Butternut – page 69

One of my fave-tasting squashes…even though, I generally enjoy all of the relatives in its family.

I landed up making the same quantity, 250g butternut specified. Instead however, I roasted this for 40 minutes, rather than 10minutes (at the same temperature). Then set the butternut as-is on the stove plate, added in the butter and the onion and the seasoning and covered with a lid and allowed the softening, steaming, infusing, melting, cooking to all kick-in.

What resulted was: softened butternut, melted butter, cooked-through shiny onion, fragrances of the divine jeero. Excellent.

Verdict: I believe butternut refers to the vegetable: butternut. Not butter-butternut. 50g butter to 250g butternut is unbelievably crazy. Please use rather 10g butter, okay even 15g butter. I had to drain and soak-out a substantial amount of butter from this otherwise, oh-so-hearty veg. I now believe that although it tastes really good, this outcome is testament to the older Indian generation insisting that ghee must not be compromised as it adds to the flavour. Dearie me…. Intend smashing this up with plain white rice and enjoying like a baby-who-only-eats-solids! Haha!

Vegetarian Lagan – page 74

I thought this to be a good weekend-at-home-snack-option, so made a batch with intentions of filling the tum in between meal-times, as a meal, or even serve these to unexpected guests who may pop by to visit.

All the ingredients were chopped, grated, beaten and combined in one bowl: the food processor’s bowl. This left for an effortless and jiffy time spent in the soulofthehome; which is always welcomed ahead of a relaxing weekend.

Instead of pouring the final mixture into a casserole dish, I spooned the mixture into a muffin pan (about 2/3 way up, as the mixture contains self-raising flour), so that I could get a dozen individually baked mini veg muffins/quiches. Baked the tray at 180C, but for 25minutes (instead of the 35 to 40 minutes stipulated in the recipe).

Just to note, there’s a typo in the ingredients vs method. The ingredients lists butter (but nothing follows through in the method, I just omitted butter entirely), then there’s no mention of salt in the ingredients (but it appears in the method, I added about 1 tsp or less). For frozen corn, I used the whole kernel version in the can.

Verdict: This is a quick one to whip up! Wholesome and nutritious, given the vegetable count. Substantial, given the 4 eggs – so it’s really veg quiche. Tasty for sure. Excellent outcome for the intention that I had in mind: easy, healthy snack + good side to serve with tea + the mini muffin sizes will be a decision I will stick to over and over again! Definitely a lot less greasy than these beauts that I made much earlier on…

Naan – page 124

Oh My Lord! This recipe was such fun to take on…but the pleasure-on-repeat has been indulging in this since it’s come out of the oven! Sinful. Disgusting. I like!

The recipe, please note spells out 7 (s-e-v-e-n) cups of flour. So, unless you’re really confident that it’ll turn out successful (okay, granted you have my notes to assist you, let’s hope), but then unless you’re sharing it with neighbours and friends, you may as well open up a naan bakery after baking this entire batch! I halved the recipe, so a decent 3,5 cups of flour (and then too, we had 1,5 naans too many BUT I ain’t complaining… these were divine to indulge in…!)

The method offers explanations for both: instant dry yeast, as well as the compressed yeast. I only ever use instant dry yeast. It’s so much more convenient to use these days…

So, at the point of step 2 in the method: Add in the instant dry yeast too.

As for step 4, I had the dry ingredients’ mixture aside in a big bowl (as this was the final bowl that everything was going to get thrown into and mixed altogether), then aside was the beaten egg, oil, etc. mixture. I heated water&milk combined in the microwave until hot, so that when I added this hot milk/water mixture to the egg mixture (the recipe doesn’t say so, but I did so anyway), the entire mixture will then be luke-warm, which is then ideal for activating yeast. Never too hot, never too cold – either extreme will do nothing/kill the yeast and no rising will ever happen.

Anyway, set aside the well-kneaded dough in a warm, sealed-off warm area, let rise until double its size and then punch down and shape into 3 large buns (given the flour quantity, this batch yielded 3 naan breads). I didn’t roll these out, I loosely shaped these into 3 thick circles – then let these rise and sprinkled with egg yolk and khus khus and baked.

Dough shapened into naan bread and risen. Ready to be basted and baked.

Basted with egg yolk and khus-khus seeds

Verdict: DIVINE smell and taste and texture and….! It’s a crime to ever buy these again. Such fun making, such fun eating! A winner recipe. The saumnf aroma just-did-it-for-me!

Toasted naan with butter – scrumptious! Love this!

Kerhaai Gosht (variation) – page 46

I’ve made the other version of this meal much earlier on, which is just a page before this recipe. I remember cooking this meal with a lot of TLC (something that I was not accustomed to, as a newbie in the kitchen) and then realising just how imperative it was to cook the meal, slowly until it’s tender. The taste’s worth the patience….in the end.

So for the variation, there’s nothing drastically different from one method to the next – just a change in ingredients, some omissions, some new additions – let’s just say that both meals are safe wins and are tasty wins. Time consuming, in the sense – compared to putting up a pot of chicken fillet (cooks in a jiffy in comparison), but for the usual lamb meal, it’s nothing out of the ordinarily-expected timing.

