Rice with Mushroom and Soy Nuggets

Mushrooms are an absolutely delight for me. The flavors and textures of mushrooms vary and that gives the dish an ultimately different approach. I have always liked working with button mushrooms as they are incredibly easy and they adapt very well with anything - be it rice, noodles, pasta, couscous etc. I even make curries out of it. Whereas, the usage of Shiitake mushrooms in my kitchen is quite limited. 

You can use a mix of mushrooms in the recipe mentioned below. I just happen to have a tin of button mushrooms at that time that is the reason why I used it. You can easily use chopped Portobellos, Enoki, Shiitake etc. It depends on what kind of mushroom you like. I suggest using the Shiitake in less volume as it has an exceptionally strong flavor.  

I have used soy nuggets but you can always substitute it with frozen/fresh Edamame beans.

Also please note that I have used excessive chilies in my recipe. You can adjust it accordingly to your liking or completely omit chilies if it doesn't suit your palate.

For the Pilaf:

1 cup basmati rice

1 cup button mushrooms (sliced)

1 cup soy nuggets

½ cup shredded carrots

½ cup potatoes diced

½ cup onions (sliced)

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp mild olive oil

1 tsp dry red chili flakes

2 green chilies chopped

1 tsp garlic powder

Handful of raisins

Salt

Sugar

3-4 cups chicken stock

Wash the basmati rice in some cold water and soak it for 15-20 minutes. In this time we can take care of the vegetables and rice.

Heat the chicken stock until it starts boiling. Add the carrots and potatoes to it and cook it partially. We are doing a little more than blanching but we are not cooking it completely. Once the carrots and potatoes are partially done, use a sieve and take it out of the liquid and keep aside.

Add the soy nuggets to the same boiling stock and cook the soy nuggets completely. Once they are done, you need to keep it under cold water and then squeeze out the liquid completely.

Add the washed rice to the stock and bring it to a boil. You will see that after about 10 minutes of boiling, the liquid starts to thicken up and the rice looks plumper. The rice should not be cooked completely. It should be done two-thirds. The rest of the cooking will be done by the microwave.

Strain the rice and keep aside.

In the same pan, heat the butter and mild olive oil. Add the onions and cook until they are gorgeously golden. The garlic powder, chilies and chili flakes goes in next followed by the chopped mushrooms. Saute the mushrooms until they get some color. Add the partially cooked vegetables and soy nuggets and stir. Season it well with salt and sugar. Throw in the raisins.

Once they are well sautéed, add the rice. Combine thoroughly without being harsh as it will break up the grains and become mushy.

Transfer the contents to a microwave safe bowl; add about 3-4 tbsp chicken stock. Cover and microwave on high for 10 minutes.

Serve hot as a side dish or it can be eaten with raita.

Sautéed pressed rice with Potatoes

Poha or Sauteed pressed rice with potatoes is a very popular breakfast dish in India. Pressed rice or beaten rice is easily available in all Indian stores. It can be easily stored up 3-5 months in airtight containers.

The preparation of beaten rice is very easy. All you need to do is rinse it well in cold water. please use a sieve. During the rinsing process, the flat beaten rice soaks the water giving it a crumbly texture. Though it will look a little wet in the beginning, it should be able to soak the water and the excess will be drained out. 

My recipe uses more onion as it gives moisture to the pressed rice and the potatoes. May be I am a little partial to curry leaves as I love them but the addition of curry leaves is essential as it gives an authentic flavor and aroma.

I usually make this in advance for breakfast and also store in the fridge for up to 3 days.  Some people like their poha sweet and some like it tart. I like it somewhere in between – there should be a good balance between the tart, sweet and the heat from the chilies. Also, the addition of peanuts gives it a very good crunch. The tradition recipe doesn't use cashews; it’s just that I am overly fond of cashews that are fried until they are golden brown. So if you don’t like cashews, you can skip it.

For the Poha:

1 cup onions sliced

3 cups pressed rice

1 cup boiled potatoes diced

1 tsp mustard seeds

10-12 curry leaves

½ tsp Whole cumin

2-3 green chilies chopped

Handful of salted peanuts

Handful of raw cashews

2-3 tbsp oil

A Pinch of turmeric

Salt, Sugar and lemon juice to taste

The first job is to wash the pressed rice thoroughly. Use cold water to wash this. You will see that the pressed rice is very delicate and with this thorough wash it is ready to be eaten. It should look crumbly and not stiff. Keep aside.

Heat a wok with the oil and chuck in the mustard seeds, cumin, curry leaves and chilies. Cover the wok and let the mustard seeds pop in the hot scorching oil. Once the popping stops add the onions and sprinkle some salt on it. Give it a good stir and cover so that the onions stew in its own steam. We are not going to brown the onions but we are merely going to cook the onions until almost cooked. Chuck in the cashews and boiled potatoes and sprinkle the pinch of turmeric. Stir this on high heat as we want to cook off the powder-iness of the turmeric. Add the salt and sugar to the potatoes and mix thoroughly before adding the washed pressed rice to it. Again give it a good mix and give it a squeeze of lemon. Sprinkle the salted peanuts on top.

