Potato Cutlets

Potato Cutlets 

To be fair these Potato cutlets which I made on a particularly lazy Sunday without the internet in-between back to back episodes of Til' Death was mainly for the husband. My husband loves eating in which should be a boon for a cooking enthusiast such as myself but then at times his want to eat at home bites me hard. It was one of those days when I knew was going to be those overly lazy ones so I decided instead of going out for Dosas I would be prepared with ingredients for a quick snack.

In Bengal the easiest snack that I was served as a child was puffed up rice with the beautifully aromatic green mango and chili flavoured mustard oil and lots of fried potatoes. Now as much as I love fried food I am trying to avoid it these days and so I decided for the husband who suddenly becomes a fry obsessed maniac on holidays I would boil potatoes and make something.

I was about to make the Indian potato cutlets 'Aloo Tikki's which is one of my favourite Indian snacks but then I simply cannot imagine Tikkis without the fiery Green chutney hara bhara chutney and sonth ki chutney (a sweet and tangy sauce) and because I was feeling lazy I ditched the idea of Indian potato cutlets and simply made potato cutlets

Serves 2 (In our case my husband gobbled up 1.5 serving :) )

Here is what you need :-

2 big potatoes
Half a large onion finely chopped
2 large cloves of garlic finely chopped
Salt as per taste
1.5 tsp Fresh Thyme leaves
1 tsp Freshly ground pepper
1 tbsp cornflour

Olive oil for shallow frying

Simply mash everything except the oil together and make 4 cutlets and let them rest in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. This helps them harden up a bit and hold shape when frying.

Heat oil and shallow fry on low heat till its golden brown on both sides. Enjoy by itself or team it up with some mustard.

Roasted Carrot Onion Soup

Roasted carrot onion soup

Sometimes in life what you need is a soul warming hearty soup. It may be on a cold winter's night or a day when the rain lashes out on the earth.

I generally love soups. Now before I give you the recipe I have to admit one thing,  in my experience soups cannot get their  flavours if you do not have a good stock at your disposal. For those who eat chicken a good bouillon is one of the best blessings and for vegetarians a good vegetable stock is a must.

This recipe is a teeny bit elaborate but the end result is just so soul warming that you don't mind the lengthy process. Its lengthy but does not need much energy and you actually get two dishes in the end

What you need to serve 3 to 4 people

200gm carrots
5 to 6 small sized onions but not the tiny variety
1 head of garlic
50gm butter
4 leg plus thigh of chicken with the skin (the 4 legs and thigh together should weight about 1.5 kilogram) or a whole chicken weighing about 1.5 kilogram
Half a stalk of fresh celery
1 litre chicken stock
Salt and pepper as per taste
2 tbsp finely chopped spring onion

Start by cutting the carrots and onions roughly and making a bed of them on a roasting pan . Roughly chop the celery and toss it in and then melt 20gm butter and pour it over the vegetables.

Now season  the chicken with the salt and pepper and then massage it with the rest of the butter and leave it aside for 15 minutes. Now preheat oven to 220 C and place the chicken on the bed of vegetables and roast for 1 hour or so or till the chicken juice runs clear.

Now take out the chicken and let it rest covered in kitchen towel for 15 minutes and in the meanwhile peel the roasted garlic cloves and bring your stock to a boil and add the vegetables , peeled garlic and the juice in the roasting tray and then blend all of it to make a smooth paste. Now bring it to a boil again and check the saltiness and add some salt if you want to and simmer for 5 minutes and add the finely chopped spring onion.

Ah its one of the best soups I have ever had all thanks to  the fatty goodness.

As for your chicken you can save it for a gorgeous sandwich

Egg Potato Salad

Egg Potato Salad 

The best part about being part of some amazing virtual platforms is that you can never run out of inspiration when it comes to recipes . So Claudia , a wonderful chef posted about this boiled potato based Italian salad and I knew it had to be my lunch today. Its really simple and well I did adapt the recipe, so I substituted capers with stuffed olives and replaced the herbs with what I had at home  but the end result was delicious indeed.

