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Butter Chicken

8 March, 2011 (20:06) | Chinese Food Culture | By: admin

March 6th, 2011 | Indian Recipes | No Comments

I am sure you all remember Sukaina from Lick My Spoon who recently shared her naan Recipe with us. Today, she is sharing yet another popular Indian recipe that we all love–butter chicken. Butter chicken is often served at Indian buffet restaurants and it’s easily my favorite Indian dish. I always ask for an extra serving of naan to sop up the creamy and rich sauce of butter chicken. Thanks to Lick My Spoon for her butter chicken recipe. Enjoy!

After my naan post recently, I thought it would only be fair to share a butter chicken recipe with you. After all, you can’t have one without the other. I can’t tell you the number of times I have gone to an Indian restaurant where my other half ordered a butter chicken and begged, ”Can you make this at home?’ I had no choice but to learn how to make this. So I turned to the best chef I know when it comes to Indian cooking- my mom. She has this wonderful knack of trying a meal at a restaurant and then replicating it at home. I slightly modified her recipe by adding a few more spices…

I once read somewhere that butter chicken was created when a hungry man walked into an Indian restaurant and they had no curry left. The chef decided to whip up a quick meal by throwing a tandoori chicken into a simple gravy of butter, tomatoes and a few spices. And thus, butter chicken was born. Also known as murgh makhani, this is curry not for the faint hearted- literally! Originating from Mughlai cuisine, it has lashings of butter (duh!) and cream to give it that dreamy, creamy texture. This is one dish where skimping on these two essential ingredients is not recommended. What I love about this recipe is that it doesn€™t contain any food coloring to give it that gleaming red color.

Many people love eating Indian food at restaurants but are often intimidated about trying it at home. This recipe is super simple so you’ll have no excuse to order take out again. It is best served with steamed rice or butter naan.

Butter Chicken Recipe

Ingredients:

500 grams boneless chicken, cut into 1-inch cubes
juice of 1 lemon
salt and red chili powder, to taste
1 cup yogurt
2 tsp ginger
2 tsp garlic
1 1/2 tbs tandoori masala
3 tbs butter
2 cardamoms
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
4 medium ripe tomatoes, blended
1 tbs tomato paste
1 tsp garam masala
1 tbs honey
1 tbs dried fenugreek leaves
250 ml thick cream
extra butter or coriander to garnish

Method:

Marinate the chicken cubes in lemon juice, salt, chili powder, yogurt, ginger, garlic and tandoori powder for at least half an hour. Overnight is best. Preheat the oven to the highest grill setting. Place the chicken on a baking tray closest to the grill and grill for at least 10 minutes on each side or until cooked. Allow the chicken to cook until it JUST starts to char.

To prepare the gravy, heat and melt the butter. Add to it the the cardamoms, cinnamon sticks and cloves. Stir fry for a minute before adding the tomatoes and tomato paste, Let this simmer on low to medium heat, half covered, for about 15-20 minutes. You will notice the gravy thicken and the oil will form a film on top. If the gravy is too thick, you can add a small amount of water. Add the rest of the ingredients as well as the grilled chicken and simmer for another 15 minutes. Garnish with butter or coriander.

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World Peace Cookies

25 January, 2011 (22:46) | Chinese Food Culture | By: admin

January 25th, 2011 | Baking Recipes | No Comments

By now, you should know that I am not a very good baker, even though I actually enjoy baking. There is a challenging baking recipe in my upcoming cookbook and I couldn’t get a consistent result and Pick Yin, a fellow Malaysian, came to my rescue and that’s how I discovered Life is Great, a blog about all the good things in life: food, traveling, cooking, and baking. Please welcome Pick Yin to Rasa Malaysia as she presents us the World Peace Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. If you are doing last-minute baking for the upcoming Lunar New Year, this is a great Recipe to try.

I am honored when Bee presented Life is Great the opportunity to share a recipe here at Rasa Malaysia. Her authentic Penang Char Kuey Teow was the first recipe I tried and savoring the dish brought back memories of our delish holiday at the food haven island.

This month it is baking frenzy time at our kitchen. Chinese around the world will be celebrating the Lunar New Year in about 1 week when families and friends gather for good times filled with love, laughter and of course, food. This year I plan to make Bee’s pineapple tarts and some Dragon cookies to usher in the year of Rabbit but before that, something chocolate is required to fill our cookie jar…

Dorie Greenspan originally called these Korova Cookies (Sablés Korova) in her dainty Paris Sweets cookbook, the name referring to the restaurant where Pierre Hermé created these dark treasures. She then changed the name to World Peace Cookies in her famed Baking: From My Home to Yours after her neighbor, Richard Gold, pointed out that constant offerings of these cookies will surely bring out all senses of goodwill and joy in us.

