Recipes I Never Used, Using Herbs I Never Knew About Radha Eswar Photos by Janani Eswar How things rushed by in the rush of things How things rushed by in the rush of things What I saw when I paused - The importance of stopping to pause, to check, if we are on the right track... - A whole new world of various herbs, plants and trees that could oﬀer innumerable recipes... I was turning 35. Mother to three kids and busy with businesses that made me feel like I was some kind of pro. I built a house that my children like to call the chocolate house. We started with a small garden around it. All the fun I had as a kid while in gardens tended by my parents and grandparents came back to me and I started showing my children the pleasures of gardening. Somewhere between being the great kid of the gardens and becoming the dud of an adult, I had lost touch with keeping tab on my connection with nature. I had missed exploring the wonders of using natural, wild edibles in recipes that I knew my mom and grans were experts at. My engagement with becoming a professional made me become a toddler-adult who had to once again get connected to some of the most beautiful creations in the world… namely plants and trees. Fortunately, like a toddler, I was curious, passionately interested and ready to learn, explore and discover. Better late than never, I thought. Once I got smitten, there was no looking back. I grew younger in my mind with the wonder of what I experienced. The usual urud-dhal-with-rice dosas, wheat atta rotis, white rice and sabjis from the market soon got replaced with exotic dishes of various combinations and permutations. I started looking up to older women who loved cooking, with reverence, and pried their memories for recipes they knew as those of their great grand mom’s. The internet has been a boon to late toddlers like me and I rediscovered my innate connection to nature once again by looking up heroes and heroines who worked magical recipes with oh-so-many diﬀerent plants. Imagine my surprise when I learnt that Portulaca oleracea or pigweed is edible raw if you like. It loves to grow even on pavements! So many plants that I thought as weeds, suddenly sprang up clamouring for my attention, saying, “Hey, I have this power, I can make for a great dish. Don’t just pass me by!” All of a sudden one lifetime seemed very inadequate. i Chapter 1 Tea was no longer just dried leaves of Camellia assamica - It could be concocted with so many other herbs as well... Tea, for me, the adult toddler, was just the brew of Camellia assamica, made to dust or leaf powder and stashed in tetrapacks. Imagine my thrill on realising that Tulsi, lemon grass, henna fruits, dalimbe leaves, hibiscus, chamomile, Cassia angustifolia bark, rose, pudina, parijata flowers, flax seed, Cassia tora leaves and many other leaves and flowers also made for great teas without the side eﬀect of “cooked tea”. A dash of honey and a little bit of cardamom or cinnamon made these hot “teas” taste exotic. I soon became a fan of Aparna Sirur, a great Amchi expert who has so much to say about the use of herbs in Amchi cooking. Section 1 Herbal Tea Using Dalimbe, Goranti and Mysore Mallige leaves... Here is Aparnaji’s recipe for a herbal tea: Aparnaji says, 10 leaves of dalimbe leaves and goranti leaves with two jointed leaves from the Jasminum grandiflora plant should be boiled in one cup of water, with ¼ teaspoon of jeera powder and ½ spoon of dhania powder. Wait till the water starts to boil and then add half a cup of milk and jaggery or honey to taste. Makes for some healthy chai that can warm you nicely inside. 3 Chapter 2 My tryst with millets - Cereals other than sona masuri and refined atta Every day we should eat cereals, and those essentially would just be rice or wheat, right? Wrong! I have stopped ordering for 15 kg of rice I was getting into the routine of, like most South Indian families. I don’t order organic rice even of that quantity any more. Instead I buy fox tail millet, ragi, jowar, bajra flour and have fun making rice-like preparation out of saamai arisi. Navdarshanam, in Bangalore, sells multi grain flour, which can make for some good hot porridge or dosa. Jowar rava from Parisara, Bangalore, can substitute sooji rava any time. Amongst rice, I learnt that I could make some yummy sweet with black rice and jaggery like my granny used to make. I don’t know if you, reader, are as much as a toddler as I am in these things, but the truth is that we were once a millet-eating community, not the rice or wheat eating community we have now turned into! Section 1 Using millets in the place of rice and wheat - The way to eat without the fear of eating in an unhealthy manner I won’t forget the surprise I felt when I cooked navanne, like rice in my cooker! It came out fluﬀy and nice. Had my fears though when I wondered how my rice eating family would welcome this “experimentio” as they were fond of calling all my cooking. But what do you know! When the family gathered around it for lunch, it went