Chicken Hazarvi Kabab

My son has completed one month today. It seems like yesterday that I went to the hospital in labor pain and ground my way through the delivery process. Any mother who has nurtured her young in her womb for 9 months and suffered one of the most excruciating painful experiences of all called labor knows why a child is called the 'bundle of joy' because the exhilaration and satisfaction upon seeing your young one nestled in your chest softly inhaling the first few breaths of fresh air of his or her life is incomparable with the joy of anything else. It is the most beautiful feeling in the world.

 

My pregnancy had been a smooth one. I was lucky in a way that I never felt nauseous for once and I could eat anything and everything I wanted. Since me and my husband were on our own throughout the pregnancy and delivery period, I was quite nervous about how everything would go, but with the grace of God, everything went smoothly. One of the most important things I have always taken care of is the food I consume. Though I was alone with no one to cook delicacies for me even when I was in the advanced stage of my pregnancy, I always took care not to let my craving go unsated.

 

It is very important to give your body proper nutrition to have a healthy baby and acquire strength enough not only to push the child out of your womb into the outside world but also to rear him or her up. One of the many things that I gorged on greedily were a variety of kababs as I had huge cravings for kababs during pregnancy. Some kababs I made at home and some I brought from restaurants, but the quality of kababs available in nearby restaurants were no match with what we get back home. In fact, some restaurants kababs were very chewy and dry in texture. Hence more than often I preferred to prepare my kababs at home only. The recipe below is one of such kababs I happened to cook quite frequently. The original recipe belongs to Sanjeev Kapoor but I replaced some ingredients according to my own convenience.

White Chicken

With great pleasure I would like to share the joy of the addition of a new member in our family with the readers of my blog - our son Debarpan born on 5th May this year. His arrival has changed our lives completely, for the better. Though in the absence of any helping hand at home, managing everything on my own is stressful, everything gets made up for when I get to see the adorable face of my newborn. My parents were supposed to come from India to give me support nursing my kid but at the last moment my father fell sick and their trip had to be cancelled. First few days after I came back home from the hospital with the newborn were quite challenging for both me and my husband, but with a bit of planning and mutual cooperation with each other, we are pulling through this phase seamlessly so far. We both are savoring every moment of our time with our son. It is pure bliss!!

 

The recipe that I am going to share today is a tried and tested recipe of a chicken preparation one of my friends recently shared on her Facebook wall. As these days I am trying to be frugal in my consumption of spices as my baby breastfeeds, I take a liking to this recipe because it is less spicy. I tried it at home recently and the outcome panned out to be fantastic. It will earn brownie points with those fond of less spicy dishes as it did with me. Happy eating!!

Aloo Tamator - Alu Tomato Curry

House of Cards (Season 2) has come back with a bang with Kevin Spacey once again charming us as cunning hard-hearted Congressman Frank Underwood. I think after 'Breaking Bad' and 'Game of Thrones', House of Cards is one show that I had been waiting earnestly to reappear on air. The fun of watching the show increased manifold with an awesome platter of food accompanying on dinner. Though this delicacy was meant to be devoured at breakfast, but these days I am not used to taking heavy breakfast and so it made its way into our dinner table. I have posted the recipe of Achari puri in my earlier post and this one is the curry I had the puri with. Made in typical South Indian fashion, every morsel of this beauty was pure bliss. Hope you all will enjoy it.
 

Achari Puri

Now I have not been very dedicated to updating my blog for last few months. I am extremely apologetic for that. But the good thing is as I was away in self-imposed hibernation, the number of hits per page of my blog kept increasing steadily, something I didn't expect really. I thought the infrequency in making posts would result in a decrease in the number of my blog followers and members of my blog, but that didn't happen really, and I am really grateful for that to all of you for supporting me and not leaving my side.

 

If you know the real reason for my absence, perhaps you would become less offended with me. Well, I am into the advanced stage of my pregnancy and while juggling with a freelancing job plus the teeny weeny bit of discomfort the little one is causing me, I am in a state of extreme laziness, a vice that I think plagues every pregnant woman as her tummy grows voluminous. With no helping hand here in USA where you have to do everything on your own, things are not always easy for pregnant women. Anyway, that's some story of pain I don't want to trouble you with. So better get down with the recipe in hand. This is an interesting piece of recipe I collected from a Facebook webpage. This puri tastes heavenly with any potato curry of your choice, but I specifically had it with Alu TomatoCurry. It was a magical combo.

Gujrati Aloo Curry

Happy Diwali to all my friends and readers who encourage me to keep going on with my blog. Thanks for all your love and support even though I have been infrequent in publishing posts for last couple of months.

 

 

What is your happiest memory of Diwali? Kali Pujo aka Diwali is not a mighty occasion as Durga Pujo in the City of Joy. But Kali Pujo brings back some beautiful childhood, girlhood and womanhood memories of my life spent in Kolkata. Kali Pujo reminds me of my late pet Bonnie who scared of all the resounding firecrackers bursting outside used to skip into my arms, shivering to the bones, for comfort and taking the opportunity of his dread, I would cuddle him incessantly. Kali Pujo reminds me of those long hours of chit-chat session with my childhood best friend on the rooftop of her house throughout the evening to late night with a dig into the lip-smacking bhoger khichuri from the local pujo. Kali Pujo reminds me of Nera Pora which takes place just a day before Diwali in which an effigy of a demon made of hay is burnt with plenty of potatoes placed inside the fire and after the fire is doused, those burnt potatoes are relished with pleasure.

