Nilgiri Style Chicken(Chicken Andhra)

Recipe web page link: http://www.sanjeevkapoor.com/Recipe/Nilgiri-Style-Chicken-Sanjeev-Kapoor-Kitchen-FoodFood.html#sthash.ZoSnALio.dpuf

Ever since I tasted Chicken Andhra at Sweekar and Nisarga Restaurants near Urva market Mangalore, I wanted to make that curry at home. Meena followed foodfood channel on TV and made this dish the other day. 

What better recipe can we ask for, when super chef Sanjeev Kapoor has presented it so perfectly!

This is a healthy delicious curry with greens fit for summer, easy on the digestive system, at the same time full of vitamins and calcium. It is tasty as well, but the recipe has mentioned use of minimum green chillies, whereas we like it more spicy. Hence we garnished the curry with a few roasted slit green chillies and relished the curry with hot phulkas. Squeeze in some lemon as well. It adds to taste. I had Presto Green Chilli pickle that I mixed in while eating the curry with rice for more tangy and hot feeling!

Ingredients:
Chicken cut into medium sized pieces with bone - 750 Grams
Onions - 2 medium
Oil - 2 Tablespoons
Cloves - 4-5 
Ginger-garlic paste - 1 Tablespoon
Turmeric powder - 1/4 Teaspoon
Coriander powder - 1 Teaspoon
Salt - To taste
Yogurt - 6 Tablespoons
Red capsicum - A few thin strips for garnishing
Ginger - A few thin strips for garnishing

For the paste: 
Spinach blanched - 1 medium bunch
Fresh mint leaves roughly chopped - 1/2 bunch(A handful)
Fresh coriander leaves roughly chopped - 1/2 bunch(A handful)
Green chillies roughly chopped - 2 
Fennel seeds (saunf) - 1 teaspoon
Scraped fresh coconut - 1 cup

Method:
Put spinach, mint leaves, coriander leaves, green chillies, fennel seeds and coconut with a little water in a mixer jar and grind to a fine paste.
Finely chop onions. 
Heat oil in a deep non-stick pan, add cloves and onions and sauté for a minute. Add ginger-garlic paste, turmeric powder, coriander powder, chicken and salt and mix well. 
Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes. 
Add the ground paste and mix well.
Add yogurt and mix well. 
Cover and cook on medium heat for 10 minutes. 
Transfer into a serving bowl and serve hot garnished with red capsicum and ginger strips.

Our variation:
1. Since we didn't have red capsicum in store, we garnished the curry with browned half chopped onion and 3-4 roasted slit green chillies.

2. The recipes mentions 2 green chillies in the masala paste but we added 4. Still the masala was not spicy. Adjust chillies according to your taste.

Chef Sanjeev Kapoor shows step by step method in this video

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Authentic Chinese cuisine is mostly bland, but we Indians especially living in the South make it more spicy and call that Indo-Chinese cuisine. Among the authentic Chinese delicacies, there are a few surprises, some dishes that are abundantly based on fruits. Pineapple, the tropical wonder fruit has the qualities of both vegetable and fruit because it is mostly fibrous and juicy, at the same time sweet and sour in taste. It is widely used in global cuisine. Chinese also have found a prime place for pineapple in one of the most wonderful dishes I have ever tasted, 'Sweet and Sour Chicken'.

I first tasted this dish in Mysore way back in 1979 when I was a regular at Shang-Hai restaurant in Shivarampet. The lady and her son who managed the restaurant found out that I am a Chinese cuisine buff and they recommended me many of the authentic dishes including Chicken with Cashewnuts and Veg, Hunan Chicken and this Sweet and Sour Chicken. I also started ordering that dish occasionally when I relocated to Bangalore, where I was mostly visiting Rice Bowl, Continental and Ginza around Brigade Road and Church Street. This is one dish that can be relished as it is or as main course dish with fried rice or noodles.

I first prepared this dish in 2009 but the recipe I followed was not authentic and I had not added pineapple juice then. I found a good recipe by Chef Sanjeev Kapoor recently but he recommended the baking method for chicken pieces, whereas I followed the deep frying method. I also made little changes in the ingredients and arrived at a fantastic recipe of my own eventually!

Then again, the lonely pineapple from our garden was employed in this preparation. That one was sufficient to make a summer cooler mocktail and a sweet dish as well. This easy to make dish requires some preparation like extracting pineapple juice, preparing chicken stock, marinating chicken and cutting pineapple fruit as well as handful of vegetables. Marinating chicken is not suggested in most of the recipes you find online or on books but I recommend this step for two reasons. One is, chicken pieces get tender and at the same time when you coat them in flour and deep fry them, they become evenly cooked and become crispy on the outside, soft and spongy inside. Even after you cook them with sauces and keep the leftover dish inside a fridge for a couple of days, the chicken pieces remain as succulent and tasty as freshly cooked!

