Hoysala days in Malgudi country

It's December, so this must be Mysore. Bakery readers may remember that the first blog was inspired by the 2009-10 South India visit - this time the focus is on the Hoysala temples around Mysore. Oh, and the never ending quest for the perfect cup of coffee. And cake. The latter two of course are missions to which my entire middle age is devoted, but I am far from alone in that. Hoysala temples, on the other hand, are much less known and deserve more attention, particularly those in little villages, well off the beaten tourist track.

Hoysalas were rulers of a fairly small part of South India during the 12th and 13th centuries, around Hassan and Mysore, in what is now Karnataka. They weren't pacifists exactly (how else do you get to be a ruler in those days?) but their demise was eventually caused by Balallala III holding up his regal hands and saying "mate, I don't want to fight" to the incoming hordes of those dreadful fellows from the North, as my aunts refer to anyone who hails from further up the Deccan plateau than, well, Chennai. For two centuries, these kings did their ruling, probably  a fair bit of smiting, but their lasting memorials are the exquisitely carved and pretty well preserved temples which are dotted around the countryside, plus the big ones in Belur and Halebid. Their logo was bloke-slays-lion, as you can see from the top of the tower pictured at the top. This logo doesn't appear on them all, for reasons which are not yet clear to me, but is intended to convey some unwarranted warlike characteristics of the Hoysalas.

The Hoysala temples are recognisable for their fine carvings, well preserved due to the use of soapstone, which is soft when carved and then hardens over time. This allows the sculptor to work in much more detail than if using granite. One of my companions (also known as my mother) regularly instructs me to "stand in front of it, darling, don't look at me, look at it, I need you there to give a sense of proportion". So here you have my hand, complete with flower for the god, plus dodgy watch purchased at a street stall in downtown Mysore (Indians don't need Mary Portas to tell them markets = good), showing the size of one of the six layers of friezes which stripe around the lower part of the outside of the "new style" (most of those built after year 1200) Hoysala temples.

These six layers are typically, from top to bottom: birds, aquatic monsters, scenes from the Indian epics (the Ramayana and the Mahabharata), plants or lions, horses and finally elephants, as if supporting the whole edifice. The example on the left is from the Hosaholalu temple, about 40k north of Mysore, which can be reached by driving through beautiful rural India, passing sugar farms, stopping to pluck a fresh papaya fruit from the verge and on to K.R.Pet and turning left (asking for instructions if necessary). It is currently my favourite, as the consistency of the carving is so good and the quality so high, in a perfect setting of a square in the middle of the village, and still in use.

Besalaru, the subject of today's visit, is less used and required the help of our driver (left, outside temple gates), who sternly instructed me not to scale the iron padlocked gate but using his skill and judgement, quickly found the lady-of-the-lock, whose job it is to make puja (offerings to the Shiva and his companions in the temple shrines) and let visitors in when necessary. I am guessing it isn't her job to do any maintenance. Above the six layers of friezes come (in the "new style" temples") two eaves, under which nestle statues of various gods (at a Shiva temple) or various versions of Vishnu (at a Vishnu temple). Why is Vishnu so vain? Your dedicated detective will research and report back. However, today's temple (keep up at the back, we are at Besalaru), is a Shaivate (dedicated to Shiva) temple, so we get a veritable three dimensional presentation of the Hindu pantheon. I am particularly in love with the feet. Often dancing, sometimes crushing demons, frequently be-bangled but almost always deliciously well carved. As Tony Soprano once said (or something like this), nowadays it's nearly impossible to find anyone to grout your bathroom. Who today could craft a toenail so tiny, so perfect and so millenially-lasting? And then do eighty-odd sets of others?

