In the memory of my dear niece

खै के भनु

खै के लेखॅु

तिन दिन भयो मैले तिमिलाइ जता ततै खोजेको

जमिनको हरियो दुबोमा

फुल्दै गरेको टुलभमा (tulip)

हॅागामा बसेको चरामा

तलाऊमा पौडिरहेका हॅासहरुमा

अनि

रुखमा चराले लगाएको गुणमा

किनकि,

तिमि जो कुनै रुपमा पनि आउन सक्छेउ रे भनेर।

तर मैले कतै पनि तिम्रो सोरुप चिन्न सकिन।।

साहेद तिमि म सित रिसाएकि छौ कि

तिन दिन भैसक्दा पनि

मैले तिम्रो पृयतम् लाइ बोलाउन नसकेकीमा

तिम्रो मुटुका ट्क्राहरुलाइ नरोउ भन्न नसकेकीमा।

मन नभएर हैन

मायॅा नभएर पनि हैन

भन्ने सब्बद नपाएर मात्रै हो।।

खै के भनु

खै के लेखॅु

भाबनामा डुब्ने मेरो आदतै सानै देखि

अब त झन बेदान्ततिर लागेकि छु

यो संसार केहि होइन,

हामि माटोबाट आएम् अनि माटोमै मिल्नु छ

भन्ने पनि थाहॅाछ।

तर पनि किन हो कुन्नि

तिम्रो प्रस्थानले यो मन सारै डग् मगाएको छ।।

धेरै कुराको संझना आईरहेछ मलाई

तिमि हुर्किसके पछिको हैन

सानो बच्चामा छुनु मुनु गर्दाको याद।

मेरो बिहा भए पछि “म पनि भिनाजुसित बिहा गर्छु”

भन्ने बेलाको याद।।

हैरान छु मनको गहिराई भित्रका कुरा

यो पोष्टमा म कसरि उल्लेख गरु?

मानिसहरु भन्छन्

कोहि अरुको लिन जन्मंन्छन् रे

कोहि चाहि अरुलाइ दिन,

कोहि मानिस अरुलाई दुख:दिन

अनि कोही चाही अरुको दुख:लिन।

तिमि त सबैको दुख:लिन आएकि रहिछौ

समयमै सबैको रिण चुक्ता गरेर गयौ।

खै के भनु

खै के लेखॅु

बस यति जान

तिमिले जुन कामकोलादि जन्म लिएकि थियौ

ति सबै पुरा गर्न सकेकिमा गर्ब मान।।

तिमि जहॅा गयौ

जहॅा छौ

आरामसित बस।

 

Rest in peace my dear Sandhya

I will miss you so much!

The Story of Life

 

Our life is like a sheltering tree that started its journey from a tiny seed. Imagine the tree  providing a cool resting place and producing flowers/fruits to nourish others. Then the tree dies at the end of its life-cycles in order to make the space for other seeds to grow in its place. 
 
Knowing all this, however, it is the nature of some people that they aren’t capable of appreciating others—like a poisonous snake only capable of producing poison, even when you feed it the life-nourishing milk in all its life. A few other nature of things you may want to know:
 

One who can be cruel to animals is not capable of being a kind human 

One who hasn’t received a true love may not be able to give you one 

One who wish to ruin others’ reputation may end up losing his/her own.

Sekuwa or Poleko masu

Sekuwa has become one of the most selling appetizers in Nepal and its popularity is spreading beyond Nepal. However, sekuwa is just the old cuisine with a new name. For instance, almost all households in Nepal used a wood-burning stove to prepare their meals in the olden days. Those coals provided excellent energy to warm oneself up during the winter months, while cooking food.  The natural coal from the woods were the primary means of roasting sekuwa (poleko masu), potatoes, or corn-on-the-cob. 

 

My memory of the sekuwa or poleko masu is that the old and vulnerable lighted the coals in an earthen-pot and sat around to enjoy the warmth provided by it during the winter months. While doing it, I remember my siblings and I roasting a few pieces of good meat our parents handed to us --marinated deeply in the heavy spices-- just before preparing the meat kabab dish for the family.  

 

The piping hot poleko masu (or sekuwa as they’re famous now) tasted the best! Burning a makkal with a natural coal may not be feasible now, but you can do the next best thing using the outdoor charcoal grill--as you do for your barbequed meat--to prepare the most flavourful meat you can ever imagine!

 

Sisnu soup from Nepal

 Sisnu plant is commonly known as the "stinging nettle" in English. It is edible and is one of the native plants in Nepal.

