Palak Paneer, Evolution.

There has been a blog about Palak Paneer 4 years back,
http://rpcooks.blogspot.de/2010/09/taste-of-nature-palak-paneer.html
but, 4 years is a very very long time in this age of culinary evolution. I also felt that as an experimentalist, it is quite important to try out new variations to attain higher flavor profiles without destroying the base. Hence, this version of Palak Paneer is a bit modified than its predecessor.

What I offer here is home cooking, not fine dining. So it is very important to have a high power blender that can blend in your whole spices. Alternatively, one can use pre-blended spice mix and a normal blender to attain similar results. Since I believe in not wasting anything, the blended sauce is not sieved to obtain silkiness.

Moving on to the procedure - 

1. Make your own Paneer (fresh cheese from milk) - This is a very simple procedure. Boil 1ltr high fat content milk and just as it begins to rise, add few table spoons of lemon juice and simmer down the heat. The lemon juice will incorporate a mild tanginess to the Paneer and this will taste much better that using vinegar. Once the milk is split, immediately filter it through a fine cloth (muslin is the best, however fine cotton towels also work) and squeeze it dry. Bring the cheese together within the towel and wrap it inside. Place a heavy pan filled with water over the folded towel and let it rest for 2 hours. The Paneer will get pressed and it will be easier to cut it into cubes! Freeze for later use or refrigerate for immediate use.

2.  Blanch 1 kg fresh spinach - Oh yes, please use fresh spinach! Removes the leaves from the bunch and wash them well. Drop them for 4-5 minutes in boiling water and then transfer them immediately to cold water. Squeeze them to remove the water and set aside.

3. The sauce - Melt 25g of butter is a skillet and add the whole spices (3 pods cardamom without skin, 1 tsp regular cumin, 1/2 tsp black cumin, 3 cloves, half a finger size of cinnamon and half a star anise). Saute for a minute and add finely minced garlic and ginger (according to taste), 2 finely chopped onions (medium sized, just 1 if big) and a few green chilies. Add salt to taste and close skillet with a lid. Allow the onions to sweat in medium heat. When the onions are almost cooked, add 1 (big) finely chopped tomato and 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro. Stir and close the skilled and allow the mixture to get cooked well. Once the tomatoes are cooked, transfer the contents to a blender along with the blanched spinach and blend till smooth. Add 2 to 3 tsp of hot water during blending to get a good consistency and transfer to a serving bowl. Top it off with cubes of Paneer and mix it in!

4. To Note - Instead of whole spices, one can also use "garam masala". Replace chilies with black pepper pods if chilies seem very spicy. A little sugar can be used to balance the sauce if necessary. Cream is totally unnecessary! 

SAMOSA - Stuffed with memories of MADRAS

There are very few places in Madras where we used to get great Samosas. I have no idea if Samosas taste good in Chennai, for I have no intention of tarnishing my memory! Having lived in Mylapore for over 2 decades and also being an alumni of Vidya Mandir, Bombay Halwa house was the first place from where I tasted them. They always served samosa along with onions and mint-coriander chutney and this combination has no parallel anywhere in town! My next favorite place is Brijwasi sweets in T-Nagar. This is a very small shack opposite to the T-Nagar terminus and they fry them in front of your eyes and deliver them piping hot! The final place is Ritchie street. There is a shop on the entrance of this electronic street and he serves amazing samosas, but definitely a no no for a person with low immunity!

Living here in Germany, memories do no satisfy the craving! So I decided to make samosas drawing inspiration from all the best flavors I have experienced. Here is a detailed description of the method - 

All purpose flour (weizenmehl - type 405 or 450. I have used 450 here) - 2 cups

Salt - according to taste - make sure seasoning on the flour is right!

