Sauce (The Food Blog)

Baked Prawns in Creamy Garlic Sauce

2012-12-26T18:47:00.001+05:30

I've been making a lot of in-and-out dishes lately. That is, dishes that require you to zoom into the kitchen, do some quick stirring, and zap back out. This is One Such. Here's the how-to:

Take ten or twelve shelled and be-headed (and de-tailed, if you like) prawns. Not enormous ones. If they are large, cut them along the vein to make one into two. Wash and clean then, then leave them alone to dry. No marinade! Now, prep the other ingredients thus: mince about six cloves of garlic. Aww, no no, stick to three if that's all you can handle. Chicken. Yes. Anyway. Take six cloves of garlic. Peel and mince them. Now, either make a paste of dry red chilies (with a green thrown in to take the edge off), or, if you're sensible and avoid dry red chilies, just wash and chop about three green chilies (unless, that is, you're all delicate like. In which case you'd best abandon this ship now. It's going to get worse). Finally, chop a couple of shallots/green onions, stalk and all.

So, after you're all prepped, heat a tablespoon of butter in a wok.

Aww, I kid! Sunflower oil will do just fine.

No, really. One tablespoon of butter. In this, when warm and liquid, add the minced garlic. When fragrant, add the chilly paste, or the chopped green chilies. Stir quickly for about a minute. Add the chopped green onions. Just the onion parts, mind. Show some more wristwork. Then, stir in the prawns and if you're flame wasn't already on simmer, do it ASAP or the prawns will harden. After lightly tossing the prawns in the garlicky, warm butter and watching their juices mix with it for a minute or so, add a cup of fresh or heavy cream. If using fresh cream, whisk it lightly before adding to the wok. Stir this well. When it's been folded in well, add the green stalks of the green onion, toss, taste for salt and heat, add chili flakes if you want, and take it off the flame.

NOTE: this sauce can stand the addition of a lot of mild-flavoured cheese, but I'm watching out for my poor ole heart these days, so I skip it. No reason why you should, though :-)

This sauce is ready to eat straight off the wok, with a baked potato on the side or a small bowl of rice. It goes wonderfully well with pasta of most descriptions, too. However, I prefer it best baked. You can either bake it on a layer of thinly sliced potatoes, topped with cheese or breadcrumbs (or both), or you could bake the sauce-mixed-pasta, with a similar topping. I've even had it baked on top of a layer of mashed potatoes. It was divine.

Go on then, try it. And tell me how it was. Utterly delicious, or merely very good? ;-)

Chicken with Red Chilies and Coconut Milk

2012-12-20T22:35:00.000+05:30

This is a very quick update of a very quick recipe, perfect for this damp, chilly weather. It's a steaming, aromatic pot of fiery red chicken curry, tempered delightfully by the light tangy sweetness of coconut milk.

First, wash the chicken and marinate in salt, minced garlic, lemon juice and holud/turmeric. My greataunt has converted me to an ardent turmeric user this winter (I never did before). According to her, it practically cures cancer. Anyway. So you marinate the chicken, and let it steep for half an hour or so.

In the meanwhile, prep the spices. It's tres simple: take a handful of dry red chilies, depending on your personal threshold. You should use at least five, in my opinion. Personally, I use about twelve, plus a couple of green chilies to temper the flavour (dried red chilies have a harsh undercurrent that I don't enjoy). To this, add a level teaspoon of sugar (a little more if you prefer); three or four pinches of salt; about an inch of ginger, peeled; five or six gloves of garlic; three-fourths a large or one medium onion. Grind them together in a thick paste.

Now, the cooking. Lightly saute the chicken and then keep it aside. In the same wok, add a little more oil if you need it -- I'd prefer sunflower/canola for this dish -- and pour in the paste. There really shouldn't be more than a teaspoon of oil in the wok when the paste goes on, so you'll have to cook it on a simmering flame. Once the paste becomes lightly fried and fragrant, add almost a whole teaspoon each of cumin and coriander powders, or half a teaspoon each of their homemade paste. Cook the entire paste till the oil separates from it, and then add four or so tablespoons of coconut milk. Scrape up the sides of the wok. Taste the simmering mixture for salt/sugar balance. Make adjustments. (Some say dark soya sauce is wonderful in this mix as well, but I've never tried it.)

Now, add the sauted chicken back into the wok. If the flavour of coconut milk in large quantities is too overpowering for you, add water enough to immerse the chicken. Cover and cook till tender. If you're not averse to the flavour, add more coconut milk and just a little water. Cover and etc. When the chicken's done and you still have too much gravy left -- unlikely -- then boil it off at medium flame. When it's reached the consistency you want, turn off the heat, sprinkle half a teaspoon of garam masala powder (slightly less if home-ground and potent), mix it in, and cover. Let it infuse for a few minutes. Serve with steaming rice :-)

It. is. deee. licious.

Winter Vegetable Stir-fry

2012-11-19T02:37:00.001+05:30

Apparently, men cook briefly during courtship, and women cook forever thereafter. *I* cook whenever I want something that isn't deeply and completely Bengalil, because for the d. and c.-ly B we have a cook, and no one else in Chez Rimi is remotely interested in anything else. Which is why I cook during sleepy afternoons and late evenings, when the rest of the household is safely away from the kitchen-zone and probably snoozing.

And then I have to chew the cud, figuratively speaking, till the bowls of my culinary production have been polished off.

In other words, there's an excellent reason this blog hasn't been updated since September; I can eat the same bloody thing for only so many bloody meals.

However, winter is such a wonderfully tempting time to wander into the kitchen, that I haven't been able to resist a bit of stirring and boiling lately. This is an astonishingly simple recipe that I resort to often. It needs vegetables, salt, a touch of sugar, and half a teaspoon of soya sauce. It's a miracle!

Here's the picturebook:

First, decide what vegetables you want, and chop them up. I have broccoli, baby corn, carrots, mushrooms and green beans.

Blanch the 'hard' vegetables -- carrots and corn for about seven minutes, broccoli for about a minute and a half.

Then drain them.

Now heat a little oil. Fry minced garlic really well. You may even add about 1cm of peeled and minced ginger, if you like that sort of flavour. When the garlic (and ginger) is fragrant, add the hard veggies -- carrots, beans, corn.

Toss them gently for about four minutes. Then add the sliced capsicum (bell pepper).

When the capsicum smells sweet and lightly friend, add the chopped mushrooms. Stir in. Now add half a teaspoon of salt, two pinches of sugar, and a quarter teaspoon soya sauce. Fold in very well.

Add three teacups of water.

Toss occasionally for about half a minute on high, then cover and simmer. Cook till the vegetables are tender. Taste the broth to see if you'd like more salt or a touch more sugar (or soya, or any other sauce -- but I'd say keep it simple).

This dish is about decisions. Once the vegetables are tender and you lift the lid off, you have to decide: do I eat this as an incredibly lovely soup with tender yet firm vegetables, or do I let the hot, delicious broth dry in the pot and turn this into a light stir-fry to go with boiled rice?

I leave that decision up to you. I ate it, yesterday, as a steaming bowl of nutritious, yummy soup, and today as stir-fried vegetables with rice :-) I can tell you this, though: whichever way you eat, you'll love it. And it's SO easy. So get cracking, people. It'll take you fifteen minutes, but you'll remember the almost unbelievably light-yet-rich flavour for a long, long time :-)

Rimi's Special Kosha Mangsho

2012-09-20T17:18:00.000+05:30

I made killer kosha mangsho today. And in the process, I created a wonderful secret ingredient.

Unlike my usual posts, this recipe is not illustrated, but I hope the flavour of this yummy dish will be a more than adequate recompense.You *must* try it.

You'll need an inch of ginger and four or five cloves of garlic, minced or ground together. A whole medium onion, three green chilies, and a small, firm tomato, pasted. Half a small onion, diced. 1.5 teaspoons each of cumin and coriander powder or paste, preferably made at home from whole seeds. Quarter teaspoon of turmeric paste. 5 or 6 tablespoons of curd/yogurt/doi. Whole garam masala (cinnamon sticks, cloves, green cardamom). Mustard oil, sugar, salt.

Marinate 500 to 700 gms of well-cleaned mutton in the doi, salt, and turmeric powder. If you like, you may also add the onion and tomato paste, plus the ginger-garlic mince here. Let this stand, covered, for at least two hours, but preferably overnight.

