bhindi ka raita | crisp fried okra in yogurt

Raita is so simple why would someone need a recipe for it, be it cucumber raita or okra (bhindi) raita. We anyways customize our raita recipe depending on how simple or heavy or spicy the other dishes on the table are, the recipe is not so rigid and keeps changing according to the seasons too. The intrinsic beauty of Indian cuisines, especially home cooking, is that we use each produce in just the right way to suit ourselves.

Bhindi ka raita is often made with a little mature okra (bhindi) that has not turned fibrous but has lost the tenderness. The mature fibrous okra is also used in some curries I will share sometime, right now it is about bhindi ka raita. I had shared this bhindi ka raita on instagram and many had asked the recipe. I hope you like it when you make.

In the traditional recipe the bhindi slices are deep fried to make the raita but I never do that. Slow cooking in very little oil in a shallow wide pan works wonderfully to crisp up the bhindi slices to make a great textured bhindi raita.

ingredients 
(2 large servings)
about a dozen large slightly mature okra or 20 small tender ones
2 green chilies chopped finely
4 springs of curry leaves chopped finely
1 tsp cumin seeds (sometimes we use ajwain seeds)
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp roasted cumin powder
2 tsp mustard oil
pinch of asafoetida (optional)
1 cup whisked home made cultured yogurt

preparation 

Rinse the okra and pat them dry. Remove the crowns and hold them together over the chopping board. Slice them all together in very thin roundels.

Heat the mustard oil in a flat base and tip in the asafoetida and cumin seeds and let them splutter and get aromatic.

Now add the chopped chilies, curry leaves and the sliced okra, mix well and lower the heat. Spread out the okra slices over the surface of flat base pan and let them brown slowly and dehydrate a bit. Stir after every 3-4 minutes and let it cook for about 10 minutes on very low heat so the okra becomes almost crisp. Add the salt, pepper and roasted cumin powder and take off the heat.

You can bake the okra in the oven after mixing all the ingredients too. 

Now pour everything over the whisked yogurt, adjust seasoning and serve chilled or at room temperature.

We serve this bhindi ka raita mostly with dal chawal meals but any roti or paratha subzi meal also feels great with this raita. The heat level of the raita is always adjusted according to the type of subzi and dal made for the meal.

doodh wali guwar subzi | cluster beans cooked in a milky curry

Doodh wali guwar subzi or cluster beans cooked in a milky curry  is a discovery I made recently. I love it when my readers interact with me on my social media pages and exchange recipes too. I would admit I don't try those recipes always but some of those ideas are so good that I work on them immediately. Doodh wali guar ki subzi was one of them.

Guwar is one vegetable that can grow for almost all through the year I realised. A good news for me as I keep experimenting with this vegetable a lot. The mild bitterness and the fleshy texture is what I like but I think my mind starts preferring whatever is healthy for the body, I have some conditioning since childhood for sure. I remember how we used to get only a certain variety of guwar in Banaras as no one eats it there and it is used mostly for the animal feed, the beans are considered great for milch animals. 

The variety available in those days was smaller in size and used to get very fibrous if mature, everyone else in the family hated that fibrous guwar and my father always insisted it is so good for the body, him being the seasoned agronomist and seed technologist. Even I didn’t like that  in those days but now that we have started getting the bigger, softer and fleshier varieties of guwar I have started liking it a lot, much to my husband’s displeasure. Thankfully, this milky curry with guwar became his favourite too, just like the guwar with peanuts and guwar dhokli subzi.

The idea of this doodh wali guwar ki subzi came from a client who is on my regime to treat a few health problems of hers, she follows me on my Facebook page and it was there that she suggested a recipe of guwar with added milk. I was intrigued and cooked the guwar that way, and since the addition of milk reminded me of this doodh wali lauki, I decided to keep the flavours a little similar. The mild bitterness of methi seeds lends a really good flavour while the guwar changes its texture to a creamy softness so unlike guwar if you ask me. 

Such recipes leave me wondering how a humble ingredient can take a new identity if cooked differently. Such a wealth nature has given in our hands.

