MANGALORIAN CHICKEN GHEE ROAST & NEER DOSA

There are certain killer combos in food, just like made for each other couples!This is one such made for each other combination, in food. The very plain Neer Dosa is made to taste exquiste when paired with a delicious Chicken Ghee Roast.This was one of my most favourite items to order from Coast to Coast,a chain of restaurants in Bangalore which served Mangalorian food.

Being a true Malayali,I love Mangalorian cuisine as we have a lot in common, coconut being the main ingredient.So keeping all the common things aside, let's get into talking about how simple this dish is yet how fantastic it is to taste!

Neer Dosa is made out of soaked and ground rice which is then diluted with water to a very thin consistency, just like water. Neer in Kannada means water and I think it's the consistency of the batter that gave this Dosa it's name :-) Once you cook this dosa, it resembles a very soft lacy pancake! It's pure white and absolutely beautiful!

Chicken Ghee Roast as the name suggests is laden with pure Ghee. Do not even try to substitute maybe you can reduce the amount of Ghee given in the recipe otherwise the taste will be compromised. Therefore, this is not a dish you can eat on a day to day basis but only when the craving strikes or only when you feel like indulging ! That is my way of thinking and yours could be a lot different, so do according to what your heart says! :-) Nevertheless, the end product is finger licking good! Really! You'd be surprised to know how easy it is to make these two yummy items!This is originally from Kundapur, a small town close to Mangalore.

When Isha Narang from Deccan Chronicle interviewed me over the phone , she asked me about my approach to cooking. For me, cooking is pure fun but I do not consider it to be fun if it takes me one whole day to make a curry! It could be a bit of exxageration when I said 'a whole day to make a curry' but trust me, I have seen such recipes! By the end of the day,you would have just made one curry and a sink full of dishes!!According to me, simple is classy!

MANGALORIAN CHICKEN GHEE ROAST
Recipe source: Daijiworld

Ingredients:
1 kg/ 2lbs full chicken, cut into 18-20 pieces

To be ground:
15 dry red chillies soaked in water for an hour (see the picture of the curry to get an idea about the chilies used), drained
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1" stick cinnamon
4 cloves
Lime juice to taste
Salt to taste
Ghee for frying

Method:
Grind together all the ingredients for the marinade using a little water to get a thick, red paste. The colour solely depends of the kind of red chilies used. We call it 'Piriyan Molaku' in Malayalam. It is scrunched up slightly curly dry red chilies.Marinate the chicken pieces in the ground paste for 2-3 hours in the fridge, covered.
Heat about 1/4 c of ghee to start with.Add the chicken pieces and fry on high heat for 3-4 mins. Reduce the heat and then cook covered till done.
There should be some thick gravy left on the pieces and not completely dry. If it has become a bit too dry, adjust by adding some water. Check for the lime juice and salt.

NEER DOSA ( Gluten free)
Recipe source : Amma
Makes about 24 nos.

Ingredients:
1 c short grain rice (Sona Masuri)
Water as needed
Salt to taste

Method:
Soak the rice in water for 3 hours. Grind it to a very smooth and fine paste with water.It should not be grainy.
Transfer it to another vessel and add more water to make a batter of very thin consistency (think water!). Add salt to taste.Leave the batter aside for 2 hours.
Take a non stick pan with sides and heat till you can hold your palm over it comfortably.
Pour a ladle of batter on it and swirl the pan to get a nice round dosa. Since the batter is very watery, you do not have to spread it with a spoon instead you need to swirl the pan around. The dosa will have holes here and there and that's OK!
Cover and cook to fasten the process. Once you see that it's cooked,fold into half to get a semi circle. Fold again to get a triangle. Transfer it to a hot pot/casserole and keep it covered.
If you want, you can oil the pan and repeat the process.
You can make this ahead of time.

Verdict: I won't miss the Coast to Coast Neer Dosa & Ghee Roast anymore! This recipe is perfect! We all loved it and I can't wait to cook this for Jobin :-) Do try this at home, it's very very simple!

Our postman had a big box to carry and deliver today. It had multiple copies of the Sunday Chronicle on which I was featured last Sunday plus a homemade delicious cake by a very sweet reader of mine, Preetha Suju! Gosh, you guys are awesome! I always tell everyone that I have the most awesome sauce readers!! Thank you so much, Preetha! That cake was fantastic!! I mean it :-)

A take on corruption for IPAB

A
few days ago, I was contacted by an organisation called Janaagraha based in Bangalore to write an article for their new intitative ,I Paid Bribe.com. This site serves as a platform for the citizens to come forward and share their experience of bribery, stories when they stood up to it and when they encountered honest officials! IPAB's policy is to target process and not individuals.


I have worked for Janaagraha, in 2003. I was doing my Bachelor's in Home Science and we were contacted by Swati Ramanathan to do a small , week long project for them. We were divided into groups and were given maps of various locations in Bangalore. We had to chose an area and measure each property on the map and fill in the columns where the measurements had to be written. I was the head of our group and my group won the Best Team award from our class :-) So that was my small stint with this organization.


The views I am going to express below is my own. 


Bribe.What exactly is it?According to Wikipedia,it is a form of corruption, an act implying money or gift given that alters the behaviour of the recepient.
If you think, bribery starts and ends with governement institutions,I think you are wrong!How many times have we paid an autorikshaw driver an extra Rs.10 that he has asked us? How many times have you paid a police officer Rs.100 instead of the full amount on the ticket and escaped from the situation? If we inspect our day to day activities, we will come across 100's of such situation. Don't you think so?


Bribing gets things moving in a faster pace. It can get you a Doctorate degree even if you haven't seen a school ;-) It can get you positions/seats in companies/offices/colleges that someone worthy might have been rejected for. Bribing is like a maze, once you are in it, you will never find a way out. It's only because it's easy & convenient.


When I asked Jobin, my husband, for some input, he felt that bribe exists in 2 forms: good bribe & bad bribe. It is very sad when someone demands bribe for doing a task for which they are paid to do. This definitely is a bad bribe. The person who seeks bribery is the one who corrupts the system. They are the one spoiling our environment and the main cause behind making earth a bad place to live.The bad bribe is too strong for any checks and balances. The main strength for a bribe is “bribe”. The end to this could be an end to mankind, just because this has been around ever since mankind has been in existence. There is another form of bribe called the good bribe that is used by us. We use this at home very often and in a good spirit. Often we see parents asking their child to study well by bribing them with that they need. This good bribe is for a happy cause. It tries to make our world a better place to live. What we ultimately live for is eternal peace. If this can help us get it, then so be it. Sometimes the situation in our lives makes it so very difficult that we end up using the bad bribe. It is certainly a hard choice for us to perform it.


What I am trying to say is, there is evil around me and you everywhere, it's how we look at it/ handle it.I am not saying that me or you can change the whole world, because this world of ours is so big and so corrupted at each and every stage. But we can do something small for ourselves and eliminate this evil from each of our lives. Maybe if we all try it that way, somewhere, someday, we might see a change and this world of ours might become a better place to live in.