Today morning Ajoy demanded something fancy and new for breakfast. After thinking for a while I came up with this :) It was tasty and we had it as brunch instead :)


Ingredients
4 Cup Finely diced Paneer
4 Potatoes
3 Spoon Corn Flour
1 Spoon Ginger
3 Green Chillies
5 Garlic Cloves
1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder
Salt to taste
Oil

Method

• Cook the potatoes in pressure cooker.
• In a mixie grind ginger, garlic and green chillies with 1/4 cup of water to fine paste.
• Heat oil in a pan and turmeric powder and the paste in it and saute for couple of minutes
• Add the diced paneer and salt it in it and cook till paneer is done well. Keep aside
• Peel off the potatoes and mash them to fine paste.
• Add in corn flour and salt to taste and knead to nice dough
• Make lemon sized balls and press down to make cups.
• Fill these cups with spoonful of paneer we made earlier and add close and flatten it
• Heat oil really well and fry till brown on all sides. Serve hot with ketchup

Notes
While frying the pattice, the oil should be really hot otherwise the potato coating will stick to the bottom.

Its been a while since I made any chicken dish.. It was always Ajoy who ended up cooking chicken or mutton which obviously is exactly of one type. Gravy remains same and chicken or mutton changes :) So today I thought probably i can make some chicken dish to surprise him. What would have been better than his favorite roll.


Ingredients
500g Boneless Chicken
2 Cup Maida
1/2 Cup Wheat Flour
1 Big Onion
1 Cup Broccoli
1 Cup finely diced Tomato
1/2 Cup Tomato Ketchup
1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder
1/2 Spoon Red Chilli Powder
1/2 Spoon Black Pepper Powder
1/2 Spoon Garam Masala
1/2 Spoon Jeera Powder
1/4 Spoon Corriander Powder
1 Spoon Grated Ginger
8 Garlic Cloves
Salt
Oil

Method

• Mix in maida, wheat flour, salt and couple of spoon of oil and add in water and knead the dough well. Keep aside.
• Dice the chicken into small cubes.
• Heat oil in a pan and add in the chicken cubes. Cook stirring it occasionally
• When chicken turns white in color, add in grated ginger, turmeric powder, red chili powder, jeera powder, coriander powder, garam masala and pepper powder and cook till masalas start to leave aroma
• Add in tomato ketch up and cook further for 5 more minutes.
• Add in diced tomatoes and salt and cook till chicken is done completely stirring occasionally. Keep aside
• Heat a shallow pan with a spoonfull of oil and add in sliced onions, diced garlic and brocoli and cook till they are completely done. Add in salt and a pinch of pepper powder and stir well. Keep aside
• Beat the egg and put it in wide pan.
• Make a small lemon sized balls of the dough and roll thin roti
• Dunk the roti into the egg only on one side and then put it on the hot tawa with the non egg washed side down
• Sprinkle few drops of oil on to top of the roti and flip it and cook till both the sides are done. Put it on a plate
• Spread couple spoon of chicken we made earlier in the middle as one line. Add in half spoon of onion-brocolli mixture on it.
• Fold the roti from the bottom and then folding the left side on top of the mixture and roll tightly to cover the mixture completely. Serve hot with ketchup or just like that.

Notes
I wanted to keep the rotis light so instead of putting a complete egg on top of each roti i chose to egg wash one side and that worked well. rotis were light and the taste of chicken came out really well.

Recently i started watching food network and some programs are really good.. One of them is Cup cake wars.. I was amazed at how people come up with their own recipe and create those beautiful cupcakes. So here i my share of mix and match inspired cup cake.


