India on My Platter by Sanjeev Kapoor, Saransh Goila Read Free Book Online

delight to be cooking with vegetables that were smiling back at you. Tomatoes were so juicy that I felt like biting into them while they were still uncooked. As Chef Jack made the healthy salad for me, I made Lettuce Wraps for him. My dish was wholeheartedly approved by Chef Jack; it was a happy moment, trust me, so I unapologetically dug in to that soulful spiritual salad that Chef Jack had prepared. Well, I sort of understood the new world food culture here but traditional food was still a big question mark to me. Coming back to lettuce wraps, here’s the recipe:
    L ETTUCE W RAPS
    (Freshly tossed salad served in lettuce cups.)
    Ingredients
    12 large lettuce leaves
    2 tsp olive oil
    200 gm mushrooms
    1 large onion, chopped
    100 gm water chestnut
    2 tbsp minced ginger-garlic (adrak-lasun)
    1 tbsp thick reduced soya sauce
    ¼ cup Hoisin sauce
    1 tbsp red wine vinegar
    2 tsp chilli sauce
    100 gm tofu or cottage cheese (paneer)
    100 gm radish
    ¼ cup pine nuts or walnuts, chopped
    1 tbsp sesame oil
    Salt and pepper to taste
    Method
    1.  Rinse the lettuce and then soak it in ice water.
    2.  Cook mushrooms, onions, and water chestnuts in a large pan over high heat for two minutes in olive oil.
    3.  Then add ginger-garlic, soya sauce, Hoisin sauce, red wine vinegar and chilli sauce. Cook until the mushroom just starts to sweat. Add the tofu or cottage cheese, radish and pine nuts or walnuts. Cook for about one minute more.
    4.  Stir in salt, pepper and sesame oil. Arrange lettuce leaves with their hollow side facing up (trim the leaf to make it look like a neat cup). Spoon the mushroom mixture in the centre, chill for five minutes and then eat it like a taco.
    ∼
    There are different types of confluences, be it people coming together, of food, music and others. An interesting one in Leh is the confluence of the Indus and Zanskar rivers. The confluence point is located on the National Highway 1 from Leh to Srinagar. Watching the muddy Zanskar water mix with the blue-green Indus is breathtaking. Sitting at this junction you’re living in the moment, there is no past or future.
    I was patiently waiting here for my friend Neema whom I’d never met but known for a long while. He ran a water sport training company and used to train a very close friend of mine in kayaking; I had heard great stories of Neema being a kayaking champion several times. After 10 minutes Neema shouted from afar, ‘Julle!’ It was a crazy moment to finally meet a person you’d known for so long but never met. He is a gem of a guy and does adventure sports for a living. Neema insisted that now that we were in Leh we had to visit his home for a traditional and special Ladakhi feast. Who could say no to that?
    As we reached his house, which was a beautiful cottage in the hills, the aromas emanating from the kitchen made me head straight to it. It was quite a sight to visit a traditional Ladakhi kitchen. My first reaction was, ‘Wow! It is flamboyant and very ethnic.’ Most of it was made with brass and copper. Even the equipment being used was traditional. Neema’s grandmother, who was cooking in the kitchen, was an octogenarian and looked extremely cute in her traditional Ladakhi dress. She was generous in giving her 50-year-old Thukpa recipe to us.
    While I helped her blend and crush spices in a mortar and pestle (not in a mixer), she explained, ‘You must be getting a different aroma from this vessel that we are cooking in; this handi (an earthenware or metal pot) is made of brass. You will not only get a different taste but when we cook in this, the food doesn’t get spoilt easily.’ She was very active for her age and deftly made very thin and fine paape, which were like torn lasagna sheets made from wheat flour. She almost made 100 paapes in a minute! The thukpa, by now, was cooked and I had the company of Neema, his family and other friends who had joined us to make that dinner memorable. In Ladakh, before eating, they always remember the