Pyaaz Ke Samose

I am from Rajasthan and I grew up eating Samosa. I always loved the potato samosa or Aaloo ke samose. Different samosa shops had completely different flavors, loved some, hated some but the outer crust was always enjoyed. In fact, for a very long time I only enjoyed the outer crust of the samosas and only loved the Kheema samosas made by my mom. I just never enjoyed any samosa filling when the filling did not have much spice or if it tasted bland. Later while trying different Samosas, I realized that the spicy ones were always what I loved.

After I got married, during one Ramadan in Bangalore, we tried the Ramadan special Onion Samosa or Pyaaz ke Samose and just loved them. The funny thing is that people feel that Ramadan for Muslims is only about Non vegetarian food which isn’t true. We have a mix of vegetarian and Non vegetarian foods during Ramadan and we enjoy it all. These samosas are only made during Ramadan, thought there are a few Muslim shops who make them besides Ramadan too, but trust me the flavor that the month of Ramadan has in special foods is not something we get during other times.

Now since we don’t get these samosas here, I decided to make them at home and a few trials and errors and they came out just the way we like them. If you like onions samosa and like to make them at home, Please do try these out. Hope you enjoy them just like we do.

Badusha

Some sweets are connected to beautiful festivals. They always remind us of occasions and celebrations. I always connect Badusha or Balushahi with Diwali. I had friends who would serve homemade and sometimes store bought Badushas and they would be loved by everyone. I know this post should have actually been a Diwali special but sweets don’t need an occasion, they just need a sweet craving and zest and time to make a sweet dish.

Diwali is over but still posting this delicious balushahi recipe as I can’t resist my cravings and eternal love for Indian desserts or mithai. Since we don’t get Badusha in USA as it ain’t that popular here, mainly I feel its because the people have not tried it. So, I decided on making my own, multiple unsuccessful trials but I just had to make it perfect and I am glad I did. The temptation was too strong to let it go.

My mom is a big fan of this sweet dish. In fact I have heard stories that this was one of the sweet dishes made on my parent’s wedding. There is an old sweet market in my home city Jodhpur called “Pongal pada” and the street has variety of Badushas in different colors and textures and are called Maakhan Bada [meaning sweets made using butter]. Though Badusha is soaked in sugar syrup, the Maakhan Bada is covered with thick coated sugar, something close to fondant but slightly hard.

Once I cracked the recipe of the Badusha, there was no looking back. Its easy, flaky and your desire to eat just one, Did I say eat just? No one eats just one Badusha. Never!!! Its Balushahi in North India and called Badusha in South India. So, no matter what you call it, do try the recipe and make your own. These come out awesome, flaky and light. Once you try them, you will never bother getting them from the market sweet store anymore. Hope you like and enjoy them as much as I did.

Gajar Ka Halwa

Gajar ka Halwa is our winter favorite. The lovely sweetness of carrots mixed with sugar and milk and a hint of cardamom with desi ghee leaves you taste buds asking for more. Every family has their own version of Gajar ka Halwa and it’s the most common dessert in winters and can be found in most homes, specially during winters. With fresh carrots available in the market and the need to finish every meal with a dessert, this Gajar ka halwa definitely scores high.

I make mine with grated red carrots, milk, Khoya and sugar. It’s a winter delicacy and is made using the juicy red carrots. I also make it another way, which is my Mother’s recipe. Growing up I always felt that my mom makes the best ever carrot halwa. She would in fact even freeze the Halwa so we could enjoy it longer. My mom would cook her Halwa for hours on low heat and I as a kid, I would look forward to the Halwa. This sweet dish is mainly associated with North India. It is a rich, the texture is slightly grainy, with sweetness that makes the warm winter dessert taste delicious. I haven’t heard of any Indian who doesn’t love a good carrot halwa.

Garnished with slivers of dry fruits, it goes well with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on the side. I have a recipe of Gajar Ka halwa with Vanilla Ice cream on this blog too. That Halwa is made using condensed milk. So, it can be made any which way, eaten warm, with/without Vanilla Ice cream.

Most households in North Indian have their own recipe to make Gajar ka Halwa and with minor changes here and there, the taste changes drastically. This recipe of Carrot Halwa is my own and is one of the quickest and best I have had.

I grate the carrots and cook them in Ghee till they start releasing water. Once the water is dried, I add milk and cook the carrots till they are completely soft and the milk thickens while cooking the carrots and is only 1/4 left. I then add Khoya followed by sugar and cardamom powder. Cook till everything blends well and there is no liquid left in the Halwa. I only add Almonds, Pistachios and sometimes, cashews to my Halwa. But some people like adding Raisins which is completely optional and a personal choice.

