Bee Pee

Looks like my cooking craze is taking me to newer level now. I tried something which none of you have ever imagined me doing it. Guess what I cooked? Well nothing hard the title already disclosed it. Yes it was the chicken. First of let me clear out the notion I am not a veggie. I am a conditional non-veggie. Well this a term is coined by myself for what I am. I eat non veg only when the condition demands for i.e. to say if I don’t have vegetarian food available then I will go in for the non veg. But cooking it was a different story after all. I made lots of preparation looking at the recipes over the internet and seeing the videos of meat been cooked.

What actually inspired me to start cooking was actually a small incident that happened in our kitchen when I was 14 or 15 I guess. My mum was cooking some green beans. She cooks extremely well but what I did was added some dough balls to it. Now with the cooking they become wonderful my dad liked it very much. He appreciated it. No it was not that I invented it just a clever imitation of some neighbor’s recipe. But my dad’s appreciation went a long way for me. However, my first go at cooking was a big comedy. I still remember it quite clearly. My elder brother I mean my eldest cousin had come over to stay with us. I liked him very much I still like him call him “bhratashree” meaning elder brother and he calls me Anuj meaning your brother. Well, once he had come back from work and my Mum intended to prepare him Batata Poha. Well, I asked if my mum would allow me to do the honor. After a bit of reluctance she agreed however she wanted to overlook the matter. I assured her I would not blow it up. I made the Batata poha. My mum made the tea for my brother. He was having the poha while I eagerly waited for his comments. After a while he said something and his words were “Everything is well cooked but looks like Potatoes still have the skin on”. Apparently I had forgotten to peel the skin off. I still laugh at the incident.

Now my experiment with Chicken was good and bad one. First the bad bit, since I had never made chicken myself I tried to experiment with some cheap stuff from Iceland so I got some Chicken thighs instead of Chicken breasts. Searched up some recipe from the internet and began acting on it. Initially I cooked only one chicken thigh. It went wrong as expected. I had marinated it in yogurt, lime and tikka masala. I did not bother to clean up the marinated materials on the thigh before frying it. This resulted in burning of the yogurt and vessel as well. Also, I had put excess of oil; the chicken had been over cooked and hence become hard. Then after a week I tried again to make the Chicken Tikka masala. This time it was on bigger scale. All reaming five chicken thighs were used this time. I remembered my previous mistakes this time and cooked accordingly. Take care to remove the excess marinated stuff from the chicken surface, putting limited oil I managed to pull through well. This time chicken was cooked well and it was soft. Also, I had used a readymade Chicken taste maker. Additionally to the recipe I had remembered by aunt’s cooking the chicken in desi style some of the ideas were copied from them as well. Especially the potatoes I put in were inspired from their style.

When I told this to my mom she did not believe me. I had to turn on my webcam and show them for real-time I had cooked it and had come out well. It’s month of Shravan now, so I guess no more chicken or non-veg for a month and then may be one more trial is on cards

The recipe I used was this one http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/food/143268/Chicken-tikka-masala