Elaneer Payasam

It was in the summer of 2009, when I first heard of ‘elaneer payasam’ (Tender Coconut kheer). We were planning my brother’s wedding menu and the caterer had listed the dish as one of the possible items we could choose to have on the reception menu. ‘That sounds unusual’, we thought and said yes. I say thank you to that moment for it was one of the most amazing dishes I had ever tasted! I was reasonably sure ambrosia must taste so!

Since then, I have been eager to try the dish out myself but as I lived in England then, I did not want to try this with fake tender coconut in a can and just waited for my next visit. And then, of course, I moved back to Chennai for good last year and finally, FINALLY, made it to mark my wedding anniversary earlier this month. It is, in my opinion, the most bang you can get for your buck, dessert-wise. Minimum fuss, maximum taste.

It really is the most simple dish to make and mark my words, you’ll win praises from everyone, including the in-laws

Chocolate Cake

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When my son turned the ripe age of 10, the occasion called for a chocolate cake. A simple one, not too rich or gooey as just the previous day (it  being my wedding anniversary), my zany SIL and brother had got us a decadent gluten-free cake from Sandy’s and there was absolutely no space in our tummies for yet more rich concoctions. So, I decided to go the other way and make one sans any cream or ganache. I started the search for the ideal recipe at my usual haunt – Joy of Baking‘s amazing website. I have tried the vanilla cupcake recipe couple of times before and they had turned out great. I looked at the chocolate cake recipe and it looked a bit too much work so decided to tweak her vanilla cupcake recipe to suit my purposes.

And I ended up with the one in the picture above. Pretty darn good, if I say so myself!

You can use this as your template, top it up with a superlative ganache or serve it with chocolate frosting – go to town with it because this is a solid and simple cake that will take any amount of frou-frou.

Egg Curry

I am sure I am showing my age but does anyone remember the old ad that promoted eating eggs? The jingle went something like this:

“Meri jaan, meri jaan, murgi ke ande!(x 2)
Omelette khilaoon, fried khilaoon, boiled khilaoon!
Khilaoon murgi ke, murgi ke, ande hi ande!
Sunday ho ya Monday, roj khaayein ande!!”

Happy, catchy and set to the tune of an old Hindi number, this ad was played often on the telly and I remember it perfectly till date, even thought it might have been 20 years since I last saw it. Whenever I make eggs for my children, this is the ad that runs through my mind!

Read more at Eatopia @ Women’s Web

Hairy Bikers

There is a popular programme on the BBC called the “Hairy Bikers: Mums Know Best“. The two presenters, the ‘Hairy Bikers’, travel the length and breadth of Britain to learn about family favourites and feature them on their show. And that got me thinking about my own family favourites.

Growing up, the one dish I’ll always ask for is the simple rava upma. Even now, my grandmother teases me that whenever I was asked what I wanted for my tiffin, my answer always would be “UPMA!”, like it was something special. But to me, it was! Especially because she always added some ‘contraband’ into my dish – onions were banned in my grandparents’ household but gran always diced one finely and added it to my dish, transporting the humble upma to a sublime level. Till today, the dish remains a firm favourite but though I try to follow my grandma’s instructions to the letter, it never tastes the same!

My mum too, is a super cook and she has the knack of adding a special something to every dish that elevates it up a few notches. For example, she always adds grated ginger to her chickpea sundal, which, apart from adding a new facet to the taste of the dish, also helps in digesting the legumes. She makes the most awesome ‘ennai kathirikkai’ (brinjal curry) that is my dad and my brother’s favourite dish ever. That is the one dish my brother made sure he learnt how to make before he moved abroad for his studies and that was the first dish my sister-in-law asked to teach her how to make, as it is his favourite. My husband’s favourite too his HIS mum’s ‘ennai kathirikkai’, made in the typical Telugu way, gravy style. Thus, in my kitchen, the humble brinjal gets a different makeover every time and my children, I am sure, will not be able to choose one brinjal dish as their favourite!

After watching the ‘Hairy Bikers’ and talking about it with the spouse and the children, we concluded that we each had our favourite dishes but none that could be classified as a ‘family’ favourite. My son likes Spaghetti Bolognese while my daughter’s too young to have a special dish of her own yet. But we have embarked on a mission now, to carve our own family dish, one we can all claim to love, one that will earn me the ultimate seal of approval as a mum! If I want my son to boast “not like how my mum makes it” in the future, I better get cracking!

