Chicken Roti of Suriname

I have happy memories of Surinam. Whenever I think of Surinam I am reminded of the food that I enjoyed while I was there and the memories comes alive whenever I have visitors from that place. We discuss food and relish the virtual taste, sometimes exchanging notes. I used to love the street food the most, there is a different kind of pleasure while eating in the open air on the wooden benches.

Just next to my house (in Surinam) lived a Javanese family who ran a restaurant. On the days when I was too lazy to cook, I would order duck Bami with mixed vegetables from my balcony. She would pack a large portion which would last me for two full days, full value for money.

The food in Surinam had a very peculiar taste that I have never been able to find anywhere else. My favorite used to be chicken roti. I have often asked my cousins (who live there) to pack me the cooked Surinamese food whenever they make their trip to India but they just laugh it off. 

They do come and cook for me whenever they visit me, replicating the taste as closely as they can but alas! It is just not the same.

The main taste of this chicken gravy is in Surinam masala. I must ask my cousin to send me this

I asked my cousin to send me the picture of Roti Chicken so that I could drool on it and she sends me this.

Well, this is not the way we used to get back then. It used to be dhal roti brushed with the layer of chili chutney and stuffed with chicken gravy, potatoes and beans, folded like a roll.

I came across this blog of Kayotic Kitchen and she explains step by step, the method of preparing this dish, which is quite time consuming but very tasty. She has used potato stuffing for roti pancakes but the authentic roti is the one made of dhal.

To make the stuffing of Dhal, you need to soak split peas overnight then boil until soft. Place the boiled split peas in a food processor, add cumin, onion, garlic and salt, process until well-blended but not pureed.

A similar Roti chicken is also sold at Trinidad roadside stalls, but the taste is a bit different. I think the taste lies in the curry powder and how it is used. For example, in Tom’s recipe of Chicken curry, he has mixed curry powder and turmeric powder, added water and stir fried till it becomes a thick paste and then added the other ingredients. His chicken also has mustard paste in the marinate mixture. But the results are equally good.

Some things are best enjoyed when cooked by native chefs. Also the person who has tasted, can cook it too if she has the right ingredients, maybe I can too, if I have the right ingredients….

 Hello…you hear me?? My family in Surinam?? …So now you know what to get for me when you visit me in India.

Fish Cutlets

I have family scattered all over the world. During those years when I lived in Tenerife and in Surinam, I was totally cut off from my family. The only communication I had with my cousins was through snail mail. Whenever we met, we met like strangers tying up the lost years, by the time the familiarity set in; it was time to go back. 

Social network has made it possible for us to stay connected. Now we live like one-large-closely-knit-family, all the conversation tapped under our thumb. We have a group on 'Watsapp messenger' where it is possible to stay connected with each other at all hours of the day. Everybody communicates at their own convenience, at their own timings, sharing their joys and pains, offering advice and solutions, there are long discussions, or harsh arguments, but the presence of their closeness is felt even in their silence.

There are jokes and forwards, audio and video clips.

If I complain that I have kidney stones, cousin advises. “It’s very easy” she types “take a bunch of parsley and coriander leaves, clean, chop, boil, cool, filter and store in the fridge. Drink one glass daily and you will be free from all the accumulated poison”

Well, if I listened to all the advices on health and wealth, that are forwarded to me, I would live to be 100 years, but I am lazy.

I belong to food loving family, so most of our conversation revolves around food. We can peep into cousin’s kitchen, thousands of miles away.

Me at Mumbai, comfortable under cool breeze of a ceiling fan. My cousins in Manila, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Indonesia have a pleasant weather, it is raining in Lagos, weather is good in Spain, it is freezing in New York, Texas, Albany. 

Everybody in their own comfort zone.

My cousin will not venture out in the freezing cold unless she has to. It’s snowing in Chicago. She spends her time doing what she likes the most…yes cooking. She shares her kitchen tips with us as she cooks.

She is cooking Tuna cutlets.

We all are curious to know her recipe for fish cutlets. Everybody knows to make it but everybody has their own method and we are always willing to learn to make a bit different from the normal ones that we are used to.

She starts to post pictures as she starts cooking.

Dry the tuna on medium flame

Add ginger and cumin powder, salt and pepper

Add onions, green chilies, coriander leaves and spring onions

Add egg and mashed potatoes

The cutlets look good

We all are drooling. We decide to make it at our respective kitchen in our respective town sharing with our families.

