Pudla: Pancakes on Parade

Every freezer contains, within its cold depths, a bag of peas, lurking way up the back. Grasp about in the dark and you’ll no doubt find other long-abandoned edibles worth retrieving, or perhaps dumping, in the process. Much as I like people - really, I do - there are days when being alone, at home, is much needed. Digging around in the freezer and standing in front of the pantry sighing can yield surprising results. The sort that make stepping out into the fray irrelevant. Discovering a very icy bag of green peas, still sweet despite their lengthy hibernation, made me ridiculously happy this weekend.

Besan or gram, a buff-coloured flour made of chickpeas, may not be an ingredient native to your panty, but that may change once you’ve tried Pudla. Egg-less, dairy-less pancakes, Pudla traditionally belong to the cooking of the mango-shaped state of Gujarat in western India. Some cooks liken these to crepes, but that’s not quite right – there’s a certain magic that eggs, milk and refined white flour weave that cannot be equalled by besan alone. I don’t envision serving these sweet, though you, of course, with a little tweaking, may. The batter is best when spicy and served as a quick, simple dinner or lunch to my way of thinking. There’s much that can be made with the flour besides; a veritable wealth of gorgeous recipes await the remainder of your stash.

Serve piping hot, straight from the pan, with an array of chutneys, salsas, relishes, pickles or some thick, strained yoghurt; whatever your fridge holds. I made a winter salsa with a prized tamarillo and an avocado, but don’t go to great lengths here. That would simply defeat the purpose. You don’t want to have to go shopping.

I may never leave the house again.

Pudla (chickpea pancakes) with ginger and crushed peas - feeds 2-3

From Madhur Jaffrey. I’ve made these a lot this week. Exactly how many times, I’m not willing to share. It’s a little embarrassing. These will not turn out to be perfectly round – each will take on its own, odd shape and that, for me, is part of their charm.

1 cup of frozen, shelled green peas
2 cups of chickpea flour (besan/gram)
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
Good pinch of ground turmeric
Good pinch of chilli powder
1 teaspoon of sea salt
2 cups of water
A large thumb of ginger
4 spring onions, finely sliced
A little olive oil, for frying

Cook the peas, in their frozen state, in boiling water according to the packet instructions and drain well. Lightly crush with either a fork or a potato masher.

Sift the chickpea flour, spices and salt into a roomy bowl. Make a well and slowly trickle the water into the centre, whisking in a little of the dry mixture from the sides as you go. There must be no lumps. Lumps are bad. Grate the ginger and squeeze the resulting juice into the mixture, whisk well and stir through the peas and spring onions. Rest, at room temperature, for 30 minutes.

Warm a frying pan over a medium-high heat and drizzle in a little oil. When hot, pour in a ladle of the mixture and cook for 2 minutes. They should be golden underneath. Drizzle the uncooked side with another dribble of oil before flipping and cooking for a further 2 minutes. Eat hot, straight from the pan.

Tamarillo and avocado salsa

My beautiful almost-mother-in-law Barbara often serves rosy-hued poached tamarillos for dessert. They are truly a sensational winter fruit. I’m indebted to Stephanie Alexander for the idea of using tamarillo in a salsa. This is rather good.

1 tamarillo
1 ripe but firm avocado
2 spring onions
Scrap of garlic, crushed
A little sugar
Sea salt and pepper
Olive oil

Cut a small cross in the pointed end of the tamarillo and place it in a heat-proof bowl. Cover with freshly boiled water and retrieve after 1 minute. Peel then dice the flesh – seeds and all. Peel, deseed and dice the avocado and chop the spring onions as finely as your inclination permits. Gently toss with the garlic in a small bowl. Season to taste with a sprinkling of sugar, some salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil and toss again.

Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook, is hosting a one off event called Pancakes on Parade.

Get flipping - entries close on the 6^th of July.

Dinner for two: Coconut and date chutney

Sitting on the front porch, mango juice dripping down my arms, cicadas shrilling in the background. The dog chases flies, snapping at them as they buzz. Older cars that pass have their windows wound down, all the way, and snatches of their music filter into my garden. Party music, all thumping bass and angry words, alternates with the chatter of afternoon radio, a voice or two almost recognizable. Almost. I throw the leathery mango skin into the garden, frisbeed against the fence. It’s summer after all. The black bird and his wife, scratching around in the undergrowth, will be happy enough to pick at the tiny amount, if any, of flesh left. It will be gone, skin and all, before the daylight fades.

