Salad Days

It's often the very small things in life that can make you feel wildly happy.

(Ah yes, the armchair philosopher has begun spouting Wisdom for the Week - but do humour her - just as you would a rather green-behind-the ears DJ on a music channel proffering love and life advice - it's just some home-spun experience extrapolated to a world, nay, universal view ...)

Well, yes, how would you account for the fact that one of life's happiest moments, perhaps the only one, was when she discovered how to get dry yeast to work?

And the second happiest moment, just a few days ago, when she discovered her favourite brand of frozen (cleaned and deveined) prawns had made a comeback?

And the third happiest moment was when she discovered that she had refrigerated the avocado at the perfectly ripe moment so much so that when she cut through it, there was a paragon of green, glossy, buttery perfection in her hand?

Out went plans for an avocado, papaya, tomato salsa, in came what we shall now call a 'shrimp' and avocado salad. By the way, the difference between a shrimp and a prawn is this. (But I didn't go through it because it seemed boring, and who knows, my prawns might have been shrimp anyway!)

(It's a synthesis of various recipes I found on the Net, try as I might, I cannot zero in on the two I synthesised.)



But enough of meandering, here's how this impressing-friends salad is made!

Shrimp 500 gm
Oil: 1 tbsp
Red chilli powder: 1 tsp
Garlic, minced: 2 tsp
Salt, a pinch

Avocado: One, diced (sprinkle lime juice all over immediately to prevent browning)
Hard-boiled eggs: 3, cubed
Tomatoes, de-seeded and julienned: 1 cup
Carrots, julienned: 1 cup

Dressing
Olive oil: 3 tbsp
Lime juice: 4 tbsp
Sesame oil: 1 tbsp
Salt
Crushed black pepper

Stir fry the shrimp/prawns in the oil with the ingredients for just 2 minutes.

Now add the tomatoes, eggs and carrots.

Whisk the dressing ingredients well and pour over the salad.

Mix well, but with a light hand so that the eggs don't disintegrate.

Chill.



This salad goes off to Marija of Palachinka, who's hosting Kalyn's WHB this week.

In other matters, the second edition of Chalks and Chopsticks, Aquadaze's idea, has rolled around and the Bong Mom is waiting for you to spin your yarns and send them to her. Go on, do that and delight all of us, yours truly is a co-host.

Weekend Herb Blogging Salad Prawns/Shrimp Humour

Prawns & Greens, Expressly

For the first time ever, I listed the ingredients before I wrote out the story. And I'm glad they made the cut. They are ten in total but salt and chillies don't count, neither does the tadka, nor the water. And it's not something that I make everyday; in fact, this is the first time I'm making it. I have the vague impression that's it's a home-style/rustic dish, actually not even sure it existed till I went through a couple of cookbooks. I am late to the party but in the virtual world, attempts at a fashionably late entrance don't work as everything is subsumed in the round-up, so have I been late at all? ;)


Chukkakoora is my favourite variety of greens but a receding one - the shops in my neighbourhood that carry it have either closed down or stopped selling it. A meeting took me a little further away this past week and I found bunches of this in a large supermarket in the vicinity. Knowing that I couldn't use all of them, I regretfully restricted myself to buying only two. One bunch was used for dal and the leaves from the other were plucked and stored in the fridge. This morning, we used it up by pairing it with some prawns. It's nice and tangy, and don't omit the curry leaves.

Prawns: 250 gm
Onion: Chopped, a fistful
Chukkakoora/Ambat chukka/Khatti palak: 2 cups, washed (Chopping - optional)

Green chillies: 2, chopped
Red chillies: 2
Curry leaves: 2 sprigs
Salt, chilli powder - to taste
Turmeric: 1/4 tsp
Fenugreek seed: 1/4 tsp
Garlic: 3-4 cloves, crushed
Oil: 1-1.5 tbsp

Wash prawns, smear with chilli powder, salt and turmeric. Place in a pan and heat till the water oozes and evaporates. This takes just 2-3 minutes. (You'll have a hard time keeping your hands off the prawns till you go on to the next step, believe me.)

Simultaneously, cook the greens in another pan with chilli powder and the green chillies. You can sprinkle a little water if you like. Let it cook till it gets mushy (2-3 minutes).

