Chicken-Coriander Soup

Chicken-Coriander Soup

Chicken soup is very rich in nutrients and when mixed with coriander and lemon it becomes rich in vitamin C and Iron also. This gives it an edge over rest of the soups in taste as well as its therapeutic value. For a person suffering from cough, cold, and sore throat or is feeling low in energy this is the soup which helps tremendously and rejuvenating the system completely.  The lemony flavor along with the coriander makes it not only tasty but very appealing to our olfactory system. In simpler words the flavor of coriander and lemon make it very tempting and second helping is always called. If I am making the soup while my children are not well then I do not remove the fat otherwise fat is removed before dicing the chicken. It is very easy to make and does not require big preparations or long intricate steps.

Preparation Time: 5-10 min.

Cooking Time: 10-15 min

Servings: 4 Large helpings

Ingredients Required To Make Chicken-Coriander Soup:

• 150 gm. Bone less chicken
• 800 ml. Water
• 10 ml. Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice
• Small bunch of Fresh Green Coriander Leaves
• Salt to taste

Directions For making Chicken-Coriander Soup:

• Wash chicken thoroughly and drain all water from it.
• Dice chicken to small (1cm. approx.) pieces.

Diced Chicken

• Clean and wash the coriander leaves thoroughly.

Coriander Leaves

• Cut the coriander leaves to small pieces. It is not required to be cut finely.
• Squeeze lemon and store the juice in the fridge.
• Take water in a big cooking bowl and add salt to taste. Put it on the heat and let it boil.
• Once water starts boiling lower the heat and add diced chicken in it and keep stirring while it is being cooked.

Chicken being Added To Boiling Water

• Cook on low medium flame for 5 minutes with constant stirring. Chicken will turn to pinkish white and will become soft.

Chicken pieces after 5 Min. of Cooking

• Switch off the heat and add the coriander.
• Cover and allow it to stand for 2-3 minutes for coriander flavor to mix nicely with the soup and chicken pieces.
• Take required amount of pieces and liquid in a soup bowl/Cup and add freshly squeezed lemon juice as per the taste.
• Serve hot. It is healthy tasty and taken with crisp toast/ garlic bread makes full meal.

Chicken-Coriander soup

Tips:

• Chicken fat provides much needed energy and need not be removed but if it is being taken for watching the weight then it is suggested that fat be removed completely before dicing.
• Wash coriander in flowing water even if it looks clean. Herbs grow nearest to the soil thus require utmost care during cleaning.
• If the stalk of the coriander are hard then take only top green leafy part otherwise just remove the root and use rest, Why waste?
• Do not cook the chicken for a long time as it will become chewy surely an unwelcome thing.
• Keep stirring the chicken while it is cooking to avoid formation of chicken lump 
• Add less salt to water during cooking the chicken more can be added after tasting the soup as per requirement. Excess salt will spoil the taste.
• Do not add lemon juice while the chicken is cooking it will impart bitter taste to the soup. Add lemon juice to hot soup just before serving to get full flavor and taste.

Suggested Variations:

• Few coriander leaves can be diced fine and added after adding lemon juice.
• Cilantro which is one of the variety of coriander does not impart as good flavor as coriander leaves thus I prefer Coriander leaves (Dhaniya patta).

Barbecued Herbaceous Mushroom

Herbaceous Mushrooms

Mushrooms are one my favorite. Smoked/barbecued/ in salad/stir fry or any form I just love them. But herbaceous mushrooms are absolute winners for me. Delicately flavored with herb and barbecued to tenderness the juicy mushroom with pitta is heavenly combination.

Preparation Time: 10 min.

Cooking time:3-5 minutes for each skewer of mushrooms

Servings: 4 larger servings

Ingredients Required For Making Herbaceous Mushrooms:

• 500 gm. Button mushrooms

Mushrooms

• 3 Tea spoons Dry Parsley / Basil / Oregano / celery

• 2 Tea spoon Olive oil

• 2 Tea spoon Lemon juice

• Salt to taste

Direction For Making Herbaceous Mushroom:

• Wash and towel dry the mushrooms.

• In a bowl take

• Olive oil

• Salt

• Herb of your choice

• Lemon juice

• Mix all ingredients by beating with a fork till a homogenous mass is obtained.

• Coat all mushrooms with the marinade; keep in a bowl and cover.

• Let the mushrooms marinate for 5-10 min.

