Pav Bhaji - Mumbai Style!!!!

I have a constant craving for Mumbai street food and some of these dishes have become my party staples! One such recipe that I find myself repeating very often whenever I have guests or my family wants to eat something different is Pav Bhaji. I never fail to get rave reviews and never have seconds left! Recently, when a friend of mine e-mailed me for my Pav Bhaji recipe - I realised I don't have one posted on my blog. So this one is for her...

I remember reading a recipe for Pav Bhaji long long time ago in the Sunday Mid-day (my favoritest read on a Sunday) and from then on I have had a winner on hands (with a few tweaks here and there)! This is also a healthy way to get your husband and children to eat their veggies without turning up their noses! My recipe feeds 4.

Ingredients:
5 medium sized boild potatoes
1.5 cups vegetables (carrots, cauliflower, peas, beans or whatever else you have on hand and want to feed your family ;))

4 tomatoes boiled and pureed without their peels

1 large onion diced small

1 tbsp ginger-garlic paste

3 kashmiri whole red chillis

1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
Salt as per taste
Pav Bhaji Masala as per taste

Recipe:
Boil the potatoes and put aside. In a pressure cooker add 1tsp oil and the kashimiri chillis (broken in half), ginger-garlic paste and choppee d onions. Saute onions till pink. Then add the tomatoe puree and saute till the mixture leaves oil. Now add the vegetables and saute again. Add the dry masalas i.e. turmeric, chilli powder, salt and at least 2 tbsp pav bhaji masala. Add the potatoes and stir the mixture well. If the mixture is not in semi-liquid form - add some tomato puree so that the mixture is a bit pasty. Add about half a cup of water and give this a couple of whistles.

Open the pressure cooker and mash the mixture with a masher. Add water and bring to a boil if required. Now taste and add more pav bhaji masala, chilli and salt as per taste. This whole "bhaji" should not be very curry like - so if you think it's too thin - give this a couple of more whistles and leave aside - this dries up a bit on it's own. And you're all done.

Serving Suggestions:

I always serve this with a side of diced onions, lemon and grated cheese and a big chunk of butter.

The pav's are also nicely heated on a pan with butter!

Chewy Chocolate Chunk and Oat Cookies

Delhi and Gurgaon have been freezing this year and with friends and relatives being around on and off I have been too lazy and tied up to enter the kitchen. Nothing like snuggling into the blanket anytime the baby decides to nap :)! But one morning I got up and could literally smell the cookies I have been meaning to bake for over a month.

I have been trying to find an easy and healthy recipe for chewy chocolate chip cookies (chewy so my 14 month old son can eat some too...) and have tested a few recipes that I found online courtesy Rachel Ray, All recipes and a couple of other sites and came up with mine which is a little variant from the others but delivers the goods!

This recipe uses the quick cooking Quaker Oats which are heart healthy and give many benefits. I have given up trying to give my husband Oats or porridge for breakfast. Breakfast in our house can range from eggs & sausages to paranthas or dosas - I try to keep it simple and healthy but we do end up indulging on the weekends.

Though this is not the healthiest way to incorporate oats into our diet - I thought we had to make a start somewhere and incorporate the goodness of oats into our lifestyle - http://www.quaker.co.uk/Benefits.aspx

This cookie is a winner with my family and there usually isn't much left when the aroma of oats, cinnamon, chocolate baking waft from the kitchen and I have to hide a box for these to survive over 3 days....

Here goes and do leave comments and updates on how these came out:

1 cup butter softened (about 225grms)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 eggs
1tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon powder (you can add more for flavour)
3 cups quick cooking quaker oats
1.5 cups all-purpose flour (wanted to use whole wheat but haven't tried it with this variation)
1.5 cups chocolate chunks made from cadbury chocolates (made about 1/4 inch big chunks but you can use any chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, raisins etc)
a couple of spoons of milk

I creamed the butter and sugar in the food processor but it didn't beat too well - so I added about 2 tsps of milk - do add more if required but very little at a time. I then added the eggs. I mixed all the dry ingredients and added the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients (excluding the chocolate chunks).

