Ghee fried noodles

Jr. is in India. The first thing she requests from me after reaching there? Daddy, can you tell me how you make ghee fry ? 

She meant noodles and she knew I understood her request without mentioning noodles!

Was going to ask her Chitti to make it for her. They say kids will go crave for foods when they go to college. 

Mine is in India and gets to eat home cooked food from my sister in law and mom and still craves ghee fried noodles. I have done something right! (or wrong if you ask all the women in either side of the phone conversation)

So here is a videoblog.

We use Maggi noodles in the house, lead or otherwise. If lead poisoning from Maggi is happening to anyone, yours truly should be hit, having eaten Maggi at least twice a week for a good 20 years. Many patents, papers, presentations later, not to mention a moderately successful stint as hubby and daddy over the same time frame,  one can conclude that the brain is still functioning after all that Maggi! However, I dont use the masala packet that comes with Maggi and I always put Peas, carrots and Potato in the noodles. Potato is a questionable "Veggie" in our household, but it is one by my definition (for that matter, Maggi is questionable "food" in our household).

Hope the kids watch this years from now and realize that the best ingredient in the noodles was not the ghee but daddy's love.. okay.. that is asking for too much.

It is Ghee! You can make anything taste better with some Ghee!

Life without Maggi

Maggi is an inherent part of our diet right now! The Nestle made noodles are a favorite evening snack for kids at least once a week and also a dinner option for daddy and the kids at least once a week! 

Daddy is the Maggi expert and can make it in many different ways with any combination of vegetables, as a soup, just with enough water or cook it so that the "noodles don't stick to each other", depending on what the kids feel like on any given day.

When we come home after any all day outings, dinner is always Maggi, as it can be done by the time kids go take a shower. 

So it is a rude shock to see headline news that Maggi has lead and a lot more MSG in it than it is supposed to. Given Nestle is an international brand, the expectation was always that there will be "some" quality control. 

One good thing I do is to not use the Masala packet that comes with the noodles. Instead I use a combination of :

Salt + Sambar powder (made in India with my Grandma or mom's recipe) + turmeric powder + a small pinch of asafoedita (kids like it, I skip it)

and we save the masala packets. Think I have posted on this earlier as well. 

Given all the Maggi consumption, we have a drawer in the kitchen just dedicated to noodles and masala. Today I decided to go clean out the Maggi drawer and this is what I saw..

poured it on the ground and counted the packets to clear it out..

That was 670 packets of Maggi Tastemaker masala! This is just from Jan of this year. 

Going by some crude math, we would have possibly injested enough lead to make us brain dead for the next seven generations if the reports are true!

Then again, we do not know how much of the stuff is in the noodles. Will watch the reports. Maybe the New Jersey Nestle that imports it from India will do some spot checks?

It is also true that noodles (be it Maggi or Ramen) have a lot of wax in it.. so I do boil the noodles to remove the wax on occasion or dry roast it to get rid of the wax before using the noodles. 

Given the data, we are not an occasional noodle family! So we should take this seriously. In the meantime, we are going back to adai, dosai, kunukku for "tiffin" where possible.

Masala hoarder

San to me : Can you please clean up the bottom draw in the kitchen where you store Maggi. It is getting ridiculous!

Me to San : Not really. Let me check..

Well, what do you know. Over the years the girls have started liking my "Sambar podi" flavored Maggi noddles over Nestle's patented concoction which is a "crowd favorite", to say the least..and that means the packets of Maggi "Masala Taste maker" gets tossed at the bottom.

We have now over a few hundred of these packets!

Me to San : Don't want to throw them away. In case there is a ban on Maggi imports into the USA someday, we can still use those packets with Ramen noodles and get the Maggi flavor!

San gave me her trademark look that usually suggests "How can a guy be smart and stupid at the same time?!"

It is true that Indian rice imports got restricted to the US and two or three years ago rice went from $7.99 for a 20 lb bag to $ 31.99 !! Who knows, the US foreign policy is as fickle today as it was three years ago if not worse.

Still one will always have the Sambar podi to make noodles right? Wrong.

