Booze to brews

Booze to brews

   July 19, 2024       karthik

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Its been more than a year of stopping regular alcohol consumption for me. I've drank occasionally in the last 15 months; overall about a dozen times which I would consider non-regular.

I quit regular alcohol drinking in May 2023 after almost two decades of consumption. The thing with alcohol is it creeps up on every occasion; meeting a friend after long, listening to good music, playing music, finishing a long run, finishing a big assignment/job/project, having a big dinner, and even sometimes when there are no occasions at all! It was burning my time and my pocket too; good beer and other booze are not cheap. There was the emptiness though, what do you fill up those occasions with?

I found two alternatives; home-brewed kombucha and cold-brewed coffee. Both taste way better than any alcohol! In this post, I write about my experiences with making kombucha at home; the tea, the sugar, the starter, and the bottles used.

I started making kombucha at home during the pandemic time when the booze shops were closed for weeks. It started as a fad and then became a culture we keep alive till date. A good kombucha after a meal tastes like champagne!

My first kombucha, brewed in March 2020

The recipe is quite simple; brew some tea, add sugar, add kombucha culture (the best one here: https://bombucha.in/pages/kombucha), leave it for 3 - 4 days depending on the weather, and its ready. There is the option of storing kombucha in air-tight bottles for another 3 - 4 days to develop the fizz. Overall, good kombucha takes a week to prepare in Goa. It may take longer in other places; the culture does well here.

For a litre of kombucha, I add four 1/4 cups of leaf tea and four 1/4 cups of sugar in 900 ml boiled water. Brew for three minutes and separate the leaves. The best tea in my experience is Darjeeling tea, or Assam tea if you like more tannins in the flavour. Korakundah organic tea (https://www.chamrajchai.com/index.php?route=product/product&manufacturer_id=10&product_id=60) works well too and is very affordable in comparison with Darjeeling and Assam leaf tea. I use organic uncoloured sugar. Once the water cools down, add 100 ml of kombucha and thats it.`

The myth of a scoby-starter - A lot of companies sell what they call 'scoby starter' or a 'kombucha starter kit' for a steep price. But scoby is actually 'Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast' and kombucha itself is that. What the companies sell is a pellicle, something that is formed on top of the kombucha every time you brew. This is a byproduct and is not needed for the next culture. This can be disposed as organic waste; some folks also collect these and produce kombucha leather. Overall, you basically need a bottle of store-bought kombucha, drink some of it and keep the rest as starter for your kombucha. No need to bother about the pellicle or what is being sold as 'starter'. Kombucha is the starter!

Fermentation - The one litre of tea prepared with the kombucha culture needs to be kept in a bottle with a cloth tied or rubberbanded; the fermentation is aerobic, so we don't need an airtight lid. We need that for the next step. After two to three days, if you see a thin layer being formed on top and some bubbles on the side of the bottle at the top layer of the tea, all is going well!

Carbonation - Pour out 900 ml of the kombucha in an airtight bottle. I have used various types of bottles and the best ones that work are the bottles with swing-top caps (https://www.kromebrew.in/product/flip-top-bottle/?attribute_qty=Pack+of+6&attribute_capacity=1000ML). The 100 ml leftover can be used for the next brew. I was lucky I found 36 old Grolsch beer bottles from 1984 (https://www.etsy.com/in-en/listing/740649875/vintage-grolsch-beer-bottle-with) in an antique store in Goa, which I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and replaced the rubber stoppers on top and they work like clockwork. The bottles pop each time opened and that is the beginning of the excitement of drinking the kombucha brewed.

Bonus tips! Recently, I have started using cold-brewed tea for the kombucha. I leave tea leaves in water in the fridge overnight for about twelve hours and then add sugar and the culture the next morning. This kombucha has less tannins and tastes even better.

The next post will be about cold brew coffee. Happy brewing!

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Avakaya - The king of pickles

Avakaya - The king of pickles

   July 12, 2024       karthik

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This post is very special; its written by my mother and features the recipe for preparing Avakaya or mango pickle, the ubiquitous part of any Andhra meal. The first part (the recipe) contains her words verbatim. She put a lot of effort into not making it look like just a recipe which is really great; it's her first blogpost! The second part includes my experiences with Avakaya; sure to be mouth-watering.

