I wanted to recreate some of the amazing traditional recipes that we tasted in Bhutan. And when I say traditional, I don't mean the set menu that you get in the traditional restaurants in Thimpu. For me traditional means, the meal you are served in a farmhouse, following a farm-to-table concept. So if you are planning for a Bhutan trip and a farmhouse meal is not yet considered in your itinerary, then you better do because otherwise you will miss out on experiencing the charm of having food with the locals in their house with the ingredients they source directly form their farms. 

A traditional Bhutanese meal recreated by yours truly with as many sides as I could make in a single day! The meal I prepared today had the following items:

• Chili Potato Stir Fry
• Chicken with Bhutanese Chili Powder - Stir fry
• Asparagus Stir fry
• Brinjal stir fry
• Chili Onion Salad with Cheese
• Rice

All of these dishes take maximum 15-20 minutes to prepare and are super easy. I will have a separate series of blogs on the vegetarian and non-vegetarian Datshis that I made at home.

 

Steaming is one of the most popular and loved methods in the Bengali cuisine. Food is steam cooked over a low flame with a closed lid or in leaf parcels (paturi) and referred to as Bhapa which literally means steamed. Steaming technique is so popular because of how effortless it is. Marinated fish or veggies can just be put together into leaf-wrapped parcels and placed atop a pot of steaming rice. By the time the rice is done the mains is also ready with it, thereby cutting lunch or dinner prep time by half. Its quick, delicious and healthy so why not!  The technique is so popular that it goes beyond in just preparing savory dishes in Bengal. Here there is an array of sweets which use the same steaming technique and has dominated the centerstage for years now like various pitha or bhapa doi ( steamed yoghurt).

In fact entire eastern and north eastern states of India has multiple delicious steamed preparations as part of their regional dishes.  While a few might think steamed dishes might taste pretty bland is actually the other way around. Steamed dishes are healthy, delicious and every state has its own ways to add that little bit of extra zing to their steamed preparations which makes them stand out. You will find mustard paste as a defacto ingredient of most steamed savory preparations in Bengali. Now I am someone who is not a great fan of mustard paste, so I try out other options when making a bhapa. You can find some of those recipes in my blog like this - Kochu Pata Diye Macher Paturi or this Koi Macher Paturi.

This time I wanted to add a slight different flavor twist to the usual mustard paste base by adding more green chilies and a bunch of fresh coriander leaves. There are certain food experiments which turn out unexpectedly well, this was one of them. The earthy coriander flavor took the bhapa preparations several notches up. Even my mother who is a picky eater complimented on the unique flavor of the bhapa. So folks, you can give it a try when you want to relish a different kind of bhapa.

 Hi All, how have you been, again after a break I am back with one more popular Kolkata recipe. You must be wondering why such random spells of no posts. Blame it on my zodiac but this is how a Gemini works. There are long spells when I feel very passionate about certain things like social media activity, frequent editing posting interacting and then come a spell when I happily give up all these and just enjoy some not rushed time for myself. Just to clarify I am still very much in love with eating and cooking and I quite often experiment with new dishes too, its just that not always I plan to take a picture of it and create a post out of it. Today's post would also not have materialized had it not been for a special person asking me to do so. Having said that when you have to setup the entire backdrop, food prop, food thing after such a long spell of no activity, it seems overwhelming. Especially after slogging in the kitchen for half of my precious Saturday morning in the intense summer heat, when I have to push myself to be creative in food photography too I wondered how I used to put up with this on a regular basis a year back.  But I still do it - the whole 9 yards - adjusting ambient light, setting up backdrops, rummaging through my utensil box for the perfect bowl, fishing out some napkin props from the corner of my cupboard and finally taking 50-60 odd pictures so that I can find one decent photo to edit and post. Phew! And in the middle of all this chaos, I forgot to place the meticulously cut slices of boiled egg on top of my bowl of chicken bharta before taking the shots. The realization came when I was cleaning up everything - I saw those two slices of eggs sitting there like orphans in a bowl I had put aside. For a fleeting second I did think whether I should setup everything again, but then I convinced myself out of it as I was already tired with all the running around. So readers please don't judge the photos based on the missing garnish, it tasted good actually. 

Now coming to the recipe. Kolkata loves all kind of Mughlai food. There is a plethora of Mughlai dishes tailored to the palate of Bengali food connoisseurs which you can find in all small and big restaurants across the city. Chicken Bharta is a one such Mughlai delicacy prepared with shredded chicken and hard boiled eggs cooked in selected aromatics. Usually it is considered as a dhaba style dish which pairs perfectly with roomali rotis or naans. If you are in Kolkata just step out in your neighborhood in the late evenings and you will see a beeline of people waiting outside on the road in front of small food shacks for getting the chicken bharta, chowmein or biryani packed for dinnertime. Especially if its around the weekend the crowd is more. It has almost become part of the culture there to get these delicacies packed for home on the way back to office to start off the weekend food frenzy. And when you get it so cheap in the local restaurant why would anyone slog at home to make it. 

But people like us who are miles away form the city, if we want to enjoy these we have to slog in the kitchen - there is hardly any choice there. What I have understood is that everyone has their own little formula of success for a good chicken bharta. And there are mild variations of the recipe you will find all over the net. Most of the time you will see cashew paste or  poppy seed paste being added to the dish to up the creamy quotient, but since I am making this on a hot summer afternoon, I skipped it to make it a little lighter for the tummy. Taste wise it didn't compromise anything I can say. Also at time I have seen restaurants adding Kewra scent to this dish just to make it more 'Mughlai' but I really don't like it at all. The natural aroma of the spices with the chicken feels much more authentic to me rather than loading it up with unnecessary things. I hope you like this recipe. Do comment if you have nay suggestions to make it better. I had it with homemade naan which my mother made. Maybe i will also talk about the naan recipe sometime, its an absolute hit.