While raiding my pantry, I found a remaining bag of atta, Indian whole wheat flour. Ma used to make parathas, a type of flatbread for my sister with it when she visited a few months back. Next to it, I found a jar of pasta sauce. I knew that I had cheese in my fridge. Luckily, I had a pouch of instant dry yeast in the pantry. This obviously lead to – pizza.  

Atta, active dry yeast, pinch of sugar and salt. Mix.  

Adding active yeast to Atta

Add lukewarm water heated in a microwave. Keep 1:2 ratio of water to flour. Add a few teaspoons to olive oil. Knead. Here, I accidently splashed more olive oil. Too much of fat weaken the gluten network , tenderize and moisten the bread. It will result in a crumbly and flaky crust similar to traditional southern biscuit breads and scones.  

Pizza dough

 Let the dough rest.  

Roll it flat with hand on a baking sheet. Pile up sauce and top with cheese.  

Pizza just before the oven

Bake in 400F for 12-15 mins until crust gets golden brown.  

Cooked Pizza!!

 Honestly, it wasn’t either the best or among the worst pizza that I ever had. It was the best pizza I ever ate in a snowstorm and indeed it had sweet taste of victory for an indignant like myself.  

While washing all the dishes, I realized that I was running out of dish washing soap. Maybe, I should have gone grocery shopping. However, when I dug deep in my storage, I found a box of barely used dishwasher detergent. I was saved.

The one thing I wanted my cousin M to get me from Nepal was Jimbu (or jhiku-cha). According to a thesis on Jimbu, it is actually two species of perennial Allium herbs (from family of onions), Allium hypsistum and Allium przewalskianum. They grow in harsh dry and arid climates like that of Mustang, where the use of Jimbu as a spice may have started. The stalks of Jimbu plants are sundried and stored for use as a spice. While cooking, stalks of dried Jimbu are fried in ghee, to bring out their flavors, and then added to a dish. In Mustang, it is used to spice vegetables, lentils, pickles, and even meat. In rest of Nepal, it is commonly used to flavor  a type of lentil, split urad dal. Interestingly, urad dal’s scientific name is Vigna mungo (no kidding!) and it is more commonly known as Kalo or Kali (black) dal.

Like any herb of Allium species, it has perhaps high glutamate content (or glutamic acid – one of the amino acids).  Glutamate is responsible for the umami or meaty flavor and also enhances flavors of other foods by stimulating certain receptors in the taste buds.

When cooking urad dal, I fried a big pinch of Jimbu that my cousin M brought nearly a year ago. It was sealed in air tight zipped lock bag and seemed fine. After frying a few strands of Jimbu, it smelled of umami. I tasted few strands of fried Jimbu and it tasted similar to monosodium glutamate or MSG (yes I have tasted it!).

Frying Jimbu

Urad dal also has a high amount of glutamate. Perhaps, it is not a coincidence that this combination of urad dal and Jimbu evolved to marry these two glutamate rich flavors giving us umami explosion in mouth, and vegans are included this time. Here is how I made my urad dal with Jimbu.

Split dry Urad dal (Kalo dal)

Wash and soak it overnight (use drinking water). My rule is 3 (water) to 1 (urad) ratio.

Overnight soaked urad dal

Cook in medium/low heat for 1-2 hour. My rule is 1 (water) to 1 (urad) ratio.

When dal is cooked mash few of the beans to get a thick consistency.

Fry Jimbu in ghee (or margarine for vegans). Add to urad dal. Traditionally, any fried spices or garnish (tadka) is added at the end, just before serving. However, I like adding my tadka, simmer the dal to let the flavor naturally mingle. For a novice, resulting dal may look dark mushy soup. My suggestion is to reserve your judgment until you taste it.

Urad dal with strands of fried Jimbu

Best served with basmati rice.

A day before my graduation, I got craving for crab cakes. I avoided going out because it was snowing and also didn’t want to spend reminisce of my stipend. I improvised. I decided to make faux crab cake out of tuna and chopped clams lying in my pantry. Inspiration came remembering my cousin M, who once whipped out kofta curry from canned tuna. I don’t know her exact recipe but she added some potatoes and garam masala to make affordable yet luscious kofta.

