A Special Gift
(2 min read)
Being rather
old-fashioned, we don’t keep awake till midnight on 31st December to
ring in the New Year. On New Year’s Day, I was up well before dawn and wished
dear spouse a Happy New Year, with a steaming cup of herbal tea, as soon as she
woke up. Yet, I kept mulling over a better way to usher in 2022. How about a
special gift for Sanjukta, my spouse, I thought?
Then, Vikram
Doctor’s piece in The Economic Times caught my eye. He had written about
Asha Jhaveri’s book ‘A Culinary Journey of Hope and Joy’ and her legendary
Mumbai restaurant Swati. I had neither heard of Swati nor about
Asha who runs the restaurant, but two nuggets of information in Vikram’s
article got me interested. Endorsing the book, Mukesh Ambani has written, ‘We
are three generations of the Ambani family who cannot live without eating a
meal from Swati at least once a week. Vikram, after his recent meal at Swati
remembered, among other dishes, ‘the sweet-savoury guava curry brilliantly
paired with slightly bitter methi roti’.
Excited by
an idea, I hurriedly finished Vikram’s piece, and searched You Tube for ‘guava
curry’ and got several videos of which the photo of Rajasthani Guava Curry
looked the most appetising. I guessed Swati might be serving something like
that. I spent time on two videos: Nisha Madhulika (6.36 mins) and Cooking with
Sid (6.41 mins). The dish is easily doable and takes only ten mins, the expert
cooks assured. It is the season for guavas and Bhopal produces these delicious fruits.
Why not, I challenged myself, went out to the neighbourhood market and bought a
few near-ripe but firm guavas.
Let’s have
methi parathas for lunch, I suggested to Sanjukta. Sure, she said, and asked for
the needful to our cook who makes crisp methi parathas paired with paneer and
green peas curry. Then, I launched a stealth operation, unknown to spouse, since
she is a fabulous cook and can’t help ‘guiding’ me step by step whenever I try
to cook a dish.
While our
cook watched with unconcealed amusement, I sliced the guavas myself, gathered
the ingredients, cooked the curry, plated it with immaculate care, and surprised
my spouse by serving it with a flourish for lunch.
Neither of us had ever eaten guava curry, nor had we heard of it; but I’m glad that my adventurous dish came out really well, and both of us ate the methi paratha paired with the yummy and tangy, sweet n sour n mildly hot Rajasthani guava curry, and the paneer-green peas curry was untouched.
After the sumptuous lunch, I posted for our children the pic with a caption: What if I couldn’t build an Antilia for Sanjukta, I cooked a yummy Rajasthani Guava Curry, much favoured by Mukesh Ambani, I believe.’
***
Note:
- Author's profile may be seen at http://amazon.com/author/pkdash
- Books by this author are available on Amazon.in, Kindle eBook, Flipkart, and Notion Press, Chennai.
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