First Best Chicken Curry

Simple ...easy..Chicken Curry

Technically this is my second chicken curry. The first time I made it was in Bangalore. The only witness to the taste and make of the curry was Mr.Manyam Tej and myself. So not many can vouch for it and I doubt Manyam would give favorable review. Also I wasn't that satisfied with the output. It was slightly over burnt as the pieces were too large. Of course, the recipe again was from my mom. :)

This time around , in Paris, I got the chance to put into full force my culinary skills along with the super expert guidance of my mom. The result to say the least is super duper delicious..Just goes yummmmm......

Actually we were limited by so many factors, no ginger garlic paste, no cooker, no lemon which are considered essential ingredients. But I have realized moms are the greatest when it comes to do cooking with anything at their disposal. All you need to do is, for future reference, call your mom list out the ingredients you have, the time constraints, the cutlery, and they will tell you what to do in a jiffy.

Ok, here goes the recipe as given by mom 'word to word' (with slight alteration in formatting) -

Note: Steps 11 and 12 ought to be performed in sequence after Step 5. I had forgotten it.

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Hi kar,

Since you don't have the basic ginger garlic paste the curry may not taste great. If possible get some garlic and ginger,lemon,tomatoes from the mall. In my language basic ingredients are onions,garlic,ginger,lemons, you must have them for your non veg curries.

Ok do the following as soon as you reach the house.

1. First take out the chicken frm fridge and keep it outside.
2. You finely chop 2-3 onions.
3. Add oil in a frying pan-5-6 spoons,
4. Add 6-8 menthulu,avalu,jeera and if you have pepper add crushed 7-8 of them
5. After they splutter add the finely chopped onions, fry them till they bit brown. remember this forms the gravy. So you can add more or less,
6. After 7-8 min of frying add turmeric,chilly powder and then the chopped chicken pieces.
7. Fry for sometime and then add little water , not a lot . Keep it cover for 15 minutes.
8. Then once it is 3/4 cooked, taste the gravy.
9. If you feel it is little sappaga (bland) then add some red chilly powder. Now you add that briyani powder one and half spoon.
10. Then let it simmer for another 15minutes.
11. In case you get ginger and garlic then just crush 3-4 pods of garlic and a small bit of ginger crushed. You add them when onions are fried along with chilly powder. In the end squeeze lemon.
12. If you get tomatoes then you can add after frying onions and before adding red chillies, (if you don't get those don't worry).
13. You can add little bit of cobara podi (its a powder mixture of dry coconut, salt, chilli powder, heated in oil) which I have sent. It may give some good flavour, add that when chicken is 3/4 cooked

ok bye

amma

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My Sweetest and most lovable mom :)

Ingredients -

Chicken - 500gms

Onions - 4 Finely Chopped

Tomatoes - 2

Avalu - 1/2 Spoon

Jilakara - 1 Spoon

Chilli Powder - 1 1/2 Spoon

Biryani Powder - 1 1/2 Spoon

Ginger Garlic Paste - 1 Spoon

Even after such nice and details explanations I screwed it up. Here are the mistakes I did. Problem is I read these instructions 1 by 1. Fact of the matter is I did have tomatoes, paste of ginger and garlic (freshly made by yours truly by crushing and grinding them hard putting them under a flat surface , smashing them with a ladle) but did not use them. I had nicely cut onions, ginger-garlic, tomatoes and had them ready. I kept doing as it was specified in the above steps only to realize that sequence had broken and somewhere I lost the track. Anyways the final output has come excellent and we finished the whole gravy in just half an hour watching the wonderful movie - 'Ala Modalaindi'.

I am now very much confident of making this curry again and much more delicious. I realized I had put too much water instead of good number of onions. The trick of the trade always is onions form the base of the gravy. It ought to be properly cooked. Until the next best curry..Ciao!

Here goes the photos -

Chicken..of course..

Cumin seeds, Jilakara

Ginger Garlic Human Made Paste...Sadly unused

Tomatoes..another unused by product

Onions..the most important ingredient of all

86 and Counting - II

No second part can be complete without the first. You are highly advisable to read the first part before dwelling into this.

Its been 25 days in Paris so far. The most prominent thing that I would want to point out is that I haven't been able to shed not a single gram of weight so far. I am telling this even though I haven't checked my weight. I feel so confident about it I am willing to be 100 Euros on it.

