Tofu and Sweet Corn Wrap in Rice Paper

Tofu is a recent addition to my kitchen. When I made it first time couple of years ago, it turned out so bad that I subconsciously promised myself not to have it ever again. But who knew that the same me will fall for the same tofu after two years down the line! So essentially, the culprit was not tofu, but my preparation which was not even worth remembering. But that was two years back and thankfully I have come a long way in cooking. Now I actually love tofu and prepare something new almost every week. This wrap is the latest snack I made for last Sunday evening – oh that means yesterday! [I can’t believe I am posting this so quickly!] What makes this snack an instant hit is the ‘health’ factor. Tofu and sweet corn both are packed with super nutrition and there is no use of oil to make these wraps. The combination of these two makes this delicious as well as healthy; you can also have it as a quick fix lunch as these wraps are quite filling. If you don’t like tofu yet and hesitate to experiment with it, give it a shot and I bet you won’t regret! Just make sure you are buying the freshest tofu available and of a good quality.

We all loved it and I hope you will love it too! 

Ingredients – (Makes 10)

• Rice paper – 20
• Tofu – 200 gms
• Sweet corn – 1 cup
• Rice vermicelli or rice noodles – 1 cup
• Schezwan sauce – 3 tbsp [Add one more if you like more spicy!]
• Sweet chilli sauce/Tomato ketchup – as required
• Salt to taste

Method –

• Steam the sweet corn till soft. I pressure cooked them until one whistle on high flame. When the pressure drops, drain and keep aside.
• Cut the tofu in small pieces, approximately 1cm. Boil water in a saucepan and add the cut tofu into it. Boil them on low heat for 4 to 5 minutes until soft.
• Heat the schezwan sauce in a frying pan and sauté for a minute. Add a splash of water and tip in the tofu pieces. [I used the store-bought schezwan sauce; but if you don't have it handy, replace it with equal amount of any other spicy sauce like 'hot n sweet', hoisin sauce etc.]
• Stir-fry tofu on high heat for couple of minutes until all the tofu pieces are coated nicely with the sauce. Remove from heat and set aside.
• Boil water and add the vermicelli/noodles to it. Immediately switch off the heat and drain. Set aside.
• Now take room temperature water in a big bowl. Take one rice paper at a time and immerse in water for 6 to 8 seconds. Remove from water and place on a flat plate or board. Since rice papers are very thin, I used two papers for one roll. So repeat the same process for the second paper and place it on top of the first one. Try to match the edges as much as you can so that it looks one paper only.
• It’s time to fill up the roll! Take one spoon of tofu pieces, around 7 to 8 pieces, 1 spoon full of steamed sweet corn and almost equal amount of soft vermicelli/noodles and place on a straight line on any side of the double-layered rice paper. [Alter the amount of each filling as per your liking – there is absolutely no grammar here!] Spread some sweet chilli sauce/tomato ketchup over the filling.
• Now you have to be very careful while wrapping up the roll as the rice papers are very thin and soft after soaking. First make a small fold perpendicular to the filling so that it seals the bottom of the roll. Then roll up the sides of the filling quite tightly. Once the ends meet, they will stick together if applied a little pressure – very little! Repeat the same process to make more wraps. 
• Your tofu and sweet corn wrap is ready! Enjoy your super snack!

Stir-fried Chicken with Chillies and Basil

There are so many things to write and so little time I have. I am really bad at time management! Phew… what to do! I am what I am and I have to survive with it.

This post was long, long due. This is about that much awaited baking class that me and four of my friends attended on a weekend. It was real fun I must say. I am not sure how much new techniques I learned that day, but all in all I had a relaxing time with friends and enjoyed baking together. Though the instructor got an impression that I am the worst of the lot as I was being too lazy to knead my bread dough properly, I didn’t mind at all! :) I was late for the class and everyone had to wait for me, but the reason for being late was definitely not my laziness. The main culprit was this ‘Basil Chicken’, which took more time to cook than what I anticipated! What could I do? I couldn’t feed my friends half-cooked chicken, can I? So I hope I was forgiven for my delay when I saw them enjoying the dish! ;)

Well, now about the baking class – we baked spinach bread, choco cookies, chocolate cake and few things more which are not worth mentioning. But more than my learning, I was interested in taking sneak peeks on the various custom made cakes which the pro-bakers were decorating. Those were amazing!