I make Gajar ka Halwa pretty often and it finishes pretty quickly as well. You can easily double or triple the quantity of the ingredients and make a bigger batch if you want to. Along with the ingredients, the cooking time will also increase.  I try and pick carrots as red as possible and in case if I don’t get my hands on carrots that are red, I sometimes use a pinch of orange food color. It’s completely optional though.

Mutton Ghee Roast

With the wide variety of Kebabs that we make, we love kebabs made from meat the most. I love the way meat Kebabs are always so juicy and tender and absorb all the flavors so naturally. The texture of meat and the spices blend in so well together. I am sure if you look into details of cooking that when it comes to Kebabs, meat Kebabs definitely make to the top of the list. I have heard a lot of people liking Beef too, but since I have never cooked or consumed beef, I don’t really have an idea. But I do think that since Beef has a lot of fat, cooking with its own fat must be adding more flavor to it.

Coming back to Ghee Roast. I came across some cuisine where they mentioned the dish and showed how the meat is boiled till it’s cooked. after roasting the whole masalas, they are ground to a powder, and then the meat is cooked in ghee with spice powder, onions, curry leaves, and green chilies. This dish is pretty easy to make and makes it to my top ten list of easy and flavorful kebabs.

The best thing about these kebabs is that they can be partly premade a few days in advance as well. You can boil the mutton a few days in advance and refrigerate or freeze it, depending on how many days you want to use it. Similarly, you can always dry roast the whole masala and grind them and store them in a dry and airtight container. These kebabs are juicy, moist, flavorful, and go really well as a side dish or by itself. If you are a fan of meat kebabs, you will love the scrumptious chunks of flavorful meat. Enjoy!!!

Hyderabadi Chicken 65

Chicken Kebabs are an all time wanted and favorite for everyone. Chicken Kebabs go so well with Daal Chawal as a side dish and even by themselves. I love making Chicken Kebabs for my get together with friends as well. People always feel that you cannot experiment much with Chicken Kebabs at home, where as experimenting with different Kebab flavors at home is the best thing to do.

The basic thumb rule is follow the fragrance and the flavor. If there are spices that go well together and there are spices that don’t go too well. Spices like Black pepper is something that you need to add little at a time, since if its too much the dish tends to get bitter. If you need to enhance the flavor of Black pepper in your dish, its always better to add less of Black pepper and more of White Pepper to balance the pepper taste. Adding Tandoori masala gives a lot of kick to Red chili powder and makes kebabs more flavorful. You can always use citric acid in place of Vinegar or Lemon juice. Adding Flour with Rice flour and Corn starch Powder will add a lot of crunch to your kebabs if you are frying them.

With the Hyderabadi Chicken 65, I added Red chili powder and other spices with Ginger garlic paste and mixed it well. Further rolled the spiced Chicken pieces in Flour, Rice flour and cornstarch powder and fried them. Later cooked them in a sauce made with Onions, green chilies, various spices and Yogurt. I also add a little cornstarch powder to the gravy to make it a little thicker.

Chicken 65 is made in different ways in different places of India. Though the original recipe was made in Chennai, but different places modified their ways and made it suitable to their taste buds. Honestly, every pace has their unique flavor and we always tend to have our favorites but making them in different ways is always great to add more variety to your dinner table.

Puraani Dilli Ka Burrah Kebab

Puraani Dilli or Old Delhi is an awesome place for food. I believe being a central place that connects Punjab, U.P., Rajasthan, Bihar and also being close to Kashmir, it has people from all neighboring states. Hence, there is a medley of food. My dad took a lot of trips to Delhi for work. Even we as a family, would be visiting the capital of India quiet often since back in the 80’s and 90’s, we didn’t have the concept of direct trains from one city to another. So, we would take a train to Delhi and then another one to the destination. Since, My maternal family lived in U.K., dropping someone off to Delhi or picking them up from Delhi or we visiting our maternal home was always a trip through Delhi.

Now, being a non vegetarian, purani delhi is the place to be. Despite the crowd, the pollution and uncountable hygiene issues, every non veg lover at some point visited “jama masjid area” to satisfy their cravings. We did that on almost every trip and my father tried it at least twice each time, if not more. Some very popular restaurants serve awesome and delicious kebabs and curries with sheermaal, roomali roti and finger licking biryani.

Amongst the various variety of kebabs, Burrah kebabs stole my heart. Made from lamb/Goat meat marinated for a few hours, these kebabs are juicy, crunchy and full of beautiful flavors. So I had to search for the recipe. Though the recipe that I found wasn’t close to what my taste buds witnessed as a kid but being a home chef I knew how to add and deduct things and come out with the exact taste.

