घरेलु नेपाली खाना (homely nepali food)

..|chicken choweala|.. ..|with black lentil, rice|.. ..|golbheda achar|..

I remember how miserable my life was 2 years ago when I arrived in Irvine. Either I had to eat junk or cook really bad food. Now in these 2 years I have practiced enough to cook a decent nepali/newari hybrid home-style dinner. For last couple of months I have really been enjoying my own cooking :), and now am practicing cooking in larger quantity so that I can invite few friends. I have experimented with 3 people, and it went ok.

Also I have finally succeeded in cooking the quintessential गोलभेडां अचार (golbheda achar) (very similar to hot roasted tomato salsa, but this one has more spices, garlic and ginger). So, the combination of food above is one of the best dinner meals I used to get at my home.

Chicken Choweala

छोयला (chowela) is a typical newari recipe. There are primarily two variants of it; regular one (where the meat is steamed), and हाकुं छोयला (black choweala), where the black comes from the fact that the meat is grilled in buring wood that is close to coal (its not exactly coal I guess). You can get several variants of Black Choweala, and the test varies geatly. Even the texture and how it feels varies, based on how you grill the meat. At home mom just used to grill it on the stove, and even then it used to be great. The best one I have tried is one at Jogi's place, that was real hard-core choweala, prepared in an ancient style (BTW maharjan's make the best choweala and जांड :).

Orginally choweala is supposed to be made out of buffalo meat. But, I used chicken. The meat does matter, so I tried my best to make it taste like a real choweala this time. I had just partially succeeded before.

This time I grilled the meat in oven (got slightly over-grilled but its ok, will be more tastier tommorow) and then prepared all the spice mix. Then I again had to substitute a real ingredient that brings life on this dead meat. तोरी को तेल (roasted mustrad oil) ! I had to restort to heated olive oil for this. Rest everything was just fine and finally, this turned out to be the best छोयला I had cooked so far.

I like to garnish this thing with onions, tomatoes and cilantro - which is not originally done. Even if done, with just little tomoto. But garnishing compensates for the lack of original ingredients and suits it to my taste.

Golbheda Achar

This is again, something I could not live without. And, after leaving home I had to suffer having all my meals without this. This again is tomato roasted on fire and then crushed with roasted chilli, garlic and ginger.. garnished with cilantro.

Black Lentil Soup (म्या: कें, कालो दाल)

Ah! this one is another favourite of mine. A very interesting combination I like is mixing rice, black lentils and MILK. It just is awesome combination and makes the rice just slip in your mouth doing a smooth slide through the oesophagus to its destination in the belly :). This reminds me of another favorite quick and easy food, rice-milk-mangoes, try them - a very good combination.

I had to really wait quite a while till I got this lentil from an Indian store. But I am far from making a real good Black Lentil Soup. I cannot even get all the ingredients to put in there; like झिकुंचा ( jhikucha - some dried spice) and सक्कि (sakki, some kind of slippery root, more like beets but not exactly) - I don't even know the english or nepali name for these things.

आलु प्याज तरकारी (potato onion vegetable)

Almost everyday I used to ask my mom, "थौ छु तरकारी ?" (What are you cooking as the side dish today?). Mostly her answer used to be, "आलु प्याज तरकारी, अरु जम्मै सरकारी" (potato-onion are vegetables, everything else is goverment). What that means? I do not know. But, on that note below is another amazingly simple dinner delight, a vegeterian version.


..aluPyaaz.. | alu-pyaaz (Potato-onion vegetables (आलु प्याज तरकारी), with red lentils and spinach)|..

I actually learnt to cook spinach from one of my past roomates. I did not even realize how simple it is and how good it can be. Just heat some oil, fry some garlic, then throw in the spinach, some salt, ready after a while. With Trader Joe's baby spinach pack, I even do not have to worry about spending much time washing away the soil you normally get with normal bunch spinach.

आलु प्याज is sort of a national theme for food in Nepal. I guess every nepali home would have it. Now, very intersting thing is even its just potato and onions, I bet there would be zillion variations of it, below is just my version a little over spiced than you usually get in a daily supplement at home. But, I still cannot make it taste better without embellishing with spices (garam masala rocks on this, but has to be used sparingly).

It is quite common to find similar materials in daily nepali cooking, but tagging one variant as the nepali one would be mistake. As in every home I have had food, the same stuff tastes different and has the characteristics of the home (all mothers are unique!).

The food listed above mostly resembles my mom's culinary skills, as I learnt to cook just remembering how good her food used to be in times when she would really be in mood. I am posting this entry largely remembering - her, my everyday critique on her cooking and discussions we used to have (mostly jovial).