Sweet & Spicy Dip/Chinese Sauce

One of my favourite flavors and cuisine is Chinese...I love Asian flavors and especially chinese for the strong Garlic tinge in the food.

Needless to say Chinese dips go very well with Raw salads as well as party starters. Here is one such Asian inspired Chinese dip that can get your party rolling.

Here goes the recipe

INGREDIENTS

1 Tsp Red Chilli flakes
1  Tsp Finely chopped garlic
1 Tsp lemon
1 Tsp Chinese Hot & Sweet Chili Sauce
1 Tbsp Corn Starch
1/2 Tsp Salt
Sugar or honey are desired
1/4 cup water

In a saucepan, bring water, sugar and lemon to a good boil.  Now at chopped garlic, red chilli flakes, salt, Chinese Sauce and mix well. Let the garlic cook well and the flavor blend in. At this time, dissolve the corn starch in 3 tablespoons of water and keep aside. Once garlic has cooked, add the corn starch liquid into the saucepan and keep stirring to desired consistency. Top it up with some good quality vinegar. 

A greek Fava for a glowing Skin!

When I was travelling in Greece, I was not searching for Greek Gods, rather I was searching for Greek goddesses. And I found. Not just one or two, so many of them, so beautiful and such a great complexion.  One of the secrets that they revealed was the consumption of Fava. A Fava is just loads of split yellow peas, cooked and smashed into a fine paste. Usually eaten with Pita breads, with a liberal topping of onions and olive oil.

Here goes the recipe for the Fava, that I made using Indian ingredients:

Ingredients:

A cup of yellow split peas
4 gloves of garlic
Salt
1 tablespoon of vinegar
Pepper as desired
Spring onions - half a cup

In a large pan, boil together, the yellow split peas, garlic and spring onions with a good sprinkle of olive oil. Once boiled nicely, let it to cool. Blend all the ingredients together in a food processor along with lemon juice. Serve with raw onions cut finely and a good drizzle of olive oil.

Skordalia - A Greek alternative to Hummus!

When they say Skordalia the greek dip can give Hummus a run for its money, they are not kidding. While Hummus is a more adult version of a dip, I found a new recipe in Skordalia that is perfect for potato lovers and both adults and kids would savour it alike. Potato, garlic and a lime zing are 3 killer combos that I personally love with fritters.

I bumped upon this recipe during my Greece travels, in one of home cooks' house. Here is a recipe that is simple, quick to make and goes so well with Pita OR Spicy Indian snacks to even out the Zing on your tongue.

Ingredients: (for one cup of Skordalia)

1. 2 medium sized Potatoes
2. 4 cloves of garlic
3. 1/2 cup of pure olive oil ( the more authentic the oil is, the closer to home the flavor will be)
3. salt and pepper to taste
5. A tablespoon of lemon juice.
6. A handful of walnuts and almonds

Method:

Boil the potatoes to a point where they can be nicely mashed into a smooth paste. Skordalia has to be really smooth and thin, So please take care to boil a little extra to mash them. Push the potatoes through a sieve or a potato ricer. Crush the garlic along with salt into a smooth paste. Mix the potatoes and garlic paste and add in the lemon juice. Add additional salt and pepper as needed.  Grind walnuts and almonds to a crumble and top up the dip with this. An alternate variation was to grind almonds with the garlic, potatoes paste with generous oil.  I purposefully avoided the use of vinegar, some variations add vinegar during the last stages of the grinding though.

I used a Indian mixer to mix the potatoes and garlic and then added some hot water to make them thin. When serving, add a little bit more olive oil and serve.

Spinach-Pineapple-Pomo smoothie

Ingredients

Spinach - 1/2 Cup
Ginger - A tea spoon, grated
PineApple - 1/2 Cup
Banana - 2
Soaked Oats - 1/2 cup
Dates - 4
Pomogranate seeds - 1 cup
Thick Yogurt chilled - 2 cups

Prepare 3 different layers of thick smoothie by blending seperately:

1. Spinach, Ginger, PineApple & Yogurt
2. Banana, Oats, Dates and Yogurt
3. Pomo seeds, Yogurt and optional Beetroot

In a tall glass, layer each of the smoothie in any combination that you like. Serve chilled.

Churros Pancake with Spicy Chocolate sauce

Here is the Recipe for a guaranteed delicious Pancake:

Ingredients:

For the pancake batter:

1 cup white flour and 1 cup wheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
1.5 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1.5 tablespoon baking powder
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups of milk

In a large bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients - 2 eggs, butter and milk. Set aside. In another bowl, mix all the dry ingredients and mix them so they uniformly combine. Fold in the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and bring it to the consistency of a light batter. NOT RUNNY, but light.

For the Chocolate sauce:

Ingredients:
1.5 cups of chocolate chip cookies
3/4 cup of heavy cream
1 table spoon butter
1.5 table spoon cinnamon powder
1 table spoon cayenne powder

In a medium sized sauce pan, heat water and bring it to boil. Place the chocolate chips on a small vessel container and keep it over the boiling water. The Vessel should be above the water and should not touch it. Melt the chocolate chips, stirring it in high speed, once it is completely melted, add the heavy cream and butter.  Finally add cinnamon and pepper. Mix thoroughly and take off the heat. let it cool.

