Oregano Chicken

Oregano Chicken 

This is a chicken dish with an  Italian flavour.   I innovated
this dish from the Lemon chicken recipe of my Samsung Microwave
cookbook and a recipe which I had long time back cooked by my
sisters mother in law.

Ingredients
--------------------

• Chicken - 250 gms  (boneless breast piece, cut in small pieces) 
• Curd -    3 -4 Table spoon 
• Cloves - 3-4 
• Black Pepper - 3-4 
• Salt - to taste 
• Ginger-garlic paste - 1 tea spoon 
• Onion - 1 
• Butter - 1 Table spoon 
• Black pepper Powder - to taste 
• Oregano - to taste 

Procedure
-----------------

• Marinate the chicken for 30 minutes to 1 hr with curd, cloves, black pepper and ginger-garlic paste. ( If you marinate longer it may be even better.
• Now put butter in the frying pan and melt it.
• Next  fry the onion (finely cut) in butter till soft and then put the marinated chicken and fry till the oil comes out and chicken is tender. 
• This is a dry dish but one can put very little warm water if one wants a bit of gravy. 
• Put Oregano and black pepper powder from top 

The version which my sisters mother-in-law used to cook was using
more curd and butter and only black pepper powder. But I found adding oregano gives it a nice taste.
Since this is not a gravy dish often at the end I mix pre-cooked Basmati rice in this at the end and fry the whole thing together for 2-3 minutes.
In this way the juice gets inside the rice and makes it a chicken-rice combo dish.

Kalojirer-jhol (Fish)

Kalojirer-jhol  (Fish) 
-------------------------

This is the easiest fish curry to make and tastes wonderful.
It is made with Rohu fish and  is a staple diet in every Bengali household.
I believe that this is a dish that you just can't go wrong with.

This is the first fish-dish that I learnt from my mother.
This was just after my  B.Sc exams. My mother was going
out for two weeks with my grandmother and grandfather and
our cook left just before that. So this was one of the dishes
 that my mother taught me before leaving..


Ingredients
------------------

1. Kalonji (Nigella seed)
2. Green Chilly
3. Turmeric
4. Coriander leaves

Procedure
-------------------

• Fry the fish (not too fried) . 
• In a pan take mustard oil and heat it.
• When heated put the nigella seeds and Green chilly. When they spur ,mix turmeric mixed in water and bring to boil.
•  Add the fried fish fishes and simmer for a while. 
• Add the fresh coriander leaves from top and after 1-2 minutes put some mustard oil from top.

It has the tangy smell of mustard oil and coriander and tastes really great
with rice.

Quick Sahi Paneer

This is a very easy Paneer recipe which I often prepare if I call vegetarian guests or my cook does not come.


Sahi Paneer
------------------

Ingredients

1. Onion 2 - cut in small pieces
2. Capsicum 1 -- cut finely
3. Tomato 2
4. Paneer 250 gms
5. Coriander leaves
6. Rasoi Magic Sahi Panner Masala 3 tsp
7. Milk
8. salt to taste

Procedure
---------------------

Fry Onion and Capsicum in white oil.
Then put grated tomato ( If you have time then it is best to use
pureed tomato, fried, cooled and then pureed in mixer) and fry well.
Mix the shahi paneer masala in milk and stir until it dissolve.
Then put this mixture with the onion-capsicum-tomato. Bring to boil.
add little water and then put the Paneer and keep at low frame for few minutes.
Add coriander leaves from top.
(Another variant of this is to first warm little ghee/white oil and
whole garam masal (cardamom, cinnamon and clove) and when the smell
comes put the onion and fry). If I want
the coriander flavour to come  I do  not use whole garam  masala.
One can also add Kasuri-Methi for a different flavour.
If there are guests then I put fresh cream on top of this.

Lemon Chicken Rice

I confess, I am not a good cook , probably because I just don't have the patience. In India one is lucky as one can keep cooks.  But the ones (yes I have more than 1 !) I have are good for the standard  day to day recipes.
But my daughter is a foodie (and that's an understatement) and  this required
me to cook from time to time.   And I think now I am developing some interest in this.   I guess Internet has a large role to play in this since there are so many recipes around and one is tempted to try some of these.

To reduce the amount of kitchen-time I only try those recipes which are easy to make and do not take much time.  Slowly I started to think that it may be a good idea to list these recipes at one place..
so here I go..



Lemon Chicken Rice



This recipe originated from the recipe of lemon chicken given in my  Samsung microwave cookbook. This was in the auto cook menu.
I have made some modifications and it turned out well.  Specially I can make my
daughter eat some veggies too along with the chicken.



Ingredients
------------------

2 chicken leg pieces
5-6 cloves
5-6 whole peeper
1 tbsp lemon juice
1tbsp butter
salt and pepper to taste


Method
----------------

Make holes in the chicken pieces with a fork and mix butter in this. put few cloves, whole black peeper and lemon juice and salt.Marinade for 15 minutes.
Then in my microwave there is an automatic button which takes about 6 minutes for the chicken to cook.
Original recipe was this.   I have a variant of this using curd if one does not
want to use microwave. One can also use breast pieces.

What I do is I boil carrots and french beans. fry onion and capcicum in butter lightly and then add the boiled vegetables. Mix it in already prepared rice and put the whole thing in the chicken, add little more butter and lemon and heat in Microwave for a minute.
In this way the juice of the chicken gets mixed with the rice and it tastes good..
I use Amul-lite for calorie watch.
You can use any other vegetable combination like green

If I have to cook it in the evening after coming from office then I usually get the vegetables cut and boiled in the morning and rice made in the morning. So that it gets done in 20 minutes.