INTERNATIONAL CUISINE | Saute Fry N Bake

Prawn spaghetti in white cheesy sauce

Preparation time : 30 minutes
Cooking time : 30 minutes
Serves : 4 members

Description

Once in a while , I get to a mode of clearing my pantry and end up cooking with the ingredients in hand. This spaghetti was one such try. I didn’t want to repeat with the red meat ball sauce I usually make. I had fresh prawns so I paired it up with a cheesy white sauce. Flavored it up with dried herbs, mushroom and capsicum. The sauce was yum, obviously with so much of cheese any thing would taste divine. The bite of the prawn with the spaghetti sure did hit on the right spot. Served it for dinner. My son in law was like ” please reserve the left overs for breakfast “. Which is a signal that the spaghetti was done to perfection. What more do I need. I smiled with a blooming heart.

Ingredients

Ingredients	Quantity
Spaghetti	200 grams
Prawns	1/4 kg
Garlic	2 crushed
Butter	2 tablespoons
Flour	2 tablespoons
Salt	to taste
Milk	3 cups
Parmesan cheese	1/4 cup grated
Chilly flakes	1 teaspoon
Dried basil and dried oregano	1 teaspoon
White pepper powder	1/4 teaspoon
Capsicum	1 cubes
Mushroom	1 cup sliced

Method

Boil water with salt and add the spaghetti. Cook for ten minutes until cooked well. Strain and rinse in cold running water. Strain and keep aside.
Cook cleaned prawns with salt to taste and little water for five minutes and set aside.
Heat and Melt butter, add garlic crushed. Sauté until golden in color. Top with capsicum and mushrooms. Sauté for a minute. Then add the cooked prawns with the water.
Add flour, saute a little and add the milk very gradually, stirring vigorously all the time making sure no lumps are formed.
Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 1-2 minutes, add the salt, white pepper, chilly flakes dried herbs basil + oregano and 1/2 of Parmesan cheese. Mix well and boil till a thick gooey saucy consistency is obtained.
Add a little more milk if the sauce gets too thick. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Add the boiled spaghetti and toss well in low heat for five minutes, letting all the flavor’s infuse together.
Serve hot with a generous sprinkle of Parmesan cheese over.

Kabsa

Preparation time : 1 hour
Cooking time : 1 hour
Serves : 5 members

Description

I come across a new recipe in a foodie group named kabsa. I go through the recipe and find out about all new ingredients used in it. I did store the name of the dish in my mind but after that it was totally a forgotten story. On my pilgrimage trip to macca for Hajj, on the holy day of Arafat that falls on the 9th day of Dhul hajj of the lunar Islamic calendar we were all served a packet each of hot food from the Saudi Arabian king. Eager me wanting to see what it is, found a big piece of meat with rice in it . Some one near me told its camel kabsa that’s similar to our biriyani that the arabs have . We had to have that as our lunch . Me with no hesitation had my share making sure to know how they must have made it. The Kabsa was mildly flavoured and aromatic. The next kabsa was had at Dubai in a restaurant where we were served in a big plate with mutton, chicken, fish and egg all in one kabsa. Five members had to share one plate of kabsa. My nephew Anik who was around seven then took his share on one side and told the rest of us that ” This is my territory and on one can have this ” we all burst out laughing. Back home, I did try to replicate the same but with chicken and egg alone. “The kabsa taste’s exactly like what i had in the Middle East minus the camel meat and the big plate ” was what hubby dear had to say on my Kabsa try. I was all smiles for sure.

Ingredients

Ingredients	Quantity
Chicken	1/2 kg with skin cut into big pieces
Basmathi rice	4 cups
Coriander powder	1 tablespoon
Red chilli powder	1 teaspoon
Pepper powder	1 teaspoon
Onion	3 chopped
Garlic	1/2 cup
Ginger	1 inch piece grated
Tomato	2 cups chopped
Tomato	2 ground
Cinnamon powder	1/4 teaspoon
Cardamom powder	1/2 teaspoon
Red chilli flakes	1/2 teaspoon
Ginger and garlic paste	2 teaspoons
Cloves powder	1/4 teaspoon
Red chilly powder	1 teaspoon
Cumin	a pinch
Whole pepper corns	5
Salted dried lemon	1 ( I used salted preserved lemon instead )
Water	6 and 1/4 cups
Almonds + pistachio + pine nuts	1/4 teaspoon each
Boiled eggs	2 sliced into rounds
Coriander leaves	chopped few
Raisins fried in ghee	1 teaspoon
Lemon	1 Cut into circles to Garnish
Butter	1/4 cup
Salt	to taste

