Chicken Tikka Masala Pot-Pie

As winter sets in, you don't feel like eating cold dinners. Just the idea of something steaming in the kitchen makes your tummy rumble. We have very hectic lives, so we don't have the luxury of cooking fresh every day, but the days when I can, I try and make big batches, so that it goes a long way. As funny as the title seems, this pot pie really hits the spot! We eat all sort of pies and chicken pot pie is a favourite in our household :) So I decided to put a spin on the standard pot-pie and make it more interesting. I made some chicken tikka masala with carrots and green peas and made that as a stuffing for the pie. My husband enjoyed this thoroughly and it made almost 3 meals for one :) I have to accept I did not make the sauce from scratch. I just used a jar of tikka masala sauce. I am quite lucky our local does a home made sauce delivered by an Indian lady locally, but any good brand sauce should do. If you are up to it make the sauce fresh am sure it will taste even better :)
Here is what you need if you want to give this a go:

1. 400 gms of diced chicken. I keep the pieces chunky so that it doesn't break down while cooking
2. half a jar of Tikka Masala Sauce
3. half cup frozen green peas
4. 1 carrot
5. coriander
6. onion
7. garlic and ginger
8. Rapeseed Oil for cooking you can use any other flavourless oils if you like.
9. Short crust puff pastry - I got this ready made too, the ones in the store are absolutely fine. I just use half of it.
10. A teaspoon of chili flakes
11. Salt and Pepper to taste.

Lets get cooking:
Set the oven to 190 degrees fan

To cook the stuffing:

1. Make sure the chicken is completely defrosted if you are using frozen chicken. Fry the chicken in a bit of oil in a non stick pan until it turns brown and set it aside.
2. Add some more oil and fry onion, ginger, garlic and coriander. until the onions go brown.
3. Add the tikka masala sauce and green peas and cook everything for the time it says on the jar. I had to cook mine only for 5 mins.
4. Add the chicken in the sauce and let it cook for 10 mins. you are just trying to get the sauce in the chicken at this stage as the chicken will be cooked already.
5. When every thing cooks nicely turn off the heat and let it cool a little.
6. roll out the pastry one to go in you pot you are baking in and one to go on top.
7. Line the pastry in the pot and blind bake it for 15 mins. Once its nice and golden brown take it out and let it cool. 
8. Add all the cooked chicken tikka masala and put the other bit of pastry on top. Make a little cross on the top for the steam to escape and bake it in the oven for about 25 mins. Make sure you brush the top pastry with an egg or milk to give it a nice gloss and golden crust.

That's all in less than an hour you have a stunning pot pie enjoy it with a glass of wine :)

Bon apetit !!!

Twist on the classic Caprese Salad

Recently, I have been trying to make a lots of salads and I keep looking for new ways of making them, to spruce up my lunch. This is a very simple salad, takes 5 mins to rustle this up. Its very rustic, have it with a chunk of bread if you want to make a big meal of it. I had it just like that :-)








Here is what you need,if you want to try it:

• A large juicy tomato
• a few baby basil leave
• fresh mozzarella cheese ball
• half an avocado - I like it s little firm, you can get it the way you like it
• half a cucumber
• Olives stuffed with Almonds

Dressing

• Extra virgin Olive Oil
• Balsamic Vinegar
• half a lemon
• Salt to taste
• fresh ground pepper

Prep:

1. Slice up the tomato in thick rings
2. Slice the cheese in discs
3. Slice the cucumber
4. Slice the avocado
5. Tear up the basil leaves and sprinkle them over

Put it all together

Lay the tomato and cheese slices alternately.

arrange the cucumber and avocado slices on the side
Dot the olives around

sprinkle the basil leaves over the salad

drizzle the olive oil and balsamic vinegar and squeeze some lemon over to freshen everything up.

Crust some sea salt and fresh pepper. 

Its ready to serve :-) 

Mix the salad up the way you like it, this is how I did, you can mix it up the way you fancy :)

Chocolatey .. Nutty.. Banana Loaf

Have black spotty, over cooked bananas..wait don't check 'em out. These are at their best when you are craving a good ol' banana loaf :)
They are super sweet and bring a very nice flavour to the loaf. Add some white chocolate and nuts and you have a the most fudgy, sweet tasting, mind you not sickly sweet! Banana Loaf. I baked this late night as usual and I think this is going to stick with me. I couldn't resist this, I had a slice almost every day, warm it up in the microwave for 30 sec and it will taste delish ! I think this is one of my best ever loafs. Try it and tell me if you loved it as much as me or if you made any alterations.

