Fried Chicken, Hyderabadi (well almost)

Last week I had a joyous reunion with a school pal, "bees saal baad"! Two and a half days of almost non-stop yakking, some shopping, endless cups of tea. She made this really easy and very tasty dish for us and since she hails from hyderabad, it (this dish) is sort of Hyderabadi!!

You will need:
Chicken: 1 kg cut into pieces
Onions: 2 medium, finely sliced
Oil: 3 tbsp
Salt to taste

For the marinade:
Garlic: 6-7 pods
Ginger: 1" pc
Green chilli: 1
Coriander leaf: one handful
Salt: A pinch
Yogurt: 100gms

How to:

1. Wash the chicken pieces and drain.
2. Grind coarsely the ingredients (except yogurt) for the marinade in a mortar / pestle.
3. Combine the ground ingredients, yogurt with the chicken and keep for an hour.
4. Heat oil in a large non-stick pan to smoking.
5. Lightly saute the onions.
6. Add the chicken pieces to the pan and fry on high flame.
7. Gently turn the pieces over to ensure proper frying on both sides.
8. When the water released by the yogurt dries up, add a little water and rest of the yogurt marinade.
9. Adjust salt.
10. Lower flame and cook till the chicken is done.

There will be no gravy in this dish and can be eaten with rotis or naans...but worked just as well as an accompaniment to beer on a warm evening!

Shahi Bharta

Bhags sent a mail to me yesterday convinced that I had chickened out of the Arusuvai Friendship Chain. Afterall, I couldn't even figure out the contents of the secret package she sent me!! I assured her that I would be coming up with my post on it soon, in the next few days, infact. Till then, here is a recipe that R sent me. It combines brinjals with prawns

You will need:
Eggplants: 2 large, seedless variety
Mustard oil: 3 tbsp
Onions: 2 minced
Garlic: 1tbsp minced
Small prawns: 1/2 cup, shelled
Oil for frying
Egg: 1
Salt, sugar and red chilli flakes

How to

1. Cut the eggplants into halves , boil, de-skin, cool, mash and then keep aside.
2. Heat 3 tbsp mustad oil in a pan, add the minced onion and garlic, saute.
3. Add the shelled prawns.
4. Fry for a while and then add 2 chopped tomatoes and the mashed eggplant.
5. Stir fry till the oil separates.
6. Gradually add salt, sugar, red chilli flakes and finally a shredded fried egg. Mix well.
7. Serve with rotis
   

Viola! Although R has written serve with rotis, a hard core bengali like me would obviously prefer it with rice!!

Panicked Paneer

We returned home yesterday to a near empty refrigerator and hungry stomachs. It was simply too hot to go out for dinner, so I asked A to get some paneer. It was almost 8pm when I ventured into the kitchen to find that I was left with a motley bunch of ingredients. I made a mish mash of the various paneer recipes I knew to come up with this:

Ingredients or what I started with
So, at random, I chopped 2 onions.
2 small capsicum / Shimla Mirch cut into sqares (like in chinese dishes)
Eeks. Out of garlic...completely
One potato cubed (that's all that was there)
Paneer 200gms
Panch phoron (bengali 5 spice)
Jeera powder / Cumin 1/2 tsp
Coriander powder 1 & 1/2 tsp
turmeric powder 1/2 tsp
Oil
Salt

Here is how I did it:
1. I heat 2 tbsp oil in a kadai
2. Added panch phoron. Panicked as I was, I forgot the 5 spice combination and made up one of my own (jeera / kalonji / methi / anise / ajwain instead of the mustard).
3. Added powdered jeera, dhania and turmeric to the oil and fried well with a little bit of water. (When the water dries up, repeat the process couple of times so that the masalas are well cooked).
4. Then I added the cubed potato (I had to cube really fine since all I had was one aloo), stirred well. Added a cup of water, salt, covered and lowered flame to cook till potato were softened.
5. Egad. I had to fry the onions in the oil first. Which I didn't. Never mind.
6. In between, I managed to heat some water with a little bit of salt. When it started boiling, I removed it from flame and add the paneer to it, cubed (so that it could soak up the salt).
7. In another pan, I heated 2 tbsp oil, fried the diced onions and capsicum. Then I drained the paneer and added it to the pan. Till it was lightly fried.
8. In the meanwhile, in my other kadai, the potatoes had softened. I put another half cup of water in to make some gravy, adjusted the salt, let it come to a boil. 9.Then I added the onion/capsicum/paneer fry to the gravy.
10.Added half tsp grated ginger. Covered it and let it cook over low flame for a few minutes.
11. Adjusted seasoning and then served with chapatis (which thankfully came out fine).

And what do you know...it was nice. A asked for second helpings and we finished all of it. Phew.

Umm, so, the lesson I learnt was:
It is not the recipe which is important (it is, but not overtly so, atleast when u are cooking at home and in a rush), but keeping a cool head while all about you is hot (the weather -- it was so humid and hot...I had difficulty in keeping the sweat trickling down everywhere, but mostly into my eyes) is equally important while cooking!