Carp Paturi

  

Banana leaf is much valued in an Indian kitchen. It was used, and is still used in special occasions, as a serving plate for an Indian meal. Banana leaves, like green tea, contain a beneficial polyphenols and a chemical which indirectly helps to cure Parkinson’s disease.

 It can incorporate a subtle taste to a dish. Although it is not eaten as such, the delicate flavour it imparts is what really makes a difference. It actually works as a “natural” foil for steaming. Mix your favourite marinade with your favourite vegetable, meat or fish and just wrap it in a banana leaf and steam or roast at both sides for a wonderful leaf-wrapped dish! Here is an authentic Bengali (Indian) "paturi" which you will enjoy! The paturi tastes best with carp (rohu, katla), Indian hilsa, pomfret and red snapper (bhetki). I have used carp here, since it is available easily all over the world.  The paturi is cooked on special occasions and is among the most popular Bengali dishes.

Carp Paturi

[Variation: Try using pandan leaves in place of banana leaves for a little change!]

Ingredients:

Readymade fresh carp paste: 2 cups

Unsweetened hung curd: 3 tbsp

Green chillies (add more chillies for the brave-hearted!): 2

Mustard seeds: 2 tbsp

Turmeric powder: ¼ tsp

Salt: ¾ tsp

Mustard oil: 1 tbsp

Banana leaves (cut into half the size of your laptop screen): 6 rectangular sheets



Lightly oiled banana leaves



Method: 

Grind the mustard seeds, a pinch of salt and the green chillies into a fine paste. Mix the carp paste, turmeric powder, salt and the curd with this and mix well with your hand, so that all the ingredients are evenly distributed in the fish-paste mixture so obtained.

Dip each banana sheet into warm water for about 2 min. Remove from warm water and pat dry. Apply mustard oil on each leaf on its glazed side evenly and put a dollop of the fish mixture into it.

Wrap it so that it becomes like an envelope, ensuring that no paste is leaking.

Now tie each of the banana leaf parcels with a piece of thread (alternatively, use a toothpick). Heat a non-stick pan and put these parcels on a medium flame. Cover the lid and let this cook for 2 min. Now reduce the flame to minimum and cook each side till the leaves show a change in colour (this takes around 7 min). Flip and repeat the process for seven more minutes.

To eat, open each parcel carefully and discard the leaf. The steamed and spicy fish preparation is ready to tickle your tastebuds. This is best accompanied with steamed rice!

Stove-Top Asparagus Frittata

My family loves eggs. So I often search for and experiment with different kinds of egg preparations. This is the frittata which I made this Sunday and it was truly delicious! This is the first time I have made frittata myself, although I had tasted a different version of frittata in my sister-in-law’s home.

Frittata is an Italian word, which means “to fry”; originally it applies to any kind of egg preparation cooked in a pan or skillet. The frittata can be regarded as an Italian makeover to the Spanish tortilla (where a very thick egg omlette is cooked, incorporating fried potatoes). It generally has a number of additional ingredients, such as ham or sausage, cheese, vegetables or even pasta! Eggs are beaten heartily till these become frothy for that “extra fluffy” texture. But, unlike a general omlette, where the eggs are beaten first, then cooked until atleast half-set and then additional ingredients are put on this and rolled or flipped over, frittata is cooked with eggs and all other ingredients together. A 10'' non-stick skillet works best for a frittata meant for four people. The end-result is a very thick and fluffy omlette, incorporated with a variety of tempting ingredients, along with herbs!

While serving, frittata can be cut into wedges and served as a part of breakfast, lunch or dinner, along with other accompaniments, such as a variety of breads salads and beans.  In Italy, cold frittata wedges are a common food in corporate lunchboxes!

Vegetables such as spinach, mushrooms, peppers, tomato and asparagus make the frittata more colourful and nutritious! Frittatas are first cooked for some time on the stove top until the bottom layer of the egg mixture has set, and then are baked in the oven to solidify this completely and brown the frittata.

This frittata has been cooked till the end on a stove-top and no baking is involved!