Our friend Uma Shenoi is basically a lover of spicy and hot preparations but she authenticated this dish as too good. Even my choice is spicy food but I didn't add chilli sauce or other additives to make this spicy while consuming it. I just mix fried rice or noodle with this and enjoy my dinner. Hope you will also enjoy yours.

Ingredients:

For the Fried Chicken: 
Boneless Chicken - 500Gms(One inch pieces)
White Vinegar - 2 Tsp
White Pepper powder - 1/2 Tsp
Salt - 1/4 Tsp
Corn Flour - 4-5 Tbsp(Reserve left over corn flour for making paste later) 
Refined Vegetable Oil - Sufficient for deep frying 

For the Sauce:
Ginger - 1" piece chopped
Garlic - 10 cloves peeled and chopped
Chicken Stock - 300Ml(Either boil bony waste pieces of chicken with chopped ginger pepper powder, one bay leaf in 1 Liter water for 15-20 minutes and strain it or use 2 Maggi Chicken cubes)
Unsweetened Pineapple Juice - About 200Ml(1 thick slice pineapple chopped, liquefied with 200ml water and strained)
Dark Soy sauce - 1 Tsp
Salt - To taste
White Pepper powder - 1 and half Tsp
Sugar - 1 Tsp
White Vinegar - 1 Tsp
Corn Flour - Leftover from chicken dusted for deep frying. Mix with some water to make a thin paste.

Vegetables:Spring Onion bulbs - 2-3 chopped
Onion - 1 medium cubed
Capsicum - Handful of 1" pieces
Red/Yellow Bell Pepper or Carrot Sliced - Handful of 1" pieces
Pineapple - Handful of 1" cubes)
Onion Shoot - 2-3 sprigs cut into 1" long piece

Method:
Wash pat dry and marinate the chicken pieces with salt, white pepper powder and vinegar for 1-2 hours in the fridge.
Heat oil in a wok and allow it to start fuming.
Reduce the heat to medium.
Dust the marinated chicken pieces in corn flour to coat them and deep fry 4-6 pieces at a time in hot oil till crisp and golden.
Allow to cool down on a colander lined with kitchen paper.
Heat a frying pan and add 1 Tsp oil from the wok.
Stir fry the onions, chopped spring onion bulbs and carrots on high flame slightly, followed by pineapple pieces, capsicum and bell peppers(if you are adding bell peppers) till crunchy, adding a pinch each of salt and white pepper powder.
Keep aside.
To the same pan, add one more tsp oil from the wok and fry chopped ginger, garlic and spring onion bulb.
Add pineapple juice and chicken stock.
Add dark soy sauce and bring to a boil.
Add salt, sugar and remaining white pepper powder.
Now add the corn flour paste and stir till the sauce starts to thicken.
Add the fried veggies and chicken pieces.
Allow to sizzle on full flame for 2-3 minutes till chicken pieces are well coated with the sauce.
Add vinegar and mix gently.
Finally garnish with chopped onion shoot and serve hot with fried rice or noodles. 

Note:
1. You can use the same fried chicken pieces to make a number of Chinese gravy based preparations like Hunan Chicken, Ginger Chicken, Garlic Chicken, Chicken with Cashewnuts and Veg, Chili Chicken or even Chicken Manchurian.
2. Vegetarians can make this dish with baby corn adding vegetable stock. Use one maggi vegetable cube for making stock.
3. Most of the Sweet and Sour Chicken recipes have added tomato sauce or ketchup but I don't prefer adding that directly. If you wish, you can always add it optionally while eating this.

Pineapple Honey Quench - Summer Cooler/Mocktail

Pineapple or Ananas, one of the most delicious juicy tropical fruit is originally from South America. It is widely used in preparing juices, sweets, jams, preserves, desserts, curries and wine. It is seasonal, but there are places where they grow pineapple round the year. Soans Farm in Bannadka Moodabidri close to Mangalore grows a special variety of pineapple that grows really big, juicy and sweet. We also get fresh pineapple juice pasteurised and bottled by Dr LC Soans. Pineapple candy is also sold in boxes there. However, home grown pineapple has its own significance, and I had the opportunity to harvest one such pineapple recently which we used in making a sweet dish, a curry and also a special mocktail that I named 'Pineapple Honey Quench'.

