Achari Aloo

Cook in haste and repent, err, eat, at leisure.

Almost all my meals are express meals. I mean, when you travel 75 minutes or more one way, work for at least 9 hours and then trudge back, and you like to have decent meals on the table, you enjoy cooking, and you have a food blog over and above all that. How can any meal be leisurely (in terms of preparation)? And no, you don't have a cook.

To top it all, when I'd spent a lazy Saturday doing almost nothing, except for attempting some masala buns, S and I decided to invite our good friends over for dinner. So, there I was. With almost no vegetables in the fridge, definitely no time on hand and friends visiting. I made something simple for dinner. Really simple. And as I figured, I was able to whip up an entire meal in just about 30 minutes. So, this goes to Mallugirl’s Express Cooking challenge.

I have the luxury of owning a double storey 4 burner stove and 5 pressure cookers and pans. But please remember that we don't as yet own a dining table and our apartment has a really really small kitchen. So, while I do the make the most of what I have, managing in the little hole is a tad tough.

My meal for the evening comprised rice, Payatham Paruppu Kuzhambu, a variation of Katrikkai Karumadhu, and this potato experiment. Why did I experiment? Because many people, read that as MANY people, are averse to this lovely versatile vegetable called brinjal/aubergine/eggplant. S and I love it and we have it at least once a week in some form. Fortunately for me, our friends T & B enjoyed the brinjal.

Amchi cuisine has a mixed vegetable side dish called chow chow. Left over pickle gravy, called humman, goes into the gravy making the dish a really spicy one. S and I had the same caterer at our offices when I was working in Gurgaon and she supplied us with achari aloo once in a while. Her dish used the fennel flavoured mango pickle in mustard oil. So, using up old pickles seems to be common. I will try that as well some other time as I do have mango pickle from 2 years ago. Thanks to my friend's mom in Ludhiana.

Last winter, the same friend's mother sent a winter pickle for us. It had carrots, turnips, and cauliflower. It is supposed to be consumed within a short span and does not keep for long. But then, we keep everything for as long as it can be used. And so although we did enjoy the fresh pickle in winter, we continue to have it in the fridge.

I decided to pair this pickle with potatoes and the resultant dish was finger licking good.

Ingredients:

4 Potatoes, peeled or scrubbed well

1 tbsp Oil

1 tsp Cumin Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

1/2 tsp Turmeric Powder

1/2 tsp Chilli Powder

3 tbsp Dry Pickle

Salt to taste

Chop the potatoes into small cubes.

Heat the oil in a kadhai and add the cumin seeds and asafoetida. When the cumin crackles, add the potato cubes, chilli and turmeric powders. Fry for a few minutes. Add the pickle and salt and cover and cook for 15 minutes.

Enjoy this with rotis or rice and dal.

While the potatoes were shedding their firmness, I set the rice in a cooker. That taken care of, I chopped some long purple brinjals and made a simple brinjal curry. Instead of the elaborate Katrikkai Karumadhu, I made the curry with just chilli and turmeric powders instead of the masala. I threw in some yennai katrikkai podi, that Amma had made for me years ago, towards the end. These brinjals seem to cook very fast and the curry was ready in less than 10 minutes.

When the brinjals were simmering, and, in a pressure pan, proceeded to make the Payatham Paruppu Kuzhambu.Instead of cooking the dal separately and then adding the seasoning, I prepared the seasoning in the pan and added the dal and water to it. This, I pressure cooked in about 5-7 minutes.

My entire meal was ready in just about 30 minutes with no prior preparation. With curd and pickles always available at home, it was a complete meal.