Ingredients 

(2 servings)

300 gm guwar beans chopped in 1 inch bits (remove stalk but retain the tail) 

½ tsp methi seeds 

2-3 whole dry red chilies 

1 tsp chopped garlic 

1 finely chopped green chili

¼ tsp turmeric powder 

Salt to taste 

1tsp mustard oil 

1 cup of milk 

2 tsp ginger juice (just grate an inch piece of ginger and squeeze it into the curry when required) 

Procedure 

Heat the oil, tip in the methi seeds and dry red chilies. Wait till they get fragrant and then add the garlic and chopped green chilies. Fry them till fragrant again, keeping the flame medium so it doesn’t burn.

Add the chopped guwar, turmeric powder and salt, mix well and cook covered for 5 minutes. 

Add the milk, mix well and cook covered for 2-3 minutes or till it becomes soft and the flavours blend well. Add the ginger juice and mix well before taking the curry off the stove. 

You can add more milk to make the curry a little more saucy or cook a bit more to make it dry, I like it both ways and have been cooking it almost every week this season. 

Please try this doodhwali guwar ki subzi and let me know if your family likes it too. 

recipe of malai tinda | apple gourd cooked in a creamy curry

Malai tinda is one recipe that will convert a tinda hater for sure. I have witnessed it myself and I think the key is in making the food look good even if it has a bad reputation regarding taste and texture.

Every tinda hater I came across wouldn’t even touch a regular tinda subzi if served along with other foods but when it is in the form of Malai tinda or shahi tinda that I make, they won’t even bother asking what subzi is it. They will pick up, eat, take second helpings and rarely realise it was tinda, more because one bad experience with tinda turned them off for ever and they really don’t know how it taste like.

Many punjabi homes cook tinda with loads of tomatoes and onion and though I like that recipe too, my favourite will this malai tinda and the achari tinda that I make sometimes. The shahi tinda is great too but I cook it rarely. Tinda chana dal is made when I have to make a quick meal that tastes great too.

In fact tinda takes the flavour of its cooking medium quite well, if seared for a few minutes and then cooked with whatever flavour you want to infuse it with. And yes, there are some flavour that don’t go well with tinda, the doodh wali lauki or lau shukto when cooked with tinda was a big failure. Imagine similar sounding vegetables have such finer nuances in terms of flavour pairings.

There are many versions of malai tinda made in punjabi families and some of them are quite rich with cashew paste and loads of malai (cream). This recipe of malai tinda has been adopted to my family’s taste and has undergone a few changes over the decades it is being cooked in my home, the original recipe came from some family friend as much as I remember.

Ingredients
(2 large servings)
300 gm tinda (tender apple gourds)
1 medium onion (70 gm approximately) diced finely
2 green chilies slit lengthwise
Pinch of red chili powder or yellow chili powder
¼ tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp everyday curry powder
¼ tsp special garam masala
1 tsp fine ginger paste (preferably juice of ginger)
Pinch of green cardamom powder
2 tejpatta
Salt to taste
1 tbsp mustard oil
1 cup milk
1 tbsp malai (fresh home made clotted cream)

Procedure
Clean the tinda surface, no need to peel them, and chop each one of them in quarters.
Heat the oil, add green chili, chopped tinda and onions at once. Stir fry at high for a minute, lower the heat and add the tejpatta. Keep stir frying till the tinda quarters get a little brownish patches around the edges.
Add all the powdered spices and stir fry for a minute so the spices turn aromatic, pour the milk, lower the heat to minimum and cover the pan to cook for 8-10 minutes or till the tindas are cooked through. The cooking time depends on how tender the tindas are.
Once cooked, add the malai, stir gently and empty the malai tinda in the serving bowl. Adding the malai at the last step brings out the creamy colour beautifully.

To make the malai tinda richer, you can add 1-2 tbsp of cashew paste along with the malai or just increase the quantity of malai.

Some people like to add kasoori methi to the malai tinda but I like it plain. But I make it hot many a times with an extra dose of chili, ginger juice and pepper sometimes, you might try doing that if you like hot curries.

The best thing is, that malai tinda taste great with our multigrain rotis and multigrain sourdough kulchas that is regular in my home. It is great with any type of roti, paratha or even poori I suppose, though I have never tried it with pooris.

