Al fresco food, glorious food!

Barbeque season is officially here, in India anyway as it is COOL enough to sit out! We just had a yummy mini BBQ on our balcony, i'm vegetarian and I loved it! My ingredients for a brilliant BBQ are as follows....

- some pretty lights, i love my lanterns from Dubai 

- somebody very patient who can get those coals a'smokin (HI HUSBAND!)

- a nice sauvignon blanc or indus pride beer (lager infused with cardamom, coriander or fennel)

- corn on the cob as a v easy starter, just remove the leaves and silk and chuck on the bbq, serve with salt, pepper, lemon and a bit of butter

- homemade coleslaw as a side dish (grate half a white cabbage, 2 carrots and stir in 2 dessert spoons of mayo, use red cabbage and raisins too if you feel fancy!)

- sausages and burgers are so retro, if you fancy a (healthy) change try my kebabs!:

- chop a couple of green peppers, 2 red onions into 1/8's and throw in a big bowl with some mushrooms and a good amount of paneer or chicken chunks (we do half and half), you can use any veggies that bbq well but just be mindful they should all take the same amount of time to cook, cremated tomatoes are not a good look! Make a marinade of 1 tsp chilli flakes, half tsp turmeric, 1 tsp kitchen king masala (or garam masala), 1 tsp coriander powder, 1 tsp cumin powder, 2 tsps chicken seasoning (the one i use is paprika, dry garlic, chilli, dry onion and pepper), juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 tsp soy sauce, 2 tsp ginger garlic paste, 1 tbsp veg oil and 3 tbsp yogurt. Mix well and marinade your veggies and paneer/chicken for an hour... 

- while your kebabs are soaking up those spices, throw some wooden skewers in a load of water so they don't burn on the bbq

- after one hour stick your veggoes and paneer or chicken on skewers and bbq til cooked!

- serve with coleslaw! You could also do some jacket potatoes if you have the patience (scrub clean large potatoes, dry, rub in olive oil and salt, wrap in foil, thrown on bbq for an hour)

Yum!

Of course if its too hot/cold to sit out you could make all of these in the oven!

Mushroom Curry

I love food, and I love finding new ways of serving up my faourite foods, i remember tasting aloo gobi for the first time years ago and realising there was so much more to cauliflower than cheese! 

A few weeks ago i had a lot of mushrooms looking a bit sad in my fridge and i really didn't fancy a stodgy risotto or pasta dish, I had a little look online and found an amazing, quick, and very easy recipe for mushroom curry on madhur jaffreys website! I have adapted it slightly, I hope you like it, this is a firm favourite in our house now!

The recipe uses ginger and garlic, I happily admit i am a lazy chef and can't be bothered fiddling about peeling garlic cloves and cutting the skin off ginger, never mind the stink on your hands when done! I always use ginger garlic paste, or frozen ginger and garlic, a god send!

The recipe also uses yoghurt, i didnt have any in when i made this last week so used milk instead, it worked just as well.

I think the secret ingredient that makes this dish so awesome is  the lemon juice!

 

Try it and let me know what you think! We had it as a light dinner with papads and curd!

Mushroom Curry

Ingredients

4cm (1½in) piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped (or use 1 heaped tsp ginger garlic paste)

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped in quarters

450g (1lb) mushrooms

4 tablespoons vegetable oil or ghee

3 tablespoons natural yoghurt

1 teaspoon tomato purée

2 teaspoons ground coriander

¼ teaspoon salt 

¼ - 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder

2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander

1 tsp lemon juice

Step One

Put the ginger, onion and garlic into the container of an electric blender along with 3 tablespoons water and blend until smooth. Clean the mushrooms and cut them into halves or quarters, depending upon size.

Step Two

Put 2 tablespoons of the oil in a non-stick frying pan and set over high heat.When hot, put in the mushrooms. Stir and fry for 2–3 minutes or until the mushrooms have lost their raw look. Empty the contents of the pan into a bowl.Wipe the pan.

