Never, ever feel like you are alone:
With such a reminder, there’s really nothing to worry about in life. Insecurity happens!
To a week of no more worries!
September 29, 2017
Friday Flavour: Honey Dew Manchurian Chicken
Category: Fabulous Friday Flavours
Have you ever heard of a dish called Manchurian Chicken? If you haven’t, now you do.
As I found out many years back, this dish embodies Chinese influence and is largely popular only in India. As an old Indian friend of mine once said, “There’s nothing remotely Chinese about Chinese food in India. Somehow they call it Chinese because it’s got Manchurian in there!”
Why Manchurian? I really have no idea. I do know that it’s a pretty darn good dish. We used to add it to our list of food to order whenever we decided to get a home delivery of Indian food during our Bangkok days.
We hardly ever do home deliveries these days. In our little hole, it doesn’t exist; a perfect excuse to try make our own Manchurian chicken!
The only thing I did different from the original version of the Manchurian gravy was to add honey dew (otherwise also known as honey melon) to my cooking. Only because we happened to have an extra ball of melon lying around. We were melon-ed out by then and there was no reason for waste.
There’s something sinister about the soya sauce, tomato ketchup and chilli combination. The additional but optional ingredient of melon gave a natural sweetness and a light taste to it. It’s a wonderful dish to have every once in a while.
Sold yet? Give it a go:
Honey Dew Manchurian Chicken
2017-04-08 03:55:11
Serves 4
A unique Chinese-Indian fusion with the eclectic add-on of honey dew and lemon grass.
Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
35 min
Total Time
45 min
Ingredients
- 3 inches ginger
- 3 cloves garlic, pressed
- Half an onion, chopped
- 1 green chilli, chopped
- Fresh spring onion, chopped
- 1 carrot, chopped
- 1 lemon grass, bruised
- Half cup water
- 2 tspn corn flour
- Olive oil
Marination
- 8-12 pieces of chicken
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp soya sauce
- 4 tbsp corn flour
- 2 tbsp flour
- Salt & pepper to taste
Gravy
- 1/4 cup tomato ketchup
- 1 tbsp soya sauce
- 2 tbsp chilli sauce
- Half a lemon, squeeze the juice
- 3-4 slices of honey melon (about 2 cm thick each), mashed into pulps
Instructions
- Coat the chicken pieces with all the ingredients for marination. Set aside for half hour. Then fry the chicken in hot oil till a little brown. Drain and set aside.
- With the remaining oil (about 3 tbsp), saute ginger, garlic, onion, green chilli and carrots for about a minute.
- Add all the ingredients for the gravy. Stir well.
- Then mix in the bruised lemon grass. Add water. Let it bubble up and add corn flour to thicken
- Add the fried chicken. Mix well with the gravy.
- Sprinkle spring onion over
- Serve!
Notes
- The use of melon and lemon grass are optional. If no melon is used, add in about 2 tspn of sugar for sweetness. Feel free to substitute lemon juice with vinegar if you prefer so.
Grubbs n Critters http://grubbsncritters.com/
September 28, 2017
The Sky Spray-Farted Rainbows!
Category: In and around the Netherlands
Here’s a question: How often do you get to see a rainbow?
Back in the day when we were still living in Asia, we’d be lucky to see one or two rainbows once a year. Or, if any at all for a couple of years. It may rain a lot living in such a tropical climate but really, they don’t come by often.
That however, has not been the case here.
In fact, in the last few weeks, we have seen more rainbows than I have ever seen in my entire life. The frequency of us catching the sight of a rainbow just about when it started forming in the horizon was incredibly ridiculous. It was insane.
By that I mean we would see a rainbow at least 2-3 times a day in between our daily commute. On good days, it was for 6 days straight, SE-VE-RAL times a day. Some days, we even had a double. I mean, after about 2 weeks of seeing them lurking around, these sights were just getting lame!
It’s like the sky mercilessly spray-farted rainbows all around.They appeared everywhere and nowhere within mere seconds. Gone just as fast too!
The last picture is my favourite – we were driving over the dyke and in the distance, there was massive amount of rain under the clouds that had gathered together in balls of fluff. Then, came the band of colours above the water. Right moment to fish out the phone and try to snap a good picture whilst being in a moving car.
I know, I know…this is getting old. Too many rainbows going on around here; like the one I shared before last year and another in the summer. Oh- so-lame! 😉
One thing is for sure: Autumn is here. We have now officially say goodbye to Summer and September is about make an exit.
In the lamest way possible, I shall be waking up as (when) September ends. I’m certainly looking forward to clearer skies and brighter stars. Here’s sending lots more rainbow to colour all the hopes and dreams in your life!