Indian home cooking

It’s been a slow start getting out and about in the New Year. Extra centimetres everywhere made gym the priority and a visiting friend — a very talented cook — has been a consistent taskmaster in getting me there daily — so that we can still enjoy her cooking! In any case, with beautiful and abundant produce currently in season, we can concoct much more delicious and imaginative meals at home than in most Harare restaurants. So in between gym, menu making, and market exploring, we have been couch surfing with cook-books and cooking programmes to get spirit and inspiration.

In spite of the plethora of cheffy programmes on DStv, relatively few are really about the food. Rick Stein’s India is one of them and his passion and enjoyment in new methods and tastes, coupled with decades of skill and experience make this Indian Journey a real treat. Both the accompanying cookbook and the series offer an insight into a culture, a people and a cuisine through the doorway of his personal tastes and favourites.

He sets off on this three month odyssey around India to find the perfect curry and the show intersperses travels and encounters with local foodies, chefs and restaurateurs, farmers and fishermen and a myriad of colourful markets in different cities, with cooking demonstrations in a beautiful tropical kitchen on a Keralan lagoon with walls open to the palm trees, coconuts and abundant birdlife — as well as a tame snake in an overflow pipe!

Indian regional cooking is the product of centuries — and the mostly superb home cooking is about uasing what’s locally available, fresh and in season. My friend cooked the most delicious Indian feast tapping into what she could find in our markets and gardens. A clever vendor at the Marimba shopping centre is doing a quick turnover in speciality Indian vegetables — different gourds, exotic beans, green coriander and most unusually — fresh fenugreek leaves — methi. One of my most memorable meals in India was in a simple village hut — a dish of wild greens cooked with methi and served with rotis.

My friend cooked it with chicken mince. Her meal also included homemade paneer — the soft Indian curd cheese — in a delicious pepper and tomato sauce, delicate bean sprouts gently sautéed in light spices, and a vegetable curry made with baby green aubergines and garden marrows cooked with whole green chillies, yoghurt and chana flour. My roti rolling techniqe has a long way to go. Apparently I push and press as if with pastry — ending up stretching rather than just rolling. Lots more practice needed.

One highlight was delicious dhokla — a famous Gujerati snack — a spiced steamed bread made of slightly fermented ground up chana dhal and rice. Can’t wait to try making that myself.

Emerging into reality hasn’t been much fun where, in my neighbourhood, rubbish reigns supreme — with people even dumping used disposable nappies on the side of the road on what is perceived to be unoccupied property. Disposable does not mean chuck them anywhere! What on earth do people think happens to this stuff that they toss out of sight – out of mind? Other friends filled the back of a Pajero with rubbish collected on a 1km stretch of national road in the Eastern Highlands. So it is a relief to see one small stretch of city road obviously cared for. Marigolds, zinnias and red salvia — all pretty easy to grow- provide a magnificent and cheerful display on Prince Edward Street near the Kensington scout hall.

Kudos to those civic minded people! Here’s to a 2015 with less rubbish all round.

g.jeke@yahoo.com