A little change of flavor - Mud Slide

Ah well - sorry about that my non-alcoholic friends or those who believe that I am non-alcoholic... I am most of my life and am very choosy what I take in ...sweet and strong red wine for example - rare to find but VC shares my taste and tips me with good bottles...anyways Priya and Pankaj - my sis-in-law and her husband are into hospitality business. One of the joints they own is the Pub "Beach" in Bangalore. And whenever I go there - I indulge in the mudslide (apart from Mojitos)there and finally I have figured out the recipe...(actually saw it in a newspaper)
Vodka (30 ml)
Kahlua (15 ml)
Baileys (15 ml)
Secret ingredient - Vanilla icecream (1/2 spoon)
Blend well in a blender and served with crushed ice.
I will try and let you know...

Fish curry - attempt to make it similar to Highway gomantak

Highway Gomantak is my favourite place for fish curry in the world. And their food is so light on stomach and so tasty that I just cannot resist going there every alternate time we go out. I wish I could go there more often but Saurabh doesn't like seafood that much.
Here is one attempt to make my curry taste like theirs. I must say I was fairly successful. See pic.
Well I did some reverse engineering to figure it out. And some experimentation too (coz I added tomato and I know that they don't add tomato).
Ingredients:
1) Pomfret fish (1 fish)
2) Grated coconut - handful of it
3) 1/2 lemon
4) 1 tomato
5) 1 onion
6) fresh garlic
7) fresh ginger
8) Dhania powder, lotsa haldi, red chilli powder, jeera

Method:
Mix 2-7 and grind it in a mixie. Make a good paste.
Add a little oil in the paste and add ingredients in point 8 and grind again. This trick I learnt from my maid.
Heat a little oil in a pan. Add this mixture into it. Saute for a while. Note our onion is not cooked and it takes a while to cook so do let it cook for a while. Add fish pieces. Add water if required (and you will require). And let the fish cook. Pomfret cooks fairly fast.

Pomfret/King Fish Fry + coriander garlic lemon brown rice

The recipe that I learned from Paramesh (very spicy):
Key ingredient - Badshah Fish Masala (he would insist that no other masala is good :))
Ingredients list:
1) Badshah fish masala (1 table spoon)
2) Red chilli powder (1 teaspoon)
3) Turmeric powder (4 teaspoon)
4) Ginger Galic paste (1 teaspoon)
5) 1 lemon
6) Pomfret cut in thin slices

Mix 1-5 to make a paste. Add pomfret pieces to it and coat the pieces well. Let it marinate for atleast 30 minutes.
In a non-stick tawa add some olive oil. Add these pieces and fry them till they are golden brown.


My own recipe (very mild) - sometimes I like only the taste of the fish:
1) Lemon
2) 1 teaspoon haldi
3) 1 teaspoon red chilli powder
4) Rawa

Marinate your fish with a coating of 1-3 for atleast 30 mins.
Take rawa in a plate. In a non-stick tawa add some olive oil. Coat your marinated fish pieces in rawa and fry them.



Recipe of coriander garlic lemon brown rice
The name itself is sufficient - this is my own recipe and quite a hit with myself and saubhy (husband)

Chocolat

This recipe from monalisa hota- I will link to my version as soon as I try it out... kamra als ohad his 2 cents (look for at the end of the blog)
My hot chocolate (as put together intuitively based on other recipes from the net):

Ingredients (for 1 cup of hot chocolate):
1 packet Hershey's spl. dark hot chocolate mix;

1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp coffee
a pinch of chilli peppers
2 TBS chocolate chips or plain dark chocolate
whipped cream (optional)

1. melt the chocolate chips (along with chilli peppers and coffee) INDIRECTLY. You could put them in a ceramic bowl/cup and put that over hot water. Occasionally supply heat until it melts. Then add about 1/4th warm milk little by little and heat the mixture until it blends well and is thick. ( I read somewhere that if chocolate is melt this way, it tastes better).
2. In another cup, pour the mix and add little cup warm milk to it to make the mix muddy.
3. Mix both mixtures and heat over low flame until it simmers for 2-3 min. Add the remaining milk gradually while stirring. Keep stirring to prevent from sticking on the bottom. When its thick enough like a syrup, pour out into a mug and have a blast. (you may add whipped cream but it won't stay over the hot chocolate).
You can of course make it as thick or thin to your taste by adding water/milk.
Enjoy the deadly mix!!!