In a pressure cooker, heat and then cool a tablespoon of mustard oil. Saute four peeled and halved potatoes in it till the spuds take on a lightly golden colour. Drain and keep 'em aside.

To the same oil, now add lightly-malleted cinnamon sticks, green cardamom and cloves. When you can smell the spices frying -- and it's a heavenly smell -- add a teaspoon of sugar. Keep tossing till the sugar begins to melt (but not caramelise -- you don't want your kosha mangsho to taste like the upside of a burnt caramel custard). Once the sugar dissolves a little, add half a small onion, diced. Stir gently but constantly, till it's all nicely golden/brown. Scoop the spices, sugar and onions up from the oil, grind them to a paste, and keep it aside.

In the same pot, heat two more tablespoons of oil, and then let it cool for a minute. Lift the mutton off its marinade, shaking off as much of it as you can. Lay them carefully into the oil, and when its all in, begin tossing gently to fry all sides of each piece. This will take a while because you must do it on a low flame. A high flame will harden the meat.

Once the meat is browned, add the marinade. If you hadn't added the ginger-garlic and onion-tomato pastes to the marinade, add them to the pot now. Stir thoroughly for the first five minutes, making sure the paste doesn't remain raw and coats the meat well. Now add the cumin and coriander powder or paste (if it is a powder, mix it with a little oil to make a thick paste), with a teaspoon of sugar and quarter a level teaspoon of salt. Over the next ten minutes, stir occasionally, letting the spices roast and separate from the oil.

When it does separate, add the potatoes, toss the entire pot about till it mixes well with the spices, juices, and richly-flavoured oil, then add three cups of water. Use your spatula to scrape the sides and bottom of the pan, and whirl them into the water you just added. When that's done, add the sugar, onion and garam masala paste you made. Stir well, dissolving it.

Now put the lid of the pressure cooker on, and let it simmer for about an hour. The whistle will probably go off twice or thrice in between, but don't turn the flame up just to make it sound. The more pressure the mutton is under, the more tender it will be. Patience is a virtue ;-)

Serve the wonderful final conoction with steaming white rice, or pulao, or parathas, or rooti. Bon apetit!

Banana Chocolate Biscuits

2012-08-20T17:56:00.004+05:30

I've had some dark chocolate lying in the fridge for a deeeeliciously long time. Call it laziness, call it the comfort of nibbling a magically unending bar of chocolate, but I kept that bar in the fridge for almost a month. Till guests with ickle children came along, and my mother promptly said, right in front of them, "Isn't there some chocolate in the fridge? Maybe you can finally do something with it!"

Mothers.

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of bananas myself, and I definitely don't want them in my lovely chocolate. But the moment the children saw the bananas in the fruit bowl, they had to have banana-chocolate mousse.

Well. All right then. Good chocolate gone to waste. Or so I thought, while I set about making the mousse. However, in the middle I changed my mind, and started making fruity chocolate biscuits, because I've had the recipe in my mind for a while, and wanted to see if the pracs matched up to the theory. And when I was done, I must say, they turned out radically different from the sickly-sweet mess I expect all banana desserts to be.

So, here goes the picture book :-)

Peel a frozen banana.

Chop it up. Then mash it with a fork.

Now, in a wok, melt two teaspoon of butter on the lowest stovetop heat. Swirl the melted butter all around the wok, then gently slide in three teaspoons of flour (I used whole wheat) and stir with a spatula till it begins to turn golden brown. Then, whisk in half a cup of milk. If you like a smoother texture, you can use half heavy cream instead of all milk.

If at any point you think the wok is getting too hot and the mixture might char, take it straight off the flames and do the next few mixings by putting the wok on a cool table-top or stone slab.

Then, add the mashed banana. Mix well.

Pour in a tablespoon of the chocolate sauce. Whisk.

When it is evenly mixed in, add another two tablespoons (or three!), and mix it in.

The chocolate sauce:

Is tres simple. You take small pieces of dark, semi-sweet chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl, top with milk, and heat for about thirty seconds. Given it twenty seconds to stand, then make an even sauce by whisking it.

The biscuits:

No dough required. That's the best part about these biscuits. You just coarsely grind some Marie biscuits, mix in a teaspoon of water to hold it together, then pour tiny, equally spaced heaps on a well greased baking tray. Then, you flatten each heap, so you get a tray full of this:

Bake this at 170/180C for five to ten minutes, till they take on a lovely chocolately shade. Or, you could leave them as-is. I like the slightly toasty flavour of baking ready-to-eat biscuits :-)

Then, you add a generous dollop of the banana-chocolate mousse on each flattened heap. Even it with the back of a spoon, if you have to. Then, pour another tiny heap on each biscuit, and flatten it again. Bake for another ten minutes. Voila! Heavenly banana chocolate biscuits are ready!

You can eat them as-is, or doused in chocolate sauce, or doused in chocolate and then frozen. I love the last option the best :-)

Go on, then. Such an amazingly easy chocolate recipe, aren't you going to give it a try? :-)

Whole Wheat Mushroom/Chicken Pie

2012-08-12T10:35:00.001+05:30

Much too late in the season to help farmers, we've been having a spell of cold breezes and rain. Almost overnight, the weather has changed from the daal-bhat-lemon juice kind to the hearty soup type. Which is why I made a version of my savoury chicken pie, much a quicker, much less elaborate one, in a whole wheat crust (recipe for crust here).

It was very very yum.

Now, very quickly, this is what went into the pie, sharp enough to counter the chilly, wet weather. Skinned, cleaned chicken cut into small chunks. You can use meat-on-bone -- it gives the filling a better flavour, I think -- but before putting it into the pie, you'll have to pick out and chuck the bones. The chicken's substitutable with chopped mushrooms, by the way. Now, in a wok, heat a teaspoon of butter or white oil (sunflower, canola/rape seed) over a low heat. When it melts/warms, stir in half an onion, diced; one green chilli, chopped fine; and half an ich of ginger, peeled and minced (two cloves of garlic minced, optional). Keep stirring till fragrant.

Add the chicken, with a little salt, and stir like mad. When the meat changes colour from pink to white to golden-brown, add water (or chicken stock), cover the wok, and simmer till the meat is tender. Add enough water or stock so that when you're done, there's still quite a bit of gravy.

A small greased earthenware bowl, lined with the crust. Make incisions in it.

Pour in the filling. See the chilies? And how much gravy there is?

Now, cover it with another piece of the crust, seal, and make incisions.

Just baked! The perfect chicken pot-pie in twenty-five minutes!

With thickened, delicious, savoruy gravy inside. Just the way pies should be, and not the way pies usually are these days, all dried meat pieces within.

Make this quick, people! The weather will not last :-) :-)

Cambodian-style Chicken in Coconut-milk Curry

2012-08-05T14:11:00.000+05:30

I can never ever be a food-blogger, unlike our resident Rimilet, because I have not the patience to take and upload pictures et al, especially where cooking is concerned. I'm more of an impulse cook, relying on improvisations above all else -- sometimes these kitchen experiments turn out well, and at other times, heh. :)

Tonight, at about 10 pm, I decided to cook a chicken curry with a coconut-milk broth base, vaguely inspired by Cambodian style fresh ground-spice-mixture cooking. The recipe here is totally improvised, based on my cooking common sense, and I used what I have in my kitchen for the most part. This one was decidedly a success, yess. For a change, I had my camera around, and so, voila!

The recipe here is approximate in terms of amounts of ingredients, etc. Go by your general cooking instincts, people. It works well.

Disclaimer: this was done in an American kitchen, plus I sourced a lot of the ingredients from my friendly neighbourhood pan-Asian grocery store (thank you Chun Ching!), so I have a bunch of ingredients not readily available in the usual Calcutta rannaghor. Just substitute them as you see fit :)

Prepping

1) Marinating the chicken:

I used skinless, boneless chicken thigh pieces, roughly cubed. I have about 830gms (1.8 lbs) of chicken in here.

Then added salt, ground black pepper, 3 tablespoons (approx) of rice wine vinegar, and some Korean red chilly paste.

Note: You can substitute plain vinegar/lime juice for the rice wine vinegar, or even use an unripe papaya for this -- the idea is to tenderise and flavour the meat. And you can substitute red chilly powder for the Korean chilly paste.

