Malikah-e Tamatar-Murgh-ka-Salan

This is Farah Malik’s recipe. I have just re-created it in my kitchen with chicken. Her original recipe is with goat meat/mutton. I met Farah on the Facebook group called Indian Food Freak. IFF is a fun food group started by my former super boss and some of his food friends around the NCR region.

When I saw people like Aman Kahlon wolf down Farah’s recipe, I couldn't stay away from it for long. And yes, Aman did follow the goat meat protocol in his recipe.

Since the temptation to have Farah’s Tamatar Gosht-ka-Salan was immense, and I did have a whole chicken in my freezer, I decided to make it with what else – Murgh (Urdu for chicken!). The decision was made very, very late last night while writing photo comments on Farah and Aman’s creations. Maybe that explains why I dreamt of tomatoes and mutton and onions and spices.

Ingredients for Malikah-e Tamatar-Murgh-ka-Salan are:

800 grams chicken pieces (bone in and skinless)
1 large red onion, thinly slivered (the size of red onions here is super, I’d say about 300 grams of onions should suffice)
4 medium size ripe, hothouse tomatoes
1 tablespoon garlic paste
1 tablespoon ginger paste
1 teaspoon garam masala (I pound together little quantities of cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, and black peppercorns)
1 heaped tablespoon coriander powder
1 tablespoon red chilli powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
2-3 tablespoons mustard oil
1 tablespoon desi ghee/clarified butter
Handful of fresh coriander, chopped fine
5-6 whole green chillies (optional)
2 bay
Salt

Start by blanching the tomatoes for 8-10 minutes on high heat. Make sure you score the bottom of each tomato with a pairing knife to form a large “X” before you dunk them in water. This will help you take the skin off easily. Retain the water in which you have blanched the tomatoes. Remove the skin and keep the tomatoes whole.

Heat the mustard oil and ghee in a thick-bottom pan. Add the bay and the slivered onions.

Sauté the onions till they become translucent. Now add the ginger-garlic paste, coriander powder, red chilli powder, turmeric and garam masala powder. Mix everything with the onions and slow cook till oil releases from the spices.

Now add the chicken pieces. Cook the chicken with the onions and spices till it becomes nicely browned. Do this on low-medium heat and scrape off any spices from the bottom of the pan, lest they burn. The chicken should take about 10-15 minutes to get browned and coated with the spices.

At this stage, add the blanched tomatoes. Let them break down on their own and mix with the chicken and spices. 10 minutes of medium heat cooking will do this for you. Season with salt and watch the chicken and tomatoes release tons of juices of their own. Mix well.

Add the water you retained from blanching the tomatoes to the chicken and tomatoes. Let it cook on high-medium for 5-6 minutes. Do a taste test, season with salt if necessary. Turn the heat off and add the chopped coriander and whole green chillies.

I will serve the Malikah-e Tamatar-Murgh-ka-Salan for dinner tonight with parathas and my desi salad.

Though I must confess I have already sneaked in spoonfuls of the shorba (gravy) in a bowl and already love the tangy taste of tomatoes in this dish. Thank you, Farah Malik for this gem. I promise I will make it with mutton next time.

Thakumar Chhanaar Dalna

The Chhanaar Dalna (Bengali Cottage Cheese Curry) is a makeup recipe for all my vegetarian readers. I also want to remind the rest of you about the huge possibilities of vegetarian cooking in Bengali cuisine. This is an old-school recipe with paneer (Indian cottage cheese), a welcome shift from the matar and palak paneer dishes of the mainstream world.

Sad but true, in olden days, widowed Bengali women had to live on vegetarian food after their husbands passed on. They had to denounce worldly pleasures, wear whites, chop off their manes, and sometimes even live separately from the main family house.

Whoever invented a Chhanaar Dalna probably did a whole lot of good to such women. This way they got their share of calcium from the paneer, and a whole lot of flavor in the aromatic sauce of cumin-ginger-garam masala it is cooked in.

I love the old fashioned touch to this recipe, although I am not too pleased about certain stereotypes attached to vegetarian food in Bengali culture. Thankfully, a lot of it is a thing of past in urban families. There is no greater pleasure for me to see my own Thakuma (Grandmother) slurp on chicken soup. I have a feeling my Dadu (Grandfather) too is pleased as punch to watch his wife living a “normal” life from up there.

