It all comes together!

Pomegranate Raita – left – from Nigella Lawson’s show – and my cooking here.

Muttar Panner - bottom - from Nigella Lawson’s show – and my cooking here.

Or rather Peas & Cheese

Or as the British would have it .. Muttah pan-Knee-yur!

This recipe is also from Nigella Lawson. It’s from the same show as the pomegranate raita. I usually avoid paneer altogether. But, I haven’t seen paneer dancing with peas in a long time. So I thought, let’s turn on the gas stove and make us some paneer.

This recipe started with a disaster I can never forget. After I paid the bill for all the other ingredients, I realized that all the groceries around my house were out of stock on paneer. If you know me, you know that if I’ve decided mutter paneer, then nothing else can take it place. So after some googling I found out there were cheese substitues that I could use in it’s place. So I headed back to the store, and hello hello! There was plain, hallomi, feta, labneh and what not. Also, a lot of these packs had some ingredient called Cow’s Rennet. I did some googling from my mobile and found out this :-

Cheese is made by coagulating milk to give curds which are then separated from the liquid, whey, after which they can be processed and matured to produce a wide variety of cheeses. Milk is coagulated by the addition of rennet. The active ingredient of rennet is the enzyme, chymosin (also known as rennin). The usual source of rennet is the stomach of slaughtered newly-born calves. 

http://www.vegsoc.org/info/cheese.html
 

Whoops! That was scary! Stomach of a slaughtered newly born calf? No thank you! Just when I was about to give up, I read the next line -

 Vegetarian cheeses are manufactured using rennet from either fungal or bacterial sources. Advances in genetic engineering processes means they may now also be made using chymosin produced by genetically altered micro-organisms.

God bless genetics! I checked some more packs and found one that said – “Rennet cultured from microbes”. I did a little jig. What I had forgotten in my excitement was that I should have also googled whether the cheese melted under fire, or burnt. I didn’t. My bad! I came back home and tried heating the cheese cubes and watch my dreams melt away with them cubes. 

Day 2. Went looking further. In between calls to Chandrasur and 2kgwala, I managed to locate a shop selling paneer. One kilo of it. Amul Frozen Paneer. I actually heard the “Amul .. The Taste of Indiaaaaaa” in my head when I picked up the pack. 10 minutes later, go – time!

Muttar Paneer

What you will need:-

1/2 cup vegetable oil 
250 gms paneer
1 onion, halved 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped 
1-inch piece ginger, roughly chopped 
3 teaspoons of salt – adjust for your taste
1 teaspoon turmeric 
1 teaspoon garam masala 
500gm packet frozen peas 
1 teaspoon tomato puree 
1 cup vegetable stock (I used 2 cups water for this)

Let’s Do This! 

The first thing you can do is prepare the paneer cubes. I opened my 1 kg pack to find two 500 gm packs inside. Which meant I needed to break one of them to get my 250 gms. 2 knives, a hammer and a screwdriver gave me all they had, but alas! I could barely dent the surface. The instruction was to let it thaw for 30 mins. I couldn’t wait that long. I put in my microwave at Med. low for 6 mins, and voila! The knife ran through it smooth as butter..er..cheese. Careful though. You shouldn’t put back in to the freezer stuff that was frozen before and thawed. Keep such items in the fridge. Once you manage to get a chunk of paneer, cut them into darling 1″ cubes like this.

Heat the oil a large pan  and add the paneer cubes, in 2 batches, and fry until they are golden.  The paneer will give out some water when heated, and given that there is no love lost between Mr. Oil and Mr. Water, you may want to get an apron and some glasses on. Fry them on one side ..

And then flip each of them over to fry the other, so that you have something that looks like a grilled sandwich.

Remove the golden cubes to a double thickness of kitchen towel. It is possible to dry fry the paneer cubes in the pan with no oil, to avoid the oil splashing you. Then continue with the recipe below.

Pour all but about 2 tablespoons of the oil out of the pan. Put the onion, garlic cloves, and ginger into a food processor and blitz to a coarse pulp. Should look like this..

