Egg Puffs or Pattys

These are sooo very much a throw back to my childhood that the second I saw this recipe I had to try it. As far as I can tell, its mostly indians who have eaten these. I am going to look out for other recipes besides just egg and damn my stupid chicken allergy because chicken pattys were the shit.

The recipe is from this amazing blog again. I mostly followed the recipe w.r.t. the proportions, but unfortunately I got distracted chatting with mom and ended up overcooking the onions a tiny bit. Overall they were a bit spicy, but I thought they were delicious!!

Ingredients

• 1 large onion, diced 
• 1 tsp ground coriander 
• 1 tsp garam masala 
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin 
• 1/4 tsp hot chilli powder 
• 1/4 tsp pepper 
• 3 flakes garlic, grated (I just used ginger paste and garlic paste)
• 1 inch piece of ginger, grated 
• 1 green chilly 
• 2 tomato, diced 
• 3/4 - 1 tsp salt 
• 1 tbsp light olive oil 
• Small handful fresh coriander (didn't have any)
• 4 medium sheets store bought puff pastry 
• 2 eggs, hard boiled

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 450 F. 
2. Thaw out frozen pastry sheets.
3.  Hardboil, cool, peel and halve two eggs.
4.  In a pan, heat the oil, and add the diced onion. Fry on a medium to high heat for about 7 - 10 minutes, until a light gold colour and very soft. 
5. Add the ground coriander, garam masala, ground cumin, chilli powder and pepper and saute for about 2 minutes. 
6. Add the diced tomato and salt, and cook, stirring often for about 5 minutes, until the tomato is very squishy and the masala comes together in a gooey mass. 
7. Take off the heat. Leave to cool completely.  
8. The frozen puff pastry sheets work out well for one puff each. Place some masala, just off centre, then place an egg half on top of it. Add some more masala on top of the egg. Moisten all the edges using water, then fold over. Seal and place on a greased baking sheet, as above. Bake in the preheated oven for around 20 - 25 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and golden. Serve warm with a hot cup of chai. This recipe makes 4 puffs.

South Indian Style Biryani with tamarind and curry leaves

I'm not sure who originally wrote this recipe. A quick search of the interwebz suggests it was first posted in 2010 to about.com by Petrina Verma Sarkar. I found the recipe on facebook when a friend liked it on Ambika Pillai's facebook page. I was intrigued because it has tamarind and curry patta, which is weird in a biryani. I didn't use lamb because IMHO the biryani gets really heavy and since I am now allergic to chicken we ended up using pork. It was quite delicious!

I also deviated from the original recipe by using the pressure cooker to make the curry because the original version takes more than an hour and ain't nobody got time for that.

Ingredients

• 1 kg pork meat (We used a picnic ham chopped into 2" by 2" pieces)
• 2 tbsps garlic paste 
• 2 tbsps ginger paste 
• 3 tbsps sunflower/ canola/ vegetable cooking oil 
• 2 large red onions, chopped fine and I onion sliced finely
• 30-40 curry leaves 
• 2 green chillies (optional) 
• 2 tbsps coriander powder 
• 1 tbsp cumin powder 
• 1/2 tsp turmeric powder 
• 1 tbsp garam masala 
• 1 tsp salt (this is how much I use, you can add salt to suit your taste) 
• 1 cup hot water 
• 50 g ball of tamarind 
• 700 gms Basmati rice 
• 1 tsp salt

Method

1. Put the meat, garlic and ginger pastes in a large bowl and mix well to coat the meat with the pastes. Keep aside for 20 minutes. 
2. While the meat is marinating, heat (on medium temperature) the cooking oil (3 tbsps) in a large, deep pot/ pan. 
3. Add the finely chopped onions and fry till translucent. Add the curry leaves and green chillies fry for 1 minute. 
4. Now add the powdered spices - coriander, cumin, turmeric, and garam masala powders. Mix well and cook for 2-3 minutes. Stir often to prevent burning. 
5. Add the marinated meat now. Stir well and often and cook till the meat is browned. Add 1 1/2 cups of hot water, stir, cover, simmer heat and cook till meat is tender. Keep checking for this stage as you do not want the meat overcooked and soft. Instead, at this stage, I added in the tamarind, below and then added 2 cups of water and pressure cooked the meat for 25-30 minutes. I saved some of the tamarind and added it after the meat was cooked. I just wasn't sure the tamarind flavor would withstand the pressure cooking.
6. While the meat is cooking, make the tamarind puree: Put the tamarind in a plastic or glass bowl and pour 1/2 cup of hot water over it. Allow to stand for 5-10 minutes. Now strain the tamarind and water mixture through a sieve (do not use a very fine sieve) into a bowl to get tamarind puree. Add this to the curry when you feel the meat is almost done. Stir well. 
7. Once the meat is cooked, keep it aside and prepare the rice. Put the rice in a sieve and wash under running water till the water runs clear. 
8. Now put it into a large deep cooking pot (preferably one with handles). Add enough water to fully cover the rice - at least 4" over the surface of the rice. Add 1 tsp of salt to taste. Set the rice up to boil. Cook till almost done. To determine when it has reached that stage, remove a few grains from the pot and press between your thumb and forefinger. The rice should mostly mash but will have a firm whitish core. Turn off the fire.
9.  Strain through a colander and keep aside. 
10. Heat 3 tbsps of oil in a pan and fry 2 of the onions till caramalized - golden brown. Drain and keep aside on paper towels for later use. Grease a deep dish or pot (which has a nicely fitting cover). We used a dutch oven. 
11. Now evenly layer the cooked rice, meat (and its gravy) in the dish/ pot, to form at least 2 sets of layers (rice-meat-rice-meat-rice). 
12. Garnish with the previously caramalized onions. Cover the dish tightly. If your dish does not have a cover use 2 layers of aluminium foil (shiny side of both layers pointing down towards the rice) and secure on to dish with baking string. We just popped on the dutch oven lid. Since I use a Handi (a deep pot with a nicely fitting lid) which has a flat rim, I seal it by making a firm dough with flour and water and pressing this over the joint of the Handi's rim and cover. 
13. Now put the dish/ pot in a pre-heated oven set at 350 F/ 180 C/ Gas mark 4 for 20 minutes. We did 30-35 minutes since our curry was more liquid than hers probably was. Only open when you are ready to eat. The way to serve Biryani is to gently dig in with a spoon so you get through the layers.
14.  I serve my Biryani with Raita and Kachumbar salad.

