Pepper Mushrooms
As a creature of habit you get so used to something that when an alternative or a change of scenario presents itself, you take time to adjust to it. Only, the adjustment time period is different for each one of us. This morning as I sat down to work on this post, unconsciously I found myself trying to move the laptop a bit sideways just as if I were sitting with a pen and writing pad and used to tilt it sideways to write! (Although the fact that Dustin Hoffman was playing 'Tootsie' on my TV set could be construed as a distraction, but I know better!) Just as suddenly reality dawned, and I realized how much I missed literally penning down my thoughts! I have been using the computer to write or rather type for a number of years now, but never has the urge to use pen and paper ever really left me. It almost seems like another era now when writing was an important medium of communication, be it letters, notes in a greeting card or for that matter posts as they have become now. Writing is no longer personal, it has become mechanical with the mechanized world that seems to have 'technologized' us. However it may be, there seems no going back in time. And no matter how much irascibility it can cause at times, the fact remains that the past is the past. It can never be retrieved in any measure, only be lamented, and the number of those who indulge in this sort of lamentation seems to be dwindling too.
However, this post is is not about any such nostalgia. It is about the present and how it infuses us with enthusiasm to do things our own special way! So there I was one fine day, I call it fine because I had been feeling quite excited and impatient since the day dawned. It had been a day when our nation's capital had scripted history by electing to power a new government to the legislative assembly. A government that advocated putting the people's interests forward. Even though as I write this today that image seems to be receiving a fair amount of tarnish, the fact remains that not all hope is lost. The very fact that the common man had the nerve to go against tradition and conformation to usher in a new wave in politics was in itself refreshing and showed that people were willing to give a chance to those who would stand for them, even if the alternative meant new faces and new ideologies that had never before been tried or tested. So, there is gleam of a hope for a better tomorrow promising to do away with decades of decadence and vitriolic depravity in the political fiber that had in turn penetrated and infected the very foundations of our polity.
And feeling rather peppy that day, I decided to cook 'Pepper Mushrooms' - a dish that I had recently discovered on TV and had tried out with a fair amount of success. The lady who showed the dish on the program called it 'Pepper Mushroom Fry' as the dish is not meant to have too much gravy. I have tried it out with slight variations the few times I have cooked it, and am proud to say that the dish came out tasting better each time with a little tweaking of the ingredients! So, when I made the dish a couple of days back, it turned out that there was a fair bit of gravy and I found that I liked it best that way. Hence, I called it simply 'Pepper Mushrooms'.
So, here's what you need to do to make this delicious gravy dish. Begin by washing and chopping up the mushrooms and then keep them aside. Next, take a bowl and add some turmeric powder, red chilly powder, salt, cornflour (about two tablespoons), roughly ground peppercorns and some finely ground cinnamon powder. As an option you may add a bit of coriander powder to this mixture. Regarding the exact quantities of the dry masalas and other powders, try to keep mind the quantity of the core ingredient (in this case, mushrooms) and be familiar with the taste of each ingredient that you include. For instance because we all know what salt tastes like, we know how much to include depending on what we cook. If you know how and what an ingredient tastes like, chances are that you will probably not need exact measure to cook with!
Once all the dry ingredients are inside the bowl, the next thing is to add some water and mix everything well enough to form a sauce of watery constituency. Keep in mind that this sauce should be sufficient to coat all the mushrooms evenly. So, go ahead and tip in all the chopped mushrooms into the bowl and mix well. Keep the bowl aside and let the mushrooms marinate in the sauce at room temperature. While the mushrooms are sitting pretty in the bowl, heat a pan and add some oil. When the oil is hot enough, add some chopped shallots and curry leaves and fry till the onions turn golden. For those of you who'd like it, you can add green chilies too to get that added spiciness. However, the dish is fairly spicy in itself because of the red chilly and the black pepper. But one is always free to experiment a bit and also find out whether adding green chilies would change the taste somewhat!
Next, I added an optional ingredient that was not present at all in the original recipe. I like my mushrooms with tomatoes and so even though the lady on the TV did not mention it, I gave myself the liberty to add some tomatoes to my dish and found to my satisfaction that the dish tasted rather nice. So, I leave it to you as to whether you'd like to add tomatoes in your dish. Now, as soon as the shallots turn golden, add some chopped tomatoes and cook (stirring in between) till the fat starts to separate. Again, the quantity of the tomatoes would depend on the quantity of the mushrooms and on your palate's preference for the amount of acidity and sweetness that adding them would bring. I prefer a fair amount, so the tomatoes I added were about half the measure of mushrooms.
