Cook with Own Hand and Enjoy Foods - HUNGER GAMES with Seema Chowdhry
In the last few years, since my 10-year- daughter and I have been cooking together, she gets to do only the things she likes—choose the recipe, measure the flour, pour the batter in the cupcake moulds. When it comes to the ‘dirty work’ (read that as breaking eggs, cleaning the batter off the whisk rod of the hand mixer), then the little madame is always on a break.
To break this habit of shying away from the real work that cooking involves, I decided to teach her how to make tomato chicken curry dish. I had learnt this dish, Tamatai Murg, about 5 years from Kulsum Begum of Hyderabad, who at the time was a consultant chef with ITC Welcomgroup. I am not sure if the relationship still exists.
Born in the royal household of Salar Jung III, the erstwhile Nawab of Hyderabad, Kulsum Begum draws on her lineage to present the delicate flavours of the Deccan.
This is one of the simplest dishes to make and Kulsum Begum had dug this one of out of her repertoire to convince me that not all Hyderabadi or Deccan cooking was necessarily time consuming and tough. Over the years, of course I have made my own minute changes to the recipe, but some things that I learnt from her still remain a part of my cooking. One that I have taught kiddo to follow—always put salt in the dish after it has been cooked, never while it is on the fire, cooking.
{Seema Chowdhry} My 10-year-old had great fun collecting all the spices—nigella sativa, fenugreek cumin, and mustard seeds—together for this recipe. She spent a good 10 minutes identifying what spice could be nigella sativa and what was fenugreek seeds. Google of course was a big help since she could see the images and then look for them on the spice rack. Even as she learnt about spices she had never used before in her cooking, the big push was yet to come.
She had to dice tomatoes and puree them, peel the ginger and grate it and the hardest of it all, cut boneless chicken breasts into small pieces.
She dealt with the tomatoes with a little murmur, washing her hands after every tomato chopped. When it came to peeling the ginger stub and then grating it, she was not very happy with the smell it left on her hands. But it was the chicken which drew maximum protest. She refused, requested for help, bargained that she should be asked to cut only one piece, negotiated that it would be faster if we all cut chicken, threatened that she would cut one piece so badly that we would not ask her to do the rest...her pleas fell on deaf ears and the only thing I kept telling her was that we would not eat lunch that day unless and until she cooked this chicken recipe, which she loves, from scratch. I was there to help with the fire, but all the chopping, cutting and collecting of ingredients had to be done by her.
The first chicken breast was held between the tip of her forefinger and thumb and plonked on the chopping board. She tried to cut the chicken with one hand using a sawing motion with the knife over the chicken and thought that it would help. But when she realised it would not, she asked for a glove so that she could wear it on the hand that would hold the chicken down while it was being cut it. We don’t have one at home and the request was denied. In all, it took her 23 minutes to cut the first chicken breast and about 6 minutes to do the last one.
Before you think it was unnecessary and cruel to put my 10-year-old through this exercise, let me just say that I was in the kitchen with her all the way and I truly believe that if she wants to learn cooking then she should be involved in all aspects—including chopping, grating, measuring etc. That is the best to learn about the ingredients and cooking.
For the rest of the recipe, she did nothing more than pour in the seeds, puree and chicken in the hot oil in the wok, and once or twice stirred the simmering wok. But for her this chopping, cutting and working with the ingredients was the first step towards actual cooking.
Below is the adapted Kulsum Begum’s Tamatai Murg recipe. For the original, please visit
Tamatai Murg (Tomato chicken)
Ingredients
- 3 pieces chicken boneless chicken
- 4-5 tomatoes (puree in a blender or grate)
- 1tsp fresh ginger, grated
- 1/2tsp coriander powder
- 1/2tsp roasted cumin powder
- 1/2tsp chilli powder
- 1/2tsp fenugreek seeds (methi)
- 1/2tsp nigella sativa seeds (kalonji)
- 1/2tsp cumin seeds
- 1/2tsp mustard seeds
- ½ cup curry leaves
- 4 red chillies
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- Salt to taste
Method
I like to grate the tomatoes for this recipe to avoid using the tomato skin. Oil in heated in a kadhai (wok). I first add whole red chillies and when they start crackling, add the cumin, nigella sativa, fenugreek, mustard seeds. Then I add the grated ginger, and when all the ingredients crackle turns brown, add half of the curry leaves. Then I add the coriander, cumin and chilli powder. Next I add the tomato pulp and cook on high heat. I finally add the chicken pieces and keep stirring till the oil floats on top. Sometimes I add a little water if the chicken looks dry, though Kulsum Begum never does. I finally sprinkle the salt 10 seconds before switching off the flame and mix well.
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