kitchenclown

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Once upon a time in Nambol Bazaar. 

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San Nungshidak Kanghou (Beef and Mint stir fry)

I haven't been blogging for a while I know. It's usual same old excuse.....too much college work, no time to click pictures or update. Damn!!! I should start getting serious about this! Well....besides that, I have been craving for beef. I tasted this particular dish at a party and I had to get the recipe because it was sooooo good!!! This recipe belongs to one of my friend, more like a sister actually and she cooks amazing food! And yeah she shared her recipe with me. And ever since that, I have been eternally grateful to her. :)

To get started with, you'll need:

Half a kilogram of fresh beef minus the bones

One large onion

One bay leaf

Two dried red chillies

Six green chillies

Two tablespoon ginger garlic paste

Half a teaspoon cumin powder

A huge bunch of mint leaves

One teaspoon meat masala

Cooking oil around two and a half tablespoon

How to go about it:

Pressure cook the beef along with some salt and water for about three whistles. Shred the beef into little pieces once done and set aside.

Now heat a pan with enough oil and fry the bay leaf, onions, ginger-garlic paste and dried red chillies.

When the onions become done, add the cumin powder and stir in well. Then add the shredded beef and fry till they get mixed properly.

Toss in the green chillies too. And add salt.

When the beef is almost done add the mint leaves.

 Let the leaves wilt before turning off the flame.

I had it with steamed rice and lots of sambal.

#beef #mint #stir-fry #food #recipe #manipuri food

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Herbs and Tomatoes (snippets from my terrace garden in Manipur)

#herbs #terrace garden #vegetables

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A playlist of Murakami inspired music/ Music that inspired Murakami. And it played on as I waltz through my kitchen making spaghetti with meatballs.

#murakami #food music #the year of spaghetti #the wind up bird chronicle #8tracks

[kitchenclown]

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Yesterday, I thought I'd have a quiet evening to myself. Cloudy and dreary, the Night walked on and I felt like I was in a Murakami novel for at least a fraction of an hour. I found some spare spaghetti lying in the kitchen and that made me think of Toru Okada (the protagonist of Haruki Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicle). I went all out to induce the surrealism into the home-alone situation that I was in. And so I spent another evening in the kitchen with Rossini's Thieving Magpie playing in the background and cooking an all-time favourite, Spaghetti with Meatballs.

For this you'll need:

one large onion chopped

three tomatoes (to be made into a puree)

six cloves of garlic bashed up and chopped

ten sprigs of fresh oregano chopped roughly

five green chillies chopped

meatballs (ashamed to admit that I used store bought ones this time)

3/4th tablespoon of butter

one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

ordinary cheese (adjust the amount according to your taste)

spaghetti

one cup of water

salt to taste

How to go about it :

- Chop the onion.

- Bash the garlic cloves with the broad side of your knife. Chop them up roughly and untidily.

- Chop the oregano and the green chillies too.

- Cut the tomatoes into quarters.

- Use a food processor to destroy the living daylights out of them into a puree.

- Fry the meatballs in a broad pan in some oil. (I used lard, half a teaspoon, to fry the meatballs. You have to keep adjusting the flame from high to low, so that the meatballs don't get burnt). Set aside after you're done frying.

- Now in a pan, heat the olive oil and butter (using olive oil saves the butter from getting burnt).

- Throw in the garlic cloves and fry till they become golden brown.

- Now add the chopped onions and fry till golden brown.

- Add half the chopped oreganos and the entire green chillies. Mix them properly with the rest.

- Next, pour the tomato puree along with salt. Add the water and the rest of the oreganos. Let it boil and reduce. 

- Grate some cheese onto the sauce when it has reduced enough. Stir it in properly. Add the meatballs to the sauce and mix.

