Hummus

Hello, boys and girls!

Welcome to cooking with Varun. Back when I was living in Solihull, UK, my landlady, whom I referred to as my British Mum, had 2 cats. Both, black and white, plump, and greedy. Every day after I'd get home from work, I'd stroll into the kitchen to grab a snack before starting my prep for dinner and each time, irrespective of where in the house they were, they'd unerringly make their way into the kitchen and stare at me long enough to make me uncomfortable to the point that I'd give them a little something (which I usually did). Knowing that I was a soft touch, they adopted this ploy every time I was in the kitchen. I'm not even sure how they knew I was going to be there; although I'm putting it down to their kitty-senses tingling! I'd be cooking, and when I'd turn to get something from my spice cupboard, there they'd be. Staring. Unblinkingly. Challenging me to resist their almost hypnotic eyes. You'd think that being British house cats, they wouldn't like spicy Indian fare, but noooo, those fiendish felines would eat anything. I was having dinner one night when they tiptoed to my chair and started pawing it. I attempted to shoo them away but they just flicked their tails and made a, 'Yeah, right. Like that's going to work!' expression and continued to paw at my chair. Accepting defeat, I offered them some of the dal makhani and lachha parantha from my plate hoping to dissuade them, and instead of looking disdainfully at it, they polished it off and asked for more.

They weren't all bad though. They could be quite nice when they wanted. For instance, sometimes when I was cooking, I'd chat to them in Punjabi and they'd mew in reply, and some summer days, when the sun was out, I'd sit on a lounge chair in the garden with a big glass of mango juice and read a book, and they'd curl up into furry balls next to my chair and ask to be stroked every once in a while. We got them catnip one Christmas, and after getting them high on it, watched them go absolutely mental. I once bonked  one of them on the nose repeatedly with a balloon and he scurried out like his tail was on fire! This was soon after I'd fed him a dry red chilli from my sambar because he wouldn't leave me alone! Don't go feeling too bad for him though, he'd made it his life's mission to trip me on my way down the stairs and break my neck because he'd always be sitting there when I was rushing to work (his kitty-sense at work, no doubt). Come to think of it, one of the few things they wouldn't eat (apart from red chillies from my sambar after the first time), was hummus. I like to dunk my crisps in hummus and while they were perfectly content eating the crisps, they wouldn't touch the hummus (which is what inspired this recipe).

On an unrelated note, unlike children, if you throw a cat in the air, they don't come down giggling and happy, expect a lot of twisting, mewing, and claws. Good times.

For my (cat repellent) Hummus, you will need the following: 

Chickpeas	2 cups
Tahini	3-4 tbsp
Garlic	2-3 cloves
Olive oil	1/4 cup
Lemon	1
Salt	to taste
Pepper	to taste
Paprika	to taste
Coriander/Parsley leaves	handful

Prep:

1. Soak your chickpeas overnight. (Unless you're using the canned variety).
2. Crush the garlic cloves.
3. Roughly chop your coriander/parsley leaves.

Method:

1. Turn on the gas.
2. Bung a pressure cooker on.
3. Plonk in the chickpeas.
4. Splash in enough water to submerge the chickpeas about 2 fingers deep.
5. Slap the lid on.
6. Crank the heat up to high.
7. Wait for the first whistle.
8. Drop the heat to low.
9. Let it whistle, hiss, and spit for 15 minutes.
10. Turn the gas off.
11. Wait for the steam to leave the pressure cooker.
12. Take the lid off.
13. Grab a grinder.
14. Fish out the boiled chickpeas and plop them in. (Don't pour the water away just yet!)
15. Toss in the garlic.
16. Spoon in the tahini.
17. Add salt and pepper to taste.
18. Sprinkle in the paprika.
19. Add a biggish splash of the chickpea water from the cooker.
20. Squeeze in the lemon.
21. Pour in the olive oil.
22. Smack the lid on.
23. Grind to high heaven until you have a smooth paste. (Adjust the consistency with the olive oil and the chickpea water as desired).
24. Empty into a bowl.
25. Swirl it around.
26. Top with olive oil, paprika, and chopped coriander/parsley.
27. Serve with whatever.
28. Stuff face.
29. Bask in the glory of your successfully executed dish.

Tip: To make your own tahini, toast your sesame seeds, pop them in a grinder with olive oil and blitz.

And remember, overeating is a myth. A full tummy is a happy tummy!

Sriracha & Honey Chicken Wings

Hello, boys and girls!