Chinese dumplings, Jiaozi, 饺子

We used to eat these all the time when we had dim sum and these were also available frozen pretty much everywhere in the states, so we didn't miss them until we moved here to the land of cold, ice and NO DUMPLINGS!!!

Apparently the chinese Jiaozi, japanese gyoza and nepalese momos are all cousins in one big, delicious, east asian, meat wrapped yumminess family (sez wikipedia)...with, of course, regional flavour variations. This makes me want to try making momos next. And tho traditionally momos are made with water buffalo meat, something tells me its the spices that really make the momo. 

We tried two different variations of the Jiaozi. The first was the very traditional recipe which uses ground pork and lots of shredded napa cabbage (and ginger and garlic and so on). These were D-licious and probably a lot lighter than the version we finally settled on (all meat, no cabbage), but the napa cabbage released so much water that we had to keep stopping to drain water from the stuffing mixture and I suspect we lost a lot of the soy and other flavor in the water we poured out. These cabbage and pork dumplings were fantastic, but objectively slightly less tasty than the final, all pork version and also more difficult to make (because of the water release). We did find a really good youtube video (thanks runnyrunny999!) in which the cook actually squeezes the napa before using it, and seems to have much fewer problems. We just drained the water by pouring if off, I guess we need to be quite aggressive if we try these again.

We also used the youtube video to learn how to properly fold the dumplings and cook the dumplings, it really is an excellent video. 

The version we finally settled on is apparently more Hong Kong style (Video here recipe here from all recipes). The recipe text and video seem to diverge pretty far from one another in terms of the truth though. The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of chopped garlic chives when the lady clearly adds what looks closer to a cup. So we kind of made up our own recipe based on the video. Below.

Uncooked dumplings to show the shape and pleating

Ingredients

• 500g ground pork
• 1.5- 2 tbsp minced garlic
• 2.5- 3 tbsp minced ginger
• 3 tbsp light soy sauce
• 2.5- 3 tbsp sesame oil
• one egg
• 10-12 stalks of garlic chives
• ~50 or 60 dumpling wrappers
• oil for cooking
• chilli flakes in chilli oil or your favourite dipping sauce

Preparation

1. Make sure the dumpling wrappers are thawed. Room temp is probably better but we've frequently microwaved the frozen stack of wrapper in cases of dumpling panic. Repeated nuking at a low to medium power for 45 seconds each usually work out ok. Watch out for the edges of the wrappers drying out. Wet your finger with water and run around the edges of the stack to keep the wrappers from cracking on the edges. Thawing at RT does not have this problem. 
2. Chop the garlic chives finely and add into a large bowl with the minced ginger, garlic, pork, soy, sesame oil and egg. Use your hands to mash all of this together till well mixed. 
3. Take a dumpling wrapper and wet the outer rim with water and add about a teaspoon of mixture to the middle.
4. Fold the two halves of the wrapper together, making pleats on one side and pinching the wet wrapper into the other side firmly so the two sides seal together. runnyrunny999's video demonstrates this really well. This leads to dumplings with one flat-ish side and one curved side. This shape makes it easier to cook (IMHO)
5. Work through till you either run out of dumplings or mixture. 
6. In a preferably non-stick pan, heat up oil and add the dumplings. Cook for a minute or two on medium-high heat and then add in a cup of hot water. Cover the pan and wait for 7-10 minutes or till the water has evaporated.
7. Remove the cover and after about 30sec to 1 minute, shake the pan, the dumplings should move free of the pan. This usually means they are done. If using a non non-stick pan, wait till the water has all evaporated and then give it a minute or two for the skins to crisp up again and then use a spatula to gently coax the dumplings off the pan. 
8. We usually eat them with just the chilli in chilli oil paste, but honestly, any good dipping sauce will do. 
9. These also freeze really well. We just pop a bunch of them into ziploc bags and try not to put them one on top of the other and freeze them.