Moroccan Dinner

Given the super-sultry + roasty weather in Delhi currently, eating has become a chore. Thinking of something that will actually tantalise the tastebuds and coax everyone into eating a hearty meal is quite difficult. But the other day when rootling for snacks, I came across an unopened pack of couscous and immediately flashed back to some couscous dinners in summers past, which had been delicious and popular with the family (read kids, the husband stops counting after you have more than one kid  - at least in these matters!). I happened to lug Kid number three to the doctor, and the doctor’s office is in easy reach of my favourite sabzi mandi, so naturally I made a beeline for it, and picked up loads of veggies, including celery and parsley, feeling like seeing some flecks of green among the grains of couscous.

I wanted to make an accompaniment that had lots of veggies and remembered seeing a recipe for Moroccan 7 vegetable stew in my friend Lulu’s blog so went across and took a look at it. The recipe also called for harissa, one of my favourite condiments, so was a cinch.

Couscous ( for 2-3 people)

Easy-peasy. Boil ¼ liter of water with 1 tsp oil and salt to taste for 250 grams of couscous. When it comes to a rolling boil, drop in the couscous and turn off the heat. Wait for 2-3 minutes and turn heat on to the lowest. Add one or two knobs of butter ( hazelnut-sized) and fluff up the couscous with a fork until the butter has melted and the couscous is fluffy and dry. Add in your choice of mixed herbs – I added parsley, coriander leaves, mint and chives – and mix well. You can also add in a few pomegranate berries for a fresh, sweet pop.

Harissa
10 dried chillies
5-6 pieces of garlic, peeled
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp caraway seeds ( shahjeera) – optional, I’ve never used them
3 tbsp roasted coriander seeds or 2 tbsp coriander powder
1 peeled tomato, chopped
Handful fresh coriander
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt to taste
Chilli powder to taste

Soak dried red chillies in hot water for an hour, until they become soft. Use Kashmiri chillies or Karnataka Byadgi chillies for the least pungency and best colour – if experimenting with other chillies, add them slowly to the harissa, as they can be unexpectedly potent. My tongue is still blistered from yesterday’s first batch! Puree together with all the other ingredients except the olive oil. When purred to a smooth consistency, add the olive oil. It can be stored in a fridge for 3 weeks – if it lasts that long. I find it addictive and it never lasts more than a couple of days.

Moroccan stew
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
2 onions, julienned
3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ yellow bell pepper
½ red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
Half cup shelled peas
4-5 medium sized potatoes
2 carrots
200 gms pumpkin
28 oz tomato chunks ( I used a tin to make life easy)( approx 1 cup)
2.5 cups veg stock ( just add a stock cube to the water)
Half cup chick peas, boiled
Handful of raisins

1 bay leaf

2-3 saffron strands

2 tbsp olive oil ( not extra virgin!)

Salt to taste

Cut all the veggies into half inch dice. Saute the potatoes in the heated oil until golden brown and keep aside. To the same oil, add the celery, onions and garlic, green bell peppers and bay leaf and cook on medium heat until the onions soften. Add the tomatoes and the saffron as well as the carrots and the stock and let simmer for ten minutes. Then add in the rest of the veggies including the potatoes, and the salt and cook, covered, until the veggies are done. Add the boiled chickpeas and raisins just before serving.

Serve the couscous with the stew on the side, accompanied by harissa so everyone can add as much harissa as their spice-meter enjoys. You can also squeeze a bit of fresh lemon on the couscous to make it taste even more fresh and light, just before serving.

PS. You can add other veggies to the stew - cauliflower, broccoli, beans...

The best scrambled eggs, ever!!!