Do try the recipe and let me know how malai tinda treats you.

okra and baby potatoes with butter garlic sauce

This okra (bhindi) and baby potatoes with butter garlic kept ringing in my head until I made it at home the very next day after meeting Bridget White Kumar. This Anglo Indian recipe is being served at the J W Marriot Aerocity right now where she has curated a menu around this cuisine, I loved it so much that I had to share it with you all too.

Note that this version of okra in butter garlic is my recreation after tasting it at the festival and not the authentic way Bridget makes it, there might be a minor variation in her original recipe of okra in butter garlic.

ingredients
(2 servings)

300 gm tender okra (bhindi), caps removed and cut in one inch pieces diagonally
300 gm baby potatoes, boiled, peeled and halved
100 gm or a large onion sliced
one large tomato chopped finely
50 gm butter
2 tbsp finely chopped garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup milk (optional) 

preparation

Heat a pan and add the butter and garlic together, let them sizzle while stirring till the garlic gets aromatic.

Add the sliced onions and baby potatoes and toss well to coat evenly. Keep cooking for a couple of minutes.

Add the chopped okra, salt and pepper and toss well to coat. Keep tossing or stirring lightly for 5 minutes, add the tomatoes, mix well and cover to cook for 5-7 minutes on medium heat. The okra should be cooked by now, the onions a nice shade of pink and the tomatoes completely mushy.

Cook a few minutes more if the okra is not cooked well. Add milk, stir and cover to cook for a minute, adjust consistency by adding a little more milk if you wish. Check and adjust seasoning.

Serve hot with soft rotis or bread rolls.

daab paneer recipe | paneer in mustard sauce steamed in tender coconut shells

You must have heard about daab chingri  and that is one of my favourite prawn recipe too. Inspired by the classic recipe, I recently cooked daab paneer and loved it so much that it has become quite regular on my table.

Tender coconut is a great thirst quencher, a delicious blend of electrolytes that nature has packaged so wonderfully for us. Daab, as tender coconut is called in Hindi and few other regional languages, has been the favourite drink whenever we can get it. Few decades ago we used to get daab only when we traveled to coastal towns but thankfully it is available in cities like Delhi fairly easily.

To me it feels like a wonder every time I sip from a tender coconut, right since my childhood. Each tender coconut packs a different flavour if you consider the minor variations of sweet and salt, the mineral taste and of the course the malai (tender coconut meat) that lines the inner wall, like a surprise unfolding gently. 

Tender coconut was our saviour last year when both of us were hit by chikangunia together. We had asked the neighbourhood daab wala to deliver 2 tender coconuts every morning and evening and that helped us a lot in recovering from the most annoying sickness we have had. But then we made friends with this daab wala and he is always ready to deliver at home, he will come with his cleaver sometimes and cut open the daab so we can eat the malai as well. All those tender coconut shells went into my compost heap but then I decided to make a raised bed using them, the next garden project. About that some other time as I am sharing a daab paneer recipe with you right now. 

 I had eaten daab recipes in hotels and restaurants in the past but never had bothered to cook anything with them at home, apart from adding the tender coconut meat to some of my kheer recipes. When I saw a daab chingri recipe by Ipshita Bhandari on a facebook group I felt tempted to try that at home. After all I have easy supply of daab and the daab wala ready to cut it into convenient halves. 

The Bengali daab chingri is a popular dish, easy to cook but the daab is such an exotic ingredient that everyone serves the daab chingri with a certain sense of pride. I am a sucker for easy recipes with clean flavours, thankfully this recipe was appreciated by everyone who tasted it. 

In fact for a week I was on a spree to cook with daab malai and found the right balance that works for my type of palate. The balance of mustard, green chilies and tender coconut meat, the three crucial ingredients of this secret sauce is a distinct personal choice according to the extent you can take the pungency of mustard mixed with the heat of green chilies. The fresh daab malai (tender coconut meat) renders a unique sweetness to this dish and that’s where lies the specialty of this dish. 

Take care to ask your daab wala to chose a daab with soft but generous malai in it, if it has lesser malai just consume it as is, if the malai has turned meaty you can snack upon it as we need the firm yet jelly like malai for this recipe. If you are making daab chingri or daab paneer for a crowd you can use a mix of tender and not too tender coconut meat as that will maintain the flavour. 

