Feeling wonderful!!

Maid was on leave, mom was to return home at 10 p.m. after a hectic day at work and S didn’t feel like cooking. So I, the blogowner set out with newly found inspiration to cook more, from Asha, and with nothing else but the taste of my mother’s rassam or charu or whatever it’s called (!) to make dinner for the night.

I couldn’t think of any dish that I would want to try neither did I feel like finding the dusty old Sanjeev Kapoor and Tarla Dalal recipe books. So, like everytime I’ve made something for the first time, I trudged along with with only my instincts (which actually must be enough for seasoned cooks since my mom (and everybody else’s of course!) keeps coming up with new innovative ideas every now and then).

The charu I made-

Yea well, it doesn't look great but it did taste so! Yes, i have no modesty left in me!

It took me about half an hour to prepare the charu. It took me 10 more minutes to toast some bread and cut it in shapes. My mom was home by then. I immediately served all I had made (hot hot!! Yay! it all tastes best when it’s hot :)) and she, being the understanding mom who has spent 20 odd years of her life trying to make a slow-eater S eat while the food is still warm, got down to the eating business. Of course, she told me it was wonderful and called up my dad to tell him about the Sneha-making-actual-dinner story! God! That feeling, watching mom have the food I’d made was most heart-warming. I was so happy to actually see her…. Okay well, istead of trying to put the feeling down in words I’ll just leave it on the hindi saying – Khaane se zyada khilane me mazaa aata hai!

UPDATE!!!

Okay, so originally I had not included the procedure that I had followed to make this charu (I don't use the word recipe here, because it's not the real recipe!). Anyway, here goes....

1) I heated some oil (about 3 teaspoons) in a kadai and added a little mustard seeds, saunf or fennel seeds and asafoetida or hing powder till the mustard seeds spluttered (which was very early!!). I then addded some curry leaves, crushed ginger and about 3 cloves of garlic which had also been crushed.


These are mustard seeds!

Saunf (or fennel seeds)

Asafoetida Powder.


2) I then added some salt (to taste of course!), some curry powder, a little chilli powder and finally 3 (I didn't really know how many tomatoes I should be using, however since I was cooking for 3 people, i thought why not 3?!) tomatoes which had been cut in thin slices. The tomatoes were medium sized.

3) I cooked the contents of the kadai for a while (till the water from the tomato had almost evaporated). Then, I added about 3-4 cups of water (I was really generous with the water :)).

4) I added a lid and let the water come to a boil. After it came to a boil, I cooked it further for about4-5 minutes (till the salt-water balance came ie!) with stirring from time to time.

5) Then....... my charu was ready! :)

Enjoy!

PS. I added the pictures (which I found from the net) of those 3 components because I thought it would be easier for other novice cooks like me to figure out what all these ingredients actually mean. I didn't know those black chaunk seeds were mustard seeds till I googled it this morning!!