I thought I had it down pat. The perfect, fluffy, light and delicious scrambled eggs. But no, as always in cooking, there was more to learn. Watching Junior Masterchef Australia, I heard one of the young cooks mention olive oil. Another took out cream from the oantry as an essential ingredient. And one of the judges talked about making scrambled eggs on an almost cold pan, stirring desultorily. Hmm, I ruminated, and promptly put my thoughts to the test yesterday at breakfast. Apart from missing snipped chives, these are, honestly, hand-on-my-heart, the very best scrambled eggs I have ever tasted. Fluffy, light, buttery and with that delicious flavouring of olive oil...

Ingredients:
5 eggs ( for 5 ppl) - or more if you want to be generous
Freshly ground pepper - can not stress this enough!!!
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tbsp good quality extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup cream
Salt to taste

Break the eggs into a bowl and lightly stir until the eggs and yolk are well mixed, but don't beat the eggs. Lay the pat of butter on the saucepan and turn the stove on low. Add the olive oil. In 2-3 seconds, add in the mixed eggs. Let them cook on the lowest possible flame. As you see the eggs coming together, stir gently with a wooden spoon, or if you want to show off, shake the pan from side to side. Keep doing this occasionally until you see more solid than liquid in the pan - it can take up to 5-7 minutes, so be patient. Add in the cream and switch off the heat. Add salt and mix; top with pepper. ( I like my scrambled eggs to be solid but not hard so I added the cream a little bit later).

World Food Week yet again

Many years ago, before I entered the time-sucking world of parenthood or the convenient zone of maids cooking for one, I used to do all the cooking. And as usual bored of anything routine, I used to do one week of pan-Indian cuisine, i.e. cuisine from different states of India every day for a week, and one week of world food – food from different countries every day of the week. Those bit the dust along with cooking as a daily activity with the arrival of Chubbocks, but he is turning out to be quite the gourmet. He loves trying out different types of food, will try to guess the ingredients in various dishes and point out interesting recipes he spots here and there. In fact, he spotted a cheesecake pie recipe in one of his storybooks from school and we ended up making it – super simple and delicious! He’s my partner in watching Masterchef Australia and drooling at the amazing food they dish up. So this summer, one of my resolutions was to try and teach him to cook a few dishes. I have to say, this has been a pretty sad effort so far, what with my travel and overload of work and so on, but we have managed to try one or two things together.


Another big issue in my house is the appetite of Puddi, in particular. She gets bored of food and can take an hour or two to eat a piece of toast. Plus the kids do get bored of a steady diet of daal-chawal which is what happens when I don’t have time to cook up anything more interesting and leave it to the maids to decide the menu. While usually tasty, it does get very routine and boring, even for me. So I hit upon a solution – I asked Chubbocks and Puddi to create the menu, starting with breakfast, then lunch and dinner. We’ve been doing this for about 4 weeks now, give or take a few slips due to travel or work. We decide upon a week’s worth of food at the beginning of the week, and that way they don’t get to protest at whatever’s dished out. We do keep it a little flexible so we can move things around if need be, from one day to the next. But it really helps everyone in being more organized – the maid knows what has to be ready for the next day’s breakfast in advance, I know what veggies to shop for and therefore don’t end up greedily buying up everything in sight at the veggie shop as I used to, and the kids get to enjoy their favourites and quite a bit of variety. What’s interesting is that I find them naturally turning to suggest daal chawal or rice and raita after a day of more exotic fare. I’ve also started taking the kids veg and grocery shopping with me so they understand how to pick out veggies and fruit and how not to go overboard at Spencers .

This week we ended up with a menu that resembled world food week all over again. On a day when we had rajma chawal for lunch, we decided to put the rajma to good use as stuffing for veg tacos, with guacamole, tomato salsa and mango salsa on the side. Then we had noodles on the menu on Tuesday. As it turned out, we had gone grocery shopping on Monday and I spotted Pad Thai noodles at Spencer’s so I decided we should do that with a curry sauce, instead of the usual Maggi + soy sauce + veggies. I also spotted rice pancakes and decided we could do a nice little starter with those.

