sweta's food quest

Sonika's Mean Fried Chicken Nepali Style - with a twist!

 So this is the girl i went to school and grew up with, had my first 'real' and disastrous cooking lesson with at the age of 15 i think... have fought, cried, laughed and jammed with since infant days of yore. Therefore, no surprises about the fact that she has been chosen to grace the first page of my new blog with her mighty, wild and unconventional presence, although i don't use that word 'unconventional' to describe my friends anymore. It just seems too mild...you know ;)

Also all my friends are great cooks and can whip up a mean gourmet meal within seconds even if an egg and a tomato are the only supplies in the fridge! To my mind, it comes from years of living by ourselves in city apartments doing the nine to five and coming home weary, sometimes very late in the night ravenously hungry,just to open the fridge and only find eggs and tomatoes in there! What can one do but make the best of a bad situation? I, for one, can find ten different things to rustle up with just eggs and tomatoes - that i might as well start a whole new blog on that! Just kidding...:0

Sonika is all that and more with an attitude to match - my best friend, fellow crafter and artist, tattoist, DJ, awesome dancer, world's top shrink, ruthlessly honest critic, partner in crime but the one attribute that drives it all home is her honest to goodness heart. There is so much to love about this extraordinary woman but I heart her heart the most :)

She and i always agreed on how each family or household have their own styles of cooking which is unique to only them. For instance in Darj, the same raaye ko saag and sungur ko masu might have varied tastes depending on where it is cooked and who cooked it. That is what i love about the art. One can get creative and do whatever the hell you want with a particular dish as long as it tastes good... let's make that 'awesome'.

That is how I cook and how Sonika cooks - we keep with tradition as much as we can but where's the fun if you don't put your own signature into that dish? How does that become yours? Of course most recipes out there are just too good to be messed with, but sometimes for your own sanity's sake, You got to OWN it.

She made the time and effort to cook AND click all the photographs for this entry because i couldn't be there where she lives.

Here's Sonika's take on her Grandma's Nepali Chicken Curry.

NOTE: This is a very simple dish but it needs a lot of attention.  It's not one of those dishes you put on the stove and come back after 30 mins and find it ready.  And the temperature is very crucial so make sure you use the smaller burner on your stove.

The Recipe

Ingredients:

500 gms chicken with bones

2 medium size Onions

2 medium size Tomatoes

1 tsp (heaped) fenugreek seeds

1” ginger thinly sliced

1 bunch coriander chopped

Green chillies as per taste

½ tsp turmeric

½ tsp chilli pwd

4 spn Oil

Salt to taste

1sp vinegar / twist of lime

1tsp sugar

Use a big wok / pan for this dish.  Heat the oil.

Once hot add the fenugreek seeds. The seeds turn brown almost immediately (do not let them burn so keep the chicken close)

Add chicken, onions, ginger, turmeric, chilli powder and salt and cook on medium heat for a minute.

Add tomatoes, green chillies, vinegar, sugar and half of the coriander.  Cook for a minute.Add about a cup of water.  Cover and cook for 10 minutes on low heat.Uncover and cook till all the water dries up.

Leave the dish on low heat and keep stirring every minute till all the onion tomato mush has become crisp and starts coating the chicken pieces, should take about 15 minutes.

(Keep a strict watch since it can easily burn at this stage.  Incase it starts to burn, add two spoons of water and cover for a minute and continue with the last step again).

And lastly the all important taste test.  Check the salt, sourness and sweetness. If it's too sour add a bit of sugar, if it's too sweet add a bit of vinegar.  Garnish with the rest of the coriander and serve! Or eat.

Guest Speak

My mom is an amazing cook and I grew up eating such fantastic food that I guess it was just natural that I took to cooking (and eating!) like a fish to water.  I remember making an omelette - the first thing I ever cooked when I was just 10 and bragging about it for days!  I love entertaining and cooking for family and friends and this dish I’m sharing today is an old family recipe, with a twist!  Everytime I cook it, it takes me right back to my grandmother’s home in the plains of Nepal, a rustic sleepy village called Salakpur. It was surrounded by beautiful rice fields and flanked on one side by a bamboo grove, next to which was the wooden kitchen built separately from the main house.  Food was cooked on firewood   and the aromas would come wafting through all day!  You just could not be NOT hungry there!  

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