Archive for June, 2009
Chapli Kebabs
There are two things you should know and three things you should always have if you want to cook Pakistani food.
The first thing you should know is that cooking in Pakistan, is a serious affair and you should do it thinking you have all the time in the world, even if you don’t :). Home cooked food is given the highest priority and serving your guests with ready-made meal is frowned upon here. There is no such thing, in Pakistan as, “grabbing a bite”. Each meal is carefully planned and carefully consumed. Highest importance is given to breakfast and dinner as it is said here, skipping breakfast makes you weak and dull and skipping dinner is inviting old age early.
The three things you should have plentiful are Cumin Seeds (Urdu: Zeera), Garlic/Ginger paste and Mint/Coriander leaves. There is hardly any recipe that does contain at least one of the listed items.
The recipe I have chosen to write about is a famous recipe, common to both Pakistan and Afghanistan and the origin of this dish is Afghanistan (at one time, the northern areas of Pakistan were actually a part of Afghanistan and eventually Persia(Now Iran)). There is a heavy influence of Iranian, Turkish, Afghani, Arabian and Central Asian cuisine on Pakistani cuisine due to our ancestral roots there.
So here is the recipe of the popular dish. Another thing before I list down the ingredients is that these Kebabs can be made from either beef or lamb but my favorite type is beef and I think they taste best when beef is used so I am going to list minced beef as an ingredient. You are most welcome to try with other types of meat and let us know the experience.
Ingredients:
For Chapli Kebabs:
- 1/2 Kg. finely mined beef
- 100 grams Corn meal (Do not use Corn Flour as it makes them stiff)
- 1 medium sized onion, roughly chopped
- 1 tsp. ginger paste
- 1 tsp. crushed cumin seeds
- 1 tsp. crushed dry red chillies
- 1 tsp. crushed coriander seeds (pay special attention: seeds not leaves)
- 1 tsp. wild pomegranate seeds (I am not sure if it available easily everywhere, it can be skipped if not available although it gives a nice hint of sour flavor to the taste of the kebabs)
- 3 green chillies roughly chopped
- 1/2 cup fresh coriander leaves (this time it is leaves)
- 1 tsp. lemon juice (vinegar can be used instead of lemon)
- 2 eggs and 1 tsp. salt
For dressing
- 1 tomato
- 1 small onion - slice it and fry the slices until it is brown
Podina Chutney (Mint Sauce) for serving:
1 ounce of mint leaves
1 tsp. salt
½ cup whole dried red chilies
5 tbs. tamarind paste
2 green chilies
Soak the Tamarind in water for an hour.
Remove the seeds from the tamarind.
Put everything into a grinder and grind until it’s a smooth paste. Refrigerate.
Kebabs Recipe:
Take the minced meat and take all the ingredients listed above (from 2 - 12) and mix them in meat as well. Knead carefully and gently until all ingredients are mixed thoroughly. At the end, the mixture would be a bit rough (as you can see that most of the ingredients are not powder crushed). Place the mixture in refrigerator and let it site there for 2-3 hours so that it is thoroughly marinated.
After it has been marinated, take a medium sized portion of the mixture and roll it till it forms a ball. Then place your palm on the ball and keep pressing till it is in the form of a roughly shaped disc. The thickness of the disc should be about 1/2 inch. Make discs out of the rest of the meat as well.
Fry the discs in the oil until brown. Do not use too much oil.
(Image Source: https://www.khanapakana.com/urdu-kebab-recipes/images/images/Chapli-Kabab.jpg)
I forgot to take pictures while cooking so I got the closest match that looks like my kebab from Google.
Serve it with Mint Sauce. You can also eat it with roti/naan (white bread) as is done in India and central areas of Pakistan. Or you can make a sandwich with it. Trust me, it’s better than McDonald’s beef burger :)
Kugel
We know that this blog is about cooking food that is not from your own culture, but we’ll make an exception with this one because we already have the pictures of the process, which took place more than 3.5 years ago (back in Israel).
According to wikipedia, Kugel is “any one of a wide variety of traditional baked Jewish side dishes or desserts consisting of ground or processed vegetables, fruit, or other starches combined with a thickening agent (such as oil, egg, or flour). It is sometimes translated as “pudding” or “casserole”".
I got this recipe about 4 years ago from Avishay, whom I worked with and who had gotten it from his mother. He brought a piece of Kugel to work one day and after having a bite of it I demanded the recipe immediately.
