Sun Evaporated Sugar.

How would it feel to use locotarian, organic, sustainably grown, free from processing, free from added chemicals,  nutritious and wholesome sugar. Hard to believe such a thing exists! especially when it concerns sugar which has now earned the moniker - white poison.

Well, we we just managed to make such a batch of sugar right at our home. All it required was patience.

This April we harvested a small crop of sugarcane, organically grown in our backyard. It turns out, sugarcane is quite un-fussy and easy to grow. It just needs a lot of water and manuring. After eating some, giving it to friends and keeping aside a small portion for the next round of crops we managed to get  2.5 liters of Sugarcane juice.

We planned to make sugar out of this juice and employed mother nature to do all the hardwork. We spread the juice over 3 large tarts and started to evaporate it under the harsh April and May summer sun of Goa (Surprisingly this summer has been much pleasant than last year- or perhaps our plants have grown bigger) .

After 15 days of evaporation, during which the liquid had to be protected from ants, bees, birds and other sugar deprived creatures, the colour slowly turned reddish-golden from the original olive green. The volume had substantially reduced and the entire juice now could be accomodated in a single tart.

Another 15 days of drying and the rate of evaporation had substantially reduced. The liquid had become so viscous that I could hold the tart vertical without actually spilling the juice. It can perhaps be called molasses at this stage.

Another seven days of drying I realised that there was no reduction in the volume of liquid- The sun had  finally given up.
I tasted some of our lovely sweet nectar and it tasted great. It initially tasted like dark jaggery and has an after taste of honey and the flavour lingers for quite sometime.
Sugarcane juice is very nutritious but the process of manufacturing sugar and jaggery robs all its nutrients making it a junk and harmful product. Considering the temperature may never have crossed more than 40 degrees during the making of this sugar, I believe it retains most of sugarcane's nutrition (the inevitable loss due to degradation by time is always there). What more could I ask for.

 We gently poured and bottled the liquid sugar and managed to get about 250 ml of sugar. (Ah! I lost about 300 ml of sugar, when a naughty bird toppled one of my tarts). All said and done this should last us for 8 to 9 months (Nope! our sugar consumption is not low, its quite normal. Anything more than this is excess sugar in your life.)

Meanwhile the next batch of sugarcane has sprouted this time all going well- expecting a larger batch of the golden syrup.

Recipe from a Bouquet

A tree that grows fast and gives abundant flowers is the drumstick tree. Said to bear nutritious leaves, seeds and flowers the tree is a favourite to a lot of creatures. Many birds especially the Parakeets, Orioles, flowerpeckers visit it and squirrels enjoy the abundant flowers it gives.
The flowers make a very tasty dish- you just need it to eat once and you will forever fall in love.
So when I gave Aarina a bouquet of drumstick and banana flowers she cooked a delicious dish from them. Well this is how she did it.

The red banana inflorescence, which is removed as the bunch grows to optimum size has small florets in it.

Keep the yellow stamens and discard the  outer calyx. 

The drumstick flowers are much easier to clean. Just pluck the flowers from the branch.

One branch gave quite a bowl full of flowers.

The recipe is quite simple. Take oil in a vessel and heat it up. Splutter some mustard seeds, then add curry leaves.
Add both the drumstick and banana flowers and salt. Add a little water and close and cook for 5 minutes. Then add freshly grated coconut and cook for another 5 minutes.
We also added fresh greenpeas along with the flowers and they do go well with the flowers.

Oh yes- that's it, serve hot; it's pretty darn delicious. 

Banana Stem Cutlet

It is always a pleasure when your plants fruit- we recently had one such delightful moment when we harvested a big bunch of banana. Once the fruit ( banana is botanically a berry, but still...)  is harvested, the banana plant (which is technically a herb, but still...) is chopped off. One edible, tasty and nutritious part of the plant is its inner core. We always make it a point to cook it and this time we made cutlets; that made a perfect breakfast for us.
So below is the recipe for Banana stem cutlets:

1. Cut the inner core of the banana steam into small pieces and keep aside. Similarly chop, onion, garlic, ginger  and green chillies. ( I'm not mentioning quantities since you can vary it as per your taste)

2. Pressure cook and mash potatoes and keep aside.

3. In a vessel take oil and splutter mustard seeds. Then add curry leaves and the chopped onions. As the onions start to discolour, add the ginger, garlic, green chillies and fry. (We also added turmeric, coriander, cumin and Garam masala for a heavy body flavour. We have even skipped these spices out, and the cutlets turn out to be equally good)

4.  Once these spices start to give out aroma, add the chopped banana stem and little water and cook for about 15 minutes.

 5.Cook till the water is fully evaporated, then cool it. Once cooled, put it in a blender and grind it to a fine paste.

6. Take it out of the blender and add the mixture to the potato (equal quantity of potato and mixture). The mixture will turn out quiet watery, since the stems release water when grinding. To make it more pliable add gram flour. Add salt and mix well. In case your mixture is quite dry, we still recommend adding gram flour, since it gives a nice umami flavour to the dish.

7. Take very little oil in an  iron girder, put a blob of cutlet mixture and gently spread it into cutlet shape. You can even shape it in your hands and place it on the girder- however use wet hands and that makes shaping easy.

8. Fry till the crust turn dark brown and the cutlets are firm. Serve hot- makes a tasty, wholesome breakfast.