Murgh a la Mama Gaggan

Ingredients

2 tablespoons oil

2 1/2 tablespoons ginger, finely minced
3-4 green cardamom pods, crushed

2 brown cardamom pods

2-3 bay leaves

4 cloves

1 inch of a cinnamon stick

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

1 1/2 cup onion-garlic paste

1 tablespoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon salt

1/2-1 teaspoon red chili

2 1/2-3 cups tomato sauce, preferably with fresh tomatoes

1 pound chicken, diced into 1-inch cubes

3 potatoes, diced into 1-inch cubes

2 teaspoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1. Fry ginger in 2 tablespoons oil on high heat, until golden.
2. Turn the heat off and add green cardamom, brown cardamom, bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon stick, and cumin seeds. Stir well.

3. Turn heat on and add the onion-garlic paste, as detailed in a previous post. (This recipe requires roughly 1 onion and half of a head of garlic.)
3. Cook for 10 minutes, and add the ground coriander, salt, red chili, and 2-3 tablespoons of water to thin out the paste, as needed.
4. Add tomatoes and cook until the sauce reaches a thicker consistency and oil separates from tomato mixture, about 30 minutes.
5. Add chicken and cook for 5-8 minutes.

6. Add potatoes and cook over low-medium heat for 5 minutes. Cover when potatoes are 'sealed' / partly cooked. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes.

7. Add 1 1/2-2 cups of hot water to chicken and bring to a boil.

8. Add brown sugar and 1 teaspoon salt.

9. Keep stirring, until the oil comes out, about 20 minutes.

Done! Enjoy!

Bengan Bharta

Ingredients

3 T oil

2 tablespoons ginger, finely minced
1 1/2 cup onion-garlic paste
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons turmeric

2 teaspoons coriander
2 cups tomato sauce, preferably using fresh tomatoes
4 cups eggplant, steamed, peeled, and diced into 1 1/2-inch cubes

1. Fry ginger in 3 tablespoons oil on high heat, until golden.
2. Use the onions, garlic, and spices to make the onion-garlic paste, as detailed in a previous post.
3. Once the paste is ready, add the tomato sauce. Simmer for 25-30 minutes.
4. Add eggplant and cover. Reduce and stir to prevent burning, until eggplant is soft and pulpy. This may take 15-25 minutes.
5. Immersion blend the bharta (eggplant) until desired consistency.

Note: You may pressure cook the bharta for several minutes to make removal of skins easy. Also, the tops of the bharta may be added to the dish, as well - cooking them renders them like artichoke hearts at the end. Very nice to suck the 'marrow' out of them when the dish is finished.

Carrot-Pea Subzi

Ingredients

1 tablespoon ginger, finely minced
1 cup onion-garlic paste
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons red chili powder
2 1/2 teaspoons coriander
3/4 teaspoon turmeric
1 medium tomato, diced
4 cups carrots, diced
2 cups peas

1. Fry ginger in 3 tablespoons oil on high heat, until golden.
2. Use the onions, garlic, and spices to make the onion-garlic paste, as detailed in a previous post.
3. Once the paste is ready, add the tomato. Cover and cook for 5 minutes over high heat.
4. Uncover and stir until oil separates from tomato mixture—about 10 minutes.
5. Add carrots. Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes until the carrots are tender.
6. Add the peas and cook for an additional 5 minutes are ready.

Aloo Gobhi

Ingredients

3 tablespoons ginger, finely minced
Onion-garlic paste (1 red onion, 1 head of garlic)
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons red chili powder
1 heaping tablespoon coriander
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 head cauliflower, chopped into medium florets (about 5 cups)
4 medium potatoes, diced (about 4 cups)
1 medium tomato, diced

1. Fry ginger in 3 tablespoons oil on high heat, until golden.
2. Use the onions, garlic, and spices to make the onion-garlic paste, as detailed in a previous post.
3. Once the oil begins to separate, add tomatoes. Cover and cook for 5 minutes over high heat.
4. Uncover and stir until oil separates from tomato mixture—about 20 minutes.
5. Add potatoes and cauliflower. Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes until the vegetables are ready. If using a gas stove, place a cast iron skillet underneath the pan so that it diffuses the heat.

Serve with warm chapati, raita, and pickle or chutney.

