Diwali with a Vegetarian Snack

Diwali-- the festival of lights. Rama's return from the forest. This is perhaps one of the most climatic holidays of the Hindu calendar, and yet, I hardly ever remember when it falls. It is my mother who each year sends me a brief e-mail: "Today and tomorrow are Diwali. Try to eat vegetarian food. Clean the house. Lakshmi only visits clean houses, and if there is anyone who needs the goddess of wealth's assistance this year, it is you. If you have time, make some sweets and share them with your family and friends. Do not forget to light the lamp in the evening. And have a Happy Diwali!"

Of all the tasks my mother has set before me, the one I find the most challenging is cooking and eating vegetarian food for two days consecutively. It is not that I lack ideas for a vegetarian meal, or that I do not like eating vegetables, but that I am married to a man who rarely finds meals without meat fulfilling. So with less than a day's notice, I must come up with something tasty, filling, and a far cry from flesh.

My solution: the ragda patty. It is the quintessential Bombay street snack: crunchy, sweet and sour, in short, addictive. The base is a potato patty, doused in a white bean stew, topped with a date-and-tamrind chutney and a coriander-and-mint chutney, and garnished with finely chopped onions and fresh coriander. It looks like a carnival atop a plate, and as strange as the ingredients may seem, it is a sound combination, feeding the hurried Bombay crowds for decades.

Ingredients:

For the patties:

4-5 medium sized potatoes

1 bunch fresh coriander

2 tsp. ajwain (if unavailable, use oregano)

4 garlic cloves

1/3 inch piece of ginger

2 tsp. chili powder

1 cup semolina

salt to taste

oil for frying

For the red chutney:

1 ball of tamarind, about the size of a walnut

1 1/2 of pitted dates

1 or 2 red chillies with the seeds removed

salt to taste

2 1/2 cups of water

For the green chutney:

1 cup of coriander leaves

1/2 cup of mint leaves

1-2 fresh green chilies

2 tsp. breadcrumbs

1/4 cup cold water

2 tbs. lemon juice

salt to taste

For the bean stew:

1-2 cups chickpeas and or other beans, soaked in water over night

1/2 tbs. cumin

1 tsp. asofoetida powder

1 tsp. turmeric

1 yellow onion, chopped

3-6 cups of water

For the garnish:

1 cup of coriander leaves, finely chopped

2-3 plum tomatoes, finely chopped

1-2 small red onions, finely chopped

To make the bean stew:

I always start cooking the beans, since they need at least an hour to cook. This way, while they simmer away, I can prepare all of the other components.

1) In a stock pot, heat up a few tablespoons of oil. When the oil is hot, toss in the cumin, turmeric, and asofoetida. Once the cumin starts sizzling, add the chopped onions.

2) Cook the onions until wilted and slightly golden.

3) Then add the beans, salt and enough water to completely cover the beans.

4) Cook for about an hour, until the beans are tender and all the flavors have melded together.

To make the patties:

1) Bring a pot of salted water to a steady boil. Wash the potatoes, and add them to the boiling water. Partially cover the pot, and boil the potatoes until cooked thoroughly but not falling apart.

2) While the potatoes are boiling, chop the coriander finely, and prepare the ginger garlic paste. Remove the skin of the piece of ginger, and add it, along with the cloves of peeled garlic, to the mixer with a few tablespoons of water. What you will end up with is a smooth and moist paste of ginger and garlic.

2) Lift potatoes out of the water and let them cool. As soon as they are cool, peel them, and mash them by hand. You need not make them smooth, just so long as the pieces are small, and the potato sticks together.

3) Add the ginger and garlic paste, the chopped coriander, and all of the spices, and mix well. Shape the potato mash into little round patties about the size of your palm.

4) Heat a thin layer of oil in a flat-bottomed pan.

