Veal Stew and a Milestone

Filed Under Beef or Veal, India - Kerala, Mains, Recipes | 29 Comments

Wow, I can’t believe I am writing my hundredth post! More unbelievable is the fact that I kept this up for five months! It had become an addictive obsession at one time, but I think finally the honeymoon period is over. Now I am at that stage of life where I don’t need to do it everyday. The romance is still very much alive, I can squeeze in two or three a week, even with the busy work schedule and soon with parents in the house. Yes, I am still talking about blogging, take your mind out of the gutter :).  Thanks to all my readers and blog buddies for the support you’ve given me these past months! If it weren’t for your encouraging words, I would have quit a long time ago! So thank you! 

Now time for the trip update. We had the most fantastic, fun-filled three day mini-vacation on the beach. It was just perfect, exactly what I needed after the week I had at work. The house was amazing, a gourmet kitchen with an eight burner stove, just perfect for a foodie vacation! We cooked and ate a lot, drank a lot, played a lot, even attempted to shop, but all Seaside had was a factory outlet. Weather wasn’t too kind to us, it was way too cold to be out on the beach, but that didn’t stop us from getting out into the ocean. We even caught hundreds of some creature we thought were baby turtles or soft shelled crabs, it took about two hours to collect those, during which we brainstormed about the perfect recipe for the shellfish! But finally those turned out to be some parasites which are not proven to be edible yet, so we let them go back into the ocean. I wish I had pictures to share, of the food and the beautiful ocean and the scenery, but we were too busy having fun that we forgot to take pictures most of the time. But here is one of all of us in front of the house we stayed at.  Siv and I are the ones on the left.

Coming back to the subject of this blog, I wanted my hundredth post to be about food. So here is something exotic, well the meat is exotic, the recipe is not so.  A stew is a stew is a stew , but with veal it is just a little something extra. Don’t let the boring picture fool you, this stew was just amazing! The meat was just so tender and tasted great with the mild spices in this stew.

Ingredients

• 1.5 lb Veal shoulder chop
• For the stock (can be replaced with 2 cups store bought veal stock)
  • 6 cups water
  • 10 cardamom pods
  • 2″ cinnamon stick
  • 20 black pepper pods
  • 15 cloves
  • 1 star anise
  • 1/2 cup onions cut into big pieces
  • 1/2 cup diced celery
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 tbsp fresh ground pepper
• salt to taste
• 1 tbsp all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup chopped shallots
• 2 tbsp chopped garlic
• 2 tbsp chopped ginger
• 3 green pepper slit
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 2 cups canned coconut milk
• 1/2 cup diced potato

Method 

Trim the fat from the veal along with a little meat and keep aside. Cut the rest of the meat into small cubes.

To make the stock, cut the fat and meat kept aside in the previous step into small pieces. Mix with all the other ingredients for the stock and bring to a boil in a stock pot. Simmer on medium heat for about an hour. Strain the liquid and throw away the solids.

In a deep pan, heat oil and add the veal pieces. Season with salt and pepper, and saute till the meat pieces turn brown. Add the all purpose flour and saute for a minute.

Add the shallots, garlic, ginger and green pepper and saute for about two minutes.

Add the prepared stock and bring to a boil.

Open the canned coconut milk without shaking. Remove 4 tbsps full of thick cream from the top and keep aside. Mix the rest of the coconut milk well and add to the pan along with the vinegar. Add more hot water if the liquid looks too thick.

Simmer on medium low heat for about 20 minutes. Along half way through this, add the diced potatoes.

Add the coconut cream kept aside in the previous step and mix well. Simmer for about 10 minutes on lowest heat setting.

Delicious stew is ready. Serve with rice or Appams (hoppers) or Idiyappam (string hoppers).

For a Memorable Memorial Day Weekend

Filed Under Random Musings | 18 Comments

It’s been a busy week! Haven’t cooked anything or been to any new restaurants. Haven’t been out bloghopping either, other than the occasional sneak peek during boring meetings. Today we are off to Seaside, OR for a short break.  Ten of us are going to be shacked up in a beach house for three days. Since all of us live to eat, we will be cooking and drinking a lot, hopefully I will get some nice food/drink pictures to share.

