Dog day

Some fathers like dogs, some don't. Chotto-Ma's dad is a dog-person, mine isn't. Chotto-Ma sits on D's lap, and together, they pour over a Dog Encyclopedia for hours. I'm fairly uninvolved in the process, though merely by being in the same room, I seem to have collected a fair amount of information on breeds and barks. Growing up though, my conversations with my father had rarely concerned canines. Baba was not fond of dogs (or anything else on four legs for that matter), Ma was non-committal, and my brother and I thought nothing of it.

Dog-people or not, D and my father have one thing in common. They're the best kind of dads, the solid kind. The kind with lots of love to give; along with a firm shoulder and tight hugs. Their fathering is completely different, but D is the kind of father that suits Chotto-Ma, and Baba is the kind of father that suits me. It's all about the having a father who fits.

So, while D was woken up on Father's Day with an odd assortment of dogs and pups (the ones below), I called Baba to give him kisses, and to hurry him on. He and Ma reach London today; their flight lands in a few hours. Of course, if any of these dogs had been real, he would've probably caught the next flight back.


Meet Spotty Dog and Shaggy Dog, hand-cut and drawn entirely by Chotto-Ma, for her Ba, in the secrecy of her room. Apparently, Shaggy Dog isn't snarling at Spotty Dog as I'd initially imagined. He's showing Spotty Dog how well he's brushed his teeth (!)

And this is Bookish Dog, which I contributed, inspired by one of Chotto-Ma's drawings.

She also made him a card with Hanuman, the powerful Monkey-God from the Ramayana. Hanuman is her fast friend, and one with whom she has long conversations.

So, even though summer shows no signs of throwing a party, we had a dog day afternoon. And, of course, we also fed the dad. Cuddles are all very well, but you do need a slow-cooked pork-belly  to keep you going. The (very) slow-cooked pork belly was on the hob for three hours, gently simmering in coconut milk, and when it was done, it broke off the bone, melted in the mouth, and was as good as a pork belly can get. There was a green mango salad too. I'll tell you all about it.


Slow-cooked Pork Belly in Coconut Milk

3 long slabs of pork belly (we picked up 3 pieces for the 3 of us. You can easily add one more, keeping the rest of the recipe the same.)
2 cans unsweetened coconut milk
Generous splash of fish sauce
3 star anise
2 long stems of lemongrass, each cut diagonally into 3 pieces
1 tsp green peppercorns
2/3 long dried red chillies
1 large white onion, sliced
1 inch ginger, bashed with a pestle
3 large cloves garlic, grated/minced
Bunch of fresh coriander leaves, chopped
2 tsp tamarind paste
2 green chillies, chopped
1 cup water
1 tsp brown sugar 
Salt

This really is a one-step recipe: Put everything in a pan together, and simmer slowly, stirring (when you remember), for about 2-and-a-half to 3 hours. When it's cooked to it's softest, pick out the lemongrass and star anise and discard. That's all. Nothing more.

Green Mango Salad

I knew I wanted a green mango salad, and one that I found on The Kitchn suited the pork to perfection. You can find the recipe here (the only tweak I made was adding thinly sliced fresh coconut), so I'll just leave you with the pictures.

Walk along The Backs

When the sun comes out, we get greedy about the outside. We take long walks, drink beer amidst buttercups and cow dung, choose restaurants that have tables in the sun, watch Chotto-Ma scoot off to pet other people's dogs, and comment obsessively on how spotlessly, madly blue the sky is.

We go overboard. We do all the things that people do in sun-starved countries; except take our clothes off to sunbathe in the park, because we're Indians and born with all this lovely tanned, subcontinental skin. (I had this awful urge to write 'tanned when canned', but I didn't. Except now I just did. The sun's gone to my head, I rhyme.)

I thought I'd take you along the walk we walked recently; it's been a while since I took you on a Cambridge walk, hasn't it? The last time, it was a different season, a different light.

I also thought I'd cook you something weekendy: I made cheese fritters with a simple mix of ingredients I had at home, but had no plans of blogging about (so, iPhone photos again). But it was really good, so even though the photos are less-than-good, they had to be shared with you. The fritters have a ripe, peppery flavour - Camembert, rocket, garlic and sun-dried tomatoes. It's wonderfully melty in the middle, crisp on the outside and a few minutes in the making.

And so that was what it was. A long walk through the morning, and the rest of the day on the sofa, the sun slanting in. An old movie, a cup of tea, a plate of fritters and a floor strewn with Lego.


First, the walk:

It's a series of iPhone photographs, just as they were shot; in bright sunlight. They're too obvious, too unsubtle for my liking, but I'm hoping you won't mind.

We live in one of the prettiest cities in England, and Cambridge, in summer, is something special. This walk goes past the River Cam, around The Backs, skimming the colleges, through old alleyways and out into the marketplace which sits at the centre. The Backs - here you can see the backs of all the colleges in one grand row, sloping off into the river - is my favourite strip of the city.

And this is where our walk ended: in front of King's College where cycles leant in patient queue; next to cafes where coffee and croissant beckoned.

You must be hungry.


So now, the fritter: 

Camembert & Rocket Fritters

Ingredients:

125 gm Camembert or Brie, roughly cut into pieces
2 cups rocket, roughly chopped
3 pieces of sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
A generous sprinkle of coarsely ground black pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced or grated
2 tbs of flour
1 tsp fine semolina
1/2 cup milk
Salt

Mix in all the ingredients except the milk. Then pour the milk in, a bit at a time to make a thick batter.
Heat oil in a deep pan. Lower heat and drop in blobs of the batter. Fry till brown.
Transfer on to a a sheet of kitchen paper, and then onto your serving dish. Drizzle with a squeeze of lemon. Bite in.

