Sorshe Elish - Hilsa in Mustard Gravy

Life is so unpredictable. At one moment you are performing acrobatic stunts and the next moment you are dead. Day before yesterday we went to the Dayton Airshow in which we witnessed live crash of a plane that killed two, one was the famous wing walker Jane Wicker and another was the pilot. It feels so weird to think that we have captured her last moments in our camera and the plane crashed so suddenly in front of our eyes that it took me few moments coming to terms with the accident. I have never witnessed a mishap before and I pray to God I don't see another. It is a saddening experience watching someone hale and hearty dying instantaneously. The memory of the accident is still giving me goose bumps. All our lives we make plans for this and that forgetting that any moment we could be snapped out of life.

I am not in the best of my mind to write anything cheerful today. This recipe was waiting in my draft for last one week. It is one of the very popular Hilsa preparations relished all over the Bengal. This recipe has lot of variants but this one cooked by my mother is my all-time favorite. Hope you will find it delightful.

Rohu Kadhi

Today one of my friends was ruing over the fact that I don't upload recipes that can be made superfast in a jiffy. She said that some recipes should target the segment of working women who after coming back from home don't have enough time and energy to cook a fancy meal. I know not many but there are few recipes I have uploaded which can be made very quickly and they are my saviors in those days when I don't like cooking with any elaborate preparation. Check out the below lists:

Egg Chatpata (10 minutes)

Egg Drop Curry (20 minutes)

Simple Yogurty Alu Dum (20 minutes)

Potato Drumsticks in Yogurt Sauce (20 minutes)

Bengali Aloo Curry Kalo Jeera Diye (20 minutes)

Avocado Pasta (10 minutes)

South Indian Style Potato Curry (15-20 minutes)

There are many recipes out there which don't require a long list of ingredients and can be put together within the same timeframe. The below recipe too is an easy one if you can manage to get the fishes fried somehow (may be with the help of your husband ;)...they are good at this task.) and the rest can be made within 5 minutes.
 

Potato Eggplant Curry with Drumsticks - Sojne Data diye Begun Aloo Torkari

Today I am very happy. I found a long lost friend on FB. I have been searching her on the cyber world for over 4-5 years but her name is so commonly found among Bengalis that every time I keyed in her name in the search engine, hundred others of her namesakes appeared on the screen, making the act of searching a humongous task. When I was about to give up hope of ever finding her, today out of the blue I received a friend request from her, to my utter shock and surprise. It feels so nice to catch up with old buddies. All the memories of precious bygone days come flooding in your mind and you just drift in a wave of memories. The silly things you did together, the puerile dreams, the skirmishes all come streaming in front of your eyes and you realize how many good years have passed in between. College life would be always special in anyone's life and so many memories of mine are linked with her. I feel bad at time for having grown up so soon.

 

Anyway, allow me the opportunity to share the recipe now. It is a simple concoction of potato, eggplant and drumsticks. We call drumsticks in Bengali sojne data and we all grow up knowing how chewing on the drumsticks strengthens our teeth. Strengthening or not, I love chewing sojne data for the juicy flavor that bursts in the mouth as I crush them between teeth.

 

Avocado Pasta

Considered a fruit, avocado because of its leathery hide and pear-like shape is often referred as the Alligator Pear. The tree that bears the avocado fruits stands 65 feet tall and is known as Persea Americana. Avocados are rich source of 20 vital nutrients including monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, fibers, vitamins and potassium. Avocados are eaten raw usually with salad, sandwich and sometimes pasta. So today the recipe I will be sharing is of avocado pasta. It is an ideal meal when you are short on your time for cooking anything fancy and it tastes just awesome. My fondness for avocado has grown after coming to US and I must confess eating avocado is one of the healthy habits I nurture. 

This dish is cooked with spaghetti or linguini pasta but in my photo you might find traces of penne pasta as well. As I was short of spaghetti, I mixed penne pasta with it to increase the quantity to suffice for our dinner.

Prawn Curd Rice

You gotta really worry when your neighbor is a potential psycho. Very recently a new occupant has come in the flat below us and within two weeks of his arrival, he has visited us twice to complain about making sound. Now I really don't how to keep pin drop silence in a wooden house. In last two weeks after coming back from the NY trip we were so tired that we didn't even invite any friend or hold a party at home, but still the man came knocking at our door twice, once at 1 o'clock at night. I was completely freaked out when his knock from a dull monotone went on becoming louder and louder. He at least knocked for 5-6 times loudly on our door, imagine at the dead of night. I was so scared that I didn't let my husband even open the door. The man is a maniac. Our A/c was not working on that night with a temperature hovering around 100F. We were not able to sleep so I stood up on our bed to open the vent of A/c wide not knowing the a/c had blown up. The thudding of my foot on the floor had woken him up from his sleep as it seems and he without any hesitation ran upstairs to complain. My Gawd!!

