Mouri Murgh with Peas Pulao

Chicken with Fennel ...served with Peas Pulao

A friend had pointed out that my blog hardly has any typically "Bangali Murgi'r Jhol"!! And upon going  through my posts, I realised how right she was!!

So today I was all set to make the typical "Bangali Murgi'r Jhol"...but the "Murgi" had other plans! 

And while making the chicken curry, my whims predominated and what resulted was a mild fennel flavoured chicken curry...an impromptu experiment with a happy ending!

And realising that there is barely any rice based item in this blog, I thought of jotting down the recipe of Peas Pulao...the lightest, easiest and quickest of all Pulaos.

Mouri Murgh

Ingredients :

Chicken - 1 kg

Finely chopped medium sized onions - 2

Finely chopped tomatoes - 2

Potatoes cubed - 4

Garlic paste - 2 tbsp 

Ginger paste - 2 tbsp

Tej Pata - 1

Whole garam masala - 2-3 nos. of 1"sticks of Cinnamon, 2-3 green elaichi, 2-3 black elaichi, 4-6 cloves

Fennel Seeds - 1 tsp

Turmeric / Haldi / Holud - 1 & 1/2 tsp

Dry roasted (on hot tawa) & ground Mouri / fennel seeds - 3-4 tbsp

Jeera powder - 1/2 tsp

Kashmiri Mirch - 1/2 - 1 tsp

Green chili - as many as you want 

Chopped Coriander leaves/Dhonepaata

Salt to taste

Oil

Procedure :

1. Marinate (at least for a few hours) the washed & cut chicken with 1 tbsp each of Ginger & Garlic paste, salt and 1/2 tsp of Turmeric/Haldi/Holud powder.

2. In a kadai, heat oil and saute the cubed, washed and Haldi-Salt smeared potatoes till they turn golden. Keep aside.

3. In the same kadai, add another tablespoon of oil (I used mustard oil). Drop in the Tej Pata, whole garam masalas, fennel seeds 

4. Stirring the above for a few seconds, add garlic paste, chopped onions followed by a pinch of sugar for caramelising and adding colour. Fry on medium - high heat till the onions get a brownish colour.

5. Add the ginger paste followed by chopped tomatoes. Turn up the heat and fry till the colour turns brown and the tomato-onion turns into a well fried mush.

6. Mix  Turmeric-jeera powder-kashmiri mirch powder-2 tsp of roasted-ground mouri/fennel seeds-salt with a few drops of water...make a paste and add to the kadai. Cook the masala well.

7. Add the marinated chicken and stir around till all the pieces are well coated in masala. Do this on high heat. Once the chicken is well coated with the masala, keep turning around...koshano / bhunoing (frying on high heat). While at it, add the rest of the roasted-ground mouri/fennel seeds and continue frying (koshano / bhunoing).  Add the cubed and sauted potatoes

8. If time permits, continue cooking in the kadai till the chicken is tender. And you may need to sprinkle water now and then to prevent burning. But like me, if you are running short of time, transfer to a pressure cooker. Add a mug of water. 2 whistles are adequate. Once cooled, and the lid comes off, transfer to the serving bowl and garnish with chopped coriander leaves / dhonepata.

Serve with roti / rice / Pulao. 

Peas Pulao

Ingredients :

Basmati - 3 cups

Peas (preferably fresh ones) - 4-5 cups

Cashew / kaju - a handful, slit lengthwise 

Ginger paste - 1 tbsp

Tej Pata - 1
Whole Jeera - 1 tsp

Whole garam masala - 2-3 nos. of 1"sticks of Cinnamon, 2-3 green elaichi, 2-3 black elaichi, 4-6 cloves

Jaiphal / Javitri powdered - 1/2 tsp

Sugar 

salt

Ghee - 1 - 2 tbsp
1/2 slice lemon

Procedure :

1.Wash the rice, dry it if possible, on a newspaper in the sun.

2. Heat Ghee in a kadai. Add whole garam masala, tej pata, whole jeera, ginger paste. Fry for a few seconds.

3. Add the washed and (preferably dried) basmati rice followed by the sugar, salt, Jaiphal or Javitri powder. Mix well on medium flame.

4. Add the peas. Again give everything in the kadai a stir to mix. 

5. Transfer to a rice cooker. Add 5.5 cups (same cup as used to measure the rice) of water. Squeeze half a piece of lemon (learnt from some blog on the net sometime back and follow it religiously for all pulaos and as promised the result is amazing...the cooked rice DO NOT stick)

 The Peas Pulao is ready!!!

Mouri Parshey

(Parshey Fish in a Fennel based gravy)

Parshey is SD’s favourite and everytime the fish is available in the Sunday Fish Market, it would be bought and brought home!

And on most occasions, I make it in the simplest method using kalojeera, shorshe bata etc et…

Today after having marinated (in salt & turmeric paste) for 5-10 minutes and lightly frying the fish, just as I was about to pour oil for proceeding with the gravy, I wondered why not try something different! I dug into my bookshelf and pulled out an almost unused book I’d bought years ago….. ‘Moner Moto Ranna-Sananda Sankalan’ (A compilation of recipes by Sananda…a Bengali women’s Magazine)

Searching for Parshey, I found an uncommon yet easy recipe where I had at home ALL the ingredients!

So here goes the recipe which was for 4 Parshey (I presume they were BIG sized ones). Since I had 500gm of small sized Parshey, I modified the quantities accordingly…..

Ingredients :

1. Small Parshey Fish – 500gm

2. Fennel paste – 2 tbsp ( I used 2 tbsp fennel seeds)

3. Green Chili paste – 1 tbsp (I used 2 long green chillies)

4. Ginger Paste – 1 tbsp

5. Turmeric powder – ½ tsp

6. Red chilli powder – ½ tsp

7. Kashmiri chili powder – ½ tsp

8. Plain curd – 1 cup (160ml)

9. Salt – to taste

10. Sugar – ½ tsp

11. Tej Patta -2

12. Fenugreek (Methi) – ½ tsp

13. Dry red chili (whole) – 2

14. Mustard Oil – 4-5 tbsp

Procedure :

1.Tossed the cleaned fish in a tsp of Turmeric & pinch of salt and lightly fried them and kept aside

2. I used my small chutney jar to make a moist paste with the fennel seed & green chilli

3. I took the plain curd and added the fennel (mouri) + green chilli paste and other ingredients given at Sl.Nos 4-10 (of ingredients). Mixed the curd and masala to a smooth paste.

4. In a wok poured the oil and once hot, seasoned with Tej pata, Whole Dry red chilies and methi.

5. I added the curd & masala mix and fried it well till the oil had separated from the masala.

6. Added the fried Fish and sprinkled about ½ bowl of water. Covered it and cooked for abt 5 minutes (or till it comes to a boil) on medium flame. The gravy should be thick. Garnish with a few slit green chilies.

Serve it witn hot steamed rice!!!

This is my 2nd entry to the Blog event ''THINK SPICE:THINK TURMERIC", hosted for Nov '09 by Sudeshna of COOK LIKE A BONG and the Think Spice event is the brainchild of Sunita of Sunita's World .

The logo for the event is...