All mixed together, now :)

2) Making the spice paste/chopping veggies:

Garlic, ginger (chopped into long, thin, julienned strips), onions -- the base to any good curry, mamah. I chanced upon a giant mutant conjoined-twin onion, and it made pretty patterns when cut, yess.

Next, making the spice-paste! It should be uber-simple for anyone with a mixie/grinder/food processor. But I had only a grater available, so grated everything by hand -- ah well.

Zesting a lemon -- the tangy smell is bloody heavenly.

PS Lime (i.e., paati lebu) is better, folks, but I had only lemons handy. If you have lime leaves/lebu pata too, nothing like it --- just add it to the mixie!

Adding citrusy leaves to ground-spice-mixtures is a hallmark of Cambodian cooking, I learnt last summer. (As is adding galangal and chopped bamboo shoot, but alas, I didn't have these on me.)

To the lemon zest, add a paste of basil leaves (tulshi pata).

Shilnora works for this. Rimi assures me, however, that tulshi in a mixie/grinder becomes bitter, so maybe paste the tulshi by hand, even if you have a grinder?

(The smell brought back memories of my granddad, who used to have tulshi pata paste with Chawan Prash every single evening. )

Next, add lemongrass paste. I added approx 2 tablespoons. Fresh trumps out-of-a-tube any day, but the problem with impulse-cooking at 10pm is that stores are closed by then :(

Above, you see the lemongrass paste added to the basil-lemon zest mixture.

Grated ginger and 3 green chillies join the fray! Aaand the spice-paste is done :)

Cooking

I used sesame seed oil (about 2 tablespoons), because I love the smell and the flavour it brings, but any vegetable oil should do, really.

PS that is Honu in the background, playing my swing music Pandora station while I cook <3

Fry the onions, adding a bit of turmeric and a shake of dried ground basil leaves.

After the onions have become somewhat translucent, add the chopped ginger and garlic, saute a bit, and then add the spice-paste.

Saute, like so :)

Depending on how hot you like your curry, now is the time to ponder adding some split dried red chillies to the saute-mix in the pan. I put them in, because the wee smidgen of Korean red chilly paste (called gochujung, as Panu informs me) and 3 chilles pasted into the spice mixture isn't hot enough for me.

The chicken goes into the pan next.

Fold it in prettily, so that the onions-spicemixture-garlicky-gingery heavenliness coats the chicken pieces thoroughly. Fry this for a few minutes until the chicken pieces get browned.

Add the coconut milk once the chicken is somewhat koshaofied.

PS Lookit me sneakily promoting brand of coconut milk in this shot, heh :P I am clever like that.

Check the salt/sugar balance (I added a pinch of sugar to the broth at this point), stir the whole mixture, and bring to a boil.

Once the gravy starts bubbling, turn flame to the lowest setting, cover pan with a lid and let simmer until chicken is done.

Just before taking off the heat, garnish with fresh basil leaves to prettify and also to add a burst of full-bodied flavour to the already delicious broth.

Serve over steamed rice (I have jeera rice in here), and enjoy :)

Alooparatha and Aloopuri

2012-07-15T18:39:00.005+05:30

When it rains, I like my meals piping hot and savoury.

True, it hasn't been raining as much as July should, but my tastebuds expect fried goodness this time of the year, so the same rice and daal and curries that were delicious just last month seem bland and pointless and vaguely disheartening now.

To soothe them and be nice to myself, I thought I'd make alooparatha. But, my chief complaint about aloo paratha is that it isn't quite as crispy or deep-fried or yummy as my favourite form of the stuffed Indian flatbread -- pooris. Now, I know people say potato is a difficult stuffing to handle when rolling the stuffed pockets of dough out, which is why one should stick to the safer paratha option, but I wasn't going to let a little thing like received wisdom stop me, was I? Not me!

So I didn't, and though the rolling out did take some patience, I had two lovely, lovely golden pooris to prove my point. Here's the picturebook :-)

Boiled and skinned potatoes.

Seasoned with chopped onions, coriander leaves, salt and pepper. One can add more herbs if one likes, and perhaps some ginger, but I stick to the basics.

Mash it all together.

Roll little bits in between your palms to make smooth potato balls.

Put these inside thick cups of dough, made by mixing whole wheat flour, a little white oil, salt, touch of sugar, and slightly warm water.

Pull up the sides of the cups and seal them together at the top. Now dust it in flour and roll it out carefully.

The rolling needn't be that careful if you're making parathas. Shallow-frying doesn't need a smooth surface.

But deep frying does. Hence the perfectly shaped and carefully rolled-out pooris.

Touch of butter, for autheticity.

A little for the pooris too :-)

Strawberry Mint Jam

2012-07-09T22:27:00.000+05:30

I am not a fan of the sweet stuff, unless it's good old milk and cottage-cheese based Bengali sweets. I'm especially averse to sweetness at breakfast. Cornflakes, fancy cereal and jam-on-toast have no place at my table. Indeed, the one time I was gifted a box of rather exotic breakfast cereal, I ate it as dessert. With warm milk and honey. Perfect for lulling you to blissful sleep.

Unfortunately, I don't always have sole and full control over my table. Occasionally, I'm forced to share it with people, and these people take to sugary breakfasts like a parched duck to water. And gradually, in their company, I've learnt to appreciate the delights of such easily-made meals as a glass of milk and homemade fruit-jam on toast.Only, of course, I'm lactose intolerant, so the milk had to go. And the jam-toast comes after my usual savoury breakfast, as a sort of sweet-afters, because there's no way I'm actually breaking fast with a mouthful of sugar.

So then, since it's strawberry season in the northern hemisphere, and strawberries make my favourite kind of jam -- tart, yet sweet, with a refreshing, wake-up-sleepyhead! after-tase -- here's the picturebook for an easy, three-step, homemade strawberry jam! Say goodbye to the preservatives and plastic packets, people!

NOTE: Since strawberries are far from abundant where I now live, I had a friend make me this batch. The shots are from his kitchen.

That's a kilo of strawberries, three large lemons, mint/pudina leaves, and sugar.

Step 1: Clean the leaves, roughly grind them, simmer the coarse paste in hot water in a covered saucepan, drain the infusion, and cool it.

Step 2: Add the cleaned and diced strawberries to a thick-bottomed wok or saucepan (this one's cast iron). Stir as the juices release, and simultaneously mash the softening fruit, so there are no large chunks in the jam.

Step 3: When most of the strawberries are mashed into a more or less even consistency, raise the heat to medium-high. Let the fruit bubble. When it does, add 2 cups of sugar. Keep stirring till it dissolves. Then, add the juice of two lemons. Fold it in well. Let cook for five minutes.

Now, taste. Take your time. Blow on the spoon or the edge of the spatula, wherever you test-taste rests, and let it cool till you touch your tongue to it. No point risking your tastebuds. Then, carefully savour the flavour. It is too tart? Is it too sweet? For me, two cups of sugar is usually a little more than enough, but you might like your jam sweeter. Depending upon personal preference, add sugar or lemon juice. When you're happy with the flavour, turn the heat back up. My friend used a candy thermometer (such fancy gadgets these Western kitchens have, eh?) to see if the temp is stabilised at 100C. That's apparently the temp. to aim for, if you want your jam to set*. Let it do the bubbly-boil at this temp. for about ten or twelve minutes.

If you like, to this mass, you can now add a handful of strawberries, diced. It'll give a certain chunky, fresh tartness to your jam :-)

Step 4: Turn off the heat. Let the hot jam cool a little -- say about ten minutes. Then, pour the mint extract into it, and mix thoroughly, and very quickly. Transfer the jam to clean mason jars, leaving about two inches of air at the top. Seal the jars. My great aunt said it's a good idea to put the mason jars in a jolshora -- or a water-bath -- before you scoop the jam into it, but I've done it without the jolshora, and my jar hasn't exploded, so I suppose you could skip if you like. Put the jars straight into the fridge!

Homemade strawberry mint jam on toast. As delicious as it gets!