Since I never made crab cakes and too lazy to google recipes, I reverse engineered my $20+ crab cake brunch. My recipe translated into following;

Ingredients for my faux crab cakes

2 cans of 5-6 oz tuna
You can use and other canned fish. Here I used a can of tuna and chopped clams because that’s what I had in my pantry. Make sure not to throw out all the oily water from canned fish. You can use it for binding the fish cake.

3 tablespoon cream cheese
Adds creaminess!

⅓– ½ cup Italian style bread crumbs
Change quantity depending on the consistency of the cake batter and flavor.  Yes, you can taste your batter to check seasoning.

½ cup spinach
Just because my ma said I need greens in my diet.

Mix everything while cautiously adjusting amount of breadcrumbs. You need to get slightly more consistency than fresh cookie dough that can be shaped into a flat tuna cakes. Avoid grinding too much because it will remove flaky texture of the fish.

Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in pan over medium low heat.

Cooking tuna cakes. It's tempting but don't rush turning over.

Put cake and wait at least a few minutes before first turn (unless you suspect burning, then your heat is way high). Turn it once or twice more until you get a nice golden brown color.

My Faux Crab Cakes!

Enjoy. PS. my cakes are darker brown because I like crunchy coating.

Tastes good what if it's made from canned tuna!

I’m a newly wed with no background in cooking whatsoever. I come from a Desi family where food is the center of life.  My husband on the other hand doesn’t have the same love for Desi dishes and it can be challenging to make things he will enjoy.  My mom’s recipes are generally wasted on his taste buds, so its always nice to find something both easy to prepare and delicious.

One dish we both agree on is Chili con Carne.  It’s not Desi, it’s actually Spanish or Mexican but because its so spicy I love it.  I looked up a few recipes online and played around with the ingredients to my own taste.  My Chili con Carne is meat heavy and I have made it with both black beans and kidney beans, each version was delicious and you can choose whatever you prefer.  The great thing about Chili is that a lot of the ingredients can be stocked in your pantry for a later date, you can substitute things that are missing, add veggies as you like and still create a great tasting Chili.  I recently made this as a side for a dinner party.  I took some pictures of the ingredients but got too busy during the actual party to take pictures of the finished product.

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The Best Burger = high quality ground beef cooked until moist pink just start to disappear served between a toasted flour bun preferably with a slice of melted cheese on the meat. Other frills including extravagant toppings, sauces or different type of buns may add flavor to an already good burger but can’t improve a mediocre one.  My quest to find the best hamburger in the Washington DC took me to these five places.

The Burger Joint

I was really excited on opening of a new The Burger Joint few minutes away from my work in Dupont circle. My cousin (who drove in from Richmond, VA) and two of his friends made plans to eat at this well reviewed joint. On our arrival, we noticed that their fancy psychedelic disco lights were still turned on but the joint was closed for a training. After debating other dining options, such as sushi, we used our smartphones to track down another location in old town Alexandria. My cousin really wanted to eat lamb burgers and I really wanted to eat whatever was their most popular burger. I got 7 oz “The Wellington” burger. The flavor of mushrooms and caramelized onions with sauce served on highly enriched French Brioche bread was good. However, even after conversation with the cook about getting a medium rare burger, I got slightly rubbery well cooked one. At the same time, a friend who ordered an entirely different 10 oz burger well done got burger with bleeding red in the middle.  I could not get past the fact that the burger cost me 30-50% more than a burger at any other sit down restaurant such as J.Paul’s and Sequoia.

The Burger Joint's Wellington with sweet potato fries

The Burger Joint's Wellington (Yes lots of musrooms!)

5 Guys

Compared to any other fast food chain, burgers at Five Guys are good. Although you can’t request the doneness of your burger, the flavor of fresh meat comes through in medium well cooked burger. There are larger numbers of free toppings and sauces. Five Guys’ fresh potato fries are delightful as well. Be careful though, a regular burger and fries would be a too big lunch for a normal day, unless you are sharing the fries. Some of their locations give away free roasted peanuts in the shell while you wait. Few locations, such as the one in the Georgetown, also serve decent selection of beers.

Silver Diner

Diner burgers are hit or miss. I despise when a diner serves a generic frozen quarter pound beef cooked well with bread from chain grocery store. Silver Diner is a small chain based on DC area and it serves 8 oz burger usually cooked medium or medium well. Their burgers are comparable to any of the regular sit down restaurant’s burger.

