Watermelon rinds?

Well now, what have we here?

In my view, the watermelon is one of the most beautiful fruits. We have just carved one into huge slices and so we have some rinds left over. Now, in the Southern United States, these rinds might be used to make a pickle. You may well see the same in India. Here is what I just did although, let it be said, it does not make a terribly long lasting pickle.

You have eaten your watermelon. If you didn't wash the rinds, do it now. Cut them into strips and then into little squares. Put them in a big bowl. Take a big green fresh chilli (the contrast -not too much contrast, though.-is very pretty). Cut the chilli, seeds and all. into fine pieces, add it to the rinds with a big pinch of sea salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper and, say, a hazlenut-sized piece of ginger root which you have grated finely. Mix it all up with your hands, then add the juice of a lemon, its finely grated peel and two teaspoons -but taste and taste again to see if you'd like to add more -- of  chaat (or chat) powder, one specifically marketed for fruit chaat which, like anything else with chat/chaat in its name, is a snack food. Chat is usually  spiced with aromatic flavourings, such as black cumin and pomegranate and green mango powder.  Might be a fresh peach salad (which you need tio eat straight away because it wilts fast!)or perhaps a potato salad. More on which soon. You can find chat powder easily enough in Asian supermarkets and shops; I tend to get mine here www.spicesofindia.com I like the 'shaan' brand best!

Mix everything in with your hand and pile into jars. The pickle is ready to eat after two days but will keep for a week. To make it longer lasting you'd need more preserving liquid, but that's jot quite what I'm after here. Keep it in the fridge. I will be serving this pickle with lots of South Indian snacks next weekend.

The photos you see are all mine: of the pickle itself, but also a few images from my kitchen showing some balti dishes hanging up, the plate of chilli and ginger which is invariably sitting on top of my big salt jar, plus one of my piles of thali dishes. I like the colours of my watermelon pickle against the vintage 'Ball' preserving jars. I collect these and you can still get them for just a few dollars at flea markets in the U.S. I've bought mine in Virginia and Georgia. Ball is still is business, the jars are still great but not, alas, in the same lovely colour.Clear these days.

Let me talk you through a couple of days of food ---feasting and observations.

Now Thursday was my birthday. I am not telling you how old I was, save to say that I have more energy now --and of a sustained and, well, productive sort than I did when I was eighteen. Read on. Lunch was a superlative jacket potato -- as follows. I cooked this just for me because, while I had been wined and dined ant breakfast and elevenses (well, hot chocolated), I wanted time alone. I know not everyone wants this, but, for me, it's nice to dine alone.

Right the potato served one, everything else two BUT with copious leftovers because, as you'll see, I cooked double. Give it a try?

First: your best jacket potato.

Take a good sized jacket potato. A proper floury job. Having pre-heated your oven to 200, rinse the potato gently and then pat it dry. Now, massage it liberally with some Maldon sea salt and stick it in the oven. That's the secret to the best jacket potato you will ever have eaten. When it's done, you will find that the skin is delectably crisp and the inside fluffy.

I've told you before of the habit in my household, copied some years ago from Nigel Slater, of attacking the potato with a neat karate chop. Try it. Some people --my husband now included-- do say that it ensures am appealing and not too neat potato. Anyway, now put in a little butter and some grated mature cheddar and then -- keep your eyes peeled this time of year-- any ittle green shoots you may find in your garden or someone else's. Or round and about, but know what and where you are picking. In my case, this consisted of some tiny sorrel leaves just pushing up, some little mint leaves (ditto) and some wild onions. You will see them here, there and everywhere. They look like chives and grow in abundance, I notice, in my nearest churchyard. But no foraging there. All the green shoots were finely chopped and added to the cheese.

See how simple this is and how it will make you happy?

Now, birthday dinner postponed until next week (suhsi -- I'm afraid I go into a sort of feeding frenzy and end up with teetering plates), here is what we had instead.

Superlative chicken and spinach curry in the oven. All you do is this.

Take as many free range chicken thighs (boned or not: mine are invariably on the bone) as you and a beloved might eat and put them into a nice big oven dish, having pre-heated the oven to around 200. Now, add a tablespoon of ground coriander, two of ground cumin, half a tablespoon of turmeric, five or six unpeeled cloves of garlic, a slosh of sunflower oil if the chicken is skinned (mine happened to be, that day), ten cherry tomatoes, a teaspoon or two of red chilli flakes, a fat pinch of asafoetida (which isn't essential, but it does give this a sort of musky, savoury depth) and five or six pieces of chopped, frozen spinach. Mix this all up well, add a little salt and pepper and just shove it in the oven. You will need to watch it closely to begin with, stirring it carefully as the spinach melts into the spices. Then you can leave it to do its thing for a good forty five minutes. At this point, it's done and you will have sweetly spiced chicken and you can squeeze out the lovely golden paste from the whole garlic cloves into your dinner. We had this with...


