Kasundi Broccoli

By now I have written quite a fair bit about my Bengali heritage and love for Bengali food. One of the Bengali recipes I posted was for Kasundi Chicken – this delicious, moist chicken curry with the characteristic Bengali mustard flavour. Happiness!

Today I am sharing another kasundi recipe. The awesome sauce (literally) deserves many ways to be added to your meals 🙂 It is also an amazing way to jazz up basic veggies and make them a lot more appetizing. In this case, broccoli. I like broccoli in many ways, in salad, with some masala or steamed with some garlic. But one of my favourites was when my aunt made broccoli with just panch phoron. I’ve based this recipe on my aunt’s, with the addition of the magic ingredient – kasundi!

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Pecorino Crumbed Chicken with a Chunky Tomato Sauce

One of my favourite things about travel is discovering new food! For me new food includes new ingredients, new recipes, new flavours, new ways of cooking and even new ways of using familiar ingredients. Food is probably one of the best ways to experience a city, don’t you think? It really helps you understand what the locals like, helps you learn about the history, helps you connect with the people and makes the experience so much more enriching…and delicious 🙂

My friend S and I were in Italy last year. We spent about 9 days exploring Florence, Rome and parts of Tuscany. Along with visiting many museums and churches, we also pretty much ate and drank our way through these places. Every meal was accompanied by some house wine 🙂 Italy gave me the opportunity to try so many kinds of food and so many ways to use ingredients that I left feeling immensely inspired. Along with all the delicious meat, one of my other favourites was pecorino! I’ve had pecorino before, but always in a mixture or a sauce and never just as is. What a cheese! Sharp, peppery and delicious! I brought some back and the husband and I kept nibbling on it everyday. So when my friend T went to Italy this year, I asked her to bring back wine (obviously) and some pecorino.

Apart from nibbling it everyday, I figured I must also cook with it, right? 🙂 I am a big fan of baked/grilled chicken and make some form of it every week (like this recipe). I’ve made crumbed chicken before and think it is super easy and delicious. I swapped out the regular cheese for pecorino, added some other fun herbs and voila! Pecorino crumbed chicken!

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Masala Poha (Spiced flattened rice)

Growing up in Delhi, Poha wasn’t something we came across often. The dish is more traditionally Maharashtrian and is eaten widely across the Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh as well. As Biharis, we use flattened rice in different ways – soaked and then mixed with yoghurt and jaggery (dahi chura) or cooked till crispy and served with spiced peas (chura matar).

While I was finishing school, our help at home learned how to make the Maharashtrian poha from someone and then suddenly we had this cool new option for weekend breakfasts 🙂 My sister isn’t a big fan, but I love this dish.

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Dry Kala Channa (Dark Chickpeas)

Growing up in Delhi, the Navratras were a big deal. Nine days where people ate vegetarian food or fasted, prayed (more) and abstained from alcohol. Our family doesn’t really follow this ritual, but we did enjoy the special food our friends ate during this time. It’s a time for buckwheat instead of flour, lots of potatoes, rock salt instead of regular salt, among other things – making for some pretty tasty food.

The best food though is on the 8th day, Ashtami, where there was a puja (prayer) for girls and everyone then got to eat puris, halwa and kala channa. Since we didn’t do the puja, we used to wait for our friends to share the food with us 🙂 Priorities are clear, food above rituals 🙂

This kala channa recipe is a modification of the ashtami once, with the addition of some tomatoes and ginger – garlic plus tweaking of the spices a little. But whenever I make it, it takes me straight back to those ashtami days!

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Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies have been my go-to for as long as I can remember. Growing up, we used to get only plain, vanilla biscuits for the longest time. But once the market opened up and people’s preferences became more varied, we started seeing a lot more ‘fancy’ cookies in the market. One of the first new types was the chocolate chip. It started off as the thinner, crisper variety (the recipe of which shall be up soon), but then also added on the thicker, chewier version. My aunts used to get the chewy chocolate chip cookies from the US as well – those were these super luxury goodies for us back in the day. And so delicious!

On my recent trip to New York, I tried a ton of cookies. Like really a ton. My favourite were from this bakery called Levain. BEST COOKIES EVER! Massive, thick, dense, chewy and full of chocolate in every bite. Heaven!

While these aren’t at that level yet (I promise to try to replicate those), these are pretty much bang on in terms of thick, chewy cookies. I ate way too many in the process of testing, all worth it, I say 😀

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