Method

Wash and soak the basmati rice for one hour in water.
Marinade the chicken pieces with coriander powder, red chilli powder, pepper powder, salt to taste and ginger + garlic paste for 30 minutes.
Heat a heavy bottomed vessel with butter. Fry the chicken pieces to golden. Remove and keep aside. Divide the chicken fried butter equally into two portions in two separate bowls.
Heat one portion of the chicken fried butter in a vessel. Add garlic and onions. Sauté to pink and translucent. Top with grated ginger and salt. Sauté for a minute.
Add chopped tomatoes and ground tomatoes. Sauté until butter floats on top. Top with cinnamon powder, cardamom powder, chilli flakes, red chilli powder, cloves powder, cumin, preserved salted lemon and whole pepper corns. Mix well.
Add the fried chicken pieces, salt and water. Cook for twenty minutes. Remove the chicken pieces. Place them over an oven prof greased tray. Pour two ladles of chicken cooked gravy on top of chicken pieces.
Place small cubes of butter on top of the chicken. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for ten minutes. Remove and squeeze lemon juice over the chicken pieces.
Drain the soaked rice. Heat the renaming other half of the chicken fried butter. Add the strained rice and fry gently making sure the rice does not break.
Add the chicken cooked water, salt and more water if needed and cook the rice to done. Once cooked add small cubes of butter and fluff up the rice with the help of a fork.
Spread the cooked rice over a tray. Place the chicken pieces over. Arrange the sliced boiled eggs around. Garnish with fried raisins, almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, coriander leaves and lemon rounds. Serve hot with dacos sauce.

Dacos sauce

Ingredients

Ingredients	Quantity
Onions	1 chopped
Garlic	3 flakes chopped
Vinegar	1 tablespoon
Tomato	1/2 kg ground
Lemon juice	1 tablespoon
Oil	1/4 cup
Salt	to taste

Method

Heat oil, add onion and garlic. Fry to golden brown in colour.
Add all the other ingredients mentioned and sauté for 12 minutes. Remove from heat. Cool and serve.

Pita bread

Preparation time : 1 and 1/2 hours
Cooking time : 4-5 minutes
Serves : 3 members

Description

We are invited for lunch to a friend’s place on our holiday visit to Dubai. I make sure to be of some help to my friend in the kitchen. She asks me to open a packet and place the flat breads on a plate and serve it in the table. As opening the package, I get to see pita bread written over it. I was like, so this is the pita bread and made sure to try it out as well. After that it was a forgotten story. After years on my visit to Cochin at the lulu mall, I see them make fresh pita bread using a machine in their food court. My jaws dropped literally seeing how efficiently the machine made these breads. Back home, one day when I wanted to serve some thing out of the box than the regular. The pita bread popped up in my mind. I gave it a try with the results being not bad at all for my first try. Served it with three different Arabic dips. Dinner table was silent, with no complaints it vanished away with in a few minutes time. From getting to open a packet of pita breads in Dubai, to my jaw dropping in Cochin seeing how the pita bread is made, to making it at home in my home kitchen was a real worth memorable journey.

Ingredients

Ingredients	Quantity
Warm water	1 cup
Dry yeast	2 teaspoons
Honey	1 teaspoon
Wheat flour	1 and 1/2 cups
Flour / maida	1 and 1/4 cups + 1 tablespoon
Olive oil	1 tablespoon
Salt	to taste

Method

Mix warm water, yeast and honey together. Keep aside for five minutes. Add wheat flour, flour 1 and 1/4 cups, olive oil and salt to the yeast mix.
Knead well for five minutes by dusting 1 tablespoon of flour to get a smooth dough. Roll the dough into a ball. Grease the dough with oil. Keep covered for one hour.
Punch down the doubled dough and knead again for two minutes. Roll the dough into equal nine lemon size balls. Roll each ball into 1/4 inch thickness round rotis.
Cover the rolled pita dough with a wet cloth for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 230 degrees Celsius for ten minutes. Place two rolled pita breads in the middle rack of the oven and bake for 4-5 minutes.
Once the pita breads puff up, remove and continue to do the same with the rest as well. Cool completely.
Cut each pita bread into triangles and serve with hummus or baba ganoush.