Here is what you need if you want to back this loaf:

• 2 large Bananas - mashed.
• Handful of roasted Pecan nuts, substitute with whatever nuts you like, walnuts, almond, macadamia all bake nicely.
• 150 gms white chocolate - cut in chunks
• 1/2 tspoon - vanilla paste
• 175 gms whole meal flour - self raising, use white wheat flour if you cant get hold of Wholemeal flour
• 100 gms - light brown sugar
• 75 gms - dark muscavado sugar
• 175 gms butter
• 2 medium organic eggs
• 2 table spoons demarara sugar - for sprinkling on top 

Lets Bake!
Prepare your loaf tin
Turn on the oven to 180 degrees, so that the oven is nice and hot when you put the loaf in, we are going to bake for 30 mins.

1. Beat the light brown sugar, muscavado sugar and butter together till they are light and fluffy
2. Beat the eggs and add 1 at a time, it will avoid the mixture from splitting. Don't worry even if it does.
3. Add the banana a bit by bit, add some flour as you go along. If you put the whole banana as it is you will see the mixture curdles, but again does not matter, it will not affect the taste of the loaf.
4. Add the coarsely chopped pecans, roast them before you chop them. I do it the easy way. I just bundle them up in a tea towel and bash them with a rolling pin.
5. Add the Vanilla paste.
6. Add the flour and give everything a good mix.
7. The mixture will be a little runny so don't worry if it looks runnier than a standard cake batter.
8. Pour the mix in the prepared tin and sprinkle over the demarara sugar. This will give you a really nice crust on the loaf
9. Bake on the medium shelf, so that the sugar does not burn.
10. Bake for 30 mins at 180 degrees. Check the skewer comes cleanish. Since there is banana there it will not come out perfectly clean.

Happy Baking :-)

Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Everything has a story when I start baking :) and I don't just say it.. there really is a story. I worked very hard today went for walks, given my fitness levels they were quite a bit for me to take in today. I came home knackered and snuggled up on the sofa watching my favourite movies. Just then I had this sudden craving for chocolate chip cookies and there were none in the cupboard.. I tried to ignore it but I really wanted to eat cookies.. hence there was no choice but bake them.. no gains without pains you see :) The problem was, I have never baked cookies, but I had an idea how to bake them. I like my cookies really soft and squidgy where as my husband likes them crunchy.. so I, armed with my little knowledge of them, marched to the kitchen, had a nose around in the larder to see what I could find.. as I feared I had no chocolate chips left, but a bar of milk chocolate hanging around and some pecans. So I decided to make Chocolate chunk cookies rather than chocolate chip cookies :) I pulled them out and I was on my way. Result a batch of nice soft cookies and a batch of really crunchy cookies, both of us tucked in and gleaming with happiness :) As for me, by the end of it I had no craving left but a lot of satisfaction that I had nailed them and got them just the way I like 'em :)
Give these a try, they don't take long and really put a smile on your face, these are very honest old style cookies with no fuss, you make them once and you will fall in love with them. The only tip I will give is watch them like a hawk when they are baking, cookies can dry out very quickly. I squatted in front of the oven till the last batch came out!
So here is what you need, basically anything you have in your larder as far as you can get the dough right. Here is what I used:

Ingredients:

1. 1 bar of Milk Chocolate (150gms)
2. handful of Pecans - roasted.
3. 100 gms Soft brown Sugar
4. 100 gms Granulated sugar, use caster if you had it at hand, its easier to beat in the butter.
5. 210 gms Pain Flour
6. 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
7. a healthy pinch of salt
8. 150 gms unsalted butter - You can replace this with salted butter and skip the salt if you are out of unsalted butter.
9. 1 large egg
10. 1 tsp Vanilla paste, but you can use any form of vanilla you have at home. If you are using the extract use about 2 tsp.

Prep work:

1. Pre heat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (fan)
2. Prepare a baking tray with parchment paper / baking sheet
3. Break up the chocolate into small chunks or if you are shopping shop for 150 gms Chocolate chips will save you from chopping chocolate.
4. Roast the pecans and try and get the skin off when they cool off, if you like the skin leave it as is. Roughly crush or chop the pecans.

Lets get baking:

1. Beat Butter and Sugar until creamy. Whisk the egg and add it to the Sugar and Butter mix. Beat it in. Lose the whisk now and switch to a wooden spoon. 
2. Add Vanilla and mix it in thoroughly.
3. Add the Choco chips / chunks and pecan pieces and mix thoroughly.
4. Add the flour, baking soda and salt and mix it well. Please note, this mix will be quite dry, not like a cake mix where its fairly runny. So don't be alarmed if you see the mix is quite dry and thick, that is how it should be.
5. Now start making little balls of the mix and place them on the try. There are various ways you can make this, if you want even cookies get a table spoon and spoon them or if you are like me with a general judgement just roll them in your hand and place them apart.
6. Cookies will spread when they get in the oven so give them enough room to spread out.
7. Make them in batches if you have to, but don't crowd them.
8. Transfer them to a preheated oven - 175 degrees fan for about 10 mins if you like them crunchy and about 8 mins if you like them soft
9. Please don't over bake the cookies they will dry out and not taste great.
10. When you pull the cookies out of the oven they continue to cook and firm up until they cool off so keep checking you cookies after 5 mins. 