Silver Diner's Avocado Bacon Burger

Founding Farmers

Founding Farmers claims to serve ground to order beef.  After about 30 minute wait in rainy weekday, two of us were seated in large cafeteria type table for dozen people. It was slightly awkward after they started to bring more people to our table. I ordered their The Fresh-Ground Cheeseburger. Maybe my expectations were high, but their burger tasted exactly like a regular burger at any mediocre restaurant. On the menu, I didn’t find any mention of quality of beef such as “grass-fed beef” or “organic”. Instead it just stated how the meat was processed; “ground-to-order”.

Founding Farmer's The Fresh-Ground Cheeseburger

Ray’s Hell Burger

Ray’s hell burgers epitomize simplicity of the hamburgers. Their 10 oz burgers are made from good quality ground beef (at least tastes like it) cooked exactly as requested served a toasted flour bun. Out of many burger places I have been to DC and elsewhere, Ray’s is the best burger I have ever tasted. Ray’s many free options for toppings and some fancy ones such as Foie Gras with truffle oil for 10 bucks. This time, I got fontina cheese burger cooked with recommended warm center (medium rare) with free toppings; cognac and sherry sautéed mushrooms, sautéed peppers, and  hot green piranha sauce on side — all under 10 bucks.  On the side note, they accept cash only. If you eat beef, my suggestion is to go to Ray’s Hell Burger  to start appreciating this simple American food, hamburger.

Ray's Hell Burger

Ray's Hell Burger with recommended red warm center

Growing up in a desi household, I don’t recall my first encounter with chiya. What I do remember is juxtaposition of sounds, smells, and sights that make up my personal definition of tea-drinking. The crisp aroma of tea leaves boiling to the perfect tint. Newspapers ruffling with my mother’s morning tea as I closed my eyes and nose to gulp down milk.. intolerable even at its most child-friendly-chocolate form.

Sometimes I asked to have tea for breakfast. I was told that I was too young for tea, and educated on how calcium in the milk is very important for growing children like me because it makes the bones strong. When I pointed out that Ani, one of the house helpers who was younger than I was drank tea everyday at breakfast and at supper with no milk, I was enlightened about how privileged I was to be able to afford milk.

“You know, Cleopatra was a queen, and she bathed in milk.”

“Cool. That means I don’t really need to drink it. I can just bathe it.”

“Arre. This child.” I was offered my two remaining sips from the tea-pot.

Raising this question in an environment obssessed with lighter skin color, a common explanation I received was  ”Besides milk is white so drinking milk will make you fairer, no. You don’t want to not drink milk and be dark like a villager who works with dirt under the sun, now do you?”

A common sound I grew up associating tea with was sschshshshhhh. A regular visitor at our home poured his tea on the saucer and sipped aloud. “What a gawaar. He drinks tea like he just rolled out of the village. ” I’d roll my eyes. After a couple of years I toured around some of biggest metropolises in Japan, and found everyone sipping ocha and slurping noodle with a familiar sound from my childhood sschshshshhhh. So, ssschchhhh-ing while drinking tea I unlearned is actually complements flavor and taste-comparable to taking champagne in a flute, brandy in a snifter or burping to show appreciation of good middle eastern food. Now I am dating a foodie who often sips, slurps and eats aloud to savor the taste of great dining and drinking.

After moving to the United States, some of the most religious tea-drinkers I met vividly remember stumbling upon Ceylon tea or Himalayan tantra-mantra chai-latte at Starbucks. Some remember the adrenalin rush of waking up at 5 A.M for garam-garam chai cuttings (parallel to espresso shots) in their college study abroad trip to India. While some discovered through a desi roommate, colleague or a chance potluck gathering.

One cutting before work at nearby chaiwalla’s thela at Nehru Park. A cup of teh tarik at an upscale Asian fusion hub at Central Park.

If you like to make your own, chances are your kitchen pantry, the top of your microwave at your home or work space is equipped to make tea. You may add two tablespoons of tea leaves, a pod of cardamom, fresh grated ginger and 0.15 grams of pepper with 2% milk 56.79 seconds before boiling point. Or a Red Label tea bag, cream and a sachet of Splenda. Or just Hot water and Gurinar’s chai mix.

You may follow a strict recipe, or you may have an open relationship with tea-making, or you may not drink tea at all. Whatever the regiment, relation or relevance, like any other food or activity of cultural value, for most desis drinking chai, cha, chiya, teh, and/ or tea has personal, emotional and psychological significance.

