Kitchen Experiments : Light-and-Fragrant Pudina Biryani

I was recently taken over by an urge to cook something high on flavour, but low on oil-and-spice. And vegetarian. (I think healthy eating is worming its way into my heart - and tummy!)

And as though by miracle, this recipe came like a flash to me - no research, no homework, and crystal-clear with all ingredients and steps listed in order on the screen of my mind's eye. So much so, that I dont feel I can take credit for this recipe - it just CAME to me.

The end result is divine - light, delicately-spiced biryani, heady with the fragrance of pudina. Best enjoyed straight from the pot, with the warm, mint-scented curls of steam wafting about you!

Ingredients:

For the rice:
1 wati/katori/cup basmati rice, washed
1 loose handful pudina (mint) leave - fresh
1 half-stick cinnamon, 2 peppercorns, 2 cloves, 1 bayleaf, 1 pod green cardamom, 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
3-4 cups water

For the masala:
2-3 handfuls (tightly packed) fresh pudina (mint) leaves
2-3 handfuls (tightly packed) fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves
2 green chillies
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon garlic paste or 2 cloves peeled garlic
salt
Mixed veggies, washed and chopped - I used cauliflower, carrot, boiled potato, French beans and capsicum
1 tomato, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon garlic paste, or 4-5 cloves peeled garlic
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
2 teaspoons oil

For the assembly:
a pinch saffron, lightly crushed and mixed with 2-3 teaspoons warm milk
1 teaspoon ghee
A few pudina leaves


Method:

Cook the rice with the whole spices and pudina leaves in a covered pot till just-done. (Test every minute after 12 minutes or so of cooking time).

Drain away the excess water. Cooking the rice in plenty of extra water means the starchiness is washed away, leaving you with soft-yet-with-a-bite grains of rice which stand separate from each other rathe than clumping around each other in a sticky cake-like form.
Keep the cooked rice covered to keep it warm.

Blend the mint, coriander, green chillies, 1/2 teaspoon garlic paste, 1/2 teaspoon cumin and salt (first 6 items in the 'Masala Ingredients' list) with some water to make a smooth paste. Should be zingy.


Lightly boil the veggies (except the potato, which is already boiled) till they are cooked but retain their crunch- 5 minutes, tops.


In a wok/kadhai, heat the 2 teaspoons oil till very hot. Add 1 teaspoon cumin seeds and let them splutter.

Add the finely chopped onion and stir for 30 seconds. Add the 1 teaspoon garlic paste and stir well.


Once the onions are transparent, add the garam masala. Stir for a minute.

Add the chopped tomato, and stir well in a mashing motion - if your onion and tomato is finely chopped enough, at this stage the mix in the wok will start looking like a thick gravy.

Let it cook till the oil starts separating at the sides.

Add the green chutney (that's what the mint paste is, effectively).


Rinse the blender with a teeny amount of water to get out every bit of paste from the nooks and crannies and reserve the minty water to dilute the masala later, if needed. (Waste not, want not!)

Cook till the mix starts heaving and bubbling like molten lava.

Throw in the boiled veggies and mix well. Add the water from the blender if you think the green gravy is too thick to coat the veggies properly.


Adjust the seasoning, and let it cook for a minute.

In a copper-bottomed pot or a brass/copper stockpot, spoon out the vegetable masala to make a thick layer.


Add the boiled rice on top, evenly.
Pour the milk-with-saffron on top.
Add dots of ghee evenly on the top, especially near the sides (where the melted ghee can trickle down easily till the bottom once the pot is hot)
Strew on the mint leaves.


Cover with a tight-fitting lid (any lid will do, but a tight fitting lid is ideal), and cook a low flame till little curls of steam start escaping from the sides of the lid. The kitchen will start being scented by the fresh scent of mint.


Remove from the flame, serve (ensuring that you scoop out till the bottom, to get even portions of rice and veggies) hot.

Enjoy!

Unlike most biryanis which take ages to prep and cook, this one is done from start to finish in a little over an hour. Provided you have fresh mint leaves at hand! :D

Mini Black Crackers - bite-sized puffs of deliciousness!

With the explosion in the import of 'gourmet' foods into India by unorganised importers, (and not a planned ,full-scale India invasion by MNC food companies like Kraft) every visit to the supermarket reveals some surprise nugget in the 'imported foods' section. Which might or might not be there the next time you visit.

