Finally a worthy contender

On your guard Tea House! A formidable adversary has just been spotted prowling the arena - Little Szechuan of St. Paul MN.

Regular perusers of this page would remember that we Gushed Over Tea House, rather unabashedly a while ago, and while we still stand by all those proclamations of love-at-first-taste, our hearts went aflutter at the overtures of this new contender for best-Chinese-food-in-town. The food is great and immensely flavorful, the portion sizes are decent, and especially the lunch specials offer all that you would want in an a la carte meal for a very puny sum.

Shalini had been to the restaurant with some co-workers of hers earlier and her high recommendations sold me as well. So, a few days ago, we made it a lunch date there. From outside, the restaurant looks like a warehouse with a nondescript entrance, but don't let this self-deprecating reticence fool you. The dining room is spacious and the decor while not very outstanding is still trendy and smart.

Our server presented us with the menu cards and looking at the dinner menu, I was swamped with the plethora of choices available. Lamb and beef dishes alongwith tantalizing seafood and chicken delicacies. Fortunately, the limited choice lunch menu saved me from the trance induced by indecision.
We decided to order Chicken Lo-mein and Beef Kung Pao and as is usual with us, we share each other's food :-)

The appetizers were - an egg-roll and egg-drop soup. Both were wonderful. The soup being surprisingly hot and the egg-roll meaty.

I took a Pinot Noir to accompany the food and it turned out to be a great choice - rather dry with a medium body and mild spicy notes. The wine went very well with the beef.

Beef Kung Pao was served with a bowl of steamed rice and oh! what succulent and delicious a dish it was. Dominant flavour of smoky blackbean with the heat of dried red chilli-peppers. The meat was cooked just right - tender and suffused with taste.
"Thish ish good ...." Shalini managed to mumble with a mouthful of the beef while I was attacking the chicken lo-mein with gusto. Needless to say that we both had our forks across the table in the other's plate :-)

They offer desserts as well, but mostly of the European kind. We tried the Tiramisu and it was good. But likely sourced from an outside bakery.

Delightful company, Great food, good ambience and a nice wine made it a beautiful date indeed!

And now for recommendations: ***** (yeah five big fat sparklers)

We're Back - A story of love, loss and happy endings..

She is Australian, a sizzler and a sleek one at that!!!!

We met last summer, one thing led to another and a passionate affair ensued. A mere touch of my finger-tips was enough to turn her on. Each episode was torrid and steamy. At such times being even in her near vicinity was like being enveloped in the hot breeze of a sirocco.

But alas! it was not meant to last for very long. One day I discovered that my fingers had lost the magic to turn her on. But we soon learned to our dismay that she had a diseased valve. Soon she retreated into her own self, ignoring me completely as I desperately looked for cures. Then winter descended and the mood was grim as all attempts at helping her seemed to be failing, but I kept up hope!!! She brooded away in dark and gloomy corners.

Finally last week, we found a blessed donor and a minor procedure brought her back to her usual self. And now we are back with the same passion - as if nothing had happened.

Of course I had to clean her of all the dust and grime that had collected upon her while she sat in the corner of the garage, being unused. Yeah, I was talking about my Aussie Grill.
What were you thinking?!!

No sooner than it had been fixed, after a brief clean-up we took it for a spin, with some Tandoori marinated lamb chops, EVOO'd portobello caps and sweet peppers. 8 minutes a side at medium-high and we had medium-well done chops - cooked through yet succulent and tender. The show stealer though was the side act of the grilled sweet peppers - with the flavors enhanced with the infused smoke. A small salad to accompany and a glass of Sutter Home Zinfandel (inexpensive and under-appreciated - good taste) and even a Sunday night, usually gloomy with prospects of a Monday looming ahead, turned lively.

No man worth his tongs and flippers should ever have to be without his grill - not even for one weekend.

Ras-Malai in 20 minutes

Ras-Malai (literally: syrup+cream) stands out as one of the most heavenly delectable confections among the plethora of Indian sweet-meats. A bowl of chilled ras-malai can trigger the happiest of chemicals in your brain, enhancing the feeling of euphoria that had previously been induced by a lip-smacking Indian meal :-)

Skeptics might be excused for disbelieving that the required ingredients that go into a ras-malai are nothing but milk and sugar. But don't worry, we won't send you to the cow with a milk bucket just yet.
Frankly, I have no idea how the halwais (sweetmakers) go about making Ras-malai, the traditional way. Suffice it to say that the end product belies a lot of toil in front of a fire invoking sweat and tears.

If I have scared and tempted you in equal amounts for this treat, what would you say, if I were to claim that a total novice, with a microwave and a few ingredients can produce a ras-malai rivalling that of the best of India's halwais ? I am sure you would think I was pulling your leg. So, without further ado here is the recipe:

Inputs:

1 can of Rasgolla (or Roso-golla, Rosho-Golla) or Raj-Bhog available from your Indian grocer.
For the un-initiated, Rasgolla is balls made of farmer's cheese in sugar syrup.




