dedicated to my mother-in-law who died 26 years ago in december
On that sultry August afternoon in Madras I sat next to her on our blue rexine sofa and tried to capture on paper the recipes that were only in her head; recipes of the food that my husband had grown up with that she made so well; recipes of the simple masala curry and the complex boondi ladoo and everyone’s favourite, the paal paayasam.
Roast the coriander powder till the raw smell disappears, she said, and I wrote it down not knowing what it really meant till I tried making the masala curry in a graduate student apartment in Iowa City with the unfamiliar pots and pans that I had picked up at the Salvation Army Thrift Shop. The fragrance of roasted coriander soon started traveling around town with me on the second-hand parka that also came from the Salvation Army store.
Boil the sugar syrup till frog eyes pop, she told me but I never picked up enough enthusiasm to attempt the ladoo on my own, let alone hunt for the rimmed multi-holed ladle that is such an essential utensil to make boondis for the ladoo. I resigned myself to dreaming about the soft sugary delight that was the boondi ladoo; this particular version was becoming a lost art even in Madras.
The paal paayasam I did perfect and not just on the stovetop. I created an adaptation of the recipe to make in the high-end microwave oven that my husband brought home one day from the Sears in Gainesville as a surprise. We had, by then, started accumulating our material possessions because he had a job and we had already taken care of the necessities like the music system and a Sony TV.
The high-end microwave oven served us well for twelve years before it lost its mind - the computer chip that Sears couldn't replace because nobody used such complex microwave ovens any more. But my handwritten notes on yellowing paper have survived. I still use them to make paal payasam when our married daughter comes home. One day these scribbled short-hand notes will be hers to decipher.
1 comment:
I, too, have many yellowing pieces of paper with my grandmother's handwriting on them. Recipes for my favorite cookies, jams and pies. I have mastered none, attempted few, yet they are among my most cherished treasures. Beautiful, Lakshmi!
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