Cook in India : Methi salad

Having been in India for 4 years, I "finally" realized that I could use "cheap" and "local" veggies to make some awesome dishes!

What You Need:
<For Salad>
1)  Methi! --- Methi leaves can be found in most of the veggie shops in Bangalore, and they are so cheap! All you have to do is to clean them very thoroughly(!) before you make them into a western-style salad.
2) Green peas --- Any kind is fine. I like the regular kind for the salad.
3) Lotus Roots --- You can now buy them in most of the veggie stores around Bangalore (however, you can skip them  if you can't find them or replace them with white radishes)
<For Dressing>
1) Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2) Vinegar (American white vinegar or white wine vinegar)
3) Yoghurt (Indian curd is good)
4) Dijon mustard
5) American mayo (if you'd like and as needed only)
6) Japanese miso (if you have it)
6) Salt & pepper

Clean and Wash and Prepare (absolutely necessary in India!):
1. Methi
Get a bunch of methi leaves, and cut 1/3 of the bottom off (basically the root plus dirty parts). Pick the leaves off from the stems. Soak the leaves in "fruits and veggies detergent" for a while and rinse and wash them thoroughly about 10 times in running water. Then soak them in filtered water for about 10 mins. Wash and rinse several times with filtered water.
2. Lotus Roots
Peel, slice thinly, soak in vinegar water for 10 mins, rinse, and boil them for 10 mins. Drain once and put them back into into cold water for a while and drain again.
3. Green peas
Shell and boil them in salted water for 2 mins or so until they float to the surface. Drain and put aside in water.

Make dressing: 
Mix good extra virgin olive oil, white vinegar, yoghurt, Dijon mustard in a 2:1:1:1 ratio.
Only if you like mayo, and if American mayo is available, toss in some (maybe in 1 ratio). The same applies to Japanese miso.
Season to taste. Whisk together.

Mix!:
Mix lotus roots and green peas first in the dressing, and add some toasted almond slivers if available.
Finally add leaves and lightly toss everything together.  Sprinkle on roasted sesame seeds as you like :)

Japanese style Pork Rib Stew

Now I am in India, cooking Japanese has been a challenge. But, since I brought back my hubby's favorite Sake, I challenged on making what's called "Buta no Kakuni" type of dish. The only pork meat we could get that is similar to the texture of Kakuni would be the ribs (although all of them comes with sizable bones), so we did. And, instead of using Naganegi for the garnish, I used what's called "leak" here in India, which is different from the leak I know in the US. Anyway, it worked quite okay.

Ingredients:
Pork Ribs (approx 700g), white radish (Indian white radishes are small, so I used two), 2 carrots, 2 onions (cut into four big pieces), leeks for garnish, ginger for garnish, ginger paste (of course you can use real ginger, but in India it is easy to get a pack of ginger paste so I used it instead)
Sauce mix: 1 cup of cooking sake (which might be hard to get in India. You could substitute this with dry sherry), 2 tbs of soy sauce, 1 tbs of Mirin (nope you cannot find it in India, so you can skip this if you don't have it), 1 tbs of honey, 2 tbs of sugar.
Instructions:
In a pressure cooker, brown the meat (if they fit ^^). Add ginger paste or crushed ginger (I put in quite a bit), add sauce mix to the pot, add onions (leave a couple of slices), add just enough water to cover the ingredients, cover and simmer. Let them cook in the pressure cooker for at least 30 mins on medium heat.
Once the pressure is completely released, open the pressure cooker, add carrots, remaining onion (cut into 1/4 size). I also add two boiled eggs at this time. Cover and let them cook again for at least one whistle.
Open the pressure cooker (again, after releasing the pressure), simmer until the sauce gets thicker and reduced. And you are done!  Add some garnish (leek and finely sliced ginger) and enjoy!

Exploring South India - Part 6: Mysore

My hubby was still very sick the next morning, which was really rare for him who typically conquers any kind of sickness in 24 hrs. He tried to eat breakfast to regain energy, but of course it didn't work well. He went back to bed, and we decided to hold off on any sightseeing activities until he felt better.

It was around noon when he finally thought he could get up and visit Mysore Palace, which was luckily within 5 mins auto ride from the hotel. The sun was high, and so was the humidity. The perfect combination for sick people :( We had hired an auto driver as a guide to take us around the town the previous day, but we told him just to take us to Mysore Palace.

Mysore Place looked big from outside but even bigger after stepping inside the site. The place was packed with thousands of tourists. As the wiki said, it is one of the most popular tourist sites after the Taj Mahal. I had heard of the palace of course, but never really imagined this magnitude of palace in a small city such as Mysore which is also only 2hr car drive away from Bangalore.

The first thing which came into sight was the vast garden glittering with different colors of flowers and plants completely exposed to the bright sun, and the contrast to the off-whitish palace building was just perfect.

The construction of the current palace started in 1897 and finished in 1912, taking only 15 years. Although some parts were added later around 1940, it is still unbelievable to be able to build such a huge palace in 15 yrs!!!! I could just picture hard working cows and Indian labors working night and day under the hot sun for 15 short but long years.

You are not allowed to go into the palace with your shoes on just like any other holy places in India. You would then proceed to the security check where your bags will be scanned. The security guard will also make sure that you do not have a camera in your bag, and if you do, he would ask you to go back outside, walk back to the gate, and hand in the camera at the booth next to the gate. The funny thing, however, is that they do not care about a mobile phone with a camera. :-) The great part about this palace is that it comes with an audio guide, which I highly recommend you to get one. If you want one, you need to stop at a small booth on the opposite corner from the security before moving forward into the palace.

Thank god, inside the palace was much cooler than outside. The granite floor would also feel cool to your bare feet (so if you don't like that, I would recommend wearing a pair of socks like I did). The first hall you enter is pretty impressive with very high ceiling gorgeously decorated with stained glasses and supported with numbers of thick pillars. There are numerous exhibitions throughout the palace, and if you spend time on each one, it would likely take you up to 3 hrs (or even more) to go around. Since my hubby was sick, we just went along with the wave of people moving from one exhibition to another. Still it took us about an hour and half.

We skipped another part of palace as my hubby needed to lay down again. We went back to the hotel and rested for a couple of hours before we headed out again with the guide to the wood carving factory and incense factory. We knew it was tied with his commission to bring us to these random local factories, but we just love factories so much that we didn't care. All you have to do is to say "NO" to very obnoxious sales guy who would follow you around and try selling anything in the store.

The wood carving factory was interesting. I have seen this kind of furniture before in Bangalore, but I never realized it was engraved and smoothed out using sand paper rather than just a painting on the wood. And interestingly each design is made by professional designers before it is placed into the engraving which is done by another professional. Of course you have a separate professional to do the sanding. And the finished products were pretty good looking.

Unfortunately my hubby was not feeling well, so we visited another factory and headed back to the hotel. I had dinner by myself that night, but guess what happened? I got attacked by some sort of food poisoning this time :(  gG was trying to comfort both of us (thanks gG--) that night.

Boy... it took a while to finish writing about my trip to South India at the end of last year...  For those of you who wanted to know the contact information about the hotel in Kochi, here it is.  I think they are still working on their web site.

Les 3 Elephants
1078 Convent Beach, Pipeline Road,
North Cherai, Kochi (Cochin) 683515, India
email: contact3elephants@gmail.com