The recipe - The season of summer is special for making pickles, rice papads and fruyams, which we generally call 'vadiyalu'. The entire family would be engaged in some activity to make use of solar energy. We get good quality of raw mangoes of the right size during end April and early May. Here is our recipe for making the delicious pickle Andhra special Avakaya. 

Ingredients required are basic starting with good mangoes. The other ingredients are mustard powder, good quality chilli/mirchi powder, salt, fenugreek seeds, and sesame oil. Making avakaya is quite simple if you have all these items. The recipe here is for 15 mangoes.They have to be washed nicely and wiped well with a dry coth. All the mangoes should be cut into pieces; each mango can be cut into approximately 12 pieces. The seed should be removed and while cutting care has to be taken that the thick outer shell of the seed remains attached to the piece. The cut mangoes are readied this way.

Our yearly ritual of making Avakaya in the month of May

Preparation. Mix well 150 gms of mirchi powder, 125 gms of mustard powder, 100 gms of salt, and 1 table spoon of fenugreek. Now the actual procedure of the pickle preparation starts. In a porcelain jar add some of the mango pieces, a portion of the mixture of the powder mentioned and some sesame oil. This forms one batch. The next layer, repeat the same and batch by batch complete adding mango pieces and powder coating with sesame oil. After adding all the cut mango pieces and the powder mixture, add the remaining oil. Total oil generally used in this process is 750 ml. Upon completing this process the jar has to be kept in a dry place. After three days, the mango pieces and the mixture has to be mixed again. Add oil if it seems less; always the oil layer should be on the top layer of jar. Now avakaya is ready. Fourth day onwards the pickle is ready to be eaten with hot steaming rice! Enjoy!

During my field work in the Eastern Himalaya, hunger was the only motivation to prepare food, which had to be prepared over fire. On really lazy days filled with rain, hunger, solitude, and homesickness, I would cook some rice and eat it with the Avakaya from home with some cut onions added; it was bliss. Overall, food links us to memories of home and of travels; its a gastronomic ticket to travel anywhere in the world!

  

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A feast for the furry folks

A feast for the furry folks

   July 04, 2024       karthik

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We moved to our home in Goa in March 2020, the pandemic time. We had five dogs then and the home caretakers used to feed the dogs in our absence. The meal was rice and chicken curry pieces boiled together twice a day and milk and biscuits as snacks twice a day, year round. The dogs were a bit obese both due to this monotonous meal and the lack of walks/exercise. We changed this immediately; took over their cooking and took them out for walks to the beach. In the meals, we tried different combinations; reduced the rice and added some dal, reduced chicken and added fish or red meat, and cut off the biscuits and milk. Their health improved over time. Over the last four years, we have come up with the best recipe for the dogs with meat, vegetables, and soya chunks. This post is about that delicious meal that we feed them twice a day, that I often myself envy!

The meat - There are a few options in rotation for this portion of the meal. The first option is of chicken curry pieces, which are the ones remaining when the main parts of the chicken, the legs, wings, and breasts have been removed. For our five dogs, we cook 400 grams of chicken curry pieces for every meal. In Goa, these curry pieces are used to prepare most of the chicken gravy; the Ros. These cost cheaper than conventional chicken ranging from 50 to 100 rupees a kg depending on where one buys. 

The second option for meat is called 'dog mince' in Goa which is a mince of the bovid stomach, meat that humans don't consume much. A packet of 400 grams of this 'dog mince' costs about 50 rupees. I usually include a packet in the meal prepared for five dogs. Dog mince is also sold loose, which I prefer; I then include about 350 grams every meal. 

The third option that we have in Goa is of pork aadmas, the bony pieces of pork with some meat that people don't prefer as much as the rest of the pork; too much handling time. I include about 500 grams of this in their meal which costs about 60 to 80 rupees. 

When we run out of these first three options, I keep a backup of tuna cans. Among fish, tuna is the possibly the one with the least ecological footprint; its caught in the Indian waters, and their reproduction is relatively faster than that of other large-sized fish. Among the cans, I find that there are two varieties, 'tuna in brine' (yellow) and 'tuna in oil' (blue). While tuna in brine costs 130 rupees, the tuna in oil costs 240 rupees. I always look for 'tuna in brine' and each can lasts two meals for the dogs. Overall, for the meat options it costs 40 to 70 rupees for a meal for five dogs; quite reasonable. And these four options are rotated through the month.

