Paneer Butter Makhani

I love watching TLC channel. It has some really great shows about food, cooking and recipes. There is one programme I never miss and that is "Cheese Slices".

It really amazes me how we are able to produce hundreds of varieties of cheese from just three main milk sources: goat, lamb and cow. Buffalo milk is not used that commonly apart from making the mozzarella.

Have you been to the gourmet cheese stores. They let you sample the different varieties. Frankly speaking some of the cheeses are simply yuck! Maybe I do not have the palette to appreciate mouldy, smelly stuff. And if you ask me then my favorite kind of cheese is the cottage cheese. That is right!! Nothing to beat apna desi paneer. We can cook it in so many different ways. Every region of our country has a variation of the paneer dish. 

This dish is a rich and creamy presentation. I have used both tomato puree and ready made puree. I have found that adding ready made tomato puree to any dish increases its taste. Maybe that is because we do not always get god quality tomatoes at the grocer's. Whatever be the case the combination of these two makes the dish so great!!

Ingredients

200 gm paneer, cubed

4 tomatoes, blanched and pureed

2 tbsp readymade tomato puree

1 tbsp tomato ketchup

1 tsp ginger paste

1 tbsp kasuri methi

1 tsp garam masala

1 tsp cumin powder

 1 tbsp coriander powder

 1 tbsp kashmiri red chilli powder

3 tbsp cashews, soaked and made into a paste

Salt to taste

A pinch of sugar

1 cup milk

Blanch the tomatoes in hot water, peel and make a puree.

Heat some oil. Add the ginger paste, sauté, and add the tomato puree. Cook on medium heat till all the liquid evaporates. Now add the readymade tomato puree, tomato ketchup, kasuri methi, cumin powder, coriander powder, garam masala powder, red chili powder, sugar and salt. Fry well.

Add the cashew paste and fry. Now add a cup of water and simmer. Add the paneer pieces and slowly add the milk. Do not put the milk in one go. Rather drizzle a lit and mix well after each addition. Simmer for some time and add a dollop of ghee.

 

Paneer Bread Rolls

Bread rolls are a quick and easy snack for children. You can put in as many veggies as you like and the kids will still enjoy them.

Ingredients

5 bread slices

100 gm paneer, grated

1 onion, chopped

1 green chilli, chopped

½ cup peas

1 tsp cumin seeds

Salt to taste

Heat a pan and add some oil. Now add the cumin seeds. When the seeds start to crackle add the onions and green chilies. Sauté for a few moments. Now add the grated paneer and peas. Cook for some time. Season with salt.

Remove the crusts from the bread slices. Dip them in water and squeeze. Now put some filling in the centre and tightly close up the bread slices. Make sure there are cracks through which the filling is peeping.

Deep fry the bread rolls. 

Double Streusel Cake

There is streusel cake and then there is double streusel cake!!

Double the fun!!

Streusel is a German word meaning “sprinkling” or “topping”. Streusel is a mixture of flour, butter, sugar, sometimes with cinnamon or coconut mixed in it. It adds a crunch to the soft cakes. Use it on cakes, cupcakes, pies and see the difference it makes!

Ingredients

For the cake

1 ½ cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

¾ cup castor sugar

½ tsp vanilla essence

¼ cup oil

1 egg

¾ cup milk

For the streusel mixture

¾ cup brown sugar

4 tbsp flour

3 tbsp melted butter

2 tsp cinnamon powder

Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Line and grease an 8” cake tin.

Mix together the streusel mix ingredients and keep aside.

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Add the oil and mix with your hands till it looks like breadcrumbs. Beat together milk , sugar and egg. Gently add to the flour mix.

Pour half the batter in the tin. Spread half the streusel on top. Pour rest of the batter and then sprinkle rest of the streusel. Bake for 30-40 minutes.

Lagan ka Murg

Lagan ka Murg is a Hyderabadi dish cooked in a cooking vessel called a “lagan”. It is wide, thick walled and has a slightly curved thick bottom. It is easily available in Hyderabad, ofcourse but I am not too sure if one can find it in different parts of the country. In case you do not have a lagan you can cook it in a heavy bottomed pan. I had this thick bottomed milk pan and I decided to cook the lagan in that.
I had marinated the chicken and kept it overnight. I find that doing this enhances the flavour of the chicken tremendously. The chicken is then slow cooked in the lagan in a mix of homemade spices. I am not claiming that this is an authentic lagan ka murg recipe. I have tweaked it to suit my availability of material and to my personal taste.


Ingredients

1 chicken, cut into pieces
2 tbsp ginger garlic paste
Salt to taste

For the spice mix
¼  kopra, grated
2 tbsp poppy seeds
½ cup cashews
2 green cardamoms
1” cinnamon
3 tbsp coriander seeds
2 tbsp caraway seeds/shah jeera seeds
4 dry red chillies

For the gravy
3 onions, sliced fine
1 cup ready made tomato puree
2 tbsp ginger garlic paste
4 green chillies, chopped
1 tbsp kashmiri red chilli powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
Salt to taste
½ cup yogurt
Chopped coriander leaves and julienned ginger to garnish
Marinate the chicken in salt and ginger garlic paste and keep overnight.