Onion-Garlic Paste

Most North Indian recipes use an onion-garlic paste as a base. Below are instructions on how to prepare this essential component of Mama’s recipes:

Ingredients

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 red onion
1 head of garlic

Method

1. Blend onion and garlic in a food processor until smooth. Heat the oil over high heat in a frying pan, ensuring that the oil does not burn.
2. Add the onion-garlic mixture to the oil and fry, stirring often, until oil begins to separate from onion mixture. If onion starts to stick, add several tablespoons of water to the pan. (This process can take 30 minutes or longer; ensure that the mixture doesn't become too dry, as this slows the process of oil separation.)
3. Spices should be added to the pan along with the onion-garlic paste after the paste has heated through.

Some recipes require that minced ginger is added to the oil prior to the onion-garlic paste. If this is the case, add the onion-garlic paste after the ginger has turned golden.

Witches' Brew

(The below is copied exactly from an e-mail from my mom.)

A strange name for a recipe - isn’t it?

Indeed, it warrants a little explanation.

We worked in a university in Nigeria and lived on-campus along with other expatriate and non-expatriate staff - about a thousand plus families. Power outages and erratic water supply was quite common. For the convenience of the university community, the university built a dam on the campus that supplied water to the residential area on the campus. In addition, each house was provided with a 500-gallons water-tank as reserve water supply. Conservation & improvisation were the two most common practices.

However, the electric supply was not within the scope of the university and we lived with the erratic power supply managed by NEPA (National Electric Power Agency of Nigeria). Whenever, there was an outage (which was quite often), opening the refrigerators or freezers was a “No, no…”. Just as the electricity would go off, we would attack the refrigerator and quickly drag out all the left-over vegetables from the frig knowing fully well that it might be a while before we would be able to open either the frig or the freezer. So, all the retrieved itty-bitty things went into an improvised concoction looking like soup/stew.

The name Witches’ Brew was given to the concoction by my children. They (Gaggan and Candy) would come in after playing outdoors with their friends and would see me stirring something in a big cauldron in the dim candle light; they would also join in stirring the cooking brew with their ladles; our long shadows falling on the kitchen walls. We, in our hooded sweat jackets, looked like three Macbethian witches stirring their brew. Hence, the name Witches’ Brew.

The Brew can be served as a whole meal with side dishes, like salads, chips, croutons, tortillas etc. I usually serve with toasted garlic bread from the bakery. Just be creative.

Enjoy the recipe!

Ingredients

(Cooking time: 45 minutes to an hour.)

Water 8-10 cups, as desired + ¼ cup

Lentils/ Urad Dal ¾ cup
Onion 1 (large), sliced
Potatoes 1 -1 ½ cup, uniformly cubed
Green Beans ¾ -1 cup, ½” cut
Peas ¾ cup, (optional, if beans used
Carrots 1 cup, ½” or round circles (as desired)
Cauliflowers/ Broccoli 1 cup, flowerets
Tomatoes 2-3 cups, roughly diced

Spices

Cinnamon 1 stick (big)
Salt 1 teasp. or as desired
Corn starch 2-3 tabsp., for thickening

Garnishing

Parsley/Cilantro 2 tabsp., finely chopped

Method

In a big deep pot (4-6 quarts), put the lentils and the spices together to cook.
Start it on a high heat. Once it starts a rolling boil, add the raw vegetables and cook on reduced heat (low medium).
Cook till all the ingredients reach the consistency of a stew/soup.
In a bowl, mix the corn starch in ¼ cup of cold water. Take a cupful of the hot soup and mix it slowly with the corn starch, stirring constantly so that the mixture does not get lumpy.
Pour this corn starch mixture in the main pot, constantly stirring to avoid the lumps in the soup.
Garnish with parsley or cilantro (each serving bowl or the whole pot of soup). Add a spoonful of butter (cream cheese or feta cheese, as desired). Serve hot with toasted garlic bread or croutons of your choice.

Tips

The beauty of preparing the Witches’ Brew is that any left over veggies can be used – added or substituted. Okro (Ladies’ Fingers) is the only vegetable to be avoided as it draws.

Ground meat can be added at any stage of the cooking for the non-vegetarians. Just brown the ground meat in a fry-pan before adding to the soup mixture and let it simmer along with all the other ingredients.

Left-over chicken, cut into small pieces, from an earlier meal can be added. Add at any stage of the cooking and simmer it in the soup.

If some of the vegetables that are to be used in the brew are frozen and some are fresh, then add them to the cooking brew at different intervals. Frozen vegetables, like beans & peas, may be added 5-7 minutes before the brew is ready. All the raw vegetables need to be added initially along with the starter ingredients together.

