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.