The deluxe life

Here she goes again, you think, boasting about her riches.
But listen to this story and why I am so exultant.
When I lived in Pune, and had just started cooking, 'foreign' vegetables were just coming into the market and priced to reflect their novelty. I didn't mind so much about asparagus and zucchini (yes, even zucchini was 'gourmet'!), but I did mind the parsley. At nearly 80 Rs for a couple of stems, parsley cost more than meat and so was never bought. A green-fingered friend did try to grow some for me, but the seeds never sprouted for him either.
When I came to Chatola, I discovered that a local organisation was selling herb starts. I bought garlic chives and rosemary and sage and of course, parsley. They all thrived. The parsley especially self-seeded as if it wanted to make up for the disappointment of a decade ago. Today, I need to just stretch out a hand to get parsley, but I still feel recklessly indulgent when I make a parsley-heavy dish like tabbouleh.
And today, G took me hunting for these.

Riches indeed. They have been lovingly cleaned and simmered in butter supplied by a neighbour.

Mian comes home soon. Dinner will be homemade pasta (made with our eggs) with morels, parsley and garlic- all from our garden.
Wallowing in luxury, we are.

The feeding tree

Life before chickens was simple. All I had to do was scatter grain on the ground, and the birds would visit. When the chickens arrived, they would not get a chance to eat the grain unmolested. And so I needed alternatives.

 Our lovely apricot tree provided the solution. It is aging now, and dying in parts. THe trunk is almost completely hollow, and I began to put grain into the hollow of the larger branches, and also scatter a little along the craggy trunk.

It seems to have worked.

Sparrows cluster to eat a roll of dough

White-cheeked bulbuls wait for their turn

A slaty tree-pie eating rice

The only real Vindaloo

The five stages of grief are a lie.

For me, grief is like the beach holidays that we would take when I was a child. Amma would sit on the beach while her daughters played in the water and watch us. The rule was that each time one of us got knocked down by a wave, we were to stand up. The idea was that Amma could know we were okay.

Of course, in practice that meant that I would get knocked down, flail wildly, manage to stand up spluttering, and get knocked over again by the even-bigger wave that had been rearing up behind me all this time.

I had thought that the nights of waking up because I was unable to inhale were past me. But then our wedding anniversary came up. I realised that Amma would not call me up to wish me that day or ever again. I bought a new pressure cooker and automatically reached for the phone to tell her and got punched one more time by the realization of loss.

Yesterday I decided to cook pork vindaloo for myself in that brand-new pressure cooker. Mian had been gone for a few days and I was tired of eating leftovers.  I made it properly using Amma's handwritten recipe; when I opened the mixer jar in which I had ground the masala I burst into tears. That was the smell of most of the happy times of my childhood.We had a lot of fun times around pork vindaloo- a special treat for us.

But here is her recipe.

As far as we are concerned this is the only authentic pork vindaloo recipe.  Make it and enjoy. If you don't eat pork, the masala paste is a great rub for any oily fish. If you are a vegetarian, I suppose you could try it on potatoes for a Goan version of patatas brava. But please, no chicken or 'mixed-veg'- that's just wrong.
I follow the recipe as she wrote it in my copy of Thangam Phillip's book, with one exception. Mum would cook the pork before cutting it small. I cut it into inch-or-smaller cubes before cooking and then pressure  cook everything together.

Pork vindaloo

Cut 1 Kg pork into small pieces. You need some fat in the pork, and we also keep the skin on.
Soak 15 kashmiri chillies in vinegar for two hours  (or you can just use kashmiri chilli powder)
Grind together- garlic cloves from one big head (or more) + 2 heaped tsp cumin+ 15 peppercorns + 5 green cardamoms + the soaked chillies + 3 nos of 2" long sticks of cinnamon + 10 cloves + 1/2 tsp turmeric + 1/4 cup of a dark vinegar (sugarcane or malt) + the pulp from a lemon-sized ball of tamarind (about 3 Tbs)
Slice 5 onions and maybe two or three fat pieces of pork thinly.
Heat a pressure cooker and 'dry fry' the thin slices of onion and pork fat. You don't need to add oil because the fat will render.
When it begins to brown, add the pork, the ground masala, salt, two bay leaves (the Indian kind, the leaves of cassia cinnamon) and just enough water to barely cover (less if your meat is very tender).
Let three or four whistles go, and then simmer for 20 minutes or so till tender.

Eat with rice or soft white bread. And beer. It's V.good, as Amma wrote.