Of Tomato processing, Rotis and Joomla

Ive been at it again, the cookery that is. 

First some boring background gyaan:

Earlier - went to visit the website guys - i was shown a layout for sooper deployment of Joomla for first marketing & then eventually internal document management - if i were a self employed/salaried techie - open Source CMS is what id be doing during free time. Trust me, it blows your mind off. Its free and runs out of one's browser and is getting more and more powerful by the day.

Lunch at the old dhaba express buffet - they have hiked the charge for the all-you-can eat-veg-buffet - from 55 to 80 - cant remember the last time i went to lunch there - the famous thaiyir saadam was still present - cool, sticky - im guessing - made with  last night's left over rice :x

[*After posting, i realized that i wrote 'buffett' in place of 'buffet'. heh. Changed now :x]

I shared a table with about 10 first years from CEG hostel - all chatting away about Cups, girls, mobiles, Chennai superkings & Engg Mechanics - i still remember that we went to lunch there almost every sunday back when we were kids from the Hostel too. 

I walked back - at 2 pm - in the sweltering heat - dont ever walk to places more than 10/15 mins away when in madras especially - in the afternoon. DONT. EVER. 

Ok - lets cut to the chase now. 

How to make & eat Tomato gravy in 20 mins. 

Take 2 teaspoons of oil in a sort of a pan and heat.

Add, like, 4-5 spoons of uluthamparupu (Bengal gram?), 2-3 spoons of mustard (I did not, wasnt availabe at home) and, um, like, saute until they are nicely sizzling.

Add 2 teaspoons of turmeric powder to the sizzle, a pinch or two of salt. 

** Cut up 2 green chillies lengthwise (Not in omlette type small pieces) add to the sizzle.

Bring down the stove so that the pan nicely simmers and stir stir for a bit until all the stuff gives off a nice smell.

Take 4 or 5 nice tomatoes (Even slightly sour ones will do), hold each of them over the pan along with a knife (to make sure that water in the tomatoes does not spill out needlessly), cut them into large pieces, tip them into the pan. 

Stir well - manually try to masticate / beat any of the larger pieces of tomato into pulp - with the spoon - the idea is to make sure that the juice from the tomatoes seeps out nicely and becomes the cooking medium in the pan.

Remember - we havent added external water at all - all of it is from the the tomatoes.

Sprinkle salt and tear up like a handful of coriander leaves - and add to the pan - stir stir for 5/10 minutes or so - and voila - a nice - Tomato Gravy is ready. 

(Cant call it puree i guess, Gravy is the closet word i can think of!)

** - the chillies are a critical step. If you put in 1 or 2 more - it can screw up the entire thing by making it extremely hot. Be warned.

This is tomato gravy - the shelf life of this preparation is normally not more than 7-8 hours i guess. 

We can make a sort of a PICKLE - with a shelf life of like 3/4 days (with a fridge) with the following improvisations: 

- Mash up the tomatoes in a mixer - strain them to remove atleast half the moisture - BEFORE Adding to the pan

- Make up the loss of cooking medium with OIL - The amount of oil in the formulation is directly proportional to its shelf life - Inversely proportional to its taste - and i guess oil makes it unhealthy.

- A product with even longer shelf life can be made by adding about 30% onion / garlic paste, mashing up the entire mass in a mixer (The chillies and all) - BEFORE the actually hot work with the pan.

I actually made this gravy and about 4 rotis (from basic materials - flour, water and all) in just over 25 minutes - and i guess it is a fairly useful recipe to use to make good, wholesome, tasty khana for 1 or 2 people pretty damn quick.

I am still struggling to get a proper measure of quantities - for eg. i ve ended up making enough gravy for 2 meals - so half of it is now in the fridge to check for expiry tomorrow and consume if all is well. I also ended up making enough atta to roll out 10 rotis - im making all of them - and put them in the fridge - heat them tomorrow. 

One generally unrelated observation 

- it is MUCH easier living with your parents when youre on a diet / losing weight / seriously excercising etc. - stinking gym clothes to be washed daily - watching what one eats - self cooking leads to over producing (improper control over batch sizes due to lack of adequate practice) and which inturn sometimes leads to overeating and so on...

Lets see, i appear to be on course to make my old man poorer by 10,00,000 on 31 August 2009 - but the rate of weight loss appears to decrease with more weight loss - for eg. i lost my first 5 kilos in like 30 workouts - and the next 20 have just about taken out like 1.5 kilos - will revisit strategy after another fortnight i guess.