 

Though sitting amid the pin-drop silence of my current neighborhood, it is impossible to fathom that such a mighty colorful festivity is going on in one corner of the world which has illuminated the whole country. What is most unfortunate is that I stay in an apartment where there is no balcony and the entire house being made of wood, I am quite scared of decorating the house with lighted candles lest it catches fire, so I have done my bit by lighting a string of tiny bulbs over the windows. It is looking bright like never before.

 

(The above piece I had written exactly a week before on Diwali but lazy me I took hell lot of time to edit the snaps of food. Anyway please bear with my laziness and enjoy the post that was meant to be posted on Diwali.)

 

The recipe below is not Diwali special anyway. Into my 4th weeks of pregnancy, I am trying to avoid anything that requires elaborate preparation. So this one below is quite an appropriate preparation for people looking for quick recipes. I have got the recipe from Facebook shared by one of my friends who happens to be an expert in vegetarian dishes. I seem to have a lot to learn from her. Thanks Neha.

 

Beetroot Dal

Durga Puja has started in full swing from today and it would be four years in a row I am outside Kolkata during Durga Pujo. I will miss the maddening clamor of Kolkata illuminated in the garb of one of its much awaited and celebrated festival of the year. Few days before in a party someone I met asked me about the hullabaloo with Durga Pujo and I quoted her the lines of Vir Sanghvi who crooned the essence of Durga festival beautifully in his words "You can take the craze of Diwali in Delhi, ...Christmas in London, summer carnival in Rio de janeiro, Valentine's day in Paris and then add it to the month long madness of Olympic Games or the world cup and cram all that into a span of 5 days and you still wouldn't know what you are missing if you haven't been in Kolkata during Durga Puja". Such is the craze with Durga Puja that people all through the years count days for this mighty festival to begin and plan for months on how to spend those precious five days.

 

 

Like thousands others, I have plentiful of beautiful memories connected with Durga festival. First crush, new dresses, fight with friends, food feasting, getting together with relatives and friends from different parts of the globe all of these and lot more take place in the span of those five days amidst the glitter of lighting and melody of sound. From the first strike on Dhak till the immersion of the idol and even after that, the mood of the festival pervades every home in Kolkata. Once the pujo is over, people visit each other's home to exchange greeting of the festival by eating different homemade sweets and delicacies. Sitting in a foreign land in an uncanny silence occasionally broken by the sound of dish water and microwave beeps, I miss a lot the sweet clamor of Kolkata and most of all 'the people'. With 10 weeks into my pregnancy, it will be more than a year waiting when I will be able to visit my homeland again. Sigh !

Kumro Pabda - Pabda Fish with Pumpkins

My days are going really busy these days. Hence I am unable to update my post as frequently as I used to. I am really sorry for that but I will get back to my frequent mode once the course that I am doing is over.

 

Facebook is a boon in one way that it has brought so many of my friends, separated after college or university, together in one place for interaction which otherwise we would not have been able to do. Recently one of my fellow batch mates in University contacted me over Facebook and she being near our city in Illinois we didn't let the chance go for a get-together and there we went driving for 3 and half hours to her place last weekend and her baby is so cute and adorable that you would just feel like cuddling him throughout the day. We had so much fun at her place and she cooked this delicious Kumro Pabda among a slew of other items which I ravenously consumed. Her husband is a good chef and loves experimenting with food and on that note though we met each other for the first time, we got along instantly. He shared some recipes with me and I cooked this Kumro Pabda at home yesterday. It is a simple neat preparation but awesome in taste. A must try if you love pabda.

Shim er Dana Diye Chingri - Prawn Curry with Hyacinth Seeds

How would you feel if you are away at your work and upon returning home find out that your home is not there anymore, but completely bulldozed by some goons into rubble with your valuables stolen by people? This is what I see have happened to a couple in India and it is utterly shocking. What more when the distressed couple went to file a complaint to police, the police refused to lodge a case. I wonder at times where are we heading? It is when we find ourselves in problem like this we begin to understand how the entire system is seeped in corruption. I myself have pretty bad experience while getting our passports done. The officials whose responsibility was to verify files and addresses of the applicants simply won’t do their job or delay the process intentionally unless you grease their palms. It is so pathetic. Anyone having gone through the process would acknowledge my pain.

 

Hyacinth seeds that we call shim er dana in Bengali have been a rarity here. I have been looking for hyacinth beans for over a year but to no avail. So I thought if the hyacinth beans are such a rare sight, hyacinth seeds would be a complete nonentity here but I proving me wrong I found one Bangladeshi grocery store selling hyacinth seeds and not only that my favourite pui shaak was also there. For me that finding had been similar to the experience of discovering a treasure trove. Just Amazing!

