Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Curd based Chicken curry

On my visit to the famous bachelor's pad.. I mean to visit JD at Nelson's house...its fun to carry food. Before anything else, let me tell you that JD is this absolutely lovable, adorable person...a fine musician ..a bass guitar player with 'Blue Frog'. An absolute genius...I met through Shekhar :)...has scored a beautiful music album with his buddy's Lima and Lindsay. You got to hear it!! Called Bliss Logic ...its ROCKING, well thats the most apt word to describe it....chk out myspace/bliss logic. This time...it was to introduce Mohnish on some music tips for his first movie at NYFA.

Now wondering what to cook for JD...led me to make a curd (yogurt) based boneless chicken curry.
To add a tad bit of interest to the curry, I roasted the onion slices and the boneless chicken!

Ingredients: Boneless roasted chicken shredded pieces, roasted onions slices, chilly powder, coriander powder, pepper corns, fresh coriander leaves and curd.

Method: Roast the boneless chicken and keep it aside. grind the roasted onions slices, chilly powder, coriander powder, pepper corns together. Heat a little oil in a heavy based pan, add the ground masala to it along with fresh coriander leaves and saute well till you can smell the aroma of the masala. Beat the curd and pour it into the pan ...let it boil...add chicken and salt to taste.
I leave you the option of adding some cream to it.

Its yummy... try it plz... then post your valuable comments.

I'll post pictures of the food in some days...he he... let me buy my SX 10...!!

Saturday, May 9, 2009

CAVIAR MANGO....from Canada.

Vaibhav Suryavanshi sent me this lovely recipe from Canada....

recipe for mango caviar

CAVIAR MANGO
250G MANGO PUREE
250ML MANGO WATER
1.8G SODIUM ALGINATE
1.3G SODIUM CITRATE

method to make it

Make mango water by infusing mango peels in water. Strain and reserve. Dissolve sodium citrate in this water; incorporate alginate into mango puree with a hand blender. Mix two liquids, strain and reserve. At this point mixture is ready to drop into calcium chloride bath.

this is most famous served with my duo of mango
mango lassi and mango terrine served with mango caviar

Thankyou Vaibhav!! :)

My awesome Gas Tandoor......

I am blessed with people who love food. So everyday evening is very interesting. It my nature that I do not follow any recipe as the cooking comes from my heart. My son Mohnish says, thats the beauty of my cooking'.

Everybody loves grilled food but usually here in India the tandoor stuff is colourful. I do not recommend food colours. So in preparing a chicken tandoori, I devised my own masala usually called afghani..i suppose..white in colour. This mixure of spices brings out the flavours of the chicken, the marinade softens the meat that it simply melts in your mouth.

Today on the menu is tandoori chicken legs. I will share my recipe with you, please try it and give me your comments. I do not prepare any food to be very pungent to taste. So, if need be please add green chilli paste to the masala according to your taste.

Recipe for the marinade:
Thick curd, full cream, ginger-garlic paste, lime juice, black/white pepper powder, coriander powder, cumin powder, salt, oil.

Method: Mix all ingredients very well. Make incisions on the chicken legs and rub the masala mixture. keep aside for 3-4 hours. Heat the tandoor, oil the grill plate and place the chicken legs. Cook for 35 to 40 minutes. (time may differ in the type of grill used)

Serve with raw onions or salad.

Do try this out and post your comments.

Friday, May 8, 2009

What's cooking in my kitchen...these days

While talking to me about food and testing my passion, my H O D at IIHM, said every ingredient should be respected and used lovingly but aptly. I agree and practice it everyday effortlessly.
For example, breaking away from the tradition, yesterday while cooking a simple goan fish curry with Indian Salmon or Rawas fish, I fried the pieces with turmeric, chilli powder and a bit of salt and then added it to the curry, the result was excellent in extracting the flavour of the fish. The curry is tastier and flavourful. Let me share the recipe. It goes like this...
Ingredients: Grated coconut, coriander seeds, turmeric, chilli powder, salt, green chillies are optional to add more pungentness to the curry. Some pieces of Kokam (souring agent). Grind all this finely except the Kokam.
Method: In a hot flat bottomed heavy pan, add a few drops of cooking oil, fry a few pieces of onions finely cut till they are translucent, add the ground masala, water to thin the consistancy according to individual requirement, the kokam pieces, let boil. In another pan, fry the fish to which turmeric, chilli powder and salt has been applied and kept aside. As the curry is boiling and you smell the aroma, add the fish to it and let it cook. Put off the heat after ten minutes and let it rest for 30 minutes before eating it with freshly cooked rice.
Try it and update me with your comments.