Prawn pesto spaghetti

Preparation time : 20 minutes
Cooking time : 45 minutes
Serves : 4 members

Description

Saturday nights as a kid in boarding school was a movie night. The excitement that builds up for us to watch the movie one a week used to be so exciting. On one such Saturday night we watched the movie “A night at the opera “. Thinking about that movie now. Nothing is worse than the disappointing, nostalgic feeling you get when watching an old movie and you have to ask yourself, “Why can’t they make movies like this anymore?” At the center of this comedy masterpiece is a lively musical sequence that includes Allan Jones belting out a hearty vocal solo, Chico Marx performing his signature piano routine, and, of course, the ever poignant Harpo on the harp. And it all starts with a plate of Spaghetti.

As with similar comedy teams from the period (read: The Three Stooges), a running theme with the Marx brothers was that they were always trying to find something to eat. The context in this film is that they are illegal stowaways on a ship from Italy to New York, and they are starving, and when they finally do find food it’s a banquet of spaghetti, served out of a ridiculously large bowl, with meatballs and sauce, all liberally heaped onto their plates with no questions asked. There’s nothing they can do about it except stare with wide eyes at their newfound feasts, and smile. After all, what better way to launch into an epic song-and-dance number than on a full stomach? And with these amiable protagonists, it’s difficult for the audience not to feel stuffed right along with them. Yet, the spaghetti scene is only one of the many reasons A Night at the Opera frequently, and rightfully, earns a spot on shortlists for the highest-rated, most critically acclaimed films of all-time. Spaghetti always takes me back to this movie. As I was making this prawn pesto spaghetti, I had the entire spaghetti episode run in my mind. That was when I knew they ate spaghetti which an Italian dish and not noodles. Crazy breed me.

Ingredients

Ingredients	Quantity
spaghetti	250 grams boiled in a pinch of salt and some olive oil ( reserve the boiled water )
olive oil	1 tablespoon
mint leaves	few to garnish
cherry tomatoes	2
garlic	1 clove peeled
Prawn with tail	1/4 kg

Ingredients for the Pesto Sauce

Ingredients	Quantity
basil	2 cups ( at times I substitute with 1 cup mint + 1 cup coriander leaves or equal amounts of all the three )
Parmesan cheese	1/2 cup grated
toasted walnuts or pine nuts	1/2 cup ( I used pine nuts )
Salt	to taste
garlic	4 cloves
olive oil	3 tablespoons

Method For the Pesto Sauce

In a blender add all the ingredients and mix till a semi-fine paste is achieved.

For the Pasta

In a pan heat the olive oil, add the garlic clove. Add the cherry tomatoes and prawns.
Toss for a minute. Remove the whole garlic clove.
Add the pesto sauce. Cook for 1 minute.
Add the boiled spaghetti.Toss well, making sure the pesto sauce has coated the spaghetti all over.
Add about 4 tablespoons of spaghetti boiled water to get the right consistency and moister.
Garnish with a mint sprig and grated cheese over. serve hot.

Heart pizza

Preparation time : 1 hour
Cooking time : 15 minutes
Serves : 4 members

Description

My obsession with hearts goes way back to when I was a kid. I remember hair bands were so much in fashion in the early eighty’s. We used to get it with flowers, beads, in all materials and colours too. My senior in school masume from Iran had a hair band in metal which had tiny hearts engraved in them. Her class boy’s forcefully took it from her and counted how many hearts were there in the hair band and nick named her 56 hearts there after. That was when I got to know what a heart shape was and why and how it refers to love. No idea where masume is now or her 56 hearts metal hair band but the story remains fresh with in me. As I was making these heart shaped pizza’s, this story was running in my mind with me smiling. My help at home asks me ” amma enna thaniya sirikireengga ” which means, why are you laughing on our own. I didn’t want to let her know this story as I know she will think.. I am the silliest soul on earth to have such things in mind decades later too. This pizza was an instant hit at home like masume’s 56 heart’s metal hair band and her nick name.