One such amazing thing (so awesome that it justifies an entire blog post to itself!) is the Mini Black crackers that Dad picked up a couple of weeks ago. Manufactured by Gloria Bisco (an Indonesian biscuit company), the name is kind of a misnomer. While the biscuits ARE mini (nibble-sized), they are neither black nor are they crackers (or is it me just who thinks crackers are salty?!).



What they are is small, dainty, chocolate-brown puffs with a (supposedly funny) picture traced in yellow on their smooth rounded surface and with little grill/pinch marks on their flat bottoms.


But what is more attractive their their perfectly-finished appearance is their texture as you pop one into your mouth - the most amazing balance between crisp and soft - a softly crunchy morsel of chocolatey goodness! AND there's more to come - a micro-ration of chocolate cream filled in the centre of each biscuit. Smooth and velvety, this daub of chocolate cream is the surprise hit of the entire package.


And all of this - dainty looks, great taste and chocolate cream filling - all packed into one tiny biscuit no more the size of a checkers piece. It is rightly said - big things DO come in small packages!

Cookout at Agent J's

A week ago, we had the most amazing roundup of foodies for potluck. But with a difference - rather than get stuff pre-cooked from home, we would gather round, and cook together. With Agent J's well-stocked and conveniently-located apartment and his ever-willingness to host a jamboree, we all showed up there, lugging around ingredients at different levels of pre-cooking prepapration. I had gotten up early and made the dessert - kheer- and triple-packed it (can you imagine bumping over city roads in an ancient cab with kheer leaking out of its container? Not I!) so all I had to do once I landed at J's was to snaps pics of everyone else hard at work. Tee hee hee. :-D


Masterchef NJ showed up late, and with loads of green chillies mint and coriander. Some crossed wires between him and Agent J meant that the 1 kg chicken required for NJ's superlative biryani , which was supposed to be marinated, was still clucking about somewhere.

A quick call to Mangalore Girl and Bong Babe (who were running even more late!) ensured that the chicken would be picked up enroute.

MG and BB showed up with a huge hamper of food - marinated chicken for MG's non-tandoor Tandoori Chicken, fresh prawns, pomfret fish and pastries from Bakehouse.
These pastries, along with the Chicken Bites I'd picked up from Prabhat Poultry on my way to J's bachelor pad kept us going till lunch was served at - get - this 4 PM! Oh, and MG's prawn starters too.



Allie (of the chicken biryani fame) and AK47 also showed up on the heels of the girls, so it was soon a full house. MG and BB wrapped up their chicken and Fish in Mustard Curry pretty quick, leaving NJ to toil over a hot stove for the piece de resistance of the meal - the incredibly flavoursome (and incredibly complicated!) biryani.





While we waited for the biryani to cook 'on dum' we sprawled in front of the TV and had a gala time watching the evergreen Hindi movie Sholay on DVD. The best part was Agent J's own risque interpretation of the scenes being played! :P

All in all, a wonderful day packed to the rafters with food, fun and friends....may we have lots more!!

PS: Recipes - coming soon, if all contributors give 'em! ;)

Simple joys: Egg Sandwich

The best things in life are the simple ones - a nice book and a cup of hot chcolate on a cold evening, the first cry of the cuckoo in spring, an all-night talkathon with friends. And these simple joys are best left simple.

The same principle applies to cooking as well. When you have had enough of rich curries and spice-laden tandoori meat, your soul (and digestive tract!)craves for simple nourishment - dal-rice-pickle, or khichadi, or rasam....you get the drift.

One such simple - and classic- breakfast dish is the Egg Sandwich. With a few flourishes, this humble offering takes on a sassy wicked avataar while retaining its simplicity. And its mighty tough to beat as a lazy late Sunday breakfast after a night of revelry!

