Friday, July 31, 2009

Aachar Gosht (lamb in pickling spices)


Today we all feel like eating mutton but none of us want to eat the curries which I normally make. Vindaloo naaaa, Roce curry naaaaa, Shakuti, Green masala naaaa naaaa naaaaa.

Opened my cupboard to check on a new recipe from my cooking books. I found this book, “50 great curries of India by Camellia Panjabi with some different curries which I never tried. My mind is all set on this recipe “Lamb in pickling spices (Aachar Gosht-Bhopal style). Aaachar is the Indian word for pickles. This green curry is aromatic, little tangy and not too hot. The gravy is thick so you can simply have it with roti/paratha/ or plain boiled rice. Since I was going to serve it with Plain rice I made some tomato Saar & french beans vegetable to go along with the Aachar Gosht. .

Ingredients

1 ½ kg Lamb pieces with bones.
2 cups of full fat yoghurt
1 big bunch of coriander leaves
500 gms of onion chopped
6 flakes of garlic
1 inch ginger chopped
2 tsp fennel seeds
1 ½ tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 ½ tsp nigella seeds (kalonji/onion seeds)
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
50 ml oil
8 green chillies
!/2 tsp turmeric powder
Salt as per taste.

1.Wash the meat, drain and keep it aside.

2.Puree the yoghurt and coriander leaves set aside. Puree the onions garlic and ginger.

3.Lightly pound the fennel, fenugreek seeds, nigella seeds, mustard seeds in a mortar. Slit 4 chilies and stuff the spice mixture and leave the remaining dry spice mixture to be added later.

4.Take a pan, add oil. Once the oil is hot add the remaining 4 chilies until its pale.

5.Add the onion puree and cook for another 10-15 minutes until it gets pink in colour.

6.Add the remaining dry spice mixture, fry for another minute. Add the yoghurt puree season with turmeric and salt as per taste. Add the stuffed chillies.

7.Add the meat, mix well and bring to a boil.

8.Cover the lid and let it simmer on slow fire for another 45 min to 1 hour until the meat has cooked.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Saltimbocca Steak


Adrian & me we both love to cook as well as eat. Now we have one more member who loves to eat (I should say loves to hog) Sabrina (sabu) my daughter. As a child she was a bad eater, we had to shout for not eating and now we plead at her to stop eating.

Sabu loves Sizzlers and so do I (winkkkk). While we were in Mumbai we tried Saltimbocca Sizzlers at Poptates. The taste was little sour which we both didn’t enjoy but the steak stuffed with bacon & cheese looked yummy. Adrian brought some steak so dinner tonight is Saltimbocca Steak with mushroom sauce, Mashed potatoes & Couscous salad.

Pakodas (Fritters)


My all time favourite evening snack is the different pakodas (fritters) made from potato, onion, chilly. I normally make potato & onion but wanted to try something different so made some with cabbage & paneer. Here is the platter of hot & yummy onion, potato, cabbage & paneer pakodas.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Cornmeal Cookies



I just love baking as the aroma of butter & vanilla is so heavenly. Its been long I've baked any goodies so decided to make some cookies. Last week I tried baking Crunchy Oatmeal raisin cookies. Wasn’t very happy with their shapes as they came out flat but were very crunchy and tasty. I had some cornmeal stored so my search for cornmeal cookies begin and i bumped into these Italian Cornmeal cookies, “Crumiri”. Had all the ingredients in my kitchen shelf, so without wasting any time just off to bake them. Sabu was all excited to help me with the baking. She loves to cream the butter and sugar and finally she did the whole dough. Filled the dough in the pastry bag and Sabu was already with the piping bag running down with imagination as what shapes she should make. She happily piped out some ginger man, shirt, heart and various different shapes on the greased baking sheet. Baked the cookies in a preheated oven for 15 minutes and she was right next to the oven waiting impatiently for the cokies to come out of the oven. Side by side I spooned few cookie drops in another baking sheet. Few were sprinkled with pistachio powder and few I put 1 almond in the centre.

Ingredients :

180 gms unsalted butter
140 gms sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
240 gms all purpose flour
½ tsp salt
110 gms cornmeal

Preheat oven @ 180C. Grease the cookie sheet. Cream the butter & sugar until light and pluffy, add one eggs at a time, add vanilla essence now add the dry mixture of flour, cornmeal & salt. Mix well. Put the dough in a piping bag and and pipe out V , S or any shapes you like. I made few shapes and few dropped few with a tsp and sprinkled it with pistachio powder. Bake it for 15-18 minutes. Makes 3 dozen.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Oats & Wheat Flour Pancakes


We love pancakes that are drenched with maple syrup & butter. Tried many recipes but couldnt get anything closer to the pancakes from McDonalds’, just love them. Yummmm. Finally I got a recipe which is nice soft & fluffy and It’s healthy too which can be made in a jiffy. Makes 6 pancakes.

Ingredients :

1 Cup Quaker Oats
1 Cup wheat Flour
1 ½ cup Skimmed Milk
¼ cup Oil
2 tbsp Sugar
2 tsp Eno salt
2 Eggs


Put all the above ingredients in a blender or just whisk it to a smooth batter.
Take 2 big serving spoonful of batter and put it on a hot non stick pan for 2-3 minutes until it starts blistering now turn the other side and leave it for another minute. Serve the pancakes with butter and maple syrup. If you don’t have maple syrup you can also enjoy it with some chocolate syrup or just apply any jam that you prefer and enjoy…….. What a delicious healthy breakfast.