Putting the Tea back into Tea

Any Indian would tell you how important tea-drinking is in people's daily routine. Every household has their own recipe. Tea at our home was always black tea, steeped with water, milk and sugar. A range of spices were added to it in winter - ginger, cloves, pepper, tulsi - for their heating properties. Especially when it was made for someone suffering from a cold, or a fever, the heat from the temperature of the tea would often be surpassed by the heat from the spices. I remember gasping over countless cups where the sting and burn of the spices (ginger and pepper, especially) would last for several minutes afterwards.
Company tea, or party tea, always had a little more milk and a little more sugar, and cardamom. All in an attempt to make it 'richer' and more worthy of being served to guests. Then, of course, there were alterations specific to certain guests. A particular aunt liked her tea with very little milk, so when she was visiting, the milk to water ratio was altered. But try as she might, mom couldn't manage to stop at the tiny amount of milk my aunt liked, and the result would be tea that would be unsatisfactory to both of them - too milky for the one and not enough for the other. The same process was reversed when my mother visited her. It was possible, of course, to go the tea bag way, or the tea service way with pots of milk, sugar and brewed tea (or hot water and tea bags) available for assembly right at the table, but fancy as that might be, the flavour was never deemed satisfactory enough to be desired. Everything in the right quantity had to be steeped together for several minutes, till it achieved an undefinable perfect colour and consistency. I don't think I ever managed to learn to make tea just the way my mother liked it. I did accidentally hit upon the 'perfect' cup of tea a few times, but it was pure fluke.

Recently I've been wondering about all the amazing ways to make tea (Cranberry Iced Tea, or Cucumber Ginger Tea, for example) in which people forget to put one very important ingredient - TEA! I mean, what you cook and the way you cook it is entirely a matter of taste, and I respect everyone's right to cook exactly what they want. But for the sake of clarity, if nothing else, shouldn't tea-less teas be called something other than tea? And yes, I'm equally against seviyan kheer without the seviyan, or sarson ka saag without the sarson. Its like going to a restaurant and saying, "I'd like some onion pakoras, but skip the onions." That's not to say that recipe adaptations are at all problematic, but please acknowledge that its an adaptation. If you were inspired by a recipe for Achari Alu and decided to use cauliflower instead of the potatoes, you're not going to still call it Achari Alu, are you? I'm sure there must be some people out there who will think me an insufferable puritan for this, but I'd like to reclaim the word tea for beverages that actually contain tea! And in case you were beginning to wonder if I'm a racist as well as a puritan, not at all, all colours of tea are equally welcome. Black, Green, White, Yellow and any other shades I don't know about, so long as it be tea. That's all I want. Or is that too much to ask for?
So you don't like tea (or you do like and just need a break or a change, whatever), go ahead and make your novelty concoction. Let your creativity run wild as you experiment with flavour and colour and temperature and ingredients and everything else that can be experimented with. The only think I ask of you is if your Ultimate, Tongue-Tingling, Glow-in-the-Dark, Raspberry Flavoured, Lemon Coloured, Fizzy Tea doesn't have tea, please call it something else.

Midnight Quesadilla, aka The Cheese Factor

I love cheese.  In India, of course, cheese generally means processed cheese. Usually Amul, or maybe Brittania. Paneer is also called cottage cheese, but mostly it’s just called paneer. In my childhood, my parents enforced a ration of one 400g tin of Amul cheese per month, and I remember how exciting it was when we bought a new tin, and how disappointing when it got over. Those were the days when you had to use a can opener and work your way around the tin, then use a knife to lift up the cut metal sheet (which would have gotten wedged in the cheese). Usually, and this is where the fun began, some of the cheese would get broken off in the process. Slightly yellow in colour, soft and crumbly, that cheese was one of the best things I’d ever tasted. Some 20 years later, I still cannot resist the sight of a freshly opened pack of Amul cheese, or what I encounter more frequently now – a freshly peeled cheese cube. It is for that reason alone that I prefer cheese cubes rather than bigger packs.

Cheese spread is handy enough, but it doesn’t taste like the real thing. Cheeslings, on the other hand, I can eat by the pack. It was such a great ‘event’ when Mozzarella cheese (pizza cheese) became available in the retail market. It is rather lacking in flavor, I think, but melts easily and gives your homemade pizzas a fresh-from-a-pizzeria look! The best pizza I made used a combination of mozzarella and parmesan cheese, where the texture of one and the flavor of the other made a good balance. I don’t know if parmesan cheese is made in India. For me, it’s one of the items I request my brother to bring from the U.S. If it has to be imported, might as well do the importing yourself!