Once, you see the fat start to appear around the edges of the pan, add the marinated mushrooms and give the whole thing a nice stir. Rather than stir fry, cook with the lid closed for a few minutes so as to let the mushrooms absorb all the aromas from the masalas. Depending on how well done you like your mushrooms, you may cook them for 10-12 minutes or less. Although cooking mushrooms would release some water, do remember to keep stirring the pan now and then, especially if you are cooking without tomatoes as the corn flour tends to stick to the pan. Turn off the heat once the mushrooms are done and serve hot with steaming rice or hot chapattis. Hope you try it out and enjoy your cooking experience too! Bon appétit!
However, this post is is not about any such nostalgia. It is about the present and how it infuses us with enthusiasm to do things our own special way! So there I was one fine day, I call it fine because I had been feeling quite excited and impatient since the day dawned. It had been a day when our nation's capital had scripted history by electing to power a new government to the legislative assembly. A government that advocated putting the people's interests forward. Even though as I write this today that image seems to be receiving a fair amount of tarnish, the fact remains that not all hope is lost. The very fact that the common man had the nerve to go against tradition and conformation to usher in a new wave in politics was in itself refreshing and showed that people were willing to give a chance to those who would stand for them, even if the alternative meant new faces and new ideologies that had never before been tried or tested. So, there is gleam of a hope for a better tomorrow promising to do away with decades of decadence and vitriolic depravity in the political fiber that had in turn penetrated and infected the very foundations of our polity.
And feeling rather peppy that day, I decided to cook 'Pepper Mushrooms' - a dish that I had recently discovered on TV and had tried out with a fair amount of success. The lady who showed the dish on the program called it 'Pepper Mushroom Fry' as the dish is not meant to have too much gravy. I have tried it out with slight variations the few times I have cooked it, and am proud to say that the dish came out tasting better each time with a little tweaking of the ingredients! So, when I made the dish a couple of days back, it turned out that there was a fair bit of gravy and I found that I liked it best that way. Hence, I called it simply 'Pepper Mushrooms'.
So, here's what you need to do to make this delicious gravy dish. Begin by washing and chopping up the mushrooms and then keep them aside. Next, take a bowl and add some turmeric powder, red chilly powder, salt, cornflour (about two tablespoons), roughly ground peppercorns and some finely ground cinnamon powder. As an option you may add a bit of coriander powder to this mixture. Regarding the exact quantities of the dry masalas and other powders, try to keep mind the quantity of the core ingredient (in this case, mushrooms) and be familiar with the taste of each ingredient that you include. For instance because we all know what salt tastes like, we know how much to include depending on what we cook. If you know how and what an ingredient tastes like, chances are that you will probably not need exact measure to cook with!
Once all the dry ingredients are inside the bowl, the next thing is to add some water and mix everything well enough to form a sauce of watery constituency. Keep in mind that this sauce should be sufficient to coat all the mushrooms evenly. So, go ahead and tip in all the chopped mushrooms into the bowl and mix well. Keep the bowl aside and let the mushrooms marinate in the sauce at room temperature. While the mushrooms are sitting pretty in the bowl, heat a pan and add some oil. When the oil is hot enough, add some chopped shallots and curry leaves and fry till the onions turn golden. For those of you who'd like it, you can add green chilies too to get that added spiciness. However, the dish is fairly spicy in itself because of the red chilly and the black pepper. But one is always free to experiment a bit and also find out whether adding green chilies would change the taste somewhat!
Next, I added an optional ingredient that was not present at all in the original recipe. I like my mushrooms with tomatoes and so even though the lady on the TV did not mention it, I gave myself the liberty to add some tomatoes to my dish and found to my satisfaction that the dish tasted rather nice. So, I leave it to you as to whether you'd like to add tomatoes in your dish. Now, as soon as the shallots turn golden, add some chopped tomatoes and cook (stirring in between) till the fat starts to separate. Again, the quantity of the tomatoes would depend on the quantity of the mushrooms and on your palate's preference for the amount of acidity and sweetness that adding them would bring. I prefer a fair amount, so the tomatoes I added were about half the measure of mushrooms.
Once, you see the fat start to appear around the edges of the pan, add the marinated mushrooms and give the whole thing a nice stir. Rather than stir fry, cook with the lid closed for a few minutes so as to let the mushrooms absorb all the aromas from the masalas. Depending on how well done you like your mushrooms, you may cook them for 10-12 minutes or less. Although cooking mushrooms would release some water, do remember to keep stirring the pan now and then, especially if you are cooking without tomatoes as the corn flour tends to stick to the pan. Turn off the heat once the mushrooms are done and serve hot with steaming rice or hot chapattis. Hope you try it out and enjoy your cooking experience too! Bon appétit!
Comments
Post a Comment