Carrom seeds (ajwain) or Thyme - 1 tablespoon

Sunflower oil - 8 tablespoons

Water - few milliliters

Take the flour in a kneading bowl and add salt and carrom seeds to it. Now add in 8 table spoons of sunflower oil and get your hands in to do the work! Mix the flour thoroughly with the oil. Make sure that every grain is well coated with the oil. This is very important to get the perfect crust for the samosa. Introduce water now, but in very small quantities (tablespoon by tablespoon) and keep kneading. It is very important not to add excess water since the dough can be repaired. Knead until you get a tough dough. The entire dough making process should take you at least 15-20 minutes. Cover it with a moist cloth and keep aside for 30 minutes. Make small balls from the dough, flatten them and roll them out into thin circles. DO NOT add any flour at this point! The dough will be oily and it will be easy to roll! Cut the circle along its diameter, add the potato stuffing in the semi circles and fold them to get cones. Press the edges so that they stick well and fry them in oil. Maintain your oil at a medium heat to get a well cooked and crisp crust.

The stuffing - 

Boiled and cubed potatoes

Sliced onions

Green peas

Cumin seeds - 1 teaspoon

Fennel seeds - 1 teaspoon

Turmeric

Red chili powder

Salt

Garam Masala powder

Temper the cumin and fennel seeds in hot oil and add the onions. Sprinkle the turmeric and red chili powder and allow the onions to get fried. Now add the green peas, salt and garam masala powder. Cook for a few minutes and them add the boiled potatoes. Mix well and cook at medium heat for 5-10 minutes. DO NOT allow the potatoes to get fried! I prefer not to smash the potatoes as well!

The sauce - 

Grind together some coriander, mint, green chillies, lime juice, salt and a little water into a nice paste. Mix this well with sliced red onions and then serve along with the hot samosas!

You can of course play around with the stuffing by adding cashew nuts, raisins and green chilies! 

Divine combinations I : Ladies finger and Rasam

There are several combinations when it comes to Indian food. We never cook just one dish alone. Every thing we cook needs to be accompanied by yet another and hence the terms, main dish and side dish. A "thali" consists of several items which are served together and usually they are good combinations. But one cannot have the luxury of cooking or eating the several items served in the thali, unless one wants to eat everyday at the restaurant! So, everyone finds their own divine combinations. Some are complex and some are simple and many are just out of the ordinary (trust me, there are combinations unbelievable!!). Here I present to you one of the most beloved combinations and voted favorite by so many of my friends, Ladies Finger (Okra) fry and Rasam. And the magic lies in keeping the dish as simple as possible to attain the closest mother made taste.

Lets start with the Rasam. Take a vessel and add 2-3 cups of water. Into this, drop some chopped tomatoes, crushed garlic (optional), a pinch of turmeric powder and hing, 2 table spoons of Rasam powder, salt to taste, curry leaves and chopped coriander. If using tamarind paste, then dissolve into this mixture little tamarind paste (depending on taste levels, optimum would be half of as much that goes on a toothbrush :P ), else extract the first juice from grape sized ball of fresh tamarind and add it to the vessel. Finally switch on the heat and let it boil for 5-6 minutes until all the mixture boils. It is essential that the tamarind loses its rawness. Some people would like to add a little cooked lentils into this mixture. Do so at this point, else just remove it from the heat and temper it with mustard and cumin seeds popped in hot melted butter or ghee. 

For the Ladies finger (Okra) fry, chop the okra after removing its crown, into half centimeter pieces or more finely if you prefer. Heat oil in a frying pan and pop some mustard seeds, cumin seeds and broken dry red chillies. Add some broken urad dhal, a pinch of turmeric and some hing. Do not let the red chillies or the urad dhal burn. So, immediately add the cut ladies finger (Okra), sprinkle the necessary salt and allow it to get cooked. If you close the pan, then you end up with cooked Okra. But then, keep if open and reduce the flame heat to medium and keep stirring carefully (from time to time) to obtain nicely fried vegetables.

Pour some hot Rasam over cooked white rice and serve with the fried ladies finger!

