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.

 

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.