I will see you all next week. If you are going to spend this weekend partying, try one of these fabulous cocktails. Click on the picture to go to the recipe page. Wish you all a memorable memorial day weekend!

Yum Yum Sup Sup - Seattle Fave Five

Filed Under MeMe, Restaurant Reviews | 13 Comments

Amy of Nook and Pantry, fellow Seattle food blogger tagged me to write about my five favorite restaurants in Seattle. It sounds easy, but I live in a city which is truly a foodie heaven, how do I pick just five?  I have way too many favorites. So after pondering this over for about a month, I decided that it is best to pick my favorite restaurants in five different categories, instead of picking my five absolute favorite restaurants, which might all fall in the same genre.  So here goes!

Favorite Breakfast- Macrina Bakery and Cafe

Since I’ve blogged about Macrina recently, I won’t go into details about the restaurant.  Even though it is always fun to sit in the dining room and enjoy the hearty omelettes, it is such a rarity that we actually find seats there. So we almost always end up getting a take out, our favorite item in the menu - Fried egg sandwich. Crispy fried eggs, with spicy tomato salsa, roasted onions , bacon pieces, Dijon mustard and muenster cheese served on sesame bialy, the best fried egg sandwich in the world! This one moves quick, they only make so many of these, and run out of these pretty fast! The fried-egg sandwich they serve in the restaurant is not the same, first of all it is served on potato bread, and the eggs are done over-easy, and instead of the salsa I think they have a tomato sauce. The to-go sandwich is all solids, just my type!

Check out my previous post on Macrina: http://blog.sigsiv.com/2007/05/macrina-bakery-belltown-best.html 

Website: http://www.macrinabakery.com/index.html 

Favorite Take-out - Malay Satay Hut

I’m sure everyone has their list of favorite take out place, on those lazy days too tired to cook or sit pretty in a fancy restaurant, we all dial that number, stored in the cellphone, probably on speed dial, no need to look at the menu, it is almost always going to be the same order. For us, that place is Malay Satay Hut - a Seattle favorite. Cuisine is Malaysian, prices are dead cheap, and the food is to die for! If we eat at the restaurant, we always start with the Roti Canai a thin Indian flat bread,  served with a thin potato curry. If Siv and I go together, we always get the curry lamb and vegetable fried rice and share both the dishes. If we go with friends, when sharing is not an option, I get the fish with ginger and scallions and Siv gets Nasi Lemak (coconut rice, chicken curry, boiled eggs and pickled anchovies.

 Nasi Lemak                                                       Roti Canai

But this is about the takeout food, and for take out we always get the Dry Curry Crab and Vegetable Fried Rice. This is the best Crab curry I’ve ever tasted! A whole crab cut into pieces, served in the shell, in a red dry curry with onions, lots and lots of curry leaves and star anise! Simply Delicious! It is so messy to eat the crab in shell, that is why we never get this in the restaurant. I wouldn’t want the public to see the way we attack the poor crab! This is a must try dish!

(All images from http://www.malaysatayhut.com)

Favorite Small Plates - Harvest Vine

This is a tough category to pick a favorite in, since if I picked my absolute favorite five restaurants, three would fall into this set. After thinking about it for a while, I pick Harvest Vine as my favorite tapas bar in Seattle.  Check out my review here: http://blog.sigsiv.com/2007/04/harvest-vine-best-tapas-in-town.html 

Here is a picture to entice your appetite: Pan seared foie gras with caramelized apples.

http://www.harvestvine.com

Favorite Happy Hour- Cascadia

Cascadia restaurant has the best happy hour deal in town! $1 mini-burgers! And the mini burgers are to die for! This is another place I’ve blogged about, so read more here: http://blog.sigsiv.com/2007/02/cascadia-best-mini-burgers-in-belltown.html 

And here is a stack of mini burgers for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.cascadiarestaurant.com

