Summer Smoothie with Mint!




Summer Smoothie with Mint!

Summer smoothie with mint is the recipe of the amazing mint-and-fruit smoothie I experimented with this morning. The mint, lychee, apple and the mango made a great match with each other in this fruit drink. Then, there are lemon and honey into it, along with the yogurt. All blended, this is the tasty surprise I got, which my family enjoyed till the last drop. Actually, I wasn’t expecting that it would turn out to be so delicious; but, it did!

 

When I woke up today morning, I looked outside my living room's glass window in Hong Kong. The reflection of the morning sun on the sea was looking like someone has thrown a bagful of diamonds into the sea. The summer season is already here in its full form! And that’s great news, as that also means the season for mocktails, sherbets, ice creams and smoothies!

Summer Smoothie with Mint!

Ingredients:

Mango pulp: ½ cup
Lychees: 2
Lemon juice: 2 tbsp
Apple, chopped finely: ¼ cup
Mint leaves: 3 or 4
Brown sugar: 2 tbsp
Salt: ¼ tsp
Yogurt: 4 tbsp
Drinking water: 2 cups
Crushed ice: ½ cup
Honey, divided: 3 tbsp

Method of Preparation:

Reserve some chopped apples and 1 tbsp honey for putting at the bottom of the serving glass. Add all the ingredients, except water, to the blender and blend all to a smooth paste.

Add the water and blend once more.

Take out a frosted glass from the refrigerator, put the reserved apples in it.

Pour honey (1 tbsp) over it.

Now, pour the minty smoothie. Serve chilled.

Healthy Spinach Curry with Indian Five Spices




Healthy spinach - mixed vegetable curry with Indian five spices

This healthy spinach curry is a true representation of an authentic Indian dish: a product of being creative with the five spices. I know this recipe is going to cheer all my vegetarian/vegan friends who love Indian cuisine. The original name of this Bengali preparation is Palong Shaaker Jhol: a must-have in a traditional Bengali family. The spinach curry is healthy, as it is extremely light and non-spicy. The five kinds of seeds (called Indian five spices or paanch phoron) and the bay leaves used for singeing infuse an out-of-the-world aroma to the dish, without making the dish spicy at all! The dry red chilli can be lightly browned in the tempered oil, so that the oil gets the aroma of that, and can be discarded after that, if one does not want the dish to be hot. Typically, we Indians would love the dry red chilli to be right there!

Indian five spices, bay leaves and dry, red chilli

Paanch phoron: Ironically, these Indian five spices are not spicy at all, these just impart a distinctive aroma to the dish! These five spices comprise cumin seeds (jeera), fenugreek seeds (methidana), fennel seeds (saunf), onion/nigella seeds (kalonji or mangrel) and wild celery seeds (radhuni), in equal amounts. My advice is that, use a little extra cumin seeds in these five spices, which improves the taste even further.

This is one curry which the Indian (Bengali) mothers are immeasurably satisfied to feed their kids. In my maternal home, it was compulsory to eat this dish atleast once a week, given its nutritional benefits! Probably, I have been eating this dish, wonderfully cooked by my mother, since I was just eight months old. Till today, I love this dish so much that I am quite addicted to its lightness and unique taste! Now, I am a mother myself, and I get the same satisfaction when my kids eat this vegetable medley, where so many vegetables come together in just one, single dish! Isn’t that lovely?

Bengali cooking is an art in itself, with no exaggeration of spices, and this form of Indian cooking is still relatively unexplored for the rest of the world. Yes, Indian cuisine is more than the naan, samosas, chaat, tandoori chicken and the korma. Every Indian state has its own list of endless delicacies and till today, a majority of Indian women love to spend hours in the kitchen, perfecting themselves even more.

Tempering going on

In the Bengali-style cooking, the phoron or the tempering plays a vital role; the seeds tempered should be perfectly brown: neither more, nor less. After the tempering, each kind of vegetable has to be shallow-fried and slow-cooked to a point where each of them are nicely browned and yet firm, but soft just to the point that the pieces break easily when a kitchen spoon’s edge is lightly pressed over it.

Vegetables in the dish are cut in this manner

So here is the recipe. I did not use radish here, but you might use a little bit of cubed radish for a greater flavour.

Healthy Spinach - Mixed Vegetable Curry with Indian Five Spices

Ingredients:

Spinach, roughly chopped, with stems: 5 cups

Potato, peeled and cubed: 1 cup

Ridge gourd, peeled, big cubes: 2 cups

French beans, cut into half the finger size:  1 cup

Pumpkin, with peel intact, medium-sized cubes: 1 cup

Aubergines, medium-sized pieces: ½ cup

Carrot, peeled, quartered and cut medium-sized: 1 cup

Indian five spices mix (paanch phoron): ¾ tsp

Bay leaves, small-sized: 2

Dry, red chilli: 1

Green/Red chilli, whole (optional): 2

Turmeric powder: ½ tsp

Salt: 1½ tsp

Sugar: ½ tsp

Mustard oil, divided: 5 tbsp

Dry pulses’ drops (bori or vadi): 6-7

Dry pulses' drops (bori or vadi)

Method of Preparation:

Cut the vegetables, as shown in one of the above-shown pictures..

