Stuffed Jumbo Pasta with Creamy Tomato Sauce

Right now, I am very excited and counting days! A few weeks back, I received an invitation on behalf of American Express and the Asian Food Channel to meet Canadian celebrity chef Chuck Hughes! He will visit Hong Kong very soon for the third edition of the Celebrity Chef Series. Chef Hughes will cook interesting dishes in the event and if I’m lucky, I might be one of the invitees who can actually taste his dish! After this, he will play host to an exclusive dinner.

Well, I have been reading about stuffed pasta for quite a while now. Spinach seems to be one of the popular ingredients in stuffed pastas. I didn’t want to use spinach in this. I experimented with a little amount of avocado in my pork-mushroom-based stuffing and the taste was really great! If you trust my recipes, I’d like to suggest you that this recipe can definitely impress your loved ones.

Stuffed Jumbo Pasta with Creamy Tomato Sauce

Ingredients for the filling:

Jumbo Conchiglioni pasta: 20 shells

Purple onion (finely chopped): 1 cup

Good-quality honey pork sausages (medium-sized, finely chopped): 2

Honey ham (finely chopped): 1 cup

White button mushrooms (finely chopped): 10

Ripe avocado (finely chopped): ½

Dijon mustard: 3 tbsp

Cream cheese: 3 tbsp

Shredded mozzarella cheese: 2.5 tbsp

Shredded parmesan cheese: 2.5 tbsp

White pepper powder: 1.5 tsp

Fresh parsley leaves (chopped): 1.5 tbsp

Basil (chopped): 1 tbsp

Salt: according to taste

Extra virgin olive oil: 2 tbsp

Ingredients for the creamy tomato sauce:

Purple onion (finely chopped): ¾ cup

Garlic (finely chopped): 2.5 tbsp

Readymade concentrated tomato paste: ½ cup

Homemade chicken broth: 1 cup

Mozzarella cheese (grated): 1 tbsp

Cheddar cheese (grated): 1 tbsp

Fresh cream: 1 tsp

Butter: 1.5 tbsp

Salt: according to taste

Muscovado sugar: according to taste

Additional grated parmesan–mozzarella cheese mixture: 1.4 cup (for garnishing)

Method:

Cook the jumbo conch-shaped pasta according to package directions or until almost done. Drain the pasta and rinse well in cold water. Separate each of the shells and spread on a plate. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in a pan. Add the chopped onions and sauté for 5 min. Now add the finely chopped honey sausages, honey ham and mushrooms. Continue to cook on a medium flame for 5 min. Add Dijon mustard, cream cheese, white pepper powder and the chopped avocado. Add the two kinds of cheese, along with freshly chopped parsley, basil and salt. Cook till the cheese is well-blended, which takes around 4–5 min. Switch off the gas. Let it stand for 5 min.

To make the creamy tomato sauce, heat butter and add the chopped onions. Sauté till it becomes soft. Add the garlic and sauté for 5 min. Introduce the tomato paste and cook for 7 min over medium flame, stirring continuously. Now add the chicken broth and bring this to boil. Add the cheeses, cream and salt. Stir continuously and cook for further 3 min. Check the sourness of the sauce and adjust the sugar accordingly. After adding the sugar, stir well and boil for 2–3 min. The sauce is ready.

Spoon this stuffing carefully into each shell. Place these stuffed pasta shells into a microwave-safe dish and spread the sauce over the pasta generously. Sprinkle the additional grated parmesan–mozzarella cheese mixture over the top.

Cover this dish with a cling film and microwave on medium power for 2–3 min. Serve hot.

[Please feel free to follow Cosmopolitan Currymania if you love reading my blog. It motivates me a lot! And thank you, all my 237 followers, for being with me in my culinary expeditions! You can connect with me at @purabinaha on Twitter or click here to like my Facebook page. Thank you for stopping by!]

Cabbage Koftas: Indian Vegetarian Party Dish!

[This post is on Foodbuzz Top 9 today (19 Feb 2012). Thanks, dear readers, for your votes and thoughtfulness!]

Koftas, or meatballs, are very popular in India and are often a part of the wedding menu. Indian koftas are influenced more by the middle-Eastern koftas. If you haven’t tried Indian vegetarian koftas yet, you are missing out on something really unbeatable in taste! These are prepared with so much care and the spices are so well-balanced that these vegetarian koftas almost taste like meatballs (or sometimes, even better!). The kind of kofta displayed in this blog post is very famous in the Eastern India (West Bengal and Orissa) and has a subtle balance of flavours.