Here is a small table that explains why :

Noodles Tastemaker Taste
=====================================
Maggi Sundar's mix Yummmmmmy
Maggi Maggi masala Yummmmy
Ramen Maggi masala Yumy
Ramen Raman mix Yucky
Ramen Sundar's mix Yuckkkkky

So it might not be a bad idea to hold on to the tastemaker packets after all!!!

For now, I get to store them in the garage...

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Dream Job

Many a time when the daily routine got too stressful, San and me have had conversations that run something like this:

Me : I am tired. My health is going. Enough with this house/school district/money business. My parents gave me a good education. We can try to do that without this expensive school district thing or anywhere in the world. Let's retire. Or at least let me retire..

San : Can you come back to the real world please?

Me : Why can't I just start a drive through shop which sells only four things.. Maggi noodles, samosas, Chai and filter coffee? We can make a living doing that? no?

San : Where?

Me : anywhere on I-5. you will have a queue a mile long.. trust me!

San : usually shakes her head and walks off or says something to the effect of "by tomorrow your head will cool down and you will be back to work"

Recently we found a dude who is doing my dream job..

On a route between Rohtang pass and Manali, there is a guy who under a simple yellow tarp canopy makes simple omelet sandwiches and Maggi Noodles!

Hot noodles when it is really cold outside! Unfortunately he makes no Chai/Coffee to go with this. Still it is a pretty good deal for 30 rupees a plate.

Mochu's Cafe on the gate behind IT-BHU in Varanasi, used to be a favorite Saturday night hangout for us because our regular mess halls would be closed Saturday. Mochu would make us a plate of Maggi noodles for 5 rupees between 8-10 PM only. A big aluminum vessel where maggi was constantly added and removed.

Some of us south Indians would call it Mochus "Akshaya patram" where he kept coming up with noodles for a large crowd. He also sold us cheese sandwiches (2 nicely cut triangles with Amul cheese) for 2 rupees and Chai for 1 rupee. In winter when you see your breath condense in front of you, the hot Maggi would taste divine.. just divine.

In close to 20 years the Maggi plate price has gone up 6 fold, but the good news?

The taste has stayed the same!

ps. In the audio you can hear my FIL ask me :

Is it clean?

I say "the seat is clean".

He then tells me "not the seat.. the plates and spoons" and I say "you can't expect much here. The noodles is boiling. the hot noodles will kind of take care of the plate.."

funny how I switch cleanliness standards when we travel in India.

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Maggi - Dal Atta

It is no secret that I love noodles. My GaneshRam 777 Sambar powder flavored Top Ramen noodles was a favorite for fellow graduate students !

Recently, Nestle has gone on a dicovery path with newer additions to their Maggi noodles lineup.

The vegetable atta was great !

Now comes the Dal Atta aka Sambar noodles !


The ad. pretty much uses every stereotype for a sambar eating south Indian to the point of insulting you. But it still promises every non south Indian a guaranteed authentic sambar flavor. After seeing the advertisement for the Dal Atta, I had to try it !!

If there is one thing that will turn you off faster than the ad. for this noodles, it is the noodles itself !!

This thing downright sucks! I expected something remotely close to my own sambar flavored noodles, hoping to get a whiff of tamarind, cumin, coriander, fenugreek and mustard.. but it was disappointing.

Why ? After you cook the masala for the usual time and cook the noodles, the hot spices stand out. You get the same taste as you get in some restaurants, where they didn't take the time to cook the sambar fully and you think you are eating uncooked chili powder. It is always a challenge to make tasty sambar quickly. The faster you try to wing it, the worse it tastes.. I thought Nestle did some pre cooked magic to eliminate this problem, but was wrong.

So, here is a tip to salvage the situation, in case you bought a 100 pack box of this stuff !! (I buy noodles in boxes! lucky for me, I always do a trial run before I get my box). Add nearly 1 1/2 times the water for every pack, put the tastemaker in and let it boil till the water comes down to the usual 1 cup. Then cook the noodles.

You can also make it taste closer to sambar if you add a little asafoedita after the masala is cooked.

Better luck next time Maggi ..