Fry gently for about 5 minutes with a sprinkling of salt. Stir in the garam masala and turmeric and cook for another 2 minutes before adding the still frozen peas. Dissolve the tomato puree in the vegetable stock and pour over the contents of the pan. Stir again and turn the heat down to low, cover with foil or a lid.

Before ..

Cook for 15 minutes, tasting to check that the peas are tender.

After..

You can cook muttar paneer up to this stage, if you like, uncovering and then reheating gently with the diced, oil-crisped paneer, or proceed directly now. In which case, take off the foil and add the paneer cubes to warm them through before serving. 

Do that and you have - 

~ Muttar Paneer ~

I saw this recipe on Nigella Feasts. I usually don’t like the show very much. Don’t get me wrong. She’s a wonderful cook. I just am very uncomfortable with the way she romances the camera, with her coy smiles, subtle shimmeys, blushes, eyelid bats etc. Watching a stranger coming on to me on television, when she’s cooking is a little nauseating.

However, this show had an Indian theme to it and I really like two of the items she cooked on it. One of them was a sweet and tangy pomegranate raita. If you don’t already know, a raita is a curd based dip that accompanies a lot of North Indian cooking, especially if there’s any Indian bread on the plate. South Indians have it too, but it’s called patchadi.

Here it is the Anarkali of Raitas -

The Pomegranate Raita a la Nigella

What you need:-

1 1/2 cups natural yogurt

3 spring onions
1 pomegranate, to give 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds 
1/2 teaspoon salt

Let’s Do This:-

Chop the spring onions. Spring onions are supposed to be milder than actual onions, but I didn’t feel it at all. Cut off the leaves, the roots and slice about 2-3 mm thick circles across.

Next, we need to deseed the pomegranate. A nice trick is to cut the thing in half. Once you’ve done that, take a hard bottomed spoon, keep the seeded side away from you and well, for want of a better word, spank!

Give the skin some nice hard but firm thwacks and all the seeds should pop right out.

This should ensure that you get something that looks like this -

Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl, reserving some pomegranate seeds for garnish. Add a squeeze of pomegranate juice from the husks of the seeded pomegranate at the end.

Stir everything together, and serve in a bowl scattering the reserved pomegranate seeds over as a garnish. 

Now doesn’t that look yummy or what? I’ll warn you – don’t try licking it. If you do, you’ll end up making it your main course!

It’s my birthday today. I turn 27 and decided I would make something nice to celebrate. I decided to have a Calorie Extravaganza.

I made Pasta and Garlic bread. I had some white wine that was begging me to open it, so I bought that out as well. And I bought some of my favorite Pralines and Cream ice cream.

What was it they say about being sinful on your birthday?

As my dad said … Happy Birthday Mr. Bean!

The pasta needed garlic bread. So, here goes!

Microwave Garlic Bread

What you need

One french loaf

5-6 garlic cloves

100 gms butter

some parsley

A slice of cheese

Let’s do this

Fine chop the garlic and the parsley. If you have a garlic crusher, so much the better. Otherwise, chop,chop,chop.

But some butter in a bowl and heat in the microwave for 30 seconds on medium heat.

Take out the butter and mix in the garlic and parsley.

Cut the french loaf as wedges. You can do this by cutting 2 cm thick pieces. While cutting remember not to cut down straight, but to rather cut diagonally.

Apply the butter mix on the wedges. You could also add some cheese on the top and put it in the microwave.

Heat it up at full tempetrature for 2 minutes.

Ta-da!

I’m thought I’d start a guest post column. What I can do here, is have someone send me a recipe and I make the dish. Simple enough.

I’m using the mail that Wika sent, with the pictures from my attempt to do justice to the recipe.

Ladies and gentlemen, without any further I give you Wika’s Ghost-at-1:00 Pasta

Take it away Wika!

Pasta Time:

It all started with Joka. She got married. She started cooking. And then she made something.

I was looking for a nice dish to cook in cashew nut gravy, and she told me about something she had made. I could see it being cooked in front of my eyes. The highlights were cashew nut gravy …. aloo stuffed with cheese!

Only one word comes to mind ….sinful!

