Living in Tacoland

After spending almost four years in Tacoland (Austin) with it's umpteen number of Taco Shacks, Taco Delis, Taco Cabanas and of course the ubiquitous Taco Bell, one tends to take the taco for granted. Though I did fall in love with the first ever potato egg cheese breakfast taco that I ever had (lots of hot salsa on the side, of course), nevertheless I have never gone somewhere just to eat tacos. Till I discovered Torchy's Tacos on South First - a humble mobile food place, it reminded me of the Chinese ( really Indian Chinese) food vendors near University Circle in Pune. Though our moms frowned at our eating there, and the food was not perhaps the best (nostalgia makes everthing taste better), it was always a fun place to go to with my friends, sit on our two wheelers, munching chicken lollipops and eating spicy chicken Manchurian with fried rice.

Torchys reminded me a little of the same, though it is located at a much prettier setting, by the side of a creek with red lanterns strung on tree branches. However the rest of it is bare basic functional with a few plastic chairs and tables between the two mobile foot eateries. The food is good and justifies the line of people always seen there. The first time I went there, I had the monthly special Cool Runner taco comprising of Jamaican Jerk Chicken, avocado, mango, cheese and freshly squeezed lemon in a flour tortilla. It was so good that my Ranch Hand ( I hope I remember the name correctly here) taco paled in comparison and I don't recollect it at all. It wasn't bad at all, but the Cool Runner just completely overshadowed it. The unusual combination of the spicy Jamaican Jerk Chicken with the sweet- sour mango flavor and the smooth avocado and a squeeze of lemon juice was just delicious. I was left thinking if only I had ordered two of the same. Two were plenty of food for lunch and more than enough motivation to convince R to make the trip back with me some day.

The next time we went, we also had our friend A ( always willing to try something new), all of us ravenous after a 5k ( to be honest, I walked). We got done with the 5k around 11 am, a perfect time to eat some tacos. After a long and circuitous drive from Mozart's to South First (for some reason, many streets were closed downtown), we reached Torchys only to discover to my great dismay that they had changed the monthly special (yes, it does change every month). So no Cool Runner this time. I ordered the Baja Shrimp and a potato, egg, and jalapeno breakfast taco. R ordered the same while A ordered the breakfast taco along with a fried avocado taco ( highly recommended by vegeterians), all on corn tortillas this time). The Baja Shrimp was yummy with fried shrimp in a creamy sauce and shredded cabbage and carrots. The creamy sauce probably had crushed jalapenos in it. The breakfast taco was good too, but I ll opt for a flour tortilla for the breakfast taco next time as the corn was a little too strong a flavor for the egg and potato mixture. R and A liked their tacos enough to order one more. Go Torchys! I ll be coming back for more.

Climbing The Mango Trees

Just finished reading "Climbing The Mango Trees - A Memoir of a Childhood in India", an autobiography by Madhur Jaffrey which recounts her childhood and adolescence years growing up in India. I have been a big admirer of Ms. Jaffrey's cookbooks ever since my mother bought "Eastern Vegeterian Cooking" more than ten years back. I really like her writing style and for the longest time, I used to read the narrative accompaniments preceding the recipes rather than the recipe itself. My mother then increased her collection of Madhur Jaffrey's books to include the "Far Eastern Cookery" and "Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook - Food for Family and Friends". I read all of them, they would be my introduction to hummus, tabbouleh, and satay ayam. To a girl growing up in Pune, these were exotic recipes indeed and later after moving to the US, I had a very definite idea of all that I wanted to try eating. In fact, I carted these books to the US with me and my brother gave me " A Taste of India" as a wedding-going away gift. I still had not read the recipes, quite far away from trying to cook any of them. It would still take a couple of years for me to start cooking from them , though my mother had already tried out many of the recipes to great success. Still, I was surprised at how easy it was to follow the recipes and somehow the narratives with each recipe gave me a much better idea of what I should expect the end result to be (a very helpful factor in case one has never tasted the food item before).

