Cookery School : Home-style chicken curry

As said before, I come from a vegetarian household. The family treasure-chest of pass-down-to-the-next-generation recipes has absolutely no mention of anything remotely non vegetarian (not even egg)

So for a chicken-lover like me, learning to make chicken curry meant banging on my neighbouring Aunty's door and demanding a lesson :D The said lady, Aunty H, has been ferrying across delicious dishes across the apartment landing for yours truly for years now. Her fried fish, stuffed fish, fish curry, spicy cabbage cake, chicken curry have been culinary highlights of my growing-up years. So it was inevitable that I roped her in to teach me her fabulous meat-and-fish recipes!

Our cookery school flagged off yesterday and Aunty, flustered at my actually wanting lessons, coralled her cook into making an unscheduled visit so that she could teach me. (Aunty claims the cook's mastery in the kitchen far outstrips her own) So off we started - with me clicking pics amidst giggles (from the cook) and exclamations of horror at the 'mess' in the kitchen (by Aunty).

The recipe is hearty yet amazingly simple, uses no exotic difficult-to-get-your-hands-on ingredients, and is ready in under half an hour. What more can one want?

Ingredients:

1 chicken, cleaned and cut into 10 pieces
3 mid-sized tomatoes
3 mid-sized onions
a big handful coriander leaves+tender stalks
3 green chillies (to taste)
1.5 inch chunk of fresh ginger
2 heads of garlic (15-20 cloves), peeled - yes, there's a LOT of garlic here!
3 teaspoons Malvani masala (readily available in stores) - if not available, its my guess that 3 teaspoons of a mixture of equal parts of garam masala and red chilly powder should do
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
Salt, to taste

Method:
Whiz the coriander, chillies, ginger and garlic in a blender with some water to make a smooth paste.


Rub this paste onto the chicken and let it marinate for 30 minutes or so.


In the meantime, whiz the onions to a fine paste. Keep aside.


Ditto with the tomatoes (skins on - don't bother with peeling and de-seeding. :D )

In a saucepan/large-ish vessel, add the oil and let it heat. Add the onion paste and saute till the oil starts separating from the onions and they start taking a golden hue.


Add the tomato puree and stir, again till the oil starts separating (at the sides) from the tomato-and-onion mix.


Add the malvani masala (or equivalent) and saute - yet again, till the oil separates and you get a gorgeous thick red gravy.

RED Malvani masala........

....gives a gloriously red gravy!

Dump the marinated chicken pieces and salt into the pan and stir so that the gravy coats the chicken pieces evenly.


Add about a cup of water and let it simmer gently on a low-to-medium flame till the chicken is cooked through.

Adjust the seasoning, take it off the flame and garnish with fresh chopped coriander leaves.

Serve piping hot with pao (dinner rolls) - NOT sliced white bread. This curry is yummy ladled over fluffy white rice as well.

The piece de resistance!

Cooking the chicken on the bone means that the meat is so lusciously tender that it slides off the bone when you prod it with a fork/spoon/your fingers. You can make this curry with boneless chicken cubes as well, but then you MUST be very vigilant about not letting the chicken overcook - especially chicken breast which starts getting dry and stringy very rapidly once its past the just-cooked stage.

My personal take on this dish is that its a great contender for a party dish. You can cook up a large vatful in minimal time and with minimal effort; its versatile; does not use too many or too exotic ingredients - and finally - its absolutely delicious. :)

Enjoy!

Kitchen Experiments: Mini-Muffin Mania

I recently acquired a mini-muffin tray. Of wobbly silicone. In a briaght-and-pretty-cherry red. Of course I had to use it!

