Chicken Chetti(nad)

Hi,

Am back with a bang after a short break. It is probably easy to write as we cook, but hey someone has got to wash the vessels as well. ;-)

Chicken - wow...sooo many memories with this word. I still remember the very first time I tasted chicken (knowingly at least!!). Many might know that I was not "supposed" to eat chicken or non-vegetarian for that matter. There's enough stories for my clandestine efforts of eating chicken. Will save that for later.

Probably the very first time I've actually cooked a chicken dish was in Portland, OR. Once I saw a colleague of mine prepare this dish - Chicken Chettinad and I tried to replicate it after a few weeks. My friends then named the dish after me - Chicken Chetty or probably they named me after the Chicken. Damn...first name last name confusion. For a very long time "Chicken Chetty" was popular amongst the Pacificorp crowd in Portland and it tagged along for a long long time.

For a while it has become an interest of mine to prepare my own spice mix. Who needs the packet masalas!!

So this is what went in the masala:

Just in case you are not able to figure out everything from the picture, here's what went in:

• Dried Red Chilly 
• Fennel seeds 
• Poppy seeds
• Black pepper corn
• Bay leaves (careful not to overdo this)
• Cinnamon stick
• Coriander seeds
• Elaichi seeds
• Star aniseed 
• Channa dal  - in case you prefer to have a thicker gravy

Fry this mixture in a kadai on medium heat - no oil please. Fry them until you can smell the spices. Cool and grind it up in a blender. Try to sieve the ground mixture so you get a nice smooth powder.

Other Ingredients:

• Chicken (duh)
• Onions (preferrably red). Shallots are even better. However considering the cost, I stick to red onions.
• Tomatoes (roughly 1 or 2 less than the onions)
• Ginger-Garlic paste
• Mustard seeds
• Curry leaves
• Coriander leaves
• Turmeric powder
• Sesame oil

The method:

I prefer to blend the onions and tomatoes if I am looking for a nice gravy. You may skip this step if a consistent gravy is not on the cards.

1. Heat up the oil and sautee the mustard seeds and some curry leaves.
2. When mustard splutters add the onions (or the onion tomoato paste).
3. Continue sauteeing the mix until for about 2-3 minutes.
4. Add chicken, turmeric powder and ginger garlic paste.
5. After a few minutes add the masala mix along with salt and continue stirring.

Initially it looks like:

Add a good amount of water to this mix and cook for about 30 minutes with a lid on. Being chicken drumsticks, do need to allow extra time for it to cook. Uma prefers a pressure cooker, but me prefer to slow cook it. Continue cooking until the gravy becomes:

Garnish the dish with curry leaves and coriander leaves.

Best served with plain white rice.

Happy Cooking!!

C

Pan Cake - Apple Cinnamon

I can't say I grew up on pan cakes, but I do remember the very first pan cakes I've had in my grandparent's house in  Muniappan Koil St, Salem made by my aunt. As a child there were probably very few occasions that I enjoyed pan cakes. However things changed after I went to US of A thanks to IHOP (International House Of Pancakes).

While in the US, we had a "tradition" of having a pan cake breakfast on Sundays for a very long time. "Aunt Jemima" came to our rescue then. They had the best pan cake mixes we've ever had. After our return from US we again had a break in pan cakes for quite some time. The best pan cakes I've had recently was at my cousin's house in Brisbane. Bro - those were awesome blueberry pancakes!!

In the Oz, we haven't been lucky enough to find a good pan cake mix. All we find at the local groceries are the ready made mixes where you just mix water to prepare the batter. Not very happy with that. It's all good...it pushed us to prepare our own batter from the scratch. In Sydney we've had some good pan cakes at a place called City Extra. A concept which the owners picked up from a trip to the US of A.

The recipe here is a bit of a mix from several sources with a bit of our own twist.

What goes in


Guess I have to give the specific measurements this time. Anything to do with flour and egg together, if you mess it up the proportions - well it becomes a mess. :-)


1) All purpose flour - 1 and 1/2 cups
2) Baking powder - 1 tea spoon
3) 1 Egg (Yolk and White separated)
4) 1 and 1/3rd cup milk
5) 1 Apple
6) 1 tea spoon cinnamon powder
7) 1 tablespoon sugar
8) 2 tablespoons butter (melted)
9) Maple Syrup (NOT Maple flavoured syrup - has to be natural maple syrup)

What went in...

The Process

1) Peel the skin off the apple and grate the pulp.
2) Mix the flour, baking powder, milk, egg yolk, melted butter, cinnamon powder and beat it to a nice smooth batter. Try not to have the lumps.
3) Add the grated apple and give the mix a good beat.
4) Beat the egg whites fast enough to make the creamy white stuff out of it. Easier if you have mechanical beater.
5) Mix the egg white into the batter in the end.

