Chicken Lollipop

Ingredients:

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16 Chicken wings

1 Cup breadcrumbs

1 tbsp Corn flour

1/2 tsp Salt

2 Eggs

1 tbsp White pepper

Oil for deep frying

A pinch of ajino motto (optional)

Cooking Instructions:
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Take a bowl and beat egg in it.

Add corn flour, breadcrumbs, ajno motto, white pepper and salt and make a fine batter.

Now mix chicken wings with it.

Heat oil in a deep bottomed pan and deep fry chicken wings one at a time until dark brown.

Chicken Lollipop is ready to serve.

Summer Specials: Paratha special, West India Special and East India Special

The summer of 2007 for Food Club distinctively saw three special meets: Paratha Special, West India Special and East India Special. The three were held at Sarang's place, Ritu's place and Pathikrit's place respectively.
'Paratha special' saw parathas coming out of result of both experiments as well as the traditional ones. The experimented ones were the onion paratha, mixed veg paratha while the traditional ones were paneer paratha and poren poulli. Each of the members demonstrated cooking one paratha each while the rest were already prepared.
The next to follow was 'West India Special' where the dishes came out from various parts of West India viz. Rajasthan , Gujarat and Maharashtra. This meeting saw Mr. Sanket Pattekar preparing an exotic maharashtrian non-veg dish known as Chicken Sukha dry. However, the proceeding started with Amit who prepared made to order Bhaigan Bhaaja which was an instaneous hit with empty stomachs. While Ashwini made preparations for ghee soaked marwadi suji ka halwa; Ritu started with preparing Kadi. The thick kadi had pakodis of peas. This was an experiment which paid off in the end. Amit, being Bengali though brought up in Gujarat, prepared his mixed 'Shaak' with Sanket's dish. The members enjoyed the dishes with rice. The last nail was the tasty sooji ka halwa which made us experience the ruchness of Marwad.
The end of summer saw 'East India Special' to compete the success of the previous meet. This meeting had Mr. Swaroop with his wife Sarbani as guest chefs who prepared an out of the world, 'Bengali Mutton Curry'. This spicy dish would definitely give chettinaad chicken run out of its money. Pat, played a real host and prepared the other dishes. Starter was Baigan Pakora, vegetarian was Gobhi and then the sweetish cutish dish 'Doi Mishti'. The main course was eaten with rice and members really had a tummy full day.

Chicken Sookha Dry By Sanket Pattekar

Ingredients:
500gm. Chicken.
1 tsp. chili powder.
1 tsp. garam masala.
1 tsp. dhania powder.
1/2 tsp.jeera powder.
1/2 tsp. poppy seeds.
1/2 tsp. nutmeg powder.
2 pinch of turmeric powder
Pinch of hing.
Salt to taste
5 flakes of garlic.
1/2 inch ginger.
4 green chilies.
Small amt. of coriander.
2 small onions.
1 tomato
1 tbsp. ghee.
3-4 clove
1-2 pieces of cinnamon
2 Black cardamom
Pinch of shahi jeera
1/2 tbsp lemon juice.
1 tsp. butter
Coriander for garnishing
Preparation:
Cut chicken into small, even pieces and put it in a bowl. Add chili powder, garam masala, dhania powder, .jeera powder, poppy seeds, nutmeg powder, turmeric powder,salt and hing and mix well.
Mix garlic, ginger, chilies and coriander to a fine paste, and add this to chicken. Keep this chicken marinated for at least 2 hours.
Take a heavy bottom pan, add ghee, clove, cinnamon, cardamom and allow it to sputter. To this add shahi jeera and onions, and sauté the same till onion become golden brown. To this add tomatoes, and sauté for 5 mins.
Add the marinated chicken and sauté it on high flame. Reduce the flame ad keep mixing till the chicken is dry.
Add some water and allow the chicken to cook. After the chicken is cooked sauté on high flame, till the chicken is completely dry.
Garnish this with lemon, butter and coriander
Tips:
Poppy seeds, Nutmeg powder, and Ghee are must for this recipe
This recipe is slightly spicy. Reduce the quantity of Garam masala, to ½ tsp, if desired
This recipe is very dry. If you want to have gravy, increase the onions to 3 in number and tomatoes to 2
This recipe can be had as starter or with roti.