This basic recipe works equally well for other berries and fruits, but use the mint judiciously. It's not a flavour that goes well with everything. But before the summer's over, do give your own jam a try. It's easy, relatively quick, and makes for lovely and thoughtful gifts :-)

*About setting though, be warned. Organic strawberry jam will never achieve a wobbly, jelly-like consistency unless you add things to it you probably shouldn't be feeding yourself. A good way of testing for setting, my friend said, is to put a plat in the fridge, then drop a teaspoon of bubbling jam on this plate, and put it back in the fridge. If it sets in a minute, your jam is done! Ta-daaa! If not, let it boil till it does. Twelve to fifteen minutes does it.

Red Bean Burger

2012-07-02T01:05:00.002+05:30

Now that red meat is officially off my diet -- except maybe the occasional mutton biryani -- I had to hunt down reasonable substitutes for my tikias/tikkas and burgers (which, when you think about it, are basically the same things, only the former are seasoned better, and therefore far more delicious :-). Anyway, beans/daal are the most obvious animal protein sub., and since I had a handful of rajma (red kidney beans) leftover from... oh, I don't know, months ago, I decided to sacrifice them to the cause.

First, as always -- and especially in these times of elevated chemical-content in produce and grocery -- I washed the rajma thoroughly, and then left them soaking from early morning till after lunch in hot water. Not warm. Hot. Bubbly-boiling water. Why should you do this? You should do this because taking chances is silly. The second-last batch of rajma I made tasted slightly bitter. The smell was a bit off, too. So when I made it again, I stopped right the rajma has been pressure-cooked to softness, and smelt the soupy bean-stock. And yes, there was that extra-dark brown colour you couldn't get naturally, the odd, un-placeable smell. So I chucked the stock, washed the beans thoroughly, and started from scratch. This time onwards, I was going to carefully right from the outset.

So! You soak well-washed beans in hot water. If you can remember to do this, drain this water after a few hours, give the beans another quick wash, and soak them in warmish or room-temp. water till late afternoon. Then, when the beans are plump and shiny, follow the steps below :-)

Lightly saute minced ginger, garlic and thinly-sliced red onion in a teaspoon of mustard oil, on a low flame. Add the washed and soaked beans to the pot/pressure cooker, toss, add water, and cook till they're soft.

Test the tenderness of beans with a fork. They must be mushy enough to be mashed.

Follow through to the logical conclusion. Mash them.

Mix in salt, a boiled potato, half a teaspoon of cumin powder, and chopped green chilies. But you can leave the last out if you don't like 'em.

Pat them into standard burger/tikia shapes, not too thick, or the insides will remain all bland boiled beans and potato.

Either grill them, or fry them on a lightly greased skillet. Unless you're exceptionally healthy and on a regular exercise regimen, please use white oil.

The tikias! Now, you can eat these straight away with a salad, or sprinkled with lemon juice. They're delicious!

Or, you could cut yourself a couple of slices from a ripe, firm tomato, slice through the middle of a (toasted) bun.

[Lather it with cream cheese or mayo :-] Layer the tomatoes on top of it.

Top with the tikia/burger. [Similarly lather the other half of the bun]

Maybe add some onions. And cucumber. And lettuce. And pickles. And whatever else you want.

[Maybe even a pat of that cream-cheese or mayo]

Aaaaaand, voila! Your totally healthy, no-cheese, no-mayo [brackets not included], tomato-and-other-veggie-laden burger is ready.

If you're going to complain about the potato in the mix, go run yourself a mile after you've stuffed one of these down your gullet. It's good for you.

All the rest of you happy people, save this recipe. You might have thought the old rajma had no future beyond rajma-chawal or the occasional hearty, soupy winter dish, but man. I'm telling you. It makes a killer tikia. If you're vegetarian for ethno-religious reasons and can't bring yourself to bite into a standard-issue meat-inna-bun, but (rightly) despise the aloo-tikia they serve in the burger-chains instead, make yourself a whole batch of these burgers and freeze 'em. They're incredibly handy, fry in under two minutes, and are a filling and lip-smacking meal in less than five. Especially if you stuff the bun with crisp, fresh vegetables.

Also, for the worker-bees and parents of school-going children: this makes an amazing packed lunch. Try it! You'll keep coming back to it :-)

Orange Liqueur

2012-06-29T00:18:00.000+05:30

I used to think fruit (and other flavoured) liqueurs were those fancy, exotic things that were well beyond my tiny culinary reach.
And then, I discovered how to make them. And improvise on the base. Now, all I need is a steady supply of pretty bottles and labels hinting at a smoky, mysterious sensuality to run my own wildly successful label. Till that happy day, however -- and on Sue's request -- this is how you make orange liqueur, a la Rimi. (Well, it's probably how you've always made it, but humour me.)

Peel about four oranges. You are, of course, welcome to peel more. Total freedom in the area of peelage, is my motto.

Scrape off the white skin/stuff from the inside of the skin. I do this with a spoon. You can use whatever exotic implement takes your fancy. By the time you're done, you will (a) smell the sharp, citrusy smell of orange peel. It's divine for a headache. (Although, now that I say that, I remember that I once met a woman whose headaches were trigged by the citrusy scent. She was probably half-fairy). And (b), the peels will be semi-translucent, and if you hold them upto sunlight, you'll see the network of tiny orange-oil pores, glistening and plump.

Now, either toast the peels covered on the lowest possible flame, or heat an oven to 250-300C for twenty minutes, put the peels inside, and turn down heat to the lowest. /After another twenty minutes, turn off heat entirely. Let peels stay in the hot oven for about 2 to 2.5 hours. Or longer, if you forget. I frequently forget. Either way, let the peels cool -- outside the oven this time -- for about six or seven hours. Overnight works well.

Finally, here's the crux of the recipe. Heat enough water to dissolve 400gms of sugar and still remain liquid (and not become syrupy). Dissolve said sugar, with bits of crushed cinnamon and maybe two lightly pounded cloves. You can do without the spices, mind. It's just how I like my orange liqueur.
Now, if you want a strong liqueur, add vodka after the sugar-water is off the flame. If you don't, add half while it is still on the flames. Add the rest when it's off the flame. In an air-tight glass jar, put the peels and the scooped, deseeded pulp of half the oranges (didn't see that coming, did you? Hah!) in. Top with sugared cinnamony vodka.

Let the whole think soak each other up for a month or six weeks, snugly sealed and in a cool, dark nook. Strain the stuff. Store. Daydream about sensuous labels. Donne!

It may not be the steamier metaphysicals, but it's quite the sweet intoxication.

Dimer Jhaal

2012-06-26T06:50:00.000+05:30

It has been raining here lately. Has anybody noticed? :-p The traditional local fare for the season -- and when I say traditional local fare, I mean amongst people who can actually afford a choice of victuals; may their tribe increase -- is khichuri, with a variety of crisply-fried chasers. The favourite at my house is jhurjhure aloo bhaja. Wispy juliennes of peeled potato, marinated in turmeric and salt and deep fried in batches. At my grandparents' household, on the other hand, khichuri was practicable declared inedible without the accompaniment of dimer bora -- seasoned egg-and-flour batter, fried in little pieces -- and ilish machh bhaja, when good ilish graced the market. Our neighbours, on yet another hand, have an inexplicable attachment to potol bhaja. The English word for it escapes me at the moment, so you'll have to do your own research.

But khichuri is a cultural standard. It's a preference I share with my entire community. My family's attachment to dimer jhaal, on the other hand -- eggs in a dry, spicy, mustard gravy -- is a taste shared by few. Indeed, I've seldom heard of this dish being cooked or served at home, and from this I'm tempted to conclude it is something of a rarity.

So, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I present to you: dimer jhaal!

Unlike the magician, my rabbits come out roasted.

The ingred. Hard-boiled eggs, shelled and halved. Whole wheat flour mixed with a tiny amount of water, to the left. Fresh coriander leaves/cilantro. Mustard seeds pasted with salt, a teaspoon of sugar, and three green chilies.

Coat the halved eggs in the flour-paste. Just the side with the yolk, mind.

Fry them -- both sides this time -- in a little mustard oil.

See how lovely they look?

In the same oil and wok, stir chopped onions till golden. Then add two teaspoons of the mustard paste.

Cook the mustard paste with the onions till it turns a rich shade of brownish-golden. Add two cups of water.

Gently slide in the fried eggs, one half at a time.

