Chili Mustard Chicken

Chili Mustard Chicken 

Meeting the right kind of people makes you confident, it makes you strive for betterment and you learn so much more than you had expected to. Meeting the wrong kind of people can have the exact opposite effect. The right kind of people have indirectly inspired me to start my own sourdough starter , open up my mind, experiment and be happy.

I blog because thats the way I express myself. I try to hold on to the fleeting moments of joy and pen them down, most of the times I fail but the strange thing is every time I haphazardly look up a post written long ago I remember every moment of the day, my feelings what led me to write the post.

During my initial days of blogging I was stunned with what I had experienced. A world where photographs rule over the very essence of food. Dont get me wrong I love good photographs but this insane obsession with photographing over learning about food made me feel alone till I met the right group of people whose interest in food transcends beyond fabulous photographs. Some of them take beautiful photographs but the main subject is all about food.

I had , well I still have a basic point and shoot camera which my husband forced me to buy and recently I cannot even find its chord to download the photographs to my computer.

Anyway the joys of seeing that my 2 month old neglected starter is alive completely makes up for the loss of the cord.

So I made a caramelized onion and black pepper sourdough bread. I am  a novice when it comes to sourdough bread so if you want to make your own sourdough bread I suggest you look up the internet. There are plenty of posts which would guide you in the right direction.

Then I thought I needed something to go with my bread. Ideally I would have preferred a dry spicy mutton dish but since we had mutton just last Saturday I went with what I call a mild fiery mustard chili chicken.

Its one of the most basic recipes, minimum ingredients and a quick fix. Where did I learn it, ah well nowhere it draws heavily from the Bengali style of cooking


Anyway it serves 2


You need :-
450gm chicken chopped in medium sized pieces  (preferably thing and leg pieces )
2 to 3 tbsp yellow mustard seeds
10 to 12 green chili (the hot variant is what I used)
A pinch of black cumin seeds aka nigella seeds
Salt as per taste
2 tbsp mustard oil

Make a smooth paste of mustard and green chili with water  .Heat the mustard oil, when the foam appears add the nigella seeds and when they splutter add the chicken and seal the juices and lower heat. Strain the mustard and chili mixture and add it tot he chicken. The best way is to add a bit of water and extract all of it . Straining is a must else the gravy turns bitter. Simmer on lowest heat possible for 10 minutes and serve with hot steaming rice or in my case some rustic homemade sourdough caramelized sourdough bread.

Chocolate Ganache Cake

Chocolate Ganache Cake 

In the past few months every time I sit down to write a post I inevitably end up questioning myself if its worth it to blog than do something else. The last time I sat down I was in one of the most beautiful towns that I have ever been in my life. A quaint little University town in the Western Cape of South Africa but then I looked out the glass window and I wanted to take a long walk and I did exactly that.

Frankly speaking in a world where photograph trumps everything else in the world of blogging at times I feel a bit discouraged to blog. Truth is I cook and bake. I cannot feign interest in photography plus honestly I enjoy the part where I plan, shop , cook and serve. 

Freshly brewed coffee, long walks , a well made pastry and by that I mean a filling of fresh cream (not the non dairy nonsene) have always been sources of constant joy for me and recently a pack of Dunhill or Marlboro makes my day with some strong coffee. 

Ideally when I am happy and cook a dish I mostly forget to click pictures but in Kolkata there is hardly anything else to do than work, read and click pictures of the dishes which I make. Long walks are out of the question what with the terrible heat, overpopulated streets and the high level of pollution. There are no mountains to drive off to and the orange red autumn leaves make me miss Stellenbosch pretty bad. 

Then I remembered this chocolate cake and a promise made to myself and I cheered up a bit. Frankly its one of my favourite chocolate cakes. A pure chocolaty cake for which I follow Larousse's recipe along with some ganache makes it the chocolate cake of my dreams 

To begin with you need a 7 to 8  inch round pan no more no less 

For the cake :-

3 eggs 

125gm caster sugar 

125gm all purpose flour 

150gm dark chocolate (I use 70% dark) 

4 tbsp milk 

125gm butter at room temperature 

For the ganache :-

100gm dark chocolate 

200ml double cream or single cream (In India you dont get double dairy cream so I usually use the one we get with 25% fat) 

Preheat the oven to 180C for 10 minutes. 

Grease and dust your pan with flour. 

Separate the eggs. Heat the milk and chopped chocolate together to form a smooth mixture. Take the yolks and the sugar in a steel bowl and use the bain marie method to gentle heat the yolks and sugar but make sure you dont scramble the eggs all the while whipping them vigorously. It will become pale , light and fluffy. 

Whip the softened butter and chocolate and quickly add the yolk sugar mixture and fold in the flour. Pour it in your prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes to 40 minutes.
Depending on the oven it can even take you upto 60 minutes. So take the cake out at 40 minutes and do the toothpick test. If the toothpick comes out clean you are done else it needs to bake a bit more but keep a sharp eye on the oven so that you dont over-bake the cake. 

Let the cake cool down overnight. 

Using the bain marie method heat the cream, add chopped chocolate and whip till fluffy . Cut the cake horizontally and fill it some of the ganache and then top the cake with the rest of the ganache and serve with coffee.