Lucky Delicious

Doab Fish Fry (What to do with Shan Masala)

2011-12-09T12:08:00.001-06:00

I have a lot of recipes that are based on adding my own twist to packaged Shan Masalas. Their qorma, chappli kabab, Sindhi biriani, and a few others are quite good but all need some adaptation to give one's own signature to a dish. Here is what I do with a box of Shan Lahori Fish Mix. Shan Lahori Fish Mix on its own is quite good but extremely salty. It is so salty that if you don't doctor it up, it is inedible. But it is quite convenient to use in that if you were to make a fish fry mix on your own you would need at least a dozen more ingredients than what I have listed below, so it saves time and effort.

I christened this recipe Doab (doh-aahb) Fish Fry since it is a confluence of Shan fish fry and my ingredients, just like a meeting of rivers in the land of the five rivers, Punjab.

Doab Fish Fry:

1 lbs Swai fish filets cut into 2-3 inch chunks or large nuggets (or any other white, mild tasting fish like tilapia or king fish)
3 tbs vinegar
1 tsp turmeric
pinch of salt (1/8 tsp)

1 box Shan Lahori Fish Mix
1/4 cup of besan (chickpea flour) plus 2 tablespoons
4 tbs yellow cornmeal
3 pieces of garlic
1 inch of ginger
2 green chiles
2 tbs fresh cilantro finely chopped
1/2 tsp dried mint
1/2 tsp ajwain seeds
pinch of red or orange food coloring powder (optional, I just use it to give a festive look and also so that the end result doesn't seem like I have used Shan Masala stuff from the box or that it is just a fish pakora)
1 tsp lime juice
1 and 1/4 cups water or a little more if the batter looks too thick

oil for shallow frying

Method:

Wash fish well and cut into large nuggets. In a bowl, mix the vinegar, turmeric, and salt. Add fish to this and allow to marinate for 1 hour or so. The vinegar will have a slight pickling affect on the fish, so when it is battered and deep fried the fish flesh will be extra creamy and tender against the crisp batter. Yum! The vinegar also removes any unpleasant fishiness from the fish. When you are ready to fry, remove fish from vinegar, briefly rinse the fish and pat dry.

*Tip: You can also freeze your fish nuggets in the marinade and defrost, rinse, and proceed.

Grind together the garlic, ginger, and green chiles to create a fine paste.
In a large mixing bowl, add all of the dry ingredients into the Shan Lahori Fish fry. Mix well. Stir in the water and the wet ingredients including the ginger-garlic-chile paste and cilantro. Add in the fish and allow to marinade for 1/2 an hour to 1 hour.
Heat oil on a medium-high flame and shallow fry fish on one side, then the other.
Serve immediately. You may wish to garnish with a dash of chaat masala or a sprinkle of lime juice but I think it tastes amazing on its own. Serve with ketchup or meethi chutney. For my meethi chutney recipe, see here in this post.

*Tip: I wear disposable kitchen gloves when I handle the fish and wet marinade and batter because I like to mix with my hands to ensure even coating, but I hate the stains of turmeric or food coloring.

Pastel de Tres Leches or Tres Leches Cake (Halal)

2011-10-27T18:45:00.000-05:00

In Spanish, tres means three, leches means milks. Tres leches is a cake moistened with three types of milk.

This is a common party cake in my home state of Texas, especially among Mexican-American families. I read that the origins of this cake are that it is based on traditional Latin American syrup soaked sponge cakes, but the tres leches concept was created by a canned milk company to promote their products during the 1950s. Versions of it exist all over Latin America, and some include coconut milk or alcohol. My recipe is a simple Tex-Mex version, and the tres leches or three types of milks are sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and half-and-half.

To begin, you need to bake a yellow cake from a box mix. I use Betty Crocker's Supermoist Yellow cake. Bake this according to the instructions on the box in a 9 by 13 inch glass baking pan, but add a dash of alcohol free vanilla. I use Frontier brand, and I find that it is very delicious. Allow the cake to cool completely for several hours. Then, using a fork, poke holes all over the cake.

Take note of the holes poked in the cake. Feeling stabby?

For the leches, mix together:
3 tbs plain sugar
1/8 teaspoon (pinch) cinnamon
few drops of alcohol free vanilla
1 14 oz can of evaporated milk (I use Carnation)
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk (I use Eagle)
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 cup whole milk
(or use 2 cups half and half, which is half cream and half milk)

Ladle this milk mixture over your sponge, ensuring that you moisten all parts of the cake. Cover cake and allow to absorb the milks overnight in the refrigerator.

The whipped cream frosting topping:
2 cups organic* heavy whipping cream
4 tbs powdered sugar
few drops alcohol free vanilla
1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut
3 tbs chopped pecans

Blend ingredients and using an electric beater, beat your whipping cream with the powdered sugar and vanilla until it forms stiff peaks. Spread this on top of your milk-soaked sponge. Garnish with the coconut and nuts. You can experiment with garnishes of fruit, cajeta, caramel, chocolate shavings, or whatever suits you.

I wish I had a picture of the finished product, but on the day I was taking these demo pics, my kids came and smashed the cake with the cake server before I had a chance to snap a picture. Mine is a very home-made, non-fancy look, though. The end result is a sweet, super moist but not soggy, delicious cake!

*I use regular heavy whipping cream in the tres leches mixture but I go for a superior tasting organic heavy whipping cream for the whipped cream frosting to achieve the best taste. Organic cream is more expensive.

Mangoes 'n Cream or Aam ka meetha

2011-09-04T12:16:00.000-05:00

This is a recipe from my mother in-law. It is not a fancy party recipe, but just something to serve at home after a family meal.

Mangoes are so delicious by themselves when they are in season, but what if you have mangoes that are from towards the end of the season or overripe, or the mangos weren't handled well during transport/export so they will never develop their full sweetness even when ripe? What if you only have frozen or canned mangoes available in your location? This is a super simple recipe that allows you to take advantage of delicious mango flavor even though the mangoes you may have aren't in their prime state of sweetness.

Just cut about 3 mangoes (+/- 2.5 cups or so) into bite sized, mushy chunks. Mush them a bit more with the back of a spoon. Whip 1 cup of regular or double cream (!) with 1/4 cup sugar. Use just a tablespoon or so sugar for canned mangoes as these have been soaking in sugar syrup. Beat well to ensure sugar dissolves. Then stir in the mangos. Transfer to a serving dish. Chill in the fridge for a few hours, then serve. The cream will thicken very slightly and you will have a sweet and creamy mango delight! You can also do this with any other juicy pulpy suitable fruit like peach or apricot.

Roasted Garlic Chile Chutney

2011-09-03T20:45:00.003-05:00

This chutney is caustically hot, and has all of the sweet, deep flavor of caramelized, roasted garlic! I was inspired to create this recipe by an imagined amalgamation of North African harissa and Gujarati red garlic chutney. Plus, anything with roasted garlic is just gooood.

A few words on chutney for people less familiar with South Asian cuisine:
I've come to realize that many non-desis are confused bout chutney. For example, we goras (white Euro-origin people) usually think that chutney means some sort of fruit compote. We think instantly of mango chutney when we hear the word mentioned. I suppose that this is one kind of chutney. Many goras who frequent Indo-Pak restaurants know mint chutney and tamarind chutney as the green and red sauces that come with pappadums. Those are also two types of chutney. But how does one explain what chutney actually is? Chutney can be a concoction which is served as a dipping sauce, but it is more than that. It is like Korean kimchi. You can have bites of many types of chutneys on the side of a meal, or mix it into your food to change up the flavor. Chutneys can be cooling, but often they add heat and pungency to a dish. There are wet chutneys and dry chutneys. There are chutneys made with fresh ingredients and chutneys made with cooked ingredients, and combinations of both. There are even chutneys that are powder or grain-like in texture. From Kashmir to Kerala and all in between, there are probably hundreds of thousands of types of chutneys.

For roasted garlic chile chutney:
It is meant to be eaten spooned on the side of a plate of rice and daal or rice and vegetables, or with flat bread (chapati or roti). You can have a bite of it, or in a plain home style daal, mix morsels of rice mashed with daal with a bit of this chutney while you eat. Scrumptious! Brave souls who like desi-fusion will enjoy this chutney as a spread on sandwiches.

How to roast garlic:
For this you need to roast whole peeled cloves of garlic to cook out their rawness and bring out their sweetness. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Toss 2 cups of garlic cloves (3-4 peeled heads) in a flavorless oil (like Sunflower or Canola) and a dash of salt. Lay some aluminum foil on a baking sheet, put the oiled garlic on this foil, and now roll up the foil to seal the garlic inside of it, making a rough pouch. Put this on the baking sheet into the oven for about 50 minutes. The garlic will come out browned and mushy. You can make this in advance and keep it in the fridge until you are ready to make the chutney.

Ingredients:
About 2 cups roasted garlic cloves (your original 2 cups may shrink a bit upon roasting, that's ok)
10 dried red Indian chiles or Mexican árbol chiles
1/2 heaping cup Indian red chile powder (no joke!)
1/2 cup cumin powder
3 tbs coriander powder
1/4 or so cup mustard oil
2-3 tbs flavorless oil like sunflower or canola
3 tbs sugar, or to taste
1.5 to 2 tbs salt, or to taste (you should have a slightly overly salted result)
1/2 cup or so fresh squeezed lime juice (may need more or less depending on how sour your limes are)

Method:
Heat mustard oil in a pan. When it smokes, toss in your dried whole red chiles. Very shortly, when they color and puff up, remove them quickly from the oil (with tongs or slotted spoon) and set them aside on a paper towel to drain. In the same hot oil, add in the roasted garlic. Turn off the flame and immediately toss in the dried red chile powder, cumin, and coriander. Stir to fry it in the oil. The flame is off so as to not burn the spice powder. Allow this to cool so that you can transfer it to a blender.

When cool, scrape this into a blender. Add in your lime juice, salt, sugar, and 2-3 tbs of flavorless oil. Blend well to a thick creamy paste, pushing down what rises to the sides of the blender. Taste for salt. It should be a bit overly salted since it is not meant to be eaten on its own but with a meal containing rice or flatbread. Adjust with a bit more salt, sugar, and lime juice if necessary. Now, stir in the fried whole chiles which you have kept aside. Pulse the blender, pushing the chiles down a few times to get them to be roughly chopped into large pieces in your chutney. The large chile chunks look pretty in the paste, and taste smokey if you happen to get one in your mouth. You may have to add a dash more of your flavorless oil to help things along in the blender.

This recipe yields about 2-2.5 cups of chutney which will keep in the fridge for 4-6 weeks.

The oil, sugar, salt, and lime juice are natural preservatives for this roasted garlic and chile chutney. Transfer into a clean, dry container with a lid, and keep in the fridge to serve this hot stuff with daily meals.

This stuff is pungent, extremely piquant, and or course lip smackingly garlicky. I highly advise against kissing anyone immediately after consumption unless your co-kisser has also eaten some of this roasted garlic chile chutney, too!

Are you a chutney addict?
For a delicious Hyderbadi style tomato chutney, see here.
For a Gujarati style coriander-peanut chutney, see here.

Landi Kotal Shinwari Style Karhai Chicken

2011-08-26T20:38:00.010-05:00

In Pakistan and India there are endless recipes for varieties of karhai dishes. This particular recipe is a prototypical specimen of the karhai chicken of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, the 'original' karhai chicken. You will find this sort of karhai chicken or karhai gosht in Peshawar's Namak Mandi, and it is named along with meat tikka and kabaab as one of the famous dishes of the Pashtoon tribes of the entire Frontier region. This recipe in particular is based on the Landi Kotal style karhai of the Shinwari tribe of Pashtoons. It is known in Pakistan for being highly delicious while containing no ground dried spices besides black pepper. Green chiles and juicy ripe tomatoes give this dish its unique and clean flavor. It makes its appearance on Pakistani restaurant menus and in wedding catering as Shinwari karhai. I had this style of karhai in North West Pakistan, as well as at an open air Pashtoon restaurant in Karachi, and I have always been intrigued by its delicious simplicity. Recently, I had this style of karhai chicken at the DC Metro area's notoriously tasty Ravi Kabob restaurant. Though Ravi Kabob is owned by Punjabis and the cooks are all from Mexico and Central America, the taste of their karhai chicken is exactly like what I remember eating in the Frontier restaurants. It's probably the best and most authentically Frontier style karhai chicken I have eaten outside of Pakistan. I felt inspired to do some deep research in attempt to replicate what I had eaten there and in Pakistan. Here is what I have come up with. My husband says it tastes spot on like Frontier style karhai, and he insists that it is even better than Ravi Kabob's famous karhai chicken.

1 chicken, skinless, bone-in cut into 2 inch pieces (ask for karhai cut from halal desi butcher)
5-6 whole green chiles, slit
1 tbs ginger-garlic paste
2-3 tomatoes roughly pureed
2 tomatoes cut into medium chunks
1 tsp salt or to taste-should be nicely salted
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tbs lime juice
1 tbs ginger cut into long thin slivers ( finely julienned)
1/2 cup cilantro chopped
1/2 cup or so oil (traditionally this dish is made very rich with an excessive amount of oil)

In a karhai or deep cooking pot heat oil. Add slit green chiles and stir until they begin to color. Remove chiles from oil with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add in ginger-garlic paste. When this turns golden, add in chicken pieces. Stir on high heat, allowing chicken to brown a bit. When the chicken has got some color, add in the tomato puree. Add in the salt. Stir around for about five minutes, allowing the tomatoes to break down a bit and release their water, but not long enough for the water to dry up. Add in the tomato chunks, stir, and cover with a lid. Lower heat and allow chicken to cook for about 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once the chicken is cooked, turn up heat and stir for a few moments more, adding in the black pepper. Turn off the heat. You should have a semi-dry gravy laden with tomato chunks, with quite a bit of oil floating on top. The trick is to cook the chicken through while still leaving some rawness in the tomatoes so that they remain wet and red. They should not fully break down in the gravy and darken as in a typical 'curry.' Now, stir in your lime juice, half of your ginger shards, half of your cilantro, and all of your chiles. Garnish the top with the remaining ginger and cilantro.

Serve with fresh hot naan.

Krazy for karhai?
For a Southern Pakistani interpretation of Frontier style karhai, see here.
For black peppercorn karhai, see here.

Roghan Josh

2011-04-09T13:12:00.002-05:00

Roghan Josh, also spelled Rogan josh, is a well known Kashmiri dish. From Persian, "roghan" means ghee/oil/butter/fat and "josh" means like bubbling hot with excitement...so it is like "hot bubbling fat." What a fatilicious name!

There are a lot of roghan josh recipes on the internet. Most are faux Mughlai/Punjabi restaurant style recipes and contain cream and tomatoes, neither of which are found in Kashmiri Pandit or Waza Roghan Josh recipes. It is actually pretty hard to google up an authentic recipe without some digging and research. For some basic info on Kashmiri Pandit and Wazwan cuisines, see here.

I wanted to share two recipes for Roghan Josh that I acquired after a lot of hunting online. I have tried them both multiple times, and they are both good. One is a Pandit recipe, and the other a Muslim recipe.

The Pandit style recipe I found at the another subcontinent forums from poster Suman. (post #1) (The Another Subcontinent forums has a wealth of anecdotal South Asia food information, tips and recipes. Every once in a while I just sit there and read food threads for a hour.)

Rogan Josh.

(somehow blogger is not letting me link above anymore so I linked the source here)

1 llb lamb, cut into small pieces
couple tblsp mustard oil or substitute.

4 cloves/laung
1" dalchini/cinnamon
2 black cardamom
couple small bay leaves

1/4 tsp hing
2 tsp saunf/fennel
1/2 tsp sonth/dry ginger powder
salt, chilly powder

4 powdered green cardamon
1/4 cup yogurt, beaten till smooth.

Saffron optional.

In the hot oil put in the whole spices(cloves, cinammon, cardamom, bay leaves) and stir for a few seconds till fragrant. Add the lamb and the hing and fry on fairly high heat until speckled with brown. This should take between 5 to eight minutes. Add the saunf, saunth, chilly powder, and salt and fry for a minute or so. It should be pretty fragrant by now.

Reduce the heat, add the beaten yogurt and powdered green cardamom and keep stirring till it comes to a boil. Add 1/2 cup of water, cover and cook till done. In LA the lamb takes about 30 minutes to cook, so adjust cooking time and the quantity of water.

Saffron can be added when done and simmered for a couple minutes more.

The resulting gravy should have body, should not be watery and is served with rice.

A green vege, stir fried with a tadka of a pinch each of hing and clove powder plus a whack of chilly goes very well with this.

I pretty much followed Suman's recipe to a T, but I used bone-in mutton and cooked for 1 and a half hours till tender, not 30 mins, I used sunflower oil (I don't like the taste of mustard oil), I powdered the saunf/fennel seeds and beat it in with the powdered cardamom, and I did not use saffron. It came out very nicely.

The second recipe was posted here by a Ms Princess W in the India Mike food section (post #55) by a US origin lady married to a Kashmiri Muslim and living in Indian Kashmir. At the time she posted, she was learning Kashmiri Muslim style cooking from her in-laws. I also recommend that you read through that entire thread as she and other posters share more information on Roghan Josh and Kashmiri cuisine.

Roghan Josh

(once again fickle blogger is ignoring my instructions to hyperlink above, so source is linked here)

1 kg lamb, bone in

1/2 to 1 cup Mustard Oil

3 Onions, sliced thin

3 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon minced ginger

1 1/2 cup plain curd, beaten to a liquid consistency

3 black cardamom pods

4 whole cloves

1" stick cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp red chili powder (if you want the red colour & more spice)

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

2 green chilis, minced

1 Tablespoon dried mint leaves

2 teaspoons fennel, ground (can use whole seeds if you prefer)

fresh coriander leaves, chopped

First, boil the lamb in a kettle of water seasoned with salt and one of the black cardamoms. Boil about 10 minutes and remove. Reserve water.

In pressure cooker, fry onions in oil until golden brown and somewhat crisp. Remove and grind the onions with the garlic and ginger to form a paste. Add cloves and minced chilis to the hot oil and fry about 30 seconds. Add lamb to the oil and brown just a little, then add the rest of the seasonings and about 2 cups of the reserved lamb broth. Place the cover on the pressure cooker and let it come to full pressure. After 3 or 4 "whistles", reduce heat and continue to cook for about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let cooker cool naturally before opening.

Check the tenderess of the meat. If it comes off the bone easily, it is ready. Add the beaten curd to the pot and stir well. Let the Roghan Josh simmer on very low about 1/2 hour to blend the flavors, then let stand about 1 to 2 hours, or better yet, refrigerate, then heat n serve the next day, topped with the coriander leaves.

Here is my picture of the rendition of Ms Princess W's recipe.

I used chaampen or mutton chops rather than botees as that is what I had on hand that day. Nice hot fat floating on the top, eh? And check out the red color! I did not pressure cook the lamb but cooked it stove top. Ms Princess W doesn't mention cockscomb here, but I also added paprika instead of more red chile powder to imitate the color of Kashmiri cockscomb flower, which obviously is hard to procure outside of Kashmir. Paprika is a good option instead of extra red chile powder since obviously the heat factor would be uncharacteristically amplified by extra chile. I also omitted the dried mint because I didn't have any. And just like with Suman's recipe, I forwent the traditional mustard oil simply because I am not a huge fan of the taste. It was a nice dish, and with the Kashmiri waza method of adding seasonings to a yakhni/broth and perfuming a dish with fennel, this dish was very distinct from my typical daily tamaatar-pyaaz Pakistani saalans.

I often create my own recipes by adapting and combining recipes from friends, in-laws, books and online, and altering methods and ingredients slightly to suit my taste and cooking style. Here you have two simple and authentic recipes that you can do the same with.

Where Do You Store Your Masalas?

2011-04-06T10:01:00.001-05:00

I have been eyeballing this pricy Tablefare SpiceCare Interlocking spice storage system for a while, but haven't found any in depth unaffiliated reviews of the product. I asked about it on my favorite foodie website, Chowhound, but no one responded to my query. It looks great, though. I am afraid it will cause fumbling and I will have to unlock a lot of stuff all at once to get out a few spices. The SpiceCare thingy was recommended by Chef Bosco Pereira on twitter (@Chef_Bosco), so that's how I found out about it, and I trust what Chef Bosco says a lot. (His tweet soliloquies on South and South East Asian food are awesome. His food-knowledge is as vast as the Seven Seas!) But I'd still like to read some feedback on the product before investing in it.

In my daily cooking, I usually cook the typical dishes of my husband's particular community. For those dishes, I keep the fast moving standard every-dish spices in a masala dabba. Spices I use less frequently are in clear plastic jars with lids (the little jars are about 16 oz in size, I'd say). They are just all stuffed in the cupboard. There are some I keep at the front of the cupboard, but I step up on a step-stool to dig around for others. I have a friend who keeps all of her spices in a clear plastic jars but keeps the jars in clear plastic stackable storage drawers so the spices are easy to see and take out. Awesome idea! But never got around to doing that. I should really do that, I suppose.

The spices I purchase usually come in large plastic baggies. Here is what I do with the plastic spice baggies: If it is a fast moving spice for me like red chile powder or cumin, I pour some in a plastic jar, some in the masala dabba cup, and then use the tiny bit left over in the baggie first. If it is a very slow moving spice, I pour it into the plastic container, and I toss out the few tablespoons which are left over at the bottom because I know it will go stale before I use it all. It is a waste, I know, but I buy the spices cheaply at the Indian market, so no worries. Before I started tossing them out, I kept the left over amount in its baggie closed with a rubber band, but it would just sit in my cupboard for ages and I would end up throwing it away anyway. For Shan masalas, I mostly use only a couple of teaspoons at a time, so I keep them in the boxes in which they come. For rice and chapati ata, I have them in giant clear plastic locking storage boxes, and for daals, I have them in one drawer in medium sized lockable clear plastic bins.

What about you? If you are a spicy home cook, how do you store your masalas? Any recommendations?

Fried Cassava Wedges or Yuca Frita Desi Style

2011-03-24T13:22:00.004-05:00

Cassava goes by many names. In the US, it is widely known in English by its Spanish name, yuca. (Sometimes spelled yucca, but not to be confused with the spiky perennial decorative plant yucca, so I will spell it yuca here.) Yuca is a delicious, starchy, potato-like tuber with its own distinct taste. In terms of subcontinental cooking, yuca is more of a South Indian ingredient. In the North, it is only widely known through its by-product, sabudana, or tapioca pearls, which are used in a variety of preparations. Note that sabudana and sago/sagudana are not the same thing, though many people mistakenly think that they are. They are actually made from different sources. Barring a few Gujarati origin East African friends who I have observed grew up eating cassava as mogo (from Kiswahili mhogo), I am not familiar with it being used much in the North of the subcontinent. Please let me know if I am mistaken about this, because I am always interested in new regional culinary information and recipes. Yuca is eaten in South India in a variety of forms. In some parts of South India, yuca is cut into wedges and cooked in wet gravy preparations (aka 'curry'). Cassava pops up in many cuisines from the Americas to Africa to Asia, but in terms of subcontinental flavor, there are also a lot of diasporic desi recipes for cassava, from Trinidad to Fiji. It is well worth looking into recipes to expand your repertoire with this simple yet delicious tuber. Cassava leaves are also delectable, and can be cooked like any saag.

I enjoy fried yuca, and I wanted to share with you how I make it at home.

Ingredients: yuca, chaat masala (I use Shan brand), roasted red chile powder, roasted cumin powder, and salt. I am not specifying the quantity of powdered spice, but I'd say it is a pinch of each spice per yuca that you use. (I seem to love to deep fry things and sprinkle them with chaat masala. I love chaat masala!)

Put some water in a deep pot and bring it to a boil. Take your yuca and cut off both ends of it. Cut it in half latitudinally. Then use your knife to peel off the skin. (The skin contains toxins that you don't want to eat.) Once the two halves of yuca are peeled, cut them down the middle length wise, and remove the long inner fiber if there is one. Don't worry if your yuca has any purple coloring. That is normal. Submerge your yuca in water and strain it a few times, rinsing away the excess starch.

Once your water is boiling, put the yuca pieces in it. Allow the yuca to boil for about 25 minutes. The yuca should be cooked completely, and you should be able to break it apart into starchy shards if you press it down. There will be visible ridges in your cooked yuca, and these will create a delicious mouth texture when crisp fried, plus the seasoning will sink into the crevices. Yum! I digress.

You have removed your yuca from the boiling water. Set it on a paper towel to dry. Allow it to cool completely and air dry very well. I sometimes allow it to cool, refrigerate it, then bring it to room temperature and fry it the next day. That is also an option if you don't have time to complete the process all at once.

Once your yuca is air dried and at room temperature, cut it into wedges. You can make them larger or smaller depending on your own preference, since the inside of the yuca is already cooking and your goal is simply to crisp fry the exterior rather than to cook through the tuber. Heat some oil in a pan, and fry it till lightly golden in color and crispy. You may shallow fry or deep fry at your discretion. Take care not to over-fry it, as it will dry out and become dense. Ideally, each yuca wedge should have a very crispy exterior and a soft, moist interior.

Set your yuca fries on a paper towel for a few moments to remove some of the oil.

Now here is a trick: Take a brown paper sack. (Do not use a plastic bag as steam will be trapped inside and your yuca will lose crispness.) Pour in a dash each of all of the dried masalas and salt. Use more or less masala depending on how much yuca you have and how spicy you want your fries to be. Put the yuca fries in the paper sack, roll it closed, then shake shake shake your bag to evenly distribute the salt and masala.

Oila, yuca in hot and tangy chaat masala!

Serve alone, with tamarind chutney, or ketchup. This can be a snack, or a side dish with a meal. My kids love spicy yuca fries, too.

Qorma Biriani of Lucknow

2011-02-11T10:53:00.011-06:00

My husband's mother's family is from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. This city was a seat of North Indian Muslim culture and the Urdu language, and this is a great source of pride to my mother-in-law. Qorma biriani is the preferred type of biriani in their family home. Qorma biriani is not particularly spicy. Its virtue comes from the richness of the ingredients, the warmth of the garam masalas, and the savory red-brown fried onions. The toasted ground white poppy seed, or *khashkhaash (khaskhas in Hindi), and the mace and nutmeg are also characteristic seasonings of Lucknavi cuisine.

The onions give a lot of flavor, but be light handed with them in layering with the biriani rice. You don't want an overpowering fried onion flavor hiding the delicious yet delicate qorma flavor. Traditionally, only the highest quality Dehra Doon basmati rice would be used, so you must use the best basmati rice you can find. I like Tilda as well as India Gate brand.

*If you are not familiar with white poppy seed, here is how to use it. Purchase it at your local Indo-Pak market. Black poppy seed is NOT an acceptable substitute. Heat a pan to medium-high, pour in white poppy seeds and toast until they become a darker color and you can smell their roasted nutty fragrance. Once toasted, set on a plate and allow to cool. When cool, grind to a smooth paste (it will be very slightly gritty) in your spice grinder. Store in the freezer, as it goes rancid like nuts. I grind in small amounts and keep mine in a ziplock baggy in the freezer.