When all the eggs are in, cover the wok. Cook for ten minutes on low, letting the eggs absorb the gravy. Then taste the jhaal for a balance of flavours. Add salt or sugar, if required.

Then garnish it with freshly-chopped cilantro. Give the wok a few stirs, and cover again. Let the coriander infuse.

The utterly delicious dimer jhaal...

Perfectly flavoured to bring this bland, morose weather to life.

Serve with boiled rice. Do it now!

Indian Chicken Dumpling Soup

2012-06-24T21:27:00.002+05:30

A savoury, simple chicken soup, with one-minute dumplings.

At my last visit, my doctor goggled so hard at my various test reports that I thought his eyeballs might pop out for a closer look. Then he clutched at his heart, and tried to roll his eyes at the back of his head.

A bit dramatic, my doctor.

Anyway. I've been quite clear on the point that I cannot give up rice and potatoes entirely. It's impossible to live in an average middle-class Bengali household -- especially in these white-hot produce-price times -- and forswear our favourite carbs. There's a reason one seldom sees a fed-and-clothed Bengali -- especially one brought up in the old homelands -- without a slight paunch. We're a curvy, soft-bodied people. Mostly. The subtraction of rice from our diets is absolutely brutal. And not just any rice. The absence of my beloved 'sheddho chaal' and gobindobhog/kaljeera rice plunged my first few months abroad into a deep funk. For proof that hunger is at least as much psychological as it is physiological, look no further.

Or perhaps I just love my food too much.

Which brings us back to tragedy that is my current cuisine-controlled life. I've decided to concede to the worry-lines on my family's brow, and go every now and then without rice and potatoes. And too much oil in my food. And sugar. And cream. And butter. And so on. And so forth. Hence, and as a tip of the hat to the monsoons, which have just floated in, I present: A deliciously savoury chicken dumpling soup! With Indian spices! Yum yum yum!

NOTE: The cooking was done in the middle of the afternoon, when the sun came out in all its blazing glory for half an hour. Please excuse the ridiculous colours.

Chicken-on-bone, breasts and legs. Rubbed with turmeric, salt, a little red chilli powder, and the juice of two lemons.

Mix them all up, especially the lemon juice. Make sure it goes everywhere. Leave the lot for twenty minutes (longer, if you can. About an hour).

For a crispy effect, sprinkle flour/constarch over the chicken (I use atta) and rub in over the surface of the chicken. If the juices that will have collected around the chicken made it lumpy, sprinkle some more atta. Undaunted!

Fry it. Deep fry, I'd say. Wait till the oil bubbles, drop it in, flip a couple of times, lift it out. It soaks a lot less oil that way. See how little oil has accumulated on the dish from deep-frying three chicken pieces.

Now you're back in word-land.

If you have veggies at hand, dice them, saute lightly in the same oil you fried the chicken in, and drain them. Now, add half a tablespoon of the same oil -- if you have any left over -- to a pot, preferably a pressure cooker. If you haven't any leftover oil, fresh is fine too.

Add minced garlic and ginger. When they're all nice and fried and aromatic, add chopped onions (and green chilies, if you like 'em). Saute away. When the onions turn translucent, add half a tomato, diced. The tomato should add to the flavour of the soup, but you shouldn't be able to taste it independently. When the tomatoes are well-mixed and completely disintegrated, add a level teaspoon of cumin and coriander powder. Fold in. Let it cook on a low flame, with occasional stirs, till the scant oil you used bubbles to the surface.

Add the fried chicken (and the vegetables). Stir for a minute, coat well with the spices, then pour either chicken stock, or water. Now cover, and let cook. When the meat and vegetables are tender, you can either leave the meat on the bone, or pick the meat apart, add them back to the pot, and chuck the bones.

While the soup's still cooking, make your dumpling batter: take semolina (shooji) and whole wheat flour (atta) in 2:1 ratio. Now, here's the flavour trick. Instead of adding water, add enough soup from the pot -- plus a little salt -- to make it into a thick, semi-solid paste. This batter goes into the happily bubbling soup, about half a teaspoon at a time, and you will see a purrrfect dumpling blossoming from the lumpy dough, right in front of your own eyes.

It's beautiful.

When all your dumplings are gently bobbing in the soup, simmer. Let the soup just gently cook for a few minutes, letting the dumplings soak up the flavour, and give your soup body. Then, dish them into individual bowls, squeeze the juice of a quarter lemon into each, and serve piping hot! You don't even need bread with this. It. is. perfect!

For all rain-drenched souls. Happy, happy eating.

Watermelon Dessert Cocktail

2012-06-13T01:09:00.002+05:30

I made this sauce for noboborsho, which was nearly two months ago today. The watermelons were red and sweet and juicy back then, not anaemic and ridiculously watered-down like they're now. Complete waste of my meagre fruit-budget this week, I can tell you. So unless you can guarantee sweet watermelons (or, of course, unless you're happy to pour several cups of sugar into your fruit-sauce) you must resist all temptations -- and it will be tempting! -- of making this lovely cocktail/mocktail/dessert-condiment.

And with dire warnings thus disposed of... here comes the sauce, doo doo doo doo!

It's quite a bit of an all right, even if I say so myself.

Skin and dice the watermelon, and scoop out the white and brown seeds.

Put in a few ice cubes in the mixie/blender/hand-blending pot if you want to serve this immediately (to, primarily, yourself), and haven't the time or patience for freezing.

Add two cups of curd/yogurt, in my case, home-made from full-cream milk. If you must, add a tablespoon of sugar. Definitely add half a teaspoon of salt.

Now add the skinned, diced and deseeded watermelon. If you were making a smoothie, I'd say also add half a cup of water. However, watermelon is quite high on water-content itself, and you need this blended thick.

All blended!

Oh, and: this is very very good with a generous dash of your favourite liquer (vanilla liqueur is a good match for this one). "A yogurt-based fruity cocktail?", you're probably thinking. "No, thank you. Ew". But if you like lassis and milshakes and smoothies, and you're old enough to drink without putting me in prison for suggesting it, try this. And you'll never go back :-) Especially since a milk or yogurt based cocktail gives you a lovely buzz, while minimising the less savoury effects of alcohol. It's true. A doctor told me so.

You can, of course, drink your watermelon cocktail/smoothie.

However, it was the New Year's, and we'd been gifted a whole box of 'diabetes shondesh' -- those sugar-free blocks of cottage-cheese garnished with split pistachios?

So, what you do is, you pour a generous amount of this thick, hopefully alcoholic cocktail on the shondesh, garnish it with watermelon julienne, refridgerate for an hour, and serve.

As you can probably see, however, I didn't bother with julienning. I hacked at my leftover watermelon till it was small enough to garnish with, and sprinkled it over. When faced with ease and aesthetics in food, always pick ease.

Yum yum, everybody! Make the most of this summer's few delights :-)

Leftover Dumplings

2012-06-05T19:07:00.001+05:30

To make this short: Weather murderous. Heat, torturous. Laptop, hot and radiating. Fan: full-speed, ineffective. Self: baking, sweating, wishing for a pool. Will let pictures do the talking. Wouldn't have posted at all, except this is so wonderfully delicious, it's positively mean not to share :-)

Leftover chicken from a tikka butter masala, and home-made chicken curry. Leftover roast chicken works fine too. As does leftover paneer, for folks who prefer a vegetarian platter :-)

Mash them in a mixie/food processor with green chilies, 2 small/1 large onion(s), pieces of giner, salt, crushed black pepper, half a teaspoon of cumin and coriander powder, and a touch of sugar.

Mix it with about a tablespoon of soya sauce (a little more if you're working with more than a small bowl of chicken). Chopped scallions are very nice in this mix, too.

Now, make dumplings with the mixture above as directed here. This pic above is the last stage of dumpling-making: boiling them thrice in a deep wok of water.

Steamed dumplings are delicious on their own, of course...

But I like some of mine deep-fried. Even in this heat, yes. So I deep-fry them in a small iron wok, which allows me to achieve the 'deep' in the fry with far less oil than I would need to use in a larger, more broad-based wok.

Tricks of the trade, children. Tricks of the trade.

