Curried Chicken Salad

Every once in awhile I have leftover chicken and I think that it'd be a good idea to make chicken salad.  It almost never is.  A good idea I mean.  It just usually tastes gross and has a weird texture because I get lazy and don't want to chop it so I put in the generic magic bullet and then it becomes pasty.  Anyway, this one was an exception!  The flavor was good, Indian spices basically, and I chopped it into cubes instead of trying to make it all small.  Also toasted cashews.  There were lots in there.  And onions, and green onions, and tomatoes.

Serve on a lettuce leaf because there is no bread at home!

It actually looks fancier that way anyway!  

Palak Murgh

So I'm pretty happy with the outcome of this one.  It was basically born out of a need to use up some baby spinach.  It's basically chicken breast pieces cubed, sauteed with tons of onions and garlic, and then I thre in all the usual spices.  Then all the leftover spinach and just let it stew for a bit.  No liquid was added, that pretty much all came out of the spinach.  Seriously it was good!

Close up of the simmering action!

Serve with a parotta and a dollop of yogurt.  This meal was actually pretty healthy I think and also delicious!

Indian Food Oddities

These are a few of the new and different things that I saw and ate.

This is musambi juice. I've seen it with many different spellings. Mitzy had been going on about how much she wanted to try it, when me and Priya saw it on the menu, we jumped at the chance. It's described as a sweet lemon but to me it kind of feel like orange juice with a kick. It was good and I'm glad we got to taste it, sorry Mitz!

Ah, the Royal Falooda. Urmi got this at Woody's and apparently it is quite popular in Mumbai. It's basically a sundae but the real weird are those little transparent squigglies. Those are vermicelli noodles! In ice cream! The things people enjoy just amazes me sometimes.

Ok now here is a shot of the famous Indian soda called Thums Up. For starters, please note and laugh at how the B is not included in the word "Thum" yet it is clearly showing a logo of a hand giving a thumbs up. I would call this a Coke rip off but insanely (to me anyway) it is made by Coca Cola! It does kind of taste like Coke, but much flatter, and very often it's grainy. Ruchir perfectly described it as tasting "dusty." We did have it once where it wasn't dusty and that was definitely the anomaly.

These are slices of dragon fruit. I had never seen or heard of this fruit until we were at a buffet in Delhi but I guess this originally comes from Thailand. The whole fruit was sitting up on a ledge in a tall glass, almost like a decoration, and Ruchir's Dad asked what it was. Next thing we know the waiters are slicing it up for us. I thought it kind of tasted like watermelon with a little more texture and of course those tiny seeds. The others didn't really agree with me (as usual :).

Other Indian Food Pics

Some other random food pictures taken during the trip...

This is at the market where we saw a live buffalo lumber past us and then minutes later it was slaughtered. Ew. Ruchir was enthralled ... of course. Anyway, this is a less gory picture from that day, showing these tiny bananas. I'm not sure if they have a different name, or even taste different that regular bananas. But since I love miniatures and these are small, I crave them!

Here we are eating fresh green coconut by the beach with all the Chinese fishing nets. The coconut water is delicious (fun fact: did you know that it is sterile and was once used as fluid for IVs?). I'm not that big of a fan of the fresh coconut meat but it was kind of fun since the guy had hacked the shell into a little scoop for me.

These are fresh sardines which have been flash fried. We got the sardines at the market (where the tiny bananas and the water buffalo slaughtering took place) and then took them back to Paliam where they were dunked in incredibly hot oil. They were a bit salty and actually I don't like them that much, but I love the crunchiness. I do think that it is kind of weird to be chewing through all those bones though.

And then there is this wonderful picture. This was taken at my favorite ice cream parlour (yeah I used the British/Indian spelling, it just seems appropriate in this context) which is located just a short walk from Paliam. It used to be called Woody's but now is called Korter and has undergone a serious makeover. I prefer the old scene, mostly because I hate change, but the ice cream is still great! This sundae is called The Grasshopper. It used to be served in a tall glass and without that many brightly coloured (I did it again!) syrups but the taste is the same. It's pistachio ice cream with mint sauce and tons of random crunchy things. I actually think some of those crunchy things are cornflakes, which sounds like it might be gross but is actually very good. I cleaned my bowl in no time!

