Monday, January 08, 2007

Chicken Soup with Garbanzo Bean From Other Blogs



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There was a lot of red in the season and in my blog last week. Remember the Eveready Ad , "Give me Red" and so enough Red was given and endured. Now it's time to go mellow with yellow.
With all the dinners and lunch during the weekend I wanted to have something light for today. Also with Indo talking about controlling carbs and eating healthy I thought why not and went over to Kalyn's Kitchen to get some soup. She had some wonderful low carb, healthy soups and I found the Chicken Soup with Garbanzo Beans particularly alluring. Never had this combination before and thought of giving it a try

However the hardcore desi that I am, I needed to give a desi touch to this pardesi soup to suit my palate. Remember the song from Dard Ka Rishta


Yun Neend se Wo Jo Jaan-e-Chaman Jag Uthi hai
Pardes mei Jo Yaad-e-Watan Jag Uthi Hai...



Anyway the result was very tasty though I am sure it was far from anything that Kalyn intended. So with due apologies to her here is my version of the soup . Please check Kalyn’s page for her original recipe




Chicken Garbanzo Bean Soup Desi Ishtyle



What You Need

Chicken ~ small pieces, I used 10/12 small pieces
Garbanzo Bean or ChickPea ~ 1 cup
Onion ~ 1 small diced
Baby Carrots ~ 5/6 chopped
Green Chillies ~ 2/3

For Marinade
Soy sauce ~ 1tsp
Worcestershire sauce~ 1 tsp
Garlic paste ~ ½ tsp
Ginger paste ~ ½ tsp

Garlic ~ 1 tsp of finely chopped garlic
Ginger ~ ½ tsp of crushed ginger

Key Lime or any other lime ~ I used juice of one small key lime, substitute with suitable measure of other lime juice
Lemon Zest
Parsley ~ 1/2 cups freshly chopped

Elaichi or Cardamom ~ 2 pods
Laung or Clove ~ 2
Black Pepper ~ 10/12 crushed

Salt
Olive Oil

How I Did It

I had 10/12 pieces of a Cornish hen cut up in small pieces in the freezer.Marinated them with 1tsp of Soy sauce a little of worcestershire sauce and 1/2 tsp of ginger and garlic paste for half hour or more
Heat 1 and 1/2 tbsp of Olive Oil
Add 1 tsp of finely chopped garlic and 2 Cardamom and 2 Cloves
Add the chopped onions
Sauté till they are translucent
Add Chicken pieces and sauté till they are browned
Add carrots
Add the garbanzo beans
Add crushed ginger about 1/2 tsp, chopped green chillies and add water
Add lemon zest and coarsely ground black pepper and salt to taste
Cover and cook on slow heat
When almost done add chopped parsley and a juice of one small key lime
Bring to a rolling boil and you are done.
Serve garnished with parsley

This bowl of soup made a very tasty and light but hearty meal. The weather today being pretty much wintry, a sharp change from the Spring weather of the weekend, this light and warm soup definitely warmed the cockles of our heart.

Garbanzo Beans or chickpeas are the most widely consumed legume in the world. Originating in the Middle East, they have a firm texture with a flavor somewhere between chestnuts and walnuts. Chickpeas or garbanzo beans have 361 calories per 100g, and are rich in carbohydrates, proteins, phosphorus, calcium and iron.

I am sending this to Coffee's MBP as my entry for Cooking From Other Blogs

Trivia:In ancient Rome where the chickpea was highly valued, the leader Cicero proudly claimed his name derived from cicer, the Latin term for chickpea. It is believed that one of Cicero’s ancestors was named Cicero because he had a wart on his nose that looked like a chickpea.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Blogger Beta Tip for Category

If you are not on Blogger Beta please do not waste your time by reading ahead.

If you are on Blogger Beta but using the new templates with the Widget thingy and the Layout page, forget my post and get on with your life

If you are like me, switched to Blogger Beta but still using the old template for whatever reason, read ahead if you want to.

Blogger beta has Labels a nice thing that lets you categorize your posts. But if you are using an old template there is no way you can add "Categories" on your side bar. I found a simple way to add categories to your sidebar using your labels even in the old templates and so wanted to share it with you guys. Many of you must know this already but if you are still switching to beta this might help
Do this:

Label all your posts with the labels you want. Say you have Label1, Label2, Label3
Open your template for editing.
Go to the code for sidebar
Add the following lines


Add an href="http://YourBlogName.blogspot.com/search?label=Label1" for Label1 and so on for Label2 and Label3



This will add the categories Label1, Label2, Label3 in the sidebar

If you are using the new Layout in the Blogger Beta the Layout page does this for you. But if you are like me, who are reluctant to move their template because of all the things you need to redo, this is a simple way to use this Blogger Feature

If you have any questions please post a comment

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Tomato Khejur Cranberry Chutney & some Meme



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Tomato Date Cranberry Chutney a beautiful, sweet and tangy way to kick off the New Year and some “meme”…

Sra had tagged me for a pretty interesting meme about "What Your Blogger Friends Look Like and Why" The meme sounded interesting but I thought before I went deep into describing I should take a more deeper look into the blogs to do justice. But the deeper I looked the more confused I became. 95% of the bloggers I read were food bloggers with a purpose and they rarely shared personal tit-bits of their life like the side of the bed they slept on or whether they preferred "Neutrogena" to "Dove" in their shower, leave alone sharing their dark secrets. So though each blog had a character it was very difficult to discern the face behind it.