I forgot her recipe so I adapted a recipe off the net called Shahi Aloo Kaju. Of course, that recipe was like apka sadharan ghisa pita recpie. This one has a far more oomph to it. I call it Aloo Peek-a-boo.

Aloo Peek-a-boo

(in cashew nut gravy) for the seriously lactose tolerant

What you need

Allo Peek-a-boo, What you need

Small sized Potatoes : 300 gms

Cashew nuts : 4 tblsp

Onions : 2 nos

Ginger : 1 inch

Garlic : 1 clove

Chillies : 2 nos.

Jeera: 2 tsps

Garam Masala : 2 tspns

Turmeric Powder : a pinch

Curd : 1/4 cup

Milk : 1/4 cup

Cheese : 2 slices

Oil, for frying

Salt

Let’s Do This!

(Optimized Process)

Phase 1: Soak the cashew nuts in a glass of water. This will get them soggy and they’ll grind easy. Put that away.

Kaju, in the Before

Phase 2: Clean the potatoes, cut them in half and put them on boil. They should be soft enough to scoop out their insides with a spoon. This will take about 15 minutes on a high flame. So in the meantime, we go to

Phase 3: Chop up the garlic and ginger. We’ll be grinding this, so rough chops will do. Chop the onions nice and fine. Slit the chillies lengthwise, wash and cut the coriander leaves and you’re good to go.

Phase 4: Where it all comes together

Kaju, in the After

Step 1: Take the soggy cashew nuts, garlic and ginger and grind, baby, grind.

Add a little water so you get a nice paste.

Step 2: Check on the potatoes. Assuming their done, make like a psychologist and peel off their layers. Next, we’re going to get the inside scoop on them.

I have a confession to make. When I went to Baskin Robbins, I stole one of

Potatoes in the heat

their tasting spoons. I knew it would come handy one day. Well it did. Turns

out it’s a great tool for what we’re going to do next.

Use a spoon to scoop out some of the potatoes. Save the chunks you take out. Next, take the cheese slice and make a little pieces that you can place inside the scooped out holes. Put these on a tray, cheesy side up and inside the microwave, so that the cheese melts. To stop the cheese from drooling, you can make a cut to flatten the heads of the potatoes, so that they can stand up to the heat.

No Fill, Filled, Sinfully Filled

Step 4: Heat some oil on low flame in a kadai. Throw in the jeera. Fry it a bit. Next, toss in the onions, chillies, garam masala and turmeric powder to keep the jeera company. Once the onions show their true colors (golden brown), put in the cashew nut paste that we’d grinded earlier.

The gravy has a tendency to stick to the bottom, so you’ll have to keep stirring it in.

Step 5: Add the curd. Keep stirring and again watch out for the bottom

The broth thickens

sticking. When the gravy thickens, proceed to

Step 6: Add the milk and half a glass of water, about 2 tsps of salt, the

potatoes and the coriander leaves. Keep stirring while mixture thickens and the potatoes get coated nice and good.

Step 7: Switch off the flame. Sprinkle some coriander leaves and some cashew nuts for garnish and voila!

Aloo Peek-a-boo!

Notes:

Variation : Put in half a cashew inside the scooped potato, before stuffing the cheese in. You could put in a raisin there as well

Tangent : Maybe using less potatoes might make it look like one of those koftas that they serve in restaurants

Tangent: Try using no onions at all

I have been eating Mom’s yummy sandwiches as far as back as I can remember. Well, not as long as Mr. Hillel used to make them, but I used to take them to school, take it on picnics, eat them on trains, feast on them on birthday parties, and so many many evenings.

The key potion to making this sandwich taste unforgettably awesome is to get the chutney (or what the American’s would call a spread). I used to think that something this good would actually take a long time to make, but it turns out I was wrong. You can finish making this between two breaks of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

Sandwich Chutney

What you need

Fresh Cilantro (Coriander) Leaves : 1 bunch

Green Chillies : 6 nos.