School is nearly over for the year. The dragging days, countdown to six whole weeks of freedom were, as a child, excruciating. A week, often longer, would pass before Christmas arrived. I'd play cricket in the street with my brother, calling as cars approached, slower than they do now. The forbidden thrill of roller skating on the Bennett's driveway, the most satisfying of surfaces to roll across, was noisy and wonderful, but only if they were out. We'd skate past nonchalantly just to make sure. Riding bikes full pelt down the steepest of roads, no hands, definitely no helmet. You fell, picked the gravel out of your knees and started again, winded, but laughing.

The difference between the cozy northern Christmas and the sunny southern one is vast. Despite this we share the same snowy imagery, an irony not lost on Australian children. So, our Santa is often depicted in shorts, fur-lined thongs (the shoes, thankfully, not the underpants) and sports a jolly beer belly. Kangaroos pull his sled, a cringe-worthy but amusing thought. He sometimes wears a hat strung with corks that dangle from the brim to keep the flies off. Sitting in the front yard, flies everywhere, I could do with one of those hats. Luckily the dog does what she can.

Holidays again. Off to Sydney, to blue carpets of Jacaranda petals and the squealing of parrots as they settle colourfully in my parent’s leafy suburban yard. Glimpses of the harbour, sun-sparkled, caught between blocks of flats; congested streets but knowing all the short cuts, all the back ways. Seeing mum, dad and my brother (my brother!) who has, I think, fallen in love. Cooking with mum, who shares her daughter’s obsessive interest in food and literature. Talking, properly, with my dad. Friends. Jo especially. She’s had a tough year, but it’s been good. This is what Christmas holds for me.

Until then, though, we still have a week or so up our sleeves. Just like that break between the last day of school and Christmas itself, it stretches ahead of me. But it’s passing way too quickly. Something tonight, then, for just the two of us. A quiet night in before the silly season gets into full swing.

Coconut and date chutney

Adapted from Claudia Roden’s unbelievably useful Book of Jewish Food. This addictive fresh chutney, easy to make and easier still to eat (said as she pauses to dip in yet another cracker) is from the Bene Israel community of India. You’ll need to be an unabashed coriander-lover (cilantro) to enjoy this and while a combination of mint and parsley might work, I love coriander. Adore it. Great with fish, especially the fragrant banana leaf-wrapped parcels below, but wonderful too with slices of fried eggplant. Try serving it as a dip with crisp papadams, rice crackers or those mini toasts that the French make. Hard to stop eating, I tell ya…

1 tablespoon of tamarind paste
1 ¾ cups (about 125g) of shredded coconut
2/3 cup (about 150ml) of warm water
1 large bunch of coriander (cilantro), well washed
12 dried, pitted dates
Juice of 2 limes (or one juicy lemon)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
½ teaspoon of sea salt
¼ teaspoon of hot chilli powder

Dissolve the tamarind paste in 2 tablespoons of boiling water. Tip the coconut into a large bowl and pour over the warm water. Leave both tamarind and coconut for 20 minutes.

Discard the roots of the coriander and roughly chop the rest. Push the dissolved tamarind paste through a sieve, pressing to extract as much liquid as possible, making sure to scrape anything that accumulates on the underside of the sieve too. Place all the ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well chopped. Add a tablespoon or two of water down the chute to make the chutney smoother. Keeps for a few days, tightly lidded, in the fridge.

Banana leaf snapper parcels – for 2

We had these with tiny, pebbly new potatoes, boiled in their skins until tender (10 minutes), drained well and then sauteed, whole, in 2 teaspoons of ghee. 1 tablespoon of garam masala was added moments before serving.

Preheat the oven to 200 C (400 F). Take 2 banana leaves and lay them out flat on the bench, dull-side up. Place a fillet of snapper (or any firm-fleshed, white fish) in the centre of each leaf. Top each fillet with a sprinkling of freshly ground cumin, a few slices of lime, 1 long green chilli, sliced on the diagonal and some thin slices of ginger. Season, then wrap securely, tying the parcels with kitchen string or using bamboo skewers. Bake, on a tray, for 15 minutes. Unwrap at the table. Serve with the coconut and date chutney.

So, over to you. How will you be spending the festive season?

