odzer's blog

The idea of making one’s own bread is always appealing. One of the reasons I love baking is that it makes the house smell good. So I decided one evening that the next day I would want my own bread. So I let the dough rise the whole night after introducing a yeast culture. The bread I settled on baking was Focaccia, an Italian pizza like bread that can have a number of toppings.
After the dough had risen, I rolled it out in a baking tray and topped it with some green pimento olives, usually its done by using black olives but I decided I wanted a variation and the sad fact is I just had not eaten the olives and forgotten about them. So after I fetched the jar from the deepest darkest recesses of my fridge all I had to do was chop the olives up on the bread. As the recipe calls for inundating the dough with olive oil, I did the same. Finally I put some mixed herbs on top. You can basically just use whatever herb you fancy. Oregano is as good as Rosemary or whatever.

Although the bread is good by itself I wanted to eat it with something because I wanted to make a meal out of the whole thing so I chose to eat it with Ratatouille. I ate a cold meal because the temperatures here can put you off sometime. I think the bread baking experience has been nice and I might try some variants in the future.

Some days ago I wrote a post about Indian love with Milk. India is also a country that loves its sweets. One of the most interesting aspects of Indian culture is the “Goli” or the “Mithi Goli”. Perhaps as with everything I write on it is only confined to the part of the country where I live but nevertheless for the sake of convenience I will address it as a uniquely Indian characteristic. A “Goli” usually in Indian parlance refers to a candy. However it also has another sweet meaning, it is something that can be vaguely described as behaviour or words that are used to escape from an undesirable act or situation. The easiest way to understand the Goli is to perhaps to give an example in its most western equivalent, the classic “Your check is in the mail.” Or “Don’t call us, we will call you.”

However Indians take this art to a new high. You can come across it almost on an every day basis. Companies use it, people use it and even the government seems to pass a Mithi Goli now and then. When my Dutch business partner and I started working together to set up an outsourcing business in India we came across the goli so much that soon even my Dutch partner started to recogonise this term. We made deals with many IT companies who promised us efficient, time bound delivery. Nothing of course ever came out of such deals. Every time they had a new excuse for not delivering on time and wanted more time. Some lied to us at the beginning that they were equipped to handle the work but later we discovered that they had no such capabilities. Slowly we learned the ropes after opening an office for which we had employees, which managed to slip us some golis as well. At the end I have perfected a system in which is nearly goli-proof.
However in my personal life things are not always that perfect. I am still golied at times. Take for example this huge Indian bank who wanted me to set up an account with them. They called me up and made an appointment. I waited and waited and no one showed up. The next day they called and pretended as if nothing had happened the previous day and again sought an appointment. I again gave them the time and this time I get a call around the time when their person was supposed to visit me and the woman on the phone says :

“Sorry our executive is a bit late”
I reply, “I do not want to do anything with your bank anymore, If I can not even trust you with an appointment. How can I trust you with my money?’’
End of conversation….

A while later the phone rings again and its her again and she has the nerve to tell me that they were only a little late! However this is just a small instance. In the month of December I purchased a new air conditioner. The guys sent by the store where I purchased it installed the air conditioner. When I tried to use it a few weeks ago it did not work. I called the people who installed it and they passed me to the store. The guy at the store passed me on to the company in question who manufactured the product. The company shrugged me off saying they did not install it. So I was tired of all this wrangling and decided to get my neighbour to send me their air conditioning people. They arrived and did another shoddy job. Now I had no option but to keep chasing these people and so I began calling them. Every time they answered and told me they would be at my place in ten minutes but no one ever showed up. I must have called close to 100 times in 4-5 days. Sometimes there would be no answer. Finally they got the message that I would not give up and demanded more money to fix something that they should have taken care of in the first instance and I was so aghast at their attitude I wanted to throw them out but I had no option but to use them because I wanted to hold them accountable. So I used them and paid them a bit more.
Now I am not saying that people do not lie, cheat or loot people in other countries by any means. What I am saying very clearly is that in India it happens more often than anywhere else that I can think of. I have never been cheated and lied to so much anywhere other than here. So the next time someone here assures you that it would be done, think twice. Although you will have no choice but to take their word, do not be completely sure that they will ever deliver because the art of Goli my friends is perfected here. This is the reason that India will never be a developed country — ever! Do not be taken by any propaganda that you may hear otherwise. If people do not stick to deadlines or if they do not deliver as they promise how can you ever trust them? Sure they are cheap but ultimately the charm of cheap wears off.

Every culture has a comfort food. It seems for many guys here it is Rajma-Chawal or Kidney Beans and Rice. Every boy will swear that his mother makes the best Rajma. Even though I am not so fond of eating beans I decided to cook this particular lunch because even I admit I feel nostalgic for this sometimes. Rajma is so popular in India that you can find it on the menu of every small restaurant and even South-Indian chains like “Sagar-Ratna”.

