Doddapatre (Cuban Oregano)Tambuli - Cooling the body and the soul and some exciting chukbhuk news :-)

Last week has been such a rushed one what with amma complaining about a back pain that pretty much tied to her room and bed for a couple of days. She is the backbone of the family and when she is down, typically life seems down too :-(, Woman power in our household in not at all exaggerated. On that note, Happy Women's day everyone!

Then BH started coughing and sneezing and like always didn't go to the doctor until it brought him down royally during the midweek, makes me wonder if my 'nagging' abilities are kind of becoming diluted over time :-). Finally, when he couldn't sleep for 2 straight nights and also kept the rest of the house up & awake, realization dawned on and he came back from the doctor with a handful of antibiotics. He is on the mend, slow and sure recovery. I am hoping to not catch any bugs for a while but then they don't really listen to me, do they?

On a positive note, my Maddur vade post got published in Indian railways Railbandhu magazine. You write something that is close to your heart not even thinking about the audience it may reach and then someone from the other side of the world finds it and reaches out to you. It is exhilarating. I wasn't even aware that Indian railways had a magazine and when they contacted me in Jan stating they liked the post (not just the recipe but the write up about train journeys) and wanted to publish, I was more than happy to nod my head. The entire post is not on the magazine for lack of real estate, however it is an abridged version of my original post. If you are in India and travel in railways, look up the magazine if you have time. I received a pdf version of the monthly and here is a picture of the same. Happiee me..

I have a very simple, homely, almost rustic recipe today that won't be on the menu in any restaurants. You will have to knock on the doors of people who continue home cooking in Mysore region and ask them for a bowl of this delicious tambuli. Yep, that is the only way to get your hands on this ever green, soul happy dish. I have a couple of recipes for tambuli on the blog, here & here but what I have today is the queen (it could have been king I suppose but since I am writing the post on International Women's day :-)) of tambulis made with doddapatre (dodda~big, patre~leaf) or cuban oregano.

This is my favorite tambuli variety, nammamma always had this bush growing in the yard as far as I can remember and it used to be on the menu regularly and more frequently in summers. She would serve it as the first course on a hot afternoon and the taste & fragrance of the leaves just freshens you up. I have had it in pots for over 8 years now. The herb like the regular oregano is easy to grow and grows wild if allowed but pots seem to restrain the free growth. Some of my Tamil speaking friends have borrowed it to be used as medicine, I believe the leaves are crushed and the juice is applied on the forehead to get relief from common cold and congestion. It may not be easily available in your garden stores around the world but you can order it online. Growing it in the pot is easy, don't expose it to extreme temperatures and harvest the leaves regularly. DD loves it so much that she won't eat anything else on the days I make it for lunch.

My inlaws live on the outskirts of Bengaluru in a self contained educational campus filled with students but devoid of any of Bengaluru city's pollution (atleast thus far). The air is clean, mornings are filled with the music of birds & stray dogs, unadulterated cool breeze freely fills the surroundings. While staying so far away from the city has these advantages, it also becomes essential to be self sufficient. The surrounding villages have stepped up along with the college itself reserving land for farming. You get the fresh vegetables but also get the instant maggi noodles and the likes to satisfy the student population :-). I guess everyone thrives. The people who live on campus (other than students) are typically the teaching staff and management and the housing has developed in to a colony.

On our last India visit, DD & I were generally walking around on our last day in Bengaluru around the campus and came across a small park not far from the house. There is an elderly lady who lives right across and is a mega gardening enthusiast. She has plants all around her house and also have adopted this park to grow plants of all varieties, you will find vegetables, fruits, flowers which just makes the area so colorful and chirpy. She invited us to come see her park and we went with her. As I was admiring the pomegranates, guavas, chikkoos hanging from the branches, DD saw something that made her jaw drop and she quietly sat down. Curious, I went near her to see what she had found and burst out laughing.

