Home Alone

With Rahul working late and Arnav away at his grandparents place, I got so engrossed reading that time just passed by without making the slightest of sounds. There was no desire of venturing out at 8:00 for a dinner out or ordering out, so I decided to do what the husband does - look into the refrigerator - see what has to be finished and then decide on the recipe. With carrots, radishes and some frozen peas, I thought about a salad with some leftover bread - dumped the idea as quickly as I thought about it since eating raw radishes wasn’t exactly my idea of pleasing the palate. The Sichuan pepper which I had been in search of for the past year and a half and finally found was staring at me accusingly stating that I hadn’t yet touched it after all that I went through to find it. So it was time to make the amazing Chinese five spice powder which was so freely available in all supermarkets in the US but you just can’t find here. The mortar and pestle got from Coorg was useful to grind the Sichuan pepper, fennel seeds, star anise, cloves and cinnamon. I always feel the stone ground spices are better than mixer ground ones - more oils are released with the pressing and tearing the spices. I used roughly the same quantity of each of the ingredients except for the cloves which I feel is a stronger spice and so could mask the aroma of the others.

Made ribbons of the carrots and radishes with a vegetable peeler and dunked them along with peas in boiling water for about a minute. Then fried about half a teaspoon of sesame seeds in about a teaspoon of oil and tossed the vegetables in it with half a teaspoon of the five spice powder and some salt. The subtle aroma of the sesame seeds with the spice was delightful with an accompaniment of brown rice cooked with salt and lemon peel.