Gastronomic tours with Swiss Cheese

This one's my own invention, prompted by one of Tahir's incessant cries of, "I'm still hungry". I call it Chatpatta chicken because it tastes almost like Bhel Puri, and is ready in just about 10 minutes.

To start with, we don't actually cook any chicken, but use pre-cooked chicken sausages. Chicken salami works too. I also added in a bunch of mushrooms for fun.

Ingredients (serves 4):

• 4 large chicken sausages (frankfurter sausages are good, but a little firmer)
• half a packet of mushrooms, washed well
• optionally, 100gms soya nuggets (cooked, but this will add some 20 minutes to preparation time).
• half a cup of bhelpuri sauce (you can make this or buy it readymade)

Remember, for bhelpuri sauce, the taste is in the tamarind.

Procedure:

1. chop up the sausages and mushrooms to a manageable size
2. heat up a wok/kadai on a medium flame.
3. Drop the mushrooms and chicken (and soya nuggets if you have them) in, stir around for a couple of seconds, and then add the sauce.
4. Mix well, turn to low flame and cover the Wok.
5. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for about 5 minutes.
6. Open the lid, mix around a bit more.
7. Serve hot, eat with Appams.

This has been a long time coming. It's one of those dishes that one doesn't find in recipe books. It just happens when you're on a restricted diet, but still crave for good food.

I started with the basics for mutton biryani, but used soya nuggets instead of meat. The result was very tasty.

Ingredients:

• Basmati Rice
• Soya Nuggets

How much of the above you need depends on how many people you're going to serve. The rest of my recipe will assume 3 cups of rice and 400gm soya nuggets.

• 2 tsp chilli powder
• 2 tsp jeera (cumin) powder
• 2 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp turmeric powder
• 5 tsp coriander powder
• 4 ripe tomatoes diced
• 1 or 2 onions cut into small pieces
• 2 tbsp ginger-garlic paste (make your own for best effect)
• 2 chopped up green chillies (optional, use if you want it spicy)
• 1/2 cup of curd
• 1 bunch coriander leaves, chopped up
• 1 bunch mint leaves, chopped up
• 3 cardamom pods
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil
• some raisins
• some almonds
• salt to taste

Procedure:

Now, you can do four things in parallel, but make sure that you're done with the nuggets and rice before you actually need each of these.

1. Cook the rice till it's about three quarter ready. Cook it with the cinnamon and cardamom, some salt, and a sprinkling of mint, but no oil.
2. Prepare the nuggets for cooking. This involves boiling them for 10 minutes, then squeezing out, rinsing in cold water and squeezing out again.
3. boil the almonds to remove the skins and cut into slices.
4. Start cooking the masalas. This is the elaborate step.

1. Heat a pan till it is of suitable temperature for oil (ie, fling a drop of water at it and it should sizzle off immediately)
2. pour the oil in, and heat it for a couple of seconds.
3. Add the onions, and fry till light brown
4. Add the ginger-garlic paste and fry for 2 minutes
5. Add in the chilli powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder and jeera powder and chillies. fry for about 30 seconds, and add in the salt.
6. Add the diced tomatoes, and stir fry the whole thing for 3 minutes

I hope your soya nuggets are ready at this point, because you need them now.

7. Add in the soya nuggets and mix well. It will start to get really dry, but don't panic. Let it simmer for a minute or so.
8. Add in the curd, garam masala, chopped up coriander and chopped up mint (you may want to save a little mint and coriander for the raita).
9. Mix well. The curd should make the whole thing watery again.

Ok, the biryani curry is ready, and I hope your rice is too, because this is where you need it.

10. Take a baking dish, or a large vessel that can be sealed.
11. Put a layer of rice at the bottom, then a layer of soya nuggets, then another layer of rice.

You can carry on like this as long as you have enough matter to layer, just make sure the top most layer is rice and sufficiently thick. I've found that adding a layer of boiled potatoes (with or without their jackets) also helps. You can deep fry the potatoes if you like it better that way, but do it in really really hot oil.

12. Add the raisins and almonds on the top (you may want to stir fry them first, but I like to stay off frying as much as possible).
13. seal the dish and pop it into the oven at a very high temperature (I used 250°) for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Now, I used a handi, and I sealed it with wheat dough. You know that it's done when your dough starts to burn. You can also eat the dough later. Kids love it :)

Break open the seal and smell your biryani.

Now for the raita. I normally make a simple tomato-cucumber raita with curd and salt. This time I decided to experiment a bit, and added a sprinkling of mint and coriander. The result was amazing, and my raita was a hit with all those who tried it. Just mix everything together in a bowl, and refrigerate.

Serve the biryani hot and raita cold.

Had prawns. Had idea what. Had no idea how.

Decided that I wanted to make either sweet and sour prawns or garlic prawns, but didn't know how to make either. Called up dad. He gave me a rough recipe over the phone. All quantities were "to taste", so I decided to give it a try.

Ingredients:

• Prawns (200gms)
• Tomato Ketchup (to taste)
• Pineapple Juice (to taste)
• Salt, Sugar, Chilli Powder, Ginger Garlic paste
• Vinegar (optional, again, to taste)
• Soya Sauce (1 tsp)
• Corn flour/Maida (refined wheat flour)
• Carrots, cauliflower, spring onions (quantity as you see fit)

Method:

1. Chop up carrots into longish slices (diagonally is nice). Break onions into petals.
2. Keep prawns ready (not frozen or cold, should be at room temperature)
3. Mix tomato ketchup and Pineapple juice, adding to taste in a saucepan
4. Heat on low flame
5. Add salt, sugar, chilli powder and ginger-garlic paste
6. Mix in some corn flour or maida to increase thickness. Stir continuously to avoid forming lumps. Keep stirring until it turns translucent.
7. Add in vinegar if necessary for taste and soya sauce.
8. Add in prawns
9. Add in carrots
10. Bring to a boil while stirring continuously. Boil for about 5-10 minutes depending on freshness of prawns.
11. Simmer to get rid of excess liquid if necessary.

I made a few mistakes though. I used frozen prawns and they weren't completely defrosted when I put them in, so they didn't cook completely. The sauce however turned out well.

Other options:

Pre-boil the prawns, or deep fry them in a batter made out of maida/corn flour and bound with egg (you can use just the egg white if you don't want the yolk).