The World is Ending, So Why Not Drink to It?

Remember September? You know, the month that Greenday wanted to be woken up at the end of? (Oh boy, there is a screwed up sentence. And we wonder why one of us sucks at her day job. But we digress. As always. And you love us for that, dontcha? Yes, you do. Oh, you do! Okay, now get back.) If you are not a Greenday fan, September also has a whole bunch of other stuff going. It is the late Mr Laden's favourite month, but we shall not make jokes about the dearly departed (it's rude and totally against Indian culture, you know. And what if Sapil Kibal is watching?). September gave the world Hugh Grant, Dev Anand, Will Smith, Asha Bhosle and Catherine Zeta Jones. It also gave us Nicole Ritchie and Aditya Pancholi, but then one presumes that into each month some idiots must fall.

September, apparently also has Fashion Weeks! Who knew?! Apart from a large section of the world that, you know, knows a thing or four about fashion. Which, of course, is not us.

Anywhoo, the reason why we are so meticulously trying to jog your memory about a relatively average month is so that we can also remind you that last year, it had Divali (the kind with the capital D)! And if you remember Divali, you will also remember how you were made to suffer through endless pictures and posts in all the other food blogs and Facebook and greeting cards about ALL the seemingly gorgeous food that people made and ate. Remember how you looked at those pictures, and wished that you had all that food on your table, while trying to navigate a spoonful of soggy cereal around that huge lump in your throat? We, being the sensitive little souls that we are, felt your pain as that singular tear dropped down your left cheek. And we, being the same sensitive little souls, vowed that WE would never contribute to that pain. Which is why we have been restraining from posting any pictures of our own divali (the kind without the capital d) table. Or even about the food we made and eated. THAT is how much we love you.


Just when we thought we’d survived, came December with all it's wintery longing and holidays-inspired feelings of emotional inadequacy. The cheerful world of food bloggers attacked with all their sugary, buttery, frost(ing)y vengeance and all of us whose roommates and other ‘loved’ ones abandoned us for greener pastures and yummier home-food were left nursing our fragile little hearts and big weeping tummies. But when faced with all that end-of-the-year pressure, self-doubt, and depression, did we crumble like a badly baked cookie? No, we kept calm and carried on. WE, looked at the world of pointless chipper-ness and unbounding optimism square in the eye and raised our glasses (or in this case, repurposed glass jars) of warm hot chocolate and said, “We don’t need your mountains of delicately created food, and cozy little parties and mid-night revelry. WE have hot chocolate.” After all, when faced with grave adversity how else does one fortify one’s defences if not with chocolate?


“Hot chocolate?” you ask. “That was your defence?” you wonder in surprise. “Why, yes!” we’d reply, in that ever confident tone of the calmly wise. “Hot chocolate. Because chocolate does not question. Chocolate does not make demands or have expectations. Chocolate, understands.”

And this is chocolate at its basic, undemanding best. Without its high-flying strawberry and butter friends. Without the fancy dress up of a cake, or truffle. This is chocolate at its roots. It needs only the little warmth of a splatter of cream, a few slivers of orange rind, and a whiff of cinnamon. But at the back of it, it carries the strength of sturdy dried red chillies. Or if you prefer, the robustness of ground black pepper. Like we said, chocolate does not question. It just knows.

Right now, as that the practical bitch in us is telling the whimsical fool to get on with the business already, ladies and gentlemen, allow us to present to you, Cinderella at the fancy-food ball, our long haired, frying-pan wielding rescuer from the New Year Monster, the untarnished awesomeness of a Spicy Hot Chocolate.

You will need ingredients of 3 kinds:


1. The stars: Very predictably, milk and cocoa powder. Now one could, if one so wishes, use chocolate powder as well. But Crumbs who prefers her chocolate strong, dark and bitter, thinks cocoa is the purer choice. If you have to use chocolate, go easy on the sugar. Since we are making this for one, let’s go with one mug of milk, and 4 tbs of cocoa. (If you are making it for more than one, we hope you are good at math :P)

2. The faithful sidekicks: These are what take the cocoa and milk to the next level—namely, coffee and cream. Oh and sugar. Since, we (namely Crumbs) think that the coffee makes the world go round, we use 2 tablespoons. One would suffice for lesser mortals. About a quarter cup of cream—just to make the milk, well, creamier. Feel free to indulge and add more. Promise we won’t tell a soul. Neither will chocolate. About 1 tbs of sugar. And, errmmm, chocolate chips or chopped chocolate—you know, since, whoever said too much of a good thing is bad is a filthy liar.