Ingredients for the dough

Ingredients	Quantity
Yeast	1 tablespoon ( good quality must for good results )
Oil	1/4 cup
Maida	1 1/2 cup
Warm water	1 tablespoon
Salt	1/2 teaspoon
Egg	1
Sugar	30 grams
Milk	1/4 cup

Method

Dissolve yeast in warm water with 1/4 teaspoon sugar and 1/4 teaspoon maida. Keep covered with a wet cloth for 10 minutes to ferment.
Beat egg, oil, sugar and salt together in a bowl. Pour milk at boiling point to the bowl (of egg, oil, sugar and salt ) and mix well with a wooden spoon till sugar dissolves.
Seive maida. Add maida in small quantities to the milk egg mixture along with fermented yeast mix and knead to a smooth dough.
Don’t have to add all the maida, when the dough is soft, stop adding maida. Knead well. Place the dough in an oiled bowl. Cover with a wet cloth and set aside for proving for 30 -40 minutes.
Divide the dough into equal apple size portions. Shape each piece into a heart shape about 1/2 inch thick.
Keep aside for another 5 minutes and then bake till light brown at 200 degree Celsius. Take out. Cool to room temperature.
Spread the filling and bake for another 5 – 10 minutes until cheese melts.

Sauce and Filling Ingredients

Ingredients	Quantity
Tomato	1/2 kg ( blanched , peeled and blended )
Capsicum	2 chopped , ( green 1, red 1 )
Onion	2 chopped
Egg	1
Celery	2 stalks chopped
Spring onion	2 chopped
Baby corn	1/4 cup cut into thin circles
Olives	1 tablespoon sliced
Garlic	8 flakes ground
Ginger	1 inch piece ground
Chilli powder	1 teaspoon
Sugar	1 teaspoon
Oregano	2 teaspoons
Cheese grated	100 grams
Butter	1 teaspoon
Tomato sauce	1 tablespoon
Sausage , chicken , mutton or paneer	1 cup shredded ( optional )
Tomato purée	1/4 cup
Chilli flakes	to taste
Egg white	1 seasoned with salt and pepper to taste and beaten
Olive oil	2 tablespoon

Method

Heat olive oil add onion and fry for a minute, top with ginger and garlic paste. Once crisp add capsicum, celery, spring onion, salt, oregano and baby corn and sauté for a minute. Remove from flame and set aside.
Heat the blended tomato , chilli powder, sugar, salt and tomato purée together to get a thick sauce. Add tomato sauce and cool down completely to to room temperature. Add a beaten egg and mix well. Taste and adjust. Spread this sauce over the heart pizza base.
Sprinkle with 3/4 of the cheese, spread the onion, capsicum mixture over. Top with sliced olives and sausages, mutton, chicken or paneer of your choice.
Sprinkle remaining cheese over. Dot with butter and brush with egg white and bake in a preheated oven for 5 – 6 minutes. When cheese melts, remove, cut into wedges and serve hot garnished with oregano and chilli flakes.

Dolma

Preparation time : 25 minutes
Cooking time : 40 minutes
Serves : 4 members

Description

Any thing stuffed and filled always excites me. I got to know about this recipe from the Australian television show food safari where the host Maeve o meara goes umm and aah over getting to eat international dishes made by experts. I scribbled the recipe as I was watching the show in my hand written recipe notebook. After that it was a forgotten story totally. When I had to make a lunch spread at home guests, I was in search of a different curry to make. The dolma popped up, I immediately grabbed the opportunity and made the dish. All my guests were blown away with dolma when served with ghee rice. We all need a change from the regular at times to bring a spark of raised eye brows at the table. So let me pass this effect of raised eye brows to your tables too :-)).

Ingredients for the filling

Ingredients	Quantity
Mutton mince	250 grams
Onion	1 chopped
Basmati rice	2 tablespoons soaked in water for ten minutes
Egg	1
Red chilli powder	1/4 teaspoon
Turmeric powder	2 teaspoons
Curry masala powder	1/2 teaspoon
Salt	to taste

Ingredients for the curry

Ingredients	Quantity
Onion	1 chopped
Curry masala powder	1/2 teaspoon ( for the curry masala powder mix together- Cinnamon powder + cumin powder + coriander seed powder + pepper powder + turmeric powder + red chilly powder - 1/4 teaspoon of each )
Salt	to taste
Olive oil	3 tablespoons
Red + green + yellow capsicums	1 each
Potato	3
Hot water	little
Boiled white chick peas	1 cup