Ingredients
4 Cup Maida
3 Cup Dates
2 Cup Milk
1 Cup Butter
2 Cup Cream
1 Cup Icing Sugar
1.5 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
2 Lemons
1 Spoon Baking Powder
1/4 Spoon Baking Soda
Salt to taste

Method

• Grind a cup of dates in with the milk to form smooth paste. Keep aside.
• Whip sugar and butter using hand mixer till mixture is smooth and fluffy
• Add eggs and blend well to get smooth mixture.
• Sieve Maida, Baking powder, baking soda and salt together.
• Add it to the butter, sugar - egg mixture in portions alternating with milk-date mixture, beating well with each addition.
• Add in remaining 2 cups of dates - chopped and a lemon's peel grated and as well as its juice. Mix lightly till combined.
• Preheat oven to 350F/180C
• Line the cupcake pan with the cupcake paper cups and fill each of them to 2/3rd with the cake batter
• Bake the cakes at 350F/180C for 25 minutes. Keep aside to cool down completely.
• Add cream in a bowl and mix it with the icing sugar.
• Whip it using hand mixer on low speed till the cream becomes fluffy and stiff
• Scoop it on each cup cake or decorate using piping bag. Garnish with grated lemon peels.

Notes
I created a cone that i made from the parchment paper and piped the icing on top of few cakes and scooped the icing on others. So making cone is alternate to using piping bag :)
While whipping the cream its better to use hand mixer as its easy, fast and reliable. :)

The Inchin bamboo garden here serves this dish and its Ajoy's favorite. Of course it was Milind who introduced us to this dish given his liking for Okra. I wanted to try this out when he was staying with us but somehow it just remained a wish. Today finally I try this and I am glad I did. The dish turned out very nice. Worth making it multiple times.


Ingredients
5 Cups Okra
4 Spoon Maida
4 Spoon Corn Flour
1 Onion
1 Green Chili
3 Dried Red Chillies
2 Garlic Cloves
2.5 Spoon Soy Sauce
1/2 Spoon Red Chili Powder
1/4 Spoon Garlic Paste
Oil
Salt to taste

Method

• Mix in Maida, corn flour, red chili powder, garlic paste and salt to taste toegether.
• Add in water and make a running consistency batter for pakodas.
• Add in handful of okras in the batter and take them out into hot oil.
Fry them in oil on medium - high heat till the okras are golden in color. Keep aside on tissues to drain the oil. Fry all of the okra pieces similarly.
• Heat couple spoon of oil and add thinly sliced onion, green chili and garlic cloves. Saute till it turns light brown in color
• Add in dried red chillies crushing them by hand, soya sauce and saute.
• Add in fried okras and stir. Serve immediately

Notes
If you are going to serve this to guests, it would be good idea to keep fried okra ready but saute them in the sauce only just before serving that would help in keeping the crunchy, crispiness of the okra.

Recently we started getting the crabs from Costco. The first thing I made was this Pulav, an impromptu attempt to make something quick yet tasty. It turned out such a hit that we craved for more for days.. So this dish these days makes appearances in our meal quite regularly.


Ingredients
1.5 Cup Rice
300g Crabs Meat
1 Cup Curd
1/2 Spoon Red Chili Powder
1/2 Cup Black Pepper Powder
1/4 Spoon Coriander Powder
1/4 Spoon Jeera Powder
A pinch of Cinnamon Powder
A pinch of Cloves Powder
Salt to taste
Ghee

Method

• Mix in curd with red chilli powder, black pepper powder, coriander powder, jeera powder, Cinnamon powder, cloves powder and salt to taste.
• Add in the crab meat to the mixture and keep aside for hour or two.
• Soak rice for half an hour.
• Boil water and add in rice. Cook till rice is almost done. Keep aside.
• Heat ghee and add the crabs-curd-spices mixture and on medium heat cook till the crabs are done and the mixture separates from the ghee.
• Add in the cooked rice and mix lightly. Sprinkle salt to taste.
• Cook for a minute or two. Serve with raita.

Notes
Here we get big crabs, we got around 1.5lb = 0.7Kg and then after washing removed the meat from the shell and used the meat. If the shell is too hard or crabs or small try with shell.
To get the crab meat out from shell, we cut the shell with sharp knife and take the meat carefully out.

