The Engineer's Kitchen - Cooking for beginners

One of my favorite dishes since childhood has been Doi Maach. Though I am not a die hard fan of fish, Doi Maach is among the few exceptions that my taste buds have learnt to love. Whenever I go home for a weekend trip, my mother almost always has this dish prepared for me. In the 5 years since I started cooking, I had never ventured into cooking fishes. However, today I though "why not try this recipe". So I went to my elder cousin and asked him to help me buy Rohu or Catla fish (as I have never purchased this on my on). We went down to the nearest market at 7:45 in the morning, purchased the fish (with my cousin pointing out how to identify a fresh fish and understand about the quality bit) and returned to his place. I asked my Aunt about the recipe (as she is the one other person who prepares this dish to my liking) and once I had got all the details,  I returned home.  I prepared the dish and along with my aunt's recipe added my own small twist to increase the ...

So today being a Sunday, I thought i would make something nice and easy for Lunch. Back in the day, Sunday meant only one thing - the day I would gorge on mutton. The only problem of this was, since I love mutton, I used to purchase a lot of it  for 1 person. 500-750 gms and i would finish that off in a day. This had been going on for a long time till I decided to put my feet down (I was trying to lose weight and still am) and decided I would no longer cook mutton for myself. It has been 8-9 months since I last made any mutton dish. So anyway, coming back to the present, I decided on making a very simple recipe I had learnt from my mom and also read about on the internet. The dish is very tasty and can be had with rice or roti. Ingredients: Chicken - 800 gms with bone Yoghurt - 500 gms Onions - 2-3 large sized finely chopped Butter or any other bread spread fat (I used Nutralite) - 2 tablespoons Whole green Chili - 3 Ginger Garlic paste - 1.5 tablespoons Lemon...

Lets get one thing straight. I prefer non vegetarian food over vegetarian any day of the week (yes, that includes Thursdays). However, among the vegetarian dishes one dish I love in particular is Matar Paneer (Cottage cheese cooked with peas as a curry). I have come to believe that my love for this dish has to come from my mom, who loves it while my dad absolutely detests paneer. This dish is another one of the many dishes that I learnt from my mom but I have updated it by adding one of my favorite ingredients : cashew nut paste. This is a completely optional ingredient and is used solely for making the dish tastier. Now you may ask why am I making paneer today all of a sudden if I love non vegetarian food. Well, I prefer taking my lunch to office and today when I checked my ingredients supply I found that it had almost run out. What I had was  1 block of paneer (200gms), 1 onion and 1 tomato among the essentials. Egg curry was out of the question as I already had eggs for break...

So today, after a hectic day at office, returned home and was not feeling like putting much effort into cooking as I was extremely tired. I thought of purchasing some chappatis from the dhaba near my home. However, the shop was closed so decided to make fried rice with biryani masala (the kind that is found readily in market courtesy various brands). I went for this against normal steamed rice as i would already be having something boring called Chicken Stew that I had prepared in the morning. This recipe was taught to me by my sister and I have improvised it with my own touches. Remember you will need a pressure cooker to make this. Ingredients Gobindabhog Rice - 1 Cup Onion - 1 large, sliced into rings Tomato - 1 large, sliced into circular pieces Biryani masala (any biryani masala available in the market) - 1 teaspoon Oil - 2 teaspoons Salt to taste 2 - 3 tablespoons of peas (optional) A handful of Mint leaves chopped (optional) Water - 1.5 cups  Cooking In...

This is a recipe I learnt from my mom very recently. The simplicity of this dish is simply outstanding which makes it perfect for beginners. Ingredients : Chicken Mince (Keema) - 500 gms Potato - 1 large chopped into small Onion - 2 medium chopped finely Ginger Garlic paste - 2 teaspoons Green Chilies - 2 to 3 ( or more if you want to increase the heat) chopped Tomato - 1 chopped finely Pepper Powder - 1 to 2 teaspoons Salt to taste Oil - 2 tbsp Optional Ingredients: Chopped Coriander (3 to 4 teaspoons ) Chopped Mint ( 3 to 4 teaspoons ) The optional ingredients are simply flavour enhancers. You may choose to ignore it completely. 1. Pressure cook the chicken mince in 3 cups of water and 1 teaspoon of salt for 1-2 whistles. Let the pressure settle down completely. Once done, open the pressure cooker and boil the chicken till most of the water evaporates completely. Be careful to keep an eye on the chicken here because it may get burnt if the flame is on eve...