On a recent trip to a supermarket though, I was thrilled to see several varieties of cheese produced by something called Kodai Dairy. Being handmade cheese, it was quite pricey (still cheaper than the imported varieties available), but seemed to have a decent range - Cheddar cheese, flavoured cheeses (like green chilly), etc. Milky Mist also had a cheddar cheese. Bought to pack to try it out. Another new item available in the cheese section was grated cheese blends from Gowerdhan Dairy (GO Cheese!). Along with Cheddar, they had a Mexican blend, an Italian pasta blend and an Italian pizza one. When I had visited my brother a couple of years ago, he had a pack of Mexican four-cheese blend in his freezer and it seemed like a very useful thing to have on hand. And I had mourned that it wasn’t available in India…

So yeah, I picked up a pack as soon as I saw it yesterday! And then I couldn’t wait to try it out. Ever notice how you get hungry at odd times when you have bought a new snack/ food you want to try? My hunger-moment hit at 11:45 in the night, when I was in bed, about to fall asleep. For a few minutes I debated whether to try to fall asleep anyway or to get up and eat something. The moment I remembered the cheese, though, I HAD to get up! With very few ingredients on hand, and considering the lateness of the hour, I wanted something easy and quick. That’s where the Midnight Quesadilla came in. It is something I concocted in a hungry, sleepy moment!

Midnight Quesadilla

-        -   Leftover dough to make 1 roti

-        -   1 egg

-        -   2 tbsp chopped onion

-        -  1 tbsp chopped tomato

-        -  1 clove garlic, chopped

-        -  1 tsp oil

-        -   Salt and pepper (I used red chilly powder for colour. And because it was kept closer to the salt!)

And, of course

-        - 1 tbsp grated cheese (I used Mexican cheese blend)

Heat a flat non-stick pan. Add a little oil.

Roll out the roti and cook one side.

Flip over.  Break an egg onto the roti, and spread it with a spoon/fork. Quickly sprinkle the chopped vegetables, salt and pepper, and the cheese.

Fold it in half, but don’t press down. Otherwise all the egg will ooze out.

Let it cook on a low heat till the egg is done. Flip once to make sure both sides cook evenly.

Cut into wedges and eat/serve with tomato sauce.

I am a little paranoid about eating raw egg, so before I added the cheese, I flipped mine over and cooked the egg directly. Then flipped back, added the cheese, folded, and cooked till crisp. You can even cover the pan with a lid to speed up cooking. Mine was done in about 12 minutes from start to finish.

This is what the inside looked like. 

 

It was perfect for satisfying midnight cravings, and reinforced my belief that everything tastes better with a little cheese on top!

Almost-Anniversary Celebration!

I was planning to do a 'one year of NOT blogging' celebratory post, but I'm going to have to settle for an almost... Manu's non-stop pestering to blog, blog, BLOG finally got to me. Every time I cooked anything even slightly out of my normal routine, his first reaction would be, "You should write a blog about this." So yes, I gave in. I rarely remember to photograph my food - usually by the time I finish cooking, its half past the time for eating! But over the almost-one-year, I did plan a few posts and out of them perhaps managed to photograph half. Hopefully, I'll catch up on those! (Although knowing me, that's probably too much to hope for.)
Today being St. Patrick's Day, I too played at being Irish for a day, or rather for a meal. Dinner for two :- Soda Farls, Fried Cabbage, and Irish Chicken. Oh yeah, orange slices for dessert!

The farls I had tried once before, and the cabbage was a very basic recipe with just oil, salt, pepper and parmesan. The show-stopper, at least I hope so, was the chicken. Not too complicated or time consuming, but definitely finger-lickin' good. Inspired by a recipe from the Food Network, here's how I did it...

300 g chicken (with bone)
2 carrots (sliced)
1 medium potato (cubed)
1/4 cup green peas
1 medium onion (chopped)
2 cloves garlic (minced)
salt, pepper to taste
2 tbsp chopped coriander leaves
2 tbsp oil
AND....
1 cup Strong beer (I used Tuborg, simple because that had a smaller bottle available)

Heat the oil in a non-stick pan and fry the onion and garlic. Remove from oil and set aside. In the same oil, add the chicken pieces and cook on medium high. Make sure to turn the chicken so that all sides are evenly browned. Once the chicken browns, add the onion and garlic, carrot, potato, salt, pepper, and coriander. Pour the beer over it, bring to a boil.

Then turn down heat and cover and cook for 30 minutes. Add the green peas, cook for another 10 minutes. By then, the chicken should be done, and only a little bit of sauce left. (If you like more sauce, you can always add more beer... or water).

I was slightly apprehensive about cooking this one since I don't like the taste of beer, but somehow the cooking process took the unpleasantness away, while still leaving a recognisable flavour behind. I've never cooked chicken with vegetables before (except onion and capsicum for tikka), but the carrots and peas added a nice colour to it, I think. My test subject did clean up his plate very very thoroughly, so I'm guessing it was a hit!