Oven-Roasted Chicken Shawarma

One of the big lifestyle changes that I have made since I have come back home is in the food I eat. I have been on a diet for the past seven weeks. Well, its not a diet but rather mindful eating. I have been cognizant of the macronutrients of the food I eat, whether it’s processed or not and if meets my daily nutrient requirements. There are pros and cons to mindful eating. A big advantage is challenging myself to make healthier foods by coming up with new recipes. There are negatives to mindful eating too– mainly that for the most part I have had to give up alcohol, bread, and sugar. If you have been following my blog you would know that leaving sugar wouldn’t be hard for me at all (if you need context check this out). However, leaving bread and alcohol was very difficult.

Coming back home felt like a clean slate. This needed to be a new chapter and for that reason, I felt that this mindful eating exercise had to be a part of the process. I committed to the regime. Woke up every morning and did an hour of crossfit training followed by a 300 calorie breakfast composed of 6 egg whites, a bowl of oats in soy milk with dried figs; an apple and cold brew coffee for mid day snack; black chickpea salad for lunch; and grilled chicken with one carrot and one cucumber for dinner. This is what I have been eating most days day. This comes to about 1,400 calories with a good mix of carbs, protein, and fat. It took some time to get used to this regime but now it feels strange when I deviate. Of course, I change the meals a little every now and then but the end caloric intake remains about the same.

The high intensity interval training and diet have resulted in me losing a little more than 10 kgs (22.05 lbs) in 7 weeks. The transformation, while physically doesn’t look like much, has been great for me mentally. I feel more energetic and am getting to a point where I feel comfortable with my body, more so than I have been in a long time.

Every now and then however, I get cravings which usually land up conveniently on a weekend. I seize such opportunities to make what I would call a feast. A no holds barred meal wherein I throw mindfulness out the window and create something based purely on the pleasure of taste. This oven-roasted shawarma is a product of this weekend’s feast. Shawarma is a middle eastern preparation of marinated meat that is cooked evenly and eaten with pita bread and a host of delicious accoutrements. I have made this in the past but each time the spice blend I used didn’t do justice to food. It always ended up tasting a lot like chicken tikka instead. There are two big differences between Indian and Middle Eastern marinades. The first is that in Indian marinades the meat is soaked in yogurt as a layer of additional fat whereas, in middle eastern marinades that fat is provided by olive oil. Secondly, middle eastern preparations focus more on the taste than on the aromatics. Hence, they do away with things like cloves and cardamom and only keep spices that enhance the flavors. I made this dish in the most traditional way possible. I left the chicken in its marinade for almost 12 hours, cooked in an oven for twenty minutes sliced and further fried off half the pieces in a skillet to get a crispy outer coating. What I was left was a mix of tender and crispy pieces of meat that was accompanied with store bought pita and a homemade mint white sauce which I love so much that I plan to make a lot more very soon. The feast was absolute success. Both my dad I overate which resulted in a high that comprised of antacid and soda bicarb. No regrets though.

I have loved making all these amazing recipes. I have been hearing back from a lot of friends and family  about the things that they have been making. Please share, like, and send pictures! Looking forward to the next feast day though I have been mandated by my vegetarian mother to make something for veggie lovers instead of just meat guzzlers. Hang tight for that recipe soon!

Ingredients

3 limes, juiced

1/2 cup and 1 tablespoon of olive oil

6 cloves garlic, peeled, smashed and minced

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons red chili powder (paprika works as well)

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

A pinch ground cinnamon

Red pepper flakes, to taste

1 kilogram (~2 pounds) boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1 large red onion, peeled and quartered

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Preparation

Step 1

Prepare marinade for the chicken. Combine lime juice with 1/2 cup of olive oil, garlic, salt, black pepper, cumin, red chili powder, turmeric, cinnamon, red pepper flakes, and chicken into a large bowl. Mix well, cover and keep for a minimum of 1 hour and a maximum of 12 hours. 

Step 2

Heat the oven to gas mark 6 or (425 F). Grease the pan with some oil and set the chicken. Coat the onions in the marinade and place in the pan as well.

