Eid Special- Sewaiyan Recipe

One of the best thing about my country; 100 festivals and 100 reasons to celebrate every year. Although, Eid is not a festival of my religion, there is no harm inviting some happy moments by celebrating it in some way :) Making Sewainya on Eid was my way of celebrating Eid.

Believe you me, making sewaiyan is a child's play. I was just worried about the amount of sugar we would consume while savoring sewainya. Sugar free tablets solved my problem . So here's how I prepared my sugar free sewainya........

• I took half bowl of thin vermicilli, three glasses of milk, 10-15 tablets of sugar free, few saffron strands and lots of dry fruits.

• To do away with the raw smell of vermicilli, the first step was to fry it in a spoonful clarified butter. Just for 3-4 minutes on low flame.

• In the next step, I poured the entire amount of milk in the wok where I had fried vermicilli and let the vermicilli boil in milk till milk thickens and only 10 percent liquid milk is left.

• Then added sugar free (if you don't have health woes like me, you may use sugar) and kept stirring. After adding sugar, keep stirring Sewainyan else it will catch the bottom of the pan and burn.

• Then finally switched off the gas. The right time is when you can see a little liquid milk still left. It dries up further after cooling.

• Now garnish with lots of pista, kaju, kismis, badam and a few saffron strands

• Relish your Sewainya hot or frozen. Since I had a soar throat, I had it warm.

Try for yourself :) EID MUBARAK!!

Prawns in Coconut Milk- Mom's Recipe

Can you guess what’s my favorite non- vegetarian dish is??

No it's not Chicken Tikka or Butter Chicken. Even though chicken dishes are very dear to me, but my favorite non- vegetarian dish is Prawns in Coconut Milk a.k.a. 'CHINGRI MALAI CURRY' in my regional language. No prize for right guesses if there were any ;)

My mummy makes awesome chingri malai curry and I got the recipe and pictures from her while  she cooked it for me on my and my husband's special demand . The recipe is surprisingly simple. For a dish so delicious, it is hard to believe that the recipe would be so simple. Here goes the recipe for those who wish to give it a shot :-

 

 

 

There are just two challenges in preparing this dish. First, cleaning the prawns; and second, extracting coconut milk. 

Papa got 1 kg medium sized prawns. The fish seller cleans them, however as an extra precaution mummy again ran it through running water. Make sure that the prawn mustache and tail is taken off while cleaning. Precisely, the prawn is covered with a translucent shell, these needs to be removed very gently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The second step is a mammoth task and usually assigned to papa. Breaking, shredding the inside of coconut and extracting coconut milk is a tedious and skillful act. Coconut milk is available in grocery shops nowadays. But, the idea of using coconut milk with preservatives does not go well with my bong, food-loving father. He believes that the packaged coconut milk just destroys the bona fide taste of Chingri Malai Curry.

 

 

Next step is to prepare a smooth paste of mustard seeds (2-3 tspn), green chillies (10-15 depending on how hot and spicy you want it to be) and garlic (2-3 cloves)

Marinate the prawns with a little salt, turmeric, jeera powder and mustard- chilli paste prepared in the above step. Mix 1 tablespoon mustard oil as well.  Keep this covered for 1/2 hour.

 

 

 

 

Once the cleaning and extracting coconut milk, marinating prawns is completed, 90 percent of the job is done. Rest of the recipe is just a cake walk.

Heat wok and put a tablespoon mustard oil in it.

 

Once the oil is piping hot add nigella seeds.

After the seeds splutter, put in the marinated prawns and mix well. 

After 2-3 minutes add the coconut milk. Mix well. Simmer, cover and cook for 12-15 minutes.

Keep stirring in between. Check salt and add if needed

 

Once the prawns are tender and the dish has a thick consistency, garnish with chopped coriander leaves.

......and the super awesome dish is ready to savor. 

I never tried making it myself and I am not too eager to take the pain of extracting coconut milk. I would rather ask my mother to cook it for me every time I yearn for it. However, my husband is in awe of this dish and just for him, I think I will try making the dish once on his next birthday.

After all the way to a man's heart is through his tummy; and in case of Rupam, it surely is........ :))

Paneer Mushroom Masala- Recipe with Pictures

I love paneer as much as I love Chicken. And when Paneer is complimented with mushrooms, the dish just outshines any other dish. As soon as I got paneer and button mushrooms in my stock, I started Googling for a good Indian recipe. 

Internet is full of Paneer Mushroom recipes and the bloggers have shown ample love for this dish on the internet. Finally, as confused as I could get with thousands of recipes overflowing on W.W.W., I decided to use my instincts and prepare the dish. It was definitely not my invention but an adroit combination of internet recipes and my mother’s shahi paneer recipe.

