Oil-free Shami Kebabs, Well Almost

Shami Kebabs are probably one appetizer which has kept united Indian and the Mughal cuisines in every which way. These richly flavored, patty-shaped kebabs are traditionally made with soaked chana dal and shallow fried.

But I was in a hurry to make them and also cater to some non-Indian palates. Hence I chose the oven-route, and used sattu instead of Bengal gram. Baking them in the oven also meant very little oil. Something men and women all over the world are so cautious about.

Ingredients for Shami Kebabs are:

500 mince meat (lamb/goat/beef)
2 eggs
1 small red onion, very finely chopped
4-5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 inch root ginger, minced
5-6 green chilies, minced
Handful of fresh coriander, very finely chopped
Half a teaspoon of freshly ground garam masala
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
10 whole black peppercorns
2-3 tablespoons sattu
2 tablespoons Canola oil
Salt

In a large mixing bowl, pound together everything except the oil.

Take lime-size balls of the meat mixture and flatten them between the palms of your hands. Makes about 15-17 kebabs.

Pre-heat oven to 350° F. Line a baking tray with aluminum foil. Place the kebabs on the tray and drizzle the oil, few drops on each.

Bake these for 30-35 minutes, turning them at the halfway mark. Alternatively, you can shallow fry them in a hot pan till the meat is cooked through.

Serve with fresh coriander chutney, hummus, slices of onions, and lemon wedges. I like mine with these non-heat, deep fried green chilies.

Also, the winner of my Blog’s first birthday giveaway is Aipi, the desi cook in an American kitchen! Thank you for coming to my party, Aipi.  

P.S. More kebab recipes and pictures from PreeOccupied are here.

Jhalmuri, Jhalmuri!

My beliefs as a pre-teen were mostly based on fantasy. I made myself believe that I could live happily ever after with a Jhalmuri wala from our neighborhood. He was young, wore a clean dhuti, skinny, and most importantly, not married. He also whisked out the best Jhalmuri in town. His hands worked magic with the ingredients on his push cart. Chopping, cutting, mixing and tossing an array of items in a steel can, sizzling it all up with lavish drops of mustard oil and finishing off each serving with finely chopped fresh coriander. Perfection was his persona. And I was in awe.
 
One day I told my Mother about my infatuation.  I was all about 13, and learnt the word “entrepreneur” in English class. I realized it perfectly fit the description of my street-food crush.

Mother was slow to react to my precociously coherent longing of an entrepreneur jamai for her. Then one day she freaked out when she realized that I had given two measly pieces of sondesh to my crush. Things were escalated to my Father, who said he had lost all hope in me. He also feared I would elope with that fellow. That day I saw a look of dejected sadness on his face. With her cold, stony silence, even my little sister made me realize I was the family pariah and had no business either eating or longing for “junk”. Let alone marry one. My Dida said all this was bad for my health!

Today, I am happily married to a man who is neither an entrepreneur nor a jhalmuri wala. But loves this Calcutta street food with as much passion as I do. Much of our long-distance courtship was spent in talking about whether I knew how to make Jhalmuri, and if I could do it in Canada for my deprived fiancé.

Bengali cuisine is never complete without talking about Jhalmuri. Puffed rice has never been treated with so much respect and reverence, as it is in this anytime snack which has its origins in the streets of Bengal.

Mere handfuls of puffed rice (muri) is transformed into a perky bowl of intense flavors, often rapaciously devoured by anyone who can stomach some heat, some sour, some crunch and some raw shorshe tel (mustard oil).

Ingredients for Jhalmuri are:

2-3 handfuls of puffed rice/ muri
2-3 handfuls of Chanachur/ jhal dalmut as per your preference (make sure it has peanuts)
1-2 tablespoons roasted gram
1-2 tablespoons boiled red gram/ lal chola
1 medium boiled potato, peeled, roughly chopped
1 small red onion, very finely chopped
2-3 tablespoons cucumber, finely chopped
3-4 green chilies, finely chopped (do not add if you are making for kids)
1-2 tablespoons coconut, finely chopped (I did not have it at home, and did not add in this recipe)
Handful of finely chopped fresh coriander
Lemon juice
Drizzle of mustard oil
Pinch of red chili powder
1 teaspoon bhaja moshla
Half teaspoon chaat masala
Black salt

Keep your Jhalmuri station ready to avoid any last minute missing ingredients. I like to make little portions for individual persons based on their heat and spice quotients. The rule to Jhalmuri is to mix in the wet/raw ingredients in the end to prevent the muri from getting soggy and limp.

 
(If you are using muri which has been lying in your kitchen for some time and is not as crunchy as you’d like it to be, throw some in a bowl and microwave for under a minute to get its texture back.)

Okay, so now mix together the chanachur and muri along with the roasted gram and give it a toss. Add the spices and mix well. Check the seasoning, if your chanachur is quite salty already, go easy on the black salt.

Toss in the chopped onion, cucumber, boiled potato, red gram, green chilies, fresh coriander and few drops of mustard oil and lemon juice. Give it a good mix and serve immediately in paper cones or bowls. A cup of hot chai is most often enjoyed with this Jhalmuri. Make sure you share this with your friends, it just doubles up the whole experience.

Absolute Rookie Prawn Biryani

Now this one was really made on the go! I had absolutely no idea which way was this recipe heading to. I had a bag of frozen, headless Pacific White prawns, a can of coconut milk from a Thai store and Indian Basmati rice, which was “Made in Texas”!

How could I possibly go wrong if I set off to make Prawn Biryani with such gourmet ingredients. The only problem was – I had no recipe or notes from my Mum to fall back on. Plus I had never had Prawn Biryani ever, so relying on my own taste buds was not an option either.

