BackEasy suppertime in summertime
The kitchen is hot, the pool is cool. How to make the obvious choice without compromising on what you eat
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It is spring in Bengaluru. The jacaranda are laying down carpets of lavender, the cassia, carpets of yellow, and whiskery pink flowers leaven canopies of the giant trees. But it does not feel like spring. The days are hot, the people moan and the coolness of dawn and dusk is dissipating. Of course, Bengalureans always moan about how a city that is rapidly concretizing itself never needed fans in the “good old days". Change is never easy, and we who grumble our way through lives under the rain tree are particularly resistant.
But the world is changing, especially the weather, and particularly here in the northern hemisphere. This was the warmest February in recorded human history, and followed the warmest January, US space agency Nasa’s records revealed last week. So, the grumbling over the early onset of summer in Bengaluru could have wider, global meteorological underpinnings.
Whatever.
The fact is it is hot, and when that happens, my neural pathways linked to cooking start rewiring. My cooking becomes like breathing on a hot day—it comes in short gasps. Summer, as a wise man said, is when laziness finds respectability.
My laziness only extends to the kitchen. With Montessori winding down, I have a hyperactive five-year-old who is bouncing off the walls. It makes sense to spend less time sweating in my kitchen and as much time as possible in the swimming pool. Her freestyle and breaststroke are reasonably fluent, and she is fast in the water, this imp of mine, preparing to bounce through the sixth summer of her life.
Before she disrupted our lives, I described—in an early blog version of this column—cooking in my steamy Delhi kitchen, one man, unbowed by the season of 45-degree Celsius temperatures, triumphant.
Here is what I wrote in 2011: “This is not a time one should be sweating it out in a kitchen, but invariably, that is what one does. Come summer, and I find myself stripped down to shorts and that inescapably Indian garment, the banian, toiling over breakfast and dinner... What is it about summer that drags me into the kitchen? Why am I more productive in the heat than I am in the cold? Why do I find a kitchen of heat and dust romantic? Perhaps it is a sense of achievement that drives me, standing wild-eyed in the kitchen with those rivulets of sweat streaming down my face. Perhaps I revel in testing my limits, stretching my endurance—or perhaps I am just too much of a glutton."
Did I actually write this tripe? Although the glutton bit makes sense.
There is so little time, so much more to do now than I did then—and that imp to entertain.
So, my summertime sojourns in the kitchen are changing. Instead of perversely cooking things that require sweat and time, I now advocate the easy way out. QIQO (quick in, quick out) is the season’s philosophy. This does not mean one must compromise on quality. Indeed, thanks to my spouse’s guidance—she does not cook, but she is a great organizer and imbued, sometimes, with great common sense—I could produce two new quick vegetarian entrées. One was her own idea, the other procured over WhatsApp from a friend, Rohini Prakash, who comes from a Punjabi family that specializes in lightly spiced, quickly made—and incredibly delicious—food (more on the Prakashes in a later column). My contribution was a variation on a coastal Andhra recipe for steamed fish, light and lightly laden with spices, perfect for the season. What I’ve tried to do this week is to prepare a fast repast, so to say, that caters to people like me (fish) and, well, not like me (veggies).
Most of our food these days follows the QIQO philosophy, allowing us at least 2-3 hours in the pool after school, another hour beside it—bathing, snacking and staring at other children being tortured by coaches—and a tired but calm hour at home before bed.
The only thing that has not changed is our breakfast. Summer or winter, we eat dosa (oil-free), egg (half a spoon of oil) and chutney (with little or no coconut). On weekends, potatoes and sambar join the morning feast. We believe that a hearty breakfast sets you up for the day. In any case, the evening swim makes us ravenous early. The latest I and my daughter can survive is 7.45am—and she does so only because she’s had a full glass of milk at 7am. Her grumbling mother rebels at our early morning feasting and refuses to eat so early, but by 8.15am, she invariably gives in.
What can I say? We are a hungry family. I may go QIQO, I may change what we eat, but how much we eat is unlikely to change.
Green beans tossed with almonds
Serves 2
Ingredients
250g green beans, snapped into three pieces each
10-12 almonds, soaked overnight and peeled
4-5 large garlic cloves, smashed
1 split green chilli
Salt, to taste
1 tsp sesame oil
Method
Steam the beans for 2 minutes in a microwave steamer or on a stove. Set aside. Heat the oil in a non-stick wok. Add garlic and sauté for a minute. Add the green chilli and sauté for half a minute. Add almonds, then beans and toss for a minute, taking care to ensure they remain crunchy. Add salt.
Carrot with mustard seeds and curry leaves
Serves 1-2
Ingredients
2 large carrots, grated in medium strands
1 green chilli, split and chopped in half
5-6 curry leaves
Half tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp sunflower oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Salt, to taste
Method
Heat oil in a non-stick wok. Splutter the mustard seeds and curry leaves. Add garlic and sauté until it starts to brown. Add the chillies and sauté for 30 seconds. Add the carrot and sauté for 3-4 minutes or until cooked. Add salt.
Steamed fish, coastal Andhra style
Serves 2
Ingredients
Kingfish (surmai), three medium slices
7-8 curry leaves
4-5 large garlic cloves
Half-inch piece of ginger, chopped
2 green chillies
Half tsp tamarind concentrate
Sea salt
Method
In a mortar pestle, make a rough paste of the garlic, ginger, green chillies, sea salt and curry leaves. Apply the paste with the tamarind concentrate to the fish. Let the marinade stand for an hour. Wrap in foil and steam over a boiling pot of water for 15 minutes.
This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar writes the fortnightly column Frontier Mail for Mint and is the author of The Married Man’s Guide To Creative Cooking—And Other Dubious Adventures. He tweets at @samar11.
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