5) One by one, coat the potato patties in the semolina and add to the hot oil. Cook for about 5 minutes, or until golden and crisp. Flip the patties and cook on the other side. To keep fried foods hot and crispy after frying, you can transfer them to a baking dish and warm them in the oven set to a low temperature. This way, when you serve the dish, the patties will taste fresh, as though directly out of the frying pan.

To make the red chutney:

1) Heat one cup of water and add the tamarind. Allow the tamarind to soak for at least fifteen minutes, and then squeeze it throughly. All you should have left in your hand are the strings and tough shell of the tamarind.

2) Heat the other cup and a half of water and add the dates. Allow the dates to soak for 15 minutes.

3) In a blender, mix together the tamarind pulp, the soaked dates, and the red chili, until you get a smooth paste.

To make the green chutney:

1) In a blender, blend together all the ingredients. The chutney should be thick but fluid. If it is too watery, add in some more breadcrumbs to thicken it.

Assembling the patties:

1) Place 2-3 ragda patties on a plate, and pour over a ladle full of bean stew.

2) Add one teaspoon of red chutney, one of green chutney, or as per taste.

3) Garnish with some chopped tomatoes, onions, and cilantro. Usually, in Bombay, the street chat vendors also toss on some sev, small bits of deep fried crunchy dough. If sev is available, do add that on as the final touch.

Plums for Mojca

This is a recipe born out of haste, but nevertheless adored by my friend Mojca. It’s best to use the small variety of plums for this dish that are available in the Central Market. They’re sweeter and more bite-sized than the Mercator variety. Mojca tells me these little plums are known as “bosanke,” which also happens to mean Bosnian women.

Ingredients:

For the plums:

½ kilo of small plums

¼ stick of butter

¼ to ½ cup of breadcrumbs

½ teaspoon of cinnamon

2-3 tablespoons of fruit liquor

For the sauce:

500 g of mascarpone cheese

1 to 2 eggs

¼ to 1/3 cup of sugar

2-3 tablespoons of fruit liquor

First prepare the sauce:

1) Separate the yolks and the whites of the egg. The number of eggs you use depends on how you want the texture of the cream to be. For a fluid sauce, use two eggs; for a more compact cream, use one egg. For the cream seen in the photographs, I have used only one egg.

2) Mix together the mascarpone cheese with the egg yolk(s). When it is thoroughly mixed, it will become a smooth cream with an off-white color.

3) Add in the sugar and mix until dissolved. I’ve left the sugar measurement a bit vague because you will require at least ¼ cup of sugar, and maybe more if you want it sweeter. I personally like it a little less sweet since I want the buttery flavor of the cheese to stand out and contrast the sweetness and tartness of the plumps.

4) Mix in the fruit liquor. I happen to have pear liquor (with a pear in the bottle!) at home, so I use that.

5) Beat the egg whites to a stiff and then fold them into the mascarpone mixture. Be careful not to stir too much!

6) Allow the cream to set in the fridge for about an hour.

Then the plums:

1) Wash plumps and cut each along its cleft. Remove the seed and separate the two halves.

2) In a wide saucepan, heat up the half of the butter on a medium low heat. When the butter begins to brown, it will give off a nutty smell. At that point, add in the cinnamon and let it fry undisturbed for about half a minute.

3) Then toss in the plums and stir them around, coating each in some cinnamon brown butter.

4) Allow the plums to cook for about seven to ten minutes. The very ripe plums should disintegrate into a sauce. If you see that the pan is a bit dry, add in about ¼ cup of water. This will encourage some of the riper plums to boil and fall apart, thus creating a sauce.

5) Set the plums aside in a dish. Some of the sauce will inevitably stick to the sides of the pan, but you can deglaze it with 2-3 tablespoons of the fruit liquor. Once you have scraped off as much as possible, add it to the plum mixture.

6) In the same pan, heat up the remaining butter on a medium low flame. When the butter has browned, toss in the breadcrumbs. Whether you use ¼ or ½ a cup of breadcrumbs depends on how much liquid the plums have released. While the breadcrumbs should soak up most of the liquid, the end result should still be very moist.