Stove-Top Asparagus Frittata

Ingredients:

US large eggs: 8

Onion (chopped finely): ½ cup

Potato (cubed into very small pieces): ½ cup

Crème Fraiche (sour cream): 2 tbsp

Milk: ½ cup

Sugar: ¼ tsp

White pepper powder: ½ tsp

Peas: ½ cup

Fresh baby asparagus spears: 18

White button mushrooms (cut into small pieces): 1.5 cups

Chives: ¼ cup

Colby–Monterey Jack cheese (cut into small cubes): 1 cup

Pork sausage (cut into thin rings): 1 cup

Tomato (chopped finely): 1 cup

Dried rosemary: ½ tsp

Fresh cilantro (chopped finely): 2 tbsp

Salt (divided): 1 tsp

Butter (divided): 2 tbsp

Method:

Heat 1 tbsp butter in a pan and sauté the onion till browned. Then add the potatoes, alongwith ½ tsp salt. After 3 min, add the tomatoes, peas, mushrooms, sausage rings, as well as six asparagus spears (chopped into a few pieces) into this and continue to sauté on a medium flame for five more minutes or until the potatoes are almost cooked.  Switch off the gas, add the dried rosemary and mix well.

Blend the crème fraiche and the milk very well in a blender and keep aside. In a bowl, tip in all the eggs, along with ½ tsp salt and beat the eggs vigourously for atleast 15 min, till the mixture becomes creamy and extremely frothy. Slowly add the cooked vegetables, the milk-crème mixture and half the chopped cheese to this beaten egg mixture and mix everything well.

Heat a 10'' non-stick skillet and add 1 tbsp butter, making sure that you coat the melted butter all over the skillet. Now add the egg mixture to this. Top it up with rest of the cheese and chopped cilantro. Cover and cook on a slow heat for 25 minutes. Add the rest of the asparagus spears at the top of the frittata for decoration and cook for one more minute, covered.

[Note: My frittata came out perfectly cooked throughout, so I did not flip it or bake it further. You can, however, bake this for additional 5–10 min, if you wish to brown the top of the frittata. Butter can be replaced with olive oil.]

KACHA GOLLA sweet: Festive time for Indians!

 

Durga Puja in Hong Kong

This time of the year is full of festivities for Indians! With the Navratras (festival of nine nights, worshipping Goddess Amba) and Durga puja (a Bengali grand festival of five days, in which the Goddess of power, called mother Durga, is worshipped) being just over, we are ready to welcome the biggest festival in India, the Diwali, which is the festival of lights!

Aditya beating the auspicious drum

We Indians like to associate and celebrate the auspiciousness of the festivals with a variety of strictly vegetarian dishes: the dominant one among them being sweets. If you happen to visit India during the Navaratras or Diwali, you will see a huge number of roadside stalls, along with the reputed sweet shops, dedicated to a huge variety of colourful sweets! These are made up of different constituents, such as gram flour, nuts, raisins, saffron, rose water, kewra essence, coconut, jaggery, sugar and of course, a very important ingredient: the milk. Milk is transformed into fine-quality chenna or paneer (cottage cheese) and these are then metamorphosed into a variety of sweets: the kinds differing markedly in their taste, smell and appearance.

This was my first Durga puja in Hong Kong and I was amazed by how the Bengali expats here preserve their culture even in a different country! As I said, an essential part of any Indian festivity is offering sweets to the Goddess and later, sharing this prasad (which means a gracious, edible gift having God’s blessings) among the devotees. But, one cannot find sweets in Hong Kong easily, except a few Indian superstores, keeping only a few varieties.

I was not ready to compromise on the quality of the sweets, so I made up my mind to make these myself. And there I was!

This authentic sweetmeat, originating in eastern India, is considered the purest form of sweet to be offered to the Goddess. Known as kaccha gola  or kacha golla, the taste of this sweet is blissful. Each ball is so soft that it will melt in your mouth in a fraction of seconds! Made up of pure milk, it is a nutritious substitute for plain milk, which kids often refuse to drink.

Give this a try and go wild with its variations. I am sure you will like this heavenly dessert from India!

