A delicate buttery Prawn Pasta

Inspired by Donna Hay this! And unlike another Oz show – Kylie Kwong, I really enjoy Donna Hay for the languid pace it sets. And the picture perfect view of the ocean from her outdoor grill!

For me, prawns and garlic are simply inseparable. My earliest memories of eating prawns – back in the early 80’s – come from a time when procuring prawns in Delhi was often very hard, and when you did they would be so frightfully expensive, that you could afford no more than 250 or 500gms of the stuff. But those early memories are all infused with garlic in one fashion or other. That was mostly oriental cooking back then, but this brilliant dish combines some of that heavenly fragrance with the simplicity of italian pasta dishes.

This dish needs

A few large knobs of butter.

2 tbsp of olive oil.

3-4 garlic pods, sliced thin

200gms prawns of any size you prefer

a tsp of chilli flakes

a tbsp of lime juice and some lemon zest

garlic, chilli flakes. some lemon zest.

salt & pepper to taste.

Spaghetti – 200 gms (if you’re serving 2 or 3 people)

And get some garlic bread, toasted – on the side at the end as you plate the dish

Parmesan cheese – 2 tbsp – shaved or grated

C00k your spaghetti as per instructions and reserve half a cup of the starchy water that got left over.

In a big pan, melt the butter and the oil together. Add the garlic and let soften. Add the chilli flakes and the lemon zest. After about a minute  add in the prawns. And a dash of salt and pepper to your taste. On a high heat, the prawns will take no more than 90-120 seconds to cook fully… so be judicious. You dont want to overcook them at all. Add the cooked spaghetti to the cooked prawns, toss the spaghetti to blend everything in and then toss in the lemon juice (also at this stage if your pasta is looking dry, bung in a couple of tbsp of the starchy water), and the parsley leaves broken with your hands.

Plate the pasta, sprinkle with some more fresh pepper and a tbsp of the parmesan cheese. Serve with pride! Its simple, but its one of the best seafood pastas you will eat! At our home, we cant seem to get enough of this – and last time out I’m told Vedika added some canned crab meat since we were short on prawns. Am sure that would be a fabulous variation as well.

iOS6 – first impressions from an indian persp.

This blog was never supposed to be for tech/digital observations, but what the hell. You probably won’t need this post if you’re not using a lot of apple. Or of course, you could be among a battery of people I know that own devices (apple or otherwise) and have no interest in updating them. In either case, move on and read something else.

Soo! Task 1 this morning. Download and install iOS6 to ALL the apple devices in the house. Managed to install on my iPhone4 and iPad2 and here’s the quick and dirty.

1) Download and installation was a breeze. The phone software was downloaded via the mac. The iPad one was done OTA (over the air). Large size downloads – 900MB approx, but managed both within the hour.

2) Maps a big letdown. There’s just no getting around the fact that Apple has no visible interest in Indian users, content, apps or utilities. Google maps itself was barely sufficient on the iPhone, but the native maps app on the iPhone has some serious issues. It cannot provide driving directions between even prominent points like Bombay Stock Exchange and Taj Mahal Hotel. It can (thankfully) locate both these landmarks. Out of curiosity, I asked for directions between two points on the same road (500ms away from each other), and the app could not serve directions. Clearly. Meant for a few big countries, and some other big cities. The Good part.  On the iPad the slight 3D and the ability to rotate the map around is super. You can do all this seamlessly, without any drop in res or any blank patches waiting for images to download.

2) Safari is the real winner. If you’re using multiple iOS and OSx devices like I am, the iCloud tabs feature is very useful. Simply, any tabs/web pages open on any of your devices can be accessed on any other devices. Sort of like a ‘immediate’ version of favourites & bookmarks.

3) Facebook is now deeply integrated. But the FB iPhone/iPad app still sucks. You can import & integrate your entire friends list from FB into your iPhone contacts. Which means that your current iPhone contact list (the ones on FB) gets updated with profile pics, the irritating FB default email, and the FB instant messenger. And friends on FB who were not on your contact list get added in. Which on the whole is not a great idea, but what the hell. FB and Twitter are also deeply integrated into other sections and apps… allowing you to tweet or post from anywhere.

3) Mail has become smarter. It now has boxes for your flagged items & for ‘VIPs’ – obviously you can choose who is a VIP, and read mails only from her if you are in a tearing hurry. So your iPhone and iPad mail is now a fine mirror of your mail on the mac.

4) The Phone function (are you still using your smart phone for phone calls??) = nice small touches. You can now refuse calls and send a simultaneous text message out. Nice, but really not earth shattering. Better functionality comes from a DND service that allows you to keep your phone silent for whatever period of time you decide (say midnight to 5am), and yet with alternatives built in to let specific people disturb you. Or to start ringing if a person calls more than twice. There is some nice intuition and human insight there.

There are many more cute tricks to try, but frankly, unless Apple intends to treat India like a strong future market, we will continue ti find that we will be saddled with increasingly expensive devices (blame the currency), that have little local relevance from a content or utility point of view. Am I getting the new iPhone 5? You bet. Why? The panorama shot feature in the camera looks like a cool thing to try. Aside from that, my reasons for the iPhone5 stay the same as the 4 or previous. It’s setting the standard. App quality and ease of use is superb. You dont have to struggle with Android’s sluggish app store where it’s so tough to figure which apps are best for your device. And largely, since I have already spent the effort in building my own library of mobile content that works seamlessly for me on all my devices and TV screens, wherever I may be.

