Restarting the blog!

Its over a year since I entered a post here, just been lazy to record stuff I guess, since, in reality I have done SOOOOO much cooking! So I start with a picture of some of the vegetables we have bought for Viveck's farewell party. Nishka and Nafisa are here, so we have decided that we can make a 7 dish European meal with ease!!! And I plan to share the whole process here with everyone, which will definitely include all our recipes! So here goes....a tray of peppers, 'gondho raj' lemons, they have an amazing smell, and brinjals. They looked so bright and full of colour, I also did a quick water colour of them this morning, before they went into the pot!!!!

Orange and Honey Chicken served with Spinach cous cous.

I made this today and am really pleased with how it came out.

4 large pieces of chicken (I normally get a full chicken and divide it in 4 large pieces, but I guess any pieces will work)
3/4 cup fresh orange juice
1/3 cup honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tblsp soya sauce
3 pods of freshly crushed garlic
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Red pepper chopped into small pieces
I orange sliced (for garnish)
Mix all the ingredients into the chicken and allow it to marinate for a couple of hours. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Put the chicken into a flat dish so that the pieces do not overlap. Place in the centre of the oven and cook for about 45 mins or till the chicken is tender.
I served it with cous cous which I had flavoured with spinach. To do this I first sauted some spinach with garlic and then mixed it into the cous cous!

Thinking through food habits!

This really is just to share my thoughts about food. Nishka and I have spent 3 weeks in a Naturecure Institute, and come back a convert to being more conscious to our responsibilities as cooks. I cook everyday and normally produce pretty decent food as well. We experiment a lot and are willing to try anything new. Nishka and I had 3 weeks together and spent a lot of time discussing food and have decided to try and go really healthy, but 'tastefully' healthy! The institute has some very strict 'Sathvik' ideas and believes that food is only for nurturing, and we shouldn't worry about taste. I don't really subscribe to this, as I feel creating good food is an art in itself, so this blog is now going to carry our experiments with healthy foods!

White Stew....Indian style

Another family favourite, white stew with an Indian flavour!

1/2 kg Chicken ( I use legs, thighs and breasts)
2 cups cut vegetables (I used carrots, broccoli, peas and mushrooms)
2 tblspns oil
1 onion sliced
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup chipped celery
Garam masala (comprising of 6-7 cloves, 2 piecies cinnamon sticks, 4-5 cardamom  large bay leaves)
1 heaped tblspn  flour
2 cups milk mixed with 1 cup water
salt and pepper to taste

Grind the garlic and celery into a paste.

Heat oil and add the garam masala. Fry for a few seconds and then add the sliced onion. Fry till the onions are brown and then add the chicken. Fry till chicken is golden, add the garlic and celery paste, salt and pepper. Stir well then add the vegetables, cover, put the flame on simmer and cook till chicken and vegetables are cooked. (The chicken and vegetables will give out its own water and this makes part of the gravy) Mix the flour into the milk mixture (add milk slowly to the flour to ensure there are no lumps). Put the flame on high and bring the stew to a boil and add the milk and flour mixture and cook for a few seconds till the gravy thickens!

IT tastes great with plain boiled rice!

A quick shrimp soup!

Since I cook myself, after a day's work, my energy levels only allow me to cook really simple dinners! Viveck and I love our soups, and these should be clear soups as far as possible! So I made this the other night, really quickly and it was delicious!

4 cups fish stock ( I used fish stock cubes)

250 gms cleaned shrimps (from a packet of frozen shrimps)

1 tblsp oil

1/4 cup chopped spring onions including the greens

6-8 button mushrooms chopped fine

1 carrot sliced

1/2 cup chopped celery

2 tablespoons chopped green coriander

juice of 1 lime

salt and pepper to taste

some boiled noodles

Heat oil, add spring onions and cook till onions are tender. Add sliced mushrooms, carrots and seasoning. Cover and allow the vegetables to sweat on a low flame for a couple of minutes. Raise the flame , add shrimps and cook till shrimps are done, a couple of mins. (Remember overcooking shrimps will make them hard.) Add stock and bring to boil and simmer for a couple of mins. Add celery and coriander and simmer for a couple of mins more. (Adding celery at the end allows it to remain crunchy and tastes wonderful in the soup). Put off the flame and add the lime juice and noodles and serve hot! 

Seafood Risotto

I have been really keen to make a risotto and have been storing this Arborio rice for a while. Went with Nishka to Metro Shop and Carry and bought a huge bag of mixed seafood....so here it is. The recipe was a mixture of some ideas from the net, Nigella and Jamie Oliver!

250 gms Arborio Rice
300-400 gms mixed sea food ( the frozen bag had a wonderful mixture of tiny shrimps, squid, octupus etc.)
3 tblsps olive oil
2 cloves of garlic chopped
1 dry red chilli
1 cup chopped celery
1 small onion finely chopped
100 ml white wine
800 ml fish stock ( I made it with fish stock cubes)
2 tablespoons tomato puree
salt and pepper to taste
3-4 tblsp fresh basil or parsley chopped

Heat oil, and add the garlic and red chilli. Fry for a few seconds till garlic changes colour. Remove the red chilli and discard it, now add the seafood . On a medium flame, fry for a few mins. (it cooks very quickly), and then remove and set aside. You are left with a wonderfully flavoured oil with the seafood juices. Keeping the flame medium, add onions and celery and cook till onions are translucent.Now add the rice and stir it to make sure it is well coated with the oil. Add the white wine and keep stirring till the wine has completely evaporated. (Its the first time I did this and it was wonderful how the grains of rice absorbed the flavour of the wine, so when you ate the risotto there was a subtle flavour of the wine in every mouthful!) Now add the tomato puree, and the salt and pepper, stir well. Start adding the stock a couple of ladles at a time. Once this gets absorbed, add the next two ladles. It takes around 15 mins for all the stock to get absorbed. Keep stirring so that the rice does not stick to the pot. The stock should be kept on a low flame, so that it remains hot when you pour it in. (This is a time consuming process but needs to be done to ensure the rice doesn't become a soupy sludge!!) Once all the stock has been poured in the rice should be cooked 'al dente'. Now add the seafood and raise the heat and cook through. About a minute. Add the chopped parsley or basil and serve hot. Risotto should be served 'al onda' (like a wave) which means it should flow a little when you serve it on to the plate. Serve with Parmesan cheese.

Chicken Noodle Soup

I always thought that chicken noodle soup had to be made in the ‘Chinese’ style, as that’s what its meant to be, or rather that’s the only way I have ever had it. I was pleasantly surprised to see on the net that it’s a very popular soup amongst the Americans. So I ‘thought through’ a whole lot of recipes and finally tried my own version of it. It was so quick to make and SO delicious, and really immediately came into the category of comfort food!

1 cup cooked noodles

300 gms boneless chicken cut into small strips

8 cups stock  (I have made the stock with chicken bones, but also cubes)

1 onion sliced

2 smallish carrots cut into small strips

½ cup peas

½ cup celery minced

2 bay leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

1 heaped tablespoon cornflour mixed in ½ cup water

Put stock, onions, chicken, bay leaf, salt and pepper into a pot and allow it to come to a boil and then simmer till chicken is almost tender, aprox. 10 mins. Then add the carrots and peas and allow to cook till tender. Add noodles. Bring to a boil and add the corn flour water mixture, the soup will thicken in a few minute. Now add the minced celery. Serve hot. Its always a good idea to add the celery at the end, just before shutting off the flame, as then the celery remains slightly crunchy!