Egg Sandwich a la moi

1 hard-boiled egg, peeled
1 pao (you need Indian pao for this - no sliced bread, sirreee! At a pinch, use dinner rolls/hot dog buns)
A few pieces (as many as you like!) smoked cheese (You can use any cheese you like, I LOVE smoked cheese with its....err....smokiness)
A squirt or two of Sriracha chilli sauce (Again, use any condiment/sauce/chutney you like - ensure its spicy or spicy-sweet or spicy-sour - something to cut through the richness of egg and cheese)

This sandwich needs careful construction for optimal taste.
For this:

Slice the pao sideways (but not till the end) so that it makes a pocket
Add a few dabs of chilli sauce on both flaps of the bread pocket
Slice the egg into 4-5 slices ,and palce them in the bread pocket so that the egg reaches every corner and you dont get any just-tasteless-bread bits when you take a bite
Slice the cheese or crumble it (if using a soft cheese), scatter it evenly across the egg slices
Top with generous daubs of chilli sauce
Press down the top layer of bread so that the egg, cheese and chilli sauce meld together a bit.

Take a humungous first bite and wash it down with hot, sweet tea.

Sink into the bliss of yummiliciousness!

Quick-Fix Meals - Baked Beans Pulao

Long time between posts, I know - its just that I haven't been eating out (so much) nor have I been cooking (at all), so there has been no fodder for the blog. But here I am, better late than never!

This is an incredibly quick-fix meal - IF you have a tin of baked beans in tomato sauce at hand. Else, don't bother trying it, there are better ways to reach foodie heaven. (plain Rajma-Chawal, for instance)

Ingredients:
1 tin (mine weighed 420 gms) baked beans in tomato sauce
1 medium onion, or 1/2 large onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon garlic paste / 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chilli powder
1 teaspoon Bonde Masala/Garam Masala/Chana Masala (basically any spice mix of your choice)
salt, to taste
Chilli sauce, to taste (I used Nando's Hot Peri Peri sauce, but any hot-and-slightly-sour sauce should do)

1 katori/ 1 cup Basmati rice, washed
1 pod green cardamom, 2 black peppercorns, 1 clove, 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds and 1 bay leaf
Process:

Cook the rice with the whole spices in 2 cups water.

While the rice cooks, you can get the beans ready. For that:

Heat 3 teaspoons oil to a wok/kadhai/saucepan.
Once the oil is hot, add the cumin seeds. Once the cumin is done spluttering in the hot oil, add the turmeric. Stir.
Add the chopped onion and saute till transparent.
Add the garlic paste/minced garlic and saute for 1 minute.
Add the red chilli powder and the spice mix of your choice and saute till the oil starts separating from the onion at the edges.


Add 1 cup water and stir through.
Tip the baked beans (entire tin) into the wok. Stir well.
Add the salt and chilli sauce till the taste is just right.

Take care to ensure that the gravy is slightly saltier and spicier than what you'd like since it is to be married with the bland rice later.

By the time this beans-in-gravy stage is done, the rice will have been cooked.

Fluff out the rice using very light hands (or forks) in a wide bowl. Add the gravy-and-beans (more beans, less gravy - you want a bean-studded rice, not a wet slop), till the rice is coated with th sauce and generously strewn with beans.


Taste, and adjust the seasoning as required.

Serve hot, with a garnish of fresh coriander leaves.

Handy Tip:
If you are preparing this dish beforehand and plan to reheat it before serving, add a touch extra gravy while mixing the rice and beans - the rice absorbs the gravy on standing, and will get dry. Else, if you have got leftover gravy, add it to the rice while reheating it.

Quick-fix Meals : Chutney French Toast

We had sandwiches for dinner recently, and seeing Ma wrap up the unused slices of bread brought to mind an old school lunch box favourite - French Toast.

Way back in school (lost in the mists of time :P ), French Toast was always savoury -sliced bread dipped in a mixture of eggs whisked with salt, chillies and a bit of crushed garlic and pan fried. The first time I heard of a SWEET French Toast being served with syrup et al - I was horrified. But apparently French Toast was SUPPOSED to be sweet.....you can imagine my consternation! :)

Watching Nigella Lawson's version of the recipe on TV- eggy bread pan fried till golden-BROWN (Another revelation - in school, the bread was not allowed to colour. French Toast was always a sunny yellow in colour!), dredged through powdered sugar and served with a fresh strawberry sauce - made me realise that the basic recipe had as many interpretations as there are cooks in the world.

