Ramadan Recipe #1

Strawberry Nachos

Ramadan has come upon us and this year I'm going to try real hard to post fun yummy recipes for Iftar.  The number one question i get  before Ramadan is "Are you ready"? I don't know about you all but i really truly find that question very mind boggling.  For many years i guess since i have been married i used to go along with it and just say "yeah i guess so".  But how does one really get ready for Ramadan.  My brain asks me that question all the time. It seems to be a rhetorical question.  I mean does that question mean preparing samosas for the month or stuffing 100 grape leaves and cabbages and freezing them (yes, i did have a Syrian friend who started this process a month prior to prepare and i must say i helped her a few times which in return brought home some amazing stuffed vegetables)..Seriously, i mean i tried getting into it but i ended up frying those things before Ramadan even started because i didn't have the patience to keep staring at them every time i opened the freezer. Although i say to myself in my head when asked that question.." don't you just do it".  As Muslim's haven't we been conditioned to just do it because it is part of our faith.  A part of a Muslim routine like praying, eating, breathing. The Muslim body may not look any different from any other body and it may even function the same as people around the world, but just like the monks up in the Himalayas who choose not to speak for months at all. We have conditioned our bodies to fast for 30 days once a year.  Its not a big deal.  It only becomes a big deal when you make it into a big deal.  If you are anything like me and watch countless hours of discovery channel and national geographic and nova etc you would know that the human being is an extraordinary creature able to do anything by just doing it cause you do what you got to do.  Seriously i see it all the time, having lived in Hot Humid Texas i used to watch these amazing men work in the middle of the afternoon with jeans, long sleeved shirts, boots, gloves hard hat, and that plastic yellow jacket doing physical manual labor EVERY DAY! I m sure every morning they say to themselves today is another day. Just Do It.  I mean Nike people have it down.
  Islam is an amazing religion it has so much logic and truth we choose not to see it. As human beings we pick out the lamest most ridiculous things to question but we forget the amount of mercy Allah has for us. For example  We are required to fast but it also states if you are weak, starving, sick or a young child you don't have to do it.  Since we were young,our mothers have been telling us this is the time when Satan is locked up. So we are extra careful, we think before we act, we do good deeds. It may be a small statement but that's what got me through my teen years.   If we do say or do something wrong we quickly check ourselves and try to improve on our character. It is a good time and as we grow older we learn new things we incorporate those ideas even further to improve ourselves.  We develop empathy for the meek and we broaden our knowledge we better our characters.  

Now to the Recipe:


Strawberry Nachos (My Niece Ayeshas special request every year)
12 Tortillas
Cinnamon sugar
2 pints Strawberries
1 Tbsp sugar
Oil for frying
Paper Bag

1 cup heavy Whipping Cream
1 tsp Vanilla
2 tbsp sugar, more or less according to your taste
1/2 tsp Almond Extract (optional)
toasted slivered almonds (optional)
1 tbsp whipped cream cheese

Slice or cut up the strawberries and put them in a bowl with 1 tbsp sugar.  Put in the refrigerator until ready to use
In a mixing bowl pour in the whipping cream vanilla and almond extract and whip until it looks like whip cream. Add in the whipped cream cheese and gently whip it until incorporated not too much or it will turn into butter.  Cover and place in the fridge
First we cut up the tortillas into squares or diamonds basically 1 or 1/2 inch
i just use scissors and just go at it with the kids whatever shape
Fry the tortillas in oil until light brown take them out and quickly put them into the brown paper bag sprinkle a lot of cinnamon sugar to coat the tortilla chips.  Be very generous.  Shake the bag until all the chips are coated.
After all the tortillas are cinnamon sugared.  
In a pretty dish layer the cinnamon sugar tortillas, top with strawberries.  Then the whip cream sprinkle with almonds then the left over juice from the strawberry just pour on top.  sprinkle a little bit more cinnamon sugar and enjoy!!



Ramadan Kareem!

 My top secret recipe for Ras Malai / Ras Gulla.
(whats the difference) well, ras malai would be  in a evaporated thickened condensed version of milk and Ras Gulla or cham cham (the smaller cuter versions)  would be in a sweet syrup  soaked and covered in coconut or just float around in the syrupy yumminess .  Most ive tasted here in the Americas would be from a can or made of ricotta cheese or some other form of powdered milk.  Which i am not saying is necessarily a bad thing.  Powdered milk is great for creating Gulab Jamuns and Barfi. Ive tried the Ricotta Cheese one and yes i guess it is great, well no its not great for me its always been a fail.  Does not do it for me at all. So here it is before you get started you must remember that following this recipe to the tee is key hehe. So, don't get worried it is very very easy but its very very tedious.  Basic cheese we make for this dish is literally the base for most indian sweets. This cheese can be molded into ras malai, gulab jamun and even khalakand depending how much fat nuts and more fat you are willing to add in it.