down quite quickly amidst approving sounds. From then on, my experiments with millets have travelled a long distance. I can now make rotis, uppitu, kadubus or kozhakattais, simply porridge, payasam, rice-like preparation all with millets. The smaller millets make good equivalents for rice. The bigger ones could be ground, coarsely or fine and used either as rava or flour. You could even try and boil them and mix with an experimental vegetable salad to impress the more fussy eaters who like to have their dish looking exotic. :) 5 Chapter 3 Thumping on with Tamblis - The smart way to beat any heat I felt like a child of eight, when I first heard about tamblis. Imagine… so many diﬀerent ways of having buttermilk! You could have just a glass of cooling drink, or a tambli for general immunity using amrithaballi leaves, another one for mental tonic using brahmi leaves, still another using nugge leaves, one of everyone’s favourite using lemon grass, well how about one with garike hullu, not to forget the ones with doddapatre, dasavale, mango, jackfruit, dalimbe leaves, palak leaves, so many diﬀerent soppus, tulsi, tondekai leaves, rampatre, majge hullu and so many more. You could even find this roadside plant Euphorbia pillulifera and make tamblis out of it, says Aparnaji for better functioning of kidneys and lungs! Don’t crush this so called weed next time you see it by the roadside! Pay attention and act with care and respect! Section 1 The way to tambli - Simple logic to become a great tamblier Tamblis, you would be aware could be made from leaves, flowers, seeds, fruits or other plant parts. All you need to understand is that to an ogranne of mustard, you could add sometimes jeera, fenugreek, dhals or red chilli. To this you could add turmeric, powders of dhania, pepper, khas-khas, thil, garlic or ginger. Add chopped onions in combination with relevant companion ingredients. Add handful of veggies, soppus, fruit pulps, peels, leaves or flowers. Saute only those that need sauteing and not the ones that can be ground raw. Blend the mix with coconut and green chillies and add it to cooled buttermilk. Add hing where relevant and voila! I last heard you could prepare over 1,000 diﬀerent types of tamblis! Flowers include those of dasavale, banana, ixora, dalimbe, too. Leaves are a plenty that you could use. Pickles too have found their way into tamblis, especially cut mango or amla pickle. 7 Chapter 4 Chatpata chutneys and power-packed podis - Galaxies of side dishes... I’m sure just reading the title made your mouth water! :). Mine did just writing about this! Well, to cut the chase, I thought that grannies were super heroines as they could conjure up so many chutneys and podis, that tasted oh-so awesome! When I learnt that these could be made from wild edibles from forest floors or road side dumps, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of possibilities! Imagine my awe at those many people who wandered around forests, much before times of technology, learning what herb cured which disease…mind boggling, isn’t it? Well, these days, I do not fret much about what sambhar or rasam I need to come up with. I can conjure up many interesting chutneys and podis myself… with the most bizarre herbs a city-bred, buying-veggies-from-market person could ever think of. Here goes and believe you me, this is just the tip of the iceberg! I will not mention here the more unusual ones of doddapatre, amla and brahmi here or about surli kodi or honaganne soppu. Let me get a little more adventurous and talk to you about making chutneys from say, hulichikki, or takrike leaves, chakremuni, raw attikudi, and… that is just the beginning of it all… sigh… there are just too many options… Section 1 Tangy takrike chutney - When chutneys become medicinal but taste yum Making chutneys from leaves follows simple logic: Leaves that can be ground directly, mostly thin Kothamari soppu Leaves that need to be blanched - Surli kodi Leaves that need to be sauted as they are hard and thick but not succulent - Brahmi Now you are ready to make any kind of chutney! Takrike is like brahmi and needs to be sauted. So saute it with jeera, chilli, turmeric and some coconut. Add vaate hulli or tamarind, hing and salt and blend everything. Yummy chutney is now ready! Podis simply have roasted dhals like urud and bengal gram with roasted thil and red chillies. Saute slightly almost dried leaves or roasted leaves. Add hing and salt and grind everything to a coarse powder. Podis are great to mix with boiled millets...yes, I did not say boiled rice! :) 9 Chapter 5 Soppus galore! - Don’t be fooled... there are more soppus than meets the eye! They say there are tribes that use 92 soppus in their diet. You and I are used to, say, up to 10 that we sometimes see in the market? Please stand by. So many innocuous looking plants are potential soppus that many like us are ignorant about. Most times a foraging spree in the wild would be enough to give us a portion of our vegetable intake. I have learnt from a woman