A straightforward Masoor (red lentil) dhal.

I took --let's say-- four tea cups of red lentils and added a couple of teaspoons of turmeric to them. Then, I covered them with water, plus almost as much water in volume again and brought them to the boil. Simmer very gently for about thirty minutes --really, you should skim off any froth that accumulates on the surface-- and then it should be done. I know it's traditional to simmer for a bit more, but for me, this is about right.

Now, you want to do what in South Indian cooking would be the tempering. In a frying pan, heat up some sunflower oil. Just a shallow film. To this, add a dessertspoon of brown mustard seeds. Hear them pop, and then add the same of whole cumin seeds and --because I fancied it-- onion seed (that is, Nigella seed or kalonji). Fry these off gently and just add them to the dhal with the oil. Mix in gently, check for salt  --which I always add at the end-- and serve with the chicken.

Also...spiced roast potatoes in the oven (can you improve on my word order here?)

Take, say, six medium potatoes, scrub but don't bother to peel. Make sure they are dry, though. Just put them into hot oil and sprinkle in teaspoons of dried red chilli flakes and cumin seeds and, if you like, a little turmeric. Sea salt, too. Cook them at about 200 for about 40 minutes. If you like, mix them with fresh coriander leaf, finely chopped, at the end. I also added some whole cloves of garlic, unpeeled, which I tend to munch whole.

Now, that chicken....did I mention that I cooked enough for two days? I often cook for an anticipated predicament the following day. This time, I was prescient -- and this thankful for the chicken. Here is what I did.

Chicken curry even better the next day, isn't it? (For Uncle Jamall xx)

So, you gently re-heat the chicken with some extra spinach in the oven and make sure you have added plenty of freshly-ground black pepper. While you are doing this, you can make a wonderful potato salad with Indian spices. In Northern India you might have this as aloo achaar -- a tart potato salad served as snack food. Splendid. So, boil four large potatoes with a dessertspoon of turmeric (and water, obviously) and, when done, slip off their peel and cut them into little cubes. Cool (you can make this a little ahead) or rinse gently under cold water and allow to dry. Now, snip five or so spring onions into little pieces and cut up a handful of cherry tomaties and a fat chunk of cucumber into tiny bits, too. Or, well, little pieces, because fiddly chopping might put you off when you just cannot be bothered at dinner time. Mix this in with the potato along with a teaspoon of cumin seeds, sea salt and pepper to taste and a couple of pinches of 'chaat' powder. Other possibilities, as you may well not have this addictive seasoning for snack foods knocking about the house: lemon juice, a little vinegar, green mango powder (amchoor --easier to get than you think) or anardhana --pomegranate powder. Tart and fragrant.

So, you serve the chicken with this cold and spicy salad and that's that.

But I'm not done yet. Oh no. Aha! I also made double of the potato salad. The cucmber and tomato could, I thought, just about handle it. And it did this. How clever of it.

Breakfast for a king (or Mehta, or Maharajah, or  our Uncle Mansoor in Karachi....)

Take a chapati or a pitta bread and warm it through. Stuff each bread you have with grated cheese and some of this superlative potato mixture. Really, you should have brought the salad to room temperature, I think. Dollop of decent pickle. I mean, a fragrant and slightly oliagenous mango or lime pickle, not a syrupy number.

And then for lunch or dinner...OH LOOK! I'm roasting another chicken! When it's cooked, tear up the breast meat and serve it as a salad with the rest of the potato salad, a little Greek yoghurt and some finely minced carrots. Here, a little Indian pickle added to the Greek yoghurt adds piquancy.

Fudco: tends to be my spice company of choice. Here we have turmeric in a nice big bag.

Why you should get yourself some thali dishes (part one)

Oooh: look at these. This is a stainless steel shop in Chennai (Madras) and, I must tell you, I have a splendid collection of stainless steel dishes, plates and tumblers. Favourite of all, though, would be my thali dishes.

Thali are large silver platters which are either flat -- for you to place little matching silver pots full of different dishes on the platters-- or the thali dishes have different sections into which you put your food. It is the latter I favour and, reader, I use them day in and day out and not just for curries.(Although you can see a selection of curries and fresh pickles in my last entry -- a regular dinner in our Anglo-American household, curiously enough...)

