Low Oil and Low Effort Doi Begun

Which reminds me- I HAVE cooked something nice this year.

This is the traditional Doi Begun, but low oil and low effort, so subsequently a little low in taste- but true brinjal lovers not to be fobbed of with small things like that

I got tempted to make this after seeing my friend Mhashi's  FB posts during her trip to Calcutta, Doi Begun was one of the things she had and it did look tempting- the luscious begun fried to a rich velvety brown in generous lashings of oil, caramelised onions complementing the colour, and the creamy contrasting white curd.

I love brinjal and dishes cooked in curd and seeing this posted by a friend visiting Calcutta just got too much for me and something snapped in my head.

I went to Grains for Brains (yes that  is what the grocery store  here is called, not sure if somebody meant to be cheesy or not :P) and picked up all the small aubergine I could find.

Traditionally ALL bengali brinjal dishes are started by deep frying the brinjals. However, whenever I cook, in the interests of time, health (and to be honest I am genuinely afraid of deep frying, oil splashes and therefore a most unpractised hand), I never fry the brinjal- I just cover them in a little more oil and let it roast. Sometimes I cheat even more and let it boil.

I fried some onions till a nice pink turning to brown. Then I stirred in the brinjals, let them roast, got impatient and poured some water and let it boil. Roasted jeera powder, green chillies and salt completed the dish. Once the brinjal is cooked, beat as much curd as you want and pour it over the brinjal. Serve immediately. Chopped coriander and/or rock salt can be added as per taste.

Rogan Josh at Kashmir for you

I did not post throughout 2014 because effectively, I did not cook anything :-)

But I have eaten some very nice dishes indeed

Special mention to this Rogan Josh I had at Kashmir For You in Aroma Hotel, Sector 22 Chandigarh.

This is a little kiosk in a food court. They have the standard Kashmiri fare- Goshtaba, Rishta, Yakhni, Rogan Josh. They also had two things I have not seen on a menu before. Aab Gosht and Dhaniya meat (both in chicken and mutton). I had the Rogan Josh as part of a Thali, but I regret not asking for the Aab Gosht. Would have liked to see what it was about.

The thali included a bowl of rice, some onion with masala, a mutton curry of your choice, a roomali roti and a small bottle of Coke. While that sounds rather little for a thaali, however, the mutton is extremely filling and the pieces were excellent, with good tender chunks of meat (not just bone and fat as is often the case). The gravy was rich, red and extremely tasty, spicy and tangy. I lapped it up, literally.
Rogan Josh, at least the authentic version is made without onion, tomato, garlic, ie the traditional ingredients of Indian mutton curries. The gravy is mainly garam masala, chillies, possibly ginger, with the Rattan jot giving it the wonderful colour. This was indeed very good. The roti was nice and soft and enhanced the taste of the gravy. Unfortunately they don't have a picture


There is a stall next to this one selling Lucknow Biriani - Rs 450 upwards- but humongous servings. Wish I could take Umang here

Kopir Dom

A rather delicious and simple thing I made which worked well recently was using our family aloo dum recipe on phoolkopi( cauliflower)

Cauliflower is one of my favourite veggies but I rarely buy it because it often turns out insect infested. my mother is a better judge and when my parents were here, the best thing she did for me was to leave a lot of raw veggies cut up and ready to cook in my fridge.

This was the best gift Ma could give me because I love cooking but have a pathological dislike for buying groceries, and have sometimes starved on occasion as a result :-(, coupled with weird work hours and another pathological dislike of going to the ATM. Which combined with weird work hours makes ordering in also impossible. I have recently discoevered restaurants in my locality where you pay online and am totally having a party now :)
Cutting veggies takes up a lot of time and energy so since these were already pre-cut I really felt I could work well with them. I love the sight of clean fresh veggies and was quite decided about inviting ma back soon :P

But ultimately I kept it simple. This combination of masalas is used at home for making a very favourite phaataphaati aloor dom. Is often made when we invite a number of guests as it is tasty and easy to cook I suppose.

The recipe calls for shit loads of tomatoes , the more the merrier. I used at least six for an average head of cauliflower.

Heat some oil and drop some jeera and let it crack. Then come the green chillies,as many as you like. then drop in the tomatoes and let them turn into mush. (this is a magic moment) , I usually drop the tomato pieces in, turn the heat to medium high cover the pan and let it cook by itself for 2 mins, after which I violently attack and mash the pieces in the pan. So then once they are pulpy, put in some ginger paste and turmeric (if using turmeric) Once the oil separates, put in the gobhis, saute for two minutes, till they are nicely coated, turn the heat to medium and cover it and leave it to cook Keep checking from time to time and sprinkle with water till done. I also took a tablespoon of curd, mixed it with besan and added it. Not really sure if it added anything but the dish was nice and tangy sour from all the tomato, maybe the curd also helped. Before removing I added sugar and some of my aunts muri masala (bhaja masala).
Coriander leaves cut and chopped would complete this dish nicely, but I find them difficult to manage so I dont.
The original aloor dom is usually had in our home with those lovely soft triangular Porotas that only bengalis know how to make :)). I had the kopir dom with rice though.

