Pav bhaaji

I'm starting to enjoy writing about food. I am posting for two days in a row for the first time perhaps and loving it.
So to make sure that everyone at home felt like a real sunday
should, I worked up a Indian dish called pav bhaaji. It's basically bread served with a masala curry with lots if veggies and salad to go along. You need more than just a few ingredients and some time in hand.
For Bhaaji
2 onions chopped
2 tsp. Ginger-garlic paste
3 green chillies
Cooking oil
3 tomatoes finely chopped
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp red chilly powder
Salt to taste
4 potatoes- boiled and mashed
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1/2 cup chopped pumpkin
1/2 cup chopped beans
1/2 cup chopped capsicum
1/2 cup peas
And of course Pavs

For salad
Fresh coriander
Carrots
Tomatoes
Cabbage
Spring onions
Mint leaves
Lemon
Black pepper

Bhaaji
Firstly parboil the veggies- carrots, capsicum, peas, beans and pumpkin for about 5 mins.
Now in a deep pan, heat oil and put onions. When they turn pink add the ginger garlic paste. Stir for 2 mins. Add cumin, coriander powder, turmeric powder, red chilly powder, garam masala and salt. Cook the mix for another few mins. on low flame. Now add tomatoes and green chilies and continue cooking on low flame for another 5-6 mins. While constantly stirring. Then add the boiled potatoes and parboiled veggies. Add about half cup water and while keeping flame low, start mashing the veggies using a potato masher or the bottom of a micro-safe tumbler. Continue adding water and mashing the veggies for 7 mins. Top it up with a lot of butter/ ghee.

Salad
Just toss all the vegetables in a bug bowl and serve with a dash of lemon and ground black pepper.

Pavs
Slit the pavs into halves horizontally. In a pan, melt some butter and put the pavs, continue till they are a little light brown. The pavs need to be flattened with the help of a flat cooking spoon.

Serve the bhaaji, pavs and cabbage salad with extra butter(can be passed if health a concern).

Pancakes- Aata used

So in the Saturday Special time kill, today I tried pancakes. To be completely honest I have tried making pancakes before but everytime it ends in a sloppy uncooked disaster but today was different. With the most minimal ingredients available in every single Indian household, this recipe is a sure winner.
2 Eggs
1 cup Flour(aata)
1/2 cup sugar(powdered)
1/2 cup full cream milk
2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoon butter/ghee
Few drops of Vanilla essence
Cooking oil
Maple syrup
So you beat up 2 eggs in a glass bowl, add the flour, butter and the powdered sugar; constantly stirring and whisking so that no lumps are formed. Now add milk, baking powder and continue whisking, you may want to use those electric ones or you can mix it in the blender for about 2 mins. The resultant mixture should be a viscous paste if you are looking at thick American pancakes, the thinner the paste the more you tend towards crepes. So choose your pick.
Now in a pan, heat about 2 teaspoons of oil/butter. Keep the flame on LOW(in the picture the one in the front was made on low flame and the other one on medium, so the difference is evident) and make the pancakes. You just need to put the dough in the center and not spread it; if the right viscosity it'll spread beautifully on its own. And you've used butter on the pan. it'll be a perfect circle. Flip it! Since aata takes more time to bake ensure that you are cooking well, you can try covering the pan with a plate just make sure the surface doesn't blacken.
Serve hot with butter and maple syrup(I bought at Spar hyper-mart). And love, of course.

Chhee bar

About five years ago when I was a relatively naive girl, I started frequenting this rather popular book store cum eating joint in connaught place called umm.. Well let's call it chhee bar. Getting a very 'hand to chin' amount for pocket money, I couldn't ever really have a meal or try their rather exotic sounding variants of chai. All I would do is go there and shamelessly drown my mind and my face in a book I didn't want to miss but wasn't keen on buying. Having all the time in the world, I would park myself in chhee bar for hours together but never tried anything on the menu other than the books(well technically books are on the shelves and not the menu but what the deuce).

I was in LUCKY OBLIVION.