Basic indian sweets cheese

1 gallon of Full fat (if possible unpasteurized milk or organic milk) do not use half and half (it has powdered milk in it) and do not use evaporated milk cause that doesnt even make sense

1 cheese cloth or if you are a desi maaam then a  rip out one of your white cotton wala thin dupatta
1/4 cup of plain white vinegar

Bring Milk to a boil and reduce the milk to 1/4 inch, this will get rid of the extra water
While the milk is boiling pour in the white vinegar.
The milk will start to curdle turn off the stove and let it sit until the water is separated from the cheese. (yes omg you made cheese)

sieve the contents in through the cheese cloth.  Tie the cheese cloth into a ball and squeeze as much water as you can out of the cloth.

if you have one place a metal or plastic sieve in a large bowl and put the cheese cloth ball in the sieve that is in the bowl.  That is important because when you store the cheese in the refrigerator the excess water will drip out and not get soaked up again.

So place the cheese in the refrigerator for 24 hours at least

After 24 the cheese is ready to be molded and made into whatever you want

PSSSSt did you know you can soak the cheese in salty brine water and it turns into mozzarella mmhmm
sometimes instead of vinegar salt is used to curdle the milk to give it that salty flavor

and this same cheese is used for a lot Arabic desserts as well.

Any ways so now to the Ras Malai
1 gallon milk
1 cup of sugar ( its a indian sweet so yeah it will be sweet if you wanna reduce the sugar go for it but might as well not call it a sweet dish either, i guess 3/4 of cup can be tolerable)
2 coriander seeds
1/4 cup almonds finely chopped (run it in the food processor)
1/4 pistachio finely chopped (run it in the food processor)

Bring 1 gallon milk, sugar and coriander seed to a boil until the milk is reduced to almost half ( the milk may scorch so keep stirring)
while the milk is boiling
remove the cheese from the cheese cloth take out chunks of the cheese and start shaping them to desired shapes round or oval or cylindrical the cheese should not break.
once the the shapes are done let them sit in fridge until ready to use (this will help them dry even more)

when the milk has been reduced to almost half lower the heat and slowly drop the cheese (make sure you remove the cheese from the fridge at least fifteen minutes ahead they cannot be too cold of they make crack) into the milk cook on low for another 20 minutes

turn off stove remove contents in a dish and let it cool then refrigerate
serve cold with slice almonds or pistachios

Ras Gullas (cham cham)



To make Syrup

3 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar
cardamon
saffron (optional)


Boil the liquid until it is the consistency of cough syrup (not too thick and not too watery)
lower the heat and drop in the cheese balls slowly the hot liquid bind the cheese and keeps it from breaking.Remember to remove the cheese from fridge at least 15  minutes before.

cook for 20 minutes and remove the contents in a  dish and refrigerate.  If you leave them in the refrigerator overnight the cheese will soak up a lot of liquid you can remove them from the liquid and cover them with coconut. I recommend you toast the coconut first.  Looks pretty too






Other Variations
you can stuff this cheese in Gulab Jamuns
You can use it for making barfi by adding the same weight amount of nuts (processed to almost a paste) and half amount fat (ghee or  butter) and sugar

you melt the sugar first in the pot simply throw the sugar in the pot turn on stove and stir until the sugar has liquefied completely not browned immediately add in the fat then the nuts paste cook for 3minutes then finally the cheese. You cannot leave the spot for even a second, must stir constantly. Remove immeadiately once incorporated.

quickly remove the barfi and place in a dish , let it cool.  The barfi will set when cool

Arshis crazy chicken

I havent posted for like 6 months, its been pretty busy and hectic.  Which is good lots of interesting things happened, encouraged me to write a book but then i got more busier so i just dropped it

wanted to post a super cool chicken recipe my sister conjuerd up while i was talking to her on the phone.  Here we were talking about what to cook. She had thawed chicken breast and no idea and i had no more ideas to give her.  So basically it went like this

1 lb of chicken breast cubed
oil
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp chilli
1t tsp of turmeric
1 tsp adrak lahsan
ok so the other proportions i had to guess cause she was just throwing stuff in
a few  squirts of ketchup
maybe 2 tblsp of soy sauce

a few stems of curry leaves
cilantro and 1 green chilli

put them all together and cook the chicken until done.
Now, i was gonna take a picture but i totally forgot.  But the chicken is almost orangish in color  has a nice glaze because of the sugar from the ketchup and it tastes amazing.
I made it at my house the same day.. Since she is in Texas and she is two hours ahead i had the advantage of learning the results of the flavors and going ahead with the recipe.