Tip - 

1. I would never open the oven door if I was baking a cake before its time, but with the cookies after about 5 mins I start checking them. Once they are soft to touch in the centre and fairly firm on the sides, they are ready to come out. The longer you keep them the harder and drier they will get.
2. So please take time and monitor the cookies when they are baking.
3. Use any nuts you have hanging about, hazel nuts taste just as nice or walnuts.

You get through these 10 mins and you have a batch of delicious cookies, dunk them in milk or tea and enjoy them on a cold winter's night or just parcel them off to your loved ones, nothing like a smile on your loved ones face, when they enjoy your bake, it all feels worth it :)

Stuffed Paratha / Aloo Paratha

Christmas is over, all the madness has calmed down but you still need to eat and you get bored of eating left overs after sometime. My mother used to device various ways of making left overs work and turn them into something really tasty, and I guess I have inherited that from her. I had made Potato sabji the night before and was too bored to eat it again, so I decided to make Aloo Parathas out them. Aloo Paratha is one of my favourite hearty meal to eat. Again this is very healthy as you make the bread from wholemeal or Wheat flour and the stuffing itself is just boiled potatoes and spices. Its very easy to make, mouth watering and very filling. One of these will see you through the day :) If you make them of the size I do :)

Here is what you need if you want to make Aloo paratha from scratch. You can use any left over dry veg or meat to make parathas like this, try not to use any gravy veg or meat it will not work. There is something you can make with Gravy too, I will blog about it separately :) They are called Dhapati from where I come from, I don't think I will be able to translate that in English :) So back to Parathas.

Here is what we need: This will make 4 big size parathas or 6 medium size. I don't generally give the time it takes because it really depends on how quickly you want to cook or take your time and put things together as you get through the day. 

For the filling you need:

1. 3 medium size potatoes
2. 2 large cloves of Garlic
3. 1/2 inch piece of Ginger
4. 1 medium sized finely chopped Onion
5. 3 small green Chillies (increase or reduce these as per you taste, just remember this gets stuffed in a dough so they will be milder that the actual stuffing)
6. Asafoetida (Optional)
7. Salt to taste
8. 1/2 tsp Turmeric 
9. Mustard Seeds
10. 5-6 Curry leaves (optional)
11. 6-7 sprigs of Coriander (optional)
12. Coriander seeds 1 tsp (Optional)
13. Sunflower or any flavourless oil for cooking

For the Dough:

1. 3 cups of wheat flour or wholemeal flour
2. 1 teaspoon oil
3. pinch of Salt
4. Cumin seeds
5. pinch of Turmeric
6. pinch of red Chilli powder
7. Half a cup of water

Make the stuffing:

1. Boil the potatoes and mash them roughly, this will give you some texture in the paratha, with some bits in the mash.
2. Crush Ginger, Garlic and Chili in mortar and pestle to a fine paste, you can blend it too.
3. To a pan add some oil and turn on heat to medium, when the oil is hot add the mustard seeds and stand back as these will crackle and sputter. Add the curry leaves and the garlic, ginger and chili paste and fry until the raw smell goes away.
4. Add onion and fry until onion is soft, don't have to fry until it turns brown.
5. Add asafoetida, turmeric, coriander seeds, coriander leaves and salt and cook everything for a few seconds.
6. Add the mashed potatoes and mix well. Cook for a minute and turn off the heat.
7. That's your filling ready. Now to the dough for bread / paratha.

Make the Dough for Paratha:

Mix the flour, oil, water, cumin seeds, turmeric, chili powder and salt together and knead until it forms into a nice pliable dough. Add water little at a time to make sure the dough is not too soft, otherwise it will be hard to work with the dough. Rest the dough for 30 mins.

Make the Paratha:

With the dough and filling ready all you need to now do is bring them together.