Serve hot with a cup of tea or coffee. .!

Curry Chicken with mushrooms and peas

This is one of the most fulfilling recipes. It absolutely satisfies your cravings and hunger without you having to start feeling guilty about anything. The inspiration for this recipe came from the vegetarian version of making mushrooms and pea curry. No one in my house wants to see vegetarian food that’s when I decided to add chicken to it making it utterly delectable.

You can have/serve this curry with anything you prefer – steamed rice, toasted bread, tortillas or rotis. But I served mine with couscous. The recipe is mentioned below.  

In case you are using chicken (drumsticks and thighs) on the bone, you do not need any chicken stock to flavor the dish but If you are using boneless chicken then you need about half a cup of chicken stock in which case it will be half cup chicken stock and half cup of milk.

For the Curry Chicken

500 grams of Chicken

200 grams of Button mushrooms

300 grams of green fresh/frozen peas

10-12 almonds

6 cloves of garlic

1 inch piece of ginger

1 tsp whole cumin

5 medium onions sliced

3-4 green chilies

1 tsp turmeric powder

2 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp garam masala

½ cup tomato puree

1 cup whole milk

6 tbsp mild olive oil

Salt and sugar

Chop the garlic and ginger roughly. Heat a heavy bottomed pan, add 1 tbsp oil and saute the almonds until its aroma is released and then throw in the garlic and ginger. Toast until the almonds, ginger and garlic smell wafts through. Blend it into a very fine paste and set aside.

Heat the same pan with 3 tbsp oil, sprinkle the whole cumin on it and let it pop. Saute the onions and chopped green chilies for a few minutes on high, sprinkle some salt on it, give it a good mix and lower the heat completely and cover the pan with a lid. Let the onions stew in its own juices until they are completely soft and mushy. Add the quartered mushrooms and peas. At this point add in all the powdered spices into the mixture and season it liberally with salt. Cook the mushrooms, peas and spices on a high heat before adding the tomato puree. Add in about a teaspoon of sugar. Stir the mixture thoroughly before setting it aside in a bowl.

Heat the same pan with 2 tbsp oil and brown the chicken pieces in it. I like golden brown pieces and thereby I fry it on a high heat until my desired color is achieved. Once the chicken has some color, you will see that it oozes juice into the pan that is when you add the silky almond paste to it. Stir on a high heat until you see the oil separating, and then add the mushroom and peas. Add the liquid, cover with a lid and let it come to a bubbling boil before you reduce the heat to simmer for 15 minutes.

It should be very thick and gloopy giving it a spicy hit yet there should be a creamy undertone. Please note that by spicy I do not mean it to be hot, I am particularly referring it to the use of numerous spices in the curry.

I served this curry on a bed of couscous that I flavored with ginger, mustard and curry leaves.

For the Couscous with ginger and curry leaves

1 cup of couscous

1 ½ cup of chicken stock

3 tbsp mild olive oil

15-20 curry leaves

Handful of raisins

1 tsp yellow mustard seeds

1 tsp julienne ginger

1 tsp green chilies chopped

Salt

Bring the chicken stock to a rolling boil and then add it to the couscous. I used somewhere between 1 ¼ cup – 1 ½ cup. It depends on the quality of the instant couscous, sometimes it needs more and sometimes less. Cover with a cling wrap thereby not letting any steam escape. Set aside for 10-15 minutes.

In a frying pan, heat 3 tbsp oil, add the ginger, curry leaves, green chilies, mustard and raisins to it. The mustard seeds should pop and the raisins should plump up and look blistered but not black. Fork the couscous fluffing it up before adding the tempered spices. Add in the hot oil and the spices to the bowl of couscous very carefully and stir it thoroughly.

I used raisins to give it some sweetness. When eaten with the curry, it absolutely requires this sweetness from the raisins thereby balancing the spicy gravy.

Eggy Toast Sandwich

A controversial name for a simple savory french toast that I sandwiched with cheese. A good French toast should be crispy on the outside but soft and squidgy in the middle. Most of the time I land up making a vanilla or cinnamon French toast but somehow this time I was in a mood for something savory, something that felt warmingly satisfying.

I came up with sandwiching plain cheese slice thereby giving it a whole new attitude and dimension. You can always use the cheese of your liking – mozzarella would be a good replacement as well as some flavored cheeses like pepperjack.

I used a plain white bread that I cut into ½ inch thickness. I have seen that using precut white bread doesn’t give the same squidgy-ness to the toast.