Mooli Parantha

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup water, or enough to make a pliable dough
2-3 white radishes (daikon), enough to make 3-4 cups when grated
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon red chili seeds, crushed
1 teaspoon white cumin seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander powder
1 teaspoon amchoor (dry mango powder)
1 1/2 tablesppons anaardana (pomagranate seeds)

Method

Stuffing:
1. Grate radish, using the large holes in a box grater, and spread out evenly on a baking sheet.
2. Sprinkle with salt, working it into the radishes with a fork or hands. Let sit for at least an hour on the baking sheet, slightly tilted, so that the radish juice flows to the lower end of the sheet.
3. Squeeze the juice out of the radishes. The drier the radishes, the easier it will be to stuff the paranthas.
4. Add spices to the radishes.

Tips for working with radishes:

Mooli (radish) juice can be strong and can sting your hands while cutting and squeezing. Before handling the Moolis, you may oil your hands very well to avoid stinging. Alternatively, just wash your hands thoroughly afterwards; the burning feeling will go away after 10-15 minutes. If the mooli stuffing is still soggy and rolling out the stuffed parantha is difficult, try sprinkling dry flour on it as and when required; but don’t over do it.

Paranthas:
1. Prepare dough by mixing the flour and water until pliable.
2. Take a small handful of dough and roll out in a circle with thin edges and a slightly thicker center.
3. Place 2 tablespoons of the radish mixture in the center of the dough. Fold one half of the circle over the filling, then fold the other half over in the opposite direction (like a burrito, or like an envelope). The dough should be in the form of a rectangle, with the longest sides closed and the shortest sides unsealed. Fold one unsealed edge over the top of the dough packet. Flip over, and repeat with the other unsealed side. (See video for a clearer explanation).
4. Roll the dough packet into a rectangle that is 1/4-inch thick or as thin as you like it.
5. Heat a cast-iron skillet to medium and cook parantha on one side until slightly brown. You may brush with olive oil or butter if you like.
6. Flip the parantha over and cook on the other side.
7. Flip again, for the third time.

Paranthas are typically eaten at breakfast. Stuffed paranthas are usually accompanied with plain yogurt, while plain paranthas are eaten with raita and sometimes scrambled eggs.

Daal

Ingredients

1 onion
1 small bulb garlic
2 cups daal (whole moong beans or whole massor/lentils)
6 cups water (2/3 additional cups hot water, as needed)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon red chili flakes
1 1/2 teaspoon coriander
3/4 teaspoon turmeric
1 heaping tablespoon ginger, diced

Method

1. Use the onions, garlic, and spices to make the onion-garlic paste, as detailed in a previous post.

2. When the paste is ready, add the daal, water, and spices. Cover and cook them on medium high heat until they come to a rolling boil. Adjust the heat to medium low so that the daal gets cooked slowly. Stir the daal once in a while so that it doesn’t burn or stick on the bottom of the pan.
3. Check the consistency of the daal. If it is too thick, add boiling water to thin the consistency but let it cook after adding. This makes the daal consistency more pasty.
4. Saute the reserved 1/2 onion, diced, and ginger in a little olive oil. When they are slightly darkish brown, put them in the cooked daal.

Serve hot with chapatti, boiled or fried rice.

Some useful tips:

Usually, you should not stir the whole Moong/ whole Masoor daal until it is partly cooked and broken. If you stir the daal while the seeds are still hard, some of them turn into stones (remain uncooked) no matter how much you cook later. Such stoned-seeds are unpalatable.

Daal is usually served as a complimentary dish along with other curries in a full Indian meal. However, daal and roti is a staple diet in North India and is popularly served as dinner.

Aloo de Phalian

Ingredients

1 pound green beans

2 large potatoes

1 medium tomato, diced

2 teaspoons ginger, finely diced

2 teaspoons jalapeño, minced

2 tablespoons olive oil

Several shoots of parsley or cilantro

1 medium onion

5 cloves garlic

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoons red chili flakes

1 teaspoons coriander powder

1/2 teaspoons turmeric

Method

1. Wash the green beans and dice them into 1/2-inch pieces.

2. Peel the potatoes and dice them into 1-inch square pieces. Wash and set aside.

3. Fry ginger in 2 tablespoons oil on high heat, until golden.

4. Use the onions, garlic, and spices to make the onion-garlic paste, as detailed in a previous post.

5. Add diced tomatoes and sauté until the oil separates from the paste.

6. Add washed vegetables and fold them very well in the paste. Cover and keep it on medium fire for a few minutes. Transfer it onto the tawa (skillet), with controlled heat under it. Stir it once or twice. Turn the heat down when potatoes are soft.

Serve hot with chapatti and raita. Enjoy!