Dry roast the ingredients of the spice mix. Grind them to a powder without any water.
Heat some ghee. Add the ginger garlic paste and chopped green chillies. Sauté. Add the sliced onions and cook till the onions become soft and translucent. Now add the ready made tomato puree, spice mix, kashmiri chilli powder, turmeric powder and salt to taste. Cook till the mix starts drying up. Add the yogurt and cook till the oil starts leaving the sides. Now add the chicken pieces and sauté on high flame for 5 minutes. Add a cup of water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer till the chicken is done. Garnish with chopped coriander leaves and julienned ginger.

Banana Coconut Cake

Eating fruits is a good habit. Specially bananas. Unfortunately we are not a fruit loving family. Dozens of oranges and bananas keep lying on the table. As the bananas keep getting blacker ad spotted i console myself thinking that spots are good. The spottier the banana the healthier it is. And finally they turn mushy. Sigh!!!
But this cloud does have a silver lining. We might not be a fruit eating family but we sure are a cake eating one. I try to incorporate all kinds of fruits and vegetables in them. Carrots, pineapples, oranges, pears, mangoes, bananas,  zucchini everything goes into my cakes.
This is a banana and coconut cake. I have used desiccated coconut here. However i have found that freshly grated coconut tastes better. You can add walnuts and raisins if you want. I have not because my son does not like them in his cakes.


Ingredients

1 cup desiccated coconut
¾ cup milk
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup castor sugar
½ cup oil
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas, mashed

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
Mix the coconut and milk and keep aside.

Sift together  flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.

 Beat together the sugar and oil. Add eggs one at a time and mix well. Add the mashed bananas. Add the coconut and milk mix. Beat well. Fold in the sifted flour.

Pour the batter into a greased and lined loaf tin. Bake for 50 minutes.

Malai Masala Murg

I recently read a post on vegetarianism versus no vegetarianism. Vegetarians say that if all the slaughterhouses were made of glass the whole world would be vegetarian. And this recent post said that if all the vegetarians had to wash off fresh manure off their vegetables they would turn non vegetarian.
I am a die hard non vegetarian but even I agree that if I saw an animal being slaughtered I wouldn’t be able to eat it. And the debate rages on!! I, personally believe that it is a matter of personal choice. After all the food chain has to be kept intact. You can’t blame the lion or the tiger for killing the beautiful, doe eyed deer. Similarly humans also eat animal meat. You can’t change that. The mature thing is to not be judgemental regarding food habits of half the people on this planet.
This recipe is sort of a fusion dish. It has the Indian masalas and also uses cornflour for thickening which is more commonly used in continental cuisine.


Ingredients

1 kg chicken
3 onions, chopped
2 green chillies, slit
1 cup cream
2 cups milk
1 tbsp cornflour+2 tbsp milk
3 tbspkasurimethi

For the dry masala
1 tbsp cumin seeds
2 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp black pepper
2 cloves
1” cinnamon


Dry roast the masala and grind to a smooth powder. Heat some oil. Add the green chillies and onions. Saute till the onions are translucent. Add the dry masala and kasurimethi and cook for 2 minutes. Now add the chicken and bhuno for 5-7 minutes. Add the cream, milk and salt. Simmer until the chicken is cooked. Mix the cornflour and milk and add to the chicken. Cook for a few minutes till the gravy thickens.

3 Chip Brownie

There is something about Brownies. Whenever I see one in a shop I have to try it out. Whenever I see a new recipe I have to bake it. For someone who loves chocolate a brownie is the ultimate decadence.
I have often been asked what the difference is between a brownie and a chocolate cake. Both have flour, eggs and cocoa powder. The difference lies in the proportion which changes the texture. You might have noticed that brownies are denser and fudgier while cakes are lighter and spongier. Generally brownies have more cocoa powder or chocolate and cakes have more flour. The brownies are dense in the middle and tend to be heavy.
Since chocolate is a key component in brownies I decided to make most of it. Instead of just dark chocolate I used 3 kinds of chips- dark choc chips, white choco chips and butterscotch chips. This made the decadent brownie “decaden-ter”!! if you don’t have choco chips you can simply grate the two kinds of chocolates, melt them in a double boiler and add to the batter. Top with cashews if you want. I have added the cashews to the batter


Ingredients

100 gms dark chocolate chips
100 gms white chocolate chips
½ cup butterscothch chips
½ cup oil
½ cup butter
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ cup castor sugar
4 eggs, beaten
½ cup cashews, chopped

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Mix together sifted flour, baking powder and sugar.
Melt the dark choc chips with butter and oil on a double boiler. Whisk well and keep aside. After it cools down a bit add the beaten eggs and mix well. Fold in the flour mix, butterscotch chips and chopped cashews. Pour batter into a cake tin. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes.

