Cabbage Jungka recipe

Bandhakopir (Cabbage) Jungka

My source of information regarding the Goanese origins of this dish is a well known cookbook by Leela Majumdar (the same) and Kamala Chattopadhyay, published by Ananda Publishers Pvt Ltd in Aug 1979 and titled quite simply 'Rannar Boi'. It was priced in those days at Rs 15.

Quantity :

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

Cabbage, 1 whole
Besan (gram flour), half cup
Lemon Joice/Tamarind
Green Chilli, adjustable
Curry leaves / Coriander Leaves, according to taste
Shredded Coconut, half
Whole mustard (shorshe/sarson) seeds, 1 and a half tsp
Salt
Oil, 2 serving spoons (even better if mustard)


Method:

Shred cabbage very finely.
Keep besan dissolved in half a cup of water.
Heat oil, then add the mustard seeds, let them splutter.
Add cabbage, stir fry for 5 mins.
Add dissolved besan and curry leaves/coriander leaves.
Stir for a while.
Then add 1 cup of water and simmer for 15 mins.
When almost all the water has been absorbed, add salt, lemon juice/tamarind, shredded coconut, green chillis and cover.
Remove from gas after about 5 mins.

Tips :

Add water promptly after adding besan and stir well to prevent the formation of clumps.

Addition of a little thin coconut milk enhances the subtle flavour of the dish.

Voila !

Mixed veg recipe

I've been trying to experiment with a simple mixed veggies preparation for quite some time now and this one's come up trumps each time, so I thought I'd share it with all you guys. Here's the recipe :



CREAMED MIXED VEGETABLES




QUANTITY :

Serves 4


INGREDIENTS :

Butter/Margarine – 3 tbsp
Flour – a pinch
Milk – half a cup
Table Cream/Sour Cream/Plain yoghurt – 1 tbsp
Onion -1 medium, finely chopped
Potato -2 large, cubed
Salt – adjust to taste
Sugar – adjust to taste
Crushed Black Pepper Flakes – 1 tsp

A big serving bowl of mixed vegetables:

E.g.
Tomato – finely diced
Capsicum –finely diced/cut into thin strips
Beans – finely sliced
Carrots –finely sliced
Mushroom – finely sliced
Corn
Peas


METHOD :

Boil potatoes for about 10 min. Keep aside.
Heat butter on low flame till frothy. Add a pinch of flour and stir immediately to prevent lumps from forming.
Add onions and increase the heat to medium. Stir often.
Add boiled potatoes. Stir well and often till mixture is fragrant.
Add milk and stir well and often.
Season with salt, pepper and sugar.
Add tomato and capsicum. Keep stirring till well mixed and you can smell the cooked capsicum.
Add the rest of the vegetables. Decrease heat.
Cook alternately on high and low flame till the mixture emits water.
Add the cream/yoghurt and stir thoroughly.
Remove when you have enough gravy and all the vegetables are tender.

TIPS :

To dilute the preparation or re-heat, add a little milk.
To concentrate gravy, add a pinch of flour and/or cream.
To add depth and flavour to the preparation, add paanch-phoron (Indian 5 spices) to heated butter.

Have fun !

Blueberry Vanilla Cake

My latest concoction...specially for K, who adores blueberry muffins...I thought, ok, I'd bake him a whole cake with blueberries in it. He's elated, naturally.

Every ounce of credit for the recipe goes to Moumita, who also inspired confidence in a very cooking-diffident me, to go right ahead and embark on the adventure that is baking. She was always on the phone to provide any other advice, suggestions or solutions throughout the experimental endeavour.

A great big thanks to Tanima, who told me to simply 'go for it' and also helped me out with another recipe and a photo from far-off Calgary (Canada), so that I would receive some visual motivation too !

For friends and family (just to name a few : Rashi, Abir, Priyanka, Banu & Debarati, Bor-Di) drooling over the photo at home, not to worry. I'll bake you all the cakes you want, in any flavour you desire, the moment I'm back. Ok well, not the moment perhaps, literally. But as soon as I finish unpacking !

Healthy Food

K experienced a sudden and urgent desire to have fruit salad on Tue evening, after coming home from office. But he was very tired at that point of time. So he took off on a nap for an hour or so, while I did a quick begun-bandhakopi-tomato-yellow capsicum curry which btw, turned out to be a surprise success (it seems I'm the one most surprised when one of my dishes actually work out well ). After that, we dashed off to Stop N Shop, which mercifully remains open till midnight on weekdays. We picked up a tub of plain non-fat yogurt, one of non-fat vanilla yogurt, two tubs of low-fat icecream (French Vanilla and Chocolate), a can of condensed milk, cherry flavoured dried cranberries and bananas. K dished up, with the additional help of refrigerated apples, pears, blackberries and some salted nuts an awesome dessert. And a healthy, guiltless one. He looked immensely satisfied at this feat. Cheers !

