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After Grannie left for Vizagh, leaving us devastated with her chapati-making skills, my Nagpur Auntie arrived, from Nagpur (you guessed it right). She is the younger sister of my mom and, after listening to the culinary disaster of their common mother, said that Grannie was too old to learn new tricks and offered to show us a much simpler dish using atta that she called puri.
Father was dubious and consented only when my Nagpur auntie assured him that she wouldn't be using even a spoonful of ghee. And he brought down the roller plate and pin from the attic. Everything went the same curious way except that the atta balls were not rolled over again and again with multiple ghee-encrusted folds into eternal triangles. Just one quick and expert roll and they took neat circular shapes.
And she didn't ask for our flat dosa-making tavva, but the deep bonda-making kadai. And she poured lots and lots of cheap groundnut oil into it...she is frugal by default. And lifted it on to our charcoal furnace and waited and waited till oil fumes enveloped our kitchen, then hall, and then the verandah.
And dipped a circular ring into the oil, making it emit angry gurgles. And lo and behold, it took the shape and size of my bald tennis ball. And she brought it down and asked me to go ahead and taste it. It was too hot and I had to cool it by several rounds of my out-breath (niswas). And as I gingerly touched auntie's first puri, it crumbled into powder in my hands and auntie felt sorry and gave me some sugar as a sweetener to go with her puri-powder. Not that the rest of the couple of dozens were any different.
And then Auntie said that her puris used to come out fluffy and soft in Nagpur. And she blamed our ration-shop-wheat for it and then our rolling pin and our groundnut oil and our charcoals and our envious evil-eye-neighbors and invited us all to Nagpur if we thought she was bluffing.
For the record I never got out of the Nagpur railway platform in my couple of trips from KGP to Jalgaon by Bombay Mail...just bought a few Nagpur oranges and took them as a gift to my wife who was recovering from the pangs of her childbirth per caesarean section.
Since then my mom (now 92) never touched atta. She was too frightened to attempt any chapatis, or puris for that matter. And used to say God was kind to her that she was married to a guy in Muthukur who loved his rice...rice is so easy to cook...just boil water in a huge vessel and dump rice into it and wait till it softens and then decant the water and feed the cooked rice to her hubby and kids and the leftover enriched rice-water (ganji) to the cows who loved it.
A decade later I was in Vizagh for my university education (for what it was worth). And then heard of the inaugural ceremony of its first North Indian Restaurant, called Vicky's, in the Kotha Road (literally the New Road but as it always happens it turned out to be the oldest and busiest road in the city). Incidentally there is this Kotha Hall (New Talkies) still in Nellore which, as you can guess, is as old as the very moving pictures.
And folks said that its chapati-korma combo was its best and was served free that day (only). So I went there with my friend PSK Rao and waited for a couple of hours till our turn came just before closing time. And we were served a hot chapati in a plate and korma in a side-plate. The name, korma, was familiar to me from my Muthukur years. My Muslim friends used to taunt me to visit their homes offering to feed me chicken palav and mutton korma, knowing full well that I was a strict vegetarian brahmin, scared of animals, alive or dead, as Bushy put it once.
But this Vicky's korma was advertised to be a vegetable korma but looked as reddish as blood. But both my friend and I were reassured that it had no meat in it although we found some scary yellow bits floating on what I now know as oily gravy.
The chapati turned out to be no better than Grannie's but the korma was heavenly. We gobbled it up and asked for a repeat serving and were scowled at by the server. There was a big leaf floating on the korma and we were told it was called Masala Leaf (Tej Patta in upcountry parlance). We didn't know if we could munch it like our tiny curry leaves but were too scared to try and left it alone. Otherwise it held no fears for us. The floating bits turned out to be pieces of potato and beetroot (that explained the reddish blood). And there were onion pieces and smells of garlic and ginger. I just loved it and never tasted any side-dish better.
