Cheera'r Palau or Flattened Rice Pilaf

Kanda Poha

Cheera (Bengali) or Poha (Hindi) or Flattened Rice (English) is parboiled rice that has been flattened and dried. It's available in packages at Indian markets all over India and North America and is considered a 'good' food for diabetics.

Uncooked Cheera or Poha

Thick poha is preferable to using thin poha in this recipe so that the appearance and texture is preserved after cooking. I made the mistake of purchasing thin poha so, as you can see, the individual grains are barely noticeable.

I was under the misconception that Kanda Poha refers to the potatoes in this poha dish, but during a phone conversation, my sister said it refers to the onions in the dish. Onions are considered to be non-vegetarian in certain parts of India so it's important to name it appropriately.

It's a hearty and filling meal which, if had for lunch, curbs hunger pangs that usually occur in the late afternoon.

Arahar Dal with Green Beans and Tamarind

Yellow Split Peas with Tamarind

Yellow split peas, also known as arahar dal in Bengali and toor dal in Hindi, generally has a bland taste so I like to introduce the sweet and sour taste of tamarind paste to excite our taste buds. Add a dash of dried, red pepper flakes and some vegetables for an unforgettable lentil dish.

Cooking it under pressure produces a thick and creamy dal with the added bonus of cooking in under 15 minutes. So here is a quick and hearty side dish that goes well with both steamed rice and chapatis.

Lau Shukto - Squash in Mustard and Poppy Seed Sauce

Lau Shukto

Shukto is a very Bengali dish of vegetables that must include bitter melon as a component. However, some vegetables such as bottle gourd or lau (it's Bengali name) can be cooked on its own, in the same style, and are also called shukto. I have cheated by adding onions (not considered vegetarian) and tomatoes to this Lau Shukto. Our Ninja Chopper came in handy again to dice the vegetables really fine, so that they cook quicker. 

This can be served as a side dish with rice or chapatis.

Gota Sheddo - Lentil & Vegetable Stew

Gota Sheddo

Gota (whole) Sheddo (boil) is a lentil and vegetable stew in which the vegetables are left whole or cut in big chunks. It's a ceremonial dish, both vegetarian and vegan, that uses green (unhusked) mung beans, a combination of 3 or 5 vegetables, minimal oil, fennel seeds and strips or slices of fresh ginger. Pictured here are red salad radishes, whole baby potatoes, chunks of Japanese eggplant, whole jalapeno peppers and sweet potatoes. All the ingredients are placed in a pressure cooker with a cup of water and cooked under pressure for 10 minutes. It's best served with steamed rice.

Stir-Fried Spinach and Chickpeas

Saagwala Channa

A delicious way to dress up a simple bowl of spinach is to add meat or chicken, or in this case, chickpeas/garbanzo beans. Cooking it in a pressure cooker creates a creamy spinach in which the chickpeas provide a satisfying texture. The ingredients are similar to those used in a Saagwala Murg or Lamb. 

This side dish goes well with either steamed basmati rice or chapatis.

Thai Curry Pastes

Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste

"Aromatic herbs such as lemongrass, galangal (Thai ginger) and fresh red chilis are harvested at their peak of freshness and carefully blended with fragrant spices for the perfect balance of flavors. Use as a stir-fry seasoning, a soup base, or with coconut milk to create a delicious Thai curry. Add a teaspoon to your favorite marinades for a bit of spiciness." from Thai Kitchen

Make Easy Red Curry Paste at home.

Thai Kitchen Green Curry Paste

"Aromatic herbs such as lemongrass, galangal (Thai ginger) and fresh green chilis are harvested at their peak of freshness and carefully blended with fragrant spices for the perfect balance of flavors. Use as a stir-fry seasoning, a soup base, or with coconut milk to create a delicious Thai curry. Add a teaspoon to your favorite marinades for a bit of spiciness." from Thai Kitchen

Make Thai Green Curry Paste at home.

Thai Kitchen Yellow Curry Paste

"Aromatic herbs such as lemongrass, galangal (Thai ginger) and fresh yellow chilis are harvested at their peak of freshness and carefully blended with fragrant spices for the perfect balance of flavors. Use as a stir-fry seasoning, a soup base, or with coconut milk to create a delicious Thai curry. Add a teaspoon to your favorite marinades for a bit of spiciness." from Thai Kitchen

Use Yellow Curry Paste to make this Beef Yellow Curry or Chicken Yellow Curry.

Make Easy Homemade Yellow Curry Paste at home.