Nepalese potato salad

Viewed from the kitchen table, the bright red flowers of the scarlet runner beans stand out against their climbing foliage. An impossibly cheerful shade of red, and a gorgeous thing to wake to. I have of late been consciously sitting myself right here looking out over the fledgling garden at breakfast. A book, my journal, a favourite pen and a pot of fragrant green tea my dining companions; a bowl of muesli with home-made rice milk and blueberries or a slice of these wonderful breakfast bars are regulars on the menu.

Breakfasting is something new, something of a work in progress. A slower, gentler beginning to the day. Still, my anxious nature, twitchy legs and fingers struggle to stay still for the full half hour. This solitary meal is good, I tell my legs, good for the soul. My organised parents (she a tidy virgo, he an earthy capricorn) set the breakfast table, properly, each night before they go to bed. For years this ritual has baffled me, their leonine, misfit daughter. Breakfast, mine, has always been scoffed hurriedly, flying out the door. Why someone who spends a large amount of time thinking about the importance of eating well would ignore a meal so intrinsic to well-being is quite baffling. So, I’m learning to give myself time to wake, think and organize the day over a little nourishing breakfast. And slowly, slowly, the early morning chatter in my head is beginning to quiet, just a little.

Reading books over breakfast (as opposed to reading emails) is becoming an integral part of the self-prescribed therapy that chatter requires. A neat pile of books now sits on a corner of the kitchen table, a version, I guess, of my parent’s table-setting ritual. Writing in her exquisite, enviable style, Marion Halligan’s memory of a warm weather Christmas lunch – a huge platter of fresh, glistening prawns eaten with thin slices of dense black bread, lemons and lashings of butter, washed down with cold, cold white wine - read over this morning’s breakfast got me thinking. Not of Christmas food, though there will be some of that in the weeks to come. Rather it’s made me aware of a need in December for things that, like a generous, elegant, festive platter of prawns, can be prepared with a minimum of fuss. ‘Do I really need another potato salad recipe?’, I hear you ask. I think so highly of this delicious Nepalese street food that you may feel, as I have discovered, that yes, you do.

A spoonful of leftovers, raided at the entirely inappropriate time of 7am one Saturday morning, confirmed Madhur Jaffrey’s instruction to make it well ahead of time. It’s good after two hours, but better after twelve and will keep for up to 3 days. It’s a brilliant, multi-seasonal, make-ahead potato salad. God, it’s good. I serve it with pan-fried fillets of silver-skinned garfish, dredged in rice flour, made by grinding black rice to a powder, a tablespoon at a time, in a spice grinder - a sensational combination.

Nepalese potato salad (Aloo Achaar) for 4

Adapted, slightly, from this book.

This quantity can be doubled, tripled, even quadrupled easily. Four chillies may seem like a lot (it is) but the heat mellows a little on standing. Feel free to use one small green capsicum (pepper) in their place. Lots of vitamin E from the sesame seeds and vitamin C from the chillies.

6 medium-sized waxy potatoes (Desiree or Nicola are good)
4 tablespoons of sesame seeds
Juice of 4 lemons
1 teaspoon of sea salt
2-4 green chillies (see above), finely minced
4 tablespoons of macadamia or sesame oil (NOT the dark, toasted stuff)
Pinch of asafoetida powder
10 fenugreek seeds
1 bunch of coriander (cilantro), chopped

Place the potatoes in a saucepan of cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until tender all the way through when speared with a skewer.

Meanwhile toast the sesame seeds in a small frying pan, tossing constantly, until they are golden. Watch them like a hawk – they burn in the blink of an eye. Cool on a plate then grind to a powder, either in a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder.

Combine the ground sesame seeds, lemon juice, salt and chillies in a large ceramic bowl. Slowly whisk in 3 tablespoons of the oil with a fork until creamy and well amalgamated.

If you have a gas stove, warm the remaining tablespoon of oil in a metal ladle directly over a low flame. If you don’t have gas, a small saucepan over a high heat works just as well, if not a little less dramatically. When the oil is hot (moments) tip in the asafoetida and fenugreek seeds and as soon as the fenugreek seeds darken, remove from the heat and whisk into the sesame seed emulsion. Add the chopped coriander, mix well and set aside.

When the potatoes are cooked, peel them while they are still hot, using a tea towel to protect your hand. Dice the potatoes into 2 cm (¾ inch) chunks. There’s no need to be too precise here. Toss, gently, in the sesame dressing while still hot. Cool, cover and refrigerate until serving. Best eaten at room temperature.

Can you believe that the year is almost over?

I don't know where it went...