So here are the ingredients for the Kugel:
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 a cup of sugar
- 1/2 a cup of chopped walnuts
- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1/2 a cup of white raisins (soaked in water a little bit and cut in halves)
- 250 gr (or about 9 oz ) of wide thin noodles (see pictures below of what they look like)
- 4-5 green apples (the ones that have sour taste, such as Granny Smith for example)
The process is pretty straight forward. Just mix all the ingredients in their order of appearance in the list above. This is how we did it. We started with grating the apples.
Then we cooked the noodles (just as you cook regular noodles - simply follow the instructions on the package :)).
When the noodles and the apples were ready, we started the mixing.
First were the eggs and the sugar.
Then we added the nuts, the raisins and the cinnamon.
Finally, we added the noodles and the apples and mixed everything well.
We placed the mix into a pan and sent it into the oven for 50-55 minutes at 190C (375F).
This is what it looked like when it was ready.
And this is me enjoying the final product :)
Welcome new authors!
Just a quick note to welcome our new authors to the blog: Amna, Billie, and Nadia. This is really exciting to see people interested in the idea and expressing willingness to contribute.
Looking forward to reading your stuff!!!
Erik’s Buffalo Wings
Posted by Dima in Observation, USA, recipe on June 8th, 2009
A few weeks ago Veronica and I visited Eric, who has exposed us to his version of Buffalo wings. In our eyes, the fact that Eric is actually from Buffalo, gives him some authority on the subject. So, this post is dedicated to his recipe and our observations of him making it.
There are a few stories of how the Buffalo were invented, but most of them surround the Belissimo family from Buffalo, NY and extreme conditions such as unexpected guests or excessive supply of chicken wings. Regardless, the wings became a very popular at competitive events, where snacks are appreciated :)
According to Erik (confirmed by Wikipedia), traditional wings are “deep fried and then coated in sauce.” In our case this was a slightly “healthier” version, as no deep frying took place. Also, according Wikipedia (confirmed by Erik): “Typically, the wings are deep-fried, drained, placed in a bowl with the sauce, tightly covered, and shaken until the wings are evenly coated.” In our case, the process was really different, which in my view produced better results than what I have tried a couple of times in restaurants.
So, what is it all about?
Ingredients:
As you will see, the quantities are not precise as are the names of some ingredients. Hopefully, the pictures will help make things clearer.
- wings - not sure about the quantity, but they should be small wings, not the huge chunks of meat (Erik finds them only in Costco)
- 2 sticks of butter
- 32 oz of hot sauce (based on cayenne pepper)
- 3 tea-spoons of minced garlic
- 3 table spoons of honey
- 2 table spoons of molasses
- 1 tea spoon of onion powder
- add a dash of Thai pepper sauce
- add a little ground cayenne powder
- add a little salt
- add a little lime juice
The process:
Erik started with heating a deep pan with the two sticks of butter. I think my levels of cholesterol started rising only from looking at those two slowly melting in the pan.
Without waiting for the butter to melt completely, Erik added the rest of the ingredients, starting (I think) with the hot sauce. The mixture became very colorful and he let it heat up until it started to simmer.
While everything was simmering, Erik started with oiling a couple of pans and spread the wings. At that point, the wings were actually frozen. I don’t think i have ever cooked meat straight off the freezer, but according to Erik, this is part of the process. In fact, as you will see very soon, freezer has additional functions in this recipe.
Next, with abilities of a real artist, Erik coated every single wing with the sauce, using a BBQ brush. It takes some time and can be somewhat messy, but it is important to be thorough and make sure there are no blind spots. As Erik put it: “Love your chicken, so it would love you back” :)
Then the wings went into the oven (preheated at about 400F) for about 20 minutes. After that, Erik took them out, flipped them, covered them with sauce again (on the other side) and returned them back for another 20 minutes. So far so good and the smell was great.
Now the really interesting part of the processes began. Without even letting them cool down properly, Erik put them in Tupperware and returned the baked in sauce wings to the freezer. According to the chef, this is the true secret of his version of the dish. The wings sit in the freezer for 24 hours (yes, some planning ahead needed if you think about making those) and whatever happens in the freezer supposedly makes them so soft and juicy, when they are eventually made.
24 hours later, the wings, thrown on a preheated skillet, looked like this:
The last stage was continuing cooking the wings on the skillet until they are brown and warm.
That takes some time, because first of all they had to defrost. All in all, as you can see, that was a pretty time consuming process., But the result was worth it. As I’ve written before, these were probably the tastiest wings I have tried so far. They were especially good when taken together with a blue cheese sauce.
In Russian, when you eat something very good, you say that it is so tasty that you would lick your fingers. Well, in this case, you literally had to do that!