Mint chutney

This chutney is what you would get in most restaurants as an accompaniment to your tikkas or kebabs. So here is the recipe.


Ingredients

Mint leaves - 1 cup
Thick Curd - 1/2 cup
Green Chillies - 2-3
Salt

Procedure

1. Grind all the ingredients in a blender until smooth. Your chutney is ready to serve.
2. You could always add a few extra flavours like jeera powder, chat masala, amchur powder etc as you fancy.

Paneer Tikka

After a series of posts of traditional mithais and some south indian sweets, here is a recipe for Paneer Tikka - the way you have liked it in the restaurants, the same flavour and some important hints. The taste of grilled onion, paneer and capsicum with the marinade is too good to resist.

Preparation Time : 30 minutes
Cooking Time : 20 minutes
Servings : 2

Ingredients

Paneer  - a big block of paneer is preferred, (my advice : Don't buy the readymade cubes, the size of the cubes matter)
Capsicum - 1 medium cut into big cubes
Onion - 1 medium cut into big cubes
Optional - Tomato, Red bell peppers / other coloured peppers


For the marinade

Gram Flour / Besan - 2tbsp
Ajwain / Omam -  a generous pinch
Butter - 1 tbsp

Thick Curd / Hung curd - 1/2 cup
Ginger Garlic Paste - 2 tsp
Chilli Powder - 1 tsp / according to taste
Salt - to taste
Garam Masala - 1 tsp
Lemon juice - 2 tsp
Mustard Oil - 2 tbsp
Turmeric Powder - 2 tsp

Materials Needed

A bowl for mixing the marinade
Bamboo skewers - 4 long ones soaked in water for an hour at least. This would prevent the bamboo skewers from getting burnt.
Aluminium Foil - to line the baking tray

 

Procedure

1. To prepare the marinade, first take a pan with 1 tbsp butter, roast the gram flour and ajwain till you get a strong nutty flavour.(This is one very important step to get restaurant style tikka).

2. After it cools down, add water and make a paste such that it coats the spoon and drops thick from the spoon. I would add an image sometime soon.

3. Take a tsp of this paste, add the remaining ingredients except the oil and turmeric and whisk well to incorporate the flavours well.

4. Finally heat the mustard oil till it smokes, switch off the stove ,add the turmeric powder and immediately pour into the prepared marinade and mix well. (Mustard oil is the other important ingredient that gives the tikka its restaurant flavour. If you do not have mustard oil, you could make mustard paste, add it to the hot oil and then to the marinade.)

5. After mixing the marinade well, add the vegetables and the paneer and coat them well. At this stage, if you feel the marinade is a little runny, you would have to refrigerate the marinade. Alternately, make sure your curd does not have water at all. It should be absolutely thick.

6. Preheat your oven to 230 degree C. Arrange the paneer, Capsicum, onions in the skewers in alternate layers and finish with the paneer.

7. Put it for grilling in the oven. keep a close watch to make sure the paneer doesn't become too black, it should just brown. Turn the skewer around midway, brush with a little oil to make sure it cooks evenly. The whole process would take about 10 minutes.

8. You could also cook this in your sandwich toaster if there is a grill plate in it.

9. However,I believe it cooks and tastes best when cooked in a gas tandoor. I don't have one though :-(

10. Serve hot with Mint chutney

Badusha

I must say this has become my favourite sweet. Not because it tastes great, or is not too sweet, but because of my experience making this sweet. I have tried close to 15 versions of this recipe multiple times( I have actually lost count) probably 30 times in the last two months before deciding that this recipe here gives the best badushas. Truly amazing.

So what is it in this recipe that makes it give the perfect layered texture to the badushas. It probably is the way in which we mix the ingredients. Quick, easy and effective.

The following recipe gives you 15 cute little badushas or 20 bite sized badushas

Ingredients


Maida - 1 cup
Thick Curd - 1/4 cup
Melted butter - 1/4 cup
Cooking Soda / Soda- bi-carb - 1/4 tsp
Sugar - 1 tsp
Oil for frying

For the sugar syrup

Sugar - 1/2 cup
Water - 1/4 cup

Procedure

1. Mix together curd, butter, soda and sugar till thick and creamy. This could take approximately 2 minutes if you are using a hand blender / approx. 8 minutes if you are mixing it with a whisk. I normally use a whisk first to bring them together and then use the hand blender. Alternately, you could do all of this in a big mixie jar.