Braising the spices with the softened onions is a critical step, I feel. Getting the onions softened, without discolouring them – adding in the spices and letting these infuse, braise, transform but not burn.

I followed the recipe’s ingredients with the spices as detailed, except that I substituted wet red masala to replace: red chillies + garlic (wet red masala contains ginger too, and even though the recipe does not specifically call for it, I felt the ginger in the masala was immaterial to the spicing). I then made the following edits to my method: I replaced yoghurt with ‘dhai’ (spiced milk, that I had in the fridge from the rice meal), I added about 1/4 cup and even a bit more, than just the 2 Tbls (to 1kg mutton) that this recipe calls for. This too, in light of the mutton I used at a meagre 250g! So yes, I really flooded the meal with dhai compared to the recipe’s ratios… Then, with the tomatoes, I added in an extra chunk, to get the kerhaai red and thickish. No regrets. I omitted the final addition of ‘butter’ once the meal was close to being rounded up…

Verdict: The massive tweaks that I made – I’ll keep them in mind when I repeat this meal. Worth keeping! Worth repeating!

On its way to completion, but not nearly there…

Rice Chicken Pepper Casserole – page 93

A good hearty rice meal to kickstart the week.

There’s essentially 3 stages for preparation: 1) Boil the rice, 2) Marinate and cook the chicken, 3) Prepare the veggies for stuffing and assembling. … and well, then there’s assembling (3.1 if you really must).

I fractioned this recipe down to 500g chicken (instead of the 1,5kg chicken that the recipe stipulates). This worked out perfectly well with making use of my mummy’s marinated chicken that she passed on to me. I swear, when I cooked this home-marinated chicken, I missed my mum so much. Her unique mum-spicing, marinade…created such stirs in my heart and my soulofthehome – all basic spices and I am certain even if she spelled it out to the finest detail of what she added and how, it just would-not-smell-the-same! The smell, the taste – divine!

Flavourful! Mum’s marinated chicken ready to get cooking

While the chicken was busy cooking ’til done, I had another pot boiling the rice until the kernels were swollen and brittle. Thus far, as per the recipe’s method – Step 1, I used mum’s marinated chicken as opposed to the recipe’s marinade. Step 2, I did as-is, and same with step 3 (only I landed up adding a bit more tomato to the chicken, so that I have a lot of gravy/serva at the end, but this too still was not sufficient).

At this point, with the green pepper and tomatoes (I used 1 green pepper, 1 red pepper (for colour contrast) and then 2 tomatoes – all halved horizontally and deseeded. So few? Remember, I fractioned this recipe…). I slotted in my own step here, which was: I blanched these veggies once washed, halved & deseeded. I felt that the softer the veggies go in to the oven, the better they’ll turn out once the entire meal is steamed and served. Also, given the chicken’s fully cooked and rice just needs a steam, there’s very little time given for the veggies to soften well, really well, so might as well prepare them for showtime in the oven.

So, there’s cooked chicken in the gravy/serva, then there’s the boiled rice that’s been drained and set aside, and then there’s the halved veggie ‘baskets’….

Assembling went like this: layer some of the rice on the bed of your casserole dish (select a dish that is ovenproof and has a sealed lid, or one that will secure well with some foil and a lid so that steaming is effective) THEN, spoon the gravy/serva and chicken pieces into the veggie baskets and keep aside for now, THEN with the remainder of the chicken pieces & its gravy/serva, pour over the rice that’s layering the casserole dish. At this point, I swopped the layer around, instead: I THEN scattered frozen peas generously, THEN placed the veggie baskets on top, and THEN lastly scattered the last of the plain rice to cover the entire casserole.

At this point, are the extras that I landed up doing: I scattered more peas on top (for colour), threw a good, few handfuls of fried onions (recipe suggests this anyway) and poured some saffron water, strands-and-awl (saffron strands immersed in hot water) and then a sprinkling more of water (to activate the steaming process to fully cook the rice, and infuse the entire meal’s flavours altogether and heat the layers throughout). LAST: I dotted the final touches with dollops of ghee and sealed well with foil and secured with a lid.

Verdict: When following the recipe in the book, please take note of these essential tweaks that I believe will lead to a full-on successful meal: i) ensure that you add a good quantity of blended tomatoes to the chicken, so that you have sufficient gravy/serva when assembling. Keep it moist and yum! I added extra tomatoes, but will be adding a bit more so that there’s a lot more gravy/serva, ii) Blanching was not sufficient on the veggies I used, the tomatoes softened well, but the fleshy peppers were still harder than I had hoped for, I then had to remedy the meal and soften them (further) when serving leftovers. If blanching isn’t enough, then steam the veggies well until they’re quite softened (but retain their shape to act as veggie baskets), and iii) ensure that you sprinkle water once the assembling is complete, so that the steaming process in the oven is kickstarted with some h-two-oh! I will most definitely be making this again – but with tweaks i) & ii) in mind. Do NOT serve this without the mandatories: dhai + papri + achaar + boiled egg! They are must-accompaniments that makes rice meals amazing :)

With camera flash…

…and without flash. Same flavour!