This is what our meal looked like:

Rice wrappers

Ingredients:
Bean sprouts – 1 handful
Spring onions – 2 or 3, diced small
Half a Cabbage – shredded and steamed ( I was lazy/ creative – used up south Indian style cabbage sabzi left over from the previous day)
Peas – ½ cup, steamed if not soft and ripe

Mix the filling ingredients together. Put each sheet of rice pancake into hot water and immerse for about 10-15 seconds. Pull out and spread onto a sheet of aluminum foil. Put one tbsp of the filling in the middle. Wrap the long ends of the pancake over the filling, one over the other and then wrap up the short ends of the wrapper to seal in the filling. If you like deep-frying, go ahead and deep-fry the parcel; else serve with sweet-chilly sauce from Thailand.

Other fillings we tried out:

Math dal left over from the previous day, with some spring onions and Bikaneri Bhujia sprinkled on top

Basic barfi, heated in a microwave

Pad Thai Noodles with Curry Sauce ( a bit like Khow Suey – recipe from Tarla Dalal’s Thai cooking book)

Pop the noodles into a big bowl of cold water and let them sit for about 20 minutes until translucent and soft.
Steam cook 2-3 cups of assorted veggies – broccoli, baby corn, peas, corn, red and yellow peppers, carrots, beans…

For the curry sauce:
1 cup coconut milk
½ cup roasted peanuts
1 small onion, chopped fine
4 pieces garlic, chopped fine
1 tbsp red curry paste
Sugar and salt to taste
1 tbsp oil

Smash up the roasted peanuts until fine but not powdered.
In 1 tbsp oil, put the onions and garlic to cook until translucent. Add the red curry paste, coconut milk and roasted peanuts and simmer for 10 minutes.
To serve, arrange the noodles in the center of the dish, with the steamed veggies all around. Garnish with some bean sprouts. Serve the curry on the side.

Restaurant Review - Diva Piccola

I love Diva - I think the food is great, even though the restaurant is a bit out of our way and we therefore only manage to go there once or twice a year. So yesterday when my colleague and I decided to work out of Hauz Khas Village, trying out Diva Piccola was a natch.

It's on the main street of Hauz Khas Village, but one floor up, so to start with we struggled to find it. We had landed up there at 11:30 am, whereas the cafe opens only at 12 noon, so the first waiter to come up to us turned us away. We were almost out the door, when a second one bustled up and promptly asked us to sit, specifying that food could only be ordered after 12, but we could get something to drink.

Heaving a sigh of relief, we sat and began working away on our laptops - loads of work to get through, fortified with the delicious chocolate milkshare. The cafe has a relaxed ambience, nothing fancy, with comfortable leather-upholstered sofas and large windows letting in natural light, overlooking the main street of Hauz Khas Village. It's the kind of place that makes you feel like hanging out over a lazy lunch.

At noon precisely, the smiley waiter came up with the food menu. We decided to order a pizza (Ortolano - with aubergines and tomatoes) and a pasta ( angelhair with garlic and parsley). With our laptops spread out, our ubiquitous cellphones and the glasses of milkshake and water, the table was pretty packed. That's when the said waiter turned up with a suggestion that we could move to a larger table, by the window. We looked out onto the eclectic Hauz Khas scene as we rather quickly and greedily stuffed faces with the pizza - delicious, absolutely, super moist yet crisp - and the pasta which reminded me of vermicelli upma, and now has me thinking what else I could do with vermicelli a la pasta recipes. We finished off the meal with a cappucino each, to keep us awake through the client meeting to follow, and left, hugely satisfied.

Of course the food and the ambience were great. But what made the experience fabulous was the service - understanding of consumer's needs, flexible and oh-so-prompt, whether it was refilling our water glasses, clearing the table or bringing the bill. Truly outstanding.

Many Months later...