So mini-muffins it was a la maison today. I chose muffins over cupcakes because:

1. We’d already had 2 kinds of cake around here in the last 2 weeks
2. There’s something so wholesome and virtuous about the idea of biting into a sturdy muffin along with a tall glass of milk for breakfast, rather than say, nibbling at a dainty-prettily iced-and-fluffy cupcake

(An aside – while Googling for the exact difference between muffins and cupcakes, I came across this hilarious yet true differentiator on several websites and forums – “If you hit a wall with a cupcake, you’ll get a ‘poof’ sound, but if you hit it with a muffin, you’ll get a ‘thud’ sound!” Hahahahaha – I still cant stop chuckling at that one…)

So it was muffin-recipe hunting for moi and while several chocolate chip recipes beckoned enticingly, I steadfastly turned my back on them, so determined I was to be good and virtuous. (The fact that the chocolate-mango cheesecake from a few weeks ago and an unblogged chocolate cake just last week had given me mild chocolate-chip ennui is incidental…: P)

I came across a simple banana-and-butterscotch muffins recipe on Nigella’s website (it’s her recipe, not a guest’s one) and it was love at first sight – it was so easy! I didn’t have the required butterscotch morsels, so substituted them with almond flakes and chopped cashewnuts. Also, I used half-atta-half maida (the next time I make these, I’ll go atta all the way – a muffin is supposed to be sturdy!) instead of only maida. Topped the muffins with a half-moon cashewnut each and popped them into the oven.

25 minutes later, the whole house was redolent with the comforting smell of banana-and-fresh-baking. Yummm...

A confession – I clean forgot to add the stipulated 100gms sugar in the batter and poured the sugarless batter into the greased muffin tray. I was about to shove it in the oven when I realised my mistake….and was too bored to scoop out the batter again to mix in the sugar. So I added honey in half the muffin moulds and sugar in the rest, stirred them up then-and-there (I used my finger, ssssssh!), popped them in the oven and left them to Providence. :D

I was going to initially make banana-and-walnut muffins and a second batch of mango-and-almond ones. But the lack of walnuts and a reluctance to make 2 batches of sweet muffins coupled with my experimental side waking up and sniffing the air for a challenge meant that my second lot of muffins was a chilly-cheese-coriander savoury variant.

I improvised based on Nigella’s recipe but since I simply throw things together when I experiment, I have no fixed quantities. (They aren’t needed – except for the essential ingredients like flour-oil-eggs-baking powder). I made the basic batter as per her recipe and then added a handful of grated Cheddar, about 2-3 sprigs of chopped coriander, a squirt of HOT Sriracha chilly sauce (you can use any hot chilly sauce) and a finely chopped green chilly. And yes, some salt too, for taste.

Baked them for 25 minutes till golden brown and let them cool on a wire stand. Gobbled one up with a dab of Sriracha sauce while still warm. :)

Note: While the savoury muffins are tasty, they lack a dominant flavour (say like banana or chocolate in sweet ones). They need either a component with a strong flavour that can give body to the entire muffin (chopped prawns or grilled-and-sliced sausage come to mind) or a dominant flavouring (like vanilla or nutmeg in sweet muffins) – pav bhaji masala or mint chutney seem like workable options here. I WILL fine tune the savoury muffin recipe – it’s too good and versatile to let go!

If you have any flavour ideas either for sweet or savoury muffins, please post them here as comments!

Mango Semolina Cake

With the Mango season drawing to a close, here’s one more Mango recipe to make the most of the last few jewels of the season…

Disclaimer – I have had no part to play in this recipe – neither the idea nor execution. It’s entirely Mom’s creation. But it’s so amazingly delicious that it would be a criminal to not document the recipe and share it with you guys!

So here you go: Mango-Semolina Cake

Ingredients:

½ wati/large cup milk
½ wati large cup yoghurt/curds (not too sour)
¼ wait/ large cup paneer (again, Mom used up some accidental-paneer.: P)
1.5 wati/ large cup semolina (rawa)
1 wati/ large cup sugar
The juice+pulp of 1 ripe mango

Method:
1.Grease a baking pan with ghee
2.Mix all the above ingredients (use your hands) and let the mixture sit for a good 4 hours. (During which the semolina will soak up the goodness of all the dairy products and mango and become slightly fluffy)
3.Preheat the oven
4.Add ½ teaspoon soda bi carb (baking soda) to the mixture, mix through quickly and pop into the preheated oven
5.Cooking time will vary from oven to oven (and our oven doesn’t have temperature controls, so cant tell you that either – put it on medium to be on the safe side) – but the cake should look golden (not brown) and a skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean and dry.
6.Take the baking tin out and let the cake cool rapidly, under the fan
7.Once cool, cut into pieces and serve.