Kacha golla (sweet cottage cheese balls)

Ingredients:

Fresh, full-cream milk: 2 litres

Lemon juice or vinegar: 4 tbsp

Saffron strands: 8–10

Green cardamom powder: ¼ tsp

Granulated sugar (amount can be varied according to individual preference): 5 tbsp

Fine muslin or cheesecloth

Water: 5 tbsp

Method:

Let us first make the cottage cheese. For this, pour 1 tbsp water in a wok or a kadhai (so that the milk doesn’t stick to the bottom of the wok) and add the milk. Bring it to boil, adding the saffron strands and stirring from time to time. Slowly add 4 tbsp lemon juice mixed with equal amount of water, till the cheese and the whey just start to separate. Switch off the gas immediately to prevent hardening of the cheese.

After around 3 min, pour the chenna (the cottage cheese) and the whey into cheesecloth or a muslin cloth and run cold water on this to arrest further curdling and to wash away the lemony smell. Tie the cloth and squeeze the extra whey. Keep this cloth on a perforated plate or a flat colander. Put a heavy, flat object on this for 20 min, so that there is no extra whey left in the cottage cheese.

After 20 min, open the cloth and remove the saffron-infused cheese on another flat surface. Mash the cheese thoroughly for around 15 min with your palm. Finally, a stage would be reached when there are no lumps in the chenna and it can be turned into a smooth and creamy ball.

The process of kneading makes the dough soft

The secret behind making the kaccha gola is all in its kneading. The better you knead, the better the texture.

The cottage cheese can also be mashed thoroughly using a stone grinder (do not use a food processor for the same). To see how a stone grinder looks like, please refer to the second picture in my post on the Incredible Indian spices (click here to see).

Break the ball once again and add the cardamom powder and the sugar. Knead well once again. The process will take five to seven more minutes.

Divide the dough into equal-sized balls and smoothen the balls with your palms. This is best eaten fresh, since refrigeration makes these hard and dry.

Alu-Phulkopir Torkari (Potato-Cauliflower Curry)

Indian cuisine is considered among the finest cuisines in the world. The secret behind a great Indian dish is in its somewhat relaxed way of cooking. Decades ago, Indian housewives would be in the kitchen for hours, preparing the “perfectly cooked” curry which would even put the five-star-hotel chefs to shame. So what’s the secret behind the perfectly cooked curry in a simple Indian home? If you are really an ardent lover of Indian cuisine and follow the traditional way of Indian cooking, I would like to tell you that perfect Indian curries are never cooked in a jiffy. In addition, the cooking demands a careful addition of the spices at the right stage: it is the combination and the amount of spices, along with the cooking method used, which is the secret!

Contrary to the popular belief, an Indian curry does not necessarily involve “curry powder”. Indian curries range from non-spicy, mildly spicy to the ones which are extremely spicy. The same set of spices, as I explained in my post on the Incredible spices of India, can be used in varied amounts in the dish to create tastes entirely different from each other.

Consider this East-Indian potato-cauliflower curry as an example. An extremely important step in this curry is to shallow-fry the cauliflower florets and the diced potatoes separately on a low flame till these are browned and soft, yet firm. This is done by sprinkling little water while these are getting fried (to generate steam) and immediately covering the pan or the wok and reducing the flame to low or medium. The fried cauliflower florets and the potato cubes are then checked for being perfectly fried. This is done by breaking one floret and one potato cube separately with a kitchen spoon. If these are fried right, these will break upon pressing lightly with the spoon. If this does not happen, frying is prolonged till the desired consistency is reached.

In most of the Indian curries, the vegetables are perfectly cooked when they are in a stage when they just lose their crunchiness. If you can understand and master this step, your endeavour is successful! I hope you will like this recipe from Kolkata, West Bengal, India, which is Vegan and gluten-free too!

Alu-phulkopir torkari (potato-cauliflower curry)

Ingredients:

Large potatoes: 2

Medium-sized cauliflower: 1

Mustard oil (divided): 4 tbsp

Dry red chilli: 1

Dry bay leaf (tejpatta): 1

Cumin seeds: ½ tsp

Ginger paste: ½ tsp

Coriander powder: 1.5 tsp

Cumin powder: 1.5 tsp

Turmeric powder: ½ tsp

Salt (divided): 1.5 tsp

Sugar: ¼ tsp

Green chilli paste (optional): 1 tsp

Water: for sprinkling

Fresh green/red chillies: 4

Method:

Heat 3.5 tbsp mustard oil in a wok till its smoking point. Now add the cauliflower florets, cut into medium-sized pieces and half the salt. Cover and fry under a medium-low flame, sprinkling some water after 10 min and covering again. After 20 min (or till the time these florets have acquired a brownish tan), lightly press the stem of one of the fried florets with a kitchen spoon. If it breaks, the florets are perfectly fried. If not, continue to fry for some more time. Remove the florets and set aside.