The Qorma

¼ cup oil

1.5 lbs bone-in mutton pieces in 1-2 inch chunks, ribs and shin meat best

2 medium onions finely sliced, brown fried, and crush half of them, keep the other half uncrushed

6 green cardamoms, husk popped open by pressing with knife

2 black cardamoms (bari elaichi)

2 bay leaves (tez patta)

1 piece of cinnamon bark, about 2 inches long

1 tsp garlic paste

1 cup yoghurt with ½ tsp garam masala , 1 tsp red chile powder, and 1 tbs ginger paste whipped in

12 skinless raw almonds soaking in warm water to just cover

1 tbs toasted ground white poppy seed

1 cup water

¼ tsp mace powder (jaavitri)

¼ tsp nutmeg powder (jaiphal)
1/4 tsp freshly ground green cardamom powder

1/2 tsp garam masala powder

1 tsp salt or to taste

The Rice

½ tsp kewra jal (pandanus flower water)

¼ tsp orange food coloring powder (biriani rangi) soaked in ½ cup milk

3 cups raw rice parboiled with a few green cardamoms (see here for method)

3 tbs butter or ghee

Garnish: mint leaves, some extra fried onions

Method

Have crushed, fried onions on hand. Grind soaking almonds with their water to make a paste.

Heat oil and add in whole spices for a minute. Add in meat and brown well, add in garlic paste and allow to turn golden, lower flame add in yoghurt mixture, stir to mix well on low heat (to avoid curdling yoghurt) when oil rises above yoghurt, turn up heat and stir in white poppy seed and, mix well. Stir in one cup water and salt. Bring to boil, lower heat , and cook for 1.5 hours until mutton is tender and falling off bone. Stir occasionally. Add a tiny bit of water if necessary, but you want a fairly dry clinging gravy at the end, so don’t add too much water. If you have too much liquid at the end of cooking, turn up the heat for a few minutes to boil out any excess water. Finally, stir in the crushed brown fried onions, and all of the additional powdered spices, and ground almond paste. Keep covered on a very low flame for five more minutes. Set aside.

Have the uncrushed fried onions on-hand for layering.

To see a more detailed explanation of how to layer biriani, look here at my Sindhi biriani recipe.

Have your parboiled rice ready. In a deep pot, put in some ghee/butter and then a layer of biriani gravy. Add a layer of parboiled rice, then top with a sprinkle of fried onions and ghee/butter, another layer of qorma, another layer of rice, ghee, and fried onions. On the final layer of rice, pour your orange milk in one small spot on the rice. Sprinkle with kewra jal. Put the pot on a high flame, covered for 3 minutes to get the steam going. Then lower heat and cook 20 minutes until rice is done. Allow to rest, then mix and serve on a platter garnished with mint leaves and a bit more fried onion.

Serve with lime wedges and plain yoghurt, not a raita.

Vietnamese Style Chicken with Rice Vermicelli Bun Ga Nuong

2010-11-01T16:29:00.007-05:00

mixed thigh and breast, nuoc mam pha sauce on side

Vietnamese food has been a part of my life since I was very young because I had a lot of Vietnamese American friends growing up. I can actually speak a bit of passable Vietnamese that I learned when I was a girl; enough to hold simple conversations, at least. Like desis, Vietnamese people are often very food savvy, and are raised to enjoy eating and be analytical about food. It is just part of the culture. Vietnamese also love to eat out. Vietnamese food feels like home to me, and it was one of the things I missed most when I was in the Middle East. We have great Vietnamese restaurants in my home town. Several friends' families owned Vietnamese and Chinese-Vietnamese restaurants, and I spent many many afternoons after school hanging out with them there, or going after hours to karaoke parties held in these restaurants. I have great memories of Saturday morning pots of noodle soups, craw fish boils, and huge dinner parties at friends' homes, but as I was an ignorant kid and teenager, I just ate and didn't ever bother learning how to make anything, something I regret. As an adult, I have taken an interest in learning how to make and not just eat Vietnamese cuisine. I don't cook Vietnamese food very often because it is easier to just get great Vietnamese food from a restaurant for me. But recently for about once per week, I have been making bun ga nuong for my family. This is my childhood best friend's mom's marinade recipe for thit nuong. Bac Men uses pork or chicken, but of course I don't eat pork, so this is for chicken, or thit ga. Don't be shocked by the amount of sugar or black pepper...this recipe has worked well for me many times. And don't be afraid of MSG unless you have a sensitivity. MSG is good stuff :-) I promise you that you will love the results with this recipe.

Ga Nuong marinade:

6-8 chicken breast pieces or boneless skinless thighs

12 garlic pieces
1/2 bunch green onions
chop together in food processor and place in marinade bowl

Stir in:
1 tsp salt
6 tbs sugar
3 tbs finely ground black pepper
6 tbs fish sauce
4 tbs olive oil
pinch of MSG

Mix well with garlic/green onion mixture. Add chicken pieces and marinade 24 hours. The chicken can also be portioned and frozen.

Ga means chicken and nuong means grill. You can grill this chicken. I recommend grilling only if you use thigh meat. Breast turns out too dry. Alternatively, you can pan cook it. Pan sear the chicken in a lightly oiled frying pan. Remove from pan and cut into bite sized strips. Return to pan and finish cooking. This method yields superior browning and flavor.

Squeeze 2 tbs fresh lime juice on top of finished chicken

To serve:
Bun (rice vermicelli) one packet, follow cooking instructions on package
1 bag mixed salad greens
2 tbs carrots julienned, 1/2 cup bean sprouts, 1 cucumber thinly sliced, 2 tbs cilantro, few jalapeno slices (optional)

To serve oneself: In a large deep soup bowl, add some of the fresh salad ingredients. Top with about 1 cup cooked bun. Add cooked chicken pieces. Season with nuoc mam (see below).

As an option you may make bun ga nuong cha gio, or grilled style chicken with Vietnamese style eggrolls. Cha gio are made with rice paper skins (though some restos cheat and use thin wheat flour skins) and contain hair fine cellophane vermicelli, carrots, jicama, Chinese mushroom, and usually a mix of pork and shrimp. However, there are vegetarian versions available. It is time consuming to make them at home. I buy vegetarian cha gio from a local Vietnamese restaurant when I make bun to embellish my ga nuong. Use scissors to slice cha gio into bite size pieces, then just add a top the bun with the chicken.

Each diner adds about 1/4 cup or more of mixed fish sauce (nuoc mam pha or nuoc cham) to her bowl. I make my fish sauce mix without a recipe, it is about 1 part fish sauce, 1 part lime juice, 1 part water, a few spoons of sugar, and a spoonful of sambal oelek, I often add vinegar...I just mix stuff until it tastes right...but I have linked a recipe for you. One may also choose to add Rooster Brand Huy Fong Sriracha sauce or Huy Fong sambal Oelek for extra red-hot chile heat. Limes can also be added as a garnish so diners can add fresh lime juice to their individual bowls. Crushed peanuts are also a nice addition.

I serve myself only a small portion of bun noodles since I low-carb.

For the table, the ga nuong and cha gio a top the bun, diners serve themselves

For this meal I added some shrimp into the final chicken stir fry.

single serving, less vermicelli for low carbing

Turkey Chili

2010-10-28T21:27:00.004-05:00

Cooking desi has affected the way I cook many other cuisines. Particularly the desi concept of bhunofying---that is Hinglish or Urdu-lish for cooking down ingredients until all of the moisture has evaporated out of them and the cooking oil floats to the top of the contents of the pan---has influenced me. Take the American dish, chili. Chili is an appropriation of the Northern Mexican and South Western US chile con carne (or carne con chile :p). Traditional chile con carne is a sauce of ground rehydrated dried red chiles and cubed beef, slow cooked. It actually looks vaguely like a Pakistani saalan ("curry"). No ground beef. No beans. Certainly no turkey or tofu granules. Chile con carne is very much and American dish, as it belongs to the land of the South Western US states which were erstwhile a part of Mexico. But the dish has taken on a life of its own in the hands of the gringos and gabachos in those states and in the the rest of the US, with regional variations all across the country. And it has gone from chile con carne to chili con carne...you have to say chile as chili and carne as carni in true estilo gabacho. We have divergent chilis from New Mexico to Texas and even Wisconsin, bean-less ground beef chiles, bean only chilis, black bean chili, and tofu chili. Among die-hard connoisseurs, there are great debates on whether or not good chili contains tomatoes. There are artisanal chilis and chili cook offs. Then we have chili in a can, chili dogs, and chili cheese fries, and so on. Tried and true American appropriation and adaptation (I dare not say bastardization) is seen in so many foods from around the world, and the treatment of chile con carne is the same, making it uniquely estadounidense and regionalized. Here, I share with you my personal recipe for spicy hot low fat turkey chili. Preparation involves a few steps, but the results are excellent. I credit the delicious taste to the desi technique of bhunofying the base of the chili gravy. This recipe is non-traditional and there are a few surprise seasonings in it.

1 pound lean ground turkey
1/4 cup oil

Brown turkey well in the oil, mashing and breaking it into little granules as you fry it golden brown. When it is well browned, throw it in a colander. Strain the oil and wash the excess fat off with water. Don't worry, the browning will leave it flavorful and you won't miss the fat. Set this aside. I brown the turkey separately for a couple of reasons. Firstly, so that I may rinse off the fat. Second, I find that ground turkey throws off a lot of water and simply boils in its own juices and ruins the other ingredients if I cook it with the onions and other ingredients.

1/4 cup oil
1 yellow onion finely chopped
8 cloves garlic, crushed
(I put my onion and garlic together in a food chopper and blitz them together)
3 tablespoons Goya Sofrito
1 7 oz can of chipotle in adobo sauce, (puree full can in food chopper)
2 12 oz cans Rotel Tomato and Green Chiles, pour into a strainer and strain off liquid
3 tbs chili powder (Tex-Mex style, do not use Indian red chile powder)
1 tbs chipotle chile powder
1 tbs Mexican oregano
1 tbs roasted cumin powder
1 tbs salt
1 12 oz bottle of non-alcoholic beer
1 can red kidney beans
1 can pinto beans
1/8 teaspoon liquid smoke
1.5 cups water
3 tbs masa harina or finely ground cornmeal

Heat oil in a deep pot. Add in garlic and onions and fry until golden. Add in Goya sofrito. Stir for a few moments to cook through. Sofrito is associated with Latin-Caribbean cuisines (originally it is Spanish), not Tex-Mex, but I like the savory flavor that it adds to many dishes and I use it in many other non-traditional ways. Add in chipotles in adobo sauce and stir for a few moments. Add in strained Rotel tomatoes and chiles. Stir on high heat until all the water has evaporated from the tomatoes and you have a thick paste. This is the desi style bhunofying step. I said this was a low fat recipe. Now you will turn off the heat. Cover the pot for a few minutes to allow all of the oil to come out of the paste. Now pour off all of the excess oil. You have defatted your chile base! You will have low fat, high flavor chili.

Return pan to stove, turn on medium heat and the salt, the roasted cumin, chili powder, and chipotle powder, and the Mexican oregano. Fry this for a few moments to release the flavor of the dried spices a bit.

At this point, add your browned turkey. Mix well, and add in the non-alcoholic beer. Next, add in your two cans of beans. I use pinto and kidney but you may use any beans you like. Stir in the liquid smoke, the masa harina, and the water. You may add more or less water depending on how you like the consistency of your chili, liquid or dry or in between. Adjust salt if necessary. Allow to boil, then lower heat and simmer covered for 20 minutes.

You may serve this as you like, but I like to have it with corn chips, garnished with pico de gallo, or instead chopped raw onions, cilantro, chopped tomatoes, and some shredded cheddar or Monterrey Jack cheese. You can also add a spoon of guacamole, chopped avocado, or a dash of sour cream. Very Tex-Mex, spicy, and yummy. This dish also goes great with corn bread.

All about South Asian Qorma (or Korma, or Qormah)

2010-09-02T08:02:00.015-05:00

Qorma is one of those dishes that I love to learn and read about and compare recipes. Qorma is also one of those dishes that was traditionally cooked by South Asian Muslims for special occasions and only several times per year, but like biriani, it is now made much more frequently in the homes of the affluent and also in the homes of diasporic desis. Since desi Muslims are the direct culinary inheritors of the Mughlai tradition, the dish is theirs, but it is also widely loved in many interpretations by people of all backgrounds and faiths, and many vegetarian friendly and widely divergent recipes have evolved. It wouldn't be a dish traditionally found in say, rural Sindh. But traditional versions are prepared in all of the main former centers of Muslim rule in India and Pakistan.

The word qorma came to South Asia from Central Asians (Transoxiana) and means "roasted, baked, browned" in reference to meat in Turkic dialects (kavurma). The Persians have their gormeh, prudent Urdu speakers must say it Qormah, and in both India and Pakistan it is widely pronounced as korma with no attention given to the Urdu original gutteral /q/ sound, which is approximated as /k/. But in the best Urdu diction it is Qormah/ قورمہ. It is an indeed a dish of Mughal legacy in S. Asia.

At least in South Asia it is traditionally made with mutton although these days chicken, fish, and pure veg. qormas are made to suit different preferences. I make chicken qorma much more often than mutton qorma, just because it is easy and fast cooking. My husband loves mutton qorma, though.

If I happen to be talking to a foodie, I always ask her how she makes her qorma (or how it is made in her community). A Pashto speaking acquaintance (Northern Pakistani) makes a liquidy stew with mutton and vegetables as her qorma. I think for Pashtoons qorma is any stew type dish and this is more inline with the original Central Asian qorma. I had a housekeeper who was a Bangalorean (South Indian) Muslim from a pure Urdu speaking family and she told me that they make their qorma with coconut milk, not yoghurt, and that it is mostly served on holidays and at weddings. My in-laws family (Urdu speaking North Indian origin Pakistani) qorma recipe is more of a typical Mughal inherited North Indian Muslim-Pakistani qormah recipe: meat must be browned or well braised, lots of crispy brown fried onions are used (often ground to a paste), yoghurt is the liquid, the seasonings are garam masalas (whole and ground), ginger and garlic paste (heavier ginger to garlic ratio) ground coriander, a pinch of red chile, and at the very end of cooking, a second pinch of garam masala and ground green cardamom, and a tiny dash of keora jal (pandanus flower extract water which you may know as biriani perfume) are added at the very end of cooking...without the dash of pandanus water it doesn't have that qorma perfume taste by their family standards. A layer of oil is floating on the top of the semi-liquidy gravy. It is eaten with naan and basmati rice, never chapati. There is also "white qorma" which doesn't contain browned onions, only onions which are cooked until the rawness is fully gone. Ground almond or ground cashew pastes can be added to make the qorma "shahi" or royal. Hyderabadis (of India) are known for white qorma. In Kashmir greens and vegetables can be added to the qorma, so it is more like the Central Asian-Persian type concept of qorma.

In my laziness I use Shan Masala Korma spice mix, just 2 teaspoons, plus homemade garam masala and ground coriander powder, and a dash of roasted ground poppy seeds, but otherwise prepare it as described on the back of the box. I only use very fresh yoghurt (so it won’t have any hint of sourness) and rarely add cream as is prescribed on the Shan box, but if I do, I will add 1 tbs at the very end of cooking just to thicken the gravy. I also make a qorma biriani by using the same qorma recipe, making a slightly thicker gravy (by boiling to dry up the liquid) and then using qorma gravy to layer between parboiled rice then, then close the pot and finish off the rice.

In Indian restos you will get a lot of interpretations of korma. Based on being a dish associated with Muslims, it gets classified in the resto Mughlai genre of foods and therefore you will find, inline with the resto interpretation of what Mughlai means, lots of cream, nuts and even raisins/sultanas since that is what is taken as "Mughlai". This can be a tasty dish, though it doesn't look much like a qorma made in North Indian Muslims-Pakistani homes. I wouldn’t say that's “the wrong way” to make qorma (or perhaps I should write korma here) because it IS made in India by Indians that way, and this type of korma is also what we know at UK and US faux-Mughlai/Punjabi restos. Who has the copyright on qorma, anyway? What I see as the “authentic” North Indian Muslim-Pakistani qorma isn't much like the original Transoxianan invaders' qorma, either. I do have creamy qorma like that at restos sometimes and it is yummy, too.

Here are links to three non-restaurantish, Muslim home style chicken qormas, including one Lucknawi and one from Indian Hyderabad from two good websites, just in case anyone wanted to see a sort of tradional Muslim desi non-resto/no-cream type recipe example. Boneless chicken breast can be used but as far as I know, whether it is chicken or mutton it is traditionally bone-in, and with chicken it would be whole skinless bone-in cut in 12 pieces (not specified in recipes).

http://zaiqa.net/?p=260

The Zaiqa blog (a fave I learned about through Ambhi) is an excellent resource for Hyderabadi recipes...What to me stands out as Hyderabadi about this chicken qorma is that it includes coconut (Southern touch)and roasted peanuts (she used the term "ground nut"). It also has green chile in addition to powdered red chile, plus mint leaves. I don't think those would be in North Indian qormas. And:

http://www.khanakhazana.com/recipes/view.aspx?id=5311

and

http://www.khanakhazana.com/recipes/view.aspx?id=1405

Khana Khazana is a user-added recipe site, has loads of good Pakistani and Indian stuff. The first qorma is very tradional and Lucknawi with its white poppy seeds (khashkhaash) and extra nutmeg and mace in addition to the garam masalas. The picture doesn't look too yummy but the recipe looks very good IMHO. The other recipe is very similar but without the white poppy seeds. Both users' recipes calls for the kewra water I mentioned above---very traditional.

Note that in all recipes the onions are brown fried seperately and ground to be added to the gravy.

I was happy to see the qorma with -q-, too on the recipes :-) as an Urduphile.

Anyway, just fun to see some regional variation.

Sarson da saag: Mustard Greens

2010-07-11T19:19:00.002-05:00

In the US, most goras know saag paneer. However, most would also be surprised to eat a saag (greens) dish at a desi home because desi home cooked saag is very different than the creamy saag paneer one finds at the typical generic Star of India Palace Buffet Punjabi-Mughlai inspired Indian American restaurant. I actually really love the restaurant style saag paneer that I grew up eating at Star of India Palace Buffet. However, the authentic, homestyle saag preparation varieties are also delicious. Allow me to share a simple one:

Mustard greens cooked in the Punjabi style are a winter treat, and loved across the Land of the Five Rivers on both sides of the Indian and Pakistani border. It is July now, but I am not in the Punjab. At Sprouts, I found some beautiful mustard greens that inspired me to make sarson da saag te makki di roti...mustard greens in the Punjabi style, served with cornmeal flat bread. I used HEB brand corn tortillas heated in a pan on the stove as the makki di roti. The Mexican corn tortillas look different, and of course corn tortillas are prepared from corn treated with slaked lime and makki di roti is just a cornmeal roti. But somehow the taste ends up very similar and the tortillas worked well with the mustard greens.

This dish doesn't have a lot of spices and seasonings. It isn't meant to be nose-run inducing hot. The greens are the star of the show here.

Ingredients:

2 lbs or so mustard greens, washed and chopped

1 lb spinach, washed and chopped
1 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp ginger paste

2 fresh tomatoes pureed
1 tsp red chile powder (or to taste)
2 tbs finely ground cornmeal/maize flour (you can use whole wheat flour or chickpea flour if you don't have cornmeal flour)
4 tbs butter OR butter flavored low fat substitute (I use Olivio Spread)
2 tbs oil for frying
salt to taste

Method:

You boil the mustard and spinach together until it softens, then puree it with some of the cooking liquid. Reserve extra cooking liquid for later (so you don't pour away all of the vitamins, also).

Now heat the oil and ginger/garlic pastes. When these turn golden, quickly add in the red chile powder, then before it burns, stir in the tomato puree. Cook the tomato puree on high heat for a few moments until the oil rises to the top of it. Now add the mustard green/spinach puree. Mix well, add in a your salt and the cornmeal. Mix well. You will need to add 1 to 1.5 cups or so of the cooking liquid. Then just lower heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. When it is done, stir in 3 tbs of your butter or low fat butter substitute. To serve, add shards of butter on top.

Chaat at home: Bhel Puri, Dahi Puri, Papri Chaat plus chutneys

2010-06-04T05:53:00.005-05:00

Chaat...how to explain what chaat is? It is a genre of hot and sour crunchy snack foods. How do you explain chaat to someone who has never had it before?

In Dubai, we have a lot of chaat places. Not all of it is fabulous. Stale crunchies, overly seasoned or flavorless chutneys, a chaat mixer who robotically throws ingredients together, not caring to balance the flavors---it all lends to bad chaat. But some chaat places are consistently amazing. You cannot pass them by without stopping for a plate of gol gappe or dahi puri even if you have just had a meal. Eating great chaat is like having an explosive festival of flavor and texture in your mouth. I adore chaat. If I hadn't married my Pakistani husband, my life might be void of chaat. I may never have heard of the yummy stuff. Perish the thought!

In the des, chaat can be one of those foods that poses a high risk to the tummy for non-locals. For sanitary reasons, or for reasons of ritual purity, there are many desis who prefer to make chaat at home as well. My Gujarati neighbors employ a Maharaj (Brahmin cook) who prepares fresh chaat or Gujarati farsaans for them on a daily basis. In a Western country, you may live somewhere that there is no chaat house, or where the chaat isn't that great. So, it is useful to know how to make chaat at home. I actually prepared these recipes and did a demo on home made chaat for my school. It went really well. I hope you have as much success with the recipes.

Here are some recipes and ideas:
*I use Shan Chaat Masala as my chaat masala blend.

In order to give the hot, sweet, and sour flavors to most chaat dishes, you have to use a green chutney and a sweet chutney. Many chaat dishes also require yoghurt, which you may choose to lightly season. Many English and American people think chutney means a fruit sauce, but chutney is really any kind of dipping sauce. Green chutney is mainly cilantro and can have mint. Sweet chutney is usually made of tamarind or dehydrated dates, or a combination of the two. My dear cooking teacher showed me a way to make sweet chutney with mango powder (amchoor), although this is not her exact recipe (she uses roasted cumin and red chile powder in addition to chaat masala). Before I got her recipe, I was soaking and straining tamarind and pitting dates and boiling and straining and boiling and straining. What a headache. Now, I just boil the mango powder, fuss free.

Green Chutney
Ingredients:
1 bunch cilantro chopped (about 2 loosely packed cups)
½ bunch mint leaves (about 1 loosely packed cup)
1-2 green chilies
½ piece bell pepper
½ small onion
3 tbs lemon juice
3 tsp sugar
Salt 1 heaping tsp or to Taste

How to make green chutney :
Blitz all ingredients thoroughly in a blender to make a paste. If you own a desi style grinder like this one, this is superior to a blender. Add a little water if required.

Sweet Chutney
In Dubai we get bags of gur cut into 100 gram chunks. They are about the size of a large American lemon. I hope these are available in the US, too. I don't want to deal with that giant block of gur. If that is all you have. Soften briefly in the microwave and cut off and weigh 200 grams.

Ingredients:
200 grams (two large chunks) jaggery sugar (Gur)
1 tbs mango powder
1 cup water
1 tsp chaat masala or to taste (I use Shan brand)
¼ tsp salt or to taste

How to make sweet chutney:
Boil jaggery sugar and mango powder together in water until the sugar melts. Keep boiling for about 5 minutes or until it thickens, stirring in the salt and chaat masala. You can make a double batch of this chutney and keep it in the fridge for a month to use as needed. I serve this chutney with any kabaab, chaat, or dahi baray

*This chutney contains no tamarind. If you prefer the mild, smokey flavor of tamarind as opposed the the sharp tartness of mango powder, omit the tbs of mango powder and in place of that use 1 tbs tamarind concentrated pulp...the seedless brick in the clear plastic wrap, not the terrible one in the jar.

Yoghurt for Chaat
4 cups yoghurt
1 tsp salt or to taste
2 tsp sugar or to taste

Three Types of Chaat to Try at Home
I do not make my puris, bhel/murmura, sev, etc. at home. That is beyond my cooking skill level. All of this can be bought pre-packaged at any Indo-Pak grocer. Haldiram's and Bikanerwala are excellent brands. Bhel puri mixes usually come with chutneys, too. Throw those away. Those chutneys are terrible and full of preservatives. Use the fresh recipes provided above.

Bhel Puri
Ingredients:
Pre-packaged Bhel Puri Mix – 3 cups
Potato-1/4 up boiled, peeled, and cubed
Whole green Mung beans- 2 tbs boiled
Chickpeas-1/4 cup cooked
Onion – 2 tbs, finely chopped
Sour green Mango – 2 tbs, finely chopped (optional, you can subsitute tart green apple for this, too)
Cilantro – 2 tbs, finely chopped
Green Chiles – 2-3 should suffice, use less for less heat
Sweet Chutney – 6 tbs or to taste
Green Chutney – 3 tbs or to taste

Method:
In a medium bowl, mix together bhel mix, onions, potato, chickpeas, mung beans. and sour green mango, cilantro and green chiles. Add sweet chutney and green chutney (you can adjust the amount suggested here according to your taste). Mix well and serve immediately. You just eat this stuff with a spoon. Yum!

Dahi Puri
Ingredients:
Pani Puri shells– 1 bag from Indian store
Potato – 1 medium cut into cubes
Chick peas – 1/4 cup cooked
Whole mung beans – ¼ cup cooked
Onion – 2 tbs finely chopped
Cilantro – 5 sprigs (finely chopped)
Yogurt – 1/2 cup (well beaten)
Chaat Masala – to taste
Salt – to taste
Red Chile Powder – to taste
Fresh green chiles- 1-2 chopped finely
Green Chutney – 1 tbs or to taste
Sweet Chutney – 2 tbs or to taste
Fine (Thin) Sev – 1/2 cup

Method:
Punch a small hole on top of each of the pani puri shell and place them in a plate. Stuff the puri shells with a little bit of the following: Potato, chick peas, mung beans, and onion. Spoon a little (to taste) green chutney and sweet chutney into the puri shells. Spoon some yogurt into the puri shells and then all around them. Sprinkle with chaat masala, salt, red chile powder and cilantro. Garnish with more sev and some chopped green chile slices. Drizzle green and sweet chutney on top.

Papri Chaat
Ingredients:
Paapri – 1 bag or 20-25 flat puris/paapri from Indian store
Potato – 1 small sized, boiled, peeled & cut into cubes
Chickpeas - 1/4 cup, cooked
Mung beans- 2 tbs cooked (soak for one hour then boil for 20 minutes and strain)
Onion – 2 tbs, finely chopped
Sour green mango- 2 tbs cut in cubes (optional, or substitute with tart green apple)
Fresh green chile- 1-2 chopped (or to taste)
Yoghurt – 3/4 cup, seasoned with salt and sugar and well beaten
Chaat Masala - to garnish
Green Chutney – 2 tbs or to taste
Sweet Chutney- 3 tbs or to taste
Thin Sev – 1/2 cup

Method:
Lay papri chips out on a plate. Sprinkle potatoes, onions, mung beans, chick peas, and green mango (optional) over the layer of papri. Drizzle yoghurt over the papri. Sprinkle a dash of chaat masala. Pour Green Chutney and Sweet Chutney on top to taste. Last, sprinkle thin sev and chopped green chiles as a garnish.

All chaats that contain crunchy ingredients should be served immediately to avoid going soggy.

