Category: My kitchen


Yomari

1.  Knead rice flour with warm water.

2.  Liquefy molasses (चाकु).  Mix it with fried sesame seed.

3.  Shape the dough into a hollow cone.

4.  Stuff it with molasses mix.

5.  Completely enclose the stuffings inside the cone.

6.  Steam it for 10-15 minutes, until the Yomari  looks glossy. Voila, the Yomari is ready to be served.

PS: This is a recipe for basic Yomari. Sorry, no pictures of final product, completely forgot to take pictures while gulping Yomari. Also, ignore the irregular shapes by the first timers :)

Cooking & recipe

In my previous work, we periodically cooked something for the lunch (just among our project group). It wasn’t mandatory nor it was an everyday stuff, but eating my colleagues (primarily Americans) cookery for long time made me feel guilty and inspired me to cook something for them too. I was a mediocre cook, so the pressure of “representing Nepal” was immense. For the first time I decided to take an easier route and made momo, which I am proud to say was well received. There on, I started to be more creative :D

Image source: http://www6.worldisround.com/photos/14/339/131.jpg

Image source: http://www6.worldisround.com/photos/14/339/131.jpg

The biggest problem I faced was when someone asked me for the recipe. How can I produce the recipe when even I can’t duplicate the same taste, if I try again? To my surprise they had a recipe for everything, and if I asked they could simply print out from their records and give it to me in minutes. And trust me, they had very specific recipe, for example: preheat the oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees, put the dish at middle rack for 20 minutes, let it settle for 10 minutes, apply 2 ounces of whip cream, and so on :P

Today at work I was discussing about food and cooking, and again I found my cookery lacked specifics when explaining the recipe. All I could explain was: add little bit of salt, and little more of cumin, and slightly more of curry masala, then boil for few minutes, etc :( I began to worry if it’s just me or our food culture (as a whole) is not detail oriented enough. Finally, after thinking for a while I came up with a good enough line to explain my colleagues “yours cooking style is a science but ours is more of an art, you learn these from years of experience” :D

Long live momo

I was surprised how I needed to readjust again in the country where I already had spent two and half decades before. I might have changed a little, but more has to do with me being used to what’s considered basic necessities here in USA being perceived (in fact is true) as luxury in Nepal. For example; uninterrupted supply of water, electricity, communications etc.

Though it was difficult at first but fun later to take a shower using a bucket and mug again. While I hated the cold temperature inside the house (no insulation), the warmth of sun outside was very pleasant. I have been living in Louisiana so the winter sun is similar to in Nepal (you actually do feel warm when the sun is out), but basking sun in Nepal with Oranges and Grapefruit (भगटे) in the roof top is entirely different experience. Even if I disliked the speed of internet, I enjoyed revisiting all those TV channels which I saw growing up (God! rules of cricket has changed a lot). Missing (some) independence and freedom of States compared nowhere to the priceless affections from the family.


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Khana Khajana

Firstly I would like to wish you all a very happy Nepalese New Year 2064. This New Year, I wanted to begin my day by doing something interesting. So I signed up for a cruise in a local Bayou. It was part of ‘Acadiana Migratory Bird Day Celebration’ where a National Park Service ranger and Ornithologist abroad will identify birds by sight and sound in 1.5 hour long boat tour. My only problem was to reach there at 7 AM in a weekend (I don’t like getting up early in weekends). But since I had nothing lined up for Friday night, that was well on the cards. However, I got an unexpected dinner call by a Nepalese family, so by the time we finished our political guffs and ‘Jack Daniel on the rock’, it was way passed the midnight. So, as expected I missed my cruise.

I was also invited by the Nepalese Community in Louisiana State University (LSU) for a potluck that afternoon. It was fun there too, lots of food variety. After family persons departed, the real party started for the Bachelors. For a change, we watched couple of movies while drinking. Finally, when I went to bed it was already 4 AM. I really liked one of the movies that we watched, ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ by Al Pacino. This 1975 movie is real nice, if you haven’t seen it I recommend you to see it.