Pumpkin in coconut milk, Parangi Paal Kootu or Kurbis mit coconusmilch

The sweet pumpkin is a delicacy and there are several recipies from it. Western civilizations just carve it for decoration or make pumpkin soup but rarely use it in regular cooking. The only prominent time it is cooked is during the Halloween month. But true south Indian kitchen utilizes this magical sweet pumpkin (Parangikai in tamil) in various recipies. Let me start with the most fascinating one for me.

Essentially, to make a Paal Kootu, one would require an unripened sweet pumpkin. In India one can get it immediately but in Germany, it is easy to find this sweet pumpkin only as ripened "Kurbis". Still, when purchased with a thick flesh it is perfect for this cuisine.

Sweet pumpkin - coconut scrapping - coconut milk - green chillies - curry leaves - cumin - hing - mustard seeds - salt

Cut the sweet pumpkin into thick cubes (it gets cooked really fast). Pop some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, few green chillies cut length wise and some curry leaves over oil and saute the pumpkin in this. Add salt and a pinch of hing and close the vessel for 2 minutes. Check if the pumpkin is cooked and sprinkle a handful of fresh coconut scrapping and stir for a minute. Turn the hear off and add a cup of coconut milk and mix into the pumpkin. Close the lid on and leave on the switched off hot plate for a minute. Don't let the coconut milk boil too long or on too much heat as it would destroy the entire dish. Serve with hot plain rice.

The Radical Radish

Serendipity! This is one of the most well know situations in the scientific life as well as the kitchen life. But there are many situations that lead to serendipity. For example, this one in the kitchen. A few years back I opened my fridge on a Sunday afternoon only to discover that I just have a bunch of radish left. No other vegetables and no lentils either. Germany being comfortable in so many ways, loses out on no-shopping-sundays. Well, if you really need something, there are places to go and distances to travel and then shop. But, as I already mentioned before, Sunday! So taken into account the laze factor and that it was snowing outside, I wanted to make something tasty with what I have. And I succeeded quite well :-)

A bunch of radish-tamarind-chili powder-cumin powder-coriander seed powder-salt-fresh/desiccated coconut-mustard seeds-cumin seeds-oil

Wash and cut the radish into pieces of 4. If you do not get the small radish bunch, you can always use the normal white long and tastier one that we get in India! Heat 2 spoons of oil (sesame/sunflower) in a pan and pop the mustard and cumin seeds on it. Add the cut pieces of radish and sprinkle necessary salt over it and let it get 60% done. At maximum heat it takes only 5 minutes for this. Extract the juice from a lime sized tamarind and pour into the radish. If you are going to use tamarind paste, then dilute one spoon of the tamarind in 250ml water and then add to the radish. Immediately add along 1 spoon of chili powder, 1 spoon of coriander seed powder (dhaniya) and half a spoon of cumin powder. Sprinkle hing and turmeric. Lower the heat to medium and close the pan. Allow the radish to get cooked in the tamarind juice. When the tamarind juice starts to boil, open the lid and cook  until almost 90% of water has evaporated. Add the desiccated coconut powder or the freshly scrapped coconut, stir and garnish with fresh coriander leaves. Serve with hot rice. 

The love continues, Brinjal: Innovation

Introduction:

Since the last post had a complicated name, I decide to post this without a name! Well, the truth is that I am still trying to name this Brinjal (Aubergine) cuisine. Aubergine is the only vegetable that is always there in my fridge. It is like milk, never runs out. Every market visit will replenish my brinjal stock and I am never bored of eating it! Sometimes it is consecutive days with brinjal since one huge aubergine is too big for me to consume in a single day. Of course this statement is a lie because most of the times, one brinjal is just not enough!

