Shrimply Delicious, Chili-Garlic Prawn

Some days are such, I want dinner made under 10 minutes. This does not necessarily mean I pop in the microwave a TV dinner. By now, you know my habit of cooking fresh and homemade and from-the-scratch. Well, its not really a myth to do all that in 10 minutes. Or 20 maybe.

Here is something that will give Rachael Ray a run for her money – my Chili-Garlic Prawn, with an approximate cook time of 10.

Ingredients for Chili-Garlic Prawn are:

10 large shrimps, remove shell, keep tail and devein. I used the black colossal tiger shrimps from St. Lawrence Market.

For the marinade: 
3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
3 tablespoons tomato ketchup
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 heaped tablespoon cornstarch
Pinch of black pepper powder
Pinch of sugar
White of 1 egg

Mix all the above ingredients in a bowl and dunk the shrimps in it. Keep for 20-30 minutes.

For the sauce:
1 medium size onion, yellow or red, cut into quarters and petals separated
5-6 fat cloves of garlic, sliced
3-4 green chilies, sliced
3 tablespoons Sambal Oelek
2 tablespoons tomato ketchup
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon white vinegar
Pinch of sugar
3+3 tablespoons canola oil

Heat half the oil in a Chinese wok. Remove the prawns from the marinade and shallow fry them in the hot oil, turning them mid way. Give each side of the shrimp about 2-3 minutes in the heat, so that its tail curl up and it turns pink. Do this in batches if your wok is small. Keep them aside.

Start with a clean wok to make the sauce and finish the dish. Heat the remaining oil and add the garlic and green chilies. Sauté for a couple of minutes without turning the garlic brown. Toss in the onions. Sweat them on high for 3-4 minutes.
In a bowl, mix together the tomato ketchup, sambal oelek, soy sauce, and sugar. Pour it on the onions, etc. Give it a good stir and let it cook for 3-4 minutes on high heat. Check the seasoning and adjust accordingly. Add the vinegar. I did not add any salt to my dish as all the sauces have ample salt in them.

Now add the prawns to the sauce. Coat them well, cook for 2-3 minutes in the sauce and turn the heat off. Serve immediately with steamed rice or a fried rice you like.


Now who was keeping the time?

Nigella’s Bourbon-glazed Ribs

I now know why Nigella Lawson is such a hit with men. She uses minimum ingredients in her recipes which are not too involved. She is not a trained chef. And her promiscuous cooking technique is just an added bonus.

So turn to page 82 of Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities for this seductively simple recipe of Bourbon-glazed Ribs. But if you don’t have that book, count me as your BFF. I made these out-of-the-world succulent ribs on Sunday. For one they were my first time making ribs at home, and also that my husband who is not too fond of them pigged out on pork ribs! I guess its hard for a man to resist something which comes with the tag of N-I-G-E-L-L-A.

Ingredients for Nigella’s Bourbon-glazed Ribs are:

(I have kept her ingredients as they were but changed the measurements)

1.5 kg pork spareribs
1 cup Bourbon
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
3-4 tablespoons tomato ketchup
Half cup + 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar

Place the ribs in a large pan or plastic zip lock bag and pour all the ingredients over them to form a marinade. I marinated my ribs for 48 hours, refrigerating all the time.

After two days, remove the ribs from the marinade and place in a shallow baking dish, lined with aluminum foil for easy cleanup after.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (Nigella says 425). I cooked the ribs for 1 hour 15 minutes, turning them over halfway through cooking.

At the one hour mark of cooking the ribs, pour the marinade into a saucepan and boil on low-medium heat to reduce it to almost half. The marinade will start looking glossy and thick. It takes about 10 minutes.

Plate the ribs and pour the bourbon sauce on them. I served some steamed broccoli and potato wedges as sides for our Bourbon-glazed Ribs.

Sanjeev Kapoor’s Banarasi Chilli Chicken

There is nothing much to write about this recipe since it is not mine or my Mum’s. You go watch the video where Chef Sanjeev Kapoor demonstrates how he made his Banarasi Chilli Chicken.

Of course, when you come back, I will give you my measurements and pictures for his recipe.

Ingredients for Sanjeev Kapoor’s Banarasi Chilli Chicken are:

500 grams boneless chicken (I used thigh pieces, which are more tender than breast portions)
Quarter cup + quarter cup dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons + 2 tablespoons green chili sauce
2 tablespoons + 2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 medium size red onion, halved and cut into thick slices
1 medium size green bell pepper/capsicum, halved and cut into slices
6-7 fat cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
5-6 green hot peppers/chilies, chopped finely
Half teaspoon black pepper powder
Canola oil for deep frying
1 egg
Salt

 
Cut bite-size pieces of the chicken. In a bowl, mix together two tablespoons cornstarch, the chicken pieces, quarter cup soy sauce, two tablespoons green chili sauce and the egg. Both the sauce already have salt in them, hence I did not add it while marinating the chicken (unlike the Chef). Eating less salt won’t kill me, eating more might.

Sanjveev Kapoor suggests you marinate the chicken for at least 30 minutes, I left it for about an hour and a half.

Heat Canola oil in a wok until smoking. Release the marinating chicken pieces into the hot oil. Fry till they turn golden brown in color. Remove. Do it in two-three batches if your wok is small.

