Nolen Gurer Payesh

Friday is Sankranti, which means its time to get Nolen/ Notun/Khejur Gur and keep a flickering tradition alive. The winter sun is at its glorious best today, it reminds me of my younger days in India, when my parents would get this famous date jaggery, Bengalis lovingly call Nolen Gur.

We would wait in anticipation when my Grandmother and Mum would get busy in the kitchen, breaking the gur down for sweet winter delicacies - pithe, puli, and payesh. All that is a thing of the past for me now.

What remains now, is just a taste in my mouth, and thankfully its not bitter. Its the smoky, sweet taste of Khejur Gur.

All I have today is a bowl of Nolen Gurer Payesh sparkling in the afternoon sun to remember my past and some forgotten traditions. And I’d like to share it with you…

Ingredients for Nolen Gurer Payesh:

1 liter half and half cream/full cream milk
3 tablespoons Basmati rice, washed and soaked in water
6-7 tablespoons of grated date jaggery/ nolen gur

Begin by doing this test. Boil half a cup of milk and add some nolen gur in it. If the milk curdles, you cannot use that jaggery for your dessert. If it doesn’t you are in for some treat.

In a thick bottom saucepan, boil the milk on low-medium heat, stirring continuously. When its reduced to half its original quantity, add the Nolen Gur. I grate my jaggery and then add it to the milk. It helps to quickly break it down in the hot milk.

Keep cooking the milk and gur by adjusting the heat from time to time. You literally have to babysit the cooking process. The last thing you want is to burn the milk and your precious gur.

When the milk starts to thicken, add the washed and drained rice.

Keep the heat on low and keep stirring all the time. Scrape the sides of the pan into the milk, if a skin forms on the top, mix that in as well, the real taste lies there!

Do a taste test and add a little more gur only if necessary. Remember all food tastes less sweet (or salty) when they are piping hot. Do not overdo the sweetness in the payesh, no one likes a sinfully sweet payesh.

When the rice in the payesh gets cooked, turn the heat off. The milk would have turned thick and adorn a color so rich, only Nolen Gur can flaunt!

Its now time to escape to the taste of tradition with a bowl of Nolen Gurer Payesh.

Its also legal to make Payesh with plain white sugar. Here is the recipe if you don’t have Nolen Gur this winter.

Posto Bhaate, a Bangal’s Way of Inducing Sleep

When we were kids, Mum would make a coarse paste of Posto (white poppy seed/khus khus) and serve a small dollop of it with hot, steaming rice, a little ghee and a pinch of salt. Of course the adults also got a crunchy green chili to go with it. This combination would often start many meals in our home.

Then Mum learnt this variation of the Posto Bhaate from one of her friends who is a Bangal.

Posto when made into a paste has a grainy-creamy texture to it. Its often added to mutton, chicken and fish dishes in Indian homes. The most popular Bengali dish is Alu Posto which is small cubes of potatoes cooked with green chilies and the poppy seed paste.

Poppy Seeds have a really short shelf life and often times you will see small insects in them, even though you did not open the bottle for months. I usually store mine in the fridge in a glass jar.

Ingredients for Posto Bhaate are:

Half cup poppy seeds/posto, soaked in water for 10 minutes and sieved
1 small red onion, finely chopped
4-5 green chilies, coarsely chopped
2-3 tablespoons mustard oil
Salt

Grind the poppy seeds in the smallest jar of your blender. Traditionally, the lady of the house would use the shil-nora to do this. (My Mum compares the texture of a good posto bata to chandan/sandalwood. Smooth.)

Add very little water while doing so. You will see that the poppy seeds change color from a dusty brown to a whitish color. Stop when you get a smooth but grainy texture to your posto.

Transfer to a steel tiffin box that should fit in the pressure cooker. To the posto, add the chopped green chilies and onion. Drizzle the mustard oil and season with salt. Mix.

Close the lid of the tiffin box and place it in the pressure pan. Fill the pan with water up to two-thirds of the tiffin box. Cook on medium-high heat till one whistle goes off.

If you don’t have a pressure cooker, keep the closed tiffin box in a thick sauce pan, keep a weight on the lid of tiffin box, fill the pan up to two-thirds of the tiffin box with  water, cover the pan and cook for 15-18 minutes.

Serve the Posto Bhaate with plain white rice, if you have children, remove the chili pieces from their share and add a little smear of ghee, that way they will not feel the zing of the mustard oil.

A little Posto Bhaate and some hot rice usually starts some memorable meals in our home. But I will admit, sometimes I have been so carried away by its simple taste, I have eaten all my rice with the Posto Bhaate. Trust me, its that good. Second only to the afternoon snooze it will induce.

Peas Pulao Against Plagiarism…

…and to appease the Rānāchandi in me. After what I stumbled onto yesterday.