Raspberry Linzer Slice

My husband is pretty gadget freak. It's not that he goes to buy every new product launched in the market, his fascination lies elsewhere. He loves exploring the gadgets that he buys by taking the parts out of the system and scrutinizing them. His behavior sort of reminds me of my brother's 7 years old son who equally has a fondness for breaking apart the toy cars brought for him. He likes to open parts of each car and lays them in order for his survey. Of course, the toys die a premature death with most of them becoming totally non-functional after they are dissected so mercilessly. In case of my hubby, not all the gadgets breathe their last in his hands but one or two, mostly those which belong to me, start showing up problems after he experiments on them. My laptop went for a toss recently and became so nonfunctional that I had to buy a new laptop. Anyway, not only he has fascination for conducting close examination of the mechanics of the gadgets, he also cherishes a liking for spilling water or coffee on electronic items, precipitating their demise. Immediately after we got married, he exactly ruined three items (thankfully all of them belonged to him) back to back within a matter of few days either by spilling water or tea - camera, laptop and a brand new phone. The phone was brand new, only two months old but within that short span he managed to drop it from our three-storied apartment once. The phone was lucky to have survived the fall but couldn't survive the tea.

 

Knowing my husband's spilling habit, I made sure to buy him only the cheapest of phones available in the market so that we don't feel the pinch of pain and money after an expensive one went out of form. But upon our coming to USA, he bought the galaxy which recently got soaked in coffee and now it is being repaired at some marooned repair station in Texas. The end result is I am facing a lot of trouble in connecting with hubby when he is away in office or outside. Our life has become so much entwined with phones that in the absence of this device, we just become unworkable. Today is one such day when I am missing to talk to him on phone and I need to wait for him until he shows up during lunch.

 

Few days back I went to a garage sale and there I came across a treasure trove of cooking books being sold at an incredibly low price. I bought few of them randomly and in one such I came across the following recipe which I tweaked a bit according to my own discretion. The output was successful with the raspberry jam exploding into a delightful sweetness inside mouth. Just yummmm!

Egg Shrimp Dry : Egg Shrimp Sukha

This recipe is really interesting because I have made it on my own playing around with ingredients as were available at home that day. Bored with the same egg curry with lots of gravy floating around it, I wanted to try a dry egg preparation which will not be like a conventional egg curry. I had some left over frozen shrimps which I wanted to make use of and nothing could be better than an egg-shrimp or egg-prawn concoction. I think they go well together like house on fire. If you are regular in my blog you might have noticed another of my posts I made earlier using eggs and prawns together in an omelet. Till date everyone I fed that omelet has been vociferous with their praises. So I hope this one too will create the same impression on my guests and readers. Happy eating!!

Aam Diye Dal - Sour Mango Lentil Preparation

 

Aam Diye Dal is a refreshing lentil preparation ideal for summer months. It is monsoon in India and mangoes are out of season there, but summer is young in US and green ripe all kinds of mangoes are aplenty in the market. I bought a big green mango few weeks back and but shoved it into some corner of our refrigerator forgetting all about it until I was reminded with a bit of sarcasm by my husband about some vegetables to be really taken care of before they reached sorry stage. I know I have this nasty habit of putting whatever veggies I get a grab of into the basket but this is a new habit that has grown into me mainly because the nearest Indian grocery store is at least 20-25 minutes driving distance away from home and since in the week days rushing to the Indian store is not possible, I maintain to fill my fridge with all the Indian leaves and veggies not easily available in Wal-Mart or Meyer. What to do…..when you run a kitchen, you ought to keep foresight about future needs.
 

Anyway, as I was saying aam diye tak dal is a refreshing meal for the scorching summer months. With mercury soaring higher every given day, this dal would add a cooling sensation to your lunch. Just grab some green mangoes and get set go.

Tuna Rainbow Pasta

Canned Tuna is the second most eaten seafood in USA with per person eating 2.7 pounds Tuna a year. Recently it has come to light that tuna fishes contain the brain-damaging heavy metal mercury though the level of mercury varies from one species to another. Tunas bigger in size like bigeye tuna and lean Bluefin are high in mercury content whereas yellow fin and fatty Bluefin have lower level of mercury. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has especially warned women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or of childbearing age to stay away from tuna as the heavy metal can damage the brain of infants or fetuses. To know more about tuna, go to the following link:

 

http://www.rodale.com/mercury-tuna

 

Anyway, I love tuna sandwiches and I like to use tuna in pastas. As long as I don't eat tuna daily or regularly, I guess I have nothing to fear. The recipe that I am sharing below is of an exotic preparation cooked with a combination of rainbow pasta and canned tuna.

Chingri Bharta -Shrimp Mash-up

 

Everyone out here is making use of the opportunity of the 4th of July holiday to travel somewhere except us. My hubby is stuck in this weird project which keeps Go-live during the summer time only when you want to travel places and hence he doesn't have any holiday tomorrow and in the next few weeks. It is extremely frustrating really.

 

 

Last week I was really busy between my course work and freelance projects with hardly any time left for cooking and so I cooked this easy Chingri Bharta or Shrimp Mash Up that gets ready within 15 minutes sharp and the taste is just supremely divine. Hope you people will like it.