Binoculars, a bread savoury

Nitu and Viraj are our first friends after marriage. They are also two absolutely nutty people who are super bright and super nice. With these guys there are some amazing memories. Viraj and I would argue on everything, food, movies, actors, singers, books, you name it! 19 years later, the other day when Aayush and his dad had a spat, he came to me crying, ‘why did you not marry Viraj, why did you marry Dadda?’

The police would catch us because the pillion rider was wearing the helmet and we would argue in half Kannada because we would not want to pay the fine. So many more stories tucked into our memories, Nitu remains the same spirited warm and funny girl with a zest for life and zing for food. She can give us all a run for our money for her versatility. In India for the past few years, mother of two, she has been in a hot shot IT based corporate career, wears sarees, plays the tabla and wants to pursue a career in acting. As eclectic as her personality she has shared this interesting recipe called the binoculars or the doorbeen.

Stuff that you must have:

1 loaf of white bread

175 grams of French beans

175 grams of carrots

3 cloves crushed garlic

1 chopped onion

1 teaspoon chilli powder

2 tablespoon oil

2 tablespoon butter

3 tablespoon tomato ketchup

100 grams grated cheese

What to do:

Cut the French and carrots into small pieces and boil them.

Heat oil, add onions and fry a little.

Add garlic and fry for a minute.

Add the boiled veggies, tomato ketchup, chilli powder, half of grated cheese and salt. Cook for a minute. Cool the mixture.

Remove crust from the bread slices and divide slices into 2 equal halves

In part of slice, make 2 small holes (that explains binoculars) and place this part on top of the uncut part of the half bread slice. Arrange slices in a well greased baking tin.

Melt butter and apply with a brush over the top parts

Bake in hot oven at 400 F for 15 min or until crisp (don’t overdo it, slight browning is good)

Spread a little filling on each uncut part and put the part with holes on top of it

Sprinkle remaining cheese and put back in oven

This lip smacking, crispy, cheesy snack will be ready in minutes.

How to serve:

Just pile them on flat platters and serve with chips or fries.

Trivia:

Binoculars, like the telescope, took centuries before they were developed into your present day spy scopes. Its name was actually taken from the roots bini which is Latin for “two or double” and ocularis which means “for the eyes”

Chicken in balsamic vinegar

College buddies were coming over and I had some really beautiful pasta from Rome. Most of them were vegetarian and the only meat I could cook was chicken. I really wonder how we all lived in the pre-internet days. I found this recipe and made it once before the final day. Both times, this very Italian chicken was piquant and zesty.

                                                     

I recommend you use breast pieces. For half a kg of chicken, take about 2 large sliced onions and 8 cloves of garlic. Sauté this in warm 4 table spoons of extra virgin olive oil. Once the onion is transparent pink in colour, keep it aside. To the same warm oil, add chicken and fry till golden on both sides. Now add back the fried onions and garlic. To this add about 2 diced medium sized tomatoes and stir. Sprinkle 2 table spoons of basil and oregano and 2 tea spoons of salt and pepper. Pour half a cup of balsamic vinegar. Allow the chicken to cook for 20 minutes till it is tender and infused with the flavours. Dress with fresh parsley.

Potato & Dill salad

Potato & Dill salad 

Mahesh is Shirin’s childhood buddy and therefore an acquired friend. We all look forward to August now as Mahesh visits us for a day or two. He lives in Bologna, teaches English and is drop dead gorgeous. Recently in one lovely lush monsoon day we met up at the Talwar country home in Karjat. We all cooked together and it was one of the best days of my life.

Potato salad with dill is a Jamie Oliver recipe taken from the book, The Naked Chef. So, you need a bunch of dill, some baby potatoes (about 20 pieces) and a dressing consisting of lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Take about 2 table spoons each of lemon juice and olive oil. Add in a tea spoon of sugar and freshly ground pepper. Add a bunch of chopped dill. Keep the dressing ready.

Boil potatoes, skin them and while they are warm toss them with your hand or a salad spoon in the dressing. Serve at room temperature or cold.

                                  

Aubergine Coin Pizzas

Italian food like the men and women is very chic, original and sumptuous. I first ate an authentic slice of pizza in our one hour bus stop over at Milan. That taste lingered on since 1999. Last evening, some friends were over. A few of them choose to be vegetarian. I decided to try aubergine coin pizzas. They were a smash hit.