There was the doddapatre plant creeping so generously all over the ground that she had never experienced the abundance in our restricted pot growing. The lady thought we didn't know what it was and started to explain the medicinal values, looking at DD's face I knew what I had to do and asked the lady if I could pick some leaves. As soon as she said yes, we went to her house to get a small bag and picked the leaves to our heart's content, here was the catch, we were heading back that night. So the leaves got all washed up as soon as we reached home, roasted in ghee and ground with coconut and yogurt. The freshness of the leaves still in our throats, we finished our 'head out' meal and made our way to the airport. BTW, this makes an excellent dip for maddur vade if you want to try them together :-)

I recently read an article about why Indian food is so tasty where the research says that Indian cooking seems to blend flavors that are vastly contradictory unlike others where things that complement each other are used in a recipe. I don't know all the science behind it but one statement caught my eye which read that typical Indian recipes are complicated medley of ingredients and usually have upwards of 6 ingredients. Here is my very humble, simple yet exotic in taste and medicinal value - Doddapatre tambuli for all of you to try with a small set of ingredients.

What do you need to make doddapatre tambuli? 
30-35 medium sized dodda patre (cuban oregano)
1 Tsp ghee (clarified butter)
1/2 Tsp black pepper corn
1/2 Tsp cumin seeds
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1/2 cup grated/shredded coconut (fresh or frozen)
1 cup yogurt (home made and a day old preferred, or use plain yougurt from the store)

How do you make tambuli? 

• Wash the leaves under running water a couple of times and pick any stems that might have made their way. 
• Heat ghee in a thick pan on medium heat
• Add pepper & cumin seeds, let them sizzle (1-1.5 minutes)

• Roughly chop the cleaned leaves and add it to the pan. 
• Add salt and mix well. 

• Roast for 3-4 minutes until leaves turn into a mush and leave water.
• Switch off and let cool completely. 

• Grind the roasted mixture along with coconut into a smooth blend, use the water that is in the pan. 
• Add yogurt and run the mixer a couple of times to get a homogeneous mixture. 

• Serve it with piping hot rice and enjoy the unforgettable experience. 

Notes: 

• Slightly tangy yogurt brings out the best taste, if your yogurt is too plain, add a small piece of tamarind and grind. I have done this and DD was none the wiser so it is a great tip :-)
• Use ghee in this recipe instead of oil if you can, it really brings the taste. 

Alu Palak - Perfectly delicious and friendly on the waistline

I started my Summer garden on a low key this time as I wanted to feel the soil and growing potential in our new home. But I am glad to see a perfectly green patch now as we are getting ready to bid a bye to the Summer. Squashes are growing longer and stronger, I have harvested fenugreek multiple times and the okra and beans are standing up as the bitter gourd plant continues to climb. I am just happy to see the green plants even if many of them do not have any veggies yet :-). The gardening gratification came with the greens - abundant spinach, chard, fenugreek and the lovely Dill. We are eating greens every day until everyone is blue in the face. I promised DD that I will give it a break for a while and BH has been strictly ordered to stay away from the Costco size Spinach bags he grabs on his occasional visit to the wholesaler. Yes, those occasional visits have the power to convert our home into an extension of Costco stores as he forgets that we still have loads of untouched bath tissues in the garage or big bags of baby bell peppers in the fridge or that we are growing a patch full of greens in our own backyard:-)

Back to my kitchen garden, my tomatoes flopped this time completely with a combination of bad location (read no sun light) and invasive roots underneath. I have learnt my lesson the hard way and will plan better next time, until then back to store bought, waxy tomatoes are my saviors. I have picked peppers(remember the Mirchi ka salan?) a few times and am watching the growing squashes like a hawk while also hoping to have a few other veggies before it is actually winter. All in all a satisfying gardening experience.

We are a greens loving family and I find ways to add green to the dishes. After a long time, I had the Spinach flavor while chopping the leaves and cooking it as it was REALLY FRESH. You won't believe the difference and the incredible flavor a fresh vegetable brings to a dish until you try it. It doesn't need any extra additives or spices to enhance the natural beauty. I made a quick Alu Palak which is a traditional Punjabi home recipe. Deep fried potato pieces are cooked in the mildly spiced, creamy palak sauce and enjoyed with hot rotis. I did my usual calorie counting on it and opted for the oven roasted way. The roasted potatoes were perfect in the sauce.