3. The character actors: Now one can make a hot chocolate with just cocoa and water also. But that would not do much to lift up one’s downtrodden spirits, would it? So one adds various spices. The possibilities here are endless – What we give you in this recipe is what we think is the winner—one stick of cinnamon, nutmeg, star anise, orange rind.cinnamon of about a finger’s length (we’d specify which finger but then, this is a family blog), one star anise, a quarter spoonful of orange rind and 3 dried red chillies. Yes, chillies. Nothing better to beat the blues with than chillies doused in chocolate. But since we didn’t have chillies on hand this photo session, we went with ground black pepper, which is pretty kickass too. But trust us on the chillies, will ya?

Now that we have the cast ready, let’s get ready to roll. Pour the milk in a deep pan worthy of milk-boiling. Add the cinnamon, star anise, orange rind and chillies. Pop it on the heat, and simmer. Kindly to note, we said simmer, DO NOT LET THIS BOIL. Keep the flame at low to medium all the time. Keep stirring every 34 seconds.



While this is happening, take your cocoa/chocolate powder, coffee and sugar in a small container. Spoon in a little bit (maybe one or 2 spoons) of the milk from the simmering pool and mix well to make a gorgeously gooey paste. We dare you to not nick a taste. Once this is thoroughly mixed, go check on the milk (you left it to simmer, remember?). Take it off the heat, and let the spices seep for another 10 mins. While the spices do that, go add the cream to the cocoa and whip the whole thing well to make it slightly fluffy. Don’t get ambitious, you are not whipping it to make chocolate snow castles, just a light beating will do. Check if you like the taste—you know, since it is very, very important to get this right. Very.

Once you are done licking your fingers, and er…washing you hands, go remove the spices from the milk. You could strain the milk but we just use a spoon. Less hassle. Then, pour the cocoa-cream into the milk all the while stirring vigorously. At this point, your heart should start beating a tad bit faster. But hold on, you are almost there.

Take this back to the stove, and simmer again. Again, DO NOT BOIL or bad things will happen. Add the chocolate chips, we like using both white and dark (we do not discriminate, see?), keep stirring until they dissolve all their differences in beautiful brownness of joyful hot chocolate.

Take off the heat. Scatter the ground pepper, if that is what your heart (and pantry) commands. If you are feeling a li'l adventurous, add a splash (or three) of liquor-- dark rum works the best wethinks, but hey, you are free to differ.


Pour into a warm mug, or whatever gives you comfort. Switch on the fairy lights, pull out a book, pull up your blanket, and sip. If you do not feel joy for the world, we suggest you rush to the hospital. Your taste buds might be as dead as your heart.


Harpy 2012, folks. We hope you enjoy your ride to the year at the end of the world.

Manga awesomeness of the non- japanese kind

The Mango showers have come and gone, so has the mango season. The monsoon is here, and is now threatening to stay till Christmas. All we can think of are piping hot samosas, crunchy pakodas and crispy vadas with a cup of wonderfully aromatic tea (thats bliss for me) or Crumbs' out-of-this-world coffee (Crumbs' note: I did not pay her to write this. No really. I didn't.) HOWEVER, we are not telling you how to make those things right now, because we have to tell you about our mango adventures. Yes, it is a bit late for you to try them out, but hey, now you will have yet another reason to look forward to the next mango season. And plus, onam seemed like a good time to make up for all the festivals that we missed since we started blogging. Yeah we know onam's also gone now, but it was not like you guys love us for our immaculate sense of timing, no? (We know it's our winning smiles and stunning modesty that charms you.)

Things we do to bring joy and hope to your otherwise pre-technicolor life, right? We know. And you don't really have to thank us, we do it purely out of the goodness of our wonderful hearts. That is just the kind of people we are.

Our recipe for the week (probably the fortnight, or even the next couple of months, it's us we are talking about, you know) is the mind-boggling Mambazha curry aka Manga curry. Those of you who are not from that little strip of land that prides itself on the flexibility of the tongue (We know what you are thinking, and we think you should stop thinking about that, right now, and concentrate on the post. Work with us, will ya?), do not fret -- this is just a ripe mango curry, which is amazingly easy to make (Just like everything else on this blog. We are such easy going people, yes ma'am!). And we promise, no Japanese comics of the wide-eyed kind were tortured while making this curry.

So, you'll need-


Mangoes: Of course. It'd be a little anti-climatic if we made a mango curry without mangoes, now, won't it? Although, we do that with cheesecake (another story, another day) we are not quite ready to make that quantum leap with mangoes. So, get about 2 or 3 of the hatta-khatta ripe ones. If you do overdo the ripeness, it is fine, because the mangoes are going to be boiled within an inch of their lives anyway.

Coconut milk: One packet of the Hommade variety. If you are the hardworking types, or if you happen to have coconuts in abundance at home, then you extract the milk of one grated coconut. (We are still working on getting that funny way of extracting coconut milk, but today is not that day, okay?)

ALTERNATIVELY, you could use the the thing itself. You know, fresh coconut. About half should do the trick. Grated well.