Thus my identity crisis a la French Toast was put to rest, and my own contribution to the recipe trove is like the stamp of acceptance of the many guises French Toast can take. :)

Ingredients:
3 eggs
6 slices of bread (day old stale bread is better - the drier the bread, the more it soaks up the eggy mixture)
3 teaspoons (or as much as you like) Coconut 'sandwich' chutney - fresh grated coconut, green chillies, coriander leaves, salt, sugar, cumin seeds whizzed in a blender till a smooth paste is formed
2 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons powdered Parmesan cheese - optional
Sriracha chilli sauce/any chilli sauce - optional
Salt, to taste
1 tablespoon oil

Method:

Spread the chutney on 3 slices of bread. Cover each slice with another slice of bread - basically, make chutney sandwiches.

Cut each sandwich on the diagonal, making 2 triangular sandwiches

Whisk the eggs with milk, salt, cheese, chilly sauce in a wide shallow bowl

Stand the chutney sandwich triangles in the egg mixture for a minute. Turn over and let the egg soak into the other side of the sandwich as well.

While the bread is soaking up the egg, heat a swirl of oil in a frying pan. Make sure that the bottom of the pan is covered properly with oil.

Lift the egg-soaked sandwiches and place them in the pan. They WILL BE very fragile and prone to collapse, thanks to their dunking, so handle with kid gloves.

Fry on both sides till golden brown.

Serve piping hot with tomato ketchup or mint chutney.


As you can see, this recipe is very flexible, and lends itself very well to variations. You can substitute the coconut chutney with a grated cheese-spiked-with-chopped-chillies mix, or a mint chutney, or your normal cheese spread.
For a sweet version, you can slather on some peanut butter or jam (or both in a classic PB&J combo) or even Nutella onto the bread and dip these sandwiches in a mix of eggs, sugar, cream and fry till gloriously golden.

If you have any amazing variation of your own, please leave it as a comment in this post!

Kitchen Experiments: Jalapeno Cheese Mini-Muffins

We all know that chilli and cheese is a combination made in heaven - right at the top with tomato-and-cheese and garlic-and-butter. Chilli cheese toast is testimony to this divine coupling. Jalapeno Cheese Muffins are a step toward taking chilli cheese toast to a more evolved level.

Given the fortuitous trine of a hunk of cheddar waiting to be used up, a mid-week holiday and a strong urge to be a-baking, I did a few Google searches and came up with a few cheese muffin recipes. One of them recommended using copius amount of chopped jalapenos - and hey presto!- off went the light bulb in my head - there was a tin of sliced-jalapenos-in vinegar lounging in the store cupboard in the kitchen! Now so many convenient coincidences HAD to be a sign, so who was I to ignore it?

I used this recipe, since the ingredients it required were closest to stuff I had at hand.


Of course, I did tweak the recipe a bit - the recipe calls for fresh jalapenos while I used tinned-in-vinegar ones, the recipe says 1 cup yoghurt OR 1 cup sour cream - I used half-and-half (didnt want too much sour cream and Indian yoghurt is not as creamy as the stuff you get in the US, so using only yoghurt would not do the trick). Also, the recipe needed 1/4 cup melted butter - I had a butter shortage sp again, used a butter-and-olive oil combo. And oh yeah, I used a generous dash of Nando's Wild Herb Peri Peri Sauce and Sriracha sauce to liven things up. (the batter was too cheesily rich when I tasted it, needed sharpness to cut through it)







These taste best when warm from the oven, served with a side of fresh salsa / tomato chilli sauce/ Sriracha sauce/ chilli sauce-with-dash-of-vinegar.

Note:
1. Make mini muffins instead of full-size muffins - I suspect a large muffin will be too rich to stomach.


2. They also make an excellent starter for parties - all that cheesy goodness can absorb alcohol very well. :)

Return to Mohammed Ali Road

When we visited Mohammed Ali Road last Ramzan (September), it took me 5 months to post about it. This time around, I was determined to turn over a new leaf and blog about it in less than 5 days....so here are is an account of our foodie encounters, in technicolour glory for all to salivate over! :)Anti-gluttony Declaration - We did NOT eat all the yummy stuff featured in the photographs. While my appetite is prodigious, it has not expanded to colossal proportions yet. YET being the operative word... :P