Buy whole wheat coin pizzas. Or get the regular ones that you get at the grocery store and cut out circles with the lid of a bottle. A recommended diameter size would be 2 inches.

Use aubergines, the narrow ones, and cut out circles which would fit in on the coin pizza bases. Pat them with salt and pepper. Grill them for 10 minutes at 150 degrees heat, 5 minutes each side.

Spread pizza sauce (make a pizza sauce with tomatoes and oregano, a regular one) on the bread and on the aubergines. Place one aubergine on each pizza base. Sprinkle some mozzarella cheese. Decorate with a slice of black or green olive. Bake for ten minutes and serve fresh from the oven. 

Mango Salad

This summer I discovered this recipe on the internet. One evening we were meeting up for a ladies potluck and I wanted to make a salad and carry it along with some quesadillas. Since then I have made it about ten times and my friends Aarti, Shirin, Kavery and Sarbani have also tried it. Every time it is received with lip-smacking applause!

Well that was dramatic. Okay here goes, use one large mango, green capsicum, one onion, one large tomato and a bunch of coriander leaves. The mango should be tight and fleshy. In Bombay, I use the Badami. Deseed the tomato and cut the crunch part into cubes. The mango and the capsicum also should be cut into cubes. Slice the onions. Finely chop the coriander. Keep the chopped salad aside till before serving.

For the dressing, use 2 table spoons Balsamic vinegar, 1(not full, in fact less than level) tea spoon sugar, a dash of salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Mix the components till the sugar dissolves. Now add 2 table spoons of olive oil.

Just 5 minutes before serving, dress the salad. Enjoy! Pity, that you can try this only during summer. A recommendation is that a couple of peaches could replace the mango.

Super Easy Roast Mutton

Anecdote

I am chauvinistic. I like it when a man cooks. In my case, sigh (!) this man, is my bro. We were all of 14 and 11 when we took to food and its various possibilities. We poured over books and magazines. Wine and entertainment was purchased from road-side stalls and the different salads and cheeses were read and re-read. Ikea tables would be nailed together in our heads and bowls of beautiful food would be laid out. I would even use a red-checked table cover and often be picnicking by a stream.

Dadabhai, the brother, elder was always into meats. He would sulk with the bard in the last frame of every Asterix because he was not getting to gorge on the pig roast. While in Koh Samui, when we attended a beach regatta party, I saw a live demo of that frame, and I was whisked back to those post dinner nights when he would wistfully look at Obelisk digging into that tied and barbequed meat delight. These days he has some Sunday evening favourites, prawn cocktail, the Kolkata Mocambo way, risotto, paella and mutton roasts. One weekend afternoon, I decided to pay heed to his self proclamation and telephoned him for this P C Sarkar recipe where the oven is not used. The mutton roast.

Stuff that you must have:

Mutton, a kg cut in roast pieces
Whole onions, about 4
Tomato 1
Whole pepper
Butter
Cooking oil

What to do:

Put together the mutton, the onions cut into halves, a tea spoon of whole peppers, 8 glasses of water, salt to taste, one tomato in a large deep pan and set it to boil. Do the same for a whole hour. Now take aside the mutton pieces and strain the broth. Fry each piece of mutton to a light golden brown. Simultaneously strain the broth. Once all the meat has been fried, serve them in a large semi flat bowl. Go back to the broth and thicken it. Add pepper powder, check the salt and in the end throw in a dollop of butter. Pour the hot golden liquid into the meat bowl. Serve hot. 

How to serve:

Just in a large semi flat glass or ceramic bowl. Some chopped parsley or rosemary for garnish. Some warm dinner rolls or sliced multi grain bread to go with. Yes, add a side salad. This makes a friendly Sunday lunch. Prefer it to be a sit down meal.

Trivia:

Lamb, hogget and mutton are the meat of domestic sheep. The meat of an animal in its first year is lamb; that of an older sheep is hogget and later mutton. Lamb is the most expensive. The sheep is then less than a year old. Mutton is a female ewe or a castrated male sheep. And if you are a Jew, then don’t bring your dairy products close to your meat table. The Jews are so particular about this that often uses different kitchens to ensure this separation.

Karah Prashaad

Anecdote

Gunnu and Sweety are 'sardars' from Calcutta. They speak in Bengali at home, do “Guru Nanakji ka path” every morning, eat authentic Bengali food like mustard fish and prawn in coconut milk for lunch, celebrate “bandhs” and their main doorbell ringtone is “Wahe guru satnaam, satnaam wahe guru”.