7) Allow the breadcrumbs to fry in butter for about three to four minutes. Stir regularly so that they do not burn.

8) Mix in the breadcrumbs with the plums, and set uncovered in the fridge to cool for about an hour.

9) There are two ways to serve this dish. If the mascarpone cream is thick, spoon it over the plum mixture after the plums have cooled for about half an hour. Dust the top with finely ground cinnamon. Then allow the two to set in the fridge for another half hour. The end result will be like a parfait that you can scoop out and serve. If the cream is thin, mix the two together only when serving. Pour out a ladleful of cream over a scoop of the plums, and finish off with a sprinkle of finely ground cinnamon.

Grüß Gott, Vienna!

As the train rolled past villages nestled in the bosom of evergreen hills, I couldn’t shake off a feeling of excitement. Vienna! Broad, shaded avenues and storefronts with glistening, beveled glass windows. Cafes with gold-frame Beidermeier mirrors and layered chocolate cakes sitting daintily atop crystal stands.

Vienna was what Ljubljana aspired to, throughout the centuries that Slovenia fell under Austro-Hungarian rule. The chandelier-fringed Café Europa along Slovenska Cesta or the white Art Nouveau Grand Hotel Union bear traces of a long-ago era when this provincial city emulated the culture and aesthetic of the imperial seat.

Though Ljubljana today stands as a capital in its own right, a lively city of nearly three hundred thousand, I still turn my eyes dreamily towards Vienna. For me, Vienna holds that big city promise of grandeur and action. As the three-bogy train chugged through the base of the Alps, I could relate to a turn-of-the-century Slovene’s anxiousness to reach what must have been the center of his universe.

Morning in Vienna was a regal affair. I drew open the heavy curtains to watch the empty street slowly illuminate in the rosy rays of the day’s first light. The buildings on either side stood white and tidy, like wedding cakes awaiting pick-up atop a bakery counter.

My husband Uros and I walked down the street to Café Central, housed inside what looked like a lonely turret from a medieval castle. We seated ourselves in booth besides the window, where a small placard shared a brief biography of novelist and frequent customer Stefan Zweig. Nearby us stood a rack of local newspapers, each fastened to a rapier-like wooden rod. Despite the tourist-friendly menu written in multiple languages, Café Central draws in mostly locals, who stop by for coffee, Kaiser rolls and the headlines en route to work.

We opted for the Viennese Breakfast, the centerpiece of which was a soft-boiled egg, balanced atop a flared ceramic dish that mimicked a baroness’s ball gown. With the back of his spoon, Uros cracked the top of the shell, and carefully peeled off the fragments. Then he plunged his spoon into the center of the egg, shaking up the warm and yolky interior.

“And to drink?” asked the waiter.

“Mélange,” Uros ordered.

“I’ll have the same,” I repeated.

Though the name is exotically French, the mélange turned out to be an unexciting incarnation of a cappuccino. The brioche, yet another French intruder in my Viennese breakfast, was one of the best croissants I’ve ever eaten: flaky and buttery, without leaving an oily film along my palette.

With our bellies full, we marched towards Hofburg, the imperial city of the Hapsburgs that stands in the dead center of Vienna. We passed by the Imperial Stables, outside of which tourists had gathered to see two Lipizzaner horses cross the road. One of the first things that Uros taught me about Slovenia was that these pristine-white stallions of Austrian fame actually hail from the town of Lipica across the border.

We entered the Hofburg from Michaelerplatz, where fountains graced with Nereids and mermen battling sea-monsters flank the main gate. As we strolled past the Royal Green House (home to a delightful eatery, Palmenhaus, that we have yet to try), perched above the gardens like a jewel box atop a velvet cushion, and toured the Schatzkammer where ancient crowns reveal the inspiration for the shape of the Kaiser Roll, I felt as though I had gained access to a forbidden city. Empress Maria Theresa, clad in silks, ermine and lace, must have stepped lightly over where I now stood. A sturdy wrought iron gate, boasting the crest of the Hapsburg while protecting their gold-trimmed buildings and manicured lawns, reminded me of where I was. I was at the center of a once-formidable empire, and from this vantage point, I could watch the world outside.