6) Heat a tawa - skillet or whatever flat surface you choose. The temperature of the tawa plays an extremely critical role in the outcome of the pancake. It has to be just right!! I do it on low flame. It takes a little longer. But hey...we have to wait for good things in life. :-) (Hope any of my team members 7reading this don't take a different cue from this. ;-))

7) Pour about half a cup of flour (about one serving of the spoon  in the pic above).

8) Wait for the bubbles to come up and the sides to harden up a bit. Approximately 2 minutes.

9) Flip it over and wait for another minute or so and....voila...

It's better served with a scoop of butter and of course with Maple Syrup

The Result...

(please bear with my presentation skills...still working on them...rather too hungry to eat rather to perfect the presentation) ;-)

Made a slight variation for Nandhitha:

Funny Face Pan Cake

She wanted a "Funny Face" pan cake as she had one in City Extra. :-)

Pasta with a Kick

Chetty's kitchen doesn't mean it's just me and my cooking. The memories are mine, but the cooking include Uma's and mine. :-) Today it is one of Uma's specialities - Pasta ...with a kick.

The very first pasta I could remember is my mom's totally Indian version of macaroni and cheese (Amul cheese) with ginger, garlic and tomatoes. As they say, I grew up with that. This notion of pasta continued till I went to the US of A. 

Olive Garden in Portland rather Beaverton changed this impression of mine on Italian food. I started enjoying the pennes and fettucines with marinara and alfredo sauces. However the real deal was at Johnny Carinos in Boise. They had the pasta with a kick. Remember chasing after it in Denver during the Great American Road Trip in 2005. The last time we had this was in Phoenix. From then on we've been trying to re-create it at home and was fairly successful too.

Typical pasta - the Italian alfredo style is usually too bland for Indian taste, but this one is Desi Certified.

What goes in:

For the sauce:

• Milk
• All purpose flour aka Maida
• Parmesan Cheese (Parmesano Reggiano)
• Butter
• Cayenne Pepper (can substitute with red chilli powder)

The stuff:

• Mushrooms
• Prawns (Shrimps if you are from the US of A) (Optional of course)
• Capsicum (Bell Peppers) - Red, Green
• Sun Dried tomatoes
• Garlic
• Onions
• Spring Onions
• Olive Oil (EVOO as they call it)

And of course Pasta. Any kind would do.We normally use the bow tie or penne. This time it was just spaghetti.

The method:

Sauce:

1. Heat the butter until it melts.
2. Add the all purpose flour and cook until it turns brown.
3. Add milk (warmed) and continue stirring without causing lumps.
4. Once the mixture is boiling add grated parmesan cheese and leave it to boil.
5. Add Cayenne pepper to your level of kick you need.

Pasta:

1. In a wide sauce pan sautee the garlic in olive oil.
2. Add onions and other veggies and sautee until they are soft.
3. Add the prawns towards the end.
4. Mix the cooked pasta (follow instructions on the pack) and the sauce from above.
5. Garnish with finely chopped spring onions.

The result:

The cayenne pepper and sun dried tomatoes does the trick to give this pasta a kick!! :-)

Happy Cooking!!

Pad Kee Mao

Swaa dee khrap (Hello in Thai)

If there is one cuisine that I fell flat apart from Indian that is Thai (those who knew me since 2000 should know this by now). My romance with Thai food definitely didn't start on a good note. The very first time I tried Thai was in NYC in the summer of 1999. It was my very first onsite trip to US and someone suggested Thai food as the closest to Indian food (thinking I would miss Desi food!!). The 2nd attempt at Eagle Thai also went belly up. I almost decided never to go back to Thai food again. What a disaster that would've been!! Thanks to a good old boss of mine,  I was introduced to Thai again with the right dish to be ordered - Pad Thai. From that point on there was no looking back. The only time I had a long break from Thai since 2000 was the few months I was in Bangalore.

I have been experimenting with Thai food in the last few months. Today I lost myself  when I stepped into Thainatown in Sydney. But more about that later. Today's dish - Pad Kee Mao has been a good mood enhancer. Not sure if that is what people call as "soul food". Life can't be bad after a good Pad Kee Mao from Saap Thai. :-) Had that for lunch today and while that taste was still lingering tried out at home as well.