This cake tastes yummiest when its warm-from-the-oven (the rich mango + ghee fragrance is heavenly!) but is amazing when served cold with vanilla ice cream too. :) It IS a thing of beauty (all glowing yellow-orange colour and plump jewel-like semolina granules) but alas - it is NOT a joy forever, it’s just too delicious. :D

Kitchen Experiments: Chocolate-Mango Cheesecake

Can you make cheesecake with paneer?

If the question shocks you - well, pick up your jaw from where it has hit the floor - for yes, you can make cheesecake from paneer, and yes, it is mighty yummy too. :)

With the summer heat skittering from the high-30's to the Unbearables, milk tends to curdle very easily. As a result we were landed with 2 lots of paneer from 2 casualties with the daily milk.

Now before you imagine luscious mounds of malai paneer,let me tell you that what I had on hand was the crumbly, almost mealy version, which is difficult to transform into a delish Kadhai Paneer or even a halfway decent Paneer Bhurji.

Given that I'd already been toying with trying something new in the baking department and having bought the eggs necessary for that, it didn't take too long to figure that cheesecake it would be in today's kitchen laboratory. I was going to try a new spin on the traditional chocolate cheesecake (it had been a year since I last baked one), when my foodie bff VS suggested (on GTalk) that I should try my hand at mango cheesecake instead, given the summer abundance of mangoes (Yummmmmm...)

Enthused by the suggestion, I was all set to make 2 cheesecakes - chocolate (because I luuuurve chocolate) and mango. I gathered all the ingredients (eggs, paneer, sour cream, sugar, cocoa, chocolate chips, fresh mango pieces, biscuits (Marie and Good Day - I didn't have the stipulated Digestive biscuits), butter and milk) when I realised that my ill-equipped-for-baking kitchen currently had only one baking pan of the required size.

Considering I was using accidental paneer as a substitute for Philadelphia cream cheese, I shrugged and decided to have a 2-layered chocolate-mango cheesecake instead. Easier for baking (my oven is large enough for only one pan at a time) and the washing up too :D

Now baking is one area where the rules are meant to obeyed. Even Nigella, the Goddess of no-fuss casual cooking recommends using precise measurements when it comes to baking. The last time I'd made cheesecake, I HAD played by the rules. This time around, though, I just couldn't be bothered. Maybe it was the intense summer heat which made me lazy... :P

Its come-clean time - I used no measurements at all. Gulp. There - I have said it. Everything was mixed and poured strictly by eye. But yes, I knew that I was setting myself up very likely for a culinary disaster and that it would take some serious good luck for this slapdash experiment to work. My smidgen of faith was held by the fact that with 2 whole eggs and a yolk in the mix, there was not much that wouldn't set as it baked. :D

Since all's well that ends well, (The final result of my experiment was a chocolatey creamy cheesecake with a surprise mango tang - the choco-mango combination works!) I can share with you the process (I cant call it a recipe - no quantities , you see!) I used to make this doubly delicious Chocolate Mango Cheesecake. You can get the quantities by superimposing this process on any standard cheesecake recipe.

Method:
1. The biscuit base:

• Set some (approx 3 teaspoons) butter to melt, on the stove
• While it melts, whiz the biscuits (I used 3 Marie and 3 Good Day biscuits), sugar and cocoa in the mixer
• Pour the biscuit crumbs and melted butter in the baking pan, mix well and spread it out to cover the base using the pads of your fingers
• Chill in the fridge till the cheesecake batter is ready
  

2. The batter:

• Set the chocolate chips to melt in a double boiler
  
  
  
• In the mixer/food processor, break open 2 eggs. Add the yolk of a third egg. Then toss in sugar, paneer, sour cream (I used 3 teaspoons of 'virajleli saay' (akin to curd/yogurt made entirely of cream instead of milk) ) and some milk (for adjusting the consistency - I ended up using a tad more than necessary).
  
