Tales of a Lone Wolf

Monday, August 16, 2010

Spicy Aromatic Chicken Curry

Marriage have made me lazy - the weekends which were a flurry of activates are now very less - most Sundays we laze @ home. Sunday cooking is something I love, and many a times, I improvise or come up with new recipes. ( Touch wood, no one ever fell ill after what I prepared :))

Chicken - 1 kg, cut to medium / small pieces
Onion - 4 medium size, thinly sliced
For the masala:
Coconut - 1 whole, grated
sun dried red chilies – 6
mace – 1
Black cardamom – 1
Green cardamom – 4
Bay leaf - one small
star anise -1
cinnamon bark – a small piece ( around 5 cm length)
Thyme - a small pinch
Fenugreek seeds - a small pinch
clove - 4 nos
coriander powder - 1 table spoon

Put the grated coconut in a heavy based non-stick pan and dry fry it over medium flame till it turns dark brown. Put the flame to low and add all other ingredients and keep it on the flame till you get a nice aromatic smell. Let it cool and then make a fine paste of this using your mixer-grinder - do not add more water than required it to make it a fine paste.
Clean the chicken and cut it to medium / small pieces. Mix the chicken well with this masala and a handful of curry leaves and marinate for an hour.
Heat 4 tables spoon oil in a wok with heavy base, add the onions and sauté them till they become translucent. Add the marinated chicken pieces along with the masala and add 3 cups of water, cook the chicken in high flame for fifteen minutes (keep the wok covered while chicken getting cooked)
After 15 minutes, remove the lid and adjust the water level and cook for another 15 minutes on medium flame. Sprinkles curry leaves just before the chicken is taken off the flame.
Goes well with ghee rice / plain rice/ Idiyappam (nool puttu) / appam etc.
PS: if you need the dish to be more hot, use only sun dried red chilies – don’t use chili powder or green chilies.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Flower Power

Went to the annual flower show @ Lalbagh last saturday - the crowd was very less, and I could click some snaps of the flower show (last time when I went there, I did not even get inside the gardens after I saw the crowd)

Some of the clicks:

From Lalbagh_Flower_Show_2010

For more fotos click here

ps: feels good to be back here - and I hope, I will not be taking another break soon :)

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

miles to go....

miles to go...., originally uploaded by -xh- aka aNoop.

Shot en route to madikeri. The road is awesome - excellent surface, nice straights, wide sweeping curves, very less traffic. The road from kushal nagar to madikeri is getting laid now, so, one more month, and we will get some nice twisties to enjoy.

We chanced upon some excellent back roads near madikkeri - narrow roads, challenging tight turns, breath taking scenery - had a real dose of corner carving adventure there, and to top it off, we took the madikkeri-dubare route while coming back, which is filled with lot of fun twisties.
Jeevs was at his usual best - he never complained, and did the ride without any issues.

This was R's first real long ride -2 days, 623 km of pure fun!

Monday, February 22, 2010

yellow whispers...

yellow whispers..., originally uploaded by -xh- aka aNoop.

after a long long break, testing the waters again... :)

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Two to tango

Two to tango, originally uploaded by -xh- aka aNoop.

Shot this at Bennerghetta National park, bangalore.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Sweet-Sour karela (Bitter gourd) curry

Some time back, we had this awesome sweet and sour karela curry @ kanua, and since then, I always wanted to make it at home. This weekend, I decided to give it a try - here is the recipe I tried:

Karela (bitter gourd) - 3 nos (medium size – pick the white ones if you don’t like the bitter taste – the greener the karela, the bitter the taste) )

Toor Dal - a bit

Urd Dal - a bit

Salt - to taste

Chili powder - a bit

Turmeric powder - a bit

Jaggery - to taste (I used 3 vellams - if you want the curry to be sweet, add more Jaggery)

Tamarind - a small piece

Red chilli - 2-3 nos

Curry leaves

Lemon - one half

rasam powder - 1-1.5 tbsp

Wash and split the karela. Clean the inside and cut into small slices. Mix this with salt and turmeric powder and keep for about 15 minutes.

Soak the tamarind in water and keep it aside.

Mince the jaggery and make powder.

Take a non-stick tawa and heat oil. When the oil is hot, add mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds stop spluttering, add urd dal and toor dal and fry till they are light brown. Add red chili and curry leaves to this, and then add the karela. Keep it on a medium flame till the karela is almost cooked. Add a bit of water to this and add the tamarind paste, rasam powder and jaggery. Squeeze one half of lemon and add the juice to this. Cook till the curry is dry. Serve it with rice or chapathi.