Step 3

Put the chicken in the oven for not more then 30 minutes or until the outer edges of the chicken begins to crisp and darken. Once cooked, let the chicken rest for 2 minutes. Slice thinly. If you want to make the chicken more crisp, add a tablespoon of olive oil on a skillet at high heat and cook until chicken begins to curl tight. Serve with Hummus, white sauce, fresh veggies, pita, and pretty much anything you desire!

 

 

Pad Thai

Today I begin my first full time job. I will be working in digital marketing in a PR company and while four years ago, I wouldn’t even think of this as a potential occupation, my experiences and degrees suggest otherwise. One of the things people have started telling me is that “Oh, Archit now that you have started working you will have no time.” I found this constant opinion that in college I had time and now I won’t, hilarious. College was hard y’all! I’m not going to lie, my last semester was a lot less busy but every other semester, I was constantly moving from a class to a meeting to working on homework. In fact, because I lived on campus I didn’t even have commuting time which I could use as respite from constant engagement.

In all this craziness, I also had to keep myself fed which meant either eating the same food in cafeterias or actually cooking. While I love cooking, it’s a little time consuming: prepping, the actual act of cooking, and washing dishes all add up. Therefore, I had to think of recipes that needed less equipment and minimal prep time. Enter Pad Thai. All it needs is rice noodles, any (or all) of the veggies you have in your fridge, and a sauce with which to caramelize everything. The important thing here is the sauce. All the flavors are introduced by the sauce which means it needs to hit the three palette tenets of asian food- spice, sweet, and savory. The traditional pad thai recipe asks for tamarind paste but I substitute that with lime juice and rice vinegar which simulate the tang and acidity of tamarind.

I miss original thai food all the time. One of my favorite places to eat in college was a small thai restaurant called Royal Thai, which was run by this tiny but energetic woman that we called “Thai Queen.” She used to love us and always gave us free refills of thai iced tea. I do miss college, but food like this keeps those memories alive. This week I had an unique opportunity to head back to Denison and begin a life there but I chose against it. I do believe that I made a good choice of starting a life in a country that does accept me but I guess only time will tell how smart of a choice this was.

Anyway, I hope you like recipe and give it a try. I have been hearing back from people who have been making some of the recipes and I am excited that you seem to like them. Send me pictures so that I can blog about them!

 

Ingredients

Serving Size: 2 people

4 tablespoons fish sauce

2 tablespoons lime juice

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 tablespoons Sriracha

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 cloves garlic minced

2 red chillies or 3 green chillies

200 g of chicken breast or shrimp

2 well beaten eggs

15 large cremini mushrooms sliced thinly

1/2 red or green peppers

250 g of rice noodles (3 mins on boil)

6 Spring onions

handful of coarsely chopped cilantro

handful coarsely chopped peanuts

Preparation

Step 1

Boil noodles for 3 minutes or as per package instructions.

Step 2

To make the sauce: add sriracha, fish sauce, lime juice, rice vinegar, and sugar. Mix well.

Step 3

In a wok, add oil and heat on high until oil begins to smoke. Add Shrimp or chicken and cook a minute under it’s done. Remove protein, and add garlic, ginger, and all the veggies. Cook well and add rice noodles. Add the Beat the egg whites in the center along with your pad thai sauce

Step 4

Reduce the heat and let the sauce caramelize. Mix well and serve with peanuts.

 

Tiramisu

Here’s a confession: I don’t really like sweets. Anything with too much sugar is a real turn off. Pop Tarts, doughnuts, cakes caked with fondant, hard candies, even flavored yoghurt bothers me. It just doesn’t taste good. These foods, while delicious are overwhelming, They tend to coat my whole mouth in one single even sensation- not a flavor, just a strange numbness. This doesn’t mean that I live a sad boring life (though my college roommate whose daily diet of Skittles and Sour Patch Kids would beg to differ). I love ice cream but I tend to like darker flavors, dark chocolates, essentially things where there is complexity. Where the sugar has to compete with other elements in order to have any kind of representation.

This realization, or rather development in my personal palette led to me to Tiramisu: a cake based dessert that blends a silky cheese, sugar, alcohol, and coffee into a layered concoction of happiness and satiety. Tiramisu and I have a long history that weaves with various facets of my life: past romantic relationships, travels, and a start of my culinary endeavors. In the ninth grade, I watched a movie called No Reservations. A mediocre rom-com starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart, where the actress plays a head chef with skeletons in her cupboard and Eckhart plays her ambitious sous chef. While the story is not really that memorable, there was a scene that I loved. Eckhart and Jones are in an apartment dimly lit with candles with the chef rushing to leave before the scene becomes more intimate. The sous chef stops her while simultaneously opening his fridge and offering Tiramisu to which Jones has a quite retort, “I am not a dessert person.” This cuts to them on the floor of his drawing room taking generous servings of the decadent dish and with Jones saying, “I guess I was wrong.” I loved this scene because of its simplicity. The cake wasn’t plated beautifully. In fact, it was a square plastic tupperware, but there was passion in the food that converted into passion for Jones.

High school Archit, who was in the thick of love with a beautiful high school girl, found this as his relationship mecca. Something to elevate the way he shows his love through a personal gesture that while was unique was also genuinely simple. Sadly, I was never really able to make this dessert for beautiful high school girl and something that may or may not change anytime soon.

Fast forward to my first winter back home from college, I saw the movie again and this time I decided to give tiramisu a try. Like a true aspiring student of the liberal arts I embarked on deep research into finding the best recipes. After referencing what seemed like days of delicious recipe mining, I created my own recipe which was a convoluted hybrid of Martha Stewart, Deeba Rajpal, and Sanjeev Kapoor’s concoction. I got the ingredients and commenced towards creating a true mess. The egg whites split, the sugar never dissolved, the coffee was so hot that the ladyfingers melted, and to top it off a six hour power cut converted my pastry into a chunky milkshake. I gave up. The ingredients were too expensive, especially to make something sweet. What changed this perspective was my trip to Italy where I loaded up on as much Tiramisu as I could consume until my blood turned to coffee flavored sugar. I tried concoctions made with a sponge cake, white chocolate instead of dark, with rum instead of marsala wine, and what I thought was the best of them all, a gelato with chunks of rum soaked cake. These variations gave me the hope that unlike French, Italian food can have variations. You can make it the way you want, a positive push that allowed me to give this dish another try. By this time, I had been cooking other things as well so a general knowledge about the kitchen helped me as well. I made many variations myself but the one I share below is the culmination of a lot of trial and error. It retains a sweet taste but what overpowers you is the flavor of coffee and dark rum that is succeeded with the fresh aroma of lemon achieved through zest between the layers.

Food tends to always have a history. Tiramisu has an amazing story of its own but I like the story it weaves in my life. At the end of the day, that is what I think of when I cook: The ability to share my stories with people. And hopefully with the right people.

Give this recipe a try and let me know what you think of it!

Ingredients

Serving Size: Should serve a party of 12 (idk weight)

4 large egg whites

5 egg yolks

250 g plain mascarpone cheese at room temp (in India, Flander’s makes the best version)

1/2 cup caster sugar

4 shots of fresh espresso

24 semi sweet Italian ladyfingers

4 tablespoons dark rum (old rum is best)

1 tablespoon of lemon zest

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence or seeds of 1 vanilla pod

sifted cocoa powder

Preparation

Step 1

Start by slow cooking the egg yolks. In a saucepan, boil water. Place another saucepan above it. The pan on above should be slightly bigger in order not sink in the water. Add yolks and sugar. Whisk until the sugar has mixed completely. It should take about 3 minutes. Don’t over cook. Once mixed set aside to cool.

Step 2

Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until you achieve stiff peaks. This takes some time. About 7 minutes but also depends on the weather and size of the eggs. Don’t over beat or the protein in the egg might split.

Step 3

Mix the now cooled yolks with the cheese. Mix well and add vanilla essence. Once mixed slowly incorporate the whites. Be gentle here. The idea is to incorporate the lightness of whites.

Step 4

In a shallow bowl, add coffee and rum and then dip each ladyfinger. Place half the lady fingers as one layer. Then add half of the cheese and egg mix. Add half the zest and then follow the same steps for another layer. Once set, wrap in plastic wrap and place in the freezer for 2 hours, or the fridge for 4 hours before eating.