“The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure”
Michel De Montaigne
Strange bedfellows one might say…cottage cheese, chicken & pomegranates. Common ground surprisingly exists in the form of Indian cuisine. The sun is blazing hot again & summer doesn’t want to go away. Grilling or barbequing food makes for lighter fare in this weather; is a big hit always. This is going to be part 1 of the post as my menu ran too long. I marinated cottage cheese / paneer cubes in 2 different marinades, boneless chicken bits in a creamy marinade. Decided to make some more leavened Indian bread (the third in the series I decided to try out in my lovely black box), had a delicious bowlful of dal makhani saved up from the previous day…& then made saffron kulfi to finish off the meal. PHEW…sounds like a long list, but was done in bits & bobs. And oh yes, forgot to mention the anaar ka sherbet / pomegranate cooler that I made too. That I did the previous day because I chanced upon some juicy pomegranates & couldn’t resist picking ’em up! Right then, here we go…
Paneer Tikka / Grilled Cottage Cheese
Ingredients:
Cottage cheese – 1 kg / cubed into 1″ chunks
Yogurt – 1 cup ; hung
Ginger-garlic paste – 1 tbsps
Oil – 1 tbsp
Juice of 1 lime
Paprika for half & coriander/mint/green chili paste for the other
Whip the yogurt with ginger-garlic paste + oil + lime juice + salt.
Add paprika to 1/2, & coriander-mint-green chili paste to the other. ( I add some green chutney to save time; adjust the salt if you do so).
Leave to marinate for about 30 minutes (or more) in the fridge. Toss the veggies in a little olive oil.
Put all the above on a hot grill & turn to ensure all sides nicely browned. Sprinkle lightly with chaat masala if desired. Serve with a green chutney & lime wedges.
Skewer with the veggies serve immediately.
Note: Cottage cheese tends to get a bit hard if grilled & left for later. It tastes wonderful freshly grilled!
Here’s the ‘Chicken Malai Tikka’. Made with the recipe I found at Pearls of East @ ‘Any One Can Cook’. A yummy creamy chicken tikka…eat it right off the grill to enjoy the moist, rich flavours. The recipe can be found here. I marinated this overnight; just makes life a lot simpler the next day!!
And to cool off my frayed nerves after being far too ambitious, there was nothing better than a glass of chilled ‘anaar ka sherbet’. The grenadine or pomegranate concentrate can be made in advance & refrigerated. We had it diluted with icy water & a squeeze of lime. You can perk it up by adding some sparkling lime water to it; grenadine is a great base for cocktails, mocktails & desserts too. Quite easy to make… Anaar Sherbet / Pomegranate Cooler
Deseed 2 pomegranates. Put the seeds in a pan with 1 1/2 cups of water, add 8 tbsps sugar. Bring to a boil & simmer for 5 minutes till flesh is soft (will turn light pink). Cool & push the syrup through cheesecloth. Pour the concentrate into a bottle & refrigerate. Dilute as required & use as a base for a cooler.
Grenadineis traditionally a red syrup. It is used as an ingredient in cocktails, both for its flavor and to give a pink tinge to mixed drinks. “Grenadines” are also made by mixing the syrup with cold water in a glass or pitcher, sometimes with ice. The name “grenadine” comes from the French word grenade meaning pomegranate, as grenadine was originally prepared from pomegranate juice, cherry juice, and sugar.
The ‘khameeri roti’, or leavened flatbread, & ‘saffron kulfi’ recipe shall follow soon. The ‘dal makhani’ was the good old Jugalbandits recipe which I posted here!
“Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread. Without it, it’s flat.”
Carmen McRae, Jazz vocalist and pianist
Indian Flatbread … Chapati / Roti
Wrapping it up…fresh,healthy & fun!
Here’s what I did with part of the Turkish Adana Kebabs I made a few days ago. I made Indian unleavened flatbreads, chapati or roti, & made wraps using the kebabs as the filling, with bell peppers, onions, a Yogurt dip & a new discovery…Pomegranate Molasses. Served it with a Mexican corn salad on the side. I find unleavened flatbreads very healthy & versatile. They are made out of whole wheat flour dough only, which just has to be kneaded (as the Daring Bakers tag line comes to mind…We need to knead), no question of leavening agents, prior preparation etc, & above all, no preservatives . I usually leave the dough standing for 30 minutes for the gluten strands to develop…& then am ready to roll!!
A flatbread is a simple bread made from flattened dough. Many flatbreads are unleavened—made without yeast or sourdough culture. They can range from one millimeter to a few centimeters thick. Flatbread was already known in Ancient Egypt and Sumer.
