Almost Caesar salad

Actually its almost caesar and part waldorf (a very small part though)!

My home is overflowing with good cooks giving me little reason to venture into the kitchen. But, I do miss my erst while experiments with food. Which? All of it...all of the posts on Timid Cook are my experiments.

Yesterday, I shook off my lethargy (difficult but I did it) - opted for a caesar salad variation, drew up a ingredient list and went shopping Sunday morning and tried it out Sunday night! And it wasn't half bad. Ma liked it. (Which is a big compliment)! So here it is -

You will need:

• 1 head Romain lettuce, torn - I found "lettuce" at the Spencers on Rash Behari Avenue and didn't quite mind that this was iceberg and not romaine!


• 4 slices of bacon, diced - I was more liberal here and went a wee bit overboard. Much more than 4 slices (but in this case, more is really merrier)!


• 2-3 thick slices of good hard bread, cubed. [I looked for the easy way out ... but couldnot find any croutons] 4 tbsp parmesan cheese grated. In the end, I didnot use any cheese, parmesan or other - the dressing sans cheese was quite heavy.

For the dressing:

• 2 tbsp Mayo (I used a low cal eggless one ... alas am allergic to eggs)


• 400gs Yogurt (Two 200g tubs of mother diary yogurt - actually 300 g is fine. One tub and half of the other)


• 1 fat garlic crushed - but I simply grated it over the bowl where I was making the dressing.


• 1 tsp mustard powder (recipe calls for dijon...anything at hand will do, I guess)


• 1 large lemon juiced


• A few liberal dashes of Worcestershire sauce


• 1/4 cup olive oil

How to:

1. Wash and dry lettuce and tear it into bite sized pieces. Put in a bowl and set aside.


2. In a pan, fry diced bacon in their own fat, remove and then fry the bread cubes in this fat.


3. I toasted 4 slices of bread till crispy. Cubed them with a bread knife and then lightly tossed them into the bacon fat. Set aside. Or omit this step and use croutons.


4. Combined all the ingredients for dressing a plastic container with a lid. Whipped well using a knife.


5. To serve, pour over salad, garnish with fried bread cubes!

PS - If you find good thick greek yoghurt, lucky you. If you dont, then use any normal unflavored yoghurt. To strain, I set a metal sieve onto a pan. Lined the sieve with a muslin cloth - actually a square of an old cotton sari belonging to ma; the poured the yoghurt on to the cloth and left it there. Within 1 hour or so, the water had nicely drained out and the yoghurt was easily lifted using a spoon from the cloth.

I toasted 4 bread in a toaster till crispy. Cubed them with a knife. Then tossed them into the pan where I fried the bacon. An easier alternative could be a packet of croutons?!

PS - The two recipes inspired me to make my own melange salad. Caesar & Waldorf.

Brinjal fried in eggy batter

I am awfully allergic to eggs. It runs in the family (of all the things I could have inherited...). And it is agony for me at lunch time when nearly everyone bring egg in one form or the other. Sigh! I can only gaze in envy and dismay. And here I have to mention that dimer dalna - bengali egg curry is one of the things I can make well.

Today was no exception - two boiled eggs, one omlette, one egg roll, one egg chowmein and on top of it all, J - the VSO volunteer joined us for lunch and this is what she brought:-

Talang Tortang (I hope I got that right) - Brinjal fried in eggy batter.

1. You will need:
   
   Eggplant 1
   Egg 1
   Oil 2-3 tbsp
   Salt to taste
   Soy sauce

How to:

1. Wash and pat the eggplant dry. Prick it with a fork.
2. Roast it whole over a naked flame (like for baigan ka bharta).
3. Let it cool, remove the peels - which should have turned flaky by now. Keep the tail on.
4. Flatten it by pressing gently.
5. Beat the egg. Add a little salt.
6. Heat oil in a flat pan.
7. Dip the flattened, roasted eggplant in the beaten egg and fry for about a minute.
8. Remove and eat with steamed rice.

J said that it tastes really well with soy sauce sprinkled on it just before eating but she found the local soy sauces sweet - I assured her that salty soy sauce is available and I have no doubts that she will soon locate one. Afterall, three days after she joined (first time in Calcutta, ever), she attended our NGO's 20th anniversary in saree having found a boutique which stitched her choli overnight and 4 months later she had found herself a music teacher and has already learnt three rabindra sangeet and which she sings very tunefully, albeit with a sweet accent! She also cooks well.