Yesterday, we bravely tried out a new tilapia fish recipe, baking it instead of the usual cooking-on-gas with either tomato-onion-ginger or chilli-soya-vinegar sauces-and-capsicum varieties. Sorry I forgot to take a photo, it did look very picturesque indeed when done...well, next time perhaps ! It tasted exactly like fish kebabs, healthy and amazingly subtle. Here's the recipe :

Tilapia with Garlic Butter

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
dash pepper
dash salt
pinch dried dill or parsley
dash paprika
4 tilapia fillets

Preparation:
In a saucepan/non-stick frying pan, combine butter, garlic, pepper, salt, dill, and paprika. Heat over low heat until butter is melted and starts simmering. Remove from heat. Brush a little of the butter mixture in the bottom of a shallow baking dish (line baking dish with foil, if desired) then place tilapia fillets on the buttered area. Brush top of each tilapia fillet with the seasoned butter mixture. Bake at 350° for 20 to 25 minutes, until tilapia flakes easily with a fork.
Serves 2.

Note : I didn't have dill, so I used plain old cilantro (dhonepata) instead. Don't know how it would have tasted with dill, but the dhonepata sure worked wonders for us !

P.S. K is quite indignant. I took the liberty of informing him that his snoring resembles fireworks.

Chicken Biriyani

K ventured into the territory of Mughlai cooking recently. After he heard that Sush, Kakima (Sush's mother) and RonyDa had all tried their hand at biriyani, he saw no reason why he shouldn't follow suit. He was so excited about the whole thing that it was kind of infectious, even going to the extent of overlooking any attempt to locate the recipe on the net (which would have characterised me any day) and instead, discussed the whole recipe over the phone with Sush, taking notes as he did so. His explanation would probably be that he wanted to introduce a personal touch into an impersonal dish. I rather suspect that he wanted to get the recipe first-hand from a person whose culinary skills were an established fact and whose efforts at the said dish had been voted a huge success by friends and critics alike (in short, his immediate family).

Anyway, the very next day, we went shopping for biriyani ingredients. We had a hard time doing the same in the local 'Desi Bazaar' (where we usually buy our Indian cooking raw material from) which is in any case, ill-stocked nowadays, after its proprietor, a big fat fair lady with great hair and a stentorian voice (K's nickname for her is quite understandably, 'jolohosti'), either took a break or resigned. Certain ingredients like star aniseed, mace, black cardamom, shahi jeera are used in so few and such particular dishes that it would have been a brighter idea perhaps to try out the recipes at home, where these are more commonly available. But then that's the irony. We want to make them here and now. Whereas when we want to have biriyani at home, we just call up Shiraz or Bedouin and order some. Or go to Southern Aminia or Rehmania and eat there. Life !

I digress. The point is that we were beginning to feel rather irritated at the dearth of many of the much-needed condiments in the store and I was on the verge of elaborating to K the virtues of patience, so that we could drop in at 'Patel's Cash & Carry' at Somerset (bang opposite SabyaDa-Moumita's place) the next weekend and get everything we were despairing of ever finding here. Suddenly I located a packet of biriyani masala. I read the list of contents with trepidation and was suitably rewarded. It contained most of the rarities we had hitherto been unable to find. After that, things looked brighter. We managed to find the shahi jeera and the kewra water and came home, a happy couple. Earlier, we had also dropped in at the 'Planet Dollar' at Raritan Mall and picked up a huge aluminium foil style tray and its lid for the final stage of cooking the biriyani (usually achieved at home in a huge dekchi/hnari, the mouth of which is sealed with flour.)

K marinated the chicken as soon as he got home but left the rest for evening. In due time, he followed Sush's instructions verbatim and managed to complete the first few stages of cooking more or less uneventfully.I helped him to strain the starch from the huge skillet in which the rice had been boiling, using an equally large strainer (that too happened to be a biriyani-specific purchase). The chicken had already been cooked. After that, we left the rice to dry while K called up Sush and sorted out a few biriyani-related queries that had meanwhile occurred to him. Things were proceeding quite well till the point when K had finished lining the aluminium foil tray with ghee and layering it meticulously with rice, onions, chicken,rice, onions,chicken and so on. It suddenly dawned on us that the tray was simply too enormous to fit into the oven and shut the oven door on it.

Well......that was a setback. We were stumped, looking helplessly at each other for quite some time. This was unexpected, to say the least. Not only had we wasted $2 on a tray that we wouldn't be able to utilise in any other way, at 9.40 pm it was also too late to go to any store and pick up a smaller one. We had no back-up dinner options. Things looked bleak.

But then, as I always say, I'm a versatile Gemini ginni . I managed to produce a couple of old (and smaller) aluminium trays which we had earlier used to keep food in when we had entertained the last time and which I had safely stowed the away, contemplating dire catastrophes. (Of course, I hadn't expected one so soon.) That came in handy now. The only problem now to consider was that of transferring the contents from one tray to another, since it was evidently impossible to keep the arrangement of rice, onions and chicken intact any longer. With a huge sigh, K began to transfer the contents manually, trying to salvage the situation as best as possible under the given circumstances. That done, he sprinkled kewra water over the mixture, placed it carefully in the oven, set the temperature as instructed and recorded the time. After which, we watched TV, waiting for 30 mins in extreme anxiety for the end product.

It was a success. Thank goodness.