Ingredients 

One whole daab (tender coconut) with generous amount of soft jelly like meat 

200 gm paneer 

2 tbsp yellow mustard 

2 cloves of garlic 

3-4 green chilies or more if you like 

1 tbsp or more mustard oil (depending on your liking of pungency)

¼ tsp of turmeric powder 

100 ml coconut milk (optional but recommended)

Equipment of choice, depending on whether you want to bake the mix or steam it

Both halves of the tender coconut if you are using them for baking 

Or a baking dish of 1 litre capacity with lid  

Or a steel dabba big enough to accommodate the mix and fit inside a pressure cooker

Or an earthen pot and 3-4 fresh tender bottle gourd leaves, to be baked in a conventional oven or a microwave oven

Procedure 

Separate the water and the malai of the daab, save the water and chop the malai in small bits.

Make a paste of mustard, garlic cloves and green chilies along with turmeric powder. Powdering the mustard seeds first and then adding some water and other ingredients helps make a smooth paste. 

Chop the paneer in small bits too.

Slit 1-2 green chilies.

Mix all the other ingredients together, along with half of the mustard oil. Add some of the coconut water to make the consistency as required. You need a mix with saucy consistency. I added coconut milk from a carton for this step every time as I can’t not drink the coconut water. I found the coconut milk made this recipe even better.

For cooking the daab paneer you can follow any* one of the following procedures.

*Transfer the mix to the emptied halves of daab, cover with aluminium foil and bake it for 25-30 minutes at 180 C. 

*Transfer the mix in an earthen pot lined with bottle gourd leaves or fresh turmeric leaves, cover wit the same leaves, fix the lid and bake for 20 minutes at 180 C.

*The earthen pot can be placed in the microwave oven and cooked at high for 5-7 minutes.

 

*Transfer the mix to a steel dabba, cover with lid, keep the dabba in a pressure cooker which has ½ cup of water in it and pressure cook till the first whistle blows. Cool the pressure cooker on its own and open the lid.

After cooking with any of the above process, open the lid and garnish with a few slit green chilies and a drizzle of the remaining mustard oil. 

Serve hot with steaming hot rice, preferably short grain rice like gobindobhog or jeerabatti. 

I was suggested by Ipshita that it is better to cook it in the daab shell to bring the rustic flavour but I found it good even when I cooked the mix in a steel container or an earthen pot lined with fresh bottle gourd leaves. This is a recipe that one can adjust according to personal choice of the cooking vessel used, but please don’t distort the golden trinity of mustard paste, daab malai and green chilies.

This daab paneer recipe will become a family favourite if you like the flavours of mustard. In this recipe the pungency of mustard is quite sublime due to the daab malai used. Please try the recipe and let me know.

some lost recipes revived at The Great Kabab Factory

I feel really glad when I see homely flavours in a five star hotel. I know most of the people go to the star hotels to have lavish meals served with pomp, something that can’t be created in home kitchens and no doubt that even I love to explore all the rich cuisines and cooking techniques both for the flavours as well as for the academic interest. 

But the most comforting meals are always the ones that revive homely comfort for me. Imagine my pleasure when I find a well made muli besan, a thick kadhi with pieces of radish in it, one of my favourite foods that I cook at home regularly. 

This is what happened when we decided to go to The Great Kabab Factory at Radisson Blu Plaza (Mahipalpur) this Sunday. They have a festival going on, showcasing some of the lost recipes introduced into their regular menu, Chef Vakil Ahmad has brought some intriguing recipes to the table this time.

Although the new dishes being showcased are not lost from the cuisines, the dishes were definitely something people have started forgetting slowly. Apart from the muli besan I mentioned, the keema stuffed karela, the kheibari murgh ke parchey and murgh kabab gorkhar made us bow to the skill and hard work of Chef Vakil’s team. 

The menu was impressive with numerous starters, the signature galouti kabab, pathiya sekiya kukkad (chicken grilled over cow dung cakes, a Patiala specialty, recreated in tandoor), silbatte ke kabab (kababs made of stone ground meat), mahi kasoondi tikka (fish tikka in mustard marinade), murgh kabab gorkhar (stuffed and roasted whole chicken), kheibari murgh ke parchey (schnitzel style chicken kabab) and some impressive vegetarian kababs like subz galouti kabab and taza phalon ki chaat. 