Its the conversion syndrome that ticks of for anyone who goes overseas I guess. This happened with me and the first week we were quite attentive of every detail. Everything looked darn expensive outside and so we stuck with noodles at night for all the days till we moved out from the hotel. Back at office, I relished every dish I could get hands on for lunch. We have a cafeteria downstairs at the office which specializes mostly in steak, bacon and sometimes fish (fillet). It's an absurd assortment of food - Fillings- french fries, palak paste, shoufle (some mashed vegetables), rataoutielle (yes, i had it, it wasn't as great as it sounded in the film), boiled potatoes, mixed boiled vegetables, Main dish - fried steak, fish, chicken, turkey. The actual rate of the food is around 4 to 5 euros. Since we aren't the main stay employees we are charged 4.9Euros as tax. So lunch always comes around 10 Euros. Frankly I am enjoying the food and have no qualms to continue and taste different varieties. There was this one time where the whole dish contained some fish gravy and boiled potatoes in it. My friend is having difficult time. He is a guy who doesn't eat anything other than chicken or sea food.

On the weekends we satisfied oursleves with McD or KFC. After the first week, we moved into the new apartments and have brought some groceries and have started cooking. I made upma, dal, noodles, alu fry, bendi fry, mixed vegetable curry, dal again. We have decided on the first day of our cooking that we are going to cook on the alternative days and we have been very good at maintaining it so far. Nothing much happened in the first two weeks of our stay with regard to food. Though we cut down on the intake from the office, it was only to be compensated by McD -1 Big Cantal, 1 Huge bag of French Fries, 1 500ml Coke guaranteed to fill the stomach.

I swear I have never eaten so much junk food in my life. Its scarily funny how we keep cribbing out this very fact and then went out the next day to eat the same junk as we were left with no edible choice at the office. Common, who can eat big boiled potatoes or boiled cabbage or spinach with steak, bacon or fish?

It is now the third week of our stay and finally we have managed to break the jinx and started carrying our lunch boxes. Though I am happy we are having our own ghar ka khana, the amount of rice we have been eating is just too much carbs. If I don't take some steps now my dreams of cutting down on weight would never be fulfilled and I will forever remain etched in guilt. The only other viable alternate choices that I see are fruits for the night and cereals/flakes in the morning. Of course I gotta do that damned exercises.

Apart from many other things I had dreamed of doing once I have come here, it is surya namaskaras and jogging in the morning. As temperatures here hover around 3-4 degrees, forget jogging, I couldn't even move myself out of that nice cozy warm bed. In the next few days let me see if I can do the former.

I have been promising Anu that I will jog for the last three weeks and I haven't been able to fulfil the wish though.

Toure Eiffel - A moment to remember.. forever

"Eiffel Tower is just another steel structure. The real beauty of it is only at the night" If you hear anyone tell you that or anything remotely close to that and if you know him please kick them hard in the rear. Really hard. If you don't know them, well god help these lowly creatures. No, really I mean it.Only today I was I had this very interesting discussion with a friend of mine, Mihir, from Portugal about the splendid architecture beauty that Paris has got to offer.

Travelling around metro for over a week now and also keeping in view of the 40 minute journey from Airport, I can say its nothing like I have ever seen. I mean , seeing so many hollywood movies what stays with you is these jungle of skyscrapers all racing to tower one another. Paris is completely different. All the buildings are of mediveal type having arcs on the top and they are not skyscrapers. Maybe 40 -50 stories height and all are of same height. They all have this archaic feeling exuding the rich history. Be it the metros or the the restaurants or the apartments or I don't know most of the buildings are built barring glasses. It's not to say there aren't any buildings without glasses. There are but all these must have been only in the last century compared to 16th Century buildings, these are very new.

Every building here amazes me. With this renewed interest that has started gathering within me of the last one week stay, as I got to the place where I could see the edges I was completely dumbstruck. Oh God, what was I even thinking when I typed those words parroting other people's opinion that its just a steel structure in the morning! I was being so stupid. How could I even muster such thoughts? Comparing it or even calling it a steel structure is a abominable sin, if you ask me. There I was standing, holding my breath and taking in all the beauty it had to offer. I just don't have enough words to describe that beautiful feeling within seeing such an amazing monument.

All hail the French government who have taken extraordinary care to give the utmost benefit to every person to enjoy this wondrous structure. Of the four views it has got to offer, one side is completely left for the public, almost half a kilometer stretch. You see hundreds of people with innumerable varieties of cameras - slr's, compact, videographers trying hundreds of ways to be captured along with it. We even saw a newly married couple dressed in their suit and wedding gown come along with a professional photographer with this huge camera, tripod stand, some pads to enhance the lightening. They were there for almost 30 -45 minutes getting the right pose, moment. That has got to be the most romantic site I have ever seen.