This is provided we don’t all turn into cookie monsters after the first bite and resort to fighting over the last cookie. If you’re a chocolate and cookie lover, I highly recommend stashing the batch of your cooled cookies into the deepest abyss of your freezer and blocking the access with your meats, fish and ice cream tubs. Why, you may ask. I licked clean the paddle of my Kitchen Aid. While slicing the cookie log I had to will myself not to eat up all the crumbs else there would be not much cookies left to bake. I ate three for testing after baking each tray. After swallowing the first one my other half Vijay told me matter-of-factly that we don’t have enough and warned me to keep watch on those cooling racks because he couldn’t promise he won’t steal. Making them smaller didn’t help – we ate five to six each time the jar is invaded. I almost didn’t bring some to work for sharing – I counted how many while packing.

Itâs difficult to resist these soft, melt-in-your-mouth and intensely flavored sablés. The fleur de sel not only allow the chocolate and cocoa perform their best but occasionally explodes in your mouth like little salty dynamites, balancing all that sugar. Now there is less than ten cookies left in our big jar and Iâm busy scheming on how to fit another two batches into my pineapple tart baking schedule this weekend.

I hope you will bake this too and rest assured, if you’re baking to celebrate the Bunny Year like me, these international peacemakers will not compete with the rest of your Chinese New Year cookies. They may be long gone from the tidbits table before you can utter Gong Xi Fa Cai!

World Peace Cookies Recipe

Recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours, metric measurements from Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen
Makes about 36 cookies

1¼ cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
1/3 cup (30 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons or 150 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3cup (120 grams) (packed) light brown sugar
¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
 teaspoon fleur de sel or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 ounces (150 grams) bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or a generous ¾ up store-bought mini chocolate chips

Make the cookie dough: Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together. Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until soft and creamy. Add both sugars, the salt and vanilla extract and beat for 2 minutes more.

Turn off the mixer. Pour in the flour. Drape a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself and your kitchen from flying flour and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time. Take a peek — if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple of times more; if not, remove the towel. Continuing at low speed, mix for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough — for the best texture, work the dough as little as possible once the flour is added, and don’t be concerned if the dough looks a little crumbly. Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix only to incorporate.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface, gather it together and divide it in half. Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into logs that are 1½ inches in diameter. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months. If you’ve frozen the dough, you needn’t defrost it before baking â just slice the logs into cookies and bake the cookies 1 minute longer.)

Getting ready to bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

Working with a sharp thin knife, slice the logs into rounds that are 1/2 inch thick. (The rounds are likely to crack as you’re cutting them — don’t be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.) Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about one inch between them.

Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 12 minutes — they won€™t look done, nor will they be firm, but that’s just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can serve them or let them reach room temperature.

Serving: The cookies can be eaten when they are warm or at room temperature — Doris prefers them at room temperature, when the textural difference between the crumbly cookie and the chocolate bits is greatest — and are best suited to cold milk or hot coffee.

Storing: Packed airtight, cookies will keep at room temperature for up to 3 days; they can be frozen for up to 2 months. They can also be frozen in log form for months, and can be sliced and baked directly from the freezer, adding a few minutes to the baking time.

Tips: If you find it difficult to shape the dough into a log, do it between a piece of parchment paper. To avoid very crumbly cookie dough when slicing, ensure that the butter is soft at room temperature before mixing, the chocolate chunks are small and the dough cold but not freezing. Let it rest on the counter for 5 to 15 minutes after being removed from the fridge or freezer. To avoid spreading cookies, chill the tray of sliced cookie dough forŅ to 10 minutes before baking. If the log breaks while cutting, just rearrange the crumbs and press them together again to form a round cookie.

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Mango Lassi Recipe

22 August, 2010 (12:04) | Chinese food recipes | By: admin

Mango Lassi
I got a box of mangoes when I hosted my recent Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 Summer White Party. I used half to make lobster and mango salad and also the other half for mango lassi–my favorite Indian beverage.

Even though I grew up in Malaysia where Indians are the third largest ethnic group, I’d by no means had mango lassi until I came to the United States. I very first tasted it in an Indian buffet restaurant and since then I am hooked. I love its fruity sweet taste, creamy richness from yogurt and milk, plus the smoothness of blended mango down my throat. Mango lassi is just ideal with fiery and spice-laden Indian food…

Here is my simple mango lassi recipe that is certainly totally painless to prepare. I use honey as an alternative to sugar and that truly does the trick for me!

MANGO LASSI RECIPE

Substances:

two ripe mangoes

2-3 tablespoons honey or to taste

1/2 cup milk

1 cup yogurt

Method:

Peel the mango skin, discard seed and cut the mangoes into tiny pieces. Combine all of the components in an electronic mixer or blender and blend well. Make sure the mangoes are fully blended into juice.

Adjust the components as per your taste, pour into glasses, freeze inside fridge for 30 minutes or serve instantly.

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