Motivation:

What is a life of a scientist if he does not find something new?! Though the challenges involved in the real time lab are more, I am quite at ease in inventing new food to eat in my part time lab, the kitchen. For almost over a week, I was cooking this dish in my mind with a variety of  combination of spices and finally arrived at two versions out of which I have successfully cooked, sampled and also tested one version. Oh, the second variation will just be sans tomatoes!

Materials and Methods :

Select a good big fleshy aubergine. Make sure it is straight and not twisted into several angles or deeply curved! A good straight aubergine will be easy to bake on the pan for this dish. Two big onions, two juicy tomatoes, green chili to as much hotness as is required, garlic pods, more ginger than the garlic taken, cashew nuts, cloves, cinnamon, anise and cardamom are the sauce makers. Potatoes and carrots will be our second base along with cumin, dhaniya and red chili powder.

Preparation of layer one:

The first layer is the baked aubergine. Cut the aubergine along the length and make thick slices. Thin slices will get over cooked and difficult to handle. Apply little oil on both the sides and put on a hot plate until both the sides are brown and the aubergine gets cooked. Apply salt after it is cooked and keep aside.

Preparation of layer two:

Peel the potatoes and carrots and boil them. Grate them finely after boiled and make into a homogeneous paste. Cooked peas and beans can also be added if one wants more vegetables. In very little hot oil, add the cumin and dhaniya and chili powder and then mix finely with the grated and smashed vegetables. The little oil is only for cooking the spices. Make sure the vegetable paste is mixed well with the spices and salt. Adding more oil will disrupt the nature of the vegetable paste. Exercise a little care while doing this!

Combination of layers:

Spread this vegetable paste over the baked aubergine. Make it also a thick layer, can be as thick as the aubergine is. The easiest way to prepare this will be in individual plates. If you are serving 4 people, then its 4 slices already on 4 plates over which this can be prepared. The handling will be easier. These two layers will serve as base and the sauce can be poured over this.

Cooking the sauce:

This is a time tested sauce. Nothing much to explain here, just the usual. Cook the tomatoes and onions with the garlic, ginger, whole spices (cardamon, cinnamon, anise and cloves), cashews and salt. Transfer to the blender and make a fine paste. Transfer this to the cooking pot and add water to adjust the consistency. A little cheese can be grated into this to make it rich and thick.

Results and discussion: 

Pour the sauce over the layered aubergine and it is now ready to serve! This is by itself a main course but can also be served along with hot white rice. Garnish with cilantro and onions. Too many preparation methods, but then, to create something exotic, it is totally worth doing these.Removing the tomato from the sauce ingredients will lead you to a white sauce which can also be equally delicious!

The Brinjal lover, Dahi Bhaingan

I welcome myself back to the blog after quite a while! It is becoming like "seasons". One blogging season with lots of posts and then a break and then a surprise post like this one and the season will start again. And what is better than to start again with my favorite Brinjal (kathirikai, aubergine, bhaingan). It is quite a story with me and brinjal, because, during childhood I used to hate this vegetable. Now, I have cravings for brinjal and I love it in every way possible. Cooked, grilled, baked, sambar, rasam, chutney, in pizza, in lasagna or with rice, brinjal is magic! Here is one recipe that I fell in love with and learnt from my friend from Orissa.

Choose a big brinjal, the ones that are usually grilled. Cut into round sliced. Dont make too thin slices, make them juicy. A little less than half a centimeter thickness would be really good. In a plate, mix together some red chili powder, turmeric, salt and oil. Coat both sides of the slices of brinjal well with this mixture and keep aside for a few minutes. In the meanwhile, heat a pan without oil. Place the brinjal slices on the hot pan (or plate) and cook. Turn the slices until both the sides are roasted. The brinjal should be roasted cooked but not smashed. Stack the cooked slices away until the gravy is done.

Heat a little oil in a pan and add panch puran. This is a mixture of five spices, fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds, cumin, black til seeds and onion seeds. Chopped green chili (4-5), minced ginger, chopped garlic (3-4) and curry leaves follow. Add some cumin and dhaniya powder and some hing. Switch to low heat and add well beaten curd (yogurt) and stir well. Immediately in sometime add the prepared brinjal slices and cook for few minutes on low heat. Control the salt in the yogurt if needed. 