By now, the prawns too would be cooked. Put them aside but in the same pan, add the oil and fry the onions, red chillies, garlic, curry leaves and fenugreek. Put the prawns back in, and add the mushed greens. Mix. Check for seasoning and take off the heat. This can be served with rice.

Sslurp!!!

Don't forget to participate in The Write Taste, on till October 15, 2009. Details in the sidebar.

Express Indian Chukkakoora/Ambat chukka/Khatti Palak Non-vegetarian Prawns Event

Of Candid Beel & Uncold Water

Add hot pups and fried france to the list. Along with umbercut steak patata. Snakes. And more. And you have a glorious mélange of what’s on offer in the little and not-so-little stores and restaurants all over India.

Those of you from South India must be familiar with hot pups. For those of you who are not, this is the name hot puffs go by in some establishments. Flaky or not-so-flaky pastry filled with a dark mass of spicy curry, with bits of green and orange peeping out if it’s vegetarian. The realization that pups could be a corruption of puffs came about in a rather chastening way – somebody much older than us pronounced it so and it set us sniggering, till they said something that made us realize things like those weren’t important. But they still amuse; though they don’t raise a mocking laugh any longer, they do prompt a gentle one.

Snakes, of course, are snacks. A “pig mutton” stall is a place that sells pork. Candid beel is candied peel - remember the big, sticky glass jars, containing multicoloured pieces of peel, hog plums traditionally coloured red and branded cherries, and the preserved raw papaya we know as tutti frutti? Uncold water is an ingenious phrase to differentiate between refrigerated and unrefrigerated bottled/mineral water that is stocked in the store. Uncold is cheaper, usually priced at MRP (maximum retail price), cold is costlier as the storekeeper has incurred expenses on electricity while chilling it. (I’ve read it’s against the rules to charge more for chilled bottled water, though.)

When I accompanied The Spouse on some official work to a temple town, the aspirational/tourist-pleasing aspect of small town India blended with the constraints of vegetarianism were evident in the restaurant of the hotel we stayed in. There was a variety of mystifying stuff on the menu but what truly perplexed me was umbercut steak patata. What on earth was it? Should I order and find out or safely stick to the less arcane selections on the menu? I stuck to the safe option. But the umbercut wouldn’t leave my mind – I turned it over and over and over till the penny dropped, quite suddenly – it was meant to be hamburger steak with potato! Yes, for the scores of foreign tourists who came to this place with its temple and its world-famous ashram, the hamburger patty, made of potato and not meat, would be the bridge between spirituality and their non-vegetarian homelands!

And with that, I leave you with a recipe for Fried France.

Medium-size prawns, shelled, de-veined: 500 gm
(Paneer/cottage cheese can substitute this)
Onions, minced: 2
Green chillies, chopped: 2
Tomatoes, chopped: 2
Coriander/cilantro, chopped: A cupful
Turmeric: ½ tsp
Salt: To taste
Chilli powder: 1 tsp
Cumin powder: 1 tsp
Coriander powder: 1-1/2 tsp
Oil: 2-3 tbsp (or less)

Heat the oil, fry the prawns till they turn pink and opaque.

Now add the onions, fry till brown.

Add the green chillies, sauté.

Now add the chopped tomatoes, mix well.

Now go in the powdered spices and salt. Mix well and sauté.

Garnish with chopped coriander.

Somebody who tasted this said the prawns were slightly tough, and that could be because they were fried first and continued to cook as the rest of the stuff was being added. However, she said it was tasty.
I even tried a vegetarian version with paneer/cottage cheese a couple of days later, and it worked well.

Indian English Fried France Fried prawns Paneer/cottage cheese

Eggstensions

Will suit ovo-vegetarians too, just keep reading, don't let the picture turn you away!

This recipe is mine, he said, as she finished with the camera and put it back in its suede pouch.
It will be duly acknowledged, she said.

So here it is, the spouse’s brainwave! To us, it was a new thing but in general, not really that new.

The vegetarian version

My helper at home would always tell me to break an egg into any vegetable stir-fry that I was making, that it would be “super” – but the idea of mixing up an egg with vegetables never appealed to me. Finally, one day, I asked her to do it for me, she made it with beans and carrots, was it tasty!

