Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Food Frankenstein

In a bid to eat more healthy I usually try and "cheat" myself by combining few vegetables with other ingredients making a dish/item that is indeed more palatable to me. And I do think I'm mighty clever to be doing that... *pats back*!

The most common and easiest way is to steam/boil the icky offender, puree it and then knead it with flour to make interesting looking and tasting roti's. For example my fav. is spinach, I buy like hordes of that stuff, steam/boil then puree it and mix it up with wheat flour to make phulkas or puri's. Love the greeeeeeeeen color, makes it look so much more interesting than regular plain-jane phulkas! Also, lately I have been experimenting with radish, fenugreek, and BEETS!

Man, I luuurrrvvvveee the beets roti's, the awesomely lovely red color just looks absolutely gorgeous. I remeber as a kid chomping on my crayolas, trying to see if the colors had a distinct taste (of course they didn't and tasted vile btw!) and always chomped harder on the Red ones cause I especially fancied them. The beets Puri with Milk (my fav puri combo!) almost come close!



I can now also eat eggplant and peas by adding them to Vegetable Pilafs or with Paneer. Actually truth be told I'll eat anything with Paneer, so I normally will add the ickyness with a Paneer dish and just gobble the whole thing up. I wish I had this much sense as a kid... oh well.

I have found another awesomely awesome way to avoid heartburn, tummyburn, and well... next morning pottyburn... *snicker* not too much anyways! I buy green chillies, the small incredibly theeki ones, dry them in the sun till they turn crackalicious, then grind them up either really fine or with bitty flakes on. I use this instead of Red Chilli powder in all my curries and cooking and man... it tastes, smells wonderful. Love the green chilly sun-dried scent. The only downside is (not health-wise) that the dish does not have that yummy mouth-watering reddddddd color to it. But that's ok, I have the beets phulkas na!

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Malai Kofta

A staff member at work today wanted to go home a tad bitty early; it was her brothers B'day and she was making Malai Koftas for him.

Hmmmmmmm.

Past few weeks ago I read in Nids bloggie that she'd made these yummilicious koftas WITH pictures posted to torture me of course.

Apparently it's not rocket science that goes into creating this magical dish. Feeling extremely adventurous, not to mention that the visions of creamy kofta gravy was driving me literally insane, I decided to try my hand at making them.

Popped out both Sanjeev Kapoors recipe book and the prep method on Nids bloggie, just so I'm both inspired and I don't make any goof ups mixing this instead of that. Supposed to take under an hour to get these puppies ready, and it took me close to 3! TeeHee! I felt like I was making explosives, handling the uncooked koftas as if they will explode in my hands, splattering the grated paneer filling all over me poor face. Carefully and very very slowly I managed to make 12 dumplings and fried them one by one. Oooooooo! They looked yummy and I almost chucked the gravy part, just wanted to bite into these and be done with it.

Next, the gravy was easy peasy... actually not, I always screw up the gravy. Somehow I still don't know how to get that smooth texture in the end instead of the lumpy, gritty texture I'm left with no matter how long I cook the damn thing. I variated a bitty and instead of adding the tomato puree to the fried onion puree, I added the masalas to the fried onion puree and broiled the entire mess till it turned a nice toasted shade of brown. To that I added the tomato puree and hmmmmm I admit it did look quite close to how gravies outta look. I let it boil close to 15 minutes and gobbled 2 koftas in the interim... could not resist. :P

Finally when the gravy looked "done" I switched off the gas and added the cream. Voila! Somehow I had managed to not fuck the entire thing up and it looked close to what I order from restaurants. I dropped the fried dumplings into the gravy and spooned the gravy over the puppies a bitty. So happy and hungry that I quickly ladled up a portion of it onto my plate and stood at the kitchen counter itself and ate it all. TeeHee!

It was definitely spicy (I have a generous hand when it comes to measuring out the chilly powder) and I think next time I'll try HARD to tone down the chilly factor and make it a tad bitty more bland. It was definitely rich, cause after one kofta I was like *BURP!* and forced myself to somehow finish the other one. So happy with myself, I never imagined I could make this dish at home and never imagined that it would actually taste good. *pats back*

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Roadie Foodie

What is it about the road side food that would make you abandon your hygienically cooked and packed homemade lunch for adulterated masalas, cheap cooking oil and questionable fingers?

Just ate a yummilicious portion of Channa Kulcha from a roadside vendor. My absolute favorite roadie foodie, I think I ODed on it way back in college, and still I stop and buy a plate if I spot the large brass handi on the back of a cycle. My second absolute favorite roadie foodie is Aloo Tikki. I luuuurrrvvvveeee alooooo, I can devour boiled potatoes faster than you can say ubla-aloo and happily die of glutinous choking, I kid you not! Take boiled potatoes and fry them in oil... ooooh *shivers* such unhealthy desires canNOT be good fer moi. I make yummilicious bread-rolls (yes I have documented, recorded testimonial... though it cannot be shared with the public yet) stuffed with potatoes and cheese, deep fried and generously doused with sriracha sauce. Bliss.

I have lots of absolute favorite roadie foodies, but while I'm typing this out, a very special one is tugging my memory, pleading to be acknowledged. The humble Sundal, served with pulip-maangaa... ayyomaa... LOVE it. I can taste it right now, walking on the beach, the rogue crows cawing out warnings as they swoop down and pinch morsels off your hand, the waves surging in and out, spraying my face with salty shivers, the scent of the damp newspaper cone the lad wraps my sundal in, chewing slowly savoring the pebbly texture of the lentil and the tarty bite of the mango... miss you so much.

Ohhhh wait. How did I forget VADA PAV!!! Man, I bullied Shool into carrying a serving for me in his cabin baggage when he came down from Bom to Del. HeeHee. I went CRAZEE, dying to taste it last year, looking it up on youtube videos, pretending I could taste the yeasty pav and the hot corriander sauce. *slurppp* I, of course, threw the vada stuffing cause I have weird issues about stuffings and whats acceptable for my mouth, and ate just the crispy batter skin.

Many a times have forced Navinji to eat my insipid lunch while I ordered something heavily drenched in chilly and oil. But with progressing age, my cast iron stomach is rusting. Not a pretty feeling next morning, no siree. :P