The main course had the signature dal panchmel and dal makhni, the delicious muli besan being the new entrant. The sakora gosht (meat curry slow cooked in earthenware) and Kallu miyan ki raan from Lucknow were done to perfection, the biryani made of seviyan was one of the attraction as this type of biryani is made rarely now. Seviyan biryani takes some skill and expertise to be done right and Chef Vakil’s team had done a wonderful job. 

The desserts included the dahi halwa from the kitchen of Sailana, gulab ki kheer and UP style malai chaap apart from TGKF signature kulfi and jalebi. 

My most favourite pick from this menu is the keema stuffed karela and besan muli as I mentioned above, the galaouti kabab has always been great at TGKF and the rotis have always made us feel indulgent. In the menu you would get the exotic foods as well as the homely comforting foods, the best of both worlds.

TGKF is a place where we take our guests who want to eat good kababs and biryani in one place, served in traditional Indian style, where the menu is fixed and the wait staff bring everything to the table insisting you to take more servings, just like it was done in wedding parties few decades ago. 

The Great Kabab Factory gives a glimpse of the traditional Indian hospitality in this aspect.

Colonial Anglo-Indian food to celebrate Independence day at J W Marriott Aerocity

We are always awestruck by the variety we have in our country in terms of food and produce, whenever we chance upon something new in a far corner of the country or even sometimes in our own backyard. The foreign cultures have influenced the cuisines of India and have added more layers of flavours on them, each one worth exploring whenever you get a chance.

So when I got to know that Bridget White Kumar is in town to curate a colonial Anglo-Indian menu at K3, the all day dining restaurant of J W Marriott Aerocity I decided to go and meet her as I have been following her work for quite some time. Bridget has authored 7 books on the subject of Anglo-Indian cuisine and has been helping many hotels and clubs to create special menus around the cuisine. 

 

She has been sharing recipes on her blog as well, a really warm and affectionate person I must add.

 

Chef Vivek Bhatt has collaborated with Bridget to bring Anglo Indian food to the capital for the first time, to celebrate Independence day week, and his team has done a wonderful job of recreating the fusion of flavours beautifully. I was there for lunch yesterday sharing the table with Bridget, Rohit Sharma, Nikhil Nair and Chef Bhatt and we ended up discussing the present day politics and how we have performed (not) as a country in the last seven decades of being free of foreign rule. We decided anonymously that Dak Bungalow Chicken comes to comfort in such a scenario as none of us are keen to join politics to bring any of the changes we want in the leadership. 

 

Food is a great tranquilizer, or equalizer too. Let's go to the table.

The Anglo-Indian food is served in a beautifully laid out buffet, the menu changes everyday for lunch and dinner but a few signature dishes are constant. I loved that the menu has not been made too extensive with dozens of dishes, one can taste and savour every single dish and come back with the flavours still teasing the memory of the palate.

The starters appeared to have jumped out of a high tea party of a memsahib, all wonderfully made. The Mushroom scramble on toast, the Lamb mince chop (Bengali style) and the Panthras were delectable, though not my kind of food, the husband would have taken several helpings of these I know. I had my eyes firmly focused on the main course that looked like homely comfort so I took care not to fill myself up with the starters. 

 

The Kedgree needs a special mention as this was the first time I was tasting an authentic kedgree, though I have mentioned it on this blog earlier. This was made of mung dal and rice, cooked perfectly so each grain was separate yet cooked well, the taste and the texture reminded me of a similar dish I have had at an Oriya friend’s place but I have forgotten the name of the dish as it has been almost 15 years to that dinner. I wonder if there is a connection between the two. The usual garnish of boiled eggs was missing as the kedgree was to be made suitable for vegetarians too, you won’t miss any garnish because there are much more flavourful food to devour. 

 

Check my main course plate here on Instagram. 

I have had many versions of the Dak Bungalow Chicken but the one served at this festival was so light and flavourful with a thin yogurt based gravy that it will be the benchmark from now. The Lamb Country Captain, the Pork Devil Fry and the Prawn Temperado were a delight to discover. 