Favorite Special Occasion Dining- Mistral

Finally, a restaurant we haven’t been to in a while!  Mistral is where we had our first fine dining experience! It was years ago for an anniversary that we first went there, I think we got a seven course meal, and each and every course lifted us to heaven! I didn’t even know what amuse bouche meant at that time! I still remember the sorbet they served in between courses, we were wondering why they would serve dessert when we had three more courses to go, who knew we were supposed to cleanse the palette before switching to a different course!   Our dinner with wine came to about $500 for two, the most expensive meal we had ever had till then, but totally worth every penny. We have come a long way since then , been to some fabulous restaurants in different cities, but Mistral still stands out as the best dining experience in my mind!  We still haven’t been to Herbfarm, but out of all the other fine dining restaurants we have been to in Seattle, Mistral is by far our favorite!
http://www.mistralseattle.com

I could go on and on… but instead I will stop with these five fabulous finds and move onto tagging some foodies around the world. I’d like to tag: 

• Cynthia of Tastes Like Home
  • The sweetest journalist from the Caribbean whose posts make me want to travel to Guyana soon. I’d like to know where/what to eat when I visit Guyana or Barbados where she lives now.
• Jason of Pursuing my Passions
  • Another Seattle food blogger Jason just got back from a Japan trip, so hoping for a list of his fave five in Japan.
• Nandita of Saffron Trail
  • The celebrity blogger from Mumbai, who has her own TV show now. Her list might be worth a buck or two after she goes mainstream. .
• Ros of Living to Eat
  • Her posts always make me laugh, and she has great taste! I’d like to know where she loves to eat in London
• Shantanu of Traveller’s Tales
  • This foodie is a world traveler, so I’ll leave it upto him to pick a city/country!

No pressure! It took me a month before I got around to it. If you end up writing the list,  here are the rules:

1. Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you. Include the state and country you’re in.
   Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
   velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
   LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
   eastcoastlife (East Coast, Singapore)
   Tigerfish of Teczcape (California, USA)
   Amy of Nook and Pantry (Seattle, WA, USA)
   Sig of Live to Eat (Seattle, WA, USA)
2. List your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location.
3. Tag 5 other people (preferably from other countries/states) ..and let them know they’ve been tagged

Technorati tags: Seattle Restaurants, Top 5 Restaurants, Meme

Semiya Payasam -My Shade of White

Filed Under Desserts, Diary, India - Kerala, Recipes | 28 Comments

I’ve been doing a much needed spring cleaning this whole weekend, getting the condo ready for my parents’ visit. They will be spending the summer with us, my mom will be taking over the kitchen for three months, so I decided to organize my pantry and kitchen to make things easier for her to find. When we traded in the luxury of the chef’s kitchen with infinite cabinet space and walk-in pantry for the city life and ocean view, we got stuck with a kitchen where two is a crowd and a pantry where not even Nicole Richie could walk in.  The overflowing pantry made everything impossible to find, which got us into a vicious cycle, we kept buying new stuff whenever we couldn’t find anything, which of course added to the mess. When I finally cleaned out the pantry, there were five bottles of balsamic vinegar, six bottles of fish sauce and four different bags of aniseed, just to give some examples. After a lot of consolidation and throwing out expired items, finally it is in a manageable state. Now we just need to maintain it for three more weeks till my mom gets here, then it is her problem.

Okay, I forgot where I was going with the story. Oh yeah, during my cleaning process, I came across a packet of vermicelli / Semiya which had been sitting there for a while. Since I’ve been cooking some really hard dishes this weekend, I decided to make an easy one for a change. Hey, give me a break, I’ve been cleaning non-stop. Also, the weather has been pretty lousy today, the gloomy Seattle sky made me crave for something warm and sweet.  

Semiya Payasam is similar to a regular rice pudding, but instead of rice we use Semiya as Vermicelli is known in Kerala. (shemai in Bengali, seviyan in Hindi and Urdu, shavige in Kannada - from Wikipedia.). Normally this is made with whole milk, I only had fat free milk, that too I didn’t have enough, so I added half a cup of sweetened condensed milk to balance it out. You can omit the condensed milk and use three cups of whole milk instead of the fat free milk.

Ingredients

• 100 g broken Vermicelli (~ 1/4 lb)
• 1 dsp ghee/clarified butter
• 2 cups water
• 3 cups fat free milk
• 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp cardamom powder
• ~12 cashew nuts
• 1 tbsp raisins

Method

Heat ghee in a pan and fry the cashewnuts till brown, fry the raisins till plump and keep aside.

In the same ghee, saute the vermicelli till light brown and keep aside.

