Quick Indian Cooking

Some days I have inspired ideas. Offering to cater for my colleague’s party was not one of them.

On the surface, it seemed like a bloody brilliant idea. I would cook. My colleagues would eat. I would win employee of the month.

Three grocery trips later, I realised my mistake. Feeding 20 hungry but weight-conscious PR people is tricky on most days. A Thursday night is pushing it…

Worse still, the jokes were on me:

“Chez Mallika”

“Looking forward to a Mallika kebab”

“I’m going to Buckingham Balti instead”

But there was no way out. I decided on a selection of nibbles that would be easy to cook and fill hungry stomachs at the same time:

• Murgh Malai Kebabs – boneless cubes of chicken baked in a double cream, cheese, yoghurt and saffron marinade
• Aloor daum – New potatoes in a spicy, sweet and sour masala
• Vegetable kebabs – Grilled lentils and vegetable bites cooked with whole spices, ginger and onions

With two dips and strips of readymade naan, I was ready to stage the Mallika show.

The trick, I have learnt, is to make nibbles that don’t need to be shaped or cooked in small batches and can be served cold. Keep them simple and bake/grill/stir fry large quantities instead.

Also, rope in a pefectly domestic colleague to help serve.

Another to pour you a glass of chilled wine.

The third to lavish generous praise on you.

Finally, get drunk and pass out before you notice whether anyone is actually eating anything.

Next time someone has a party, I’ll keep my big mouth shut. If I don’t – shoot me will you?

Recipe for Murgh Malai Kebab to serve 20:

3 kg boneless chicken breasts

500 gm thick yogurt

568 ml double/heavy cream

300 gm cream cheese

Half a nutmeg

1 tsp saffron, soaked in 1 tbsp hot water

3 tsp meat tenderiser

6 inches ginger

Cloves of 1 garlic bulb

6 green finger chillies

3 tbsp sunflower oil

salt to taste

Puree the garlic, ginger, green chillies with the oil in a blender. Cut the chicken into chunks slightly larger than bite sized, bearing in mind that they will shrink as they cook.

In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients apart from the chicken. Taste it to make sure the marinade is a pungent mixture, as it will lose some of its strong flavour when cooked.

Now, add the chicken and coat it evenly with the marinade. Leave it for at least two hours. I did this on the Tuesday to save preparation time on the Wednesday before the party.

Just before you need them, preheat the oven to gas mark 5 or 190 degrees centigrade. Line three baking trays with the chicken and cook the chicken in two batches for about 20 minutes each.

When cooked, the chicken will be cooked through with a warm brown surface. You may have to rotate the trays to make sure each of them gets a chance in the hotetst part of the over (the top).

Pile them up on to a platter and serve with dhaniya pudina chutney, mint and coriander sauce. Recipe to follow.

Recipe for aloor daum to serve 20:

3 kg small, new potatoes

6 tomatoes, chopped fine

3 inches ginger, chopped or grated

3 tsp turmeric powder

3 tsp chilli powder

Half tsp asafoetida

3 tsp garam masala

6 tbsp thick natural yogurt

Salt to taste

3 tbsp sunflower oil

In a large wok or karhai, bring the oil to heat over a high flame. When the oil is hot, add the asafoetida.

As it sizzles, add the tomatoes, the ginger and all powders bar the garam masala. Stir for five minutes until the tomatoes disintegrate and the raw smell of the spices gives way to a more pleasing, subtle aroma.

Now add the yogurt and stir vigorously for another five minutes until it is well incorporated with the masalas.

Now stir in the potatoes, mixing the masalas well into them. Add salt at this stage as well.

Next, add a cup of hot water, cover the wok and leave the potatoes to cook and the curry to dry up. You need to lift the lid every couple of minutes and give the potatoes a good stir.

When the curry is completely dry and a fork can be inserted through the potatoes easily, the dish is ready. Mix in the garam masala and take the wok off the flame.

This dish is spicy and infinitely more delicious when served the next day.

PS = Needless to say, the potatoes were not nearly as popular as the rest of the nibbles as obviously fatty carbs. Little did the PR folk know that the chicken had been cooked with cream and cream cheese. Ouch…

I’ve been swimming up shit creek recently. With the holiday season about to begin, I’ve got two choices – get busy or get fired.

To make matters worse, the summer sales are in full swing. After a day on totalnightmare.com, I started making my way to a trendy south London pub. With a summer goose feather and duck down (or is it the other way around) duvet and a red plastic bag with S-A-L-E emblazoned across the front.

It’s sooooo hard to be glamorous all the time…

Unsurprisingly, the pleasant people on London’s peak hour public transport gave me looks of “what the hell” as I dashed down the escalators towards a vodka lemonade.

I give them Tangri Kebab.

Tangri kebabs are grilled chicken drumsticks steeped in fresh mint, coriander, lemon and yogurt. Deliciously juicy and tender on the inside, they are coated with a lovely flavorful marinade on the outside.

And the best thing about them – they don’t need a drop of oil to cook!

This recipe takes half an hour of quick Indian cooking in two halves. The first five minutes is for marinating the chicken and the 20 minutes on the following day is what you need to cook them.