2. Slowly mix in the flour(about a tbsp) at a  time and mix well. Once all the flour is added, knead well. You will feel the smooth texture of the dough and your hands would start getting greased automatically. At this stage roll the dough into a long 1 inch diameter roll and coil it.  I used the blender and made a soft dough. To make it softer, I put it in the mixie and gave it two quick rounds. This made the dough extremely soft. The oily kinds. If you are doing it all in the mixie, you will get this automatically.





3. Leave the dough to stand covered for an hour.

4. After an hour, open the coils and give a quick roll once again and cut the badushas using a knife into equal size bits. Keep the cut piece in you hand such that one cut edge faces up and the other edge touches your palm. Now using just your pointer finger flatten it gently and press the center with the pointer finger to make a sharp indent. You could pull up the cracked edges to seal them and they will listen This is important, if the depression is not deep, the maida's property makes it spring back to its pre- depression state.





5. Heat oil for frying. The oil should get heated on a low flame ONLY. Check by dropping a little of the dough. The dough should sink and rise in less than 6 seconds. This means the oil is ready


6. Meanwhile, prepare sugar syrup in one string consistency and add a few drops of rose essence and keep aside.





7. Fry the badushas in batches of 7/8 on a low flame and cook completely. This should take approximately 10 minutes per batch. Towards the end, increase the flame slightly to a low- medium. I had a smaller kadai that could only hold 7 - 8 at a time. A larger kadai could hold more so decide accordingly.




8. After one batch is ready, take it out of the oil and dip them in the sugar syrup. Remove them when the next batch of fried badushas are ready and leave them to cool on a butter paper.




9. Get the second batch also ready and allow to cool completely. Garnish with chopped pista / almond flakes

These badushas taste best on the next day. However, it normally is soooooo good that a family of four should see it disappear the same day.

See you soon with another recipe.

Kaju Katli

I have loved the Kaju Katlis made at the mithai shops, in particular, places like Shree Mithai in Spencer Plaza, Chennai. For that matter, probably Kaju Katlis have been savoured by most of us. It's that "no one can eat just one" kind of sweet. I have often wondered how they get those perfectly shaped diamond bits of melt in the mouth wonders. And lo! , I managed to find the fool proof recipe to make them exactly the way we all remember and relish. The procedure is so simple that one would want to make it over and over again just as I do. And more importantly, this recipe does not use a drop of ghee or oil. Now, isn't that lovely ?

So here we go.

Kaju Katli

This recipe yields about 15 - 20 pieces of Kaju Katlis

Ingredients

Whole Cashewnuts - 1 cup
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Water - 1/4 cup

Procedure

1. Break the cashew nuts into small pieces and grind them into a fine powder.

2. In a non stick vessel (if you have one) or a normal vessel, take the sugar and water and make a one string consistency sugar syrup. The procedure to check for one string consistency is pretty simple. Take a drop of the sugar syrup with your forefinger and press your thumb against the forefinger. While separating the fingers you should be able to see a small thread form in between the two fingers. It takes about 4- 5 minutes for a single string syrup to form if done on a high flame or close to 8 minutes if done on a low flame.

3. Once it is done, simmer the flame, pour in the cashew powder and keep stirring the mix. After about 2 minutes, pour in a drop of the mix in a small bowl of water, you should be able to make a ball out of this drop of mix.

4. On reaching this stage, turn off your stove and grab a book or just relax. Leave the mixture to cool for about 20 minutes to half an hour.

5. Now for the last part. Bring this cooled down mixture together and form into a soft dough. Take a butter paper / parchment paper / a greased plate. Roll the dough on the sheet / plate into the desired thickness. At this stage you could add the silver warq on the rolled out dough.

6. Finally cut it into diamond shaped katlis. A pizza cutter does an excellent job of this without disturbing the edges.

You mithai shop Kaju katli is ready.

Note: The most important point to be noted here is that the cashew nuts should not be taken out of the fridge. If they are, they tend to leave out oil while they are being made into a powder.