I jostled Uros. “From the plains of Pannonia to the palace of Vienna. Your great-great-grandparents would be in awe.”

He laughed, and we left the glorious Hofburg for a common man’s lunch at the Schweizerhaus, a bustling beer-garden on the outskirts of the Prater Park. Just about every table had ordered the house-specialty: a grilled rear-knuckle of pork, sold by weight. Our waiter swiftly carved out the bone, leaving us to tackle the knuckle with mustard, freshly-grated horseradish and a bowl of cumin-studded coleslaw. And so our Frankish feast began. The meat was moist and tender, and the fatty, crispy pork skin melted in my mouth. The mustard, horseradish and coleslaw formed a trinity of sweet, sour and spicy to liven the meat.

“Save room for dinner!” Uros warned me.

We had made an early reservation at Vestibül, a brasserie in the Bergtheater. This was my chance to wear my faux-diamond necklace, and dine in amidst triumphal arches, marble columns, and flamboyant potted palms. Uros’ entrée selection of catfish cooked in a stock of carrot, parsnip, and Pannonian saffron, served with a bed of cress was equally memorable. The broth was mild, with all the flavors united harmoniously. I later learnt that Vestibül has a reputation for dishes that incorporate saffron.

Sunday morning was as glorious as Saturday morning; golden light filtered in between the buildings to admire its shimmering reflection in windows. Uros and I started the day at the classic Café Bräunerhof (Stalburggasse 2, First District), with eier im glas, two shelled soft-boiled eggs served in a drinking glass. We ordered Kaiser rolls, and the waiter, dressed in a black suit with a white shirt, brought us a basket filled with rolls and brioches. We would be charged by however much we ate, a system that certainly tempts self-control. The café stocks English-language newspapers, and I soon lost myself in the fine print, sipping on a mélange that had long grown cold.

It was a brisk morning in a city quelled by Sunday. The tourists made their usual rounds, while the locals buried themselves in café newspapers or headed off to church dressed in neatly ironed clothes. We stopped for another coffee at the Kleines Café, a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop with green wooden tables set up besides the fountain in Franziskanerplats. Just as I was about to lose faith in Julius Meinl and the Viennese coffee tradition, came an outstanding mélange. We drank slowly, watching the crowds pour out of the gray Franciscan church: boys chatting to girls who had kept their hair open, old couples with their arms interlocked chatting with young couples with their arms similarly interlocked, toddlers bundled in sweaters running about, with their mothers fretting that they may trip over the cobblestones.

When the crowd dispersed, we too left and made our way over to Österreicher in Mak, a contemporary restaurant housed in the Museum of Applied Arts. The menu is seasonal, serving classical Viennese dishes as well as modern twists on old favorites.

“Weinerschnitzel,” Uros said as he scanned the menu. “Can’t leave Vienna without trying that.”

I selected the breast of muscovy duck with honey-thyme cabbage and hazelnut dumplings. Uros enjoyed his weinerschnitzel, and since I do not eat beef, I poked at the tasty sides of cold potato salad, lamb’s cabbage and lingonberry jam. My slices of duck were moist and tender, though the cabbage and the drizzle were a bit salty. What intrigued me the most however, were the hazelnut dumplings, boiled and coated in butter, served with a few fried gooseberries. We skipped dessert, though the nuss schmarren, a mashed pancake mound that arrived on the table besides us, looked like a sweet and buttery heaven.

Back home within six hours, Vienna seemed like a dream, of nutty dumplings and sprawling fountains, of the stately buildings and saffron broths. As I walk through the center of Ljubljana, I at times crave Vienna, perhaps as much as much as these streets do.

