Few days ago , I promised to post more of my pachi’s recipes. This is one that I have come to love very much. I have never cooked any Indian savory dish with almonds before. So when I read the recipe, I was very much interested to try it. Instead of red chillies, this recipe calls for only the red chilli seeds. This helps to retain the beautiful white color. The seeds give enough spice to the gravy. Another new thing was addition of hing, I have never tried that before. I have prepared this many times in last couple of months. Give it a try, you will love it.
Ingredients for White Chicken: 1 lb (0.45kg approx) chicken 1 tea spn cumin seeds 4 cloves 1″ cinnamon 1 cardamom 1/2 tea spn shaha jeera 3-4 pieces mace (japatri) Small piece nutmeg ½ tea sn fennel seeds (badishep) 2 tbl son dry coconut 1/2 cup thick coconut milk 2 tea spn red chilli seeds 1/2 cup onion 8-10 almonds(badam) A pinch Asafoetida(Hing) 1 tbl spn ginger-garlic paste 2 green chillies 2 bay leaves 2 tbl spn thick yogurt Salt
Method: Apply ginger-garlic paste, yogurt to chicken pieces and keep it aside for about 30mins. Dry roast cumin seeds, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, shah jeera, mace, nutmeg, fennel seeds, chilli seeds, dry coconut. Add almonds and grind to a paste. Heat oil, add onions, asafoetida. Add masala and fry. Add the chicken. (Original recipe called for cooking chicken in its marinade first and then adding, but I skipped the step). Let the chicken cook. Add coconut milk. Bring to boil. Add green chillies, bay leaf. Cook for a min and take off the heat. Serve hot with yellow rice.
Ingredients for Yellow Rice: Heat oil. Add one tea spn cumin, 2 cloves, 1 cinnamon, turmeric, 1/2 cup chopped onion. Fry for a minute. Add 2 cups basmati rice. Fry for some time. Add required water and salt. Cook till rice is done. Serve hot with white chicken.
Serves : 3-4 Preparation time : 45 mins
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Every time I see some overripe bananas sitting on the counter, I think about baking cake but somehow it never happened until recently. Last week I prepared banana-carrot cake and both V and Ishaan loved it.
Yesterday little prince came home asking for some cake. I promised him I will bake him something. I started preparing for the cake and he brought his tiny chair in the kitchen, stood on it and started getting into pretty much everything!. That’s when I thought of playing the “Help me” card – see, he is at an age when he only does what he wants. That sometimes means he will bring out all his toys and dump them in living room. Then he walks out from there. Just to stop him from making more mess, I ask him to come and “Help me”. He gets all charged up and helps with anything I ask – like loading/unloading dishwasher, loading/unloading washing machine etc.
This time I thought it would be a good activity for him to line up the muffin pan. He got very excited. I also gave him some chocolate chips and asked him to add to muffins. He loved doing it (although the work which would have taken 2mins took somewhere about 10mins, I enjoyed it). He was very excited to tell his pappa all about it :).
Ingredients: 1 cup all purpose flour 1/2 cup almond flour 1 cup mashed banana (2-3 ripe bananas) 1 cup grated carrot 1 tea spn baking powder 1/2 tea spn cardamom powder 1/2 cup oil 1/8th tea spn salt 1 cup sugar Few chocolate chips (optional)
Method: Preheat the oven at 350F for 10mins. Mix banana, carrot, sugar, oil till well mixed. Seive together baking powder, all purpose flour, almond flour, salt, cardamom powder. Add the dry ingredients one tbl spn at a time mixing all the time. Line the muffin tin with muffin cups. Fill the batter to 3/4th of the cup. Add few chocolate chips on top. Bake for about 20 mins or till they are done.
PS: Almond flour is a last minute substitution, I thought it would add to the flavor. Just powder some almonds to make a smooth powder. I used store bought almond flour. If you don’t want to use it, just replace with 1/2 cup all purpose flour.
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