Baking is one thing which takes a lot of time, patience and practice. It’s really difficult to become a perfect baker from day 1. But it surely gives me a lot of pleasure. My better half’s birthday is round the corner; so I will have some extensive baking time coming soon!

But for now, let me share my basil chicken recipe. It was yum and best served as a starter or appetizer.

Ingredients – (Server 6)

• Chicken – 600 gms [I used two chicken breasts]
• Fresh red chillies – 6 [if you don’t have fresh red chillies at hand, replace with 4 dried red chillies]
• Fresh basil leaves – 40
• Cornflour – 2 & ½ tbsp
• Egg – 1, beaten
• White pepper powder – ¼ th tsp
• Garlic cloves – 6, sliced
• Fish sauce – 2 tbsp
• Dark soy sauce – 3 tsp [make sure you are using ‘dark’ soy sauce for this as light one won’t give you the same result]
• Sugar – 1 & ½ tsp
• Oil – 5 tbsp
• Salt to taste

Method –

• Slice four fresh red chillies, deseed and chop. Slice the remaining two and keep aside.
• Cut the chicken into thin strips. Add cornflour, egg, salt and white pepper powder to the chicken strips and mix well.
• Heat two tbsp oil in a wok and sauté 30 fresh basil leaves till crisp [do not burn!] Drain on absorbent paper and set aside.
• Add the remaining oil in the same wok and stir fry the marinated chicken strips until crisp and almost done. Drain and set aside.
• To the same oil, add sliced garlic and four chopped red chillies. Stir fry for couple of minutes or until golden brown.
• Now add fried chicken strips, fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar. Stir fry on high heat for three to four minutes or until cooked through.
• Add the remaining fresh basil and mix.
• Transfer to a serving plate and spread the fried basil leaves on top.
• Garnish with the sliced red chillies and serve hot!

Doi Machh: Fish in Yogurt Sauce and a sudden trip to Hometown

A sudden trip to hometown can bring a lot of changes to our life; even in other’s life too. It can make you a witness of some events whose importance was unknown to you even a while back and moreover you never even imagined to be a part of it, though you might be aware that this event was scheduled to happen when it had to happen. May be I am sounding too complicated. Yeah, sure I am. I am little emotional today and may get carried away with memories. Please excuse me for that. This month my mom retired from her service and I happened to be there at her farewell: totally unplanned. The event may seem to be very simple to many of you, but to me it was not. After 7 years of my job, I can understand what ‘retirement’ actually means. Though I feel quite exhausted at times when it becomes extremely difficult to balance both professional and personal life, but I know I can’t quit for good. My mom worked for more than 37 years in the same organization! That’s just unbelievable to me! And with that she also managed to invest enough time to our childhood! She started working at the age of 21 and now suddenly all those official duties came to an end. How can people cope with this sudden emptiness? How will I cope with it in future? Honestly, I am scared because I know I can’t sit idle for long!  Or may be time will eventually bring a change inside me and I will desperately long for retirement. I don’t know. What has to happen will happen one day. But for now, I was thinking about my mom and her service life. She was working for a nationalized bank and has met thousands of people from different walks of life which had helped her gather diverse experience. I have grown up listening to all those stories. I had always seen her working round the clock; but strangely enough she was never too ambitious. After I began my career, I started wondering why she didn't chase after her career growth when she totally deserved it. But the simple reason was that she only wanted to give us all her time, care and attention. And now both me and my brother staying far away from her, I can clearly imagine how she must be feeling about her retirement. Retirement doesn’t only mean permanent vacation; it also empties a lot of our time in a day. Sometimes it becomes quite a struggle to fill up that emptiness. All this I am saying from my observation, not experience, off course! 