Bring the water to a boil in a deep pan. Add the fried vermicelli to the pan and cook till half the water is gone.

Add the milk and sweetened condensed milk and sugar and stir to combine.

Simmer on medium low till the vermicelli is soft. Add the cardamom powder and stir well.

Garnish with fried cashew nuts and raisins.

This can be served hot or chilled.

Recipe adapted from: Flavours of the Spice Coast by Mrs.K.M. Mathew

This Semiya Payasam is my entry for this month’s Sugar High Friday - the theme is Shades of White and is hosted by Tara from Seven Spoons.

Crunchy Granola Breakfast Bowl

Filed Under Berries, Breakfast and Brunch, Diary, Recipes | 18 Comments

Thanks to this month’s Weekend Breakfast Blogging theme of Summer Fruits, I realized how easy and simple it is to make a healthy breakfast. This crunchy bowl was yummy and delicious and took just minutes to assemble.

Ingredients

• 2 cups granola
• 1 cup sliced strawberries
• 1/2 cup sliced bananas
• 2 cups plain fat free yogurt
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 2 tbsp sliced almonds
• 2 tbsp seedless raisins

Method

This is a slightly complicated process, follow the instructions carefully! Mix yogurt and honey in a bowl, add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.  Hope it wasn’t too hard to follow.

This is my entry for this month’s Weekend Breakfast Blogging, invented by our celebrity blogger Nandita of Saffron Trail and hosted this month by Padmaja of Spicy Andhra.

Restaurant Zoe - Third Time’s the Charm!

Filed Under American, Belltown, French, Northwest | 10 Comments

I don’t believe in second chances; especially when it comes to restaurants. Once I’ve had a bad experience at a restaurant, it is very rare that I’d go back to that place again. With so many choices around, why should I? But there are exceptions to any rule, we finally had a great night at Zoe on our third try, glad I broke the rule on this one.

My first visit to Zoe was with a group of friends on a girls’ night out two years ago. About 10 of us showed up for our 8:00 PM reservation, and were seated at 9:00! Service was pretty rude too, I don’t think any food would’ve tasted good after that wait! Blaming the bad food on the service, Siv and I went back there a few months ago and tried their $25 prix-fix menu on the 25 for $25 promotion, and the food was a total disaster. We had sworn off Zoe, but everyone else seemed to go on and on about how good Zoe is, so finally last night we decided to give it a final try, and guess they got the word :), the food finally lived up to its name.

Zoe is another upscale Belltown bistro, serving French influenced American cuisine. The decor is casual, crowd varies from casual to super dressy, a common Seattle scene.  The restaurant is kind of big, but the tables seemed to be cramped together to accommodate the crowd. We got an OpenTable reservation for 9:15 PM, showed up at 9:00 , and waited at the bar while our table was getting ready. Restaurant was really crowded, but luckily the bar was empty except for another couple waiting for their table. The signature cocktails didn’t interest us much, they had an expansive and expensive wine selection, we went for a relatively cheaper bottle, a blended wine from Antonin Rodet for $38. Before we were half way through the first glass, our table was ready.

Since we got really bad service last time, our expectations were pretty low. But this time the service was simply top notch! Our waiter Joe was very pleasant and completely knowledgeable. The way he described the specials and some of the dishes, it felt like he could make even a glass of water sound like a delicacy. Also it was very clear that he actually loved food, wasn’t just repeating some lines, he actually knew how everything was cooked and what went into each dish, he was even drooling a little bit while describing the Hog special! 

The menu at Zoe is divided into small plates and entrees. Appetizers ranging from $7.00 to $17.00, most dishes in the neighborhood of $10-$12. Entrees go from $18.00 to $36, but most are around $25. Then there are two more sections for salads and sides. We wanted to start with two small plates, but since we couldn’t agree on two, we went for three instead and decided to wait and see how many entrees we should order.

To start with we were served this amuse bouche complements of the chef. It was made of some kind of Italian grain, I forgot the name, the dish was sweet and had sour cherry pieces inside. It wasn’t anything great and failed to amuse our bouches. We got a little worried, thinking the third visit is going to be a disaster again!