You shouted back

This little space was born on this day, two years ago; I wrote the first post, and floated it out to sea. It really did feel like that; like a note in a bottle, bobbing off into unknown waves. It might have reached someone, or no one at all. It might have floated with the fish and fronds forever. I didn't know.

But the note did find you, and you read it, and you shouted back across the seas, and you're here now, reading this. So, thank you.

When the blog turned one, last year, I didn't notice. 'May 26' didn't ring any bells, and the date came and passed; no blips on my radar: that's how good it's been. You know, how you don't remember to say you're having a good time when you're having a good time? It's always in the past tense - "I had a good time that day. Or last week. Or last year." And you don't notice you're happy when you're happy. You only notice Happy isn't there when you're sad.

I didn't notice I was blogging.

And then a sweet person wrote me a sweet note about the blog. She said it "felt like a book, an old, forgotten, battered, comforting book discovered in clutters." I'll remember that for a long time. It made me think about this space, and about connections made in the ether. And it made me realise that it's been two years.

So, thank you for fishing that bottle out of the sea when I threw it in. And thank you for reading the note inside. And for hollering back.

I hope you'll stay. I'll plump up the cushions, and cook you something nice.



Blueberry Payesh

'Payesh' is a rice pudding, but quite different from its cousins in the West. It's fragrant with crushed cardamom and bay-leaves, rich with chopped cashew nuts. And it's often cooked in Bengali homes to celebrate a birthday.
Well, here's a birthday, I thought. So I made payesh. It's far removed from the traditional version, and nowhere near its usual colour. But I've found that blueberries get along famously with green cardamom and bay-leaves, when stirred slowly into thick, sweetened milk. And D and Chotto-Ma scraped their bowls very clean and asked for seconds. So there you go.

Ingredients

1 cup rice, washed (I found this beautiful, flaked rice at the local store, but use Basmati or Gobindobhog if that's what you have)
2 litres milk (full-fat will give you a creamier texture, but for a skinnier version, go with semi-skimmed)
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups blueberries
2 green cardamom, pounded well with mortar and pestle
1 inch cinnamon stick
1 bay-leaf
1/2 cup cashew nuts, lightly roasted

Boil the milk, and then leave to simmer till it condenses to half its volumn.
Add the rice, cardamom, cinnamon and bay-leaf.
When the rice if cooked, but still holds its shape, add the sugar and the blueberries.
Stir slowly till the rice takes on a creamy texture and the blueberries melt in.
While stirring, add a little milk if you feel it's getting too tight. Adjust sugar to taste.
When it takes on a creamy, thick consistency, add half the cashew nuts.
Ladle into a serving dish and sprinkle rest of the cashew on top.

Crisp

Things have a way of working out. When I was about seven, the 'thing' that needed working out was a way to scavenge together five rupees; that was the price of the fat, square little books at the jack-of-all shop behind my school. These were abridged versions of English classics - The Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations - and they were usually the most pressing thing on my mind. This was before the Days of Pocket Money, and times were hard for seven-year-olds. Every time I finished reading one of these books, it would feel like my last. There was not a five-rupee in sight, and no possibility of a windfall. I would give up all hope, and wait for my little classics collection to asphyxiate and die. But, just as the last book prepared to take its last breath, something unexpected would happen. Either one of my Pishis (aunts) would come by for a visit, and before leaving in the evening, would tuck a five-rupee note into the palm of my hand. Or the raddiwala would come knocking, and ask to buy my old school books; for a fiver no less. And Ting! just like that, I'd have enough for the Edgar Allan Poe I'd wanted.

After my last post, after all your lovely, thoughtful messages, and after Chotto-Ma had resigned herself to nannies and childminders, something unexpected happened. Ma and Baba decided to travel to us; they arrive next month, and are going to spend the summer here till Chotto-Ma starts full-time school. Which means I now have a very happy little girl who gets to have a summer squished between grandparents, instead of at a childminder's.

Things have a way of working out; as proved to me, years ago, by the curious ways of crispy five-rupee notes.

A few other crispy things also work out just right:

Crisp white wine on a springtime Sunday. And a rare photo of us (what with either him or me always behind the camera).

Crisp new linen on the bed. Ma gave me these lovely bedcovers and cushions when we went to Kolkata this year. I'm loving the Indian prints; feels like home.

Crisp white paper for Chotto-ma's drawings. For those of you who haven't seen it on my Facebook page, here's a slice of Ramayan - Sita picking flowers, Ram hunting, peacock pecking, sun shining.

Crisp May mornings.

Crisp white light.

And crisp, fried okra from Bulbulma's kitchen. Okra is one of D's favourite vegetables, and he's grown up with this version. I had it for the first time in his house after we started dating, and now he cooks it for me whenever we get fresh okra at the market.



D's Crispy Okra

Ingredients

500g okra
4 tbs wholewheat brown flour (atta)
Sunflower oil
Salt
1/2 tsp red chilli powder

Cut the okra into small circular pieces.
In a bowl, mix the flour with 1 tbs of oil, salt and chilli powder. Mix in with your fingers.
Add the chopped okra and mix well.
Then add a little water at a time till is forms a sticky mix. It should be quite tight and stick to your fingers.
Heat oil in a pan for deep frying. Drop in globs of the mixture, bit at a time, into the hot oil and fry till crispy. It should only take a few minutes.
Drain on kitchen paper, and serve.