Thai Green Fish Curry

Thai Green Fish Curry

One of my favourite items at a Thai restaurant, green chicken curry is always loaded with vegetables. This is a green fish curry to which rainbow peppers, peas and onion slices have been added. In place of salt, fish sauce has been used. 

Green, red and yellow curry pastes are available in tiny bottles wherever Thai ingredients are sold in Asian markets or at regular supermarkets, but you can very easily make your own at home. Take a look at these recipes for Thai Curry Pastes to get an idea on how to recreate them at home.

Shutki Chingri Diye Bandhakopi - Stir-Fried Cabbage with Dried Shrimp

Stir-Fried Cabbage with Dried Shrimp

Credit for this recipe goes to Mum who used to cook shredded cabbage with black pepper and eggs. I've blogged before about Grated Cabbage with Eggs that is similar to this. Adding the shrimp powder (entirely optional) adds a lovely Burmese touch to this dish.

Chaler Muro Ghonto - Fish Head Curry with Rice

Chaler Muro Ghonto

I was browsing through a Korean market recently and came across their open freezers and found bags of 'Rohu Fish Head and Tail'. One of my favorite Bengali dishes is Muro Ghonto and it tastes best with rohu or rui or carp fish heads. When I make it, I have only me to please, so it turned out to be spicy hot and rich!

On a phone call with my sister, she gave me the instructions for this simple and straightforward way of preparing this delectable dish. She kept stressing the importance of frying the pieces of fish until they were fully cooked so it took some time to brown the fish, but that was the most complicated step. 

It's a one-dish meal and I was quite happy to have it without anything else. 

Teriyaki Meatballs & Rice Bowl

Teriyaki Meatballs and
Rice Bowl

Dinner tonight was truly amazing, even if I say so myself, which was evidenced by how clean GrandBoy#1's dishes were after he was done eating! Use your favourite meatball recipe or buy ready-made ones, either way works because the magic is in the teriyaki and hoisin dipping sauces.

A Kids' Favourite

The meatballs are cooked in and coated with teriyaki sauce and we used the hoisin dipping sauce for the vegetables and rice. An alternative would be to take a portion of a meatball, some vegetables and rice and roll all that in a lettuce leaf and then dip into the hoisin dipping sauce. I'm so thrilled to be able to offer the GrandBoys yet another dinner option!

Onion and Tomato Raita

Onion and Tomato Raita

Raita is a cold salad, often served with a festive Indian meal, that helps to mellow the heat in spicy dishes. A dressing of Greek yogurt cools the body. 

A salsa of diced onions, tomatoes, green chilies and cilantro is dressed with Greek yogurt that is cooling to the body. Unlike a salad which is eaten as a first course, Raita is eaten along with other components of an Indian meal.

Burmese Thayet Thee Thoke - Green Mango Salad

Thayet Thee Thoke

Thayet Thee (mango) Thoke (hand-mixed salad) is a common accompaniment to a Burmese meal during the mango season which runs April through June. Look for unripe mangoes that have a dark-green peel and are hard to the touch.

They are sour, slightly sweet and crunchy, and are ideal in a salad.

Strange to say, we hardly ever cooked Burmese food at home while we lived in Burma because our neighbours were only too willing to share their meals with us. One couple, in particular, did not have any children so we were always welcome in their home. Street vendors, selling all kinds of snacks or meals, shouted their wares through our neighbourhoods from early morning throughout the day until late into the night. So we ate and learned to love Burmese food through their wares.

Because the mangoes are so flavourful, very little else is needed in this salad. Typical salad ingredients are deep fried onions, deep fried garlic and chili flakes, roasted chickpea flour, raw thinly sliced onions, a spicy oil such as chili oil or wasabi oil, cilantro and green chilies.

Serve each ingredient separately, like in a salad bar, and mix individual portions as needed. This salad should be eaten as soon as possible after combining the ingredients to maintain their structural integrity.

Hand-Mixed Green Mango Salad

Stir-Fried Mushrooms and Peppers

Stir-Fried Mushrooms and Peppers

This is likely to become a favourite vegetable dish in our home because it's so simple and takes no time at all to put together. It's composed of pre-sliced mushrooms, onions, red and green peppers, and seasoned simply with some salt, ginger and garlic paste and black peppercorns that are ground to a powder along with mouri/fennel seeds.