So when I saw "Climbing the Mango Trees" on Amazon, I knew I had to buy it. It chronicles Ms. Jaffrey's years growing up in Dehli. What I really liked and which was a natural extension of the narratives which I used to like before, was the writing style which interwove the story of growing up in north India in pre-Independance years, with the eating rituals which seem to be a staple of the Indian culture across geographies and time. The book evokes the varied experiences of life in India, the most poignant perhaps being the one about anticipating the monsoon. The emphasis on seasonality and fresh home cooked food would also be a constant in my childhood although it would be the 1980's then and I grew up in a totally different part of India. Perhaps living in the USA where I see the same vegetables year around and people loading grocery carts with ready made frozen food makes my hyper aware of these facts. Growing up, my mother rarely let us eat leftovers, at the most the next day, but food was cooked to be sufficient for one or at the most two meals and if there was any left over, it was inevitably thrown away. I still do not like to eat food left over from more than a day, although there is not much one can do at times about that. Cooking fresh for each meal also meant a huge variety of food, prepared in different ways. R never likes to see the same dish for more than 2 meals.

The only complaint I have with this book is that it stops too soon,I would have loved to know more about Ms. Jaffreys prolific career, both theatrical and culinary. Hopefully there's another book coming out soon.

Mango Pudding

This is one of those recipes I have grown to depend on. I am not much of a dessert person and am always on the lookout for a quick dessert recipe. I ate this mango pudding in the form of a mango pie at my friend A's place a couple of years back. I loved the mango flavor combined with the 'kharvas' like texture. I used to love 'kharvas' back in India. Since A is a very good cook and I was just testing the waters at that point, I assumed the recipe must be complicated and left it at that. I came across it again at my friend S's place for Diwali. She assured me it was pretty easy to make and well so it was. I looked up the recipe online and tried it out. I was delighted to see that I did not have to stand in front of the stove for hours to make it. In fact after a 15-20 minute preparation, all one has to do is leave it in the refrigerator. I make only the filling and let it set in a serving dish instead of a pie crust. The only other alterations I make are to use fat free cream cheese instead of normal cream cheese and to sprinkle saffron strands on top.

Arrow of the Blue- Skinned God

I just finished reading a thought provoking book based on an interesting subject. The author, Jonah Blank retraces the route that Ram (Prince Rama of Ayodhya, as in from the Ramayana) takes in his years of exile(vanvas). The author follows the route Ram took right from Ayodhya, after being exiled to his time in the forests near Nasik and then southward towards Sri Lanka to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana. The Ramayana is a story most Indians grow up with, I doubt anyone can pinpoint the exact time they were introduced to the story for the first time. The Ramayana is to Hindus what the Illiad or the Odyssey are to the Greeks. I am sure my parents told me the story long before I could read and later, when I could read, Amar Chitra Katha was my main source. And then of course there were those mega serials on the National television channel Doordarshan which would shut down much of India on Sunday mornings. So I never had much curiosity left to read the Ramayana as an adult, when there was so much else which was new to me.

Browsing through the local public library, I found this book "Arrow of the Blue Skinned God - Retracing the Ramayana through India" and my curiosity was piqued . This wasn't the epic story per se, I had not heard of anyone retracing the route of the exiled prince , even though India offers a million pilgrimage routes. I was not even sure if the places mentioned in the Ramayana could be found, the main exception being Ayodhya of course. It was a decidedly interesting premise for a travelogue. The author goes back and forth , between the Ramayana and his own journey through India. The journey combines his experience of the country, the landscape of the hinterland and the urban cities, his conversations with various personalities like the actors who acted in the mega serial, former royals, and random people whom he met on his travels. Once I started reading it, I was absorbed both by the epic story, read afresh after a very long time as well as the author's insight on the happenings in modern day India and how they related to the Ramayana. However towards the end, I found myself racing ahead to read the original story, though it was not new to me. I discovered many new facets in the story which I had not seen or understood before, some of which were probably taken for granted before. I think that's power of a great epic, even if you know it, it offers something new every time you read it. That being said, the whole book was totally worth a read or two, the author is perceptive and sympathetic in his observations, with a lucid and clear thought process.

Onion Soup

It actually snowed today in Austin! We have had two days of freezing rain and winter storm warnings from the weather bureaus, so have had to sit at home for the two days with not much to do. Snow is rare in Austin, the last really small snowfall occurred in February 2004. It snowed at night and by 10 am it was all gone.This time, we saw the snow falling, the snowflakes getting bigger and the snow accumulating in our backyard, on our neighbors roof and the front yard. After the drab rainfall over the past few days, this was a refreshing and beautiful change.

We went for a short walk in our neighborhood and admired our neighbors daughters snowman. After our chilly excursion outdoors, we decided we needed some hot onion soup for lunch. My father introduced me to onion soup, when he cooked it one day. My father did not cook very often when we were growing up, but whenever he did , it was always good.