Method for the filling

Cut the capsicum’s 1/4 inch with its stem to get a lid and hollow bottom. Remove the seeds from the hollow bottom and clean the dent.
Peel the potatoes. Cut the top part of the potato just 1/4 inch. Then scoop out the inner fleas of the potato to get a hollow dent. Reserve the scooped out potato flesh.
Fill the hollow dents of the capsicum and potatoes with the mutton mince filling. Keep aside.
Heat oil in a large vessel. Reduce heat and add all the spice powders. Sauté for ten seconds then add little water and salt to taste.
Add scooped out potato flesh and bring to boil. Then place the stuffed potatoes and cook covered for fifteen minutes in low heat.
Place the stuffed capsicum’s along with the cooking stuffed potatoes. Top with the cooked white chick peas. Add water up to 3/4 full to the capsicum’s. Cover and cook further for another fifteen minutes.
Reduce the curry to gravy consistency. Check seasoning. While serving, place the stuffed vegetables in a serving plate. Pour the gravy over. Serve hot with rice or pulao.

Afghanistan mutton pulao

Preparation time : 40 minutes
Cooking time : 1 hour
Serves : 3 members

Description

Those days of having just one huge television set at home which was kept in the living room. we could watch the Telly only in the evening’s as doordarshan was the only channel that telecasted programs. We had no choice , you like it or not, you had to watch what they telecasted. In between all this as a kid, I had the last choice to raise my voice if I wanted to desperately watch something on the Telly. I remember getting to see sanjana karpoor ( daughter of actor sashi kapoor) do a program about Afghanistan show casing their culture, arts and food. The food part alone just stuck into me. It’s so fresh in mind how she relished the kebabs from the streets and showed big round rotis made and sold. This was in the mid 1980’s. After that, Afghanistan was a long story in my mind and culinary try list. Years later when I got to be a part of many foodie groups. I come across this Afghanistan pulao recipe that looks colorful with carrots and nuts. I hate rice with nuts so it didn’t interest me at all. I am asked to share recipes for a monthly regional food magazine where they wanted milad un nabi recipes from all around the world. I grabbed the opportunity and made sure to try this Afghanistan mutton pulao recipe. As I was making it, the subtle flavor’s evoked my taste buds. My eagerness to know the final product got more and more. The aroma was of making a biriyani and not a pulao. I tasted my first spoon full and my, my the flavor of the meat was all over the rice. The meat just melted away with the carrot bits and nuts giving a slight sweetness and bite to the pulao. In total it was a dish with all textures and flavor’s. I have added this recipe to my regulars at home to entertain as I am bored with serving the always biriyani and ghee rice as mains. Every time I entertain with this pulao recipe, I have raised eyebrows in the dining table. What more do you need.

Ingredients

Ingredients	Quantity
Basmathi rice	1 cup
Mutton	1 kg
Onions	2 sliced
Garlic	3 flakes chopped
Cinnamon	1 inch piece
Cardamom	10
Cumin seeds	2 teaspoons
Cloves	6
Water	3 cups
Carrots	3 medium sized cut into Juliennes
Sugar	1/4 cup
Raisins	1/2 cup soaked in water for ten minutes
Cardamom powder	1 teaspoon
Almonds	1/2 cup soaked in water peeled and sliced
Garam masala powder	2 teaspoons
Oil	1/2 cup + 1 teaspoon
Salt + pepper	to taste

Method

Wash and soak the rice for two hours. Heat a heavy bottomed vessel with 1/4 cup of oil. Sauté the mutton to brown by dividing them into four equal batches. We do this so that the flavour of the mutton gets into the oil.
Remove the mutton and set aside. Add onions to the mutton sautéed oil and fry for five minutes. Then add garlic, cumin seeds, cloves, cardamom and cinnamon and sauté for one minute.
Top with sautéed mutton, cardamom powder, salt, pepper and water. Cover and cook until the mutton is 3/4 cooked. Strain the mutton and spices, retaining the mutton cooked water.
Heat 1/4 cup of oil in another vessel over medium heat. Add the carrot Juliennes and sauté for two minutes. Top with sugar and caramelise to golden in colour. Remove from heat and add 1/4 cup of mutton cooked water, salt and soaked Raisins. Set aside.
Boil 3 cups of water with salt in a vessel. Add soaked rice and boil to 3/4 th cooked for five minutes. Strain and keep aside.
Grease an aluminium vessel with one teaspoon of oil. Mix the rice with remaining mutton cooked water. Now fill 1/2 of the rice at the bottom of the greased vessel. Place the cooked mutton pieces above. Top with carrot + raisins mix. Cover with remaining half of rice on top.
Poke five holes all around the layered pulao with a wooden spatula making sure the spatula reaches the bottom of the vessel. Cover the lid of the vessel with a cloth and cover the pulao tightly. Cook further over very medium flame for five minutes and very low heat for 20 minutes.
Remove from heat. After ten minutes, serve the pulao from the bottom to top over a tray. Sprinkle garam masala powder, almonds and sautéed carrots and raisins over. Serve hot.