1. Make golf ball size dough balls and flatten them. 
2. Roll the dough into a palm size disc. This will define the size of you paratha, I have attached a picture of how big I made.
3. Put the stuffing on the disc and pull all the corners of the dough together and pinch at top, the shape will look like a dumpling.
4. Flatten it a bit, dust some flour on top and roll it out like a roti or flatbread.
5. Be gentle as you don't want the stuffing to come out, keep dusting the paratha if it feels wet while rolling.
6. Once you are happy with the size you have rolled out, it time to roast is.
7. While you are rolling out parathas, put a heavy skillet or a non stick pan on the hob.
8. Put the rolled out paratha on the pan and let it roast almost 30 seconds on each side, until it looks crisp and golden brown.

Brush some butter or ghee when the Paratha is ready, or eat it as is, if you want to go healthy way :)

Parathas taste great on its own with a cuppa or with some pickles and yogurt. These can be eaten at Breakfast, lunch or Dinner. I hope you enjoy the recipe and cooking with it. Do let me know if you did or any alterations you made I will love to hear about it :)

Bon Apetit!!

Making your own Paneer

A home made Paneer beats the ready made Paneer anytime. It is very simple to make and tastes much better than the store bought one. Its soft and Fresh. Here is what you need to make some Paneer
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups (500 ml) full fat milk, makes about 60-70 grams Paneer.
1 tsp Lemon juice
 

Making Paneer: 

1. Take a big pot and heat up the Milk.
2. When the milk starts boiling, turn off the heat.
3. Add the lemon juice and stir.
4. The Milk will curdle quickly.
5. Strain the curdled milk using a muslin cloth and let it cool until you can handle it.
6. Pull all the ends of the muslin cloth together and twist in a ball.4Squeeze all the water out as much as you can. At this stage you have made paneer, all it needs is resting for 30 mins. However if you need firmer paneer to go in panner bhurji or Palak Paneer:
7. Keep the muslin cloth with the Paneer in a colander and put a some weight on it.
8. Leave it standing like that for 30 mins.
9. Voila! you have nice soft freshly made paneer. 
10. Cut the Paneer in even cubes and you can use this in Saag Panner, Panner dishes or Paneer Paratha.

Saag Paneer / Palak Paneer

Saag Panner or Palak Paneer is a dearly loved dish across the globe. There is probably an authentic way of making it, but what I have here is my version of Saag Paneer, something I liked and the people I served it, loved it too, so I have just stuck to it. The Saag part of the paneer is a green leafy vegetable, which usually is Spinach. I like this veg because its very easy to make and liked by a lot of people, so its quite a no brainier when you are entertaining a mix of veg and meat eating crowd.


Here is what you need if you would like to give it a go:
Shopping list:

1. 1 Bunch of Spinach or a big bag of spinach.
2. 250 gms Paneer, you can get this ready made or make your own. Click here to find out how you can make your own paneer.
3. Cumin seeds
4. Green Chillies 3
5. 5-6 cloves of garlic
6. 1 inch of root ginger
7. Asafoetida (optional)
8. Garam masala
9. 1 large finely chopped onion
10. Salt to taste
11. A big dollop of naturally set yogurt / plain yogurt
12. sunflower oil for cooking or any flavour less oil will do.

Here is how you make it:

1. Make the base of the curry:

•  Crush Chillies, Garlic and Ginger in a blender or mortar and pestle. I do the later, it is much more fragrant.
• Chop the Spinach finely and cook it until it wilts completely.
• Cut Paneer is nice even cubes, so that it cooks evenly and fry it in a little oil. Let the Paneer brown on high heat but don't cook it for too long, else it will toughen up.

1.  Take a nice roomy pan add a table spoon of oil, if you like more add more, but I don't like my veg floating in oil.
2. When the oil is hot add the cumin seeds, once the crackle, turn the heat down and add the chili, garlic and ginger base and roast it until they cook and start turning a little brown, don't brown them completely as they will burn during cooking.
3. Add the chopped onion and fry until slightly brown.
4. Add the garam masala and salt.
5. Add the cooked Spinach and cook for further 2 mins, use a masher to mash everything in, some recipes suggest blending but I like some texture to the veg so I mash everything in and make it into a pulp.
6. Keep cooking until you see oil separating from the veg. At this stage your Saag base is nicely done.
7. Turn down the heat completely and add the yogurt, this is so that the yogurt does not split, add a bit at a time and mix, this will stop curdling. even if it does it does not matter.
8. Add 1/4 of the cooked panner to the pan and mash the paneer in the Veg base, this gives a good thickness to the base plus a nice texture. Cook for a min.
9. Add rest of the panner and stir it in,let it cook for a min.
10. There you have it your Saag Panner or Palak Paneer what ever you like to call it :)
11. You can try the same recipe for Saag Aloo, just substitute the Panner with boiled and stir fried potatoes.

Try this with a nice wholemeal paratha or some pilau :)

Bon Apetit!!!