Eid is just a few days to go. And to celebrate this day of celebration here we are with some eid special recipes. To start with the celebration. Here’s guest from Sohini Biswas.

Ingredients:

• 10 hard boiled eggs
• Paste of 2 onion
• 2 teaspoon ginger paste
• 2 teaspoon garlic paste
• 3 tablespoon tomato ketchup
• 2 large plum tomatoes, you can use the canned ones too
• 1 teaspoon Cumin powder
• 2-3 tablespoon MDH Meat Masala
• 2 teaspoon chopped coriander leaves
• ½ cup Full fat milk/Cream
• Salt to taste

Preparation: 

• Slice the eggs in thin round slices.
• Heat oil in a wok and add the onion paste to it.
• Fry the onion paste till golden. Add ginger garlic paste and fry well.
• Once the paste is well cooked and changes color then add the tomato ketchup and the plum tomatoes.
• Cook well for 15-20 minutes.
• Add splashes of hot water whenever necessary but do NOT over flood it.
• The main secret it to cook the masala paste. The more gently you cook the better will be the taste.
• Add the cumin powder and meat masala, salt and keep cooking for at least 30 minutes, adding splashes of hot water whenever necessary.
• Add the eggs and mix well.
• Add the milk (or the cream) and mix well and cook on a high flame to reduce the extra liquid.
• Keep stirring otherwise it’ll burn at the bottom.
• Add the chopped coriander leaves and mix.
• Take off heat once all the extra liquid has evaporated.
• Garnish with a few slices of boiled eggs and coriander leaves.
• Serve with Naan or Paratha.

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Clicked by Kalyan - St. Patrick's Church, Bangalore

School’s over and so is the innocent madness. These days Christmas has become synonymous to a partying late night on Christmas eve and perhaps a visit to the church mostly to see the Winter Fashion of the year (chuckles…). But, this time just thought of doing something a little different – planning to have a gala dinner on the 25^th night. What’s your plan for the day?

Decided on the dessert for the night – tartlets with meringue filling decorated with red cherries and sprigs of mint just to retain the colors of Christmas – white, red and green. I have used marzipan to make the crust along with maida, but you can omit the almond powder and use only all purpose flour.

Ingredients:

For the crust:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup almond powder
• ½ cup castor sugar
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 ½ tablespoon ghee/butter
• Water as required

For the filling:

• 2 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 3-4 tablespoon castor sugar
• Cherries to decorate

Preparation:

For the crust:

• Add all the dry ingredients together and pour in the butter/ghee
• Mix these ingredients to make a bread crumb like texture
• Pour cold water and knead with your hand to make a not-very-moist dough
• Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 1 or 2 hours
• Preheat the oven to 180°C
• Roll out the dough and line 6 small flan tins. Press the dough into the corners and trim off the excess dough with a sharp knife. Alternatively you can use a single 8” flan tin
• Prick the dough with a fork and bake for 10-12 min or till the crust turns golden brown
• Take out and set to cool

For the filling:

• Beat the egg whites till they form soft peaks
• Add the castor sugar, vanilla essence and continue beating

Put Together:

• Pour the filling over the tart crust and bake in a preheated oven at 150°C for 5-6 min on the upper rack till the peaks turn a little brown
• Serve hot or cold decorated with cherries

Hot Tips – You can create your own filling. Use thick custard or soft cream and seasonal fruits like strawberries, pineapple, raspberries, etc to decorate your tart. Do let us know about your favourite tart fillings.

Further Reading – Irish cream and Strawberry Tartlet, Toblerone tart.

It so happened that I used to wake up late (I still do:P) and then need to rush without grabbing a proper breakfast. But, this had a bad toll on me and my health. I felt that pre-afternoon hunger and sluggishness. So, I made it a point to have a good and wholesome breakfast. You can check some of the quick breakfast recipes.

The four main reasons to skip breakfast, what I have learned from family and friends are:

1. I don’t have time
2. I really don’t have time
3. I seriously don’t have time
4. I’m skipping breakfast to lose weight

You can either set your alarm just 15min earlier or rush to the office with the hungry tummy aching to have some food. I chose the first option, nothing is better than to have a healthy breakfast and plan for a good day. Now, if your reason to skip breakfast is solely to shed some pounds, then beware skipping breakfast has a reverse effect on your weight loss plan. This is a good read on skip breakfast, get fat.