- Now in a pot, boil some water (around 3/4th of the pot) along with salt. Add the spaghetti to the boiling water. Make sure the water is boiling when you add the spaghetti or else the spaghetti will be sticky and ugly. Keep a close eye on the spaghetti adjusting the flame from time to time (boiling water may spill over otherwise). Also keep checking the spaghetti if it's cooked or not. Once it's cooked, drain the water out immediately with the help of a strainer.  

- Serve on a nice plate and add the sauce on top. You may garnish with fresh basil leaves, but I prefer mint, therefore mint.

Enjoy with some jazz music. 

#easy #easy cooking #food #murakami #recipe #spaghetti #spaghetti and meatballs #the year of spaghetti #wind up bird chronicles

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Life gets better with butter

#absurd #advertisement #butter #humour

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Noodle Soup

This is the story of a broken cup, broken bowl and noodle soup. Yesterday, excited as I was on the prospect of a weekend despite the gloomy Dementor-ish weather in Bangalore, I decided to make noodle soup for me and my boyfriend. College ended at 1 o'clock in the afternoon with a light drizzle and heavy wind. Like two happy kids, we went to MG Road (Foodworld Gourmet) to buy ingredients for the dish and also to buy Japanese rice (although it was out of stock). And as usual I went insane, bedazzled by the array of wonderful vegetables and fish and meat and fruits and what not. But before hitting foodworld gourmet, we found a lovely crockery store called Indiana Crockery. And wonder oh wonder.....it has lovely cups, plates, wooden spoons, chopsticks, baking utensils, etc. So I indulged and bought 2 cups, 2 bowls, 2 wooden spoons, a chopstick, a wooden chopping board, a baking dish and one bowl. And it all came up to Rupees 510! Rejoice!!

But tragedy strikes at Bangalore Ham Shop. It so happened that while in the midst of paying the butcher and the admiring the perfect pork ribs....we managed to slip in a regrettable moment of utter clumsiness and Horror Horror!!! We accidentally dropped the bag which contains the precious cups and bowls. Yes, one cup broke and one bowl is martyred. Rest in Peace. 

Of course I tried my luck at blaming my boyfriend for his clumsiness and the whole argument continued half-way home. The blame game went on for ages....almost like petty politicians. But then, the boyfriend decided to close the matter by buying me cheese and two cups of delicious sweetened yogurt from a milk parlour at National Dairy Research Institute. I admit I am a sell-out when it comes to food. Cheese rewires my moodiness into excessive joy. 

So yes, we did make noodle soup and watched a good movie, all under a cold cloudy Bangalore sky.

This recipe originally belongs to my sister, but I have tweaked it a bit according to my taste.

Here's the recipe.

You'll need:

one large onion diced

four green chillies (halved)

two ngaari (fermented fish)

a small bowl of ngaphak (roasted fish)

four leaves of cabbage (torn roughly)

half inch ginger chopped

a handful of chives chopped

noodles

two tablespoons of mustard oil 

water

salt to taste

How to go about it:

-Dice the onions

- Cut the green chillies into halves, like this.

- Roast the ngaari on the gas so that it develops a smoky flavour.

- Set aside the ngaphak and ngaari together in a bowl.

- Tear the cabbage leaves by hand into small pieces and soak them in water after washing them thoroughly.

- Chop up the ginger.

- Aslo roughly chop the chives and set aside.

- Now in a pot, heat the oil. When it starts smoking add the ngaari and onions. Fry them on a medium heat till the onions becomes golden brown.

- Add the ngaphak and green chillies to the pot. Fry them for some time.

- Now throw in the cabbage leaves.

- And stir in till the leaves get slightly burnt.

- Add salt to the vegetables.

- Now add water. You could add around 4 cups of water and add some more later as you have to keep the flame at high and so the water will reduce. Throw in the chives and ginger. Let it boil for some time.

- Add the noodles. The quantity depends on how much noodles-to-soup ratio you want it to be. So you can add just a handful or noodles or an entire packet of it.

- Mix in the noodles with the soup well. Let it boil till the noodles get cooked.

And yes, serve.

