Jeera Begun Diye Macher Jhol - Fish in Cumin Gravy with Eggplant

 

Jeera Begun Diye Macher Jhol

I've made variations of this dish and blogged about them in the past. Today I combined eggplants with roasted cumin seed powder to flavour this Maacher Jhol. There was an abundance of eggplants in the fridge, of the Japanese variety, which are my favourite. Eggplant pairs well with roasted cumin seeds. I make a big batch by taking a jar of McCormick’s cumin seeds (or buy in bulk at an Indian grocery store) and dry roasting them in an iron skillet over medium heat just until its aroma is released. Allow the seeds to cool, place in a coffee grinder and grind to a fine powder. Store the roasted cumin seed powder in its original jar or a glass jar with a tight lid, for future use. The base of the gravy for this Macher Jhol comprises two quartered onions, some chopped ginger, a tomato and a green chili that are blanched for 3-4 minutes and pureed in a blender. The resulting gravy is thick and clings to the eggplant and fish pieces. This macher jhol goes very well with steamed rice or hot and fluffy chapatis/tortillas.

Simple Stir-Fried Cauliflower - Bhaja Phool Kopi

 

Bhaja Phool Kopi

Cauliflower ranks at the top of my list of favourite vegetables. I like this recipe because the true taste of the cauliflower comes through since its made with minimal spices and cooked until al dente. Be free to chop and fry onions and garlic until golden brown, but my shortcut is to use ready made deep-fried onions and garlic. The cauliflower is seasoned very simply with turmeric, salt and roasted cumin seed powder. I get a bottle of McCormick cumin seeds, roast them in a dry skillet, cool and grind in a coffee grinder (that I reserve for grinding spices) to a fine powder. The ground cumin seeds are stored in the bottle and used as needed.

Serve with chapatis, pilau or biryani and raita.

Smelts Cooked with Unripe Mangoes

Smelts with Unripe Mangoes

Mango Fish reminds me of our life in Rangoon (now known as Yangon). Mum made this dish with Topshe Mach or Mango Fish at the start of the mango season when green, unripe mangoes are plentiful. In North America, frozen, unripe mangoes are available in Bangladeshi markets. I've made this with smelts, but any filleted fish or fish steaks can be used in this recipe.

Crab Claws Curry

 

Crab Claws Curry

Rock crab claws at our local supermarket looked so clean and tempting. There was a little over a pound of claws in the package which was perfect because I will be the only one eating them. Hubby is not fond of anything that has to be picked at, so a simple filleted fish curry will suit him.

Cooking the Crab Claws

A few tips before I dive into the recipe. First of all, make sure to use a nut cracker to crack the claws, and break apart each segment before cooking. It was a mess doing that while eating. Secondly, the claws came frozen and I dropped them into the gravy as is. They thawed and cooked over medium-low heat to perfection. And last but not least, I loved cooking them this way because this is a dump-and-go recipe. Make sure the gravy ingredients are minced so that the gravy comes out smooth and delicious when cooked. 

This is best served with hot, steamed rice.

Serving Suggestion

Fish with Cauliflower and Green Onions

 

Fish with Cauliflower & Green Onions

Any kind of fish works with this recipe. I used filleted fish, but it goes without saying that bone-in fish tastes much better. This way of cooking a fish curry takes me back to the days when we first arrived in India from Burma. We stayed with our uncle's family in Calcutta and Mamima (aunt) made fish this way. It tastes so good!

Begun Basanti - Eggplant in Mustard and Yogurt Sauce

Begun Basanti

My sister, Rene, introduced me to this eggplant dish. Use any kind of eggplant. Just make sure they are cut in uniform pieces. Even the smallest eggplant, left whole or cut in half, work really well here. I love Japanese eggplant because they taste so good. I used Greek yogurt and whipped it with besan to keep it from separating in the hot oil.

Ingredients

4 Japanese or long eggplant
4 + 2 Tbsp. oil
1 tsp. turmeric powder
1/2 tsp. paprika/Kashmiri mirch
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. kalonji/nigella seeds
1 green chili, minced
1 cup thick yogurt
1 tsp. besan or gram flour

Onion-Garlic-Tomato Paste

1 tsp. oil
1 medium onion, quartered
6 cloves garlic
1 medium tomato
1/2 tsp. sugar

Mustard Paste
1 Tbsp. black mustard seeds
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp. salt
1 green chili, diced

Garnish
1/4 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. garam masala powder (cinnamon, cloves & cardamom)
1 tsp. mustard oil
3 green chilies, sliced into circles or slit
cilantro, minced