Select a young, green and small cabbage for this dish. The cabbage needs some treatment. First, it has to be finely shredded. Then marinate the cabbage with ½ tsp salt for 10 minutes. Squeeze the cabbage to get rid of the cabbage juice as a result of the marination. Keep the well-squeezed cabbage aside and proceed for making the koftas now. The chickpea flour or garbanzo flour (also called Indian besan) is needed to bind the cabbage koftas together. Note: Please do not substitute chickpea flour with any other kind of flour. You will get this gluten-free flour easily in Indian/Pakistani/Sri Lankan/Bangladeshi stores in your country.

Golden-brown kofta balls

First step: Making the koftas

 Ingredients:

Finely shredded and marinated cabbage (small): 1

Purple onion paste: 1.5 tsp

Coriander powder: 1 tsp

Cumin powder: 1 tsp

Grated ginger: 1 tsp

Salt: one pinch

Cumin seeds: 1 pinch

Turmeric powder: ¼ tsp

Red chilli powder (optional): ½ tsp

Chickpea flour (besan): 8 Tbsp (more, if needed)

Baking powder: Two pinches

Oil for deep-frying

Method:

Add all the ingredients together and make round balls. The balls should feel wet, but you should be able to make round balls. This process can be messy but you’ll be amused by the taste of the dish! Do not let the balls become too soggy, otherwise the balls will open up when you start to deep-fry these. If soggy, add more chickpea flour to the batter. Make Ping-Pong-ball-sized koftas and deep-fry in oil on low to medium heat. Never fry the balls in high heat, otherwise the outer surface will be cooked and the inside would be soggy and under-cooked.

The right amount of each spice in a curry is a family secret in most Indian homes. This special kofta masala is my mother-in-law's secret recipe, which works wonders not only in Indian kofta curries, but in a variety of curries as well.

Special kofta masala for that special flavour!

Second step: Special kofta masala

 Ingredients:

Dried red chilli (roughly torn): 1.5

Green cardamoms: 3

Cinnamon stick (1 inch): 2

Dried, medium-sized bay leaves (torn roughly): 2

Coriander seeds: ¾ tsp

Cumin seeds: 1 tsp

Method:

Here is the secret recipe for the special roasted spice mix for koftas (bhuna masala or bhaja mashla): dry-roast the whole spices on a medium flame, taking care just to change the colour of the whole spices to light brown (and not to burn the spices even slightly). Allow these spices to cool a bit and grind to a very fine powder. Store the masala in an airtight container.

Final step: Making the kofta gravy

 Ingredients:

Potato (cubed and fried golden with ½ tsp salt): 1.5 cups

Cumin seeds: ¼ tsp

Dry bay leaf (big): 1

Onion paste: 2 tbsp

Coriander powder: 1.5 tsp

Cumin powder: 2 tsp

Red chilli powder: ¼ tsp

Ginger paste: 2 tsp

Medium-sized tomato (finely chopped): 1

Peas (fresh or frozen): ¼ cup

Water: 2 cups

Kofta masala (recipe above): 2 tsp

Indian clarified butter (ghee): 1.5 tsp

Salt: ¾ tsp (or according to taste)

Turmeric: ½ tsp

Green, slit chillies: 5

Oil: 2 tbsp

Coriander leaves (freshly chopped): 2 tbsp (for garnishing)

Method:

Heat oil till it starts smoking. Add the whole cumin seeds and bay leaf and immediately reduce the flame to medium. As soon as the cumin seeds just turn brownish, add the onion paste and sauté for 5 min. Add the coriander powder, cumin powder and the red chilli powder, mixed with a little water. Sauté for 5 min. Add the slit chillies, ginger paste, salt and turmeric powder after that. Fry on a medium heat, till the tomatoes are very soft. Add the fried potatoes and the peas and fry for five more minutes.

Now add 2 cups of water and the kofta masala (recipe above), stir and bring this to a boil. Add the ghee now. Simmer and carefully add the fried kofta balls. Boil for 10 more minutes. Switch off the flame and garnish with chopped coriander leaves.

Koftas absorb a lot of water. When you switch off the gas and let the koftas stand in the gravy for 20 min, the gravy thickens by itself and is almost absorbed into the koftas, making them softer and tastier.

[Please feel free to follow Cosmopolitan Currymania if you love reading my blog. It motivates me a lot! And thank you, all my 232 followers, for being with me in my culinary expeditions! You can connect with me at @purabinaha on Twitter or click here to like my Facebook page. Thank you for stopping by!]