Ingredients:

For the filling:

• Potato (Alu): 3 large, boiled, peeled and mashed
• Onion (Peyaj): 1 medium size, chopped
• Tomato: 1 medium, chopped
• Green chili (Kancha Lanka) : 2, chopped
• Coriander leaves (Dhane Pata): ¼ cup chopped
• Salt to taste

For the wrap:

• Wheat Flour (Maida): 2 cup
• Water

Preparation:

• Make a dough using the flour and prepare parathas
• Mash the boiled potatoes, add the other ingredients and mix well
• Once the parathas are ready put a generous amount of the filling mixture and roll the parathas
• Cut each roll into two from the middle and serve hot with tomato sauce, lemon juice and salad

Hot Tips – I have used parathas for the wrap you can use chapattis too. You can also use the left over rotis or parathas from last night to prepare the wrap. The filling can also of your own choice of vegan or meat, check the egg roll post for more ideas.

Further Readings – Breakfast with eggs, Mumbai Frankie roll

]]> http://bengalicuisine.net/2010/kolkata-style-vegan-frankie/feed/ 4 http://bengalicuisine.net/2010/egg-maggi-noodles-in-easy-quick-steps/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=egg-maggi-noodles-in-easy-quick-steps http://bengalicuisine.net/2010/egg-maggi-noodles-in-easy-quick-steps/#comments Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:13:35 +0000 Kalyan Banerjee http://bengalicuisine.net/?p=2196 Follow me on Twitter. Fan us on Facebook . Visit my Flickr photostream. You can also Subscribe to BengaliCuisine by Email

Recipe in 8 words

Prepare Egg Bhurji, prepare maggi and mix both.

Seriously, that’s Egg Maggi for you. If you want to learn the details, read on.

Egg and Maggi Noodles

Maggi noodles – the Youth Icon

Over the years, several folks have enjoyed the status of being voted MTV Youth Icon – SRK, Rahul Dravid, Anil Ambani, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Orkut etc. These figures touch your life, but not a daily basis.

Maggi Noodles is undoubtedly the Youth Icon. Calories notwithstanding, Maggi comes to your help during late nights, rush breakfast, supper or when your cook hasn’t turned up.

Last was true in my case when I decided its time for Egg Maggi Noodles as a standalone dish.

Preparing Egg Bhurji

Preparing Egg Bhurji

How to prepare Egg Maggi Noodles

Serves – 1; Prep time – 12 min

1. Beat the eggs, salt and pepper (if you like) – I usually do it in a steel glass, just like your neighborhood anda wala
2. In the frying pan, add some oil and let it heat
3. Pour the mixture from step 1 on the pan
4. Make egg bhurji i.e. use a spoon to mix the egg mixture so that it mashes well
5. In another pan, add two cups water and boil
6. Add Maggi tastemaker to water and stir
7. Break the Maggi noodles into 4 and add broken Maggi noodles to the boiling mix. Mix well.
8. 3 minutes later (rather when the Maggi noodles have soaked enough water – but don’t worry about this too much), add the egg bhurji to boiling Maggi noodles. Mix well.

Boiling Maggi Noodles

Egg Maggi Noodles

Voila! Your Egg Maggie Noodles (Anda Maggi) in front of you. Enjoy with ketchup.

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When you wake up late in the morning the last thing you can think of is what to have for breakfast and what to pack for lunch. I face this problem quite often. Right now mom’s here so don’t need to worry about that, but when I am all alone this is a big deal. I am sure this troubles you too.

My mom gave me a great idea, and the result turned out awesome. It’s the simplest of egg preparation with gravy one can think of. It took me just 10mins from getting inside the kitchen to serving the dimer malpua.

Dimer malpua sounds a little crazy though, but I looked at my plate this is what came out of my mind. The fried poaches looked almost like malpua (Bengali style pan cakes) dipped in spicy gravy. You can have this as a brunch or can carry for your lunch.

Here are some more option for breakfast with eggs.

Ingredients:

• Eggs (Dim): 2
• Onion (Peyaj): 1 medium, finely chopped
• Garlic (Rasun): 4-5 cloves
• Ginger-garlic paste (Ada-rasun bata): 1 teaspoon
• Turmeric powder (Halud guro): ½ teaspoon
• Chili powder (Lal lankar guro): 1 teaspoon
• Mustard oil (Sarser tel): 3 tablespoon

Preparation:

• Make two fried poaches like this
• Heat one tablespoon of oil in an wok and sauté the onions, and garlic
• As the onions turn pinkish add the other spices and salt, toss and pour in ½ cup of water
• Let the gravy thicken
• Pour this gravy over the fried poaches and dimer malpua is ready
• Serve with chapatti or rice

Hot Tips – If you have any left out gravy from last night you can also heat that and pour it over the fried poaches. If left for 5  to 10mins the gravy soaks inside the poaches making it spicier and tastier.