So I decided to be with her at this moment of a significant change and give her some joyous memories to cherish in future. Few years back, she must have struggled managing the time for both personal and professional life efficiently which I can understand after working for quite some time now. But now she will have ample time throughout the day.

I bet she will always remember that I was there on her last day at work even though no one ever expected it. I had 5 days of joyful memories and now back to my workplace. So this sudden unplanned trip made me realize the significance of some of the indispensable events of life which we have to live with. I will leave you with this thought here and share my good old recipe of ‘Doi Machh’ – fish (Catla) cooked in aromatic yogurt sauce. My little way of making my mom n dad happy and saying a 'Thank you' for everything!

Ingredients – (serves 4)

• Fish steaks – 4 to 6, I used Catla fish (Indian Carp fish)
• Plain yogurt – ¾ th cup
• Onion – 2 large
• Garlic cloves – 10, grate 5 and keep the rest as whole
• Ginger paste – 1 tsp
• Turmeric powder – 1 tsp
• Bay leaf – 1
• Green cardamom – 5
• Cloves – 5
• Cinnamon stick – 2 inch piece
• Green chilli – 1 or 2
• Garam masala powder – 1 tsp
• Sugar – 2 tbsp
• Oil – 2 tbsp
• Salt to taste

Method –

• Wash the fish steaks well. Keep them in a large bowl.
• Mix yogurt, turmeric powder, ginger paste, grated garlic and half teaspoon salt to make a thick marinade.
• Add it to the fish steaks and coat all the pieces well. Marinate for 2 hours or at least 1 hour.
• Make a paste of the onions.
• In a frying pan, heat oil. Add bay leaf, green cardamoms, cloves and cinnamon. Sauté for a minute.
• Add the whole garlic cloves and onion paste.
• Saute till the onion turns golden brown and starts separating the oil.
• Now add the marinated fish along with all the marinade.
• Add green chilli, sugar and salt to taste. Cover and cook on low heat for 15 minutes.
• After some time the magical aroma will tell you that your ‘Doi Machh’ is almost ready. Uncover and check if the fishes are soft and cooked through.
• Check the consistency of the gravy. If you want it thicker, keep it uncovered on high flame for couple of minutes more.
• Sprinkle garam masala powder. Remove from heat and keep covered for 5 minutes.
• Serve hot with white Basmati rice.

Batter Fried Basa Fish

I miss my hometown - Kolkata. Oh! I miss it so much! Okay okay! I am not going to be “senti”, but it is true that sometimes I miss Kolkata, especially for the Kolkata-special “Street Food”. I have stayed in few big cities of India like Mumbai, Hyderabad and now Bangalore, but nowhere could I find such amazing variety of street food, be it veg or non-veg. Being a hard-core non-vegetarian, I used to prefer the non-veg snacks like mutton cutlet, fish fry, chicken roll, chicken/mutton/fish chop and many many more, but the veg options also never failed to delight me as well, like singara (samosa), alur chop (potato fritters), vegetable chop (Mixed veg fritters, mostly dominated by beetroot), beguni (eggplant fritters), mochar chop (difficult to translate – “mocha” is the flower of banana and “chop” is fritter, now you can easily combine!) and the list will go on and on. Well, There is no plan of visiting my hometown during recent months, so I will keep missing them for indefinite time unless I decide to try my hands on creating those stuffs at home. So here is my first trial of fish fry – “Kolkata style” – or more internationally can be called as “batter fried fish”. My first take came out well which was beyond my expectation. Hope you will like it too!