Chapati is a type of Indian bread eaten in South Asia and East Africa. In many areas of South Asia, particularly the north of the subcontinent, and in East Africa, it is the staple food. It is made from a dough of atta flour (whole grain durum wheat), water and salt by rolling the dough out into discs of approximately twelve centimeters in diameter and browning the discs on both sides on a very hot, dry tava or frying pan (preferably not one coated with Teflon or other nonstick material). Ingredients:
Whole wheat flour – 1 1/2 – 2 cups
Water to knead
Sauteed bell peppers with onions (all sliced); saute in a little oil for just 4-5 minutes till crisp tender.
Pomegranate molasses (recipe at the bottom) Mexican Corn Salad
Method:
Put the flour in a big bowl, add enough water to make a firm, softish dough.
Knead firmly for 5-7 minutes; it should feel pliable & come away cleanly from the edges.
If the dough is too sticky, sprinkle on some more flour, 1 tbsp at a time, to get a nice, pliable dough.
Leave to stand for 30 minutes if you have time.
Heat a flat pan / tava to hot.
Make a dough ball about 1 1/2 ” big, dust in flour on both sides, & roll out as thin & as evenly as possible.
Put the rolled out flat bread on the tava. Cook for 1 minute till small bubbles form on the surface, flip it over & repeat.
Now drizzle a little oil (1/4 tsp) & smear it all over & fry briefly on low heat. Repeat on the other side. Keep warm. Make the rest of the chapatis the same way.
Line a chapati with a the sauteed bell peppers & onion. Add some dip, layer it with a kebab or two, drizzle some pomegranate molasses over it…
Wrap it up & serve with a corn salad!
For the MexicanCorn Salad – Toss sweetcorn with finely chopped coriander leaves, finely chopped green chilies, diced deseeded tomatoes, chopped spring onions with greens, lime juice & salt. Add some roasted cumin powder if you like. Serve chilled!
This is my entry for Bread baking Day 7 hosted by Chili und Ciabatta…she says “think of indian chapati, naan, dosa or paratha, of italianfocaccia, ethiopianinjeera, swedishknäckebröd, scottish oatcakes, turkishpide, mexican tortilla, jewish matzo, armenianlavash, south tyroleanVinschgerPaarlen… this list could go on and on”…And that’s exactly what I did!
And now for the Pomegranate Molasses
The fruit chosen by Sra @ When My Soup Came Alivefor AFAMthis month was POMEGRANATE (the red ones are known as KandhariAnaar’s here). This event was started by Maheswari of Beyond the Usual & has a different host each month. I bought a couple the other day & they have been staring me in the face. Read Rachel’s post of a cake she made with it, & wondered what else could come out of it other than juice, salsa, vinaigrette etc. Arundati knows I’ve been under pomegranate pressure because we spoke while I was staring at the fruit!!Making matters worse is that it’s Feb…fewer days!! To cut a long story short…well, I missed the deadline of Feb 25th! (& to end on a happy note…Sra just mailed to say she hadn’t rounded-up yet…so she accepted my pom molasses!! Thank you Sra… YAY!)
Surfing brought me to many recipes…one which caught my attention was Pomegranate Molasses on a blog called Nami–Nami & also on Simply Recipes. ‘Pomegranate molasses’ is a traditional ingredient in Middle Eastern cooking and can be used in a variety of dishes. Here’s a bit of it that I made…mainly for AFAM, but also because I thought it would taste great with the kebab wraps…& it did! It’s like a piquant plum sauce…tangy & beautiful. My pictures don’t do justice to it…because ‘hurry made curry’ this time!! Also, the quantity is very little because we used up quite a bit…story of my blogging life….PHEW!!
Pomegranate Molasses…on the Middle Eastern food trail!
Ingredients: Pomegranates – 4 medium sized Juice of 3-4 limes Sugar – 1/4 – 1/2 cup (as per taste) Method:
Take out the pomegranate seeds ( the red juicy pearls) & blend them in a liquidiser.
Pour them through a muslin lined soup strainer to collect the clear liquid..the yummy juice! Squeeze the cloth to catch as much juice. The colour is to die for. It’s very tempting to abandon all plans & take a swig of the delicious juice…O well!
Put the juice with the sugar & lime juice in a pan & simmer, for 45-60 minutes till beautiful & thick…like molasses. It will thicken a bit as it sits.
Cool & store in a jar in the fridge.
Elise at Simply Recipes says…”You can also mix it with a little orange juice and club soda for a refreshing punch”. Sounds great…the daughter also said I can make a Kool-aid like drink with it! I’ll keep it as a sauce though, thank you; its beautiful like this!!
