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Diwali
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Diwali,
More Than A Recipe
We had a small Diwali celebration today. No, it doesn't end for me. And certainly not until I have celebrated with some of my dear friends. That makes it even more special. I made everything I has made last week all over again - chakli, chavde, shankarpali, and orange burfi - and also made pohe and khaman dhokla. I wish I had had the time to make the khaman from scratch but unfortunately, my schedule is so tough this month that I caved in and did the unforgiveable - gasp! - I used a ready mix. I recommend Chitale's mix. (No, they haven't paid me to say so nor given me free products. I just like it.)
Kitt brought chivda:
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Diwali,
NaBloWriMo
Yada Yada Hi Dharmasya
Glanirva Bhavathi Bharatha
Abhyuthanam Adharmaysya
Tadatmanam Srijami Aham
~ Bhagavad Gita
(Whenever there is decay
of righteousness O! Bharatha
And a rise of unrighteousness
then I manifest Myself!)
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Diwali,
NaBloWriMo
One more time: Happy Diwali!
Just in case you're wondering when this will end, Diwali is a five day festival. Sometimes the days get bunched up together or are spread out over more than 5 days. That's what you get for following a lunar calendar.
Today was the biggest day of Diwali. The real celebration as well as Laxmi Pujan, but we opted out and had a quiet family celebration instead: abhyang snan late in the evening, followed by aarti, followed by chicken biryani and shrikhand. The former made by me, the latter made by Amul.
Since we had no faraal left, I made shankarpali and chavde. I tried making chiroti but I can't bring myself to use ghee for frying and it didn't help that I was quite beat by that time. The more I think about it, the more I feel that Diwali cha faraal is really 1001 ways to deep-fry flour and make it taste good.
I have more cooking in store for me tomorrow.
Tomorrow, we celebrate with our friends at Boulder Balvihar where the kids will be doing skits based on Hindu mythology. Medha is playing Devaki, Lord Krishna's mother, and is rather amused that she will marry and then have eight kids. I finally heard her lines late this evening and I also heard Jai Ho playing in the background with Narada complaining about the loud music! Last year's play was hilarious. It sounds like this year's play will be fun, too!
The skits will be followed by Laxmi Pujan and then the Diwali feast. I am taking Punjabi chhole - Anita's recipe, with a few tweaks. And, I have more chavde to make. The shankarpalis will stay at home because there isn't much left to share.
Shankarpali comes in two flavors: savory and sweet. I am far more partial to the savory version so, naturally, that is what I made!
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Diwali,
NaBloWriMo
Happy Diwali!
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Diwali,
NaBloWriMo
The universe does not want me to make chivda. Not yet, anyway. On Sunday, the big packet of pohe turned out to be the wrong kind - thick instead of thin. The Indian store is closed on Monday and the news of Bri's passing came as such a shock that I was paralyzed into inaction. I lit a candle for Bri yesterday. I didn't light any diyas.
On Sunday night, I couldn't understand what was going on until I realized that the din in my head was cranberries calling out to me from the deep recesses of my refrigerator. A recipe for Cranberry-Oatmeal Bars in the latest issue of Cooking Light had caught my eye. However, the use of sour cream did not appeal to me. Also, I had fresh cranberries and I had no clue what rule of thumb to use for substitution. I figured if I left out sour cream, 2 cups of fresh berries would provide the moisture. I really don't know if my reasoning made sense but the bars turned out to be just right for us: tart and not too sweet. The original bars are meant to be not too sweet and not too tart.
Apparently, sour cream makes these bars almost cheesecake-like so I might give the original recipe a try some time later when I have recovered from the current overdose of sour cream. Many of my friends use it in everything: from sauces to raitas and frankly, I am sick of it. I also wanted to use my brown molasses but I didn't know quite how well the flavor would work with cranberries. I thought it worked well and might use only brown molasses in the filling the next time.
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Diwali,
International Cuisines,
NaBloWriMo
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Diwali,
NaBloWriMo
Today is the last day of Diwali. It is Bhau Bhij, the day when entire generations of our family gathered under one roof. There were as many aartis as there were generations. Men were honored by their sisters. What they got was diyas in their face, what the sisters got was envelopes stuffed with money. Well, we also bought them socks or ties, just so that the exchange was fair. The loot was then divided over all cousins and I remember feeling rather cheated when all that came my way was a measly Rs. 50. In those days, it was about US$2.50. But the excitement, the teasing, the laughter and gaiety was all priceless.