Mushrooms marinated in herbs marinade

• Skewer the mushrooms and place on hot amber. Keep turning the skewer for even and uniform cooking.

Skewered marinated mushrooms

Mushrooms marinated in herbs being Barbecued on ambers

• Cook for 2-3 min only with constant turning of skewer.

• Remove the juicy, tender but firm herbaceous mushrooms on a serving plate and serve piping hot with chilled wine.

Herbaceous Mushrooms

Tips:

• Mushroom should be salted very gently little excess of salt can spoil the taste completely.
  

• Mushrooms should not be left in the marinade for more than 10-15 min. Because the marinade contains salt and mushrooms if left for longer duration will lose water and turn limp.

• Do not leave the skewer with mushroom for longer duration on coal, neither cook them in advance as reheating or over cooking will make them lose the juices and mushrooms will turn chewy.

• Do not mix two herbs, make two or more marinade with different herbs and marinate mushrooms in different marinade separately.

Suggested variations:

• Mixture of salt and pepper powder can be sprinkled just before removing from skewer along with a dash of lemon juice.

• Salt can be added just before skewering the mushrooms to avoid leeching of juices.

• Fresh herbs can be taken for marinating mushrooms, but make sure that the herbs are pounded very fine or cut extremely fine not made to paste. Fresh herbs add a totally different dimension to the Herbaceous-Mushrooms.

Plain Puri (Puffed Fried Bread )

Puris with Sukka Kala Chana

Puri are fried bread made of mainly whole wheat flour. Different variation of puri are made by adding spices and vegetables to the wheat flour before making it to dough. Plain puri are made of wheat flour dough with out mixing any other thing to the flour. What ever type of puri it may be, hot puffed puri are so luring that it becomes difficult to resist. It is a delightful scene to see my children to poke a hole in the middle of puffed hot puri to let the steam out and eat.

Preparation Time:  5-10min.

Cooking Time: 20min.

Servings:  20 - 25 Puri can be made from the material given below.

Ingredients Required To make Puri:

• 250gm. Whole Wheat Flour.
• 10-15 ml. cooking oil.
• 1/2Teaspoon salt
• 100-150ml. Water to make dough.
• 200 ml. Cooking oil for frying.

Directions To Make Dough:

• Take wheat flour in a bowl and add 5 ml. of oil, and salt to it.
• Mix with your fingers.
• Add another 5 ml. of oil and mix nicely.
• The flour oil mixture should resemble bread crumbs.
• If required then add another 5ml.oil.
• The requirement of oil changes with the quality of wheat flour.
• Do not add too much oil; otherwise the puris will become too oily.
• Add water in little amounts and mix and knead.
• The dough should be soft but firm.

Dough for Puri

Directions To Make Puri:

• Put 200ml. oil in a wok and keep the wok on gas, with the gas on high flame.
• Make small balls from the dough.

Dough ball for Puri

• Oil the rolling board and rolling pin with few drops of oil.

Rolled Puri

• Keep the ball of dough in the center of rolling board and roll it to 8-10 cm. diameter round puri.
• When the oil is smoking hot reduce the flame.
• To the hot oil put the rolled puri from the side of the wok.
• Fry it from both sides to golden color by turning it once or twice.

Puri being fried

Puffed fried Puri

• Plain puri is really to be served with any vegetable.

Hubby dear enjoying Puri with Sukka Chana

My personal preference is eating this puri with Aloo ki sabji (Dry potato vegetable) /Sukka kala chana

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2011/10/sukka-kala-chana-gravy-less-black-gram.html

      and mango pickle.

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/tangy-mango-pickle-maharashra-style.html, http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/mango-pickle-north-indian-style.html

Tips

• Add water in little amounts while making dough as requirement of water changes with different type of wheat flour.
• Take care while putting rolled puri for frying, it should be put slowly from side otherwise hot oil may spill causing burns.
• For those who are not too adept at rolling, you can roll few puris and keep them separated on an oiled plate and then start frying them one by one.
• The oil should be very hot while frying otherwise puri will not puff.
• Maintain the temperature of oil by reducing/ increasing the flame.
• Puris can be kept in a closed container for a day and eaten by warming in microwave or on flat iron plate(Tawa) over gas.

Suggested Variations:

• Add  one coarsely ground red chili to the flour before kneading it adds color and taste to the puri.
• Cumin seeds / roasted cumin seed powder can be added to the flour before kneading.
• Add 2 tea spoonful of Ajwain ( caraway seeds) to make ajwain puri.