Shan ki Shan: Sindhi Biriani

2010-05-17T05:52:00.002-05:00

Some people will tell you that using Shan Masala is cheating. I say no way. Using Shan masala is perfectly fine if the end result tastes good. Shan is an auxiliary item. It doesn't create the 'maza' for you. Besides, no one just uses the packet of Shan Masala. Everyone always adds in their own medley of spices to a couple of spoonfuls of Shan for a dish. I have a post in mind about the rise in popularity of Shan's connection to the birth of modern Pakistani cuisine. Shan has contributed to the homogenization of a diverse food culture in the young nation of Pakistan. But in this post, I'd like to share with you my recipe (with a little help from Shan Uncle) for Sindhi biriani. Many people swear by Shan's Sindhi biriani mix. I use it, too as my favorite biriani. Here is my doctored up Shan masalay ki Sindhi biriani recipe. I add mango powder and extra dried plums (aloo bukharay) to the Shan masala to get a hot and sour taste in the finished biriani. Using Shan doesn't make it a bit easier, it is a complicated process. But it turns out great:

For the meat gravy you need:
1/2 cup of oil (which will be poured off of the gravy later, don't worry)
1 kg (2.2 lbs) of bone in mutton cut in large chunks (say 2/2 inch botees)
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
2 onions finely sliced and fried until crisp and brown (bhuni hui pyaaz)
1 tbs garlic paste
2-3 tomatoes roughly pureed
1 heaping tbs salt
1 tbs ginger paste
1 cup yoghurt
1.5 tbs Shan Sindhi Biriani Masala Mix
1 tsp coriander powder
1 heaping tsp ground mango powder (aamchoor)
1 tsp red chile powder
1 tsp garam masala
+/- 1 cup water
12 alu bukharay (dried plums/prunes available at Pakistani grocery)

Aloo Bukhara

Method: Mix the yoghurt with the powdered spices and the ginger paste and set aside. Heat oil in a pot and brown meat in two batches. Set the meat aside. Add cumin seeds, fried onions, and garlic paste to the oil. Take care not to burn the onions. When the garlic is golden, stir in the tomato puree. Stir this for a while until the water has evaporated from the tomato puree and the oil is rising to the top of the gravy. Add in the salt. Stir in the meat and mix well. Turn down the heat and stir in the spiced yoghurt (lowering the heat will prevent the yoghurt from splitting). Mix well and turn up the heat again. Stir until oil rises to the top of the gravy. Add in the water and the aloo bukharay. Allow to boil, cover, simmer on low heat for about 1.5 hours until the meat is nicely tender. When it is done, remove the meat and aloo bukharay from the gravy with a slotted spoon. Turn up the heat and evaporate the remaining water from the gravy. You will have a thick biriani masala paste. Pour the oil that rises to the top of this paste off of the gravy to cut calories and to avoid a greasy biriani (yuck!). Add the meat and the aloo bukhary back to the dry gravy paste and keep ready for the rice. *You can add potatoes to this recipe. Peel and halve 3-4 potatoes and add in in the last 40 minutes of the gravy's cooking. Remove the potatoes at the same time you remove the meat for drying up the gravy.

For the rice:
3 cups of uncooked biriani grade basmati rice cooked according to these instructions: Lucky Delicious on How to Cook Basmati Rice parboiling method. You will soak and parboil the rice according the specifications for biriani rice. Do this after the biriani gravy is done cooking. You will layer the rice with the biriani gravy in a pot soon after you have finished parboiling it. Take care to be gentle with the rice so as not to break the kernals.

Unmixed layered biriani before covering to fully cook (put on dam)

Perfuming the biriani:

16 fresh mint leaves
8 fresh whole green chiles, slit
1/2 tsp Kewra Water (available at the Pakistani grocery -keora jal-)
1/8 tsp of orange biriani food coloring added to 1/2 cup milk

mint and chiles

Bush brand biriani coloring, coloring mixed in milk, keora water

What to do: You have parboiled your rice. You have made a biriani gravy. Take a vessel and use a paper towel to grease it lightly with ghee. Add in a layer of meat and gravy. Distribut half of the mint leaves on top of this, and throw in half of the slit chiles. Now add in half of the rice. On top of this, add in another layer of meat gravy. Top this with the rest of the mint leaves and slit green chiles. Then add another layer of rice. Drizzle the rice with the keora water. Pour the orange colored milk into one area of the biriani rice. Now cover with a kitchen towel and close the lid. Put this on a high flame for 3-4 minutes to start some steam going in the pot. Then turn down the heat to the lowest setting and allow this to cook for about 18 minutes to finish off the rice and to allow the gravy and rice flavors to blend together. This step is called cooking on 'dam'.

biriani cooked on dam in a Sindhi sipri

When the biriani is cooked, turn off the flame and lift the lid to allow some steam to escape. Allow the biriani to rest for at least 10 minutes before mixing and serving it. This allows the rice to settle so that it won't break when you stir it. After the biriani has had a nice rest and you are read to serve, mix gently and set out on a serving dish. Garnish with finally chopped cilantro. Serve with plain yoghurt.

Freshly cooked and mixed biriani

Shahi Kababs and the Dalda Cookbook

2010-04-15T13:07:00.002-05:00

The Dalda Cookbook is probably the best known English language Pakistani cookbook. It was produced by the Dalda Cooking Oil company. It is available online (have a google) and as I frequent Pakistani and Indian food websites, I have seen many, many recipes plagiarized directly from that book (and also Zubeida Tariq's book From Zubeida Tariq's Kitchen...the other English language Pakistani cookbook, this one with a Hyderabad Dakkani twist). It seems that EVERYBODY has the Dalda Cookbook. The married women in my in-law's family make jokes about it. My mother in-law gave me a copy when I got married. I don't know much about the history of the cookbook or how it came to be so popular. The recipes are scant and simple, but often turn out very well. On the ground, what Pakistanis eat is a collection of regional cuisines based on the diverse regions of Pakistan, and the cuisines tied to history of immigration to the nation that became Pakistan after the partition of India. What is French cuisine? The cuisine of Paris is not the cuisine of Provence. What is American cuisine? We can give generalized answers for the sake of easy explanation. So what is Pakistani cuisine? The Dalda Cookbook exemplifies Pakistani cooking because it contains recipes for every one of Pakistan's iconic dishes, as well as some changed-up, experimental, or international dishes for good measure. Anyhow, I have cooked a lot based on the Dalda recipes. I would like to know more about this book. Who put it together? When was it first published? How many editions are there? Was there ever a show based on it? What is the backstory?

One of the "changed up, international" recipes in Dalda is for Afghani kababs on page 2 of my copy. It is a simple yet interesting recipe in which one makes pan fried minced meat patties, slices them into rectangular-ish kababs, and adds these kababs to a tomatoey (karhai type) gravy. The recipe has no dried spices in it besides black pepper. This makes me suspicious that it is not a true Afghan recipe. There is this myth among Southern Pakistanis and also Indians who know of Pashtoon and Afghan food that in the Afghan culinary belt, the people only use salt and pepper to season their food. I feel that I have read this in a Lonely Planet edition as well as somewhere in a Madhur Jaffrey book. My mother-in-law has told me this as well. However, all evidence I have of actual Afghan and Pashtoon cooking indicates that this is a complete myth. Pashtoon cooking is regional as well, but generally the entire belt uses a spice mix seasoning that is essentially the same thing as a simple garam masala. So they DO use masalas. I own an Afghan cookbook and two other pan-regional cookbooks that have Afghanistan sections. I also have some down-the-street neighbors who are Pashtoons. In the recipes of these books and of my neighbors, there are multiple garam masala type spices used. The food is just not as chile hot as Southern Pakistani cuisine. However, some Pashtoon recipes which I have seen online also contain a lot of chiles, green and red. So it seems that this whole "salt and pepper" Afghan cuisine thing is not true. I wondered to myself what this recipe would taste like if it were more highly seasoned it.

Anyhow, once a long time ago, I made this recipe. It is 'different' compared to the typical meat saalans (gravy or "curry" dishes) that I serve regularly, so it was fun to make and serve. Somehow, I kept coming back to this recipe as I thumbed through the Dalda Cookbook. I wanted to make it again. But I wanted to change it. So I took the idea, plagiarized it if you will, and changed it up completely. I added in "Mughlai" touches like poppy seeds, cashew nut paste, as well as red chiles.

So here is my totally changed up Dalda Afghani Kabab recipe. It is the same concept of making a seasoned meat patty, cutting it into strips for 'kabab' and then adding these kababs to a tomato gravy. Other than that, it is a totally different recipe:

Shahi Kabab*

The kababs: Combine in a mixing bowl the following ingredients

1 lbs minced beef or mutton
1/2 onion pureed
1 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp ginger paste
1-2 green chiles ground to paste
1 slice of white bread soaked in milk, squeezed to drain the milk, added to the bowl
1 tbs of cashew paste (soak 10 cashew nuts in just enough warm water to cover, then puree to grind to a paste with the soaking water)
1 tbs ghee
1 tsp freshly ground anise powder (saunf)
1 tsp garam masala
1 tbs white poppy seeds (khashkhaash)
1/2 to 1 tsp red chile powder
pinch of red chile flakes
1 tsp or so salt, or or to taste

Mix these ingredients together well, kneading them into the meat. Divide the meat into 3 portions and flatten these into large disc shapes about 1.5 inches thick. Heat oil in a frying pan and brown each meat disc on both sides. Don't worry about cooking the patties all of the way through because you will finish off their cooking in the gravy later. They should have a nicely browned outside, though. Allow the patties to cool, then cut into long strips. They will look kind of like rectangular-ish seekh kababs at this point. Set aside. TIP: before you fry all of the meat, take out a bite sized amount of meat, cook it in the pan, and taste it to check the salt and seasonings and adjust if necessary.

For the gravy:
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbs ginger-garlic-chile paste (just grind these together, 1:1:1 portions and use as needed for a week)
3 small-medium tomatoes, blanched and pureed
1.5 tbs crisp fried onions, crushed
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp red chile powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin powder
1/2 tsp ground coriander powder
2 tbs whipped yoghurt
1/2 cup water
1 tbs cashew paste (see above kabab recipe to know how to prepare)
1 tsp dried mango powder (aamchoor)
1/2 tsp freshly ground cardamom powder
3 tbs oil
1 tsp salt or to taste

Heat oil in pan. Add in cumin seeds. When they sizzle, add in ginger garlic chile paste. When the garlic and ginger turn golden, add in the tomato puree. Cook this for a few minutes until the oil rises to the top. Add in the ground fried onions, turmeric, red chile powder, garam masala, cumin powder, coriander powder, and cook for a few moments to cook off the spices. Lower heat and stir in the yoghurt. Stir for a few minutes until the oil rises to the top of the dish again. Pour in the water and simmer on low heat for 5 minutes. Add in the dried mango powder and cashew paste, and salt. Add in the kabaabs now, and a dash of water if the gravy looks to dry. Cook covered, simmering on low heat for about 10 minutes, shaking the pan gently so that the bottom doesn't stick. When the kabaabs are cooked through and the gravy is semi-dry, it is done. Stir in the cardamom powder, mixing gently to distribute it in the gravy without breaking the kababs.

Serve with naan.

*Shahi means royal. Since these kababs are enrichened with Mughlai ingredients, I changed the name of the dish.

Lahori Chargha Lahore Style Seasoned Fried Chicken

2010-03-30T03:25:00.004-05:00

In Lahore there are many restaurants where you can get this delicious deep fried chicken. I believe chargha is another Urdu word for chicken (hen, like murghi), but for some reason I have also seen this dish called "chicken chargha," which means chicken chicken. Kind of like chai tea and naan bread. Usually it's the goras who say chai tea and naan bread, but I have seen desis saying or writing chicken chargha. I know chargh/chargha is used in Pashto. Maybe chargha as chicken is too obscure since murghi or English "chicken" are so widely used. So maybe it got stuck that way the same way some English speakers say "with au jus." Au jus really means "with juice" so they are saying "with with juice." Long tangent... Anyhoo...in Lahore you can also get this same dish made with quail (batair).

In this recipe, I make use of a pressure cooker to briefly cook the chicken through while causing the marinade gravy to cling nicely to the bird's flesh. The pressure cooker nicely tenderizes the bird as well, so you don't get dry, over-cooked chicken from the double cooking process.

For this recipe you need bone-in, skinless chicken pieces. You can use a whole or halved chicken if you feel brave and have a large vessel for deep frying. In my recipe I usually use a quartered chicken or sometimes just leg-thigh pieces (5-6).

1 cup yoghurt
1 tbs vinegar
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp ajwain seeds
1/2 tsp nigella seeds (kalonji)
1 tsp red chile powder
1 tbs red chile flakes
1 heaping tbs chaat masala (Shan brand is fine)
1 tsp salt or to taste
tiny pinch of orange food coloring (like biriani rangi)
Oil for deep frying

Lemon juice and chaat masala for final garnish

Make slits in the chicken so that marinade can penetrate. In a large deep bowl, whip the ingredients into the yoghurt. Add the chicken and slather it with the marinade. Marinate overnight in the refridgerator.

Place chicken pieces directly into the pressure cooker. There is no need to add water or oil. Cover the pressure cooker and cook on medium-low heat until you get one whistle (about 10 minutes). Lower the flame and continue to cook for five for minutes. Turn off the flame and release the pressure. When the lid opens, remove the chicken pieces and set out to cool down. The chicken should be just barely cooked. Notice the marinade is clinging so nicely to the chicken. These flavor bits will stick to the flesh even when you deep fry later.

When the chicken has completely cooled, heat oil in a deep pan (big enough to submerge the chicken pieces). When oil is hot, deep fry the chicken and remove from the oil. At this stage you are just giving the chicken a spice-crust, the chicken should be fully cooked so there is no need to fry for more than a few moments.Using a strainer or a slotted ladel, scoop out some deep fried bits of marinade and spread these on the chicken as well for extra tasty bits.

Drain chicken pieces and then set on a serving dish. Squeeze lemon juice and sprinkle chaat masala on top of the chicken.

If you have some roghni naan, serve with that, plus raita, tamarind chutney. Shauqeen log can serve this with white bread and ketchup.

Myths and Misconceptions That Americans Have about Desi Food

2010-03-26T04:29:00.010-05:00

In the interest of promoting enjoyment of desi cuisines among my fellow Americans, I would like to discuss some misconceived ideas that some times crop up among non-desi Americans regarding desi food.

Indian food is healthy
Most non-desi Americans don't really even consider other desi nations in a culinary manner, they only focus on India. One of our stereotypes about Indian food is that it is very healthy (another reason that we goray log tend to have our racist, ridiculous, self-contradictory stereotypes about South Asians: we often think Indians are all skinny). Indian food IS healthy. Indian food is also unhealthy. There are too many factors at play in any cuisine to categorize it as healthy or unhealthy, especially the cuisines of India and the rest of South Asia. A home made stir fry type vegetable dish is healthy. A samosa or a gulab jaman, not so healthy. Rich, oily, meat and gravy dishes in desi cuisines are not so healthy. Neither is a dish in which all of the vegetables have been briefly deep fried before being added to a gravy. But considering that one may be eating a small ladel of such a dish with healthy boiled rice or whole-wheat flat bread, along with a stir-fried vegetable dish or a boiled lentil dish and some freshly cut vegetables, a balance exists. Many desis do eat too many carbs, especially deep fried carby foods. So do Americans. Carby, rich foods that sustained our ancestors through a day of manual work are not necessary any more. Although our lifestyles have become less active, we still eat as if we were working in a physical capacity all day. We don't burn off the calories we take in. Sound familiar? That a region has healthy as well as unhealthy foods should be obvious. Some non-desi people who are only familiar with desi cuisine through restaurant offerings may think that desi cuisine is filled with ghee, cream, and coconut milk. That is not true either. Home cooked desi 'main dishes' tend to be significantly lighter than what is found in South Asian restaurants. But I think that since Americans have our stereotype about these skinny, healthy Indians, we can even feel disappointed or duped to find that many desi foods are rich or prepared using unhealthy techniques and ingredients. Anyhow, desi food is not entirely healthy or unhealthy. We had our false notions of desi cuisine let down. But it was our own stereotypes that let us down, not the desi food itself.

India is a vegetarian country
This misconception is also related to the above two stereotypes. Vegetarian food is stereotyped as being healthy, so since Indian food is supposedly vegetarian, Indian food is healthy. Since Indian food is healthy, Indians are skinny. The dominoes of stereotypes fall down, clanging against one and other. Okay, there are many vegetarian Indians. However, most Indians are not vegetarians. Certain communities of Indians are associated with being vegetarian. For example, many Gujarati Hindus and especially Jains, Tamil Hindus of certain specific communities (like Iyers), and so on tend to be strict vegetarians. Non-Hindu Indians eat meat. There are a lot of them (+/-20% of the total population). Many, many Hindus eat meat. Some Hindus go through periods of being more religious, and give up meat for this, just like some Americans also go through phases of stronger religiosity. In some regions of India, even Brahmin food is non-vegetarian. Some regions are known for a broadly meat and fish based cuisine. Bengali food as well as the food of Kerala is mainly non-vegetarian. And on and on. Quite simply, India is a place with a wide variety of vegetarian foods, and some cuisines within India are largely vegetarian. However, India is not really a vegetarian country.

I would like to take a moment to address a common myth that I hear Indians or other non-Pakistanis repeat about Pakistani cuisine: Pakistanis only eat meat. This is so untrue. Most of the typical North Indian vegetable standards are eaten in Pakistan, too, with regional variation on exactly how they are prepared. A "proper" Pakistani meal would have a meat dish plus a daal and a vegetable served with rice and chapatti, plus some yoghurt, pickles, possibly a kasaundi (type of pickle) and some fresh salad vegetables layed out on a plate. The meat dish would be the "star" of the table, but the other dishes would be necessary to make the meal well-rounded and complete. Also, many of the "pure" veg dishes of North India are also iconic dishes of Pakistan: vegetarian chaats, dahi baray, karhi pakora, and so on. Although one does find dosai made by Pakistanis of South Indian origin, especially in Karachi, the dosa has not taken over Pakistan as a light meal or snack as it has in North India. But generally speaking, whatever meat and veg. dishes one finds North Indians eating, one will find Pakistanis eating. So it is totally untrue that Pakistanis don't consume vegetables.

South Asian food is spicy
South Asian food can be spicy. Chile heat levels vary again from region to region, family to family, and even between individuals. Non-desi Americans expect that all Indian food should be spicy and chile hot. They feel that milder Indian food is being served to them at restaurants as an adaptation of Indian food cooked to suit the American palate. This is partially true. Some non-desi Americans are grateful for this because they cannot tolerate spicy foods, so they appreciate the adaptation. However, many non-desi Americans do like to eat spicy food. They feel that being served mild food is an insult to their ability to stomach "authentic" desi atomic chile heat. They believe the restaurants are duping them. Okay, it is true that many Indian or Indo-Pak restos that cater to a non-desi clientele cook milder food. However, it is simply untrue that all desi food is fiery hot. Some foods are known to be hot. Some foods are commonly eaten mildly spiced or spiceless on purpose because that is how they are served (like a simple khichri or a daily daal). I recall reading recipe reviews from goras in which they complained that the original Indian recipe for a daily type daal was "bland" or "not spicy enough." Some particular daal dishes are cooked with a lot of chiles and spices. However, often a daily daal is very mild. It is simply boiled and has a light tempering that may include a few dried or fresh chiles, but the dish itself is not supposed to blow your head off. Some desis do like very hot foods and cannot stomach chile-less foods. However, many desis feel that a dish being overly spicy and hot (as well as oily) is a marker of it being poorly cooked. Low quality restaurants serve oily, fiery food for undiscerning customers. Being delicately seasoned is a sign of refinement. "Delicately seasoned" is a subjective description, as to an American person who cannot tolerate any chiles, a "delicately seasoned" desi dish may still be too hot and require copious glasses of water to quench the burning sensation caused by said dish. Anyhow, my recipes on this blog are probably not spicy enough for chile-heads. The red chile powder and green chile amount can be increased to taste. But Americans shouldn't just assume that desi food has to burn off the tastebuds to be "authentic" or enjoyable.

A side note: I have read on food oriented forums and websites that American goras think that Pakistani food is chile-heat hotter than Indian food. This is not true. What I think is that many "Indian"-labeled restaurants in the US are serving a less spicy, creamy restaurant genre of food loosely based on authentic Punjabi and Mughlai cuisine, particularly the non-regional-specialty restaurants that target a multi-ethnic (here meaning not just desi) clientele. Regional-specialty Indian restaurants, which mainly target an Indian clientele and are not widely popular among non-desi Americans, use a more "normal" chile heat level, and I am not referring to these types of Indian restaurants here. Pakistani restaurants may keep some of these restaurant-genre Indian items on their menu (jalfrezi, chicken tikka masala, etc). However, in the US I have noticed that restaurants that label themselves as "Pakistani"are often serving more homestyle desi type foods. "Indian" labeled restaurants are more widely popular in the US, and Pakistani restaurants are more likely targeting a Pakistani clientele. Be aware that any "Indian" restaurant can be owned by actual Indians, as well as Pakistanis, desi origin East Africans, Bangladeshis or whoever else. I mean restaurants that are promoted as Pakistani, and not "Indian"-labeled. Anyhow, since these restaurants are serving Southern Pakistani home style cuisine, they are using "normal" amounts of chiles and are not adapting the chile heat for the non-desi customers. So when goras are familliar with a typical generic Punjabi-Mughlai inspired Indian restaurant, which sets the parameters for what they know as Indian food, they must not compare this to the authentic, unadapted Pakistani food. In my hometown, many of the Indian origin people who I know joke that the only desi restaurant that serves "real Indian food" is the Pakistani restaurant. That is because the Pakistani restaurant is serving cream-less homestyle food which very much overlaps with what North Indians eat. So they feel it is much more like "real Indian food" than any of the creamy faux Punjabi-Mughlai "Indian" places. Anyhow, it is not true that "Pakistani food is spicier than Indian food." This is just a misconception based on what is available to us goras at restaurants.

South Asian food is oily
See, I told you the stereotypes we Americans have can co-exist even though they contradict each other. Among the gora's battery of stereotypes about desi food are that it is both healthy AND oily! Non-desi people who delve into authentic desi cooking and look at recipes made by and for desis and not oil-shy, Pam spraying Americans, are often wary of deep fried items, and shocked to find that traditional meat plus gravy recipes can call for 1/4 cup to even 1 cup of oil (like many 'Muslim' recipes). One has to look at it this way: the oil is not to be consumed by one person. The amount of oil is used for a dish meant to feed a large family. The cooking process in many desi cuisines requires some short and long term browning in oil, and reducing the moisture of ingredients by frying in oil. This requires a lot of oil to be done properly (although there are low-fat techniques to use as an alternative), and unlike frying techniques in which the foods are removed from the oil, the oil in these desi dishes is not removed and one adds more ingredients to this oil stage by stage. One can opt to pour off the oil at the end of cooking, or try to get less oil on the serving spoon when ladeling food from dish to plate. I have a friend who drops a dry paper towel on top of a finished dish to absorb some of the oil. One can opt to eat less of these oily meat dishes and go for more vegetables. There are ways to get around the oil. Some regional South Asian food is not particularly oily. However, foods from these regions are not widely available or known to Americans. So not ALL desi foods are oily.

Desi food is too salty
A desi "main dish" is rarely meant to be consumed without rice or bread. The desi dish is conceptualized as dish plus accompanying carb: wet dish with rice or flat bread, dryer dish with flat bread, fancy dish with special naan or kulcha, etc. Since the dish is meant to be mixed with a quantity of carbs, the dish must be highly salted or when it is combined with the carb it will taste under-seasoned. So yes, desi food is salty, but only if you are eating it the wrong way.

A common mistake in desi food consumption
Do not eat a rice dish with a piece of flatbread. Do not mix daal into your biriani. I recall reading a local review of a new restaurant in which the non-desi reviewer said that he mixed his daal into his biriani and mopped it up with his naan. He can eat it that way if he wants to, I guess. But biriani is meant to be eaten alone or with a bit of yoghurt...with some exceptions like a squeeze of lemon juice to lift a dull biriani, or a small bowl of mirch ka saalan in a Hyderabad resto, but I digress. Don't mix daal into your biriani at the Indian resto, O goray doston. It isn't mean to be eaten that way. And choose rice OR bread as your accompanyment. Ne'er the twain shall meet on the plate of the savvy.

I suggest interested readers also have a look at this post, which further discusses regionality among desi food and how that affects non-desis or non-cooking desis who are married to desi men and who would like to learn to cook their husband's regional cuisine.

A Vegetarian pullao - Channa Pullao: Yellow split lentil pullao

2010-03-26T02:51:00.005-05:00

A pullao is rice which is cooked with broth, or yakhni in Urdu. This recipe is vegetarian, so the yakhni used here is made without meat. It is simply water perfumed with garam masala. And I cheat to make this yakhni: I do it in the microwave.

I pre-fry my onions and keep them in the freezer. You should finely slice onions, put them in deep oil on high heat, and when they turn translucent, turn down the heat to very low and continue to fry, stirring occasionally until they have become brown-red and crispy (12 minutes for Indian onions, takes longer for yellow onions). They should not blacken, as this will yield a bitter taste. I prefer this method to quick frying because with quick frying the onions often blacken at the edges and the insides stay undercooked. You will need about 2 large-ish Indian onions for this recipe, or 1 large yellow (American type) onion, about 4 tbs fried. I recommend you use home fried even though pre-fried are available at the store, because store fried tend to be bitter.

You will also have to prepare the channa daal. Take 1/2 cup dry channa daal and soak for one hour. Put daal in water on stove and boil, turn heat to low, and cook on low heat for 20 minutes until lentils are tender. Strain from water and set aside. These should be fully cooked, but just barely. I also boil larger quantities of this and freeze to use in pullao, salads, queema, etc. 1/2 cup raw daal will yield 1 cup cooked. You need 1 cup cooked for the recipe.

Now the microwave garam masalay ki yakhni: take garam masala spices, say 2 bay leaves, 3 pieces of cinnamon, 10 cloves, 10 peppercorns, 10 green cardamom pods, 2 large black cardamom pods, a tsp of cumin and a tsp of fennel, and put this in water and microwave on high for 5 minutes. Strain the spices from the water. You can toss them out because they have done their job. However, you can keep the larger sized spices for "looks" in your pullao if you like. Keep this yakhni aside. For 2.5 cups basmati rice, 5 cups of yakhni.

So you have prepared all of this stuff in advance. The actual pullao only takes 30 mins or so if you have your daal and fried onions ready.

You need:

2.5 cups basmati rice, soaked for 10 mins
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp ginger paste
1 tsp garlic paste
1/2 quantity of pre-fried onions (about 2 tbs), crushed gently
1 tsp red chile powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tbs salt or to taste (the daal will soak up salt, too, so you need a lot)
1 cup pre-cooked channa daal
2-3 tbs oil
5 cups garam masalay ki yakhni

1 tsp or more ghee for finishing
2 tbs fried onions for finishing and garnish

Heat oil in pan. Add in cumin seeds and let sizzle. Add in garlic and ginger paste, allow it to turn golden, then quickly add in the pre-fried onions, cumin and chile powder, let sizzle for one short moment, then pour in the yakhni. (do not let the spices burn). Salt the water, add in the soaked rice, allow this to come to a rolling boil, then add in the pre-cooked daal. Cover, lower heat to the lowest setting, and cook covered for about 18 mins. After you turn off the heat, lift lid to let steam escape, then cover again and allow rice to rest for 10 minutes more to finish steaming and so it won't break when you stir it.

Transfer to serving dish. Drizzle ghee or melted butter on the rice. Add on the remaining pre-fried onions, mixing some of them and the ghee to distribute in the rice, but some onions should remain on top as garnish.

Serve with plain yoghurt or a raita.

Tip: You can use the same recipe with pre-cooked or canned chickpeas (chola pullao).

Low Fat Gobhi Bhaja - Oven Roasted Cauliflower Desi Style

2010-03-25T03:01:00.003-05:00

In Bengali cuisine, vegetables like eggplant, potato, and cauliflower are spiced and lightly doused in chickpea flour (besan) or perhaps rice flour, and then deep fried (bhaja means fry). These tasty morsels are served at the start of or as an accompaniment to a meal. Begun bhaja (eggplant) is most famous, but any vegetable that does well when roasted can make for a faux bhaja in the oven.

