Spicy Snacks - Chekkalu

 

Snacks are something we eat with a cup of tea or coffee in the evening, at least that’s what was the understanding. In reality we have snacks all the time or anytime. Some snacks are attached to specific drinks or event. For example like popcorn we generally have with a soda and movie. Not that I can’t have it while I am at my work place but that's the traditional way I guess!

I recently made these spicy little rice crackers called Chekkalu from the video here. A speciality from Andhra. Its also known as chakkali. I simply followed the recipe in the video and they turned out to be great and although these are generally served with tea or coffee in the evening I thought of serving them with chilled beer. Trust me it went perfectly well. They are very easy to make and you can store them in an air tight container for a long time.

I miss South-Indian food a lot especially because may be I am still settling but I hear there are lots of Indian restaurant to explore nearby. I suppose there may be services like Foodpanda in Bangalore. It is an online food ordering website through which you can order food from a wide range of restaurant in most big cities in India. If you are in India and not yet used their service, then you might like to try it out. Meanwhile I will keep sharing my experiences with you here, so hang in there and have a great holiday season ahead. 

Hot and Spicy Prawn Noodles

Electrolux was running a very interesting competition on twitter to promote their involvement in Cannes Film Festival. The competition was to upload a photo of a dish that you have cooked and link it to a movie that goes with it. And if you are the winner then you get to dine in a Michelin Star restaurant. tempting isn't it? I tweeted my current cover photo and guess which movie I went for. Well its pretty obvious, Chocolat ! Since then I have kept my fingers crossed and not opened yet! Metaphorically of course otherwise life will be pretty tough!

Apparently Electrolux products like Built-in oven and induction hobs  are very popular with Michelin star chefs. I was looking to change my oven recently and if it is good for Michelin star chefs it should be great for a home cook like me. However I would be grateful if you let me know which oven you use and what would you recommend me to have. It will be a great help for me when I buy the oven.

Now, this bank holiday weekend was sunny, warm, clear blue sky for us which is a very rare combination here in this part of the world. To match up to the weather I tried a spicy hot prawn noodles at home. It is a go with the flow recipe really, just throwing what ever I had in the fridge in the the wok and mixed with the flat white Vietnamese's noodles I got from  the Asian store.

Ingredients:

Flat noodles

200gm King prawns (raw)

1 Onion (sliced lengthwise)

2-3 Garlic cloves (chopped)

1 tsp Ginger (thinly sliced)

2 Spring onion (chopped)

Mushrooms (thinly sliced)

3 Red Peppers (long and thin ones, not the bell pepper, sliced)

1-2 Green chillies (chopped)

2-3 tbsp Spicy chilli bean paste

2 tbsp Soy sauce (light)

Salt

Oil

Method:

Cook the noodles in the salted boiling water for the time its mentioned in the pack. I did it for 8-10 minutes. On the other hob heat a wok with 3-4 tbsp of oil. Once the wok is smoking hot first fry the raw prawns for 2-3 minutes or until they turn pink. Fish them out of the wok and keep it separate. Now add the ginger and garlic to the same oil, fry them a bit then add rest of the vegetables and continue to fry. Keep stirring continuously. Add the soy sauce and the spicy chilli bean paste and keep stirring. Meanwhile check the noodles if its done. Don’t overcook it else it wont be nice. When the vegetables are ready add the prawns and the noodles to it and mix well. Take it off the hob, sprinkle some chopped spring onion on top and serve immediately. 

Review and Giveaway – LowLow Cheese Spread

Dieting and I don't go well together. Especially because most of the ones I followed or tried to follow has instructions like don't eat this and that. Usually these things will be my favourite things or something that I would like to eat. Hence invariably they failed. If I have been asked not to eat something I feel more attracted to that food than I usually  I am and in the end I end up eating it and there goes my diet plan, flushed away. Have a look at this video, you will know what i mean.

Recently when I received few coupons from LowLow to try out their product, I was tempted. And why shouldn't I, I like cheese and most morning my breakfast is toast with spread on and coffee. If I can get a low calorie yet tasty spread, which will make my mornings a little less guilt free, then why not?