It was very fulfilling.

#food #recipe #noodle soup #ngaphak #ngari #manipuri #easy #easy cooking

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Paneer Subzi

So I am back to blogging. Actually I thought of making kimbap today but ended up being utterly drained of copious iotas of energy. Now that I think of it, I was hyper in college, thanks to three cups of coffee in a span of one hour. And yes, because of exhaustion, I dilly-dallied going to Foodworld Gourmet in MG Road to buy the Japanese rice required for making kimbap. Wonder Oh Wonder.....I thought of all the possible simple dishes that I could think of making tonight. Baingan Bharta? Nah....that involves going down the road to buy eggplant and then of course roasting it on the gas-stove. Finally I found some paneer (cottage cheese) lying in the fridge, so I decided to make this paneer subzi. The recipe actually belongs to my roommate's household back in Delhi. She always gets this paneer subzi with good ol' paranthas whenever she makes a trip back home. Of course I've made some of my own adjustments to the recipe. 

Here it goes,

You'll need:

one onion

one tomato

three green chillies

100 gms of paneer (cottage cheese)

a pinch of asafoetida

half a teaspoon of coriander powder

half a teaspoon of garam masala

half a teaspoon of red chilli powder

oil for frying

salt to taste

How to go about it:

- Heat the oil and add the pinch of asafoetida first. Add the chopped onions.

- Fry the onions till golden brown.

- Add the tomatoes and the green chillies. After they become a little soft, add coriander powder, red chilli powder and salt. Mix well with the vegetables.

- Now add the paneer.

- Mix it properly so that the flavours seep in. Fry it for some time.

- Add half a cup of water to the pan.

- Let the water boil and evaporate.

- Stir the paneer and make sure the all the water evaporates. Finally add the garam masala.

- Serve with some mint leaves and have it with hot chapatis. 

#food #paneer #cottage cheese #recipe #easy cooking #indian food

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Look What I Found....

This photo was taken a year back for a Manipuri festival called Cheiraoba (which is more or less like a Manipuri New Year) usually held in spring. On this day we cook enormous amounts of food and exchange it with our neighbours. And after eating a hearty meal, we set off to climb the nearest hill.The Elders say it's for good luck, but i guess it's to improve digestion. This catfish was prepared, chopped and cooked with herbs...transformed into a dish called sareng-thongba. By the way...did you notice my muscles/biceps while holding up the fish?? Hell yeah!! 

#giant catfish #cheiraoba #manipur #sareng-thongba

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All about Crabs!

I am not doing a recipe post for this....well at least for now. So yes, Kampot Pepper Crab it was for dinner last night. I hadn't had crabs for a long time......and yesterday being a Saturday I thought of buying some blue crabs to cook this dish. And then my boyfriend and I ended up roaming around Brigade Road looking for leeks...for the dish. Found it in Nilgiris.....I love that store, they have amazing stock of all things wonderful...like lemongrass, chives and nice lil' muffin cups. 

Did I mention Anthony Bourdain inspired me to cook this dish? It so happens that some days back I was ODing on 'No Reservations' and there was this episode on Cambodia and he was gorging on Kampot Pepper Crabs on the beach....being his usual casual self....talking about the Khmer Rouge and all things commie! 

And I, hungry as Grizzly bear on Sahara Desert, couldn't wait to cook the crabs....and yes i forgot to take pictures.....you know...the whole step-by-step meticulous detailing that is required of a food blogger. 

Much can be said about the beauty of the crab meat, especially the ones in the claw. My boyfriend has the philosophy of 'no pain, no gain' when it comes to crab meat. You have to look claw-ward for the best meat, it does take a lot of crunching and cracking bones....but oh the sweetest meat is found in that obscure corner of the once alive but now delectable crab. 

