Many of you who eat eggs might think I have gone crazy to write this post. But when we take a moment and go back to those initial days of our cooking with an unknown ingredient, we will know how difficult it is for anyone to try a new ingredient. When 4-5 of my friends asked me the same question, I thought of posting this. I have been eating boiled eggs from my childhood. But when someone asked me how to boil eggs, I hesitated to answer. Well, I know how to do it and there were no failures so far, but I am not sure if what I always do is right method or wrong. So I spent some time to Google the correct answer. I learnt many different things which I didn’t know about boiling eggs. I would boil them forever without watching the time and switch off after some arbitrary time. I have seen one of my friend boiling eggs for a lot more time.
When I googled, I read somewhere that, the eggs should be boiled till the water comes to a rapid boil and then switch off the heat and close the lid. Leave the eggs like that for some duration of time and then pour ice on it. I tried it and it didn’t work out. May be the time they specified was wrong or I did something wrong, the eggs didn’t get hard in the center and since we both don’t like uncooked egg, we had to throw them all. So the safe bet would be the following method which has never failed.
Steps to boil eggs 1) Take water in a pan and slide the eggs in it carefully. Do not stack them one over the other. The water level should be 1-2″ above eggs. 2) Cook for about 15mins on medium high. 3) Discard the hot water immediately and pour ice over it. (I didn’t know this step. According to many different sites, ice helps easy peeling of eggs). 4) When the eggs are completely cooled (after about 5-6mins in ice), take them out and peel them.
I have seen some people getting really tensed while handling eggs. For ex, they take forever to peel them or even while making omelets, they think for 10mins before breaking them. With boiled eggs, do not think so much, they are not going to make a mess :).
Few things to remember: – When you keep the eggs in a bowl of water and if the egg floats on it, that means the eggs have gone bad and have to be discarded. (To verify this I googled and found a detailed article about this ). – Fresh eggs are always hard to peel. People who don’t know about this, usually feel eggs are spoiled if the skin does not come out easily. So do not worry if they are hard to peel after cooling.
Here are few very good articles related to eggs – How to hard cook an egg – Nutritional values of egg – Eggs are back! – How to boil eggs
My experience with mangoes here in US has been a big disaster so far. At my native we had a lot of mango trees. So I have grown up eating one of the best mangoes. Few of them were the “ gavnti ” – country style mangoes, they were very tasty and full of pulp. Anyone who ate these mangoes could never ever forget them. I didn’t realize how much I loved them up until we started living in the US and I was searching in all possible places for any good edible mangoes. When I first saw the beautiful mangoes in Walmart, I could not stop myself and bought few of them. Soon after trying to cut these, I was disappointed. They were not at all sweet and were full of hairy pulp. All of them directly went to trash. I didn’t loose hope and tried buying from Walmart 2-3 times with same results and now my hubby does not allow me to go anywhere near mango section in Walmart. So the next hope was to try Indian store, the same thing repeated there too. Though the pulp was not so hairy, they were too sour or had bland taste.
Even after such a disaster, I bought a pack of peeled and cut mangoes from Costco this time. I knew they were not sweet. I wonder what do they mean by “sweet mangoes” here, have they ever tried Indian mangoes?. This batch was neither sweet, nor sour. They were somewhere between and it was impossible for direct consumption. So I thought of cooking something with them.
I searched in all my recipe collection and could not narrow down on anything. Then I remembered Mango dal by Sandeepa . I was hooked to this recipe from the first time I saw it. Then I realized my husband would not eat the mango pieces in this dal because he didn’t like the big pieces of mangoes in a dish that I had prepared the previous day. So I thought of disguising the mangoes and decided not to tell him whats in the dal . I tweaked the recipe completely as I started cooking and came up with the following recipe. It was lip smacking delicious. We both simply loved it. Thanks a lot Sandeepa for such a lovely dish.
Please check Sandeepa’s blog for the Bengali traditional recipe , the one I have posted here is my modification.
Ingredients: 1 cup masoor dal 1 cup finely chopped mangoes (sweetish sour) 1/2 tea spn finely chopped ginger 4-5 curry leaves 3/4 cup chopped onion 4-5 green chilies Ghee 1/2 tea spn cumin seeds 1/2 tea spn mustard seeds A pinch turmeric 1/2 cup chopped coriander leaves 2 tbl spn fresh/frozen coconut Salt
Amount of mangoes can be adjusted to taste
Method: Heat ghee and add mustard, cumin seeds. When they start popping, add green chilies, curry leaves, ginger. Fry for a min and then add onion. Fry till it turns translucent. To this, add washed masoor dal (do not add water) and mangoes. Fry for about 2-3mins till a nice aroma comes out. Now add salt, turmeric and 2-3 cups water. Close the lid and cook till dal is mashed. This step can be done in cooker, but since this dal cooks pretty fast, I cooked directly on stove top. When done, mash well with a ladle. Garnish with coconut and chopped coriander leaves. Serve hot with rice.
Serves : 3-4 Preparation time : 40mins(about 15mins if cooker is used)