Also, by adding a tablespoon of good chicken stock (In my case, I used a pinch of chicken stock cube or you can use a dash of chicken stock concentrate) adds a depth to the toast, the taste becoming sensational.

For the Toast:

2 slices of white bread

2 eggs

3-4 tbsp milk

Salt and Pepper

½ tsp Garlic powder

½ tsp Red Chili Flakes

1 tbsp chicken stock

1 cheese slice

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp mild olive oil

Mix the eggs, milk, pepper, salt, garlic, chili, and stock. Sandwich the cheese in the bread and place the bread in the egg mixture to soak for a little bit. After about a minute, turn the sandwich so that it can soak on the other side. Heat a non stick frying pan and add the butter and oil to it. Let the butter foam up, then place the eggy bread in the pan very gently. We don’t want it to break as it is very soft and susceptible right now. It should be placed on a low heat so that the insides of the sandwich cook evenly. Once it golden brown, do the same on the other side until you get the same finish. By this time the egg is completely set, the outsides would be golden brown and crispy, the insides meltingly gooey cheese!!

Serve hot. I enjoyed mine with sweet chili sauce. It tastes marvelous with ketchup too!! 

Chocolate Cake with Cherry Filling

This cake is my take on a black forest cake. I just combined the idea of using chocolate and cherry together and hence chocolate cherry cake was born. It’s a very simple recipe and it tastes amazingly delicious with the soft sponge, the fluffy icing and the thick chocolate sauce on top. Every mouthful of this cake is luscious and moreish.

I have experimented a lot with the filling of this cake. Sometimes I substituted chocolate butter cream in place of vanilla and then I skip the whole step of adding the ganache.

I also added strawberries (fresh ones) in place of cherries. But I heated the strawberries in a pan with a little bit of sugar and lemon juice to give it a jammy consistency so that the spreading becomes easier. It also gives a nice tang and tartness to the cake which balances the sweetness in the sponge and the ganache.

This cake is light, fluffy, outright delicious and moist. Please note that I have used less sugar in making this cake. However, if you wish, you can add more for the sponge as well as the icing. I am using 50 grams of cocoa which is actually a lot of it but it makes the cake very dark and the flavor of chocolate is accentuated all the more with the addition of this cocoa.

For the Cake:

200 grams butter

200 grams flour

50 grams good cocoa powder  

1 tsp baking powder

150 grams sugar

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup milk

4 eggs at room temperature

A pinch of salt

Sift the flour, cocoa, Baking powder, Soda and a good pinch of salt and keep aside.

I always use an electric handheld mixer and that makes my job ten times easier. Cream the Softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy. The mixture should look very pale, almost white, start adding in one egg at a time. Beat the egg in completely before adding another one. Add the vanilla now.

Start adding the flour and fold it in completely before drizzling in a third of the milk. Again add the flour and then the milk.

The mixture should be dropping consistency. It shouldn’t look clumpy but it should look like a gorgeously glossy and dark mix.

Bake in a round loose bottomed 8 inch cake tin at 180 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Please start checking the cake from 50 minutes on wards with a tester. Once done, let it cool for sometime in the tin and take it out and let it cool down completely.

For the Icing:

200 gms butter

150 grms icing sugar

½ cup cherries pitted (Preserved )

1 tsp vanilla essence

Blitz the pitted cherries and make it into a mush. Strain the liquid and keep aside. Beat the Butter on high until very pale. Start adding the icing sugar and beat it in completely.

For the Assembly:

Cut the Cake in half. Add a layer of butter cream icing and spread it evenly on both the layers. We are doing this so that the sponge is not soaked in the cherry liquid (even after straining, an amount of liquid is left in the cherries so its important to put the butter cream on both the cake layers). Add the cherries and spread it on the butter cream. Now, put the layers on top of each other making sure that the butter cream sandwiches the cherry mush.

Ice the cake completely covering every inch in that luscious butter cream. And keep it in the fridge to set.

For the Ganache:

200 grms dark chocolate

75 gms Butter

1-2 tbsp Single Cream

Please note that this step has to be done after the cake is completely iced. On a double boiler, melt the chocolate and butter. Add the single cream. Take it off the double boilers and let it come to room temperature.

Once the chocolate sauce comes to room temperature, slowly drizzle the sauce on top of the iced cake and keep turning the cake letting the sauce drop from the sides creating the dropping effect. Leave it in the fridge for an hour before serving.

Garlicy Cream Sauce (For any Pasta)

Pasta is one of those ingredients that become unexciting quickly; hence you need to keep a repertoire of sauces in order to make the monotonous pasta refreshingly electrifying. Earlier I jotted down the walnut sauce recipe in which you can always make a few changes like – add toasted and pureed almonds/cashews, use slivers of pine nuts, minus the cream, add rosemary instead of oregano. That recipe had so many versions and you can quickly manipulate it to suit your palate. (Please avoid the maneuvering if you are a kitchen virgin)

Here comes another one of those recipes that is extremely quick to put together, requires very few ingredients and also doesn't really require any skills.