It takes a bit of organisation, I know, but I had enough time to plan it all while avoiding evils on the underground.

This recipe serves 4:

12 chicken drumsticks, skinned

4 heaped tbsp low fat natural yogurt

3 inches ginger

9 fat cloves garlic

12.5 gm fresh mint leaves

4 thin green chillies

25 gm fresh coriander, hard stalks cut off

Salt to taste

Juice of 1 lemon

In a blender, puree the yogurt, ginger, garlic, mint leaves, chillies and coriander. Add enough salt to make it an extra strong marinade for the chicken.

Now take a large mixing bowl and place the chicken drumsticks in it, making deep sideways gashes on either side of each piece.

Spoon over the marinade and drizzle the lemon juice all over them. Leave them to sit in the fridge for as along as possible – overnight in my case.

Take them out of the fridge at least two hours before you are ready to cook. Half an hour before you want to eat, heat the grill to 190 degrees Centigrade, gas mark 5 or 375 Fahrenheit.

Place the drumsticks down flat with a distance of a centimetre between them. Heat on each side for five minutes, with a total cooking time of 20 minutes.

In the meantime, bring the leftover marinade to boil and then simmer for five minutes. You can mix the juices from the drumsticks in the grill into this for a spicy and tangy chutney to accompany the kebabs.

Just superb on their own or with a salad.

Shami kebabs are nibbles just made for party snacking. And as it’s that time of the year, when we ditch our size zero diets and eat like pigs on speed what better than a super easy, super moreish kebab to tempt our overactive tastebuds?

I learnt how to make these on my recent trip to India. My friend Alka who hates cooking made these for me, which is really saying something. I then got the recipe off my mum’s red-lipstick and kaftan-wearing, chain-smoking friend Litu mashi over a cup of tea and three samosas. Size zero diet has not been going well for a while now…

Shami kebabs are from that staple house of Indian cooking known as Mughlai food. Handed down from the Moghal Emperors who ruled India yonks ago, it is a rich and luxurious style of muslim cooking ever-popular in India.

My recipe made about 12, which hubby and I went through in seconds. The best thing about these is that you can make them in advance and reheat in a microwave when ready to serve. Always have them hot though.

250gms lean beef or chicken mince
Quarter cup chana lentils, soaked in cold water
Half tsp turmeric
Quarter tsp chilli powder
Half tsp garam masala
1 onion, chopped fine
1″ ginger, chopped roughly
1 large bay leaf
1″ cinnamon
3 cloves
3 cardamoms
1 green chilli
3 tsp flavourless oil
1 egg, beaten
1 cup hot water
Salt to taste

Soak the chana dhal for at least an hour before you start cooking. Heat 1 teaspoon of oil, and fry the onions, then ginger and all the whole spices (bay leaf, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon).

When the onion starts going translucent, add the mincemeat, chana dhal and all the other masalas and the chopped green chilli, and stir viciously until the meat is brown all over.

Now add the water and boil until the chana is cooked (you will know when it’s soft and squidgy to taste) and the water completely evaporates.

Leave the mixture to cool slightly. Then add salt to taste and grind it in a food processor. Don’t worry if a few pieces of chana dhal are whole, this will only add character to the kebabs.

Now take meatball size amounts and shape into flat discs. Heat the remaining two teaspoons of oil. Then dip each side of the kebabs in the beaten egg and shallow fry in batches until golden brown on either side.

These are great with mint chutney and tomato ketchup.

Diwali or Deepavali, the Indian festival of lights and loud sounds, is on Saturday 21st October.

I have mixed memories of Diwali from my childhood in India. Mostly, I hid under the bed in the quietest room in the house with our dog Gina – lovingly named after the eponymous character from the sitcom Dynasty by my mother.

I crawled out in time for dinner and to collect the traditional cash donation from my dad after he’d done the Ganesh Lakshmi puja for health, wealth and prosperity.

The food was the real saving grace of the evening for my petrified self. The evening Diwali meal at our place was strictly vegetarian – a veritable feast of golden fried pooris, masala aloo and paneer with a wide selection of sweets to finish.

Sadly, I’ve never quite managed to create a similar Diwali feast in London. But I do make the masala aloo from time to time.

Here’s the recipe to serve 2-3:

6 medium potatoes, halved

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp cummin powder

Half tsp chilli powder

Half tsp turmeric powder

Quarter tsp asafoetida powder

1 tsp whole jeera

2 tbsp yoghurt

2 tbsp sunflower (or other flavourless) oil

Heat the oil on a high flame, and when hot add the asafoetida powder. Then add, in order, coriander, cummin, chilli and turmeric powders.

Let the spices bubble up in the pot for a minute and then add the potatoes. Give them a good stir, mixing the masalas in and then add the whole cummin.

Fry the potatoes for a minute or two until they start browning, and then add the yoghurt. Mix it into the potatoes and then lower the flame to medium, cover and cook until the potatoes are done.

Add salt to taste. These are great as a side dish or on their own as moreish nibbles.

Happy Diwali!