First stop was a quick exploratory walk-through of the khau galli opposite the Dargah at Mahim. Its a wide (compared to Mohd Ali Road!) street with brightly lit food stalls and makeshift eateries on both sides and the lit-up dargah at the end. Of course, given the fact that we reached there early, there weren't too many crowds yet, but oh, the food! All kinds and cuts of meat - from drumsticks and marylands to entire chickens and to kebabs and fritters of less-easily-identifiable animals - all set out in a eye-watering display oof bright tandoori reds, unnatural greens and deep golds. At one place, entire chickens were even strung end to end,like decorative banners - lurid red tandoori chickens, obviously. :)

We sat ourselves down at the rickety-wooden-table-and-plastic-chair seating at one of the more inviting (read: more yummy looking food laid out for all to ogle!) eateries and ordered a Seekh Kebab (mutton) and a Chicken Baida Roti.

Seekh Kebab

First up were the juicy, glistening-with-oi seekh kebabs. So bad for you, but oh so good! Especially with the lengths of fresh-cut onion and the zingy mint chutney that was plonked on the table as soon as we sat down. Agent J ordered pao to go log with, and we feasted on an improvised sandwich of piping-hot kebab, spicy chutney and crunchy onion all pushed inside a pillowy soft pao. Bliss!

Next up was the Chicken Baida Roti. A packet made of deep-fried crunchy shell (as close to a 'roti' as Angelina Jolie is to being ugly) encasing a moderately spicy stuffing of shredded chicken, tomato and onion....the CBR was forbidden pleasure in every bite!

Chicken Baida Roti - golden goodness!

Agent J also sampled the Khichada at another stall (needless to say, I had a taste in, too!) - a lentil stew studded with a few pieces of mutton and sprinkled generously with sweet and sticky strands of fried onion.

Khichada

Also for our gorging pleasure was bright orange 'Mahim Halwa' to be eaten with gigantic parathas - each one easily 1.5 feet in diameter. Goodness!




Luckily for our digestive tracts, we skipped these, along with shwarma and other culinary delights - for there was more to come at Mohammed Ali Road!

At M.A.R., we caught up with H, our foodie guiding star from last year. We went to the same places as last year (if it ain't broke, why fix it, eh? ) but tried different stuff. At the first stop, where we'd supped on Paya last year, this time around we tried the Nalli-Nihari. Nalli-Nihari is a thick, smooth gravy resonant with meaty umami flavour with bits of nalli (bone marrow) suspended in the gravy - which melt in the heat, so you have to mop them up with the fluffly tandoori roti quickly.



I was too chicken to try marrow (even though its a prized delicacy - I steer away from offal because of the strong flavour), so I stuck to dipping my roti in the spicy and bursting-with-flavour gravy instead. Washed down with ice-cold Pepsi, of course. Bliss!




We also re-acquanited our tummies with the World's Best Tandoori Chicken - just one maryland this time, of the Laal variety.

Scrumptious beyind words - smoky from the grill, yet juicy and succulent. Mashahallah!

We skipped the deep-fried kebabs and didnt even stop for a bite at the legendary Suleiman Usman sweetshop - instead, choosing to just packsome Malpua, Phirni and Malai Khaja (layers and layers of puff pastry surrounding a core of thickened rabdi) for the parents.

Malpuas being fried at Suleiman Usman

Malpuas ready to be devoured.....yum!!

Of course, we ogled all the different sweets on offer...

Gulab Jamuns

Mawa Jalebi

While we didnt really unearth any new treasures this time around at M.A.R., and stuck to the old and the familiar, the experience was still very novel - probably because this time around, there were fewer crowds (we'd visited on a lull day) and just three of us. So we made our foodie pilgrimage in unhurried peace. Plus, last time my head was spinning with the excitement of visiting M.A.R. the first time ever, so my high spirits meant I missed out on the finer details which a calm mind picks up (sounds like a discourse on Art of Living, eh? :) )

This time around, I had the time to truly take in all the sights and sounds and smells (oh, the smells!!) properly, at my pace.


So, I could really taste the different spices in the nalli-nihari, and marvel at its exquisite silken gravy. My mind was not overwhelmed by all the sensory overload of my eyes, ears and nose...so I could better appreciate the soft fluffiness of the roti, and relish the chicken in a - what can I say - more aware frame of mind.

Slower, more detailed, infinitely richer - my return to Mohammed Ali Road was truly rewarding.