Chinese Schezuan Food par excellence

Being consummate foodies, Shalini and I are always on the lookout for new and exciting restaurants in and around the twin-cities. For a while, her favorite cuisines were Chinese and Thai and mine were Italian and Mexican. We used to find common ground on Vietnamese. But the preferences have shifted around, until all of the above and many more are loved by both of us.

So, it was to our great delight, when a Chinese co-worker of hers recommended Tea-House to us. "Ethnic Chinese love to dine there." was her proclamation. This sounded too good to be true!! So we went to check it out and fell in a deep love-at-first-taste that still endures.
At the time, Tea-House was a family owned and operated restaurant in a nondescript strip mall in Plymouth MN. While it still exists in that location, they have opened up another on the Eastern side of St.Paul MN.
Tea-House has two kinds of menus: a menu serving American-style (milder and sweeter) Chinese food, that most people expect and an authentic Schezuan menu to cater to more adventurous foodies. This latter menu and the justice done to the dishes listed on it, is what makes Tea-House the special place that it is.

I must warn you though - that your run of the mill Chinese fast-food restaurant (Leann Chin, Panda Express) it is NOT.

The food is loaded with flavours of sesame, ginger, garlic, black beans and red chillies. If you ask for extra spicy, you could be mistaken for a fire-breathing dragon after the meal. But not all dishes are fiery hot to be delicious. Stir-fried catfish in black-bean sauce and eggplant in garlic sauce immediately come to mind.
Their Chung-king spicy chicken has been our most favourite. But from their recently enhanced and expanded menu, we are still discovering new favorites - Cumin Lamb is one and whole tilapia stir-fried in black-bean sauce is the other. The lamb was very savory with earthy cumin flavors and stir-fried to perfection, it was the fish that stole the show.
A whole tilapia is stir-fried in the most delicious mix of spices and cooked to a flaky perfection, yet it somehow remains entirely intact. Anybody who has ever attempted to pan-fry or pan-grill a fish fillet will tell you how difficult it is to avoid crumbling up a cooked fish. And then there are the myriad flavors in the sauce. The untrained palate could be forgiven for mistaking it as the Bengali Machher-Jhol (fish curry). Hats off to the chef!!

In all folks, until we visit China and actually sample some local food there, we are happy with Tea-House and recommend it heartily.

Once you get over the wow factor of the food, you might even begin to notice the exquisite decor with delicately carved wood art and paper lanterns etc.

Five Stars *****

Tandoori Chicken done right

Tandoor: is a clay oven used to sear meats and bake flat-breads.


Tandoori chicken refers to chicken marinated in bold spices and grilled in a tandoor.
If all tandoori chicken were to be grilled only in a tandoor, then it would be a rare and priceless commodity in the league of caviar, truffles and gold. (OK maybe not THAT rare!)

Fortunately, grills do a good enough job of searing the meat.

A few Sundays ago, me and my small table-top gas grill set out in the quest for that perfect tandoori chicken - marinated in the perfect mix of spices and flavors that are infused to the bone, seared to a crisp crust outside and juicy tender meat inside. Cooked just right that is.

The perfect marinade:
Here we took the help of Rajah Tandoori Masala as a starting point. Couple of tablespoons of it were mixed with a cup of yogurt, two tbsp of ginger+garlic paste, a tbsp red chilli powder, salt, a tsp of toasted cumin powder, 1/2 a tsp garam-masala and crushed black pepper. It was whisked to an even mixture. Voila!, a tandoori marinade that would be the envy of an Indian chef. This was for about 5 lbs of chicken.

The bird:
The cut chosen for this perfect union was chicken thigh pieces with bone-in and outer skin removed. Needless to say - most of the visible fat was trimmed off.


Dressing it up:
Here it gets interesting as we begin the union of the meat and the spice. The marinade mix was liberally smeared all over individual pieces of the chicken, getting it in all the nooks and crannies and generally all over the meat. The pieces were stacked together in a mixing bowl with the remaining marinade mix poured on top.
The two are given 4 hours to chill out in a secluded corner of the fridge.


Burning it just right:
The burners set to medium, and the grill pre-heated for 5 minutes (as its small), the chicken pieces were places on the grill a couple inches apart from each other and cooked for 7 minutes each side.


Dish it out:
Drizzled with lime juice and served with sliced onions.

For a while the only sounds emanating in the room were "scrunch-scrunch", "hmmm gnosh-gnosh" and so on. I accepted these accolades with a gentle bow ... over my own plate.

Curdle milk - the Greek way

So what is different in Greek yogurt you might ask?!
It is probably another one of those over-priced European dairy products you might answer your own question.

The thing though is, you would be wrong to answer thus. Check out the list of ingredients on a Greek yogurt and compare it to any other - no pectin, carageenan (whatever that is), corn-starch or any other non-milk bilge.
Also look at the nutrition information. It will blow you away.

The Greeks (or as Bush calls them - Grecians), make yogurt using nothing other than milk and then strain most of the whey out of it. This results into a fantastically creamy textured yogurt with very little carbohydrate (as lactose) and high protein. The fat-free Greek yogurt is impossibly delicious, especially when you realize that most of the calories in it are due to the high protein content.

I have seen two brands Oikos and Fage in our local Byerlys stores.
Definitely worth checking out!!

Gourmish explained

Obviously the word doesn't mean anything (in case you were consulting Merriam Webster).

Gourmish is intended to mean Gourmet + mishmash. Stuff that tastes good, but doesn't necessarily arouse a foodie by its visual appeal. Our view is that there is little or no correlation between the look of food and its taste.

Of course if the visual quality is paramount for you, then I am sure the fare dished out (no pun intended) by the food and eating networks satiates you. If however you desire to tuck into the very heart and soul of food, and connect with your victuals on a deeper than mere visual level, then read on.

I will post about my gastronomical adventures.