About one cup of fresh curd. Please note, the curd here really refers to curd, and not the watered down and weary buttermilk predecessor that you find in most shops. At the risk of sounding like brand ambassadors, we would suggest that you buy one of those Nestle/ Milma/ VIjaya/ whatever-brand-it-is-in-Kolkata packaged curds. Unflavoured, of course, unless you want a dash of strawberry or chocoloate in your curry. (If it does turn out to be yum, let us know. Would probably save us an experiment.)

Two or three green chillis, five to six shallots (these are the cute li'l versions of onions, also known as sambar onions in some part of the retail world, please do not let their size fool you. They are much more flavourful and pungent than their large sized counterpart) (Crumbs' note: to people who know us personally, do you guys see a parallel there?) or one big onion, two spoons of turmeric powder, salt to taste, two red chilies and a few curry leaves. You know, the usual suspects. Or something.

First, wash and peel the mangoes. Cut them in large pieces (we usually just cut them into four major slices, one from each side) and put them in a large container, along with the mango seeds. Don't fret too much about the shape of the pieces, as long as they are LARGE. Add water for the boiling. Add some (aka two teaspoons) turmeric, salt to this, and let boil.

Take the green chillis, pretend you are the surgeon on House MD, and slit them through the middle with precision. If you cannot manage the precision, just pretend you are Grawp and the chillis are miserable Death Eaters instead. As long as you manage to split the chillis lengthwise, and still have two eyes intact, we are good. Once the mangoes get cooked for a while, take about half a glass of coconut milk (the thick Hommade one), add water to it, pour into the boiling mango mixture, and boil till the mangoes are soft and disintegrate into smaller bits. You could also opt to smash them into the mixture, if that brings on your Mojo.

While that is going on, may we encourage you to multi-task and heat some oil in a kadai? Throw in a few mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds and a pinch of jeera (if you like the taste, that is. Please do not overdo the jeera, it stands out in the whole preparation) into the oil. Chop the onions or shallots, add them to this, and saute. When you reach the stage where you get giddy with the aroma, add the red chillis.(We usually tear them in two with our hands, but Confused has a tendency to then rub eyes with the same fingers, so we are not really advising you to do the tearing, pun fully intended). At this stage, we feel compelled to warn you good people that the red chillis are quite the spiteful creatures -- we suppose being left out in the hot Indian sun to that long can do that to the best of us. They tend to splutter, and explode and do all sorts of violent things once added to the hot oil. We encourage you get hold of an industrial welding mask (you could always sneak it out of your friendly neighbourhood mechanic's back, but return it to him/her after use though. Those things probably have emotional, and not to mention monetary value attached). Or if such a mask is not available, you need to make do with what the boring people do -- lower the flame, and gently toss the chillis from a reasonably safe distance. And then use a longish spatula/spoon to stir it a few times, till it lightly changes colour. Toss in the curry leaves before the chillis turn black, and remove from stove (In this age of induction cook tops and such like, we think the word "fire" might be inadequate).

While this is happening, or has happened, depending on how many cooks there are, beat the curd thoroughly, without adding any water to it, till it becomes this amazingly creamy beautifully flowing mesmerizing version of, well, beaten curd. Add this to the boiled mango mixture, along with some more thick coconut milk, and mix. Heat for just a bit longer on low, low flame/temperature, as we do not want curdled curry.


Once the flavours are all mixed correctly, and you can taste the sweetness of the mango combined with the tarty yumminess of curd (one of us is a big fan of curd, as you might have surmised), and the exoticness (or is it exoticity?) of coconut milk, add the 'tadka' (that would be mustard-jerra-chilli thing that you did not burn, for the non-hindi understanding amongst our readers) waiting in the kadai.

Voila, you have mastered one of those things that a mango loving person will be proud of creating. Dress it up a bit, and you have a winner on your lovely hands, ladies and gentlemen. Serve hot with rice and a bit of mango pickle and pappadom.

Clockwork Orange.
Yes, thou suspecteth right. That IS the worst pun since Orangutan (which is not a pun at all)

With exciting, and completely false promises of being more regular with posting, we shall take off. Will you forgive us if we skip the usual sign off line here?

When Life Gives You Pressure Cooker...

Being a single woman, living and working/studying in a city is an exercise fraught with challenges. At every step, there are multiple decisions to be made, each one with too many choices, and many a times, you do not have the luxury of a wise counsel of an older, more experienced in the way of the world parent figure. Sure modern life challenges do not involve the will-I-eat-the-wolf-or-will-the-wolf-eat-me-tonight kind of decisions, each day does bring forth newer issues to tackle, newer bills to pay. However, one tries to keep calm and carry on.

