Henry Victor
Is it cooked inside?
What I detested, very much, and considered a waste of my time during my first sixty years, was cooking. But now, in the last ten years, I enjoy making food very much! I look forward to cooking for my daughter and her family, like the way my mother cooked for my brothers and me with no recipes to follow, no cookbooks open in the kitchen, or Aunt Google to instruct.
Last evening, I was so pleased when my daughter and her family gave me five stars for supper I prepared for them. This included fluffy parboiled rice that exuberated cinnamon and cardamom aroma over my dining table with pappadom (from black-lentils flour) fried taking me to my grandmother’s kitchen in Nagercoil (Tamil Nadu)! When Mario is there, spicy chicken curry (with some potatoes) is a must to give him the effect of dining in the Indian Village, his favourite restaurant in Edmonton! To go with it, he and his son need red lentils into which I always like to throw some more green vegetables. Yesterday I added some green beans and made the vegetarian dish into a non-vegetarian one by sprinkling it with Maldive fish flakes (we call it maasi in Tamil)!
I also cooked chick-peas with egg in coconut milk that was not that spicy hoping to coax Josephine to explore some Tamil food beyond her usual hotdog, egg, cucumber, and plain rice with some pappadam! Justin, the eleven-year-old, wanted to know the name of that dish. I gave him the freedom to name it. Since he was unsure, I said, “let’s call this kaddalai-muttai”, literally a combination of two Tamil words for chick-peas and egg, respectively!
As for myself, I roasted some drumsticks (chicken thighs) in a Moroccan-Italian-Tamil flavour! I was aware the skin on them will drive away my daughter’s family inclined towards skinless-boneless chicken if they have to forego their red meat! But they did dip into that dish to make the old man feel good, though, as usual, my daughter dropped her doubt on the dining table: “Appa (dad), is it cooked inside? Why is it red?” That’s my daughter with some amount of dislike for birds on the table!
My Cabbage Fry
I opened my files and discovered a recipe for “My Cabbage Fry” . a few women from various parts of the world had requested this recipe, and I wrote it down.
Step 1
Take a cup of chickpeas and wash and soak in water for about 6 to 8 hours! Boil the chickpeas in that water and set them aside to cool. Then put it in a blender in the “ice-breaking mode” and switch on for 20 seconds to crush and break the boiled chickpeas. Better to avoid making it into a paste! And set aside the crushed and broken chickpeas!
Step 2
Slice and chop the cabbage into thin and tiny pieces and set aside!
Step 3
Peel and chop whole garlic and half an onion and set aside.
Step 4
Take a vok and place it on a stove, and put it on medium heat! Pour a one-eighth cup of cooking oil — I use Canadian Canola oil — and when the oil is heating up, add the following, stirring it gently: 1 teaspoon of mustard seed, 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds, 1 teaspoon of fenugreek seeds, 1 teaspoon of cumin seeds!
Into this, add the chopped onions and garlic with 1 teaspoon of salt! Cook the content until the onions turn golden brown. Into that, add 4 to 5 cups of chopped cabbage and fry (if necessary, sprinkling a little water to create a little steam.
Sprinkle about 3 tablespoons of coconut and constantly stir to mix well. And now add the crushed and broken chickpeas also to the cabbage and mix well.
Sprinkle on this 1 teaspoon of pepper powder and add 3 tablespoons of lime or lemon juice. When the cabbage turns golden brown, you are almost done. You need to fry only a few minutes for this.
Switch off the heat and sprinkle some chopped and crushed basil, oregano, and chives and leave the wok covered on that heat for a few minutes for some further blending!
My cabbage fry is ready.
