Prawn with Cream and Coconut sauce

Prawn with Cream and Coconut Sauce

Having cooked chicken and mutton a numerous times, it was time to cook something with my favorite prawns. After having got the request of cooking “Prawn in cream sauce” as well from some of my friends made it happen at the earliest but like always different from every other recipes. This is the first recipe of 2013 from the SAAS-Tastebuds kitchen and hoping to come up with more recipes compared to last year.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley
• 2 teaspoons sunflower oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 grated coconut
• ½ cup water
• 10-12 large uncooked prawns, peeled and De-veined
• Hot cooked noodles or rice

Directions

• In a small saucepan, heat sunflower oil.
• Add butter to the hot oil.
• Add the minced garlic now. Cook gently till it forms a nice mixture and u get a good smell of butter and garlic.
• Add the grated coconut and half cup water. Stir in the cream and salt, mix well and let it cook till it forms rich thick white gravy.
• Now add the peeled and De-veined prawns and mix with the gravy and leave it to cook for 5 more minutes.
• Sprinkle pepper and add the fresh parsley.
• Serve hot with rice or noodles.

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How to prepare delicious Masoor Dal

You must have heard many a time, that “Good things come in small packages”. Also in matters of creativity, Leonardo da Vinci had once said: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication!” Cooking being too a form of creative art, the most delicious food-items are often the simplest ones!

Despite this fact, we tend to always ignore the simpler daily dishes from our home kitchen, against the most popular biryanis, fried-rice, chickens, muttons, chow mein, Tikkas, kebabs, etc.

Today I’ll talk about one of the simplest and the tastiest of all recipes from the Bengali kitchen – the Moshoor Dal – or Masoor Dal or the Red Lentil soup.

Masoor dal comes in 2 forms – Brown-skinned and Red/Orange (i.e. polished) – and is available in all the Indian grocery stores and supermarkets in your neighborhood, since it is cooked as a staple item for lunch and dinner in a majority of Indian households . It’s cooked in various ways and sometimes cooked together with other lentils too.

The masoor dal is preferred as boiled and in an optimally cooked form. Over boiling loses the taste of Masoor dal. You can cook this dal by using many different spices. But the simpler, Bengali way of cooking this dal is by adding black-cumin seeds and dry red-chili or by adding onions with dry red-chillies to the boiled dal.

Here’s how you can get the best taste out of a simple recipe of masoor dal – straight after my mother’s training on it.

Moshoor Daal (image:madhurrecipes.blogspot.com)

Ingredients:

1. 1/2 cup masoor dal
2. 1/2 teaspoon garam masala
3. 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
4. 1 tsp salt
5. 1/3 cup cooking oil
6. 1/2 onion – finely chopped OR ¼ tsp black cumin-seeds or “kaalo-jeeray” in Bengali
7. 2-3 dry red-chillies for sautéing
8. 2 green chillies finely-chopped
9. 2 tomatoes; finely-chopped
10. 1 bunch coriander, finely-chopped

Preparation:

• Rinse masoor dal thoroughly in a large bowl containing water; rinse it well until you get to see clear water.
• Prepare the “chhonk” now. Chhonk is also called “phoron” in Bengali. This is done by heating the oil in medium-flame for 2 minutes, followed by sautéing the black cumin-seeds, garam masala powder and the dry red-chillies for one more minute in the heated oil.
• (If you’re using onions instead of the black-cumin seeds, then sauté for about 5 minutes.)
• Next fill a pot with sufficient water to boil and pour the washed masoor dal.
• Add the turmeric powder and salt (as per taste) to the boiled dal and stir very well.
• Next add the chopped green-chillies to the mixture and stir again
• Now add this boiled dal mixture to the chhonk, add the chopped tomatoes and stir it well, until the water evaporates.
• When the gravy thickens, add some more water and keep cooking until the color of water turns yellow and the tomato softens, giving a nice flavor to the dal, releasing an appetizing aroma.
• Once the dal softens and the gravy has become semi-thick, add the chopped coriander leaves. Do taste it and add more salt if it’s needed.

