Pakistani cooking lesson

In November, we had a friend over at our place and I learned how to cook some Pakistani dishes from her. She is a wonderful cook and I always love her food. I have learned from her how to make Shrimp Briyani and Chicken curry before.

This time, I wanted to learn some new dishes so I asked her to teach me how to make Bhindi Masala (Okura dish), Palak Paneer (Spinach Curry) and fish curry.

I prepared Fish and Spinach then our friend brought all the other ingredients including Paneer.

Paneer is cheese which is in Spinach curry. I only saw this cheese in Indian grocery store so when I talked to her before hand, I told her that I don't know where I can get Paneer so we can either not use it or use tofu instead. But my friend told me that it is super easy to make it at home and she will make it at home and bring it with her 

I was so surprised I had no idea that you can make your own paneer at home with just whole milk and lemon!!! This is a great information. This is great to know. 

Anyway, the dish I love and always wanted to learn was this Bhindi Masala. It is now easy to find good looking fresh okura in regular supermarket around here but if I find some, this is the dish I want to make. I love this dish. I order this at restaurants all the time but never really know how to make it at home.

This one came out really good. I think the point is to cook the onion really well until its kind of crispy and sweet. I love this dish. 

Then, Palak Paneer was easier than I thought. Well, my friend already made paneer and we used frozen spinach. We boiled spinach and sauted them with some spices and pureed. Then added some heavy cream. That's basically it. 

Then, fish curry. I used to eat fish curry when I was living with an indian lady in California. She makes a killer fish curry. She always used salmon and we used salmon this time also. The result was wonderful. It really reminded me of her fish curry. I hadn't had fish curry for so long. It brought back all the memory and it kind of made me nostalgic. This is something I would love to cook again and again. The julienned ginger made it taste even better!

For dessert, I made banana cream pie but it didn't looks so great so I didn't take any photos. 

Anyway, it was so much fun and educational to learn some Pakistani dishes from her. I love learning how to cook new dishes especially when they are my favorite food! I always think that Indian and Pakistani food are too complicated to make but once you have all the spices and how it works, it is not too difficult. I am so fortunate to be able to learn those dishes from some one who is originally from there. She is such a wonderful person and she always give a lot to others. I wish I could do something for her. I think she should be spoiled once in a while. I think I should invite her again and I should cook for her! 

Delicious Pakistani Dinner

On Saturday, my husband and I went to see a musical "Jekylle & Hyde". Before going to the musical, we stop by at IKEA and check out some things and went for a dinner at this small Pakistani restaurant near by. It is a very small place but our friend recommended it so we decided to give it a try.

The restaurant is small but service was very nice and friendly. It is a Kebab place so we should have ordered some kebabs but we both ordered saucy dishes which we love.

First, we ordered vegetable samosa. It has lots of spices in it and was very good.

They brought out these green and white sauce. The green sauce was spicy but very tasty. The white sauce was garlicky and more like salad dressing which was also very tasty.

I ordered "Chicken Makhni" and my husband ordered "Chicken Tikka Masala". Both of them were really good. I love those dishes.

Also, I ordered one vegetable dish which is my favorite. "Bindh Masala". It is a okra dish and I just love this dish. This one was quite spicy but tasted really good!

I am Japanese so I have to have rice when I eat curry.

My husband LOVES Naan so of course he ordered Naan. Naan was very soft and fresh and was really really good.

I was quite surprised how much Naan my husband was able to eat. Normally, he is not a big eater but when it comes to bread, he can eat like there is no tomorrow.

After dinner, we enjoyed wonderful Pakistani tea. This tea was also delicious. It made us feel really happy for some reason.

I would definitely go back to this place again. Maybe, I will try some of the kebabs next time.

Then, we head to the musical and enjoyed the musical. This musical was shown at a university campus and was a small theater. I think we had the best seats in the house. All the seats were same price but when I bought the ticket, there were these two great seats available. We were lucky! A small theater is nice because you can see expression of the actors very well.

We had a another wonderful day!

Shrimp Biryani

The temperature in NY has been cool and nice this past few days so it seems like my appetite and cooking desire is coming back! I feel like I haven't cooked real food for a while so the other day, I decided to make Shrimp Biryani for the first time in my life.

When I was invited for a dinner at our Pakistani friend's house at the end of last year (Click here for that post), she made lots of dishes and one of the dish was shrimp biryani. I watched how she made it so I decided to give it a try!

She used this Biryani Masala Mix so I bought the exact same one she used. She also added lots of spices and onion, tomato, cilantro, etc.

First, I made the sauce with this mix, onion, tomato, spices such as cloves, cinnamon, cardamon, ginger, garlic etc. I was supposed to add yogurt but I didn't have it at home so I added sour cream instead.  I added shrimps at the end then the sauce is done.

Then, I layered cooked rice and the sauce with some lemon juice and cilantro. Then, I put in the oven for a while to warm it up and at the end, sprinkled with saffron with milk.

When I was layering, I thought the sauce it too little but I think it was actually perfect ratio when it came out. Also, when I tasted the sauce, it was really salty but it became perfect after layering with rice.

My husband loves Indian food so he was really happy that I made this. I hadn't been cooking much lately so I felt little bit bad for him. Hopefully, this one made up for it. This biryani was pretty spicy for me though my husband said it is perfect spiciness.

This was the first time I made biryani and I am very happy with the result. I still have lots of biryani masala mix left so I am sure that I will be making this more often.

The funny thing is that I ate leftover next day and it was not as spicy as the night before. I wonder if the spiciness goes away with the time.

Anyhow, I am happy that my appetite and cooking desire is back. Now, I have to be careful eating too much :-)

Pakistani feast

On Friday night, one of our friend invited us over for dinner. She is from Pakistan so she made some pakistani dishes for us. I went to her place ealry so I can learn some techniques from her.

One of the things my husband really liked was this cilantro sauce. It is very simple but tasted great. I can make this at home!

The salad was also great. It was very simple salad with red onion, tomate and cilantro with limon juice but it was very refreshing and went great with some of the spicy food we had.

She loves cooking and she was very happy to have us there. She has a very busy schedule but she went out of her way for this dinner and cooked so many dishes. I really appriciate her having us over. It was great!

I was so excited to eat all the different dishes, I forgot to take pictures of some of them. For main course, we had chicken dish, Shrimp briyani, califlower dish and potate&spinach dish. There are no picture of califlower and potate spinach dish but they were also really good. I love the spicy califlower.

There was another couple with us and we were total of 5 people. We had a lot of laugh and great time. I hope we can do this again.

For dessert, I made cookies at home and brough them there and also we made bread pudding together. Both of them were delicious. I will post those pictures tomorrow.

It is so much fun to cook with your friends. I used to do that often with my friends when I was in California but I had not done that for a while. I should do this more often :-)

Anyways, the winter is definitely coming. It is very cold today. Yesterday was cold but very sunny so my husband and I went for a walk on the beach. There is a newly build hotel on our beach so we decided to have a break during our walk and had a tea. It was very nice hotel and I liked having hot tea over looking nice shining ocean.