As a kid I had a fascination for the fried potatoes without turmeric. I don’t know what it was that enthralled me about this dish being cooked without turmeric. Maybe because it was the norm to cook with turmeric, it was what we had every day that I wanted something different. The first time I saw those non yellow potato fries was in a friend’s lunch box. Probably that was the source of the fascination. At age eight or nine it is what others have that is always much more interesting and better than what you have. It was also escalated by the fact that my mom never cooked without turmeric; primarily because my dad didn’t like food which looked pale. He always ate with his eyes first, as do most of us. So food which didn’t have turmeric didn’t appeal to him and it automatically lost its taste.
And then one day my dream came true. My dad was away on an office trip and mom made the alu bhaja without turmeric. It is a very simple dish where the potatoes are seasoned with salt and turmeric and then shallow fried with some sliced onions and green chili. Dinner that day consisted of bhaat (rice), daal (lentils) and alu bhaja without turmeric.
Much as I love the dish, one fine day I discovered that I wasn’t any good in cooking it. All these years it looked a pretty simple dish until I tried to make it myself. I knew the theory of cooking it perfectly well. Cut the potatoes into strips, heat oil, and fry the potatoes with onions and green chilies. How difficult can that be?
In my first attempt I used russet brown potatoes, cut them into fat matchsticks, and for some extra flavor I decided to add scallions (in the style of alu-peyanjkoli bhaja). When my cooking was over, it looked more like chunky mashed potatoes with scallions. The potatoes were overcooked and they no longer retained their matchstick like shape. The scallions had lost all their texture and looked like green specs scattered here and there. And the worst part was a friend was coming to dinner. It was too late to make alternative arrangements so I had to serve the lumpy thing.
After this incident I have made alu bhaja a couple times, each time with more or less the same result. After that I gave up the thought of trying to make alu bhaja and somehow managed to forget about my favorite dish until one day my friend mentioned that they were having bhaat, musur daal and alu bhaja for dinner. As my brain registered the words my mouth started watering. But I didn’t make any attempt to cook the damned thing. I was very much tempted to invite ourselves over for the alu bhaja but felt a little embarrassed. As it is we frequently drop in to their place with just a phone call’s notice and often invite ourselves over for the awesome chicken biryani my friend cooks. The invitations are usually for lunch, but we end up having dinner too, and when the invitation is for dinner you can well imagine…Due to all these reasons I felt a bit shy in asking her. Added to that was a sense of shame at not being able to cook such a simple dish.
Then my parents came in the summer and for the Labor Day weekend we decided to visit the Grand Canyon since my dad was very much interested in it. “Since we are going all the way we might as well visit the national parks in Utah,” was my husband’s proposal. So the weekend turned into a weeklong holiday as tickets were booked from San Francisco to Las Vegas.
Since we’d be out for seven days we had to empty the fridge of all perishables. Most of the stuff was taken care of, except for a few potatoes and two bell peppers which were lying there sadly in the fridge. So my mom made alu bhaja and also threw in the bell peppers. In my mom’s hand the russet potatoes looked as good as our desi potatoes and they stayed firm and looked just like they should look – crisp and firm. There was no lumpy mess. So the culprit was not the potatoes as I loved to think.
Our flight was to land in Las Vegas at 8 pm, just in time to gorge on the buffets. The three of us – me, my husband and his brother – had already started arguing on which buffet to have. Since my parents weren’t accustomed to the food here and the buffet would prove too much for them, we decided that it would be best if we took food from home for them. So we packed the fried potatoes in a Ziploc along with some achar (pickles) and parotas (Indian flatbread).
On reaching Las Vegas the hot weather and the traffic jam took away our enthusiasm for the buffet and the five of us gobbled up the home made dinner in our hotel room. While we ate all of us agreed that not having the buffet was a good idea. The fried potatoes tasted awesome. Spicy, firm and crunchy – they tasted just like I remembered them from my childhood days. I felt so contented and I doubt the buffet with all its varieties would have given that sense of satisfaction.
*****
Things were going along fine until one gloomy Friday afternoon a few weeks back. The craving for alu bhaja surfaced. I tried to get over it but the harder I tried the stronger the craving became. When I thought of it I could almost feel the taste of the salty crunchy fries my mom made a few months ago. My mouth kept watering. I could smell it in the air – in the house, in the corridors of our building, even in the car. This was bad. I had to do something about it.
So I gave my mother a call. “Ma, how do you make alu bhaja?”
“Alu bhaja? It’s very simple…” and she went on to explain the procedure.
I did what she told me and voila! I had alu bhaja that looked like what she used to make, and tasted just as good.
For recipe see alu bhaja
Now where did I go wrong? According to my mom, cooking is a form of art, and as with all other art forms or for that matter anything you do in life, there are no shortcuts. That is her opinion and I disagreed thoroughly, especially when it came to cooking. Since my childhood days I have had a reputation for being a phankibaaj (n. one who is lazy, always seeking shortcuts) and that phankibaaji applied to cooking as well. When I cook, I optimize the process so that I don’t have to stand there and babysit the dish. For instance, when it’s time to fry the masala -- a paste of ginger, garlic, onion and few other spices -- I put everything in the pan, give it a stir and go off to do something else. Ideally you should stand there and stir it continuously until the raw smell of the ingredients is gone and the paste turns brown in color. Typically this process takes 30-40 minutes and I can’t imagine myself standing there for the whole time while it’s taking its own sweet time to cook. I did try doing that but I got impatient and that resulted in a curry smelling of raw onions and garlic. So what I do is add some water when the masala starts to dry up, and buy myself time, because once it starts to dry up it can burn very easily. This process continues until the masala is cooked and starts to brown. That is when I put my full attention and do the rest of the task. This walking away has backfired a few times as I forgot about the masala. A burnt smell helped me remember but it was too late as the whole thing had to be thrown away and the entire process repeated and once I had to scramble because there was a dinner party that evening. Did I learn from those incidents? No. Because as they say, once a phankibaaj, always a phankibaaj. I still cook in the same process but try not to forget that something’s cooking and hope that it won’t burn on me.
Now I applied the same process when it came to making the fried potatoes. I heated up the oil, threw in the potatoes, added a pinch of turmeric, seasoned them with salt, covered the pan with a lid (so they would cook faster and easily) and spent 30 minutes with Rachael Ray. When I opened the lid…you know what it looked like. So that was the problem of making alu bhaja my way. If I were to have the real alu bhaja, I had to babysit it, just as my mom told me to. With no other option available, that is exactly what I did. Sometimes you need to go that extra mile. Does that mean I am no longer a phankibaaj? Now what did I say earlier? ‘Once a phankibaaj, always…’
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment