Recipe - Chicken Mughlai

Cooked by chefs in Mughal dynasty king's kitchen in central Asia / Indian subcontinent. A dish fit enough for a king !!! I have served this to many of my friends who visited my house for a happy hour party. Everyone liked it. Though I personally prefer vegetarian dishes, I make exceptions for few non-vegetarian dishes and this is one of them. I have made few minor changes to the recipe to fit the fast pace of modern life without compromising on the taste. Note that, though the preparation starts 24 hrs before actually serving it, the actual time required for preparation and cooking is around 45 - 60 mins.

Ingredients:

1. 1.5 Lb chicken thigh fillets cut into medium size, or breasts or a mix of both. I prefer thighs as far as the chicken is concerned. 
2. 1 Lb yogurt. Non-fat, if you are diet conscious
3. 1/2 or 1 full medium size onion chopped.
4. 2 spoon ginger & garlic paste
5. 9-10 thin slices of bell pepper/capsicum
6. 1/2 tbsp red chili/paprika, 1 tbsp if you can tolerate!!
7. 2 spoon - chicken masala (powder or paste mixture of cumin, black pepper, cardamom, fennel, bay leaves, fenugreek leaves, coriander, cloves, turmeric). Instead, You can also buy ready-made chicken masala powder available in Indian grocery stores.
8. Olive or vegetable oil
9. Kosher salt. yes, it has to be kosher, trust me.
10. 1 large tomato, finely chopped
11. Lemon juice(optional)
12. Sugar(optional)

Step 1 - Marinate: 

Before going to bed, mix all the ingredients from 1 to 7 in a glass bowl very well. You should not see even one drop of yogurt white. 
Here's the photo of how it looks when I make it. Put the bowl in the refrigerator, the whole night. 

Step 2 - Cooking: 

In the morning, take a deep pan, deep enough to leave 1.5-inch empty space on the top. Put enough oil to wet the surface. Once the oil is heated, started putting chicken one at a time to the pan. Put all the yogurt mixture. Add chopped tomato. Close the vessel and boil in a medium to high flame for 30 mins. Add one cup of water, if it looks very thick and starts to stick to the pan. Occasionally stir the mixture. Add one tablespoon of kosher salt at the end. Boil for another 5 mins. 
Taste it, if it is too spicy for you, add 1 or 2 spoons of lemon juice and/or sugar. If it is winter, do yourself a favor, and skip doing it !!!

Step 3 - Rest it and serve: 

Once the pan cools down, put it in the refrigerator, the whole day. This is very important for spices to infuse into the cooked chicken for the best taste. The above ingredients easily serve 4 - 5 people. Serve it with Indian roti or naan (Indian flatbread) in the dinner. You can buy ready-made Indian flatbreads also if required.

Try it out, and let me know how it came or your suggested changes in the comments.

Whisky review - Glenmorangie Original 10Y

The sticker price of $36 for single malt whisky and some online reviews commenting that it is one of the top sellers in Scotland made me buy this in my local store. I am not disappointed and it is worthy of review. Here's my NO BS review of this whisky.

Basics: The distillery established in 1842 is in the northern highland region of Scotland. The distillery claims that the formula remained the same ever since and hence the bottle name 'The Original'. The brand name 'Glenmorangie' in the local language translates to 'Valley of tranquility' and has nothing to do with oranges as it may sound. 'The Original' is matured in bourbon oak casks for 10 years.

Presentation: I always appreciate the good packaging and bottle shapes of whisky. It adds to the overall experience as long as it is not exaggerated as if they are substituting it for bad quality whisky. Hence my reviews will always have special mentioning of presentations.

I liked the golden color stamp size emblem with cool patterns at the center of the box. The yellowish to bright orange color box with nice fonts is very eye-catching. It mentions that it is bottled at 43% which is a good thing. There is no mentioning of, whether E150 coloring agent(caramel) is added or not but the rich golden color makes me believe, it is added if not too much of it. There is no mentioning of whether it is chill-filtered or not which more likely means it is.