This is the simplest way of cooking masoor dal. Instead of black-cumin you can use the onions and cook exactly the same way – as I do always.

Masoor Dal tastes very delicious and appetizing if savored with steaming rice and a teaspoon of clarified butter (ghee) and fried potatoes. However this meal is unthinkable without crispy “daler bora” – or Lentil fritters. But I’ll talk about this in a later post. Watch this space!

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Ingredients of Indian Cooking #3 – Onions

One of the most important and common ingredients of Indian cuisine is Onion.

Most of the vegetarian and non-vegetarian Indian dishes are cooked with onions. They are used extensively to enhance taste of vegetables / meat / poultry, render bulk to the gravy, to make some of the most delicious soups and chutneys, as well as consumed even raw in Indian salads.

You’d rarely see Indian recipes that do not contain Onions. But what are the factors that make onions a healthy addition to Indian cuisine? This post is dedicated to exploring this aspect.

Botanical Roots

Onion is also known as bulb onion, garden onion and just onion. Botanically, Onion – Allium Cepa – belongs to a large varied family which includes more than 500 species. It’s available in various forms, such as – fresh, frozen, canned, pickled, chopped plus a few more, and used for both culinary and non-culinary purposes.

Onions are an exceptional resource of natural vitamins like B6 and C, chromium, biotin, and fibers. As such the health benefits of onions are vast. Ranging from normal cough & cold to diseases of heart, diabetes, bacterial infections, breathing problems, asthma, bronchitis, etc. onions have proved to be real effective even for poor appetite.

Thus not only for culinary purposes (as vegetable ingredient), Onions are also used for adding medicinal value to food, because of their rich content of sulfides, sulfoxides and other sulphur composites. Studies have proven that together with garlic, onions help to keep up blood levels, avert blood clot formation, lower levels of pressure & sugar in blood, and cure many other diseases.

Types and methods

Onions are found in varied colors, red, yellow, white, and green, each possessing their individual distinctive essence, from very strong to slightly sweet. They are eaten in various ways – raw, cooked, fried or roasted – each has its own different taste and effect on your health. Other than the common bulb onions, spring onions are also used in cooking purposes. Spring onions are green and add a different taste and color to your recipes.

In case of Red Onions, the smaller it’s cut, the more widespread is the variation of the sulfur substances. The more powerful the odor of Onion and its impact on your eyes, the more healthy it is, since it’s believed to contain more vitamins and minerals. So while cutting onions, if it makes you cry with the pungent odour, it will make you healthier.

There are many ways you can cut onions, depending on the dish you’re cooking. When cut in larger blocks, it stores the vitamin and mineral capacity to the maximum while cooking. On the other hand if you finely chop it and keep in room temperature for sometime before cooking, it makes the onion turn golden brown quickly and reduces your cooking time.

Spring onions on the other hand add a very mild taste to the food. It is used raw and preferred fried compared to the red onions. Noodles, sandwiches, soups and curries are cooked using spring onions.

Treating onions in different ways while cooking, implants a specific flavor and releases a specific aroma. For example, proper Sautéing of the onions is very important as it can add a different dimension to your favorite dish. Sautéing for 5-7 minutes is considered apt for cooking most Indian dishes. Light golden brown should be the only color after you are done with sautéing the onions. If the color turns dark brown it will leave you with a bitter taste and the recipe could get spoilt totally.

So the next time you feel like crying when cutting onions for your favorite dish, do remember that you’re crying in favor of health and taste!

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How to get your chickens right!

Out of all the meat / poultry-based food, preparation of Chicken is amazingly flexible and varied techniques could be employed while cooking. However, preparation of a chicken recipe starts right from the stage of buying the chicken, and goes through many levels, to keep its texture and enhance its taste.

Get your chickens right!

This post is dedicated to the  few simple steps of choosing, marinating, spicing and sautéing processes, to get the best out of your chicken recipes.