Then came our first course, grilled spicy octopus with red onions, red radish picholine olives with blood orange vinaigrette ($10.50) .This was a little too sour and little too spicy for a restaurant like this. But our Indian palettes could relish the tangy spicy taste, which we are so used to, so we loved this dish. I don’t think this dish is for everyone though, the sauce might be too overpowering for regular fine food connoisseurs, for us it reminded of some sweet and sour Indian seafood dish. 

I always carry my small camera in my purse after I started blogging. Because of this, there is a lot of wear and tear on it, and sometimes the lens gets dirty, since the cover accidentally opens up. It was acting a little strange (or was it me?) last night. The Octopus and the hog (coming up later on) were slightly out-of focus, so had to reduce down to a smaller size to make these pics look good enough.

Next course was this crispy kurobuta pork belly confit with caramelized endive puree, apricots and pistachios ($10.50). Zoe is worth a visit just for this one dish. Kurobuta pork is the Japanese black hog, it is darker and richer and well marbled.  The apricot and nuts in the endive puree is the best complement to the sweet and juicy and tender pork belly pieces with the wonderfully crispy fat pieces . Our favorite dish of the night!

Then came the foie gras tourchon with rhubarb compote, toasted brioche and pistachio orange brittle ($17.00). Tourchon is the method of cooking foie gras by placing it in a towel and poaching it. (Torchon in French means towel. ) The Foie gras patty went nicely with the pistachio orange brittle and the little too sour rhubarb compote and the bread. Not my favorite foie gras preparation, but this indeed was a great dish.

We were kind of full with the three small plates, but from the time Joe described the Hog preparation for the night ($21.25) (the Hog preparation changes nightly), we were drooling over it, so decided that one more dish won’t hurt if we can skip dessert.   What a great decision, since this was just extra-ordinary! The meat came from different parts of the pork , I remember Joe talking about the cheek and the belly and probably the back side too. The belly meat didn’t have the fat like in the crispy pork belly preparation, but the meat was wrapped around in bacon fat and slow braised. The vegetables were cooked along in the gravy formed from the fat and dripped from the meat. This was served on top of the best semolina gnocchi I’ve ever had, soft and flavorful in the gravy. Just writing about this making me drool, no wonder Joe was drooling while describing the dish, now I’m not sure if I liked this best or the crisp pork belly.

Overall, a great Friday night dinner, Zoe is going into my list of favorite Seattle restaurants. Definitely going back again, just won’t try the prix-fix, that’s all.  

Technorati tags: Seattle Restaurants

Macrina Bakery - Belltown’s Best!

Filed Under American, Belltown, Breakfast/Brunch, Sandwiches/Subs | 13 Comments

There are so many things I love about living in Belltown. Being so close to Macrina Bakery is way up there in this list. This European style bakery and cafe is the place where Seattlites bring their out-of-town visitors to.They have the best breads in town, and the pastries are to die for! Macrina supplies bread to a bunch of restaurants in town, but there is nothing better than buying freshly made bread and pastries directly from source! 

Macrina is not just a friendly neighborhood bakery, they have one of the best breakfast/brunch menus in town too. The place is packed all the time, especially on weekends. The wait to get a table could be up to an hour on peak hours! Most days we are too hungry to wait, but it is okay since we get to pick up our favorite fried egg sandwich (the best in the world, I swear!) to go from the counter. Some afternoons we do rock-paper-scissors to figure out who should walk down to get the organic pressed coffee and pastries- a fresh fruit tartlette for me and a pecan tart for Siv, a coffee cake and a random buyer’s choice to share.  But I do love to sit and enjoy the fresh squeezed orange juice and the delicious omelettes whenever I get a chance. Siv doesn’t have that much patience for it, but luckily I have equally crazy friends who would happily wait with me for an hour or so to get a table.

Last Saturday, Siv was out the whole day playing cricket. My friend M came over downtown to hang out with me. Our idea was to walk down to the Sculpture Park and visit the Taste cafe everyone has been talking about. She got here pretty late, by then we both were so hungry we didn’t want to take any chances, just go eat something familiar. So we headed down to Macrina to see how long the wait is, but it was our lucky day, we were seated immediately! Macrina is not known for their service, but things went smoothly this time.

