Foods

[Preety_India]

I'm really digging into different foods and research on it. 

 

[Preety_India]

 

 

[Preety_India]

 

Adrak wali chai in India.

ginger tea is a very common Indian beverage made from tea leaves and fresh ginger. Its also called as Adrak chai or Adrak wali chai in India.

Tea is one beverage that is made in all homes in India. sometimes i make the tea with milk. At times, I make tea with cashew or soy milk. I don’t add almond milk as I don’t like the taste of almond milk in tea. With cashew milk, you won’t even come to know that the tea is made in it and not regular milk.

 

 

 

There are a few variations of tea made in India. some spices are added to the tea thus making it a Masala chai. you can also use a chai spice blend know as masala chai powder. There is also mint tea or pudina chai and tulsi tea, which is made from fresh mint leaves and tulsi leaves (holy basil) respectively. Also, a combination of both ginger and mint can be used while making tea.

Recipe taken from the web. 

1. Wash, peel and crush the ginger. Keep all the ingredients ready for making ginger tea.

2. Crush or powder 3-4 cardamoms in a mortar-pestle.

3. In a saucepan or kettle, add 4 cups of water, 2 inch ginger grated and the crushed cardamom with the peel.

4. Boil this water-ginger-cardamom mixture for a good 6-7 minutes, till the color of the water changes to a mild yellowish hue. Ginger releases its juices & flavors in the water and thus the color of the water changes

5. Add 8 teaspoon sugar and simmer for a more of 1-2 minutes.

6. Now add 3-4 teaspoon of tea leaves and simmer for about 1 to 2 minutes till the water gets a deep hue of red.

7. Simmering make the tea strong. If you prefer a light version, then just add the tea leaves to the water. Cover and allow the tea leaves to steep in the hot spiced water for 3 to 4 minutes.

 

8. Add ¼ to ½ cup of hot milk. Some people like to have more milk and some like less milk in ginger tea. So it varies from person to person.

9. If adding cold milk, then simmer for a minute or two. If using cashew milk or almond milk, then just stir the cashew milk with tea and remove from pan as otherwise heating further would cause the cashew or almond milk to become slimy and separate.

10. Strain the tea through a strainer right into the cups. 

 

Serve the hot ginger tea or adrak chai with Indian snacks like bread pakora, shakkar pare, mathri or samosas. You could also serve the tea with biscuits or cookies.

 

 

[Preety_India]

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[Preety_India]

 

12 minutes ago, modmyth said:

AUTHENTIC CANTONESE FOOD: I just discovered this channel late last night. @Preety_India I thought you might be interested in this if you're still interested in making Cantonese food.

So this was the first video I watched. While I'm not super sentimental about Cantonese cooking as a whole, this is definitely something that I really loved even when I was young. It's really delicious mixed with plain white rice. It's classically paired with Bai Qie Ji, as mentioned in this video. Or a more commonly known dish: Hainanese Chicken.

Another thing I did really enjoy was jook, even when I wasn't sick. Probably I've written a bit about it before. My mom usually cooked it with finely chopped pork or beef though, not chicken. I would mainly add chopped green onions, a touch of sesame oil, and finely ground white pepper (my mom was very insistent that this was the only appropriate pepper to use). I personally find it a bit obscene when people add too many ingredients, but the appeal for me is the simplicity of it. Dried shrimp, scallops, and spring onions are also pretty good, but were a much rarer addition.

Also, century-old egg is a traditional addition that I never liked. I don't think it's daily thing though, more of a fancy brunch/ breakfast sort of addition.

Also, I think it's more of a northern tradition to add Chinese fried donuts; I've heard that it's a very common breakfast item there. As is congee with Cantonese style toppings in the south.

It was more of a curiosity to watch him making fish paste the traditional way without the food processors, though he said that using one is completely fine. My mom used to buy preground fish paste (usually it was dace) from the Asian supermarket, and then put it in fried tofu to make a dish which looked a lot like this, except the tofu was prefried on the outside, and then she would steam it. I think also that there was spring onion and ginger in the mix.

Side Fact: I was pretty terrified of my mom's Chinese meat cleaver growing up. She only used it for certain tasks though, if I remember correctly, finely chopping meat was one of them.

There was an interesting bit here about how ketchup was originally from a Chinese term referring to fish sauce that was used a lot in China as well Southeast Asia, and then the sauce went back to the UK where it was a huge hit and they started manufacturing their own fish sauces, and they also started making mushroom and then tomato based sauces. So apparently the tomato-based ketchup came back to China sometime in the late 1800s/ early 1900s, and then they started experimenting with putting in their dishes. This dish then came with Chinese immigrants to North America, and then we ended up with the Chinese-American version of sweet and sour pork.

 

Other things I am curious to watch on that channel: watching this older gentleman make siu mai (a popular dim sum dish, and possibly the best one), and char siu (Chinese bbq pork), and zongzi from scratch. These three recipes are good examples of what Cantonese people typically buy premade and do not make from scratch.

My mom would sometimes make the ginger scallion sauce, for example, though she would complain about the amount of chopping required. I remember she told me once too about much effort it is to make fish paste the old fashioned way. Not that I couldn't use my own imagination then, but I see it in the above video. I feel moderately annoyed/ tired watching him making those fish balls (dude, I'd rather just fry or steam that shit), but I'm sure homemade fishballs are way tastier and also healthier without all of those additives.

Really useful information on Cantonese food recipes.

I can use some of the ingredients in my recipes in the future.