Choosing the chicken

First you need to check the different types and varieties of chicken options available in the market before preparing to cook. This step can place you in a better place ahead of the other chicken chefs. Chicken – especially the boneless skin free chicken-chest – tastes better and offers a better surface if marinated properly prior cooking. Further, the age and weight of the chicken is also important while choosing a better variety. Younger / tender chicken is soft and gets cooked faster, while a matured chicken needs slower preparation to make it softer. Therefore for the best results, it’s essential to know which variety of chicken you need to buy.

Marinating the chicken  

Marinating of any meat of fish is essentially intended to make sure that the spices and other condiments go deeper into the flesh while cooking. Different methods of marinating, using an acid, like vinegar, yoghurt, lemon juice, etc. brings out different but unique flavors of chicken. In addition to the acid used, you need to add some oil and basic ingredients like salt, turmeric, chili powder, pepper, and in some cases the paste of onion, garlic, coriander leaves, green chillies and / or any other exotic or aromatic ingredients in the marinade.

Marinating makes your job easier in the later stages of cooking. This process adds moisture to the meat and makes it softer, juicier and brings out / enhances the specific flavors as per your requirements. For best results, follow these guidelines:

1. Soak the chicken in salty water (3 tbsp.of salt to 4 cups of water) for an hour.
2. Reduce oil in the marinade for more flavors. Best marinade is the combination of half oil and half acid (vinegar, yoghurt, lime juice)
3. The marinating time shouldn’t exceed a specific period. Otherwise if marinated for too long, the acid can break the chicken flesh fiber, making it taste like finer minced meat.
4. Usage of yoghurt (dahi) is the best way to marinate any meat. Add the required salt, turmeric & chili powder to the mixture of yoghurt & raw chicken while marinating.

Stay healthy by limiting the usage of oil in your recipes. Limit the usage of oil to the minimum for cooking your chicken. The marinated chicken contains a healthy amount of yoghurt, which, together with the chicken’s own fat, is more than enough to cook the chicken.

Spicing the chicken

The combination of spices is the most crucial part of rendering flavor to a chicken recipe. The right amount of cardamom, cinnamon, clove, pepper and most importantly the salt used for marinating will infuse the perfect flavor and taste into the chicken. Anything more or less than the recommended dosage changes the taste of the completed recipe. Salt can be used as per taste even while cooking, but the amount of turmeric shouldn’t exceed your requirements – otherwise it can mess up the entire recipe. Too much red chilli powder or pepper might subdue the subtle flavor of the chicken, while the adverse combinations of 3Cs of spices – clove, cinnamon and cardamom – might make the chicken taste too aromatic, thus again subduing its real flavor.

Sautéing the chicken

Sautéing process was covered in another post before. However, sautéing the chicken needs special care, since unlike vegetables, it is preferably not cut down to smaller pieces. Sauté in oil or butter for 2-3 minutes, along the 3Cs of spices, before mixing any other ingredients. This technique will result in better flavor and richer aroma. Next add the other ingredients as necessitated by the recipe, to the chicken and continue to sauté for more 6-7 minutes over medium-high heat. Always use a non-sticky skillet while doing this, and sauté the chicken thoroughly from the bottom to get its intense flavor.

Hence these are a few basics which you must get right before cooking any chicken recipe of your choice. Follow these steps to prepare a healthier, juicier, softer and flavor-filled chicken recipe at home, and your friends will ask for much more than ever!.

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5 Ways to Retain Taste Flavor and Aroma

Cooking is considered by many chefs and gourmets as a creative art! Retaining the perfect aroma in recipes, while enhancing flavor and taste, differentiates a finer chef from the rest. It may sound easy, but a majority of the aspiring chefs take a long time to understand this, while many others fail to make sustained efforts to capture this finer nuance of cooking.

Thankfully, the traditional cooking methods practiced by our mothers and grannies, are good enough to start on this journey of mastering this fine art of great cooking. For example, I learned from my mother that one of the most important aspects of keeping the flavor (as well as essential nutrients), is to master the art of covered cooking.

