Saturday, August 25, 2012

11:56 PM

Scones By Chef Prashsant Sabne, Renaissance Mumbai Convention Centre Hotel

Scones

By Chef Prashsant Sabne, Renaissance Mumbai Convention Centre Hotel


Ingredients for 10 portions

l 900 gms flour
l 125 gms butter
l 125 gms sugar
l 50 gms baking powder
l 1250 ml cream

Method:

Take a sanitised electric mixing bowl. Add all the dry ingredients to it. Start the machine at a low speed and slowly add melted butter to it. After butter gradually add slightly warm cream to it. Warm the cream so that the butter does not set. Mix it at a low speed for three-five minutes. Rest the dough for 10 minutes, then roll it one-inch thick. Cut with a round cutter and allow it to again rest for five minutes. Apply egg wash or milk wash and bake it at 225oC. Serve with whipped cream and strawberry jam.
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11:55 PM

Cinnamon and Honey Pancakes By Chef Suresh Thampy, Executive Chef, Courtyard by Marriott

Cinnamon and Honey Pancakes

By Chef Suresh Thampy, Executive Chef, Courtyard by Marriott

Ingredients:

l 200 gms flour
l 2 eggs
l 15 gms baking powder
l 10 ml vanilla essence
l 20 gms sugar
l 30 gms honey
l 10 gms cinnamon powder
l 2 cinnamon stick
l 70 ml milk

Method:

Mix in flour eggs baking powder and sugar and milk to create a dropping consistency batter. Now add vanilla essence honey and cinnamon powder. Let the batter rise up a little. Make thick pancakes and stack them
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11:53 PM

Asparagus and Mushroom Pancakes By Chef Chetan Washikar, Pizza by the Bay

Asparagus and Mushroom Pancakes

By Chef Chetan Washikar, Pizza by the Bay


Ingredients:
l 2 each eggs
l 3 cups all purpose flour
l 3 ½ cups skim milk
l ½ tsp salt
l 1 pinch baking soda
l ½ tsp chopped basil
l 1 tsp chopped parsley
l 1 pinch chili flakes
l 1 tbsp parmesan cheese
l To taste crushed black pepper
l 2 tbsp melted butter
l 40 ml olive oil
l 40 gms onion, chopped
l 10 gms garlic, chopped
l 1 each bay leaf
l 1 tbsp béchamel
l 2 tbsp fresh cream
l 30 gms sundried tomatoes
l 90 gms green asparagus
l 50 gms button mushrooms
l 1 pinch nutmeg
l 1 tsp chopped chives
l 1 tbsp sour cream
l Dry oregano, to taste

Method
Beat eggs lightly, add salt, flour, baking soda and half the milk. Whisk well to remove lumps. Stir in remaining milk until you get a thick consistency. Add the herbs, chili flakes, parmesan cheese. Whisk in melted butter and set aside. Wash and slice mushrooms, and asparagus. Soak sundried tomatoes in warm water for 30 minutes. Strain and set aside. Heat olive oil a thick bottom skillet.ASaute chopped onion and garlic. Add the mushrooms and asparagus. Sauté for a few minutes, add béchamel and cream. Add sundried tomatoes. Add grated parmesan, nutmeg and some chopped parsley. In another skillet, sauté asparagus tips in butter. On a moderately hot cast iron griddle or non stick pan, drop 80 to 90 gms of pancake batter. Let it cook slowly for three minutes or so, until small bubbles appear on the top and the sides start to dry. Turn over and allow the second side to cook. Assemble two golden baked pancakes in a serving dish. Top the pancakes with creamy asparagus mushroom ragout.
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Sunday, August 5, 2012