My Payesh recipe copy-pasted verbatim, my photograph used, the watermark cleverly removed! The Blog owner wrote in her introduction that she was making it for her special friend on a special request. I could not even leave a comment on this Blog (sayanti-bonappetit.blogspot.com), apparently the owner had disabled comments!

I posted my woe on my Facebook profile. The kind people who enjoy reading my Blog promptly replied. I emailed the Thief. I alerted other Food Bloggers whose work I could identify in the Thief’s site. I went to bed with a bitter taste in my mouth.

A note of shamelessness awaited me in the morning from the Thief.

From: "Sayanti Sarkar" <saayanti@XXXX.com> To: preeoccupied@yahoo.com hi, thanks for this mail...otherwise I would'nt hv know wat was happening using my name.....oh hole shit......after getting this mail did a google search and saw something really crap!!!!! suddenly from morning my inbox were filled up with similar mails like you...and i am gettng sick and tired of replying them...... if i did dat i should not hv replied for your information....... may be some of mah frnds has done this terrible cyber crime........... i donno....anyways i hv deleted the blog with help from the google blogger administrators..............!! will chk for sure who has done this!!!! regards

In the meantime, my friends and readers had also commented and emailed her. The Blog was removed/disabled from Blogspot.

But is this really an end? Do we have to keep a lookout for our stolen content from here on? How does one become a Blog monitor and why? I have so many questions in my head – are there any copyright laws for Bloggers like me?

If you have answers and suggestions, help this small-time food Blogger, who takes the pain to chop, cook, click and post. Its a lot of work you know.

I am still mad at yesterday’s discovery, and will probably be for the next few days. And in between being mad and blogging, I will still continue to cook and post here. Sometimes just for myself!

Ingredients for Peas Pulao are:

2 cups long-grain Basmati rice, washed and sieved for 10 minutes
1 cup green peas (I used frozen ones)
Half tablespoon freshly grated ginger
Three-fourths cup of room temperature water
Few drops of lemon juice
2 tablespoons melted ghee
Generous pinch of grated nutmeg
2+2 green and black cardamoms
1 small piece of cinnamon
2-3 cloves
2 bay leaves
Sugar (optional)
Salt

Heat ghee in a pan and add the bay leaves, cardamoms, cinnamon and cloves. Sauté for a few seconds, then add the rice.

Mix the rice well in the pan to coat it with the ghee. Add the grated ginger, green peas, salt and sugar. Mix again.

Gently mix the rice and peas for about five minutes. Add the grated nutmeg and mix again. Transfer the rice in a microwave-safe bowl. Add the water and few drops of lemon juice and cover with a cling film.

Microwave for 20 minutes. Check on the seasoning, if you think there is less salt, balance and microwave for a minute or so.
Let the Peas Pulao stand for about 5-7 minutes before serving with the curry of your choice. I will serve it with some Mutton Curry and salad.

Hyderabad-inspired “Pakki” Biryani

I shall call this Mutton Biryani – Cyberabadi Biryani for lack of a better name. And I expect you to treat it with respect, just like the Nizams revered their Biryani. It may not be the authentic kachchi Biryani the royalty of Hyderabad is used to having, but quite close.

Close enough for second helpings.

I have many Biryani-loving friends in the real and virtual world – Finely Chopped, who can have biryani for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The very enthusiastic Tojo Roy, who waits and demands that Biryanis be made and posts be written without any delay. And our dear Amarnath Babu who has every right and reason to denounce any attempts towards Hyderabadi cuisine if it isn’t authentic. After all, he has a Blog of Hyderabadi recipes.

I have made this pakki biryani for a dinner tonight and will serve it with some cucumber raita and salad. A glass of red is paired well with a biryani like this.

The basic recipe is from here, though I have tweaked it a bit. So while I document it, you go watch the YouTube video and come back to my post.

Ingredients for Hyderabad-inspired “Pakki” Biryani are:

For the meat:

1.5 kg goat meat, bone in (you can use lamb, but I wouldn’t recommend chicken)
A little over 1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup fried onions
2 tablespoons green chili paste
2 heaped tablespoons of ginger-garlic paste
Half teaspoon mace powder
Quarter teaspoon cardamom powder
1 tablespoon coriander powder
Half teaspoon red chili powder
1 tablespoon crushed black peppercorns
2 black cardamoms, crushed
2-3 green cardamoms, crushed
1 stick of cinnamon
4-5 cloves
2 bay leaves
Handful of coarsely chopped mint leaves
Handful of coarsely chopped coriander leaves
Quarter cup vegetable oil
Salt

Ask your butcher to cut the goat meat in bigger than regular curry pieces. Lean mean is not needed for biryanis, so its okay to keep some fat on the meat pieces. I would recommend you ask for a baby goat’s shoulder portion.