Ginger : 1 inch

Tamarind: 1 small ball (without the seed)

Lime juice: of 1/2 a lime squeezed out

Sugar: 1/2 tsp (if you need it)

Jeera: 1/2 tsp

Salt: 1 tsp

Let’s get to it

Step 1: Wash the coriander, remove the stalks

Step 2: Grind everything

Step 3: There is no step 3

Notes:

• Control: Add the 3 chillies in the first go, add the other chillies, after grinding and tasting. That way you can control the spiciness of the chutney
• Variation: Add some 5 spoons of grated coconut. If you are North Indian, ignore this.
• Variation: You can add half a tomato

Spread the chutney on a slice of bread, layer out some tomato, onion and cucumber slices, some mashed potatoes, cover the top with a slice of buttered bread. Put it in the sandwich toaster.

And don’t forget to say “Voila!”

Somehow a trip to Kerala or anywhere near Kerala would be incomplete without sampling some steaming Puttu and Kadala curry.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Kadala curry is a dish best served sweet. It is keeps company to a generous helping of Puttu, usually accompanied by some pappadam, sugar or banana or any combination of these.

I don’t have the contraption to make Puttu here, so I thought I’d made my favorite Kadala Curry

Here we go now!

What you need:

Black Chana: 200 gms

Grated Coconut: 50 gms

Kashmir Red Chillies: 7 nos.

Onion: 1 medium sized no.

Corainder seeds: 4 Tsp

Curry leaves: Of one stem

Cinnamon: 2″ stick

Baking Soda: a pinch of

Mustard Seeds: 1 Tsp

Sunflower Oil, Salt, Haldi

Lets Do This:

Soak the Black Chana for 12 hours. Soaking it overnight is a good idea. They’ll go from a light and listless brown to a bright and vibrant brown. Wash the chana, put it in a cooker, drown the little tykes in water. Put em’ in a cooker, heat it up and practice counting to 5.

Now let’s get to the base, the gravy, the substance of the dish. Take a small kadai, put in about 2 Tsps oil and keep it on low flame. Add 5 red chillis (after removing their hats), corinader seeds, onion and dalchini. Fry everything around, till you have some sparkling, golden brown looking coriander seeds. It should take about 3 minutes. Take a whiff of that. Now, add all the grated coconut and continue stir-frying. I used to wonder whether people would even realize that I had fried the coconut. But believe you me, when I took this dish to office, with one taste, they appreciated the fried coconut in an instant. Who would have thunk?

Fry the coconut for two minutes. Now make everything jump from the frying pan to the grinder.

Add as little water as possible and grind, baby, grind. It would be a good idea to grind it to as good a paste as is possible.

5 whistles should be done by now. Remove the weight, let the steam out and open it after a few minutes.
Put 2 Tsp of oil and the mustard seed, the last two chillies, halved breadth wise, the curry leaves and I tsp of haldi powder. Let them get to know each other at a low flame. When things start to pop, put in the paste that we just got grinded and fry it around just for fun. Put in a glass of water. (Hint: You can use this to clean out the grinder).

Fry for 3 more minutes and add the black chana in. Put a lid on it and heat for some 5 minutes, till you get the consistency that you want. I prefer mine a little thick, so I heat it longer.

Takes it off, say “Yemmy Kadala Curry” and eat up. If you don’t have Puttu, you can use bread, chappathi or even rice.

My cousin sister 3P once said that we’ve all been born into a family of foodies. To date that is one of the most profound things I have ever heard in my life.

Now, on June 21, my dad’s turning 60. So we’re having a sweet 60 party (get it?) for him. Religiously, it’s called a Shashti-abda-boorthy. I think that should translate into 60-woo hoo-birthday. Too bad wiki doesn’t have an entry for it. It has to be conducted by the eldest son and that would be yours truly! While the function involves performing a lot of pujas that are a part of tradition, the part that I can really get involved in is .. yep, the food.

It’s the first time that we are having a big function in our family, so planning the menu actually took longer than planning the guest list. The idea was if the menu was good, the people would come.

So without further ado, the courses – with some explanations for the not so south-indian food saavy. I’ll try to be as Angreji as I can. Maybe I can make it sound like a foren menu!

20th June 2008

Breakfast

Rava Kesari: A sweet tooth is a requisite for any South Indian meal at a function. More often than not you will notice that the desert is served before any other dish can tocuhdown at your plate. This is a dish that made with semolina and sugar.

