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.

Fresh Salsa Salad

This is a Mexican-inspired salad which is an all-time favorite of ours. Its quick and simple to make and most often you will find all the ingredients at home, except of course jalapeño peppers.

If you don’t have jalapeños, use any hot green chilies.

Ingredients for Fresh Salsa Salad are:

2 firm red tomatoes
2 jalapeño peppers
1 medium red onion
1 medium cucumber
Juice of one lime
Handful of cilantro/coriander
1 teaspoon cumin powder
Half teaspoon black pepper powder
Salt

Remove the seeds from the jalapeños and chop them finely. All the other vegetables also need to be chopped as finely as you can.

Mix everything in a large bowl. Toss in the spices and seasoning and add freshly squeezed lime juice.
If you are making this salad to serve later, do not add salt. Add it just before you serve. Its best to serve this salad chilled.

I will serve this tonight with grilled Tilapia fillets.

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.

Rui Maacher Kalia

I am certain all traditional Bengali wedding feasts have served the Rui Maacher Kalia, before the buffet days came and spoilt it all with their chowmeins, vegetarian machurians, and chicken jhalfreizis. Not to mention the Fish Begum Bahar!
I am yet to understand why traditional Bengali wedding feasts had to be replaced by these modern-day buffets where everything pretty much tasted the same. Plus you had to queue up in front of the food with cheap China or melamine plates, instead of being “served” like a queen!

As a kid, the only thing that got me excited about weddings were their feasts. I would plan for days what I’d wear and more importantly which were the things I’d eat or say no to. To the Bubais and the Baantys who would come loaded with “items” to be served for the biyer bhoj (wedding feast). They would come serving rows of guests sitting cross-legged on dhurries from a certain Raja Tent House, eating off shaal paata’r thala (sal leaf plates).

Sitting cross-legged at wedding feasts, sometimes with complete strangers had its own challenges. I was often troubled by the feeling of my knees rubbing with other people, and if I was flanked by my cousins, it would soon become a war of the knees, knocking each other’s knee caps – tomfoolery becoming very violent until one of us got screamed at by some elder. But what tormented me most was that leaking khuri, or a missing wedge of lemon which Shontu da forgot to drop on my plate while his brother Montu was neatly giving pinches of salt to everyone.

I would be a finicky eater too, carefully declining the less interesting shaak or begun bhaja and waiting for the real delicacies. I mostly swayed between luchi-cholaar dal and mansgho-pulao. Nothing in between.

The in between was always the king of all fish- Rohu in its kalia form. I was definitely not going to eat Rui Maacher Kalia which always preceded the mutton curry. Why would I, when I got to eat it at least once a week at home! And this is how my Mum would make it the days the maach wala (fish monger) got paka rui (a full grown fish of about 2.5+ kilos).

Ingredients for the Rui Maacher Kalia are:

4 pieces of Rohu (gaada pieces)
2 medium size potatoes cut into halves
1 medium size red onion finely chopped
1 medium size ripe tomato, coarsely chopped
Handful of finely chopped cilantro
2 teaspoons garlic paste
2 teaspoons ginger paste
Pinch of garam masala powder
2 + 1 teaspoons turmeric powder
2 teaspoons red chili powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 small cinnamon stick
2 green cardamoms
1 black cardamom
2 bay leaves
2 cloves
Mustard oil
Sugar
Salt

Rub salt and a couple of teaspoons of turmeric powder on the pieces of fish. Heat mustard oil in a wok and deep fry the fish.
In the same oil, fry the potato halves till they get golden on the edges. Keep aside while you ready ingredients for the gravy.Heat the leftover oil from frying the fish (reduce if more than two tablespoon), add whole spices – bay leaf, cinnamon, cloves, cardamoms and sauté for a minute. I always add a pinch of sugar and let it caramelize before I add the chopped onions. This way the gravy gets a rich, dark color, the trademark of a kalia (a rich preparation of fish, meat or vegetables using generous quantities of oil or ghee and a sauce made of ginger-garlic paste and onions, flavored with gorom moshla).
Fry the onions till they get a nice golden color, but not burn.
Now add the ginger-garlic paste and fry till they get cooked.
Now add the powdered spices – red chili, cumin, coriander and turmeric. 
Add the chopped tomatoes. Keep pressing the tomatoes with the back of the ladle to get the juices out. All this cooking needs to be done on low-medium heat. Season with salt and sugar.
Add little water along with the pieces of fried potatoes and simmer.Once the potatoes are cooked, add the pieces of fried fish. Cook on high for five minutes. Season with some garam masala powder (I make a homemade powder of cloves, cinnamon and cardamom).
Fried fish is already cooked, and overcooking would be disastrous as the pieces get mashed and start disintegrating.

Remove the wok from heat and garnish with chopped coriander.
Have a homemade Bengali bhoj with Basmati rice and this Rui Maacher Kalia. Believe me, there is nothing in between about it!

Dhaba Style Baigan Ka Bharta

When you are experimenting in the kitchen, you are not very sure if you want to share something as ordinary as a Baigan ka Bharta with your readers!
I don’t have a “gas” stove top here and have to do all the cooking on an electric oven range. Which is no fun if you are making the Bengali Begun Poda or the Punjabi version of the Baigan ka Bharta (Roasted Eggplant Mish-mash). Its in times like these that I have to toss my ingredients in the oven, and hope I get the taste which is close to the palate I have grown up to.

I know a lot of people do roast the eggplant in the oven, but this recipe of mine has roasted tomatoes (instead of raw ones) thrown in too!

Here is my recipe of the Punjabi Baigan ka Bharta!

Ingredients:

One medium size eggplant – I chose one which was about 350-400 gms
2 ripe tomatoes
Half cup green peas
1 medium size red onion finely chopped
Bunch of coriander chopped fine
4-5 green chilies chopped finely
5-6 cloves of garlic chopped fine
1 inch ginger chopped finely
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
Drizzle of mustard oil
2 tablespoon ghee (melted)
Salt

Slit the eggplant from the center and cut the tomatoes in halves. Put them in a baking dish and drizzle some mustard oil. “Bake” them in the oven at 350°F for an hour. You want to roast the eggplant and the tomatoes till they are nice and plump and not shriveled. Gently remove the purple skin of the eggplant and its stalk. Squish the eggplant and the tomatoes (separately).
In a frying pan, heat the melted ghee and add the cumin seeds. And all the chopped culprits (except the coriander) one by one starting with the onions.
Sauté all the ingredients for about 4-5 minutes on medium heat. Add the already mashed up eggplant and tomato. Add the dry spices and fry for five more minutes till all the raw flavors are cooked.
Towards the end of the cooking process, add the already washed and drained (if you are using frozen ones) green peas. Add salt and mix well.
Garnish with chopped coriander and serve hot with roti or naan and maybe some Tandoori Chicken to get that complete feeling of eating at a North Indian Dhaba!
This is as good as Baigan ka Bharta can get in North America! Try it.