Momo Chutney

Momos have become THE street food of our metros. In every market, at every nook and corner you will find the momo walah who mounts a tiny gas stove on his cycle with the momo steamer. Some even have a small flat stand attached to the cycle where you can rest your plate and have the hot, steaming momos. Apart from the traditional red chilli chutney the momo wallahs have now started offering green mint-coriander chutney (really!!!), mayonnaise, cream and also oregano and thyme seasoning. All in all the various combinations do work!!
However the traditional red chutney is a must have. I have sampled some of the chilli chutneys in typical Tibetan shacks and they are so very spicy that they bring tears to your eyes. I prefer this simple tomato and garlic based one that is more gentle on your palette. I avoid adding red chillies but you can add as many as you want.
On a side note i must mention that if you find the red chilli chutney hot then you have to try out the Kullu chilli chutney. The Kullu chilli comes in a dry powder form that at first glance looks like coriander powder. You add some salt and oil to it and the chutney is ready. Even a drop of that chutney will set your tongue ablaze. It is not for the faint hearted.

Ingredients

4-5 red ripe tomatoes
8-10 garlic pods
Salt to taste

Make slits in the tomatoes. Put the tomatoes and garlic pods in a baking dish. Drizzle some oil on it. Roast them at 200 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Let it cool down.

Peel the tomatoes and put the whole thing in a mixie. Do not forget to add the oil left in the baking dish. Add salt according to taste and make a puree.
Here I have not added any chilli. However you can soak 5-6 dry red chillies (or more if you want) and add them to the mixie and blend along with the rest of the ingredients.

Mix Veg Momos

Well here is another yummy momo.
Momos are something i can have any time of the day. They are filling and nutritious. As there is no frying involved you can have it without any guilt. Those counting the calories in the white flour can substitute it with whole wheat flour. Since the preparation involves very less use of oil you can have as many as you want and not feel overstuffed.


Ingredients

For the dough
2 cups flour
Salt to taste
Water to knead

Mix the flour and salt. Use the water to knead a firm dough. Cover and keep aside for some time.


For the filling
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped French beans
6 garlic pods, chopped fine
1 cup chopped cabbage
Salt to taste
1 tsp ajinomoto (optional)
½ cup paneer, crumbled

Heat 1 tbsp of oil. Add all the chopped vegetables. Add the salt and sauté for some time. Cover and cook for 4 minutes. The vegetables must not become soft because they are yet to be steamed. Add the crumbled paneer and cook for a minute or two. Keep aside for the filling to cool down.

Now make small balls of the dough and start rolling them out. The trick with rolling out the momo wrappers is to make the outer circumference thinner that the middle portion. This is because you will be gathering up the outer rim and folding it into different shapes. The middle portion has to be thicker so that the momo does not break after being steamed.
Place a tablespoon of filing in the middle and fold the momo into desired shapes.
Steam them for 20-25 minutes. Have the hot, steaming momos with the red chutney.

Chicken Momo

Momos or dumplings have been a around for centuries. You can find them under different names in China, Japan, Mongolia, etc..

The momo that has now become popular is of Nepalese origin. Inadvertently you will find that all the local momo boys in the markets are Nepalese. When the Nepalese started coming to India they bought along with them this simple yet wholesome food.

We are accustomed to only the normal chicken, paneer and veg varieties of momos. But there are so many variations of these dumplings. You can have them steamed or fried. The pan fried version is called Kothay. You can have them in soups and broths. And there are so many shapes you can make them in.

Today I am focusing only on a basic chicken momo.

Ingredients

For the dough

2 cups flour

Salt to taste

Water to knead

Mix the flour and salt. Use the water to knead a firm dough. Cover and keep aside for some time.

For the filling

500 gms chicken keema

2 onions, chopped fine

7-8 garlic pods, chopped fine

4 tbsp chopped coriander leaves

Salt to taste

1 tbsp cold butter

I have found that if you want juicy momos you should include some chicken fat into the filling. However since I buy ready made mince it is not possible for me to add the chicken fat. The other alternative is to add some butter.

Mix all the filling ingredients.

Now make small balls of the dough and start rolling them out. The trick with rolling out the momo wrappers is to make the outer circumference thinner that the middle portion.

This is because you will be gathering up the outer rim and folding it into different shapes. The middle portion has to be thicker so that the momo does not break after being steamed.

Place a tablespoon of filing in the middle and fold the momo into desired shapes.

Steam them for 20-25 minutes. Have the hot, steaming momos with the red chutney.

Sweet Cucumber Relish

Now no more buying that bottled stuff. This sweet cucumber relish can be made at home in a jiffy with very basic ingredients. It keeps well in the fridge for a month or two. Use the relish in your pizzas, sandwiches and dips.


Ingredients

5 seedless cucumbers, sliced very fine
2 white onions, sliced fine
2 tbsp whole yellow mustard
½ cup white vinegar
½ cup water
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp whole black pepper
3 green chillies, sliced

Put a big pan on flame. Mix together water, sugar and vinegar. Add chillies, whole mustard and black peppercorns. Boil till the sugar dissolves. Add the cucumber and onions. Cook till the cucumber turns translucent. Cool completely.