Chocolate-Almond Cake with Peanut Butter Icing

[This recipe is on number 2 position on Foodbuzz Top 9 today (14 February, 2011). Thank you once again, dear readers, for making my Valentine's day even more special!]

Love is in the air… Right now, I can’t think of eating anything more romantic than chocolate… With Valentine’s day just round the corner, it’s a perfect excuse to indulge in this irresistible homemade chocolate cake oozing with the goodness of almonds and peanut butter.

Some of the ingredients

This is the first cake recipe on my blog. I loved this cake. I made some changes to my mom’s chocolate cake recipe. I added finely chopped almonds and just 1 tsp of finely chopped dried apricots to the batter. I also incorporated a little peanut butter, condensed milk, chocolate essence and a little berry-flavoured yogurt to this. The result was startling! Here is the cake loaded with mouthwatering chocolate in many forms, and each bite will only entice you for the next bite of this sinful pleasure. And yes, the roses are edible too!

The decoration

Homemade chocolate shapes

For the decoration part, I did put some extra effort, which was really worth the occasion. I made the homemade chocolate hearts and leaves. For this, I melted 2 tbsp mini chocolate chips in a double boiler with ¼ tsp butter and ½ tsp milk. When the chocolate was molten, I poured this mixture into a piping bag and piped heart and leaf patterns as well as the alphabets I want to use, on a butter paper. I kept this in the deep freeze and removed after 30 min. I removed each pattern very carefully (and fast), taking care not to break the same while removing these slowly from the butter paper. These patterns waited back in the fridge, till the cake was ready for decoration.

I made the roses one day in advance (I used store-bought fondant icing and mixed a little gel-based edible food colour. I used pink and yellow colours for these roses). Here is a great video to get started with making pretty fondant roses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R8MsL-5oKA.

Chocolate-Almond Cake with Peanut Butter Icing

Ingredients:

Sifted all-purpose flour: 1.5 cups

Sugar: 1 cup

Cocoa powder (I used Hershey’s): 4 tbsp

Kosher salt: ¼ tsp

Baking powder: 1.5 tsp

Baking soda: ½ tsp

Eggs: 5

Unsalted butter: ½ cup

Chocolate essence: ½ tsp

Berry-flavoured yogurt: 1 tbsp

Water: 4 tbsp

Peanut butter: 1.5 tsp

Condensed milk: 1.5 tsp

Dried apricots (finely chopped): 1 tsp

Deskinned, finely chopped almonds: 2 tsp

Beat the icing, till you get soft peaks

For peanut butter icing:

Cream cheese: 4 tbsp

Light cream: 4 tbsp

Icing sugar: 8 tbsp

Peanut butter: 5 tbsp

Coffee essence: ½ tsp

Method:

Grease an eight-inch circular, deep-bottomed cake tin and line with butter paper. Preheat oven at 180˚C for 15 min.

Sift the first six ingredients and mix together very well. Set aside.

Whisk the eggs till these are light yellow. Slowly add the softened butter and keep on whisking. Keep aside.

Blend the essence, yogurt, water, peanut butter and condensed milk in an electric mixer. Add the whisked egg mixture and blend for a few seconds. Add the sifted flour mixture and beat on a medium speed, till the whole of the mixture is incorporated and there are no lumps or dry ingredients. Add the apricots and dried almonds. Fold in (lightly) once more for an even composition.

Pour this chocolate cake batter into the cake tin and bake for 40 min at 180˚C.

To check whether the cake is done, pierce a thin skewer at the middle of the cake. It should come out clean if the cake is done. If some cake is sticking to it, bake for another 10 min and recheck.

For the peanut butter icing, nicely beat all the ingredients for the icing, except the cream. Add the cream after that, little at a time, and fold in lightly, till soft peaks are formed.

When the cake is done, let it come to the room temperature. Chop off the dome and make the cake flat from the top. After that, cut the cake horizontally into two pieces. Apply some peanut butter icing inside and stick the two discs again. Apply the icing generously all over the cake and cover the cake completely. Flatten and smoothen the icing all over.

Decorate with fondant roses and chocolate hearts, alphabets and leaves. I have also added mini decorative sprinkles (heart-shaped) to keep in tune with the Valentine’s day theme. Indulge!

[Please feel free to follow Cosmopolitan Currymania if you love reading my blog. It motivates me a lot! And thank you, all my 225 followers, for being with me in my culinary expeditions! You can connect with me at @purabinaha on Twitter or click here to like my Facebook page. Thank you for stopping by!]