We had the chicken with pita bread but you can most definitely enjoy it rice and daal

Ill definitely try to make it again and upload a picture its a big hit in my  house for sure. Good Job Arshi i knew i taught you well     ; p


enjoy :)

Mahikhalya rice and khaddi daal

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MahiKhalya

WOW….haven’t been on here for ages, I was feeling as if like every other project I get into…. It comes to a complete and sad stop without me even realizing. Today’s get up and just do it kind of attitude was inspired by my cousin Mudassir who just had to have the recipe for MAHIKHALYA.  I think I said it right I hope. Who knows?  Mahi supposedly means fish and Khalya I guess means curry I guess.  It’s a very popular Hyderabadi dish. It is meant to be a fish curry but us Hyderabadi‘s… well, are red meat lovers and we will do anything to add goat, lamb and or beef to anything because, it just tastes better.  There is no white meat in the world that can replace the flavors of the RED MEAT.  In a Hyderabad household you must have a meat dish and one khatta dish.  If the meat dish is the khatta dish than we can have a phikka dish to compliment.  You can’t just make one item with rice or roti and get away with it.  Each curry has to have a complimentary dish or the meal is not complete.  As for veggies, well there are served mostly like a tax we eat it because our body requires it.  If we become daring and make one dish purely vegetarian, we must have a meat dish to compensate regardless along with something khatta or phikka to compliment it.  We add meat in our veggie dishes and we cook those green suckers till they resemble the color of the meat itself so we can fool ourselves into eating the green things.   All kidding aside this dish is a very special dish, I love it, but I love it with the meat.  Today I’ll be cooking it with fish because my English raised husband prefers the white fish.  So I guess I’ll make him happy today for once.  But I’ll give you the yummier meat version as well.

Mahikhalya

2 lbs of meat or fish

1 tsp of red chili powder or more per taste

½ tsp of turmeric

2 tsp salt and a bit more to taste

2 tsp of ginger garlic paste

Golf ball size of tamarind

¼ cup of cumin seeds (whole)

½ cup of dry coconut

2 tbsp of coriander seeds

1 pinch of kalonji seeds

2 onions (medium but on the large size)

2 or 3 green chilies

A few stems of curry leaves

Cilantro

Oil

Roast the cumin, coriander in a pan

 Roast coconut in a pan.

As you can see the coconut is brown not burned do not leave it even for a second

Grind the seeds in a coffee grinder

Then grind the coconut in the grinder to almost consistency of paste

Chop up the onions and brown them, I have chopped these onions very betuka (a word my mom would say in horror if she was standing next to me)

But you know what it’s all going to be browned and pulverized so who cares

In a blender pulverize the onions along with the ground seeds and coconut

In a small bowl soak the tamarind in warm water than squeeze out the pulp

Until the water is almost clear

Add the tamarind pulp into the blender and blend until umm blended...yah

Ok so here are the major points to remember, the crucial elements of cooking the curry with fish or meat.

For the meat curry,

You cook the meat with salt, red chili, turmeric and ginger garlic paste until cooked.

Then you add in the above ingredients and cook for at least 25 minutes on low heat.

For fish curry

You pulverize all the ingredients add in the salt, chili, turmeric, ginger garlic paste, curry leaves and green chili and cook for at least 20 minutes. 

Add in the fish than stir very well (because after this stirring there is no more stirring or you will end up with fish soup curry )
and cook for another 10 minutes and turn off stove

Transfer the curry into a pretty dish and sprinkle with some chopped cilantro and a stem of curry leaves.

Enjoy with Khaddi daal and rice.