So then, for a single woman living in a city, who likes to bake her own cake and eat it too, the realisation that owning an oven is a luxury that your barely-existent salary/research fellowship/allowance from generous parents does not allow, is highly demotivating. But then, you chin-up and tell yourself that one is a strong independent woman who does not let a lack of oven come in between her and baking awesomeness. Like a wise woman (that would be Crumbs) said, "When life throws you a pressure cooker, you make cooker cake."

Like most of the things we talk about in this wonderful blogspace, one could write pages and pages about this cake. Like the time when accidentally we gave away this cake, along with a wonderful plate to complete strangers, when we really thought we were giving it to a friend for Christmas. OR the time we went halfway into making this cake for a friend's birthday before we realised that we'd forgotten one minor ingredient--the flour. Or the time one gave one's unsuspecting, but always helpful roommate quite the scare by breaking a spatula over the cake. But then we thought why bore our readers with details of our rather uninteresting lives? They have enough to deal with as it is, what with Prince William marrying a commoner and Osama being killed and other such modern day fairytales. So, one would proceed in haste (before one digresses again) to the aforementioned harbinger of great adventures,

The chocolate cooker cake

We discovered the original recipe, long long long back, here. However, some 15 adventures later, one uses the recipe only for the measurements. And we do not recognise this as brownie, for this very firmly, is a good cake (although, we do not know the technicalities of differentiating brownie and cake, we do not let such things come in our way).

You will need:

Milk: 1 cup. Go for the nice wholesome full cream one. Just the way Mother Nature intended milk to be before Health Freaks and Mother Dairy intervened.

Sugar: 1 cup, then another 1/2 cup(We generally are not big fans of divide and rule, but then what the heck, it works every time). One supposes you could use the healthier Demerara variety, but we have a sinking suspicion that most of our readers are currently running to Google ‘demerara’. Don't bother, the regular white-washed refined variety is really, truly, the most useful.

Cocoa powder: 1 cup. Please note, cocoa NOT= chocolate powder. We mean the mean stuff, the unsweetened bitter variety. Just the way mother nature intended it to be before Sweet Freaks and Cadbury intervened.

Butter: 1 cup. Now, most cake recipes do ask for unsalted and all. But as a single woman living in city, you will know that those things are bleddy expensive. If you are feeling lavish, sure, unsalted is better. If you are feeling regular, just use our trusted Amul Salted of the utterly-butterly delicious fame, and we won't tell a soul. Such great keepers of secrets we are.

Instant Coffee Powder: 3/4 tsp. If you do not have this readily available in your kitchen, then we are not talking to you anymore.

Eggs: 3. We are partial to chicken, but feel free to use dinosaur, if that is what you prefer.
Condensed Milk: 1/2 cup. Now you could, technically, buy whole milk, boil it with sugar and then reduce it and reduce it and reduce it, but then, why have milk-torture induced bad karma on your head, when big corporations are so willing to do it for you?

Vanilla Essence: 1 tsp, because somehow it seems criminal to bake a cake without it.

Maida: 1 .25 cups. Also known as refined flour, our careful research has proved beyond all doubt that one cannot make this cake without this ingredient.

Baking Powder: 1 tsp. Baking Soda: 1 tsp (Don't know the difference between the two? Good, we don't either. But they usually come in differently labelled packages. Easy to identify. If you read English that is. Which we know you do. Because, you know, you read this blog and stuff. We are smart that way.)

Ready?

To begin with, the original recipe suggested that we take the butter, sugar, milk, coffee, and cocoa, and cook it till the sugar melts. During our scientific experiment number 2, we tried this. It resulted in the aforementioned spatula-throwing-roommate-scaring incident, as the mixture quickly achieved a concrete like consistency. We do not mean the wet, just-mixed-with-water kind of concrete. We mean the fortified-with-lots-of-sun of concrete.

So, in the interest of your roommates (and spatulas), here is what you do. You take the butter in a deepish vessel. You pop the vessel on the stove, over VERY LOW heat. You stir it gently till the butter melts. Then, take the vessel off the stove, and add the sugar. If you are blessed with modern day conveniences like a mixie, it is a good idea to powder the sugar. Saves you a lot of trouble and arm ache. If you do not have the mixie, you just pop the sugar into a large plastic cover and grind the life out of that sugar using any mean, heavy object you have lying around (at various points in our life, Confused and I have used large locks, stone, stray slabs of marbles salvaged from construction sites, and rolling pins before we acquired a decent pestle). Now, you mix the thus powdered sugar with the melted butter. Beat this well till it becomes a nice, powdery paste using a fork, if you, like us, do not have an egg beater. Add the milk, little by little (little here referring to about 1/4th of the cup at a time). Once the milk is incorporated, add the cocoa powder and the coffee.

If you have some big, burly men with strong biceps loafing around you, now would be a good time to put them to work, because now begins the hard, taxing labour of beating the cake mix, and like Shakespeare never said, "Beating cake mix doth not a happy arm make" or something to that effect. If no burly men are available, then you can psych your brain into ignoring your arm by imagining big, big mountains of chocolate.