Short cut eats

I haven't blogged for a while, because I haven't really cooked anything new for a long while that really, really stood out. Also for the last six months, I have been successively , slightly depressed, too lazy to buy good groceries, away on a wonderful work trip, sick and busy and wasting my time by umm.. watching cookery shows online.

I have however discovered lots of little short cut comfort foods that make life easier for me. I get back really late, too late for a proper meal or ordering in. I try to eat at work, but fixing myself a nice comfort snack is relaxing and sustaining.

These are some of the things I have been relying on:

Jhaal muri- thanks to my aunt who makes this AMAZING masala mix. I just mix some muri with mustard oil and this masala and snack on this at night. The best versions have cucumber, tomato onion and are dressed in tamarind or lemon juice.

Besan pancake type things : I have mixed besan with water to varying levels of consistency and tried frying the result in shallow pans kadais etc. With mixed results, but you can't really go wrong with fried besan :P

Then again you can, if the pan is too small and the besan remains thick and uncooked in the middle.

Unsuccessful pakode: I tried doing onion and brinjal ones- the brinjal ones did not get coated properly. The onion ones came out like pancakes. I am probably mixing my batter too thin.

Dahi ke kebabs : Ahh....these were lovely. Hang some curd - either put some curd in a muslin cloth or fine sieve and suspend it over a saucepan overnight, or just open some nice thick dairy  curd (Nestle is good) carton, eat a spoonful and leave it open a few days (in the fridge of course). The water floats to the top and you get a hung -curd like consistency.
Mix the curd with some amount of besan and whatever masalas you like- I like chat masala, green chillies, ginger, that kind of thing. Chat masala or black salt with curd is a winner. Now take small handfuls of the mix and fry them.

Eggs : I have started making these thick omelettes- using two eggs in a small frying pan. with chillies and cheese. They get a thick baked egg like consistency. Nice and filling

Mushrooms : Very easy to turn into killer dishes. Stir fry mushrooms with sme nicely browned onions, garlic salt and pepper, and then throw some sour cream in once nearly done. Adding herbs work well too. Mushrooms cook fast in their own juice and like all good proteins are v easy to cook and keep tasty with little attention. My father thought this was a gourmet dish. I served this with some neer dosas bought from my mallu butcher and panfried fish.

Sprouts : Mixed with lemon juice, my muri masala, green chillies. Have always been very fond of sprouts

Pasta : Made my own sauce by just sauteing a load of tomatoes and some garlic and spices, and blending it coarse. Tasted nice. Added some brinjal to the mix once too.

Saboodana Khichdi: Much easier and tastier than Maggi.

I also discovered this life saver thing called masala oats. I normally don't like cereal as they are always too bland or sweet. These are however catered to Indian tastes and are savoury/ spicy.

I also like keeping ready to fry dosa mixes in the house.

Of Frying Pans and Seared Chickens

I shifted from using my kadais to flat frying pans recently, the ones with raised edges.. those which look like saucepans with a growth impairment. The results, for some reason were amazing, an unbelievable improvement. Not sure about the science behind this as yet.. maybe an even distribution of heat?

I shifted to this after my recent Master Chef USA addiction. The contestants were using techniques with droolworthy names, pan-searing, braising, stir frying, pan fryinng(ok, am familiar with some of them). The common vessel seemed to be a flat bottomed pan and a lot of the more delicate meats seemed to be cooking pretty quickly on them too. 

The other factor was not being able to find my microwave grill rack. I had this sudden desire to grill some chicken in a different marinade every day of the week, but my grill rack has disappeared. Pan-searing or tawa frying seemed likely to produce somewhat related results. 

The first thing I did was winter stir-fried vegetables (separate post on that). They came out super-scrumptious. Then I shifted to the chicken. I got about 500 gms of de-boned chicken breasts (I prefer legs, but they didn't have deboned legs, and I thought boneless flat pieces would be easier to sear in a pan)- they look like flat strips. I cut them up smaller , divided them into sections and marinaded them as follows:

a) with soya sauce, honey, vinegar, salt and pepper- These were the first batch I tried searing in a pan. Searing basically involves keeping the chicken face down in a pan, and then once it browns turning it over and letting the other side cooked. Since these were the first batch I did, and I was REALLY sceptical about meat cooking in a really short time span, I kind of burnt this lot.. however the burnt part was easy to scrape off and the honey-soya sauce mix tasted good