And finally, crispy-fried leftover-chicken dumplings. So utterly yum, in any weather you can throw at it. Give it a shot, people. You're welcome :-)

Egg Fried Rice

2012-05-28T18:48:00.001+05:30

When bored to death of daal-bhaat, drowned in work, and unable to even spare the time to take a walk to the closest take-away, fried rice is deliverance. If I have to wax eloquent about this simple, austere, yet utterly delightful dish, tastebuds are wasted on you.

This dish saved my life today, after a lizard scurried over my toe and made me spill the leftovers I was saving for brunch all over the floor. After the tedious, tedious clean-up in the thick, soupy mid-morning heat, I considered my sweat-blurred vision and the rivulets racing down my skin, and chucked all idea of a greasy, over-spiced take-away. The idea of cooking was not attractive either, but I love my rice, and if I had to endure ten minutes in the kitchen for divine, mildly-flavoured rice, by gods, I would do it!

And that is the genesis of this dish :-) Picturebook below:

Boil rice, chopped carrots and beans till tender -- but not mushy! -- in your usual vessel. Drain the starchy water.

If you're not an expert at draining pots of cooked rice, use this method: Scoop rice out onto the middle of a large piece of cheesecloth, or the sort of kitchen-net one covers the mouths of pots and pans with to keep crawlies out. Loosely tie the ends of the cloth/net together to make a potla/potli/tear-drop shaped satchel. Hold it under a running tap and rustle to get the starch out of the rice and vegetables. After a minute of this washing, tighten the knot and hang it like you would hang curd. Walk away and sit under the fan for twenty minutes while all the water drips out of the rice.

This is what properly-drained rice looks like.

Now, in a wok, add about three tablespoons of oil. Trust me on this. Beat together two eggs, a tablespoon of milk, and two pinches of salt. When fluffy, pour into the wok and attack with a spatula till the eggs scramble and are cooked thoroughly -- not a like a soft breakfast scramble, but all the way through. Keep this aside.

Now, in a larger wok, heat about a tablespoon of oil, and grease the sides of it very well. When the oil starts bubbling, turn down the flame and add the now-drained rice and veggies into this. Give it a few quick stirs to make sure nothing sticks to the sides or the bottom of the work. Then sprinkle quarter teaspoon salt, half teaspoon sugar (yes, sugar), one teaspoon crushed black pepper. Keeping the flame low, hold the wok steady and stir continuously till the rice and veggies look and smell deliciously fried. If you want that 'restaurant flavour', you can add three pinches of ajinamoto/MSG crystals, but I advise against it. Try half a teaspoon of soya sauce instead.

Now, pour the scrambled eggs onto the rice.

Mix it up!

Serve :-)

Now that I'm done, I realised it took me longer to write the post than it took me to make the dish. Give it a try!

Malpoa

2012-05-24T17:28:00.000+05:30

I once had a buddy from temperate climes who frequently expressed appreciation of things by saying they put him in the mood for sex.This was all right while he spoke of music and rich, creamy desserts and, at some length, of beautiful women, but I had to put my foot down when, on a January evening, he said summer put him in the mood for sex. Summer. I ask you. Sweltering, sticky heat, unavoidable body odour, blistering sunshine, asphyxiating humidity... all that, and the old rock and roll? I'm living the tropical summer right now, and I don't think so.

Anyway. This little taste of my... eccentric social life has no bearing on the dish we're about to make, except that it too, apparently, sent the red alert to his man's libido. Unlike most of his favourite desserts, however, the malpoa is neither rich nor creamy. But then, few Bengali desserts are. This is a very, very simple dish, and the only bit about it that might conceivably be labelled difficult is the frying, and that's difficult to accomplish because it is tedious, not because it is in any way complex. Just give yourself some practice, and you will be fine.

Well then, let us jump in.

This is two fistfuls of sooji/shuji/semolina, soaked in half an inch of water at room temp.

After the semolina soaks up most of the water (say, in ten minutes), add two level tablespoons of flour.

This is kNacha mouri -- raw saunf/fennel seeds. Crush them lightly with a pestle, along with the seeds of two large cardamoms.

Add the crushed mouri and cardamom to the bowl, pour a tablespoon and a half of milk, and beat the batter together till smooth.

Heat oil till bubbly, then turn the flame down. Drop a teaspoonful of the batter, and watch it sputter and rise.

Make a whole batch of these malpoas.

Now, in the greasy wok, heat four tablespoons of sugar over a low flame till they just begin to caramelise. You will need to stir this constantly so that the bottom doesn't char.

There! All nicely and lightly caramelised. Now add four cups of water, scrape the bottom of the wok, and let the sugar and water come to a mild boil, reduce, and thicken into caramel-flavoured sugar syrup. This is your rosh.

When it does, drop in the malpoas. Let them soak up as much of the syrup as they can, and then, if you like your malpoas floating in some rosh, pour them into an earthenware bowl right away. If, however, if you like your malpoas sticky with deliciously caramelised, thick, drying syrup wrapped around it like a blanket in winter, let them simmer together till the rosh is almost all gone.

THEN pour them into an earthernware bowl, and serve :-)

For all of you with a sweet tooth but severe restrictions on desserts -- victims of cruel fate like me, in other words -- this is the perfect, perfect dessert. There's a little flour, and some sugar, but that's pretty much all there is. And it is absolutely delicious! Don't let this dish pass you by -- it'll be the best twenty minutes you've spent in a kitchen!

Tita Chhechki

2012-05-14T20:40:00.000+05:30

Hot on the heels on the rather exotic bitter gourd and cottage cheese, comes this very local, very Bengali, very daily summer delight, the tita chhechki. Well, I say Bengali. Most of my friends with ancestors from this side of the border, however, deny any knowledge of this dish. So provisionally, we'll say this is a Bangal dish, brought over in metaphorical potlis and tholis by people, crossing invisible lines between imagined nations.

It is perhaps poetic accuracy, then, that this dish is both bitter and sweet -- the slightly crispy, appetising bitterness of the korola/karela/uchhe complemented perfectly by the sweetness of the golden pumpkin. It's a beautiful dish -- cleansing and invigorating, yet mild, simple, and light. Reminiscent of endless sun-baked lunches after school, when nothing except tita chhechki and toker daal would make their way down the gullet and stay there.

An uchhe/karela/bitter gourd, sliced.

Then diced. If you're new to the flavour of Indian bitter gourd, soak this in salt-water for half an hour, then wash thoroughly under an open tap.

Heat a tablespoon of mustard oil in a wok till it loses its rich golden colour. Turn the flame down, let cool for ten seconds, and add the washed and drained uchhe. Stir very, very wel.

Now add the peeled and sliced pumpkins. Toss them about. Sprinkle a little sugar -- a quarter level teaspoon -- couple of pinches of salt and a large pinch of turmeric. Mix thoroughly and keep satuéing till the pumpkin take on a slight golden-brown fried tinge. Then, sprinkle a palmful of water on it, cover and simmer.

After the gourd and pumpkin have become tender enough for your tastes, serve with plain boiled rice, preferably white.

This above is nowhere close to the lovely green-and-golden deliciousness that is the wonderful tita chhechki, but don't let my shoddy camera and photographic abilities keep you from giving this a try. This summer, especially, if you let yourself be hooked in, you'll probably be eating this thrice every week.

And your body will thank you. Deeply.

Bitter Gourd and Cottage Cheese

2012-05-13T11:32:00.000+05:30

This is one of those combinations that I never would have thought of, even if a mountain of bitter gourd lolled suggestively beside a lake of cottage cheese right in front of my eyes. I'm fond enough of my bitter gourd, the Bengali tastebuds saw to that, but I prefer them fried or in titaa chhechhki, eaten right at the beginning of a three-course meal to cleanse the palate and shock the tastebuds to life. Eating it in a main course had just never occured to me. Foreigners have the strangest ideas.

However, the first time I ate bitter gourd with tofu in black bean sauce, it was absolutely delightful. The gourd was not as bitter as our home-grown korola/karela, and I've long been a fan of the fermented black bean sauce one gets at Chinese/other East Asian grocery shops. Still, knowing my darling family's reaction to unfamiliar cuisines, I hadn't bothered replicating this at home, till our green-grocer delivered three orders of bitter gourd instead of one last week. Suddenly, we were scrambling up the aforementioned mountain of bitter gourd. And although black bean sauce and tofu were in short supply locally, the time for experimenting was ripe.

First, slice the uchhe/karela/bitter gourd and scoop the seeds out. Then leave them salt-water for half an hour to drain some of the bitterness out.