I had been making these type of pancakes quite often lately.. Each time with different fruit. But today when I made it with dried cranberries (craisins) it was like this batter is meant for it. So here i am posting it.


Ingredients
2 Cup Maida
1 Spoon Sugar
1.5 Spoon Baking Powder
1/2 Cup Melted Butter
2.5 Cup Milk
1 Egg
2 Spoon Vanilla Essence
1 Cup Craisins
Salt to taste
Oil

Method

• Beat the egg with sugar till foamy
• Add in milk, melted butter and blend in well.
• Add in vanilla essence, sifted maida, baking powder and salt to taste and blend it well
• Heat the pan on low heat.
• Sprinkle some oil and then drop half up of batter at a time on the pan.
• Thrown in some craisins evenly around and cook till the bottom side is light brown.
• Sprinkle couple of drops of oil on top of the pan cakes and then flip them. Cook till the bottom turns light brown.
• Stack them and serve with the maple syrup

Notes
I have tried using apricots, blueberries, raisins and many more other fruits instead of craisins but as I said we liked craisins the best in these pan cakes.

I have started to enjoy salads so much that every week i almost crave for one if i dont eat one. So here is a simple butter garlic garden salad with prawns that i made that tasted awesome.


Ingredients
8 Large Prawns
2 Cup Broccoli
2 Cup Green Beans
1 Cup Sweet Corn
1 Avocado
3 Cup Iceburg Lettuce
1 Onion
1 Cup Sweet Bell Pepper Sliced
1/4 Cup Cherry Tomatoes
6 Garlic Cloves
1/4 Spoon Oregano
1/2 Spoon Black Pepper Powdered
1 Lemon
Mozzarella Cheese for garnishing
Salt to taste
Butter

Method

• Heat pan and add in broccoli and green beans with some butter. Cook till they are smoky in color. Mix in salt to taste and keep aside.
• In same pan add in sweet bell pepper and some more butter and cook it for a while.
• When pepper seems almost done add in sliced onion, salt to taste and cook till onions turn light brown.
• Mix it with green beans and broccoli and keep aside.
• In same pan add in prawns and garlic diced coarsely and some butter and cook them turning often on low-medium heat till prawns are done. Mix in salt and keep aside
• Microwave sweet corn for two minutes and keep aside
• Divide the lettuce into two bowls.
• Add in half mixture of green beans, brocolli, pepper and onions in each bowl.
• Add in diced avocado half in each bowl.
• Add in prawns and garlic dividing half in each
• Add in cherry tomatoes and corn half in each bowl.
• Sprinkle lemon juice, black pepper powder and oregano half in quantity on each bowls contents evenly.
• Garnish it with shredded mozzarella cheese

Notes
I used Lemon as the dressing instead of ranch or anything else. If you like you can add ranch or other dressing that you like. But i thought the salad tasted awesome just with natural flavours from lemon.
Except prawns i cooked everything else on high flame giving it a crunchy texture. For prawns i added them on high heat and then reduced the heat so that i could give them smoky taste and color yet cook them nicely.

The first time i ate guacamole at Chipotle, i fell in love with it.. Then i searched for recipes and came up with this perfect one. Tasted awesome and finished in few minutes :)


Ingredients
3 Avocados
2 Spoon finely chopped Onion
1 Spoon finely chopped Tomato
1/4 Spoon finely chopped Green Chili
1 Garlic Clove
Handful of Coriander Leaves
1 big Lemon
Salt to taste

Method

• Scoop out avocado and dice them in the bowl.
• Add in onion, tomato, green chili
• Add in finely chopped garlic clove and coriander leaves.
• Add in Lemon juice and salt to taste.
• Mix well, smashing it a bit and serve

Notes
I didn't smash the avocados completely so that i could get pieces of it while eating.
Consume quickly as otherwise avocados would turn brown as they are high in iron contents.