In the interest of health, I have devised this oven-roast bhaja recipe. You can do the same thing with potatoes or eggplant in place of cauliflower, but be sure to adjust the cooking time. Traditionally, the veg would be fried in mustard oil. You can use that if you like, but I have used olive oil.

First prepare the cauliflower: 1 head of cauliflower, washed cut into bite sized florets, and set in a colander to strain until comletely dry. You must completely dry the cauliflower because any moisture left on it will prevent your faux bhaja from becoming crispy.

Set oven on highest heat setting, and prepare a cookie sheet/baking tray with a layer of aluminium foil.

Since cauliflower varies in size, I suggest that you adjust the ingredients slightly for a large or small head to ensure adequate seasoning. The recipe below is for a medium-ish cauliflower:

1 heaping tsp or so sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp red chile powder
1 tsp turmeric
3 tbs olive oil
2 tbs chickpea flour (besan)
1 pinch of chaat masala

In a large mixing bowl, pour oil onto dried cauliflower florets. Toss in all of the other ingredients except for the chickpea flour and the chaat masala. Mix well so that the florets are well coated in seasonings and oil. Now add the chickpea flour and mix again to coat. Transfer cauliflower florets to baking tray and put in oven for 25 minutes or so, until the cauliflower is cooked but still slightly crunchy, and it looks crispy and golden brown on the edges. The brown crispy bits are amazing!

Remove from oven, sprinkle with chaat masala, and serve hot.

Strained Yoghurt Delights

2010-03-18T04:52:00.007-05:00

In desi English, strained yoghurt is called hung curd. It is another desi ingredient that you can do lots with. Use it in place of sour cream, or as a base ingredient for dips and spreads. What an amazing substance it is...and you don't have to strain yourself to make it :-P . But how ever do you make it? Start out with some yoghurt, a strainer, a dish to simultaneously hold the strainer and catch the water which separates from the yoghurt, and some kind of thin cloth. For the cloth you can use a very well worn cloth kitchen towel or even a thick, high quality paper kitchen towel, as pictured above. You just lay the cloth into the strainer, prop strainer on top of dish, and dump in some yoghurt. Place this in the fridge and let it strain for about 3 hours or overnight. Seeing the liquid accumulate beneath my strainer gives me a sense of self-satisfaction, though it is a completely effortless procedure to strain. You can make strained yoghurt with full fat or low fat yoghurt.

Now you've strained your yoghurt. What are you gonna do with it? How about...

Yummy Mint Dip

I got this idea from a lovely cooking class I attended. The instructor showed us several dip recipes for strained yoghurt, and after experimenting, I have decided to create my own.

1 cup strained yoghurt

1 heaping tbs dried mint

1 clove of garlic

1/2 tsp or so salt or to taste

1 tsp white vinegar

1 heaping tsp chile flakes (you can use chile powder but it will turn your dip pinkish)

1 tsp honey OR plain sugar OR Splenda

1 tbs sugar free peanut butter (crunchy or pasty is fine)

Take your garlic clove and put it in a small microwaveable bowl of water. Put in the microwave and nuke for 1 minute. Remove the garlic clove from the water and mash it into the strained yoghurt. (Microwaving the garlic reduces its strength and prevents your dip from having an overpowering raw garlic taste) Add in all of the other ingredients and mix very well. Serve as a dip for chips, celery sticks, carrot sticks, etc, or use it in place of mayonnaise on a sandwich.

Sri Khand

Sri Khand is a dessert. I usually associate it with Gujaratis, but I think these days it is widely enjoyed by people of many communities, and you can enjoy it, too because it is killer easy to make. It is silky and somehow light and rich at the same time.

2 cup strained yoghurt (make sure it is very fresh yoghurt and not sour)

2.5 tbs sugar

10 strands of saffron soaked in 1 tbs milk (just add to milk and allow to soak for a few minutes)

1/2 tsp cardamom powder

for garnish: Roasted almond slivers and pistachios, a few strands of saffron

Whip all of the ingredients into the strained yoghurt. Whip for a while to ensure that the sugar completely dissolves. Pour into a serving dish and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Before serving, garnish with the almonds and pistachios and a few more strands of saffron if you like. Dish out into small dessert bowls, or even eat it with hot puris.

In both recipes, low fat yoghurt and Splenda can be used.

Black Chickpeas Kalay Channay

2010-01-01T03:41:00.001-06:00

Black chickpeas are just so hearty and tasty. They are best cooked in a pressure cooker. They also freeze well. To prepare, soak 1.5 cups of dried black chickpeas overnight. Strain. Put in pressure cooker, add 1 tbs salt, and cover with about 2 inches of fresh water. Cook on high heat for 3 whistles, then lower heat and cook on a low flame for about 5 more minutes. Once the black chickpeas are done, strain and reserve 1 cup of the cooking liquid. The end result should be whole but tender black chickpeas that can be manipulated for cooking without breaking apart, but crush easily if you press between two fingers, so they will mash easily if pressed with a chappati while eating.

For the dressing:
3 tbs oil
5 dried red chiles
1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp ginger paste
1 tsp fresh green chile paste
(the ginger, garlic, and green chiles can be ground together to make a paste, in which case use a heaping tbs)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp cumin powder
10 fresh curry leaves
salt to taste
cooked black chickpeas
1 cup of cooking liquid
1 tbs lime juice

Heat oil in pot. Add in dried red chiles, mustard seeds, and cumin seeds. When the mustard seeds start to pop, add in garlic, ginger, and chile pastes. When this turns golden, toss in the spice powders. Quickly stir in the curry leaves. Now add the cooked black chickpeas and stir around well to coat with the masala. Add in the reserved cooking liquid. Allow this to come to a boil. Turn off heat and add in a spinkle of salt---just a touch because the chickpeas have been salted in the pressure cooker and there is salt in the cooking liquid. Now add in the lime juice. Taste for salt and tanginess. Add more lime juice if needed. It should be very spicy and tangy.

Serve with hot chapattis or rice.

Matar Pullao Pea Pilaf

2010-01-01T01:44:00.002-06:00

This recipe is for a delicious and mild tasting pea pullao. People of my husband's U.P. origin Pakistani background eat mild pullaos such as this for Sunday lunch with raita and pickles.

Rinse and soak 1.5 cups high quality basmati rice for ten minutes. In the meanwhile:

Ingredients:

1.5 cups rinsed and soaked basmati rice

1.25 cups frozen peas

1 tbs ginger paste

1 tsp garlic paste

1 tsp green chile paste (you can puree the ginger, garlic, and chiles together)

4-5 whole dried red chiles

1 tsp cumin seeds

2 pieces of cinnamon bark, about 1 inch each stick

7 cloves

2 big black cardamom (bari elaichi)

1 tsp lemon/lime juice

salt to taste, about 1 tbs

2 tbs oil

1 tbs ghee

3 cups water

Heat oil and ghee. On a high flame: Add in dried red chiles and stir them around for a moment. Toss in all of the whole spices. Once these sizzle, add in ginger, garlic, and green chile paste. Let the aromatic pastes turn golden (ensure it does not burn). Immediately pour in 2 cups of water. Remove the dried red chiles and set aside to use later as a garnish. Add in the lemon/lime juice and salt. Add in the soaked strained rice. Add in the remaining cup of water. Use this to ensure that all of the grains of soaked rice go into the pot during the transfer from their soaking vessel if you need to. Allow this to come to a boil. When it boils properly, add in the frozen peas. Allow it to boil again. Cover, then lower the heat to the lowest setting. Cook covered for 17-20 minutes. After this time, briefly open the pot to let excess steam escape, then recover and allow the rice to rest for 10 minutes with the flame off. After 10 minutes, fluff the rice gently with a fork.

Garnish with the fried dried red chiles, which people who want a little heat can eat along with the mild pullao. You should have a lightly seasoned, fluffy, emerald studded pea pullao. Serve with plain yoghurt or raita. Matar pullao can be eaten as a main dish, but also goes well with all types of curries.

Pressure Cookers: A desi secret

2009-11-15T02:12:00.003-06:00

I own and use an Indian stainless steel Hawkins brand pressure cooker (pictured above...though that isn't the one in my kitchen). The gori wife life comes with a learning curve. Since learning to cook desi, there are so many amazing foods, ingredients, and cooking tools that I have come to use quite regularly but had no clue about before. Pressure cookers aren't completely unheard of in the average American kitchen, but they are definately uncommon. However, the pressure cooker is an extremely common cooking vessel in the desi kitchen. Not all desis use them, for various reasons; "all the taste goes," "not traditional way to make X," or "pressure cookers are so lower middle class" are some reasons I have heard for the anti-pressure cooker crowd. However, I love mine and find that is it ever a useful thing to own. I'd like to talk a little bit about using pressure cookers.

First of all, they are very convenient. You can cook daals and meat in a matter of a few whistles (seeTiyan, plural of seeTi in Urdu/Hindi). Whistles? Why do Indian English language cookbooks and recipes refer to whistles? "Cook for 3 whistles." What the heck is a whistle? Well, to know you would have to watch a traditional pressure cooker in action. You add the food and water, you seal the lid, and turn on the flame. The pressure builds, then releases. To release the pressure, steam comes out of the pressure cooker's whistle (regulator). Two to three whistles for most daals, 5 whistles for goat or beef. Like so. I have an Indian pressure cooker. It is traditional. But I have heard that in Amreeka you can get modren pressure cookers that have no seetis. When I relocate to Amreeka, I will have to get one. For now, I am stuck on my seetis. So, you know how you have to simmer beef for 6-8 hours to get it nicely tender? You can pressure cook it for 5 whistles and in about 20 minutes your beef is done. Cooking fuel is expensive in the des for average families, so people save money on cooking gas by using pressure cookers to reduce simmering time. Pressure cookers are economically sound, and good for the environment since they lessen fuel consumption.

There are some downsides to pressure cookers. I love the way large legumes like chickpeas, rajma, and black chickpeas come out in the pressure cooker. They get such a tender texture that allows these legumes to grab on to flavors so well. However, I don't like the end result of how small sized daal comes out. I mean the types of daal that are cooked to a liquidy consistency and are not meant to remain whole. Somehow the pressure cooker makes the liquidy daal fluffy. I don't like the texture. So in my kitchen, I only pressure cook large sized daals which are supposed to remain whole. Secondly, though it is a great meat tenderizer, for me it ruins the taste and texture of beef and goat. The meat also comes out puffy and fluffy. It isn't horrible or anything, but I can always detect pressure cooked meat, and prefer slow simmered meat. I do occasionally resort to pressure cooking red meats as a time saver only. Chicken and fish are a no-no for the pressure cooker, as they would just be obliterated, unless the chicken where you live is quite tough. I do use the pressure cooker to tenderize chicken in specific dishes, though.

After the pressure cooker has done its job, you still have to wait for the pressure created vacuum seal of the lid to release or "fall in." This adds to your cooking time. Some people advise running the pressure cooker under cold water to release the lid. But actually, waiting for the lid to fall in is part of the cooking time of many lentils, so if you release the lid early, the lentils may not be fully cooked in the center. So it is best to wait for the lid to fall in on its own.

The pressure cooker is a necessity in "mehnati" or arduous dishes, like daal makhani. Without the pressure cooker, one would have to babysit this slow simmering daal for 4-5 hours, stirring and mashing away, and adding more and more water as needed. But the pressure cooker reduces your cooking time to 15 minutes of allowing the pot to boil, then waiting for the whistles, and another 10 minutes or so of waiting for the lid. You can't beat that.

I also make stocks in the pressure cooker. For chicken stock that would normally take over an hour, I allow the magic of the pressure cooker to pressurize all of the great flavor out of my stock cuts in around 15 minutes.

You can also use the pressure cooker for some special dishes. For a Lahori style chargha (marinated, cooked, then deep fried Lahore style crispy chicken---recipe coming soon), you can tenderize the chicken so beautifully by giving it one whistle in the pressure cooker, allowing it to cool, and then deep frying. This yields absolutely amazing results.

I know some people who use the pressure cooker for everything. Everything! A friend once told me that people are so stuck on pressure cookers in her part of India, that even their pudding (payasam---South Indian kheer) is pink because apparently milk turns pink in the pressure cooker. Many desi cooks would be lost without it.

Everyone whose family uses pressure cookers had stories of a forgetful auntie who left the pressure cooker unattended and the dang thing exploded, leaving tamaatar saalan stains on the ceiling. So, one should learn from these stories to never leave the pressure cooker unattended and to pay attention to the whistles.

Another note on the small daals, sometimes as they liquify, a tiny piece gets stuck where the steam is supposed to come out, blocking it. This will cause your steam release to spew an ugly yellow daal mess out of the whistle. I have only ever had this happen with daals, but theoretically, any small piece of something could cause the blockage.

I can't wait to use the new modern pressure cookers with their safety features and double seals. But for now, I stick to my old Hawkins quite happily. I advise all people who regularly cook desi foods to invest in one! Luckily mine was cheap over here in Dubai (and it came with a free idli tray!) but I have heard that they can be costly further away from the des.

Bengali Cooking

2009-10-22T05:32:00.000-05:00

I mentioned in this post the importance of understanding the regionality of South Asian food. What if you, a non-desi, or perhaps a desi from a totally different background from your man, marry a guy from a certain place and you have no clue where to begin learning to cook homefoods from his region....which you obviously want to learn becuzzz you lurve your man and want to impress him with your cooking? Girls, you know what I am talking about. Authentic regional South Asian English language cookbooks can be hard to find. There are loads of websites nowadays, but they are not often written for the neophyte desi cook, and contain lines like: Here is a totka, add a chutki of such and such thing, bhunofy, onions turn pink (this is a really weird one for people who have never seen a desi onion)...then put on dam for 30 minutes. Huh? I have learned a lot from cooking websites. I often search through them to compare and prepare recipes to try out for myself. But I really love a good cookbook right there in my hands. I wanted to take some time to highlight books which I have come across which I really liked, and which really helped me learn about the food of a region. I am very interested in regional South Asian cooking, and I have over the years managed to peruse and acquire some English language regional desi cookbooks. I have Kashmiri pandit and waaza books. I have a great Maharashtrian book. I have an Indian Hyderabadi Muslim book, and so forth. Let me start with Bengali cuisine:

There are two books from which I gained a lot of information about Bengali cooking, as well as good recipes.

The first is the excellent tome, Bengali Cooking: Seasons and Festivals by Chitrita Banerji. This is written for any reader, not just a Bengali Indian or Bangladeshi who is already familiar with Bengali cooking terms and ingredients. Banerji writes a narrative about her childhood in West Bengal and then her adult life in Bangladesh. She is originally a West Bengali, but she married a Bangladeshi, so she knows the cuisines of both sides of the border well. Her narratives focus on, as discernable from the title, seasons and festivals, and are interwoven with very good recipes for special foods of those times. Loaded with information, anyone who reads this book will gain very in depth knowledge about the cuisine of the Bengalis, as well as on Bengali culture. The book is well written, informative, gives a beautiful and romantic picture of Bengali culture and foods, and has great recipes.

The second book is Rannoghor by Roopa Sharma. This book, like many Indian cookbooks written for Indians, is not as easily navigable for people who are not very familiar with Indian food terms. So if you are a non-Bengali, especially non-Indian bahu of a Bengali family, you'll have to get a Bengali friend to help you with any unfamiliar terminology or show you some of the special South Asian ingredients until you have learned them all. The author says she wrote the book for the busy, working woman and offers cooking tips and simple recipes to a cook with little time to spare. I don't know about all of that, but I can simply assure you that the recipes are excellent samples of West Bengali homecooked fare. I have made many of the recipes in this book, and I liked all of them. The book can help you set your table with delicious West Bengali fare.

Chicken Nihari

2009-10-20T11:03:00.001-05:00

I love nihari. Nihari is tradionally a breakfast food. "Nahaar" means day in Arabic, the language of origin of the word nihari. Nihari is a food to start the day with, a morning food to give energy throughout the day. It is eaten with naan in most places, but in Indian Hyderabad it is eaten with the deliciously light and flakey Hyderabadi style paratha. Nihari is tradionally made with beef. These days, there are mutton and chicken niharis as well. Nihari is said to be originally from the city of Old Dehli, but outside of its birthplace of India, in neighboring Pakistan, nihari has taken on a life of its own as one of the signature dishes of Pakistani cuisine. In India it is hard to find a dish of nihari at a restaurant, usually a specialty nihari restaurant, after late morning. It is still considered a breakfast food. Nihari is expensive to make at home for common folk, so it is very often bought by the plate at specialty nihari houses. In Pakistan, some people do keep the breakfast tradition. But nihari is more often consumed at any time of day. It is a festive and rich dish associated with Ramadan and Eid.

I will say it again. I love nihari. But, I have been interested in cooking on the lighter side of Pakistani and Indian cuisine, so I had been trying to create a perfect, full bodied chicken nihari since chicken is much lower in fat and calories than beef. I have experimented a bit with online recipes. I have finally settled with a delicious self-created recipe which I am very proud of, and which I hope you will like.

Ingredients:

1 whole skinless chicken, bone in, cut into 12 pieces

1/2 lb of chicken stock cuts, such as necks, backs, and wings

1 onion finely sliced (one American yellow onion or 2-3 small desi pink onions)

2-3 Indian bay leaves (tez patta)

3 pieces of whole black cardamom

1 inch piece of whole cinnamon

6 whole cloves

1 heaping tsp garlic paste

1 heaping tsp ginger paste

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 tsp Kashmiri chile powder (or more to taste)

2 tsp ground coriander powder

1 cup whipped yoghurt

4 cups of water

1 tsp white flour (maida)

2 tsp ground chickpea flour (besan)

1 tsp garam masala

1 tsp freshly ground anise seed powder

1/2 tsp freshly ground green cardamom powder

salt to taste (about 1.5 tsps)

1/4 cup oil

2 tbs oil for thickening flours

Garnish: lemon wedges, chopped fresh cilantro, chopped green chiles, ginger cut into match stick sized slivers

Heat oil and brown the chicken pieces (but not the chicken stock pieces) and remove from oil. Set aside. Heat oil again and in bay leaves, cinnamon piece, black cardamom, and cloves. Once the bay leaves begin to change color, brown the onion by first frying on high heat, then lowering the heat until the slices become crisp and golden brown. Alternatively you can use pre-browned onions. Towards the end of the browning process, stir in the garlic and ginger paste and let this turn golden. Turn up the heat and add in the previously browned chicken pieces, and then the turmeric, chile powder, and coriander powder. Stir for a few moments. Now lower the heat and add in the yoghurt. (you lower the heat to prevent curdling of the yoghurt) Mix well, add in the salt, and stir fry for about 7 minutes on medium heat until the oil rises to the top of the yoghurt. Now add in the chicken stock pieces. Stir to coat with the masala mixture, then turn up the heat and add in the water. Allow the pot to boil, then cover and simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked.

Once the chicken is done, turn off the heat. Remove the meaty non-stock pieces from the pot and set them aside. Now, without removing the stock pieces, return the pot to a boil and boil on high heat for 10-15 minutes to remove extra water, thicken the gravy, and make the stock rich. When this step is done, you will have about 2.5 cups of gravy. Strain this gravy. You can pick the meat off of the stock pieces and use them for sandwiches laster. Aside from that, all of the spices have done their job, and any undissolved shredds of onion have given off enough of their flavor, and the chicken bones have lent their taste to the gravy. So throw it all away. Keep the gravy ready to use on the side. You can also pour off some of the oil that rises to the top of this gravy. Add water if you have boiled off too much water and have less than 2.5 cups of gravy. Now, heat a clean pan and add in 2 tbs oil. Stir in the white flour and chickpea flour and use a whisk to move this around and smooth out lumps, allowing it to sizzle in the oil and cook through for a minute. Do not allow this to burn. Slowly, 2 tbs at a time, pour in the gravy, continously whisking to avoid lumps. When you have poured in about 1 cup of gravy, go ahead and fully pour in the rest all at once. Allow this to come to a boil to thicken it. Add in the garam masala, anise seed powder, and cardamom powder. Stir this in well. Now re-add the chicken pieces you set aside earlier. Lower heat and keep covered on a very low flame for about 5 minutes. You can also allow this dish to rest a bit and re-heat gently later to allow the flavors to gel for longer.

Decorate with a little of the green garnishes and the match stick ginger, but also serve the garnishes, as well as lemon wedges, on the table with the nihari. Each diner should squeeze in her/his own lemon juice, just a few drops per serving, and add on more of whichever garnishes they like. Eat with whole grain naan to be extra healthy!

Potato with Okra: Aloo bhindi masala

2009-10-09T04:46:00.003-05:00

Many goras don't like okra because it comes out slimy. The desi methods of cooking okra can circumvent slimyness. The key is allowing the okra to fully dry after washing. Moisture will bring out the okra slime. Another key is to avoid tossing the okra around too much. Try to avoid moving it too much with the spatula, and the slime will not seep out. Below I mention four methods for cooking okra for a bhindi masala, from deep frying (ideal but unhealthy, to sautee-ing, to cooking in the gravy (some mushiness will occur), to a low fat microwave steam to saute method. The main recipe is something I picked up/adapted from my dear friend Gehana, who does cooking classes in Dubai...see side bar link for more info.

For the okra:

Wash bhindi and allow to air dry. It should be very dry, then make a small slit in each piece and cut the bhindi in two pieces.

If you want the bhindi perfect, no mushyness, cook the bhindi by deep frying till crispy looking (starting to look a bit golden on the sides) and set aside.

You can also gently pan fry in nonstick, covering and sprinkling water until done, without moving them in the pan too much so the sticky slime doesn't come out. They should be about 3/4 cooked if you do the pan method. Set aside.

There is also a way to steam okra in the microwave and then gently saute. You wash and allow to completely dry, clean, and cut the okra. Then you put it in a microwave safe dish with the top of the dish covered in slightly ajar saran wrap. Microwave on high for 4-5 mins. Then you have to allow the okra to completly cool. Then you heat a pan and add 1 tsp or so oil. I have tried with fat free cooking spray but didn't get the best results. Anyhow, you then sautee just to give the okra some crispyness and color. Then you would add it to the cooked masala for 5 mins on low heat.
I have done this with masala stuffed okra and also just plain sprinkled with some pan roasted spices. It works well and I can't say that the taste is as fabulous as deep fried, but it is definately good for something low fat.

The potatoes

For the potatoes: cut about the same size as the bhindi slices, which you can also fry separately and add in at the end, or pan saute, or also cook in the masala.

For the masala:

In a food processor add:
1 onion
4 pieces garlic
1 inch chunk ginger
3 fresh green chiles
2 medium tomatoes
1 tbs coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder,
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp red chile powder
1/2 tsp dried mango powder

Grind all of these ingredients together for your masala.

Heat 2-3 tbs oil in pan, fry the masala paste until the moisture evaporates, adding salt to taste shortly after you add the masala to the pan. When the oil has risen to the top of the masala and it is a thick paste but not fully dry, add the bhindi and lower heat and cook for about five minutes more.

All in one pan method:

You can also cook the potatoes and bhindi in the pan with the masala, but they will get a bit mushy. Some people like it that way though, so it is up to you. For this, cook the masala for a few minutes to dry it up a bit. Then add in the raw potatoes, sautee, and cover for 5 minutes, sprinking a little water. After 5 minutes of cooking the potatoes, add in the okra, stir once well to mix it into the masala, sprinking a little water. Lower heat and cover, steaming on low heat for about 20 minutes. Every five minutes or so, you should open the lid, sprinkle some water around the pan, and shake the pan gently to move the potatoes and okra. Cook until potatoes are tender and by then okra will be done, too.

Garnish:

What ever method you use, garnish with a pinch of freshly ground whole green cardamom.

Tip:

This generic masala paste can be used with many other vegetable combinations: peas and potato, peas and paneer, cauliflour, pea and carrot, and so forth. The options are endless.

Sprouted Mung Bean with Tarka

2009-10-09T04:18:00.000-05:00

I just loooove me some sprouted mung beans. See here to watch a video on how to sprout your own mung beans at home. The link leads to the wonderful website Show Me the Curry, which I highly recommend perusing.

Now, once you have sprouted your mung beans, you must know what to do with them. Here is a lovely South Indian-ish recipe.

3 cups sprouted mung beans

Boil water (about 5 cups) on the stove. Add the raw sprouted mung beans. Allow the water to return to a boil, and boil for about 10 minutes. The skins will separate from the mung beans and float to the top of the boil. Skim them off, taking care not to discard any lentils. Get as many as you can, but if there are some left, no worries. More healthy fiber for you. Strain and set aside.

2 tbs oil

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp black mustard seeds

1/4 tsp asofetida

4 fresh green chiles slit open

6 fresh curry leaves

1 tsp cumin powder

1tsp red chile powder

boiled strained mung beans (see above)

+/- 1 tsp salt or to taste

1 tsp or so lemon juice

Heat oil. Add in cumin seeds and allow to color. Add in mustard seeds and when they pop, toss in asofetida. Quickly add in the curry leaves and slit green chiles. Add in the red chile powder and cumin powder. Stir for a moment, then add in the boiled sprouted mung beans. Toss well in oil, then add in the salt. Stir for a few minutes on high heat to infuse the mung beans with the seasoned oil. Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice.

Serve with chapattis.

Desi style Suraid (shredded bread with broth and meat)

2009-09-18T04:10:00.000-05:00

Salmaan (R) said that the Messenger of Allah (S) said: Blessings are found in three things, the Group (Al-Jama'ah), Ath-thareed (a type of food) and As-Sahoor (the Pre-dawn meal)." [At-Tabaraanee, Abu Na'eem]

Al Thareed, meaning literally "small pieces (of bread or food) which have been cut" is a traditional Gulf Arab dish which is even mentioned in the above hadeeth, has its variations in South Asia, too. The Pakhtoons have versions, known as painda, randa chargha, or soobutt. This should ideally be made with very thin Pakhtoon bread. Further south, it is made with shredded wholewheat flat bread or roti, hence it is called "roti ke tukray." It is also known in Urdu as sareed or suraid, the -s- being the Urdu articulation of Arabic -tha-. It is basically a liquidy meat or chicken stew poured on top of shredded bread. Here is a Gulf Arab version, and here is a Pakhtoon recipe. Both recipes are highly worth checking out. There are many versions of this around the world, from fatta or similar dishes in other parts of the Arab world, to Mexican caserola with leftover tortillas, to Italian or French recipes using day old bread. It is basically a way to use up leftover bread and avoid waste. Perhaps that is why it is a blessed dish. The Arabian Gulf versions of thareed or margooga are sometimes eaten as an Eid dish, so it is simultaneously a humble and fancy dish.

I am forever fascinated foods which have distinct yet similar versions all over the world, like barbecued meats, stuffed dumplings, types of pasta soups, pickled vegetables, rice puddings, and of course this dish, suraid.

Below is my home recipe:

12-15 chappatis shredded into large pieces

or

6 giant extra thin Afghan flat breads (pasti), these are available where I live, but you can sub any very thin naan for this if you like. The pasti where I live is roughly the length and width of 2 sheets of A-4 paper put together, and less than a cm thick. But really, any thin flatbread should do.

I enjoy both the chapatti version and the thin naan version, and can't recommend one over the other.