A vegetarian couple a while back spent a week with us. Any longer than that would have caused me to eat heads because I was craving non-veg food so badly! But I picked up a few tips and tricks about cooking vegetables, particularly mushrooms. Because they shed so much water, the trick to cooking mushrooms, I was told, is to fry them first in nothing but oil until al dente. More oil is then added to fry the onions and other vegetables and salt should be added at the very end. This produces a dry stir-fry that is delicious served with steamed rice. It can be had with a variety of Indian breads, too.

Tok Maach - Green Mango Fish

Tok Maach

Tok (sour) Maach (fish) takes me back to my childhood in Burma, where this dish was prepared by my mother using Topshe Maach/Mango Fish and green mangoes. Mum would slice the flesh of the green mango and immerse the slices in the gravy to create a tart and lip-smacking Tok Maach.

This Tok Maach I made was inspired by a recipe I found in a food group on Facebook called Flavours from Undivided Bengal. What caught my attention in this recipe was that the mango slices were blended to a paste rather than leaving them whole. The resulting gravy was thick and full of flavour. For those of you who don't have access to Facebook, I have reproduced the recipe with my adaptations and adjustments.

Any white fish is suitable, although rui maach/grass carp or a whole fish like topshe/mango fish taste the best. Serve with hot, steamed rice for a comforting meal.

Keema Alu Matar - Ground Meat, Potaoes and Peas

Keema Alu Matar

This dish is commonly served at roadside eateries that are frequented mostly by truck drivers along the highways in India. These roadside eateries are called 'dhabas'. I fell in love with it while living in Defense Colony in New Delhi where I was introduced to a 'dhaba' at the corner of our street. To give her a day off, our help would get food from the 'dhaba' once a week. Our favourite items were Keema Alu Matar, Baingan Bhartha and Dal Makhani, accompanied by Naan/Romali Roti. This keema dish was also a favourite during our adolescence spent in Darjeeling.

Any kind of keema/ground meat can be used, such as chicken, lamb or beef. I tried Everest meat masala powder for the first time today and was pleased with the robust flavour it imparted to the minced meat. Another unusual ingredient used today is mace.

Mace is a spice consisting of the dried and lacy covering of the nutmeg fruit of a  tropical evergreen tree. It has a slightly warm taste and a fragrance similar to that of nutmeg.

The most laborious part in the preparation of this dish was browning the ground meat. The rest was easy because it was made in the pressure cooker, using just one pot.

Deem Posto - Eggs in White Poppy Seeds Sauce

Deem Posto

Posto (the Bengali name for white poppy seeds) dishes are a common item at Bengali tables. The poppy seeds are soaked in boiling water, cooled and blended with green chilies and salt until smooth and creamy. This sauce is used in both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. The general procedure is to temper the oil with nigella seeds (kalo jeera) and green chilies, add the vegetables or hard-boiled eggs in this case, simmer them with ginger until cooked and add the posto before taking off the stove.

A word of caution for anyone who has a drug test coming up, I have been told that consuming any food containing poppy seeds (black poppy seed muffins, for example) may affect the results of the drug test.

Chicken Porcupines

Chicken Porcupines

The next time homemade meatballs are on the menu, reserve 10-12 meatballs for this appetizer, especially if you have young children around. These 'porcupines' are kid-friendly because they're bite-sized and small enough to hold in their little hands. The porcupine quills are formed by rolling the meatballs in long-grain rice and steaming them.

These were steamed in a rice cooker at the base of which egg-drop soup bubbled happily. They're ready when the grains of rice begin to stick out of the meatballs, resembling porcupine quills. This could take a while so be patient.

Serve with a drop of Sriracha sauce or ketchup, as shown above, or make a dip as described below. These are great for starters and could also be served at a potluck or picnic because they're convenient to transport and eat.

Ghoti Kalai Dal

Ghoti Kalai Dal

Ghoti refers to the people of West Bengal. Kalai/urad dal is good for controlling diabetes because of its alkaline nature. This ginger and 5 spice perfumed dal was a popular dish prepared in my sister's 'shoshur bari' or in-laws' home. During one of our frequent phone calls, she gave me this recipe or rather what I remember of her instructions.

Chicken Curry with Mint & Cilantro

Minty Chicken Curry

Mum used to make her father's scrumptious recipe which she called Ceylon Chicken. Dadu (grandfather) was a wonderful cook and enjoyed international cuisine as much as Indian food. 

Using bone-in chicken in this dish would make it immensely more flavourful, but that's a matter of personal preference. I've used boneless and skinless chicken thighs for dinner tonight. Serve this as a main course with steamed rice or chapatis.