But the cake goes to the parathas I tasted in Benares in 1984 cooked and served hot by a North Indian lady. Since then I never declined offers of any kind of parathas. Wiki tells me there are a mere 45 different varieties of parathas (see the list below). I had them all one time or the other in my long life except # 5 whose name itself scares me ;)
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After Grannie left for Vizagh, leaving us devastated with her chapati-making skills, my Nagpur Auntie arrived, from Nagpur (you guessed it right). She is the younger sister of my mom and, after listening to the culinary disaster of their common mother, said that Grannie was too old to learn new tricks and offered to show us a much simpler dish using atta that she called puri.
Father was dubious and consented only when my Nagpur auntie assured him that she wouldn't be using even a spoonful of ghee. And he brought down the roller plate and pin from the attic. Everything went the same curious way except that the atta balls were not rolled over again and again with multiple ghee-encrusted folds into eternal triangles. Just one quick and expert roll and they took neat circular shapes.
And she didn't ask for our flat dosa-making tavva, but the deep bonda-making kadai. And she poured lots and lots of cheap groundnut oil into it...she is frugal by default. And lifted it on to our charcoal furnace and waited and waited till oil fumes enveloped our kitchen, then hall, and then the verandah.
And dipped a circular ring into the oil, making it emit angry gurgles. And lo and behold, it took the shape and size of my bald tennis ball. And she brought it down and asked me to go ahead and taste it. It was too hot and I had to cool it by several rounds of my out-breath (niswas). And as I gingerly touched auntie's first puri, it crumbled into powder in my hands and auntie felt sorry and gave me some sugar as a sweetener to go with her puri-powder. Not that the rest of the couple of dozens were any different.
And then Auntie said that her puris used to come out fluffy and soft in Nagpur. And she blamed our ration-shop-wheat for it and then our rolling pin and our groundnut oil and our charcoals and our envious evil-eye-neighbors and invited us all to Nagpur if we thought she was bluffing.
For the record I never got out of the Nagpur railway platform in my couple of trips from KGP to Jalgaon by Bombay Mail...just bought a few Nagpur oranges and took them as a gift to my wife who was recovering from the pangs of her childbirth per caesarean section.
Since then my mom (now 92) never touched atta. She was too frightened to attempt any chapatis, or puris for that matter. And used to say God was kind to her that she was married to a guy in Muthukur who loved his rice...rice is so easy to cook...just boil water in a huge vessel and dump rice into it and wait till it softens and then decant the water and feed the cooked rice to her hubby and kids and the leftover enriched rice-water (ganji) to the cows who loved it.
A decade later I was in Vizagh for my university education (for what it was worth). And then heard of the inaugural ceremony of its first North Indian Restaurant, called Vicky's, in the Kotha Road (literally the New Road but as it always happens it turned out to be the oldest and busiest road in the city). Incidentally there is this Kotha Hall (New Talkies) still in Nellore which, as you can guess, is as old as the very moving pictures.
And folks said that its chapati-korma combo was its best and was served free that day (only). So I went there with my friend PSK Rao and waited for a couple of hours till our turn came just before closing time. And we were served a hot chapati in a plate and korma in a side-plate. The name, korma, was familiar to me from my Muthukur years. My Muslim friends used to taunt me to visit their homes offering to feed me chicken palav and mutton korma, knowing full well that I was a strict vegetarian brahmin, scared of animals, alive or dead, as Bushy put it once.
But this Vicky's korma was advertised to be a vegetable korma but looked as reddish as blood. But both my friend and I were reassured that it had no meat in it although we found some scary yellow bits floating on what I now know as oily gravy.
The chapati turned out to be no better than Grannie's but the korma was heavenly. We gobbled it up and asked for a repeat serving and were scowled at by the server. There was a big leaf floating on the korma and we were told it was called Masala Leaf (Tej Patta in upcountry parlance). We didn't know if we could munch it like our tiny curry leaves but were too scared to try and left it alone. Otherwise it held no fears for us. The floating bits turned out to be pieces of potato and beetroot (that explained the reddish blood). And there were onion pieces and smells of garlic and ginger. I just loved it and never tasted any side-dish better.