  
  
• Whiz away till smooth, DO NOT OVERMIX. For a luscious cheesecake its essential that not too much air gets beaten into the batter as you mix it. (Its another thing that I was forced to give it one quick whiz and stop, since the lid being loose, the batter started leaking out as I whizzed it. :D )
  

3. Assembly:

• Divide the batter into two halves. Add mango pulp to one and the melted chocolate to another
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Take out the now-chilled-and-slightly-set biscuit base from the fridge. Pour in the mango batter first, followed by the chocolate, so that you get alternate layers of chocolate-mango-chocolate - the base has cocoa in it, remember?
  
  
  
  Be very careful when you pour the chocolate batter- you don't want it to splosh right into the bottom and mix with the mango batter - you'll ruin the layered effect then. Best ladle out the chocolate batter carefully over the mango one. (Though if the two do mix a bit (or a lot) - don't be disheartened - it'll look prettily marbled instead of layered and you can call it Chocolate-Mango Ripple Cheesecake. :) The taste will be just as good, so no worries.)
  
  
  
• Take a saucepan and fill it with hot water. Set the baking tin in this pan and bake in a preheated oven till the cheesecake is just-set - it should have a nervous wobble in the centre but the toothpick/skewer inserted in the edge should come out clean.
  
  
  (Dont ask me oven temperatures and timings - my beast of an oven has neither a timer nor temperature controls)
  
  
  My Old Faithful!
  
  
• Let it cool ASAP under the fan - you want to bring down the temperature immediately to avoid over-cooking the cheesecake.

Once cool, cut into slices (use a hot knife for neat slices) and serve (with whipped cream, if so desired)



Confession time:

I had clean forgotten about baking the cheesecake in a water bath. I tossed together all the ingredients and slid the pan into the oven, feeling slightly smug about how incredibly easy I had made the whole damn recipe - and it was a good ten minutes before I remembered the elaborate double-foil+cling film mechanism Nigella uses to bake her cheesecake. Mortified at my over-confident mistake I hastily made repairs and voila - no damage done. :)


Moral of the story:

You CAN get by with shortcuts and time-saving innovations if you have had some degree of practice in the kitchen. But always be on the lookout for overconfidence, for all it takes to take the air out of THAT is a deflated cake or cheesecake or souffle. Play by the rules as much as you can - but be prepared to face disastrous consequences with a smile if you've broken them - for innovations do flop (literally and figuratively!) - at times. :)

Quick-fix Meals: Scrambled French Toast

I know the name of the dish sounds like a disaster in the kitchen, but I assure you it was an entirely planned recipe. Not an accident caused by toast-sticking-to-pan-and-getting-torn-into-smithereens. :D

This is one of the fastest breakfast dishes I have ever whipped up. And its just as well that it's yummy and filling too! Here's how you make it:

Break an egg into a small pan/saucepan
Add some milk and/or cream (see footnote)
Add salt to taste
Add a dash of any flavouring you like (This is optional) - I used chicken salt (delicious umami taste!) and a tiny squeeze of HOT Sriracha chilly sauce. (Other options can be chopped green chillies/black pepper/ herbs/ garlic/ onion/ ketchup/ mint chutney whathaveyou)
Add small pieces of bread (2 slices/1 pau)
Mix well
Put it on the stove and cook it on medium heat, stirring regularly, till cooked through. (See footnote)
Take off the heat, garnish with chopped coriander / dots of ketchup.
Serve piping hot with coffee/tea/hot chocolate on the side

How much milk to add, whether or not to add cream and how long to cook- all these depend on how you want the dish to be- close to soft -folds of scrambled eggs or more like crisp-on-the-outside-soft-in-the-middle French Toast.

Add more milk and cream and cook for a lesser time for soft scrambled eggs-like texture.
Skimp on the milk and cream and cook on high heat for the crisp outsides of a French Toast.

Either way, you get a bowlful of hot, tasty goodness you can scarf down in moments. The bread soaks up the eggy mixture to give you soft pillows of bites which burst with flavour.

Enjoy!