Raspberry Smoothie

Ingredients:

Fresh Raspberries

Milk

Vanilla Yogurt

Brown Sugar

Preparation:

Blend and drink.

Very difficult!

As usual, I don't really know the measurements. I go by my eyes.

Lemon Rice

Yesterday I was too impatient to put up the recipe of the lemon rice I had cooked. So here it is:

Ingredients

Basmite Rice

Butter

Lemon, 1

Paprika

Coriander Powder

Cumin

Chicken Stock

Salt

Sugar

--Melt the butter in the pot.

--Sprinkle all the spices, leave them for a little while. Occasionally stir. Soon enough, they will begin to emit a beautiful smell.

-- Now squeeze in the lemon juice from the lemon.

--Let the juice mingle with the spices.

--Pour the rice. Stir, until the spices get well mixed with the rice grains.

--Keep stirring for 5 mins or so.

--- Mix water.

--Let the rice boil.

--- Now eat.

Nopales Con Pollo

I want to write down this recipe before I totally forget it. A couple of days ago, I bought some cactus from the store. This is my first time experimenting with them.

Ingredients:

Cactus (chopped into small pieces)

I Medium-sized Tomato, chopped into small pieces

10 pearl onions, chopped

Chicken Sausage, shredded

Mushrooms

Garlic, 4 fat cloves

1 Green Chili, slit in the middle

Dil Leaves Powder

Oregano Powder

Parsely Powder

Cumin Powder

Black Pepper Powder

White Pepper Powder

Chili Powder

Shredded Cheese

--Heat olive oil in a pan. Then pour some parsley powder, oregano powder, cumin, black pepper powder, paprika, chili powder. Let the whole thing mix for like 20 seconds.

--Then throw in the tomatoes, the onions, the garlic. Saute. Let the whole thing turn into a mush.

--Add the slit green chili.

--Then throw in the sausage. Stir the whole thing together.

--Now throw in the shredded cactus. Stir.

--- Add the mushrooms. Depending upon how seasoned you like your food, sprinkle some more of the spice powders.

--Stir the whole thing for around 5 minutes. Or until all the ingredients get mixed beautifully.

--Then cover the pan with the lid. Do not add water. The cactus pieces will bleed enough moisture. So, unless you want it real soupy, do not add extra water. Let it cook for 15-20 minutes.

--Then turn off the heat. Put the whole mixture in a glass pot. Cover the surface with shredded cheese. I used cheddar, because that's what I had in the refrigerator. Anything else will be fine too.

--Bake it in the oven for 10 mins.

I ate it with Lemon Rice. I believe it will go well with ordinary white rice or other varieties of rice too. It was GREAT!

Food and Growing Up

I didn't grow up eating lots of poppy-seed (posto) curries. My mother wasn't especially fond of them, and would tell me, posto is more of a ghoti thing. Meaning, it's more of a food that belongs traditionally to the people who are from West Bengal than us, the bangals, who are originally from East Bengal(now Bangladesh). Bengali cuisine is not something one easily gets in US. In lots of ways, Bengali food doesn't share a lot of the characteristics of Punjabi food, which has come to be understood as the India food in US. It's not as spicy, less greasy, more flavorful. Spices are used more to season things rather than to blunt the original smell of the vegetables, fish or meat. It does frustrate me sometimes that I cannot walk into a Bengali restaurant and order the delicacies I have grown up eating. On the other hand, I do like the fact that Bengali food hasn't been assimilated into the mainstream of American food cultural, the commercial culinary tourism. Whenever I cook something Bengali, I feel as if I am cooking up a secret, which I can (and do) share with my loved friends and only loved friends here. Today I cooked posto-murgi (chicken with poppy seeds). It is not something I have had ever tasted while growing up. But I would consider this dish irrevocably Bengali--the phoron (throwing of whole spices into hot sizzling oil), the poppy-seed paste, adding a little bit of sugar for the whole dish to have a caramelized taint. It does make me think about what constitutes authenticity when it comes to food? How does one take into account the regional/local/familial variations? What do those variations reveal in terms of the social historical and political dynamics of things? I made it based on these two recipes here and here. The result was delicious. The poppy-seeds gave the chicken pieces a very different kind of texture.