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Life on the farm- work and more work as far as the eye can see. The calves are having a merry time though!
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| COBOL - Sometimes you just need to sit down and stare! |
Along with the hardships of a farm life come the perks – the
perks of having a meal that is almost completely grown on the farm.
Meet the players on our lunch plate today:
Red Rice – Starting its journey in the first week of June in
a protected Rice nursery, then being transplanted in the first week of July
under lashing rains out in the open fields, and then growing for three whole
months.
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| Protected Rice Nursery. |
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Rice tillers
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| The Rice grains |
And here it is today cooked to
perfection, ready to be accompanied by the Palak –dal.
Palak – This is a fast growing variety of local spinach
which the locals call ‘Bombay
Basle’ where as the Malabar Spinach is called just Basle.
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| Local Spinach |
I can
harvest a reasonably sized bunch every
other week. Today it finds its way into
a simple dal with a jeera tadka.
Raw Jackfruit. The
tall jackfruit trees are laden with green prickly bunches. There are way more than we can deal with if
we allow all to ripen. So tender jackfruit is one of our favourite
accompaniments at lunch.
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| Would you like to carry some home ? |
Today it is
steamed and then stir fried with a dash of white pepper powder. White pepper is the inner kernel of our
normal black pepper. So it is much
spicier than it looks.
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| Ripened berries of Pepper from which we get the white pepper. |
Ghee – Is any Indian meal complete without a dollop of
ghee? We have a choice of two varieties
of ghee here – Golden yellow Cow ghee and the white Buffalo ghee. Starring on our plate today is Buffalo ghee –
made laboriously by collecting the cream from Madhubala’s milk, fermenting it,
churning it to get the butter and then melting
and clarifying it with fragrant leaves – Betel leaf, Curry leaf and
Tulsi. All these make the ghee most
fragrant and delicious.
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| Madhubala - Is this angle right - Don't I look prettier this way? |
So here it is- our meal for today
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| Red Rice, Palak-dal, Tender Jackfruit stir-fry and a dollop of ghee. |
Simple yet delicious!