Take for example dear Sra who was the initiator of this tag. I went through all her archives and though it seemed she is this "perky young journo (??) with very good writing skills and a penchant for cooking" , there was little in her blog that revealed anything personal except for her food. For all I know she might not be SRA but SRK , the "King Khan" writing up a food blog to satiate his eating pleasures. Please please tell me you are that.

Also there's a story to tell. Before going into food blogging I would often silently read random blogs. One of them was this PoisonPen which I would read off & on. The writer was some Vishnupriya RoyChowdhury, a bong connection which further kindled my interest. Being a personal blog it did reveal vague info about the person. After many such random readings, in the subconscious mind I had formed a picture of the person as in "the kind of person she is". After about a year and half of posts however the "creator" of the blog revealed a secret to the dismay of many ardent readers. This very very clever guy had created this blog and posted as Vishnupriya a female who was nothing but his imagination. In his own words


"Vishnupriya Roychoudhury is entirely a figment of a very colourful imagination. She was brought to electronic life by a slightly diseased mind with a tiny bit of a god complex.
Mine.

She was created as a prank. In order to make the prank work better, she was fleshed out. She had a personality, a history, friends and a family. She had interests and opinions. Most importantly, she had three things:
a) an email id
b) an Orkut account
c) a blog
"


Read his post here

Extremely clever and frightening at the same time, don't you think ?
If an EMail Id, an Orkut account and a Blog is all it takes to create a person Nature may as well take a sabbatical
Since blogs are so powerful, I don't think I am responsible enough to take a decision on what others look like or what they are. I am happy thinking of all my blogger friends as this group of friends like the one I would have in college each making their own mark and at the same time supporting others, each of us waiting every morning to talk/chat/update the other, each full of passion to do something, each dreaming not much caring about the real life. With time maybe I will know them more.So even though this meme is extremely interesting I will just pass it on to the more astute people around me

Coffee has also tagged me with another meme. But I am not good at this either. It's very difficult for me to pick up 3 things not because there are more than 3 but because even that keeps changing from day to month to year. The Best I can do is...

Three Things I love
1. My Family including myself . My daughter says "I love Mommy, Baba, etc. etc, and myself"
2. Reading mostly good fiction.
3. At present I love cooking, taking photos and blogging

Three TV shows/Books I watched/read as a kid:
1. Enid Blytons all of them
2. Tintin but I read them even now
3. HumLog ??

Passing on the Meme to Sra, IndoSunGod and Mandira. You can pick one of the above, all or none.

Now to Tomato Khejur Chaatni or Tomato Date Chutney which is a bengali favourite. You will find it accompanying many a bengali meal. I added Cranberrys for that seasonal touch. What resulted is a sweet chutney with a little tartness of the cranberrys. This pretty looking chutney is both good to look at and eat

Tomato Date Cranberry Chutney


What You Need

Tomatoes ~ 4/5 plump red medium chopped to small pieces
Cranberry ~ fresh cranberry 1 cup
Date or Khejur ~ about 20 pittless dates cut in halves
Mustard Seeds ~ 1 tsp

Ginger ~ fresh ginger grated and then pressed to extract 1 tsp of ginger juice
Sugar ~ ½ cup or more according to your sweet level
Salt
PanchPhoron or Five Spice Mix ~ Dry roasted and ground to a powder. Use about 1tsp

How I Did It


Heat Oil in Kadai/Frying Pan
Add Mustard seeds. To prevent them from sputtering all around the kitchen close the lid
When they start sputtering add the chopped tomatoes
Sauté till the tomatoes turn into a fine pulp
Add the cranberries and stir
Add the dates and cook stirring the mixture
Add 1 tsp of ginger juice. Grate ginger and squeeze to extract the juice
Add salt a little water and cover and cook
When the tomatoes are well cooked, add ½ a cup of sugar
Add a little water and bring the mixture to a boil
Check the consistency and the sweetness. It should be thick and sweet but tangy. Add sugar if you want some more
Sprinkle about 1 tsp of roasted panchpuran powder before serving

Update: Many people add 2/3 dry red chillies while tempering to make this chutney a little spicy. I have never done it though.

Enjoy this chutney with lunch or dinner. I have had a long love relatinship with tomato chutney and am sure you would love it too.
MyKhazanaOfRecipes has started a very interesting event "Monthly Blog Patrolling". I am not going to reveal how interesting it is, so go check it out and participate.


Trivia: Memes refer to a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another