But I had the courage of my own culinary convictions. So I set out into mixing flavors and recreating some tastes, cautiously taking measured mental notes of the ingredients lest I forgot when I chronicled it for you…

Ingredients for the Prawn Biryani are:

One and half cups Basmati rice, washed, then sieved for 30 minutes
500 grams prawns/ shrimps (they were already deveined, but with shells on which I removed, so my guess is after the cleaning up, they would be about 400 gms)
One tennis ball-size red onion finely sliced
7-8 cloves of garlic
Two inch piece of root ginger
Handful of green chilies
Handful of coriander leaves
Few drops of lemon juice
One heaped teaspoon of red chili powder
One teaspoon of turmeric powder (heaped if you love turmeric)
One teaspoon of black pepper powder
One cup coconut milk (I used the thick, creamy variety)
Two tablespoons vegetable oil
Two cardamoms (green and black)
One inch stick of cinnamon
Two bay leaves
One star anise (its okay if you don’t have it)
Half teaspoon of black cumin seeds
Little piece of nutmeg grated
Salt

In a bowl, marinate the prawns with the red chili powder and turmeric and a few drops of lemon juice. In a frying pan, heat one tablespoon oil and fry the sliced onions. Grind the ginger and garlic (together) in a paste and make a smooth chutney with the coriander leaves and green chilies (separately). When the onions start turning brown, add the ginger-garlic paste and fry for a couple of minutes. Now add the coriander-chili chutney. Sauté for 3-4 minutes on low-medium heat. Add the prawns and mix well. Add black pepper powder and salt, stir for a few minutes on the same heat and remove when the prawns start turning pink/orange at the tails. Prawns take very little time to cook and overcooking them is such a blasphemy!
In another frying pan, heat the remaining one tablespoon vegetable oil, add the bay leaves, cinnamon, cardamom, black cumin seeds, star anise and stir for a minute. Add the rice and fry till the grains get coated with the oil. Add the grated nutmeg (about a pinch), and salt (carefully as our prawns already have some). Fry for 3-4 minutes and remove from heat.
In a microwave safe bowl, add the rice, cooked prawns, one cup of thick coconut milk and one cup plus two tablespoons of water. Make sure you use the same measuring cup for the rice, coconut milk and water!
Give all the ingredients in the bowl a quick stir and cover with plastic wrap. Microwave the Prawn Biryani for 20 minutes. Check and adjust the seasoning if needed. Let it sit for about an hour before you serve.
I served it with some chopped greens and a glass of cool iced tea. And yes, its okay to reheat this dish in the microwave before you eat.
This Prawn Biryani is a big revelation for me, and I am still savoring it because that’s all there is to it!

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.

Must Have Sanatan’er Ghugni

Time flies by so fast. It seems just like yesterday when I was in school. Its strange that a Bengali girl’s Ghugni christening happened behind the Green Gates of a convent school.

Those are the earliest memories of me as a six-year-old running like cattle on cue with the bell of the recess at 11:45 AM to the lunch shed. Why? To get a ladle-full of piping hot Ghugni from Goat Sister! Nobody knew her real name. We all called this aging nun *Goat Sister*, probably because she was predisposed with chin hair. And all that a leaf-plate full of happiness cost us then was 25 paisa.
But soon the lunch hour ritual in our school ended ‘coz Goat Sister passed on. RIP dear Sister and your lip-smacking ghugni. (I am eager to meet you in Ghugni Heaven.)

My next memorable ghugni experience came along with an idli-sambar wala in our colony who sometimes came in with ghugni on his rickety bicycle. Simmered boiled yellow peas, garnished with spices and onions. Much like my Mum’s Grandmother- Nani’s. 

Nani’s ghugni was called Sanatan’er Ghugni, probably because she made it just the way some ghugni wala in Calcutta called Sanatan did!

Sanatan’er Ghugni has remained with me all these years. Replicating it is also pretty easy, considering recollecting the recipe is just a phone call away. My Mum is very reliable and doesn’t act pricey when I ask her to patiently run me through (and repeat) the ingredients, process, cook time, et. al. I think Mum also feels immensely happy sometimes that she can proxy-cook for me though only with these traditional recipes from so far away.

Here is how to make Sanatan’er Ghugni:

2 cups yellow peas, soaked overnight
2 medium size potatoes cut in cubes
2-3 tablespoon fresh coconut chopped into small pieces
1 tablespoon ginger paste
Few green chilies slit lengthwise
1 tablespoon mustard oil
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chili powder
Pinch of baking soda
Sugar
Salt

For the garnish:
2-3 tablespoon finely chopped coriander
Few green chilies finely chopped
1 small onion finely chopped
Bhaja masala (cumin seeds and coriander seeds dry roasted and coarsely ground)
Tamarind-jaggery chutneyBoil the yellow peas with turmeric powder, chili powder, slit green chilies, ginger paste, chopped coconut, mustard oil, baking soda, salt and sugar. Mid-way add the diced potatoes.

Cook the peas till they are mushy and get squished between your fingers. The water in it should also evaporate leaving a thick consistency to the peas, potato and coconut. Adjust the seasoning of salt and sugar, it should be a good balance of both.Garnish the ghugni with chopped coriander leaves, green chilies, onions, a drizzle of the chutney and the bhaja masala. Serve while its still warm.
Mildly flavored yet bursting with memories. God Bless Goat Sister, Nani and Sanatan for leaving behind a legacy of Ghugni for us.

I can now die happy, for I have recorded what belongs to them and is priceless…
For everything else, there is Google!