Taste of Asia - Fall 2006

A taste of Asia

My upcomming class at WCC promises to be a lot of fun. There will be a lot of diversity in the cooking and food, since I will be doing food from various asian countries.

To try to look at the diversity of the food of the region, I am going to start with two classics from their respective countries. I will be doing Vietnamese rolls, to explore the crisp fresh aspects of this food, the nuances of using dipping sauces. A wonderful resource realated to this is Vietworld Kitchen. Although, I have to confess that Vietnamese is really more my brother's favorite than mine.

To contrast this, I will be doing Malaysian Chicken Rice, which looks at using curried spices, is more neareastern than far-eastern in approach. We will see how this works out. Yes, I love Malaysian food (did I say that I love food?). Rasa Malaysa is a great blog on Malaysian food and travel. Speaking of which I really need to get back in touch with Dawn who is now on her Malaysia stint.

Bhatura - Leavened Fried Bread

Anshul's Surprise Birthday Party!

Boy! It is exhausting to have the children around for a three day weekend. This weekend my cooking highlight was actually doing Anshul's suprise birthday party. The food turned out really great. I made Mutton Pulao/Birayani, on that note I often wonder what the major difference is between Birayani and Pulao. This is an interesting piece on the difference. I myself love this intensely satifying dish.
Other than that I had mixed dal ghugni, dahi vadas, chicken malai kababs, papri chaat, alu dum and luchis.
Something funny happened to the luchis, I left them outside to hide them from Anshul and what I ended up with was Bhaturas, which actually turned out to be a great hit.

Bhatura (Leavened Deep-Fried Bread)

Makes 14-18

2 cups white flour
1 cup semolina
2 tbsp ghee
1 tsp salt
1 cup yogurt
Extra flour for dusting
Oil for Frying

Method of Preparation

1. Mix together all the ingredients and extra water as needed to make a soft pliable dough.
2. Set the dough aside to rise for several hours.
3. Knead this again and then with the extra flour roll this into circles of about 4" diameter.
4. Heat the oil in the Karahai and gently fry till puffed and golden.
5. Serve hot with channa or Dal.

Red and Green Tilapia

It' s interesting how much I used to cook fish until six months back, until I realized poor Aadi cannot handle anything other than Salmon. Here is an old light favorite. We will try this for the Friday class.

Red and Green Tilapia

2 lbs. tilapia or (any firm white fish) fillets
1/3 cup lime juice
2 tsp salt or to taste
1 tbs butter1 tbs extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp cumin
6 cloves garlic minced
1 tbsp. freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped scalions
1 tomato cut into a fine dice
2 tbsp finely chopped cilantro or parsley
Method of Preparation
1. Marinate the tilapia with lime juice and salt for about half an hour.
2. Heat the oil and butter together till the butter is melted. This should be done on a flat skillet type pan.
3. Add the cumin seeds and cook for 1 min, till they sizzle and add the garlic and lightly brown.
4. Add the pepper and cook for a few seconds and add the fish. Cook the fish on high for 3-4 minutes on each side.
5. Add in the scalions and tomatoes and lightly mix into the pan.
6.Cover the pan and cook on low heat for another 3-4 minutes till the tomato juices run and form a light sauce.
7. Remove from the heat, check for seasonings and serve garnished with cilantro or parsley.

Richard Oberstein

Richard Oberstein

What makes my classes fun for me is meeting new people and working with them or sometime, not quite...
This Friday's class was developed because Richard Oberstein seemed so interested after the article, I think we exchanged at least 10 calls. He even checked yesterday to see if he could bring me flowers and wine. It has been a while since someone has done that.

Bob does the wine but the flowers is another story. Well, come classtime poor Hildy (his wife) who is alergic to cats and seafood ( thank god, I had not planned shrimp!) shows up and works through the class with doses of Benadryl.

Deepta and Ma make parathas

A girl needs to learn how to make proper Daal, per Bend it Like Beckham, well the way to a man's heart is through really good pastry...
Here is Deepta holding her own with the roller.
I had quite an experience cooking with 20 preschoolers last Thursday. After, all the acolades of my cooking, imagine my shock when I see my delectable Mohon Bhog being transformed into Playdoh, oh well! such is life. I need to get back to the population council writeup.

What's in a name? Tofu ka Tikki

Tofu ka tikki ya tikka?

Here is the deal, this is an amazingly good salad that I created for one of the classes and I want to use for the book. When I am translating these recipes, Anshul takes a look and says but tikki is feminine and hence I need to change the title to Tofu ki tikki.

Folks, this is probably why I abandonned French a while back. I cannot really comprehend a language that assigns a gender to a food that is gone even before I can place it on the leaves.

Lal Saag Chorchori - Red Spinach with vegetables

Laal Saag
It is amazing how much you miss little things when they are not readily available. This is a leafy vegetable very close to spinach but red. The bengali name translates to red spinach. I have worked with red swiss chard to replicate some of the recipes, but I was besides myself with excitement when I saw this brilliant bunch at the local Bhavik store. This looks beautiful but unfortunately, these leaves are rather tough and should have been picked earlier. Anyhow here is my recipe with this.
Laal Saag Chorchori
2 tbsp mustard oil
1 tsp panch phoron
1 large bunch laal saag
1 eggpant cut into pieces
2 green chillies slit
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup bori
Method of Preparation
1. Heat the mustard oil and add the panch phoron.
2. When this crackles, add in the saag and eggplant. Stir briskly till the saag wilts, add in the chillies, salt and cover for 15 min on low heat. The eggplant should be soft and the mixture should be a mush.
3. Heat the oil and fry the bori and drain. Mix into the chorchori and serve with rice and dal.