Dilli ka Burrah Kebab also has a funny story connected to it. I suffered from Typhoid and I was forced fed all the food without oil or spice for days and when it got over and I fully recovered, the doctor asked me a simple question, “What is the first thing you would like to eat?” and I said, “Burrah Kebab”. Of course the doctor had no clue what a seven year old was saying but my parents couldn’t stop laughing realizing how tortured I was after the sickness.

This is a must try for people who love Mutton kebabs. Pretty easy to make and can be stored too.

Roti Anda Boti

We love the combinations of Chicken and Roti, basically a Chicken Roll. My Mom used to make these amazingly delicious Tikka Boti which were inspired by something similar she had a Persian restaurant in Mumbai. Chicken Roll is always an easy go to recipe when you are finding it hard to decide what to cook. It’s a delicious recipe that is loved by kids and is always fuss free.

A regular Chicken roll is always great but, if you get to make some experiments with it, a little twist and change then your palettes love it more. Its basically the same Chicken roll but just made a little differently. This Chicken roll is less of a wrap

I added onions to a pan and Sautee till they were brown in color, further adding ginger garlic paste along with tomatoes and green chilies. I further added red chili flakes, tandoori powder, cumin powder and salt. Once the tomatoes are soft, add the chicken and mix well and cook till the Chicken is well cooked. The eggs are just plain whisked with salt and pepper and make them like thin crepes.

The difference comes in the Roti or the bread. Usually the Roti is cooked and then we add the cooked chicken to it. In this Chicken roll, I divided the dough to little portions, rolled it and then added the cooked chicken and added some dry cheese along with it. Wrap the dough and seal it from all sides and then pan fry it. As much as we feel that the taste might not be too different, it actually is and at the same time it is nothing close to the taste of samosa either. Its just completely different and outrageously delicious…The only way you find it is by trying it.

Murgh Zafrani Tikka

These kebabs were a fluke cum delicious, they are juicy and soft. These were made while I was thinking of making some Kebabs for lunch and I couldn’t decide on what to make and finally the idea of going a little different than usual gave birth to this scrumptious invention. These kebabs have a pretty simple marinade and are pretty impressive for the way they taste compared to the effort that’s put in.

Some dishes need be improvised where as some super fab one where you just follow your heart and make them trusting your taste buds. This is one of those fab recipes which were made just following my heart and turned out a keepsake. To start with I made these kebabs using Chicken Breast. I have mentioned in my other recipes as well that Chicken breast tend to make dishes a little dry, specially kebabs. So, the thing that you can you can do to make your kebabs moist using Chicken breast is to add more ingredients that are cream based. Ingredients like Yogurt, cashew puree, cheese, cream and even buttermilk. In some cases even adding a little extra butter adds a lot of moisture to the kebabs. Therefore, Murgh Zafrani Tikka, you can pick any Boneless Chicken Thigh and leg meat or Chicken Breast. Your kebabs will be juicy, moist and absolutely delicious.

Addition of different spices was a little adventurous and I just followed my taste buds. Initially I marinated the chicken chunks in Ginger garlic paste, green chilies, Lemon juice saffron and salt. I left the juices to mix in for 30 minutes, which added a perfect flavor to the Chicken. Saffron added a lot of fragrance along with flavor. I am in love with saffron. It happens to be my favorite spice and I love to add it to my dishes be it sweet or spicy. The spice just gives out an amazing fragrance when added to your dish.

I further added Yogurt and spices. Cumin Powder, Tandoori Powder, White Pepper and Turmeric Powder were what I used since I wanted the flavor to be not too spicy and not too mild either and something that would enhance and bring out the flavor of Saffron. To add a little crunch I added some Besan which was dry roasted before adding. Adding a little Kasoori methi adds a different flavor to the kebabs.

You can always cook them on the pan too by adding a little oil or you can also use the Oil spray. Kebabs are something that cross out all the restrictions and can be made anytime anywhere. I fail to understand recipes that only require an oven. That should never be the case. So, oven, no oven, grill, no grill…as long as you have these kebabs marinated the right way and have fire, these kebabs can be cooked in no time. I generally do not serve them with the stick unless I make them for a kid’s party. If you are using the wooden skewers, always soak them in water for 20 minutes before adding your kebabs to it. Soaking in water doesn’t let them burn in the pan or oven while cooking.

These kebabs are very easy to make and perfect for beginners. Since it doesn’t require any grinding or blending, they are prefect if you want to add an extra dish to your table without putting in too much time into making it. These Kebabs are on the milder side so if you aren’t a fan of something outrageously spicy, this is a perfect recipe for you.