Sunset view of palace, Green Hotel, Mysore

If you want to find either of these, plus the one at Somnathpur (more well visited and with a ticket office and signposts, much easier to find than twenty years ago when my friend Emma and I had to take several rattly buses, crushed against caged chickens and carrying small children - other people's), stay in Mysore. And if you do so, please reside at the Green Hotel, which is about 3k out of town on the Vinoba Road. This is a venture which should interest anyone concerned to make as small an environmental impact as possible (the one cast by the plane that flew us from Heathrow is partly justified to my mind by the fact that we diasporic people need to see our family and our parental homelands sometimes). No aircon (yet carefully cool, thanks to cunning concrete and planting), no swimming pool, lush gardening, ethical employment policies, plus the careful preservation of a former princessly palace, the whole enterprise is supporting a local NGO for people with learning disabilities and the food is delicious. This is my sixth visit, and as I type from my little sitting area in the very reasonably priced travellers' rooms, I look out at the jacaranda tree in the garden, under which there is a sun shade (that's the funny white umbrella you can see at the bottom) under which currently slumbers my mother, Killer Sudoku book still clutched in her hand.I have work to do, so the provision of free wifi (hence this blog post) is a blessing. I can only recommend this as a place to spend happy, fulfilling, culturally stimulating and culinarily titillating days or weeks in the winter months. Yes, I'd hate me too, if I weren't here. Time for lime sodas followed by a stroll in the sunset. 

Bakery on the radio!

yes, I know it's been a year and no, I haven't disappeared. the baking continues - there is much of that to report. But to celebrate the return of the bakery, you can hear us on BBC Radio 4 no less, until Sunday 6th Nov the "listen again" feature will work for the Debbonaire debut of baking radio!

Imogen helping the radio man test the kit

Last Thursday I read the Broadcasting House email (must have had a deadline) and they were asking what we were going to do with the extra hour of the clocks going back. Amongst other suggestions, they mentioned making the perfect meringue. Which, as any baker knows, you can't do in an hour, oh no.

So smug girl here emailed them, kindly pointing out that fact but also mentioning that I can make a perfect tart in an hour, including making the pastry from scratch and baking it blind. I emailed it off and thought nothing more, till the next morning, when the producer of Broadcasting House rang and challenged me to do just that.

eek! of course the pastry won't be completely perfect as there isn't time to chill and firm. However, consulting the pages of this blog, I found my trusty leek tart recipe and invited my baking side-kick, the divine Imogen Debbonaire, to bake with me. We had a couple of dry runs (more like floury runs) and by the end of Saturday night were replete with tarts (she: lemon and syrup, me leek with homemade onion marmelade, also made within the hour - no end to my smugness today is there).

Imogen with some of the finished products

Come Sunday, a lovely radio man called Peter parked his Outside Broadcast vehicle outside the Thangam Bakery, to the delight of my neighbours, who did the equivalent of rustling their net curtains (coming outside and demanding an explanation, followed by demanding some tart when it was finished). He, Imogen and I spent a hilarious hour doing some sort of bakery maypole dance with headphones beaming the show in our ears, wires linking us to the radio mike box and two tart-making queens racing through their timetables.

If you want to listen, we are on at the top of the show, then about 20 minutes in, 30ish, 50ish and at the end (57ish) when I managed to say "I am now stuffing my face" after an hour of decorous bakery talk.

If you want to bake along, we did the pastry using the Bakery blog recipe and the contents of the leek tart are also here. Imogen's syrup and lemon tart recipe follows shortly.

Bake on. More soon. Peace out.

And the recipe for Thangam's tradition busting Christmas Cake

So, having read the previous blog of reasons to make a carry on on Stir Up Sunday (it was last Sunday but don't worry, it's not too late) here is the recipe for the cake. Gather ye dried fruit and nuts and spices and a loose-bottomed 12 inch cake tin and a little one for you to have your own extra cake.

Ingredients

200g butter - take it out an hour before cooking, so it isn't fridge hard.

150g dark muscovado sugar - yes, nothing else will do. It's worth it.

2 tablespoon black treacle - no, golden syrup isn't the same, it's not that sort of cake.

4 eggs, beaten, or kettled. Did I say big respect to the students?

100ml or so of brandy or sherry.

650g dried fruit - I use raisins (not a single sultana will be passing my mother's lips this Christmas, as per instructions), cranberries (dried and sweetened), cherries (the dark sort, not the red ones) and candied peel. But you can add currants and sultanas if you like that sort of thing. Soak everything, except the candied peel, in the brandy/sherry overnight if you can.