This can be garnished with chopped cilantro and served with hot white rice. Cooking the brinjals in this way will take extra time and gas, but trust me, the effort is totally worth it. It is not spicy, but it can be made hot with the amount of green chili that goes in the yogurt. Keep the red chili powder over the brinjal to minimum because when you are cooking this on the hot plate, it could make the environment in the kitchen uncomfortable!

Flowery delight: Cauliflower manchurian a.k.a Manjaree

Here is yet another dish that held my fantasy for a long time. Amma forbade ordering this in the restaurants because she feared that they would be too lazy to clean the cauliflower and the food might contain worms. Every time amma used to make cauli, she would remove those slimy squiggly green fellows and so very rarely ordered gobi manchurian (gm). I consider this gm as the finest collobration between India and China.

My college canteen spoiled me with this dish. We used to call it Manjaree. "Anna, one plate manjaree. Ozhunga parthu samachaduthanae? (properly cooked right?)" used to be our order line every time. Ramamurthy mama would always give a friendly tap for this question and assure us that he would bear the medical expenses if anything happened to us because of his food. Nothing has ever happened!

Gm could be a dry starter or made into a gravy to accompany fried rice or fulkas (my fav combos) and other combinations will also be fabulous anyways! Combinations are a seperate blog and I know so many people, including me, relishing certain combos that could be just un thinkable!

Cut the cauliflower into nice florets, wash them well and dry. Cut onions, capsicum and green chili into big pieces. Separate the onion as big leaves after it is cut. Sprinkle vinegar over this onion-capsicum-green chili mixture and set aside. Make a thin batter with all purpose flour adding along coriander powder, cumin powder, red chili powder, ginger garlic paste and salt. Don't make the batter as thick as for making bajji or pakodas. Make it in such a consistency that it will coat your cauliflower and not create an envelope for it. Dip the cauliflower florets into this batter and fry them crisp. Set aside and seriously fight the temptation to eat them before the procedure is complete!

Fry finely chopped onions with ginger and garlic pieces in little oil. Add chili sauce and soy sauce into this. You can additionally add sweet-sour sauce too and I usually substitute the chili sauce with the Thai version of seasoned red chili vinegar called Sambal Olek ( thanks to Sharan for introducing me to it ). Now add the marinated onion-capsicum-green chili after draining the excess vinegar off into this and give it a stir. Add the fried cauliflower florets and toss your pan a couple of times to aid good mixing. Now add finely chopped spring onions and toss again. If you are not comfortable with tossing, then carefully stir to mix well. The dry manchurian is ready!

To make the gravy version, we need not do the marination step. Instead these cut vegetables can be added before adding the sauces and cooked along. Once the sauces are added, add water and cook on low heat. Starch solution or corn flour solution can be added to thicken the gravy. When the gravy is thick, add the fried florets and simmer for a few minutes before garnishing with coriander leaves.

My personal advise, dry version is the best! If you notices, Gm does not contain any garam masala though you can experiment sprinkling some. The sauces play the most crucial role in bringing out the Chinese taste. Also, carefully add salt to this dish because the sauces will already contain salt.

Unconventional combinations: potatoes in yogurt

There are times when people get bored with conventions and want to try something new. Some people are a bit too energetic just to try something new, but they invent something new! Out of one desperate energetic situation there arose a recipe which carries no name so I simply put them as potatoes in yogurt. There might be recipes similar to this one or may be even the same one which has a name to it, but for me, this one just happened in the kitchen in-situ!