The day I could afford the chai and the loaf, I tried it and suddenly the whole emotion for the place changed. The food here is atrocious and so is the chai, not to mention overpriced and served too casually. A cafe or chai bar in the heart of the country's capital could have and should have been so much more. If you still find yourself here even after a bad experience with the chai-shai because of the sheer craving of skimming through books, flipping through pages lost in thought, just like me, your best bet here is darjeeling tea and brownie.

Everything tastes like a concotion of bland everythingness! It's strange really how consistent chhee bar staff is. Don't ever try the Kashmiri or green teas, chances are you won't have those again and even if you do, it'll faintly remind you of pee(putting it as politely as possible). One more advice, their card machine doesn't work most of the times and given the
overpriced menu, keep about Rs. 500 handy there's an axis bank ATM on the stairs itself.

Also, you'd want to ask them what IS available as the menu is just a smoke screen. More than 70% of the things on the menu are almost never available.

If not a reader you can surely skip this place. 2 on 5.

Gdspd

Why So Spicyyyy?

I was in class VIth when I ate at a Mc Donald's for the first time. It was an experience to be savoured, relished and other such food-emotion words. But all I remember is a weird "inconfidence" to order my own order and this feeling of having visited a future Wimpy's. It didn't feel right. Soon thereafter I went to a KFC, by this time I was hip enough to order my own order and my "inconfident" friend's order and ask for extra ketchup, thank you very much! But this place didn't smell right. And this KFC wasn't the KFC of now, it was the KFC of the 90s which shut shop after it faced heavy protests not only from anti-multinational groups but also animal rights’ protector, PETA. KFC was soon very conveniently forgotten and so was Wimpy's( By the way, it still exists! tucked away in CP, N block. But then again, who cares? ) 
And the new blue (red?) eyed boy was Ronald!
Everyone from loud model town aunties, their kids, their husbands with much younger lover of a PA, everyone literally wanted a piece Mc Donald's(pronounced as Maaic Do-Naaal-D). I too was sold. I had 20 bucks. I loved chicken.


Then came KFC again and this time with more "desi-ized" approach. And I don't know whether their burgers changed or my taste, but the very "not right" smell was now the "going weak in the tummy" alarm. I tried and it was finger lickin' good or what. But I have never had the money(pocket) to afford a fulfilling meal at KFC so stuck to Mc Donald's(which by now was being called M.C.D n makkad) for till I starting making some moolah.
At just when I started earning, here was my dirtiest little dream in a box for me- KFC HOT WINGSS!
It touched my taste buds and man oh man, was there a winner here. I still find it silly that my soulmate(for that period) was to be 7 pieces of spiced fried chicken!
But here is the deal about HOT wings, as fiery as the TVCS might have claimed, HOT wings aren't HOT, per say. It's a hybrid between lemony tangy and moderate bell. And guess what. It clicked.


All this while Makkad has been doing its own things. Some good things like introducing the McSwirl(softy ice cream), some bad things like discontinuing products like McPan and shake-shake fries and some down right ugly things like using old chicken for making Mc nuggets. But still has been original and different from KFC in ways too many.


And then one day, I spot a Mc Spicy hoarding and hungry as always try it out,the very same day.
There goes the London bridge! den of thieves! They are selling KFC burgers in their own packaging. Mc Spicy is a rip off of Zinger burger in a way that only a loyal zingerist for years can tell. It is like the Bangkok Burberry, you can't tell the difference till you haven't found out and once you do, there is absolutely no going back. And what's worse, so true to its name Mc Spicy is actually, well, spicy. It is so spicy that my eyes were watery and nose became an embarrassed shade of pink.  What were they thinking? You call it water, it looks like water, it feels, tastes, smells like water AND IT IS WATER. Where is the fun element? the surprise? the twist? the punchline?
They may not... I can help.


Why so Spicccccyyyy? (And then I walked over to the counter with not even the last vestiges of my "inconfidence" of ordering and said "Can I geit some waater, pliz?")


gdspd