Live: Hobbies and Me

This post is not about food, although my blog is mostly about that. Well, in a way, since I do love cooking, and this is a hobby for me, the underlying theme is food. But, as the title says: this is a blog about living. So, in a way to enhance your life, each one should discover, research, adopt and then nurture a hobby that has nothing to do with one's normal field of work. 

I am proud to say that I have not one, but many hobbies. Sometimes, I wonder how I ever find the time to do my normal work! 

My earliest hobby was to collect stamps. I did this from my early childhood to some time around the age of 10 or so, then gave it up as I hardly received stamps from overseas. Next, I took to collecting matchbox covers. Since the paper labels were stuck on thin wood boxes, I would soak the tops in water till the labels came off the wood, then dry them and stick them onto the pages of a special notebook. It was a time-consuming exercise, but as I went on searching and cataloging covers, I realised these had price denominations just like stamps! A branded box cover sold at different prices over the years, so, for example, I had a "SHIP" brand cover for 5 paise, then 10 paise, then 20 paise and then 25 paise! This would all go on a separate page!

The hobby died out as my life became more and more complicated. From adolescence to the dawn of the internet age, my next, all-consuming hobby was reading books. I have read comic books, children's books, love stories, James Hadley Chase, detective tales, Enid Blyton, classics from Charles Dickens to Jane Eyre, and, as I grew in age, I have devoured Wilbur Smiths, Arthur Hailey, Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Ludlum, Colin Forbes, and so many others. 

Reading inevitably led to writing my own books. During my school years, I wrote a series of adventures of four kids and their dog who go out and form a boys' club, then solve mysteries - exactly as Enid Blyton's Famous Five or Secret Seven did. I even wrote a full-length Hindi novel, a short biography of a fictional author, a full-length English novel, and poems galore. 

My writing hobby has continued, although I blog much more than write novels or poems. Readers who wish to read my work are requested to click HERE. 

Sometime around 2007-8, I turned to photography, I purchased my first digital DSLR camera, my Canon 550D. I have played around with it over the last decade. I amalgamated my interest in photography with my newfound interest in birding. I now go out birding, using my Canon camera and my different zoom lenses to record and save my sightings for posterity. 

Birding has been a very rewarding hobby insofar as it gives me peace, immense satisfaction and happiness of a very high order. I will write about birding in another post elsewhere. 

For this post, suffice it to say that for a fuller life, do have one or two hobbies. Discover the talents inside you, adopt the hobby and then nurture it over the years so that it takes you further and further in the territory ...

Recipe Tips: Dal gosht

Okay, so everyone knows how to make dal, right. It is quite an easy job to mix different dals, combine them with tomato and spices, cook it all together and serve it as a soup. However, when it comes to making finger-licking good dal, it does need a bit of learning. 

I make dal the traditional way Bohra Muslims do. It is a kind of thick, spicy dal. It doesn't have the sweetness and dilute texture of a Gujarati dal; neither does it resemble the Dal Maharani. It is more like the tadka dal of the north. 

There are two ways to spice up dal. One way is to temper it from over the top after the dal has already been cooked. The second way is to start a tempering in a kadhai, and then add the cooked dal over it. You could go either way. The most essential steps are thorough cooking of the dal, using a hand mixer to homogenise the dal (if it hasn't done so already with the cooking) and using spices in the right proportions. 

During the initial dal cook, use only turmeric, whole green chillis and salt, with tomatoes. In the temper, first splutter cummin seeds and mustard seeds, then add the long, thin onion; after the onions have turned a pink-brown, add garlic paste, temper further, then add ground spices like coriander-cummin powder, garam masala, red chilli powder, etc.

The lamb pieces you use to make the dal gosht must be from a tender animal. I use lamb chops with bone in; you may want to use other portions. The shoulder or the shank are equally tender. Again, there are two ways to cook the lamb. You may either marinate the lamb pieces and then add them to the cooking dal so that it all cooks together, or you can cook the lamb separately and then combine the dal with it at the last step. Regardless of which way you go, you do need to make sure that the lamb meat is properly cooked. 

For the meat marinade, use tomato paste or live curd along with powdered spices, a ginger garlic paste and salt as per taste.

I have often found that using whole green chillies during the initial cooking of the dal in a pressure cooker gives you a satisfying pungency with the freedom to eat those pieces of chilli with your dal or dal gosht. Others may prefer small red chillis or red chilli powder. Again, that is your personal preference. How much chilli to add is also a personal thing. The same is true of salt. I do advise adding salt into the dal initially rather than adding it as a last step to "season as per taste".

Finally, what do you eat the dal-gosht with? Well, freshly cooked basmati rice is one option. I usually stir in a few chapatis broken into bits. And garnish the whole mix with onion kachumber - the simple thin diced onions with coriander, diced green chilli and lime juice. 

Try these tips and see how your dal-gosht turns out. 

Do you have your own tips on how to make dal-gosht? Do share them in the comments section.