Although initially I thought of having at breakfast, I couldn't resist having a taste in the evening. I got two types of these cheese spread one plain and the other one with crushed black pepper in it. I served it as a dip to our starter and believe me it went really well with a glass of red wine. I tried it on this crackers and the salami just to see how well it goes and it blends in perfectly well.

If you want to try this cheese spread then let me know by leaving a comment here or on my FB page within next 2 weeks and at the end of it I will pick two winners in random to send the coupons.Each one will receive £12 worth of coupons that they can use to buy any LowLow products. These coupons can be used in the UK only. So come on don't be shy, just leave a comment here or on my FB page for a chance to win.

A simple Bengali meal

We got some haddock the other day and from past experience I think the best way of cooking haddock is making fish cakes, if you are not deep frying it for fish and chips. I do love deep fried food but the rest of my family detests it. So I tried making it healthy. I made these hot and spicy bite size fish cakes, which is served with rice, “dal sedho” (boiled red lentils) and “bati posto” (spicy white poppy seed paste).

For dal sedho (boiled red lentils) all you need to do is wash and boil red lentils in salted water for 20-25 minutes or until fully cooked. You need to add in enough water so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Once the lentils are cooked, in a separate pan make the “tarka”. Heat 2-3 tbsp of mustard oil (or you can use any cooking oil if you cant get hold of it!), whole red chilli broken into 2/3 pieces and 1 tsp of whole cumin seeds. Fry for a minute or two or until you get the chilli, crispy almost burnt, remove from fire and pour over the boiled dal. Check for seasoning and serve it with hot boiled rice. You can also add some roughly chopped red onions.

Posto is a typical Bengali dish. In-fact Bengalis can be divided in to two groups on this. Ones who love any preparation of posto and the others who secretly like having it but would love to tease the other group who openly loves posto.

Ideally “bati-posto” is done in a pressure cooker, but I tried making it on hob. For this you need 100 gm or so poppy seeds (you can find these seeds in the Indian shop near spices section). Dry grind them in a coffee grinder. Add water to it and make it a smooth paste. Keep it loose. Now add and mix some finely chopped green chillies, red onions, salt and 2-3 tbsp of mustard oil to it and then start cooking it on the hob. Stir continuously so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. When the water from the posto is almost gone, take it off the hob and serve with rice.

This fish cakes are very spicy and you can have them just like that or with main meals. For this I boiled the 2 fillets of haddock in water for 10-15 minutes and boiled 2 medium sized potatoes separately till they are fully cooked. Mash the fish and potatoes together (make sure there are no fish bones left in the mash). Add red chilli powder, cumin powder, coriander powder and aamchur powder, ginger-garlic paste, 1 tsp each.  Next add salt, fresh chopped coriander, green chillies, pea nuts, all as per your taste. Mix every thing together and then make small cakes out of the mixture. Cover them well with breadcrumbs and shallow fry them in oil. Serve with rice.

Aloo Chaat

Who doesn’t love chaat? I love it! Although its meant to be an evening snack that people have between tea breaks but I am a huge fan of chaat and I can have it as dinner. In fact I did that once. I was in India and at home only me and my sis-in-law was there and both of us are chaat addicts. Everyone else were out and going to have dinner outside. So both of us decided on chaat dinner! It was a lovely one! Today when I was making the chaat I was reliving those memories. We had long chats over those lovely chaats she prepared.

Ingredients:

2 boiled and pealed potato cut in to small cubes

quarter of  a medium red onion, chopped finely

1-2 green chillies finely chopped

handful of fresh coriander roughly chopped

salt to taste

1 tsp dry roasted cumin powder

1 tsp of red chilly powder (optional)

Sev / Bombay mix

Sweet chilli tamarind sauce

Method:

Now this is real simple. Just mix everything together, check the seasoning and serve. I am sure you are going to love it.

