On routine

I like routines. I keep trying to set them up. I divide my day up into thirty minute pieces, and dedicate each piece to an activity. I make to-do lists, and now, because I'm a designer, I add little checkboxes next to each activity that I can place a tiny black tick mark in once it is accomplished. No unsightly crossing-outs for me. I try to live a regimented life and find that over time it gets easier. The tasks become automatic and nearly mindless. Exercise is something like that now. I jump up and down and contort my body in alarming ways, while huffing violently as my face turns tomato red. To distract myself from my discomfort, I watch food shows (lately, Masterchef Australia, but also Nigella, Food Safari, Eat Street, YouTube cooking channels...) and it's nice to have a direct reminder of what I'm torturing myself for.
I enjoy cooking, but I don't care as much for the attendant activities: catering to appetites and palates different to my own, shopping for vegetables, the perennial struggle of keeping a shared kitchen clean... Besides, cooking requires thought, far more than exercise. Steps need to be planned in advance and performed in a certain way. Onions cannot be left to burn while I go apeshit over and over.
Then there are the sub-routines I keep trying unsuccessfully to set up for myself. Practicing the guitar for half an hour a day. Trying and failing to floss every night. Calling relatives and friends more frequently. Volunteering. Spending more time reading. It's easy to say that I don't have time for these things, but that is untrue. I don't make time for these things yet, because it is far easier to spend half an hour scrolling down Instagram (it's endless! that's freaky!) looking at tastefully arranged food photos and then, suddenly, it's dinnertime.
We don't usually plate food in little mounds surrounded by pools of gravy, but everyone on Instagram does. I tend to pile on my carbs higgledy piggledy and drown them in gravy, but that looks unappetising in a photo. This was an oat and green moong pongal, with a vendakkai puli kuzhambu (okra in a tamarind gravy) and velarikkai pachchadi (cucumber raita, south Indian style). The pongal was an attempt to make the usual rice-and-lentils even healthier while also using up a bag of steel cut oats that I bought on a whim and have since been studiously avoiding, because if we're being perfectly honest, no matter how much you rave about it on Instagram or how beautifully you plate it, does anyone really like oatmeal porridge?

The carrot never stood a chance

Amma is here visiting, and lazing on Sunday evening with my head in her lap, I asked her to make me something. The fridge contained exactly one beetroot and one carrot and from that she suggested a halwa. I perked up immediately and proposed we start. We peeled and grated the carrot and beetroot, staining our fingers pink. The raw carrot stood up well, defiantly orange in glaring contrast with all the pink. They were cooked together, in milk and there the beet asserted itself, staining the sides of the wok and dyeing the carrot pink, deep pink.

A shower of sugar made it sticky and a spoonful of ghee took care of the vaguely healthy smell that all vegetables seem to possess. I ate it then, watching telly, scraping at my bowl till I realized it was all gone. 

 Beetroot and carrot halwa:-

Beetroot: 1

Carrot: 1

Milk: 1/2 cup

Sugar: 1/2 cup

Ghee: 1 tbsp

Grate the beet and carrot up as finely as you can. You want to remove any hint of healthiness or signs of being made of vegetables from your final dish, so you want to give them a whole new character and flavour profile. cook the grated vegetables down in milk till they're soft. Then stir in the sugar and ghee and stir till the whole mass is sticky and smells decidedly unhealthy. I like to go one step further and cook it down till the sugar caramelises and clings to the wok in dark spots. Then serve, hot.

Magic

The most magical thing about cooking is when you take a few, seemingly ordinary ingredients and then combine them just so, to create something extraordinary. There are hundreds of recipes out there that use mouthwatering ingredients and combine them in unusual pairings. But in all those cases, you know that so long as you don't mess up too badly, the dish you finally create will be rather good. I remember being very proud, when I was about ten years old, for creating cake truffles that were a combination of crumbled chocolate cake, chocolate chunks, condensed milk and coffee. They tasted fantastic and I floated on air as I stuffed ball after ball into my mouth. I sat before my family, awaiting an outburst of praise for my genius, but though they enjoyed the truffles, I only got tepid compliments. On prodding, everyone admitted they tasted good, "But how could they not?" as my father put it, comprised as they were of individually delicious ingredients. This is not the story of those truffles.

Have you ever heard of Tirunelveli Halwa? I first tasted this incredible stuff when we lived in Himachal Pradesh and an officer from Appa's battalion went home to Tirunelveli on leave, and brought us some back. It was sublime. The halwa was dark brown with a golden sheen, and it contained strategically placed cashew nuts. But the best bits in my book were the crusty bits of sugar that I would seek out with my spoon, again and again. Those bits were of sugar, recrystallized around ghee, crusty and yet melting with a flavour that could bring a dead man back to life. This is however, not the story of that halwa (Okay, I promise to stop doing this now.)

The internet abounds with recipes for Tirunelveli Halwa, but I know better than to attempt them. The story goes that the halwa gains its particular flavour from the water of the Thamarabarani river. Perhaps that is true, perhaps it's only folklore. I know that no matter how well I follow the recipe, I'll never be able to replicate quite that taste.

The last time my grandmother (Patti) stayed with us though, she made a halwa, that reminded me a great deal of the Tirunelveli stuff. It had almost the same texture and the same crusty ends of sugar. I scraped the kadai clean that time and then, my craving satisfied, forgot about it. But today, after a particularly cold morning and after getting soaked while washing the dog, I thought of that halwa again. Cue a long distance phone call with Patti. I discovered to my amazement, that this halwa only contains three ingredients. Three. Four, if you count water. It came out just like I remembered. I spooned it up straight out of the kadai and burned my tongue, but it didn't matter. This stuff, is good.

Maida Halwa
2 tbsp Maida (All purpose flour)
8 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp ghee
In a small bowl, combine maida and enough water to form an even slurry. It should be about the thickness of paint. Then in a kadai, heat the sugar on high, with an additional two tablespoons of water. a 1:4 ratio of flour and sugar might seem excessive, but trust me, it's necessary. In my first attempt, with a vague idea of making it more healthy, I cut the sugar by two tablespoonfuls and then spent a later five minutes cussing and stirring powdered sugar into my rapidly cooling halwa. Allow the sugar to caramelise lightly. Just when the whole syrup turns a bubbling amber, lower the heat and add in the ghee. Once the ghee has melted completely, pour in the flour and water mix in a thin stream, stirring continuously. It will cook almost as soon as it touches the sugar below. The whole mix will turn rather wobbly and gelatinous and clump together. Stir for a minute longer, till the ghee separates, then turn off the heat. You can now drain off the excess ghee.
I served this with chopped pistachios, more for aesthetics's sake than anything else. The halwa doesn't need them. Nor does it need a shower of cardamom, the ghee does just fine at making it smell swoon-worthy, thank you very much. If you can resist, let it stand at room temperature for about a day, and those glorious sugar crystals will form. When they do, warm the halwa up lightly and serve right away.