Step Three

Put the remaining oil into the pan and set over high heat. When hot, add the paste from the blender. Stir and fry for 3–5 minutes until it starts turning brown. Lower heat &  Add 1 tablespoon of the yoghurt and fry for 30 seconds. Add another tablespoon of the yoghurt and fry for 30 seconds. Do this a third time. Now add the tomato purée and fry for 30 seconds. Add the ground coriander and stir once or twice. Now put in 300ml (10fl oz) water, the mushrooms and their juices, salt and chilli powder. Stir and bring to a simmer. Squeeze in a load of lemon juice and adjust salt. Turn the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Sprinkle the green coriander over the top before serving.

A month in review - April 2013

April 2013 was a pretty good month for me so i thought i would look back on this first weekend in May and share some of my favourite things from the month with you!

Book
I read a LOT of books in April, not just because I was lounging on the beach a fair bit, but also as the IPL (Indian Premier League - not hair removal!) started so I was, and still am, subjected to cricket games on TV every single night! My book of the month has to be The Expats by Chris Pavone. This was recommended to me by my favourite author of all time, Emily Barr. The Expats is primarily set in Luxembourg but it does hop about all over Europe, and I cannot resist a book which transports me around the globe. I won't spoil it for you, but the book is about a married american couple and the wife is an ex CIA agent, however her husband doesn't know. This book is a really good thriller that literally had me on the edge of my seat and i did shout out in a couple of parts, Sushil was rather concerned about me! Anyway if you want a good read that you will not be able to put down with a few twists that will keep you guessing, then get The Expats.

Restaurant
We eat out once or twice a week and love trying new places, but, my restaurant of the month has to be Magic Italy in Palolem, Goa. We have been there countless times and just cannot get enough of the place, i have never had Pizza so good!!! The restaurant is just off the main beach and if you ever go to Goa you MUST try it! The place is run by an italian family and is really chilled out, we sat on cushions on the floor around a low table with our friends Helen and Ziggy and had a delicious meal. I had the 4 cheese pizza with extra mushrooms and Sushil had half a lasagne and half a spinach mascarpone raviloli. We ate here the night after our wedding and it certainly removed any post wedding blues! Pizzas are huge and about £2, lovely! It is worth the 10 hour drive to Goa if you ask me!

Drink
I love my wine, especially fizz, champagne, prosecco or cava - in that order. Indian wine has a really bad rep, and to buy imported wine here you need to own a small country, a bottle of blossom chavvy hill costs almost £20 due to the laws on import tax! For our wedding I had all our UK guests organised to bring 2 bottles of prosecco over each so you can imagine my panic when I was left with only 4 guests coming from the UK, which was multiplied when 2 of said guests (parents) couldn't fit 4 bottles in their bags!!! We managed with a combination of forward thinking and begging favours so ended up with 10 bottles, but then I discovered indian champagne, Sula Brut. At 850rs a bottle its about a tenner and you know what, it isn't bad! Dry and very fizzy, the taste reminds me of my wedding(s) and is that good that I am currently planning a visit to the Sula vineyard! Cheers!

Outfit
Has to be my 1950's style wedding dress! I felt like a princess!

Recipe
As I am now a wifey I seem to have become some kind of masterchef, honestly I just cook and cook and cook! My 15 year old feminist self would be outraged! Even now I wonder, what have I become, cooking for my husband every night? But why should I feel bad? I enjoy it! Here is my mother in laws recipe for channa dhal with Ghiya, Sushils favourite dinner. I make this in advance as there is usually enough for a couple of days dinners, and we wolf it down with rotis - which I can finally make to the perfect softness and thickness but sadly still more shaped like India than a perfect circle. Ghiya is a vegetable quite common in India, I googled for the english translation and it is bottle gourd, if you cant find it dont worry, it's delicous without too!

A little hint for indian cooking is to buy the frozen ready prepared ginger and garlic cubes, if you use them they save a lot of time and for this you need one of each.

Also, the most important bit of equipment in Indian cooking as far as I am concerned, is a pressure cooker, I use mine every day!