Ingredients for Chhanaar Dalna are:

500 homemade paneer, cut into cubes
2 medium size white potatoes, cut into cubes
2 medium size ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 inch knob of ginger
4-5 green chilies
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
One-fourth teaspoon garam masala powder
2 black cardamoms
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
4 tablespoons mustard oil
1 teaspoon sugar
Salt

Grind to a smooth paste two tablespoons cumin seeds, ginger, and the green chilies. Keep aside.

Heat mustard oil in a large sauté pan or wok. Toss in the cubed potatoes till they are browned on the edges, remove with a slotted spoon.

In the same oil, add the pieces of paneer, give a quick sauté and remove.

Throw in a teaspoon of cumin seeds and the black cardamoms in the leftover oil of the wok, let them crackle for a few seconds before you add the chopped tomatoes. Stir well, add two tablespoons of the cumin-ginger-chili paste. With the back of your ladle, press the tomatoes to release all their juices. Add red chili powder, turmeric, sugar, salt and garam masala powder. Keep cooking this mixture on medium heat till the raw taste of the ingredients goes away and little bubbles of oil appear around it.

Pour about two cups of water into the tomato and spices. Let it boil for 7-8 minutes and then toss the sautéed potatoes.

Cook the potatoes till they are done, add the paneer, bring to a boil and turn the heat off. Check the seasoning and adjust if needed.

The Chhanaar Dalna makes up for a great main with some steamed rice. Serve it while its piping hot with fresh flavors.

December’s Favorite – Clear Tomato Soup

December is one month we should all take advantage of Nature's bounty in baskets of red tomatoes everywhere.

But you will need only four large hothouse tomatoes for four cups of this Clear Tomato Soup. A delightful soul food I have grown up on. I don’t garnish the clear broth of tomato with croutons or elaborate herbs if I am drinking it straight from a cup, but if you do want to dress it up, I suggest herbs like fresh basil or even the humble coriander to be added only when you turn the heat off on the soup.

Ingredients for Clear Tomato Soup are:

4 large vine-ripened tomatoes, washed and quartered
1 small red onion, coarsely chopped
2 beets (optional), halved
3-4 fat cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon black pepper powder
2 tablespoons sugar
Salt

In a pressure cooker, toss in the tomatoes, garlic, beets, onion, pepper powder, sugar and salt. Add four-five cups of water. (I add the beets for an extra red color to my broth, if you don’t have them, omit them from your recipe.)

Cook till three-four whistles go off. Don’t rush opening the pressure cooker, let all the steam release on its own. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, cook the tomatoes in a stockpot with a tight lid on medium heat for about 20 minutes till the tomatoes are mushy.

Sieve the broth on a larger bowl, mashing the tomato mixture with a ladle to strain all the juices out. Check the seasoning, and adjust accordingly. Stir in a little butter and pour into mugs or soup bowls. Serve hot.

These mugs of Clear Tomato Soup are perfect for a cold snap. Let it snow then, my hands and soul will remain warm thus.

Nameless Kaju Posto Chicken

Forget the Kitchen Stadium, for many home cooks it becomes an everyday challenge to rack her brains over dinner ideas. I usually struggle and remain pretty undecided till the time I actually start cooking. Sometimes things fall in place and impressively so. Sometimes I flip through cookbooks, and close them with equal enthusiasm for their list of elaborate ingredients. The rest of the times I look for inspirations in my own cooking.

Last evening I made this Chicken Curry where the base was made with a paste of poppy seeds (posto) and cashews (kaju).

I don’t have a name for this dish, so maybe you can help. For now, lets call it Kaju Posto Chicken. Under no temptation will you suggest I call it Pree’s Chicken.

Another thing I’d like clarify here (before PETA comes knocking on my door) is that I am not trying to cannibalize the hen you see in the picture. Its just a porcelain planter I picked from a downtown store yesterday and thought it makes for a good prop for my nameless chicken dish.