Vadai: Medhu vada to be more precise. They are doughnuts that are made out of a fried paste of horsebeans.

Pongal: Rice, green gram, black pepper and ginger. Mixed in a fashion that’ll kickstart your morning in no time.

Oothapam: Pancakes made of rice and horsebeans. The base is like a pizza, the toppings are like a pizza. Hey, wait a minute! Those Italians copied our recipe!

Chutney: Coconut grinded to a paste along with a few chillies and the usual suspects that can either leave you screaming for more, or screaming “No more!”

Sambhar: I mean, if you don’t know what Sambhar is you really shouldn’t be reading this.

Coffee: An South Indian function, particularly an Iyer function is incomplete without coffee. If you want to sound Tam when you’re there, ask for kaaa-pee. If you want to sound a little Iyer-ish while you’re at it, ask for filter kaaa-pi. Maamis will blush, trust you me!

Breakfast wasn’t all that bad. Let’s loosen up that belt and head for..

Lunch

Pal payasam: Literally, milk pudding. To me, this is the Queen of Sweets. It’s got everything royal about it. It is pure, milky white and supremely delicious.

Thair Patchadi: A Patchadi is not a pickle but is not a side dish either. Just as there was a period between a man evolving from fish to what he is today, the patchadi is right there – between a pickle and a side dish. This one’s made of curd. You know, I think I should just have said Raitha.

Ericheri: No Clue

Vazhakkai Podimas: When you need to say Va-zha-kkai, think Ko-zhi-kode. When North Indians and South Indians will fight wars in the future, saying this one word right could save your life! Vazhakkai is the raw green banana. This is a side-dish made out of it. Before you say ptttoooiiie, read my undiyo post. You have no idea how tasty those things get when they’re cooked.

Cabbage and Peas Poduthual: Poduthual is best described as the quintessential kid of all side dishes. Like a kid in a gym. It doesn’t have 6-pack masalas, or even a lumpy thick gravy. If a poduthual says cabbage and peas, then it’s likely that’s all you’ll find in it (along with some loser coconut, of course)

Kathirikkai Pitla: This is a yummy dish made out of eggplant (Kathirikkai means brinjal, but can also mean eggplant). This is not to be confused with the Marathi Pitla Bhakri

Moru Kozhambu: A liquid gravy dish made out of buttermilk. North Indian call it Kadi, though it has less sugar than how the Gujju’s make it and less spices that how the rest of North India makes. Still, it makes up for a very tasty accompanient for the rice.

Rasam: If the above dish was liquid, this one is like water. Rasam is very dilute, but when made with tomatoes and pepper, has a tangy taste to it. Most households would recommend that you drink Rasam when you fall have a cold. Not to degrade the dish, but just picture – extremely diluted tomato soup. Hey Tom Hanks! You’ve got Rasam.

Parappu with Ghee: Pulse (dal) and ghee. Unlike the North Indian version of dal, this one is ONLY dal and salt and nothing else. This version is more like a formality before you get started on the meal.

Thengai Rice: Cococut rice. In case you haven’t noticed, Southies are obssessed with coconuts.

Vadai – This one is Masala Vada - i.e. spicer than the medhu vadu. If you want to know the exact difference ask a certain Ms. Hima

Boli – Think Chappathi. Now imagine that stuffed with jaggery. That’s the Boli. Made extremely famous by the omni-present Venkateshwara Boli stall at every corner, this sweet is called Puran Poli.

Rice, Pickle, Curd, Pappadam and Chips

Whew! Made it through lunch. Forging ahead, we reach,

Dinner

Sevai: Long thin rice noodles that just keep going on and on and on. But don’t think Singaporean noodles here; we’re talking Mylaporean’s own!

Rava Dosai: You know what Rava is. These are pancakes made of rava.

Chappathi / Dal: This is the North Indian Dal-Roti combo. Since we have South Indian cooks I’m pretty sure the Dal will be forgettable and the Chappatis can replace your tyres if you get a flat.