120g nuts - I used almonds and hazelnuts. But you can leave them out if you have a nut allergy to cope with.

Finely grated zest of lemon or orange (but never a lime). Now is a good time to get yourself a zester, what a tool.

2tsp mixed spice - I used traditional cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.

Seeds scraped out of half a fresh vanilla pod if you have one.

200g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder.

Method:

Cream butter and sugar thoroughly. Beat in treacle, then eggs, a bit at a time, alternately with the flour.  The mixture should be ploppy, not liquid.  

Add in the fruit/alcohol mixture. Add the nuts. Stir it all well, adding the baking powder.

You should have greased and lined your tin with baking parchment - this is really important. And you should have heated up your oven to 160c or 140c if you have a fan oven, or gas 3.

Ease the cake mixture carefully, just half at first, into the cake tin. Now for a mixing up of traditions - Simnel cake, the traditional cake for Easter, is a fruit cake with a layer of marzipan in the middle. What could be nicer? Roll out some ready made marzipan into a circle which is slightly smaller than the cake tin, place carefully on the cake mixture and add the rest of the cake mixture making sure it covers the marzipan at the edges.

Cook for 30 minutes, then turn down the oven to 150c or 130c if you have a fan oven, or gas 2. Cook for at least 2 hours, perhaps slightly more until a skewer comes out clean except for a bit of marzipan (taste to check!).

Leave it to cool in the tin. Once cool, take out of tin and baking parchment. Turn it upside down, skewer its bottom and splash on the first drink of extra alcohol. It will quickly soak up. Now wrap the whole thing in foil and put in a tin or somewhere else which is safe from rodents or you.

It will keep for months, particularly if no-one else in your family likes fruit cake.

Stir up Sunday - don't KEEP CALM and do make a CARRY-ON

I am not keen on tradition. It's so often used as an excuse for being vile to someone or a group of someones. Some time over the next week, tradition requires ("it's for the children!") that Dutch men will be blacking themselves and their children up, adding rubbery looking red lips and afro wigs to emulate the BlackPete character who is the nasty bad men who beats the children and abducts them to Spain if they are naughty (I am not making this up). Meanwhile, saintly (and coincidentally white) Klaus gives the good ones presents. Have a look at the youtube clip of the warm and witty David Sedaris' take on this tradition for actual footage. Here are some more traditions:


Easter Eggs: a once lovely traditional time of year for celebrating renewal and growth, now small children are given appalling quality chocolate, confusingly hollow and usually empty. I suppose that is a traditional way of giving your kids a metaphor for life (or reality TV).


Weddings: traditional way of enslaving women and their property, of providing for state interference in individual's sex lives and in in most, but not all countries, a form of sexual identity apartheid. Don't go bleating to me about Civil Partnerships, it's one sort of marriage for gay people and another for straights. Netherlands, admirably (feel obliged to mention a positive Dutch tradition) have three forms of union to which anyone of any sexual identity can sign themselves to. But they are basically not my cup of tea. If you want to invite me to one, unless you are a nephew or niece of mine, please don't, though I will of course respect your right to get married. And if you are a n or an n of mine, please be warned I may well just make you a cake and bung you a tenner, with the usual injunction not to spend it all on sweets. Then tell you I am leaving you all my money in my will and not to tell the others.


Right wing governments traditionally come up with convincing sounding narratives for doing really rotten things to poor people, vulnerable people and anyone who doesn't have loads of unearned income, in ways which make many otherwise reasonable people and even some of their victims think "you know,  he does have a point".


Left wing governments traditionally eventually implode under pressure from international capitalism and internal torment, get kicked out and then traditionally annoy their loyal supporters in a range of ways, this time by referring to squeezed middles. I have a squeezed middle. I am also a loyal supporter. Squeezing my middle won't rid me of the unwanted extra 8kilo. But I can identify it. Ed, dear Ed, I voted for you, stop all this talk of middles and squeezing and blank pages and get on hammering the coalition's treatment of poor people, women, people with disabilities and also with working out how to implement the Living Wage like you promised you would.