Notes
Mutton can be replace with chicken and done following the same recipe
1.You can use apricots instead of raisins.
2.You can add pistachios along with almonds.

Muhamarah

Preparation time : 10 minutes
Cooking time :5 minutes
Serves : 4 members

Description

Middle eastern food has so much of vegetarian recipes to offer which most of us don’t know about. At a grand buffet lunch in Saudi Arabia at madina. I was blown away with their dips and salad’s spread. They had more than eight dips alone which they have with their breads. The muhamarah was something new which I was getting to know for the first time. I tried my best to guess the ingredients while tasting it but failed royally. I knew I missed out on a few ingredients that I could not get. Back home gave it a try with going through many recipes in the world wide net. Only then did I get to know that I missed out on all the ingredients as what ever I guessed was wrong. Food is so exciting to me because of this one reason of getting to learn everyday where you can never say you know it all. I tried my best to replicate what I had in madina and came close with taste but not the colour. The pomegranate molasses is what I didn’t have and I know that’s why I didn’t get the deep colour too. A must try health vegetarian dip that can be had any time of the day or even packed for kids to school or to office going adults. So save this recipe as it’s for keeps.

Ingredients

Ingredients	Quantity
Red capsicum	2
Onion stem ( white portion )	1/2 cup chopped
Lemon juice	1/2 teaspoon
Cumin powder	1/2 teaspoon
Salt	1/2 teaspoon
Pomegranate molasses	3 teaspoons
Red chilly flakes	1 teaspoon
Olive oil	5 teaspoons
Walnuts	3/4 cup
Bread slices	1 slice

Method

Grill the red capsicums over a stove top fire until the skin is black in color and the capsicum flesh is cooked. Cool completely. Remove the skin and seeds of the capsicum, keeping the flesh part alone. chop the flesh .
Grind cleaned grilled red capsicum, onion stem, lemon juice, cumin powder, salt, pomegranate molasses, walnuts and red chilly flakes to a smooth paste. Add the bread slice and grind further to a coarse paste.
Taste and adjust seasoning. Transfer the muhamarah to a serving bowl. Garnish with olive oil, pomegranate molasses, chopped walnuts, red chilly flakes and fresh pomegranate seeds.
Serve as a dip with pita bread or anything and everything.

Koi po / steamed Malaysian buns

Preparation time : 30 minutes + 3 hours for doubling the dough
Cooking time : 10 -12 minutes
Serves : 8 members

Description:

The first recipe that my co-sister Farzana wrote in my first hand written cook book around 20 years back. This is her grand mother’s recipe that I got to know through her. I had never heard of a bun recipe that’s steamed ever before. I remember she being a new bride,we had her relatives visit her very often and every time they would come with some authentic home made goodies. I used to wait to check out what new goodies are gifted each time. Her grand mother is a Malaysian,so their food is dominated with a lot of Malaysian dishes. This bun recipe is also a Malaysian dish. I got to taste a similar steamed bun on my trip to Japan but that had sweet red kidney beans filling inside. Well I guess this concept of steaming buns is a very Asian thing as I got to know even the Chinese steam buns for their new year. The universal bun that’s taken its different avatar’s through out the world. I am happy I got to learn a new technique of steaming buns and the various countries that it’s made. I may have shared thousands of recipes with you all but this one is the most special as it’s the first documented recipe of mine.

Ingredients for sweet filling :

Ingredients	Quantity
Grated coconut	2 cups
Sugar	to taste
Cardamom powder	1/4 teaspoon
Salt	a pinch

Method for filling:

Mix all the filling ingredients together.