Marinade the meat with all the ingredients except salt and leave it overnight in the fridge.

Find a heavy-bottom pan from your kitchen and transfer the marinated meat into it. Place it on low-medium heat and let it cook for 15 minutes. Once the heat spreads to the pan and the meat starts to show signs of being “cooked”, crank up the heat. This way the yogurt in your meat will not curdle. Add salt.

Cover and cook the meat till it starts falling off the bones. It should take you about 45 minutes to get your meat cooked on medium heat.

While the meat is getting done, we will simultaneously do the rice for the Biryani too.

Ingredients for the Biryani rice are:

3 cups Basmati rice, washed, and soaked in water for 30 minutes, drained in a colander
One and half teaspoons shahi jeera/ black cumin
2 bay leaves
2 black + 2 green cardamoms
1 stick of cinnamon
Half teaspoon grated nutmeg
Half tablespoon desi ghee
Salt

Heat water in a big saucepan. Add the whole spices – shahi jeera, bay leaves, cardamoms, cinnamon, nutmeg, ghee and salt.

Boil the water with the spices for about 5-7 minutes and then add the rice. The idea is to extract the fragrance from the spices and infuse it with our rice. The rice takes very little time to cook. Make sure you are stirring it and watching over it all the time. Check a few grains to see if its done. Drain in a colander and keep aside.

Since a pakki biryani is typically layered, we will ready the ingredients ahead in time and not wait till the meat and rice is done. The essential item for layering any biryani is – crispy fried slivers of red onion. Some biryanis also have boiled potatoes and eggs in between. I did not want to use eggs in this Biryani today, but since I did have a few baby potatoes, I thought they’d go well.

Ingredients for Layering are:

2 medium size red onions, very thinly sliced
1 or 2 potatoes, boiled and peeled
Fresh mint leaves, torn
Saffron strands, soaked in warm water
Few drops of Kewra essence
Oil for frying the onions

Slice the onions and deep fry them in hot oil to get a caramelized color on them, remove with slotted spoon.

I boiled the baby potatoes, peeled and fried them for a couple of minutes in the same oil the onions were fried.

The layering of the biryani is the most interesting part of the post-cooking phase.

The thumb rule to layering in pakki biryani is that the base and the top layers always have to be rice.

Here is the sequence I follow for my pakki biryani – rice, meat (without any of its gravy), fried onions, potatoes, mint leaves, little drizzle of saffron and kewra, and then rice again. Complete the layering when you have used all the meat and rice. Remember to garnish with mint leaves and fried onions and saffron and drops of kewra on the top.

Save the gravy to be served with the biryani later.

Keep covered. You can heat the biryani vessel on your stove top by place a pan or a tava at the bottom, so that the base of the vessel does not come in direct contact with heat. If the bowl is microwaveable, you can of course microwave!

I am sending my Mutton Biryani to Michael Lee West’s Foodie Friday.

Thai-style Shrimps in Coconut Milk

A little pot of Basil can go a long way. Its rain-drenched leaves are there all ready for you to pluck when you need a little sprig for a Thai-inspired Shrimp curry.

Ingredients for Thai-style Shrimps in Coconut Milk are:

400 grams shrimps, cleaned, deveined
1 can of coconut milk
Handful each of vegetables which cook easy like green peas, snap peas, green bell pepper
2-3 green onions (just the green portions)
1 knob of ginger, very finely chopped
2-3 fat cloves of garlic, minced
Handful of fresh coriander, chopped
Few leaves of basil, torn
5-6 dry red chilies
Fish sauce (I use a Thai brand)
Sesame oil
Sugar
Salt

Heat sesame oil in a wok and toss in the snap peas and sliced bell peppers. Sauté for a couple of minutes and keep aside.

 

In the same oil, add the ginger, garlic and dry red chilies. Stir for a couple of minutes, reduce the heat to the lowest gas mark and add the coconut milk. Drizzle fish oil into the coconut milk, I added about two tablespoons.

Cook the coconut milk adding little water for about five minutes. Add the shrimps then.

When the shrimps start turning pink, add the already sautéed vegetables, handful of green peas, and season with sugar and salt. Cook for not more than 2-3 minutes.

Check on the seasoning. This curry should have a sweet balance to it because of the coconut milk. Garnish with freshly chopped coriander and some torn basil leaves. Just before you serve, finish it with some chopped green onions.

Its best to serve it straight out of the wok and onto the dinner table. With a hot bowl of rice, some more torn basil leaves and lemon wedges. I had some Gondho Lebu (you could try Kaffir Lime) which I used to squirt over my rice and curry and honestly it just took my Shrimp Curry to another level.