Thai Green Curry with Roasted Duck

[This article was originally published in Zomppa, an International food magazine.]

Thai cuisine uses a variety of curry pastes, such as the red, yellow and the green ones. Every paste tastes unique. I love Thai Green curry a lot and it is among the best non-Indian curries I have ever tasted. In fact, I judge a Thai restaurant by the taste of this curry. So far, I am quite impressed by few authentic Thai restaurants in Hong Kong (my favourites being Sweet Basil in Whampoa Garden and Thai Basil in Pacific Place), which serve superb Thai green curry. When I eat there, I am always transformed to a different world such is the intensity of this curry! I took a note of which vegetables these restaurants used for making this. I also noted that it can be cooked with chicken, pork or duck! I really loved the one with succulent duck meat since we rarely get duck meat in India. Needless to say, duck meat tastes amazing! In addition, this is the season when you get to see a lot of roast ducks freshly made each day in the street markets in Hong Kong. So I decided to buy some roast duck breast from one of these tempting shops, serving just roast meat of different kinds, and get started for an out-of-the-world curry experience!

Perfectly roast duck

Oh, look at what I spotted in a small Thai ingredients’ shop in a wet market here! Thai small aubergines (these are tiny, green aubergines without seeds), fresh lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaves!

Thai aubergines, Kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass

Now, this curry can be sweet, it can be spicy or both. I love this sweet and spicy, so I made some changes in the amounts of ingredients in the basic Thai green curry paste recipe (given below) to cater to my taste. If you like this to be spicier, simply add a few more chillies to the paste and blend it once again. Make this paste well in advance and keep this refrigerated. And yes, do not restrict yourself to using the Thai green curry paste only to make Thai green curry. Let your imagination go wild and you can find yourself using this in a variety of other ways as well.

[Interesting variations: Try using a little of this paste in your regular bread dough, in any savoury batter for deep frying or in your paratha (flatbread) dough for that spicy punch!]

Thai green curry ingredients

Thai Green Curry Paste

Ingredients:

Green chillies: 10

Coriander powder: 1 tsp

Shallots: 70 g

Garlic: 40 g

Cumin powder: ½ tsp

Roasted belacan: 1 tsp

Galangal slices: 2

Coriander roots (not leaves): 10 g

Mint leaves: 20 g

Lemongrass: 2 stalks

Kaffir lime leaves: 3

Kaffir Lime zest: 1 lime

Sweet basil: 40 g

Black peppercorns: ½ tsp

½-inch fresh turmeric root: 1

Method:

Blend all the ingredients to a fine paste and store in the refrigerator.

Now that the green curry paste is ready, let’s make this authentic Thai curry at home: so nutritious and scrumptious and less than half the price of restaurant-bought green curry!

There are certain points, however, to be kept in mind while making this curry.

·         Choose baby duck breast which should be juicy enough after roasting. Over-roasting or cooking the pieces of duck meat for a long time in the green curry changes the flavor and texture of duck meat, which becomes hard and rubbery. Roasting should be just perfect, so that the meat inside the skin is succulent and, in no case, dry. If you are not sure of whether you’ll get a perfectly roast chunk of duck breast, simply replace this with boneless chicken thigh pieces.

·         To save time, commercial Thai green curry pastes can be used. But if you get all the fresh ingredients handy, nothing beats homemade Thai green curry paste!

·         Lemongrass is not the same as lemon juice and has a sharp lemony aroma, minus the sour taste. If you do not get this ingredient, do the following (my own lemongrass substitute): mix juice of one lemon, five drops of lemon essence and ¼ tsp granulated sugar. This is equivalent to the effect of two lemongrass stalks. But, fresh lemongrass is undoubtedly unbeatable. Alternatively, use store-bought green curry paste of a reputed brand.

·         If you note the green curry paste ingredients carefully, you will notice that there are two green-coloured ingredients: green chillies, sweet basil and little mint. Without these two, your curry would not be green. So do not omit these. Do not use cilantro leaves for making the paste green.

·         If after adding all the ingredients, you discover that the green curry is too spicy for you, add a little brown sugar to the boiling curry, but do not overdo this process.

·         If you get fresh (or canned) straw mushrooms, you are lucky. Go for it. If not, even white button mushrooms are okay.

Thai green curry with roasted duck

[The recipe serves 5–6 people.]

