (Pave of Melanzane).

Pave of Melanzane
A summer meal is incomplete without king of fruit: mangoes! A Mille Feuille of mango, in signature Olive style (remember the strawberry one?)took care of that. Mango sorbet with a mango and mascarpone cheese mousse. Yum! And though there was no, and absolutely no space for more, the chef insisted we wait for the baked cheesecake, which was a 5-star dessert! It came with passion fruit curd, some rhubarb bits for decor, chocolate soil and sorbet on the side. Divine!
Mille Feuille of mango

Baked cheesecake