Prepare the Pancakes. Pour small quantities of batter over butter on a TAWA and cook on both sides till golden crispy and fluffy.

Using a piping bag, drizzle chocolate mix over the pancakes according to your design. Alternately, one can also mix castor sugar and cinnamon and spread over the pancakes before drizzling chocolate.

Host a Lavish Dinner Party at home with Precision and Perfection - The MONICA CHANDLER style!!

Okay so you are planning a party at home. The guest list is big…Like really big. For me any guest list for more than 12 adults is a big list to be cooked at home.  Say you want to really impress them with a lavish spread of entrée, Main and Desserts, then, that needs to be executed with a clear Project Plan with clearly defined Time driven Milestones and a bunch of Helpers. Oh Yes, you need to unleash the Monica Chandler of FRIENDS fame in you! Let me tell you how.

My Menu for a dinner Party for 15 adults was like this:

Menu

4 Starters – Cajun Potatoes, Hummus and Pita Bread, Tandoori Paneer Tikka and Nachos Chips with homemade cheese dip

2 Mains – South Indian Uthappam/Sambar/Chutneys and Spinach-Corn Pulao

2 Desserts – Bread Halwa and Ice cream

The entire event needs to be done in 3 stages.

Planning:

So the first Part is about the Planning. 2 days before the day of the party, you need to finalize the menu and make a complete list of the food items that you will need. I made an excel with Columns Such as this. You know you get the idea. Take a print out of this and go stock up everything from a store that offers all this and also some Drinks a day before.

Cajun Potato	Aloo
	Mayonnese
Cheese DIP	Nachos, Cheese
Hummus/DIP	Hummus, Pita bread
Tandoori Paneer	Paneer
	Olive oil
	Capsicum
	Lemon
	Garlic
	Oil
	Skewer sticks
Uthappam	Dosa batter
Veg Pulao	Spring Onion
	Pudina
Halwa	Butter, Bread
	Milkmaid
	Cream Cheese
	Curd

The second part of the plan is then to decide the number of people you need to help. Here in Bangalore, the maids show a really long face if you will make them work for long hours. So, I decided to time shift with 2 cooks – One for the first half of the cooking AND another one for the second half. This is also a good disaster management plan in case one does not show up. In fact, you will need to book 3 cooks and give them specific time-slots to act like a relay cooking.  The third one is just for contingency. And one helper to do the tables, plates etc.

Execution

Now when it comes to execution, my usual order of preparation goes like this – Desserts, Main, then starters.

If your party starts at 7, and if guests are punctual, then you need to start cooking from 3 p.m.  The first item that I cooked was the bread halwa, at which I am a pro and got it ready the first thing. Then comes the main – Since I am a south Indian, I play to my strengths – As a tambram [Tamil Brahmin], I don’t experiment so much with North Indian Punjabi OR Shahi Paneer style stuff. I stick to my zone.

So the next set started with making sambar, two chutneys and the Green pulao. This took about 1.5 hours of time for my cook who is an expert at this.

By now the time was 5:30. Time to look at the starters.

Now most starters have to be served hot and others started just about when the guests are ready to eat. Hence I divided my starters into two types. Ready to serve & Cook & Serve. The ready to serve were good to go to table as soon as the guests came. This for me were Hummus and Nachos. The long action ones were the paneer tikka and Cajun Potatoes. So I had to get the basic elements ready. By now my first cook was out of the house. Enter the second cook.

 Boil and fry the potatoes and get the Cajun mix done. Marinate paneer and keep them ready in fridge.

By now, the house needs to be clean and the tables/Plates/Napkins, Spoons and fork had to be set. The helper is needed now.

Dinner Time

As soon as considerable number of guests arrive, you need to get the food going. Especially long parties that roll up well into the night require a lot of food, drinks and games. Hence we started with making the cheese dip for the Nachos which is a 5-minute affair. Once this was done, Hummus and Nachos were out.  Then we started with the Paneer Tikka and Dressing up the Cajun mix. This sucked up enough time with guests around. And once all starters were out to the table, my cook made an exit too.

Once you make a great impression with starters, you need to keep the tempo up with your mains. People like Sambar to be hot so it had to be re-heated and served. Finally, when dessert was served, I had to congratulate myself on a project well executed.

But no it does not end here. The worst part of the party is the cleaning up to do post this. 

Now how to clean your house like a Martha Stewart is for my next blog! 

2 minute cheese dip - restaurant style!

So, I am a fan of quick recipes. Anything that takes time and effort is not my forte. So there is this party going on in our house and we ran out of appetizers. I had to make a quick dip for nachos, I found this brilliant recipe on the net and here it goes.

Ingredients

Butter - 4 table spoon
All purpose flour - 4 table spoon
1 cup of whole milk
A block of mozzarella cheese

Method

In a flat bottom pan, melt the butter and add the same amount of flour and mix it well. The flour will show some foams and at that time add milk. Once the flour gets fully absorbed in the milk, grate the cheese block over this. Keep stirring till the whole mixture thickens to the desired consistency. Enjoy with a veggie platter OR chips.