Now potatoes are highly misunderstood. You see they are widely known as the reason for obesity but wake up and see the truth people. Its not the potato that is unhealthy but the method of cooking. So fry it and you pile on the pounds roast it or boil and you have a perfectly healthy food item. Of course it is a source of carbohydrate so ideally if you are taking potatoes you need not worry about extra intake of bread or rice or pasta etc 1 medium sized boiled potato contains about 211 calories. I used two small sized potatoes but they were not baby potatoes

So here goes a healthy salad which serves 1

2 small sized potatoes boiled and chilled
1 medium sized tomato
1 small sized onion
5 to 6 stuffed olives halved
1 tsp fresh onion green chopped finely
1 hard boiled egg cooled sliced and chilled
Sprinkle of paprika - I used 1/4th tsp you can use 1/2 tsp as well
1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp chives - I used dried ones
Fat pinch of oregano
Salt as per required

Simply slice them in circular patterns and chill but do not mix the salt, balsamic vinegar and oil from before. Before serving toss the chilled salad with the Extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar and sprinkle salt and serve. You have a healthy meal ready to be enjoyed.

Parmesan poached fish

Parmesan poached fish 

If you really are passionate about culinary topics you tend to pick up little tips here and there and from everywhere. It was on a lazy afternoon when I was watching TLC that I came across this fabulously simple Spanish dish for fish. Now TLC usually doesn't repeat the recipes in writing so I quickly noted down that all that one needed was a slab of fish which was poached in milk with fresh Parsley. Cut to May and it was on a happy Summer's morning when Calcutta had cooled down a teeny weeny bit from 40 C to 30 C after a 2 minute shower the previous night I was ready to stock my refrigerator in the morning. I have been wanting to have fish for the longest time and so I marched to the market and bought a nice bhetki out of which my fisherman sliced and made thick fillets. I immediately knew what I wanted courtesy TLC's Spanish fish recipe, sicne my fresh parsley had wrinkled up in this terrible heat I decided I would make my own dish. Back at home after a bit of cleaning of the home I was pretty hungry and so I wanted lunch. Well here is a recipe which takes 15 minutes and yields a fantastic dish indeed

Serves 1

100gm fish
230ml of milk (I used skimmed milk)
3 tbsp  Parmesan which has been freshly grated
1/2 tsp Freshly ground black pepper
2 cloves of garlic thinly sliced
1/2 an onion thinly sliced
1.5 large potato
Salt as per taste
1 tsp finely chopped cilantro

I will tell you what I did. So I popped the two large potatoes in the micorwave at 900W for 12 minutes and while it cooked I brought 230ml of milk to a boil and added some salt , the freshly curshed pepper and simply added my fish along with thinly sliced onions and thinly sliced garlic , poached it for 4 minutes on each side and then I took out the fish and switched off the gas stove. I peeled my potatoes and then sliced it in thin circular pieces, some crumbled but that's how it should have been in my mind. The idea was to have potatoes which weren't perfectly sliced but with a crumbly yet some whole circular pieces. I switched on the gas stove with the pan of milk and added the potatoes and brought it to a boil and simmered for 50 seconds and then drained it and put it on a plate and added the fish on top while the milk kept on simmering . I used 1.5 potatoes and reserved the rest since I knew I wouldn't be able to finish the entire bit. Now I added the grated Parmesan and Cilantro  to the simmering milk and whisked well to create a smooth thick sauce and topped my fish dish with the sauce and garnished with some cilantro. It was cheesy yet light and perfect for the summers yet it filled the stomach.

Salsa Roja

Roja means red and this salsa is red, hot and will blow your mind. You see a quick search will yield 17 variants of salsa. The easiest cooked Salsa is this delicious Tomato based one from Mexico and Southwestern USA. It literally translates to "Red sauce" and the simple salsa is an excellent dip be it with nachos, crisps or simple raw vegetables as a delicious snack.

