Golden Mandarin Cake (or, an Abundance of Oranges)

Darjeeling oranges, five to a red net 'sock', are one of my favourite things about winter.

The perfect packaging-free snack to bring along when I go sit in the weak afternoon sun. The nicest prep-free, pre-portioned, no-cook, peelable dessert. They are always so sweet! Round and juicy, fragrant with that velvety oil, small wonder the Chinese use them for auspicious New Year tokens. (Yes, Gong Xi Fa Cai!  Prosperous Year of the Water Dragon! to you too.) 

The Chinese? What are they doing here, invading Darjeeling?!

Well, geography may not be my strong point; but in fact, the Darjeeling 'oranges' are mandarins — tangerines, according to some; clementines, to others — rather than true oranges.

Sunny Spinach Salad

It wasn't the most comforting of years, 2011 — no, it wasn't. It was challenging in more ways than one.

Contraptions around the house went kaput. The house itself creaked and leaked. Folks flew away. Things fell apart. Immunity and fitness wavered. Work schedules went haywire. Travel plans went awry. Wallets lost weight. The weight-loss plan piled on the pounds! The moods swung and rung like a carillon of bells. The summer was rained out; the monsoons were stormy; autumn sulked out of sight; winter was first warm, then wet...

Of course, challenges do create opportunity too. Contraptions were repaired and replaced. The house got fresh brick, mortar, plaster, paint, wiring, tiling, lighting... Folks flew in — and dropped in! Things came together, whimsically, when least expected. A fitness plan was resumed. Work got done, by the seat of the pants; concentration (to ignore the chaos) increased. Travelling took place. New work was sought — and found. The pounds finally budged. Moodiness was made room for, even enjoyed. The wardrobe rotation got a bit of a rest. The wellies came in handy. The garden was pulled up. Next year's seedlings were well-tested by the weather gods and goddesses...

But the best thing about challenges is the way they throw up surprises, pushing you to try something you never thought you'd get up to. Until it becomes a good, brave habit. Until — supermarkets refusing to stock your favourite South African pear — you bite the Chinese bullet: bring home the crunchy, sandy-fleshed Asian pear you used to abhor and let it mellow to nearly rotten. Until you find yourself at the wet market one gloomy morning, the last of 2011, delighted by the tender young spinach leaves and sunflower-bright pumpkin flowers — and come home whooping, 'Salad!'

Pod-pourri: Crunchy creeping greens :-p

Good golly, these crrrunchy green balls of Basella alba were as good as Christmas crackers!

So good, we're cooking them again. And again. With extra crunch. Before they disappear into flowers.

The sprouting buds of pNui shaak, aka Malabar spinach, creeping spinach, climbing spinach, or slippery spinach are called 'metuli' in Bangla (that's Bengali, to English-only speakers). While the heart-shaped leaves of pNui are cooked with a mish-mash of other vegetables — often with peels in, their texture serving to offset the mucilaginous quality of the shoots and greens — all year round, often partnering local freshwater fish too, the 'cream' of this crop emerges in winter.

Resolution: Have a blooming good year!

Brightening up my table on a new day, the first of a fresh year — these gorgeous sunny-golden pumpkin blossoms. Bought for a song, and destined to make the year's first lunch sing. Don't you just love kitchen ingredients and utensils that do double duty?

In the background, as the coffee drips, I hope to turn over a new leaf — which entails celebrating more of the local harvest (2011's last lunch was a revelation) and posting fresher!

Pumpkin-Eater's S(o)uper Supper

It's one of those things that has become, quite without design, a seasonal ritual and a family tradition: pumpkin soup.

There's something so soothing about it, not too sweet, nor too spicy, simple comfort in a time of change. There's something cheerful about a cup of the sunny liquid in a smoggy grey day or as the light falls to an early dusk.

As the festival of lights and the sibling-bonding rites bring the high Hindu festive season to a warm close, aglow with flickering diyas and satisfaction, the natural seasons flicker through their own change of guards. It's time for migrating wagtails to bob along the window sill. It's time to contend with flu-bitten family members and with one's own scratchy throat (a little too well smoked from the frenetic fireworks of suburban celebrants). It's not quite time for the winter glut of tomatoes, cauliflowers, broccoli and cabbages; but it is the season of fourteen greens, of sprouted palms and apples and other exotic fruits (like raisins, once the purview of the kabuliwallah), and of the fat marrows, gourds, squashes and pumpkins of cooler months.

The sweet yellow pumpkin turned up in the five fried or frittered vegetables of the Durga Puja feasts. The ash gourd has been looking to meet up with a few coconut curls for a while. The small, round, speckled green pumpkins have been turning up whole in their youth, rather than sliced into the wedges that maturity enjoins. And the courgette or zucchini — name determined by a marketer's whims, being both equally foreign appellations in these parts — is at its green or yellow best now, though considered a springtime special in the temperate zones.

So it was for many reasons fitting that Hallowe'en lunch fleshed out the cliche of a carved-up pumpkin and a sliced-diced-spiced green courgette ... in a cauldron of soup.

Jetsetting to Supper

A scramble for supper.

That's what happens when you're trying to claw your way back to control over a haywire week.