The 5 great ways to retain flavor, aroma and taste in cooking are: Slow Cooking, Covered Cooking, Sautéing, Deep frying and Half-Boiling.

Low Flame cooking

Covered Cooking

Slow cooking – Cooking vegetables and meat in low flame retains their maximum benefits and better taste. It’s true that it takes more time to cook the food, but it always enriches the aroma, taste and flavor of the recipe. It allows you to use the ingredients in measured quantities, in time, which produces the best results by augmenting the richer taste in your cooked food. When you cook on a low flame, the food doesn’t get burnt and doesn’t necessitate nurturing much.

Covered Cooking – Covered cooking retains moisture in your primary ingredients, which in turn retains the original taste and flavor. While cooking, when you cover the pan, it also uses lesser oil and retains softness, so that the items are juiciest to relish. This method also adds a better dimension to your cooking.

The best part of slow and covered cooking is that when the food is getting cooked you can engage yourself in some other work and let your food cook gently without tending.

Sauteing

Sautéing is another cooking method, in which very less amount of oil is used to cook – although at relatively high temperatures. This method allows the food to cook very quickly in the sauté pan. Sautéing yields best result when clarified butter is used instead of regular cooking oil. The clarified butter is usually kept at room temperatures for about 30 minutes before the process of sautéing. This type of sautéing allows the food to retain flavor and aroma, while adding a unique taste of clarified butter.

Sautéing can also be done with little or no oil, which is very healthy especially when you need to keep your calorie counts to minimum. When doing “no-oil sautéing” the best practice is to use low-medium stock, broth or even soya-sauce on a flatter frying pan. The vegetables also need to be sliced in smaller sizes and kept in room temperature for sometime before cooking; this practice allows the chopped vegetables turn golden brown quickly too.

Sautéing requires a larger space to cook, so always make sure of using a large pan for sautéing. When the pan gets hot allow the butter solid to take its liquid form in the pan before starting the sautéing process.

Deep Frying

Deep frying is a faster cooking method where you submerge the food in hot oil. You won’t require water to cook your food when you are using this cooking practice. If executed properly in an optimum flame, deep-frying doesn’t make your food extremely fatty, since the moisture in the food deters the oil. It’s however important to know how fast you should keep the food in oil before you take it out. Let your hands do the talking with this method, especially while cooking your favorite crispies at home.

Half-Boiling

Deep frying gives a different and richer aroma, flavor and taste to the items cooked. Many of the Indian cuisine have their signature rich taste and aroma, thanks to waterless and deep-frying.

Half-Boiling is another faster way of cooking, which retains the original flavor and taste of vegetables. This process of cooking also retains the nutritional value to the maximum! To get the best nutritional value and flavor out of half-boiled cooking, the vegetables need to be cut in bigger slices – or better still, “knifeless slicing” or hand-broken into pieces, as practiced traditionally. Larger sizes also retain the vitamin content.

So these are the 5 distinct ways to get retain flavor aroma and taste in cooking at home. With the ever-increasing rise in various diseases especially diabetes and high cholesterol the food doesn’t need to be tasteless at all!

Watch this space for more such ideas in the future.

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Ingredients of Indian Cooking #1 – Mustard

The ingredients used in Indian cooking are as exotic as the cooked recipes themselves! In fact, our ancestors made sure that the ingredients for their food are carefully chosen, to meet the daily nutrient requirements for your body, make sure that the primary vegetable, poultry or the fish is well cooked to remove offensive smells and toxins, as well as make sure that a unique taste is created every time, which stays forever.

For example, any fish recipe could be cooked using any cooking oil – sunflower oil, corn oil, soya-bean oil, rice-bran oil, refined oils, etc.. However, when Mustard oil is used for cooking a certain number of fishes, the taste-meter goes north and nutrition value best maintained.