(Though just between you and me, when I was little we had a parrot called Mithu; he loved Chicken Maggi Noodles and wouldn’t eat chana sprouts or chilies as good green parrots ought to. So we were forced to give him Maggi Noodles with real chicken pieces, he wouldn’t have it any other way!)

Ingredients for Kaju Posto Chicken are:

750 grams chicken (I used skinless, bone-in breast portions)
1 red onion, roughly chopped
150 ml ready to use tomato paste (if you don’t have this, purée two ripe tomatoes at home and use)
7-8 green chilies, slit lengthwise
2 tablespoons ginger-garlic paste
Handful of cashews and 2 tablespoons poppy seeds made into a thick, smooth paste
1 teaspoon red chili powder
10 raisins
4 tablespoons canola oil
Sugar
Salt

Heat canola oil in a pan and sear the whole chicken breasts till they get a nice brown color on both sides. Remove with a slotted spoon and when the chicken is cool enough for you to handle, cut them into bite-size pieces. If you are using chicken which is already cut, skip this step.

In the same pan, sauté the chopped onions, with 3-4 slit green chilies, and the raisins.

Once the onions have turned light brown, toss the chicken pieces in and sauté them further; tops five more minutes. Add the kaju-posto paste and the remaining green chilies and give it a good mix. Then add the ginger-garlic paste, tomato paste, red chili powder, sugar and salt.

Cook this on low-medium heat, covered all the time for five more minutes. Add one cup water when the raw spices get cooked. Cover and cook till the chicken gets tender and the extra liquid dries up. The sauce should be clinging to the chicken pieces. Do not pressure cook, please.

So did you think of a name?

Bengal’s Own, Alu-Begun-Chingri

This is my Mum’s recipe. I love making her recipes because they are simple and easy to execute. The ingredients are readily available even in Canada, and I also get to re-create certain food flavors which have been in my head since childhood.

Though the main ingredients for this recipe are are Potato (Alu), Eggplant/Brinjal (Begun) and Shrimps (Chingri), a whole lot of flavors come from the green chilies (kancha lonka) you add to it. So this Alu-Begun-Chingri is not really for the faint-hearted.

I am not a food snob when buying my groceries. But I am very particular about green chilies. The ones we get in the supermarkets here have no bite to them, so I usually get my fill of green chilies from the Indian stores or Chinatown.

This dish is something between a curry and a sauté, we call the consistency makha-makha in Bengali, where the sauce and the spices cling to the vegetables or meat. It can be eaten with chapatis or dal and plain rice.

Ingredients for Alu-Begun-Chingri are:

400 grams shrimp (I used just the tails, they were largish, size 8-12)
3-4 Oriental eggplants, halved and cut lengthwise
2 medium size potatoes, cut into wedges
1 medium red onion, slivered
2 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped (the riper the better!)
7-8 green chilies, slit lengthwise
Generous handful of chopped coriander
One and half tablespoon of ginger-garlic paste
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chili powder
3-4 tablespoons mustard oil
Salt

Heat oil in a large, thick pan. Sauté the onions and green chilies till the onions are still light brown in color.
Then add the potatoes and get some color on them, for another 3-4 minutes. Now add the eggplants and mix well.

Next to add are the turmeric and red chili powder and the ginger-garlic paste. Mix for a minute or two, scraping the spices from the bottom of the pan, all this on medium heat. Add the chopped tomatoes and salt, cover and cook for 3-4 minutes.

The salt will help the tomatoes release their juices which will moisten the other vegetables too. Add the shrimps to the dish and mix again.

Cover for 4-5 minutes on medium heat and cook. Keep checking so that the spices do not burn. Add a cup of water and cover till the potatoes are done. The shrimps will turn pink and the eggplant and tomatoes will become mushy.
Check the seasoning. Turn the heat off if the potatoes are done, else continue cooking for a few more minutes.

Add a generous amount of chopped fresh coriander (leaves and stems) and mix again.

Though I used shrimp tails, you can use whole deveined shrimps or kucho chingri for this recipe. If you are vegetarian and do not eat shrimps, please feel free to omit them and call this dish Alu-Begun!

For more Bengali recipes, photographs and discussions, see The Big Bong Theory.