Cholay Recipe

I have taken a very long break, but i m still busy as you cant even imagine.  I will be back soon when the kids are off to school, but until than enjoy the recipe below. 
so here it is online for everyone to see this will be my ramadan gift to all who want to feed their families something delicious during this blessed month
all i ask is your duas
2 Garbanzo cans(average size)
2 medium onions
2 medium tomatoes
1 medium potato
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp chilli
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp corriander powder
1 tsp garlic paste or powder (ummm what no ginger? you ask.  YUP no ginger)
1/8 tsp turmeric (optional)
1 cup tamarind juice ( you need to buy the tamarind and squeeze the juice out) or if you must  use  the nasty tamarind black paste (which i personally despise )(1 tsp)
curry leaves lots of it (if you need curry leaves ask your local hyderabadi aunty she will have a plant for sure)
1 Lime cut into quarters
whole bunch of cilantro chopped
green chillies as many as you like
BAGAR:
3 tblsp oil
1/2 tsp cumin seed
1/4 tsp corriander
2 dried red chillis
few specks of kalonji (if you dont know what it is just skip it)


step one
prepare bagar(which means infusing the oil) with all the ones above

then add one of the medium onions, cook until transparent
chop potato and add it in and just cook for a minute, if you coat the potatoes in hot oil it wont be too starchy (USEFUL TIP FOR USING POTATOES IN ANY CURRY RECIPE(your welcome) then add one of the tomatoes chopped, garbanzo beans rinsed, spices and tamarind juice
cook until it looks like the cholay consistency, potatoes should be done by then, add curry leaves stir and turn the stove off
remove the cholay into a dish while still hot garnish with cilantro,green chillis chopped, onion finely chopped and lime
make sure it looks pretty
enjoy

(if you put shaan chaat masala in the cooking process a little curry leaf will fall off and die)
You may use the chaat masala to sprinkle on top when you are eating.

Its been so long i forgot i had to cook

So, after a long and exciting break, i have decided to use my mind and do another blog. I have been so busy going to parties and eating and eating and more eating that i totally forgot about myslef.  My goodness i totally gained about 15 pounds and i cant stop eating. In that process i developed a total loss of my cooking skills.  I cannot think of any recipes... its like some sort of food amnesia, just eat dont create type of thing.
As, i sat here staring at the screen i decided to dig deep inside my brain to search for a very good recipe. Than i got an email from one of my good foody friend that she would like me to put some recipes that the whole family can enjoy and some good healthy recipes for the upcoming month ramadan.  I am devising a plan for that but i do need some time to develop a good meal plan for the 30 days, which this year we will have a very long period of fasting and a very short window of  eating...so Im thinking healthy, light and filling.

How about some  kabobs

1lb of ground meat
1tsp salt
1/2 onion finely finely chopped in a food process or
1/2 tsp chilli or ground black pepper
1/2 tsp of garam masala (see older recipes)
2 tblsp of dried parsley
1tsp dried mint
1 tsp garlic ginger paste


mix al ingredients together

shape into kabobs
grill on the bbq 10 minutes each side

enjoy with anything !

below is a recipe for a cheesecake

 simple easy peasy cheesy cheesecake recipe. (i got this off the philadelphia cream cheese box a long time ago and its a no fail recipe) Do try the variations and have fun with it.

What you need is 2 cups of finely ground graham crakers
1/4 cup butter
mixed well and press into a pie pan (if it crumbles add a bit more butter)

8 oz cream cheese (softened)
8 oz condensed milk
8 oz sour cream
mix well with stand mixer or hand mixer until smooth
pour into the crust

place in oven at 400 for 20 minutes remove from oven cool than refrigerate for atlease 4 hours

Top cheesecake with fresh berries or mangoes or peaches or any good fruit. To get a good glaze melt some good raspberry or strawberry jam (seedless) and brush on top

you can make several variations of toppings such as peanutbutter (slighty melted drizzle on top than drizzle with melted chocolate than drizzle with melted caramel and top with chopped peanuts . 
also try this
2 tblsp of butter melt in a pan add 2 tblsp of brown sugar a pinch of salt than when sugar is melting add sliced green apples toss than add 1 tsp of cinnamon. cool than top the cheesecake
use the above recipe with pears with nutmeg add some pecans, peaches even bananas (bananas foster )

the topping recipe above can be used to tope cakes, pancakes, crepes etc

go crazy make your own version of cheesecake and enjoy the process

you can make a mocha cheesecake by adding 1/4 cup of expresso or dissolve a 2tblsp of coffee crystals into 1/4 cup of hot water and add into the cheesecake mixture.

You can make a swirl cheesecake by melting any kind of jam or jelly .  After pouring the cheesecake mixture into the pie crust than plopping a few jelly or jam than swirling them into the pie.

Good luck and have fun with it.  This is an extremely easy recipe and a lot of fun to work with.