Prepare the five-spice mixture and measure ¾ tsp out.

Lightly brown the dried pulses’ drops in oil, crush them roughly and keep aside.



Dry pulses' drops getting tanned in oil

After frying and crushing roughly

Add the oil to the skillet and let it reach the smoking point; keep the flame to medium level. Add the bay leaves and the dry red chilli. Now add the five spices. Regulate the flame carefully, so that the five spices are just browned and you just start smelling the aroma. Quickly add the cut vegetables, except the aubergines and the spinach.

Sauté for 5 min. Keep the flame medium. Add the salt and the turmeric powder. Add the cut aubergines now.

Mix well and continue cooking till the vegetables are slightly browned and you can just break each kind of vegetable with the edge of your cooking spoon. It is important not to overcook the vegetables at this stage.

Add the spinach and the sugar. Mix again, add the green/red chillies and the chopped coriander leaves.

Close the lid and keep the flame low. When you open the lid after 15 min, the leafy greens would have released a lot of water into the dish.

Add the crushed bori. Mix well and cook under the medium flame for five more minutes.

Serve this dish with plain, steamed rice.

No-Masala Yogurt Chicken



No-masala yogurt chicken. Yummy!



If you had always thought that Indian curry implies a lot of masala or spices, time to think again!

You must be frowning: an Indian chicken curry, and that too, without any masala? I must be joking. But this is true. What I learnt in these few years of cooking for my family and friends is that, sometimes, minimisation of spices helps in strengthening the taste of the dish by retaining the basic flavour of the main ingredient: chicken in this case.

The yogurt to be used for this kind of chicken gravy should neither be very sweet, nor sour, but should be “balanced” in taste. I prefer using Nestlé yogurt for this recipe.

The no-masala yogurt chicken tastes best when eaten with raw onion rings, alongwith roti, paratha, naan or rice.

No-Masala Yogurt Chicken

Ingredients:

Whole chicken legs: 4

Onion, chopped: 1 cup

Garlic, crushed: 2 tbsp

Ginger paste: 1 tbsp

Salt (for marination): 3 tsp

Sugar: ½ tsp

Turmeric powder: 2 tsp

Yogurt: 5 tsp

Sour cream: 3 tsp

Crushed black pepper (optional): 1 tsp

Oil: 3.5 tbsp

Salt (for gravy): 1 tsp

Water: 2 cups

Method of Preparation:

Marinate the chicken legs with salt, turmeric powder, crushed black pepper, 4 tsp yogurt and ½ tsp oil for 1 hour.

Heat the skillet, add the oil, bring it to a smoking point and add the chopped onion. Sauté for 10 minutes. Add the garlic, sauté for 2 min and then add the ginger paste. Mix and continue cooking this for two more minutes.

Add the marinated chicken pieces with the whole marinade. Continue to cook under medium flame, till the chicken starts getting brownish. This takes approximately 30 min.

Add the sugar and the water. 

Mix everything once, along with the sour cream, and close the lid. Slow-cook for 1 hour. Stir once in between.

Swich off the gas after 1 hour.

Remove the chicken legs on a serving plate. Trickle some reserved yogurt on these and garnish with onion rings.

Jaggery-Sweetened Rice Kheer

Jaggery-sweetened rice kheer



There is a “magic” ingredient in making one of the finest and most popular Indian desserts—the rice kheer—and the ingredient is jaggery. The jaggery or gur is used in different ways in different states in India. Some use this in curries and dals (Indian lentil soups). More commonly, it is used in making a variety of Indian sweets. This is associated with festivity and auspiciousness in India.



Jaggery



Patali gur (one superior form of jaggery) is the deep-brown jaggery obtained from boiling the liquid obtained from date palms. Patali has much greater moisture and softness levels than its cousin, the cane jaggery. The patali gur is mainly found in states of West Bengal and Orissa. Worthwhile to say, in West Bengal, no festival, marriage ceremony or birthday party is complete without this dessert!

Last year, my sister-in-law lovingly sent me the best patali gur from West Bengal, guessing that Hong Kong will probably not have this authentic Indian constituent. Well, she was right.

If you don’t get this ingredient in the Indian stores in your country, don’t be disheartened. An alternative is to use natural brown sugar, like turbinado or demerara sugar, which will also impart brown colour to the dish. But, honestly, the flavour would be “divine” only with this Indian product.

