Herb, Cheese & Garlic-Baked Cauliflower

There is nothing primal about baking a cauliflower with cheese and herbs and garlic. But it makes a pretty good dinner.

So here is a quick recipe from my kitchen, something that was literally created with some leftover ingredients lying in the fridge. Like the fresh parsley from Maria’s Piri-Piri Chicken and all that cheese from LMN’s birthday party.

I got a beautiful head of cauliflower from the Farmer’s Market for just two dollars. And instead of making my rather favourite Chingri-Phulkopi, I baked it with whatever was at home!

Ingredients for Herb, Cheese & Garlic-Baked Cauliflower are:

1 medium size head of cauliflower, trim leaves and outer stems
Half to one cup grated cheese (I used a mix of grated Parmesan, Mozzarella and Cheddar)
Handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped + one more tablespoon chopped leaves + few stems for decoration
5-6 fat cloves of garlic, peel on (Use more, I regret not throwing in a whole pod!)
Juice of half a lime/lemon
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Freshly cracked black pepper
Salt

Pre-heat oven to 350°F.

Place the beautiful-looking head of cauliflower on a pie dish (or use a baking sheet).

Crack black pepper directly on the cauliflower. Season with salt.

Tuck in stems of parsley in the space between the flowerets.

Now heap the grated cheese and chopped fresh parsley on the cauliflower.  Throw in the unpeeled cloves of garlic too.

Drizzle olive oil covering the cauliflower and garlic cloves.

Bake for an hour.

In a glass jar or bottle add the remaining fresh parsley and pound with a wooden pestle. Add the EVOO and lemon juice. Mix and keep.

When the cauliflower is ready, drizzle the EVOO and parsley dressing all over, covering the cauliflower and the baked garlic.

Cut chunks of the baked cauliflower and serve. Taste the roasted, creamy, sweet garlic with each bite of the baked cauliflower. Enjoy with a baguette and a glass of good white.

Anaarkali Butter Chicken

There is Butter Chicken. And then, there is Anaarkali Butter Chicken. Thank you Dhempe for introducing me to this one! For the uninitiated, the Anaarkali Butter Chicken is the product of hard work and passion of two butter chicken enthusiasts – I B Saxena and Padma Prasad. Apparently this team of two worked for eight years to come up with a Butter Chicken so good, that you cannot source it anywhere in the world. But if you make a donation of Rupees 1,00,000 (a little over $2,000) to the Akshaya Patra Foundation you will get to taste the real Anaarkali Butter Chicken. What you get in return is a pyramid-shaped, hand-packed cardboard box containing the premium pack of 1300 grams of bliss served in a Borosil bowl garnished with black olives and real gold and silver varq.

For the penniless like me, who could probably do with some donations herself, they also have a sample recipe on their website. For free!Today, I had the taste of this sample Anaarkali Butter Chicken cooked by who else – yours truly. I like to throw my self food challenges like these in a typical Bobby Flay style and pretend I am some great cook!

Before I took on the daunting task of making this recipe, I did get a chance to ask Padma Prasad one basic question, the answer to which the sample recipe did not have – what portion of chicken should I use? Okay, maybe that was a dumb thing to ask. She was prompt in responding on Facebook, and I used what she suggested – breast portions. Well, that was the easy bit. But what was not so easy, was to shop for the pretty exhaustive list of ingredients which were all thankfully available under the same roof. Its another thing that some people found a certain five feet something running from aisle to aisle because of a badly written grocery list.

But I wonder as I sit back and write this post if the Father of Butter Chicken, the Punjabi-Pathan called Kundal Lal Gujral would approve of the parmesan and cheddar cheese that has gone into the marinade of this dish. Or the subtle sweet flavor of the moss–colored dry basil leaves. But then he believed in revolutionizing food too, and that’s what Anaarkali Butter Chicken does! I think its brilliant how people turn something good into spectacular, leaving a legacy for others to follow.

And follow I did - dotting the i's and crossing the t's, figuratively speaking of course. Every ingredient and every step was followed, careful not to miss anything in the recipe. Yes, and I even measured that one-eighth teaspoon of mace and 45 grams of green chilies!!!!

Here is photographic evidence of how I made the sample recipe of the Anaarkali Butter Chicken.
At the end of the Naan, Anaarkali Butter Chicken and Garden Salad dinner, I thought I was in butter chicken heaven saying hello to the baap of all Butter Chicken!

Keema Baked With Noodles

I should have posted this months ago! Not because its my Mum’s recipe, but because this is the first ever dish that I made for P, during our long-distance courtship!

Somehow Keema Baked with Noodles seemed just perfect for something in between a dinner and a snack.

That night, we had reached my apartment from the New Delhi airport only after 2:30 in the morning, and despite all my kitchen enthusiasm, I did not really want to cook something at that hour. So I had settled for this dish, which I knew could be thrown in the oven while I could chat up my husband-to-be! I had done all the prep work in the evening which left me to only turn the oven on!

Okay, coming back to my recipe post, I still think this is the easiest thing you can make with noodles, mince meat, onions, green bell peppers, green chilies, and some Mozzarella cheese. I am usually not too stingy with cheese for this dish, only because there is no oil which goes into making it.
Ingredients for the Keema Baked With Noodles:

Four small portions of egg noodles (boiled according to packet instructions and drained)
1 medium size red onion cut into slices
1 green capsicum sliced
Few green chilies slit
250 grams Mozzarella cheese grated
400 mince meat (beef/lamb) (cooked with 1 bay leaf, 1 tablespoon of ginger-garlic paste, 1 small shallot, crushed pepper, salt)Preheat the oven at 350°F. Once all the preparation has been done, start layering all the ingredients in a baking dish. Top it off with the grated cheese which will give the noodles and the other ingredients a nice crusty look and a great taste. Bake for 45 minutes.   I adjusted the seasoning with some freshly cracked pepper on the top.

I usually serve this dish on its own, but any suggestions on what to serve it with is welcome! Oh, and I also think spaghetti will make a good alternative if you want to elude the noodles.