Once you have the burly man or chocolate-induced denial ready, add one egg to the mixture, beat, add next egg to the mixture, beat, then add the third egg to the mixture, beat, add the condensed milk, beat, and finally, add the vanilla essence, and don't beat--this time, just gently fold (in the present instance, fancy term for stir) it in.

Now, take the flour. Add the baking powder and/or baking soda. There are two ways of doing this. Either take all of this, and sieve them together. OR, if sieve is not available, take them in a large plastic/ziplock bag, and shake the bag like you would want to shake your boss who just asked you to work over the weekend.

Once, the flour is thus laced with the chemicals, fold (mix) it into the egg-milk-cocoa-sugar-butter paste, a couple of spoons at a time. So you add two spoons, mix, add two more spoons, mix and etc., etc, till you have all of your ingredients mixed in a wonderful amalgamation of, well, ingredients.

Then, lace your cooker pan with butter. Then sprinkle about a spoonful of flour on the pan, and shake it about, so that the flour sticks evenly to the butter, and through the butter to the pan. Pour the aforementioned amalgamation of ingredients into the pan with all your love and sweat (being metaphorical here people, NOT to be taken literally). Pop the cooker on to the stove, filled with about an inch of water. Pop the cooker pan into the water. Close cooker, wait for steam to rise through the funnel thing, and then lower the flame to medium leaning low. DO NOT PUT THE WHISTLE ON.

Go about your merry business for about 45 mins. Come back into the kitchen, turn the stove off. Slowly, and with great care, open the cooker. Your gooey-brown amalgamation must now metamorphosised into a beautiful dome shaped cake. Take a toothpick, stick it gently into the center of the cake, and pull out. If there are no gooey hangers on on the toothpick, yell, "Success!" and do the chicken dance in the kitchen. If there is some gooey hangers on the toothpick, act casual, and pop the lid back on the cooker and the cooker back on the stove. Light stove, go about your merry business for 10 mins, and repeat step 1 (of this para, not the entire post).

Once the cake is cooled enough, upturn it onto a plate, and then upturn the upturned cake to another plate to have it right side up. Slice, bite, attain nirvana.

Or you could be like us and bake another one of these cakes, and make a giant burger-like cake like this one.




But that is another day, another post. So long folks, we are ready for our take off.

Of threats and misconceptions

Crumbs and I have decided that it is time we stopped misguiding you. Nope, we are not vegetable lovers. One of us even goes out of her way to avoid eating veggies (The other one does go out of her way to trick the aforementioned one to eat her broccoli, but that has more to do with intents more evil that vegetable-love.) So for all those who are a little tired of our little vegetarian act, and for the rest of you who have been more, ermmm…demonstrative of your displeasure, here’s presenting, the bestest accompaniment to our much loved, aunty pleasing neichor (4 posts down and we are already cross-referencing our previous post. We are cool that way.)-- the much demanded chicken character-actor sidekick who often wins the Oscars aka

The Default Kozhi Curry, or if you tend to be on the r-dropping, northern side of coconut belt, Koi Curry.

So, you’ll need:

7-9 pieces of chicken. Not the Abhai-Maurya’s-face-at-student-GBs- type pink blobs, the fresh, blood-oozing variety. If you are not the number crunching kind, this translates to about half a kilo.

5 to 6 big onions. When we say big, we usually mean the beautifully healthy, big, well-fed, round ones, not those silly things most marketwallas pass off as ‘pyaaz’.





3 Tomatoes. Again, the nice big ones. Not the plum sized ones (when we say plum-sized, we are mean size of a plum, which, is not impressive if you are a tomato), because they are just not the ones we use for this curry. We will give you a chance to use those, but later (Ooh, the suspense.)




Ginger- garlic paste. Just let the large company fleece you this time



Green chilli, about 4 to 5, depending on how spicy it is, and how fire-proof your stomach is.




The Powders: Turmeric- one teaspoon; Coriander- half a spoon or less (which is preferred); Chilli powder- one teaspoon; Garam masala- two tiny spoons or one and a half teaspoons; Salt- two spoons or more.

Potatoes- if required. Why anybody would take away the taste of all that yummy chicken with potatoes is beyond us, but if you belong to that part of the nation that can not imagine a meal without potatoes, please feel free to chop 2 large ones into smallish (one inch should do it) cubes, and add a little extra salt to your curry.

Thinly slice the onions. And no, we are not using the term ‘thin’ loosely here to mean half an onion. Slice them as thin as you can, the ideal being translucent slices. Yes, it’s not easy, and no, you won’t get there without practice, but it reduces your cooking time by so much that you will thank us once you get there. Separate the layers like you did while making the nei-chor. Once you have that ready, pull out a kadai, or your friendly pressure cooker, pour in some oil. Throw in the onions, get them to brown. Adding salt really helps in the sautéing process, so that would definitely be a wise move.