Lamb Rogan Josh

Lamb Rogan Josh

Over 3 decades ago, during time spent in California, Mum's sister and my aunt came to visit us for a number of months. She enjoyed talking about her (and Mum's) childhood in Burma. It was during her stay that we met 3 families from Burma, also living in Southern California. My most precious memories of her are the endless hours we spent in the kitchen while we prepared a number of her favorite dishes. She taught me how to make tandoori chicken in the toaster oven, plump and juicy gulab jamuns and this lamb curry that originated in Kashmir, India.

The lamb simmers on the stove top for 2-1/2 hours until fall-off-the-bone tender and tastes delicious served with rice or any Indian bread.

Bori Diye Bandhakopi - Stir-fried Cabbage with Lentil Dumplings

Bori Diye Bandhakopi

Boris or lentil dumplings add flavour and crunch to vegetable and fish dishes. Each is shaped like a little pagoda with a rounded base and a tiny pointed steeple. Just like garam masala powder, boris vary widely depending on each region in India. 

Lentil Dumplings

Bengali boris are small and delicately flavoured predominantly with asafoetida/hing and are made from a wide variety of lentils and/or vegetables as pictured above. This picture which I was lucky to find on the BongHaat website on the internet (http://zozu.site/media/1796977486733311584) features Til/Sesame, Posto/White Poppy Seed, Hing/Asafoetida, Fulkopi/Cauliflower, Chalkumro/Ash Gourd, Motor Dal/Split Pea, Kalai/Split Black Gram and Masoor/Red Lentil. Wadis from other parts of India are much larger and heavily spiced, predominantly with chili powder.

Cabbage is one of those vegetables that's available year-round here in North America. My favourite preparation with cabbage is to make it with shrimp, but we have recently developed an allergy to shrimp which we now try to avoid. On its own, cabbage is tasteless so adding boris is a great idea!

Jeera Guro Diye Maacher Jhol - Fish in Cumin Gravy

Jeera Guro Diye Maacher Jhol

Another quick and easy gravy for fish. Any white fish such as snapper, carp or whitefish works in this recipe. Since we all love eggplant, it's one way to sneak vegetables into a meal. Cumin seeds are roasted in a dry pan without oil and ground to a fine powder for the gravy.

This main dish is best served with basmati or jasmine rice.

Oven-Baked Lamb Stew

Lamb Stew

Cooking meat dishes in the oven in the winter time has the huge benefit that it can be left to cook unattended with practically no interference. Another bonus is that winter can be shut out and left outdoors where it belongs because cooking in the oven doesn't release too many aromas. It took just 15 minutes to prepare the meat and vegetables for the oven. This was so quick and easy that I was a little unsure of how it would turn out and was pleasantly surprised.

After layering all the ingredients in the baking dish it took 3.5 hours to bake this stew in the oven. By the time we sat down to dinner the lamb was fork tender and falling off the bones. And because it baked for so long, there was no need to brown the meat which was a huge relief. The baking dish also served as a serving dish so there were no pots and pans to clean. So I will be filing this under my 'stress-free recipes' category.

Tilapia Maacher Tel Jhol - Tilapia in Mustard Oil Gravy

This is a delectable way of preparing fish when you're craving a tasty fish dish to have with hot, fragrant Basmati rice. It takes less than 10 minutes to prepare on the stove top and is finger-licking good! To save time on the days I cook, when fish arrives home on marketing day, they are cut into serving size pieces, rubbed with salt and turmeric powder and stored in Ziploc bags, ready to slide into a skillet on demand.

The gravy is so simple to assemble that the resulting goodness at the end is a pleasurable surprise.  It's perfect for those busy days when the choice between going out to eat or enjoying a hot rice bowl with fish at home is a no-brainer! And it uses only 5 ingredients if spices are omitted.

Burmese Egg Curry - Chet Oo Chin Hin

Chet Oo Chin Hin

Egg curry in Burma is generally made from duck eggs (bae oo) but in North America duck eggs are scarce, so chicken eggs (chet oo) are more commonly used. I've left the eggs whole to keep them in tact. Halved eggs tend to lose their yolks during this cooking process.

A Burmese lady in our Burmese food group on Facebook introduced us to her hassle-free way of cooking egg curry. After hard-boiling and peeling the eggs and potatoes, all the ingredients are combined in a saucepan with enough chicken broth and/or water to cover and slowly simmered together until the potatoes are cooked through and the gravy thickens.

This spicy-hot and sour curry is best enjoyed with steamed rice.