Soya snack for My Legume Love Affair Event

This is my entry for the “My Legume Love Affair” event hosted by the Well Seasoned Cook.

Happily, my sis R has just returned from a trip to Bagdogra where she learnt a nifty soya bean snack recipe. Our common friend Madhu P cooked this up in a jiffy one cold evening and they had a great time gobbling it up in between R’s singing and Anand's (Madhu’s husband) strumming the guitar!

I was a bit worried if soya bean is a lentil (poor knowledge). But I have proof that they indeed are. “Peas, beans and lentils are known as pulses. They are the seeds of plants belonging to the family Leguminosae, which gets its name from the characteristic pod or legume that protects the seeds while they are forming and ripening. With approximately 13,000 species, the family Leguminosae is the second largest in the plant kingdom...”. More here at the Vegetarian Society.

You will need:
(This is what I used, the proportions can be varied)

Soya beans: 1 cup full
Pepper corn: 10
Mixed herbs (oregano, thyme, rosemary): 1 tsp
Salt to taste
Water: 4 cups
Oil for sautéing

How to:

1. Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan and remove from fire. Add 1 tsp salt to the water.
2. Add the soya beans, cover and let soak for 20 minutes. Drain.
3. Grind the pepper corn. I used a good old fashioned steel ham-dista (mortar and pestle).
4. Heat 2 tbsp oil in a frying pan.
5. Add the soaked and drained soya beans and stir.Sprinkle the herbs, crushed pepper corns .
6. Stir well and fry over high heat for 5-7 minutes, adjust seasoning.

Hey presto! Your snack is ready.
I tried it yesterday and although A and I didn’t sing or strum the guitar, I enjoyed it too, huddled under a warm blanket watching TV on a cold winter night.

Hariyali Matar

What a lyrical name for this simple and yet tasty dish. It lay buried in my recipe book -- perhaps overlooked because this was not one of R's, written in her beautiful handwriting but in my horrible scrawl. This was given to me by Hema who studied french with me in Alliance Francaise Kolkata. She took cookery classes on weekends and very kindly gave me a few.


You will need:

Coriander leaves: 1 cup
Garlic 8 cloves
Green Chillie: 6 (I used half a chilli only)
Onion: 1 medium
Little water

Grind the above to a paste

Tomatoes: 2 cups finely chopped
Peas: 2 cups boiled (I used frozen peas and had only to thaw them)
Turmeric: 1/2 tsp
Coriander powder: 1 tsp
Water: 1 cup
Oil: 6 tbsp
Garam masala powder: 1/4 tsp
Salt, sugar


How to:

1. Heat oil in a pan and add the ground coriander paste.
2. Stir fly lightly till oil separates.
3. Add tomatoes and stir fry till they become soft.
4. Add peas, turmeric, salt, a pinch of sugar and water.
5. Mix well, simmer till gravy is thick.
6. Sprinke the garam masala and remove.
7. Serve with rice or rotis.

Thanks Hema, wherever you happen to be. I tried your recipe 6 years after you had shared it with me...and it was wonderful and worth the wait.

How to cook dal: Arhar

Another recipe for the number one search on Timid Cook: How to cook dal!!

Am learning to buy in smaller quantities despite the hassles of shopping more. Larger quantities, I have learnt are not really economical because they attract weevils or worse (eeks). Also, I am cooking in smaller quantities. Just enough for one meal. That way we are eating hot fresh food and not storing them away in the fridge and re-heating (where they lose their taste and sometimes I forget about them and discover later, lurking in a corner and looking distincly alien with variety of growth in it not to mention the smell)!!

I didn't look up the recipe. I just followed my hunch or rather memory of the dal from the local dhaba. And I'd say it turned out pretty well and cooking time was 20 minutes max. Just the thing for a cold winter night.