Sunday Lunch in Murska Sobota

Out of Ljubljana, there is a road heading east to Budapest. Today this road is a six-lane highway, smooth tarmac with eager white lane-dividers. But once this was an unassuming dirt road, trampled over by the Ostrogoths, the Avars, the Lombards, and other avid tribes from the steppes of Central Asia, intent on settling in Europe. Even the Romans traversed this route, though in the opposite direction from their nomadic precursors, during their conquest of the plains of Pannonia.

The road east cuts through cornfields that stretch out undisturbed towards the horizon. Atop each cornstalk sits a cluster of tassels, which when viewed from a distance, creates a purple haze, like the smoke from a sorcerer’s brew, floating over the field. Poplar trees that dot the road are the only vertical challenge to this otherwise flat and unvaried landscape. As Uros and I head along this ancient route, our thoughts are not filled with the legacy of the Ostrogoths, the Avars, the Lombards, or even the Romans, but with a far more mundane matter: what we are going to have for lunch. We go to Murska Sobota, a quiet city of thirty thousand in the heart of these Pannonian flatlands, to visit his maternal and paternal grandparents, who share their love through three-course meals.

Babi Sida and Dedi Mirko live in a two-story house of a wooden and concrete frame, topped with a sloping roof. Their house sits in the center of the city, along a road that sees few cars and few pedestrians. Behind their house, stretches a large garden that shares a boundary with the grounds of a Renaissance castle that once belonged to a feudal Hungarian lord.

Babi Sida is a passionate gardener and tends to her flowers with great affection. A sprawling rosebush climbs along one side of the house, while on the other side, stand short but productive rhododendron plants. In wide pots on the balcony outside of her bedroom, Sida rears tall stalks of hibiscuses, which bloom into regal yellow, orange, and pink flowers.

Dedi Mirko tends to the fruits in the garden, the pear, plum, apricot, and peach trees that yield enough for jams and compotes to last throughout the winter. On our recent visit, the boughs of the apple and pear trees were laden with fruit, while only a few ripe peaches remained for picking.

The garden is the source of the vegetables that find their way into the kitchen. Luscious, fist-sized tomatoes, belonging to the “cow’s heart” variety, appear at dinnertime, cut in slices set on a ceramic plate. My husband eats them with a sprinkling of salt, but I prefer eating their juicy, fruit-like flesh plain. Sweet, pale-yellow paprika joins the tomato as another raw accompaniment to slices of the region’s Prekmurje ham and braided milk bread that form the crux of the day’s final meal.

Dinners are simple in an effort to counterbalance the extravagance of lunch. The first course is always a soup, followed by a heavy meat dish, and finished off with something sweet: a small square of cake, a helping of baked rice pudding, or maybe a scoop of chestnut puree, served with fresh whipped cream. And to cleanse the palette and aid digestion, or what I perceive as indigestion, a cup of Turkish coffee.

For Sunday lunch, Sida had prepared an elaborate baked roll: under a thin shell of phyllo dough, layers of Swiss chard, gouda cheese, grated carrot, sautéed mushrooms encased a chunk of pork loin. What an unusual but beautiful and tasty combination! When the roll came out of the oven, the vegetables were warm, the cheese had melted, and the pastry was moist yet flaky. Each slice of the baked log is colorful and geometrically balanced. When I asked Sida what it is called, she shrugged her shoulders. “A baked roll with vegetables and meat, I suppose,” she said. Though this may be her invention drawn from over fifty years of cooking experience, its colors and emphasis on patterns strikes me as something from the Middle Ages, a dish that perhaps may have been served to the Hungarian lord of the neighboring castle.

Dessert was yet another phyllo dough ingenuity; the flaky layers sheltered a moist walnut and chocolate cake. We eat the this course on the verandah, in between jokes and sips of sweet, hot Turkish coffee.