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Update: Removing Vegan word from the post. Since it uses eggs even for the filling, how can it be vegan, argued Soma. And I couldn’t agree more. Thanks for pointing that out.

What is Dimer Devil or Deviled Eggs recipe

The eggs are boiled and the yolks are removed, and re-stuffed with a mixture prepared from the yolk, boiled potato and some vegetables. The re-stuffed egg is then dipped in besan, then in bread crumbs and fried in oil.

Who can cook Dimer Devil

This is for intermediate skilled cooks, or mere amateurs who want to prove that given adequate instructions, they can cook (I fall in this category). You can have Dimer Devil for an exotic evening snack. I had this at lunch with steamed rice, musuri daal and ketchup.

You can learn about more Egg Recipes here.

Ingredients of Deviled egg recipe

About the devil (why such name)

Deviling means seasoning the food heavily (This link gives an elaborate explanation). I tried this egg recipe only because of its name. Never had it, so gave it a shot. And it turned out well.

Though this isn’t an authentic Bengali recipe, Bengalis sure love it. And you would too.

Recipe in 10 words

Boil Eggs, cut in half, fill with stuffing, oil fry

Ingredients of Dimer Devil (Deviled Eggs recipe)

• 3 eggs (2 for cooking + 1 for dip)
• 1 medium potato
• 1 medium onion
• Carrot (gajar, gajor) or Beet
• Other vegetables as per availability/taste (matar – green peas, beans etc.)
• Ginger and garlic (or ginger garlic paste)
• Green chilies
• Hing (asafoetida), Jeera (Cumin)
• Garam Masala Powder
• Bread Crumbs
• Maida or Besan

Preparing Dimer Devil (Deviled Eggs recipe)

• Boil the Eggs and potato for 15 min [in Bangalore, the potatoes don’t soften easily. In such a case, its best to cut the potato into several small pieces and then boil]. Cover the eggs with at least an inch of water.

Now is the time to prepare the filling. I used a vegetarian filling. You pick whatever suits you.

vegetable cut

Potato and egg boiled

Mashed up

Fried mashed up mixture

• Meanwhile, cut onion, chilies, beans and grate the carrot/beet
• Drain hot water, pour cold water (makes peeling off easier) and crack the egg shells
• Cut the boiled eggs length wise and pop out the egg yolk in a separate container.
• Add peeled off potato and the vegetable mixture to the container. Add salt, pepper to taste. Mash them well.
• Heat a frying pan, put some cooking oil (mustard oil for the quintessential jhanjh, or sunflower oil for the calorie savvy) and then the onion pieces. Heat till the color changes to brown. Add the mashed potato-yolk-vegetable mixture.

Stuffed Eggs

Preparing for the fry

Next, need to stuff egg white with the filling and fry

• Fill the egg halves with the mixture. Make it tightly fit since we need to fry this later. Let us call this stuffed egg half
• In a separate bowl, break an egg carefully and add a spoon of Besan. Add salt, pepper to taste and blend it well. Let us call this egg besan
• On a pan (I used a newspaper J), pour some bread crumbs.
• Heat a frying pan and add oil.
• Now do this in sequence – roll the stuffed egg half in egg besan, then in bread crumbs and then lower carefully on the heated oil. Fry well. Do this for each stuffed egg half.

Dimer Devil or Deviled Eggs

Tada. Your Dimer Devil (Deviled Eggs recipe) is complete. Serve with ketchup.

If some egg besan is left, fry it on the pan to make Egg Bhurji. It tastes good.

Dimer Devil with Rice and Dal

Further Reading

• Vaidyanathan Pushpagiri on Eggs in Calcutta, Devilled Eggs and everything in between
• Check out the website Deviled Eggs Recipes for some great variations in Dimer Devil recipes
• Here’s another – http://www.deviledegg.org/

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Have you ever made a promise? The everyday ones. A promise that you could have written in caps with a bold and font size 72.

This post is a part of the Valentine’s Day Special recipes. Valentine’s day is just 2 days away, and today is Promise Day. Earlier we talked about Paneer Pulao in Rice Cooker on Teddy Day, Chocolate Cake in Microwave on Chocolate Day and Bengali Style Matar Paneer on Propose Day.

When I googled for the word “Promise”, there were more than 9 million hits including some promise day sms, lyrics from a song by Ciara, a wiki page on promise and many many more. I clicked on one particular link showing the etymology of the word.