Austerity governments can traditionally rely on a Royal Wedding as cover for even more nastiness, whilst we revert to forelock tugging commoners, grateful for a souvenir mug and a day off job seeking, failing to notice that even when the Queen says she will pay half, that's OUR MONEY she is spending. And we will also be paying for some in the police to indulge in the now traditional habit of kettling under age enthusiasts on the day. Oh, and traditionally, we will all forget that royal marriages, going back to Henry 8th and before, with a very few exceptions, don't traditionally go that well.

Christmas: bah humbug. Once a way of feasting and warming each other up during the dark cold winter days (good plan now the price of gas seems to have double), now it seems to me to have become a way of using tradition as an excuse for making people feel they have to spend three months' wages on STUFF. People, stop it, we don't have any money and spending money we don't have just because bankers want us to is why we are in this mess! Go home and knit some socks. Or order a goat from Oxfam- my kind mother has given me practically a flock over the years and I love them all (thankfully, Oxfam has sent them to live with someone who actually knows about goat husbandry).

So it is with some surprise that I realise that I have a deep and abiding love for one, a Christmas, tradition. Stir up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent is the day to make the plum pudding. I have made it the day to make the Christmas cake, which I adore. Sticky, dark, studded with plump raisins sodden with brandy, it's a nutritious and balanced meal which travels well and lasts for months, particularly if you remember that it has a thirst and will be happier if you give it ever more brandy every few days.  There is a lot of time involved in the stirring, cooking slowly and then feeding it over the weeks between the cooking and the big day itself. But that gives you time to watch Mad Men and knit more socks (you can learn how to knit on youtube you know). As you trudge the lonely road on a donkey to the source of your birth, don't forget to ring her up to let her know you have packed a blanket, a fully charged phone and map not a SatNav (who knew that maps would help more in a snowstorm than Sean Connery's voice in an electronic box? No possibility of answering that without sarcasm so I will just park it). And before you set off, wrap the cake up well, remember it will add substantially to your weight allowance if you are flying and if you get snowed up, it will provide you with all essential nutrients for longer than your phone battery will last.

Love in the room, Christmas stirred. And you can cook a big daddy of a cake and a little small one, just for you.

Recipe follows on next blog page.....

The Bakery Called and the Today Programme answered....Hot press!

A couple of days ago I posted that I was finding it hard to get any current news about the government apparently ignoring the fact that the public sector cuts are going to hit women and poor people hardest (particularly poor women and their children). And today, on the ever wonderful Today (Radio 4, 6am to 9am daily except for the blessed Sunday) comes my answer! As part of their week long exploration of fairness in public sector cuts, the feature today was about the impact on women. I clutched my knitting (I am knitting my nephews and nieces a university to go to) and listened with bated breath.

First at 7.30ish, an examination of the claims with union officers and female public sector workers. You can hear this feature by clicking here.  The interviewee who currently works for London Ambulance part time pointed out she is able to afford child care and go out to work, fitting round her children's needs through flexible working and confident her children are well cared for when she is at work because of the provision of child care support, thus paying taxes, providing a role model for her children and still being a good mum (this is not a criticism of women who do not do paid work). She is now facing the end of this and an impossible choice about how to be a mum out of work.

Then at 8.19am Fawcett Society's Anna Bird was on the air (click here to go to the page for the entire programme, annoyingly there isn't a direct link for this feature but you can click on play the entire programme and then fast forward to 8.19am, two hours and 19 minutes into the programme), along with Louise Bagshawe, Tory MP.  I typed as I listened. Anna Bird reminded us of the following reasons why the cuts are likely to hit women hardest and therefore why the Fawcett Society has lodged a legal challenge asking the ConDems to do an Equalities Report, a legal obligation, and to take action if this report shows unfairness in the effects of the public spending cuts:

• Women make up 65% of the public sector workforce, more in the health and social care sectors
• Women are heavier users of public services than men –  we are more likely to live in poverty, we frequently get fecklessly pregnant, we need more care in old age as they live longer (there is a gender equality flaw in that last argument - what are we doing about men's shorter life expectancies? - but it doesn't undermine the overall validity)Women already shoulder the majority of unpaid caring duties and when the public sector cuts are felt it will be women who are expected to take up the slack, looking after elderly neighbours as well as family, doing child care on top of low paid work, we will be the Big Society because that's what we've always done.