While that is going on, chop the tomatoes. This time, we are not concerned about the size of the pieces, and you are free to squish them. Just make sure the knife wins this battle. And remember, we are fighting the tomatoes, NOT your finger. Throw those in, stir a bit.


Grind the green chillis. You will have to do this one the hard way, so just don’t rub your eyes soon after you do this. Put in a spoonful of the ginger garlic paste and a few spoonfuls of the green chilli paste, give the whole thing a healthy stir to ensure none of it is getting overly fond of the bottom of your cooker or pan, and add in The Powders (ignore the salt, if you have added it to the onions). Once the whole thing has been mixed and cooked enough, (the hint here is to take a deep breath. If you can smell individual ingredients, keep stirring. If you can smell a whole lot of happiness, you are good at this. If you can smell smoke, reduce the fire, and stir better- you might still be able to save your dish. If you choke, thank god you did not add the chicken), add the chopped potatoes, if you really have to, and add the chicken (washed and preferably bloodless, not that we judge).


Mix it all well, making sure you are not ignoring the bottom of your vessel. Add about a glass of water and close the pressure cooker. Wait for steam to rise out of that little chimney- like thing, and put the weight on it. Wait for a whistle, turn off your stove. Do not open the cooker yet. If you are using a kadai, you of course, won’t have a whistle to wait for. You will just have to wait out about 15 mins, and then check if the chicken is tender. This you do, by opening the kadai, sticking a fork into a piece, if it goes in easily and the chicken feels soft, you are good to go. But, we suggest that you pop a tiny (the term ‘tiny’ here is rather loosely used) piece into your mouth, just to be sure.

So while you are waiting, heat some ghee (No, we do not forget lovely things like ghee), fry a few slices of onion, some cashewnuts, if you like. Now, when that is done, switch off the stove and chop some coriander leaves. Open the cooker now (assuming, of course that the steam is gone); poke the chicken to see if it is tender. If it feels like rubber, chances are you will have to cook it for a while longer probably one more whistle will do the trick. If it feels just right, pour it into a serving bowl, add the garnish, and serve it hot, with lots of our very own ghee rice.

This is guaranteed to expand that waistline a bit, but as they say- eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow, we may diet (We know that line’s been around since Dr Phil was a wee li’l lad, but it cracks us everytime. Diet. Hahahahaha. Diet!)

Harpy Valentine's and Other Such Joyful Tidings

Hi. Hello. How you all been? Yeah, we know, we know. We are too young a blog to be taking long vacations and expecting our readers to still stick around and wait -- with eager eyes and a yearning tummy -- for us to come back from whichever wonderful place we went to and post again. Ma-haan, that was a long sentence. And we know (not a lot, even so) that long sentences do not make for good apologies, but hey, we know (again) that our mad apology skills are not what you guys love us for.

Anyway, cheek aside, the thing with us is that we are as lazy with our writing as we are with our cooking (and this is the part where confused raises her eyebrows in a formidable fashion and tells crumbs to speak for her sluggish self). In our defence, we did have grand plans to post a Christmas special. Only, that got a li’l delayed and then we thought we might as well make it a New Year special. But then that didn’t take off either. So, when a certain mother hen of questionable authority told us to get off our indolent asses and give our hands some exercise, we decided, in a moment’s rash frenzy, to post about whatever we make for dinner that night. Which, not too happily for you guys, turned out to be tomato rice. We know, we know (there we go again), some 4 months of waiting and we give you tomato rice? Tomato rice?? Toe-maa-toe rice?! (insert toe-maa-toe/toe-may-toe joke here. Ha. Ha.) Such are the cruel twists of destiny and etc etc.


But keep faith, dear readers. Because as far as tomato rice goes, you could do with a lot worse than what follows. In fact, as far as tomato rice goes, this is the good stuff. We are not a big fan of tomato rice in general. But this one? We get cravings for this one. At regular intervals. Honestly. It is THAT good.

So, allow us to present, the redeemer of all tomato rices, the supreme ruler of the dangerously coloured rice,

The Tow-mah-Toe Rice (Will breaking down a name to 3 letter bits make it sound Chinese? Hmmm....maybe, this should be year of the wabbit special. Or not.)

You will need:


Tomatoes. Of course. Make sure you get the fat, ripe ones, nothing ruins a tomato rice's awesomeness as khatta tomatoes. You will need to puree about 5 medium sized (basically, you make slight cuts through the skin, dunk them in boiling hot water for exactly 5 mins, then immediately scoop them out [With a spoon/prongs/anything that is not your finger. Unless you are Johnny Storm, which you are not. We checked.] and immediately drown them in cold cold water. The idea is to shock the tomatoes into loosening their skins, which then you sadistically peel off, like, well, tomato peel. Once the tomatoes are stripped, you pop them into a blender, and puree them. OR, you pay large corporations to do the dirty work for you, and buy a handy 200 ml carton of ready-made puree.)

