AJI’S VALACHI USAL
One of the Konkani Maharashtrian dishes my Aji [dad’s mother] used to make was a valachi usal—a lentil preparation of rangoon val (field beans) in a curry made from garam masala, jaggery and coconut. The dish is usually made with beans that have been sprouted and skinned, but she always made it with whole, unsprouted beans with their skin on instead.
As delicious as this preparation was, what really made it special was the way my Aja (grandfather) and dad ate it. Each bean was picked up individually, held gingerly between the thumb and forefinger, before they carefully bit off the hilum [the scar where it joined the plant] and squeezed the cotyledons through the skin and onto their tongues. The leathery, translucent skins were then discarded into a growing mound on their thalis.
Being the good Akerkar grandson and son that I was, I quickly learned this idiosyncratic, painfully involved Akerkar way to eat this lentil preparation. My mother would crack up watching us men carefully nibbling through the lentils, one bean at a time! But it taught me early on that food, to be truly appreciated and savoured, must be eaten patiently and with mindfulness and purpose.
OMA’S STEAK TARTARE
As a child, whenever I visited my grandparents in New York, my German Jewish Oma (grandmother on my mother’s side) would take me along on her chores, and the highlight was getting a cookie or some freshly baked treat at the Jewish bakery, or a slice of bologna or mortadella from Lester, the local butcher, while he attended to Oma’s order. Very often, this comprised freshly ground sirloin which Oma transformed into the most delicious steak tartare as soon as we got home. I was always amazed at how deftly she combined the meat with finely chopped white onion, capers, cornichons, anchovies, egg yolks, mustard, parsley, thyme, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, which we devoured with fresh rye bread crisps.
The key to making the perfect tartare, I learned, had more to do than simply combining these ingredients in a bowl. It was about the freshness of the beef, the grind and textural quality of the meat, and the right sequential way to combine everything. It made me appreciate how good food depends on an uncompromising attention to detail in sourcing and using the right ingredients.
AJI’S MODAKS
The end of the monsoons meant the arrival of the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, and all the edible goodies Aji made in celebration of Lord Ganesha. Chief of these were her ukadiche modaks—a steamed, teardrop-shaped, rice-flour dumpling with a sinfully delicious stuffing of freshly grated coconut, jaggery and cardamom cooked with ghee. When it came to downing modaks, I regularly competed with Ganesha, devouring close to the 21 modaks offered to him during the festival. I ate many of these sitting with Aji in her prayer room, and while I may not have understood it at the time, it opened my eyes to the almost spiritual connection one can have with food when it is prepared and shared with love.
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ORECCHIETTE WITH RICOTTA, WALNUTS, BROWN BUTTER AND SAGE
In my twenties, I spent five summers in Calabria, where I learnt most of my Italian cooking from the family of a girl I was very in love with. One of the dishes involved making orecchiette, a pasta shape that resembles ‘little ears,’ by hand, with a sauce of ricotta, brown butter, walnuts and sage. It’s a simple, delicious dish where the woody, nuttty flavours of the browned butter and walnuts perfectly balance the creamy cheeses and fresh fragrance of sage. Many years later, I fell in love with and wooed another girl, albeit this time in Mumbai; and yet strangely somehow connected to this same pasta dish. She was dating someone else at the time, so I invited them both over to the house for dinner, cooked them the orecchiette. Her name is Malini. She loved my cooking, dumped him, and eventually married me… impacting my life forever!!
JETHRO’S HALF DOZEN
The first restaurant I ever worked the kitchen was at a tiny (20-odd seater), very French, high-end bistro called Jethro’s, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The first dish I ever learnt to make in a professional kitchen was the Jethro’s Half Dozen, an appetizer plate of six, cold, frequently changing hors d’oeuvres that always included a hard-boiled egg with remoulade and tapenade. The Provençale tapenade at Jethro’s was a salty umami bomb made from Niçoise olives, capers, cognac, mustard and anchovies. Set against the hard-boiled egg smothered in remoulade, it exploded with flavour. I couldn’t get enough of it—slathered on thin sourdough toast, with eggs, on a steak—any way possible! I like to think of it as the dish that launched my cooking career.
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