Conservative MP Louise Bagshawe promptly flat out denied that the public sector cuts will have this effect. She criticised the Fawcett society for their concern about housing benefit cuts, child benefit cuts and cited the restoration of the link between earnings and pensions as a support for women and said that the majority of the public supported the ConDem cuts.


She also pointed out that the Labour Government didn’t do an Equalities Impact Statement on the abolition of the 10p tax band in 2008 (the year after the Gender Equality Duty became law) which is a good point, though please let’s notice that they did in the end reverse the decision.


Fawcett Society’s Anna Bird reiterated that the child benefit cuts and so on will hit women hardest, Today programme journalist asked “what about the argument that this is what women want”? Anna Bird said the government has LEGAL DUTY to look at the impact on equality and to take action to avoid discriminatory harm.


Louise Bagshawe said she knew that the Treasury is looking at this and has met with the Fawcett Society. She also said that the government is supporting small businesses, which are often a place for women to gain economically. Today programme asked if government would be happy to see more women forced to stay at home. Louise Bagshawe, after calling herself a feminist, trotted out the old clichés about choice and children doing better if women stay at home. It's curious that having denied that there was a gendered impact, she went on to defend the government by saying that they were looking at it. It is particularly odd seeing as the curiously positioned Theresa May, Home Secretary and minister for equalities has previously stated clearly to gorgeous George Osborne that she herself was worried that the government might, ahem, be breaking the law on equalities.


I have to ask, how will having less money, cutting their benefits if they find themselves unable to work for whatever reason, having to take on more unpaid work and having fewer opportunities to do paid work or get quality child care give women more choice? I also have to ask when someone will please teach Tory politicians, in fact, be fair, most politicians, to read or at least understand the summaries of the resaerch on which they claim to base their evidence based “what works” policies? Or just to notice their own ideological biases? Children do best when they are not poor. Children do best when their parents aren’t worried sick about how they are going to manage. Children do better when we all make a commitment to support them, whether or not we have our own – we will all need the current generation of children to look after us, pay for public services and bring us the odd pitcher of margaritas when we are old.


I do get (though politely have to disagree with) the argument many of my friends and many others are making about higher earning parents not needing Child Benefit. First criticism is the link between this and an inferred inevitability about having to make such huge public sector cuts and with such speed - a premise which greater brains than mine are rejecting. Look at the example of the austerity bugets of years gone by which resulted in the Great Depression and the converse of the post war public spending investment which resulted in growth in European and US economies. Government budgets are not the same as household ones, we rightly pool our resources and expect the state to invest on our behalf so that we all have good roads, transport, schools, health, water, refuse collection etc and then we can grow as an economy, pay more in taxes and require less in benefits, at which point public spending can fall as a proportion of GDP because we just need less of it.


Then there is the symbolic importance of valuing children from birth - the benefit is called CHILD benefit, not PARENT benefit, it's for children. And even if you argue in favour of cutting child benefit, the current plan is clearly, demonstrably unfair as it favours dual income families with individual salaries just below the cut off point over single income families with salary just above.

Finally, I feel strongly that the original argument made by our grandmothers and great grandmothers in the Labour and Co-op movements a century ago, about rewarding, even if only symbolically, the unpaid work of bringing up children, still stands. Even if you don't want children, you don't want other people's growing up poor, badly brought up, lacking in basic health care, even if only for the self preservation reasons I have already mentioned - we childless are going to need other people's children when we are old (actually I already do need other people's children and I am merely of a certain age).


If you want to make your own mind up – and please do – you can visit the latest from the Fawcett Society and go to the Today Programme website to hear the interview. For a previous Today programme interview with the same Anna Bird and the Institute of Fiscal Studies’ Mark Littlewood, broadcast on 25th August 2010 you can click here.