Fernandez - Seasoned for family and friends: contemporary recipes with an old world flavour and reminiscences and vignettes of life in Provincial India

Notion Press

Old No. 38, New No. 6

McNichols Road, Chetpet

Chennai - 600 031

First Published by Notion Press 2016

Copyright Morvarid Fernandez 2016

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 978-1-946204-36-3

This book has been published with all effort taken to make the material error-free after the consent of the author. However, the author and the publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover Design and Illustrations by Annushka Hardikar

In Memory of my beloved Parents

Sheila and Farrokh Irani

My beloved Grandmother Una Maud Ferguson

and

Kairus

Say not in grief he is no more - but live

in thankfulness that he was

*Jewish Proverb

Writing a cookbook is not just about tapping the keys on your computer. It involves food, the cooking and eating of it, and more, much more! A cookbook only turns meaningful when family and friends get involved, to savour and appraise and hopefully ask for more! So David and Katrina, thank you for your constructive criticism that forced me to do better, for your unstinting encouragement and support. I will always be grateful to our many guests at the Hermitage, who have visited us over the years, and have unwittingly been at the receiving end of some of my experiments with food!

What joyfulness in the kitchen when the dishes come back empty!

I would like to thank my dear niece, Vashti for taking time off to read my book chapter by chapter and for giving me such valuable feedback, my brother Raian for his support and excellent ideas. My dear cousin Kayandokth for the stories and reminiscences we shared thank you. Finally, I am ever so grateful to my extended family for being who they are and for making life such an incredible journey!

Tushna, thank you for checking and proofreading Seasoned, for every comma you added and every comma removed! Your help is much appreciated. Annushka, I wish to thank you for understanding Seasoned so perfectly and illustrating it so beautifully.

I want to thank the Karnataka State Divisional Archives Office in Mysore for permission to view the Palace Maramath files, and to Mr. K. S Chandrasekhar family friend, for all his help.

Finally, all of you at Notion Press who have contributed to making this book a reality, thank you for everything, working with you has been a fulfilling experience, greatly appreciated.

1. The Hermitage

The sounds of the jungle change subtly through the day but seasonal differences are unambiguous and sharply defined. Monsoon mornings begin with the call of the peacock, summer days break with those of the jungle fowl, while the early birdsong of a winter visitor warms a chilly morning. During the monsoons, the drumming of the rain enhances the timbre of the amphibian choir that sings night and day. In peak summer, you just cannot ignore the serpent eagles screaming overhead, nor the countless cicadas for whom silence is meaningless. These are some of the jungle sounds that intermingle with the mundane everyday sounds of our household, the whistle of a pressure cooker, the clatter of teacups, the roll of the curry stone, or Dhakliya chopping wood. In the background, you can hear the farmhands at work, the hum of a water pump, and David on his tractor.

We live on a farm, David my husband, my daughter Katrina and I; deep in the jungles of the Western Ghats of Peninsular India, we call it The Hermitage. We moved here in 1981 and have lived here ever since. Our daughter Katrina was born in 1983 and is now a conservation biologist, assiduously studying the magnificent biodiversity that surrounds us.

Some years ago, we started a small family run guesthouse, and many visitors from around the world have stopped by to experience life in a jungle environment. Some are fleeting encounters, many stay longer coming back time and again to build long and lasting friendships. Nevertheless, everyone who had passed this way has touched and enriched our lives and for this, we are truly grateful. I spend a lot of time in my kitchen because I do all the cooking, and the recipes in this book are for the uncomplicated, straightforward meals that I cook our guests. However, my recipes arent perfect, and I should like you to think of them as mere ideas to expand and experiment with, to work on and improve.

I had no desire to write a conventional cookbook but preferred it to be as straightforward and uncomplicated as my recipes. Therefore, you wont find surreal photo-shopped photographs of food, elaborate Master Chef Compositions, or cut and dried recipes with calorie counts. Instead, I thought to write a home cooks handbook, and because I live on a farm, you will find instead, home-grown tips on country living, and plenty of stories!

I grew up with stories. My grandmother would read me one every night even after I learnt to read myself. Hidden among the recipes in the book you will find stories. I hope you will enjoy them; they are about growing up in the sixties and seventies in small town India. Life in boarding school, still other stories about weird and wonderful experiences in rural and provincial living, and life on the farm through the eighties and beyond. Most relate to food in some way or the other! I hope that while you cook, patiently waiting for that final whistle to blow, the milk to boil, or those eggs to coddle you could perhaps read a story or two. I am sure we will both meet, through the food and the stories, and discover that our lives, no matter how far apart, are not very different.

2. Recipes Across Borders

Cooking should be a fulfilling and enjoyable experience, rather than a tedious, stressful chore you have to endure. To achieve this, what better way to go than creativity and inventiveness? Celebrate and treasure a good recipe, but finally, the dish that sits on the table is an interpretation and the result of the hands that cooked it. Borrow ingredients across borders and meld them into your style of cooking using them to play new and unconventional roles. Turn the mundane into the outstanding with the addition of an exotic and mysterious element ingeniously used! Turn your everyday cookery on its head by using familiar ingredients but in different and unusual ways. The recipes in this book include ingredients from around the world, your local Asian, Middle Eastern or specialty store are sure to stock most of them. If not you can always source them online.

We truly forget how to provide for ourselves. It s hard to ignore the hard sell of modern retail, huge conglomerates, and supermarkets that relentlessly tell us what we should eat, whats best for us, and reassure us that taking unhealthy shortcuts in the kitchen is intelligent thinking. The commercial food system has besmirched our taste buds with artificial sweeteners, flavour enhancers, harmful preservatives and with unhealthy additions of hormones and antibiotics. Lets shop for healthy ingredients at an organic store, shun G. M, and pick heirloom over a hybrid. Lets grow our herbs in a pot on the balcony and exercise in a vegetable garden instead of a gym. Lets promise to use those leftovers and to fill our store cupboard with homemade pickles, jams, and jellies. Lets take responsibility for sourcing our healthy food.