What I used:

Arhar dal: 1/2 small cup about 3 full tbsp (to be precise)
Water for pressure cooking the dal: 2&1/2 cups
Turmeric: 1/2 tsp
Salt: 1 tsp
Onion: 1 small
Garlic: 1-2 pods
Tomato: 1 small
Hing (asefoetida): 1/2 tsp
Dried red chillie: 1
Mustard seed: 1/4 tsp

How to:

1. Wash the dal with several changes of water, drain and put in the pressure cooker with the turmeric, salt and fresh water. The rule for pressure cooking is that water should be approximately slightly less than double of the other ingredient in this case, dal. But given the cold weather and the fact that arhar dal takes a bit longer to cook than say masoor or moong dal, I added 2 and 1/2 cups of water. Let it cook for quite a few whistles. (I let it cook for 7 whistles of the cooker and found that the dal was still a bit hard. So I simply added a bit more water and let it cook for another 5).
2. Chop the onions, garlic and tomatoes.
3. After the dal is cooked, add oil to a small kadai or pan. Add the mustard seed and hing powder.
4. When the seeds start popping, add the garlic, onions and stir till they are browned. Keep stirring or they might stick to the pan.
5. Add the tomatoes and fry till the tomatoes release their juices.
6. Then, add the cooked dal. If the water has evaporated while pressure cooking, add more water. Arhar dal is usually thicker than other dals, so don't add too much water.
7. Bring to a boil, adjust salt and remove.
8. Eat with chappatis!

Note: The red chillie can be added while tempering (before the mustard)....but A can't eat anything remotely hot. Also, while serving, add a generous spoonful or lump of ghee and if not, then buter! This step I omitted (lower calories for A)!

PS- We finished it all up and really fast and so there are no photos to show....alas!

Is it Pizza?

It looked liked it, smelt like and tasted like it too ... but dare I call it a pizza? Well why ever not? And it was quite easy to make. I actually made it in the commercial breaks while watching Gerard Depardieu in "My Father the hero"!



What I used
(I made two. The following are the ingredients per pizza)
Pizza base: 6" diameter
Capsicum: 1
Tomato: 1
Onion: 1 (A insisted)
Salami: 2 slice
Salt
Olive oil
Cheese


What I did

1. Brushed the pizza base with olive oil.
2. Sliced the capsicum, onion, tomato in to thin rings. Quartered the salami slices.
3. Layered the the pizza base, in order - the tomato, onion, capsicum, salami.
4. Topped it up by grated cheese.
5. Grilled the pizza in my OTG at 210 deg for 15 minutes. And viola!

Note: The cheese had melted nicely all over but the base had become crunchy. That wasn't bad to eat...but I still have to figure out how to keep the base soft.

Plain musoor dal

(This extremely basic recipe is for all those of you who keep coming to Timid Cook via the search for "How to cook dal" and there seems to be many such searches! Hope this helps)!

Last friday, we returned from a short trip to Goa, sun tanned and over stuffed (with goan goodies), extremely happy but to a bare refrigerator. We were too tired to go shopping immediately so I had to make do with what I could find. Rice-musoor dal-begun (brinjal) bhaja! Ah! Comfort food.

There are varities of musoor dal recipes...the difference being the ingredients used for tempering or "chowNk". This recipe uses a small onion, garlic and cumin seeds.

You will need:

Musoor dal: 1 cup
Turmeric: 1/4 tsp
Bay leaf: 1
Red Chilli: 1
Salt to taste

For tempering
Onion: 1 small
Garlic: 3-4 cloves
Cumin seeds: 1 tsp
Oil: 1-2 tbsp

How to:

1. Wash the dal well with several changes of water. Drain.
2. In a pressure cooker, put the dal, turmeric, the bay leaf and the red chillie and salt to taste.
3. Add 1 & 3/4 cup water (a little less than double the quantity of dal) and cook for two whistles (might take more in winter). Leave aside for the steam to escape and the lid to open.
4. Slice the onions into fine rings. Mince the garlic.
5. In a kadai, heat oil and add the cumin seeds.
6. When the start to splutter, add the onion and garlic and stir well. Cook till the onions turn pink.
7. Add the cooked dal to the kadai.
8. Add water to make the dal thinnish. Sometimes, while cooking the dal in the pressure cooker, all the water evaporates.
9. Adjust salt and cook the dal in the kadai on high flame for 4-5 minutes.
10. Remove from fire and serve with rice (along with other veggies ... I prefer this dal - rice combos with fries or "bhajas" - brinjal or parwal or aloo and sometimes, fish!