Each one had its own identity in terms of flavours and appearance, the Lamb Country Captain felt like a light homely curry we make at home, the Pork Devil fry had green capsicum and garlic flavours, the Prawn Temperado with a pleasant caramelised onions and tomato flavour and a hint of tartness to balance.

 

A special mention to the Okra in Butter and Garlic, the vegetarian main course that I loved so much that I tried to recreate the dish today. I knew it was something the husband would love and I was right, this recipe is going to be repeated frequently all through the bhindi season. More about this in the next post. 

The desserts were the classic Trifle and a Roli Poli pudding which is a steamed jam cake so light you can easily over eat. Better take a small proration and eat small bits of it, take your time to finish if you are sensible or save some space for desserts. 

More than the food, it was a delight to meet Bridget in person. I have been connected with her on social media for a long time but was meeting her for the first time in person. She has done a lot of work in discovering and preserving the family recipes and she has been doing it ever since she took voluntary retirement from her banking career. She found her mother’s and grandmother’s recipes hand written and filed along with knitting and embroidery patterns and revived all of those classics meticulously converting the weights and measures as most of the recipes written by the women had measures written in the form of a housewife’s manual, 2 anna’s coriander leaves and 3 anna’s onion must have been difficult to convert to grams and tablespoons. Anna was a unit of currency during British period.

I admire Bridget to have done such wonderful work of documenting the recipes and bringing the flavours to us, each fusion and progression in the history of cuisine is an important link with the older history as well as the changing times I believe. Food reflects the society at so many levels, each recipe brings a new story sometimes. 

 

Bridget is here for just one week so go soon and discover these stories and flavours. You would love to meet the humble and cheerful lady behind this food too. 

how to make bhujia : recipe of karele ki kurkuri bhujia

There are a few simple things that can bring as much joy as some kurkuri bhujia served with dal chawal or khichdi. But you won't understand if you haven't had bhujia ever, you might end up thinking the hand cut potato fries are the best kind of fried veggies.

While I love the nice hand cut potato fry especially if it comes with a generous sprinkling of herbed salt, the potato fry is not my favourite. I vote for bitter gourd fry or crisp karele ki bhujia. You have to try this kerele ki bhujia to know what I mean.

The other day I was at the neighborhood salon to get my pedicure, and the lady next to my chair was talking about how the kids these days don't want to eat vegetables. The pedicurist started grinning when I asked the lady ow much vegetables the adults in her family ate, to which she admitted they eat minimal vegetables but wanted their kids to eat more. The problem starts at the root obviously.

Then I got curious what this 20 something pedicurist eats as he works almost 10 hours a day and all such boys live on their own as they have migrated to big cities for work. I asked him and he said he cooks his food twice a day and that is paratha bhujia in the morning and dal chawal bhujia or dal chawal chokha for dinner when he reaches home. I can't tell you how happy I felt to hear this.

Anyone who cooks everyday and enjoys cooking as a de-stressing activity has my heart.

It reminded me of a few lovely people on Instagram who have been asking for my bhujia recipe they see with my khichdi or dal chawal. Some of them point out that it's always either karele ki bhujia or bhindi ki bhujia with my dal chawal meals.

Yes I love my karele ki bhujia a lot. As much as I love the karele ka chokha.

Karele ki bhujia is the simplest thing to make but you need some patience as it demands slow cooking. The good thing is that it doesn't demand much chopping and there is no peeling involved. The cooking is done by just stirring the bhujia a few times while it is on lowest possible flame of your gas stove.

ingredients 

300 gm bitter gourds (karele)
2 tbsp mustard oil
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp red chili powder or a little more
1/2 tsp amchoor powder
salt to taste (1/2 tsp and little more to adjust if needed)


preparation 

Clean the gourds, remove the stalk, cut into 2 inch pieces and halve eac pice longitudinally. Then slice into thin strips of 5 mm thickness.

Heat mustard oil and tip in the karela slices along with salt. Stir to mix and spread the slices evenly in the pan so they crisp up for about 5 minutes on lowest possible flame.

Stir and arrange in an even layer again to make them brownish all over. Once you get the desired colour and crispness you add all the powdered spices, cook for a minute and take off the stove.

Serve hot with dal chawal meals or parathas and bless the bhujia. You would satart loving karela after eating this bhujia trust me.