Rawa Idli or Rawas Idli?

Not eating seafood for two months can be quite discerning for Pisceans. So the most sensible thing to do is to eat as much seafood as one can before the 'ban' begins!

Eating fish can also be quite challenging; I wanted to avoid that undetectable piece of fish bone surreptitiously choking my throat and  ruining the pleasure of the eating experience.

Rawas fish has less bones and more flesh. Its more convenient than other fishes too. (Rohu has 'Y' shaped bones that can be a pain)

Clean and boil the pieces in water with some crushed garlic and salt for 2-3 minutes. It will be easier to clean out the bones after that.  Add a slice of bread for binding. Some more salt to taste, black pepper powder, some more garlic, lots of lemon juice and chopped spring onion. Shape like aloo patties.

Traditionally, fish is fried with a coating of semolina, gram flour or rice flour. But try this.......

Buy some ready made Idli Mix (the wet one). Coat the fish patties with lots and lots of idli mix and deep fry in hot oil. You get a different and tasty texture.

Serve with tartare sauce. I'm sure it would taste good with hot and sweet chilly sauce as well.

Amrood ka Kalakand

Sometimes brilliance just happens!

Split one litre whole cream milk and reserve chenna (the white grainy part of milk). Add 250 gms of guava pulp, 1 teaspoon of ghee, 100 gms of sugar and some food colour. Cook till dry. Cool & sprinkle pistachios. Short  and sweet?

A Barfi with Mixed Feelings

What do you do when you need barfi and there are no mithai shops around? I'm not talking about pangs; I'm talking about the time when you actually 'need' it.

Simple......you make your own barfi!

Here's what I did, I got 250 grams of Khoya/Mawa/Cottage Cheese.....call it what you want. After heating just one teaspoon of butter in a pan, I fried the khoya for 2 minutes and added 2 tablespoons of Mixed Fruit Jam and stirred on a low heat for about 3 minutes till the mixture was smooth and pink. Pour into a greased plate and pop it into the freezer. Pop it out after a couple of hours and cut into squares or diamonds. Choice of dryfuits can be anything, but I preferred cashew nuts since it looked like kaju katli that was blushing! 

Awesome taste, no sugar required, just the right amount of sweetness...I can go on and on.

Some useful tips: 

Firstly, will not set at a room temperature.

Secondly, too much jam would make it too runny to set even in the freezer.

Second-lastly,tastes best next day, so exercise some patience!

Lastly, imagine what you could come with if you substitute that jam with orange marmalade!