Image: My morning dip ‘n’ sip: Lipton with Swad’s Masala Tea and Splenda

Aloo Sadeko is a boiled potato dish mostly popular in the Newar community in Kathmandu valley. Aloo (or alu) is potatoes and sadeko roughly translates into marinated. This marinated potato salad type dish is commonly used as afternoon snack and served with Chiura (dried beaten rice). I once made this as an appetizer for my friends and family in a small gathering at my place.  Since then, the popularity of this marinated potato salad has lead into a norm that I make this dish every time there is a get-together.

Complete list of ingredients and amount are given at the end of the post.

Boil egg sized red potatoes in a pot by adding some water and a pinch of salt.  Boil it under a full gas power for about 20 minutes. You can tell whether the potatoes are cooked by poking into potatoes with a fork or a tooth pick.

Once done, let the potatoes sit for 15 minutes for cooling off. Peel potatoes. Dice potatoes into to small pieces.  An egg sized potato can be cut into 6 pieces.

Dice tomatoes, onions, green chili pepper into small pieces and pour over the diced potatoes. Chop cilantro and add into the potatoes.

Chill in freezer for 10/15 minutes.

Add black peppers.

Chinese peppers.

Ginger and garlic, black salt (Kala Namak), and table salt.

Cumin powder.

Turmeric powder.

Crushed red chili pepper.

Paprika

Classic yellow French mustard. (or mustard powder)

Heat oil with Methi (fenugreek)   in a small pan for about 3/5 minutes until it turns into black. Once done, let Methi sit for 10 minutes for cooling off.  Be careful!

Pour oil with Methi over the potatoes.

Mix all the ingredients together in the bowl.

Best if mixed with bare (cleaned) hand.

Prepared Aloo Sadeko.

Most enjoyable if served with Chiura (dried rice).

Ingredients:

20 small size (an egg size or as small as you can get) red potatoes
1 small sized red dried onion (diced)
1 medium size (larger than an egg) red tomato (diced)
2 large or 4 small garlic cloves (crushed)
4 small or 2 large size green chili peppers (diced)
4 tea spoon of vegetable oil
1 tea spoon of ginger paste
1/2 tea spoon of black salt
1/3 tea spoon of regular salt
1/2 tea spoon of fenugreek
1/2 tea spoon of French’s mustard
1/2 tea spoon of red chili pepper (crushed)
1 tea spoon of paprika powder
1 tea spoon of cumin powder
1/4 table spoon of turmeric powder
10 strings of cilantro (chopped)

Suji Halwa (Semolina Pudding) is one of the classic desi dessert popular throughout the Indian subcontinent.

The video is in Nepali with English subtitles for directions. Also spelled Sooji Halwa.

Maggi microwave medley (3M) is my standard way of cooking any packet noodle (e.g. Ramen, Wai Wai). I like using Maggi Masala because I love the spice sachet inside it (Maggi’s version of curry powder) .

Maggi Masala Packet

Maggi noodle and spice inside the sachet.

1 cup water (more for soupy, less for dry), thinly sliced onions, frozen peas (add whatever fresh or frozen vegetables you have on hand)

Cooked for 3 and half minute. Make sure to stir once in the middle.
CAUTION! Bowl will be HOT!
You can eat right now or for extra protein and creaminess in sauce…

Egg. Beat it.

Half minute in the microwave.

Finito!

Homemade samosa chats are one of my favorite dinners whenever I am yearning for chat. I buy samosa from a local Indian store/restaurant and freeze individually in a small sandwich Ziploc bags. Here is my recipe for a relatively healthy and balanced diet from deep fried potatoes and flour.

Frozen samosa right out of the freezer. (Mashed potatoes and deep fried flour freeze well.)

Samosa after being microwaved for 2 minutes on high (time may vary).

Canned chickpeas (washed), chopped tomatoes and onions. More salad type diced vegetables make it filling, healthy as well as adds a personal touch.

Plain fatfree yogurt (i.e., curd for all desis).

Chat masala (and black salt) since I like it spicy. Alternatively add some salt to taste.

Mix and mash together.

Sprinkle generously with alu bhujia (and sweet tamarind chutney).

Eat Eat Eat (Why repeat words?)

Finito!