Source: Stok photo from the Internet

The plant has numerous health benefits, according to sources. But the poor in Nepal eat sisnu not because of the health benefits, but because the plants are free for them to use. They pick the tender new shoots of sisnu with a pair of tongs (chimta in Nepali) to avoid the stings and cook it as their main meal. 

 

I grew up in Kathmandu where sisnu plants grew widely in wetlands, between woods, rocks, and shady hills. I had to pass these plants along the narrow paths at least twice a day to and from my school in Baneswor, which I still remember.

 

I don’t have the exact recipe for it, nor have I ever seen anybody preparing this dish. However, my mother was a very inquisitive woman. She had apparently cooked sisnu stir-fry for us one day. We found out only when she asked us how her stir-fry sag tasted, and we replied, “It was really good.” Then she revealed her secret!

Based on the taste of my mother’s sisnu stir-fry and her story about the poor people in her village where she grew up cooking sisnu ko khole for their meal, here is an approximate recipe for sisnu ko khole--substituting spinach leaves for sisnu greens since they taste very similar to me. However, use sisnu greens if you can find them.

Sisnu ko khole

(Mildly spiced stinging nettle soup)

“Khole” is a generic name for ‘beggar’s soup’ that is made of whatever is handed to down to them. Sisnu is one of the perennial plants, native to Nepal. The average sisnu plant can get above a foot tall.  The plant looks like Caribbean spinach greens, but sisnu is covered with a hair-like fuzz and stingy nettles that inject histamines and other poisonous chemicals into the skin on contact. The plant’s stingy nettles become more effective with cold water. Warning: Although sisnu’s stingy nettles and hair-like fuzz fall off and disintegrate in heat, it can burn your skin badly when coming in contact before cooking. Also, before cooking check if you’re allergic to this plant

 

Ingredients

 

454 grams fresh spinach or sisnu greens, chopped coarsely

½ cup rice or legumes of any kind

¼ cup corn or wheat flour to thicken the soup (optional)

1 medium potato, cut into cubes 

1-2 whole chilli pepper, broken into pieces if you want it spicy-hot

5-6 cups water

2 T. ghee or mustard oil 

1 tsp whole cumin or fenugreek seeds for added flavour 

¼ tsp turmeric powder for color

1 tsp salt or to your taste

 

Preparation

 

Step 1.           Clean the greens thoroughly. If you find the sisnu green, wear a pair of rubber gloves before handling it. Wash the green in hot water, discard the woody and old parts, and chop coarsely with a gloved hand. Set aside. Wash the potato, peel, and cut into pieces. Set aside.

 

Step 2.           Brown the seeds in ghee or oil in a deep saucepan. Bring the water to a boil. Add all other ingredients, except for the sisnu greens. Sprinkle the flour over the soup and give a gentle stir. Cover the pot, lower the heat, and let the soup simmer for about 10 minutes. Now, add the sisnu greens and cook for another 5-7 minutes.

 

Serve hot for supper or lunch, as the poor people in my mother’s village did, to get a feel for how their life was. Sisnu ko khole is an exotic hardy soup that should be eaten all by itself.

Remembering Childhood in Kathmandu

Roasted corn, chickpeas, peanuts, and soybeans made up the major lunch meal for most Nepalese even in the Kathmandu-valley until a few decades ago. Back then, almost all households in Kathmandu had a small patch of land around their house where they grew enough of their own vegetables and grains to last a full year. Not many people could afford a refrigerator in those days, so the roasted grains made ideal snacks and lunches for most households.

 

Corn and soybeans are still part of Nepali meals for some Nepalese, but these grains are now roasted in a metal pot, unlike in the olden days when they were roasted in an earthen pot over a wood-burning stove. The wood burning stoves have also been replaced with kerosene or gas stoves in most households in Kathmandu.  

 

Outside of Kathmandu there still is a unique tradition of serving makai ra bhatmas bhuteko with a glass of buttermilk. Sometimes, a few slices of raw radish or soft radish leaves accompanied makai ra bhatmas bhuteko. While radish is a digestive root-vegetable with very few calories, soybeans are high in protein but need to be eaten with grains to get the complete nutritional value out of them. Thus, eating soybeans with corn, radish, and buttermilk was an ingenious idea that they had learned through their own experience, not from a book! 

Why the cows and goats look healthier than the humans in Nepal?

