Shorshe Chingri

I invited a young friend to dinner last night-and made Kosha Maangsho (mutton semi dry semi gravy bengali style), Kopi posto ( cauliflower in poppy seeds) and shorshe chingri ( prawns in mustard sauce).

This menu has 3 plus points:
Is as Bengali as Ma Durga or Mohan Bagan or maachher jhhol or even... the phuchka...and therefore completely appropriate for the two people who were probably going to spend a fair part of the conversation being smugly superior about the subtleties of our cuisine:) plus, jokes apart...I am at my most comfortable cooking reasonably traditional bengali meals. I guess we all have different ways of holding on to our roots- NRIs become weirdly conservative, I cook.
It consists of two delicacies, and a third dish( Posto) that is everyday Bengali fare-IF YOU HAPPEN TO LIVE IN CALCUTTA :P- so NATURALLY the first thing that every Bengali does once he hits non-bong land is to start sighing for Posto( a dish he had probably ignored or even turned up his nose at during the time he WAS at home! )One CANNOT go wrong if one serves posto to a Probashi Bangali:P
Looks ridiculously elaborate, but is ridiculously simple, and for a meal of THIS quality, requires a disproportionately small amount of kitchen time.

So here goes with the recipes one by one
Shorshe Chingri:

dry spices: I used jeere phoron and shorshe phoron ( whole cumin and mustard seeds)
main ingredient: Prawn( I use frozen, shelled and deveined ones from IFB, sumeru also sells (nominally) deveined prawns, but I find Sumeru prawns disastrous, they still have veins, and honestly that's icky for me, cos I keep thinking of the fact that I am cleaning up the prawn's poop- I mean doing it for a human kid is probably bad enough but an adult PRAWN....
Other spices : a combo of coconut powder ( Maggi coconut powder widely available at grocery stores), Posto( Poppy seeds ground in a mixie) and Kashundi- but mustard paste is fine as well.. I have both in my kitchen, and use either as the mood takes me. these things were thrown into water, to make a kind of thin sauce...but I am sure one could use less water to get a more paste like consistency as well
other components
Onions and green chilies

Cooking
Stage 1
Make the watery/paste misture I described-mustard, coconut powder, poppy seeds. Of these the latter two are dispensable,  but add body and flavour to the dish if used.
Stage 2
Heat some oil- i used a flat bottomed frying pan for this, as I was using a small qty of prawns-and throw in some cumin and mustard seeds.Once they stop spluttering, throw in slashed (chera) green chillies and grated onions- grated onions are easier to cook, and anyway this dish should not havea strong oniony taste. For the Kosha mangsho I had sat and peeled and sliced and fried four onions two nights back, and that's enough slicing for an entire month!

after about 2-3 minutes ( if you fine grate the onions, they don't need much frying)
put in the prawns, throw liquid mix on top, cover it and let it cook, according to my grandmother for about 5-7 minutes if you are using small prawns- NOT MORE THAN THAT.

HERE , I, the permanent sceptic, made my fatal error. Refusing to believe that anything could be cooked in the same time span as a maggi packet ( otherwise why not eat prawns as a convenience food rather than Maggi? )I kept the prawns on the flame ( luckily low heat) for 10-15 minutes. As a result the sauce was delicious, but prawns were toughened as my grandmother had warned. Sadder and wiser, I took an on the spot oath, to forever listen to the grandmothers henceforth, as any nice well brought up woman should :)
So to sum up:
Oil content: Very minimal. In fact next time I am going to try steaming this dish and make it zero oil, and see how it turns out
Cooking time: well.. as you see, it should have been much shorter, than this particular effort. Go by what Thamma said and try five to seven minutes. One can always seethe it for a bit more if it is underdone. So five to seven, add one more minute for frying the spices- well the whole dish should not take more than 10 minutes MAX, and that too its so delicious
Actual presence required in kitchen time: I would say , you can leave the kitchen after covering up the prawns, so really it's only the preparation time plus the few seconds you need to fry the spices. but what the hell are you going to DO outside the kitchen if you have to return in 5 minutes? Get ahead with some other preparations/washing up.
Extra ingredients: I marinaded the shrimps in lemon juice and salt. Or you can add aamchur. The sourness adds a nice tart flavour. My roommate and guest flipped over the gravy


Will add the other dishes tomorrow. Just hope I can keep this blog going:( Have started two book blogs before this, but never got beyond the first posts
I will add pictures later.

