Cookin’ Fresh with Chef Lokesh

So, we’ve been in India for how long?  Almost 2 months?  It’s time for a cooking class already!  We found one (probably the best one) in Jaipur taught by a Chef Lokesh Mathur who has quite an impressive resume, including a brief stint as the Indian chef at the Ritz in Qatar, and the personal chef of the Crown Prince of Bahrain.  He also cooked for other royalty in that same area – seems he’s the Indian head of fancy, opulent Middle Eastern cookery.

As you can imagine, we made some of the best food we have ever eaten – everything was so fresh and vibrant.  I guess if it’s good enough for the Crown Prince of Bahrain, it’s good enough for Zev.

We enjoyed the class with a couple from Vienna, Bernard and Lillah, who were also blown away by Chef Lokesh’s masterful culinary skills.

He must have told us to “have a look” 35 times.

To start things off, Chef taught us how to make the perfect cup of chai, which is great in the roasting Indian heat and probably even better in the winter back home.  So if the weather makes you want to wrap up in a blanket and never come out, make a cuppa this – it’s so easy and so worth the bit of effort involved!

~Masala Chai~

Ingredients:

• Small piece of fresh ginger
• Small piece of cinnamon
• 1 green cardamom
• 2-3 black peppercorns
• ½ cup fresh whole milk
• ½ teaspoon black tea
• ½ teaspoon sugar

Steps:

1. Add the pieces of  ginger, cinnamon, cardamon, peppercorns (crushed if you wish) to boiling water.
2. Next add the milk, the sugar, and the black tea.
3. Strain and enjoy.

Mmm… Chai…

After chai and before our dinner courses, Chef needed to make a fresh batch of garam masala which he makes now and then and stores in an airtight container.

Garam masala is a blend of essential Indian spices, used in 90% of all Indian cooking.  Much better to make than to buy, and we plan to make when we get home.

~Garam Masala~

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon green cardamom
• 1 tablespoon brown cardamom
• 1 tablespoon cloves
• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds
• 8-10 bayleafs

Steps:

1. Place all the spices in a frying pan and roast until it starts smelling yummy.
2. Let the toasted spice mixture cool.
3. Dump it in the Cuisinart and blend until you reach the consistency of a fine powder.
4. Store in airtight container.

After that business was taken care of, first up on the menu was veggie samosas with a tamarind chutney.  We made an extremely simple dough and plopped a bunch of yummy spicy goodness inside, in this case potatoes and cashews and peas.

The tamarind chutney was as easy as cooking down some chunks of fresh tamarind with a lil’ bit of sugar, and then blending it smooth.  Done!  (Maya is now a huuuge tamarind fan.)

I realized that after making the samosa dough, you can stick whatever the heck you want in your there and fry it up!  Breakfast samosas?  Scrambled eggs, cheddar, and diced bacon go inside.  Time for dessert?  How ’bout Nutella and banana?  Fun hors d’oeuvre?  I’m thinking Brie and Granny Smith apples.  YUM!

~Samosas à la whatever~

Ingredients:

• 100 grams flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• some of your filling

Steps:

1. Mix well and knead tightly by adding water when needed.
2. Divide the dough into lil’ balls, flatten em’ into disks and cut em’ in half.
3. Fold them into triangles and stuff your filling inside.
4. Pinch to seal the edges and make sure it is in a triangular shape.
5. Deep fry until they become golden brown.
6. Enjoy!

We ate them fresh out of the fryer during class.

Next up is one of my favorites, good ol’ paneer butter masala (not peanut butter masala, that’s completely different).  Paneer, that Indian cheese, is served in a delish tomatoey gravy.  Lil’ bit hard to explain, but it’s good.

Making paneer could not be easier!  First you boil whole milk, then add some vinegar.  The milk immediately starts curdling and then you strain it and voila – you have paneer.  This is something we will definitely be doing at home!

Now on to paneer butter masala.  We whipped it up in no time, and I was stunned because: paneer butter masala in resturants always has a vibrant crimson color, but ours was a light creamy pink.  Chef told us that to achieve that brilliant red hue, restaurants often add food coloring!  Eww!  I can never eat restaurant paneer butter masala again because I know that it most likely contains “Red No.5” (though I probably will just grit my teeth and do it…)

With one eye, I am noticing the aforementioned creamy pink hue.

Aloo gobi is basically just fried veg with a few choice spices, what’s not to like?  We fried up some onions, fresh peas and cauliflower with chili, coriander, and turmeric, then added fresh tomatoes.  It was bursting with flavor and probably one of the best dishes we have eaten in India thus far!  It was so much better than it sounds.  Who knew vegetarian food could be so flavorful and satisfying?  If you desire the recipe, comment below to let the Ramblers know.

By the way, these fried onions (pictured below) were divine.  He basically just drops them in oil and lets them deep fry until they are crispy and then they’re used in a few of the dishes.  They really take things to the next level and they looked exactly like what you would get on your Philly cheesesteak.

Hmm… an Indian-Philly cheesesteak…would you sub the Cheez Whiz for paneer?  I never want Whiz in my sammich, thank you very much, I’ll stick with provolone.  By the way, a place called Little Sicily II in Philadelphia has created a tandoori chicken cheesteak sandwich, grab one sometime Karla and let us know how it is!

Before…

And after.  They taste like onion rings and make an amazing garnish.

To top it all off, we made two kinds of paratha – regular and potato.  Paratha is Indian flat bread, not too different from pita.  ‘Cause with any Indian meal, you gotta have either rice or bread.  We had both, which is better than one or the other.

Finally, finally, finally, after 3.5 hours,  it was time to eat.  (Don’t worry – we snacked on everything we made as it was ready so we weren’t dying of starvation yet…)

No, we aren’t praying – just excited to eat!

And for dessert, we had saffron rice kheer- rice puddin’ that tasted like an Indian twist on tapioca pudding.  An amazing finish to one of our favorite nights in India.  Again, let me know if you want the recipe.  Also easy and, yes, delish!

Oh and of course, Maya made a new, furry and very large friend…

Maya’s friend, Don. 

Through this class, we were introduced to some new ingredients that I either never heard of or never thought to use, including watermelon seeds and cinnamon bark.  Apparently, the lil’ cinnamon sticks that we use often contain chemicals. Cinnamon bark, however, smells and tastes a lot better and more like the strong cinnamon you would expect.

Our final few days in India will be spent shopping and gathering some of these ingredients to bring home.  We plan to buy asafatida, green cardamom, brown cardamom, tamarind (Maya likes to eat this by itself –  it’s super sour), cinnamon bark, and a cheese strainer for making paneer which, by the way, will be delicious on a caprese salad in lieu of fresh mozzarella.

In conclusion, before this class, we had never really done Indian home cooking because we always thought that it was too complicated.  But, as we quickly realized, it’s mind-blowingly simple.  (Editor’s note – that’s a slight exaggeration, but, yes, we will be making all of this at home and it is way easier than we anticipated.)

Bone apple tea!