I have been calling home frequently to get updates on how my Dad is doing. He is recovering and is in post operative ICU, he is not feeling any pain right now.
I guess he would be discharged later this week. I am going home tonight, tomorrow and day after are holidays here.
As a part of my new initiative to expand my cooking horizons, I had lined up Paneer butter masala as my next item. As always, my off-shore consultant was kind enough to send me a very detailed recipe on how to make it. I followed the instructions faithfully and here is what I got !!
Looks nice, doesn't it ? Tasted awesome too !! :-). First time I can really claim that after making something. I will shamelessly re-produce the recipe here soon , continuing my history blatant plagiarism :-)
Cooking has been a good diversion for me today. Been struggling with the news of Dad developing some illness. He is scheduled for a surgery on Monday, hope and pray things will be alright. Initial indications are that it is something minor, hope that turns out to be true
No matter how much we grow up, we never handle the news of a parent not being well, can we ?
Orkut baba says "He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals."
I say "He that falls in love with his own cooking shall never go hungry" :-)
Vada pav experiment turned out with satisfactory results. I followed the recipe given here . I made the vada a touch too big, I think. Also it had bit of a strong taste. I suspect too much coriander or garlic could have been the culprit. You are supposed to eat it with some chutney. Being a keralite, I of course opted for a coconut chutney with onions.
Was lying around this weekend when this sudden urge to cook chicken hit me. Chicken tikka is what I zeroed in on. I always prefer bone-less chicken, much easier to handle for novices like me. I followed the recipe given at the back of the tandoori chicken masala. Not too much of a recipe, though. Marinate chicken in lime juice and salt for half hour. Then marinate it in a mixture of curd, tandoori chicken masala, ginger and garlic for a further 2 more hours. I remember some one telling me that it is best to leave the marinated chicken in the fridge , so that is exactly what I did. This was followed by cooking in in my microwave in grill mode for close to half hour, need to turn the pieces around couple of times.
Turned out pretty ok, very different from the hotel version of tikka, but very much edible :-)
Plan to cook paneer soon, been pressing my on-shore consultant for a recipe, have not got it in full yet. Should be able to extract it in full in like 4-5 attempts, I know the drill by now :-)
They say "A fool and his money are easily parted", I say "A female and her recipes are not so easily parted" ;-))
Before I jumped in with Vada Pav, this thought stuck me today morning as to why I cannot make poori at home . A phone call to my off-shore consultant and discussions followed. The key outcome was the advice to knead the dough more than what you do for chapathi and make it soft. Also I was told you have to fry it in full flame and really hot oil. My previous misadventures with hot oil did make me a bit nervous, but I was confident I could pull it off.
Spoke to my on-shore consultant during the day and was told that dough needs to be hard, only then would pooris come out well. 180 degree phase opposition between consultants !! Not entirely un-expected. ( It is a bit like Kimi Raikkonen and Luis Hamilton are unlikely to take the same driving lines in an F1 course. Why ? Because each has their own distinct way of getting the maximum performance out of the car. I am more of a Sakon Yamamoto when it comes to cooking :-( ). Finally I decided to take the middle path, neither hard, nor too soft :-)
After all the kneading and rolling, I started frying them on full flame. The first 3-4 came out like stiff papads, very crispy. I hate it when pooris are this crispy. S.O.S call to on-shore consultant followed. Got the suggestion that I was probably over-frying them. Good tip, started taking them out a bit sooner and suddenly things were a whole lot better !! The aloo curry was 2-3 days old and was showing every sign of going bad, just was too lazy to cook more curry. So managed with it for the time being ;-)
I am getting pretty happy with the slow expansion of my range. Future projects in mind including baking buns and cookies.
Just one day after my lament about no one seeming to care about terrorism here, I watched this nice Hindi movie called A Wednesday, which deals more or less with exactly the same stuff that I was mentioning. Maybe I should focus on screen plays now :-). Movie was nice, no songs or typical Hindi movie dramas. Very gripping, superb acting and a decent plot line.
Health is back to normal now. And my cooking speed is improving. managed to make 5 chapathis in around 25 mins from start to finish !! ( Used to take me up to 1 hour ). Happily reported this to my North Indian food consultant ( have a seperate one for non-veg, keralite food , cakes etc ;-) ), and immediately got ridiculed. Consultant claims she can do the same in 5 mins !! That is surely an exaggeration, no way you can do it in 5 mins start to finish. Or can you ??
Next in line is the humble Vada Pav. Hilariously, Shiv Sena is now interested in Vada Pav. They claim it is necessary to have a standard taste for it. Surely there are more pressing matters for them to focus on !! I guess I will wait for their standardized recipe , don't want to get stoned for cooking something else ;-)
I was watching the shocking visuals from the Delhi blasts yesterday. I just could not help feeling an overwhelming feeling of bitter frustration as everyone went through their motions once more. The politicians expressing shock and sympathy, the news channels with their share of opinion polls and panel discussions, the mandatory cat fight between BJP and Congress. We have seen the same thing after the Mumbai and Ahmedabad blasts. Sadly, we shall see it again.
Picture this : Some folks come in , murder 20 or so of our own citizens, taunt all of us with an e-mail which says "do what you can, but we will still kill you", and as a country we are not even outraged by it. Why can't someone from the government say something like "As a country we will not take this anymore. Wherever you are, we will hunt you down and we will eliminate you" ? In 2 weeks, no one will remember this, then they will strike again. In a different city, different head count and then the carnival shall start again.
Our own citizens being slaughtered in our own country, what do we care ? Life of an Indian is not worth much, is it ? Life goes on.
Does the word Indian mean anything any longer ? May be I am one of the very few idiots who still think it does
Finally after sometime I am returning to blogging. Drove down home recently in my WagonR. It is a superbly scenic route to Calicut, especially once you enter Kerala. Sometimes it is easy to forget how breathtakingly beautiful God's own country can be. Couple of snaps clicked from the Wayanad Ghat section of the road is below, cameras can never do justice to this scenery.
My family came back to Bangalore with me and spent the whole of last week here. Yesterday was Onam and it was nice to have them around here. My wife and her team won a second price in their medical college pookkalam ( flower carpet ) competition with the following rendering, looked pretty nice
Unfortunately, I have been down with an infection since Thursday, throat pain and really high fever in the night. Gobbling up lots of medicines now.
Most of them induce drowsiness, so I am off to dreamland now.
5 a.m , jet lag is really biting now. I am as fresh as a daisy and hungry !! Had a miserable flight back as usual, I just hate being inside those aircrafts for 18-20 hours ..
Did not make much progress on the V2 specifications front. As a first step I have brought back the long discarded jeans back into my wardrobe collection. Now I can save on my washing expenses :-)
Listening to the song "Maa" from Taare Zameen Par.Such beautiful singing, with so minimal instruments.
I can rarely listen to this song without a tear or two welling up in my eyes. Which would sort of tell you why Pradeep V1 has been having some ups and downs of late, just the heart taking over the mind :-)) Internal wiring at birth, nothing I can do to change it, I guess.
Another song that always moves me, Hallelujah from Shrek. Again, just a piano as accompaniment, beautiful singing ....
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