Cranberry saaru - a wild berry hits the road towards south(India)

Do you have any funny bones in your body? let us check it out with a quick test today, shall we?
Q: What do I like best? Brexit or Thanksgiving?
A: Brexit, because it made me lose pounds :-)

Ok, I should confess that I am considered somewhat of a stand up comedian at home because of the PJs I keep cracking when in company. So far it has been my family and some close friends that have the privilege(!!) of listening to suffering through my PJs and I thought why not share some with you guys as well since you are all virtually family now. I promise I won't do it very often (nothing to jeopardize the readership on the blog) and also will release only certified & quality controlled jokes here on the blog. By that I mean, I will sift and select from my vast repertoire of 'no-good' jokes to find those rare gems that brought atleast a hint of smile on BH's face, the poor guy on the other hand has no choice but to listen to them in person and also read them on the blog :-), double whammy!! Let me know how you enjoyed the funny line (I can see BH holding his breath and hoping I won't get a lot of encouragement on this path..)

But jokes aside, I seriously ate a lot during last weekend, it seemed like the entire universe was conspiring me to just let go of all reservations and eat. DD was home, I was happy, there was easy access to good food, weekend was cold and needed to be fueled and on & on.. all good reasons to gorge on food right? This is what I call stress free eating :-). I still have a few more calorie rich, terrific items in the drafts but I needed to post something that is non greasy, plain, not too creamy but flavorful dish right now and hence the other recipes will have to stay in the drafts for a little longer until I can actually bring myself to look at all those other(mouth watering) pictures.

I have mentioned about our Thanksgiving family tradition and as always went to get some fresh cranberries for the chutney. I love the color of these berries and honestly think they are the best looking berries too. Just because it was on sale(don't judge me, doesn't the 'on sale' label get to most of us mortals?), I got 2 - 12oz packets of the fresh berries. The first packet was opened and made into a lipsmacking south indian chutney loaded with roasted fenugreek and mustard while the second one got left out in the vegetable crisper for 5 days. After DD left, BH & I wanted to try eating a lot of vegetables with no or very little rice/millet/oats/wheat etc.. We have done this a few times before as well and while I don't like to call it 'cleanse diet', it definitely is cleaner and simpler food (lot of fresh salads, lentils, flavored butter milk and loads of sauteed & seasoned vegetables) and we don't feel the need for adding rice or roti. Surely something I hope everyone gets to experience once in a while purely out of choice. Disclaimer: This diet definitely is not for all age groups and people with varying degrees of physical activity because it has missing food groups.

Every time I opened the refrigerator, the plump, pink berries would look at me and ask if I had any plans for them. As I was attacking vegetables most of the week, day after day, I kept disappointing them and ignored their plea to be out of the refrigerator. Weekends & holidays are my 'think' days as far as cooking is concerned. Weekdays are just a mad rush and I prefer to cook 'tried & tested stuff' which brings me comfort & joy in cooking and eating while avoiding any brain activity needed for new recipes or inventions. The best benefit of cooking on weekdays (other than ofcourse creating yummy food to eat) is that I unwind as I cook. I am all for improvisations as it goes with the flow and helps me relax but most days I am not upto creating something new. So come Saturday, a week after Thanksgiving I was ready to pick up these beautiful berries and play with them. And play I did. The regular chutneys and thokku would not work because there are still multiple varieties of chutneys in the fridge slowly getting finished and I had to think of something different & new.

Come to think of it, a cranberry is a sour, tangy berry with a unique flavor. I decided to make a south indian saaru (or rasam) which is a flowing liquid with or without lentils, seasoned with spice powders or fresh herbs and served as an appetizer or first course drink. I could have called this pink drink as soup instead of saaru but since I seasoned it with mustard I feel saaru is a more aptly suited name than soup. At once tangy and spicy with a faint hint of sweetness, this drink can don on multiple hats and doesn't really care how you address it. You may decide to skip the seasoning and make it truly 'soup-ey', I will leave that to you and won't even claim copyright on it :-)

I was thinking of the quintessential lemon saaru while making this one and hence ended up adding a piece of ginger. Sometimes accidental discoveries are worth more than you imagined. The combination of cranberry & ginger is unique and totally delicious, and the possibilities are endless. So do give this a try. The saaru turned out just perfect, as a drink and as an accompaniment with rice. The color reminds me of the rasam made with kokum (another tamarind substitude used widely in the Konkan regions), a very pleasing pink. Now that I know cranberries work in my dishes, I am going to use the remaining ones in Huli/Sambar today. If you look for presentation quotient in your dishes, then use cranberries for that beautiful hue it imparts to the dishes, I simply love the color.

