Indian style dinner with everyday dal

I'm working nowadays. Just for the Summer, like most students, to earn a little more (pocket) money. I do reception work at my mum's work. She works nights for an institution that takes care of mentally disabled adults. 
My work is quite varied: answering incoming and outgoing calls, typing and posting letters, doing some administration, openening gates, ... I like it quite a lot. It's not boring and I come across people all the time so that I 'm never lonely, even though I have to spend the hours in a fish bowl-like office ^^

As I have very irregular hours, I mostly don't eat dinner with the rest of the family. I have to cook my own stews. That might seem lonely, but that's also good for trying out something new.

Today it's Veggie Day for me. And what cuisine is known for it's splendid vegetarian kitchen so much as the Indian? I browsed through the recipes and found this gharki dal recipe. 

It's a lentil stew with lots of spices and can be served as a hearty side dish or even as a full meal with basmati rice. (the author calls it 'everyday lentils', but for me it's much more)
It looks quite boring because it's a porridge-like dish, but the taste is quite unlike it!

As you see, the dal really needs a lot of different aromas - 11 - but they're essential to the end result which is delicious!
The tomatoes I've added to the recipe weren't there originally, but to me they add some more colour and I'm also a fan of having as much vegetables (with all their vitamins) in my food. But if you want to leave them out, that's also no problem because the dal is great in itself.

Ingredients for 1:
- 55 grams red lentils
- 250 ml water
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 ground turmeric
- 1/5 teaspoon nigella seeds
- 1/5 teaspoon fennel seeds
- 1/5 teaspooncumin seeds
- 1/5 teaspoon mustard seeds
- 1/5 teaspoon fenugreek leaves
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1/5 teaspoon hot chilli powder
- 5 cherry tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon of chopped up fresh cilantro

How to:
Put the lentils, the tomatoes you've cut in four and the water with the salt, turmeric and ginger on the fire. Let the lentils simmer on medium heat for about 25 minutes until they're tender. 

Crush all the other spices - apart from the cilantro - and the garlic until the aromas come off. Add them to the lentils on the fire. Stir regularly while the dal simmers for another 10 to 15 minutes.

Now cook the rice according to the instructions on the package. 
Serve the dal with the rice and the fresh cilantro.

Watch out with the chilli powder if you are not a fan of real hot food! I like it very much, but you might be surprised by the heat of just the pinch you put inside ... 

Enjoy!

Pretending you're in Zanzibar with pilau!

Summer's heat is melting everything and everyone that dares to come out. Temperatures will rise even higher this weekend, and it made me think of a wonderful destination: Zanzibar.

We've lived in Tanzania (Arusha) for three years for my dad's work. I was 12 when we moved there, and that was the exact age I became a regular cook at home. I experimented a lot, with some of the most disastrous cakes you can ever imagine and 'accidents' such as a full deep frier falling down which flooded the whole of our kitchen with oil ...
Luckily I also made some good to excellent things. Otherwise my parents would never allow me to continue.

Each year - around my birthday - we had our little holiday on the island Zanzibar. There we enjoyed the arabic tinted kitchen and especially lots of fish. 

I very much liked the fish pilau at Dolphin Restaurant in Stone Town. It was a very old building with loads of cracks and an African grey parrot that could talk to the customers and broke down the ceiling. I have such good memories of those holidays!

When we left for Belgium, I missed the spicy dishes a lot. It took me a long time for finding out where to get the right ingredients, let alone to find the correct recipes.
After endless searches on the internet, I found something that sounded about right to me. It's this recipe I took as base for my own Zanzibar pilau.

I meant to make it for the four of us, but after serving it seemed as if I had still enough for at least one or two more people. So keep in mind, when you decide to prepare this for 4 people, that you reduce the amounts :)

Ingredients for 5-6:
- teaspoon of cumin seeds
- teaspoon of black pepper corns
- teaspoon of ground ginger
- half a teaspoon of salt
- cinnamon stick
- ground cinnamon
- 5 cloves
- 10 cardemom pods
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 300 grams rice
- 250 grams tomatoes, chopped
- 1 apple or handful of raisins
- 900 ml of fish stock (1 and a half cube in the water)
- 400 grams (or more if you like) of white fish, diced
- olive oil
- 1 onion
- for serving: a little parsley and slices of lemon

How to:
Heat the stock with all of the spices. Once it all cooks, keep aside. Heat a pan and fry the onion, chopped garlic in it with a little olive oil.

Add the fish and turn them around quickly. 

Now take all onions, garlic and fish out.
Put the rice in the same pan and stir so that all the rice can get covered in the olive oil.
Pour in two thirds of the stock-spice mixture. Spice things up with salt and some extra pepper (if you like it hot). Let all of it now simmer  with the lid on. 
Add the apple and/or the raisins and the tomatoes to the rice. After a few minutes, you can add the fish, onion and garlic too.

Check with a fork from time to time so that you can add more of the stock-spice mixture when the rest is soaked up. 
When the rice is done, put the pan with the lid in a preheated oven at 200°C. 
It's ready when the rice is dried up.

Chakula tamu!

Paella with chicken and sea fruit

paella nearly ready to serve

I made paella last year, and that was a complete disaster.
I didn't find fresh sea fruit so had to do with frozen sea food and found out that it didn't taste any better than pieces of rubber. I just used regular rice, which wasn't cooked through after absorbing the water. I didn't fry the chicken beforehand so the chicken was still raw at places. I didn't season enough which made the flavour bland ...
In short, making paella wasn't something I would try again soon. The disappointment of my fellow eaters was just too great and so obvious in their way of looking at me.