I then made balls (slightly sticky dough) of the size of a table-tennis ball. I then add the chocolate chunks individually into the cookies and put them on a greased parchment. Flattened them slightly with the end of a wooden spoon and left them a little rounded towards the top . These cookies don't spread too much - so you can make the balls the size of the cookies you want.

I baked them for 13-15 mins at 165 degrees centigrade and then left them on the wire rack to cool. They were yummy and full of taste and I ate the ones that had extra chocolate chunks hidden in them.

I definitely got less than 2 dozen cookies with this recipe but didn't count how many I got....

Pictures too follow soon. And please do leave me some tips on getting the darned pictures right!

Mango Shrikhand

Having been on a self indulging spree for the last 14 months, I have decided to take stock of my life and gradually start steering myself to my pre-pregnancy days and follow a healthier lifestyle. Blogging has been taking a toll on my waist and not having time to hit the gym is just adding ‘fat’ to the fire! So I decided to start thinking of healthy desserts from today (last night I tried making a molten chocolate cake and couldn’t find enough tiny ramekins to bake it in and made one disaster of a big cake – but the ‘Eton Mess’ tasted soo good – I ended up eating it all – 350gm of dark chocolate, butter n sugar n all – yumm!).

Growing up in Bombay (Maharashtra) and surrounded by loads of Gujarati and Maharashtrian friends I have been lucky enough to savour a variety of cuisines. One of my favorite childhood memories is of eating cool and creamy home-made Shrikhand on hot sweaty days. Shrikhand is made in many flavours – cardamom, saffron and nowadays in any fruit you wish flavor. You also get Amul Shrikhand off the counter isn’t as yummy and healthy as home-made Shrikhand.

Shrikhand is a very versatile ‘food’. Any good Gujarati restaurant serves it as an accompaniment to be in their Thali’s. It can be eaten as is for dessert or in dinner with paranthas or poori. When I was younger and not very calorie conscious I used to really enjoy “shrikhand-poori” but now I can only see the health benefits in this dish. Shrikhand is made of strained yogurt, flavored with ‘elaichi’ and ‘kesar’ and can be sweetened with fresh fruits…. Easy to whip up at home – it is my all time favorite comfort food for the summer months.

The health benefits of yogurt itself have been known for centuries… so this dessert is a no brainer… go ahead and try it out!

Recipe:
Puree of 1 mango - Alphonso preferred but any sweet mango will do.
400gm yogurt - hung for about an hour
1 tbsp castor sugar (you can adjust the sweetness by adding more sugar... I kinda like the slightly sour taste of the yogurt and mango combination and also less sugar equals less calories)
1/4 tsp cardamom powder

Combine the yogurt, sugar, cardamom powder and puree all together till the combination is creamy and smooth. Don't whip since the yogurt can become smoothie like in texture and you want this to be slightly thick. Leave in fridge for an hour to set.

Mine is in the fridge setting itself right now... will add pics as soon as it comes out and if we don't devour it before that!

(Healthy) Butter Chicken

Indian cooking is done from the heart and I don't think measuring spices and quantities to the 't' can give you the perfect end result - so you can slack a bit on the measurements I have mentioned and keep tasting the gravy to make it your liking. Good indian gravies always smell as nice as they taste so if you start getting a wierd whiff of anything, stop and take a step back. Taste your gravy and see what's gone wrong with it. Also, I have never been able to stick to the original recipe of any cookbook coz the personal touch you add to the recipe will give it it's unique flavor.

Indian cooking as most people know also gives also a dense heady aroma of spices so I like to prepapre my dishes in advance so I don't smell like the dish. I remember my rommie in NY would get a bit annoyed when I cooked in our small apartment coz she felt her coats would smell of the dish I had cooked (as you can guess her coat stand was right next to our open kitchen)! You need a nice big ventilated kitchen to be able to cook gravy and curry dishes and always switch on your exhaust!