From the same oil which you used for deep frying, take a couple of spoons of oil and heat in the (same) wok. Add the chopped garlic first and sauté for a couple of minutes on high flame without browning the garlic.

Next, throw in the onions and toss them around to coat the garlic and the oil.

While the onions are still pink, add the sliced capsicum.

After a couple of minutes of cooking the capsicum with the onions and garlic, add the soy sauce and green chili sauce as the Chef suggests. Whisk the remaining cornstarch with half a cup of water and keep it ready. As the sauces start bubbling at the sides, add the cornstarch mixture little by little. Keep mixing continuously on high heat.

Now add the already fried chicken pieces into the saucy mixture. Coat well. Lastly, throw in the chopped green chilies and the black pepper powder.

Give it a taste test and if you think you want to add any salt, adjust it now. There should not be any extra sauce in the Banarasi Chilli Chicken when you finish cooking.

Turn the heat off and serve with paratha, roti, chowmein or fried rice. Or just have it on its own with a glass of chilled beer!

What’s your favorite thing to eat with the much-loved Chili Chicken?

My other Chili Chicken recipes are here and here.

That ‘80s Chili Chicken

This is an old school Chili Chicken every young Indian Mother from the 1980s was christened into when it came to Chinese cooking at home.

Finely Chopped’s Chili Chicken metaphor rekindled the desire to do what my Mum – a Mother of two very finicky daughters loved to cook. Okay, make that one – the me who believed that gourmet food everyday was my birthright. In other words, I was the problem child. I choked on Ilish maach bhaja, vegetables made a pocket around my throat, and I was happy eating luchi-mangsho for breakfast, lunch and dinner. While Little Sis B drank her milk, ate her egg yolks with panache and even relished uchche bhaja.

That growing up ‘80s decade sure was fun, except for the bitter gourd part. The 1982 Asian Games, color television, Different Strokes, and cartoons which made sense.

I grew up in Patna, which had its share of Chinese immigrants. The men were dentists and their wives ran thrifty beauty parlours. Giving the uninitiated populace of the capital of Bihar the Lily’s and the Chang’s salons. The rest of the 40% opened restaurants. The best Chinese food memory from my childhood was this family-owned place called Hsin Long (Thanks Kaushik for the correct spelling). The food was the greatest a 12-year-old had had. One day, we heard the restaurant had closed, it is hazy why they shut shop. We heard the family had left town after paying a huge ransom for living in Bihar to the then gunda state government. That also ended our monthly outing to a great Chinese restaurant.

Which meant we were stuck for life with my Mum’s Chili Chicken, which went on to become a bestseller in our extended family.

Ingredients for the ‘80s Chili Chicken are:

500 grams boneless, skinless chicken, cut into bite-size pieces (I used thigh portions,which have the tenderness like drumsticks and the meatiness of breasts)
1 medium red onion, cut into quarters, peels separated
4-5 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 bell pepper/capsicum, diced
6-7 green chilies, cut into little pieces
Half cup white vinegar
Half cup dark soy sauce
Half cup green chili sauce
2 tablespoons Canola/vegetable oil

Marinade the chicken in the vinegar for about 30 minutes. I do this to make the chicken tender and also to remove any gamey smell from it. Drain the vinegar.

Heat oil in a wok and add the chopped garlic and green chilies. Sauté for a couple of minutes, do not brown the garlic.

Add the onions and give them some heat. Let the onions turn pink in color before you add the soy sauce and green chili sauce.

Toss around the onions in the sauce and add the chicken pieces.  
Cook for 5-7 minutes till the chicken becomes tender. Add the diced capsicum.

Cook for another 5-7 minutes till the sauces dry up a bit. Serve immediately.

 

10-Minute Soy Sauce Chicken

Quick. Easy. Tasty. These three words sum up this 10-minute chicken. If you have some boneless chicken, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, onions and green bell peppers, you can head straight to the kitchen. And yes, don’t forget a handful of green chilies from your kitchen garden!

 
Ingredients for Soy Sauce Chicken are:

400 grams boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
1 small green bell pepper/ capsicum, cut into cubes
1 medium size red onion, quartered
2-3 green onions sliced fine
Handful of green chilies chopped coarsely
5-6 fat cloves of garlic chopped
1 tablespoon of ginger-garlic paste
2 tablespoons white vinegar
Half cup soy sauce
Green chili sauce
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Pinch of black pepper 
Few drops of red food color
Canola oil

Marinade the chicken pieces in quarter cup soy sauce, vinegar and ginger-garlic paste for four hours. This is how it will take you just 10 minutes to cook it!

Just before you are ready to eat, heat oil in a wok. Drain off the excess liquid from the marinated chicken. Add 5-6 drops of red food color and cornstarch and mix well.

Shallow fry the chicken pieces for 2-3 minutes and remove with a slotted spoon. In the remaining oil, add the chopped garlic, green chilies and sauté for a minute. Add the chopped red onions and bell peppers and coat them nicely with the garlic and chilies for a couple of minutes. Now add quarter cup of soy sauce and green chili sauce to taste. Mix well. Throw in the pieces of chicken in the sauce and give it a good stir. We don’t add any salt in this recipe as soy sauce already has a high content of sodium in it.

Season with freshly crushed black pepper and garnish with chopped green onions. Serve hot with rice or noodles.