Food and Love

"Do you like Butter Chicken? " Not a question many guys will ask the girl they are dating within the first week. When I asked that question to M she discerned the intensity in my words and while trying her best to curb a flurry of giggles she looked at me with those soft eyes said 'yes'. For me that 'yes' was right up there with the big "yes" that would come four years later. Not so much for the fact that she liked my most ultimately favorite dish, but because I knew then that she understood my passion for food and one hurdle had crossed between us being completely made for each other!

Love grows in funny ways, and when you look under the exterior structure of sights , sounds and smells you discover the foundation built on common passions! The continuing forums on which you can keep on conversing and participating all your life. Not a surprise then that one of those forums for me and M has turned out to be food! From trying out each other recipes to fighting over who is going to cook the next meal , we have done it all. All those amazing places that we have eaten out at wouldn't be that amazing if M wasn't there to share my critique and drink in the ambiance.

Yesterday we celebrated 5 years to the day we went from being just friends to oh-my-god we are dating! And though M wasn't there with me on that day , I finished my day by trying to perfect the recipe for Chicken Marsala which I plan to cook for her next time we are together.

Hey, if food and love were not made for each other I wonder if I would bother cooking!!

Masala Burger and Baked Garlic Fries

Have you ever wondered how cool it would be to eat kebabs in a bun! Well I have , and last week I was all set to cook at my fiancees house when a light bulb lit up in the white cloud hovering above my head. What if I could cook up a hearty burger with all the goodness of spicy kebabs! Of course no dish of meat in a bun can go without a side of fries. But hey , what if the fries were not really fries but only look and taste like fries! read on....

Ingredients:

For Masala Burger:
Minced red meat (Lamb or Beef) 1.5 lbs
Potato 1 (peeled, boiled or microwaved and mashed)
Large egg 1 whole
Chili powder 2 tbl spoons
Cumin 2 tbl spoons
Turmeric 1/2 tbl spoon
Garam Masala 1/4 tbl spoon
Salt 2 tbl spoons
Black pepper 1/2 tbl spoon
Rum (a dash /optional)

For Baked Garlic Fries:
Medium Potatoes 4
Garlic powder 2 tbl spoons (don't be afraid of garlic my friend)
Salt 1 tbl spoons
Pepper 0.5 tbl spoon
Oregano 0.5 tbl spoon

Method - Masala Burger (Serves four):
1) Take the meat in a large bowl and add the red chili powder, cumin, black pepper , salt ,
egg , mashed potato, turmeric and if you are crazy enough, a dash of rum.
2) Mix well the goop in your bowl and let it stand for 20 Min's.
3) In the mean time heat a pan on medium high (no oil is required since the meat will cook in its own juices.)
4) Gouge out a ball of meat from the goop and roll it smooth with your hands then flatten it to resemble a burger. The mixed-in egg and mashed potato is supposed to keep it from breaking apart.
5)Then slap on the burger on your pan and cook on it on one side for about 8 Min's till the side becomes dark brown , then flip the burger and cook the other side for 5 Min's.
6) Once the burger is done, transfer it to a plate covered with a paper napkin which will soak the fat on the surface of the burger.
7) Take a moment to look at your creation and admire it.
8) Server the burger between two slices of your favorite bread ( In my case it was buttermilk bran) and garnish it with mint chutney and a slice of onion and tomato.

Method - Garlic Fries (Serves four):
1) Peel four mid-sized potatoes and cut them
up in the shape of fries. ( you don't have to be exact)
2) Transfer the potatoes to a bowl and sprinkle salt, pepper , garlic powder and oregano liberally on the top.
3) Then give the bowl a few tosses to coat the potatoes uniformly with the seasonings.
4) Cover a baking pan with aluminium foil and spray cooking oil on the foil to make it non-stick. (if you don't have spray you can dab a paper napkin in oil and then rub the foil with the napkin gently to form a light coat.)
5) spread the fries evenly on the pan and toss the pan in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.

Now there you have it . If you think that is complicated , you are more than welcome to go to McDonald's and feed on some gourmet saturated fat.

P.S: Special mention of thanks to Mana and Sayan for admiring and devouring my dish.
Pic courtesy of S Dasgupta.

Intro

That I did not know how to cook even as less as four years ago would be a gross understatement. Like many other twenty two year olds from India I came to US with two dozen packets of Maggi and a box of laddoos to keep me alive for the first week until the cafeteria of my university opened for the semester. Making chai was as big a mystery to me as the inner workings of Bollywood. It wasn't until I left the dorms a semester later and started living with other students in off-campus apartments that my real tryst with cooking began. It has been a long, fruitful, satisfying and discovery laden 4 years of learning the hard way. Countless of smelly , crummy creations of mine went down the drain but at the same time opened a Pandora's box of limitless possibilities.

I may sound a bit overly dramatic in my ability to cook because, hey , more than half the population of this earth can do it! But it is the way I feel about cooking! . Even when I created my first cup of chai , it was to get my mind of homework and it worked so miraculously that cooking has been my stress buster ever since. And then it is more than that. See when a child is really small, good parents tend to notice the child's hidden talents and try their best to hone it. Similarly I tried to be a good parent to my inner child and no matter how busy or where ever I was I never missed an opportunity to whip up a meal or a snack and maybe find a hidden secret to add to my kitty of every growing discoveries.

I can safely say that over the years I have developed my own little style of sorts. Two things contributed to the fact. The first was that since I got into the whole cooking thing so late in life and in a different country than my own , I never had the prejudice toward a certain kind of cuisine. To me all are same and equally mysterious , and my favorite cuisine changes ever so often that I unravel those mysteries one by one. The second thing is that being an engineer that I am by profession it was natural for me to not follow recipes but learn the make or break way, so I can safely say that more than half of my creations have been not so endearing and that percentage keeps getting smaller everyday. But in the process I have found and keep finding many gems and invaluable insights. And therein those two beliefs lies my style which i like to call "Anything goes" , a more agreeable term would be 'fusion' but that sounds cliche. My motto was "Good ingredients make good food" until i found a way to make stale rice taste good. So now I do not have any mottoes because I do not have any preconceived notions.

The fact that most of our (and you may not be one of them) palates are so confined to the boundaries set by our childhood and influenced by our culture disturbs me a lot, and I have sort of taken it upon myself to fight the eponymous battle against the conservative eater. I don't intend to do it by antagonizing that kind , but hope to provide a bridge which they can easily cross over into the vast continent of foodies like me and many of you who are reading this blog.

Which brings me to this blog. My main goal in starting this blog is that it provide my readers with ideas to cross that bridge I was talking about earlier.In here you may find my recipes , food articles or just my muses on anything and everything edible. My secondary goal in the case that my blog readership doesn't reach the high standards i expect (about 5 readers) is that it will still remain as a journal of my foodie adventures.

Bon appetit.

Pic courtesy S Dasgupta.