Last night we ate like savages, we indulged in pre-historic culinary habits of eating on a newspaper.....bare hands and silence (conversations are bad for your stomach). After destroying the living daylights out of the once beautifully presentable Kampot Pepper Crabs......we rolled the remains of the crustaceans in the newspaper and flung it to this empty plot of land (where other Bangaloreans fling garbage). See we are all for sharing with the creatures that live in the vicinity....there's stray dogs, cats, rodents, bandicoots (bigger than cats) and chickens.

But today.....as we were enjoying the view (hey it's not really bad...that empty plot of land has lots of trees....and by trees I do not refer only to coconut trees), we saw the most random creatures devouring the crabs. To add to the list of creatures in the plot, there came an army of ducks.....in a file...dutiful, purposely and disciplined....they polished the crabs (or whatever remains of them). What I am really surprised about is - where the fuck did they came from??? Surreal Oh So Surreal......watching a file of ducks....quacking and waddling through the streets of Koramangala....."Crab Ahoy!"....the captain of the Duck Army must have signalled. And they went back to wherever they belonged....neatly in a line. Such discipline....they should definitely join the Indian Army. I'm sure they can do 150 push-ups after eating those crabs. 

Sharing is caring. From me to ducks. :P

#food #blue crabs #kampot pepper crabs #cambodian

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Brownie Banana Cheesecake

Well...yeah...i haven't been blogging for quite some time....thanks to a week of harrowing workload ala Christ University style. An article on Alienation for Indian Literature, an exhibition on Post Colonial Literature, Advertisement assignment, Abnormal Psychology test and a presentation on censorship in India. Phew!!! and right when i thought the weekend would be brilliant......i ended up wallowing in self-pity and emotional breakdown thanks to a bottle of Port Wine which i finished entirely by myself. 

So yeah.....i woke up with a crazy migraine and the ubiquitous hangover. I forced myself to walk down the Delicatessen store.....bought mascarpone cheese, bananas and some stuff for making brownies. and i decided to make brownies...topped with mascarpone and bananas....

and as they say....when the going gets tough...the tough gets going....my brownies were a disaster.....my brownies got burnt. yaay! all hail culinary disaster!!

disheartened and almost at the brink of having a panic attack...i decided to salvage the brownies.....i scraped out the unburnt part and decided to make brownie based cheesecake instead. here's how it follows.....

for the brownies you'll need:

flour - 140gms

plain chocolates - 100gms

butter - 115gms

cocoa - 2 tablespoon

caster sugar - 250 gms

eggs - 2 large

vanilla essence - 1 teaspoon

salt - a pinch

for the cheesecake part you'll need:

mascarpone cheese - 150 gms

fresh cream - 2 tablespoon

caster sugar - 2 tablespoon

banana - 1 ripe

so here's how it goes:

melt the chocolates and butter in a slow simmering pan filled with water. stir occasionally.

add the eggs (one by one), vanilla essence and caster sugar to the chocolate mixture and stir well.

sift in the flour and cocoa powder into this mixture and mix them properly.

the batter will look like this.

grease a baking tray (in my case i made the mistake of using round pan which was way too big in diameter). bake it for around 20 minutes on a preheated oven (180 degrees celsisus). 

for the cheesecake part, whip the mascarpone, fresh cream and caster sugar together till it becomes soft and oh so fluffy!

that's good ol' mascarpone cheese.....aah the beauty of it!!!

yeah so....the brownies got burnt....and i tried to salvage it by scraping out the good part and making them into cheesecake base.

top the base with dollops of the cheese cream mixture and line it with a layer of bananas. put it in the freezer for at least 3 hours to set it.

this is how my cheesecake turned out to be. not bad....except for the shape. 