Friday, March 20, 2009

One of the best times of my life!!

One of the best times of my life!! I have found friends, one of them a soulmate...Manoj, we worked on the same work station, shared fights, jokes, chai, bidi, drinks and of course food. But nonetheless, I like them all. Along with Manya, my best buddies are Omkar, Bhupal and Rakshit. Though I am friends with Rajesh too...hey do visit his restaurant 'Madhuban'.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Food. It means different things to different people. And what of cooking? Some hate it. Others are coaxed to do it just for the sake of it. There is little doubt that it holds a special place in every household. You agree, don’t you?

For me, cooking is relaxation, enjoyment, the road to immediate gratification. The science amazes me. The blend of spices, the outcome of its mixture, the aroma, texture, taste…everything is magical. Many make it to be a treacherous task. Its like knowing how to fit the words into a raga and if you know music well its effortless. It’s a very subtle art actually…cooking.

My dream is actually to have a well equipped workplace, utensils, ladels, knives, spices, vegetables, fresh and cold storages, meat, et all. I visualize it in two ways, one…a huge kitchen with flowing hot and cold water and the works…but very personal. Another has to be on the beach somewhere…a round working place, rustic but well equipped…a dream that I share with my boy, Mohnish. The beach place is actually a commercial venture and I like the idea of having only beer with the type of the food that would be dished out.

With the wink of the eye and a chuckle, one says…”I know, it will turnout good!” after every experiment. Hmmm!!…..ummmm!!….yummmm!!…oh! wow….damn!....holy s..t!!….good heavens!! Give a mouthful to taste and hear these and many such swears!! There’s much a do about all this…so…

Well as time went by and so to say my cooking was appreciated, like every cooks heart would yearn to see satisfied and satiated faces…smiling yet cursing themselves to have gorged more than they should have!! So with me…I have never had the inkling to follow a recipe other than the one needed to make a perfect blend of powder such as, chutney powders of our south India. For that matter even garam masala can be made according to one’s taste and need to what’s cooking.

The intuitiveness to know the steps to adding ingredients, more than attentiveness it is the mind talk you have with what’s cooking, the complete involvement, your 100%, your vibes matter a lot…therefore you sometimes wonder why food tastes different when the same is cooked by two different people!

Now, allow me to say that in Indian cooking, jeera and mustard seeds actually don’t make sense in adding them to a seasoning together as they wary in their flavoring to the food… they are very distinct in their nature. Similarly, the most abused garam masala can be avoided in a coconut based fish curry as the taste of the fish itself is lost in the load of masala that’s added to it. For that matter curry leaves bring in that zing that’s required for a simply cooked vegetable or ‘subji’ as popularly called in India. Asafotadia is a spice added to reduce the ‘gas’ factor… which is again discounted by many cooks. Cooking is very scientific…not all fathom this!! Loads of fat such as ghee (clarified butter) or oil is not required to make cooking tasty, it’s the blend of seasonings and the time to cook that really matters, fat is only a medium.

Have you ever thought why do we as Indians need to have seasoning for our cooking? Why do we use say… turmeric or coriander seeds in our cooking? Is it that we follow our predecessors blindly or do we understand what we are throwing into the pan? Nowhere in the world would they know that ingredients of the garam masala produce heat in the body. It is the spice mainly of the north of India where in one experiences cold weather. Accordingly in the south of India the food is kept simple as the weather is always warm…with the least of the spices. Now western influence has brought alcohol. In a way it’s unavoidable and we have to adapt to all influences no doubt. But here sadly it’s regarded as a medium of intoxication rather than to add heat to your body. For example, Papaya generates heat in the body and cucumber is cooling…tell this to a non Indian all you’ll see is a shrug of his shoulder!! Shashtras on food of India have been written and forgotten, the names are being used by Yoga masters such as saatvic food, rajasic food and so on. Research is a big word now but our ancestors have done and are over with about food… but the importance is not carried on.

The palates of people are so abused that, one thinks what is made in a restaurant is more authentic than what is cooked at home!!

Asha S Saraswat