Wednesday, July 3, 2019

FOOD NOSTALGIA

Allows me to tweak  Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous lines from the poem 'The Charge Of The Light Brigade thus -

I am not  to reason why ,
I am  but to eat and cry .....
not  literally though..!
Any talk of food by me draws a jibe for my wife  who is blunt enough to point out that  I care for food and food only.
She is a self appointed  nutritionist in my case  who decides what to eat and what not to keeping in view  my advanced age. So no excess Proteins in diet which according to her do more harm than good past a certain stage.
So no Rajma will be cooked  for the two of us.However, it becomes necessary to cook  Rajma, when kids come visiting  and I get a chance to savour the delicacy.
Another  food item I like is the Baingan ka Bhartha, which she cooks from time to time , though not the way my mother used to when round shaped baingans were  put on angeethi and rotated &;turned till the pulp would start oozing out. Then those were fried with masala and left to cook. My wife , not to take any chance,cuts them into pieces and puts them on the gas burner in a kadahi to reach the pulp stage. I must say these also taste good.
I am taken back to my University days, when we 2 -3 friends were day scholars and invited to lunch by our boarder friends in the Hostel mess. In fact they knew my predilections for Rajma & Bhartha and by chance both were on offer together at the same time.
A friend from Haryana would add a liberal helping of desi Ghee brought from home.
Lip smacking delicacies indeed, the taste still fresh in memory and mouth after 45 years !

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