Asparagus?

Continuing my recently acquired habit of experimenting with vegetables I've never eaten(or cooked) in my life, I brought some Asparagus from Mail Pail, and yet again bugged my sister for recipes.

Question: I brought some asparagus today from farmers market. do you know any recipes where I could use it?

Answer: Just steam for 3-4 mins or put 1 tsp oil/ butter and stir fry in it.
You can chop and put it in omellette too... Just take off the tough ends (abt 3 inches) before cooking.

Zucchini?

Having no idea about Zucchini, I brought some of them last weekend from the awesome Milk Pail market near my house.

And today, I asked this question to my sister:
I brought green colored Zucchini, now some recipes please?


And the answer came a minute later:
Great. Zuccini reduces bad cholestrol...

1. Just make it like mom made tori ki subzi.. Fry onions and garlic and
add 1-2 tomatoes chopped and seasonings (usual masala, salt mirch etc)
and then add dices zuccini and cook covered for 15 mins.
2. Add like any other vegetable to pasta, chicken stir fry.
3. Grill it ( if you have barbeque, great...otherwise oven mein for 15
mins)... Cut Zuccini in round pieces or vertically in 3-4 long pieces
and put lemon juice, salt and pepper and grill.

Dal tadka: with white rice

In Punjab, dal usually accompanies lunch/dinner around 3-4 times a week. Its one of dishes that takes a very little while to cook, around 10 minutes, and hence the second most favorite of bachelors in India after "Anda-Bhurjee"(Egg-bhurjee).

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients
1. Half katori masoor daal
2. Half katori moong daal
3. Onion - half(small onions, if its bigger one then put accordingly)
4. Tomato - half
5. Garlic - 2-3 strands.
6. Ginger - same quantity as garlic
7. Jeera - half tea spoon(cumin seeds)
8. Red Chilli - 1 tea spoon( u cld replace it with green chilli - add to taste)
9. turmeric - 1/2 tea spoon
10. Salt - To taste



Directions
1. Mix 2 types of daal, add around 3 times water and put in a cooker
pressure. wait for 1 whistle, that's it no, more!! after the whistle,
don't keep the pressure cooker covered otherwise the dal will become
"halwa", with a help of a spoon, take out the steam and open the lid
immediately.
2. While daal is cooking, make masala parallely
a. Add a table spoon of oil in pan, let it heat for about 30-40 seconds
b. Add jeera(5-10 seconds)
c. Add onion, giner and garlic(fry till golden brown)
d. Add haldi, mirch and namak.(stirr often)
e. Add tomato
3. Take masala out and put it in to daal, add some water if necessary, cook for a few minutes(if the
daal was overcooked earlier then dont cook the daal againn for more than
a minute : vice versa if daal was uncooked)


Sprinkle some coriander and serve with onion and mango/lemon pickle.

Aaloo Parantha - Failed Attempt

On one of these sunday mornings, away from mother and motherland, I decided to try my hands at one of the favorite punjabi breakfast dishes, Aloo Parantha.

As usual, I called up mom(Thank you Skype) and confirmed the recipe for Aloo Paranthas. It was Sunday, almost 11:00am, planning to make it a brunch, the stage was all set.

So here is what I did,
1. Boiled potatos(2-3 medium sized for about 5 paranthas)
2. Mashed potato's and added chopped onions(one medium size), salt, red chilli and garam-masala.
3. Prepare whole wheat dough
4. Make dough balls, small enough to make one parantha. After this failed attempt, I realized that its always easy to cook thin aloo paranthas, so make sure the dough per ball is not too much(you'll learn over time)
5. Roll a dough ball in to small sized chapati, add mixture to the center and close it from all sides.
6. Run the dough ball through dry flour and roll the stuffed ball evenly on all sides, in to relatively bigger chapati.
7. Put the parantha on a hot tava and evenly spread oil and cook well on both sides.

That's it, enjoy while you can!

I screwed up at following,
1. The dough ball was too big.
2. Mashed potato mixture should be proportionate to size of dough ball.
3. Evenly roll out stuffed dough ball. trust me, its not going to be easy in first few attempts, especially when the dough has not been knead the right way.
4. Tawa should be hot before you put parantha on it.