What do you need to make Cranberry saaru?
1 cup of fresh cranberries
1 inch piece of fresh ginger
3-4 dry red chilies
1 Tsp crushed jaggery/brown sugar
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1/2 cup grated coconut
few curry leaves
1 Tbsp chopped cilantro (optional)
Seasoning: 
1 Tbsp oil (use ghee if you like)
1 Tsp mustard
1/2 Tsp cumin
1/8 Tsp asafoetida

How do you make Cranberry saaru? 

• Pour cranberries into a bowl of water and pick out any mushy berries and discard. 
• Wash the remaining berries. 

• Add cleaned berries, salt, chopped ginger and pieces of dry red chilies into a blender along with 1/2 cup of water and blend into a fine paste. 
• Transfer the ground paste into a stock pot, add water to get it to the desired consistency. 
• Tear the curry leaves and add it in, add jaggery. 
• Bring the saaru mixture to a gentle boil on medium heat. 

• In the meantime, take the grated coconut to a blender jar along with 1/2 cup water and grind into a very smooth paste. I did this to avoid extracting coconut milk and also to not discard coconut. See notes for alternatives. 

• Add chopped cilantro (if using), let saaru boil for a couple of minutes before switching it off and setting it aside.
• Heat oil in a seasoning pan, add mustard & cumin. When mustard starts to pop, add asafoetida. Let the seeds crackle before pouring it into saaru. 

• Cover the vessel and let the flavor mingle. 
• You can serve this as a appetizer or use it to mix with rice. 

Notes: 

• I used dry Byadagi chilies and did not roast them before grinding. If you wish, roast the chilies in a couple drops of oil until they crisp up and use. 
• Use green chilies instead of or in combination with red chilies if you like that taste. I wanted to preserve the color of the berries and didn't want to add specks of green. 
• I intentionally avoided saaru pudi/rasam powder in this recipe to keep the flavors simple. 
• If you want the saaru consistency to be very thin, extract coconut milk from the ground coconut and add only the milk. 
• You can use store bought canned coconut milk or regular milk in this recipe. Keep the milk at room temperature and reduce heat before adding it. 

Cranberry Tokku - 3 perspectives + some thoughts, giving Thanks and cooking with Cranberries

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. November is my month of contemplation for many reasons besides the traditional Thanksgiving celebrated this week. So here is my rambling on the topic, feel free to skip and go to the recipe but I promise I have links to some great reads below that might interest you :-).

All this started a couple of months back when a dear friend of mine shared an article titled "Why Women still can't have it all" by Prof Anne-Marie Slaughter, professor of Politics and International affairs at Princeton University. If you follow news and trends regularly you are probably familiar with Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg's 'Lean in' concept. This article is a little taunt for 'leaning in'. I understand both points of view at some level but don't agree with either 100%. 'What does having it all" mean to you? What you need/want is never a constant, it changes through out life and is true for both men and women. Life is more complicated than it was in my mom's generation but that doesn't mean you cannot enjoy it. I am neither glorifying a working woman having a family nor do I consider a non working mom to be deficient. My mom never worked outside home though she was qualified to do so and I have plenty of friends who make it seem so effortless as they work outside home and come back and take care of things at home too. So, 'having it all' is defined by you as an individual and there is nothing more to it.

The second perspective came when a colleague of mine sent this link - it does a good take on why nobody should apologize for having a life outside work which is very true and has taken years to come to be accepted. I still remember when I first started work, it was a taboo to talk about family commitments or tell your manager you had leave to take care of your child. It was an unspoken thing that you would compromise your career if you did that. I remember the early days of DD's day care experience when both of us used to be wreaks by end of the day. In the late 90s in India, corporate world was not mature enough to consider women taking time off for maternity, child care or there were no options to work from home or work part time like there are today. It is wonderful to see things changing and work places recognizing and respecting personal lives of their employees.