The first time I tried Alu Palak for an office pot luck a few years back, I had followed a friend's recipe to the T and deep fried the potato pieces, those were the days when there was no guilt associated with eating deep fried stuff every day, yeah they are called 'when I was younger' :-). One thing that was not instructed in the  recipe was that when you chop the potatoes, they should be patted dry to remove the moisture content before they got dropped into the hot oil. I am sure my friend's mom credited us with some common sense but given the fact that it was my early days of cooking and I didn't pay attention to the finer details, I dropped my fresh cut, juicy potato pieces into the hot oil and had a well burnt forehand to tell a story for a while. The Alu palak though turned out delicious with BH pitching in to both provide some TLC to the hurting wife and also take on the role of chef in the kitchen. Credit goes to aunty's well tested recipe. So if you do want to try the deep fried potatoes, make sure they are patted dry completely before dropping them in the oil.

Here is how I made oven roasted Alu Palak with the home grown spinach. As the green were very flavorful, I went low on the spices. It is a very forgiving recipe and you can play around with the spices to suit your taste. Use the below as a framework and experiment.

What do you need to make Alu Palak? 
4 cups tightly packed chopped spinach
2 medium sized potatoes
1 medium sized tomato
2 small green chilies
1X1 inch piece ginger root
1 small onion
1/2 Tsp crushed garlic (optional)
1/2 cup milk
1 Tsp cumin seeds
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1 Tblsp oil
1/2 cup water

Dry Masala powders:
1/2 Tsp red chili powder
1/2 Tsp garam masala
1/2 Tsp amchoor powder

How do you make Alu Palak? 
Prep work: 

• Wash, clean and chop Spinach.
• Peel and cut ginger into small pieces.
• Chop onions & tomatoes into small chunks. 
• Wash, scrub the potatoes and cut them into bite sized chunks. I used red potatoes and kept their thin skins intact for added nutrition. 
• Cover the potato chunks in water and parboil them for 5 minutes. They should be semi cooked and hard still. 

Making of Alu palak:

• Take the chopped spinach, green chilies and water in a sauce pan, and cook it until the water boils for a couple of minutes. Once the spinach is soft, switch off the stove and let it cool. 
• Heat 1/2 Tblsp in a pan, add the crushed garlic and chopped ginger and fry for a minute. 
• Add the chopped onions and saute until it starts to sweat. 
• Add chopped tomatoes and continue to cook until tomatoes turn soft. 
• Mix a Tsp oil and a pinch salt and coat it all over the potatoes, arrange them in a single layer on baking sheets and bake at pre-heated oven in a 350F for 45 minutes. Remove once after 30 minutes to turn them over. 

• Drain the water from the spinach, reserve it for later use. Blend the spinach & green chilies coarsely and keep aside. 
• Blend the fried onion, tomato mixture into a smooth puree.
• Heat the remaining oil in a pan, add cumin seeds, let sizzle. Add the onion-tomato puree. Add salt, reserved spinach water and the dry masala powders and let it cook until the mixture changes color slightly in about 5-8 minutes. 

• Add the spinach puree,  milk and continue to boil for another 5 minutes until the gravy thickens slightly. 

• Add the roasted potatoes, give it a mix and switch off the stove.

• Let the potatoes sit in the gravy for a 15-20 minutes to soak up before serving with rotis or ghee rice/fried rice. 

Notes: 

• You can deep fry the potatoes but I honestly think there is no value add and overrated especially in this recipe since oven roasted potatoes serve the purpose and taste just as well. 
• Par boiling the potatoes before baking them reduces the baking time in the oven and also gives that soft inside, crispy outside texture to the potatoes. 
• I usually put the potatoes with water in a microwave safe dish and microwave it on high for 5 minutes. 
• If you do not have an oven, par boil the potatoes (they should be semi cooked and firm) and saute with a couple spoons of oil in a pan to get the golden cover on the outside. 
• You can use cream or half & half for a thicker, creamier texture of the gravy. 
• We like a 'not-so-thick' gravy to eat with rotis, if you prefer you can make this thicker and drier by not adding the reserved water or cook the spinach with a little salt and no water.
• Sometimes I skip the tomato in this recipe and increase the amount of amchoor powder for the tangyness. This retains the rich green color of the spinach.

Thanks to one of my readers Kaveri for her comment, my healthy Alu Palak is going to her Show me your HITS which she is hosting this month for Sangeetha's HITS event