Happy Durga Puja! Happy Dassera!
That’s Anu’s main festival, and it’s today. I’m gonna post a short picture post about food. Because Anu would almost always come up with some amazing food preparations on festivals and celebrations like these. (She’s just wonderful to have around. I love you honey. And not just because of the food you cook, OK? It’s everything you do…)
But this time, there’s a catch. We’ve shifted to our new house, which comes with only a blasted electric cooker (NO, gas stoves are NOT safe, says the developer). For me, whoever cooks with an electric cooker, don’t know nuts about food. How do you do a proper Asian stir fry with a bloody electric stove?!?!?? I could like heat up 4 friggin dishes, all at one time, in 5 minutes, in our old International City house. Now, the dishes have to take turns, coz if you set one stove top to ‘9’ (hottest), the other stove tops can’t turn on for some reason or other…, and it’ll take at least 3 times longer to heat up the same things as a gas stove. Plus, I wonder how much power we’re friggin using! Hope the electricity bill doesn’t give us a heart attack when it comes…
Anyway, here’re some food Anu churned out and some we ate outside thru the years. …Somehow or other, the outside food always falls short of our expectations, besides being bloody expensive. Here we go!
Last year’s Durga Puja dishes – All that for our tiny family of 4, plus 1 niece. Still reasonable, compared to the 13 dishes for Chinese New Year earlier this year! Among the dishes I can see – chicken parts, mutton soup, french beans in soya sauce garnished with fried onions and a sprig of dill, gundruk salad (a Nepali pickled vegetable), kangkung, fish crackers… (not really Indian, right?)
More Indian dishes… although Anu’s not too fond of ‘em. Yeah, no kidding! In 2007, we stayed in the 5-Star Marriott Lakeside Chalet in Mumbai for 40 days (compliments of the company I was working for then, ahem), and we ate almost every dinner in the hotel's Chinese Restaurant. We dined in the hotel’s Indian Restaurant only once (and that too at my prompting), and she didn’t like it. Here’s some keema matar (mince mutton & peas, one of my favourite Indian dishes), pudina (mint) chutney, pickled onion, salad (the white slices with the red fringe are red radishes) and chapatti (of the instant kind… frozen chapatti, Kawanku brand, of Malaysia). What to do? Anu hates kneading dough…
Here’s something we imported from the North East (of India) – Anu calls them New Potatoes (I call them baby potatoes). These are our chips of choice, and they’re only available in season (winter I think). Fried with a pinch of turmeric, cumin and dried chilli (hope I’m correct)
Moving on to other food –
Rice with prawn & petai sambal – Anu loves petai, and sambal. We love sambal so much now that almost every meal, we have some form of sambal or chutney
Here’s Anu’s version of the Hainanese Chicken Rice that we get in Malaysia, and it can pass off nicely as the real thing! The only problem is that Anu cooks, and she forgets. So the next time you asked for it, she may cook a different thing or it may not taste exactly the same… (hence the pictures, hehe)
And this is Anu’s version of Nasi Goreng Kampung, complete with nice table decorations…
Salad is what we mostly eat at home for dinner for some time now. (We love herbs!) Here’s chicken and sautéed mushroom with kangkung salad oriental style (tastes like the Sotong Kangkung we get in Malaysia)
Fish (I think it’s Sea Bream …or is it Bass?) with potato & lentil salad
Lamb patties with 2 types of salads – Avocado salad (I call it Guacamole Assam-Style, because it has chillies… everything has chillies) and strained yogurt with cucumber and umm… I dunno (I call it Tzatziki ala Anu …Hey Honey, don’t you know that this is Tzatziki? What’s that? It’s something the Greeks eat)
Something incredibly simple, but nice – 2 types of garlic bread, salad and tea for breakfast. 2 types? Ya, one with olive oil & garlic (Anu’s preferred way, she’s psychologically averse to butter), and the good ol’ loaded ones with butter and cheese
Pasta! Ala Anu. One of my favourites – with chicken, mushroom, black olives, pasta sauce, a few dashes of soya sauce, black pepper, chilli flakes and parmesan cheese…
One of the many quinoa dishes Anu makes. This is black quinoa with lamb chop. We usually have white quinoa with chicken… She also makes couscous & salad with salmon, but I don’t have any pictures of that
This is the best paella I’ve eaten. Far better than the ones we’ve tried outside. Maybe it’s the white wine that Anu uses?? Plus, there’s chutney! Radish chutney…
Now for some outside fare…
Quesadillas and burger at Chili’s, the Market, Dubai Investment Park 1 (DIP 1) on Durga Puja 2017
Seafood buffet at the Crowne Plaza, Deira on Anu’s birthday in 2016, a nice treat from niece Karishma – How’s the lobster?
And this is one of my favourite Arabic dishes, Chicken Mandi from Al Mandi & Al Madhbi House – all this for AED 13 at the Abu Dhabi Petrol Stations between my Project and our head office in Dubai. Can’t get anything more value for money than this nowadays, here in the UAE
That’s all for today folks. Enjoy your puja! (And for those who're not celebrating, ...just enjoy!)