Ingredients:

Roast duck breast (with skin; sliced): 250 g

Thai aubergines (cut into half): 5

Babycorns (cut into half, lengthwise): 6

Plum tomatoes: 8

Green bell peppers (cubed into medium-sized pieces): 1

Snow peas: 8

Halved straw mushrooms (can be replaced with white button mushrooms): 8, if straw; 5, if button mushrooms

Pumpkin (cubed and skin removed): 8

French beans (chopped into medium-sized pieces): 5

Thailand longans: 8

Coconut milk: 400 ml

Warm water: 1 cup

Sweet basil: 7–8

Salt: According to taste

Method:

Heat the oil. Add 5 tbsp Thai green curry paste (recipe above) in 1 tbsp vegetable oil. Lower the heat and add the coconut milk, stirring continuously until the coconut milk starts separating oil.

Mixing coconut milk with green curry paste

Add the pumpkin and the French beans first. Then add the remaining vegetables and salt. Add the fish sauce and the warm water. Stir and simmer for 10 min.

Adding all the vegetables

Adding the fish sauce

Add the sweet basil and sliced duck meat and cook for 3–4 min. Garnish with a few fresh sweet basil leaves or mint.

Adding Thai basil

Adding roast duck breast

Serve hot with steamed rice or noodles.

Letting the Thai green curry simmer

[Please feel free to follow Cosmopolitan Currymania if you love reading my blog. It motivates me a lot! And thank you, all my 219 followers, for being with me in my culinary expeditions! You can connect with me at @purabinaha on Twitter or click here to like my Facebook page. Thank you for stopping by!]

Kelp-Mushroom Stir-Fry with Shichimi Togarashi

[Thank you, dear readers, for voting this recipe to number 1 position on Foodbuzz today (February 3). This fusion recipe is an effective home remedy for people suffering from hypothyroidism or those who are iodine-deficient. Read on to find out how it can improve your family’s health in a number of ways.]




Kelp-mushroom stir-fry with shichimi togarashi

 

Why would you eat kelp?

Kelp is a sea weed and is loaded with nutrients. This wonder food is rich in amino acids, vitamins, calcium, magnesium, potassium and most important, iodine! This is the reason why it is regarded as one of the most preferred home remedies against hypothyroidism, in which there is a lack of iodine in the thyroid gland. Not only that, kelp is also eaten as a health food to reduce weight!

Kelp is a storehouse of vitamin B-12: found mainly in animal products. The chemical called “algin” found in kelp aids in metabolism and soothes heartburn. Kelp removes toxins (harmful substances) from our body and thus, it is believed to help in preventing a wide range of ailments, including cancer. It is a mild laxative as well!

Kelp keeps the skin youthful and is believed to add shine to the hair. This is also one of the reasons of its commercial popularity (as an ingredient in cosmetics and as a herbal supplement).

Chinese-style marinated kelp

Where to look for kelp in Hong Kong?

Kelp is among one of the healthiest snacks in Hong Kong. Available easily in most sushi outlets, this Japanese health food is very popular among the young generation for its weight-reducing ability and for its wonderful effect on skin and hair.

JUSCO outlets in Hong Kong keep dried kelp packs and the sushi section in TASTE serves the fresh seaweed.

What is shichimi togarashi?

Shichimi togarashi is a Japanese seven-spice seasoning (meaning “seven-flavoured chilli”). It is mainly a mixture of crushed red pepper, dried tangerine peel, Japanese pepper and sesame seeds, among others. This seasoning is mildly spicy (according to my Indian tastebuds!)

Kelp-mushroom stir-fry with shichimi togarashi

This dish has both Chinese and Japanese flavours in it. Fresh kelp (1 cup) should be marinated (in the Chinese way) with ¼ tsp each of sugar, salt, sesame oil, soya sauce, red chilli flakes, vinegar and sesame seeds.

Ingredients:

Kelp (marinated): 1 cup (0.2 lb)

White button mushrooms (chopped): 12

Shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven-spice mix): 1 tsp

Fried garlic (for garnishing): 1 tbsp

Salt: ½ tsp

Sesame oil: 1 tbsp

Method:

Heat sesame oil in a pan. Add the mushrooms with ½ tsp salt. Fry on a high flame, till it is dry.

Frying mushrooms with shichimi togarashi

Now add the shichimi togarashi and cook for 3 min on a high flame. Then add the marinated kelp.

Serve hot, garnished with fried, crisp garlic flakes.

[Please feel free to follow Cosmopolitan Currymania if you love reading my blog. It motivates me a lot! And thank you, all my 212 followers, for being with me in my culinary expeditions! You can connect with me at @purabinaha on Twitter or click here to like my Facebook page. Thank you for stopping by!]