Thair Semiya: This is Vermicelli in curd. Might not sound too appetising, but cooks usually make it very interesting by throwing in some nice fruits or other tit bits. Trust me, when you eat this, you will not stop.

Chutney, Sambhar, Pickle, Curd, Chips

And we made it through Day One. After a nice long sleep and an even longer stint in the loo the next day morning, make way for…

21st June 2008

Breakfast

Halwa: In Arabic, Halwa means Goal! In English, it would be called Jelly. We started with a sweet again by the way.

Idli: ‘Rice Cakes’ don’t capture what a darling of a dish that this item is. Across India, people wake up to the smell of freshly cooked Idly’s. The simplest, most nutritious breakfast one can have in the morning.

Kichadi: Not very far from the North Indian version of the dish. Rice based dish with lots of lentils. Has some interesting precedents and antecedents.

Roast: You had dosa the night before. What many North Indians don’t know is that you can get a crispier version of the same thing if you say Roast instead of Dosa.

Idli podi: In English, it is called Gunpowder. Not the stuff that you use to blow out of cannons, but when you pay a visit to the restroom, you might think that it was aptly named.

Vadai, Chutney, Sambhar, Coffee

Lunch

There are many types of Iyers. But the most common type are the Pallakad Iyers. Most of them can trace their roots to a place called Pallakad which is a small town right on the border of Kerela and Tamil Nadu. Not surprisingly therefore Pallakad Iyers are influenced by both Kerela and Tamil Nadu ways. The way they speak for example is a dialect in itself. Essentially, they speak Tamil, but it would have so many words borrowed from Malayalam, that a true Tamil would be bewildered. Their cooking also has lots of imports from the Malayalee culture. As you would have no doubt guessed by now, we are Pallakad Iyers and the lunch on this day is dedicated to our Kerela roots.

Paaladai Pradhaman: Here come the Kiiiiing. This fabulous pudding is a sweet dish made of flakes of rice, milk and sugar. It’s a special dish that is served only on important occsaions. It’s super sweet and usually very thick as well. If you have diabetes, you’d better avoid this. If you haven’t got it, then one helping of this dish and you are on your way!

Sadha Sadhayam Payasam: I’ll leave this one for you to find out when you get there.

Fruit Patchadi: Patchadi made with fruits and maybe some curd as well

Ishtu: It’s potato stew that has been aptly named. Get it .. Ishtu - It’s Stew! It also sounds so much like “Ishatam” of Malayam which means love. This dish is something that you will positively love. It’s basically cooked potatoes in coconut milk gravy. When you finish this you should say, “Enniki Ishtu Ishtapettu” (I loved the Ishtu). [Hint: You can substitute name of that Mallu girl you have been dying to propose to instead of Ishtu. You're welcome]

Olan: No, this has nothing to do with an African company that gives you tons of money, a gun and a one way flight ticket. This dish, in some ways this is the cousin of Ishtu. It also has a coconut paste base. Where Ishtu uses potatoes, this uses pumpkins

Kootu Curry: A curry made with Bengal gram and a host of other vegetables

Avial: Venkilla told me that when the Pandavas returned back to a burnt down wax palace, they wanted to make some food to eat. Bheema, the metro-sexual of yore who liked to wrestle elephants and spend time cooking in the kitchen and connecting with his inner self, said he would make the food. All he had though was leftovers. He put them all together and what they ate then, was what we know call Avial. I don’t know if this is a Parnab Mukherjee funda, but it’s a great question and an even tastier dish. The best Avial I have had to date incidentally is in a place called Dammam in Saudi Arabia, but that is another story.

Beans Poduthual: Remember, the kid in the gym? This time he’s wearing beans shorts.

Mini Jangiri: Mini Jalepi

Puliyodharai: Tamarind Rice with some extra jills and jangs that make up for at least one encore

Pulikyachal: Too bad you don’t get a drum roll when something is served on your plate. This item surely deserves one. I won’t tell you about this. You will find it as a thick brown paste on the top left corner of your plantain leaf.

Thair Pachadi, Vadai, Pappadam, Paruppu, Ghee, Rasam, Pickle

All that remains to be asked is,

when are you getting here?