An Inauthentic Dal

Some women shop for shoes. I shop for spices, pulses and grains. Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming to open the pantry and wonder when, exactly, you were planning to use them all. Never met a pulse I didn’t like. A half-filled jar of mung beans, the result of a failed sprouting attempt, needed emptying in an effort to wrestle back some semblance of control. Mangy-looking sprouts sold in supermarkets and one, delicious, meal of kichidi aside, I’ve not cooked or eaten mung beans nearly as often as their nutritional profile suggests one should. Moong dal is one of the few foods considered tridoshic in Ayurvedic medicine; a protein- and fibre-rich, easy-on-the-digestion, no-soaking required, all-rounder of a bean. Why, I wondered, haven’t I been cooking a pot of them at least once a week?

A large portion of Saturday morning, post voting and a half-hearted attempt at weeding, was spent faffing on the computer. Fool. The weather was stellar, but there I sat, sucked into a vortex of food related searches. Three hours passed, trawling the internet mindlessly and nothing, not one, single, useful thing had been achieved. Not exactly my intended Saturday. Frustrated, I switched the damn thing off, found a wide-brimmed hat and headed outside with Marion Halligan and Mark Bittman tucked under my arm.

‘Mung Bean Dal with Apples, Coconut and Mint’, from Bittman, sounded revolting, not least because half a cup of mint is, in my opinion, only really useful in a teapot. Bittman’s is a fairly broad use of the word dal, but it is worth noting that there are nearly as many dals as there are cooks. His suggested ‘twist’ - ditching the apples for carrots and the shredded coconut in favour of cashews - sounded interesting. And those mung beans had already lost their coveted spot. The result, with a few changes, is a surprisingly delicate moong dal with enough of the elements of Keralan cuisine to take your tastebuds on a nice little trip to tropical southern India. I can’t tell you how light and lovely this is, odd and inauthentic though its various components seem.

Having wasted Saturday morning, wasting the afternoon shopping would not have been wise. That is the beauty of a well-stocked pantry. A few handfuls of less-than-perfect spinach wilted through at the end and a palmful of curry leaves, retrieved from the very back of the freezer, rounded things out nicely. Two limes from the grocer next door were the only shopping required. One for the recipe, to cut through the coconut milk and the other for slicing into a celebratory Cointreau later in the evening. Sipped whilst dancing (badly) and messaging like-minded friends, a bit further away than I’d like them to be.

Mung dal with cashews and carrots – for 4-6

Adapted from this book. A highly delicious way to eat a highly nutritious little wonder-bean. Great with basmati rice spiced with a tablespoon of mustard seeds, carefully popped in a little hot oil moments before serving. Mustard seeds aid the digestion of beans – I do love the ancient, noble wisdom of Ayurveda.

1 ½ cups of whole mung beans (moong dal, yellow dal)
½ cup of raw cashews
3-4 medium-sized carrots, chopped
A large knob of ginger, peeled and finely grated (about 2 tablespoons)
6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or crushed
8-10 curry leaves (optional)
½ teaspoon of turmeric
1-2 dried red chillies
1 x 400g (15oz) tin of coconut milk
1 ½ tablespoons of brown sugar or agave syrup
1 teaspoon of sea salt
A handful or two of spinach leaves
1 lime
1 long green chilli, thinly sliced (to garnish)

Basmati rice (see above), to serve

Pick over the beans very well. Pebbles and other stray bits will do your teeth no end of damage and this also gives you a chance to discard any damaged or shrunken beans. Soak the beans in a bowl of water while you prepare the other ingredients. I’m never sure of the age of mine, so a short soaking means they will cook, perfectly, within the allocated time.

Drain the beans and place them, along with the cashews, carrots, ginger, garlic, curry leaves, turmeric, chillies, coconut milk and sugar in a large, heavy-based saucepan (a Dutch oven is perfect). Add enough water to cover by 10 cms (4 inches) and bring slowly to the boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer and partially cover with a lid.

Simmer for 45-60 minutes, stirring and checking the water from time to time (I keep a hot kettle of water by the stove to top things up). The beans must be absolutely tender before adding the salt, stirring through the spinach and squeezing in the juice of the lime.

When the spinach has wilted, ladle out over bowls of basmati rice and garnish with the slices of hot, green chilli.

So, I’ve earmarked some shelf space and washed out a new jar. Mung beans will be back. Might just be making that delicious coriander and garlic-laced kichidi again, too.

This week Weekend Herb Blogging is being hosted by Kalyn, creator of this popular, weekly blogging event.