 

I am scared of psychos and USA is full of them. When I complained about this activity to our community, the woman sitting behind the desk gave a laugh and told me to ignore the man as much as possible with a warning not to get into any confrontation with him because often this type of recluse turns out to be psychopath.

 

Coming to the recipe below, I collected this one from a cookery show. I think the taste might not suit all although I liked it very much. I have friends averse to curry leaves and hence I think people not fond of curry leaves may find this dish not appetizing enough, but those who have no problem with curry leaves will find the dish flavorsome. I for one enjoyed the simplicity of the flavor and the hassle-free preparation.

Coconut Paratha - Narkel Parota

 

Summer has finally set in in US. Summer here is really beautiful with the sun being up in the horizon till wee hours into the evening. It's one of a kind experience to have your dinner watching the sun set down. Since winter here is mind-bogglingly frustrating forcing one to confinement, summer opens the sought-after gate for all the sinful escapades winter deprives one of. To bask in the moments of summer, we packed our bags and made the first trip of this season to NY again, this time mainly with the purpose catching up with my sister in law who will be getting married very soon. Last few days have been really relaxing with food, hearty conversation and travels to exotic locations occupying our hours, but nothing comes without a hitch. My husband fell sick on the trip which kept me on my toes for one day and we changed our itinerary to reach home safely. For the first time in my life I drove for hours on congested busy highway from NY to Ohio due to my husband not being properly fit for driving because of sickness, though he took charge of the steering wheel once in a while to give my eyes a little respite. Driving for hours is quite strenuous on nerves and eyes I must say, but it honed my driving skill.

 

Anyway, the recipe of this paratha has been waiting in my draft for few weeks...this paratha tastes really good with pickle or curd but please take care not to add too much of water while preparing the coconut stuffing else the paratha might fall apart during the making.

Yogurty Chicken

 

There is a particular cosmetic counter in a mall here where I buy cosmetics of a particular brand. What is very common about the cosmetics stores in India and here is the sales girls at the counter just try to shove products in your hand, so you go there to buy a regular face cream and you come back home buying a host of other things that you didn't have any plan of buying, credits to the marketing ability of the girl behind the counter who with her sweet smile and convincing but pushy marketing skill sell you products that you have no need of. While shopping in the malls in Kolkata many a time I have had experience of a sales woman coming behind me and showing me this and that dress of her choice to convince me how good that would look on me. Now I have been seeing myself on the mirror for years and I have little if not much sense of what I look good in and since in a mall the dresses are all over the place in front your eyes, you really don't need any help in choosing a dress for yourself unless you are very confused and ask someone for help. But it's really annoying when the girls don't leave you alone to pick your choice.

 

 

In US, thank God, you can shop your clothes at your own free will without a sales girl trying to shove a dress in your hand, but can't say the same thing while you go shopping for cosmetics. So as I said in the beginning, I buy cosmetics of a particular brand in a mall here and now every time I go there to buy the face cream, she shoves something or the other in my hand so persuasively that I can't say no. I have this problem of not being able to say no to people from childhood. Though not as bad as I was before in saying no, now I manage to utter the negative word once in a while but in front of someone being so pushy with her sweet smile and warm hospitable behavior, I simply find myself dumb and so out of the feeling that I would disappoint her if I don't buy any of the products she is trying so vehemently to sell, I end up buying cosmetics that I had no plan of buying while entering there.

 

I am sure many are there like me who similar way get influenced by the marketing skill of the sales girls and buy things not needed. I wish I would know how to evade the extra unnecessary purchase without disappointing them.

 

Back to the recipe, this is a very simple yet fantastic preparation of chicken. Make sure to cook it using butter. The buttery flavor boosts up the taste to a great degree.

Shahi Mutton

Last week went pretty turbulently for me. My system went for a toss, thanks to my husband's over enthusiasm. All the hardware devices started malfunctioning including the USB ports, speaker and audio device and then a defect in motherboard was detected repairing which would equal to the price of a new laptop. So I preferred to go for a new laptop instead. It is baby pink Vaio. I just can't take my eyes off it. The earlier Vaio was turquoise blue in color and while buying that 2 years back I was looking for a pink color but due to its immediate unavailability, I settled for the blue. Anyway my dream of owning a pink laptop has finally fulfilled. I have this fetish for pink. I have plenty of pink dresses, tops and I usually go for pink lipsticks and my nickname 'Pinky' also finely fits into fascination with pink. So though I was very sad after the blue Vaio got damaged, I am equally happy now for the new possession.
 