Is it me, or did the uchhe absord the water and grow plumper? o_O

Here's my tofu substitute: paneer. Cottage cheese. Made at home and diced into inch-thick cubes, then lightly sautéd.

In the same wok the paneer was sautéd in, heat a little more oil. When hot, turn the flame down completely, and fry half an inch of minced ginger and a couple of cloves of minced garlic in it. When the ginger and garlic smell fried, add the drained and washed gourd.

After stirring the gourd in with the ginger and garlic for a minute, throw in finely chopped red onions. Keep stirring, so everything is evenly fried.

When the gourd becomes a darker, fried green and the onions turn translucent, then slightly golden, add diced tomatoes. Sprinkle a little salt on them. Turn the flame up to medium. Holding the wok steady, toss them thoroughly till they begin to disintegrate and form the beginnings of a gravy.

Now, add the sautéd paneer. Right with it, add half a level teaspoon of sugar, and a pinch more salt.

Mix everything up furiously. Then add half a teacup of water (unless you want a more soupy effect, in which case add more water). Fold it in well, scraping up drippings from the sides and bottom of the wok. Cover and simmer for about seven minutes.

When you lift the cover, the paneer and gourd should be tender, easily sliced by the spatula, and there should be a light gravy in the wok (unless, that is, you added more water in hopes of a soup).

Serve this delicious concoction of tangy sweetness, balanced by an appetising bitterness, over boiled rice. I suppose this can also be eaten as a soup, but for me, if something can conceivably be eaten with rice, it must! Blame the Bengali genes.

For those still hesistant about this, my cuisine-conservative parents absolutely loved it. In fact, I -- the long-suffering cook, was only allowed one helping, because Themselves conquered the bowl and didn't let go till there was one desultory paneer and a few slices of gourd left.

So try it! Live a little. Give the foreigners a chance. It's a global world, after all :-)

Chicken Sandwich with Homemade Mayonnaise

2012-04-03T00:20:00.002+05:30

I used to love the little chicken sandwiches we used to get for tea at the old colonial hotels, and at home while grandmothers were still around. I never got around to getting the recipe from mine, so I sent out a Facebook SOS for it a few weeks back.

Because food is soul, especially soul-food like the delights of granny's table.

Sweet mustard, mayonnaise and chicken pâté, between hot buttered toast :-)

Anyway, plenty of people responded with their versions of the simple chicken sandwich, but nothing was quite what I was so keenly missing... till Sue turned up with her's. I tinkered with it a little, true, but it's a brilliant recipe, perfect in its simplicity, and absolutely delicious. Here's the picture-book.

Chicken, marinated for half an hour in lemon juice and minced half a small onion and garlic.

Heat two teaspoons of mildly-flavoured oil (sunflower, canola) over a medium flame, and toss the chicken and the marinade in. The lemon juice might sizzle a bit, so be careful.

When the chicken turns golden, pour two cups of water, and simmer covered. Cook till the chicken comes apart easily when prodded with a fork.

Then, take it off the flames and let cool in a plate.

While it's still warm, take it apart with a fork, and mash it with salt, pepper, and a little butter.

And now, for the mayonnaise. Take a couple of eggs. Actually, if you worried what you eat, just take one. Then, use a spoon (I'm using a daal-er haata) to scoop out the yolk.

Pour it into a separate bowl.

Now, take half a teaspoon of red and black mustard seeds, a large pinch of salt, and a quarter teaspoon of sugar. Grind into a paste with a little water. Of course, one could use prepared mustard, but I prefer the seeds.

That's the mortar-and-pestle at work.

Add the mustard to the yolk(s). Whisk together very, very well, preferably with an electronic whisk (since I haven't enough muscle-power to make a proper whisked mix).

Now, alternate adding oil and water+vinegar (or lime juice) to the eggs, and blending it into the mixture. Do this till half a cup of oil and half a cup of water is all whisked in.

Cut the crusts off sliced bread. Because I'm delicate and they hurt the insides of my mouth. If you like, you can toast and butter them lightly before layering on a little of the chicken pâté.

Lightly coat the other piece with the mayonnaise. Or slather it on. Personally, I'm fond of the slather :-)

Club them together, and cut diagonally across. Make a whole plate of them. Incidentally, if you don't toast them before, I strongly recommend toasting them after.

With the leftover egg white, make a white-only omelette. Put it on a sandwich.

Put another sandwich on top of it. And you have a chicken-omelette-mayonnaise club :-)

Trust me, it's delicious. Deeeelicious. Try it with a pot of tea, and soon!

Orange-liqueur Pancakes

2012-03-29T21:07:00.002+05:30

"Orange-liqueur pancakes", you might be thinking, "What a deliciously exotic affair!".

This is what we'll get to.

Sadly, it is no such thing. Orange liqueur might sound mysteriously tantalising to these our Bengali (and Indian) ears, but it's really a sharper, more liquid sweet achaar, made from an unusual fruit. And the pancake, foreign though it may sound, is a variant of the Indian omlette we've gobbled all our lives.

Well, perhaps not the vegetarians among us.

Anyway, this lovely, glorious pancake: It's ideal for breakfast, but you won't find me dissuading you from eating it at lunch on a work-from-home day, because that is precisely what I did. You can even see the blazing afternoon sun glittering on the honey. It is exhausting to cook in the heat, of course, but the yummyness of the dish more than makes up for the twenty minutes in the kitchen.

This is the home-made orange liqueur. If everybody is good and I find the lost pictures, I shall post it's how-to soon.

For one, take a cup of flour, add a pinch of baking powder, two tablespoons of milk, and a quarter teaspoon salt. Break in a couple of eggs. In deference to my health, I've broken one. Now, pour about five tablespoons of orange liqueur in.

There! Isn't it pretty?

Whisk it well. It's in your own interest, you know.

Grease a griddle. Then pour a small amount of the well-whisked batter on it. Flip it a couple of time. Keep the oil handy, should you need to add more along the circumference of the pancake.

Aaaaaand, voila! Pancakes! In deference, again, to my wilting delicacy, I have used very little oil, or these would be like lovely, fluffy, solid phulkas/pooris, not flat like this. Oh well. We win some, we lose some.

After such careful consideration for my constitution re. eggs and oil, I proceeded to lather the pancakes with butter, and pour honey (or maple syrup) over them. After all, and I may have made this point before, you win some, you lose some.

And, a most satisfying, delicious confluence of flavours, that is the orange-liqueur pancake brunch. Bless my original ideas. They serve me spectacularly well.

Usually.

Dim-Pauruti Chepe

2012-02-28T23:26:00.001+05:30

When I was young, my mum had two quick-fixes for jolkhabar -- the evening version of the elevenses for a culture that dines late, really late.

Since there's only so much of the evening, and such cartloads of work to do in it, jolkhabar is always tricky. Especially for families like mine, where tastebuds have been coddled such that the ubiquituous Bengali snacks -- like tel-muri, chirabhaja, badambhaja and so on -- had no place on our shelves. To keep rumbling tummies happy, my mother had two fall-back ops. One was a spicy pancake, made by whisking together red onions, chilies, little bits of tomatoes, eggs and milk. We ate it without sweet syrups or honey -- indeed, sweetening this lovely savoury delight never crossed my mind -- but it was delicious.

The other is this, a dish without a real name, referred to always in terms of its methods of preparation. Dim, pauruti chepe. Eggs, with bread pressed on it. And it's so impossibly simple, that I'll let the pictures do the talking.

1. Whisk an egg with a little salt, and chopped green chilies if you like 'em. Pour it in a small circle on a hot, greased tawa/griddle/frying pan.

2. Press a slice of bread on it. My slices of bread always have their crusts cut off, because they hurt my mouth. I'm delicate like that.

3. Now flip the concoction, and let the bread toast on the greasy griddle for a bit.

Transfer onto a warm plate. Sprinkle pepper on top, if you like. I do :-)

Eat!

Good old dim-pauruti chepe. Always comes through in moments of culinary crisis. Like, for instance, at 4AM at the end of the week, when the fridge and larder are both depressingly empty. Or if there are perennially hungry children in the house.