Ingrdients – (makes 2)

• Boneless fish fillet – 2, I used Basa fish, you can use any other boneless, white and meaty fish like Bhetki
• Refined flour (Maida) – 1 cup
• Egg – 2
• Milk – 1 cup
• Salt to taste
• Oil – for the batter and for frying.
• Crushed black pepper – ½ tsp, optional

Method –

• Wash the fish fillet well. I used frozen fillet, so I had to thaw them completely before starting.
• Season the fillet with little salt.
• In a big bowl, combine the flour, eggs, milk, salt [approximately a little less than ½ tsp will do] and 1 tsp of oil.
• Whisk them well to make a thick and smooth batter. The batter must be very smooth without any lumps. Consistency should be such that it should coat the fish fillet and does not flow off. To check that, dip a spoon into the batter. If the batter coats the back of the spoon evenly, then the consistency is right. If you feel it is too thick, add a little more milk and if it is too thin, throw in some more flour. Arriving at the right consistency may take few practices.
• Heat oil in a frying pan. I didn’t deep fry my fish; I did shallow frying which worked really well.
• Dip a fillet into the batter. Take it out and when the oil is quite hot, tip in the batter coated fish. If you find that the batter is flowing out of the fillet, take a little amount of batter from the bowl using a spoon and smear it on the top of the fillet.
• When the bottom side turns browns, carefully turn the fillet upside down and fry it till brown. It will take around 10 minutes each side but it also depends on the thickness of the fillets you are using. Mine took 10 minutes each side. To check the doneness, take a toothpick and prick the fish in the middle. If it goes in very easily without any resistance, your fish is done. Else give it two more minutes.
• Once done, remove them on tissue to soak the excess oil.
• Serve hot with tartar sauce. Delish!

Prawn Patio

Cooking prawns is always a delight for me. I have loved prawns ever since I came to know about their existence, so I don’t mind giving that effort to shell and devein them every time. These prawns were resting in my freezer for 5 days as I was searching for something totally new and exciting. And finally I got it! I got it in the new addition to my cookbook collection – “My Great India Cookbook” by the celebrated chef Vikas Khanna. This prawn patio is one of the famous Parsi delicacies and according to Vikas Khanna, it tastes lovely with rice; and how correct he was! It was an amazing companion with plain hot rice and you won’t even look for any other side dish if you are as crazy as me for prawns. So take a delish ride with this flavorful Parsi recipe.

Ingredients – (serves 4)

Spice paste –

• Cloves – 9
• Dried red chilli – 4
• Turmeric powder – 1 & ½ tsp
• Cumin seed – ¾ tsp

Patio –

• Medium prawns – 500 gms
• Onion – 4, medium
• Tamarind pulp – ¼ cup
• Jaggery – 1 tbsp, grated
• Fresh coriander leaves – 1 cup
• Oil – 2 tbsp
• Salt to taste

Method –

• Combine all the ingredients of the spice paste together in a grinder and make a smooth paste using 2 tablespoon of water. Set aside.
• Clean and devein the prawns. Shell them keeping the tails intact. I do it this way because for me it looks better for presentation than the fully shelled prawns. You can do away with the shell fully.
• Out of the 4 onions, slice one finely and chop the rest of the three.
• Heat oil in a frying pan and put on medium heat. When hot, add the sliced onion and sauté till golden.
• Stir in the ground spice paste with a splash of water and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes.
• Now add prawns stirring well till they are thoroughly coated with the gravy.
• After 4 to 5 minutes, tip in the chopped onions, finely chopped coriander leaves and salt. Add half a cup of water.
• When the water comes to boil, cover and simmer till the prawns are just cooked.
• Stir in tamarind pulp and jaggery and cook till the jaggery dissolves and the gravy turns thick.
• Remove from heat and serve hot with rice.

Tomato Puree - How to make at home

Isn’t that red colour looking amazing? It’s stunning to me. And this is the ultimate satisfaction for which I take all these pain to make tomato puree at home! Yes, you have to agree that making this at home takes a lot of effort and patience, but the final result is outstanding. Like the saying goes – “every good thing comes for a price”, which holds good even for this one. You can easily buy a pack of ready-made tomato puree from the grocery store and it will also taste nice [I mean, I was doing the same for so many years!], but doing it from scratch at home is a divine feeling and you will surely agree if you had done it even at least once. Any homemade stuff is definitely the healthiest choice devoid of any preservative and unknown chemicals. So if you want to make that healthy decision, go ahead and give yourself this pain to gain something extremely beneficial! 