If you need help with any of this, call out.

And if you’re looking for a more detailed review, I found this one nice.

Surely there are many more around, but from an India persp, a lot of this means v little.

In fact Apple has posted its key feature list, and which countries those features are working in. And that makes me smile ruefully.

Chicken Ghee Roast. Dont Ask!

I first heard about Chicken Ghee Roast over an innocuous lunch conversation with Rahul Balyan, Mahesh Shetty and Hitesh Sharma. We were doing one of our ‘fish lunches’ at Jai Hind near the office.

Rahul and Mahesh had that look on their face when they spoke of this Mangalore speciality that is apparently a hit at a Bangalore eatery called Coast To Coast. I was mildly surprised that I had never heard of either the restaurant or the dish. But. Having seen the look on those faces, this became a worthwhile effort.

Some research later – yesterday – gave this a shot, with some really good result. Not sure if this is close to the original taste, but I liked what I saw and loved the final taste. Will get Mahesh/Rahul to do a comparative one of these days.

Start with this

1/2 a cup of Ghee (I have never ever used ghee in a recipe before!)

12 curry leaves, and some chopped coriander,

1 kg Chicken – I used only drumsticks; but I think much better to use small curry pieces.

Marinade the chicken in

1/2 a cup thick curd

1 tsp  turmeric

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tsp Salt (adjust as you like)

And Dry Roast the following

15-20 dry red chillies

Soaked tamarind – 2 big chunks | Reserve the water that you use for soaking

1 tbsp coriander seed or powder

1 tsp cumin seed

1/2 tsp methi seeds (that’s fenugreek)

12 peppercorns

When you are done dry roasting these; add the roast spices and 6 cloves of garlic into a blender – add sufficient quantities of the tamarind water, and grind the spice mix into a smooth puree. Add more (plain) water if you need – no need to worry about the consistency of this, as long as you’ve managed to puree it well.

Heat 1/2 the ghee in a large kadai or pan, and put all your chicken & marinade in.

Make sure to toss the chicken every few minutes; and let cook for about 8-10 minutes. The chicken will look cooked through at this time. Remove the chicken into a bowl, and the rest of the (now cooked) marinade into another bowl. In the same kadai, heat the rest of the ghee and fry the ground masalas in this oil.

About 3-4 minutes, and the oil will separate to the sides of the pan and you can now make out that the masala is cooked through. Add the cooked marinade and the chicken back into the kadai now and cook on low heat for 8-10 minutes more. What will yield is wonderfully cooked chicken in a (very) rich and thick curry. Throw in the curry leaves and cook for another minute – and finish by garnishing with coriander.

Here’s a snap of the final stage chicken!

Rasam. An ole favourite.

Anywhere in India you go, there is one part of the cuisine that is a broth or refreshment that is tangy, pungent, fragrant and is created with perhaps the sole purpose of getting us to breathe deeply and expressing a warmly satisfied sigh. I count the masala nimbu soda as one such. And I had sworn once that if I could get ‘kanji’ to drink every evening, then I would give up alcohol in favor of that rye & carrot fermentation.

Rasam. Another one in that list of liquids.

A couple of months ago, I had noticed some Rasam recipes in good food and had’nt really paid heed. Then some weeks ago, out of boredom, I tried one out – and hey! Surprisingly good results. Today, I heard the maid complain of some extra Rasam powder that had been delivered; so I read that as a sign and started out again.

Wonderful result!! And this took about 15 minutes and 1 pint of Kingfisher.

What I had to get together quickly

3 ripe tomatoes | blanched, peeled and pureed in a blender

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp asafoetida (hing)

1 tsp turmeric (haldi)

salt to taste

12 leaves of curry patta

1 green chilly | broken into 2 or 3 pieces

4 pods of garlic | grated

A packet of Rasam Powder |  easily available at most stores, but also quite easy to assemble

4-5 cups of water | in which I had blanched the tomatoes

2 nice large balls of tamarind | soaked in warm water, squeezed & drained to give you a cup of tamarind pulp/water.

And away we go.

Take a deep pan, heat a couple of teaspoons of oil, and gently fry the mustard seeds, cumin powder and garlic together. Add the curry patta & green chilly and fry the leaves a bit as the fragrance develops. Immediately after, put in the pureed tomatoes, the tamarind water, the haldi and the hing. Let this cook and boil over for 3-5 minutes. When the puree & masalas looks well cooked and some oil’s separated, add 3 tbsp of the rasam powder.

Once everything is well blended, add the water and salt to taste and let boil for a few minutes.

Serve as in an earthen mug, or with rice. I love it both ways and usually end up doing a couple of cups of Rasam each way!

If you love Rasam as much as I do, you will end up finding out more about it; and it may surp you as it did me that there is quite an amazing variety of rasam’s you can make. The basic tenets of jaw dropping spiciness, fragrance and watery texture remain the same of course, but tomatoes, coconut milk, toor dal, dry red chillies, pepper and their many combinations can create some wonderful variations.

This variation above I can call my own. I read a bit, and picked from Good Food of course, but made many amendments of my own. This exact dal-less version is the one I like the most. Um. OK – So far.