Lord Ganesha & the Italian Grandmother's Semolina Cake

Lord Ganesha in the waters off Chowpatty Beach, Bombay

Last Wednesday here in Hyderabad we celebrated the birthday of Lord Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god worshipped across India as the god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune.   It’s a public holiday in many parts of the country and, like most religious festivals across the subcontinent,  everybody joins in to some extent – Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians ... and even atheistic foreigners!


Buying the flowers at the local market



Eco-friendly clay Ganeshas

Fresh garlands of flowers

Fruits and leaves to adorn the Ganesh statue

 We usually start the day by going to the local village to purchase a Ganesh statue and the accompanying flowers, food and banana leaves that are all part of the ritual on the first day of what is know as Ganesha Chaturthi – a 10 day festival  celebrated each year  in September which ends with the immersion of the idol in water bodies - usually lakes and seafronts around the country.


 



Some of these statues can be several metres high and each village or locality builds the biggest Ganesha they can afford in a sort of ethereal contest of the town’s spiritual worth.  The bigger statues have to be lowered into the water off the back of trucks with cranes especially installed for the festival.   In Bombay, where we lived for a couple of years, more than a million people crowd Chowpatty Beach to see the final immersion of the Ganesh statues.

Our ritual is a little more low key.  We always buy an eco-friendly Ganesh made of clay ... which dissolves easily in water ... unlike many of the giant plaster statues which, along with the often garish oil-based paint used to decorate them, are a major pollution problem once the festival is over.  


Preparing the table



Lighting the incense



Breaking the coconut

Our Ganesh statue will stay with us for 10 days

 The statue is placed on banana leaves on a table and surrounded by fresh fruit and leaves.  Then one of the ladies who works with us will recite a Hindu prayer, incense is waved over the statue and a coconut is broken in honour of Lord Ganesh.   The two halves are then placed on the table and each of us is marked on the forehead with red vermilion powder.

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi!

 This year we celebrated with a low key Indian lunch but as plans for dinner took shape I was in the mood for something different.   This is where the Italian grandmother’s semolina cake appears!


I have this fabulous baking book called  “Classic Home Desserts: A Treasury of Heirloom and Contemporary Recipes”, written by an American writer and cookbook author Richard Sax.  It’s a compendium of mostly American dessert recipes – though many are influenced by early migrant families from across Europe – and is an engaging mix of recipes, historical and anecdotal notes about cooks and quotes from literary works across 200 years of American and English history.    It was first published in 1994 and won many awards before being republished a few years ago.   (Sadly, Richard Sax died in 1995 from lung cancer at the age of 46.)

One of the standout recipes in the book is called “A Semolina Ring Cake from Friuli”; Friuli is Italy’s most north-eastern region (the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was born there) and has its own distinctive food culture.   This recipe, which is over 100 years old, found its way into the book via an Italian chef’s grandmother.

My Italian semolina ring cake

I really liked this recipe upon first reading because: (1) it used Italian semolina flour, which I happened to have found surprisingly in an Indian supermarket and (2) it used unpeeled almonds!   You simply put the flour, sugar and unpeeled almonds into a blender and zap at high speed until its a fine powder.  If you have ever peeled 30 or 40 almonds as I have many times, you’ll appreciate this alternative approach!

So this is what we had at the end of dinner last Wednesday night ... an historic Italian semolina cake to celebrate Lord Ganesha’s birthday!

SEMOLINA RING CAKE FROM FRIULI

Ingredients:  
2/3  C blanched or unblanched almonds    ¾ C semolina flour  1 C sugar   grated zest of 1 lemon – 2 in India as they are too small   6 eggs, separated    pinch salt    icing sugar for topping   Plus eggnog custard with rum    (Recipe also says you can serve it with fresh strawberries but they are not in season here.)

Method:     
Preheat oven to 180C degrees .   Butter and flour a cake tin – preferably a round bundt pan.  
Grind the almonds, flour and sugar in a food processor until powdery and then add lemon zest and all of the egg yolks.  Blend and set aside.

The batter after mixing in the beaten eggwhites

Beat the egg yolks and salt in a bowl until they nearly form stiff peaks.   Fold into the semolina- almond mixture and pour into the cake tin.  Bang the tin on a surface several times to settle the batter.
Bake the cake until top is lightly golden ... about 40 minutes worked for me.   Cool cake, run knife around edge of tin, invert onto another plate or cake stand.    Top with the icing sugar & serve with custard or icecream.

Note:   suggest you find a custard recipe you are familiar with and add 1 ½ tablespoons of dark rum.   Me? ... I fucked the custard up completely by overcooking it and making it curdle ... which is why I am not showing you a picture of it ... and is also why my dear departed mother would be utterly ashamed of me!

Nevertheless, the cake was an absolute classic ... beautifully light with a lemony almond aftertaste.   If you can’t make the custard serve it with icecream ... and have a dark rum and soda instead ... that’s what I did.

Tony saab, Hyderabad Sept 2012
   

The World's Best Chilli Crab Recipe

Singapore Chilli Crab - in Hyderabad!

 

When I first met my partner we were living in Melbourne and both working in the media there.

She was born and grew up in India – her father was Indian and her mother Australian – so every 12 to 18 months we would plan a trip back to India to visit her father, who at the time was living here in Hyderabad.

 Often we would use this place as a base and go off exploring other parts of India or South Asia for the rest of our holidays.   However, on most of these trips we invariably stopped over in Singapore – either going or coming back – and spent either the day or an overnight stay there.  
 