Some basics I follow

I spent two years cooking on a microwave, so I have a very process oriented approach to cooking- I also find that when one standardises any activity in the framework of a process, it leads to neatness, efficiency and consistency.
To me basically, any dish consists of 3 components:
a) the dry, whole spices ( if any)-these are roasted absolutely at the beginning
b) the main ingredient-ie the vegetable, meat fish etc
c) the powdered or wet spices and pastes, and turmeric and salt

However, once I started cooking on a stove, I found it a much more creative and instinctive as well as continuous process, so I really don't think I will be putting all my recipes in this framework. For a beginner however, it was a good way of sorting things out in one's head.

Heat: High or Low?
I ALWAYS use low heat for cooking, except when I need to fry something/ boil water:

This increases the cooking time, but REDUCES the time YOU need to spend in the kitchen!something which is simmered over a long time on a low flame, is not very likely to burn and stick ( Tola lege jaaoa), that too on a non stick, hence can be left to look after itself, while you just put it on and then go do your own thing, but earn the kudos at the end :P
A HIGH flame on the other hand, will require your continuous presence and continued stirring to ensure that food does not get charred
also according to Ma, food is better cooked through and through if slow done over a low flame.. apparently high heat sometimes leaves the inside of the food uncooked

Cookware:
SPEND if you can afford it and buy some high quality non-stick cookware. SPECIALLY if you dislike cooking. In fact the more you dislike cooking, the more you need to spend on your cookware;
This is because good quality, specially non-stick cookware will actually aid the cooking process, and will ALLOW YOU TO SPEND A GOOD PART OF THE TIME OUTSIDE THE KITCHEN! there is not that much need to continuously stir, once the ingredients are well coated with spices. because there is very little chance that the food will stick to the utensil.

Use graters mixies etc, whenever you feel like. Please DO NOT use ready to eats. Order in instead!

the title of my blog

is a rant against one of my favourite pet peeves ( I have MANY :P)

Bachelor cooking:
To wilfully misquote a favourite author, IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man (not in possession of a wife) must be in want of dumbed down cooking instructions :P.
So what about single women? How come nobody has published simplified cookbooks for unmarried girls?  Anatomical difference automatically equips you with cooking skills? Unscientific ,much?


I am beginning to get annoyed by the GENDERING of these household debates.Like all gender stereotypes the term is unscientific and derogatory to BOTH men and women. While men are allowed be retarded creatures who can't feed themselves unless given really simplified instructions, a woman MUST by default be a kitchen goddess, regardless of her inclinations or any other responsibilities or claims on her time.
Thus depriving men of an essential survival skill, and women the choice of individual likes and dislikes.

There are PEOPLE who like cooking and find it relaxing and there are others who find it a chore and a bore, regardless of what they are equipped with down there.
This blog is mainly to record my own learning curve in the kitchen while simultaneously helping the latter to have reasonably good, healthy and TASTY food and drop out of the office-canteen/punjabi dhaba/andhra mess/ dependent population(why I started cooking in the first place). The goal is optimise and ultimately reduce kitchen time, through experimentations, using various cooking techniques, shortcuts and forgetting orthodoxy. Of course, one could also hire a cook, like a lot of good Bengalis do :) .. but you know.. in case you can't find one or they don't work out to be worth the expense.Which means cut down recipes(give or take a few exceptions) simplified menus,  because while I enjoy cooking, at the end of the day(literally) there are so many other things I would rather do.