The Peanut affair

Peanuts and I go a long way back to my childhood days. I think the love affair started when my sister and I used to play Ghar-ghar or house-house. Our mother would give us a fistful of peanuts and some jaggery to use in our make believe pantry. Sometimes the peanuts would be replaced by a piece of khopra (dry coconut). Watching us play, my mom was sure I was going to be a spendthrift and my sister the one who was careful with her money.

It turns out that my fondness for gobbling up the peanuts was not matched by my ability to spend money. I did not turn out to be the spendthrift like my mom feared. If anything, my friends feel I am a little bit too careful with my money.

However, I digress from the peanut affair. Raw peanuts, roasted peanuts, peanut laddoos, potatoes cooked with crushed peanuts, peanut chikki (brittle), nothing was off limits when it came to my affair with the peanut. Eleven years ago, in the country of Lady Liberty, I discovered the joys of peanut butter and another chapter was added to my peanut affair. I found out I could eat it with chocolate, with apples, spread on a whole wheat tortilla with some jam and sometimes just dip a spoon and lick it straight off the jar.

Raw peanut pods for Susan's BWW

However, I still keep going back to my favorite way of eating peanuts since childhood. In Indore, where I grew up, mungfalliwalas (peanut sellers) would make the rounds of the dusty lanes in my town during peanut harvest. He would have pre-boiled the tender peanuts pods in salty water. They would then be slow roasted in woks, filled with hot sand, set atop a coal stove placed at the end of his thela (push cart).

Boiled, shelled and roasted for Susan's BWW

He would serve them by the kilo in paper cones and we would all sit on the floor, after dinner, and devour the peanuts, splitting the shell by applying pressure on the beak. Biting down on the crunchy, salty outer layer we would savor the sweet, soft meat inside. Fresh, green chickpea shells suffered a similar fate but that story is for another post.

Today, I give you salted, boiled and roasted peanuts of my childhood.

There is no real recipe to boiling peanuts. Fill a big stockpot or a pressure cooker with enough water to cover the peanuts. Add about a tablespoon of salt for every one and a half cup of peanut pods. Boil the peanuts till tender.

Let cool and shell the peanuts. In a heavy bottom pan or wok, roast on medium low flame till the peanuts change color from a tender, pink to a crusty, salty smoky red. Cool a little bit before digging in.

Note: I have, in the past, tried to roast the peanuts in their shells. It takes a long time and a lot of stirring to get the peanuts the right consistency. Shelling the peanuts and roasting them is faster and the texture is similar to the one the mungfalliwala sold.

Homemade double chocolate ice cream and pantry check

                   
When Nupur of One Hot Stove asks you to check what is lurking in your pantry, you don’t dally. You head straight for the pantry, throw open the door and stare at the mess that greets you. The pantry along with the rest of the house had been neglected for the last three months due to someone’s studies. There were packets of lentils, flour, some sprouting onions, a funky smell from some potatoes that got left at the bottom of the basket.

Ladies and gentlemen, don’t judge me. I am not always like this and I usually clean my pantry every couple of months. I was running a month behind, no big deal. Besides, the first step to solving a problem is acknowledging it, no less on a public blog.

Keep in mind all my kitchen essentials, except my masala dabba, are stored in the twenty square foot space which my dad calls a small kirana store (corner grocery store). Ok, my plates and bowls and glasses and kitchen utensils are also not in there.

Coming back to the sprouting onions and rotting potatoes, which promptly went on a date with the waste basket, the pantry was not as much a mess as it looked at first glance. The big cereal box from Costco was put on the top shelf, dwindling grains and lentils were transferred to cleaned, washed and saved up jam and salsa jars. The larger packets got their due space in bigger containers and canned goods were arranged with smaller ones on top of the larger ones.

Before you think I try to arrange my pantry like Ms. Martha Stewart, let me clarify. I grew up in a house where my mom cooked in a tiny kitchen. The first apartment I lived in after marriage had a galley kitchen so small I could touch the sink and stove with my arms extended. Six years later, when we bought our house, I was excited to have a pantry big enough to keep everything within easy reach.