Ingredients –

• Tomatoes – 1 kg [use as much red tomatoes as possible and avoid those which still have the green tinge.]
• Vinegar – 2 tbsp
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Sugar – 2 tbsp, optional

 

Method –

• Wash the tomatoes well. Give a criss-cross cut at the bottom of each tomato, but do not cut them all the way through.
• In a big bowl boil water. Bowl should be quite big which could contain 1 kg of tomatoes. I didn’t have any, so I did it in two batches.
• When the water is bubbling, add the tomatoes and boil them at medium heat for 10 minutes.
• Now remove from fire and drain. Add cold water to make it easier to handle.
• You can wait till the tomatoes cool down a bit. Then peel off the skin. It will come out quite easily since the tomatoes have become very soft.
• Cut the tomatoes and discard the seeds.
• Put the tomato pulp in a blender and blend them till very smooth. You can use a hand blender too.
• Now transfer the blended pulp in a heavy bottomed pan and put it on medium heat.
• Bring it to boil. Add vinegar, salt and sugar.
• When the puree starts bubbling, lower the heat to the minimum and cook until a thick consistency is reached. Making a thicker puree will increase the shelf-life.
• Remove from fire and set aside to cool down completely.
• Store it in fridge in a clean & airtight glass bottle and use a clean spoon every time you use it.

Chicken Meat Balls in Spicy Gravy

Meat balls! Sounds yummy, isn’t it? Indeed it is. I saw many food programs in television making these meat balls and tempting me to the extreme that finally I made this for yesterday’s dinner. It turned out… ummm…. Well, it would have been better if I used mutton mince, but my darling hubby is dead against red meat recently [let alone his craze for eating healthy!], so I had to use chicken mince, which also gave good result but alas, I wish I could hide my disappointment for not being able to use mutton keema. It’s not that I love mutton too much, but I wanted to make these meat balls as perfectly as possible since I was trying my hands on these for the very first time. But you can ignore me and easily use chicken keema, it won’t do any harm to the taste. I can guarantee this from the way my dear husband finished off all the meat balls!  

Ingredients – (serves 2 or 3)

For meat balls -

• Chicken mince (keema) – 300 gms
• Ginger paste – 1 tbsp
• Garlic paste – 1 tbsp
• Egg – 1
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Enough oil for deep frying
• Red chilli powder – 1 tsp

For the gravy –

• Onion – 2, medium
• Ginger paste – 1 tsp
• Garlic paste – 1 tsp
• Tomato puree – 4 tbsp
• Turmeric powder – ¼ th tsp
• Red chilli powder – 1 tsp
• Garam masala powder – 1 tsp
• Oil – 2tbsp
• Salt to taste

Method –

• Wash the chicken mince and squeeze out all water.
• Take a big bowl and mix the keema with ginger-garlic paste, egg, oil, red chilli powder and salt.
• Knead it well and make a soft dough.
• Now make small meat balls from the dough and keep aside.
• Heat the oil in a deep frying pan or wok. When the oil is quite hot, tip in the meat balls and fry them on medium heat till they are deep brown.
• Take them out and put on absorbent tissue. [You can taste one or two though! ;)]
• For the gravy, chop the onion finely.
• Heat oil in a skillet. Add the chopped onion and ginger-garlic paste.
• Sauté them till they are golden brown.  Add the tomato puree and sauté till the raw smell is gone.
• Make a smooth paste with turmeric powder & red chilli powder adding a little water.
• When the onion paste starts separating the oil, add this spice paste and fry on high heat.
• When the spice starts separating the oil, add warm water. Add salt and little sugar if you want to add a dash of sweetness, but it is totally optional.
• When the gravy comes to boil, add the fried meat balls.
• Cover and cook on low heat for 10 minutes so that the meat balls absorb the flavors of the spices.
• Now sprinkle the garam masala powder and remove from heat.
• Serve hot with rice or roti/naan.