3:30 PM

GUJARATI MASSAMAN CURRY

Sauté onions and garlic with one packet massaman curry paste as you would for an Indian curry. When the masala seems to be letting out its
aroma, add two small tetrapaks of coconut milk. (I use the Ayam brand, widely available in India but there are many local versions.) Stir and cook over low heat till the curry thickens. Now add half a mug of good quality chicken stock. As the curry simmers, add chunks of boiled potato and a fistful of unsalted peanuts.
Taste the curry to see when it is done (i.e. the thickness you want and no kachcha masala taste), adjust the seasoning. You may want to use Thai fish sauce, soya sauce, sugar, lemon or whatever. After you turn off the heat you can add aromatic leaves and cover. You can use kothmir/dhaniya, sweet basil, makroot leaves, etc. I usually don’t have them handy so I don’t bother, but it does improve the flavour.
Take a pork chop and cut into small pieces. Mix a paste of garlic, ground galangal (or ginger) and mashed lemongrass (you can use powder but fresh or bottled paste is better) and smear it over the pork pieces. Put aside for half an hour. In a very hot wok, add vegetable oil and wait till it is as hot as you can imagine. Throw in the pork and stir fry quickly for about two minutes or so, depending on how well done you want the meat to be. Remove from the pan, drain the oil. Taste. If it seems under-seasoned, drizzle with a little fish sauce or dark soya.
Make brown rice as normal. Cut onions, tomatoes and cucumber to make a Gujaratistyle kachumber, seasoned with nimbu. You can add chillies to the kachumber if you like the spice.
In individual dinner plates, make a pile of pork on one side and a mound of brown rice on the other. Put the kachumber somewhere in the middle. The curry goes into individual bowls.
To eat, you mix the pork, rice and kachumber and add as much of the curry as you need depending on how moist you want each mouthful to be.
Roasted papad on the side helps with the texture. (This is a Gujarati dish, after all.)
I make this to eat at home but as you can see, the presentation is suitable for dinner parties or fancy entertaining. Drink Coke or beer with it.
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3:30 PM

THE CURRYNAMA

Though found in many countries east of the sub-continent, it is hard to deny that the curry originated on Indian shores

