Kosha Mangsho...Oppa Bongo style!

Let's face it, I never ever ever cooked Bengali food (except Ilish maach shorshe bata jhol) before I got married. Cooking for me was always an experiment. I wanted to try new flavours and not something I already knew about. Then along came the husband who brought with him the wish to eat Bengali food everyday. And so we got a Bengali cook, thanks to whom, I learned a lot of Bengali dishes.

And the cook made a mean Kosha Mangsho! A slow cooked lip smacking mutton delicacy. I never bothered learning this from her because I hadn't planned on firing her so soon and so multiple attempts at making this awesome dish went awry. The mutton didn't taste bad at all, it was amazing mutton curry, but it just wasn't Kosha Mangsho! You see, Kosha Mangsho has to be so dark brown that it must almost look black! And mine always had a nice earthy brown colour. I just didn't know what I was doing wrong!

But that's because I was taking tips from the wrong people. Multiple Bengali ladies, including my mom, were giving me wrong instructions. All they told me was that "Everything's the same as normal mutton curry, it's just that instead of pressure cooking it, you koshao it a bit." Which means you slow cook it. "That's it?" I would ask. "That's it", they would reply.

Bullcrap!!!

Image courtesy senskitchen.com

My rating for this dish
 - 9/10


Here, dear readers, are the differences between Kosha Mangsho and mutton curry, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Follow these steps and you shall get a nice, yummy, dark mutton dish that'll leave you eating out of the kadhai.

1. Do not marinate the mutton in curd. Do not add curd to this recipe at all. This will give it a regular curry flavour which you don't want.
2. Marinate the mutton only in salt and ginger-garlic paste. You may also want to use raw papaya paste for marination as this helps as a meat tenderizer. I usually do not use papaya myself, because it lends its taste to the dish which I do not prefer.
3. Cook it in ghee. Even though I'm saying this, I don't. But the original recipe says so! But if you have a sedentary lifestyle or a fat ass like mine, you should use mustard oil and NOT sunflower/ groundnut/ any other white oil. Again, the darker mustard oil helps the colour of the dish and also gives a healthy heaviness to the dish.
4. Don't save on the oil. The oil is what will allow the spices to go inside the mutton as you slowly cook it.
5. This is the heart of getting Kosha Mangsho right. When frying the chopped onion, wait for it to become transparent. Then add a spoon of sugar. The sugar caramelizes, giving the onions a dark hue. This will eventually give you your desired colour at the end!
6. The original recipe does not have tomatoes, so ideally, there's no need to put this. However, I feel that it adds to the intended colour of the dish. Plus I love tomatoes in my meat, so I anyway go ahead and put them in.
7. If you have the time and an unlimited supply of cooking gas (hehe), do not pressure cook the mutton. In fact, if you don't have the time, don't even bother making Kosha Mangsho. It has to be cooked and spooned and cooked and spooned. Love the mutton a little. Make it yours. Ummm. I am a little energy conscious so what I do is that I koshao the mutton until it's almost done. By this time, the mutton is already a nice dark brown in colour. Then, I pressure cook it for 3 whistles just to tenderize the mutton. This is not required at all if you've marinated in papaya.
8. Use Bengali garam masala at the end, 10-15 minutes before you switch off the gas. Bengali garam masala is simpler than the Punjabi version, with only cardamom, cinnamon and cloves being the input ingredients. This again gives the masala a darker colour rather than the popular reddish garam masalas, lending to the colour of the dish.

Yesterday, I cooked Kosha Mangsho (Sunday awesomeness) and it was on the stove for two full hours. If you're at the fag end of your gas cylinder cycle, it is not the time to cook Kosha Mangsho! ;)

Follow these tips and tell me if they worked for you!!!

Chicken Kasuri Methi - my cook's claim to fame!!

Chicken kasuri methi - yumm!

My rating for this dish
Food: - 8/10

Kasuri methi adds a zing to any dish. Add to that the elaborate method of cooking this chicken curry, and you got yourself tummy rumbling food! I learned this from the cook who makes food at my house everyday. Guests have had this dish and taken the recipe back home, so I figured, why not let more people into this lip smacking recipe! Here goes...

Ingredients (to feed 4-6)
- 1 kg chicken (with bones)
- 4 onions, chopped in large pieces
- 6 garlic cloves
- 1 teaspoon grated ginger
- 3 tomatoes
- 1 heaped tablespoons curd
- 7-8 kajus (cashews)
- 2 big black elaichis (black cardamoms)
- Pinch of haldi (turmeric)
- 1 teaspoon red chilly powder
- 1 teaspoon jeera (cumin) powder
- 2 teaspoons dhaniya (coriander) powder
- 1 teaspoon garam masala
- 1/2 teaspoon of kasuri methi
- Vegetable oil

How to cook
Put 2 cups of water in a non-stick kadhai and add the big elaichis and onions. Bring to a boil and wait till you see the onions turning pink in color. Till that happens, keep adding water in case all water evaporates so that the onions don't burn. When the onions are pink, take the kadhai out of the stove and keep under a fan until the onions have become room temperature. Don't throw the water as it has a lot of the onion's flavor in it (I told you this would be elaborate, didn't I?).

In the meanwhile, make a paste of the ginger, garlic, tomatoes, curd and cashews in a mixer.

Once the onions and elaichis have cooled, make a consistent paste in the mixer (Leave the water aside, we shall use this later). Now heat 1/2 tablespoon of vegetable oil and fry the onion paste in it till the pink color brightens a little. This should hardly take 1-2 minutes. Then add the earlier paste to the kadhai.