In the meantime, do tell what is your family favourite. What did you like the most when you were growing up? What is the ultimate comfort food for your family now?

Hmmm! Tempting!

Well that is not an easy thing, is it? For people like me, the serpent needn’t try very hard to tempt me away from the good stuff. While good health is its own reward, tucking into E-number-less fare can sometimes be extremely, well, boring. This is why it is considered a good idea to incorporate a cheat meal into your weekly healthy meal plan. Rosemary Conley, the diet guru, apparently eats a square of chocolate every year and that’s her only vice. For the rest of us mortals, the cheat meals have to feature a bit more frequently to keep us on the straight and narrow.

But sometimes, the prospect of a double chocolate scoop a Sunday isn’t enough. Lord knows, my crunchy peanut butter calls out to me when no one is around and sirens luring sailors would have come a poor second compared to that. So what do you do when you need something more to help you stick to the guns? What spurs me on is this favourite pair of chinos that I love but haven’t worn in almost 10 years. Last time I fit into it, I was 4 months pregnant with my son and my expanding girth finally made me put away my regular clothes. As my waist hasn’t seen 28 inches again, I have never been able to wear it and it just sits at the bottom of my cupboard. I imagine wearing it again and it gives me this burst of energy needed to walk past the crisps aisle. When that isn’t enough, I imagine walking past some of the people I dislike the most (who are, invariably, stick insects) being the only plus-size around! I’d never walk away from peanut butter as fast as in that moment.

There are other ways too and one tip, suggested by a Twitter mate (thanks @happyhippy58!) is to have penny jars – three, to be exact. Two reward jars, one for exercise and one for food, for you to put a coin in when you have been eating and exercising well that day. The third jar is the naughty jar – money from the good jars go in here if you skip your workout or sneak in a Mars bar while out and about. The money from the good jars can finally go towards a well-deserved treat! Good, eh?

A friend pointed me towards this site – where you can make your pledge (lose weight, give up fags) and put your money where your mouth is. And – here’s the best bit – if you don’t succeed, the money you pledged will go to something you dislike, like the political party whose beliefs you cannot stand! I bet if my £10 were going to BNP, I would keep well and truly away from Friday night pizza!

So, a well-deserved massage paid out of your goodie jar or losing your pledge to the whack jobs of the world, what spurs you on? What helps you stick to your fitness goals?

Image courtesy http://chennaidailyfoto.wordpress.com

Last Saturday was my son’s ‘star’ birthday – ie, his birthday according to the Indian calendar. As is customary, we went to a temple at East Ham, where we were joined by friends and then rounded it off by lunch at Hotel Saravana Bhavan (or HSB, as they are popularly known). Saravana Bhavan is a South Indian restaurant chain, serving a wide range of dishes from traditional Tamil dishes like idli, dosa, vada etc to Indo-Chinese dishes such as Fried Rice, Cauliflower Manchurian and the like. Their outlets can be found in East Ham and Harrow in London.

The restaurants definitely are not fine dining by any stretch of imagination. The restaurants are decorated more canteen style and they serve everyday food and excel in quick turnaround of tables. Back in Chennai, my hometown, they made the unforgettable combo of adai-aviyal – griddled lentil  pancakes served with a medley of vegetables. They are the go-to joints for when we need a quick idli-dosa fix.

East Ham and other such big Indian pockets in most cities worldwide has idli-dosa restaurants of a similar variety. These places are often full of Indian families, eagerly tucking into the kind of food no non-Indian has normally heard of. You certainly would not expect Jamie Oliver to whip up a batch of idlis when he talks of “Indian nights”.

Remember I just said they aren’t fine dining restaurants? Well, they aren’t and we know what to expect when we go to such joints. But my biggest query has got nothing to with the quality of the food – but it is a basic question regarding service. Or mostly, lack thereof. Whilst one doesn’t expect elbow joggers and people standing behind you, waiting for you to vacate the table, like they used to in such joints when I was little, the service hasn’t improved as much as you’d hope. You’d think, having opened outlets abroad, where heavy emphasis is placed on the quality of service and there are television programmes a’plenty that demonstrate exactly what an establishment must do for its customers, that HSB and its ilk would have picked a point or two.