Welcome to cooking with Varun! I'm terrified of heights, so I do the most logical thing I can think of, which is to do idiotic things that involve heights, with the hope that they will help me overcome my fear. Things like, rappel down a building, shimmy up a tree and jump over the gap to get atop a building to retrieve cricket balls, dive 50 feet into a cold lake to impress a girl, climb atop ruined city walls to take the perfect picture, and skydiving. Yes, these aren't clever things to do. No, I don't have a death wish. Rewind back to 2012, I was living in Antrim, Northern Ireland, with my roommates, Beer-chugging-Goan and Big-talking-UPite, and since my birthday was coming up, I wanted to do something memorable. So I thought of all the things that I could possibly do, and after careful consideration, I decided that throwing myself out of a plane at 13,000 feet with a biggish piece of nylon strapped to my back to slow my descent seemed the way to go.

I did some reading online, made some calls, and decided on a venue in Garvagh, Northern Ireland, to make the dive. The easy part sorted, I now had to convince a couple of others to take the plunge with me, because let's be honest, there was no way I was doing this alone. I turned to my roommates and after a few days of convincing (begging) they consented to doing the jump with me. As we were finalizing our plan in the office one lunchtime, another friend, F*cks-sake (this was his pet phrase), overheard us and expressed interest in doing the jump too. Not wanting to give the others time to overthink things and get spooked, I booked the 4 of us in for my birthday weekend. We rented a car and drove down to Garvagh, only to be disappointed since the weather was stormy and it was too risky to go up. We monitored the forecast for the next few days and rescheduled our jump to the following weekend. Upon our arrival, we were informed that the weather was good, and that we would indeed be making the jump that day. After some basic training, and a walkthrough of the process, we were suited up in maroon jumpsuits, strapped into our harnesses, clipped onto the jump instructors (It was a tandem dive. Even I'm not mad enough to attempt this by myself!), bundled into a little plane, and up we went. As we went higher and higher, my stomach started churning more and more, and even little glances out of the window towards the ground so far below, made me immensely queasy. Once we had made the required altitude, F*ucks-sake and his instructor, who were closer to the door, lined up to jump first. As I watched, with nary a warning, the duo were out the door, and as I saw them suddenly disappear I was more afraid than I had ever been. My instructor then dragged us over to the door, terror plain on my face, a prayer on my lips, wishing I had gone to loo before getting on the plane. He hung me out as he positioned himself at the door... and let go. As we plummeted to the ground, my instructor deployed the little drag chute to slow our descent to about 120 mph. For 45 seconds we hurtled towards the ground in free fall, spread-eagled as the freezing wind assaulted our faces, my fear having been replaced by pure exhilaration and I let out a whoop of unbridled joy. He then deployed the main chute, and we spent the next several minutes drifting slowly earthwards, drinking in the gorgeous views, loving the peace and quiet, my only complaint being the tight harness that was pushing uncomfortably against my bits.

As we plonked gently onto the ground, I found myself (as I had often done as a young boy) wishing I had wings so I could soar unassisted across the skies! Speaking of wings and flight, did you know that the longest recorded flight of a chicken is a whopping 13 seconds? Seems like an underachievement if you ask me. This recipe for wings however, is by no means an underachievement.

For my Sriracha & Honey Chicken Wings, you will need the following: 

Chicken wings	10-12
Sriracha sauce	5 tbsp
Honey	2-3 tbsp (depending on how sweet you like it)
Hot sauce (Tabasco or similar)	big splash
Lemon	wedge
Spring onion greens	handful
Oil

Prep:

1. Grab a bowl.
2. Pop in the sriracha.
3. Add in the honey.
4. Splash in the hot sauce.
5. Squeeze in the lemon.
6. Mix.
7. Taste.
8. Adjust the heat/sweetness as desired.
9. Divide into 2 batches. (70-30, 70% one for the marinade, 30% for the finish.)
10. Throw the wings into the marinade batch.
11. Mix and shake the bowl until all the wings are well coated.
12. Set aside for 30 minutes.

Method:

1. Turn on the gas.
2. Bung a pan on. (Preferably one with a lid.)
3. Splash in some oil.
4. Count to 20 as it heats up.
5. Pop the wings in. (Make sure they're not one on top of the other.)
6. Cook for a few minutes until you have a nice sear.
7. Pop the lid on for 8-10 minutes until the wings are cooked through.
8. Take the lid off.
9. Crank up the heat.
10. Cook for a few minutes on each side until you have the desired amount of char on each side.
11. Drop the heat to low.
12. Plop in the 'finish' batch of the sauce mixture.
13. Toss expertly.
14. Turn the gas off.
15. Serve garnished with spring onion greens.
16. Stuff face.
17. Bask in the glory of your successfully executed dish.

Tip: You can cook the wings in the oven first, the finish them off in the pan for the char and finish. 180 degrees for approximately 15 minutes (you can always check) in a fan oven with the wings laid out on grease proof paper should do the trick.