Even though these beans take a long time to cook because they are not sold here in cans and even long longer to digest and they always end up giving me a lot of flatulence. I decided to make cumin rice along with the Rajma. Here in this part of India we do not eat rice everyday and whenever we do eat it, we sort of make a big deal out of it. Basmati is popular though expensive and sometimes people will make a pulao or at least make cumin rice when they are expecting guests. I also made a mixed raita for lunch. Raita is basically a yogurt side dish. I simply added fresh crushed mint leaves and some red chilli powder and black pepper to mine.

Indian people are usually not good at salads and as such the traditional Indian idea of a salad is just vegetables that are cut either finely or in big chunks and put together. The usual seasoning is just lime juice. However I kept up the tradition and did the same here.

This weekend I wanted to cook something that would be quick but would at the same time make me very happy. I thought of calzone. A calzone is nothing but basically a folded pizza so that the toppings become the filling. It has been a long time since I had any and I do not really particularly agree with the calzone’s that most commercial pizza chains sell here anyway. So I made my favourite kind, roasted eggplant calzone. I would have added chicken but there were two problems, one I did not have any and second I was too lazy to cook it. So I settled for the next best thing—Chicken Ham.
I have added Tomatoes, green Bell Peppers, and Gouda Cheese to the calzone. Usually the cheese that goes in to the calzone is a soft cheese like Ricotta with something like Mozzarella thrown in. However the quality of Mozzarella is terrible here so I completely skip it. Imported things are quite out of my price range so I settle for some cheap Indian made Gouda, which is quite decent. Unfortunately since its warm these days an I often feel exhausted due to the heat by the end of the day I sat a bit too long outside in the veranda in my favourite cane chair with a glass of Iced tea and it was a tad over done. I think I am thinking of doing a spinach calzone next time.

Last night as I sat with a friend we began discussing how Indians deal with Milk. I have a feeling that a lot of people especially housewives spend the better part of the their day just struggling with Milk. Those who have not ever been in India would not of course know of this fascinating obsession that most of North-India has with the white liquid. So I have decided to split this post on how both rural and urban Indians have a rather milk centric life.

Rural India:
5:00 Am: Wake up and milk the buffaloes and cows.
5:30 Am: Feed the animals
6:00 Am: Make a fire outside in the wood stove to boil the milk.
7:00 Am: The man of the house leaves to sell the milk.
8:00 Am: Go to the fields to get fodder for the animals.
10:00 Am: Chop the fodder in a hand rotated machine.
(Many people lose their limbs while doing this; it’s not such an uncommon sight in villages to people missing the good old right hand)
11:00 Am: Churn the milk; separate the buttermilk and butter.
12:00 Pm: Send the buffaloes out for their daily bath.
1:00 Pm: Use the churned butter to make clarified butter
(This is a particularly noxious process and makes the whole neighbourhood stink. It is done in cities as well by some people)
2:00 Pm: Serve lunch with loads of fresh butter.
3:00 Pm: Fight with the neighbours about your cattle trespassing on their land.
4:00 Pm: Collect the buffaloes and bring them home.
5:00 Pm: Feed the cattle again.
7:00 Pm: Start boiling the milk for making yogurt
8:00 Pm: Mix in the yogurt culture and leave it to set.
9:00 Pm: Serve the leftover milk to the whole family to drink.
10:00 Pm: Check on the cattle and sleep.

Urban India:
Most urban Indians are nostalgic about the time they have spent in villages and remain strongly connected to their milky ways. So how does your average urbanite spend his or her day?
6:00 Am: Wake up and stand in a line outside your favourite milk dairy.
Or
7:00 Am: Wait eagerly for the milkman to arrive.
7:30 Am: Complain for at least 10 minutes to the milkman about the quality of the milk.
8:00 Am:  Boil the milk.
9:00 Am: Force your child to consume at least 400ml of the nauseating stuff that is passed off for milk in cities.
10:00 Am: Refrigerate the milk.
11:00 Am: Complain to the maid about her dish washing skills and how doesn’t clean the milk patila (sort of a utensil used to boil milk) properly and how it still has milk stuck to it.
12:00 Pm: Make a cup of tea from the previous days leftover milk for yourself and the maid.
1:00 Pm: Make sure the maid has left when you churn the cream in to butter.
2:00 Pm: Serve lunch makes sure use loads of butter.
3:00 Pm: Drink Lassi, a yogurt drink that you prepare yourself.
4:00 Pm: Drink Chai with loads of milk, force your child who is now back from school to have yet another glass full of milk.
5:00 Pm: Wait for the evening milkman.
(Yes some people actually have two!)
5:30 Pm: Complain to the evening milkman about how the morning milk is far better than his!
6:00 Pm: Boil milk again.
7:00 Pm: Refrigerate the milk.
8:00 Pm: Heat milk for setting yogurt.
9:00 Pm: Force the whole family to consume one glass each of the precious liquid.
10:00: Have a nightmare about having left the milk unrefrigerated and wake up to check on it.