When I was in school, Chandamama and Balamitra monthly feature magazines used to be my companions. I used to read the stories and get fascinated. There were some long stories translated from foreign languages that used to appear in series, especially those on travel and adventure. One such story was about the Amazon Forest in which a ship carrying salt gets wrecked and some of the travellers are stranded by the riverside dense forest. They meet a small boy named Kumewawa who takes them around, hunting for food, offering them a variety of exotic fruits and other forest produce which the travellers had never experienced in a natural habitat before. I specially remember one scene in which Kumewawa plucks a ripe pineapple and cuts it into pieces, drizzles pure wild honey over that and offers that to the travellers. They relish the combination and feel good. We are used to eating Jack fruit segments with honey. Pineapple and honey combo was imprinted on my mind after reading Kumewawa's story, but I'd never tried it till I made this mocktail the other day.

Honey Quench was a branded honey drink manufactured marketed by Amrith Apiaries in Kadri Hills Mangalore in the late Sixties and Seventies. However, they lost market when Coca Cola, Fanta, Gold Spot and Rim Zim flooded the market. Younger generation seldom gets attracted to local beverages and Honey Quench and a few other such drinks lost ground sooner than they were launched those days!

My other experience was tasting one of the best pineapple juices at Shivamogga in the early Seventies at an eatery on Nehru Road called 'Manohar Tiffin Rooms'. There he served hot snacks like Idli, Vada, Cutlet and Samosa along with  a few nice juices and Joy Ice Cream. I used to hang around that place, gobble up some snack and drink one or two glasses of pineapple juice. The specialty of the juice the owner made contained small chunks of pineapple floating and we used to fish out the pieces with the spoon he provided along with the juice! It used to have the right amount of added sugar and the pineapple used to be sweet and tangy!

So, based on what Kumewawa served the travellers in the story, Honey Quench beverage that I had tasted in Mangalore and also the pineapple juice at Manohar Tiffin Rooms Shivamogga, I decided to make the mocktail Pineapple Honey Quench with fresh pineapple juice made from part of the lonely fruit we harvested, adding chunks of pineapple, fresh Coorg honey and Angostura Bitters, an aromatic cocktail mix from Trinidad and Tobago that my brother Dr Radhakanth had brought few years ago.

Angostura Bitters is made from plant extracts and the smell is almost like our Ayurvedic medicines. It can be added to cocktails, mocktails, juices, ice creams and just about anything that you serve chilled. It enhances the flavour of the drink leaving a nice aroma after you sip the drink. 'Screw Driver', a Vodka-Orange based cocktail  can not be made without adding Angostura Bitters. A full bottle of this cocktail mix was in store since I had quit drinking Two years ago. I though of making the best use of it this summer, adding to various mocktails and frozen desserts that we are going to make and present in the coming two or three months.

Making juice is very easy but cleaning and cutting pineapple is laborious. There are pineapple cutters available in the market but I clean it manually the traditional way, using a sharp knife. The standard measurement is, a cup of pineapple pieces with 4 glasses of water and 8 spoonful of sugar should yield 4-5 glasses of thin juice. Then again we are adding honey and pineapple chunks. So you may add 6-8 teaspoonfuls of sugar to one cup of pineapple pieces and 4 glasses of water. Better not add crushed ice or ice cubes,as fresh juice tastes better if you chill it for 2-3 hours before consuming. Make this summer cooler in a big volume, and you will see a nod of approval from your young ones who will ask for more! 

Ingredients:
Fresh Pineapple - 3 slices cut into 1" pieces(About 1 cup pieces) + 1 slice chopped into small chunks separately.
Sugar - 6-8 Tsp
Water - 4 glasses or 800 Ml
Pure Honey - 4-6 Tsp
Angostura Bitters

Method:
In a mixer, liquefy the pineapple pieces with water and sugar for 2-3 minutes.
Strain through a fine sieve into a vessel or juice jug.
Add the pineapple chunks.
Chill for 2-3 hours in the fridge.

To serve:
Take 4 Hiball glasses or Champagne Flutes.
Shake the chilled pineapple juice and pour into the glasses equally, leaving 2-3 mm space at the brim.
Carefully add a spoonful or two of honey into each glass.
You may adjust volume of added honey according to your taste.
Add a dash of Angostura Bitters into each one of the glasses and serve immediately with stirrer and straw.

Note:
You can add a pinch of Kaala namak(Saindhava Lavana) and black pepper powder if you don't get Angostura Bitters.
To make the straws firmly planted in the glasses, you can siphon little honey into each one of the straws and sink them deep into the honey that's settled at the bottom of the drink. You need to stir the mocktail gently as you consume it sip by sip.