I remember how much I think (read rant) about foods from the inner recesses of my memory. Maybe age or inert self and vacant mind.
Sometimes some such foods turn into an obsession for search and research .. Of tasting sessions and mostly disappointments and sometimes as plain successes.
I remember the AA sweets and that's frozen in memory and the kaju kand which we get in food courts is a lovely substitute but not the bulls eye. The kaju/badam puri still available in the market. The badam biscuits were definitely same as that in memory as found in champion biscuits of vile parle. Hence some things lost and some found.
Something's though I can prepare at home. Alu chips ( cousin of French fries) are one of them. But now I watch my diet and tongue. So I don't prepare them that much. The other one is has two of my favorite stuffs. Dates and walnuts.
I remember dada used to get Diwali hampers. After dinner was over, a hamper was carefully opened, with cellophane wrap kept for crafts so would the box with its golden embossing after it was over. We would store our collections in that. Different shells, post cards of actors and actresses ( I don't think we still get them) but that was another story.. So this box had so many goodies as I had earlier described. A bit of walnut, pistachios,cashew nuts, and at times chocolates ( shall I say hard boiled sweets since they never had chocolate in them but saffron and cashew nut flavor). We got our bounty then. And we would savor that.. Till the next day's dinner. I kept this bounty in a small plastic
box ( which I still have.. A faded white half moon) and ate according to my preference.
Sometimes some such foods turn into an obsession for search and research .. Of tasting sessions and mostly disappointments and sometimes as plain successes.
I remember the AA sweets and that's frozen in memory and the kaju kand which we get in food courts is a lovely substitute but not the bulls eye. The kaju/badam puri still available in the market. The badam biscuits were definitely same as that in memory as found in champion biscuits of vile parle. Hence some things lost and some found.
Something's though I can prepare at home. Alu chips ( cousin of French fries) are one of them. But now I watch my diet and tongue. So I don't prepare them that much. The other one is has two of my favorite stuffs. Dates and walnuts.
I remember dada used to get Diwali hampers. After dinner was over, a hamper was carefully opened, with cellophane wrap kept for crafts so would the box with its golden embossing after it was over. We would store our collections in that. Different shells, post cards of actors and actresses ( I don't think we still get them) but that was another story.. So this box had so many goodies as I had earlier described. A bit of walnut, pistachios,cashew nuts, and at times chocolates ( shall I say hard boiled sweets since they never had chocolate in them but saffron and cashew nut flavor). We got our bounty then. And we would savor that.. Till the next day's dinner. I kept this bounty in a small plastic
box ( which I still have.. A faded white half moon) and ate according to my preference.
I ate the least liked (read raisins.. I eat them only for health reasons now) and savoured the favorites like pistachoes, dried apricots and dried figs last and the liked but could be parted with cashews in between. I even counted the number of each item of bounty and made them into smaller groups and ate that group ( eg: a pista, a cashew, a fig and an apricot) together. Some of my favorites but not that frequent visitors in that small bounty were the now defunct AA sweets kaju, pista or kesar roll toffees. These I spent hours slurping the hell out of. Till the bits of some nut ( not sure if it was cashew) scraped my inner cheek and till my mouth had lovely fake milky taste of pista or saffron. Or the tasty date chocolates (?).
Date chocolates were nothing exotic . We didn't taste exotic chocolates then. The exotic then were catbury milk chocolate or fruit and nut. No ferro rocher, ghiraldelli or Lindt existed then around us. These date chocolates had a lot of Diwali feel about them. Maybe because they mostly came only in diwali hampers and never otherwise in the 'Kirana' shops or anywhere else. So these 'chocolates' were individually transperant cellophane wrapped big dark brown seedless dates ( medjool maybe) have a single walnut half decorating its top and few times a walnut piece or almond inside. I liked the. The most. And because of their rare appearances overall. I was always very happy when we opened a new hamper and found them. I liked the combination of walnut with the sweet a bit sticky date. The crunch of walnut cushioned by soft, silky date. The date used to be big and shiny top, a whole smooth date, not like the ones we ate usually, 3 or 4 stuck together with their innards ( the seeds and tops) stuck to them. It looked like a sweet, sticky mass and not dates. But not this date which looked like an impressive personality and oh just so delectable. I loved to see my bounty more than actually eating it.. Though I loved actual eating too. So it would come as a shock and feel bad at the waste when my sister's compartment would be cleaned and out came these graceful beauties, with half eaten dried apricots with their half nut lurking out, discarded pistacho shells sticking to them . 😱The once delectable bite now looked pitiable in their now developing ecosystems in white and green. 😭The walnuts having teeny weeny wild animals called bugs. It was a craft in itself.. Some kind of work of an abstract painting which my sister did every year 😜 and till now continues in some form or the other. That's another story which I may never narrate 😂.
Today I prepared this treat at home with the available de seeded deglet noor dates. Though not as juicy and sweet as medjool, they still complimented very well with walnuts that I filled their seedless stomachs with. It was my fast and felt like eating sweet . Snickers due to their egg content were out of question and oranges were already a lot in the belly since morning. One idea ( that changed my life I mean palette) and voila.. A tasty eggless au natural chocolate ready and it didn't even take two minutes 😃