WHO INVENTED CURRY? If you answered, “India, of course,” then you may well be right. Except that people in other countries may disagree with you. After all, curry is an Asian dish found in many countries east of the sub-continent: Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and Thailand.
Photo: DINODIA SPICE ROUTE Indian curries depend on dry spices and do not usually use coconut milk but dairy products such as ghee, dahi, etc The Japanese freely admit that their curry was inspired by ours. The Malaysians and the Indonesians are slightly more circumspect, but it is hard to deny that their curries originated on our shores. Only the Thais present a problem. They claim curry as their own and argue that their curries – as globally famous as Indian curries, these days – have nothing to do with ours. They developed independently, they say, and only the English word ‘curry’ suggests a bogus kinship with our cuisine.
The Thais point to two key differences between their curries and ours. The first is that they rely on fresh herbs while our curries depend on dry spices. The second is that an essential ingredient of their curries is coconut milk. Indian curries, on the other hand, do not usually use coconut milk but depend on dairy products: Ghee, dahi, etc.
I asked Ananda Solomon, the only chef I know who is at much at ease with both Thai and regional Indian food, what he made of the distinction. Ananda conceded the general point about spices versus herbs but argued that the Thais also used spices (ground coriander seeds, etc) and that Indians used fresh leaves like dhaniya, kadi patta. So, the differences were not as clear-cut as the Thais suggested.
But it was the use of coconut milk that intrigued me. When the Thais say that Indian curries do not use coconut milk, they refer to north Indian food. And certainly, it would be bizarre to use coconut milk in a rogan josh or a korma. But there’s much more to Indian cuisine than the food of the north. And once you go south of the Vindhyas, the Thai claim seems shaky.
Coconut is one of the mainstays of south Indian cuisine. It is used in nearly every form (flesh, oil, etc) all over the south, and in Kerala and parts of Karnataka, coconut milk is an essential ingredient in many curries.
In fact, once you compare the food of Kerala to the food of Thailand, the distinction between Thai curries and Indian curries is so slender as to be almost meaningless. The coconut milk curries of Kerala are fragrant, delicate and very different from the curries of north India.
So, did the Thais get their curries from south India? It is hard to say but we do know that the coconut appears in ancient Indian literature long before it turns up anywhere else. According to Hindu mythology, it was the creation of the sage Vishwamitra and archaeologists have found fossils all over India (including land-locked Rajasthan) which suggest that there were coconuts in India long before there were human beings.
The Thai coconut milk curries may be of more recent origin. They seem to have grown in popularity as recently as the 17th century and one theory (admittedly, not universally accepted) suggests that it was the Portuguese who encouraged the Thais to put coconut milk in their curries.
But why would the Portuguese, who use no coconut milk in their own cuisine, want the Thais to start using it? At this stage, the theory falters. Well, perhaps, they were missing the richness of dairy food, food historians suggest weakly. I have my own explanation. When the Portuguese came to Thailand, they did not take a direct flight from Lisbon to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport. They got to Thailand only as part of their general exploration of the Indian ocean, for which they used India as a base. Most Portuguese ships did not have conquistadors manning the stoves. Instead, they used Indian cooks who they had picked up in Goa and south India.
Could this be the route through which the coconut milk curry travelled from south India to Thailand? Nobody knows for sure but it is a plausible enough theory.
All cuisines develope and adapt after a while. So, while it is true that both south Indians and Thais use coconut milk, their attitudes to the ingredient are different. In Malayali cuisine, there are broadly three different strengths of coconut milk, depending on thickness. The curry is made in the usual Indian way with the masala being sautéed first and the thinner coconut milk being used as north Indians would use water in their curries. The thickest coconut milk goes in towards the end of the cooking process as a thickening agent.
For the Thais, however, the coconut milk is the point of the curry.
They begin the process by heating it till the fat begins to separate and floats to the top. Only then, do they add the curry paste.
According to Ananda, the secret of a good Thai curry is to let the coconut milk cool down a little before adding the curry paste/masala.
As much as I love Malayali food, when I do cook a curry at home, it tends to be the Thai version. It’s not because Thai curries are necessarily better but because they are so easy to make as to be virtually idiot-proof. All you need to do is to follow the instructions on the back of the packet of curry paste.
Here, for instance, is what it says, in Thai-English, on the packet of massaman curry paste that I usually use:
“Put coconut cream in a heated pan and add paste. Stir fry until oil appears on top. Add meat and continue stir fry until done. Fill the rest of the coconut milk. Boil to cook and simmer till tender. Put potato and cut onion. Add fish sauce, sugar, tamarind and seasoning as prefer. Leave it to boil until finish.”
Even in Thai-English, it is easy to follow. There is one obvious drawback in the method, though. Clearly, you are meant to add the coconut milk in two batches, one before the masala goes in and one after.
I don’t actually follow any Thai recipes myself even though I use their pastes. When I make a massaman curry, I Indianise the recipe and serve it Gujarati-style with papad and kachumber. My recipe is below.
Of course, it is completely inauthentic and they would probably cancel my Thai visa if I tried cooking it in Bangkok. But hey, what the hell!
Curry is our dish, anyway...
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Thursday, August 2, 2012

3:23 PM

Lata Mangeshkar with her sister Usha & Meena traveled for 40km to visit new branch o f Goa Portuguesa / Diva Maharashtracha to enjoy hard core non veg dishes like Chicken Cafreal, Nagpur Saoji Mutton & Prawns in Mango Curry a day before onset of Veg Shravan Month at Andheri-W. For the non believers & hard core Non-veg eaters there are Grand Buffets for Lunch @ 499* + 1pt. Beer/ Wine/ Mocktail & Dinner @ 599*Nr. Ambani Hospital. Shravan food festival was launched at Goa Portuguesa / Diva Maharashtracha & It was attended by Mumbai’s who’s who enjoying a detoxifying pure Veg, Satvik food at Shivaji Park. There will be Shravan Thali for one month @ 349* Also for A-la Carte Main Course / Alcohol Dishes there is Monsoon Special offer - 50% Discount for Lunch and 25% Discount for Dinner at Andheri and Shivaji park branch.