2 cans of evaporated milk. Regular milk can be used as well, but requires more thickening.
1/2 tsp of ground cardamom seeds
1/2 tsp of saffron
2 tbsp of slivered almonds/pistachio for garnish

Experiment:
Pour the evaporated milk from the cans into a microwave safe bowl about twice the capacity of the total milk. Add the ground cardamom seeds and saffron and put it in the microwave for about 15 minutes.
Note: After about 10 minutes, keep a closer eye on the milk lest it boils over. Cleaning of the microwave after such a mishap is not included in the original time estimate :-)

While the passions of the milk are being simmered to an arousal, un-can the Rasgollas. Resist the temptation to chomp down more than a couple of the Rasgollas. I know, it's tough, but bear with me, the finished product will justify this sacrifice.
Depending on your level of hygiene consciousness, use your hand or a couple of spoons and taking the Rasgollas one at a time, squeeze as much as possible of the juice from them, without breaking them. This part requires care and patience. I have yet to find a quick-fix for this, and believe me, I am not a patient person.
Lay all the Rasgollas - squeezed nearly dry of the syrup out on a plate. Right about now, they are probably feeling drained of all life and purpose, victims of some vicious sugar-syrup dracula, but they will see the saviour in you, before we are through.

Turn your attention to the milk in the microwave. At the end of 15 minutes, it should be boiling. be careful and tend to it only as required, with a long handled spoon to avoid getting scalded. If you see a milk rising in a rebellion in the form of a giant bubble, burst it gently and let the milk subside before continuing on.

After the milk has seethed and raged for 15 minutes, carefully vent it of all revolt and take the bowl carefully out of the microwave. Now add the balls to the liquid gently and carefully to avoid the splash-and-scald guerilla attack of dissident milk colonies.
As you are adding the balls, carefully squeeze and release each one of them in the milk, at least once to ensure that they have absorbed the new fluid. After this put the bowl back in the microwave for another 5 minutes and let the milk and the Rasgollas get friendly and happy while heat is applied using, well, microwaves.

Take it out, add the almonds/pistachio etc to garnish. Chill it and serve.

By now you probably agree that 'slice of heaven' was not an overstatement at all.

Sweet Peppers - an Oxymoron?

When most of us think of Chilli-peppers, the image that usually comes up in our mind involves a torrid inferno in the mouth burning up large swaths of taste-buds. Teary eyed and with a runny nose, as we looked around for cold water, we are probably contemplating whether the tongue would be able to tell any subtle tastes after this torture?
But lovers of Indian (or Mexican, Thai, Chinese...) cuisine have palates masochistic enough to go back for the delicious pain again and again.

So, when you hear the name - sweet peppers, doesn't it sound rather like an oxymoron? Probably does. But these are delicacies that are worth a try. They have plenty of the bold flavor of chilli-peppers and none of the fabled heat. The absence of heat probably taken to be a sign of sweetness, hence the name. I agree, the bar was set rather low for sweetness

The possibilities are endless: slice 'em up and toss 'em in salads, on pizzas, on burgers and sandwiches, oven-roasted and topped on crackers with cheese, or just munched raw with the food.

Without going over-board shall we say, the results are adequately satisfying. :-)

Italian meatballs made with .... chicken?????!!!

Yes! Italian meatballs made with chicken as the principal ingredient.
Sounds like tofu-turkey Or veggie burgers doesn't it?

But bear with me and try it. You will agree that this meat substitution doesn' t deserve to be attached with the stigma of 'health-food' though healthier it is, if compared to it's beefy cousin.

We are on a quest to clean out our freezer and pantry of food items procured on a passing fancy, but sitting there since. In that spirit, I discovered a pound of ground chicken sitting in the freezer, that I had purchased a while ago for some dish I now have no recollection of. Our first-born Saumya is a huge meatball afficionado. So, I decided to experiment....

1 lbs ground chicken
2 tbsp ricotta cheese
1 egg (as binder)
salt to taste
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tsp crushed pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp rosemary

Pre-heat the oven to 400 deg F (~200 deg C).

Mix it all together. If the mix appears too wet, add some breadcrumbs to soak up the moisture.
Cover a cookie-sheet with some aluminium foil and spray with an oil of your choice.
With the help of an ice-cream scoop, make the meatballs and lay them about an inch apart from each other on the cookie sheet.

Put the cookie sheet in and bake it for 30-40 min until the meatballs are brown on the inside.

Voila! you have Italian food visiting your kitchen.

You can now eat them as a snack (on a stick), smothered with pasta sauce with spaghetti, or in a sandwich.

Let me know how it turned out. Suggestions for improvement are always welcome.

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.