#food #recipe #bananas #cheesecake #disaster #salvaged #mascarpone

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Rogan Josh

I just had to call up my dad in the morning. Of late i had been planning on cooking Rogan Josh, a type of mutton curry cooked with indian spices. My dad cooks the most excellent Rogan Josh of all. Once when i was in sixth grade i ate 13 rotis with his mutton curry. Luckily my digestion is pretty good so i didn't fall sick or throw up after eating till the brim of my food pipe. :P 

Since it's Eid, mutton was fresh and abundant....although extremely expensive. I have never cooked mutton in my life. I have a very interesting relationship with mutton. It's my first meat (as in the four-legged kind) and i ate it by accident. i thought it was chicken( when i was a small kid i ate only chicken, eggs and fish). And that day my dad took me for a family dinner at one of his colleagues' house (these bureaucrats have lovely cooks i must say). There happened to a very interesting looking round food stuck on tooth-picks. And i ate it. And i was thrilled with the flavours.....I ask my dad what it was. And horror...oh horror!! It was mutton. I contemplated bawling out....but then it was socially inappropriate. So i decided to eat mutton. Hey, it was delicious....why make the fuss!! Oh and the round finger food stuck on tooth-picks was actually kababs. :)

Now back to the Rogan Josh.

You'll need:

half a kg of mutton

two large onions ground into a paste

one tomato made into a paste as well

one black cardamom (crushed)

2 cloves

half inch sliver of cinnamon bark

one bay leaf

chilli powder

two tablespoon of unsweetened yogurt

cooking oil

salt to taste

how to go about it:

Heat a pressure cooker and pour three tablespoon of oil. When the oil is hot, fry all the spices together.

Add the onion paste and stir it in till golden brown.

It'll start smelling really good. Next we add the tomato paste. Add salt and chilli powder. Stir..stir...stir. Now add the mutton and mix them well so that the flavours seep in properly. Pour one and a half cups of water. Close the lid of the pressure cooker. Wait for it to whistle thrice. Let the steam out and open the lid and add the beaten yogurt. Let the dish boil for 30 minutes on low flame. You'll have to wait for the gravy to reduce to one third of the original. And it is done.

Garnish with coriander leaves. Goes well with roomali roti. 

#food #rogan josh #mutton #meat #recipe

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Grilled Pork in Japanese Spices - Last night's dinner. 

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Cucumber and Mint Salad

So yesterday we had cucumber mint salad. We needed something refreshing and green. Yeah it's annoying when you see people going ga-ga over plastic food like KFC chicken and Dominoes Pizza. Call it reactionist or whatever....but then we are what we eat. And I'd rather be fresh and minty rather than oozing with oil from KFC chicken. I also think Oreos are overrated. 

For this salad you'll need :

one medium sized cucumber (peeled or otherwise, it's up to you)

a handful bunch of mint leaves

half a lemon

four fresh green chillies chopped

a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

one and half  teaspoon of chaat masala

salt to taste

Here's how we go about it :

Cut the ends of the cucumber and rub them to remove the bitterness. The ends will start foaming as you rub.

Peel the cucumber and chop it up into small cubes.

Chop green chillies 

And the mint too.

Now toss them all together with the extra virgin olive oil, salt and squeeze the juice of the half lemon.

Don't forget to add the chaat masala. It will transform the salad. It lends a very Indian street food zing to it.

#chaat masala #cucumber #food #fresh #mint #salad #recipe

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Easy Breezy Sausages Stir-fried

This is one of the easiest dish when you feel lazy but you need something to go with your beer. And it goes swimmingly well with beans and some salad. 

You'll need :

five sausages

one large onion (cut into big pieces)

four green chillies (halved)

a tablespoon of worcestershire sauce

one teaspoon of dried thyme

salt to taste

one and half tablespoon of cooking oil

Cut the sausages diagonally (after they are thawed, if frozen). Cut the onions into large pieces (quarter them), slit the green chillies into halves.  Now heat a pan with some cooking oil, add the onions and dried thyme. Throw in the green chillies and sausages. Fry them till the sausages start browning a bit. Add the worcestershire sauce and salt. And it is ready to serve. 

Told ya it's easy!

[note: goes well with cheap beer - UB Export recommended]

#easy cooking #food #sausages #stir fry #recipe