What went in:

• Basil leaves
• Choy sum (Some kinda spinach) (the stem and leaves to be separated)
• Broccoli
• Chicken
• Eggs
• Bamboo shoot strips
• Garlic
• Bird eye chillies
• Oyster sauce
• Kecap Manis
• Sugar (very little a tea spoon per serving)
• Soy sauce
• Fish Sauce
• Cooked Rice noodles (the wider variety)

The result:

The method:

1. In a fuming hot wok, add a generous amount of oil and sautee the garlic and chillies for a few seconds.
2. Add in the chicken pieces. The chicken pieces have to be small enough to cooked under a minute or so.
3. Add in the Choy sum stems and bamboo shoots and sautee.
4. In a little while add the Choy sum leaves, broccolli and any other veggie that intend to add.
5. Add in a bit of fish sauce at the moment when the chicken and veggies are being cooked.
6. Add the noodles. Care to be taken not to over do this part. (I repeated this process 3 times for the amount of food I wanted to cook.) Roughly limit to only what you need for 1 serving.
7. Add all the sauces you have in your pantry (not tomato sauce though!!) and some sugar.
8. The distinctive "aroma" of the fish sauce should come out at this point.
9. Stir fry the noodles a bit to mix the sauces evenly.
10. Add the basis leaves and stir it for a minute.
11. Create a space in the center of the wok and break in an egg (or 2 if you chose to).
12. Stir fry the egg and mix in the noodles after the egg is about 90% cooked.

Potential Bloopers

1) Don't over cook the noodles. The result will be a dry kanji (dry porridge).

2) Watch out on the fish sauce, it can come out to be too salty.

Happy Cooking!!

Ulibitambaram

Ulibitambaram - This one word typically explains where I come from. Some people call it Sambar - but no this is different. The name if translated says Uli (Tamarind), bittu (added), ambaram (curry, soup....er, Sambar). In the western world one can call it a Lentil soup with Tamarind.

As I was thinking of a good dish to begin the Blog, this was one that went way back to my roots and I couldn't shrug it away. Even though we hardly make it these days. This was one of my signature dishes for a long long time amongst my friend's community. The very first time I had actually seen how this was cooked was at K.R. Puram (Bangalore) - thanks to Radha (Sethuraman). (Radha, Sridhar, Puneet, Phani & Biju - if you are reading this...hope you remember that sambar). From then on, there was no stopping for my Ulibitambaram. 


Ulibitambaram comes in various shapes and forms depending on the primary vegetable. It is quite versatile that way, you can make it with almost any veggie. However, THE Ulibitambaram  is the one made with Drumstick (Nuggikkai). Nuggikkai Ulibitambaram - it simply rocks. It can be had with any side of poriyal (sabji/stir fried veggies), but the best would be with Appalam (Ambi's appalam if you can get it).


If you want to try it:


What goes in:

• Toor Dal
• Oil (Any kind that suits you)
• Turmeric powder
• Asafoetida
• Red chilly powder
• Salt
• Onion
• Tomato
• Vegetable (Pick any that is  fleshy)
• Mustard seeds
• Tamarind water
• Badaga (An exotic mix of shallots, mustard seeds, curry leaves and what not. More about this in a later post)

The way I do it:

1) Pressure cook the Toor dal  (about 2 -3 whistles.) with a few drops of oil and a pinch of turmeric powder.

2) While the dal is being pressurised you can start with the veggies.

3) Heat a deep pan and sautee the mustard seeds until they crackle.

4) Sautee the onions until they become translucent.

5) Mix in the veggie. Add turmeric powder, Asafoetida and red chilly powder. Sautee for about 3-4 minutes.

6) Add the tomatoes and continue sauteeing until the tomatoes are soft.

7) Add water as much as you want. You can't go wrong here. If it gets too thick, serve the same as Dal. If it gets too watery serve it as Rasam. :-) If you want to get it just right - experiment. :-) 

8) As the water comes to a boil add in the tamarind water. I usually save some for a later point to touch up if I don't get enough sourness.

9) Once the tamarind added soup comes to a boil add in the pressure cooked Toor Dal.

10) Oh yes, somewhere in between do add salt to your liking.

11) Let the mix to boil. Usually until the veggies are soft enough. However you can leave it longer if you want to thicken the plot...er Sambar.
12) Sautee the Badaga in oil and garnish the Ulibitambaram. THIS is the secret ingredient here. (I wonder how I missed it the first time...thanks to staying away from India for a long time!!)

Yes, you really don't need Sambar powder to make Ulibitambarm (or any Sambar for that matter).

This is to be served with Sona Masoori rice. If had with any other variety (Basmati or Jasmine) it would kill the taste.

Happy Cooking !!

Bleepers:

1) Today while this was being prepared, the blog was so much in my mind that I forgot putting the weight on the pressure cooker. Just a little mess...nothing that could not be taken care. ;-)

2) As I added water Uma came by and had a question about the water level. Well...just had to simmer it a few extra minutes to get to where I wanted it to be. :-)

A Prelude

Hello,


Welcome to Chetty's Kitchen.


As I mentioned in the description this is an attempt to share my memories on food.


This Blog will contain recipes. It will contain all the ingredients - common and "secret", but no measures. I would rather leave it to each person to experiment with the measures (as I do). If there are some hard pressing ratios that could make / break a dish, yes I would mention that. Other than that....experiment and enjoy. :-)


Without much further ado will get on with my first post.


And yes, Thanks for stopping by and do drop a note in the comments. :-)


Chetty