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3:22 PM

Gourmet Delight @ Goa Portuguesa

Lata Mangeshkar with her sister Usha & Meena Mangeshkar traveled for 40km to visit new branch o f Goa Portuguesa / Diva Maharashtracha to enjoy hard core non veg dishes like Chicken Cafreal, Nagpur Saoji Mutton & Prawns in Mango Curry a day before onset of Veg Shravan Month at Andheri-W. For the non believers & hard core Non-veg eaters there are Grand Buffets for Lunch @ 499* + 1pt. Beer/ Wine/ Mocktail & Dinner @ 599*Nr. Ambani Hospital. Shravan food festival was launched at Goa Portuguesa / Diva Maharashtracha & It was attended by Mumbai’s who’s who enjoying a detoxifying pure Veg, Satvik food at Shivaji Park. There will be Shravan Thali for one month @ 349* Also for A-la Carte Main Course / Alcohol Dishes there is Monsoon Special offer - 50% Discount for Lunch and 25% Discount for Dinner at Andheri and Shivaji park branch.
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Wednesday, August 1, 2012

1:06 AM

Keep food fresh in monsoons

KEEP THEM IN SEPARATE BOXES:

Fruits and vegetables should be kept in separate drawers of the refrigerator. Fruits give off ethylene gas which can shorten the storage life of vegetables.

WHAT NOT TO REFRIGERATE:

Don’t refrigerate potatoes. Keep them in a cool, dry place as moisture encourages sprouting. Keep onions in a well ventilated place, away from potatoes, as they can absorb moisture from the latter and get spoilt.

POULTRY ITEMS:

Fresh meat, poultry, fish and seafood should be refrigerated as soon as possible after purchase.

LEMON AND LIME:

Lemons and limes absorb odour from the fridge, so it’s best to keep them at room temperature.

DUMP PLASTIC BAGS:


Always store unwashed mushrooms and okra in a paper bag, not in plastic.
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1:04 AM

Cure for coughs Fusion tea

INGREDIENTS 

■ 5 gm fresh lemongrass
■ 5 gm dry ginger
■ 5 gm tea leaves
■ 100 ml water

METHOD

Heat the pan and pour water into it.
Mix fresh lemongrass, dry ginger and tea leaves and put into the vessel. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes.
Serve with sugar on the side.









It acts as medicinal food in the monsoon. It is also called marunnu kanji and is best eaten on an empty stomach early morning or for dinner. The main ingredient is a special kind of rice, locally called njavara. It is cooked in cow’s milk. Coconut milk is added towards the end. For taste, add black pepper, cloves, cardamom, and herbs such as tulsi and mint. It is cooked using jaggery and onions sautéed in ghee. Consume every day for 7-10 days. It is highly recommended in ayurveda and they call it a ‘therapy diet’.
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1:00 AM

Red pumpkin bhajiya

INGREDIENTS
■  1 cup grated pumpkin
■  1 large onion, chopped lengthwise
■  4 tbsp besan flour
■  2 tbsp rice flour
■  1/2 tsp (optional)
■  1 to 1.5 tsp ginger garlic paste
■  2 sprigs curry leaves
■  Salt to taste
■  Oil for deep-frying


METHOD

  • In a mixing bowl, com bine the flours, chopped onions, grated pumpkin, salt, red chili powder, ginger garlic paste and curry leaves, and mix well. No need to add extra water.
  • Heat oil to deep fry. Take a small portion of pumpkin mixture and drop into the hot oil.
  • Deep fry the fritters until golden brown and crispy and remove from the oil.
  • Serve with hot tea.
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