Chapati

The second email I can find from mama with a recipe contains several attachments of different recipes! It wishes me good luck for a dinner party I must have called for help with. Best of all, it contains mama's descriptions of the dishes. For this post, I reproduce her attachment for chapatis:

Chapati is the simplest form of unleavened bread made of whole wheat flour. It has several other incarnations, like Roti (rural terminology), Phulka (urban terminology), though Chapati is more universally known. Whole wheat unleavened bread is more of a staple diet in the north and the middle belt of India. Typically, it is a part of every Punjabi meal in the northwestern state of India.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups of whole wheat flour

1/2 cup of white unbleached flour

1 1/4 cup warm water, divided

Oil, for patting on the dough to prevent crusting

Method

1. Chapati bread dough: Mix the brown & white flour together in a basin or a bowl. Heat the water to lukewarm temperature. Add 1 cup initially to the mixed flour, folding it in. Using the remaining water, a little at a time, keep kneading the flour to a play dough consistency. All of the 1/4 cup of water may not be used depending upon the brand and coarseness of flours being used. Use only as much water as required to make the dough pliable. Dough with too loose a consistency, will be difficult to roll out. Knead the dough for 7 - 10 minutes, occasionally wetting the bowl or oiling hands while working on the dough. Roll it into a compact ball and put it in a Tupperware or stainless steal container with airtight lid. Oil the dough to prevent crusting on the top. Set aside in the refrigerator. Ideally, leave in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before use.

2. Preparation of Chapati: Take a fistful of the dough, roll into even seamless ball, flatten it out with hands, and roll it out with a rolling pin to 5-7 inches in diameter. Dust occasionally with dry white flour while rolling to prevent sticking on the board. Place it on the preheated skillet (tawa). Keep the heat low to moderate under the skillet and monitor from time to time.

3. Turn it over when the color of the dough changes, say, about 12-15 seconds. There will be small brown spots on the surface. Turn it over & let it cook for another 12-15 seconds. Repeat this step once more. Notice the round Chapati fluffing up with the steam in between the layers.

4. Remove the Chapati from the skillet with tongs & roast it on open fire, turning it around and turning it over in quick succession in order to avoid burning the Chapati on the open fire. If this is not, Chapati may catch fire that can, of course, be muffed.

5. Butter it while it is hot. Place it on several folds of paper napkin in a bowl, and cover it with a lid or plate. It will keep Chapati warm & moist. Serve it hot with curries or daals (lentil soup).

Aloo Mutter Paneer

The first recipe I can find in email from Mama is mutter paneer, and it is also the dish we made together on her last visit, when she asked me what a blog is. It seems perfect for starting this blog of her recipes. Mutter paneer translates literally to "peas cheese", paneer being a home-made country cheese much like cottage cheese. Luckily, nowadays you can purchase paneer in supermarkets; my local one even has pre-fried cubes, exactly what the traditional version of this recipe calls for. You may also use firm tofu in the place of paneer.

Ingredients

2 or 3 medium sized potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 packet of frozen peas, or about 10 - 12 ozs

1 packet fried paneer (now available in some supermarkets), or about 8 ozs of fresh paneer

1 large onion

3 or 4 large garlic cloves, peeled

1 teaspoon of ginger, diced

1 green chili, diced (optional)

2 large tomatoes, diced

1 can of tomato paste, about 6 – 8 oz

1 tablespoon of parsley or cilantro, finely cut to garnish

1/8 cup of vegetable oil

1 teaspoon of cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon salt (to taste)

1/2 teaspoon red ground pepper (to taste)

2 teaspoons of coriander (powder)

1/2 teaspoon of tumeric (powder)

2 – 3 cups of hot water, to add to the curry

Method

1. Fry ginger and cumin seeds in 3 tablespoons oil on high heat, until golden.

2. Use the onions, garlic, and spices to make the onion-garlic paste, as detailed in a previous post.

3. Add cut up tomatoes and fry till the oil starts separating from the paste. Stir frequently to avoid burning the bottom of the pan.

4. Add potatoes, stir, and cook on controlled heat. You may have to put a thick griddle under the pan to evenly spread the heat and save the pan from burning- almost like simmering in its steam and stirring only occasionally.

5. Just 5 - 7 minutes before the potatoes are ready, add peas and the fried paneer and stir well.

6. Add the steaming hot water depending on how thin or thick the paste you want. Always start with lesser amount of water. Let it simmer till the peas are done & paneer cubes have puffed up and are soft.

Serve hot with chapatti, naan, or puri. Yogurt raita, of any kind, and mint chutney make excellent accompaniments. Enjoy!