Have been a lazy, lazy blogger...but then you know that by now. However, thankfully I have not been a lazy, lazy cook. Here are some of the more interesting food innovations I've come up with over the past few months:

1. Pasta sauce inspired by Baingan ka bharta

I loove Baingan, or aubergines. And I love the way that my cook makes Baingan ka bharta - she slowcooks the onions until they become almost caramelized, and that gives the Bharta a wonderful sweetish taste that sings well with the taste of smoked Baingan. Anyway, as I was greedily scoffing it one evening at dinner, I thought - what better than to combine the earthy flavours of this with pasta? And thus, a culinary star was born.

I didn't want to over-tip the Indianness of flavours, so I steered away from the spice rack I would have beelined for, for a Bharta. I used freshly cut basil from my garden.

I thought the smoked baingan would look less attractive served over a pasta, so I diced it up finely and slow-cooked it in vegetable oil until it was melty-soft. The onions and tomatoes were also cut and cooked the same way. I added salt to taste, a dash of olive oil and a generous grating of parmesan, topped it off with the aforementioned basil and served it over farfalle. Delicious. But next time, I'm going to try it with smoked aubergine and see which ones lives up to my culinary dream better.

2. Cheesecake pie

Chubbocks read this recipe in a storybook and wanted to try it out. one of my objectives for this sumemr is to teach him to cook, so I thought this would be a good, easy one to start with. It was easy-peasy, looked professional and tasted fab - definitely a keeper for when I have guests over.

Ingredients:
1 pack of Philadelphia cream cheese ( about 200 gms)
1 carton of lowfat cream ( 200 ml)
Honey to taste
Vanilla - 1 tsp
15 biscuits - depending on size. Use Digestives for better texture.
100 gms white butter, softened
About 20 strawberries, cut into halves, and assorted berries (canned will do)

Put the biscuits into a ziplock bag. Take your rolling pin out and bash them about - a great stressbuster too - but don't crush them too fine into powder. Add the softened butter and make it into a dough. Spread it out with your fingers to fit the bottom of a 9" diameter nonstick pie pan and park the pan into a cold fridge for a couple of hours, till the crust sets.

Meanwhile, put the cream cheese and the cream into a mixing bowl. Add the vanilla and the honey and beat into a smooth paste, but be careful not to overdo it, else the cream will turn into butter!!! Spread it out on top of the crust and put it away to chill.

Just before serving, top with the cut strawberries and the mixed berries. Add a dash of finely cut basil if you like.

3. Eggs and beans

Yes, not your usual combo, right? But anyway, I have to eat a lot of eggs on my diet, and am always looking for ways to make it fun. So I thought I'd experiment with Szechuan green beans topped with Chinese fried eggs, and whaddaya know, it worked!

Szechuan green beans - Top and tail fresh green beans, stir fry until somewhat soft on high heat in sesame oil, along with diced onions and finely chopped green chillies. Add a dash of soy sauce when done.

Chinese eggs - Fry eggs on medium heat in a dash of sesame oil. Add finely chopped fiery green chillies and finely chopped coriander leaves while the egg is still cooking, adda  dash of soy and leave until the egg is firm.

Top beans with eggs. Enjoy!

4. Raita/ dip with aubergine chips

Tastes great with any pulao/ chips/ crudites...

Take a couple of small aubergines and slice them really, really thin ( 1 mm). Deep fry them in oil until firm - they taste delicious, BTW.

Beat a cup of homemade yoghurt with a couple of minced garlic cloves and salt to taste. Decorate with the fried aubergines just before serving.

Dilli delicacies

Last week I finally managed a wishlist item and went to Chandni Chowk with friends, by the Metro, much the sanest way to get there. I hadn't been back since I lived in the Red Fort during my first year of college, so Chandni Chowk certainly looked very different from what I remembered. We found our way to Dariba Kalan, passing vendors selling yummy-looking guavas and vegetable sellers who had beautifully packed mushrooms, broccoli and baby corn side by side with cholia and other purely desi veggies.