This is my version of the alfredo sauce; I decided to complete ignore the use of butter as I am already using cream and egg yolk. For people who wants to make it extra creamy, they can go for heavy cream instead of single cream. I do add a squeeze of lemon at the end as it cuts through the richness of the silken cream sauce. The garlic gives it a good punch thus I leave out chili flakes (which is optional. Sometimes the volatility of my temperament changes and I add a good pinch of red chili flakes to the sauce)

For the Sauce:

1 cup single cream

½ cup grated parmesan cheese

1 egg yolk

½ tsp grated or minced garlic

Salt, pepper and sugar to taste

A squeeze of lemon

Parsley (Fresh or dried)

For those who are not familiar with the double boiling method, here it goes – take a saucepan with about 1 inch of water. Place a bowl over it. The bottom of the bowl should not be touching the water. Bring it up to a boil. Put the cream, salt, sugar, pepper and the parmesan cheese in the bowl and let it come up to temperature. The indirect heat will melt the parmesan. Once the mixture is warm, add the egg yolk and stir until the cream thickens a little. Take it off the heat.

In a separate pan, add a tsp of flavourless oil and toast the minced garlic until soft and brown. Dump the garlic into the sauce. Let the sauce cool down a little before adding the lemon, if it’s warm there are chances that the sauce will split.  

There is another way to cook the sauce but if you are not careful, the egg yolk will split and hence you will get cream and scrambled egg. So unless you have done this before and are absolutely sure that you can handle it, I suggest using the double boiling method.

Heat up the cream in a saucepan until you can see bubbles arising on the sides. Give it a swirl. Take it off the heat and beat in the egg yolk. The residual heat will cook the egg yolk and make the sauce thick. Throw in the parmesan cheese and let it gradually melt in. Add salt and pepper to taste. To finish the sauce give it a squeeze of lemon. Finish off with chopped parsley.

You can use this sauce with spaghetti, fettuccine, tagliatelle. Sometimes I just add strips of fried chicken to it and it tastes absolutely fantastic. 

Curried Spinach with Garbanzo Beans

Spinach is one green that I really like and I try to make different sauces or curries out of it. I generally mix and match – sometimes I use Garbanzo beans, corn kernels, and chunks of potatoes, other beans or simply cottage cheese. However this recipe is with Garbanzo beans.

I add tomatoes to this to cut through the bitterness of the spinach and also it adds a tang to the dish. I love curries that are hot and spicy thereby the addition of green chilies gives that attitude to the recipe. I do add a little butter and cream to bring a depth and richness to the sauce. Adding these ingredients make an ordinary and immensely boring green to something extravagantly scrumptious.

I tend to eat this with rotis or the Indian flatbreads but you can pretty much eat it with anything you like. Sometimes I, even, toast good crusty bread and dunk it in this curry. Trust me; you’ll start loving spinach (like I do) if you make this once.

I mentioned using heavy cream and butter. Some people like it very rich and some like it light and fresh. So use the cream and butter accordingly - use less for light version or use more for rich version! Just replace the butter with mild olive oil to saute the beans in. 

For the Curry:

3 cups Spinach

2 can Garbanzo Beans    curry

½ c tomato puree

3 medium onions diced

3 Green Chilies or Serrano Peppers

1 tsp garlic paste

½ tsp ginger paste

½ tsp Whole cumin

1 tsp Turmeric powder

1 tsp Cumin Powder

1 tsp Garam Masala

2-3 tbsp Heavy Cream

1 tbsp of butter

1 cup of chicken or vegetable stock

2 tbsp any flavorless oil

Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pan and add the cumin until it the pops. An earthy aroma should be released at this point, add the diced onions and sprinkle a good pinch of salt. This will help the onions to brown faster. Add the green chilies, garlic and ginger paste. Sauté it for a few minutes and add the pureed tomatoes to the onions. The spices (Turmeric, Cumin and Garam Masala) have to be added to the tomatoes and in order to cook off the floury texture, just stir it on high for few seconds. Add the spinach and sauté it. You will see the spinach wilts very fast releasing all the water. Puree this mixture and keep aside.

Drain the chick peas/ garbanzo beans. Heat the tablespoon of melted butter and stir fry the beans until you have some color on it. Add the pureed spinach to it and let it bubble away for at least 15 minutes. I like this curry a little on the gravy side and that is why I use about a cup of chicken stock to dilute it. However, if you like it thick you can add just about ½ cup of the stock. And then let it simmer for 15 - 20 minutes or until the sauce starts to come together. Finish it with a tablespoon of two of heavy cream.

Serve with warmed tortillas or Rotis or steamed rice.