But I found something in the supermarket last week which would soon change my mind: a mix of sea fruit, already cooked but fresh.
My mind began racing and I took the decision of trying paella all over again.


We don't have a special paelle pan and buying one for the occasion is a bit out of proportion for me. Our own skillets would have to do.
I set off for another try at paella.


I have to say that the taste was just right. Of course, it can't compete with the authentic - made in a real paella pan - dish, but it's really worth trying andsuper easy!


Ingredients for 4:
- olive oil
- 1 red pepper, blackened, skinned and cut in small strips
- 1 onion
- 4 cloves of garlic, cut in very small pieces
- 100 grams fresh peas
- 8 cherry tomatoes, cut in half and dried in a 150°C oven for about 45 minutes
- 1 gram of saffron powder
- a pinch of paprika powder
- crushed chillies
- 200 grams sea fruit (prawns, mussels, squid, ...), already cooked
- 6 chicken legs (or any other part of chicken), already fried or grilled
- 300 grams paella rice (you can find it in any supermarket)
- salt and pepper to taste
- a little kurkuma for extra colour
- 1 fresh lime
- 600-700 ml of fish stock


How to:
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Fry the onion, the garlic, the pepper and the tomatoes until they've browned slightly.

Add the rice and spices and turn them in the pan so that each grain of rice is covered in a little oil and the spices are all over the ingredients.
Now pour the stock in, together with the chicken and the peas. Let it all simmer on medium heat with the lid on the pan. Check from time to time whether the rice is ready to be eaten and the stock has been taken up. If more stock is needed, add a little at the time. 
When the rice is just about ready but hasn't taken up all of the stock, add the sea fruit. They have to be added as late as possible so that they don't get rubbery (I learned from my mistakes!).

Before serving, let the paella stand for a few minutes so that the excess damp can evaporate.
Cut the lime in slices and put them on top of the paella on table. Everyone can now spoon his or her own serving. 


Apetitoso!

Cod tandoori with saffron pilav

I made a huge mistake yesterday. Instead of doing groceries properly and bringing meat for tonight, I took a large portion of cod out of the freezer. I never thought my mum bought it for making something special. She was a bit angry when she found out I reserved it for tonight (and she couldn't cook tonight because of work). Now, she told me to make something with it anyway. 


What to do then? I am a great fan of the Indian kitchen, so I looked in one of my great Indian cook books. Nowhere a recipe to be found with cod. A lot of chicken and lamb, but nearly no fish at all ... 


I've tried chicken tandoori in the past, my idea now was to try making cod the same way. So I did. I made the marinade and put the fish soaking in it in the fridge. It's looking really odd, pink in colour and all!


Ingredients for the cod:
- 4 slices of cod 
- 250 grams yoghurt (it's supposed to be Greek yoghurt, but I only had 0% so I used that)
- 1/2 teaspoon tandoori food colouring
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger powder
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 2 large cloves of garlic, crushed
- 4 ground cardemom pods
- 3 ground cloves
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon cumin powder
- chilli powder to taste (I used none today because my sister hates hot spicy food, unfortunately!)


How to prepare the cod:
Mix all the ingredients apart from the cod together so that you get a pink/reddish sauce. That's your marinade. Now put the pieces of cod in it and turn them around so that they get coloured all over.
Put it all away in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.
When ready to cook, preheat the oven grill up to 230°C. 
Take the pieces of cod out of the marinade and put them in an oven tray that you put about 15 centimetres from the grill in the oven (quite high).
Grill the fish for about 20-30 minutes until cooked through. Turn it around from time to time so that the fish colours on all sides.


I did the fish, now it was time to think about what to serve with it. As you see, I'm not really a planner in these sorts of things. I take it from where I am at the moment.


I turned the pages of the Indian cook book and saw a lot of tasty looking rice dishes. Tandoori isn't saucy, so I wished to make something that was tasteful by itself. I decided to make saffron pilav (kesar bhat). It's described as a dish widely served in the more Muslim parts of India and the ingredients looked really good from the start. On top of all that, it has the most amazing colour: bright yellow, from the saffron. Quite luxurious, isn't it?


Ingredients for saffron pilav:
- a handful raisins
- 250 grams basmati rice
- 1 gram saffron powder or 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads (soaked in the water)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 cardemom pods
- 3 cloves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 small onion, sliced into small pieces
- little oil for the pan


How to prepare the saffron pilav:
Soak the basmati rice for about half an hour in some cold water.
Heat the oil in a pan on a heavy fire. Put the onion in and let it colour for a while. Then add the cinnamon, cloves and the cardemom  pods all at once. Stir it all around. 
Drain the rice and add it with the raisins, the saffron and about 500 ml to the rest of the ingredients. Now turn the fire on so that it starts to cook. Once it all cooks, you turn the fire a little lower so that it can slowly simmer for about 5 minutes. After that, turn the fire on the lowest heat and put the lid on the pan. Let it all be for another 5-6 minutes. You'll see that all the water has been absorbed by the rice and the raisins by now. 
Take the pan off the fire and let it rest for another 5 minutes with the lid on the pan. The rice will dry out more and the water will steam away.


For some more colour and the vegetables, I served the fish andthe rice with some cherry tomatoes. If I had some fresh coriander, I would scatter them over the plate for an even more colourful plate.

My parents and I approved, my sister - a special case when it comes to food - wasn't convinced. Fish is not her favourite, and the rice was too spicy ... What can I do about that?