I went for my usual, smoked salmon scramble -Eggs softly scrambled and served with onion bialy, cold smoked salmon & herbed crème fraiche. Served with herb roasted potatoes & a salad of organic greens. I just love the smoked salmon, egg combo. And the bread is just so flavorful, well they are most famous for their bread afterall!

M got the Market Special - Fresh veggie omelette with Asparagus and peppers served with roasted potatoes, organic greens, herb baguette & fresh fruit. I didn’t taste it, but she seemed to enjoy it. It looked beautiful for an egg-white omelette!

After the scrumptious lunch, we went down to Elliot Bay, and walked for about two hours on the waterfront. Good food, good exercise and good conversation - a perfect Saturday afternoon!

Technorati tags: Seattle Restaurants

Yam - Drumstick Curry

Filed Under India - Kerala, Recipes, Side Dish - Gravy, Vegetarian | 39 Comments

A few weeks ago, I was alone at home on a Thursday night, watching TV in my pajamas when I got a call from my friend M that she and my other friend M were in front of Cascadia restaurant across my house, and wanted me to go down and join them for a drink. Cascadia is kind of a dressy place, especially on Thursday nights. I was in no mood to dress up to go down, so I invited them up for a drink instead. M & M are both my college roommates, they know how messy I am, no need to tidy up the house for them, don’t even have to change my pajamas, they have seen me in worse!

I was in a particularly hospitable mood that day, so I offered to cook dinner for them. If you know me at all, you’d know how out of character that is for me. Don’t get me wrong, I am all about entertaining, love to throw parties and cook for people, but it absolutely has to be pre-planned. I need to sit and plan out the elaborate menu, make a shopping list, buy all the ingredients before I can start the cooking process! But I was just so happy that they decided to ditch Cascadia and come up to be with me, I opened a wine bottle for them and proceeded to find something to cook in my normally empty refrigerator.

Unfortunately all I could find there was a yam, a vegetable I had no idea what to do with! Frankly I didn’t even know how it ended up in my fridge, I think Siv picked it up for some experiment! After a long search through my cookbook collection, I found a Yam and drumstick curry recipe in The Family Cook Book by Mrs.K M Mathew. Lucky for me, I had some frozen drumsticks in my freezer too! I didn’t have high expectations for this dish, but was happily surprised by the end result! It was almost as good as a meat curry, the sweet yam flavor well balanced the spices in this dish. It went nicely with chapattis. It was so good I bought a yam and made the curry again last night.  Here is the recipe for those who are looking for a nice yam dish. Trust me, sooner or later you will be in my shoes and will end up with just a yam and a packet of frozen drumsticks and two hungry friends to feed!  

Ingredients

• 2 cups yam skinned and cut into small cubes
• 10-12 finger long pieces of drumsticks split into half
• 1 tbsp red chilli powder
• 1/8 tsp turmeric powder
• 1/2 tsp pepper powder
• 1/4 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 cup thinly sliced shallots/onions
• 1 tbsp minced ginger
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• a few curry leaves
• 1″ piece of cinnamon
• 3 cardamom pods
• 6 cloves
• 1.5 cups canned coconut milk
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• salt for taste

Method

Heat oil in a deep pan and add the mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds starts to splutter, add the sliced shallots, ginger and garlic and saute till brown.

Add the cloves, cardamom and cinnamon and saute for a minute or so.

Mix the turmeric, red chilli and pepper powders with a little water to make a paste. Add this paste to the pan and saute in reduced heat till the spices are cooked well and the oil starts to separate. (The spices need to be cooked very well for this curry to taste good).

Open the coconut milk can without shaking, so that the cream is on top. Remove 1/2 cup of the top creamy layer and keep it away. Add the rest of the coconut milk to the pan along with the yam pieces and let it come to a boil on high heat.

Add the drumstick pieces and cook on medium till the yam is soft. Add the vinegar and salt and the coconut cream from the above step and simmer the curry for a few more minutes.

Serve hot with fresh chapattis or rice.

