Food for 7 Stages of Life

I enrolled into a neighborhood gym to burn those extra pounds and even registered for a Personal training with an instructor who was no good (which I found later). To add to my frustration I didn't see any difference in me. This is when I read about the South Beach Diet in Sig's 'Live to Eat' Blog. I was little hesitant to join this programme until I read about the success stories of Sig and fellow South Beach dieters. It was intriguing, then I asked myself. Can I keep up this commitment? Can I follow all the rules? Can I adapt Indian food to my diet? Then I remembered the quote above (first line of this post). So I decided to go on a South beach diet. After registering on SBD website and reading all their articles I fairly had an idea what I should do.
To me, the most important aspect of the diet is to eat what we enjoy. So I am trying to create meals that will suite my Indian tastebuds at the same time I ensure that they are healthy and meet the SBD norms. Indian style Baked Chicken is one such improvisation to the Chicken fry. Hope you enjoy this as we did.
How it tasted?
      The aroma of Indian spices filled my home and I couldn't wait to take them out of the oven. Remember I am on diet so ate a small chunk to suppress my cravings. For TH, I sauteed the onions and tomatoes with little indian spices and added the diced chicken to make a simple and quick curry for the roti. I added the small chunks to my salad and savored it as a Indian style Chicken Salad for my lunch. YUMM.

Canola/Olive Oil - 1-2 tsp (Optional)

Method
1. Cleaning 
Clean the chicken breast thoroughly with vinegar or turmeric powder. Pat dry to remove the excess water.

I had 3 huge chicken breasts, so I cut them in to halves. Also It was little thick so I created a small slit in the center(along the breadth). So the chicken breast looked like a (pita) pocket. This will ensure that the marinade gets in to the center of the chicken. If your chicken breast are thin, then I wouldn't suggest you to make a slit along the breadth. Instead you can create couple of .5 cm slit along the length.
2. Marinade

Take a baking tray/cookie tray and line it with a Aluminium foil. If you want you can drizzle some oil/cooking spray on the foil.
Using a brush or your hand spread the marinade to coat the chicken well. If you are creating a slit do spread the marinade inside the pocket.

Using a spatula carefully remove them and place it on a plate. Garnish it with cilantro and serve it lemon wedges and onion (sliced into full moon). Serve it immediately as an appetizer with Green chutney or Yogurt dip.

Ingredients from my Pantry

Cooking Instructions
Garam Masala:
    Dry roast the above ingredients until the spices start leaving its aroma. Let it cool and grind it in a mixie/blender.When is 80% done add chili powder and coriander powder and grind it to a fine powder.
Curry:
In a Kadai, pour 2 tbsp of oil. When it is hot add cumin seeds and let it splutter. Immediately add finely chopped onions and saute until it is golden brown. Add some salt to speed up the process. 
This will take 5-8 minutes. 
Add tomatoes and cover it with the lid until it becomes mushy and the onions and tomatoes blend to form a nice sauce. This will again take 5-8 minutes on a low flame. Keep an eye when it cooks, add a tablespoon of water if you think it is sticking to the kadai. 
Now add chicken and fry until it color changes or fry for for 6-7 minutes on a low flame. 
Add Ginger Garlic paste and saute for another 4-5 minutes or until it raw smell disappears. 
Add the ground Garam masala powder (that we made in the first step), chili powder, coriander powder, salt (as required) and stir. Let the masala cook and blend with chicken. It will take another 5-6 minutes for the raw masala smell to disappear Then add 5-8 tbsp of water (chicken leaves out lot of water which helps the chicken to cook well,so adjust the water accordingly ) and cover it with the lid and cook for 20-25 minutes on a low flame. Stir in between to ensure that it doesn't stick to the kadai. 
Add coriander leaves, some lemon juice (optional) and stir. Serve it with rice or rotis or even dosas.
I forgot to mention: add a tbsp of cream (optional) and coriander leaves/cilantro to garnish.

Please note that the chicken in U.S cooks super fast. I know in India it usually takes some time to cook. So adjust the timing accordingly and add more water if necessary.


This recipe is being sent to Sunitha's Think Spice: Think Turmeric event guest hosted by Sudeeshna

We decided to spend the labor day weekend at home as we were travelling to Kansas city the following weekend. Since we were home, I decided to cook an extravagant meal for my darling husband. The meal included chicken soup, biriyani, plain rice, chicken curry and my all time favorite chicken liver pepper fry. Many of us don't prefer to add the gizmos of Chicken or goat like liver, heart and lungs in our curry or fry preparations. These teeny-weenies are high in nutrients. Chicken liver is considered to be low in sodium. It is also a good source of Proteins, Vitamins (A, C, B6, B12), Minerals like copper, zinc etc., On the other side, both goat and chicken liver are high in cholesterol. 100 gm of chicken liver could have around 563 mg of cholesterol. Better avoid them if you have high cholesterol. 

I bumped into an interesting fact when I was googling about these gizmos(livers). As per a study and chinese medical belief, the goat liver is used as a remedy for Night blindness. Also, since they are rich in Vitamin B, Iron and Vitamin A pregnant women are asked to eat liver to avoid birth defects,  prevent anemia and for normal fetal growth respectively. Though it is good for the expecting Mom, they are still advised not to consume in large quantities. As too much of Vitamin A could cause some birth defects too.

You can prepare a number of dish with these gizmos. I love to add them in curry, biriyani or fry preparations. You can also exclusively prepare dishes like chicken/goat liver fry or chicken/goat liver pepper fry. I usually like the way my granny pepares the chicken/goat liver pepper fry. They are simply awesome and it goes well with rice, rotis and especially a good side for rasam. You can find the recipe of chicken liver pepper fry in one of my previous post. Recently when I was talking to my Mom she said that my dear granny doesn't add tomatoes and cumin powder in her preparation. So please avoid tomatoes and cumin powder in my recipe and use shallots/pearl onions for the authentic taste. 

I would like to submit this to 'Food for 7 stages of life - Pregnancy', my debut blog event co-hosted with Sudeshna of Cook like a bong

I should say that this is RV style Chicken fry which means that this is my own recipe. I was just thinking how it would taste if I take a piece of boneless chicken dip it in egg and fry it on a tawa. Then I thought I wouldn't like it unless it is spicy. Ok then I should marinate the chicken with spices fry it so that it cooks well from inside and then coat it with egg and fry again. This sounded good to me. Again something was missing thought why not saute some onions and bell pepper and mix the fried chicken with it and add some sauces... aah.. now I think you are good to read this recipe. Hope you find it interesting and lip smacking.

Trust me the random style recipe came out really well and my hubby dear said some more please..:-)

I feel nostaligic when I think about the Chicken or Mutton Liver fry. My maternal granny used to prepare this whenever we visited her. I shall say that my Mom n myself inherited our cooking skills from my darling granny. The recipe that I am posting today is one of my favorites and it tastes great with hot rice, rotis and as a perfect side dish with Rasam. It has a heavenly taste inspite of requiring minimal ingredients. Veggies can replace Chicken with Mushroom to make a yummy Mushroom Pepper fry. I have tried doing this using button mushrooms and it tasted awesome.

Ingredients