Finally, I saw this movie (one of my treadmill movies :-)) called "I don't know how she does it" which has the glamorous Sarah Jessica Parker who does not look glamorous at all in the movie & Mr.Bond, Pierce Brosnan. It is an affable comedy, of a working executive who also happens to love her family and is trying to balance her 2 worlds. There is a MIL who constantly tells her how things were different (and obviously better) in her times, there are a couple of exaggerated stay at home moms from the school that find fault with everything she does, a robotic female assistant who works long hours and shuns marriage but finds herself as a single mom and there is a male colleague who stops nothing short of stealing ideas and sabotaging efforts at the last minute. It made me smile as she puts a store bought pie into an old container at home so everybody at her daughter's school thinks that she made it herself for the annual bake sale. It is very relatable as she has to bail out last minute on a family Thanksgiving dinner to attend a client meeting. All in all it is a fun watch. The movie ends with her taking a stand refusing to make a business trip on a weekend and telling her boss, "Sorry, I am unavailable, I got to go make a snowman.". Oops, spoiler, but I am sure you would guess the end as you watch the movie, so it is all fair :-)

When I think about all this, I find myself extremely fortunate to have been brought up by a father who encouraged his little girls to do anything they wanted to in life just as he cheered his boys. He was of a generation where working women were not prevalent but he just looked at us as individuals with ambitions of our own and gave us opportunities every step of the way. Wish he was here still. I married this guy when in my twenties who thinks that my dreams are as valuable as his and willingly accompanies me when I take the leap. He never thinks low of my pursuits but instead has molded part of his own journey to accommodate the co-traveler. I feel blessed to have these wonderful people in my life.

With that we celebrate our Thanksgiving with a fingerlicking cranberry thokku, I am giving a miss to my Thanksgiving traditional lunch this time as we are headed out for a much needed break this long weekend. Looking forward to signing off from work on Wednesday. Cranberries have become such an integral part of my Thanksgiving celebrations, I love these tart berries as they are very amenable to Indian cooking. I made some no grate, no grind tokku this time, it is a much less time & effort consuming Tokku compared to these here & here and has a gorgeous, inviting garnet color and delicious taste. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving season, count your blessings and share some. I will be back next week to talk to you all.

What do you need to make Cranberry Tokku?
4 cups fresh cranberries (you can use frozen ones too but not the dried cranberries)
1 Tsp methi/fenugreek seeds
1 Tblsp red chili powder (adjust to taste)
pinch of asafoetida
3 Tblsp oil
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1 Tsp mustard seeds
8-10 curry leaves

How do you make Cranberry Tokku?

• Wash Cranberries by soaking them in a vessel filled with water. You will be able to easily rinse them with hands and pick out any mushy cranberries out.
• Heat a pan and roast the methi seeds without any oil on low to medium heat constantly stirring until the seeds turn light pink. Let cool and powder it in a mortar & pestle or using your spice grinder.
• Add oil to the same pan (my economic way to reduce dish washing, you can use different pans if you have the luxury :-)), add mustard, let it pop. Add the curry leaves followed by washed cranberries.

• Add salt, stir it all in so the cranberries get a coat of oil and let it cook on medium heat.
• Within a couple of minutes, you will hear the cranberries popping, stir once or twice to move the berries around so they get a contact with the hot pan and pop open.
• The idea is to have all the berries open up and become a mushy goop. This will take about 7-9 minutes. The berries do not leave a lot of water but it is important to cook on low heat so the rawness goes off completely.

• Add the red chili powder, mix it in and do a taste test for salt or red chili powder and adjust.
• Let this cook for another 8-10 minutes until oil starts to ooze out from the sides, do not expect a lot of oil to come out of the sides since we have used a small quantity to begin with.
• Add the powdered fenugreek seeds, mix and switch off.
• Once completely cooled, store it in dry, air tight containers. This will stay fresh for a month if you use dry spoons to serve. Makes a great spread on toasted breads, rotis, chapatis etc.

Notes:

• Roast the fenugreek seeds slowly on a low-medium heat, burnt seeds spoil the taste entirely.
• Make sure all berries pop open, give them a little assistance if needed by crushing them with the back of your spatula. This helps them absorb the flavors better.  
• One of the ways Nammamma used many of the thokkus made at home was to convert it into a quick and delicious one pot rice item. Here is how - Cook rice until soft but grains are fluffy and separate. Add desired amount of the thokku and mix it in. Make a seasoning of mustard, chana dal, urad dal, curry leaves and peanuts in oil and add it to the rice. You will have a quick and yummy rice to fill your lunch box with. Enjoy.