Directions

1. Cut eggplant in 2" lengths and cut each segment in half lengthwise.
2. Toss eggplant pieces 1/4 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. turmeric powder and marinate for 30 minutes.
3. Soak mustard seeds in water for 1/2 hour, drain and blend with salt and green chili to a smooth paste.
4. Bring a cup of water to a boil and blanch quartered onion, garlic cloves and tomato until skin on tomato splits.
5. Remove skin from tomato and blend it along with oil, sugar, blanched onion and garlic to a smooth paste, reserving water.
6. Heat 2 Tbsp. oil and fry marinated eggplant until golden brown and soft.
7. Remove eggplant from oil and set aside.
8. Add remaining oil to skillet and temper with nigella seeds and minced green chilies.
9. Add remaining turmeric powder and paprika to hot oil along with onion-garlic-tomato paste and stir-fry until oil resurfaces.
10. Add reserved water from blanching onion to skillet.
11. Beat yogurt with besan and mustard paste, and add to skillet.
12. Return eggplant to skillet, stir well and bring gravy to a boil.
13. Garnish with sugar, garam masala powder and chilies.
14. Stir, sprinkle with cilantro and transfer to a serving dish.

Serve as a side dish with hot, steamed rice.

Asparagus with Onions and Tomatoes

 

Asparagus with
Onions and Tomatoes

Green beans prepared this way was a favorite when we were growing up. Fresh asparagus, I was sure, would work just as well and it was! A generous sprinkling of cracked black pepper finishes this dish, giving it lots of zing. Serve this as a side dish to any Indian meal and can be served with steamed rice or any Indian bread.

Ranga Alur Bhortha - Sweet Potato Mash

 

Ranga Alur Bhortha

Sweet potatoes were always a favourite vegetable even as a child. One of my earliest memories is walking around with a boiled sweet potato and munching on it like candy. Bhortha is a mashed vegetable or fish preparation, so it's better to microwave or bake the sweet potatoes rather than boiling them. This dish is served as a first course during a Bengali meal and tastes best paired with steamed rice.

Omelette Curry

 

Omelette Curry

This reminds me of Mum. We'd have this as a wonderful alternative to Dimer Dalna made with whole eggs. Cook the omelette in a large frying pan, more like a flan than rolling it up. It's very simple and easy to make, but cutting diamond shapes out of the flan makes it look fancy. Serve this as a main dish with steamed rice or chapatis.

Beyond Meat Keema Curry - Minced Meat Curry

 

Beyond Meat Keema Curry

Beyond Meat is a plant-based substitute for meat, made from a combination of peas and brown rice. It tastes just like the real thing with a meaty texture. I treated it just like minced meat to make a keema curry. DH claims it tasted better than chicken or beef, but I was more impressed that it took far less time to cook. This keema curry goes well with steamed rice or chapatis.

Mattar Paneer Bhurji - Scrambled Cottage Cheese and Peas

Mattar Paneer Bhurji

This looks a lot like Indian scrambled eggs, but there are no eggs in this preparation. Instead, paneer or cottage cheese is grated and cooked in the same way. It makes a terrific stuffing for tortilla rolls or can be served as a side dish with rice or chapatis at dinner.

Bhindi Alu Bhaja - Stir-Fried Okra and Potatoes

 

Bhindi Alu Bhaja

Bhindi or okra is a summer vegetable and tastes wonderful when stir-fried on its own or with diced potatoes. I like to coat the cut pieces of bhindi with amchur (dried mango) powder before frying in hot oil. This reduces the viscosity of the vegetable. Sliced onions and diced tomatoes along with salt are added at the very end of the cooking process.

This stir-fried dish is served as a side to complement a Bengali/Indian meal and goes well with steamed rice or chapatis.

Begun Bashonti - Eggplant in Mustard Sauce

 

Begun Bashonti

This eggplant preparation was first suggested by my eldest sister. Mum would make it for special occasions for which it is suited because it's pure vegetarian and does not use onions or garlic. I like using Japanese eggplants because they have very few seeds and cook down to a tenderness that melts in the mouth. This dish uses both black and yellow mustard seeds, white poppy seeds and grated coconut that produces a smooth and mellow paste for the base of the gravy. Best had with hot, steamed rice, it can be accompanied by a meat or fish item and lentils.

Panch Mishali Chorchori - Stir-Fried Vegetable Medley

 

Panch Mishali Chorchori

This dish is a mixture of 5 vegetables (panch mishali) that are stir-fried (chorchori) with or without lentil dumplings, also known as 'bori'. I used 3 root vegetables, radish, carrots and sweet potato, along with eggplant and pui shaak or malabar spinach. It's very easy to prepare and a great use of vegetables that may have been overlooked or forgotten. It doesn't need onions or garlic which was a blessing for me because I dislike 'shedding tears' over onions.