Coconut milk. One 200 ml carton. Just pay the large corporations this time, will ya? It's such a pain to think of funny ways to extract coconut milk.

Onion: 1 medium sized, slice them thin.

Ginger: one inchish, Garlic: 6 podsish, or take the shortcut and use 1 tsp of readily available ginger-garlic paste

Green chillies: 3-4, depending on how much you love the insides of your stomach.

Now ideally, you should be making a paste out of ginger, garlic and green chillies. But, if you are taking the shorter way, you can just grind the green chillies separately, and nobody will be any wiser.

Jeera/Cumin: 1 tsp

Mustard seeds: 1 tsp

Turmeric and Chilli powder: About half a tsp

Garam masala: 1tsp

Oil. You know, to saute and stuff. Take your pick between vegetable/sunflower/rice bran/coconut/random other favourite. We'd suggest staying clear of mustard or olive unless you are feeling rather reckless.

Rice. One cup, washed thrice or 4 times depending on the hygiene habits of your neighbourhood kiranawala. Then drained.

So, pour about 2 big spoons aka table spoons of oil in a flat bottomed sauce pan/pressure cooker big enough to hold two cups of water and then some. Place on medium high flame. Throw in the jeera and mustard. Move 5 steps away and wait for the tiny li'l suckers to explode all over the pan. Once the popping slows down to a reasonably safe rate, reduce the flame, add the ginger-garlic-chilli paste. Saute till the rawish smell goes away, which should take about 5 mins--or till about a third of the paste is firmly stuck to the bottom of the pan. Up the flame and throw in the onions, toss them about with abandon till they are nice and pink and softish. Reduce the flame again, add the turmeric and the chilli powder. (Reducing flame to low when you add an ingredient is generally considered industry best practice for its renowned effectiveness in preventing the addition of a nice charred layer at the bottom of your pan.) Mix for about 2 mins, till the masala coats the onion.



Add to the above mixture, all of the tomato puree and stir the very thick soup looking liquid till it just about begins to bubble. Stir in the rice to the bubbly and let the whole thing boil for 2 mins. When the bubbles become bigger, add salt (about a leveled tsp should do it, you can check and change later) and garam masala. Meanwhile, fill 3/4th of the cup with coconut milk, top it with water to get a thin watery coconut milk. Pour that into the rice and give the whole thing a hearty stir. (What is a Valentine's Day Special without a hearty something. Get it? Heart-y? No? Okay.)


Now, cover and leave for cooking. Please note, we said "leave" not abandon. If you thought you could watch like half an episode of How I Met Your Mother while the tomato rice was cooking, then you would be wrong. This sneaky li'l thing has an unfortunate affinity for the bottom of the pan. Leave it alone for 10 mins at a stretch, and there will be an inch thick layer of rice sticking on to the bottom of your pan for dear life. You will need to uncover the pan, and shake things up every 4 mins (not even 5).

Once the liquid is about evaporated, you add another half cup of watery coconut milk and stir again. This helps make the rice moist, and fluffy. It's like slowly fattening the metaphorical lamb for slaughter, etc, etc. The thing with this rice is that it is one of those "my biggest weakness is my biggest strength" kind of thing. While you are constantly checking the rice, it also means that you get to adjust the flavour to suit your taste just-so. Not tangy enough? Chop up another tomato and toss it in. Or add a spoonful of ketchup (gasp!). Not spicey enough? Slit a green chilli's throat and throw that in. Too dry? Add some more water mixed with a bit of coconut milk. The possibilities are endless.


In another 15 mins time, your rice should be done--it will look bloated and soft, and will mash like well boiled potato between your fingers, and the liquid part of it would be reduced to a coating. At this point, add the last round of very thick coconut milk, give the whole thing an almighty stir, and sigh a deep sigh of satisfaction, and switch off the stove. Close the lid, and let it be for another 5 mins. And ta da! Your creamy, juicy tomato rice is ready for the tomato rice hall of fame!


We know this sounds like a lot of hard work, but boy, does it pay! And to prove our point, we have, exhibit A. And, er...A.1.

If you are still cynical, the big, eerily glowing heart should definitely do it.
So on that good smoke, good fellas and fellies, it's time for our take off!

The simple-in-making, but high-in-taking Ghee Rice

Confused firmly believes that there are a few things in life as glorious and uplifting as ghee. Considering the amounts that she uses in her cooking, I am prone to believe that it gears more towards the 'upsizing' things, if you know what I mean. But hey, after the last post, I think some people have got the rather misguided impression that this blog is about healthy cooking. Being such unapologetic lovers of good (and succulently unhealthy) food, it causes us to shudder so forcefully, that we dropped our gulab jamoons right out of their sugar syrup. So, we figured we might as well set the record straight.