Ingredients for the bun :

Ingredients	Quantity
All purpose Flour / maida	1/2 kg
Butter	5 grams
Vegetable oil	5 grams
Milk powder	2 tablespoons
Ice water	1/2 cup
Powdered sugar	2 tablespoons
Salt	a pinch
Instant yeast	11 grams

Method for buns :

Mix all the above mentioned ingredients together and knead to a smooth dough for ten minutes. Cover the dough with a wet cloth and set aside for three hours to double in size.
Punch the dough down to remove air. Knead the dough. Make medium size even balls out of the dough. Keep aside covered with a wet cloth for another one hour.
Flatten each ball to Palm size discs. Place desired filling in the center. Bring the edges of the dough towards the middle and roll to a bun with no cracks. Place the filled buns over cut foil paper squares.
Heat a steaming pot with water. Place the stuffed buns with the foil paper below and steam for 10-12 minutes.
Remove and serve hot,warm or cold.

Notes :

These buns can be filled with savory filling of choice too.

Nihari Gosht

Preparation time : 30 minutes
Cooking time : 1 hour and 30 minutes
Serves : 5 members

Description

As a teenager growing up watching a lot of cricket on the television and admiring a few players in sports star magazines that my brother used to buy. I have to admit I was a die hard fan of imran Khan and wasim akram of Pakistan. I guess that liking was forwarded to be so very curious about Pakistani food too. The first time I got to taste typical authentic Pakistani food was in Japan. I know sounds very weird but that’s the fact. My cousin brother ordered as he was a regular to the restaurant. The food was excellent in taste and I didn’t find much difference at all. It was almost like our North Indian cuisine. The nihari gosht that I had there was cooked to perfection with the meat just melting away. Since then, I wanted to try making it at home. Then again in Saudi Arabia I happened to have it again which tasted the same as I had in Japan. I made up my mind.. with no more postponing, I have to try the recipe soon. I did and my boy who is back from London after two years of his education, with his first mouth full of the dish.. was like mom this tastes just like the nihari gosht that I always have in a Pakistani restaurant in London. Only thing is the London version is a bit bland. I was all smile’s that I did cook the dish perfectly as my boy did find out that the dish was nihari gosht even with out me mentioning about it. Nihari gosht a Pakistani dish has taken a roller coaster ride with me through out the world from my childhood day crush’s in ooty, to Japan, to Saudi Arabia, to London and made in Tirunelveli finally.

Ingredients	Quantity
Mutton	1 kg
Cardamom	4
Cinnamon	1 inch piece
Cloves	1
Black cardamom	2
Bay leaf	1
Water	1/4 cup
Ginger and garlic paste	1 teaspoon
Coriander powder	1 teaspoon
Red chilli powder	1 teaspoon
Turmeric powder	1/4 teaspoon
Garlic	3 peeked , sautéd in oil and ground to a paste
Small onion	3 peeled , sautéed in oil and ground to a paste
Curd	3 tablespoons
Garam masala powder	2 teaspoons
Nutmeg powder	1/4 teaspoon
Cardamom powder	1/2 teaspoon
Saffron	1/2 teaspoon soaked in 1/4 cup warm water
Kewar essence	a drop
Chapathi dough	2 cup
Coriander leaves	few chopped to Garnish
Rose water	1 teaspoon
Oil	2 tablespoons
Salt	to taste
Ginger Juliennes	1/2 teaspoon to Garnish

Method

Heat a heavy bottomed vessel with oil. Add Cardamom, clove, cinnamon, black cardamom and bay leaf. Once they crackle, top with mutton and sauté until the colour of the mutton changes.
Add turmeric powder and salt to taste. Sauté for two minutes. Add water, bring to boil covered.
Once the mutton boils, add ginger and garlic paste, coriander powder, red chilli powder, sautéd and ground garlic and small onion paste. Sauté for five minutes.
Top with beaten curd, rose water, garam masala powder, nutmeg powder, cardamom powder, kewar essence and soaked saffron. Mix well and cook covered for three minutes.
Roll the chapathi dough into a long log. Place it around the mutton vessel. Place the lid over and seal the edges making sure the steam does not escape.
Lower the flame to sim and cook for 45 minutes to one hour to done.
Remove the dough seal. Garnish with chopped coriander leaves and ginger Juliennes. Serve hot with chapathi’s, rotis and rice.