Posts Tagged ‘recipes’
A Kashmiri winter dish
Two summers ago, I grew a bunch of vegetables in my front yard. Outcome – I ended up with way more than I could eat, so I was drying. Mostly herbs. But that got me curious about dried vegetables. About the same time, I had learned about Kashmiri dried vegetables, Hokh Syun (link). For Kashmiris, it used to be necessity back in the days when snow would isolate villages and homes. Now it is a childhood memory food for most. For me, it is curiosity. So I dried some in my trusty dehydrator – eggplant and bottle gourd. Both were store bought but the vegetables were unusually tender, so I could pretend that they were from my kitchen garden.
I have been meaning to cook these dried vegetables for a while, and I finally got around to making the dried eggplants, wangan hachi, earlier this week. I rehydrated the dried eggplants in salted boiling water – they were nearly cooked in the process. Like Bengali cooking, Kashmiri cooking starts with heating mustard oil to smoking point and then cooling down to normal heat. I dropped a couple red chilis, a generous pinch of cumin seeds and let them splutter. Then I added sliced onion and minced garlic and let them soften. To that I added the powdered spices (turmeric, kashmiri chili pepper, fennel) and let them lose their raw aroma. And to all that I added the rehydrated eggplants and a splash of hot water. The eggplants were so soft that the vegetable took on a bhartha consistency. Once the liquid cooked down, I added a bit of milk and let the vegetable medley reach a consistency I wanted. And finally, I acknowledged that I had run out of cilantro leaves.
I paired the sabzi with a ragi (finger millet) roti and yogurt raita.
I have been trying flatbreads with a variety of gluten free grains. One of my prized possession is a countertop mill. It allows me to buy grains and mill on demand, it lengthens the freezer free shelf life compared to buying whole grain flour. Ragi roti is wonderful when you add a bunch of onion and make a super soft dough. I used cooked leek tops instead of raw onion. I flattened the soft dough on a hot griddle with wet hands to shape a rough flatbread – I call it roti, but flatbread is more appropriate. These flatbreads are thicker than roti and take some time to cook. I don’t use ghee when making flatbread, but I imagine what it would taste like if I added ghee instead of neutral oil.
Again, I have never eaten Hokh Syun before, so I only had my imagination to rely on. The eggplant had a strong eggplant flavor. The mustard oil had given it a desirable pungency. It reminded me of bhartha without the smokiness.
The vegetable was great with the flatbread.
Take the greens by the stalk
We have consumed more greens in last two years than we ate the entire last two decades. I have our CSA (Live Earth Farm) to thank for that. Red beets come with lively green tops. Baby carrots come with leggy green tops. The turnips come with eager green leaves. The fennels come with delicate frond wings. Then there are just the greens on stalks – the rainbow chard and the spinach and the collard greens and the lacinato kale and the russian red kale and the winterbor kale. And of course there are herbs – the cilantro, the parsley, the rosemary, the scallions and the basil. These are not your anemic slim bunches that you get at the grocery store. The leeks come whole i.e. twice the greens of your grocery store bought ones. And finally, the heads, the salads, the radicchio etc.
There is no way you can waste them. These are no faceless farmers from another continent. They are located in Freedom, just a hop, skip and jump away. The food is grown on a land that I call home and I am convinced that small scale organic farming is backbreaking labor of love.
So, I have been cooking these greens in all possible ways. The unexpected greens from the carrots, turnips, fennel and beets, the stalky greens, the heads of greens, the herbs. And the greens don’t just stop with CSA – the real backyard giveth onion weeds, the oregano buds, the mint, the sorrels, the lemongrass, the makrut lime leaves, the fig leaves, and the bay leaves. Sometimes there are microgreens in a box by the window.
… and it has been exhausting. Like I have been running a marathon. All the cleaning, chopping, drying, freezing, pureeing, powdering, …
Read the rest of this entry »I too like to take the scenic route when I cook!
When I took a whiff of Matsutake mushrooms at Signona’s, I knew that I would have to make Matsutake Gohan. My version has Minnesota Lake wild rice, the ghost varietal, matsutake mushrooms, pearl couscous, pine nuts, dried tomatoes, salt fermented plums, green Szechuan peppercorn, black cardamom, bay leaf, cinnamon leaf and leeks. This meal was in honor of the Day of the Dead, a tradition I have adopted to honor those who are are no longer with me today. The first to pass away was my grandad, in fact, it was many decades ago this day. I was still a child then. He used to write long letters to me and might have played a strong hand in nurturing my contemplative nature.
The phrase “I Like to Take the Scenic Route When I Cook” is the title of a November 2025 newsletter from Yotam Ottolenghi. My cooking style has been described as my love language. I don’t see it that way but I didn’t have words to describe it until I came across Ottolenghi’s Nov newsletter. And then it clicked. I too prefer the scenic route when I cook. In any month, there is at least one day when I would just like to open a can of sardines and a bottle of wine for dinner. But most times, food is a journey, sometimes an hour, sometimes a day or three, and sometimes, a few seasons.
Here are some of the journeys I undertook with this dish.
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Locomotoring 