As I have described before in my Mor Kuzhambu blog, yogurt or buttermilk is going to reflect the spices that we add in and that is what exactly happens here and yet another happy thing I like about this particular recipe is that it contains specifically self tailored spice mix. To get into details of what made me choose these ingredients for the masala would be a very tough one to answer. Impulse? Or may be a voice from within guiding my hands to pick up just these dear fellows? Or I could have just got lucky!

Dry roast half a stick of cinnamon, 2 cloves,  half a table spoon of cumin, one spoon of dhaniya seeds, 2 or 3 red chilies and 10 whole black pepper. Roast until you feel the room being filled with the aroma or if you have a cold while cooking this, just keep an eye until the cumin or dhania starts turning brown! Transfer them to a blender and make it into a fine powder. The dhaniya and the pepper tend to dominate the flavor but still the cinnamon and cloves do not get totally suppressed. I am sure many people will find this combination interesting.

Chop onions (how much ever you want to!) very fine and add it to just melted butter in a cooking pot that can be closed. Stir the onions and add into it boiled and peeled baby potatoes (80% boiled). Add turmeric, salt and the ground spices and top it with just a scoop of butter. Close the lid and shake well to mix and allow to cook on low heat. Allow the onions and the potatoes to get cooked in the butter. Keep shaking the vessel slowly so that the bottom does not burn and to allow all the potatoes to get well coated. Once this is done, add thick whipped yogurt and stir softly. Allow to simmer, closed on a very low heat for 3-4 minutes. Garnish! Eat with rice or rotis!

And then Rp said, let there be taste!

A spicy sinful indulgance, Kurma, as I do it !

This could be called as kurma, but I prefer to call it vegetables in spicy cashew coconut gravy. I used to cook this for every party and my friends here just love it so very much. I tried to find a picture of this to upload but I didnt have the habit of taking pictures until recently and since now there arnt any more Indians in my town, I have nearly stopped making this. The very first dish that bore my trademark and made me a famous person in this little town of Mülheim.

I am huge vegetable fan and there is not a single vegetable that is not delectable to my taste buds and this particular facts makes me cook dishes that have multiple vegetables involved. The craze for vegetables starts from purchasing them, in cutting them and eating them raw whilst cooking. I should mention here that I have different knifes for these purposes and thank Herr Saroj Panda for gifting me with a single piece steel knife that is a collectable for life. An authentic German make, Nirosta, worth nearly 50 Euros. I use this to cut potatoes, beetroot, nholkhol and similar vegetables. For onions and tomatoes it is my pure white non stick nano carbon coated non stick knife from Zassenhaus, for cabbage and fine mincing, it is the Edelstahl and for fruits and hand held cutting, Cartini. 

I also love to conjure up my own spice mix for the dishes. Using garam masala powder that is readily available is limited to everyday cooking and self one pot laziness. Especially in this particular dish, it is just an imaginative expression of spices. An ode to spices I should say!

Potatoes, carrots, beetroot, nholkhol and beans. All cut into similar sizes, big or small according to the mood of the day or the feel of the moment are steam cooked until just done. The water used for cooking is transferred in to a pan, heated with a dash of pepper and some salt and transferred to a bowl to be drank as soup while cooking the kurma! Salt is added to the boiled vegetables, shaken, and kept aside. Finely chopped onions are sauted in butter and to this is added the spice mix. Cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, annas flower, marathi moggu and a dash of poppy seeds are powdered well in the mixie and to this powder, soaked cashew is added and this paste is added to the onions and cooked. Red chili powder can be added at this stage along with a sprinkle of turmeric. Add a little water to aid the cooking of the cashews and not to burn this congress. Once this is cooked, the boiled vegetables are added and stirred carefully without smashing them. This is why it is important not to steam cook them to totality. Finally, coconut milk is added and the heat is turned off. Let it stay in the heat for sometime and finally garnish with chopped coriander leaves.

I do not add ginger and garlic to this nor do I use a single drop of oil. See, healthy and semi aacharam :P

Eat this with hot poori and oh, be warned, your house will smell of spices for days after cooking this!