Temper the oil with some mustard and cumin seeds, some onion, if you like, put in the veggies (about a cup-and-a-half), season them, let them cook after stir-frying them on 'high', break a couple of eggs into them and scramble. Add some more seasoning and curry powder if you think it's necessary, at this stage.

Somehow, I never repeated it, though, and the recipe stayed dormant in my mind till the other day when the spouse, on an impulse, whipped out a packet of frozen prawns from the freezer, thawed them under running water singing paeans to how this particular meat was oh so simply thawed, and quite without any idea of what shape the dish was going to take, started sautéing the prawns pink. We didn’t have any ginger-garlic paste ready, and neither of us was going to start skinning ginger and garlic and grinding them at that late hour, so he said, shall we break an egg into it and see what it’s like? A bit of hesitation, and then I brought two eggs and cracked them into the pan and scrambled them – and voila, a blog post was born!

Using egg (or vegetables) to stretch the curry is an old habit. If there isn’t enough potato to go around, add some pumpkin. If there isn’t enough meat to go around, add some potatoes. Or simpler still, leave the daughters out and feed those choice morsels of meat to the sons.

Before I can get any more snarky, here's the recipe:

Prawns/shrimp, shelled and deveined - 250 gm
Some salt, chilli powder, curry powder - a pinch, to taste, a teaspoon, a tbsp, take your pick of the amount
Eggs - 2
A bit of coriander
Oil - 2 tsp

Saute the prawns, season with just a little salt and chilli powder till cooked. Break two eggs into the pan, put in a little more salt and chilli powder into the eggs, add the curry powder and mix them up with the prawns, stirring constantly, till they are scrambled moist. Remove from fire, sprinkle chopped coriander. You can add some lime juice for added flavour. (I didn't think of that when we made it.)

Note: The texture of the eggs changes when you re-heat it in the microwave but it's tasty all the same. Sandeepa reminds us that the prawns/veggies made this way can be a good thing to put in fried rice!

Tags: Prawns Eggs Quick recipe Shrimp Stir fry Substitute vegetables for prawns Gluten-free Low-carb

Baked Leftovers

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There are the strangest of superstitions and beliefs and I consider this as one of those – if you do something today, on New Year day, you’ll be doing it for the rest of the year. So, if you spend money today, you’ll be doing that the rest of the year (oh no!), if you eat a lot today, you’ll be gorging the rest of the year (oh no no!), whatever animal you think of, the year will go by at a pace matching that animal’s (really, what will they come up with next!), and if you blog today, you’ll be blogging the rest of the year (Yes, Yes, Yes!)
Here’s a dish that I tried out yesterday – it’s a bake of leftovers and comes in handy when you have old bread that refuses to finish. I suppose it’s something like a soufflé with bits in it, it doesn’t have the velvetiness but it rises like one when it’s baking. It’s not my own recipe but I’ve seen it in several avatars in various books, but really, go ahead and do what you want – these are just guidelines:

Sandwich bread, crusts sliced off – 4 slices
Cooked prawns/veggies – a big handful, chopped
Eggs – 2, separated (* so that’s two yolks and two whites, beaten till stiff *)
Milk – 1¼ cups
Cheese – 4-5 cubes, cut up into bits/grated/just crumbled
Seasoning: Salt, pepper, mustard powder/chilli powder

Tear bread into pieces, soak in hot milk for 15-20 minutes. Add prawns, egg yolks, cheese and seasoning, mix well. Add egg whites, fold in well. Grease a baking dish and pop it into the oven.
I baked it for an hour at 180 C which I thought was too long, but the usual test – sticking a knife into it and seeing if it came out clean – took a long time. Funnily enough, it smells like sweet bread pudding and I felt full just inhaling it – I guess it was the combination of the milk and the bread, though why sandwich bread should result in a smell so sugary, I don’t know! After a while, I even began tasting the raisins (non-existent, of course)! It tastes fine, but there’s no correlation between the smell and the taste, know what I mean? Go ahead and try it, it takes little effort and makes a filling meal!
Tags: Leftovers Bread Prawns Baked dish