The rice - The dogs were earlier fed the rice that is obtained through ration, which the home caretakers had access to. Unfortunately, the rice provided by the Government as ration was not of great quality and the dogs were a bit unhealthy too. We now buy whats called 'Sona masuri' rice, which is of the same quality as we eat. We buy the 26 kg bag for about for 1400 rupees, which lasts us about 25 days. So each meal of rice, which is about 600 grams costs about 30 rupees. Off late, I have been replacing some of the rice with millets, which makes it a little more expensive though.

The vegetables - I buy the frozen vegetables pack from Godrej and other companies. It works out quite well, I add about 60 to 100 grams to each of their meals for vitamins and fibre. When cooked with the meat and rice, the dogs do not leave any vegetables; they hate vegetables otherwise!

More protein - Since the meat has been reduced from 500 to 400 grams, I substitute the 100 grams with soya granules or chunks. The dogs love it and finish all of the chunks.

Overall the general recipe is this for five dogs; 600 grams rice, meat (400 grams chicken curry pieces/ 350 grams beef stomach mince/500 grams pork bone-meat/210 grams tuna), 60-100 grams vegetables, and 60-100 grams soy granlues or chunks. I cook this mix in a pressure cooker for two whistles and open it after twenty minutes and cool it for another 30 minutes, and there it is: yummy food for five happy dogs!

I store this mix in the freezer so that even if we are travelling the maid just needs to mix this with rice and serve a delicious hot meal to our dogs.

Future experiments - I may decide to cut rice a bit more from their meals and add millets and perhaps also add seaweed or fish mint (Houttuynia cordata) and cut down the meat quantity furthermore. Will post updates to this recipe when I find more interesting items to add to their meal. The idea is to cut down their ecological footprint further without affecting their health. Any suggestions/comments welcome!

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Reverse Dal!

Reverse Dal!

   June 28, 2024       karthik

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Growing up I noticed my mother cooking Dal this way; wash the lentils, soak for a little time, boil with a few cut vegetables (often tomatoes, onions and/or potatoes) in the pressure cooker, end with garnishing and seasoning. Years later I learnt a method with an opposite sequence!

In Baghmara, Meghalaya, I saw a Garo cook washing the lentils and then frying them in some oil. I wondered what snack he was preparing. Next went in finely cut onions followed by chopped vegetables which were dry-fried in the pan with the dal too. After about twenty minutes, water was added to this mix and boiled for about thirty minutes followed by the last step, seasoning with spices. This dal tasted like a completely different dish from what I had been eating all my life, and frankly was tastier! Lo and behold was born the 'Reverse dal' recipe!

Then on I have cooked reverse dal this way with diverse vegetables: brinjal, pumpkin, tomatoes, ridge gourd and others. Everything tasted way better. Once at home I was coming dal this way and my mom had the same puzzled expression I had when I saw this reverse process although later she approved of the taste! She advised that this 'reverse dal' would work only with the dals that cook easily such as masoor (red lentil) and moong (mung bean), and not tuwar (pigeon pea) and chana dal (chickpea). I have used this recipe now for more than two decades and shared it with some friends. My friend Ben from South Africa cooks it a few times every month and his family eats it with rice and Boerewors. In my opinion, the reverse dal is tastier, although many may not agree with me! No way to find out other than making this Dal yourself!

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The lazy chutney

The lazy chutney

   June 23, 2024       karthik

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I was 21 in 2001 and had finished engineering and like or/and unlike many other engineering graduates had not a clue what to do next. We had a personal computer at home and I used to load it up with the games Commando and Hitman and used to play most of the day! Both my folks would leave for work by 845 am and then the castle was mine! 

By 11, I would get hungry and with the 20 bucks I had I would buy a loaf of Iyengar bakery bread and a cube of cheese or two and get back home. I would cut an onion, tomato and coriander, add a little salt, one green chilli and blend these in a mixer and spread it on the bread and eat. It was delicious. 

Years later, I realized that this was a simple enough delicious recipe anyone can make, born out of necessity and essentially laziness! This morning I made this chutney with Dosa; only, I used yak cheese from Himachal and pudina and cilantro leaves from my garden; affordability and options have increased, laziness has disappeared! But I would never forget this easy-lazy recipe!

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