This weekend, my kids demanded chicken fry! My mother has an excellent recipe for chicken fry which I inherited and am now sharing with my readers at Foodatarian! Hope you all like it.
Ingredients

900 gm Chicken boneless

1 medium Onion

1 Bay leaf

5 Cloves

5 Cardamom

1 inch Cinnamon

5-6 Clove flakes

2 Star anise

1 tsp Ground cumin powder

1/2 tsp Chilly powder

1/2 tsp Garam masala

25 blanched almonds

1/2 inch Ginger

5 cloves Garlic

3 tablespoon Yoghurt

3 tablespoon Fresh cream

Recipe

Cooking tip: As far as possible, always take out the ingredients in a plate 5 minutes before you start cooking. If the chicken was kept in a freezer, make sure you defrost it.

Grind ginger,  cloves of garlic and blanched almonds, with little water, in a blender and keep it aside. Wash the meat and pat it dry. Cut the meat into narrow pieces.

Fry the meat pieces in oil till golden brown.

Transfer the chicken pieces to a dish and allow the oil to strain. Next  warm a little oil in a pan and add bay leaves, cardamom, cloves, star anise (optional) and cinnamon. Fry till the bay leaves turn dark brown on a low flame. Add chopped onion and fry for two minutes. Add the ginger garlic almonds paste and fry till oil leaves the side. Now add cumin powder and chilly powder and fry for 2 more minutes. Whisk yoghurt and add 1 tblsp. Mix well for 30 seconds and slowly add the remaining yoghurt. Continue mixing, add chicken and fresh cream to the paste and cook at high flame for a minute.

Now lower the flame, stir the chicken well and cook for 15 minutes. Add garam masala and coriander leaves and cook for another five minutes.

Remove it in a dish and serve with hot bread/chapatis

Check out some more Chicken recipes here

As a child, I hated the ridge gourd vegetable and so my Aai (mom) used to make this chutney from the peels of the ridge gourd and make me eat the vegetable along with the chutney. We tend to throw away the peels of many vegetables when they have the most nutritional value. So every time I make the ridge gourd curry, I preserve the peels and make this chutney. A very simple recipe of chutney, my mom’s recipe…

Ingredients:

Peels from 1/2 kilo ridge gourd (also known as Toree, Turai, Dodka, Shirale, Heeraikai, Peerkangai),

3-4 green chillies; slit vertically,

1 tbsp white sesame (til),

Salt to taste,

Oil for tempering.

Method:

Wash the ridge gourd and then peel them. Pat dry the peels with paper towels. In a pan heat 1 tbsp oil and add all the peels to it. Roast on low-medium flame, stirring occasionally.

When they begin to brown and turn crisp, remove from flame. Grind them to a coarse powder. Add salt to it and mix well.

In a small kadhai or pan, heat oil for tempering. Add white sesame and cover immediately. Else the sesame seeds will splutter all over the place. Uncover after few seconds and add green chillies.

Stir and add the ground peels. Mix well, cover and cook for a minute or two. Serve hot with chapatis or dal-rice.

Vermicelli Upma or Semiya Upma is made out of vermicelli/sevaiyan we use to make kheer. It is seasoned with onions, peppers, chillies and salt and forms an excellent breakfast or snack.

Ingredients:

200 gms semiya or vermicelli (roasted or non-roasted),

1 large onion, chopped,

1 small red pepper; deseeded, halved and sliced,

1 small green/yellow pepper; deseeded, halved and sliced,

2 green chillies; deseeded and finely chopped,

1/2 tsp mustard seeds (rai),

1/2 tsp cumin seeds (jeera),

A pinch of asafetida (heeng),

1/2 tsp turmeric powder (haldi),

Few curry leaves,

Salt to taste,

Oil for tempering,

Water for cooking vermicelli,

Freshly chopped coriander leaves to garnish.

Method: 

If using non-roasted vermicelli then add heat a kadhai and roast the vermicelli on a low flame until they turn light brown in color.

When roasted (or using already roasted ones) add hot water only enough to cover them, add some salt, give it a nice stir, cover with a lid and let them cook for 3-4 minutes or until they break easily when pressed between your fingers. Drain out the water completely and toss with little oil.

Meanwhile, in a pan heat 3 tbsp oil for tempering. Add mustard, cumin, asafetida, curry leaves and when the seeds splutter add onions and chopped chillies. Sauté until they turn light brown. Then add turmeric powder, peppers and cover and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Then add some salt (adjust as per taste since we added some salt while cooking vermicelli), stir and add the cooked vermicelli. Stir well and let them cook for few minutes.

Garnish with freshly chopped coriander leaves and serve as a breakfast or snack.

TIP:

You can also add tomatoes if you like.