I am glad to share this venerable Bengali recipe, passed over many generations in India. The rice typically used in this is the small-grained fragrant rice, used as an offering to lord Ganesha during the festival called Ganesh Chaturthi. This rice is called gobindabhog chaal in Bengal. The rice should be washed properly and soaked in just enough water for ½ hour (½ cup rice in 1 cup water). The consistency of this kheer should be runny: not too thick.

Jaggery-Sweetened Rice Kheer

Ingredients:

Small-grained fragrant rice: ½ cup

Milk: 1.5 litres

Jaggery: ½ cup

Bay leaves: 2

Green cardamoms, split: 2

Cashewnuts, broken into half: 12

Raisins: ¼ cup

Ghee/oil: 1 tsp

The basic ingredients for this kheer

Method of Preparation:



Shallow-fried cashewnuts and raisins



First, shallow-fry the cashewnuts and the raisins in ghee/oil separately, till light brown. Remove and keep them aside.

In a skillet, pour the milk, bay leaves and green cardamoms. Bring the milk to a boil, stirring from time to time.

Add the drained rice, immersed in 1 cup water for ½ hour. Add the fried cashewnuts and raisins.

Cook for 1 hour on low flame, stirring occasionally. After 1 hour, the rice will get nicely cooked in milk.

Stir occasionally to prevent the kheer getting burnt

Switch off the gas and wait for 5 min.



The white colour of the milk changes to brown on adding the jaggery



Then add the jaggery. Mix well. (Adding the jaggery to hot milk is not preferred, since it leads to curdling of the milk.) Serve cold.

Basic Indian Triangular Flatbread (Paratha)

Basic Indian triangular flatbread (paratha)

As “pasta” is to the Italian and “noodles” is to the Chinese, the same way, paratha is to the Indians! If you are an Indian curry addict, then learning this basic triangular paratha is a must. If you are not a curry lover, which is less likely, try parathas with the commonly available tomato sauce in your town, and it will taste no less! These can be also eaten with Indian pickles (which range from sweet, sweet and sour, to spicy). You might have come across a number of paratha recipes, some being stuffed, but this simple paratha (very popular among the Bengalis) has a beauty of its own…

These parathas should be crisp, not to the extent that these break off easily, but you should be able to tear the small pieces effortlessly. The only way to make these crisp is to initially cook it over slow flame for a few minutes and then increasing the flame to medium. If you cook them over high heat, the parathas would cook from outside, but these will be raw from inside. Also, there are chances of the product getting burnt. So you have to be very careful in controlling the flame at the right time!

Whole wheat flour

These Indian flatbreads taste best if you fry them in Indian ghee (available in Indian stores) or butter, instead of oil. Also, serve them immediately to savour the crispiness to the fullest! Each cup of whole wheat flour makes three balls for rolling out into these unique triangles. I have made an attempt to explain the process of making these triangular flatbreads as stepwise as possible. Hope you will try it out and share your experience with me soon!

Basic Indian Triangular Flatbread (Paratha)

Ingredients:

Whole wheat flour (gehun ka atta): 1 cup

Salt: ¼ tsp

Water: ¼ cup

Ghee or butter: 7 tbsp

Method of Preparation:

Combine the first three ingredients to make smooth dough. Please add little water at a time while kneading. Make sure it is not powdery with flour, in which case you’ll have to add a little water and knead more till the desired texture is reached. If it feels sticky, add more flour and knead again. Finally, it should look like this:



The flour dough

Make three equal-sized balls from this dough. Take one of them, flatten it slightly and smear some flour on the ball.

Now roll out a medium-sized circle, making sure that the thickness is even all around.

Take ½ tsp ghee or butter and spread it over the circle.

Fold the circle, so that it becomes a semi-circle. Again, spread ghee on this.

Fold this one more time, as shown below.

Press the small triangle slightly, between your palms. Put some flour again and start rolling this out.

First, elongate the paratha. Smear a little flour on both sides.

The next step is to roll it wide. Ensure that the corners are thin and the body of the paratha is comparatively thick.

 The final size should be a little smaller than twice the size of your computer mouse.



Ready to be fried!



Heat 2 tbsp ghee and let it start smoking. Slide in the triangulr flatbread carefully (it should not fold).Reduce the flame to “low” for 2 min.

After 2 min, increase the flame to “medium” and flip when you find the paratha has started swelling up.

Can you see the paratha puffing up slightly?

Fry the other side for 2 min. Flip again.

Press the corners and the body of the flatbread slightly. Flip again after 2 min. You should see that the flipped side is nicely brown-tanned.

Repeat, till both sides have brown marks.

Serve immediately with your choice of curry, pickle, yogurt, tomato sauce or even jam!

I like it with my favourite hot and sweet mango pickle. The paratha is eaten directly using your hand: no forks, knives or chopsticks, please! Enjoy your bite.