For the shorba:
1/4 cup oil
1 chicken skinned and cut into 12 pieces
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
1 large onion chopped finely
1 tbs garlic paste
1tsp ginger paste
2 fresh green chiles finely chopped
2 fresh tomatoes pureed
1/2 tsp haldi
1 tsp red chile powder
1 tbs garam masala
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp dried fenugreek (qasoori methi)
2 tbs whipped yoghurt
3.5 cups water
a big dose of salt
1 tbs lemon juice
1 pinch garam masala for final ingredient

garnish: chopped fresh green chiles, chopped cilantro, small chunks of butter or a few tsps ghee, and lemon wedges

Heat oil in pan. Add cumin seeds and allow to sizzle. Add in chopped onions. Fry on high heat, stirring frequently until they become golden and have lost a lot of moisture. Stir in ginger garlic chile paste. When the ginger garlic are golden, add in the turmeric and chile powder. Quickly add in the tomato puree. Cook for a while until the tomatos have lost their moisture and the oil has risen to the top. Add in the chicken and stir, still on high heat, until the chicken has all changed color. Add in yoghurt and stir for a moment. Pour in water. Add in garam masala and coriander powder. Now you can salt the dish. You should add in double the amount of salt that you normally would for a waterless curry. The amount of salt should be enough so that the shorba flavor doesn't become bland when mixed with the flatbread. I'd estimate 2 heaping teaspoons or more. When the water boils, cover and lower heat. Cook until chicken is done, maybe 25-30 minutes. When the shorba (liquidy meat soup) is done, add in the fenugreek, a pinch of garam masala, and lemon juice.

Set the shredded flatbread in a wide flat dish like a casserole dish. Using tongs, place the pieces of chicken on top of the bread. Then pour the shorba on top of the bread. The bread should absorb the shorba but it shouldn't be too liquidy or soupy. Now add the garnish and serve.

You could also do this dish with bone in goat or lamb, adjusting cooking time of the shorba as appropriate. Another variation would be to leave out the tomatos and yoghurt.

A delicious dish full of history and blessings.

Dastarkhwaan e Hyderabad: Tamatar ki chutney or Tomato Chutney

2009-08-23T04:12:00.000-05:00

This chutney is a good accompanyment to any daal or veg dish eaten with rice. It also goes well with idli and dosa. If you are into desi sandwiches, you could even use it as a sandwich spread chutney. It is complicated to make because there are a few different steps. For this reason, I make large amounts of it and freeze it in small batches. That way I only have to make it a few times a year. It will keep well for a few weeks in the fridge, too.

One good thing about this recipe is that you don't have to chop all of the ingredients because you will blitz them in the blender later.

First you need:

3 tbs oil

15 red ripe tomatoes, puree in your chopper to save time

1 tbs cumin seeds

2 onions chopped roughly,

7 pieces of garlic

5 fresh green chiles

1 heaping tbs tamarind paste (I use Priya brand)

Heat oil and add in the cumin seeds and fresh green chiles. When thecumin seeds sizzle, add in the garlic and onions and cook until the onions have lost most of their moisture and are golden but not browned. Add in the tomato puree and tamarind paste and cook on medium to high heat, stirring constantly, until the oil separates from the tomatos and the tomatos have lost all of their moisture. Set aside and allow to cool.

Next you need:

1/4 cup peanuts

1/4 cup sesame seeds

Dry roast these together in an un-oiled heated pan. They should darken a bit and that is how you will know they are done, but be sure not to burn them.

Allow these to cool a bit, then toss them in the blender with your tomato paste mixture, add ing a little water (about 1/2 cup) to aid the blending. Add in the salt while blending, about 1 heaping tsp...be sure to taste because the tamarind paste is often salty.

Return these to your pot. Add a little water to the blender to get out all of the extra paste. Now cook the paste a bit for a couple of minutes to remove the excess water.

Add in 1 tsp of Korean or Chinese roasted sesame oil for extra depth in taste.

Last step, the baghaar:

1-2 tbs oil

5 dried red chiles

8 curry leaves

1 tsp black mustard seeds (optional)

Heat oil and add in red chiles. When these color, add in the mustard seeds. When these pop, add in the curry leaves. Pour this tempering into you pot of chutney. Fold it in.

Allow the chutney to cool, then transfer to a jar or tupperware for storage.

Sprouted Mung Bean Salad

2009-08-23T03:36:00.001-05:00

For this salad you have to know how to sprout mung beans. I found this video at the wonderful site Show Me the Curry (I love this site...they have loads of great recipes!!!) which will explain to you how to do this. It is so very easy and simple, and once you know, you will become and addict of sprouted legume salads and curries. Here is one such simple salad.

You need:

3 cups sprouted mung beans

Boil water, submerge the sprouted mung beans, and branch briefly by allowing the water to return to a boil, bubble for a minute or so, and then straining the mung beans. It is okay if the skin and mung beans separate. The mung beans should still be crunchy and raw, not mushy. You've just tenderized them a bit so that they will be easier on the ole digestive system.

You will mix the sprouted mung beans with any medley of colorful vegetables and/or fruit. In the pic above I used blanched baby corn chopped into small rounds, cherry tomatoes halves, chopped carrots, and fresh pomegranite seeds. This is what I had in the fridge that day, so that is what went it. Use about 1/4 cup or so of each ingredient.

I have also used: chopped jalapenos, dried soaked pomegranite seeds, chopped apples, chopped bell peppers, chopped cucumbers, peanuts, chopped blanched water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, walnuts, the list could go on and on. Whatever you throw in should create a crunchy combo of color and flavor. I usually add in some basic salad type veggies, plus something tangy and sour like the green apple or pomegranite.

For the dressing:

1 very small tooth of garlic crushed
1 pinch coursely ground black pepper
1 pinch of salt (taste for salt when you have finished combining your salad ingredients
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbs pomegranite molasses
or
1 tsp of sugar

Mix well and pour on top of your salad. Taste and adjust for salt, sugar or what have you (some lemons are more sour than others so you always have to check).

Basic mixed vegetable: Mixed sabzi

2009-08-22T03:15:00.001-05:00

The trick here is that in this dish, the veggies steam on a bed of onion, garlic, and ginger. There is no stirring involved. Let me explain.

Ingredients:

3 tbs oil

1 tsp whole cumin seeds

1 onion chopped finely

1 tbs ginger paste

1 tbs garlic paste

1 tsp green chile paste or finely chopped green chiles

2-3 small potatoes cut into wedges. I don't peel but desis tend to prefer peeled.

1 carrot peeled and chopped into bite sized pieces

1 cup green beans cleaned and chopped into one inch pieces, such as french beans, gawaar beans, sem, phalian, a mix, or as you like

1 medium head of cauliflower, florets prepared for cooking

1/2 cup fresh tomato roughly pureed (1 large or two small tomatoes roughly blitzed in chopper)

1 heaping tsp salt or to taste

1 tsp mango powder (amchoor)

1 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp or more red chile powder

1 tbs cumin powder

1 tsp coriander powder

1 heaping tsp of any good curry powder or Kitchen King Masala that you like

1 tbs dried fenugreek leaves

1/4 cup frozen peas

garnish: roughly chopped fresh green chile and chopped cilantro

optional garnish: toasted sesame seeds

Heat oil in deep pot (must have a lid) and add cumin seeds. When they sizzle, add in onions. Stir fry these until they become translucent. Add in ginger garlic paste and chopped green chiles. Stir to mix well and allow to sizzle. Now add potatoes. Do not stir, add in carrots, beans, and then cauliflower, each one in a layer roughly on top of each other in the pot. Pour in the tomato puree all around the sides of the pot. Now add the salt, mango powder, red chile powder, turmeric powder, cumin powder, and coriander powder. Be sure to distribute these spices and the salt pretty evenly over the top layer of veggies. The heat should still be high at this point. Cover the pot, turn down the heat to medium, and keep covered for 25 minutes or so. Test a potato by sticking a fork in it and when it is done, all the veg will be done. Notice that you haven't stirred the veggies at all yet. The onion ginger garlic paste mixture had acted as a beg to the rest of the vegetables, and it slowely caramelizes below them on the medium flame. The tomato puree acts as a flavor agent but also provides moisture so the edges of the bottom of the pot doesn't burn. The moisture within the vegetables themselves also aids the steaming process. It is so simple and easy, no stirring and "bhunofying" until your arm falls off. Turn off the heat. Now add the green peas, curry powder, and dried fenugreek leaves. Keep the lid on for 5 more minutes to allow the peas to steam. Now keep the lid a jar on top of the pot for about 5 more minutes to let everything settle. It is now time to mix everything. Mix and stir well. Add the garnishes. Serve with hot rice and chapattis. Above pic is without garnishes added.

I learned a version of this dish from my excellent cooking teacher, Gehana (see her blog linked in the side bar). She also adds whipped yoghurt and has a few other options. This is a Sindhi style "seyel bhaji" and the no-stir technique is special to that region. Her version is the best, I have just simplified it a bit to be a no-brainer, extra simple home style vegetable dish.

Black Peppercorn Karhai Chicken

2009-08-22T03:02:00.002-05:00

This dish has very few spices in it. It is a good dish to serve at a mixed desi and non-desi party because it is not red chile-heat hot, though it is loaded with rich flavor and some heat from the deep fried crushed black peppercorns that lace it. It also contains fresh slit green chiles added in the last few minutes of cooking for a bit more heat and flavor. I have no idea if what I present here is authentic or not, but the original black peppercorn karhai chicken is an Afghan/Northern Areas dish. However, I can assure you that this dish is tasty, authentic or otherwise.

Ingredients:

1 heaping tsp black peppercorns

1/4 cup or so oil

1 chicken skinned, bone-in, cut into 8 pieces

1 tbs garlic paste

1tbs ginger paste

3/4 cup whipped yoghurt

salt to taste

5 large sized fresh green chiles (like jalapeno or very small pakora mirch), slit open

Heat oil in a vessel and add black peppercorns. Allow them to sizzle for a few moments. Strain oil and keep aside. Lay black peppercorns on a paper towel to cook and to remove excess oil. When these are cool, crush them coursely. I do this in a coffee grinder. Keep aside a few whole pieces, too. Set your coursely ground black peppercorns aside. In the same oil that you used to fry the peppercorns, brown the chicken. When the chicken looks nicely colored, add in the ginger and garlic and toss with the chicken until the ginger garlic paste is golden. Lower heat a bit and add in the whipped yoghurt and salt (lower the heat to prevent yoghurt from curdling). Allow the yoghurt to come to a gentle boil, then cover your pan and cook on low heat until chicken is done. When the chicken is cooked, turn up the heat for a moment and toss in the slit green chiles and black peppercorns. Gently stir fry to blend the chiles and pepper, and also to remove excess moisture from the yoghurt and chicken. You should end up with a semi-dry gravy, just barely clinging to the chicken pieces. Serve with roti or naan. This dish goes well with a rich, spicy red meat dish or a tomato based vegetable curry, since it's flavors are mild in contrast.

Krazy for karhai?
For 'original' Landi Kotal Shinwari karhai, see here.
For an adaptation of my mother in law's karhai recipe, see here.

Trying to keep it light? Try chicken chappli kababs

2009-06-04T14:32:00.000-05:00

Authentic chappli kababs are made with beef or mutton, are full of extra fat mixed into the ground meat, and are shallow fried in large flat "chappal" sized pieces. I do these ground chicken chappli kababs in a patty shape and freeze them to take out for when I don't feel like cooking, or to serve guests.

1 lbs ground chicken

3 tbs chickpea flour (aka besan)

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp red chile flakes

1 tsp whole coriander pods (roast in dry pan to toast for one moment)

1 tbs dried pomegranite seeds

2 finely chopped spring onions

1 tsp garlic paste

1 tsp ginger paste

1 chopped tomato (try to keep out the wet pulp of the tomato, if the mince meat mixture gets too wet, just add a tad more ground chickpea flour)

1-2 chopped green chiles

1 cup cilantro finely chopped

1 tsp ghee or butter (as an alternative to the hunk of dumbey ki charbi !fat of the long earred lamb's tail! that would be in your real Peshawari kabab mixture!!!)

salt to taste.

Mix all of these ingredients together. Allow the mixture to sit for about 30 minutes to bind. Shape into patties and shallow fry in a tiny drop of oil. For a party you could press a slice of tomato into each patty and give it a flatter, more irregular shape like an authentic chappli kabab.

Qabuli Pullao

2009-06-04T14:29:00.001-05:00

I have adapted this recipe from my in-law's family recipe served every eid. The recipe looks complicated, sorry if it is difficult to read...I promise you that it is extremely easy to cook, though.

This dish is simple but has several steps. The first couple of steps can be done a day ahead of serving. You can actually make the whole gravy a day ahead and add it to the rice the next day, as well.

1 chicken skinned, bone-in, and cut into small-medium pieces
1/2 cup channa daal
3-4 onions
2.5 heaping table spoons garam masala
1 heaping tsp red chile powder
3-4 whole dried red chiles
15 aloo bukharay
1/4 cup water
salt to taste
3 tbs oil
3 cups basmati rice
1 tbs ghee or butter
some whole garam masale: 3 bay leaves, 10 black pepper corns, 5 cloves, 5 green cardamom, 2 big black cardamom, 1-2 shards of cinnamon bark, 1 tsp fennel seeds, 1 tsp cumin seeds

The daal: soak 1/2 cup channa daal for one hour. Boil water with daal a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then keep on a low flame for 20 minutes. Strain from water. You should have just tender whole channa daal. Keep aside.

The tali hui pyaaz: Thinly slice 3 onions and fry until gold. Strain from oil and grind (crush or put in a grinder). Mix 1/2 of the ground fried onion with 1 tsp garam masala and keep aside.

The aloo bukharay: soak in water for about 10 minutes before adding them into the gravy. Strain before you add them into the gravy.

Now to make the gravy:

Heat oil and brown the chicken pieces to seal in the juices. When the chicken looks browned, add in the remaining ground fried onion, the red chile powder, whole red chiles, the remaining garam masala, and salt to taste---be slightly heavy handed with the salting because you will later add the channa daal to this gravy. Stir for a moment and then add the aloo bukharay. Stir again, add 1/4 cup water, allow this to come to a boil, cover and cook until the chicken is done. When it is done and still hot, mix in the whole cooked channa daal. Close the lid and let it sit for at least 5 minutes to allow the channa daal to soak up the gravy flavors. The aloo bukharay should have disintegrated only very slightly, but should for the most part remain whole so that those who consume your dish get one or two in the mouth as they eat. Gori wives, if you serve this to non-desis who have never eaten an aloo bukhara (pity the souls), remember to tell them to not eat the seed! Okay, your gravy is done. You could keep this in the fridge overnight or add it to the rice right away, as suits your needs.

Dum dad dum dum dum: The rice (this works for any biriani rice and is called the "dum" method):

Soak the rice for 1/2 hour. In the mean while boil a pot of water with the whole garam masalas. Allow to boil for 10 minutes to extract the garam masala flavor. I cheat sometimes and nuke the water with the whole garam masalas in the microwave on high for 4-5 minutes to get out all that garam masala flavor. Strain the water, keep the garam masalay to the side, return the water to a pot, and allow it to return to the boil. You may add in a few of the strained garam masalay such as the bay leaves, cinnamon, and cardamom into the water for looks. Or keep it out if you want and just throw the strained garam masalay away. You should salt the water double the amount you normally would for 3 cups of boiled rice because you will par-boil the rice al dente like pasta, and throw away the water, so the rice will be bland if it doesn't absorb enough salt.

Okay, now that your garam masala seasoned water is boiling, strain the soaking rice and add it to the boiling water. Keep the colander ready in the sink. Allow the water to return to a boil and let it boil away for 3.5 minutes. Watch the beautiful basmati. kernels lengthen. Now strain the rice. Quickly add 1 tbs ghee or butter to the bottom of a deep pot. Keep the ground onion and garam masala mixture on hand. Add in the strained rice, sprinkling it with the fried onion and garam masala mixture, then a layer of rice, then more onion garam masala mixture. Turn up the flame to high and cover the pot. After two minutes of high flame, put the flame to the lowest possible point and cook the pot of rice for 20 minutes. Turn off the flame. Allow the rice to rest for about 10 minutes before you mess with it further to avoid the kernels breaking.

For a party you can put the rice in a large platter and spread the chicken gravy on top of it. Alternatively you can layer the rice and chicken gravy like a biriani (as shown in the pic). It is up to you.

I hope you enjoy!

I love karela: Bittergourd stuffed with its own peelings

2009-06-04T14:21:00.000-05:00

Karela, our bitter gourd, is an acquired taste. I suppose I have acquired the taste. Here is a recipe for bitter gourd which is shaved and stuffed with its own peelings. It is a good recipe for any time, but it is also a good party dish because it looks interesting and impressive.

Select smallish dark green bitter gourds for your cooking. This recipe is for 5 bitter gourds.

First, you need to prepare the bitter gourds. With a potato peeler, peel off all of the outer layer of dark green bumps. Shred any large peelings with your fingers. Add salt to water and submerge the bumbs in the salted water for a few minutes. Strain and set aside.

Make a length wise slit in your bitter gourds. If you have long ones, it is okay to cut them in half as well. Stick in your thumb or the a vegetable coring instrument and gouge out the innards and yellow seeds. Karela can take a licking and keep on kicking, so you don't have to be gentle while removing the innards.

Add 1tbs turmeric and 1 tbs salt to a deep bowl and fill the bowl with water. Submerge the peeled, gouged karelas in this water and allow to sit for at least 20 minutes. In the meanwhile, you will prepare the peel stuffing.

Ingredients:

About 1 cup of bitter gourd shavings

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 small onion chopped very finely

combination of garlic, ginger, and green chile pastes, adding up to about 1 heaping tea spoon all together

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp red chile powder or less to taste

1/2 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp cumin powder

1/2 tsp coriander powder

1 heaping tsp amchoor (dried mango powder)

salt to taste

one squeeze of lime

1 tbs oil or less

**Since bitter gourds vary in size, you will invariably need to adjust the seasonings based on the length and circumference of the karelas that you have at hand.

Heat oil in a wok or frying pan. Add in cumin seeds and allow to sizzle. Add finely chopped onions to pan and allow them to cook on high heat until the are almost fully caramelized brown. Add in the ginger garlic chile paste. Allow to color. Add in bitter gourd peelings. Stir around for a moment, and add in the masalas. Stir and cooking for about 10 minutes on medium heat until all of the moisture has evaporated and bitter gourd peelings are fully cooked. Now salt: add a sprinkle of salt based on the amount of bitter gourd you have now after it has reduced in size and lost moisture. Don't over salt. Turn of the heat and add in the squeeze of lime juice. You have a hot, sour, bitter stuffing that should be browned in a way that it resembles beef/mutton ground meat (qeema). Set this aside and allow to cool.

Strain the skinless bitter gourds. Try to squeeze extra water out of them, washing them a few more times. Don't be afraid to squeeze. Remember that this is a tough little vegetable. Allow to air dry well before stuffing.

Now stuff each bitter gourd with fillings. You may also wrap a thread around each bitter gourd, winding it around the cylidrical body. This will prevent the stuffing from falling out as you Pan fry them later. However, I have done it both ways, wrapped and unwrapped, and even with bitter gourd that I cut in half because they were very long. I stir fried gently and no stuffing fell out. If you choose to wrap with thread, of course remember to remove the thread before serving :-)

Heat oil in a flat frying pan that has a lid. It should just be a light glazing of oil in the pan. When the pan is hot, add the stuffed karelas. Fry them as you would a sausage or hot dog, allowing them to spend time on each side for a few minutes in order to caramelize and color with nice golden brown blisters. While the karelas sit in the pan coloring, you should cover the pan with the lid in between turnings so that they steam a bit and cook through. When all sides have colored, keep them in the pan for a few moments more to make sure that all of the moisture has evaporated and that they are very slightly crispy. You can actually freeze them and heat them up gently for a party some other time, or prepare in the morning and re-heat at night. You would let them come to room temperature and then gently pan fry them again to heat through and revive the crispyness.

You may garnish with pan grilled onion rights, or deep fried garlic slices. In the pic above, I added some orange food coloring (biriani rangi powder) to garlic slivers, deep fried them till crisp, and then drained them on a paper towel. I added them as a garnish before serving the karela at the table.

Dastarkhwaan e Hyderabaad: Mirch ka saalan

2009-02-13T12:11:00.003-06:00

Saalan simply means a wet gravy, a "curry," if you will. The word saalan is mainly used in Muslim Indo-Pak cooking, despite it being a Sanskrit origin word. (Non-Muslim Hindi speakers are more apt to use the word tari or rassa) However, mirch ka saalan has gained fame across India and in Pakistan as well, though it is a speciality of the South Indian city of Hyderabad.

I find this dish a very cumbersome to cook because you have to "bhunofy" the gravy for a long time to get the best taste. You also have to lightly fry the peppers separately. And you have to prepare the tamarind water. Tamarind water is made simply by soaking a 3 inch chunk of tamarind pulp in about a cup of warm water for an hour, then straining out the seeds and fibers and reserving the remaining water. You should also have bhuni hui pyaaz (reddish-brown fried onions) done and set aside. Plus you have to roast the sesame seeds and peanuts by stirring them around for a few minutes in a hot pan until they get a little color, then allow them to cool before grinding. Oh, and you should have fresh shredded coconut on hand (I buy it at the desi grocer and keep it in the freezer). So you see, this is not a dish to cook on a whim. But if you prepare for it, it is a delicious, rich, and luxurious dish. I made mine with a dryer gravy, but you can also make it more liquidy if you like. A liquid gravy is more traditional, and I have had this dish in Hyderabadi homes containing whole or chopped mirch, and even the addition of a few other vegetables in the saalan. You can use any kind of larger, "sweet" chile pepper, (try the Hatch Chile in late summer in the USA) but in desparation, you may substitute bell pepper. Although this deviates from the traditional mirch ka saalan, I have also seen this dish served with the chiles stuffed with seasoned paneer as sort of a modern and fancy touch. So there is some leeway for variation with this dish.

You need:
8-10 large green chile peppers
1 caramelized onion
1/4 cup white sesame seeds pan toasted
1/4 cup peanuts pan toasted
3 tbs fresh shredded coconut
1 tsp red chile powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tbs garlic ginger paste
1/2 cup yoghurt
1 cup water
1/2 cup tamarind water
1 tsp salt or to taste
3 tbs oil

Garnish:
Baghaar (tempering) of 1 tbs oil plus 1 tsp mustard seeds plus pinch of red chile powder
chopped cilantro

Make a length wise slit in each chile. Lightly shallow fry in a pan just to partially cook, and set aside. Finely grind coconut, toasted sesame seeds, and toasted peanuts in a food processor. Don't over grind or you will end up with a nut butter. If need be, you will have to use a handblender to grind the saalan even finer later once the liquids have been added (that is what happens to me). Heat oil, add in the ginger garlic paste, caramelized onions, then dry spices, and allow to sizzle for a moment until the ginger garlic is cooked. Add in the coconut-sesame-peanut mixture and fry well, stirring constantly for a few minutes. Add in the yoghurt and water, and salt. Stir and fry and fry and stir and stir and fry until the mixture is dry and well "bhunofied." The oil will separate from the gravy and float to the top when the gravy is done. Add more water as needed. My gravy looked lumpy from just blitzing in the chopper, so I also use my hand held blender and make the gravy texture even finer as it finished. When the gravy is done, add in the tamarind water and fry for just a few more moments. You can add more or less water for a thicker or runnier gravy. Now add in the peppers, stir around gently, and cover for about 5 minutes on low heat to finish their cooking. To serve, put in a platter. For the final baghaar: Heat 1 tbs oil then add mustard seeds. When they begin to pop, turn off the flame and quickly add in the red chile powder and immediately pour a top the mirch ka saalan (so as not to blacken the chile powder). Add the chopped cilantro.

Phew, that was a heck of a lot of trouble and now my arm is tired from the stirring and bhunofying. But dang that is good stuff. How can you go wrong with peanuts, sesame, and coconut? Serve with hot naan!

Chicken dopiaaza: Chicken cooked in onion gravy

2009-02-13T11:48:00.001-06:00

This dish is also called istew and istew dopyaaza. Dopiaaza is a reference to the fact that the dish incorporates bothe sauteed onions and caramelized (bhuna) onions into the gravy. My recipe was passed along to me by my mother in-law. As she is from U.P. originally, this recipe is yoghurt based and doesn't contain tomatoes. It requires whole garam masala (khara masala), as well as powdered garam masala. I keep fried onions ready in my freezer. You can also buy them ready fried at any desi grocer. The sauteed onions are easy to do, but these days you can also get packets of ready sauteed onions at the desi grocer. I also keep pre-ground ginger/garlic paste on hand in the fridge. These ready done items make this dish easy to make, but it is quite easy even if you start from scratch.

You will need:

1 chicken skinned and chopped into botees (bone in)
1 onion chopped finely for sauteeing
1 onion sliced from brown frying (or just use pre-fried bhuni hui pyaaz)
2 tsp ginger paste
2 tsp garlic paste
1 heaping tsp kashmiri chile powder
1 heaping tsp garam masala powder
1/2 cups yoghurt
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
2-3 tbs sunflower oil

Khara Masala:
1 cinnamon stick
1-2 bay leaves
5 peppercorns
5 cloves
5 green cardamon pods
1-2 large black cardamon pods
1 tsp cumin seeds

Mix all powdered masalas plus 1 tsp of ginger and 1 tsp of garlic paste into the yoghurt and set aside. Pre-fry sliced onions and set aside. Heat oil in pan. Add in khara masala and fry for a few moments. Add in chopped onions and sautee until the are clear. Add in the rest of the ginger and garlic paste and fry for a few minutes. Stir in the caramelized onions and chicken. Stir around until chicken is browned. Add in yoghurt-masala mixture and salt, plus 1/2 cup water. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat. Cook for about 25 minutes or so until chicken is done (chicken available where I live cooks very fast...it might take yours longer). The dish is ready to enjoy. Serve with basmati rice and/ or naan.

*Tips: I buy a bad of whole mixed garam masala and pick out the ones I need as pictured above, rather than buying individual quantities of each masala. Life is just easier that way.

An alternative style is to add finely chopped tomatoes and allow the water to evaporate from them when the finely chopped onions have melted down a bit and before you add the chicken to bhunofy. I have tried both ways, and both are equally delicious.

Kashmiri Style Ribs: Tabak Maaz

2009-02-13T11:29:00.003-06:00

I have adapted the recipe from an old magazine clipping. The hing, ginger powder, fennel, and of course Kashmiri chile powder give the gravy a Kashmiri touch. This is a great party dish. It is tasty as well as easy. You can make it in a dry velvety clinging sauce (pic 1) by drying up the moisture in the gravy, or serve it in a more liquidy sauce (pic 2), as per your preference. You could also serve the wetter gravy as a dipping sauce on the side.

1 lbs lamb or goat chops (mutton chops or champein!)
1 cup yoghurt
1 heaping tsp ginger powder
1 tsp freshly ground fennel seeds
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp Chinese Five Spice Powder
1/8 tsp (pinch of) hing/asofetida
1 heaping tsp kashmiri chile powder
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp or so salt (to taste)
1 cup water
3 tbs sunflower oil for braising
1/4 cup sunflower oil for pan frying

Blend all of the spices and into the yoghurt. Marinate ribs in yoghurt for a few hours or overnight. Heat 3 tbs oil in a pot and then add ribs. Add in salt now. Braise for a few minutes on medium heat until the oil separates from the gravy. Take care not to allow the yoghurt to curdle by keeping the heat controlled. Add in one cup water or so to cover the ribs, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer on very low heat for about 1 to 1 and a half hours until ribs are nice and tender. Remove ribs and set on plate to cool completely. Keep the gravy aside. At this stage you can boil off excess water from the gravy to thicken it. Now heat the rest of the oil in a flat frying pan. Brown ribs in the frying pan by frying on each side. Serve on a flat plate and pour the remaining gravy on top of the ribs. If you do this for a party, you can wrap the end of the bones in foil.