 

Other than a few urban areas, Nepal is mostly an agricultural land where villagers heavily depend on domestic animals, such as cows and oxen, for milk products and ploughing land. Goats, sheep, chicken, and ducks are also raised for meat and fertilizer. All this means that animals are an important part of the villagers’ lives. So, when corn is milled, the villagers separate the coarsely milled corn for chiyakhla and the powdery flour for dhido or for feeding animals. 

Since the powdery flour has corn germs and other fivers, this is more nutritious than the chiyakhala flour. This is one of the reasons you may find most of the animals in villages looking healthier than their keepers!

A perfect vegan soup for the winter

 

Quati ko rus (Vegan spicy soup of sprouted mixed beans)

 

 

Quati is a mix of sprouted beans, lentils, and peas of various kinds. Rus means soup in the context of Nepali cuisine. Jhol is another name for a spicy soup in Nepal, while a mildly spiced soup is called suruwa (broth).  Thus, jhol and rus are used interchangeably for a spicy soup in Nepali cultures. Quati soup signifies a special occasion, called “Janai Purnima” in Nepal. Janai Purnima is explained in detail in my book, Cultural Heritage of the Nepalese by Sasi Kala. 

 

Sprouted beans and legumes are no longer considered  as the “poor man’s meat” even in the Western world. In fact, recent research shows that the enzymes derived from sprouted beans and legumes are far superior to that of meat sources. Sprouts are also rich in vitamins and minerals. Thus, this colourful, healthy, and delicious vegan soup will be a perfect addition on your menu—especially for the winter months when we habitually look for a hearty soup. Since sprouting requires some efforts on your part, I suggest you sprouting more than you require for one meal.

 

Colourful sprouts are hard to find in many cities, but you can sprout your own at home.

To grow sprouts, gather varieties of beans, lentils, and peas. Soak them overnight in a container (any pot or bottles will do). Drain the water, rinse the beans, and shift them in another pot/container with a lid. Set the container in a warm place during the winter months (sunny window-ledge or a mildly warmed up oven) for a day. Sprouts are ready when they grow up to ¼ to ½ inch long. Sprouts longer than that height will lose some of the nutrients in them. If your sprouts aren’t ready by then, rinse the sprout again, strain, and let them grow for one more night. If you need more help in sprouting at home, please refer to A Culinary Journey to Nepal by Sasi Kala and read under the sub-section “Selective Preservatives and Probiotic Pickles”. 

 

 

Ingredients

 

2 cups mixed dry beans (makes about 5 cups sprouts)

1 medium potato (about a cup), peeled and cubed 

4-5 T. mustard or olive oil

2-3 dry cayenne peppers (1-2 for milder soup), broken into pieces for heat if desired

½ tsp freshly ground black pepper 

2-inch fresh ginger root, crushed

3-4 medium cloves of fresh garlic, crushed

½ tsp turmeric for color 

¼ tsp powdered Szechuan pepper (optional)

½ tsp garam masala powder 

½ tsp cumin and coriander powder, each

A pinch of fenugreek and jwano seeds, each 

A small pinch of asafoetida powder or ½ tsp baking soda (optional)

7-8 cups water for soup

11/2 -2 T. salt, or to your taste

1 large plum tomato diced (optional)

A handful of freshly chopped coriander leaves (optional)

 

Preparation

 

Step 1.           Rinse the sprouts thoroughly and drain the water. Set aside. Wash all the vegetables and cut them according to the specifications. Set aside.

 

Step 2.           Heat the oil in a deep saucepan and brown the seeds first, then add the chilli pieces, turmeric, and asafoetida. If you’re using baking soda, hold on to it until the next step. Immediately add the sprouts and potato.  Stirring often, cook for five minutes. Add the spices now and stir again. Cook until the water dries out completely, while constantly stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan. This is a very important step to get the authentic sharp taste in your quati!

 

Step 3.           Add the water, salt, and baking soda now—if you chose this option instead of asafoetida. Stir and let the bubbles of baking soda settle before covering the pot with a tight lid. Lower the heat and let the soup simmer on low heat for 15-17 minutes in a regular pot. If you are using a pressure cooker, let is whistle for 3-5 times. If you use a pressure cooker don’t open the lid until the steam is completely out. This is very important for your safety!

 

Add the freshly chopped tomato and coriander if you’re using them once the steam is out. Stir and let the flavour develop for five minutes before serving with dinner rolls, boiled rice, or roti (pita bread). A bowl of steamy quati ko rus makes an excellent appetizer or a snack for a cold or rainy day. This soup stays good inside a refrigerator for a couple of days. It also freezes well and comes in handy to use in a hurry.