Have you ever thought of writing promise as “Promys”, am sure the primary school teacher would have come to you with a long stick in hand. But, that was how the word was spelt in 1400s when it first appeared in Middle England. Through the centuries the word evolved and is now spelled differently.

I made a promise to myself today. By next year am going to be a good baker. I had been an awful baker all this time; you can have a look at my baking disasters. Recently, I have made some improvement in my skills, but still pounds to bake before I perfect the art. J.

Today’s recipe is a simple and easy to prepare one. It is a healthy breakfast and an ideal way to start a day. This recipe is on its way to Srivalli’s Kids Delight – Wholesome Breakfast.

Ingredients:

• Bread (Pau ruti): 4 pieces, cut into four squares
• Hard Boiled egg (Sedho dim): 4, cut into quarters
• Boiled potato (Sedho alu): 2 medium sizes, chopped coarsely
• Coriander leaves (Dhane pata): 2-3 sprigs, chopped coarsely
• Sunflower Oil (Sada tel) for deep frying
• Bhujia for garnishing
• Salt to taste
• Lemon juice (Lebur rash): 2 tablespoon

Preparation:

• Heat oil in a wok and fry the bread pieces. Fry till they are almost brown, take out and place over a kitchen paper to soak out the excess oil
• In a large salad bowl put the fried bread pieces, boiled potato, chopped coriander leaves, lemon juice, salt and toss
• Divide the tossed breads in four serving bowls, garnish with  the eggs and bhujia

Hot Tips- Its best to fry a little old bread pieces, fresh bread tends to crumble. I have cut the bread pieces into four. You can cut it with a cookie cutter in any shape of your choice.

Wish you a Happy Promise Day!

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I just came across the event organized by Malar this month. It’s a lovely event, the theme tells you everything about it – Kitchen Disasters. Kitchen disasters are not a new thing in probably anybody’s kitchen, especially for those who recently got married or just moved away from home. When I started cooking a year and a half back even I faced such problems frequently. Kitchen mishaps have now gone down because of the practice, but of course it’s not extinct. But when it comes to baking I am always there to do some kind of mishaps. The main reason behind this probably lack of a proper baking oven. I always try to bake something in the microwave oven and it turns out to be awful. Just last month, after much searching on the internet I got hold of a youtube video which taught to bake a cake in a cup in the microwave. I followed the steps, and the result was horrible. The first one was hard like a stone with an entirely blackened core. One burnt cake could not turn me down, I tried with the other one – that was even worse than the first one, it looked like a cake, but couldn’t eat it. It was so spongy, that my sister and myself started pulling from both sides to tear it into two pieces.

I clicked an image of this disaster, and was waiting for the right time to publish this. And what better way can I find but to send the entry for an event. The burnt cake chapter never turned me down, and so I was again in search of something to bake in the microwave oven. This time it came to my google reader, a post on microwave cookies by Indrani. I was very happy to get this post. First, the post was from a very loving person. Second, the cookies were baked in the microwave oven. I followed almost the same way as Indrani’s but made a little change but preparing two types of dough – one with honey and the other with chocolate, just to bring a little color to the cookies. I used the Cadbury chocolate, broke them down into small pieces. The cookies, to my utter happiness turned out to be good, at least not burnt or having some disastrous textures. But, they were a little hard which was probably because of over baking them. When I asked Indrani about it she said to Microwave the cookies for a less time.

Makes 30 cookies

Preparation time 1hr 15min

Baking time 3-4min

Ingredients:

All purpose flour (Maida): 3 cups

Butter (Makhan): 100gms, at room temperature

White sugar (Chini): ¾ cup

Honey (Madhu): ½ cup

Egg (Dim): 1, beaten well

Almond (Kath badam): A handful, coarsely chopped

Chocolate chips: 90gm

Preparation:

• Divide all the ingredients except honey, and chocolate into two equal parts

For the honey dough:

• Mix butter, honey and half the sugar and heat it over low flame till the sugar gets dissolved, keep it aside to cool to room temperature

For the chocolate dough:

• Mix butter, chocolate chips, and the rest of the sugar and heat it over low flame with constant stirring till the sugar and chocolate dissolves, keep aside until cooled

• Pour half the egg into the honey mix and the rest into the chocolate mix, fold well

• Pour the two mixes separately into two halves of the flour and make into two firm dough

• Refrigerate the two dough after wrapping them with plastic film for an hour or so

• Take the two dough and roll them into a half-inch thick circles, now put the chocolate one over the honey mix dough and roll them together

• Cut the roll laterally into half-inch thick cookies and place them on a microwave safe plate

• Microwave high (800watts for my MW) for 3-4 mins; let them cool inside the microwave oven. Keep in an air tight jar and feast on them whenever you feel like.