This is a great go-to party dish and believe me people will suck the goat ribs dry!

Dal Makhani

2009-01-10T23:57:00.000-06:00

To prepare the daal:

Prepare black uraad daal (1 cup) and rajma/kidney beans/red chawli beans (1/4 cup) by soaking them together overnight. Throw away the soaking liquid, then add to a pot in about 10 cups of water and boil, reduce heat, and simmer on a low flame for about 4 hours until nicely tender. Check occasionally to see if you need to add more water. When the lentils are tender, continue to simmer on low for another hour or so, this time mashing and breaking up the beans as the water slowly evaporates, leaving a creamed bean texture. You can also prepare the lentils a pressure cooker. I prefer this way because it reduces the simmering time to only about 15 minutes. You will still have to spend some time boiling away the excess water and mashing to achieve the best texture, though. For the pressure cooker, you should have about 8 whistles (use about 10 cups water) to ensure the rajma is cooked. Salt the daal to taste after it is cooked if you do it in a pot, but add salt to the water before cooking if you do the pressure cooker. When 8 whistles occur, lower the heat for about 5 minutes. Turn off the flame, release the pressure cooker's clasp, and allow the lid to fall in. Then you will still have some mashing to do to reduce the liquid and allow the creamy texture to develope. Mash the daal with the back of a spoon.

Now you need to make a wet masala melt:
2-3 tbs any veg. oil
2 onions chopped finely
2 tsp garlic ginger paste

1 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp red chile powder (or more to taste)
1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp coriander powder

1 heaping tsp garam masala
3 tomatoes chopped finely, or pureed if you prefer

1/2 tsp salt

To finish off the dish:
pinch of garam masala powder
3/4 cup whole milk

3/4 cup Arabic labna
1 heaping tbs or more of butter

Garnish:
chopped cilantro
chopped green chiles, deseed if you want

a tsp of cream to garnish (completely optional)

First heat oil. Add in onions, stir on high heat for a few minutes, then lower the heat and cook until they look translucent but golden (well sauteed) and have lost a lot of moisture, now add in garlic/ginger paste, still on medium heat, and stir until this is all golden brown and cooked, turn up the heat, add in the turmeric, red chile, cumin, and coriander powder, and the garam masala---allow this to sizzle for a moment---all of the steps from the time you turn up the heat should happen in a quick sequence so as not to burn any of the spices or garlic/ginger. Now quickly add in the tomatoes and salt, and cook until all the moisture has evaporated from the tomatoes (this could take 8-10 minutes, less if you use pureed tomatoes) and the oil floats above the masala. You may pour off the oil that rises to the top of this masala to reduce calories, since you will be adding butter later. Now pour this tomato based masala into the pot of pre-made daal, stir in the pinch of garam masala and taste for any extra salt needed, bring to a boil, then cook on low heat, covered for 5 minutes more just to let the flavors blend together nicely. Now it is done. To finish it off and make it "makhani" or buttered, add in the pinch of garam masala, the milk, and the butter at the last minute for the buttery perfume taste. Now garnish with your "green masala" or cilantro and chilies, serve with hot chappatis or white rice. Yum! A trip to Panjab right in your kitchen!

Okra/Lady Finger/Bhindi Fry: A great accompanyment to any meal

2008-12-29T05:39:00.000-06:00

This is so easy. All you have to do is wash your okra, let it dry well, and then cut it into little nickel sized slices. Chop chop chop! This is the most time consuming part. Then you fry it on high heat until it is crispy and a little browned. Set the fried bhindi on a paper towel to remove excess oil. Then you have a snack, side dish, or garnish. You can keep these fried okra chips in an air tight container, unrefridgerated, for up to a week. When you are ready to serve them, season with salt, chaat masala, and a dash of lemon juice. The okra becomes a chutney type side dish with any meal. You can also garnish daal with it, or just eat it with a spoon as a snack!

Desi style Daikon Radish Cooked in its own leaves (Mooli ki sabzi)

2008-12-27T07:05:00.001-06:00

Daikon Radish is known as mooli in Hindi and Urdu. Mooli is available year round, but its taste is best in the winter when it is less bitter and almost sweet. It is an integral part of the "Punjabi salaad," which is a simply a plate set with an assortment of raw chopped vegetables such as carrots, tomatoes, onions, mooli, cucumber, beetroot, romaine lettuce leaves, lemon wedges, and/or whatever else suits your fancy. It can be left plain, or garnished with lemon juice, salt, black pepper, and chaat masala. Mooli is also used in pickle making. But mooli is not just an accompanyment to a meal. It can be a meal itself. Here is a recipe for mooli cooked in its own leaves, mooli ke patte or mooli saag. You know saag paneer? Saag means greens, paneer is cheese. Saag comes in many varieties, paalak (spinach), sarson (mustard), and so forth. You can use the recipe below for any saag, actually. Instead of radish, with paalak you could add potatoes or paneer, or even pre-browned pieces of meat for paalak chicken or gosht. If you decide to use meat, stir in 1 tsp garam masala at the end of preparation of the dish. With a vegetarian dish, you could optionally add yoghurt, milk, or cream to achieve a restaurant style creamy effect. Another variation is to puree the greens in the blender. So many options with such a simple and delicious family of vegetable, leafy greens!

First, you should peel your daikon radish with a potato peeler. Slice it into circles about as thick as two quarters stacked together. If you have a particularly fat radish, you can cut the larger slices into semi-circles. Set these aside. No chop your radish leaves, stems and all, into fine shreds. I prefer to chop, then wash. Wash your leaves really really well, because you don't want to end up with a gritty texture to your dish from leftover dirt and sand. Set your washed radish and leaves aside, but still dripping wet from the wash. This will provide the moisture for steaming them during the cooking process.

Ingredients:

one radish and two bunches chopped radish leaves, all prepared as described above

2 tbs oil

1 tsp whole cumin seeds

1 small onion finely chopped

1 heaping tsp garlic paste

1 tsp ginger paste

1/2 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp red chili powder

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tomato, chopped (skin if you like, but I am not that fussy)

salt to taste

fresh cilantro chopped

fresh green chilies chopped

1 tbs butter

Your pot must have a lid. Heat oil in pot. Add in cumin seeds and onions. Let onions cook until translucent. Add in your ginger/garlic and allow to brown, then stir in powdered spices and allow to sizzle. Quickly add tomatoes and stir until they melt down. Now add in ALL of your greens and radish slices, and cover the pot. Don't worry, the moisture on the greens will prevent the masala from burning. Keep the lid on for a minute, then lift the lid. The greens will have melted down. Mix well with the masala. Now that you can see the amount of finished post-melted greens you have, you can add salt to taste. Add a tiny bit of water if it looks dry. Allow to bubble up on high heat, then cover and turn the heat on low. Cook covered for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until the greens and radish are done. Turn off the heat. Stir in the butter, cilantro, and fresh chilies. Serve with flat bread or rice!

Baingan Bharta

2008-12-24T04:43:00.001-06:00

For this, you need to roast two large sized eggplants. You can do this by putting them in the oven on highest heat wrapped in foil for about 45 minutes. You can also paint them with oil, and roast them over a gas stove flame, turning them as they blacken. Once they seem mushy, allow them to cool, peel them, and set aside the flesh. A little bit of charred skin adds a nice smoky flavor note in this dish, so don't worry if there is some skin mixed with the flesh. Also, save the stems as a garnish, and also to suck on for the lucky people who get them.

Ingredients:

Two large eggplants, cooked as instructed above.

2 medium onions, chopped finely

3 tomatoes, chopped into small chunks

1 heaping tsp crushed garlic

1 tsp crushed ginger

1 tsp whole cumin seeds

1/2 tsp red chile powder

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp garam masala powder

handful of fresh cilantro, chopped finely

2-3 green chilies, chopped roughly

3 tbs oil

salt to taste

While your eggplants are cooking, make a Masala Melt (see post below). Start by frying in oil the cumin seeds and chopped onions on high heat, then turn down the heat and cook until they are nicely sauteed and clear. Add in the ginger and garlic, allow to cook through, then turn up the flame and add the red chile powder, ground cumin, and ground coriander. Once the spices sizzle, toss in the tomatoes. Once the tomatoes have melted down and the oil has separated from the masala, you are done. Now mix in the eggplant flesh (stems, too). If by chance when you peeled the eggplant there were some uncooked parts deep inside, you can cook everything for a few minutes in the masala paste to cook them through. I usually add salt once I see how much eggplant flesh I have because you might have more or less depending on whether or not you had a lot of seeds in the eggplant. Some seeds are okay, but if you had a lot of seeds, you should toss that part out. Add salt now, mix well, and then mix in your green masalas (cilantro and chilies), and the garam masala. Stick the eggplant stems on top as a garnish. If you have an eggplant shaped serving dish, even cuter!

Melting the masala

2008-12-24T04:17:00.001-06:00

Let’s look at how to make the basic tomato-onion masala that forms the flavor base of a wide range of North Indian/Southern Pakistani dishes, especially Panjabi dishes. I call this making the ‘Masala Melt.’ This is when you take wet aromatic ingredients such as onions, ginger, garlic, green chiles, and tomatoes, and you fry them for a long time until the moisture evaporates from them and the oil separates from the ingredients. Dry masalas such as whole and/or powdered spices are usually added to the Masala Melt. We don’t have anything equivalent to this in American cooking. Cooking onions this way goes far beyond our more common technique of caramelization. But this technique is integral in producing authentic North Indian dishes. So, how do you make a Masala Melt? Start with finely chopped onions. Depending on the recipe, you may have to fry whole spices (khara or sabut masala) along with your onions. Add these to oil in a deep pot on high heat. When the onions have lost a bit of moisture, turn down the heat and saute them for a while until they are translucent, very soft, and almost falling apart, but not browning. If they are browning, you need to lower the flame. They shouldn’t start to brown too early or your onions will burn before the process is done. When the onions start to turn golden in color, you can add in your ginger, garlic, and chile pastes. Let this cook until the garlic and ginger are golden, too. By now, everything should be crispy looking and your onions should have taken on a reddish brown color. This indicates that all of the moisture has evaporated from them and they are properly fried. Now, turn up the heat and add in any powdered spices required for your recipe. Immediately after tossing in the spices, and before anything starts to burn, add in the tomatoes. The tomatoes should be chopped into fairly small chunks or roughly pureed in a food processor. You may also add salt at this point. Continue to fry the masala on high heat, stirring frequently until the tomatoes have ‘melted’ into a thick paste. The oil should rise to the top of the masala paste, and this masala paste should be slightly sticking to the pan. You now have a Masala Melt. The fried onions should have completely broken down in your Masala Melt and should no longer be visible. With some recipes, such as Rajma, Daal Makhani, Chola Masala, or some other lentil dishes, you will pour the Masala Melt into a pot of pre-cooked lentils. For some dishes, like Baingan Bharta, you will add cooked eggplant to the Masala Melt. You can also add various types of meat and use your Masala Melt as the base of a curry.

Tonight we are gonna do it Madras style

2008-11-19T04:47:00.000-06:00

Tonite we are doing it Madras style. It is uttapam, sambhar, and coconut chutney. My husband isn't too much into this kind of thing...but too bad for him! I only serve it every once in a while. Since it seems novel, he appreciates it.

The recipe below isn't really helpful unless you have access to ready made dosa/idli/uttapam batter. I am just sharing because it is a favorite meal of mine, plus I feel accomplished for serving it even though I buy a ready-made batter.

For the uttapam: I buy Saravana Bhavan's ready made dosa/idli/uttapam batter from Lulu Hypermarket. Just pour into a hot pan like a pancake and top with chopped onions, chopped green chilies, cilantro, ground coconut, and a few slices of tomatoes. Making dosa batter from scratch would be above my level of cooking skills, though I have been told it is very easy. I have used the boxed Gitz dosa mix before, but I don't recommend it.

For the sambhar: boil toor/arhar ki daal. When it is done, add in a medley of vegetables of your choice, plus some garlic, ginger, and onions chopped. To be true to a sambhar recipe, I recommend tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, eggplant, drumstick vegetable, pearl onions, green beans, and some type of pumpkin. (I buy a packet of pre-cut up mixed veggies called "sambhar vegetables" from Lulu Hypermarket) and cook them till tender, add in about a cup of tamarind water, add in sambhar masala to taste---about 2 tbs (I use Eastern Brand), salt, and a tempering of mustard seeds and dried red chilies, and curry leaves.

For the coconut chutney: in a blender blitz 1 cup fresh ground coconut flesh, 3 chopped green chilies, 1tsp ginger, and some water, and salt to taste, stir in lemon juice, temper with a few curry leaves, 2-3 dried red chilies, a pinch of mustard seeds, and a pinch of unsoaked uraad daal.

Still so much to learn

2008-11-13T07:44:00.000-06:00

Whenever my mother in-law comes to visit, I am always in awe of how much more I have to learn about desi cooking. My MIL came to our house for the birth of my second daughter to snuggle the new baby and also to help out with the cooking and all. This time she made a delicious chicken dopyaaza "istew" twice. I really liked it. She wrote down the recipe for me, but I am going to cook it myself and try it out before I post it.

Today our housekeeper made khatti daal and I made bhuna gosht (recipe here on blog). We are going to have it with white rice and brown Arabic flatbread. We will also have a "Punjabi salaad," which is what the housekeeper calls a plate of sliced salad vegetables such as cucumbers, daikon radish (mooli), carrots, and tomatos. I like to sprinkle this with some lemon juice and a dash of chaat masala, but my husband prefers it plain. Plus I am lazy. So I usually serve it plain. With a daal, I usually put a chutney or two on the table. Tonight it is a Lebanese chili chutney from the local grocery deli, and some Mitchell's brand mango kasaundi. So that is our dinner. Oh, and there is some left over soya ki sabzi, which in this case is dill cooked with potatoes in a dry masala. The housekeeper made it yesterday.

My MIL tells me that people from her region in U.P./Lucknow usually serve one or two dishes, but set the table with a large variety of chutneys to eat with rice or take a nibble of while eating the main dishes. This is a good idea because it makes the table spread seem more abundant even when you have only cooked the bare minimum of dishes. She says that when she moved to Punjab after her marriage, her Punjabi neighbor would tease her by saying that all she served was chutneys and raitas. I happen to like the idea and I copy it myself.

Do you know what daal is?

2008-10-22T05:43:00.001-05:00

My exposure to South Asian food before I become a Muslim was limited to occasional family dinners at the local Star of India Palace type place. I knew NOTHING about South Asian food. I learnt a lot about South Asian cooking after marriage. I think when you are female and in an intermarriage, you get a lot of pressure to learn the cooking of your husband's background. Luckily, my husband eats a lot of different stuff from all over. And luckily I happen to love Pakistani food. So we eat a good variety of international dishes at home. But I have non-Pakistani girl friends married to desi guys who will ONLY eat Pakistani food, even when they go out to restaurants. Anyway, I wanted to learn South Asian cooking because I liked all of the foods I tasted after I accepted Islam and met a lot of desi Muslims, and also after I married a South Asian origin Muslim guy. So I learned to cook desi. Is this a big shock?

Somehow, I seem to have the same conversation with Pakistani Auntie-types. Often the line of questions starts out with "Do you like Pakistani food," or more often "Can you eat spicy food?" "Yes," is my answer. "Can you cook any Pakistani dishes?" "Yes." "What dishes can you cook?" "Hmmm, a lot of them." "Can you make biriani?" "Yes." Actually, I make several types of biriani. Sometimes I get a test question: "How do you make X?" So I have to give a quick recipe for kofta or whatever. I guess I should be more understanding as to why Auntie-types might be incredulous about my cooking skills. I mean, gori cooks desi? Not so common, I guess. I am no star chef, but I am not bad either. Yet it is really hard for them to believe that a gori can cook desi.

Once I was at this dinner party and I had gone through this line of questioning with the hostess. I told her I could cook a lot of desi food. I was using food name terms in Urdu and all. Then, minutes later, she asked me if I knew what daal was. "Do you know what daal is?" She said. After I just told her that I could cook most Pakistani dishes. Sigh. "Jee nahin, daal kya hoti hai?" I mean, "Yes, I know what daal is." She proceeded to tell me that something was wrong with her paalak daal. I asked her what was wrong. "I just don't know, I think I put too much salt." I advised her to add in some lemon juice, and she could perhaps add in some potatoes to suck up the salt, and then remove them before serving the dish. She just thought I was nuts. Later, I tasted her daal. Guess what was wrong with it? She had obviously burned the bottom of the pot, the daal had a strong burnt flavor with an attempt to veil it with a heavy dose of lemon juice. Yuck. How could she not realize that this was the problem? If I were her, I wouldn't have even served that burnt dish. She had lots of other dishes set out anyhow. Anyway, I am no expert, but I just wish people would believe it when I say I can cook a fair bit of Pakistani stuff.

Is it really that hard to believe that a gori can cook desi?

Bhuni hui Pyaaz Browned Onions

2008-10-18T01:02:00.002-05:00

These browned onions, or bhuni hui pyaaz, are a key ingredient in a lot of North Indian and Pakistani dishes. Frying them fresh for each dish is time consuming. As a time-saver, I fry a large batch about once per month, store them in the freezer, and use as needed. To do this, I finely slice a whole bunch of onions. I deep fry them on high heat, then lower the heat once they have gone translucent (about 8-10 minutes). They cook on medium-low heat for about 20-25 minutes, needing occasional stirring. After that, and they become crispy fried, reddish-brown squiggles. I strain them and let them cool on some old newspaper. Then I put them in a plastic container in the freezer. When I am ready to use them, I simply pull out a handful for whatever dish. The oil prevents them from being destroyed in the freezer. I usually give them a quick sizzle in hot oil , as if they had been fried up fresh, then continue cooking whatever dish. I also grind them to add to certain types of recipes, like kofta. I don't think it compromises flavor, either. There are bags of fried onions available at desi grocery stores, but they tend to have a bitter under-taste. I use them occasionally, but I prefer my home fried onions. I also keep ginger and garlic paste on hand to use as needed. Taking these shortcuts certainly makes South Asian cooking easier and saves time.

Fish in tamarind sauce

2008-10-17T12:20:00.000-05:00

I hardly ever cook fish but I like this recipe for when I do. It is a lot of ingredients but it takes 5 minutes to cook once u set out the ingredients. This should be cooked in a large non stick wok (karhai) if you have one:

3 hand sized fish filets, deboned and cut into large chunks. I use Arabic Grouper (hammour) but u can use any firm white fish that won't fall apart when you stir fry it. hmmm, i think striped bass would work for this in the USA.

Pour 1 tbs Shan fish masala on the fish and marinate for 1 hour or so.

For the stir fry:

4 cloves thinly sliced garlic
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
1/2 tsp whole coriander seeds
1 tsp crushed garlic paste
1 tsp crushed ginger paste
mix together 1 tsp each powdered: cumin, coriander, shan fish masala, 1/2 tsp turmeric and 1/2 tsp red chili for your spice mix
5 whole dried red chiles (less for less spicy)
3 green chiles chopped (less for less spicy)
5 fresh curry leaves (you can leave this out if you want)
A few leaves of mint chopped
A handful fresh cilantro chopped
1/2 cup tamarind water (soak 1 inch square of pulp in 1 cup hot water to get this, you've gotta squeeze the pulp, then strain it
Sprinkle of salt
Pinch garam masala
1/4 cup oil

Heat oil in wok, when hot add cumin seeds and whole dried red chilis, after few seconds add coriander seeds, curry leaves then thinly sliced garlic. allow to fry for 1 minute while garlic turns golden (don't burn it though), then throw in the salt and spice mix, let sizzle. then toss in the marinated fish. stir fry gently (don't break fish apart) fish will cook very quickly, maybe four minutes. When fish is done, pour in the tamarind water, let it heat up and bubble for a moment, then turn of flame. It is done. Now add the garam masala, chopped fresh cilantro, the chopped green chilis, and the chopped mint leaves. Stir once and serve immediately. Serve with rice or flat bread.

Korean Chicken Stew: Tak Jim

2008-10-17T12:12:00.001-05:00

Here is a very simple Korean recipe that I make pretty frequently. I am addicted to Korean food, by the way.

1 tbs sugar
1 tsp Chinese/Korean sesame oil
1/4 cup Korean/Japanese soya sauce
1 tsp Blue Dragon brand Mirin (it is alcohol free)to substitute for rice wine
4 cloves garlic chopped
1 pinch black pepper
1 whole chicken, skinned and cut into medium pieces, bone-in
1 large onion, sliced into medium-thin slices
2 potatoes, peeled and quartered
1 carrot halved and cut into large longish chunks
5 Chinese black mushrooms, the dried kind that you have to soak in water to re-hydrate, soaked, de-stemmed, and cut in half. Reserve your soaking liquid.
3 tbs cooking oil
pinch of roasted sesame seeds
1 spring onion with the green part chopped in long strips

In a large bowl mix the first 6 ingredients and put in chicken. No need to marinade for long, just coat chicken well. Heat oil in large non-stick pot, add in chicken and marinade liquid, stir around on high heat until marinade separates from oil so that the chicken braises in the liquid (about 7-10 minutes). Toss in all your veggies, stir around to coat in sauce, then add in 1/4 cup mushroom soaking water. Cover and cook on low heat for about 25-30 minutes until your chicken and potatos are cooked but not falling apart. At first it will look like there is not enough water in the pot, but the chicken will release a lot of water. Also, due to the large amount of soy sauce there is no need to add salt.To serve, garnish with sesame seeds and spring onion. Serve with Korean steamed white rice, plus a selection of kimchee and ban chan (Korean side dishes).

Pasanda: Thin rump steaks stewed in seasoned yoghurt gravy

2008-10-17T11:59:00.000-05:00

My mother in-law makes these a lot when she comes to visit because quite frankly they are so easy, and they taste good. My husband likes them a lot, too. These two pasanda recipes are adapted from her original recipes.

Garam Masala Pasanda

1 lb beef rump sliced into 1 cm thick steaks (ask the desi butcher for pasanda)
(I have also made this recipe successfully with pasanda sized slices of chicken breast)
1 cups yoghurt
1 tbs good garam masala
2 heaping tbs coriander powder (pisa hua dhania)
1 tsb red chili powder
1 tsp salt or to taste
2-3 tbs oil

Pound the meat slices, stab them with a fork, beat and abuse to tenderize. Whip the masalas with the yoghurt. Add in the meat and marinate over night, or at least for a few hours so the yoghurt can tenderize the beef. Heat oil, add the meat and marinade. Cook on high heat for about 10 minutes or so until gravy separates from oil. If you are using chicken breasts, lower heat and simmer for 10 more minutes and you're done. For beef, add in about 1/2 cup water, allow to boil briefly, lower heat and simmer for 1 hour or more until beef is nice and tender. You may need to add a little more water if it gets too dry. The gravy should be thick, velvety and separate from the oil at the end.

Pasanda in Ginger Garlic Gravy

1 pound pasanda beef slices
1 cup yoghurt
1 tbs garlic paste
1 tsp ginger paste
2 tbs crushed browned onion (bhuna hua pyaaz---I fry and freeze in large quantities, you will need to fry some up, say about 1 medium onion, if you don't have them on hand)
1 tsp red chili flakes
2-3 tbs oil

Mix the yoghurt and all the masalas except the browned onion. Add in the meat. Marinate overnight. Heat oil and add in the browned onion for one moment (don't blacken, just sizzle), then pour in the marinade. Braise on high heat for 10 minutes or so, add in 1/2 cup of water, bring to a boil, turn down heat, and simmer for one hour or until meat is tender.

I also like the Shan Masala pasanda recipe. Be careful of your beef slices being too thin because they should be tender but not falling apart, and shouldn't curl. Pasanda gravy should be fairly dry , but if you want more gravy, use 1/2 cup more yoghurt. If you want to make it dryer, use 3/4 cups yoghurt instead of 1 cups and add more water in the recipe, then just dry up the water at the end of cooking. Serve with naan or basmati rice.

Bin Masala Chicken: Chicken cooked without a heavy masala

2008-10-17T11:54:00.001-05:00

Here is an extremely easy and delicious chicken "curry" recipe from Lucknow, UP. It was shown to me by my mother in-law. It is called Bin-Masala Chicken which means chicken cooked without spices--- although there are spices in the recipe, it doesn't have the usual garlic/ginger paste or caramelized onions that typify many "curries." You can do this recipe two ways: chicken is cut into pieces and cooked stove-top, or whole skinless chicken is cooked partially stove-top but finished off in the oven (pictured above). Here is what you need:

1 whole chicken, skinned and cut into medium pieces, OR one skinless whole chicken
1.5 cups real yoghurt (buy it from desi or Middle Eastern Market)
2 tbs of a good brand of "garam masala" which can be bought an Indo-Pak grocery store
small pinch each (1/4 tsp each) of nutmeg and mace (this is necessary to make it Lucknawi style)
1/2 tsp of Kashmiri chili powder or paprika if you don't like heat
2-3 tbs oil
salt to taste

Fully Stove-Top with Chicken Pieces: First whip the spices and salt into the yoghurt. Add chicken pieces and marinade at least one hour or up to 24 hours. Heat oil in pot, add chicken with marinade and stir on medium heat until the oil separates from the yoghurt (+/-10 mins). Turn heat down very low and cook until the chicken is fully cooked. (around 30-40 minutes depending on how fast chicken cooks where you live, where I am it is very tender and cooks very fast and will fall apart if cooked for more than 30 minutes) When finished, the gravy should be slightly thick. If it is not, remove chicken pieces from gravy, turn up heat and stir for a few minutes till it thickens, then return the chicken to the gravy and serve immediately. You must remove the chicken or it will break apart--the yoghurt marinade makes it extra tender and sensitive also.

Whole Skinned Chicken: Whip powdered spices, salt and yoghurt together in a large bowl. Add the whole skinless chicken to marinade. Allow to marinade from 1 hour up to 24 hours. Heat oil in pot. Add in chicken and marinade at medium heat and cook, stirring around gently until the yoghurt is cooked and the oil rises to the top of the gravy. Once the oil has risen to the top of the gravy, lay the chicken on one side, breast and thigh piece down, and cook covered at a simmer for 12 minutes. After 12 minutes, turn the chicken so that the other breast and leg are at the bottom of the pot and cook covered for another 12 minutes. Stir in a little bit of water if the gravy looks dry. After the 12 minutes is up, turn the chicken so that the breast side is down and cook off for a final 12 minutes, adding a tiny bit of water if necessary. This rotation method insures that the thigh-leg pieces stay in a good shape and don't flail out. Once this 12 minutes is up, transfer chicken and gravy breast side up into a baking dish. Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes to brown the chicken and make sure that it is cooked through. Baste it with gravy once it is remove from the oven, then allow it to rest for 10 minutes or so. This whole chicken is nice to serve at a small dinner party so that you may cut it up in front of the guests and impress them. :-)

Best with naan or plain basmati rice.

Keema Qeema Queema: Spiced Ground meat

2008-10-17T05:52:00.000-05:00

This queema recipe is from North India/Pakistan. It is spiced minced meat (could be beef or mutton) eaten with either plain boiled basmati rice or whole wheat flat bread (you could use whole wheat tortillas or pitas). It can be accompanied with plain yoghurt or raita if you like.