Buffet at the Taj Malabar

The Taj Malabar is one of the nicest hotels in Cochin. We stopped by for the lunch buffet, man what a spread! The food was good, and plentiful, but actually I'd probably take home cooked any day.

Ruchir's plate...

... and my plate! :)

Here's a close up of the infamous Kerala rice, the brown streaks are remnants of the husk or something like that. Does rice have husks?? Anyway, it's supposed to have a lot of nutrients, kind of like potatoes are much healthier if you don't peel them. No complaints here, it doesn't affect the taste so it's fine in my book!

A lastly a shot of the dessert buffet; I think it speaks for itself!

Breakfasts at Paliam

After returning from India, all I can think about is the wonderful wonderful food.  I will try to describe that deliciousness here, but trust me, it will be difficult.  This is simply food that you have to taste to believe.  I will start with the breakfasts.

Ok, first up are cutlets. Normally not a breakfast food, these heavenly wonders are made with ground beef, potatoes, and delicious spices.  They are coated in very fine breadcrumbs and fried to a delightful dark brown crisp.  That first bite is truly heavenly; first a wonderful crunch which then reveals a soft savory center.  If I could eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be these cutlets and rice.  I did attempt these on my own recently, with very dubious results.  The inside filling was close to being right, but the outside just didn't live up to it's impeccably high standard.  I will try again though, maybe success is one day within my grasp.

Ok, on to these playful little sausages.  They have a bit of a bite to them, but once you get through the casing, the insides almost melt in your mouth.  Much lighter in color than normal sausages, these are are made a some sort of soft pork.  Or maybe they are chicken.  Who knows, and honestly who cares because when covered in sauteed onions, the combination is divine.

Now we are at vadas.  These look like doughnuts but definitely are not the American sweet coated in a sugary glaze variety.  I actually don't even know what these are made of, probably some lentils or something, but the are spicy and soft and sometimes the outside is crunchy and they are good when dunked in some sambar.  Probably not my top food choice in the list, but they are good when the mood strikes.  In the background of the picture, you can see the cutlets again, and to the right of that is egg masala.  Yum.  This is basically hard boiled eggs smothered in tomatoes and onions with tons of spices and the result is really quite delicious.  For some reason, it never seems right to me to eat these with anything else, like rice or starches, I just like to load them up on my plate and gulp them down.

And lastly, there are parums. This treat certainly at times seems more like a dessert than a breakfast.  Parums are very ripe plantains which are boiled to an almost caramelly deep yellow color.  They should be served warm, cut in half, and slathered with butter.  Then comes the best part...the sugar.  Something about the Indian sugar just sets my mouth watering.  It is similar to turbinado sugar, those dark heavy crystals in the  oversized brown packets occasionally jammed in with all the multicolored packets that profess to be as good as the real thing.  But Indian sugar, it is the real thing, better in fact.  The crystals are large, but not dark at all.  My memory is that it is always served in a small metal canister with a tiny spoon and that there is a constant presents of ants trying to get at the potent sweetness.  However, I am getting severely off track.  Plantains, butter, sugar - the combination is a hat trick of flavors which will certainly start your day off right!

The last great component of the perfect breakfast meal is and always must be beef stew.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of it, I was too busy scarfing it down.  And like all extremely delicious foods, this stew is hard to describe but I will do my best. Beef chunks are mixed with potatoes and carrots and onions, all boiled along with garlic and ginger to be incredibly tender, moist and flavorful.  They are bathed in a delicious broth, made from boiling coconut milk and the juices gained from boiling first ingrediants.  The end result is a delicate balance of flavors, great when ladled over bread and eaten with your hands.  This is good not only for breakfast, but lunch as well.  It used to be my favorite meal, but over time other delicacies have replaced it.  But it remains in my heart as a nostalgic favorite, guaranteed to brighten any day and improve any mood. Well that's a quick summary of the breakfasts.  Other various foods eaten on the trip are soon to follow!