With one end devoted to this, enough care has also been taken to make sure there are no other tall buildings in sight around it for about half a mile radius. What is left is this huge gargantuan structure that gets its glory in full attention. It feels as if someone from above has just cleared some space in the middle of a colony and erected the tower. It is just plain intimidating to look at.

Once the tower lit up, its view altogether is changed. But I would like to say now that the true and absolute beauty is when we can see it without any glitz and glamour. One needs to see it in all its naked glory without any embellishments.

I am truly blessed to have witnessed this Wonder of the world and this has been one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life.

My Adventurous Start to Paris - I

If blogging has taught me anything, it is that memories are best captured when they are still fresh. There are so many wonderful things happening around me that I want to remember but often gets washed away in days that pass by.

Anyways my last days before starting off to Paris have been one such set of days which I want to recall. At the outset I would like to say no packing is ever complete without mom's hands. This is a statement everyone ought to remember. After vacating my room in December, I spent the whole month of January at my avva's place. It had been one of my best days at Hyderabad with Anu too being there. Though we never got to shop together for my trip, we had fun in just talking stuff, going out (It was kinda wierd being with so many girls on the day before Anu had to depart and when all their friends had come). On the first week of Jan, mom too had come just to see me. The kind of lashing I had got on that day after they saw the state of the room I had been in still rings in my ears. Since it was only a week or so I had been there, I didn't bother much moving things around and just kept them lying.

Again, the weekend being the only time I had got to do shopping and stuff, whatever I bought I just dumped it near the table. Just to be clear on what exactly the room contents were, I had 2 suitcases, 2 bags, 3 carry bags nicely kept at one corner of the room. I know I could have dumped the contents, removed the unnecessary stuff, arranged the neat ones. But the way they were at that moment, I didn't think it was nearly as ghastly as my says it was. Neither my mom or dad shared the same view though. For them, I had done something so terribly bad that I have shamed their upbringing. Damn, what on earth are girls genes made of anyway in handling such stuff? Why are their rooms always kept so darn well? I am pretty much sure, mote would have made a much bigger mess of the whole thing. As usual I didn't argue much and anyway they took upon the tasks themselves to clean it up. Well, why bother with the whole shouting anyway? Parents, I tell ya!

So a week after that mom had come again, this time with mission in mind. The task was simple but something I had been postponing just waiting for the confirmation date. The date of travel wasn't sorted out by then. With mom, no such thing happens, she wanted the things right away. It was one of THE best things we did - that is sorting out what is needed, what else to buy and removing the unwanted stuff nicely in one of the bags. She made me pack all the things in different bags. This relieved my mind completely and gave me so much clarity in all the coming days. I exactly knew what was needed - a adapter, one pair of jeans, one cap, one jacket.

These simple items turned out to be much more complicated than I had imagined. I had spent one whole day going around 3 malls in search of one pair of perfect jeans. I have become very bad at choosing things and I lost the ability to chose nice dresses - be it a pant, shirt, or jeans. Nothing I see seem good or fit. It was one of the most dazed shopping experiences in all times. This is something I have started seeing in myself of late and its not a pleasent experience. Without anybody accompanying me, I feel I chose one of the worst dresses and I go into depression. My mind then goes blank. Anyways with such feeling, I put this on hold for the last day.

As the days went by and the date was set, the frenetic activities increased. With only few days to go I bought the suitcase of my choice. Fight broke out between my parents and me, details of which can be found in another blog. Cutting the story short and coming to the last day. This is how things stood.

The tasks pending from my end were -

1. Getting the universal adapter
2. Getting one pair of paint
3. Buying one extra pair of glasses
4. Buying torchlight
5. Get the Office laptop

There were much more. It turned out the weight wasn't enough. I still had the capacity to load 7 Kgs! Mom made sure every kg was properly utilized. With everything running so peacefully, it all went downhill once I reached office around 4:30. Everyone's eye literally was on my eye. Pranav, my manager, then dropped the bombshell by telling me to make sure I carry a medical certificate declaring that eye's stye was not contagious. I hadn't still procured the goddamn office laptop. It was 6:30 in the evening. My backup was not yet done. All these was just creating havoc in my brain. ...

To Be continued...

P.S. I am so tired right now. I have the much more important task of documenting my Eiffel Tower Trip. Will come to this again sometime soon..