Hope to come over them in coming days.

thai chicken dinner

I have been anticipating to prepare a thai dinner for almost a month and gathered ingredients like lemon grass, coconut milk, fish sauce.... true thai staples...
I decided to make Thai green chicken curry and sticky rice.

For curry:
I got 2 chicken breasts from fridge... good thing I had time to clean and keep all the chicken in ziplock bags over the weekend... saved me lots of time....
Now the ingredients - 1 can coconut milk (use the "lite" kind to save on fat)
1 lemon grass ( its a long light green stick , very flavorful)
fish sauce
3 tsp thai red chillie paste (they call it Nam prik Pao.... rhymes with pao bhaji but has nothing to do with it)
Kaffir lime leaves (apparently a thai speciality) I could find it so I replaced it with some lemon zest.
and while I was gathering ingredients my little one has opened one kitchen cabinet and has all tupperware out, I am not interrupting him as I want to get dinner one my way and keep him busy somehow....
back to ingredients....
1 cup fresh coriander (Dhania yaar in case you got confused)
3 green chillies (spicy indian hari mirch or thai green peppers if you can find)
3 green onions with stalks
garlic cloves ( 3)
Ginger (1 inch piece) if you don't have garlic you can omit it but ginger is important

Let's start cooking now.....
Strip the coarse, dry outer leaves from the lemon grass. Cut off the base where the root begins and discard. Cut the bulb into rings about 1/4 thick. Only go up about 4 or 5 inches, where the bulb stays white and tender. Lemongrass is so important in thai cooking that many thai restaurants are named "Lemongrass"...
Now take a blender and put washed green dhania, green chillies, green onions, ginger and garlic and grind it to a paste. add a little water if needed.
Now the actual cooking, but wait my little one is bored so he goes and opens the drawer full of serving spoons, grater and what not.... all of it is slowly taken out and being banged on the floor... okay I think I better hurry up now.... in like 5 minutes my little guy will need attention from mommy....
So I put the pot on gas burner.... once heated I put 2 tsp oil and add the green paste I just made.... cook for about 2-3 minutes and then add chicken and cook for 2 more minutes.... Now add 1/2 cup water and 1 can coconut milk..... then take a lemon and grate the top green part...not the white pitt just green in the curry.... add 2 tablespoons of fish sauce and 2 tsp of red chillie sauce....stir well and cover the pot... cook for about 10 minutes on medium heat ... taste for seasonings... if not salty enough, add some fish sauce and for more spice add more chillie sauce...and voila the dish is ready.....

Now I pick up my little guy in my arms and yes, while I was cooking the chicken curry I prepared sticky rice in parallel.. forgot to tell you about that.

Here is how to make Sticky Rice:
Take 1 cup of thai sticky rice (its sold in regular grocery stores in international section. These are also called Thai sweet rice. )
1 3/4 cup water . Not double, a little less..
wash the rice in cold water and add the water to it... Bring it to boil and simmer for about 15 minutes covered on low heat... keep covered for aothe 5 minutes and rice is ready...

Serve with green curry.....

My little one loved the sticky rice and some pieces of chicken..... The dish turned out very tasty.. especially for first time thai cook....
and yes my hubby comes from gym and says... roti shoti tayyar hai? and I said oh yes the roti shoti is ready but no real "roti" some sticky rice instead : )

Roti Shoti..

Roti Shoti, sounds funny? well, to us it sounds delicious, Roti actually means chapati(flat-bread), but in punjabi its synonymous with food. Shoti alone doesn't mean anything, but when used with Roti, it means delicious food and it shows affection towards the person who is preparing the food. Punjabi's often say following words to dhabe-wala, or their spouse,

"Oye Roti-Shoti Laya Yaar...."

With that, let me introduce you to this blog. We spend atleast 2 hours(10% of our lives) everyday cooking various types of food, and often want to share the success and recipes of our cooking endeavours with the world. So here we are, a place where we are going to post every little thing that we cook or want to cook, good or bad.

So hang on while we take you for a ride through this foody world.