The Gourmet Pizza – Domino’s Pizza Review

Another delicious treat from Domino’s. If you are a pizza lover you have got to try Domino’s Gourmet Pizza. If you are not a pizza lover, then also I would suggest to give it a try as this might change your opinion. There are three options to choose from. Firenzi (Pepperoni), Florentine (Veg) and Rustica (chicken). Check out there full range of delicious pizzas here.

We recently tried the large Firenzi Pizza, thin and crispy base with Pepperoni and double Jalepeno peppers topping (ummm..spicy and hot). You can choose reduced fat cheese but we went for the default, deliciously fresh Mozzarella cheese. The sauce base they used is also very special, made with sundried tomatoes and garlic. Absolutely delicious.

One large pizza was more than enough for two of us. In fact we couldn’t finish it in one go and had to take some rest before we attacked it again. The pepperoni was little spicy too and along with the Jalepeno peppers, it was haven. Thank you Domino’s for another delicious hot and spicy pizza.

Litty Chokha- Delicacy from Bihar

This is a traditional dish from Bihar. I have never tasted this dish before, its only recently I came accross this dish and really wanted to try it out. I didn't have any reference to compare with so if you have tried this dish before and you make my version too do let me know how close it is to the one made in households of Bihar. I found several recipes online but they all differ some way or the other. Some say to deep fry whereas others suggest do it in the oven. The traditional method was to make in the cow-dung fire which does not sound very appetizing. But the process in which the littis get cooked, sounds similar to baking in the oven. Hence I went with it. I have a strong feeling that deep frying litties will make it taste like “Khasta kachori ” but you can try that as well. Either way I knew its was going to taste great!   For chokha some use roasted eggplant with potatoes which complements this dish very well.

Ingredients:

For the filling:

6 tbsp Sattu (roasted chick peas flour)

1“ ginger (finely chopped)

3-4 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)

3-4 green chillies (finely chopped)

1 tsp of kalonji (Nigella seeds)

1 tsp Ajwain

2 tsp of lemon juice

hand full of chopped coriander

salt

1 tsp red chilli powder (optional)

2-3 tbsp of water

For the dough:

1 cup of Atta (whole meal flour)

2-3 tsp of oil

pinch of salt

2-3 tbsp of yoghurt

enough water to make a hard dough

For Alu chokha:

2-3 medium size potato boiled and roughly mashed

1 Red Onion thinly chopped

1 tsp whole cumin seeds

1 whole dried red chilli (broken into 2-3 pieces)

3-4 green chillies (finely chopped)

oil for frying

1 tsp Aamchur powder

hand full of chopped coriander

Method:

Start with the filling. Mix all the ingredients except water and then slowly add the water spoon by spoon. The filing should not be like paste or very dry that it falls apart. if it reaches a state where you try to press the mix in you palm and it holds its shape then its done. Check the seasoning and keep it aside.

Now for the dough add the salt and the oil to the flour first then add the curd and mix well. Add enough water to make a stiff dough. The dough should not be soft so add water slowly as you kneed the dough. Now make small balls out of the dough and start making the pocket for the filling. Remember to make the outer layer of the dough ball thin so that you can stuff the filling as much as possible. Then close the pocket and give it a shape of round ball. Repeat the procedure for all the dough you have or until you run out of the filling.

At this point either you can deep fry the littis or bake in the oven. For baking do the following. Pre heat the oven at 180 degree C then place the littis in the oven for 20 minutes or till they are turned light brown in colour. Take the baking tray out and turn them and place the tray back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes or till you see an even light brown colour on the littis. Take them out again and dip the littis in oil or melted ghee and place them back in the oven for may be 5 minutes or so. Take them out and let it rest for some time.  

While the litties are in oven make the chokha. Heat oil in a pan and fry the onion, chopped green chillies, dried red chilli and cumin seeds in that. Add salt, when the onions are soft and little brown add the boiled and roughly mashed potato in to it and start mixing. Add the aamchur powder and mix the whole thing till its almost a homogeneous mixture. Garnish with finely chopped coriander leaves and serve with the littis. Enjoy.