The ingredients are very simple . All you need is :-

To be fair this recipe might have served more than 4 people but whenever I make it vanishes in no time and well that's the beauty of this simple yet delicious recipe

800gm to 1 kg of plump red tomatoes
2 onions
3 to 4 ripened red chilies / dried red chili
1.5 to 2 tbsp minced garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cumin powder
Salt as per taste
2.5 tbsp finely chopped coriander leaves

Blanch the tomatoes and then skin them and chop. Saute the garlic in olive oil and when the beautiful aroma spreads throughout your kitchen add the onions and fry till translucent which means its soft and cooked but not golden and definitely not browned. Add the chilies and saute for a minute before adding the tomatoes. Masher with a masher and and salt and cumin powder. Cook till it reaches you desired consistency and add 1 tbsp of the coriander leaves. Once done coarsely blend it and garnish with the rest of the coriander leaves. This sauce is supposed to be chunky and deliciously spicy and red hot. Enjoy this lovely salsa 

Onion fritters

The story of the Spicy Onion fritters

 our very own Peyaji, Bhajji or Pakodas  

So it has been a crazy 3 days with the onset of Diwali. There was menus to be prepared, analysis to be completed and attention to be given to my four legged darlings. Saturday was the Bengali Diwali, Kali puja. We have this feminist outlook in our blood. The biggest festivals celebrate powerful Goddesses and Goddess Kali is the angry version of the graceful Durga.

Anyways so I am awake from 6 juggling the analysis and paying a visit to the market , reducing milk for kulfi and then pouring them in moulds making luchi, aloor dum and chanar dalna for lunch. By the time I sleep for an hour I am bone tired.

It is 5 p.m., and I still have work to do. Here I was handling whole milk and all purpose flour and clarified butter and soft homemade cottage cheese , we in Bengal call them "chana" , though why we do so has ever baffled me. You see there is 'kukur chana (puppies)  , beral chana (kittens) , chana pona (children) ,actually chana in that context means chidlren) and then there is the soft chana - the cottage cheese and there I was writing about brakes and averages and mileage. Two different world indeed.

Anyways I put the kettle on boil. A cup of Darjeeling tea settles my mind but then I realized that I was hungry like a wolf. You see she who cooks need not always get time to eat at times. I wanted something to go with my hot cup of tea and then realized that I had a left-over batter from the previous day's aubergine fritters and immediately set upon some onion fritters.

In Bengal these crispy, crunchy onion fritters are called peyajis. usually it is chopped finely and then batter dipped and fried so that you get a cluster of thinly sliced onions inside your mouth , but I decided I wanted things different. Why you ask em , well you see I like variety and well ever since I started blogging I have begun putting a bit of though for presentation. So the onins were chopped in circular shapes and the rings taken out.

All that goes in are : Now here is my catch with measurements. An old old lady had once told me, "If I give you every little detail even with measurements then how is it that you are using your skills' That was when I was in school and till date I am very bad with measurements. Other than some specific items I strongly believe it is here that one's culinary skills come out and not only culinary skills taste and preference as well. Let me talk about my friend A, someone whose needlework is magical and someone who is very good in her kitchen as well. Now A loves things extra spicy and oily , so as delicious as her chicken might be it is full of extra robust spices and is very oily, delicious nonetheless. I like mine subtle full flavored with the right balance of spices (now right is a wrong word in the gastronomical sense. One man's meat is another man's poison') So please use spices as per your taste and liking. Taste appeal is a very subjective matter. I have nonetheless tried to give a rough measurement.

2 onions chopped in circular patterns to create rings
4 tablespoon masoor pulse
4 tablespoon rice flour
7 tabselpoon of gram flour
1 heaped teaspoon of cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
mango powder as per taste
chili powder
rock salt
Chopped chilies


To the previous batter of masoor pulse, rice flour and cornflour , in went some besan (gram flour) and somehow I wanted things spicy so in went cumin powder, chili powder and coriander powder.

What I did first was dust the onion rings with cumin powder , mango powder and salt so that the insides become as tasty as the crispy outside.

Then you make a batter of a thin flowing consistency and add the chopped chilies . The thicker the batter is the less crispy the rings would be. Then the resultant fritters have a very hard and thick coating which is unacceptable.

Dip the onions and fry them. One can use three to four circles of onions  at the same time. Serve it hot with  piping hot tea and you have some very happy people sipping on tea and taking crunchy bites of their fire-cracker onions.

P.S.

The rice flour adds the extra crispiness :)
Remember to always fry these on low to medium heat , so that the insides get cooked and the outsides don't turn blackish brown and then turn up the heat before taking them out for a few seconds for its crunchiness.