You’d think. Case in point – at lunch last Saturday, we placed orders with our waiter and sat back, chatting amongst ourselves. Within moments, our food started arriving (Remember? Quick turnaround.). But here was the main problem – the food arrived for just our side of the table. Plate after plate of idli, vada, dosa and pongal arrived for self and family while our friends sat across the table, politely averting their gazes from our steaming plates. In fact, used to such service, they urged us not to let our food get cold and start tucking in.

But how could we? And then, a few minutes later, how could we not? So we started on our rapidly cooling lunch and were halfway through them before our friends got theirs. We finished ours first, of course and then it was our turn to twiddle our thumbs while our friends ate.

None of us were surprised, I repeat, because this is par for the course. My question is, why should we accept it? Why can’t these ‘hotels’, as they are known in South India, serve a table at one go, course by course. There is no order or sense to the order – you get them once the chef has finished making it. It doesn’t matter if they are starters or main dishes, if it is ready, it will land up on your table. It isn’t an uncommon sight in such places to see diners struggling to find table space for more dishes than they’d care to count and try to eat from them as quickly as possible before they get cold.

Why can’t these restaurants just pause and serve us just like the other restaurants around the world do? Course by course, a whole table at one go? So people can actually eat together, which was why they go to such places? What will it take for them to get the point?

And so I fell off the wagon. Spectacularly, I might add! Yes, I, who had been so diligent with the new diet and exercise routine, finally cracked last Monday. It was half-term week and my son was home from school the whole week. As a treat I was making the kids homemade burgers and curly fries – something that will def get the hounds of hell after me! Here I was, placidly standing while mixing up the defrosted spinach into the grated cooked potato, making them into patties and frying and then suddenly, I snapped.

You see, my weight loss had plateaued.

In the beginning, I had a super run – lost 1 kilo in 3 days, which moved on to 2.5 kilos in 10 days. I was eating loads (of the good stuff), exercising well and was feeling fabulous. No mood swings thanks to lack of spike in blood sugar levels caused due to sugar dump from bad carbs and I was happier than Larry. Till it stalled.

At first, I ignored it and just plodded on. Then watched what I ate, ditched the post workout sweet potato. Dropped Intermittent fasting. Still no dice. Then the coach changed my exercise routine. Consciously drank more water. Nothing happened.

So when I made the veg burgers for my children and was about to start making my super healthy lunch, I had a WTF moment. Within minutes, I was feeling sorry for myself, for the plateau and angry as hell with something, don’t know what, for stalling my weight loss, despite me being so good. Pretty soon, I was in a full-on woe is me mode and decided enough was enough and ate a cutlet for lunch instead. Before the last morsel was down my gullet, I had another one. Then ate some of the kids’ fries from their plates. Finally got myself a plate and served me a large serving of the curly fries, dipped them in ketchup and called it lunch.

By tea-time, I was feeling mighty ashamed of the potato fest I had called lunch and decided to get started on my workout early. But that day, I found it hard going. Where I used to do 40 jumping jacks without pause, I was stopping after #20. As the workout continued, I was breathing harder, feeling light-headed and generally out of sorts. After I finished and sat down with my protein shake, I started feeling queasy. Within minutes, the light-headedness had become proper dizziness and it was all I could do to flop back against my chair.

I remained so, feeling drained and piss-poor for the better part of an hour. Hubby came home from work and seeing my pathetic state, started dinner, while I was going through my post-carb-blowout withdrawal like a junkie coming down from a high.

And that was last Monday. After two more days of feeling sorry for myself, I decided I shall go on a diet break now. For 10 days, starting last Wednesday and till Sunday Mar 6, I am not going to stick to my usual routine. My initial thought was to live it up – but after feeling like warmed up crap after eating two back to back carb-laden meals, I changed my mind double-quick!  I am now eating healthily 2 out of 3 meals a day and instead of my usual workout, I am doing the 3-miler with Leslie Sansone. I am also using this time to re-evaluate my fitness goals, read up on nutrition (I am especially interested in Ayurvedic cooking) and see how it goes.

This weekend is our anniversary and P’s birthday so am going to whoop it up before getting back on the wagon on March 7. I have been promised by Coach (newly certified Kettlebell instructor – WOOT!) that he’ll be breathing down my neck big time. Think Richard Callender and Angie Dowds combined! That’s how badass he is!