Cherry Chutney – National Cherry Day

It’s summer now! Cherries are in season, in fact today is National Cherry Day.

I always have some stories to tell when it comes to cherries, It all started in Morella, Spain where we nicked bags full of cherries from a tree near a gas station. I will always remember that incident as it reminds me of my childhood so much. Me and my cousins used to steal tamarind and raw mangos from our own ancestral home kitchen back in India.

 

Last year it was the day when England was playing against Germany in the World Cup Football knockout match. We decided to go to a pub in the city centre to enjoy the match in true British Spirit. On the way to the pub I spotted a cherry tree which had very few cherries left. As usual I was temped to pluck some, which I did but I also got my white t-shirt stained with cherries. It looked awful so I had to rush to a shop to buy another top to wear it to the pub.

This year I got a big container full of cooking cherries from our neighbour as a gift and was thinking what can I do with it. I was thinking of doing something other than Cherry pie and then my mum-in-law suggested that she could make chutney with them. I didn’t think twice, British cherries cooked in Indian way, would be a very interesting experiment for me. It was fabulous. Not very sweet yet tangy and the colour was so dark and rich, I simply loved it. Here is how she made it.

Ingredients:

200 gms (approximately) Cooking cherries (de-seeded)

4 tbsp sugar

1 tsp oil

1 tsp black mustard seed

1  whole dried red chilli (broken into 2-3 pieces)

1/2 cup of water

Pinch of salt

Method:

Heat the oil in a deep bottom pan and add the red chilli and the mustard seeds into it. When the seeds starts to splatter add the cherries with a pinch of salt. Fry for a minute and then add the water and sugar and keep boiling it till the sauce thickens and the cherries are cooked. Do check the sauce to adjust the sugar balance in it. It will take bout 4-5 minutes then remove from heat and let it cool down. Serve cold.

I had it just like that but you can try it with vanilla ice-cream or Greek yoghurt. It will taste good. Enjoy! Sending this recipe to an event Simple and in Season hosted by Fabulicious Food.

Sorshe Ilish (Hilsha Fish in Mustard Sauce)

Hilsha or as we call it “Ilish Maach” is a hot favourite of most Bengalis. We love fish and among all types of fishes Hilsha is the king in taste. No matter what you make with Ilish maach, its going to taste great! Back home you can get this fish fresh from the market but here in UK we get it in Indian shops, frozen and at least 8-10 months old. I am happy with that. Something is better than nothing. At least I get to eat it once in a while.

Sorshe Ilish is also called Ilish maach er jhal and one of my favourites. Ideally yellow mustard seeds are used to make the paste but I think they are bit difficult to find here. So I used black mustard seeds. The biggest problem with the black mustard paste was a bitter after taste I used to end up with each time I cook it. I have tried different techniques to get rid of the bitter taste but never been that successful. Finally I switched to English mustard which is a great shortcut for me and easily available in the supermarkets.

This is a very easy to make recipe if you have all the ingredients handy. Also, if you don’t have Hilsha you can use Herring which tastes similar to Hilsha. 

Ingredients:

800 gm Hilsha (cut in to pieces)

2 tbsp of English mustard paste

2 tbsp of white poppy seed paste (We call it posto in Bengali)

1 tsp of nigella seeds

1tsp of turmeric powder

1 tsp red chilly powder

3-4 fresh green chillies

3-4 tbsp Mustard oil

Salt

Method:

Clean the fish and lightly rub them with little turmeric and salt and keep it separately. In a bowl make a mix of the english mustard, poppy seed paste, turmeric, chilly powder and salt. In a frying pan heat the mustard oil and shallow fry the fish pieces. Remove the pieces from the pan and add the nigella seeds and the green chillies in the remaining oil, fry for a minute then add the mustard-poppy paste to the hot oil. mix it well then add the fish pieces and cover them in the sauce. Cover the pan and cook it for 1-2 minutes and then remove from the heat. Serve with plain boiled rice.