Our paths diverged when we went to different colleges, although we both – despite our love for writing– took up the sciences. I, after getting my undergrad degree in Physics, decided I’d rather be a journalist. Sangita on the other hand went on to get a doctorate in Physics but she keeps up her love for writing with her witty and thoughtful blog, Skaypisms. During the times I hung out at Sangita’s home as a teen, which was often, we shared some truly delicious food her mom cooked for us. One dish I have never forgotten was a great peanut curry, a specialty from the south Indian state of Kerala. Here, in her own, vivid words, Sangita shares her memories of cooking with her mom and her mom’s recipe for this incredibly simple yet incredibly flavorful dish. Enjoy! Some teenagers are forever, I thought gloomily, when Vaishali asked me about my experiences cooking with my mother. My memory of mummy’s kitchen is always alive with all the wonderful smells of Keralite curries wafting through. And with the sounds of our ‘conversations’ when I attempted to cook anything. All teenagers have a period of adjustment with their mothers, but I realize that in her realm, I never really grew up. My experience cooking in my mother’s kitchen has always been, to say the least, colorful. The rest of the family watched in shameless amusement at our constant bickering and drama, the mother of all sitcoms. It gave the phrase TV dinner a whole new meaning. Mummy is very particular about the ingredients that went into her curries, only the freshest, only the cleanest, only the best. Spinach was washed in a huge vat of water several times, and apples were scrubbed till the grime of Bombay slid away revealing gorgeous shades of red and gold. The spices had to go into the pot in a particular order, and she would more often than not, lecture me on the physics and chemistry of making a curry. But while a perfectionist renders brilliant results, her co-workers have a difficult time. Ask me. (And the good lord help me when mummy reads this blog!) Call it fate, but invariably in my mother’s kitchen, I do the wrong thing. Always. “Aiyo! No, no! not like that! Wait for the onions to get a tad more golden! You’re putting in the garlic? Ohhh, what’s the point? It will melt away!” “I know, mummy, I know, am I a ten year old? I can cook!” I retort, my voice shrill enough to shatter the glasses in the cabinet. Check to get new recipe updates by email.
“Let it boil, let it boil! Else the turmeric will never get cooked. We’ll taste the raw turmeric! Oh! Have you ever tasted raw turmeric? I tell you, it’s not something you want to taste in your meal.” “ARRGGGH!,” my voice has by this time reached the correct pitch for the neighbors to rush to their own cabinets to try and save their glassware. It doesn’t help at all that I am very hot headed. Hot headed, quite literally, because in my desperation to one-up mummy I had moved too quickly and gotten a huge ladleful of sauce on my hair, right from the hot pan. Such little incidents aside, the end result is always wonderful, the family is in splits at our little mother-daughter Gilmore Girls drama, the food turns out to be finger licking good, and several months later, mummy and I manage to laugh about it. Mummy is well known in our family for her culinary skills. I remember folks dropping in with special requests: “Chechi, make that mor-curry, no? I have been thinking about it all the way here!” Vaishali recently mentioned a particular peanut curry that mummy had once made for her. Considering that it has been more than twenty years to that meal, this memory is certainly a compliment to mummy’s culinary skills. So here it is, the peanut curry, a la mummy.
More yummy peanut recipes:
Virginia Peanut Soup Vegan Massaman Curry Eggplant in Peanut Curry Sauce Vegan African Peanut Stew Vegan Thai Noodles in a Spicy Peanut Sauce
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