 
Okay, so today I am going to post an awesome recipe of mutton that I have been planning for ages to post but somehow due to time constraint could not make it. Anyway, better late than never. Enjoy the mutton and let me know if you have any query.

Paneer Bhapa - Steamed Paneer

Sorry Friends. Lately I have got little busy with my freelancing projects and hence my posts are not as frequent as were earlier, but thanks for your patience. Today I am going to post one of my favorite paneer preparations. It is my favorite not because it is very tasty, but because it is very hassle free.
 

Paneer Bhapa is a dry paneer curry cooked through steaming. If you have a steamer at home, you may use that to get this dish right or else you may follow the traditional technique of steaming, put all the ingredients together in a tiffin box tightly closed with a lid and then place the tiffin box inside a pressure cooker and pour 1/2 glass of water around the tiffin box to bring about steam. Now snap the lid of the pressure cooker in place and cook until 1 whistle. Don't open the lid immediately, let the pressure come down to room temperature and then open the lid. This paneer curry tastes best with rice, mainly because I have used mustard oil. I have seen my mother pouring raw mustard oil into the dish as final touch. The raw smell of mustard oil adds a pungent flavor to the dish which we Bengalis like. But you may cook the dish using white oil if you want to enjoy it with roti and as final touch, you may add ghee.

Tetul Diye Elish - Tamarind Hilsa

 

 

 

Monsoon was the only season when hilsa used to flood the market. We have grown up seeing that trend only, waiting for a year after the end of one monsoon for another to take a bite into hilsa fish. But these days, thanks to the much improved refrigeration technique hilsa is available round the year. At least here in US we get hilsa all the time and the quality is outstanding.

Not wasting much time in dabbling, let’s get on to the recipe which is pretty innovative with tamarind pulp adding to the flavor.
 

 

Chicken Guacamole Sandwich

Few weeks before I shared the recipe of guacamole and few days after that of Turkey Guacamole Wrap and few days later the recipe of Turkey Bacon Guacamole Sandwich. Yes it is true I am increasingly growing fond of guacamole. So here goes another lip-smacking mind-invigorating recipe of Chicken Guacamole Sandwich, one of the best sandwiches I have tasted so far. This sandwich is so good that you can actually consider serving it in restaurants. Seriously!!

 

Sweet Oat Pancake

The weather last week was very beautiful with clear weather and the sun glowing red into the late evening sky, a telltale sign of summer approaching. In fact the mercury went up a bit putting my excitement high and I went out to bask in the sunshine pulling on a flimsy jacket over a top on last Sunday, but the last two days of murky weather with heavy wind howling and growling in full might occasionally accompanied by bouts of rain dampened all my feelings of enthusiasm before even they could take shape. With the way things going, looks like I need to stay sheltered in the cocoon of my home this weekend for the mighty gales make the feel-like temperature go up by few degrees.

 

 

Anyway, it's been long I have not posted anything new of oats.  This sweet oat pancake will remind you of French toast. This recipe originally was featured in biggest loser recipes, but they did add no butter and very less sugar, which I kind of modified in my recipe of the same. Having come to know of butter being good fat, I have become very fond of butter, not that I used to dislike it anyway but these days I am eating butter without guilt.

Green Goddess

The season of mango is in, summer. This is that time of the year when trees become laden with mango blooms. The most beautiful thing of summer is the abundance of ripe mangoes. Mangoes of different types, shapes and sizes deluge the markets of Kolkata during these two-three months period of extreme weather. I am very fond of mangoes, both ripe and raw ones. I could eat 2-3 ripe mangoes at one go when I am in mood and the mangoes are deliciously succulent, but sadly outside Bengal or abroad, the quality of mangoes are not as good as those of Bengal.

 

 

 

West Bengal with its humidity and extreme climate offer perfect ground for mango cultivation. The sweet juicy fleshy mangoes of Bengal is a great miss here, though mangoes are on sale in US market all over the year, but the quality of taste and juiciness come nowhere near to that of West Bengal. Few times over tempted by the external good looks of the mangoes specked with perfect combination of crimson, orange and yellowish tinges, I bought a good many mangoes that resulted in disappointment for the taste being blandly sweet or tart. Later on, I used them for making custard as I couldn't relish them uncooked.

After the same experience repeated time and again for couple of times, I finally have settled myself on only buying the green mangoes; at least I won't keep vain hope of them being sweet and succulent while buying and the pangs of disappointment will be less. The following is recipe of a juice enjoyable during those scorching summer afternoons when the body thirsts for something cool and sensational to keep itself from dehydration.