FOOD SPECIAL...... IN WINTER

FOOD SPECIAL IN WINTER Seasonal menus are trendy and it may be a good idea to go back to some traditional winter vegetables this season     The most common winter vegetables we have traditionally loved, at least since the colonial times when “English” vegetables started being grown in the hills and made available in winters in cities such as Bangalore —cauliflower, peas, carrots — are now available 24x7. So what are some of these almost forgotten winter veggies that we should stock up on if we want to eat healthily, seasonally and, of course, more flavourfully? Green Revelations Winter in Punjab and northern India is associated with not just sarson ka saag but all sorts of deliciously fresh greens, including fenugreek leaves, one of the most flavourful ingredients one can use to rev up any dish — from a chicken curry to dal (cook methi leaves with urad dal, for instance, this season). But my favourite green of the season is perhaps bathua (pigweed) that few Indian kitchens perhaps cook with anymore. The easy way to cook bathua would be to stuff it in paranthas or make a nutritious raita (boil bathua leaves to remove bitterness and then sauté them in cumin; add to wellbeaten yoghurt, seasoning it with salt and red chilli powder). But the way I remember it being cooked at home in my childhood was with a lot of patience and love.     The saag would be chopped and then bhunoed in oil with abundant onions and garlic till it reduced in quantity to alm o s t o n e - t h i rd o r one-fourth of its original quantity. Like with most Indian food, this dish was elevated to something very special  (and even more given the chutney like portions,  we would be served) thanks to the slow  cooking. One of my colleagues recently taught me the Nepali way to cook rai ka saag (another variant of the mustard leaf ). Boil full leaves and then temper them with garlic and red chilli. You can also chop the leaves, temper them with garlic and small whole cloves of garlic and then let them cook with rice to make an aromatic tahiri-like preparation.     Head-turner     Turnips are another winter vegetable that most of us shy away from. But it can make for a delicious preparation, and perhaps more so if cooked with mutton. Shabdeg was a hearty mutton stew cooked with turnips and carrots in Old Delhi homes. The meat would be cooked overnight in pots, put on slow fire or ovens made underground in the soft alluvial Yamuna soil. It’s a lost art now. But shalgam-mutton is a commoner version of the dish (if you are attempting the curry at home, take care to add the vegetable at the end, when the mutton is almost cooked. You can rub salt on dices and keep aside before washing in cold water). Roasted sweet potatoes as chaat is a common winter street snack. But you can make halwa with the vegetable. Cut it in rounds and let it cook in enough ghee, bhuno when soft, add a dash of sugar (not too much since this is sweet potato) and mash well, cook some more till the sugar blends. Add some dried fruit if you like. Bean Bags One of my friends whose mother is an amazing cook (Tam-Brahm/ Karnataka style cooking) tells me about the various kinds of beans — butter beans, double beans — used in sambhars this time of the year. Both are dried but were used in winter cooking. There were also small radishes that would be available quite routinely and cheaply in Bangalore (unlike today’s fancier micro greens) that one would use in salads and in sambhars. Then, swallowroot or mahali khizangu in Tamil is a root traditional to Peninsular India, used to make a pickle in the winters. Pickles and winters are, of course, inseparable even in northern India. This is the time when traditionally housewives would stuff the big red chillies (another winter special) with fennel, methidana, coriander seeds et al and other masalas and pickle them in heavy mustard oil to such delicious results.     My aunt makes an instant pickle with the red chillies should you want to whip it up one day with your paranthas or hot dalrice. Slit the red chillies, cut them lengthwise, add panch phoran (the Bengali mix of five spices that is now handily available at retail stores), cook in a little oil till the chillies are translucent but still crunchy.     Now add a pinch of jaggery for a piquant flavour, let it melt and mix. Take the pan off the flame, finish with a dash of vinegar. This is an instant pickle that can rev up any winter meal. :: Anoothi Vishal ETM131124