Sunday morning I woke up at 9 AM, normally I don’t wake up at 9 when I go to bed at 4, but I had to drive back to Lafayette then do the entire regular stuffs: laundry, groceries and cook food for whole week. Yes, I cook food for entire week on Sundays (i.e. for Sunday to Friday). Rice is easy, so is the ‘Daal’ (Lenticels) but the curry is the pain of all. When you live all alone, you don’t feel like cleaning the dishes and cook every other day. For last three weeks I had lamb meat, sounds fascinating, but it’s my coercion. After cooking lamb for the first week it took me something special to discontinue my lamb’s run. Every time I went for grocery I wanted to buy lamb, not because it is tastier but it’s efficient to cook as well. Rice is easily done, so just cook lamb in a pressure cooker like any other meat (I have a default technique for everything I cook) and then add water and press it; now I don’t even require ‘Daal’, one less dish to wash.

Before I got into lamb stint; chicken, cauliflower, cabbage, or pork were my regular curries. If not those, eggs are my obvious choice. In fact, I love making curry out of egg because it’s very convenient and you can make more variety of dishes out of it as well. “Variety out of egg?” Oh yes, if you are lazy and/or incompetent like me eggs can help you lot. My favorite dish using eggs are: eggs with onions, onions in egg, egg with onions and tomatoes, tomatoes and egg, etc. You can do the permutation your self to get as many different dishes using those three ingredients. :D One might say why bother, why not eat outside. But, always eating outside is not economically viable, and most importantly being a Nepali it’s hard to live without eating ‘Dal, Bhat, Tarkari’ at least once a day.

This week to overcome my lamb stint, I decided to have momo everyday for dinner. I made ‘keema’ (ground meat) ready for the whole week, so all I have to do each day is wrap about 20 momo’s and steam it. The picture is from my dinner yesterday.

I Love MOMO

What do I have for lunch is one of the niggling problems abroad? I guess it’s even harder for me as I came abroad after spending quarter of my life in Nepal. I simply couldn’t adjust to the foods here. While in Nepal having a burger, pizza or taco for a change was a good experience for the taste buds but having those foods as lunch, or sometimes even dinner, everyday can’t be pleasant. In my early days abroad, noodles used to be my best friend due to different taste variety, inexpensive as well as convenience and ease to cook. But now I get sick even with the thoughts of noodles, just imagine how much noodles I must have eaten already. When I looked around I saw similar, if not the same, problems with many Nepalese abroad; glad to know that I am not alone.

I remember when in Nepal selecting a lunch was quite easy, ‘SAMOSA’, ‘PAKODA’, ‘ALU TARKARI’, ‘DOSA’, ‘CHOWMEIN’ etc; but ‘MOMO’ was the king of all. My taste senses never got bored even after having momo for lunch for seven days, and I could repeat that for the next week too. Not only the Bakery Cafe, even the small restaurants, where shopkeepers can be seen applying pressure to stove using bicycle air pump, were my favorite lunch hangouts. I bet it won’t be unfair to say that one of the major developments after democracy was the “MOMO Boom”. People in Nepal take momo for granted and can never imagine how big a problem is solved by it. I have done that and seen many people do that; that is to go to a restaurant, ask for a menu and review it from top to bottom, but always ask for momo. One of my friend (Sabin Ninglekhu) had termed that as a compulsive behavior of Nepalese. We tend to review the whole menu even if we already know from the first that we will ultimately be having momo. I am having a hard time to distinguish either if it’s a compulsive behavior or it’s a power of momo. Such is the power and dominance of momo in Nepal that I believe one with momo as their election symbol can do very well in political campaigning.

Life is full of compromises and momo happened to be one for me. I still can have momo in weekends when I am with friends, but nothing beats momo in Nepal. After moving to Lafayette, LA I was somewhat excited with the prospect of ‘Cajun’ food. Cajun food is very different to conventional American food and is largely regarded for its good taste. Yesterday I had gone with my colleagues for a lunch to a Cajun type restaurant where they served plate lunch. The daily special was rabbit meat so I decided to have a smothered rabbit. When I started eating I couldn’t stop visualizing a beautiful white rabbit that I saw in the zoo when I was a kid. May be it was the guilt of eating a “beautiful white rabbit” I didn’t enjoy my food at all while all other people were admiring the food. I will give a shot to a different Cajun variety, perhaps alligator meat or widely acclaimed gumbo, but never a rabbit meat again.