Sagu

I've been really ill with viral for the past few days so haven't felt up to doing anything - blogging, talking, even reading. Food has been tasting like nothing which is really sad for someone who loves food like I do. But one dish that'll definitely taste good at any time and have the added benefit of being good for you is an old-style Karnataka vegetable stew called Sagu. It goes with puris, typically and makes for a wonderful Sunday brunch, especially along with Mango sheekarane in the summer. Hot sagu and puris is a wonderful meal in winter as well, and we love to eat this out on our terrace garden.

I suppose this is somewhat like Thai green curry in terms of ingredients, but the taste is totally different.

Here's the recipe:

1. 1 handful freshly grated coconut
2. 3-4 cloves of garlic
3. 1 inch ginger
4. 6-8 cloves
5. 2 inch piece of cinnamon bark
6. 1 tsp cumin seeds
7. 1 handful fresh coriander leaves and stems
8. fistful of roast chana dal - bhuna hua chana or hurakadale
9. 3-4 green chillies

2 carrots, diced
2 onions, diced
2 potatoes, diced
half cup fresh peas, or frozen
half cup cauliflower florets
half cup beans, cut into 1 inch segments

For tempering:
1 tsp mustard seeds (black)
2 tsp oil
handful curry leaves, washed and dried
1 dried red chilli

Method

1. Put the first 9 ingredients into the blender with a little bit of water and grnd into a smooth paste.
2. Put 2 and a half cups of water to boil, with salt added. Toss in the diced vegetables one by one in the order of how long they take to cook. So start with the potatoes, then add the beans, then carrots, then cauliflower, peas and onions last of all. Boil them until they are al dente.
3. Add the paste of the first 9 ingredients to this water and stir to mix. Taste to check on salt, and let boil until the vegetables become soft but not mushy (another 5 minutes, say)
4. Prepare the tempering: Put the oil on to heat at high in a small wok. Add the mustard seeds. When they have finished popping, add the curry leaves and red chilli and turn off the heat.
5. Top the sagu with the tempering and serve it hot.

Sagu tastes great with rice or rotis, or even crusty bread. Sometimes I even have it by itself as a hearty soup!

Home remedies for kids

Today I'm thinking about recipes of a different kind, since my son has fallen ill with a bad throat infection. Lots of times, we tend to dismiss home remedies as just old wives tales or superstitious claptrap. I'm far from the superstitious type myself, and used to view a lot of things I heard from my grandmother as just a 'grandma's story'. However, after my son was born, I realised that some of these things may have a) some truth; and b) some efficacy, to them. 'There are more things in this world, Horatio...'

One of the things my husband and I now firmly believe in is nazar or 'drishti' as we south indians call it. There has never been a single occasion, from my son's first birthday party to the first time he swam or a school performance or even a long lost friend exclaiming over his photograph, of apppreciation of either his looks or his ability not resulting in an immediate illness. It sounds weird to hear two MBA types swearing by something as illogical and arcane as nazar, but we're both firmly convinced that some kids tend to attract it. It's now normal behaviour on our part to put a 'kala tika' (black mark) behind his ear or to get one of his grandmas to do a nazar utaaro ceremony every few days, because whenever we have failed to do so and exposed him to the world without that protection, he's fallen ill!

Anyway, one really good posset to brew up for a sore throat is as follows:
Good handful tulsi (holy basil) leaves
Handful of plain basil leaves
10 black peppercorns
10 cloves
2 inch piece of licorice root
2 inch piece of cinnamon bark
2 cups water

Boil all these things together on a slow flame for about 15 minutes. Add a teaspoon of honey and serve warm. It soothes the throat and many of these ingredients are also used in many herbal cough syrups. You can reheat and serve this till the water is finished. Serve only the liquid. For grownups, you can add a tot of rum - perks them up and cures the throat!

For a child under 5 years, with a runny nose, try this. My uncle and aunt apparently used it on all their kids and it works magic with mine too.

Take a teaspoon of warm milk. Add 3-4 strands of saffron to it and let the milk absorb the saffron for an hour or so till it thickens a bit. Dab a drop or two of the milk on the child's nose. He/ she will have a bright yellow nose but the runniness will stop. Repeat every half hour or so, and in a couple of hours, the kiddo will let out an almighty sneeze which is pretty much the end of the cold!

Greens

I probably sound seriously uncool to most people, but I have to admit to a fondness for leafy green vegetables. I love the entire lot of them, from lettuces of different kinds to spinach, mustard/ collard greens, fenugreek leaves, bathua leaves etc. I also love herbs to add interest to a variety of foods, and one of my favourite recipes in the winter is an herb pilaf/ pulao which is of Iranian origin, which I will blog about later.

Aromatic Dhania

I love the smell of coriander. To me there's nothing that spells freshness quite as much as the scent of this herb. I view it as such a thing of beauty that I hate throwing away even one leaf. I love garnishing dals or vegetables with dhania, dhania chutney with samosas or on a sandwich, in a raita. I even have a great recipe for dhania soup with garlic (another vegetable I love), a portuguese recipe, I believe, which is incredibly sensual with the two intermingled aromas and a dash of good quality olive oil. To me, a perfect lunch in the summer is cucumber salad with lemon juice as dressing, garnished with dhania, and salt and pepper to taste. Easy on the eye, on the nose and on the palate.