Murgh Malai Tikka

These are most juiciest and softest kebabs I have ever made. Yet they are amazingly flavorful. My story for Murgh Malai Tikka is connected to my older son. My older son, who is a handsome teenager now used to have GERD as a kid. For those of us who have kids suffering from refluxes and unable to keep their food down, we know the pain. For those who have kids who are picky eaters, we know the struggle. Unfortunately, for my son, he was both a picky eater and suffered from a reflux and that continued for the first 2 years of his life. But, as they say there is always a ray of good hope and things started to get better once he turned 2.

Now once he started eating real food, his choices went more towards dishes that were spicy but considerable mild at the same time. That was when during one of our outings he tried Malai Tikka and he was so much in love that we placed another order of the dish, which of course he didn’t touch because we forgot that he was two and as much as we loved to feed our super fussy toddler, his tummy could only take so much. But, this was the time when I decided that I should start making my own Malai tikka kebabs at home.

And of course, like everything else dishes also require experiments and some times way too many. So, with this one my initial experiments weren’t that bad but they weren’t successful. The first try, I made them with Chicken breast. Although with some kebabs Chicken breast comes out dry, but honestly with this recipe make one of the most moist kebabs ever. Chicken breast is a great choice for curries and for dishes that require you to mince the chicken, but this is something tried and tested, while making Murgh Malai tikka, you can pick any Boneless Chicken Thigh and leg meat or Chicken Breast. Your kebabs will be juicy, moist and a taste to die for! The second mistake was to only rub in yogurt which didn’t make them too different from the other ones that I was already making.

Secondly the addition of different spices also was a little adventurous but finally a few experiments later I discovered that the key to a perfect Malai Tikka wasn’t just Yogurt and cream but also cheese. A little bit of shredded cheese might sound weird and you might feel that cheese is the last flavor you want to taste in you desire when you bite into your Malai Tikka, but trust me, no one ever knows. I guess its a pretty well guarded secret…LOLzzz. Well, now you know. The cheese needs to be shredded and you can only add Mozarella which isn’t too strong in taste. Adding anything like Cheddar will definitely ruin the taste.

I make these tikkas by marinating them in Yogurt, Cream, Ginger garlic paste, Shredded cheese, Black pepper, White pepper, Cumin powder, Red chili powder, Salt, Turmeric Powder, Tandoori Powder and cashew paste. Besides that I also add some fresh chopped Coriander leaves and Green chilies. I believe there is nothing that can enhance the flavor of spices more than fresh herbs. Though I make these kebabs in the oven, but they have been grilled to perfection on our outdoor grill as well by Mr. Parveez and they come out perfectly juicy and delicious. You can always cook them on the pan too. Kebabs are something that cross out all the restrictions and can be made anytime anywhere. I fail to understand recipes that only require an oven. That should never be the case. So, oven, no oven, grill, no grill…as long as you have these kebabs marinated the right way and have fire, these kebabs can be cooked in no time.

I generally do not serve them with the stick unless I make them for a kid’s party. If you are using the wooden skewers, always soak them in water for 20 minutes before adding your kebabs to it. Soaking in water doesn’t let them burn in the pan or oven while cooking.

These kebabs are very appealing and inviting and an instant hit. They melt in the mouth, while the spices give you a light kick, the cream base cools your taste buds down making these irresistible little chunks soft and juicy and delicious enough for you to lose the count of how many you relished.

Dahi Chhole Papdi Chaat

We are a family that loves chaats. Anything and all kinds of chaats are made in our kitchen and make it to our table. My chaat venture was restricted to Aaloo tikki chaat and occasional paani poori. Mr. Parveez always loved eating chaats, and he would even make Masala Poori at home when we got married. After we got married, he tasted Aaloo tikki chaat and he loved it. Since the, I would always try and experiment with different kinds of chaats, including chaats with sprouts, fruits and beans.

Chhole make an awesome addition to every chaat. Once you mix them up with onions, coriander leaves, green chilies, chutney and yogurt, it really absorbs the flavors and tastes delicious. This chaat is crunchy, crispy and full of sweet, sour and mouth tingling flavors. It tantalizes your taste buds opening up to so many different tastes.

This is a quick answer to chaat time craving. The whole process never takes too long, specially if you have boiled chickpeas. I usually soak and boil mine and make small packets in the freezer. Though using canned chickpeas is absolutely fine as well, but I just prefer mine to be homemade, since it isn’t too time consuming. Chaat cravings always need quick answers and this is soul satisfying to any chaat lover. Enjoy!!!