That’s Anu’s main festival, and it’s today. I’m gonna post a short picture post about food. Because Anu would almost always come up with some amazing food preparations on festivals and celebrations like these. (She’s just wonderful to have around. I love you honey. And not just because of the food you cook, OK? It’s everything you do…)
But this time, there’s a catch. We’ve shifted to our new house, which comes with only a blasted electric cooker (NO, gas stoves are NOT safe, says the developer). For me, whoever cooks with an electric cooker, don’t know nuts about food. How do you do a proper Asian stir fry with a bloody electric stove?!?!?? I could like heat up 4 friggin dishes, all at one time, in 5 minutes, in our old International City house. Now, the dishes have to take turns, coz if you set one stove top to ‘9’ (hottest), the other stove tops can’t turn on for some reason or other…, and it’ll take at least 3 times longer to heat up the same things as a gas stove. Plus, I wonder how much power we’re friggin using! Hope the electricity bill doesn’t give us a heart attack when it comes…
Anyway, here’re some food Anu churned out and some we ate outside thru the years. …Somehow or other, the outside food always falls short of our expectations, besides being bloody expensive. Here we go!
Last year’s Durga Puja dishes – All that for our tiny family of 4, plus 1 niece. Still reasonable, compared to the 13 dishes for Chinese New Year earlier this year! Among the dishes I can see – chicken parts, mutton soup, french beans in soya sauce garnished with fried onions and a sprig of dill, gundruk salad (a Nepali pickled vegetable), kangkung, fish crackers… (not really Indian, right?)
More Indian dishes… although Anu’s not too fond of ‘em. Yeah, no kidding! In 2007, we stayed in the 5-Star Marriott Lakeside Chalet in Mumbai for 40 days (compliments of the company I was working for then, ahem), and we ate almost every dinner in the hotel's Chinese Restaurant. We dined in the hotel’s Indian Restaurant only once (and that too at my prompting), and she didn’t like it. Here’s some keema matar (mince mutton & peas, one of my favourite Indian dishes), pudina (mint) chutney, pickled onion, salad (the white slices with the red fringe are red radishes) and chapatti (of the instant kind… frozen chapatti, Kawanku brand, of Malaysia). What to do? Anu hates kneading dough…
Here’s something we imported from the North East (of India) – Anu calls them New Potatoes (I call them baby potatoes). These are our chips of choice, and they’re only available in season (winter I think). Fried with a pinch of turmeric, cumin and dried chilli (hope I’m correct)
Moving on to other food –
Rice with prawn & petai sambal – Anu loves petai, and sambal. We love sambal so much now that almost every meal, we have some form of sambal or chutney
Here’s Anu’s version of the Hainanese Chicken Rice that we get in Malaysia, and it can pass off nicely as the real thing! The only problem is that Anu cooks, and she forgets. So the next time you asked for it, she may cook a different thing or it may not taste exactly the same… (hence the pictures, hehe)
And this is Anu’s version of Nasi Goreng Kampung, complete with nice table decorations…
Salad is what we mostly eat at home for dinner for some time now. (We love herbs!) Here’s chicken and sautéed mushroom with kangkung salad oriental style (tastes like the Sotong Kangkung we get in Malaysia)
Fish (I think it’s Sea Bream …or is it Bass?) with potato & lentil salad
Lamb patties with 2 types of salads – Avocado salad (I call it Guacamole Assam-Style, because it has chillies… everything has chillies) and strained yogurt with cucumber and umm… I dunno (I call it Tzatziki ala Anu …Hey Honey, don’t you know that this is Tzatziki? What’s that? It’s something the Greeks eat)
Something incredibly simple, but nice – 2 types of garlic bread, salad and tea for breakfast. 2 types? Ya, one with olive oil & garlic (Anu’s preferred way, she’s psychologically averse to butter), and the good ol’ loaded ones with butter and cheese
Pasta! Ala Anu. One of my favourites – with chicken, mushroom, black olives, pasta sauce, a few dashes of soya sauce, black pepper, chilli flakes and parmesan cheese…
One of the many quinoa dishes Anu makes. This is black quinoa with lamb chop. We usually have white quinoa with chicken… She also makes couscous & salad with salmon, but I don’t have any pictures of that
This is the best paella I’ve eaten. Far better than the ones we’ve tried outside. Maybe it’s the white wine that Anu uses?? Plus, there’s chutney! Radish chutney…
Now for some outside fare…
Quesadillas and burger at Chili’s, the Market, Dubai Investment Park 1 (DIP 1) on Durga Puja 2017
Seafood buffet at the Crowne Plaza, Deira on Anu’s birthday in 2016, a nice treat from niece Karishma – How’s the lobster?
And this is one of my favourite Arabic dishes, Chicken Mandi from Al Mandi & Al Madhbi House – all this for AED 13 at the Abu Dhabi Petrol Stations between my Project and our head office in Dubai. Can’t get anything more value for money than this nowadays, here in the UAE
That’s all for today folks. Enjoy your puja! (And for those who're not celebrating, ...just enjoy!)
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