Note

• Yam mentioned in my cookbook is called Chena in Malayalam, which I don’t think is even in the same family as the Yam we get in United States. I used the orange-fleshed sweet potato which is sold as Yam in the US grocery stores.
• Don’t confuse the vegetable drumstick with chicken drumsticks.  Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drumstick_%28vegetable%29 to learn about Drumsticks (Moringa oleifera)

Forbidden Rice Pudding

Filed Under Desserts, Diary, Mango, Recipes, Rice | 36 Comments

Don’t let the name confuse you, it is not a forbidden pudding, it is a pudding made of Forbidden rice. I picked up this rice from the Asian store, just because I was intrigued by the name. Also because the packet had the following description:

Legend tells us that Forbidden rice was once grown exclusively for the Emperors of
China to enrich their health and ensure their longevity.

So that’s where the name came from, it was reserved for the Emperors. Well, I had to try it of course. The packet also mentioned the fragrant aroma, nutty taste, deep purple color and the nutritional value. After I got home I tried a Google search on Forbidden rice and found out that this is indeed a highly nutrient rice.

Forbidden Rice is rich in iron and considered a blood tonifier. Unlike other black
rice from Asia, it is not glutinous or rough and cooks in only 30 minutes to produce a superior flavor, texture, and color.

I remembered seeing a purple color rice pudding recipe on the crazy-delicious blog Writing at the Kitchen Table by Freya and Paul - one of the funniest food blogger couple I’ve seen. When I searched their site, I found that they used a rice called Nanjing Black Rice, but had very helpfully mentioned that it is known as Forbidden rice in the US. So without further hesitation I proceeded to make the rice pudding following Freya’s recipe.

Check out the original recipe here. I omitted the butter and used whole milk instead of skimmed. I also added some cardamom pods while cooking the rice. Freya and Paul paired this with mango sorbet, which I am sure would have gone wonderfully with this, but we had it with fresh mango pieces this time.

Even though I knew it was going to be purple after cooking, I didn’t expect the seemingly black rice to turn such a deep shade of purple! It really was a treat for the eyes and the taste buds. I expected it to have the same texture as black sticky rice, but it had a nutty crunch to it, and tasted wonderful.  

I am sending this to The Spice Cafe for the Monthly Blog Patrol - Something Sweet hosted by adorable Coffee. The rules for the Blog Patrol is simple, based on the theme of the month, you have to cook something from the fellow bloggers posted recipes. Thanks Freya and Paul for the delicious treat! 

Chilli Chicken

Filed Under Appetizers and Snacks, Chicken, Indo Chinese, Recipes | 30 Comments

Chilli Chicken is a loose term used to describe a variety of dry chicken preparations in India. There is no standard recipe for it, everyone uses the culinary license to make their own versions of this popular dish. I have multiple variations of chilli chicken recipes, it is the perfect dish to experiment with. This particular recipe is based on a tried and loved Pepper Chicken recipe from Hooked On Heat. I This time I used Meena’s base technique of sautéing the marinated chicken pieces, and modified the rest of the recipe to make my version of Chilli Chicken.

Ingredients

•  4 boneless skinless chicken thighs cubed (~ 1.5 lbs)
• 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
• 1.5 tbsp red chilli powder
• salt to taste
• 1.5 cups sliced onions
• 2 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp minced ginger
• 5 sliced green chilies
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 3 tbsp sliced green onions (optional)
• oil

Method

Mix the chicken pieces with turmeric powder, red chilli powder and salt and marinate for half an hour.

In the mean time, heat a little oil in a pan and sauté the sliced onions and green chilies till onions are soft and translucent. Remove from the pan and keep aside.

In the same pan, heat some more oil and sauté the marinated chicken pieces till the pieces are cooked through. Remove from the pan and keep aside.

In the same pan, add a little more oil if needed, and sauté the garlic and ginger till brown. Reduce the heat and add the tomato paste and fry for a minute. Add the soy sauce and vinegar and salt and mix well to make a sauce.

Add the fried chicken pieces to the pan and mix well to coat the chicken pieces with the sauce. Add the prepared onions and chilies and mix well.

Finally add the sliced green onions and cook on medium for a few minutes till the sauce is completely dried out.

This makes a nice appetizer and is best with cold beer.

Notes

• I prefer dark meat for recipes like this, but it contains a little more fat and calories than white meat, you can replace the thighs with boneless breast pieces if you prefer white meat.
• It is a dish on the spicy side, adjust the amount of chilli powder and number of green chilies to suite your palette. 
• My dearest vegetarian friends can use paneer or tofu or cauliflower in place of chicken.