Repeat the same with medium-sized, peeled and cubed potatoes, adding the rest of the salt. Remove and set aside.

Frying the potatoes and cauliflower florets separately is important because these take different amounts of time to be “perfectly fried”. Thus, frying them together will lead to the florets being overcooked.

Add ½ tbsp oil in the same wok and add the red chilli, bay leaf and cumin seeds when the oil is hot. When the bay leaf and the cumin seeds just turn darker, add the ginger paste and the powders dissolved in a little water. The flame should be low at this stage and you have to take extra precaution not to burn this wet-spice mixture. Stir continuously till the spices look fried and you can see oil separating from the spices. Add the fried potatoes and the cauliflower florets and mix everything well. Sprinkle some water and add the sugar. Now sauté under medium-high flame for 10 min, alongwith the chilli paste and whole, green (or red) chillies. The delicious dry curry is ready to be served with steamed rice, chapatti, poori or parathas!

Welcome Fall with Roselle Tea!

Not only roselle tea (or sorrel tea) is popular in Thailand, but also across Africa, Italy and Egypt. In Latin America and the US, it is popularly known as Agua de Flor de Jamaica. It is believed that the pharaohs of the Egypt were served this tea. In Australia and some other parts of the world, rosella jam and the colourful roselle liquor are very famous.

Roselle: a healthy, floral tea

Roselle is not the same as rose. It is actually obtained from the hibiscus plant. Research has proved that the chemical anthocyanin found in hibiscus (e.g., roselle) reduces cholesterol and hypertension. It acts as a natural diuretic and acts effectively against body’s fluid retention or oedema. High in calcium, niacin, riboflavin and iron, roselle tea is a good alternative against your regular cup of tea. It may also help in preventing bladder infections and kidney and liver problems. Roselle tea relieves constipation and research has now proved that if taken regularly after the meals, a hot cup of roselle tea is very effective to reduce weight.

Be creative with roselle!

If you spot a roselle plant in your place, you can experiment with it in numerous ways:

·         The fresh leaves and young stems are used directly in salads.

·         Make your own cup of Jamaican-style roselle tea (popular as a traditional Christmas drink), which is made by putting roselle calyces into an earthenware pot with grated ginger, boiling water and sugar, and letting the mixture stand overnight. The resultant liquid is strained and served with a dash of rum, along with a few ice cubes!

·         Thickened roselle sauce is found to substitute cranberry sauce effectively. This sauce is made by just boiling the tea longer, so that it acquires a syrupy consistency. This may be added to various desserts and salad dressings for the unique taste and a dash of colour, apart from being used as a sauce for pouring over pancakes, waffles and ice creams.

·         Add a little of this tea to your drink for a beautiful colour and a different flavour!

In winters, people prefer a hot cup of roselle tea, but the cold version works its magic with equal effect in summers as well! Dried roselle calyces are generally obtained by letting the fruit dry naturally on the plant and then gently taking out just the calyces, discarding the inner fruit. The taste of the tea is a bit sour, which can be adjusted with a careful addition of sugar for that perfectly balanced sweet-n-sour taste. So when I spotted a jar of dry roselle in one of the supermarkets here, I could not stop myself to try out a healthy brew of roselle tea.

The tea is easy to make. Perhaps, this is the easiest recipe on my blog so far!

Thai roselle tea (makes 4 cups)

Ingredients:

Dried roselle calyces: 10–12

Drinking water: 4.5 cups

Sugar: 5 tsp

Freshly crushed lemongrass (optional):  2 stems

Crushed ginger (optional): ½ tsp

Method:

Add all the ingredients in a pot and boil for 10 min. Strain and serve hot.

On another note, thanks to Quatro for awarding Cosmopolitan Currymania with Cherry on Top Award. Quatro’s blog, Quatro Frommagio and other Disgraces on the Menu, is very interesting and will definitely tickle your tastebuds. I am really honoured, Quatro!