Saturday, June 25, 2011

A Toast to Buttered Toast

I rarely dedicate an entire blog post, to a post made by someone else.

But this particular article resonated so strongly with me and seemed to express everything I thought and never got around to saying, but in a much better way than I could ever frame it.

So from the author of Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese here is an awesome piece on food (Sidin's first as far I can tell) :

A toast to buttered toast

I completely identified with :
"When you’re staying in hotels, for instance, tanking up on toast somehow seems a waste of all the other scrambled, fried, poached and griddled delicacies. Especially if a breakfast buffet is involved."

And his final advice for all:
"Scoop a generous helping of warm butter in one go, enough for the slice and then come. Then dab it strategically at one or two points towards one edge. Then work it across the whole slice in broad, confident strokes. Only in one direction please. Otherwise you will apply, remove, apply, remove, apply, remove like Pakistani life cricket ban. At the end take any excess butter and throw it away. Do not reuse. Especially don’t think you can move quickly and butter another slice with this. That is the kind of reckless, wasteful adventurism that led to Pune Warriors."

Read the entire article at : A toast to buttered toast

Monday, June 13, 2011

Recipe: Mrs Nath's Mattar Parathas - Indian bread stuffed with peas

This is a recipe from my friend Arindam's mom. He served them to us at dinner at his place. The parathas were really very tasty and we gladly accepted the offer to take home leftovers to be refried the next day.. He has been kind enough to share the recipe.

Of course technique is key to making parathas and I'm terrible at stuffing and rolling out parathas (I can barely manage rotis), so my pictures look a bit mangled. But the taste was so good, that I had to share the recipe.

Ingredients:
Roti dough / paratha dough (made from wheat flour, a pinch of ghee and salt)
For the Stuffing:
1 cup fresh/frozen peas (not dried - you won't get the flavour from dried peas)
1 tsp saunf - fennel seeds
1-3 green chillies (adjust heat to your taste)

pinch of sugar
salt to taste
ghee to fry (or oil if you want to keep it vegan)

Method:
Puree the green peas (if frozen, let them come to room temperature) in a blender
Saute the pureed peas with the saunf, chillies, sugar and salt.
Fry on a low flame until it reaches the consistency slightly drier than mashed potatoes.
Stuff this filling into balls of dough and roll out the parathas (how much stuffing you manage to put in is completely dependent on your competence at stuffing- my MIL who is supremely competent in this art has more stuffing than dough in her parathas - something I can only aspire to)


Slowly fry the parathas in ghee (for best taste use at least a tsp per paratha) on a low flame till well cooked on both sides.


Serve hot.

The simplest accompaniment to stuffed parathas is  yoghurt and pickles.
You can get fancy and serve it with a raita.
Its a wonderful filling breakfast to start a busy day.
Stuffed parathas aren't normally served with dhal, if they are, it would be with a black dhal rather than a yellow dhal.
You can serve it with a dry vegetable side or a semi gravy side of meat. In the picture below, its served with tawa kebabs.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Recipe: Cucumber & Peanut Salsa Salad

In the heat of Delhi, its quite a painful process to even attempt any cooking, and also you know that no one has the appetite to eat anything piping hot or heavy.

We end up having lots of milk shakes, lassis and ice cream for lunch alternated by the occassional healthy salad and this is one of those easy to assemble salads if you roast and skin the peanuts in advance. If you have cooked skinned peanuts, then you don't even need to turn on the gas, which is something I dread doing in the afternoon heat.


I also assemble the salad without adding the peanuts (so they don't lose their crunch) and pop it in the fridge for upto a day and mix the nuts just before eating. So the cucumber is really chilled and its even more refreshing on a hot summer day.

Kid's love it, but depending on your child's spice tolerance you may want to balance the chillies.

Ingredients:
1 cucumber - skinned and diced (deseeded if you prefer)
1 small onion - diced (optional)
1 green chilli - finely chopped (deseed, if you don't want it too spicy)
1 handful of peanuts - roasted and  skinned (or boiled and skinned for a different texture)
juice of half a lime (I had some salted green mangoes that I needed to finish off as they were dis-coloring, so I used a few slices of that chopped up - it imparts both a salty and sour flavour)
salt to taste

Method:
Just mix all the ingredeints and serve as is or slightly chilled.
If you want to preassemble: Mix everything upto a day before. Except the peanuts - add those just before serving.
The peanuts are high in protein, so its quite balanced to have as an entire meal.
Or serve it as a salsa side with grilled meat or a salad with Indian food


Options:
You can add a handful of sprouted gram to make it healthier.
Onions give a different taste if added
Personally, I'm not a fan of raw tomato, but its also an option.
Use chaat masala instead of salt

I've submitted this recipe for Kid's Delight - Cool Comforts which is part of Srivalli’s Kids delight event.







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