b) Pesto and Yoghurt- Had a jar of rocket pesto which I mixed with some curd. These were the best of the lot. I had learnt my lesson the first time, that these were really small pieces and searing probably lessens the cooking time, so I turned them around and took them off the pan at what seemed like optimal times , and it worked. The chicken came out supple and tender which was  a big surprise, because usually I find breast pieces stringy, tough and dry. I realised that this could be because: the breast pieces usually take less time to get cooked through, so while cooking a chicken with an assortment of parts, by the time the tougher pieces get cooked, the breast is already overcooked. Hav decided to work with specific pieces in future. In terms of the taste of the marinade also this was a clear winner.. tasted a bit like reshmi kababs with pesto. I was even able to manage a little glaze with lemon juice :)

c)Normal tandoori mix- curd, ginger, garlic, red chilly powder, salt, jeera, mustard oil,aamchoor.. I didn't burn these but definitely overcooked them. The marinade tasted ok.. could hvae done with sharper flavours. Guess will have to figure out the science behind this too.. are any of the flavours undercutting the others?

I used up the chicken making a normal kosha chicken with onion, tomatoes, ginger and garlic (shredding WHOLE spices) but more in the nature of a stir fry, where I prepared the masala first (frying onions, tomatoes, ginger and garlic)and then added the chicken and seared it.

So two more marinades still on the card, an orange/shredded ginger one, and a honey/mustard one

Stir fried mushrooms with cheese

I made some stir fried mushrooms recently which turned out pretty well. I used a recipe I got from a booklet which came with BBC Good Food India, compiled by Himalaya who are advertising their mushrooms, of course modifying it to suit myself.The original recipe also contained tomatoes and capsicums which I skipped, wanting to enjoy the full, unadulterated flavour of mushroom

I used:

2 packets of normal mushrooms
2 Onions
Several cloves of garlic
Chives
Black pepper powder
Cheddar cheese


Slice the mushrooms sometime before and lay them aside. Then chop the onions fine and start sauteeing them. While the onions are softening, grate the garlic cloves. By the time they are done, the onions will be pinky-brown. Now is the time to toss in the garlic. Let it fry and release it's flavour. I also tossed in some dried chives I possessed. Once these are nicely roasted, I put the mushrooms in, and stirred a whole lot. Then I covered the wok and let it cook by itself.  Mushrooms release a LOT of water, and are best cooked in their own juice covered on low heat. They remain nice, rich and meaty. I finished off with some black pepper powder and sprinkled grated cheddar cheese on top before taking it off the flame. The end result was extremely satisfying. The mushrooms were nice and rich, having been stewed in their own juice :P, and were tender without being soft.Black pepper added a kick. Tasted really awesome on bread , as a topping. 

Baingan ki Dry Sabji

Brinjals, together with cauliflowers have to be my favourite vegetables. I like the smell of both raw and cooked brinjal, their rich purple colour, their inherent rich taste which makes even a simple chachhari seem ...rich ..:)
My simplest go-to recipe is to just stir-fry them with Paanchphoron, but I wanted something a little less basic and something a little more ..like the hearty sookhi sabjis of north india which I love.

I followed the recipe from here, however, I did not fry the brinjals and potatoes beforehand(actually I did not add potatoes at all). That specially seems to fit the objective of this blog, which is mainly to produce eatable and more than eatable food in the shortest time possible. While frying the vegetables would definitely have added to the taste (in fact, most of my Bengali folks did not believe that brinjals could actually be cooked without being deep fried at first), it would  have resulted in a much longer, more laborious process, to say nothing of the quantities of oil that would have been required.

Ingredients:

Brinjals
Whole Ginger
Green Chillies
Red chillie powder (optional) or Deghi Mirch
Tomatoes
Jeera Seeds
Dhaniya Powder
Turmeric
Dhaniya Patta



Slice the brinjals into smallish pieces, whichever way you like. I cut them into halves and then slice them longitundinally and then horizontally. I find large or medium sized brinjals much easier to do than those tichy small ones.Rub some salt on the pieces (this apparently makes them absorb less oil) and leave aside.

Heat some oil and chop the tomatoes while the oil is heating. Once the oil is heated, drop the jeera seeds into the hot oil, and once they stop spluttering add the tomatoes and stir till mixed. Now add green chilies(though I usually add these first, however I tried it in another order here), give the tomatoes some time to get nice and squishy.. Meanwhile scrape off the ginger peel and grate it; revel in the fragrance. (it helps to have soaked the ginger piece in some water)
Now in a small bowl mix the grated ginger(should be paste like), the turmeric, coriander powder, red chillie powder with some water and make into a smooth paste. By this time the tomato pulp should have been squished out. Add the masala paste and stir till it becomes semi-dry and everything is well integrated. Now add the brinjal, stir it so that it is well coated with masala put the heat on medium high and cover it. Add salt, and keep stirring at five or ten minute intervals so that all the brinjals get the heat evenly. Add more oil if required. I like my brinjals nice and soft and mushy. While the brinjals are cooking, one can chop coriander leaves and put them in at the end, however this adds to the time spent in the kitchen.

Note: this dish tasted better a couple of days AFTER I made it, in a similar way to meat dishes.