So here's an idea: why don't you pop over to Spices of India at http://www.spicesofindia.co.uk and find yourself some dishes like these; you'll find them listed as dinner plates and then use them for all sorts of things? For example, dinner last night for assorted under 8s. A thali dish into which went little handfuls of crisps, carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes, peanut butter sandwiches cut into stars, cubes of cheese, some chipolatas and a big mango hedgehog. The mango hedgehog is, as you might know if you've been reading this for a while or have read my book, simply a fat slice of mango, skin still attached, scored and bent back on itself. Looks like a hedgehog, see? Well, sort of. My point is, the dish looks novel and hugely cheerful, like party food every day, but is practical and a good way to eke out odds and sods and make them look special. Ker-ching!

And for our dinner tonight, the thalis will be used by Mr Nedved and me and they will be heaped with a prawn curry (curry leaves, cumin seeds, fresh coriander, chopped red chilli, garlic), in the central section will be a mound of basmati rice, in another, some Greek yoghurt, just slightly flavoured with some 'chaat' powder and in another section, a little fresh pickle of finely chopped cucumber with sea salt, black pepper and fennel seed. Fire lit (have you looked outside? My five year old got blown over in a field just now while we were dog walking); dinner on lap. Try it. We might be watching --against Mr Nedved's will, the X factor: awful but I cannot seem to look away. I digress. The thali dish, by the way, tends to be native to Southern India (see the beautiful thali of Southern Indian vegetarian food above), but you do see it elsewhere. And I've given you (to left) another stainless steel picture (how I love these shops) and one of my own thalis. In the dish below, you can see a nan (or naan) bread, which is speckled with kalonji -- the spice you might know as onion seed or nigella; there is a rather thick massor (red lentil) dhal with curry leaves, some aloo paalak (potato and spinach curry), a hot lime pickle, some cucumber batons which I had barely sprinkled with anardhana (pomegranate powder), some fresh lime slices, a hot lime pickle and a little fresh pickle (or you might call it a salad) or tomato, green mango, onion, saunf (fennel seed), fresh mint and dred chilli. These are North Indian foods.Get cooking. x

Many thanks to McKaysavage and LadyJake at Flickr for, respectively, the stainless steel shots and that of the South Indian thali, about which I will tell you in a more scholarly future chapter.

A little Indian food demonstration.

Now, should you find yourselves in Wiltshire on November the 5th and not at a firework display, here is something for you. My alter ego, Calcutta Scarlet (which is the name of my catering company) is giving an Indian food demonstration as part of an evening in aid of the Hope Foundation, an organisation which works with vulnerable children in Kolkata, India. Come one, come all. Here's a link to their site...http://www.thehopefoundation.org.uk/

And here are some pictures of my very own Indian food, largely North Indian dishes, these. There's masoor dal ( a red lentil curry), aloo paalak (potato and spinach curry), a perky little salad of onion. red chilli, lime juice, roasted cumin (jheera) seeds and nigella seeds (kalonji), a naan bread, a few strips of cucmber and a hot mixed vegetable achaar -- a preserved pickle. Off camera, I had a raita, which is a cooling relish or dip of yoghurt with a little cucumber plus some fresh mint on this particular day. You like?
कामे एंड एअत विथ में सम टाइम सून?

An unsuccessful attempt to introduce a new ingredient: Karela.

Right: I love bitter foods. Love them all. Since I first had karela, the knobbled bitter gourd, in Sindh Province, Pakistan, eleven years ago, I have been hooked.It's a funny-looking thing, the karela. The size of a medium courgette, it is dark green and with a lot of warts! And man, it IS bitter. But, in hot countries, this bitterness, with heat and salt, is comforting and cooling and I like it in damp Blighty, too.

Oh, while I'm at it, here's a link to my catering company. It does Indian food. This is really my hobby, you know www.calcuttascarlet.com

You can get Karela fresh (well, ish) in Asian markets, in cans (though I'm not keen) and, I have discovered,in the frozen foods section in Tesco. (Whence I buy fozen okra and fenugreek greens, by the way.) So try what follows. I've said it was unsuccessful in that I have always failed to get the Georgian husband to eat it. But hey, what do you expect from a man raised on grits. (No -- don't get cross: I love grits, too.)

To make an exceptional lamb keema with karela, try this.

Take about 450g minced lamb.
Also, two small onions. Now do this: chop the onions finely and sweat them in oil unitl they are golden brown. Then add a tablespoon of ground coriander and the same of ground cumin, a teaspoon of red chilli flakes and, perhaps. a dessertspoon of turmeric. Mix carefully and fry together for a couple of minutes. Now, add the lamb, turning it around carefully in the spices. You could also fry off the lamb in a separate pan to make sure it is properly browned. I would then add two large handfuls of karela, add a little water, some salt and pepper and bring to a high heat, then down to a simmer for twenty minutes before adding a good handful of fresh, chopped coriander.Check for seasoning and serve with rice. You may want to add a much more complex list of spices and flavourings: say, three cloves of chopped garlic in with the onion; a large piece of finely-chopped ginger; a dessertspoon of brown mustard seeds; a tablespoon of garam masala in at the end....Experiment, but do not overdo. एक्सपेरिमेंट बुत दो नोट ओवर दो!