Kamra's 2 cents:
In step 2) the mix is the 'Hershey's spl. dark hot chocolate mix'. It can be replaced be any cocoa mix. But the more bitter and less sugary it is, the better it would be. We couldn't find such a cocoa mix though. Right mona ?

Chilli peppers is the key here. But put very little otherwise it can become really hot.

and I guess if those chocolate chips were also dark and less sugary it would have tasted better.

veg korma

I looked for the recipe all over but couldn't find one that was doable. Cashew paste alteranative of G3 is something I am yet to try. So anyways tehre were so many versions - that I added one more version of mine to teh net. This is my own way of doing it. I am thinking of copyrighting so that no stupid software engg copies it and pastes it on her own blog.

Ingredients: mix veg (carrot, peas, beans), cottage cheese (paneer), 2-3 spoons of yoghurt, ginger garlic paste, fresh coconut (optional)

1) Boil mix vegetable pack
2) I na pan, add oil, mustard seeds, ground cloves.
3) Add onions and fry til lthey turn brown and your neighbours complain of strong onion smell
4) add tomoatoes and fry (dont let it totally melt)
5) add mixed veggies, add diced paneer (cottage cheese cubes)
6) Add a little fresh coconut (option)
7) Add yoghurt and mix

paneer achari :)

This is a starter dish (then serve it with mint chutney) or as a side dish in main course. I tried it at bama's place yesterday and she gave me an idea of the recipe. Actually I just cooked it and I find it really heavy. But it is super yummy. And relatively simple. No fancy requirements. A good candidate to try on my folks in India as well when I am there with them.
Ingredients:
1) Sauf - fennel seeds (I promise this is the only out of the blue ingredient - rest are common stuff)
2) Your usual spices- jeera, mustard seeds, cloves, bay leaves etc
3) Ginger garlic paste
4) Yoghurt (as thick as possible - preferable drain the water - that's what bama told me but I am a lazy bum)
5) paneer
6) really really finely chopped onion (the finely chopped part is very important - also no paste of onions)

Steps:
1) Heat oil in pan, add the cloves, bay leaves, jeera, sauf (fennel seeds), mustard, red chillies (I forgot this time but i think this will add a good rustic touch).
2) Once done, add the finely chopped onions. I added 1 and half onion for 5/6th of the paneer (around 1 pound) that I get in mayuri.
3) I fried it till it turned pink. This took a while.
4) Add 1 spoon of ginger garlic paste (I put the one i buy from market, my mom hates the idea of not usign fresh stuff:( ), added garam masala, red chilli powder, dhania powder and haldi.
5) Once i thought things are cooked, I added 2-3 tablespoon of yoghurt. Enough yoghurt so that al ltthe paneer drowns in it.
6) Once the yoghurt seemed done (oil started seprating fro mthe corners), I added paneer cubes.

For the folks like Bama who work hard:
1) Marinate this mixture overnight. Or atleast for a few hours
2)Next day grill this in your oven.
This would be a starter with mint chutney

For folks like me that is catch (...) :
1) I had a flat bottomed non-stick tava pan (what are these things called officially?).
2) I heated up a little oil and in 2 batches ( I really had a lot of paneer) placed a layer of paneer on it.
3) Once one side was doen I turned it.
You can see the pics of it when placed in tava and once out of it on my serving bowl.
I personally feel (after eating) that marinating a little while it will give a good flavour to paneer.
Also my onions were from Indian store. I think that was a lucky co-incidence for my dish.

shrimps when you have nothing but shrimps

Ok- disclaimer - this is meant for kitchens in US coz I know even when the kitchen is empty - we have onion and frozen grated coconut in stock. And if you don't then you cook less frequently than once in 3 months. So those are my ingredients:
1) Onion
2) grated coconut
3) shrimp

Actually to begin with I only had 1 and 3. But then I remembered that coconut might blend in well and then I remembered taht G3 had fed this to me so I became more confidant.
So here is the recipe:
1) finely - really finely - chop onions. No shortcuts here
2) Heat oil, add cumin seeds, 1/2 cloves, green chillies (if you have them) etc
3) Add the onion and fry till they are golden brown - that stage comes after they turn pink :).
You can add your garam masala, haldi, mirchi, dhania powder at this stage
4) Add the shrimps
5) As an after thought I added good amount of coconut
6) Then I cooked it on and on til lthe shrimps were done
7) I garnished it with some fresh coriander leaves (I know i know - the title of this post is misleading ;) )

It tastes fairly good with the rotis.