But the cake goes to the parathas I tasted in Benares in 1984 cooked and served hot by a North Indian lady. Since then I never declined offers of any kind of parathas. Wiki tells me there are a mere 45 different varieties of parathas (see the list below). I had them all one time or the other in my long life except # 5 whose name itself scares me ;)
- 1. Ajwain paratha (layered paratha laced with ajwain)
- 2. Aloo paratha (stuffed with spicy boiled potato and onions mix)[6]
- 3. Aloo Cheese Paratha
- 4. Anda paratha (stuffed with spiced egg)
- 5. Bal wala paratha
- 6. Band gobi wala paratha/Patta gobhi paratha (stuffed with cabbage)
- 7. Batuha paratha (Lamb's quarter, Chenopodium album)
- 8. Boondi paratha (stuffed with salty boondi & baked with ghee)
- 9. Ceylon paratha (from Sri Lanka)
- 10.Chana paratha (chick peas)
- 11.Channa dal paratha (stuffed with channa dal) [7]
- 12.Chicken paratha
- 13.Chili parotha/mirchi paratha (small, spicy shredded pieces)
- 14.Dal paratha (stuffed with boiled, spiced and mashed dal mostly available in northwestern and western India)
- 15.Dhaniya paratha (coriander)
- 16.Gajar paratha (carrot)
- 17.Gobhi paratha (stuffed with flavoured cauliflower)
- 18.Jaipuri paratha
- 19.Kerala paratha (popular version pronounced "porotta")
- 20.Lachha paratha - tandoori (Punjabi in origin. Round in shape with multiple layers traditionally prepared in a tandoor)
- 21.Lachha paratha - tawa wali (popular in eastern India, triangular in shape with multiple layers interspaced with ghee)
- 22.Lasuni Paratha (Garlic flavoured)
- 23.Lauki paratha (bottle gourd)
- 24.Makka paratha (corn)
- 25.Mattar paratha (stuffed with boiled, mashed and flavoured green peas)
- 26.Meetha paratha (stuffed with sugar)
- 27.Methi paratha (stuffed with fenugreek leaves)
- 28.Mooli paratha (radish-stuffed paratha, popular in most regions of northern India and the Punjab region of India.) [8]
- 29.Mughlai paratha (a deep fried stuffed paratha filled with egg and minced meat)[9]
- 30.Mutton paratha
- 31.Mix paratha [10]
- 32.Palak paratha (spinach)
- 33.Paneer paratha (stuffed with cottage cheese) [11]
- 34.Parton wala paratha ( Lachha paratha )
- 35.Plain paratha (layered roti without any stuffing except ghee and baked with ghee – popular in most regions of India)
- 36.Podeena paratha (laced with dry mint)
- 37.Putthay taway ka paratha
- 38.Pyaz ka paratha (stuffed with onion)
- 39.Qeema paratha, (stuffed with minced meat (keema), usually mutton, mostly available in Punjab, Hyderabad in India, and Myanmar)
- 40.Roti paratha/prata (Singapore & Malaysia)
- 41.Sattu paratha (stuffed with spiced sattu – roasted gram flour popular in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) [12]
- 42.Shrimp paratha
- 43.Sugar paratha (layered with caramelized sugar, usually after a meal or as dessert)
- 44.Tandoori paratha
- 45.Tomato paratha (stuffed with tomatoes)
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Any list of Para(n)thas, and there are many, will be incomplete without a mention of Amritsari variety. In fact there are about half dozen variations of Amritsaris. All are mouth-watering.
ReplyDeleteTry them at home ! You wont regret the burnt fingers. Literally, kaalina chetulu, I mean !