Don't mock it's simplicity, and it will serve your tastebuds and tummy well. Happy emergency eating :-)

Roshopuli II

2012-02-12T22:43:00.000+05:30

Puli :-)

After phulkopir shingara, roshopuli! This is the second -- and last, if the weather doesn't hold -- winter special on Sauce! this year, and a desser I make absolutely no effort to resist if I'm in Calcutta during winter. All my life, I've slurped down hearty, warm bowlfuls of it made by my mother and great aunt, but ever since I mastered this dish last year, I'm the family's Reigning Roshopuli Queen.

And this is my special recipe. Finally, I have a Special Rimi Recipe. Oh, the joy.

First, take five tablespoons of shuji/sooji/semolina. Soak in enough water to just submerge the shuji.

After ten or fifteen, you'll find the indiv. grains of shuji are slightly larger, having absorbed the water.

This is narkel-kora. What would be suitably expressive English for it? Shaved coconut? Excavated coconut?

Anyway, scoop the shuji on it. It'll hold the shape of the bowl, which you can have fun mahsing up.

And then! The star of the show -- khejur guRer patali! Jaggery lumps made from the sap of the date-palm.

Mix it all up! By hand. By freshly-cleaned hands.

Now, pour it all into a wok, on a simmering flame.At first, it'll stick frighteningly to the sides. Let your spatula divorce them, but don't worry too much -- it'll crumble on its own when it's done.

See?

Spread it thin on a plate and let it cool for a while. Then, take a tiny bit in your palm, and roll between both palms till it's a little ball.

Keep at it till you have a platful. Like this. It's utterly yummy. But DON'T eat it right away! We have Plans.

NOTE: If you fancy extra work, you can put little bits of this mixture into rice-flour casings, like dumplings or momos.

Now, take four or five small cardamoms.

Smash 'em open.

Boil about 500 gms of full-cream milk, with the cardamoms AND about four tablespoons of crushed guRer patali. Trust me, don't go overboard with the guR. You can always add some later if you want.

After about twenty minutes, scoop out the green shells and throw them away.

Wait till the milk almost boils over, then simmer the pot. Scrap up the cream-leavings on the side of the pan.

Now, gently add the naru-like little guR-narkel puli. They'll sink straight away. Relax. They're supposed to.

After about ten minutes, they'll slowly rise to the surface. By this time, the milk will have reduced to a lovely, thick, creamy texture.

This is what the pulis look like after that good, long soak.

And this is what it looks like in a warm bow, all ready for your discerning tastebuds. And if you DO have discerning tastebuds, you'll be grateful. Very grateful :-)

Phulkopir Shingara

2012-02-10T22:52:00.001+05:30

Apparently, this weekend is when winter will bid us a final adieu, and we won't miss it one little bit... till March slowly melts into April and we start dissolving into our own little puddles of sweat.

The shape of things to come.

On a more immediate level, winter marching also means lovely fresh yummalicious veggies marching out of the markets, leaving the same old aloo-potol rubbish till next winter. So! I created a little alternate reality where I am NOT simultaneously working on five different projects, and I haven't a care in the world except to keep my tastebuds and tumtum happy. Day 1 of this produced phulkopir shingara -- that lovely, lovely piping-hot golden pastry, stuffed with a lightly, yet piquantly, flavoured cauliflower and potato.

This version of the shingara -- which is the Bangali version of a fried/baked ravioli, momo, dimsum or similar -- is completely 'niramish'. Absolutely vegetarian. There is no onion, no garlic, no hint of scandalous things forbidden in the Hindu household a century back. Prep time's an amazing forty minutes, especially if you're a deft hand at making the little triangles. If you're not, three batches and you will be. So then! Plunge in :-)

First, cauliflowers. Washed and cut into little florets. And I mean little.

Then, two small potatoes. Or one large one. Whatever you've got at hand. Plus, those chilies? If you can handle 'em, chop 'em up.

A teaspoon of oil. Half a teaspoon of jeera, because I like a strong flavour.

Toss in the diced potatoes and cauliflowers, lightly rubbed with turmeric. Then, when it smells fried, toss further with salt and two pinches of sugar. Then, sprinkle a tablespoon of water all over it, simmer, and cover till tender.

When the vegetables are tender and there's no gravy of any description left in the work/pan, take it off the flame. Sprinkle bhaja guro moshla* over it, and mix well.

Now, the shingara! Roll out your average flatbread dough into a circle, then cut it into half.

Fold the semi-circle into half, keeping the top fold slightly larger than the bottom (look at the pic carefully to see how this works). Now, wet the tip of your finger, run it along the longer flap, and carefully make a cone of the semi-circle.

See? Cone.

Which you stuff with stuff. Like, say, that awesome cauliflower filling.

And then, you wet your fingertip again, and seal the bottom of the cone, such that they have a flat(ish) bottom to stand on.

Then, contrary to all laws of flatbread-frying, slowly sink your shingaras into oil you've just put on a medium flame.

Incidentally, if you think the sticky dough is sticky enough to hold shape, and skip the wet-fingertip act, this is what will happen to your shingara: Eet weel kaam aaapaaart.

However, if you've been good, and done as you're told, you will have a platful of crisp, steaming, utterly scrumptious shingaras, with the lovely vegetarian filling.

Happy Bengali snacking, people!

*'Bhaja guro moshla' is an assortment of dry-roasted spices ground to a fine powder in a mortar-and-pestle. In this case, it is jowan (ajwain, carom seeds) and whole jeera (cumin), toasted together on a skillet or tawa till fragrant, then ground in a mixie.

Cinnamon-Almond Chocolate Cake

2012-01-11T21:03:00.000+05:30

This cake is a wonder of midnight-bakery. If you'll recall, this cold, wet, unseasonably stormy weather had put the damper on my newly-minted baking skills, and pushed me firmly back into hearty soups and chilli-noodles territory. However, a tray of desert ingredients can only twinkle at you temptingly for so long before you think, "To hell with the winter rains!", and bake yourself a climate-inappropriate cake.

One of perils of keeping ingredients waiting, however, is that some of them tend to disappear. Especially when one lives with one's parents. And since I have not learned the value of ingred. reconn. even after multiple minor kitchen disasters, I had to resort, once again, to immediate improvisations. In this case, replace the lovely dark chocolate quietly nicked by my mother with garden variety milk-choc.

It's not bad. I'm not saying it's bad. In fact, it's very good. But it's not seventy per cent dark. And you feel the difference.

That's 80gms of sugar, three sticks of cinnamon/daarchini, one 25gm bar of milk chocolate (all I had in the fridge), and three eggs. Plus, there is a little butter, the leftover dark chocolate (about 50gms), and approx. 30gms of sunflower oil in the sidelines.

That's the tiny pat of butter.

Which we melt in a saucepan of bubbling water. In my mephistophelian kitchen.

On top of it, goes the chocolate.

And obligingly melts.

Powdered sugar to beaten eggs. The old drill.

That's the oil.

Add it to the sugary eggs.
That sounds positively revolting, 'sugary eggs'.

In the meanwhile, the chocolate has melted. Yay. Have you ever noticed shop-bought chocolate bars take far longer than cooking chocolate to melt? I wonder why that is.

Scoop and scrape all the scrumptious chocolate into the egg-sugar-oil. Beat, beat!

And then, the best idea I've had all night: roughly-diced almonds. Mmm!

Then, just for fun, add a quarter teaspoon of cayenne/shukno lonkar guro. Because all the cool people eat their chocolate with red chilli powder.

And then, because it's 3AM and you're light-headed with chocolate and the lack of sleep, add a quarter teaspoon of home-ground garam masala (cinnamon, cardamom, cloves). Top with half a teaspoon of baking powder.

And then whisk it all together a few more times, and pour it into a greased and floured baking tin. And notice, too late, the air bubbles.

Not that it harmed the cake any. And the entire place smelt a warm, summery, cinnamony divine right till daybreak.

And we were done with the bowls and forks for the night. Yawn!

And Then, Disgustingly Early The Following Morning...

Surprise, Mamma! There's a cake in the oven! Now hooo could have baked it?

Well, never mind that. Let's have ourselves the first big slice, crunchy with cinnamon-roasted almonds. It smells like a slice of hearty, warm paradise.

That only improves on eating. Especially with a steaming cup of coffee.

Sigh. Winter morning contentment. What is happiness, after all, but the perfect forkful?