from the hills, special soppus I never used before like the surli kodi. The art of removing the tender rolled shoots of this soppu is something that engages my senses quite handsomely. Garagada soppu makes for a great liver tonic, I’m told. Chakota soppu, kasi soppu, Gongura soppu, brahmi, nugge, kare soppu, thudube soppu, thupekeere soppu, chitige soppu are again, just, some of the soppus you can have, if you can identify them amongst the forest ground covers, like a native can. Section 1 Making soppu from a weed - Did you know, most soppus are weeds that grow back easily... maybe that’s why they became food for humans and animals! Water spinach or Ipmoea aquatica is a weed looked down by most. Well, it can become wild, but if it does we could harvest and use it’s leaves for making delicious soppu. For this, roasted dhania seeds need to be added to leaves boiling in a little water till cooked well. Blend this into paste and add ogranne to it. Curry could be made from neer brahmi, an otherwise bitter soppu. Just add the chopped leaves to ogranne and garnish with coconut and some jaggery if you wish. Try soppus in not just saarus, but also in tambulis, kadubus, dosas, rotis, curries, kootus, pulaos and maybe boiled or raw in salads depending on leaf in question. But include them everyday in your food. With no carbohydrates and being rich in fibre, vitamins, beta carotene and sometimes medicinal ingredients, they make for best foods you need to eat. 11 Chapter 6 Rousing rasams - The hot health lean soup to wake you out of stupor Have you ever had rasam made with hippali? Well, you can never forget it if you have. Try it some time. How about neem flower rasam? If you wish to help someone cure their arthritis, do give them rasam made with agniballi. I read somewhere that some tribals use arrowroot for making rasam. Now that however, does not sound too appetizing, but I may be wrong! Section 1 Reasoning behind rasam recipes - Your cup of hot medicinal salt water... spiced up to serve diﬀerent needs Try your hand at amla rasam, just 10 amlas to 1/2 a litre of water. Or some healthy rasam with tulsi and tailed pepper. For this grind a handful of tulsi with five tailed pepper pods, tie this paste into a bundle to a boiling tamarind juice extract. If you can get hold of ambusondeballi, that can make a medicinal rasam, too. Just take a cup of its leaves, make a paste along with some tamarind and tomato (optional). Add water and nicely filter this paste into thin juice. Make ogranne, add to the watery juice to make rasam. Very good for cough, cold and for keeping your stomach in order. A rasam made out of leaves of wild snake gourd or musumuskai protects you from allergens and colds from irritants. So go ahead and try pudina rasam, nugge leaves or flower rasam or methi leaves rasam. Basically any medicinal part used appropriately with hot sour water and relevant additives to balance doshas makes for good rasam. :) 13 Chapter 7 Avatars of dosa, idli and roti - Making tiﬃns that intrigue Are you a parent whose kids complain, “Oh no! Not dosa again!”? Well, you need not worry any more. You can dress your dosas and rotis in diﬀerent ways by including varying ingredients in them. Try for example, dasavale leaf dosa, nugge leaf roti or agniballi leaf dosa. Have you tried making dosas using diﬀerent millets? No one will then complain of boredom with so much variety, I’m sure. Section 1 Keep your family guessing :) - You may never have to repeat a dish if you were smart Make dosas, kadubus, idlis or rotis with any of the following leaves. Try and use green gram dhal instead of urud dhal. Brahmi, Neeru sabbasege for memory power Nugge to remove constripation and better eye sight Dante for eye problems Basale and doddagoni soppu for ulcers Hullichikki soppu for any bleeding disorder, diabetes etc. Gongura leaves, and chicory leaves as liver tonics. Chakremuni, agase leaves for enrichment Leaves of dasavale and other herbs could also be used Try and make kadubus in turmeric leaves, or leaves of chanda kala. The taste is diﬀerent and adds to your health. Try all edible flowers, too. Enjoy maadi! 15 Chapter 8 Snacks to vie with fast foods - For that intermediate snack that would outshine fast foods Who says that you cannot beat fast foods? You can with delicious pakodas, pattis and bajjis made from diﬀerent millets and leaves like dasavale, basale, doddapatre and now I bet you will be bold enough to go out and learn t identify more wild edibles and use them to cook up some awesome dishes yourself! Have fun! Chapter 9 Radha Eswar Passionate about plants & trees. Child of nature. Mother of three lovely children. Social entrepreneur at heart. Wife to an innovator. Daughter, daughter-in-law; and relative to many, friends to more. People say they like having me in their team. Trained to be an architect. Self-trained to be a green architect. Love to remain a student of life. Wish to stay eight years old at heart. Is my eBook useful to you? Do write: [email protected] www.artyplantz.com