Singapore - at the crossroads of South Asia

And the main reason for that was the food!   Singapore is blessed with being at the crossroads of trade and migratory movements across South Asia and beyond and as a result it has an extraordinary mix of people and cultures.

From the native Malays, early migrations of Chinese and Indians, and the arrival of the British in the 19th Century - all these cultures have left their mark on Singapore's culinary history.   And situated as it is - in a pivotal area of South Asia - other countries in the region have also heavily influenced the country's cuisine  - from the Philippines, Sri Lanka and neighbouring Indonesia to as far west as the Middle East and Saudia Arabia.

A particularly unique and singular cuisine in Singapore is known as Peranakan or Nonya cuisine.   Perankans are local Singaporese who are the descendents of early Chinese migrants who married local Malays in Singapore itself or in areas such as Penang and Malacca on the Malaysian peninsula.
Nonya cusine is a unique mix of Chinese cooking techniques like wok cooking with the spices used by local Malays and their Indonesian counterparts.   Their curries for example are often coconut based but with lashings of firey spices ... just the way we like it!

All of these different cuisines and much more can be experienced at Singapore's renowned open food markets.   Nowadays they are far more regulated - as everything else seems to be in Singapore! - but despite the somewhat "food mall" atmosphere, the actual cooking and presentation hasn't changed and you can still get extraordiary seafood dishes, satays, curries, savoury pastries , breads of all sorts and endless noodle combinations at these small, often one-owner, businesses.

Orchard Road - the place comes alive after dark ...

We would most often arrive at Singapore's Changhi Airport early in the morning from Melbourne, and then have most of the day to explore some part of the city before our flight to India that same evening.   After a quick bus ride into town we would head for the food stalls at the famous Newton Food Centre and then maybe stroll up the main shopping area along Orchard Road, or the ethnic enclaves of  Chinatown or Little India, or head off to the famous Raffles Hotel for a very atmospheric gin and tonic - or two.  

Raffles Hotel - built in 1887 & extensively renovated 100 years later

The Raffles Hotel - originally built in the 1880s - has also been "renovated" in recent years - they no longer have a  live tiger in a cage in the front bar - but it was still fun to reminisce over a drink on the balcony about the writers and other artists such as Somerset Maugham, Chaplin, Coward, Kipling and Conrad who all stayed in the very same establishment at some point in the early part of the 20th Century.  

Part of the Long Bar, Raffles Hotel

I recently read Maugham's "Collected Stories" and his writing perfectly catches the atmosphere of what these old hotels and other establishments must have been like in the dying days of colonialism in  South Asia.   However, I think you can only read Maugham in small doses as there is often an air of melancholy - sometimes sadness - hanging over his characters ... and living here in 'the tropics' it can be quite infectious ... not to be read with gin, especially!
 

Chilli crab served with rice and crispy cabbage salad

One of our favourite Singapore treats was always the chilli crab - giant mud crabs - bigger than the ones you get in Sydney and further north in Australia - cooked in a chilli and tomato based sauce.   This is the kind of dish you can only eat with your hands, cracking the shells and sucking the meat from the thinner legs as you go.

The best recipe I have used to cook Singapore Chilli Crab comes from Stephanie Alexander's book "The Cooks Companion"; at 1126 pages, this is definitely the bible of Australian cooking and was one of the cookbooks I had to bring with me to India when we moved here again.

The recipe was originally demonstrated to Stephanie by Singapore chef, cookbook writer and restaurateur Violet Oon and she cooked the dish using lobster; however, crabs are much more readily available and cheaper.   Don't be put off by the inclusion of tomato sauce as one of the ingredients; whilst it may look a bit naff' amongst the more Asian ingredients, it blends magically with the chillies, black beans and vinegar.   Besides, tomato sauce - thanks to the Maggi company - is ubiquitous across the whole of Asia these days!

Violet Oon's Chilli Crab

Wash and cut the crabs in half

Ingredients:    1.5 kg crabs in their shells   1/4C vegetable oil    8 cloves of garlic, finely chopped   8 small red chillies, finely chopped (less if you dont like it too spicy)    1 t rice vinegar or lime juice    1 egg, lightly whisked   i bunch coriander - including roots - washed & finely chopped    6 spring onions, cut into short lengths

For the sauce:    1 C water    5 T tomato sauce    1 or 2 teaspoons of Chinese black beans    1 1/2 t cornflour    1/2 t dark soy sauce (shoyu)    3 T sugar    1/2 t salt

Garlic & chilli are first cooked in oil to add fragrance

Method:

Mix all ingredients for the sauce and set aside.    Clean and cut crab into pieces, cutting the carapace in half and separate the larger legs.   (We have a fishmonger to do that for us at the front gate when he delivers!)    Heat a large wok and add oil, add garlic and stirfry 1 minute then add chilli and cook another 1 minute.    Add crab pieces & legs and cook several minutes until the shells begin to go red.  

The crab several minutes after cooking in the rich sauce

Stir sauce ingredients into wok and continue stirring for 2 minutes.   Cover and simmer over high heat for another 7 minutes, by which time all the shells will be dark red.

Remove lid, add rice vinegar and then stir in egg, mixing to form threads in the soupy stock.   Add coriander and spring onion, stir and serve immediately.

There it is ... what we think is the world's best chilli crab recipe!


Tony saab, Hyderabad India, Sept 2012