Onion Soup
4 yellow onions, cut into half and then sliced thin
8 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1 cup of milk
10 cups of water
some rosemary
some sage
4 garlic cloves, sliced
4 bouillon cubes
salt to taste
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp all purpose flour


Melt the butter in a deep pot over low heat. The Calphalon soup pot is another of my prized possessions , its absolutely fantastic for making soups and sambar. After acquiring this soup pot we really have started drinking a lot more soup, though not really sambar. Add the peppercorns, bay leaf, sage, rosemary, garlic and sugar. Add the onions after the garlic turns a little golden and cook over medium heat till the onions turn golden brown. Add the flour and mix everything together. Add salt, water, bouillon cubes and milk. Stir for some time and then let it boil on low-medium heat for about 20-25 minutes.

We ate the soup, liberally topped with freshly ground black pepper, with some artisan bread, sliced lengthwise, topped with some cheese and toasted in the oven for 2 minutes.

Pattice

Being Puneites / Punekars, one of the memories both R and I have is that of the Hindustan bakery vegetable pattice. These were available only on Sunday, and due to high demand were usually sold out from the neighborhood bakeries by 9 am. Sunday morning breakfasts consisted of hot tea with vegetable pattice, accompanied by the Sunday morning newspapers and followed by all the Sunday morning shows on Doordarshan, well at least till the invasion of cable. I think pattice are available in Poona throughout the week now, but at that time, we used to really look forward to eating them and we still think of them on Sunday mornings.

Recently my brother in law R3 mentioned that he had a recipe for these pattice. I wanted to try the recipe immediately and I did.

1 packet of Pepperidge Farms pastry sheet (there are two pastry sheets in one packet. Each is folded into three parts. I could make around 6 decent sized pattice from one pastry sheet)
Potato Bhaji (I cooked this in the Maharashtrian style)
Kheema
Some water in a bowl

Kheema Recipe
1/4 lb Chicken Kheema
1 cup yogurt
1 tsp salt
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp red chili powder
2-3 tsps ginger - garlic paste

Mix this with some yoghurt, 1 tsp of salt, 1 tsp of turmeric and 1 tsp chili powder.
Heat some oil, add some ginger garlic paste when it is hot, fry the ginger garlic paste for a minute and then add the kheema. Add some garam masala and let it cook till there is no liquid left. Let this cool down.

Leave the pastry sheets to defrost for 40 minutes as per the instructions. On a lightly floured surface, open the pastry sheets and cut them each into three parts along the folds and then each part into half. This should leave you with 12 pastry rectangles. Preheat the oven to 400'F. While the oven is preheating, place some potato / kheema mixture a little off center on each pastry rectangle and then fold them to cover the stuffing. I made 12 pattice of potato and 12 of kheema. Place these on a baking sheet and after the oven is preheated, leave them inside for 10 minutes. I made the mistake of using aluminum foil and had trouble removing them later. A friend suggested the use of baking sheets. After 10 minutes, we had hot, straight from the oven, flaky pattice!! Thanks R3.

The Elephant Safari

The Long Boat on the banks of the Maekong river

on the river


first sight of the elephant camp

Our elephant still searching for bananas and sugarcane
pieces even after we had finished feeding him all that
we had



Northern Thai style picnic lunch: those neat triangular
banana packages contain rice


Sticky rice steamed in banana leaves

the tsongtao

We had planned on doing an elephant safari in Northern Thailand for a long time before we actually reached Thailand. Earlier R was trying persuade me to sign up for one whole day of mahout training, at the end of which I would be riding alone on an elephant, and directing him myself! R wanted to add the Mahout certificate to his many accomplishments, however..... I was not very keen on spending an entire day of my precious vacation becoming a mahout. So we compromised by going on an elephant safari in Chiang Rai. We went to the main town of Chiang Rai and hunted down a tour company called Golden Triangle Tours, highly recommended by Frommers. After going through a variety of tours that they offered, we settled for this one which combined a long boat ride, an elephant safari, a northern Thai style picnic, a visit to three tribal villages and a famous local waterfall.