The bottle is shaped more like a bottle of wine rather than a whisky bottle with a very long neck and no broad shoulders. I read that, it is to signify that the distillery uses one of the tallest stills in Scotland.

Nose: This is one of those whiskies which smells a lot better than its taste. Don't get me wrong. It does not taste bad. It is just that, it smells so good. Add a spoon of water to the drink of 1 standard size(1.5 oz/45 ml). Anything less or more water will not get you that optimal smell. It smells like honey when you add it to boiling water while making tea. It smells sweet and floral.

Taste: Undeniably vanilla and citrus taste. But I did not taste almonds as mentioned in the box. But, if I look for it for too long, the raw alcohol taste comes in from nowhere and surprises me. It has a good mouthfeel with quite a long after taste. It has hints of highland park 12Y taste but it lacks that thicker liquid feels you get in highland park. Do not bother about any heavy smokey/peaty tastes, it has none and that's OK.

Bottom line: Try it if you have not yet. You cannot complain about anything here as such for $36. This is more than good enough whisky but just not great. BTW, There are not many great ones at this price range.

Let me know what you think by commenting. More so if you tried it, and tasted or smelled something that I missed.

How to Improve Your Handwriting

Bad handwriting has easily cost at least 10-20% of my marks in academic life. Not to mention, complaints from my colleagues in the office when I write notes to explain stuff. I always wanted to improve my handwriting but never put required hours in deliberate practice. For the last 2-3 months, I have consciously put effort to improve my handwriting, and proud of myself to say that, it has immensely improved.

It involved not only good old practice but also few specific pointers which I followed. I am sharing those here which may be helpful for my blog readers.

Trick # 1: Have a proper grip: For this, I used a Lamy Safari fountain pen which was very useful. One, it is a fountain pen that slightly slows down your speed of writing which helps during practice, and second, it has a triangle-shaped grip section which helps you to learn proper pen grip. The grip where the thumb and index finger comes in inverted V shape and the pen rest flat on the middle finger. Believe me, once you use a fountain pen, you will think twice before going back to a ballpoint pen. The feeling of writing with a fountain pen is pleasantly different from a ballpoint pen and you get more options with nib sizes, ink colors, cool filling systems, etc. The line variations and ink shading you get cannot be found with a ballpoint pen. By the way, if you tend to write characters very small, use extra-fine or fine nib size so that writing does not get mangled.

Trick # 2: Learn cursive letters: Take a print out of lower case cursive letters practice sheets from online and practice each characters multiple times, a,a,a,a,a, b,b,b,b,b, and so on. I am stressing on lower case letters because of the fact that you only use the initial character in the sentence as upper case and you do not have to join in with the rest of the characters.

Trick # 3: Practice cursive patterns: Cursive handwriting requires the joining of each character (except for this rule is explained in the next trick). So practice writing inininininininini(forgot about the dot in I as of now) pattern at forty-five degree. Keep the pattern going making sure it is always joined, there is an equal length between each character, all are of the same height, width touching baseline and it is legible. Then practice 3 character words, then few 4 character words, etc.

Trick # 4: Know the few basic rules of cursive handwriting:

a) Only the initial letter in the sentence is uppercase and it does not have to join with the rest of the characters in the first word of the sentence.

b) Do not join consecutive m's, n's, mn's, uv's, For example, words like running, cunning, etc

c) Do not lift your pen to put a dot to i's and dash to t's. you can do it after completing the word. it distributes the flow.

Trick # 5: Forty-five-degree angle: I could have mentioned this as part of trick # 3 or # 4. But it needs a special mention because of its importance. The forty-five-degree angle makes it so easier to write cursive handwriting and when you turn the face of the nib slightly towards you, the pen flows very smoothly. One technique is to practice using a fountain pen with a 1.1 stub or italic nib along with a normally rounded nib.

Please leave comments and let me know, the techniques that worked for you.