And remember, overeating is a myth. A full tummy is a happy tummy!

Sookhi Dal

Hello, boys and girls!

Welcome to cooking with Varun! Sometimes, if I'm lucky, the people I meet (and like) on one project, I get a chance to work with again on my next. One such person, is my friend (and biryani teacher), Thinks-that-she-can-sing-but-can't. I first met Thinks-that-she-can-sing-but-can't in Solihull, in 2013, where we worked on separate projects but for the same client. We were introduced through a couple of mutual friends, one of whom was my roommate at the time, Ms. Popularity. Quite conveniently for me, since Thinks-that-she-can-sing-but-can't was on a short trip, she was vacating her room at the home of the British family she was staying with, and since I was looking for a new place, it was the perfect solution. So Thinks-that-she-can-sing-but-can't returned to India, but as luck would have it, was asked a couple of months later, to make another trip to the UK. She returned, bags in hand, and made a beeline for her old home with her trademark ear-to-ear grin, and was lovingly offered a room to live in (my landlady's formerly goth daughter's room, complete with terrifying 'graffiti'). Chuffed at her return, for the next few weeks, Thinks-that-she-can-sing-but-can't, Ms. Popularity, and I had a wonderful time. We'd cook great food, eat, feed our British family, mess with the cats, go out, and cook some more, until it was time for her to depart again (we fought loads too, but this is a happy story so we won't go into that).

The following year, after I moved back to Poona, India, I discovered that Thinks-that-she-can-sing-but-can't was not only in Poona, but also on the same project. After a few months in India, we both travelled to Istanbul for work, and following an uncomfortable living situation with her roommate, Thinks-that-she-can-sing-but-can't ended up moving in with me for a bit. She moved in over a weekend, unpacked her things (by unpacked I mean emptied her suitcases in the middle of the room and randomly flung the contents everywhere.. not literally, but you get the drift; she was as messy as I am OCD), and soon we were back to cooking great food (with me feverishly cleaning the war zone that had been my kitchen after she was done!), sipping beers on the window sill in the balcony as we looked out at the twinkling lights of the Istanbul skyline, and discussing what we'd do when we started our own restaurants. But since all good things come to an end, it was soon time for her to leave, and as she left, my house suddenly seemed emptier than it had been even when I had moved in. It wasn't a total loss though, I got to keep all her spices and ingredients (and an excellent pumice stone in the shower that is responsible for my soft, dead skin free heels), and one of the things she left behind was a packet of urad dal that I used when I first made today's dish.

For my Sookhi Dal, you will need the following:

Urad (white) dal	2 cups
Onion	1
Tomato	1
Green chillies	2-3
Garlic	2-3 cloves
Haldi (turmeric) powder	1/2 tsp
Red chilli powder	2-3 tsp
Dhaniya (coriander) powder	2-3 tsp
Jeera (cumin) powder	1 tsp
Jeera (cumin) seeds	2 tsp
Coriander leaves	handful
Salt	to taste
Oil/ghee

Prep:

1. Rinse the dal in cold water until the water runs clear.
2. Chop the onion.
3. Chop the tomato.
4. Mince the garlic.
5. Chop the chillies.
6. Roughly chop the coriander leaves.

Method:

Dal:

1. Turn on the gas.
2. Bung a saucepan/patila on.
3. Plonk the dal in.
4. Pour in 4 cups of water.
5. Sprinkle in the haldi.
6. Sprinkle in some salt.
7. Add a teaspoon of ghee/oil.
8. Crank the heat up until the water comes to a boil.
9. Drop the heat to low and put the lid on halfway.
10. Cook until the water is almost all gone.
11. Turn the gas off.

Tadka:

1. Turn on a smaller burner.
2. Bung a pan on.
3. Splash in some ghee/oil.
4. Pinch in the jeera.
5. Roll in the chillies.
6. Pop in the garlic.
7. Cook for a minute.
8. Add in the onion.
9. Cook until the onions are translucent.
10. Sprinkle in the red chilli powder, dhaniya powder, and jeera powder.
11. Mix well.
12. Plop in the tomato.
13. Mix well.
14. Cook until the ghee/oil separates from the tomato.
15. Turn the gas off.

Putting it together:

1. Turn on the gas.
2. Drop the heat to low.
3. Bung the saucepan with the dal on.
4. Spoon in the tadka.
5. Throw on the coriander leaves.
6. Mix.
7. Serve.
8. Stuff face.
9. Bask in the glory of your successfully executed dish.

Tip: A squeeze of lemon as you serve it lights this dal up in wonderful ways.

And remember, overeating is a myth. A full tummy is a happy tummy!