I haven't celebrated Bhau Bhij for over a decade now. I have also heard that the celebrations in our extended family are rather low key now. Several of the oldest generation that held the family together, in particular my grandmother, are no more. Most of my generation are dispersed all over India and the globe. Our children do not know each other and that is truly very sad. I often think of putting together a mailing list for cousins on each side of the family...maybe one of these days, I will get down to actually doing it.
Today was exhausting to say the least. My friend and I made chavde, mountains of murukku, and more roasted chivda. Then we raced to the annual Diwali function of the Boulder Balvihar that we had found out about just yesterday. The children were going to perform short skits from Mahabharata, followed by a Lakshmi Puja, where each child would perform their own puja. Medha does not attend the Boulder Balvihar but she was invited to join in, nevertheless. We plucked mums from our flower bed, put together all the samagri, scrounged for a picture of Goddess Lakshmi, and made it just in time.
The evening started with the chanting of Aum, which set the mood for the evening. The children's program was fabulous. There were some individual performances, too: a Bharat Natyam dance and a voice and violin recital of Humko Manki Shakti Dena. The talent on display was very inspiring.
After this each child set up their own little puja with their family sitting around them to assist them. "Vivek Uncle" led the puja, reciting the Lakshmi Ashtotram and explaining each step of the puja and we followed, reading and chanting from the document that had been sent by email earlier. Before this, I didn't know how to perform a Lakshmi Puja and I am sharing that document to help those of you who were as clueless as I was. (Some of the formatting was lost when I saved it as a Google document and I apologize for that.) The overall experience was very uplifting.
A special thanks to Latha Narasimhan for telling me about the Lakshmi Ashtotram and encouraging me to find out more!
Diwali of 2007 is over! It was a very special, busy and fun-filled Diwali. My husband is very relieved. No more of this kind of food till next year, right? Deep fried and ghee-laden? Yes, I agree. No more. But we know - you and I - that there will always be food on the mind!
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Diwali,
Laxmi Pujan,
NaBloPoMo
Today is the 4th day of Diwali. Balipratipada. This is the day to seek the good in everyone, including those you don't particularly care for. I love the symbolism of Diwali. It's a warm fuzzy feeling!
This Diwali has been extra special because I found that special recipe I was looking for all these years. The Nankatai recipe.
There was much discourse between my husband and I, between my sister and my husband and finally my sister and I. I insisted that in Marathi, it is nankatai. They talked, burning international lines, efficiency of the conversation no longer in question, about how I had no clue and it was all the fault of that British convent school I studied in. My sister was at that school, too, but she suffered only two years of it while I was there much longer. It took its toll on me, they laughed, that I don't know the difference between ka and kha. I grabbed the phone and insisted that it is nankatai, only to be told that it has a lot of ghee in it, which might help oil the failing machinery. My mother came to my rescue. She has not one but two recipes for Nankatai, written in Marathi. If you're wondering why I went with nankhatai in my previous post, I didn't think of looking in my mother's diary for proof!
Feel free to call them nankhatai, because that is what most of the rest of India does. But in my home, they are nankatai.
So here they are, golden powdery ghee-laden Indian cookies, nankatai.
Today is the third day of Diwali. It is also Laxmi Pujan. Laxmi, also written Lakshmi, is the Goddess of Wealth. In our family, it was mostly those with businesses who did Laxmi Pujan. Invariably, it meant a trek to my great-uncle's studio near Chowpatty Beach (in Bombay), with each one of us decked up in our new Diwali finery. As kids we didn't really care about the Puja. We were more interested in the Cadbury's Dairy Milk bar that Anna-mama would give every one of us. It was a long thin bar, almost like a single serving that was not cut into squares. After that, we'd beg to be taken to the beach, not to swim but to eat bhel. Our stomachs were like insatiable pits on that day because as soon as we got back, we'd plead for some ice-cream from the vendor down the street. I don't remember a thing about the puja!