Gunnu hates cooking. Even omlettes are a nightmare for her. She could have wrangled some more deals out of her rich husband had she got past this pre-decided vocal hatred. She cannot understand why anyone would want to sweat in the kitchen instead of sleeping or shopping, for clothes and jewellery, no home shopping for her! 

Having detracted culinary passion from my darling girl friend, I must say that Gurbir Ahluwalia alias Gunnu, also makes the most outstanding ‘Suji halwa’. It is sweet, drenched in ghee and it transports you to a ‘langar’ in Amritsar.

Stuff that you must have:

1 cup atta
1 cup sugar
3 cups water
Ghee accordingly

What to do:

Add the sugar to water and boil to make a chashni. Separately bhoono the atta in adequate ghee till it turns brown. Add the chachni to the atta and bhoono again. The halwa will start leaving the kadai on its own. Serve.

How to serve:


Serve with puris.

Trivia:

The "Karah Prashad" is made as the sacred pudding in a 'langar'. During the process of cooking, the maker has to recite the sikh scripts. At the end, the pudding is blessed with ardaas.

MUTTA CHUTNEY KEBAB

This a very easy to make preparation. The taste of boiled eggs and coconut chutney makes it an impressive combination. This is dipped in egg and shallow fried. It can be served hot with tomato sauce as an accompaniment.

Ingredients:

5 Eggs (hard boiled and cut length wise), 2 egg white, lightly beaten. Oil for deep frying

For Chutney:

½ a coconut grated, 4 green chilies, ½ an inch of ginger, 3 flakes of garlic. 1 spring of curry leaves, ¼ bunch of coriander leaves, 1 tsp lemon juice, salt to taste.

Method of preparation:

Grind coconut, green chillies, ginger, garlic, coriander leaves and curry leaves to a paste.

Add lemon juice and salt and mix well.

Take a piece of boiled egg and cover with chutney over the cut surface.

Evenly dip it in egg white and shallow fry carefully.

Repeat the process with all the eggs.

Beans al dente

Anecdote

Our boys went to the same play school. We had never met. In an age when mothers were truly clued on, we were the mavericks. We hardly went to school. We almost never picked up our kids. We knew very few peers. We hardly did play dates. So, when Ash invited me for her son’s birthday party, introduced herself as a co-Bong and a co-entrepreneur, I was amused. I was skeptical about my attendance at the party. To top it all it was on a Sunday. Smart-quick that she is, her parting shot, “If you don’t come for my son’s birthday, I won’t come to yours” clinched the deal.

Ash brought a lot to my life in small and large ways. She took me to a celebrity bungalow for lemon grass tea uninvited (both of us), introduced me to mosquito patches from Watsons, showed me how to fight out issues with a friend and still have the friend, dragged me to my first Kala Ghoda festival and fed me Beans Al Dante. This was on a weekday afternoon when we were having Thai green curry with plain rice and coke.

Stuff that you must have:

French beans, fresh ones
Soya sauce, dark
Salt
Sugar
Cooking oil

What to do:
              
Boil about half a Kilogram of cleaned fresh French beans. Actually par-boil it. While boiling add a pinch of salt. While its still crunchy, drain out the hot water and wash the beans in ice cold water. Wipe them dry and set them aside till serving time. If required, you can refrigerate the beans. Just before serving, warm about 2 table spoons of oil in a wok. Add a pinch of salt and half a tea spoon of sugar. Immediately thrown in the beans and stir fry. Add one table spoon of the soya sauce. Stir fry for a minute and serve them fresh.

How to serve:

Beans never tasted so good, Jack would say. I have many friends to vouch for that. You can serve them with Thai, Continental and Chinese food or with omlettes for breakfast. They look the best in pastel shaded deep bowls. My animal eating spouse absolutely loves them. These need no reference certificate from nobody.

Trivia:

In cooking, the Italian expression al dente describes pasta and (less commonly) rice or beans that have been cooked so as to be firm but not hard. "Al dente" also describes vegetables that are cooked to the "tender crisp" phase - still offering resistance to the bite, but cooked through. It is often considered to be the ideal form of cooked pasta. Keeping the pasta firm is especially important in baked or "al forno" pasta dishes. The term comes from Italian and means "to the tooth" or "to the bite", referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness. The term is also very commonly used as a name for Italian restaurants around the world.