Since Confused is out at the battlefield, while I sit at home to watch the kettle, she has, in the spirit of valiant generosity, left the recipe in my inbox to post. So, without much ado, ladies and gentlemen, let us present for you, the darling of khaataa-peeta khandhans, the stayer on the hips, the deliciously simple, yet flabulously yummy,

The Aunty-impressing Ghee Rice a.k.a Nei Chor

So you will need:

One cup of rice (One could argue that this demands the royal basmati variety, but if you want to save your money for all the ghee, ask your local storekeeper around the corner, a.k.a kiranawalla for biryani rice, or jeera rice)

Onion (we prefer the pink ones)

Ghee (as much as your C2 levels [conscience and cholesterol levels, for the uninitiated] allow)

Cooking oil (well, again depending on your C2 levels, according to Confused, one should not be stingy about these things, but then, you be the judge)

Soak the rice in water for about 45 minutes to an hour--after thoroughly washing it, at least thrice first as the norms of the Kaliyuga demand from us the additional mile of caution.

Thinly slice the onion. the thinner, the better. This, if you are a novice can take considerable amounts of practice. But do not be disheartened if your onion slices cannot make the cut for Fashion TV ramps at the first go. Just keep at it, and as Shiv Khera says, "You can do it!". Now, the good thing about the onions in this recipe is that you have to make sure the various layers have been separated. So think of all those people on your hit list, and lovingly squeeze the sliced onions between your fingers in this rotating motion, so as to separate the various layers. This also helps the onion slices to become tender and easier to brown, but that purpose is only secondary to the therapeutic venting of repressed vengeance. Once the onions are sufficiently broken, they are now ready to be fried.


Pour some ghee (about two tablespoons) in your cooker (If, despite your best efforts, your C2 acts up, tell your self that you can go a bit unhealthy here, since you are getting all our nutrition from the dal or the chicken, preferably, that will have to accompany the rice). Once the ghee is hot (DO NOT put your finger or any body part in the ghee to check. Let's just assume, for the purposes of this experiment that 1 min on fire is good enough to heat the ghee), put in the onions.

Once the onions have fried in the ghee (just golden brown, not dark brown, mind you), put the soaked rice in the ghee (without removing the onions), and add some oil. The ultimate bliss of ghee rice, is to cook it with pure, unadulterated ghee, but then, burning off those calories might take a lifetime, so we suggest that you just add oil (two teaspoons, for starters).

Now is the difficult bit. Stir the rice in the cooker, till it becomes hard to stir. The real test to see if the rice is done, is to move it about, and check the rice at the bottom of the cooker. If it is properly "fried", then the rice tends to bounce up and down, like those magic crackers that pop in your mouth. Once you reach there, pour in two cups of water (the same cup that you used to measure the rice, please), add some salt (one to two teaspoons is the usual, depends on your taste), close the cooker, wait for five minutes, for the steam to rise through the tunnel thing on top, and then put the weight on.

Once the cooker gives out one high-pitched whistle, switch the gas off. Wait for the steam to completely let out, and then pop the cooker open. The rice SHOULD be done, however, there are some varieties of rice that require more cooking (one can never be sure these days, after all, it's the Kaliyuga, remember?). So check if the rice is done--best method being to pop a few grains into your mouth. If they are soft, good, if they are still a li'l stubborn and solidly stony, pour a few tablespoons of water and steam with the cooker partially closed. Once you are done, the end product should look something like this:

For those who like to experiment with spices (Confused does not, Crumbs does. So well, you pick the sides), you can add a small piece of cinnamon, about two cloves, and some cardamom. If you chose to go with the spices, then you should pop them in the first thing in the ghee, wait for about 3 secs, and then add the onions. Now, these spices really do give this awesome aroma to the rice, and your kitchen, but if you have fussy kids around (and by fussy kids, Confused means herself), we suggest that you remove them before serving. The cardamom is easy to mask- you can remove the husk and put in only the seeds. But unless you want people making faces (which is what Confused often does, of course), remove the cloves as they are famous for their pungency.

The final stage in this rather difficult culinary journey (Ha ha, see the clever use of irony there? No? Okay.) is the garnishing. After all, ghee rice, for all its internal beauty and wit, is quite the plain jessi to look at (without the bad haircut though). So you spruce up your rice by adding fried cashew nuts (fry them in ghee,
no excuses for that), raisins, chopped coconuts, and so on. Add some yummy chicken and cool raita, and some nice fried pappadoms on the side, and you have a perfectly wonderful meal. And ta da! You are now ready to show off your rather fancy culinary skills to all and sundry and the next door aunty who never calls you for her endless dinner parties.


So folks, on that good smoke, it is time for our take off.