 

Here goes the recipe:-

 

INGREDIENTS:-

 

 

The biggest pain was to clean the mushrooms. Thank god for Google, else I wouldn’t have known half the things I know now :)). I discovered that different people have different ways of cleaning mushrooms. My mother cuts off the stem and cleans out the brown hairy part with a knife before slicing the mushrooms. This reduces the mushroom quantity to a great extent. So, I was not convinced with this method. People in the west don’t like washing mushrooms under running water. They recommend wiping the dirt off using a damp cloth. After going through couple of blogs, I decided that neither i am going to clean off the mushroom stem or hairy part, nor I am going to avoid cleaning it under running water. The inside of mushrooms, including the hairy part is all edible. It just looks gross and hence some people clean it up. This is what I did to clean up mushrooms.

 

  Lightly washed the manure and dirt off mushrooms under running water

Wipe it dry

Peeled off the thin covering on the mushroom button

Sliced it vertically taking the stem along

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, I stir fried the mushrooms. This step takes out all water from mushrooms and it becomes smaller in size. This is how it looks after frying

 

Next step, I deep fried the cubed paneer pieces and soaked in hot salty water to retain its softness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cleaning, chopping and frying the ingredients forms a major part of the whole cooking job. Thankfully this part is over by now. Now we just need to prepare the gravy base and cook it all together. I wanted the base to be rich and spicy and full of flavor. 

 

The wok was piping hot with oil in it. I started by putting a bay leaf in it. 

 

 This was followed by half a teaspoon cumin seeds and after they spluttered, paste of onion ginger and garlic was mixed in. 

 

   

The most important question while cooking is to figure out how long every step takes and how to know when it is done. The best hint for this is to be watchful of the color. The onion paste will turn crispy brown when it is done. You know how does brown look like; to figure out what does crispy brown look like, you will have to run your imagination's search engine ;) 

After successfully achieving the crisp brown color, add in the dry spices. Turmeric powder + Red chili powder + coriander powder + jeera powder.  Add tomato puree and salt

 

Mix well. Cover and cook on medium flame. When oil separates from the spices, you know that the spices are done and the raw smell of the tomato is gone. I feel the most crucial part of cooking is when you cook the spices, tomato and onion together. That is what decides how good the dish will turn out. 

Now warm 1/2 cup water and mix in the spice paste in the wok and keep stirring. Mix in the fried mushroom pieces and Paneer pieces dipped in warm water. Stir and mix well. Let it cook on medium flame for 3-4 minutes. 

 

 

 

Add a pinch kasoori methi. Add some more warm water to wok now to increase the gravy. Do not add too much water. The dish must have a thick and rich gravy base.

 

 

 

After cooking for 3-4 minutes, garnish it with chopped coriander and half teaspoon garam masala. Decorate with layers of fresh cream.

 

 

PS:- Cooking it in clarified butter will give the dish a tastier twist. But also add layers of fat to this already rich and high calorie dish :) 

Breast Cancer- Save yourself

As I scrolled my LinkedIn homepage, I came across some very disturbing pictures of Beth Whangaa. After her breast cancer surgery (Total Bilateral Mastectomy) she decided to share her story and her sufferings by posting her bare pictures on Facebook. The aim was to shake the world by showing her scars and highlight how important prevention is. 

I was shaken!  And I believe that every woman who looks at the scars of amputation on her body will be perturbed to the extent that they start taking care of themselves and of the women around them they really care about.

IMAGE LINK- Beth Whangaa

(not sure if  I can copy the pictures directly in my blog)

 Whangaa, a nurse by profession, and a mother of four, was diagnosed with breast cancer on her 32^nd birthday. She is a carrier of BRCA2 gene that puts her to an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. She underwent a double mastectomy, a hysterectomy, lymphadenectomy and melanoma lumpectomies. A lady, who was under knife so many times losing her two major female organs and fighting the beast named cancer, stood very strong baring her scars. She chose to speak out about her agony for the sake of others affected by cancer.

"Your scars are a physical or emotional representation of a trial you've been through. They show that you came through the trial and survived."

                 - Beth Whangaa

Going through Beth’s story, I came across the ‘SCAR PROJECT’. It is painful to know how cancer is hurting millions of lives across the globe; both physically and psychologically. The SCAR PROJECT brings to light the courage and spirit of breast cancer survivors through its raw yet beautiful photographs.

(Few cropped images from the SCAR PROJECT)

In past few years the awareness about this deadly disease is on a rise. I work in a busy diagnostics department of a big hospital. I have witnessed a significant growth in the number of females who choose to get their preventive breast examination done every year by getting a breast mammogram and ultrasound breast done.

It is very wisely said,“Prevention is better than cure”. There is an important learning which I got from the industry experience. There is no better tool than self breast examination to detect any untoward changes in your body. The five step self breast examination is explained in the image below:-

 

5 Step Self Breast Examination

Regular self breast examination can aid detection of breast cancer at a very early stage. A yearly mammogram and Ultrasound breast for females above 35 years of age is an important preventive measure. For females below 35 years only ultrasound breast is recommended.

Not even in dreams we would consider falling prey to the beast named cancer. But, the wretchedness of cancer is such that it wouldn't knock the door before entering one's life.

THINK & ACT!!