Mustard Seeds (image-source:http://tradeindia.com)

Mustard is the base of many vegetarian and non-vegetarian cooking in India. The rich smell gives you a better sense to cook, adding new breadth to your recipes. It is so much loaded with essential vitamins and nutrients, so that the oil from Mustard seeds is often the recommended massage oil for growing babies and adults in India. It improves blood circulation of your body, helps in hair vitalizing, acts as an appetizer, improves skin texture, is anti-bacterial in nature and loads of other goodies are ingrained in it.

Mustard Oil (image-source: http://www.alibaba.com)

Mustard oil has a strong sinus-irritating aroma – somewhat like that of wasabi – a hot nutty taste and is regularly used for cooking in Eastern & Northern India. The oil is always pre-heated before cooking which is trying to cut its strong taste and stink.

According to a survey by American Heart Association, Mustard Oil is better than Olive Oil from the health point of view. Mustard oil is considered to have low saturated fat as compared to other vegetable oils, e.g. sunflower oil, palmolein oil and other cooking oils. This pungent tasting oil consists of fatty acid, oleic acid, erucic acid and linoleic acid.

Mustard Oil has the goodness to improve your Heart function, keep triglycerides under control, improve blood fluidity, and helps the patients of Crohn’s disease, asthma, arthritis, cramps, adult diabetes. It has antioxidant and cholesterol reducing properties which is one of the most important reasons for its extensive use in Northern & Eastern India.

Therefore the next time you feel like cooking a vegetable or meat, consider cooking it in Mustard Oil, and you’d find your recipe taste like never before! For a recipe prepared in Mustard Oil, please look through my next post.

References:

1. Benefits of Mustard Oil
2. Mustard Oil is best for your Health
3. The Hindu – Mustard Oil best for your Heart
4. Why Mustard Oil beats Sunflower, Safflower, soybean and other oils
5. American Chefs Discover Mustard Oil
6. Mustard is about to get its moment
7. So You Think You Like Grated Wasabi on Your Sushi?

 

Why Indian Cooking is my Hobby

 

My culinary adventures as a hobby started off as an experiment in my home kitchen. After gathering working knowledge from the lessons I took from my mother, one fine Sunday morning, I popped into the kitchen. I wanted to try my newly acquired skill and cook something for Sunday lunch – which was a sort of a challenge!

After a very nervous beginning, I went on with it and started getting the rich aroma of fresh spices and the spicy flavor, which stayed on my hands. At this point I became more and more confident that my first recipe was well on its way to the dining table! It was therefore a mini success achieved from an innate desire to re-create my mother’s magic for a Sunday lunch!

What’s so great about Indian cooking?

Indian food is all about its herbs, spices and their rich aroma, which are very hard to find in western food in general. Indian food is very easy to cook and this is one vital reason that makes Indian cooking attractive and hassle-free for any newbie!

Indian cuisine differs across the country’s myriad cultures flourishing across its regions and locations. It also varies seasonally, depending on which fruits or vegetables are available at the time. Therefore, not only the spices but the various seasonal fruits and vegetables do add that extra flavor to, and liking for Indian food. The ingredients and the seasonal variances are thus the exotic life-force of Indian food.

My attraction towards Indian cooking was also founded on its inborn simplicity. You can literally play with the spices and ingredients and cook a different Indian dish every time; or even by treating each spice a little differently, you can create a completely different taste of the same recipe, which stays on the tip of your tongue! Further, I also came to understand that while some of the ingredients are common for both vegetarian and non-vegetarian preparations, some others are unique to each type of preparation.

Therefore, the lessons from my mother, the experimentation with the ingredients and an understanding of the role of each of the ingredients and spices, made me discover my zeal and aroused my urge to dive deeper in taking Indian cooking as a hobby.

This blog is all about these personal experiences of a simple individual who wanted to live his hobby of cooking. I can gladly add that if you have an enthusiasm to create and enjoy new food regularly, then cooking as a creative art is something which will always bring a broad smile on the faces – of yours as well as your loved ones!