Bon apetit!

Cabbage Khichdi

I have managed, in this heat, to catch a cold. My head feels heavy and my movements lethargic. On top of that, my cook did no a show, but she was kind enough to inform me about that. I was not really feeling up to doing much cooking, so I made a one dish meal. This is a recipe that A taught me and it has been a life saver (mine) on many an ocassion.

You will need:
These are the proportions I used; these can be easily varied

Cabbage: 1/2 of a medium sized cabbage
Rice: 1&1/2 cups
Peas: a handful
Tomato: 1
Onions: 2 - quartered
Potato: 2, halved
Garlic: 4 cloves smashed
Ginger: 1/2 tsp grated
Bay leaf: 1
Cinnamon: 1" stick
Cumin seeds: 1 tsp
Cloves: 2/3
Green elaichi: 2 pods
Salt: 2 tsp
Sugar: a pinch
Oil: 2 tbsp

How to:

1. Shred the cabbage, wash well and drain.
2. Wash the rice and drain.
3. In a pressure cooker, heat oil. Add the cinnamon, cardamon, bay leaf and elaichi.
4. After 30 sec (by this time, the spices will have released their aroma), add the cumin seeds.
5. When the cumin start spluttering, which is almost immediately, add the cabbage, peas, garlic and ginger and turmeric and salt. Stir well.
6. After a minute, add the tomatoes. Stir well.
7. After a minute, add the rice. Stir well otherwise, the rice will stick to the pan.
8. Add the quartered onions and the potatoes.
9. Add 2&3/4 cups water - the same cup that was used to measure out the rice.
10. Cover the cooker and cook for one whistle. Remove from flame. Let the cover drop by itself. Don't lift the weight on top of the lid to release the pressure.
11. Viola! Done. Enjoy. Bon Appetit.

Note:

• The onions can be sauteed right in the begining right after adding the cumin. Any other vegetable can be used too.
• Since it's a khichdi or Khichudi in bengali, it can be accompanied by fritters - begun /brinjal, parwal /potol, papads.

And it does not take more than 20 minutes start to finish.

Faux Uttapam

A feels very hungry post his evening walk and the temptation to pick up the phone and order some calorie laden take away is enormous. So I am forever on the look out for easy at the same time tasty (enough to keep him away from fatty food) recipes. Also, if I am at work, my maid has to cook it and can't have any thing very complicated nor do I want to spend much time in the evening cooking something which requires a great deal of effort (should I be around). This is one easy and tasty recipe. And fool proof. Always turns out great and does not require exotic ingredients.

You will Need:
Semolina / Sooji: 1 cup
Curd: 2 cups (meaning double the amount of the sooji)
Onion: 1 small finely sliced
Garlic: 3 or 4 minced
Capsicum: 1 small finely sliced
Carrot: 1/2 cup finely sliced
Cabbage: 1/2 cup shredded
Coriander leaves: a few finely shredded
Oil for frying

How to:

1. In a bowl, add the sooji and double the amount of curd. I used one cup because that's all I had. Sometimes, you might have to add a bit more or less of the curd. It should be thicker, than the dosa batter. (The batter won't spread by itself on the pan. You will have to spread it out using a ladle or spoon).
2. Add the chopped veggies. These are strictly, optional. It tastes just as good with just onions.
3. Season with salt (about 3/4 tsp)
4. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a flat pan over high flame. Spread the batter out - should not be spread thinly; it might break while frying.
5. Keep on high flame for about a minute or so. Then turn it over carefully and lower the flame. Cover and keep for a few more minutes.
6. Press lightly with a wooden spatula so that all the batter inside is cooked as well.
7. The whole thing should take 6 to 7 minutes.
8. Serve with sauce of your choice!

Note: Its quick, uses less oil, simple to make, tasty. However, you CAN while frying, add a bit of butter to the oil or use only butter, if you are not counting your calories. It tastes terrific when fried in butter. You can fry them out in any shape. Normally they should be round and the size of a quarter plate. But you can make mini pizza size or like today when strangely while spreading the batter, it took a oblong shape. Tasted just as good!!