Channa dahl with Ghiya
1 cup Channa Dahl
Half tsp mirchi (red chilli powder), haldi (turmeric) & salt
3 glass water
1/2 a ghiya
2 tbsp ghee
1 inch Ginger
6 small cloves garlic
1 onion
2 tsp jeera (cumin seeds)
1 tomato
Handful dhania (fresh coriander) washed and chopped (i just hack at it with scissors!)
1/2 tsp dhania (coriander) powder
1/2 tsp garam masala


Wash dhal and bring water to boil in pressure cooker uncovered with mirchi, haldi and salt
Put dahl in when washed
Peel Ghiya and cut in small pieces
Wash Ghiya and add to pot
Add 1 tbsp ghee
Put lid on pressure cooker and cook on medium flame, after first whistle reduce to low flame - cook for half an hour
Meanwhile, chop ginger and garlic
Chop onion
In another pan make tadka - Fry garlic in 1 tbsp ghee for 2 min then add jeera til brown on medium flame
add onion ginger - reduce to low flame
Chop tomato
Chop dhania
After 10 mins of cooking tadka add tomato
After 1-2 mins add dhania powder and garam masala powder
Stir then add fresh dhania, stir then remove flame & cover
After 30 mins open channa dhal and stir, mashing as you go
Combine with tarka

Serve !

Thats it from me then, I hope you liked this little review of my month, I'll do it again next month but I'd like to mix up the categories, maybe next time I'll talk favourite films, purchases, places etc! Happy bank holiday weekend all! X my photo of the month of April was created using Project 365, one of the best apps you'll ever come across! X

Cooking with my mother in law

I feel like my first 2 blog posts were focused on the more negative aspects of life in india, so i wanted to share something a bit more cheerful! My future mother in law is staying with us at the moment. She's an amazing lady, not the typical indian mother in law i'd heard about. For a start shes absolutely cool with Sushil marrying a gori (white girl) and us living together before marriage. I know of indian parents in the UK who won't allow their kids to date people of different castes, never mind different countries! We don't speak the same language, she speaks a little english and i speak a little hindi, but we get along really well. Well i think we do!

Anyway while she is staying im desperately trying to learn as much as i can from her in the kitchen department, so i thought i would share her recipe for channa masala with you, my favourite dish! This is a brilliant dish for vegetarians like me as its high in protein and absolutely delish! We use dried chickpeas, tinned food hasnt really caught on here, but you can use a can of chickpeas instead and skip the first step, just add them at the end with a cup or 2 of water.
I like to make this as early as possible to allow the flavours to infuse. We eat this for breakfast, lunch or dinner, its very tasty and filling!

2 cups channa (dried chickpeas)
2 tbsp channa dhal
1 tbsp tea or 2 tea bag
1 tbsp oil, veg oil is fine, i like to use coconut oil if available though.
1 tbsp jeera (cumin)
1 onion
1 green chilli
2 tomatoes
1 tsp lal mirchi (red chilli powder) - you can adjust the amount according to your preference
1 tsp haldi (turmeric)
1 tsp dhania (coriander powder)
1/2 tsp garam masala
2 tsp channa masala mix (available in indian supermarkets)

1.Soak channa and dhal over night in a covered bowl with double the amount of water and 1/2 tsp salt. add to a pressure cooker with water it was soaked in. Cook for 45 mins with salt and 1 spoon of tea tied in a muslin cloth (or 2 teabags). - if your channa doesnt cook well a tip is to add 1/4 tsp baking soda
2. Meanwhile fry 1 tbsp jeera until it browns and the fragrance is released
3. Add 1 chopped onion & 1 chopped green chilli and stir regularly
4. Chop 2 tomatoes and add to onion mix after 5 mins
5. Add 1 tsp red chilli powder, 1 tsp turmeric, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp coriander 1/2 tsp garam masala
6. Add a little water (approx 1/2 cup) and cook on a medium flame for 10 mins, the water helps release the spices aroma and flavour
7. Add onion & tomato mix to cooked chick peas in water
8. Add 2 tsp channa masala mix And salt to taste if required
9. Simmer for 5 mins
10. Keep covered until ready to serve.

Serve with rice, rotis or battura. I like a big dollop of yogurt and a good sprinkle of fresh coriander before serving looks nice and tastes brilliant. If you liked this please comment and let me know if theres any other indian dishes i can try and tell you about!