I spotted a cart selling Daulat ki Chaat as soon as we hit Dariba Kalan, and I was thrilled. I had been reading about this winter delicacy for years! Daulat ki chaat sounds like the kind of thing you'd expect indulgent nawabs to have invented - the froth is whipped off of boiling milk and left out to cool under the stars overnight, so the early morning dew soaks into it and helps it set. This is then whipped up with a few rose petals, slivers of khoya, bhoora and saffron to form an ethereal mouthful, like early morning clouds of a hopeful dawn, tinged with the red-gold of the sun. It dissolves on the tongue in seconds, leaving behind the merest hint of its grace to tantalise your tastebuds.

Once we'd indulged in that and some jewellery shopping in tiny shops along Dariba Kalan, we headed for Parathe wali Gali. One of my friends had recommended that we go to the third shop in the lane. Sadly, it's not much of a Parathewali gali anymore, and the third shop down was the only one to be offering the said Parathas. They had all kinds, though - karela, bhindi, mirchi, matar, khoya, kela etc along with the more traditional aloo, gobhi, mooli.

We decided to be adventurous and only go for the exotica - starting with Karela, mirchi and papad, then moving on to malai, matar and so on. The meal consists of kaddu ki sabzi, tari wale aloo, sukhey aloo and gur-imli ki chutney with bananas along with the assortment of parathas. As it turned out, the one traditional one we ordered - the mooli one- was a big letdown in erms of flavour, but all the others were fabulous, leaving me dreaming up combinations of my own to try out at home. Though the parathas were deep-fried, they weren't heavy. Four of us ate about 9 of the parathas, washed down with Pepsi but didn't feel weighted down by the meal when we left.

Highly recommended: Papad, mirchi, kaju parathas; kela paratha for dessert. Do carry tissues/ wet wipes and if you're particular, some sanitizer.

Experiments with food

Watching Masterchef Australia and then Masterchef USA, if you're at all a foodie and someone who enjoys cooking, it's hard not to get inspired and think about plating and flavours and experiments...so I've been back in the kitchen a bit lately, stirring away. And here's what I came up with - a cheesy farfalle with broccoli, snowpeas and peas - a hit with the children, fried Borek stuffed with spiced apples, Szechuan green beans topped with Chinese fried eggs...and hopefully more to come.

There are no pictures of the Farfalle or the Borek - they vanished too quickly. Hopefully someday soon, though, I will put up pictures of the green beans. Meanwhile, recipes:

Farfalle
I cook about a cup dry farfalle per head
1 cup shelled peas, for 6 people
Two handsful snowpeas
2 cups broccoli
1 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tbsp chili flakes and dried oregano
Grated parmesan - 1 cup
Any other cheese - 1/2 cup
6 tbsp plain allpurpose flour
1.5 cups skimmed milk
Salt and pepper to taste

Put about a liter and a half of water on to boil with about 1 tbsp salt and a few drops of olive oil in it. Once it comes to a rolling boil, add in the farfalle and let cook, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is al dente - you should be able to slide a fork through the pasta but it should hold the fork firmly. Drain out the water and put the pasta back in the pan; top with a dash of olive oil and stir so the pasta is coated lightly with the oil - that keeps it from becoming an unappealing lump.

Meanwhile, steam the broccoli and the snowpeas. Boil the peas until soft and keep aside. Put the olive oil on to heat ( not extra virgin, just plain); when hot, add in the garlic, oregano and chili flakes; toss in the steamed broccoli and snowpeas and stir for a couple of minutes on high heat and remove.

Put the milk on to heat in a saucepan on low heat. Slowly add in the flour, tbsp by tbsp, whisking away so it gets nicely absorbed and doesn't form lumps. Add in the half cup of cheese - we had blue cheese lying around so I used that - and whisk until fully dissolve. Assemble the farfalle - add the cheese sauce to the pasta, toss in the veggies, top with grated parmesan and pepper; taste to check the salt is ok and serve with a smile :)