Later on I found out that this was called Chopda Puja in Gujarati. Chopda means books and, quite literally, the large journals that were the Books of Accounts were worshipped. After we started our own business, I remember doing a brief aarti of our computers - they were our lifeline in every way and also stored our Books of Accounts!
We didn't do any puja today. I didn't feel the need to either because I am always grateful for every form of wealth that comes my way. I am grateful every day. We did light some diyas and I made kaccha chivda...
and, yes! More nankatai! It's Recipe #2, baby! I am on the top of the world!
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Diwali,
Laxmi Pujan,
NaBloPoMo
I am so excited!
Today is Narak Chaturdashi, the day when Narakasur the demon was defeated by Lord Krishna. The triumph of good over evil, yet again! Narak Chaturdashi is typically celebrated as Deepavali in our family.
There would be a race between families in our building to get up at the crack of dawn, get well-oiled by the woman of the house, have an abhyang snaan and rush downstairs to burst the first bomb of the day. As we grew older, we let the kids have that privilege. Who really wanted to get up that early anyway! And if we could have, we would have thrown a bucket of water on that well-scrubbed kid in new clothes who was jumping up and down with glee. We'd get our revenge when it was Holi!
After Abhyang Snaan, my mother would line us all up for a puja. She would make us look into little steel bowls with red water till we saw our face. Then she would give us what we really wanted: an envelope stuffed with money. But before that, we had to break the kaarit with our heel and then taste the bitterness it spewed. It was all very symbolic. To leave behind any bitterness associated with the past, to forgive and move on to a more fulfilling year ahead. We always cheated, we dipped one finger and licked another. But with the whole family watching, we always got caught! Which meant we had to lick the finger we had dipped and do it again properly. The brightly colored, always crisp, Rupee notes in the envelope helped soothe some of that trauma. But the best was what followed, Diwali cha faraal with pohe.
Then we made the rounds, from home to home, wishing everyone a Happy Diwali. At the end of the day, we had eaten several different types of pohe and a zillion variations of faraal. And we returned home with as many packets of faraal. The packet I looked forward to the most was the one from my Pushpamaushi's home. She made chaklis that melted in my mouth, karanjis that had the right amount of sugary sweetness with the goodness of fresh coconut, besan ladus with a hidden gem, a plump manuka, and her chivda was to die for. Memories...
My excitement, however, is about something else. I found two recipes in the deep recesses of my Mother's blue diary for nankhatai! My Mom made the best nankhatai ever and for years, I have been ruing the fact that I don't have her recipe. The instructions are a little vague and there is no mention of what temperature they should be baked at! I am pretty sure that this recipe is from the days when my Mom had a round counter-top electric oven, with a little glass window at the top. It lacked temperature control so whether it was a cake or a nankhatai or flan, they all baked at the same temperature! Since I don't know what that might be, I asked around and looked it up on Google. 375F for 20 minutes seemed to be the most popular suggestion. One batch at this temperature and I was rushing to pull them out within 15 minutes as the bottom had started charring and the cookies looked more brown than golden! They don't look very good but they taste just like nankhatai! The next batch went in at 300F for 30 minutes. They don't look great either but they're done.
Tomorrow, I will try Recipe #2 and see which one is more like the one my Mom used to make. It's entirely possible that she didn't use either of these recipes but since there's no way of knowing that now, we'll be happy with what we do have. Depending on which recipe works out best, I will try to post that with pictures. But I am making no promises!
Happy Diwali!
Deepavali chya Shubechha!
Today is Dhanatroyadashi, the first day of Diwali. Tradition held that it was the day to buy gold. My family never did. What we did do was put a diya on our doorstep and switch on every lightbulb in the house. And we continue with that tradition except that we turn on the lights in a very symbolic fashion - they are turned off soon thereafter.
This year Diwali is going to be very lean. One namkeen and one sweet only. The two people that were polled, voted for kaccha chivda and chavde. I feel like making sanzhori, too. For me; and in memory of my Dad.
Medha lit a diya and wanted to post it to my blog, so here is her diya:
A very Happy Diwali to you and your families!
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Dhanatroyadashi,
diva,
Diwali,
diya,
NaBloPoMo,
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Diwali,
Indian Sweets and Desserts
Thank you, Anita, for a wonderful new recipe on such a special occasion for us!
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Diwali,
Indian Snacks and Munchies