Cousin in Indonesia prepares the same day and thanks my cousin in Chicago for the lovely recipe.

I ask my cook to prepare. Its awsum! I share my picture while I munch. "Where is the Chutney?" asks my cousin.

well, who care? It tastes good just the way it is...there are enough chilies in it.

My cook has learnt a new dish, imported all the way from Chicago.

Carrots- The Orange Friend

During my growing up days, whenever I visited my friend, her family would offer me a carrot juice. I was not too fond of this juice but they would inform me that it was good for my eyes.

But is there a truth in it? Or is it just a myth. Most of my friends need reading glasses, irrespective of gallons of carrot juice they might have had.

There is nothing magical about carrots alone. It’s the vitamin A within the carrot that is so important for maintenance of eye health. If the person is deprived of vitamin A for too long, the outer segment of the eye’s photoreceptors begin to deteriote and normal chemical process involved in  vision can no longer occur.

But wait, that does not mean that you will take an over dose of the carrots. No, don’t do that. Eating too many carrots can cause the skin to appear yellow-orange due to  a built-up of blood coroten levels.

Many centuries ago, there were purple carrots that grew wild in the bushes with mutated versions occasionally popping up including the yellow and white carrots. They were thin, spindly and didn’t taste great. They were mostly used for medicinal purpose.  Purple and white carrots still grow wild in Aghanistan where they are used to produce a strong alcoholic beverage.

The orange carrots which we are familiar with, wasn’t cultivated until Dutch growers in the late 16^th century took mutant strains of the purple carrot, including yellow and white carrots and gradually developed them into sweet, plump, orange variety that we have today.

Having just one recipe for every vegetable becomes very boring. It is interesting to combine with different vegetables to recreate a complete new dish and one such combination that I like having is carrots with lotus stem.

 

 Carrot and lotus stem

Ingredients

1 teaspoon crushed garlic

100 grams lotus stem, sliced diagonally

100 grams carrots, finely chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

1teaspoon ginger, grated

1 Green chilies, finely chopped

1teaspoon turmeric powder

2teaspoon coriander powder

1 cup fenugreek leaves, chopped

½ cup coriander leaves, finely chopped 

Salt to taste

1 tablespoon Oil

Method

1. In a pan, heat oil and add crushed garlic.
2. Add chopped lotus stem, chopped carrots, tomatoes, ginger, green chilies, turmeric powder, coriander powder, salt, fenugreek leaves and coriander leaves.

3. Cover and cook till vegetables are tender. Do not add water.
4. Serve with freshly roasted chappatis

Saturday Challenge with Marathon Bloggers

Just for fun post.

A paragraph is given by participants of Marathon Bloggers  and here I am imagining the impossible, please bear with me cause I am in dreamy mood.... a fiction indeed...or pure imagination...

I ran. Fast. Out of breath. Lungs bursting. Legs hitting the earth. I thudded up the path, around the corner, right up the stairs and reached the door. I flung it open, rush to my room and grabbed the TV remote.

I was just in time for my favorite TV program ‘Junior Master Chef- Grand Finale’

The children were to make Indian Kababs and I was interested to see if they made it well.

Smart kids, just 10-yrs-olds, were making most difficult and exotic dishes so efficiently. But I was sure that Kababs would be difficult for them to make.

Why is Kababs so difficult to make? You may ask.

Well, making kababs is an art. The consistency has to be proper, masalas have to be just right and molding into a proper shape is an art, it depends on the dexterity of the finger. These kids have tiny palms, not enough space to roll the dough.

Their tiny hands minced the mixture of meat and soaked channa dhal in the food processor, added garam masalas, lime, salt and chilies, then started to roll the kababs in proper shape.

“Take enough quantity kid, you have taken too small a portion” said I, hoping they could hear me.

They took just a small handful and made into marble size balls.

“That’s not Kababs, silly” I screamed

The kids continued to shape into small marble size, unaware of my frustrations.

In a non-stick pan, they fried those tiny ten kababs, flattening it a bit with the ladle.

“Okay, since you have made such tiny blotches of meat, I wonder how you plan to plate it?” I grumbled

But kids are smart.

They arranged ten kababs in a fan shaped design, surrounded it with thinly sliced tomato alternating with onion rings and slit green chilies, they placed a small bowl containing green chutney at other end of the plate making a nice geometrical design.

Hmmns..I am impressed.

Though both the contestants had followed the same recipe, the winner would be the one who made the tastiest kababs.

I wished I were the judge.