Now, look at this lovely thali dish of mine, below. Here we have, from top left, clockwise:
ginger root
green cardamom
dried curry leaves
fennel seeds
masoor dal (red lentils)
black peppercorns
turmeric
kalonji (aka onion seed, or nigella)
whole cloves
cinnamon quills
red chillies
fenugreek seeds
cumin seeds


If you want to get yourself some stainless steel dishes like these --with or without the katori, the little dishes that can sit in your thali, if you like, nip ovet to this site, of which I have long been a great fan: www.spicesofindia.com

• Really, this curry, above, is a variation on keema mattar (minced meat with peas). I adore the hit of the bitter gourd with the savoury lamb mince. I might also like to increase the amount of chilli I use. I do sometimes stuff  karela, too, but as what I write here is often the shape of family meals down our way, it tends not to be often. I noticed that the Georgian husband had removed the slices of karela from his keema. Does he not know it's supposed to be a tonic and good for thinning your blood?
  

Vegetable samosa

In other words, subzi (in Hindi, for example) samosa!
 वेगेताब्ले समोसा
This is a bit of a weekend project. An essential form of childcare for me, as you may have surmised, involves a project with at least two children and a general writing off of the kitchen. Try this. I will say that you need to get the pastry nice and thin; other than that, don't fuss at the offspring: these will taste wonderful even if they have been dropped on the floor.

Makes 20-24.

180g plain white flour
Fat pinch of salt
4 level tbs soft unsalted butter

So, this is for your pastry. Get a child to do it (it'll get their hands clean! I'm joking, of course) and then finish off the rubbing in so that it's like fine breadcrumbs. Actually, I'm sure you know how to make pastry. Just add some water --say 5tbs, but take it bit by bit-- until you have a smooth ball and put it to one side. And an important thing about pastry is that it likes to be kept cool. Then it will behave better.

For the filling, try this for starters. As you get more confident, you could try adding other fillings: keema (minced lamb) some finely chopped chicken or even prawns. But always with potato: that's what makes these so good, I think.

4 medium potatoes, cut into small dice (or cook in larger pieces and then dice them when they are cooked)
1 onion, finely chopped
170g frozen peas
1 finely chopped red or green chilli
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper
1 dsp cumin seeds; ditto coriander: bash them up a bit first. Use a pestle and mortar.
1tbs finely chopped fresh ginger
1 dsp yellow mustard seeds
1 dsp garam masala

First, cook your potatoes until they are well done, adding the frozen peas just before they get to this point. You could also plonk a bit of frozen spinach in with them when they are cooking. Very good for you. Drain well and mash the potatoes and peas.

Now fry off the chopped onion in a bit of sunflower oil or ghee (clarified butter) and then add the spices. Don't let them burn. Cook gently for a couple of minutes and then add the potatoes to the frying pan. Mix well and cook for another minute. Taste, taste and see if you are happy. A little lemon or lime juice might be good here.

I have to say that the next bit is where I might disappoint Madhur Jaffrey or Vicky Bhogal. I roll my pastry out and cut it into about 24 squares and, having filled them with about a dessertspoonful of the mixture, I then fold them into triangles, folding the edges together neatly, dampening them down with a little water and trimming them, if necessary, with a sharp knife or my cooking scissors. If you want to be fabulously authentic, may I suggest that you repair to one of the above authors and follow their instructions for folding!

Now, the key points about samosas. Fry them slowly in shallow hot oil, turning once or twice, until they are golden brown and very crisp. Also, if you keep the filling to between a dessertspoon and a tablespoon, they should not explode. Keep the pastry thin and drain them well on kitchen paper after you've fried them and they won't be greasy, either.

I like these with a sharp tamarind and mind fresh chutney. Mix two tablespoons of tamarind paste with six tablespoons of water. It is watery, in case you were wondering. Salt and sugar to taste (although I dispense with the latter) and a big bunch of finely chopped fresh mint. OR, the same of tamarind and thick Greek yoghurt to taste with a good pinch of salt.

Alternatively, I was once served a lovely chutney for these which consisted of good thick yoghurt, tamarind paste and mint jelly from a jar. And a related household tip from my plumber which I cannot resist passing on: this thick green gelatinous stuff is brilliant for smearing on your taps and shower head in hard water areas. It clings, you see. Leave it overnight and your limescale is history. He advises you to go to Lidl for the best value mint jelly. It also has no bits! This is a jolly useful text, isn't it?