.jpg)
.jpg)
Paoli Dam
Masor Tenga
• Ingredients
Katla maachh, chalta, papaya, bhaater maar (rice starch) and lebu (lime)
• Preparation
Fry the fish and keep it aside. Boil chalta, rinse and keep the water aside. Fry the chalta in a pan. Add the fried fish to the chalta water. Next, add papaya to it. Add bhaater maar and lime. One can use thekera, a unique ingredient of Assam, instead of lime. And voila, the dish is ready!
I love cooking. I have been cooking since I was in school. We lived in a joint family and had an Odiya cook. He taught me to make parathas when I was in school. I remember watching Sanjeev Kapoor shows and jotting down every detail of dishes he would make.
Rituparna Sengupta
Dips
• Ingredients
Yogurt, rock salt, olive oil, black vinegar, cream cheese, cilantro, ground pepper, oregano, chilli flakes, avocado and sour cream
• Preparation
You can take any base such as yogurt and mix it with mint and pepper and some rock salt. Then whisk it nicely and add olive oil and black vinegar to the mix.
Next, mix the cream cheese with cilantro, ground pepper, oregano and chilli flakes. Crush the avocado and add sour cream to the mix.
Cooking is actually very creative in nature, it is very fulfilling. It gives you freedom to create, to innovate. Good music can add to the mood in the kitchen. It brings happiness. It’s kind of an interesting exercise for the mind.
Ridhima Ghosh
Creamy Rice Pudding
Ingredients
2½ cups of whole milk, ¹/³ cup of Arborio rice, ¼ cup of granulated sugar, ½tsp of vanilla extract, ¼tsp of ground cinnamon and ¼cup of dark raisins
Preparation
Add the milk to a medium saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. Add the rice and reduce the heat to medium. Simmer for about 25 minutes or until the rice is tender.
Add the remaining ingredients and cook for five more minutes. Remove from the heat and put it in a small bowl, cover with a plastic wrap making sure the wrap is actually touching the rice. Refrigerate for a minimum of three hours or overnight.
Riya Sen
Chinese Steamed Seabass
• Ingredients
Whole seabass, salt, ginger, spring onion, soya sauce, sugar and oil
• Preparation
Sprinkle salt on the seabass. Add ginger, spring onions and then some more ginger and spring onions over the seabass. Boil water in a pan. Put the seabass on top in a steamer. Now add soya sauce, sugar and hot oil on top of it and serve.
Adil Hussain
Kashmiri Pundit Mutton
• Ingredients
1 kg mutton, ½kg curd, little less than one teaspoon of hing (asafoetida) powder, one-inch piece of ginger, bay leaves, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, ghee or mustard oil and three or four potatoes
• Preparation
Mutton pieces should be little bigger than usual. And it has to be from the hind leg. Put mustard oil with a little bit of ghee in the pan and heat it up. Add the whole garam masala, and you take it out in a few seconds and keep aside. Add the mutton to the pan and fry till it goes brown. Meanwhile, heat up some water (the quantity should be such that it comes to the surface of the mutton when added to the pan) with the hing. Once heated, add the water to the mutton. Add chopped ginger, salt as well as the garam masala that you had kept aside before. Cook for around half an hour to 40 minutes to dry up the water, on very low heat. Meanwhile, beat the dahi well. Once the water goes down and the oil comes out, add the dahi. Mix it up well and let the dahi dry slowly. When the oil and the dahi get mixed, and the dahi hasn’t dried out fully, you take it off the heat. Serve with steamed rice or paratha.
Anjan Dutt
Spaghetti Bolognese
• Ingredients
Spaghetti, minced pork, garlic, onion, olive oil, tomato puree, oregano, cheese and parsley
• Preparation
Take minced pork, mix it with garlic. Add crushed onion. Stir in olive oil. Add tomato puree and oregano. Then add cheese. Stir till the meat sauce looks appetising. Boil spaghetti till it is soft. Then rinse it with olive oil. Serve spaghetti with the meat sauce. Add chopped parsley if you like. Have it with red wine.
I simply love to cook Italian food with my sleeves rolled up, while drinking vodka. As I cook, I imitate all the gangsters I have seen in Hollywood gangster movies with a cigarette dangling from the lip!
Gargee Roychowdhury
Bekti Bhapa
• Ingredients
Bekti fillet, curd, onion, cilantro, salt, turmeric, sugar, green chilli and parsley
• Preparation
Take bekti fillet and add curd (tok doi), onion, cilantro, green chilli paste, chopped green chilli, turmeric, salt and sugar. Sprinkle oil on it and keep aside for sometime. Then add chopped parsley leaves on the fillet and microwave for 10 minutes.
Tonushree Chakraborty
Phuchka Mocktail
• Ingredients
Tamarind, black salt, jeera powder, lemon, chillies, sugar syrup and tonic or soda water
• Preparation
Soak fresh black imli (tamarind) pulp in a cup of water for half an hour. Mash the pulp and take out all the seeds. Add a cup of water to the tamarind water. Put one teaspoon of black salt, one teaspoon of jeera powder. Squeeze half of ghondhoraj lebu into it. Cut the lemon into little pieces and put them in the water. Add two chopped chillies and two teaspoons of sugar syrup. Add either tonic water or a cup of soda water. Serve with ice.
Rrishii Kaushik
Desi Murgir Jhol
• Ingredients
Desi murgi 1kg, onion, garlic, ginger paste, tomato and jeere-dhone paste
• Preparation
Put everything in a kadai and stir. Once cooked, turn the gas off and add kancha shorshe tel.
I love cooking. I hardly get time nowadays. But whenever we have a get-together with friends they insist I cook. I can make very good Pork Vindaloo.
Riddhi Sen and Surangana Bandyopadhyay
Caramel chocolate Oreo pie
• Ingredients
Two medium packets of Oreo biscuits, brown sugar, whipped cream, butter and dark chocolate chips
• Preparation
Step one
Take the Oreo biscuits, remove the cream and then grind them inside a mixie. Take the Oreo crusts (two to three cups), then blend it with three to four spoons of melted butter. Then bake it for 10 to 15 minutes at 350°F or in a microwave bake for four minutes and then leave it for cooling under a fan.
Step two
Take a saucepan and pour two cups of butter and start melting it. Add two to three cups of brown sugar to the butter (once melted), then start stirring to blend it until it turns thick and sticky. To this mixture, add two to three cups of whipped cream and start stirring again till it blends and turns into thick caramel. Pour the caramel into the baked Oreo crush and refrigerate for 45 minutes.
Step three
Take a saucepan, pour one or two cups of whipped cream and add dark chocolate chips (15 oz) and start blending it till it becomes a thick chocolate sauce. Take out the baked Oreo crust with caramel and pour the chocolate on it. Refrigerate for 30 minutes and your Caramel Chocolate Oreo Pie is ready.