PS: I do understand that weight-loss plateaus are normal – but the reason I took it so hard was that I expected to reach a magic size by March 4. Instead of just thinking “I need to get fitter and eat healthier”, I did the usual blunder of “I should be able to get into a skinny jean in 2 months time”. And when that didn’t go according to plan, I fell apart. There’s a lesson for you!

Low carb pizza

When can a pizza be called a “low carb” pizza? When the base is made of eggs, soft cheese and nothing much else. Ever since I embraced the low carb way, UK cookery book author Rose Elliot has been my savior. Her “Vegetarian Low Carb Cooking” has become my bible, the one book I rely on to give me menu suggestions for the day.

So when I saw a recipe titled “pizza”, I jumped at it. It was so simple and tasty, the kids insisted on eating our pizza and we had to make fresh ones for us! It is very easy to make and you’ll never want to faff with the dough ever again.

For the pizza base, you need,
Grated cheddar cheese, 200 gms
Eggs, 3
Soft cream cheese (I use Philadelphia), 115 gms
Garlic, 1 clove, peeled and crushed
Tomato, chopped, 1/2 tin (or 225 gms, washed and cut into chunks)
Olive oil, 1 tsp
Oregano, 1/2 tsp
Olives, sliced, 4
Mushroom, sliced, 3
Peppers, sliced, a handful
2 tbsp finely grated Parmesan cheese

To make the pizza, first you have to warm up the oven. So turn it over to Gas Mark 5.
Line a 5″ x 3.5″ Swiss roll tin with non-stick baking paper. Sprinkle grated cheddar cheese evenly along the base.
Beat the eggs, cream cheese, oregano and crushed garlic together. Pour this mixture over the cheese, tapping the tin gently to make sure it spreads evenly.
Bake this for 30 mins until it firms and is nice and golden.
Meanwhile, make the tomato sauce by simmering the tomato in a saucepan over low heat for 15 mins. Cool it slightly and blend it with some salt and oregano.
Spread this sauce over the pizza base. Scatter the sliced veg over that, shake some oregano flakes over it for aroma and finally, top with the parmesan cheese.
Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, cut into slices and serve.
This should be enough for two people, if served with a nice green salad.

Edited to add: For a variation on the same theme, check out this link.

My meals were composed mainly of protein so once a day I had 3 eggs scrambled and then another time, paneer in gravy, both served with steamed veg and fresh salads. For my post workout carb, I preferred a portion of sweet potato served with a tbsp of soft cream cheese. Which was SUPER YUM and the prospect of that made me go through my workout like a good girl. So, despite prior worries, mealtime wasn’t a problem.

The problem was that my body decided it will not let go of the fat.

I hit the dreaded plateau fairly early on. After staying there for a month, when my weight didn’t move a bit despite eating properly and exercising well, the coach decided to change things around. In his words ” When you fast your body releases cortisol. This could happen in an excess in some folks results in weight loss plateaus. Fasting also slows down metabolism… another reason for weight loss plateau.”

Trust my body to refuse to let go of the lard!

So I am back to eating brekkie now and am going to go on like this for next 2 weeks and then will see how things stand. In the meantime, it is protein shakes at 9 AM and believe me when I say, it is taking a bit of  getting used to! I  had forgotten how liberating it is not to worry about a meal and now, with a breakfast to eat, it is funny how I need to constantly remind myself that I have to eat something!

It is the French peasant dish, ratatouille, made ultra famous by the Pixar movie of the same name. I use the Beeb’s guide in making it. So go on, give it a try. If you do, I promise not to post another aubergine recipe for at least a month!

Ingredients

Aubergine – 1 (use the big one you use to make bharta)

Courgettes – 2

Mixed peppers (capsicum) – 2

Onion – 1, sliced

Tinned tomatoes – 1

Fresh basil – 1 bunch

Garlic clove – 1, crushed

Sugar – 1 tsp

Method

Cut all the vegetables into bite-sized chunks. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a thick-bottomed pan.

Cook the aubergines on medium heat till they soften. Drain them off the oil and keep them aside. Repeat the process with the courgettes and the peppers.

In the oil, brown the garlic. Next, drop in the onion and cook it till it turns translucent.

Add the tin of tomatoes and torn leaves of basil and cook for couple of minutes. Add the sugar and salt, stir well.

Slowly add the vegetables one by one, mix well and cook for 5 minutes. Turn off the stove and serve piping hot, garnished with more fresh basil.

Check out my new food column Eatopia over at Women’s Web