Bread and Zucchini Lasagna

Don’t be quick to discard old bread; so long as it hasn’t become moldy, it can still be put to good use. Using bread slices in lieu of pasta to separate the layers of lasagna is one of the many ways to revive stale bread. It’s a clever twist on a classic Italian dish: the bread soaks up the sweet tomato sauces, becoming slightly moist while retaining its shape, texture and chewiness. And in between these slices of bread sits a colorful medley of melted mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, and flour-dredged and egg-battered fried zucchini strips. You’ll never again underestimate stale bread.

Note on the bread: For this dish, I recommend a hearty, chewy peasant’s bread. At my neighborhood Merkator, I purchase malnar, which is a light and chewy wheat bread, similar to but slightly bit denser than ciabatta. I’ve never tried this dish with pre-sliced loaves of bread, though I am sure it will work, so long as the bread you’re using has some density. Since pre-sliced breads are so thin, you’ll need to use slightly less sauce so that the bread does not become too soggy.

Ingredients:

2 to 3 mid-sized zucchini fried into strips

2-3 cups of sweet tomato sauce

300g or ¾ cup coarsely grated fresh mozzarella cheese

½ cup coarsely grated Parmesan cheese, or less if using finely-grated cheese

½ to ¾ a loaf of a stale, hearty peasant’s bread like malnar

¼ cup of toasted finely-powered breadcrumbs, or ½ cup of larger, crouton-sized breadcrumbs

1) Follow this recipe to fry the zucchini.

2) If you have prepared and frozen some sweet tomato sauce, set it to defrost in the fridge the night before you plan to make this lasagna. Otherwise, prepare a fresh batch using this recipe.

3) Cut the bread into ½ inch slices. The amount of bread you will require depends on the size of your casserole dish. The casserole dish that I use at home measures 7½ by 7½ inches, with a depth of about 4 inches. I managed to fit in two layers of bread, which required a little more than ½ a loaf of malnar.

4) Coarsely grate the mozzarella cheese, so that it is crumbly, and the Parmesan cheese. Toss the two cheeses together and set aside.

5) Preheat the oven to 200° C.

6) Place the slices of bread on a baking sheet and allow them to toast for about five to ten minutes. You want the bread to dry out partially, so that the top and bottom sides are dry and crunchy while the inside is still a bit moist and chewy. This way, when it is time to layer and you pour over tomato sauce, the bread will absorb the sauce and become moist but not soggy.

7) Once the bread is out of the oven, allow it to cool for five minutes. Then you can start layering.

8) Coat your casserole dish with a thin film of olive oil. Ladle out some tomato sauce and spread it over the bottom of the dish. You want only a thin layer of sauce on the base; you should be able to see through it to the base of the casserole dish.

9) Now cover the layer of sauce with slices of bread. You need not worry about covering every empty spot with a piece of bread.

10) Then begin to layer the strips of zucchini. I like doubling up on the zucchini, so that after the first layer of strips, I scatter some more tomato sauce, then I start placing the next layer of zucchini over that.

11) Scatter a generous handful of the cheese mixture over the zucchini, then cover with another layer of zucchini.

12) Top with some tomato sauce, then cover with more slices of bread. This is the second layer and last layer of bread.

13) Spoon some more tomato sauce over the bread, and then cover with yet another layer of zucchini.

14) Over this final layer of zucchini, scatter another generous handful of the cheese mixture.

15) Cover the final layer of cheese with the finely powdered or the crouton-sized breadcrumbs. I used the larger variety because that was what I had handy, though normally, I like using a mix.

16) Then set to bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Check intermittently to make sure the top layer of breadcrumbs does not burn. Keep in mind that all parts of the lasagna are already cooked, so the only purpose for baking it at the end is for the cheese to melt and the flavors to meld. Once you see that the cheese has melted, it is can be taken out of the oven.

17) Let the lasagna cool for about 5 minutes so that it does not fall apart when you cut it and serve it.

This recipe has been adapted from Lidia Bastianich’s cookbook, “Lidia’s Family Table.”