Maacher Tel Jhol - Fish in Spiced Oil

 

Maacher Tel Jhol

It was getting late one evening and creeping into the last hour before dinner, when I realized the protein part of dinner was missing. We usually have 3 dishes at dinner comprising lentils, vegetables and a protein. Fortunately, Hubby had shopped at Sam's Club earlier in the day and brought home his favorite Tilapia fillets. The only prep required to make this fish was to cut the fillets into bite-sized pieces and slice an onion. It was done in a jiffy, and, without missing a beat, dinner was on the table at our usual time.

Simple Bhapa Shorshe Maach or Steamed Fish in Mustard Sauce

 

Bhapa Shorshe Maach

The easiest way to prepare this dish is to use Colman's mustard powder instead of grinding mustard seeds that need to be soaked for a couple of hours. Any kind of fish can be used, but hilsa (ilish) and salmon steaks taste the best. The process is very simple. Fish pieces are combined with the mustard sauce and placed in a stainless steel tiffin box and steamed for 15 minutes. This dish is ideal for getting a meal on the table in under half an hour.

Shada or Pani Khola Maach - Fish Stew

Fish Stew

As you can surmise from this photograph, my kitchen caters to Jack Spratt and his wife. As the nursery rhyme goes,

Jack Spratt could eat no fat

And his wife could eat no lean.

And so betwixt the two of them

They kept the platter clean.

The man in this house is tall and lean and his wife, the opposite. She lives to eat and he eats to live. She loves 'bone-in everything' and he likes a no-fuss meal. That's why this fish stew is made with two cuts of fish. Nice, fatty fish steaks of Swai or Mekong catfish for the wife and fillets of Tilapia for Jack.

I didn't expect too much from such a simple recipe. There are only 5 ingredients to consider but requires killer prep. The most tedious part is to mash slivered onions, salt, green chilies and mustard oil until your hands ache and all the juices from the onions release. This takes a total of at least 15-20 minutes, so I do it in batches. I add salt to the onions and let them sit until they soften and then mash them. When my hands begin aching, I take a break, a sip of coffee, flex my fingers, relax a bit and go back to mashing the onions. In the end, all this effort pays off because not only is the stew light and refreshing, it's also easily digested which suits Jack Spratt to a Tee.

From all the recipes I've perused, this is generally made with hilsa or ilish maach, which I can only dream of because it's difficult to come by in North America. So I've adapted to my environment and learned to live with the scarcity of specialty fish. 

This is best served with steamed long-grain rice.

Phoolkop'r Bhortha - Cauliflower Mash

 

Phoolkopi'r Bhortha

This is the Bengali way of making Bhortha (Bharta in Hindi) or mashed vegetable. Phoolkopi is cauliflower, so this is Mashed Cauliflower. As you know, cauliflower has little flavour of its own and takes on the flavour and aroma of herbs and spices that are added to it. The overriding element in this dish is mustard oil that is added to the cauliflower while it's still hot from steaming. The pungency of mustard oil is what sets our bhorthas apart from bhartas from other parts of India. Another distinction is the addition of salt to taste along with raw, minced onions, green chilies, cilantro or coriander leaves and tomatoes that are mashed into the vegetable. It's a simple dish to assemble and takes center stage at any meal.

The leaves and stems from the base of the cauliflower are removed and the whole head of cauliflower is placed in a pressure cooker with 1/8 cup of vegetable broth or water and 2 tablespoons of oil. Salt is sprinkled over the cauliflower, the cover is put on, its brought to full pressure over high heat and then pressure cooked for 15 minutes over low heat after full pressure builds up. After removing from heat, always allow pressure to release naturally, for about ten minutes, before messing with the cover to prevent steam from burning your hands.

Use a masher like a 'daler kata' or lentils masher to mash the cauliflower and add all the aromatics before mixing it all together to make the bhortha. This bhortha  goes well with hot, steamed rice and is usually served as a first course or starter of a Bengali meal.

Fish Pulao

 

Fish Pulao

This is a simple and satisfying one pot meal of buttery rice and fresh fish. I used a combination of basa steaks and filleted tilapia to cater to my preference for bone-in fish and Hubby's preference for hassle-free filleted fish. Large discs of russet potatoes provide texture and wholesomeness to the dish.

This main dish uses a few, simple ingredients and comes together with little effort to produce a flavourful dish that goes well with fresh salad or raita.

Served with fresh
Tomatoes and Onions

Chaler Payesh - Rice Pudding

 

Chal'er Payesh

A comforting and deeply satisfying end to a meal, rice pudding is a favourite with young and old alike.