As for me I use milk out of a carton just like ‘normal’ people do! I guess that makes me dull and boring by most accounts. I can’t really remember when I actually drank a glass full of it but I do use it in my tea. I purchase a carton of yogurt and a packet of butter. So not all Indians are milk crazy. However I think the milk obsession occupies almost hysterical proportions in this country. So much so there are whole seasons when milk just vanishes and you cannot lay your hands on it. I think a lot of Indians even if they suffer from lactose intolerance will drink huge quantities of it in the belief that it brings them good health. Milk also has huge sexual connotations for people here; most Indian people relate a glass of milk with having sex somehow or better performance. Even though a lot of people think of themselves as ‘vegetarians’ in India they will happily drink ounces upon ounces of milk and consume milk products rather happily. Sometimes just to tease them I ask them “What do you think happens to male calves?”…..

Priyank Says :

To add some spice to our rather routine blogging life, Odzer and I collaborated on this photo-blog post. It shows certain common urban features in Toronto (Canada) where I live and Chandigarh (India) where he lives.I loved doing this interesting post.It was very interesting to do this post. The standardization of cities around the world amazes me. All these pictures are from my neighborhood and I am always armed with my camera, taking hundreds of pictures.”

Odzer Says :

Some days ago Priyank and I have decided to collaborate and create a photo post together. The idea was to find common aspects between the cities of Toronto and Chandigarh. At first I thought it would be radically different but at the same time having seen some cities in various countries I thought it shall also be boringly same. The results are for all of you to view in the pictures here. I really enjoyed going around the town taking pictures and since I live in India at least on two occasions people actually came up to me and asked what I was doing. At one time when I was taking the graffiti picture an old couple walked up to me and asked a friend who was with me at that time what the graffiti meant. When I was taking a picture of the man hole cover a chai-wala boy (a boy whose job it is to deliver tea), wanted me to photograph him instead of the manhole. He was very annoyed about the fact that I was wasting my time taking pictures of a gutter cover. He actually would not even budge from my shot. I think that both of us agree that we will be doing a bit more of posts like this in the future. Not only does it make for us a nice change from our regular posts but also gives us an interesting activity for half a day or so!

This weekend I decided to cook a casserole dish. Rather it was an idea from a friend with a vegetarian girlfriend. I really hate the idea of ‘changing’ a dish to suit someone’s eating preferences but somehow I liked the recipe and I said to myself, ‘what the hell’. So I am not going to rant on and on about how terrible vegetarian people are and how they cause endless suffering to those around them but move on to talking about the dish itself…..

So as far as Toad in the hole is concerned it is one of those dishes that the UK people seem to have put together in their sleep. Chunks or big pieces tossed in a dish and left to cook. It is often said that if you do not know how to cook, cook something British and no one will ever notice. However apart from the obvious ugliness of this particular dish it came out to be rather tasty. I am sorry though you will just have to take my word for it.I added carrots, tomatoes, corn, french beans, onion and garlic to the dish. The base was composed of flour, eggs and mustard. As this dish bakes it floats to the top and rises up much like how a doughnut does when you fry it. The only difference is that the dish only uses about 2tbsp of oil. I think I may want to do a more genuine version of Toad in the hole in the future, provided I can lay my hands on some good sausages……

I have made Yakisoba or what is known more popularly as chowmein today. Although I like noodles I do not eat them very often. I decided that I should eat my yakisoba with a fried egg. I love breaking up the egg yolk in to the noodles and eating it that way. As I have posted in a blog earlier as well one of the main concerns with chowmein is the quality of the noodles themselves. As you might notice I have skipped cabbage in my chowmein. Not that I have anything against cabbage but most of that particular vegetable in Chandigarh seems to be infested with tapeworm which can cause serious brain complications due to cysticercosis. In fact this city has the highest known rate of this particular disease anywhere in India. So I would only eat cabbage when it is well cooked like for example in a soup.

In fact while on that topic what is interesting to note is that most people who get weird food poisonings mainly get them through things like salads, raw fruit etc. Meat products usually are cooked well so parasitical infestations are usually rare. Anyway I am happy to be blogging again after a break due to some insanely busy schedules. I hope to put a few blogs yet this coming week.

Yesterday one of my friends has found a mulberry tree and it was full of fruits. He brought some berries for me. I have always loved eating mulberries and I remember them well from my childhood. When I was a kid we lived near this forest which had many bushes of mulberries growing. I would go around collecting them on warm sunny days and when I had a huge collection I would gobble them all up.

Mulberries sort of leave rather nasty stains. So if you are eating them you have to be rather careful about the leaving stains on your clothes. In fact even if you just use your fingers to eat them they will turn them all blue! My friend told me that the place where these berries grow in the city has not many people who seem to be interested in eating them. However a camel seems to have devoured most of them. I was quite upset initially when I heard about the camel eating the mulberries instead of me!