My recipe for the butter chicken follows. Feel free to email me for any clarifications... and pictures will follow soon. I don't think I should bother being apologetic about not getting pictures up soon enough because a baby at home keeps my hands rather full. It seems like a rather long list of ingredients but don't get daunted!

Ingredients:

500gm boneless & skinless chicken breasts – cut into bite sized pieces

Marinade

3-4 cups yogurt / curd (hang in muslin cloth for 30 mins) – Use 1 cup for marinade and 1 cup for gravy. Squeeze as much water out of yougurt as you can before removing from muslin cloth.
2tbsp ginger-garlic paste
2tbsp any tandoori chicken masala (Recommended: Roopak’s Chicken Mughlai Masala)
1 pinch turmeric powder
Pinch of salt

Chicken Makhani Gravy
2-3 tbsp oil, 1 bay leaf (tej patta), 1tsp dry fenugreek leaves (kassori methi), 2 tbsp ginger-garlic paste, 1 tbsp sauted onion paste*, 1-2 whole dried red chili (kashimir mirch)
5-6 medium sized tomatoes blanched, peeled and pureed
1/2 cup tomato puree (ready-made)
2 tbsp cashewnuts (soaked in hot water, drained and ground into a fine paste)
1 cup milk
1 tbsp cream for garnishing
1tsp garam masala, ½ tsp red chili powder and ½ tsp dried coriander powder (optional)
¼ tsp sugar
Salt as per taste
1tbsp tandoori chicken masala (same as marinade)

Method:

There is prepration required to make this dish but if you plan a bit in advance you can prepare this in 30 minutes. It tastes great and is always great to have on the menu when tertaining and it isn’t too heavy on the waist. This can be made with chicken on the bone too but I prefer this with boneless chicken breasts.

Wash the chicken. Mix all the ingredients for the marinade in a big bowl. Cover with cling film and put in the fridge. (The chicken can be marinated overnight also).

Take a heavy bottom non-stick pan or non-stick pressure cooker. Add the oil – let it heat. Add the bay leave and stir for a couple of seconds. Now, put the sauted onion paste, ginger-garlic paste and red chili into your utensil of choice and saute for a couple of minutes. At this point I also add all the dry spices - garam masala, tandoori chicken masala, coriander poweder and fenugreek leaves and saute this further for a couple of seconds.

Add all the pureed tomatoes (first fresh and then ready-made) and sugar and cook till the oil starts separating from this mixture and the color turns slightly brownish.

Now spoon in the prepared cashewnut paste and stir for a few minutes till it has completely mixed in the gravy. Add about ½ a cup of water or keep adding more till you get a slightly thich gravy / curry.

Add the marinated chicken, 1/2 of the remaining hung yogurt and simmer till the excess water given off by the yogurt has evapourated and the chicken is almost cooked. Add salt to taste. Give this a whistle if cooking in the pressure cooker or simmer and cover utensil till chicken is cooked if using a heavy bottom pan. Incase you feel the gravy is not creamy enough - add the remaining yogurt.

Add the milk and keep stirring slowly and bring to boil. At this point do taste your curry and see how it tastes and tinker with it a bit to refine it! Remember to not overcook the chicken since the chicken breasts can become a bit chewy if they are.

Garnish with swirls of cream and enjoy!

TIPS:

If it’s too spicy and thick – you can a couple of tsps of milk and simmer it.
If your gravy is not creamy enough or it’s too spicy – you can a tbsp of yogurt.
If the spice level is a bit on the lower side – you can add more of the tandoori masala.
* I always keep a paste of well sauted (browned) onions in my kitchen and use it in all my gravy dishes. Instead of the sauted onion paste you can use a small finely chopped onion. After sauteing it - do puree it otherwise there will be onion pieces floating in the gravy. You can also elimitae the onion paste - but I think it adds flavor, color and a nice earthy taste to the makhani gravy.