 

Cranberry chutney - spicy way to say Thanks on Thankgiving

Thanksgiving & Christmas have become family traditions for us after we moved here. As leaves change color, trees become bare, Summer gives way to the chill, jackets & heavy clothing wrap the body, holiday spirit sets in and the twinkling lights, shopping malls will suck you in for sure. We have over the years enjoyed these holidays with friends, family, co workers and others. Thanksgiving is very similar is spirit to the Sankranthi festival that it celebrates a plentiful harvest and lets people come together over food and say Thanks. The first Thanksgiving is thought to have been observed in the US in the 1600s.

I used to watch my co-workers & friends prepare for Thanksgiving for many days in advance. It takes a lot of planning to host a Thanksgiving family dinner where extended families sometimes travel to meet each other. It is a time for reunion, laugh & reminisce over some a spread of good food. Being a vegetarian, I only used to listen to the food stories around the holidays, remember I am not much of a baker and so didn't feel confident about the pies, cakes, brownies either. Then one day few years back, things changed. We used to go to Chinmaya Balavihar in Michigan and got invited to the Thanksgiving celebration, it was a vegetarian fare but with a focus on the local food traditions. There was roasted sweet potatoes, cranberry chutney, masala dosa (yes, that was our stuffed turkey equivalent).

We celebrate Thanksgiving at home with masala dosa, an Indianized cranberry chutney, oven roasted sweet potatoes & butternut squashes and corn bread. So I use most of the harvest ingredients and make the menu my own which I think is a wonderful way of customizing the celebration. Earlier this week, walking down the isles of Whole Foods market, I found an entire section dedicated to vegan Thanksgiving, it had Tofurkey, squashes, cranberry sauces and other things.

Cranberries are those super berries with a lot of health benefits. The tart berries are known to help fight against diabetes, cholesterol build up and urinary tract infections. Cranberry sauces I get here in the stores are too sweet for my taste and almost jam like, so in my usual tradition of finding a spicy alternative I have zeroed in on this recipe of a spicy chutney. All you need are 3 basic ingredients with some salt thrown in and 10 minutes of cook time, you will have a delicious spread. I have heard you get frozen cranberries in India also, go ahead and give this a try for a refreshing change in your chutney varieties. One of my friends who ate this when she came home for the Bommala koluvu has been asking me to put the recipe on the blog, so here it is for you N. Enjoy..

We had a very relaxing Thanksgiving brunch earlier today and enjoyed the food. As I reflect on what I am thankful for, there is indeed plenty. I am blessed in a lot of ways starting with a wonderful, loving family, host of friends that care, good health, my work. This year has been extra special with the blogging and I am very grateful for the happiness blogging gives me. It is fulfilling and relaxing and I am very happy for all the friends I have made through my blog. Thank you All!

For those of you in the US of A, if you are planning on a Black Friday shopping, stay warm, stay safe. We don't have any big shopping agenda but will hit the malls for a few hours just to be part of the fun :-). See you later this week.

What do you need to make Cranberry chutney? 
1/4 pound cranberries (I used fresh, bagged ones)
6-8 dry red chilies (adjust to taste)
1/4 of a medium onion chopped into thin strips
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1 Tblsp fenugreek seeds
1 Tsp oil
Seasoning: 
1 Tsp oil
1 Tsp mustard
1/4 Tsp asafoetida
a few curry leaves

How do you make Cranberry chutney?

• Dry roast fenugreek seeds on medium heat until the seeds turn pink and start to pop. Keep aside to cool. 
• Heat a Tsp of oil in a pan and roast the red chilies for a minute, set aside. 
• Add the sliced onions to the same pan, add salt to hasten the cooking process and roast for a minute or two until onion turns limp. 
• Add the washed cranberries to the pan and continue to fry for 5-6 minutes. 
• The cranberries pop, turn into a mush, at this stage switch off the stove and let it come to room temperature. 

• Make a dry powder of the roasted fenugreek seeds and red chilies. 
• Add the cranberry & onion mixture and pulse it in your blender. Avoid adding any water and make it into a paste by pulsing it. 
• Make a seasoning with mustard, asafoetida and curry leaves roasted in oil and pour it over the chutney. 

Notes: 

• Seasoning is optional and if you do not want to season the chutney, add the asafoetida while grinding the other ingredients. 
• Cranberries are quite tart in taste, make sure you balance the taste with a good amount of red chilies and salt. 
• Avoid adding water while grinding and let the ingredients cool down completely before grinding them.