1 lbs ground beef
2 tbs oil
1 large onion chopped
1 heaping tsp finely chopped garlic
1 heaping tsp finely chopped ginger
1 tomato cut into small chunks
1-2 green chilies (optional)
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp red chili powder
1 tbs coriander powder
1 tbs. cumin powder
1 heaping tsp garam masala powder
1 heaping tsp whole cumin seeds
½ cup water
Salt to taste
Fresh cilantro for garnish

First sautee onions in oil till transparent. Add in the whole cumin seeds while sautéing. Add in garlic/ginger allow to cook for a few moments (don’t burn). Toss in turmeric and red chili, stir for a moment and add the ground beef. Stir around until all the meat is browned and the juice has come out and dried up. Browning the meat well is a key step to achieve the correct desi flavor. Add salt, coriander powder and cumin powder, tomatoes, and green chilies. Stir a few times. Add ½ cup water and cover and cook on low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover and turn up heat, stirring for a few minutes to let it dry out just a bit. Add in the garam masala powder and stir again. Garnish with fresh chopped cilantro, and if you like it hot, another chopped green chili.

You can vary this by adding in potatoes (cut into large wedges), peas, green bell peppers, or eggplants. Traditionally you would only add one type of veg., not all together. You would add the veg in at the same time as you add the powdered coriander and cumin and before you pour in the water.

Channa daal ka queema:

Another variation is to add in firmly cooked channa daal, and you will have channa daal ka queema. To do this, soak 1/2 cup of channa daal in water for one hour. Boil then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes until daal is fully cooked, but firm and not falling apart. Stir this into your queema during the last 5 minutes of cooking. You will have to add more salt to your recipe to balance out the salt that the daal soaks up so that you don't end up with bland queema.

Aloo Anday: Potato and Hard Boiled Egg Curry

2008-10-17T05:45:00.000-05:00

Aloo anday or potato and hard boiled egg curry:

3 medium size potatoes- they should be a quick cooking variety as in will be ready in 20 minutes, not a hard variety. chop into chunks that are the size of hard boiled eggs. you can peel or not peel at your discretion.
5 hard boiled eggs. Peel, and cut in half. Set aside.

1 1/2 tbs crushed garlic
1 tbs crushed ginger
1/4 tbs ground turmeric powder
1/4 tsp-1/2 tsp red chili powder
1 heaping tsp ground cumin powder
1 heaping tsp ground coriander powder
1/4 tsp whole cumin seeds
1-2 roughly chopped fresh green chilies
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 cup water
pinch of salt
3 tbs oil

Heat oil in pan. Add garlic, ginger and whole cumin seeds. Lower heat and cook this stirring frequently on very low heat for 15-20 minutes. Be sure not to burn it. But the garlic and ginger should practically carmelize like a Cuban mojo. This will cook all the bitter strong garlicy taste out of the garlic and leave you with the base of a delicious sauce. Okay, when you have cooked the garlic paste, turn up the heat and add in the haldi, the red chili powder, the cumin and coriander powder. Stir around once quickly. Do not allow to burn. Toss in your potatoes, stir once, then pour in the water. Allow to cook for 20 minutes or so until potatoes are ready and the oil has separated from the gravy. When it looks ready, add in the fresh chopped green chili cover the pan with the heat off for about five minutes just to steam the chilies. Serve immediately. When ready to serve, pour into a casserole type dish and add in the halved hard boiled eggs, spooning a bit of the sauce over them. Be gentle and don't stir the dish cuz you don't want the egg yolks to break up into the gravy. Garnish with chopped cilantro. The main trick in this dish is cooking the garlic/ginger paste until done perfectly so that the sauce tastes great. If you haven't done it right, it will taste bitter or like raw garlic. If you have done it well, it is heavenly.
Serve with basmati rice or wheat flour flat bread.

Stuffed Grape Leaves Vine Leaves Waraq Ainab Dolmeh

2008-10-17T05:38:00.000-05:00

I recommend trying to find fresh grape leaves or fresh grape leaves that have been vacuum sealed in a jar at a middle eastern grocery rather than using the ones preserved in brine. the taste of the non-brined ones is just far better. If you can get your hands on them, all you need to do is blanch them briefly in boiling water. Take out about half the jar and freeze the rest.
Here is my recipe. It is for the "hot" version, meaning it contains meat so it is served warm, as opposed to the vegetarian one which is eaten cold. You can dip them in yoghurt while you eat them:

For the stuffing mix together:
1 fresh diced tomato
1 handful of flat leaf parsley chopped finely
pinch salt
pinch of all spice
pinch of red chili flakes
3 cloves finely chopped garlic
1 finely diced onion
1/2 lb ground mutton
1 cup short grain Arabic rice washed but not soaked (ask for Lebanese or "Egyptian" rice at the Mid East grocer---you must use this rice for the authentic version, long grain rice is not the right kind. This rice looks similar to sushi rice or risotto rice)
grape leaves: blanch and set aside

For the broth:
alot of chicken stock, enough to cover your layers of wara' ainab/dolmeh in the pot
about 1-2 tbs lemon juice depending on how much broth you use
3-4 cloves garlic cut into slivers
1/4 cup tomato paste
lots and lots of olive oil.

Line your pot with any torn grape leaves. Put your rolled stuffed grape leaves in the pot, stuff tighly, put slivers of garlic here and there between the grape leaves, cover with the broth, put a sheet of tin foil on top, a plate, and small but heavy jar of water (to weigh the plate down), allow to boil gently once, cover the pot, lower the flame to the lowest heat, and cook for one hour. The rice should be perfectly cooked, not mushy.

Channa Daal Tarka

2008-10-17T05:32:00.000-05:00

For the daal

1 cup channa daal, pick out stones, wash, soak for one hour
3 cups water
1 inch chunk of ginger crushed
1/2 tsp turmeric
salt to taste
1 chopped tomato

Boil daal, skim off scum, lower heat, add in raw ginger and turmeric, and cook partially covered until daal is nicely tender and slightly mashed but not obliterated. This will take about 40 minutes. About 10 minutes before the daal is done, add in the chopped tomato. Adding the tomato at the end will cook it but prevent it from completely breaking up. I like to get a bite of chopped tomato in my daal.

For the tarka:
1 finely sliced onion
1 tsp cumin seeds
3-4 whole dried red chilies
1 tsp cumin powder
1/2 to 1 tsp dried red chili powder
garlic cut into slivers
2-3 tbs to 1/4 cup oil

In the oil "bhuna" or brown the onion. This means put sliced onions in oil on high heat and then cook until they turn translucent, then lower heat and allow to caramelize, stirring occasionally for 25 minutes or so. When they are reddish and skinny, they are "bhuna hua." When the onions are almost fully bhuna-ed, they will be mostly brown, but still have a little bit of translucence, at this point, put the heat up to medium and add in the whole chilies, the garlic, and the cumin seeds. Allow to cook until the garlic is golden and crispy. If you time it right, the garlic and onion will finish at the same time. At the last minute, turn up the heat to high, put in the cumin and red chili powders, then quickly, before they burn, dump the whole tarka into the daal. Stir once to evenly distribute the onions and all, but leave some of the oil and onions on top, then garnish with cilantro.

Aloo Gobhi

2008-10-17T05:25:00.000-05:00

Here is my recipe for aloo gobhi, or cauliflower and potato stir fry. The trick is not to add any water. It is a dry veg, not a wet one. This is easisest to cook in a non-stick wok shaped pot with a lid, but any deep non-stick pot with a lid will do.

1 small head phool gobhi--cauliflower, chopped into florets and washed

3 quick cooking potatoes, (they must be the kind that cook in 20 minutes, not the baking kind that take an hour) cut into small cubes and soaking in water

1 small onion sliced

4 garlic cloves cut into slivers

1 tsp crushed fresh ginger

1 tsp whole cumin seeds

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2-1 tsp red chili powder

1 heaping tsp ground cumin

1 stick cinnamon

3-4 cardamon pods

2 bayleaves

5 black pepper corns

5 cloves

(all of these whole spices come together in a packet of whole garam masala in small quantities to make it easy for you so you don't have to buy separate packets of each)

2-3 whole red dried chilies

2 fresh green chilies cut in bite sized chunks (de-seed if u like)

2 table spoons of roughly chopped fresh cilantro

1/2-1 tsp garam masala powder

2 tables spoons oil

salt to taste

Heat oil in wok until very hot. Add in the whole red chilies, the cumin seeds, the bay leaves, cloves, pepper corns, cardamon, cinnamon stick, and fry around for about 1 minute. Then add in the onions, garlic, ginger. Fry until onions look translucent and garlic looks crispy. Then add in the turmeric, red chili powder, and cumin powder. Let this sizzle for one moment, then add in the potato cubes. They must still be wet from soaking in water...this creates steam to help them cook. Stir around well for a few minutes, getting the masala color on them. Then lower heat to medium and cover. Leave for 10 minutes, stirring a couple of times to prevent bottom sticking. Then turn up the heat and add in the gobhi---it helps if you gobhi is a tad wet from being washed as well. Stir again coating in the masala oil. You should add your salt now, too. Then lower heat to medium again and cover for about 10-15 more minutes, stirring occasionally. By now the potato and cauliflower are both cooked, and it is done. They should be fully cooked, but slightly crisp. Definately not mushy and falling apart. Now add the pinch of ground garam masala and the chopped green chilies. With the heat off, cover again and allow the green chilies to steam a bit for a few minutes. Then uncover, add in the chopped cilantro garnish, and serve.

Paalak Chicken

2008-10-17T05:20:00.000-05:00

Here is a recipe for paalak murghi. The end result will be the spinach makes a wet gravy clinging to the chicken pieces, not a curry drowning the chicken in spinach:

2 tbs oil
1 skinless, bone-in chicken cut into medium pieces
2 tomatoes chopped
1 onion finely sliced
5 cloves garlic crushed into a paste
1 inch piece ginger crushed into a paste
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
3-4 dried red chilies whole
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp red chili powder
1 heaping tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 cup frozen chopped spinach
1 tsp salt or more to taste

* if you don't have these all these spices at home and want to keep it simple, you could substitute all the powdered spices for some kind of curry powder that you like. use 1 1/2 to 2 tbs of the curry powder if so.

Heat oil, brown chicken pieces on high heat and remove from oil. Set aside. Heat oil again, add in the whole cumin and dried red chilies, then after about 30 seconds, the onions and sautee stirring frequently on high heat until they start to brown a bit and get soft (7 minutes or so). Add in garlic and ginger, stir for minute till garlic looks cooked, then toss in all the rest of the spices, then after 30 seconds, add in the tomatoes and salt. Keep stirring on high heat for about 5 minutes and allow the tomatoes to melt down a bit. Then add the spinach back in and when it is no longer in frozen chunks, add the chicken back in. Allow to bubble up once, then lower heat and cover. Keep covered for about 25 minutes on very low flame (or longer, my local chicken cooks very fast and will fall apart if I cook for longer), stirring occasionally. It is done when the chicken is cooked and the oil separates from the gravy. Don't add water, some liquid should come out of the chicken and the frozen spinach. Garnish with fresh chopped cilantro. Serve with basmati rice or some type of flat bread, plus plain Greek yoghurt on the side.

I love karela: Karela aloo

2008-10-17T05:14:00.000-05:00

Karela is an acquired taste. It is supposedly good for diabetes and also removes toxins from the blood according to ayurvedic principles. Don't know if I believe that, but that's what they say. When you select your karela, you choose small, dark green, firm ones. Don't choose yellow ones (or with a lot of yellow spotting) or large sized ones. Here is karela aloo or bitter gourds with potato:

3 bitter gourds, slice into centimetre thin circles, poke out any hard yellow seeds from the circles, no need to remove the soft yellow seeds because they will soften, add 1 tsp turmeric and 1 tsp salt to a bowl of water, soak for 30 minutes, then drain and set aside
3 small quick cooking (not for baking) potatoes, slice into medium thin circles
1 heaping tsp garlic paste
1 tsp ginger paste
1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds
2-3 whole dried red Indian chilies (omit if you don't like heat)
1 stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf
1 inch chunk of tamarind pulp, seeds are okay---pick them out if you like or just pick them out when you eat your serving along with the bay leaf and cinnamon, break it up with your fingers into bits, do not soak, you will use it whole
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 to 1 tsp Indian red chili powder or cayanne
1 heaping tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp coriander powder
(if all of these powdered spices are too much trouble in terms of availability, you can just use 2 tbs of your preferred "curry powder" instead)
salt to taste (about 1 tsp)
2 tbs chopped cilantro
2 fresh green chilies cut into thin 1 inch strips, deseed if you want
2-3 tbs oil

You need a deep nonstick pot or wok with a lid for this.
Heat oil in wok or deep non-stick pot, when hot toss in cumin seeds, garlic, ginger, dried red chilies, cinnamon, bay leaf, and the bits of tamarind pulp. Stir around for a few moments to allow to sizzle, then stir in the turmeric and red chili powder. Quickly add in your potato and bitter gourd circles. Stir and coat with the spices, stir continously and add in the cumin and coriander powder. Lower heat and cover for about 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally until potatoes are tender and bitter gourd is cooked. Turn up the heat and toss for a few moments more at the end. The veggies should be lightly golden and crisp, not soggy. The spice paste should lightly cling to the veg. Do not add water during the cooking, or you will get a soggy result. Garnish with cilantro and green chilies. Serve with whole wheat flat bread and plain Greek style yoghurt on the side.
You will get a nice bitter, slightly sour from the tamarind, salty and spicy dish.

How to cook basmati rice

2008-10-17T05:10:00.000-05:00

I cook and eat basmati rice almost everyday. Soaking time depends on the brand and the cooking method. For high quality aged brands, you must rinse and soak for about 30 minutes. For pre-parboiled varieties, ten minutes is fine. Then add to boiling water, cover, lower heat, and cook for 17-20 minutes. Soaking will ensure that the basmati grains become long and fluffy and beautiful. My daily rice is Tilda brand, which requires 10 minute soaking, then I do it in the rice cooker. Either way, for basmati, double the water amount to the rice amount. A trick is that when it is finished, allow the rice to "rest" for 10 minutes before fluffing it. This will prevent the grains from breaking apart and result in a fluffier pot of rice. I also might add butter/ghee at this point. I feel the ghee perfume comes stronger if you add it at the end rather than boiling it with the rice.

For birianis or "party" rice dishes, I do a par-boiling method which is like cooking pasta. This is actually the most refined way to do it because you will get beautiful, long, separated grains of rice. I am just lazy to do this everyday and I save the technique for weekend birianis or parties. For this method, you MUST soak the rice, for Tilda, it would be 30 minutes or even up to an hour. While the rice is soaking, put a huge pot of water to boil. Add whole garam masala ingredients such as a couple of bay leaves, a cinnamon stick, some black pepper corns, some cloves, some black and green cardamomm, whatever takes your fancy. Allow this to come to a rolling boil. Also, heavily salt this water, about double the salt you would use in a plain boiled method, because the rice will not absorb enough salt and will come out bland if you don't. If I don't want the whole garam masala in the rice afterwards, I sometimes strain the water and discard the whole spices, then return the water to a boil. This way the water has garam masala perfume without the spices that people hate to accidentally bite into. Anyway, add in the pre-soaked rice. When the water reaches a boil again, set your timer for 3-4 minutes, and allow it to boil. Have a colander set aside in your sink. When your timer goes off, strain the rice, allow the water to go down the drain. In the meanwhile, you will have painted a stove top pot or a baking casserole with butter or ghee. (If you want a tah-daig crust at the bottom, use lots of ghee or butter) Quickly put the rice in either the pot or casserole. If you are doing stove top, (you would add your biriani gravy or whatever at this point) you cover with a slim kitchen towel under the lid, put the flame on high for 1 minute to get things going, then lower the heat and leave covered for 20 minutes. Turn off heat allow to rest for 10 minutes, then fluff or transfer to the serving dish. For the casserole, add in rice, cover well, then cook at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes, until the rice is cooked. This method results in a firmer grain, but it shouldn't be so firm as to seem undercooked.

Gujarati Style Hari Chutney (Green Chutney)

2008-10-17T05:05:00.000-05:00

I have been using this green chutney for a while, it is a Gujarati style hari chutney, hence the sugar and peanuts. You could also add 1-2 tbs dried ground unsweetened coconut or fresh shredded coconut to this recipe. It is great with pakoras and of course dhoklas:

large bunch of cilantro, washed well, stems and all (like 2 cups)
1/2 bunch of fresh mint leaves (like 1 cup)
1/2 green bell pepper
1-3 green chilies or jalapenos
1-2 tbs of lemon juice
1 tbs sugar
1 tsp or so salt to taste
1/4 cup skinless peanuts

Pulverize in your blender. You may need to add a splash of water if it doesn't mix easily.
I keep portions of this frozen and defrost as needed with samosas or whatever.

A plain green chutney is just cilantro, lemon juice, salt, and green chili with a touch of water, perhaps some mint mixed in. But I think you will like the recipe above cuz of the peanuts.

Bhuna Gosht

2008-10-17T04:52:00.004-05:00

Bhuna is fried, brown fried to a crisp sort of. For bhuna gosht, the gravy should be very well fried and dried up, or bhunofied in Hinglish.

Yet another goat meat Pakistani family favorite. The end result should be a rather dry and thick velvety gravy paste.

2-3 tbs oil
2 finely sliced onions, fried until reddish brown (bhuni hui pyaaz)
1 pound bone in goat meat in stew sized chunks
2 tbs yoghurt
1 tomato roughly pureed
1 tsp ginger paste
1 tsp garlic paste
1 heaping tsp good garam masala
2 tsp ground coriander powder
1 tsp or so salt or to taste
1/2 to 1 cup water for the "dam"
chopped cilantro and green chilies for garnish

*TIP*I fry up large quantities of browned onions and freeze for use about once per month. It is a huge time saver to not need to caramelize onions for every dish that requires them, since they are so widely used in Pakistani cooking. For this dish, I use pre-browned onions. Be sure when you add them in to the hot oil, you do it shortly before you add in a wet ingredient to prevent them from burning.

Brown the meat very well, add in the fried onions, garlic, ginger, and fry some more. Add in the tomatoes, garam masala, dried coriander powder, and salt, and continue to stir on high heat for a while until oil rises from the gravy. Add in the yoghurt and stir until the yoghurt separates from the oil. Add in the water, the goat should be about 1/2 covered in water. Allow to boil, cover the pot, and simmer on very low heat for 1 hour and 15 minutes or so until the goat is nicely tender. When the meat is tender, turn up the heat to high again and stir around for a few moments to thicken the gravy a bit more, until you have a dark brown paste. I often remove the goat from the gravy and stir the gravy to thicken on high heat to get a very thick paste. Then I add the goat in again. The results should be a brown, very well bhunofied gravy that is fairly dry and clinging to the meat. This is what is "bhuna" about it and why it is different from a saalan. Garnish with the "green masala" or cilantro and green chilies.

Mutton Curry

2008-10-17T04:47:00.000-05:00

Here is my recipe for mutton curry. I use Shan Masala Curry Powder. Another Pakistani home favorite.

2-3 tbs oil
1 kg bone in goat in stew sized chunks
1 onion chopped finely(the big yellow American onions 1, but if you use desi purple onions, use 2-3)
1 tbs garlic crushed
1 tsp ginger crushed
1 stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf
5 black peppercorns
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
3 whole dried red chili pods
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
2 heaping tsps Shan Curry Powder
1/2 cup yoghurt
2-3 tomatoes chopped
2 cups water
2 tbs Qasoori Methi (dried fenugreek leaves)
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp salt or to taste
chopped cilantro and green chilies for garnish

First brown meat for a few moments and then remove from oil and set aside. On high heat, add in this sequence cumin seeds, whole dried red chilies, cinnamon, bay leaf, peppercorns, onions, stir around till onions become translucent and lose a lot of moisture...you may need to turn down the heat if they start to brown. They should just be sauteed, not browned in this dish. In the mean while, add in the ginger garlic. When the onions are sauteed and the ginger and garlic is cooked, add in this sequence the turmeric, red chili powder, cumin powder, and coriander powder. Allow to sizzle for one moment, then add in the tomatoes, stir to melt down for a few minutes, then add in the yoghurt and for a few moments, add your salt and Shan Curry Powder now. Then, add in the browned goat. Pour in the 2 cups water and then allow to boil briefly, then cover and simmer on very low heat for 1 hour and 15 minutes or so until the goat is very tender. Now turn up the heat, (if the curry looks dry for your taste, add up to 1/2 cup water) and add in the dry Qasoori methi, stir around for a moment. Add in the lemon juice, stir, turn off heat, and garnish with green chilies and cilantro. Serve with chapattis or basmati rice.

Alu Gosht

2008-10-17T04:43:00.001-05:00

Alu gosht is meat and potatoes. It is a Pakistani home cooked standard.

You will need:
2-3 tbs oil
1 onion sliced finely
1 tsp crushed ginger
1 tbs crushed garlic
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp red chili powder (or use less for less heat)
1 tsp coriander powder
2 large tomatoes chopped
1 kg bone in goat meat cut into 2 inch chunks
3-4 potatoes cut into large wedges or even just halved
salt to taste, like about 1 heaping tsp
1/2 tsp ready made garam masala spice mix
chopped cilantro and chopped green chilies for garnish

First you have to brown the onions. Fry them in oil on very high heat, when they have lost a lot of moisture, turn down the heat and allow them to turn reddish brown, stirring occasionally. This will take maybe 1/2 cup of oil, so you can strain them from the oil, take out your oil for the rest of the dish, and set aside the remainder of the now onion flavored oil for something else.

Now, brown the meat well on high heat, when it looks nice and browned, add in the garlic, browned onions, ginger, garlic, turmeric, red chili powder, and coriander powder, stir around for a few moments just to sizzle and cook the garlic/ginger through. This should be a very quick step, do not burn the spices or the browned onions at this stage or your dish is ruined. Once you have given it a good sizzle, quickly add in your tomatoes, the moisture of the tomatoes will prevent anything from burning. Just stir as the tomatoes melt down---you can add your salt now, too. Keep stirring until everything is melted into a dark brown paste clinging to the meat, as for bhuna gosht. After a few minutes, add about 1 1/2 cup of water. Allow this to come to a boil, then turn down the heat to very low and simmer covered for about 1 hour. Stir occasionally to prevent the bottom from sticking. When an hour has passed, add in your potatoes. You may need to add a tiny bit more water, like 1/4 cup. Allow this to boil for a quick moment, then lower heat again and cook for about 20-30 mins more until potatoes are done. The goat should be very tender by now and you should have a wet 'shorba' (soupy) gravy. Turn off the heat and stir in the garam masala. Garnish with the chopped chilies and cilantro. Serve with some type of brown flatbread or basmati rice, and plain live yoghurt on the side.

Karhai chicken I

2008-10-16T11:02:00.007-05:00

I love the combo of hot and sour. Luckily there are a lot of Pakistani dishes that hit the spot for me when it comes to chili hot and lemon sour layers of flavor. A karhai is a wok like pot with two handles on either side. You can use an authentic karhai, but it isn't absolutely necessary. I make karhai chicken in a deep non-stick pot, which I use for most of my "curry" type dishes. Karhai chicken is a very typical PK household standard. Originating from the Frontier region, it is made in many interpretations across Pakistan and also in India. You should serve this particular version with chapati (whole wheat flatbread), or naan. This is an adaptation of my mother-in-law's home recipe.

1 whole chicken skinned and cut into medium to small pieces (about 12 pieces), bone-in
1 tbs crushed ginger
2 inches worth of ginger chopped into match-stick sized slivers
1 tbs crushed garlic
3 large tomatoes chopped
1 tsp red chile powder
1 heaping tablespoon Shan brand Curry Powder
1/2 tsp amchoor (dried mango powder)
2 green chilies finely chopped
2 green chilies roughly chopped (large chunks)
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1 tsp or so lime juice
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup water
2-3 tbs oil

Heat oil in pan. Add in crushed garlic and crushed ginger and stir on high heat until golden. Toss in tomatoes, Shan Curry Powder, red chile powder, finely chopped green chilies, and salt. Stir on high heat for about 10 minutes until the tomatoes melt down and you are left with a thick gravy paste. Toss in the chicken pieces and braise on high heat for a few minutes until all the chicken turns color. Add in the water---you may need more or less depending on how much water your locally available chicken releases when cooking. Allow to boil once, cover, and lower heat to the lowest setting to cook until chicken is done, stirring occasionally to prevent the bottom from sticking/burning. The chicken available to me here in Dubai takes about 30 minutes. *TIP*: Karhai chicken should have a fairly thick and dry gravy. When you are ready to serve, add in the aamchoor, lemon juice and mix it well into the gravy. The aamchoor and the lime juice both add sourness, but have very different flavor notes, and will add something special to the dish while achieving tartness in the gravy. Garnish with the roughly chopped green chilies, cilantro, and match stick sized ginger slices.

So simple, tangy, hot and delicious. You're gonna luv it!

Here's another *TIP*: You can easily turn this dish into karhai methi chicken. Methi is fenugreek. You need a box of Qasoori methi, which is dried fenugreek. Follow all of the steps and ingredients, but omit the match stick ginger garnish. When the chicken is cooked and the gravy looks good, stir in 2 table spoons of Qasoori methi. Cover the pot and allow the methi to mingle with the chicken for about 5 minutes. Then stir in the aamchoor, lime juice, and garnish with the roughly chopped chilies and cilantro.

Krazy for karhai?
For black peppercorn karhai see here.
For Landi Kotal Shinwari style karhai, see here.

Mah-e-Ramazaan ka pakwaan at Chez Gori

2008-09-24T12:02:00.001-05:00

I try to produce healthy and hearty meals during Ramazan. We break our fast with 3-4 dried dates, milk, and water. Often, we have a cup of wholesome soup. We pray, then shortly after, we have a normal meal. I make sure that this meal is well balanced, including a veggie, meat, and carb. We then have a snack of fruit at around 10 pm, before we sleep. I occasionally go on a mad gulab jamun consumption spree and pack back 6 or more of the little suckers. Ramazan blood sugar fluctuations throw my self control out of the window. But I usually attempt to limit the sweets. For breakfast, I have cereal and a banana. My husband has cereal, but occasionally he makes himself a fried egg and eats this with toast or a roghni roti or paratha. He dines on this breakfast more often during the end of Ramazan.

This is the healthy way. This is the way to eat during Ramazan when you want to maintain your stamina and focus on ibaadat and not on the food.

But culturally, Ramazan IS all about the food in many ways.

Ramazan is a time for a breakfast or sehri that is as big as a dinner. Sehri might be parathas and eggs, and also include sweets. Doodh jalebi is a special one in my husband's house. Iftaar starts with a date washed down with rose syrup milk---Rooh Afzah is the syrup of choice to lift the Rooh, or the spirit! Then come the Unidentified Frying Objects: UFOs. Typical UFOs are samosas, pakoras, and kachoris...there might be some dahi bhalle or chaat, too. All these things all together all at once is okay. Why not? Eat as much as you can, then go pray on a stomach filled with greasy fried carbs. Try not to pass wind as you bend into sujood now!

The real meal will be later. Perhaps 9 or 10 pm, maybe later than that. Only crazy goras eat at 6 or 7 pm. Dinner could even be midnight. The closer to bedtime, the better. If you eat very late, you might get to skip sehri and just wake up for fajr namaz. This meal will be heavy and will be topped off with a sweet. Muzzafar, kheer, sevaiyan, shahi tukray...or any number of sweets...YUM! Since you have eaten so much fried stuff just a few hours before in the blood sugar spike fest called iftaar, you won't have too much room for the dinner, so be sure not to eat too much or you won't have space for the sweet.