We started off from our hotel around 8 am, after a good breakfast and were driven to the banks of the Maekong river a little outside Chiang Rai where a longboat awaited us. I had thought that there would be some more people along with us for the tour, but was pleasantly surprised to realise that it was only us, which meant that we could spend as much or as little time at each destination as we liked! The upriver longboat ride was very pleasant in the morning hours, we saw some riverfront houses which obviously belonged to the very wealthy, some shrines and even a river front beach with small cottages built along the riverside where people could picnic and spend the day. On the way, our guide Natcha, who spoke excellent English pointed out the various types of vegetation prevalent in Northern Thailand. In an hours time, we reached the elephant camp village, Ruammit . The villagers of Ruammit are from the Karen tribe and Christian. As we ent on a Sunday, the village looked a bit deserted as most of the villagers had gone to church. It was right around a bend in the river and quite a sight.. 10 - 15 elephants sauntering along a river embankment, quite similar to an ' Indian ghat'. We spent some time with the elephants and talking with other guides and tourists, while the village organization decided which elephants we would get. My mother in law recently told me that R's childhood ambition was to work in a zoo or a circus. True to his childhood ambition, R immediately went about getting acquainted with the elephants. I was a little more hesitant, but utterly thrilled when an elephant I was photographing made a salute!!! We even saw a pregnant elephant whose baby could be seen moving inside.

After we were assigned an elephant, we climbed up to a 'machan' or elevated platform which made it easier for us to climb on the elephant (this was the part I had dreaded before I saw the machan, a previous experience riding a camel in the Jaisalmer desert had taught me that's the roughest part of the ride... when the animal stands up and one is suspended midair for a millisecond!) However this was easy and we also had the 'howdah', the elephant seat. I have to use Indian words as I never got to know the Thai words. The mahout sat on the elephants head , as cool as can be, his legs dangling on the elephants forehead, and thus he sat for most of the trek. We had a bigger elephant, clearly the patriarch of the tribe ahead of us, carrying an Australian couple. The patriarch barged ahead of other elephants , who rapidly made way for him as he trumpeted his arrival to his followers. Clearly, none was going to mess with him! We passed out of the village, the surrounding farmlands, and into the dense tropical jungle. At first, I hung on with some trepidation, clutching tightly to the the iron bars of the 'howdah'. R was enjoying it immensely , this was something he had been wanting to do ever since we decided to visit Thailand, his only regret was that he had to sit on the 'howdah' and not on the elephants back! Slowly we both got used to the elephants gait, though every downhill part of the trek had me clutching to the howdah for dear life. The elephant walked adroitly down narrow pathways, up steep hillsides and through shallow streams. I had to admire its dexterity in navigating this terrain, despite it's size (The Thai elephant can weigh anywhere between 2500 to 4000 kgs and the average height is around 2.5 m). After a little more than two hours through the tropical jungle, we came to the second tribal village camp on the other side of the hill. We had bought a bag of bananas and sugarcane pieces for our elephant at the first camp and fed this to him here. It was a delightful sight to see him munch through the contents of the entire bag in a matter of minutes. Elephants can eat 200 kgs of food and drink 100ltrs of water per day, so I guess it was just a small snack for him. He even examined the plastic bag to make sure there wasn't anything hidden inside at the end.

From here we went by tsongtao to a picnic spot in the hills, it was a very pretty location, by the banks of a stream in a heavily wooded area. Our northern style Thai picnic lunch consisted of sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, stir fried chicken, fried catfish, jackfruit steamed with red chili paste , stir fried baby corn and beans, and fried tofu, all this accompanied by a green colored peanut based dip and a red chili based dip. We were supposed to dip the chicken, or tofu or fish in the dip and then eat it with the sticky rice. The food was delicious and tasted even better, I suspect because we were having it outdoors! The steamed jackfruit reminded me of the 'fanasachi bhaji' (raw jackfruit )my mother makes, a great childhood favorite of mine. According to our guide, Natcha, the Thai version is made by steaming raw and chopped jackruit for a long time till it is quite soft, and then pounded with red chili paste along with some other ingredients. We made short work of the food and then lazed around the campsite for a while.

After a short ride in the 'tsongtao' through the mountainous countryside, we reached the Khot Korn waterfalls. We did make a quick stop at another tribal village, but perhaps because we have seen similar villages before, it was not a very unique experience for us. I t was however fun to ride in a tsongtao. Tsongtaos dont usually have air conditioning, to compensate, a pedestal fan was strapped to the seat near the front end of the passenger section. It was one funny sight! The Khot Korn waterfalls gave us an opportunity to enjoy some more of the beautiful northern Thailand countryside. Overall one of the highlights of the trip for us was definitely the elephant ride and the picnic lunch.