Shaak-Bhaaji Mixed

Ingredients:
3-4 small Carrots
100 gms of Green Beans
2-3 medium sized Potatoes
1 medium sized Tomatoes
1 medium sized Cauliflower
Oil
Salt to taste
1 spoon of Garam Masala (containing Cumin, Coriander, Red chilli)
1 spoon Turmeric powder (heaped)
1.5 medium sized sliced Onions
Medium sized Kadhai with cover
Wooden ladle
water

How to make Shaak-Bhaji Mixed:
1. Wash all the vegetables
2. Chop the carrots into small circular pieces after peeling off the outer skin
3. Chop the beans into an inch sized pieces
4. Chop the cauliflower into medium size pieces after removing the hard pieces from the bottom
5. Chop the tomatoes into circular pieces and remove the seeds from inside
6. Peel the skin of the potatoes and then make 4 slizes of each
7. Slice and dice the onions into very small pieces
8. Put the kadhai on medium heat and pour oil upto quarter of the kadhai's height
9. Fry the potatoes first till golden brown
10. Put the onions and fry till brown
11. Put all the vegetables and stir fry
12. Along with the vegetables, add the garam masala, turmeric powder and salt to taste and keep on stirring for 5 minutes
13. Add water such that all the vegetable pieces are soaked more than 50% in water
14. Put the cover on the kadhai and allow the contents to cook for about 15-20 minutes till all the water is absorbed
15. Between 5 min interval, open the cover and check if the vegetable pieces are boiled or if the salt is per taste. Add more sal, turmeric and garam masala if needed
16. After cooking, remove the kadhai from burner and allow the mixture to cool. Do not serve right after removing from burner

BEGUN BHAJA RECIPE

Ingredients:
oil to fry
1 tsp turmeric powder
salt to taste
2 big size brinjals

How to make begun bhaja :
Wash and cut the brinjals into half inch round slices.
Apply salt and turmeric powder.
Heat up the oil in a pot to smoking point.
Take off heat, cool slightly and then reheat.
Fry the brinjal pieces till crunchy and brown.
Serve hot.

Going West (of Amsterdam)

The meeting at Roja's place on 6th May,2007 seemed to get a slow start but then it picked up with lot of things being prepared and discussed. As per the plan, we had following recipes:
Kotmir wadi by Ashwini
Poha by Prakash
Vegetarian Korma by guest chef - Achut Shanbagh
Toran (mallu dish) by Roja
and dessert 'Sondesh'( of two types) by Pathikrit

Ashwini initiated the proceedings with explainations about Kotmir wadi along with its ingredients. Pat, in the mean time, started preparing for Sondesh(es) as well. He gave a tasty surpise when he said that he's going to prepare infact two type of Sondesh: a normal one and a chocolate one. Prakash had to wait for his Poha while Kothimbir wadis were getting fried. Hungry people had their mouth ful with delicious Kothimbir wadis along with 'mrchi ka achar'. Poha, a popular dish from UP and MP, was followed by the main course.
The main course had 'Vegetarion Kurma' by our guest chef Achut which had all the flavours of Konkan. Next was Roja's tasty Toran, a popular Kerala dish.

Hence, Pat's Sondesh were all ready to be eaten and they were yummy. According to Pat, two is very less number of types as compared with the total types available for Sondesh. Interesting, isn't it?

April Fool meet

Well we met for cooking on April 1 as well. Coincidentally April 1 was a sunday exactly 2 weeks from our previous March 18 meet. This meet was special because it was the very first time we invited a guest chef. Pathikrit was the guest who now is a club member himself. Pat liked the idea of learning and cooking togther and hence opted to be a member himself.

This meet also saw a new member join the club - Roja. Also we met Fakhruddin's family, including his daughter Sara, this day.

Menu for this meet was:

• Soyabean kebabs with Mint Chutney
• Biulir Daal
• Posto Chingri Bhape
• Phulkopir Posto
• Sheer Khurma

We opted for 2 types of posto (Poppy seeds) dishes - one being vegetarian and the other non vegetarian. To go along with the posto dishes Urad Daal (Biulir) was also prepared.

Around 12 people were supposed to reach Ashwini's place. Pat being the guest chef and a quality person was the first to reach and had already started preparation like defrosting the chingri and cooking white rice.

Vandana had already prepared the soyabean kebabs from home as was very time consuming to demonstrate the same there. However some raw kebab mix was brought for demonstrating how the kebabs are made. All enjoyed the kebabs with mint chutney.

Once most of us were in, Pat started demonstrating the process of grinding the posto and breaking the phool gobi. The ingredients were discussed, salt check-check & dal tenderness was checked. The chingri posto was cooked in the microwave with minor research on Ashwini's microwave part of the process.

Finally we had the urad dal, veg and non-veg postos & white steamed rice to eb enjoyed. At this moment Pat gave us a pleasant surprise with his self made chilly pickle. It was exceptional. I even took some of it home which Pat gave reluctantly ;)

While the urad dal was getting ready, preparation for sheer khurma was started. The nuts were cut, milk boiled and sivaiyan mixed along with. The prcoess was demonstrated well. We then had the meal round 1 and round 2. Round 2 was only attempted by the non veg folks. As it is said, it needs to be had hot or else it is not the same, so we all enjoyed a bowl of hot & delicious sheer khurma.

Following the meal discussion happened on some more food. Specially the drink mastani from Pune that I jsut need to try whenever I am there.