All of this is fun, but it involves a lot of negatives: it is stressful on the person who has to cook it all at odd hours, it causes heart burn, gas, and smelly burps, and in terms of keeping you pumped up for ibaadat, you are running on the steam of fat and processed carbs, so you aren't getting a balanced diet even if there are some veggies hidden within that coat of pakora batter.

I know, I am such a killjoy!

What I do to honor my husband's Ramazan cultural traditions and foods is this: we have a UFO night at least twice during Ramazan. Our dinner is just pakoras and one other UFO, perhaps samosay or dahi bhallay. That way it is something special, something to relish. The rest of the time, we eat relatively healthfully. Our own family tradition is the Ramazan soup. Okay, soup isn't as fun as a pakora, I know. I know. Like I said, I am a killjoy.

Karhi Pakora: Can you dig it?

2008-08-27T02:32:00.002-05:00

Everyone likes kababs. Naans are pretty internationally palatable. But there are some Indo-Pak dishes that may fit into the category of "acquired taste" for foreigners like gori wives. How 'bout some maghaz curry? That would be brain---they say eating it will build brain power. Or some pungent mixed pickle to scrape up with your delicious paratha? Hot, oily, sour, red, filled with unrecognizable preserved slivers of curious vegetables, desi achaars are not for every gora. I happen to like much of the weirder stuff...food being weird is subjective of course. I just mean stuff that might seem weird to the goras when they first have it. One dish which I think could be a challenge is also one of my favorites. Karhi pakora. It is SOOOO easy to make. But it is hot and sour and should ideally contain fresh curry leaves. These features make it fall into the "weird stuff" category. Anyway, here is my recipe:

The wet part:
1 cup older live yoghurt (the older it is, the more sour it will be)
5 cups water (add more later if it looks too thick for your taste once it boils)
1/2 cup chickpea flour (besan)

Mix these together with a whisk. If for some reason the besan goes lumpy, give the whole thing a whiz in the blender. You could alternatively pour the mixture through a strainer. Whatever works for you. The purpose of the besan is to prevent to yoghurt from curdling when cooked, which would be a distaster.

The seasonings:
2-3 tbs oil
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
3-4 whole red chilies
1/2 tsp to 1 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp cumin powder
10 fenugreek seeds (methi daane)
1 heaping tsp turmeric powder (haldi)
1 heaping tsp dried mango powder (amchoor)
10 fresh curry leaves
1 onion chopped
fresh cilantro and chopped green chillies for garnish
lots of salt

The pakore:
You can use any recipe. I cheated this time and used the National Pakora mix doctored up with an extra splash of salt, some green onions, green chilies, and cilantro added in. Your recipe should yield a heavier pakora. If your pakore come out too light and airy, they will break apart in the karhi gravy. For the Nat'l Pakora Mix, I used 1 cup of water, not 1 and a half. One and a half cups of water would be good for the light tempura style veg pakoras, but will cause pakora break up in karhi gravy.

What to do: Have your yoghurt mix ready. Heat oil in deep pot. Add in whole cumin, whole dried red chilies, curry leaves, and fenugreek seeds, and let sizzle for a moment. Stir in your cumin and chili powder. Before this starts to burn, pour in your yoghurt mix. Now add in the rest of the seasonings and mix well (except the garnish). Allow to boil, then turn on low, cook until the onions are done and the gravy has thickened. It should be soupy but not runny. Taste for salt. For some reason, the besan flour sucks up all of the salt, so I always find that I have to add salt to achieve the correct saltiness. In the meanwhile, fry up your pakoras and set them aside. You could also use stale leftover from the night before pakoras...it is a good way to use up leftover plain pakoras. I usually make the pakoras for karhi a little large in size, though. Anyhow, about 10-15 minutes before serving, stick the pakoras in the karhi gravy and let them settle in and soften. At serving time, garnish with cilantro and chopped green chilies. Some people eat this dish with plain white rice (my husband's family---Urdu speakers from India), some people eat this dish with chappatis (Punjabis), and some people just eat it plain. It is up to you. This stuff is highly addictive. It is heavy, so I would serve it with a veg dish or a lentil, or possibly with fish. It kind of functions as a meat dish since it is so heavy, actually.

If you google this dish, you will find lots of recipes. Some recipes call for buttermilk instead of yoghurt, which is the preferred dairy base for kadhi in the villages of Punjab. In Gujarat, it is made thin and has added sugar or jaggery. In Hyderbad, the gravy contains tomatoes, so the end result is pinkish curry. Some people don't add curry leaves, some must have mustard seeds (rai), some recipes instruct you to add the seasonings (tarka/baghaar) to the cooked curry at the end, etc., etc. So this is yet another dish which you might have to tweak to get a certain style that will suit your husband based on his family/community recipe. I happen to like my own hot and extra sour recipe. Happy cooking!

Desi Chinese

2008-06-18T11:55:00.001-05:00

Goris may be surprised to discover the desi penchant for Chinese food. These days, many non-Chinese origin Americans are aware that the food in American Chinese restaurants varies in degree of authenticity. Those restaurants that serve inauthentic Chinese food are dishing out Chinese as well as locally available ingredients, and Chinese dishes which have been adapted for the American palate and. Some American Chinese dishes do not even have any roots in original Chinese dishes. They were totally created for the American palate. Since most US Chinese immigrants were from Southern China, the Americanized Chinese has a Southern Chinese (especially Cantonese) backbone. Well, waddya know, the desi sub-continent also has small pockets of Chinese immigrants. Just like there are a lot of Chinese Americans, there are also Chinese desis, people of Chinese origin but born and raised in the des, perhaps second or third generation. They are mostly Southern Chinese, just like in the US. And due to this...there is a genre of Chinese cuisine that is served in Chinese-Indo/Pak restaurants that is inauthentic in terms of being traditional Chinese food, but has been adapted to suit the desi palate and uses ingredients available in the des. It is totally different than Americanized Chinese food in many ways. For one thing, it is spicy-hot. Generally speaking, desis like chile heat, hai na? Desis like rice mixed with gravy dishes, so desi Chinese food is also pretty heavy on the gravy, though there are dry dishes as well. The gravy is often heavily cornstarch laden. A lot of desi Chinese food is also made with ketchup based gravy. Garlic-chile sauce is another common addition to desi-Chinese stir fry sauces. Stock cubes are added to stir fry gravies as well. Stock cubes give depth in flavor. In Hindi and Urdu, the way to say MSG is "Chinese namak" or Chinese salt, and it seems that no desi Chinese dish is complete without a heavy dash of the stuff. I am not an anti-MSG person, and I think that MSG has gotten a bad rap in the USA. It is actually a very excellent flavor enhancer. But beware, if you have any sensitivity to MSG, desi Chinese food tends to have a good pinch of it in each dish. There are also many types of noodle dishes in desi Chinese cuisine, and it seems that there must be a noodle dish eaten with every desi Chinese meal. Egg noodles are a favorite. In the desi type Chinese restaurants I have been to, the food is served with Indian long grain variety rice rather than Chinese rice. This affects the flavor of the entire meal as well, since the dishes are meant to be eaten with rice. The vegetarian branch of desi Chinese food is filled with very creative dishes. "Velveting" meat is an authentic Chinese cooking technique. In Desi Vegetarian Chinese dishes, vegetables like cauliflower are velveted (often simply dusted in dry cornstarch rather than a traditional wet cornstarch marinade) and fried. Cauliflower Manchurian and Singapore Cauliflower are two popular examples of this. Manchurian Balls (follow link for nice looking sample recipe) is another unique desi Vegetarian Chinese dish. Desi home-cooks (meaning wives and aunties) pride themselves on having a few desi Chinese dishes in their battery of recipes. As a gori, you may or may not like desi Chinese food, as it tastes neither like authentic Chinese food, nor like the American Chinese food you grew up with. Bear in mind that a lot of desis ONLY enjoy desi Chinese food. They find American Chinese food to be "pheeka" or bland, and authentic Chinese food to be too foreign and exotic. With an open mind, you may join the desis and develop a strong penchant for it. I have come to enjoy desi Chinese food as a cuisine in its own right. For example, I love chicken corn soup (what Americans call eggdrop soup) seasoned the desi way now, with a splash of green chilies in vinegar and maybe a dash of hot sauce.

Arvi Curry: Taro root cooked in a desi style

2008-06-17T04:29:00.000-05:00

Arvi is taro root. Since I have been doing South Asian cooking, I have eaten many vegetables that are very exotic for me. These vegetables have been very exciting to discover and add to my repertoire of things I cook and eat. Arvi is one of them. Arvi is similar to a potato in taste and texture, but still different. Like potatoes, arvi soaks up gravy flavors very well. You can find the furry little guys at your local desi or East Asian grocer. Choose small, evenly round firm ones. To prepare:

Ingredients:

3-4 arvi, peeled and split in half

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

2-3 dried red chilies

1/2 tsp ginger paste

1 tsp garlic paste

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp red chili powder

1tsp Shan Curry Powder

2 medium tomatoes, chopped

1/2 cup water

1 tsp or so salt to taste

2-3 tbs oil

1 tbs cilantro chopped

1-2 fresh green chilies chopped

Preparation:

Heat oil in wok (wok must have a cover) or deep pot (that has a lid), when the oil is very hot, add in cumin seeds and red chilies. Allow to sizzle, toss in garlic and ginger. Cook until golden, a bit less than one minute. Do not burn. When garlic/ginger start to color, toss in turmeric and chili powder, stir and allow to sizzle. Then add in tomatoes, stir and let tomatoes "melt" by stirring on high heat to allow the water to evaporate from them. Add salt at this point. After about 5 minutes, add in the arvi halves, stir to coat with the gravy. Add in the water and Shan Curry Powder. Bring to a boil, then cover and lower heat. Cook until arvi are tender, about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Garnish with chopped cilantro and fresh green chilies and serve with chappatis or plain basmati rice.

Homemade Butter

2008-06-16T08:36:00.000-05:00

I read on Chowhound.com (see sidebar Links) about how to make homemade butter. I told our housekeeper A. about it and she said, "Oh yes, it is sooo easy!" She helped me figure out the odds and ends of removing the buttermilk and storing. Basically, you just have to buy some good cream. Get the cream cold in the fridge. Then, you put it in the food processor and blitz away, pausing intermittently. When the butter starts to form, you stick in a few icecubes, blitz some more, and then the butter and the buttermilk separate. Then comes the fun. You stick your hands in and form the butter into clumps, squeezing out all of the buttermilk. You might need to add a few more ice cubes to keep the butter solid. You must squeeze out as much buttermilk as possible to prevent the butter from going rancid later on due to the residual buttermilk. You can was it in cold water as well. Then you just stick the clumps in a tupperware container and use as usual. Cream is expensive, so this is just for fun, something to do with your kids or whatever. You can also cook the butter on a low flame for a while and strain out the milk solids once they appear if you want to make pure ghee. That will keep for a really long time as well, and you can spoon it over your rice or chappatis.

Good cookbooks for beginner gori wives and other faux desi-chefs

2008-06-08T05:17:00.000-05:00

So gori marries Pakistani ... there are a lot of online resources for her to use for recipes. But she doesn't have the desi cooking basics down to execute the online recipes because the sites are generally meant for people who grew up with desi cooking and typically know how to achieve a perfect pot of basmati rice, have an idea of where to begin with caramelizing onions, and understand what garam masala is.

What do you do if you don't know all of this stuff? Where do you even start? I learned from a few cookbooks that I highly recommend:

1. Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking

This book will teach you all of the basics. Sahni tells you the secrets of achieving separated kernals of fluffy, aromatic basmati rice. She explains how to properly caramelize onions, an essential technique in North Indian-Pakistani cooking. She tells you the ins and outs of South Asian vegetables, and offers good substitutions and tips for preparing these in the North American context. She also lets you know which recipes freeze well. This book will arm you with great basic recipes. However, for those looking to cook authentic North Indian Muslim / Pakistani dishes, Sahni does not offer useful recipes. Sahni's "Mughlai" recipes (recipes brought to India by the Muslim invasions and refined in India) are what would be served at Punjabi / Mughlai restaurants ... you've had this cuisine at your local Star of India or India Palace. The recipes are tasty. But these dishes with cream and almonds and so forth are not what your desi Muslim in-laws eat at home. Once you have mastered the basics, know how to "bhuna the pyaaz," how to get tamarind water from the dried clumps in the package, know how to make a "baghaar" or "tarka" from Sahni's book, you can get your authentic Indian Muslim / Pakistani recipes online or from a Pakistani cookbook. See some of the sites in my side bar. However, the veg, daal and snack dishes eaten by North Indians like Sahni and eaten by Pakistanis from a Hindustani or Punjabi background will be similar, so you can use all of those recipes to impress.

2. Madhur Jaffrey's An Invitation to Indian Cooking

This book is a classic must-have. Madhur Jaffrey moved to the US not knowing where to begin with the replication of the foods of her childhood home. She documents the knowledge she gained on her home cookery learning journey in this book. Though Jaffrey is from an Indian Hindu Delhi family, the recipes in this book are basically the exact cuisine that my husband, a Pakistani "Urdu speaking" origin guy grew up with. Jaffrey's tips for the North American cooking environment are useful, and the recipes are punctuated pre-emptive "dos and don'ts" to assist you in avoiding screw ups. Actually, I love all of Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks, and her A Taste of India (see below) and the classic Far Eastern Cookery (not South Asian so I didn't review it here, but great for East Asian food lovers) are both practically falling apart since I have used them so much.

3. Madhur Jaffrey's A Taste of India

In the blog post Gori Cooks Desi: My Notes for the Gori , I describe the importance of understanding that desi food is very regional. In this book, you get a real sense of the regionality of Indian cooking. You come to understand which region is famous for certain vegetables, which region's cooks are heavier handed with specific seasonings, and so forth. The book has a U.P. as well was Punjab / Dehli section, which has recipes that cross over to Pakistani cooking. There are also Hyderbadi Muslim recipes in the Hyderbad / Andhra section. I emphasize knowing your husband's family background and the foods associated with that background. At the same time, I love a lot of different South Asian foods, and this book helped me get to know them.

4. Vicky Bhogal's Cooking Like Mummyji

Vicky Bhogal is a British Indian who learned to cook the Sikh Panjabi food of her dear old mummyji. She shares mummyji's recipes and tips in this excellent, easy book. The food of the Punjabi Sikhs is basically the same as general Pakistani fare, plus the constraints of cooking desi in the British context parallel those of the North American context, so you get a lot of useful short cuts and tips as well. The desi names of foods have some "Indianisms" so you may wonder why Bhogal calls sabzi "sabji" ... don't worry about all of that. The recipes are the same as what your typical diasporic Pakistanis are using, even though the pronunciation of certain terms is different.

My own tips for the gori:

Once you have the basics down, you can use and adapt the recipes you see on Pakistani websites online, as well as Shan Masala recipes. None of the books I mention contain beef nehari or haleem recipes, or other specialties of North Indian Muslims or Pakistanis, or Pakistani regional specialties like chappli kebab, Lahori fish fry, Lahori chargha, etc. But you will get all of the bare bone basics, from chappati making to making and storing your own garlic-ginger paste, from the books above. Then haleem and nehari making and all the rest will seem like a cinch.

Fried Rice

2008-06-08T04:31:00.000-05:00

I love fried rice. Fried rice is easy to make, but also easy to screw up. There are a few things that I do to ensure that my fried rice comes out well everytime. Firstly, I always use leftover refridgerated plain boiled rice---I mean last night's rice. That way, the rice kernals are easy to handle, and don't break up when you stir fry. Secondly, I prepare an omelet and set it aside. I never break an egg into the wok with the rice. It just comes out more beautiful and less "eggy" tasting that way. In the above pic, I prepared a thin plain omelet, rolled into a tube shape, and cut it into chunky pieces to achieve a decorative swirly look. For the rice itself, I use 2 tbs of oil or so and fry the aromatics (in this case, crushed ginger and garlic, sliced onions, and roughly chopped dried red chilies), then I add the protein, here prawns, cook for a moment and add soy sauce---about 1tbs per cup of cold rice. For chicken or beef, I sometimes pre-cook then stir in the chicken/beef strips at the end. That is a good tip for all home stir-fries. That seals in the meat juices and prevents the meat from getting boiled in its own juice. Our home cooking ranges don't get as hot as restaurant ranges, so it is a good idea to stir fry protein in small amounts and add it to the rest of your stir fry later on to prevent the boiled meat affect. Anyhow, after the prawns and soy sauce, I add in the rice, stir well until all the rice is coated well and colored by the soy sauce. Quickly, I toss in dried prawns (you can fry these in the oil with the aromatics earlier, but it gives an underlying savoury yet slightly fishy taste to the dish, which not everyone likes ), roughly chopped green chilies, and pre-cooked peas (I just blanch them till tender to maintain that electric green decorative color), and stir on high heat for a few moments. Add in cracked black pepper if desired. If you have used enough soy sauce, you shouldn't need to add salt. Then, turn off the heat and toss in your pre-cooked eggs. Oila.

Gori cooks desi: My notes for the gori

2008-06-02T04:22:00.000-05:00

It is hard to learn to cook a cuisine that you didn't grow up with. I am a foodie at heart and I love trying new things. Enjoying desi food took away some of the difficulty in actually learning to prepare desi dishes. I think as a gori, if you are open to desi flavors, you can become a successful desi cook.

I learned by sheer trial and error. I made a lot of mistakes. I questioned the aunties. I tried to learn the names of all of the foods and find out how to make them. Authentic South Asian foods are very different from what is served in the average American Star of India restaurant with its creamy dishes like the ubiquitous saag paneer and so forth. It was in peoples' homes that I got exposure to "real" South Asian food. I read a lot of Indian cookbooks. Unfortunately, there simply aren't very many Pakistani cookbooks. There were certainly none available to me when I was learning. Luckily, North Indian cuisine overlaps a lot with Pakistani cuisine due to the obvious shared geography and history and all. Now we have so much more on the web. But nothing beats a good, detailed cookbook.

So, a gori marries a desi. She tries new desi foods and wants to replicate those foods at home. She wants her husband to say that she is a good cook. Not in a "surrendered wife" way. Just cuz it's nice when someone likes your food, especially if that someone is a loved one. Where should said gori start? First of all, from our typical knowledge base goris only know the desi nations, maybe not much more than that. We do not know about the never ending diversity of people in South Asia. I know a gori-wife friend who wanted to surprise her husband by learning to cook Pakistani foods. She took an cookbook of Indian curry recipes from the library---700 Yummy Curries or some such title. Her husband is from a place near to Peshawar. She surprised him with a chicken in coconut milk dish filled with mustard seeds and curry leaves. It didn't go over well. Why not? Typical Pathan cooking doesn't contain coconut milk, curry leaves, or mustard seeds. The food was just as alien to my friend's husband as it was to her. He was actually grossed out by the curry leaves. She was crushed. Where did it go wrong? Well, you may be asking, what the heck is a Pathan? Her husband was one and she didn't know that. In South Asia, communities are divided into regional ethnic groups, castes, and so forth. These identities are paramount to people. Each group has its own unique customs, often its own regional language, and most importantly for the gori wife: its own distinct foods.

If two Pakistanis intermarry, say the husband is Punjabi, and the wife is from an Indian Gujarati origin family, if the family follows a traditional structure, then the wife will have to learn the ins and outs of her husband's family cooking. She may cook some of her Gujarati dishes sometimes, but she must pick up the recipes of her husband's community. That is just the way it is. So, if you are a gori wife and you want to impress your dear husband with your cooking skills, you must know what community your husband is from. You must know the standard recipes of that community, and if possible, the specifics of his family's recipes.

My own husband is pretty broad minded and likes a lot of different foods. I cook a lot of New American, Italian, Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, Korean, South Indian, whatever at home. He eats it all, and has international favorites. He loves Korean barbecue, he savors a good steak. But he loves recipes from his particular community, and also from his family. So I have learned those as well.

So, the first step a gori should take is to learn what her husband's family background is, and what repercussions that has on the style of desi cooking she will learn.

My husband's family is what in Pakistan is known as "Urdu speaking," "Hindustani," or "muhajir." Both of his parents were born in India and emigrated to Pakistan when they were young. If you know your husband is "Urdu speaking," don't leave it at that. Where in India are his family's roots? That is an important question that will affect the cooking you aim to learn. His family could be from Bhopal, Hyderabad, Delhi, or any of a million places...each with special recipes. My husband's family's roots are from the general U.P. area, specifically Dehli, Dehra Doon, and Lucknow. This has huge implications on the way his family cooks and eats. His family settled in Punjab in Pakistan. Punjabi cuisine is similar...it all seems the same at first to us goray---but it is distinct. For example, some Pakistani favorites of my husband's family are made with a yoghurt based gravy instead of a Punjabi style tomato gravy. There are foods that my husband's family prefers to eat with rice, whereas people from the Punjab would have these foods with whole wheat flat bread---though my husband's family usually has both rice and flat bread at every meal. I could go on an on. Anyhow, if you were raised knowing all of this stuff, great. But it is mind boggling for a neophyte gori wife. Give yourself time to research. Don't be afraid to ask people for recipes and request that they specify their community. It is normal for desis to know each others' communities when they interact. In terms of what is available to you, most North Indian style cookbooks are suitable for both U.P. and Punjabi recipes. Most online Pakistani recipe sources also cater to the U.P. emigrant or Punjabi style---what is thought of as "standard Pakistani food" are the foods of these two communities. Shan Masala caters to that generic style as well. But if your husband's community is from Hyderabad, India, or he is a Pathan, or a Memon, or whatever, you will have to find out the culinary nuances of his particular community and may have a more difficult time with recipe sources. Don't worry, there is so much out there on the net these days.

I personally don't appreciate a picky man---hopefully your guy is satisfied with whatever you put forth on the table, even better for you if he gets in the kitchen himself. But come on goris, you know you want to learn to cook desi and get stuff right. So here I am presenting my humble advice on how to learn to cook in a way that honors your husband's family tradition.

Kofta: Meatballs in sauce the desi way

2008-06-02T03:29:00.001-05:00

I posted this recipe for Kofta at one of my favorite foodie websites, Chowhound. This is originally my mother in law's recipe. I have used it many times and it yields excellent results.

Yes, that really is a centimeter or so of oil floating on top of the gravy. Welcome to authentic Indo-Pak cooking. You can pour off the fat at the end if it really bothers you, but you won't get the same results without it in the initial stages of cooking.

This is really aloo kofta or potato and meatballs in the pic. I added the potatoes peeled, quartered potatoes at Step 11 of my chowhound recipe post.

A trick I discovered for really tender, silky textured koftay is to use 1/2 of a white hamburger or hot dog bun, the cheapie kind that kids like to eat as your white bread in the kofta mixture.

If you do not regularly cook desi (subcontinental) food and don’t have typical desi ingredients in the home, you will have to go for a trip to your Indo-Pak grocer to pick up a few things. Namely ground poppy seed powder (khash khaash powder), which is an optional ingredient, a good quality garam masala, a box of Shan brand Qorma masala (it is an authentic and widely used Pakistani spice mix, highly reputable, and far from the yellow curry powders), and a packet of chickpea flour a.k.a gram flour (besan). If you like heat, I would also recommend that you invest in a desi type of chili powder. Lastly, you should only use real yoghurt (Greek type), which you can also get at the desi grocery.

The recipe’s ingredients are broken into two parts: koftay (meatballs) and saalan (wet gravy).

INGREDIENTS

KOFTA Ingredients

2 tbs. chickpea flour (besan)
2 onions
1 lb ground beef or mutton
1 tsp crushed fresh ginger
1 tsp crushed fresh garlic
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground red chili powder
1/2 tsp poppy seed powder (khash khaahs powder)—-optional, just gives that extra umph
1-2 fresh green chilies
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 tsp salt or salt to taste
1 tbs butter
1 slice white bread soaked in milk and then squeezed

SAALAN (Gravy) Ingredients

1 cup real yoghurt whipped
1 onion
1 tsp crushed fresh ginger
1 tsp crushed fresh garlic
2 heaping tbs Shan Qorma Masala
salt to taste (about 1 heaping tsp)
1/4 cup oil
2-3 cups water
1 tbs fresh chopped cilantro for garnish

INSTRUCTIONS

In a dry hot pan, roast the chickpea flour for a few minutes until it browns a little bit and you can smell the toasty aroma. Set aside.

Finely slice two of the onions, then caramelize them in oil until they are crispy brown: deep fry on high heat for about 7-10 minutes, then lower the heat and allow to brown. this takes about 20 more minutes—-this is a typical step in South Asian cooking and you should know how to do this if you would like to cook authentically from this region) Remove with a slotted spoon, drain on paper towels, and set aside.

In a food processor, grind the raw onion, half of the browned onions, and green chilies

Place the ground meat in a largish mixing bowl: add the ground onion/chili mixture, the squeezed milk-soaked bread, and all of the other KOFTA ingredients. Knead very well with your hands, mixing, mashing, breaking down the fibers of the meat to achieve maximum tenderness. You should mix and mash for about 10 minutes.

With wet hands, roll out the ground meat mixture into balls slightly smaller than a golf ball. You should get around 12 meatballs or so. Set these aside.

Heat on high 1/4 cup oil in a deep pot. Add in the other half of the browned onions, the garlic, and ginger and stir for around 30 seconds until the garlic and ginger cook. Do this quickly and do NOT blacken the onions or your gravy is ruined.

Stir in whipped yoghurt (when you add this it will prevent the browned onions from blackening.

Add the salt and the Shan Qorma Masala, and about 1/2 cup of water. Mix well.

Cover, lower heat, and allow to cook for 20 minutes until oil separates from gravy. Stir occasionally to prevent gravy from sticking to pan.

Next, add meatballs in pan a single layer. Add 1/2 cup more water if necessary. Meatballs should be about half way covered in gravy. Turn up heat, allow the gravy to boil, then cover and lower heat. Simmer for 15 minutes, turning the meatballs by shaking the pan gently.

Lastly, add 2 cups of water to the pot, allow to boil, then lower heat and cover. Allow to cook for 1/2 hour.

When done, you should have a lot of gravy. It should be liquidy, but velvety.

Garnish with cilantro.

Poha

2008-06-02T02:27:00.002-05:00

I have no idea if people in Pakistan eat poha...it is more of an Indian thing. It is some yummy stuff. To make it, you will have to get a bag of poha (powa/powha---sometimes labeled as chewra/chura/cheora...anglicized spellings can be so confusing. In Hindi Cheora is the raw form and poha is the cooked form, but I have seen both terms used interchangeably for both forms of the yummy stuff. It is flattened/beaten rice. Not to be confused with puffed rice (bhel/murmura). Poha is a great breakfast food. It is also had as a snack or at tea time. I prefer it for breakfast.

Ingredients:

2 cups poha

2-3 tbs oil

1-2 small potatoes

1 small onion or 1/2 medium onion

1 tsp salt or to taste

1/2 tsp turmeric/haldi

6-8 fresh curry leaves/kari patte

2 fresh green chilies, chopped into large chunks

2 tbs peanuts, roasted (or fried)

1 tbs or so lemon juice

2 tsb fresh chopped cilantro

To prepare:

Soak poha in water for about 2 minutes, then drain in a strainer. Set aside. Chop potatoes into bite sized pieces. I prefer to leave the skin on for texture, flavor, and nutritional value, but generally desis prefer skin off. Slice onion thinly. Fry potatoes and onion in oil until potatoes are cooked. On high flame, add curry leaves and turmeric to the oil and let sizzle for one moment. Stir in poha. Toss around for a few moments, adding in salt at this time. When poha has absorbed the turmeric coloring and has softened, it is done. Add in fresh chopped chilies, cilantro, and peanuts, then lemon juice. Toss once more. Now serve fresh and hot.