I was visiting my in-laws and had some guests over for dinner. We were around 15 people and I and my mom-in-law were cooking. We decided to prepare 2 types of chicken curries and 2 types of vegetarian gravies, along with a fresh green salad, rotis, meat biryani and Trifle pudding as dessert. One of the recipes we prepared was Vegetable Manchurian and everybody loved it. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients: (Serves 10)

1 medium size cabbage; finely grated,

3-4 carrots; finely grated,

1 cup cauliflower florets; washed and pat dried, and finely chopped/coarsely ground,

4-5 scallions; chopped,

2 tbsp garlic paste,

1 cup or as required corn flour,

Salt and pepper to taste,

Any vegetable oil for deep frying.

For the sauce -

1 tbsp very finely chopped garlic,

1 tsp very finely chopped galangal (or use ginger),

3 scallions; finely chopped,

1-2 green peppers (optional) (you can use red/yellow peppers too); chopped,

1/2 cup red chilli sauce,

2 tbsp dark soy sauce,

Salt and sugar to taste,

1/4 cup corn flour mixed with some water to form a paste,

1/4 cup olive oil (or you can use the same vegetable oil you used for frying),

1 tbsp white wine vinegar,

Water as required.

Method:

Combine all the ingredients for Manchurian balls and knead into a dough like mixture. Grease fingers and palms with some oil and make balls. I made around 32 balls from the above mixture. The number may differ upon the size of the balls. Meanwhile place a wok on a low-medium flame and heat oil in it.

Once all the balls are rolled and oil is hot (not smoking hot). Drop a small piece of the mixture into the oil and if it surfaces to the top of the wok, then the oil is at the right temperature. Drop few manchurian balls into the hot oil and fry them at a golden brown color and crisp texture (see picture below). Drain them on paper towels and fry the next batch.

When all the manchurian balls are ready, we will prepare the sauce.

For preparing the sauce -

If using the same vegetable oil, reduce the quantity of oil in the wok to up to 1/4th cup, else in another wok heat olive oil on a low-medium flame for a minute. Add chopped ginger and garlic and sauté on low flame until fragrant. Then add peppers and scallions and stir fry on medium flame. Then add soy and chilli sauce and combine. Add some water, enough to prepare a medium thin gravy. Then add salt (soy sauce has some amount of salt in it, so adjust as per taste), sugar, vinegar and stir. Stir in the manchurian balls and let the gravy simmer for a few minutes. This way all the sauces and flavors will be incorporated in the manchurian balls. In the end, add the corn flour paste, stir and you will find the gravy thickening instantly. Turn off the flame and serve hot over noodles or boiled rice.

NOTE: The sauce in this recipe is not very thick, so that it could be eaten with rice.

Serving Suggestions -

1. Fried Manchurian Balls can be served as a snack or appetizer (starters).

2. The sauce can be very thick and lesser in quantity (reduce the amount of corn flour paste) to prepare a dry manchurian.

My father-in-law loves sweets but is highly conscious about ghee and sugar. He insisted me to make Besan ke Laddoo and asked if they could be made with less ghee and sugar. This is my mother-in-law’s recipe. The original recipe calls for a 2:1:1 ratio of gram flour, ghee and sugar, but as I told you earlier, I modified the recipe to a lesser fatty one. So here in the recipe I will give you the original recipe as well as tell you how I modified it.

Ingredients:

3 cups coarse besan or gram flour,

1 1/2 cups ghee (I used only 1 cup),

1 3/4 cups powdered sugar (I used 1 1/4 cup),

1/2 cup crushed dry fruits like cashews, pistachios, almonds and raisins,

1/2 tsp ground elaichi (green cardamom).

Method:

Melt ghee in a heavy bottom kadhai and add the crushed nuts except raisins. Roast them on low flame for few minutes until they begin to brown. Drain them and set aside. Now add raisins and fry them in ghee for a minute. Drain and set them aside along with other fried nuts.

In the same kadhai, add gram flour and roast on low flame for around 20-25 minutes stirring continuously so that it does not burn. The sign to stop roasting flour would be that the flour becomes fragrant and turns very light brown in color. Do not over roast else it will burn and impart a bitter taste to the laddoos.

When done remove from flame and transfer to a big flattish plate (precisely a parat). If you have used 1 1/2 cups of ghee then wait for the mixture to cool down at room temperature before you add sugar. But if you are using 1 cup ghee as I did, add sugar to the flour immediately. I would suggest you to grind the powdered sugar for a few seconds before you add it to the flour. This way you ensure there are no lumps in sugar and it eases the mixing process.

Then add the fried nuts and mix well. Start rolling laddoos by holding a spoonful of mixture in between your palms and pressing it to fix.

With more quantity of ghee, rolling laddoos is very easy, but with lesser ghee, it make take up some efforts.