My New Year Gift to You!

Happy New Year, dear readers!

Oh I know it's almost half way through the first month of the year... Things get way unsettled from mid-Dec to mid-Jan here at Karthi. We have been fortunate enough that a prediction hasn't come true, but Ockhi happened and showed us that even if there is a warning system in place and information had been handed to government agencies, it didn't percolate down to the people who really needed the warning. There are still 300+ souls whose fate is unknown. Let us continue to contribute what we can to ease the suffering of the loved ones that the departed and the lost have left behind.

Back in the summer of 2013, my kids made an amazing discovery - they learned that cakes can be baked at home! Blame the summer camp that they attended at DH's workplace. And although they saw and helped in the baking process at the camp, did they want to be bakers themselves? No sirree, they colluded with their father to buy a microwave and made ME do all the hard work! 

Even though baking is one 'craft' that I didn't adopt on my own, it has become dear to my heart. It satisfies the creative, the eternal student and the gourmand in me. And it gets me raving accolades from my family! Frequent baking makes for expanding waistlines, so I bake cakes only for birthdays, bake sales at the kids' school and for guests.

Last year I was bold enough to try baking a cake without a recipe!!! I know, sacrilegious, isn't it? The amounts have to be just right to make the chemistry that is almost alchemy work for the novice. I got news that two of my cousins were coming to visit. Karthi's snack box was empty and they weren't staying for lunch. So I decided to bake a quick chocolate cake. I didn't even have to break out my hand mixer! My cousins didn't mind being guinea pigs - in fact they asked for more! Then I knew I was on to a good thing! And indeed I had the occasion to bake it twice afterwards and they both came out very good. So here goes:

Quick and Easy Microwave Chocolate Cake 

Dry ingredients:

All-purpose flour - 1 cup

Cocoa powder - 1/2 cup

Baking powder - 1/2 tsp

Baking soda - 1/2 tsp

Wet ingredients:

Vegetable oil - 1 cup (I found peanut oil the best. Coconut oil makes for a heavy cake) 

Sugar - 1 cup

Milk -  1 cup

Eggs - 2, lightly beaten

Vanilla essence - 1 tsp

Whisk together sugar and oil till sugar is somewhat dissolved. Add milk and mix well. Sieve dry ingredients together and add to the mixture while whisking. Pour in the beaten eggs while whisking. Add the vanilla essence.

Pour batter into greased baking mold and nuke at 80% power for 12 minutes. Check whether done with a toothpick or skewer.  It's yummy and moist served either hot or cold.

This cake is not overly sweet - it suits our tastes perfectly. The batter may look runny, but that is how it is supposed to look. 

And as I was writing this, a memory came to me and I chuckled thinking those days are far behind me. Touch wood!

Do have a go at my new year gift. Let me know in the comments!

 

A Reluctant Recipe

I don't enjoy cooking very much. There, I've confessed to the worst sin a stay-at-home-mother can commit. I won't go into the whys and wherefores now as that would be sufficient stuff for another post. When I started blogging, a few of my friends suggested that I should post recipes - I cringed at the thought of the extremely basic fare that I plate up each day and kept mum. Last month, a childhood friend (popularly known as a chuddi buddy these days?) came to visit after a loooong gap of several years and I prepared dinner for him. I still aver that it was not deliberate, but when I was thinking about a chicken dish, I automatically chose a childhood favorite. Not until I saw him picking out chicken pieces to eat with relish even after his rice was long over did I realize that he must have eaten the same dish several times as it was a staple of my mom's at parties. If people ask me for just one dish that is an absolute favorite of mine, it is this, it is this, it is this!

So here is my mother's fried chicken (or as we Malayalis call it, chicken fry) in my style.

Ingredients

Chicken, skinned and cut into medium-sized pieces: 1 kg

Onions, thinly sliced: 1 cup

Grated coconut: 1 cup

Green chillies: 6  - 8 for medium, 12 if you want it really spicy (Me like REALLY spicy!)

Any good chicken masala: 2 tbsp

Curd (plain yogurt): 1 tbsp

Garlic and ginger diced finely/ paste: 1 tsp each

Curry leaves: 2 sprigs

Coconut oil: enough for frying

Salt: q.s

(tee hee, I've always wanted to write that q.s., pretending to be a master chef writing out my recipe!!!)

Procedure:

1. Mix curd, chicken masala and the salt together, rub the mixture on the chicken pieces and let sit in the fridge for half an hour (can be made even without this step, but I find it adds to the flavor).  Meanwhile, grate the coconut, slice the onions and do the rest of the prep work. Here's a pic of the ingredients after all the prep work is done.

2. Cook/steam the chicken for around half an hour till it's half cooked - this again helps it to absorb more flavor. Strain out the chicken pieces after they are done. You can use some of the cooled chicken broth for grinding in the fourth step.

3. Heat a heavy-bottomed pan with a tsp-ful of coconut oil and add the onions, grated coconut and green chillies. Fry them over high heat stirring continuously. Don't you dare stop for even five seconds if you don't want charred and smoky masala. This is what it looks like at the beginning of the step.

Half-way through it will look like this. Keep a glass of water ready at the side:

No, don't add the water to the mix, that is for YOU to drink as you will be thoroughly sweating and parched by now. You can add the garlic and ginger at this stage. If you are intrepid, you can add half a dozen pepper corns if you want - okay, okay, just saying... The next picture shows you how it will look when done.

There is a tiny window of time between when the coconut is evenly browned and when it is charred, so as soon as the coconut reaches the above color, take the pan off the fire and keep stirring for a minute or two till the heat dissipates.

4. As soon as the masala mixture cools down, grind it in a blender with just enough water or broth from step 2 to get it ground evenly into a fine paste. Transfer it into a bowl and keep aside.

5. Put the pan back on the fire and pour enough oil to cover the bottom to a good quarter of an inch high. When it heats up, put in just enough chicken pieces in so that turning will be easy. Fry each side of the chicken for two minutes each, then add the masala paste (keeping aside enough for the second batch of chicken if need be, of course). Add a few curry leaves too and turn the pieces occasionally so that the masala will coat the chicken (don't worry if the paste doesn't stick to the chicken, some of it will fall off.) When the masala turns dark brown and becomes less mushy, it's done. To make sure,  take out a tiny bit of the masala, blow hard on it and check if it has a "fried" taste.

6. Take out the chicken pieces, then scoop as much masala out of the pan as you can after squeezing it on the side of the pan to drain out as much oil as possible.  Arrange the chicken pieces in your serving dish and smear the pieces with the masala. Add more fried curry leaves as garnish. Enjoyed best with white rice and curd  with a green salad on the side. 

My mom's way of making this is to grind the masala and cook it with chicken and water and once the chicken is done, she allows the water to boil off gradually stirring it occasionally and then adds oil to the mix and fries it. This process entails a lot of time and stirring in front of the stove in addition to the masala-frying time, so I do it this way. My method also saves some time because you can let the chicken cook while you are frying the ingredients for the masala. But you can try it  mom's way too, just make sure you have a lot of water to drink!