Prawn Pickle

Growing up, pickles with any sort of meat were never something I had heard about, so it was a revelation tasting meat pickle brought back by friends from Kerala in our hostel.
It turned out later that that meat was beef so that effectively ended my gustatory experiments with meat and pickle but slowly, over the years, I began hearing of how so-and-so back at home had heard of somebody who made ‘chicken pachchadi’ and ‘mutton pachchadi.’ These reports would always be accompanied by an expression that said “What’s the world coming to? What will people pickle next?” I hadn’t heard of fish and prawn pickle even then, not from any part of the country, but came to discover them only much later.
The prawn pickle that I’ve tasted a few times over the last few years is made with lemon juice, garlic, fenugreek and mustard, much like the time-honoured recipes of many other pickles Andhra homes are famous for. I’ve even tasted one with the bite of cloves, which I found excellent.
These days, of course, due to the home-style stores in Andhra that specialize in making and vending traditional snacks and sweets once not usually found in sweet shops, non-vegetarian pickles seem to have become more popular and less ugh! The morsels found in them are an apology for meat and the masala is black, fried to death, probably due to the huge quantities they undertake to make.
At a book exhibition recently, I found a book that had recipes for two kinds of prawn pickle – one with tamarind and the other with lemon juice. I tried the lemon juice version today, and while I misread the instructions and messed up things midway, the end product didn’t turn out too bad.
Of course, it’s still just a couple of hours since I made it – after wrestling with the photos, I immediately stuck it in the fungus-proof interiors of my wonderful fridge, so I’m not sure how good it inherently is.
Here’s the recipe then, as it’s found in the book. I do hate it, though, when these books don’t specify the kind of salt or the measure but blandly say “Salt - to taste.” Maybe the book expects its readers to be experienced, all-knowing cooks, I don’t know. Funnily enough, the list of ingredients in this recipe totally missed mentioning the salt but all the other pickle recipes said that. It’s not as if it’s a dish you can easily adjust the salt in – pickle-making is a delicate and difficult enterprise, all the more so when it’s your first time, why don’t authors think of that? I asked around and crushed two small fistfuls of rock salt and added it to the pickle – that’s another of its inherent uncertainties!

Prawns: 1 kilo (2.2 lb) (I used only half the quantity and frozen, thawed ones as I don’t know how to handle fresh ones)
Garlic: 4 cloves (you can increase the amount)
Turmeric: 1 tbsp (increase it, it might give the pickle more staying power)
Chilli powder: 100 gm
Salt: I used two small fistfuls of crushed/ground rock salt
Mustard powder: 50 gm
Fenugreek powder: 50 gm
Lime juice: 1 cup (I ultimately had to use 2 cups for it to retain some moisture)
Oil: ½ a kilo (I forgot to measure the volume, sorry, but it’s not impossible to weigh)


Shell the prawns, wash well, drain and place them in a bowl. In a frying pan, heat half the oil to smoking point and fry till “red.” Cool.



In the same frying pan, put in the rest of the ingredients, mix with the rest of the oil, then mix with the prawns and bottle in sterilized jars. Leave it to steep for a day and check for seasoning the next. Meant to be eaten with hot, soft rice. I would recommend putting it in the fridge.

Tags: Prawn Pickle Non-vegetarian pickle

Pandan Prawns

Palav or fried rice at home often had these aromatic, long leaves curled languidly around it. They didn’t know what it was called, but were using it on the advice of a friend who brought them the plant from Malaysia many, many years ago. Only recently, I asked that friend’s family to give me one, and it arrived after two months, with a pretty pink ribbon tied around the pot!
This is the first dish I’m using it in – after letting it grow a bit in my own place. I can’t say it tasted of pandan - but it filled the house with its fragrance even before it went into the pan, tempting me to break off a conversation on the phone in the next room and savour its richness to the full.

Here’s how I made it:

250 gm shelled and de-veined prawns
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed/minced
3 green chillies
200 ml coconut milk
1 tbsp coriander powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
3 pandan leaves
1 tbsp oil, or even less
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil, fry onions, garlic and green chillies together till soft. Then put in the coriander and turmeric powders, and on low heat, fry till they release their flavours. Put in the pandan leaves, stir for a few seconds, slip in the prawns and coconut milk. Add some salt, stir and let it simmer till it thickens. Take off heat and add pepper. Serve with rice, ordinary or Basmati. I also think it will taste good with dosa, aapam or idiaapam.