Add another 1/2 tablespoon of oil and fry this paste for 3-4 minutes. Add the haldi, red chilly powder, jeera powder, dhaniya powder and garam masala powder to the paste and stir. After a minute, add the kasuri methi.

Finally, add the chicken and fry in this mixture. Remember that the key is that there should be very little water in the paste when you add the chicken, so the chicken really "fries" and not "boils".

Keep stirring continuously for 5 minutes. Now add the onion-water. Keep cooking, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is done. If required, keep adding water from time to time. The end result should be a nice thick yellow-brown colored gravy to be eaten with rotis or parathas!

Courtesy, my cook Roma!

Seasonal recipe - Mango chicken

Mango chicken cooked yesterday

My rating for this dish
Food: - 7/10

This is something a friend and I invented together in 2009. Wonder why I didn't blog about it earlier. but it is the season of mangoes, and every year, I make it a point to cook my 'Mango Chicken' once during this season. Made best with Alphonso (so a slightly expensive dish to make), it is a hatke chicken curry, with a tinge of the sweetness of mango!

Here's how you do it in case you want to serve a group of 4-6.

Ingredients

The marinade
- 1 medium sized ripe Alphonso mango, scooped from the skin and made to pulp. Always use your hands to mash and pulp. The unevenness of the pulp makes a dish always seem more endearing.
- 3 tablespoons heaped with curd
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
- 2 teaspoons red chilly powder
- 1 teaspoon jeera (cumin) powder
- 2 teaspoon dhaniya (coriander) powder
- 1 tablespoon garlic paste
- Salt to taste

The rest for cooking
- 1 kg chicken (I always prefer with bones to boneless, but this is up to you)
- 1 stick of dalchini (cinnamon)
- 2 small green elaichis (green cardamoms)
- 1 big black elaichi (black cardamom)
- 2 lavangs (cloves)
- 6 whole peppercorns
- 1 teaspoon garam masala
- 2 large onions, chopped finely
- 6 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
- 2 tomatoes, chopped finely
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon chopped coriander
- 3 green chillies, chopped

How it's done
Take all the ingredients in the marinade and mix them all together well in a bowl or plate. Then add the chicken and coat all pieces well with the marinade. Cover the marinating chicken bowl/ plate with a lid and put it in the refrigerator. Marination is the key to any dish tasting awesome. Marinate for as long as you can. I've even tried overnight once and the meat was oh-so-tender! A minimum of half an hour for chicken and one hour for mutton is necessary for the marinade to do it's magic.

After you have completed your designated marination time, take out the chicken from the fridge and keep it aside. Take a pressure cooker, put in the oil and keep it on a medium flame. When the oil gets hot, drop in the dalchini, elaichis, lavangs and peppercorns so they crackle for about 30 seconds. Then add the onions and garlic till they turn a nice golden brown, always stirring. Add the tomatoes and stir for a minute or so. See to it that the onions and garlic are not getting burnt. They must maintain their golden brown color when you add the chicken. Which is what you do next.The full chicken, along with the marinade goes in the cooker. Turn the flame to low. Cook for 15 minutes, occasionally stirring. Add half a cup of water in the 5th minute. When the gravy becomes really thick, add a cup and a half of water and close the lid of the pressure cooker. Turn the flame to high. Wait for a whistle, and when you hear one, turn off the cooking flame. Wait for 5-10 minutes as the chicken cooks in the steam within the cooker. Now open the cooker lid and turn on the flame to a medium. Add the garam masala and the green chillies. Cook the chicken for another 15 minutes or so, which is how long it will take for the water to evaporate from the curry so that it becomes thick and delicious.

Your Mango Chicken is ready! Sprinkle some fresh chopped coriander on top of the dish just before you serve! Goes great with rotis, parathas or rice.

Amboli @ Amboli!

Amboli

Burrp page: http://mumbai.burrp.com/listing/amboli-bar-and-kitchen_andheri-w_mumbai_restaurants/1975462712
Mumbaikar page: http://www.mumbaikar.com/en/directory/listing/amboli-bar-kitchen-andheri-w.html

Place: Amboli, Andheri (W)

Food:  - 9/10

Menu variety:  - 9/10

Service:  - 7/10

Ambiance:  - 6/10

VFM:  - 8/10

A restaurant called Amboli in Amboli. It couldn't have been located in a better place :) However, it's not called Amboli because of it's location. Amboli is a kind of Maharashtrian dosa, which goes very well with Malvani and Konkani gravies.

Food
We were a big group and ordered for a multitude of dishes ranging from fish, prawns, chicken and mutton. And every single thing that we ordered was great. The spices were perfect and the meat/ seafood was well marinated. You can try absolutely anything here and you wont be disappointed!

Menu variety
The menu here mostly covers seafood in all sorts of preparations, but the focus is Malvani cuisine. You can also order for common north indian items in meats or vegetables, and this is sometimes necessary when you have those one or two people in your group who are allergic to (or just nauseated by) seafood. It's a good choice of items for all.

Service
Service was prompt and waiters were friendly and always willing to help. Food came quickly and items that would take time was told to us before-hand. So important to do that - I wonder why some restaurants fail to perform this most common courtesy.

Ambiance
The restaurant could have had a more seafood-y feel. But they've chosen to give it a more normal look. There was a visible lack of artwork but the lights were nicely complementing the decor.

Value for money
A meal for two will not cost you more than a thousand bucks (even if you have a couple of drinks each). It's very reasonable.


Location
Right at Amboli, near the Cafe Coffee Day and very close to the Amboli church. Easy to find.

And in conclusion...
When you're in the moods for Malvan and in and around Andheri, you have to visit this place. Cheaper than Mahesh Lunch Home and comparable food (cannot compare the menu variety at MLH though)...what else do you want? :)