Hot Tips – When baked in the microwave oven, the cookies start getting baked from the centre, so check the cookies in between baking once to make sure they don’t get over baked.

Further Reading – Microwave Honey Lemon Pistachio Cookies, Microwave Peanut Butter Cookies

Amount Per Serving (1 cookie)

• Calories 59
• Calories from Fat  24
• Polyunsaturated Fat 0.3g
• Monounsaturated Fat  1.4g
• Cholesterol 3mg
• Sodium 28mg
• Total Carbohydrates 8.2g
• Dietary Fiber 0.2g
• Protein 0.6g

Sending this post to Malar Gandhi for hosting a wonderful event  -Kitchen Disasters.

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“Jai Mata Di”

This is the first post of this New Year at Cook Like a Bong. I wish you had a wonderful weekend. Mine was good too. I went out for a short trip to the Himalayas, specifically to Vaishna Devi. For those who are not aware of this holy Hindu shrine, let me give you a little information. The shrine is one of the holiest temples among Hindus, and one of the few temples where the Goddess is worshipped not in the form of any idol but just a little piece of rock. The shrine is located in the Northern State of Jammu & Kashmir and is a 13km trek from a little hill town called Katra. Vaishno Devi or Mata Rani is a manifestation of the mother goddess. As with all Hindu temples and shrines, the Vaishno Devi temple also has some mythological significance, to know more about those stories here.

Amidst a cloud covered sky we reached Katra. The following morning was our trek to the shrine, but the rains and cold were about to wash out everything. Fighting with all natural hazards we still could make out to our destination with a 6 hour trek – walking and by pony at times. The cloud and fog never let us have a view of the mountains, and we were almost heart broken. The aarti and visit to the shrine was a divine experience. After a long and tiring journey, a visit to the temple really had its charming effect. All done, we were to head back again the next morning. Thanks to the all night rain and little snowfall, the next morning was a wonderful experience. We started our journey when it was still dark, and could see the first rays of sun slowly falling over the snow capped mountain. I have watched this very scene many times at different places, but the first ray of sun turning the snow to gold is always a mesmerizing view. We took a helicopter to come down. It was to save time and also to have a once in a lifetime experience in a helicopter. The trip lasted just 3 days with loads of troubles including cancelled flight, lost items in the flight cargo, rains, cold, wet sweaters, walking bare foot on the ice cold stone steps – these incidents made me feel really bad. But while writing this post, I realized I really enjoyed the trip.

Coming back to food, I just thought of writing about this egg in mustard-poppy paste recipe. I had clicked the photo quite some time back, and was waiting for the right time to post it. The first post for this year, rather this decade seemed to be exactly the right time for it. It is an easy recipe and can be had be one and all.

Serves 4

Preparation time 10min

Cooking time 30min

Ingredients:

Egg (Dim): 4

Potato (Alu): 1, large

Mustard seed (Sarse): 4 tablespoon

Poppy seed (Posto): 4 tablespoon

Onion (Peyaj): 1, medium

Turmeric powder (Hau guro): ½ teaspoon

Chili powder (Lanka guro): 1 teaspoon

Mustard oil (Sarser tel): 10-12 tablespoon

Garam masala: ½ teaspoon

Salt to taste

Preparation:

Preparation:

• Hard boil the eggs, chop the onions finely, slice the potatoes into long pieces, make a paste of mustard and poppy seeds together
• Heat the half the amount of oil in and fry the chopped onions, keep aside
• In the same left over oil fry the eggs, keep aside
• Pour in left over oil and fry the potatoes till half fried
• In the mean time, mix the chili and turmeric powder to the mustard-poppy paste
• As the potatoes get half cooked, pour in the spices and little water, cook till the potatoes are almost done
• Carefully put in the eggs and cook for 2-3mins more, pour in the garam masala powder,  and take out of flame, garnish with the fried onions
• Serve hot with warm rice

Hot Tips- If you want to make the gravy spicier then add some more mustard and poppy seeds to the paste.

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A fort night back I had posted with a week’s resource of “Breakfast with egg”. Egg is the best way to have a wholesome and yummy breakfast. Out of these recipes the Mughlai Paratha recipe has become an instant hit.

Talking about eggs, I am sending this photo to Jugalbandi’s Click contest for this month, the theme being Bicolor.

Broken egg