Chakri Kabab :
OK. Guys.
Here you are again. This time it is original. Designed, invented and perfected by yours truly.
A HUMBLE REQUEST:
Kindly read it slowly and thoroughly, probably reread it. Don't try to read the page, try to read the mind of the writer. You would probably love it as much
as I loved it while making. Though lots of my friends visiting our household have enjoyed it, but today it is FIRST TIME that it is being broadcast in the cyberspace.
I have tried to be as explicit and commentate as possible and do hope that you would have no difficulty in making at your home and enjoying it with your friends.
Ready folks ?
So here we go.
You have to have few things made, then assembled and finally the dish comes out.
Part I.
Take some 100 Gm of Chana Dal and soak it for about 3 hours. This is how it looks like after the treatment.
I am proud of my butcher. He never underweighs. I bought 500 Gm of Keema [ Minced Mutton ] and I got 500 Gms.
and transfer it into a bowl.
Now take you spice plate and measure the following spices.
1 Table Spoon full of salt.
1 Tea Spoon full of red chilli powder
1 Tea Spoon full of coriander powder
1 Tea Spoon full of Garam Masala
1 Tea Spoon full of Sonth [ Dried Ginger Powder ]
1 Tea spoon full of Cumin Powder
1 Tea spoon full of chat masala
1 Tea Spoon full of Seekh Kabab Masala. This is another spice that we use in Kababs. I bought it from International Trade Fair. This is made in Pakistan.
[ you can omit it or try to buy it in the halls exhibiting international merchandise at International trade fair held at pragati maidan, delhi every november, you might find me there searching for some more spices]
And this is how your spice plate looks like. See the seekh kabab masala at almost 5 o clock position ?
Pour the keema in the pressure cooker.
A table spoon full of ginger garlic paste.
Pour in the spice plate
and soaked and drained channa dal.
Add half cup of water
Try to have a good "dekho". I do sometimes talk to my food and feel in unison with it [don't laugh, years of experience would get you to this stage]. But today I only looked and didn't talk and made a mistake.
Put the Cooker lid on. LIght the fire and after the first whistle, reduce the flame and let it cook for about 10 mintes from the first whistle.
Put off the fire. Let the cooker cool off a bit. Open the lid, and if there is any small qty of water left in the cooker, just reduce it, so that your minced mutton is almost dry. Now take out your dry grinder
and put the keema in it for grinding.
Grind the keema. Since it is dry, you would have to open the grinder time and again and push the keema with the back of the spoon so
that the blades of the grinder get some purchase. After a couple of attempts, this is how it would look like
Take it out in a bowl, and notice how dry it is.
And I made a BIG MISTAKE. Stupid me. Now what am I going to do ? I was looking at chickloo who was also flaberghasted. Meekly she told me
that she too forgot. In our household, keema without saunf powder is just unthinkable. I think the photography and posting is taking its toll.
WORLD'S GREATEST TIP:
Add Saunf powder to any mince mutton dish and it would just add a new dimension to it. Saunf taste is so complementary to the taste of mutton
I can't redo the whole thing again. Then suddenly somethng struck me. Just watch.
Part II
Making chapatis. This is damn simple and anybody can do it, no big deal. Ha, ha. How Naive.... No . everybody can't make good chapati.
Here is the formula.
ok. roll your chapati. We need rather thin one for this kabab.
and put it on your tawa
Count 10 and turn it
and now let it cook till you can see small air pockets in the chapati at random places. it takes a count of about 20 -22. Just turn it
and watch the magic.
The chapati become a gol gappa without doing anything to it. The science behind it is that by count of 10 you just sealed in the pores quickly on one side and then turned and cooked over the other side by a count of 20 till the steam started forming now turning it back, heats the half cooked first side and you have a perfect specimen.
Make 4-5 rotis.
Part III.
Now take some fresh spinach leaves and cut out the stalks.
Till we have about 30-40 leaves.
Take a pan. Pour in some 1.5 liters of water into it. And add half a tea spoon full of vinegar
and half a tea spoon full of salt.
COOKING TIP:
Addition of salt and vinegar helps to keep the spinach green. If you have some cauliflower and you suspect that it might have some insects in it just immerse the cut cauliflower in water with salt and vinegar, the scoundrels would come out yelling for help.
Ok. on to kabab now. Light the fire and let the water with the salt and vinegar come to boil. Once it has started boiling, drop the spinach leaves for just about a minute and a half to blanch them.
and immediately drain in a colander
and wash it with cool water. Since it is winter time so the tap water does a fine job, otherwise you can immerse the spinach leaves in iced water.
draining and immediately putting in cold water stops the cooking process going on in the leaves and they remain beautifully green.
Now take a plate and put your clean kitchen napkin in it and put in spinach leaves by ones or twos
and pat dry them. Drying is very very important. You would have noticed that all the ingredients; the roti, the kabab and the spinach leaves are as dry as possible.
Meanwhile take your chapati and put the pat dried spinach leaf on it.
and continue doing so
Kyon Maja aa raha hai ke nahin ?
till you reach
Now put your kitchen napkin on the spincahed chapati
and press it hard
this would further dry out the spinach leaves. Look how the napkin left its impression on the spinach leaves.
Now take that cooked and ground keema a bit by bit and flatten it out
and place it on the spinach.
and repeat
till you are done
Now some plastic surgery.
flatten the keema and cut it to desirable sizes to fill in the blanks left on the roti.
After plastic surgery, do some micro-surgery, and flatten out the keema at the rims so that the chapati is full.
take some more bits for the finale
till you have reached your Master piece. Shahjahan would have loved you.
How to rectify the mistakes.
Remember I had forgotten to put in the saunf powder. So here is the master stroke !!!!!!.
I just dusted the forgotten saunf powder over it , for the first time in the history of my kabab making. And I discovered another thing today. Why not add some saunf powder
in the spice mix and cook it as usual and the rest of it just sprinkle. I did some retrospection, had I used the saunf like i always do, it would have cooked with the minced meat for sure.
But this way gave me additional way to keeping another flavour of raw powder and also more importantly dusting it gave me another go at keeping the keema more drier.. Voila.
Reaping benefits of mistake !!!!!!
and add another dimension. Add crushed black cardamom and green cardamom seeds as well.
Again for the first time in the history. I would remember bcmtouring recipe section for this innovation.
and then again we do the repeat of spinach leaf laying process. One by one.
we again put the kitchen napkin to dry the spinach leaves
and slowly the mystery unfolds
Now lift the chapati from its side and start to roll it
gently but firmly
roll it
Circus Act I
When you reach the end of rolling. Place your fingers like shown in the pic and count 10 in hindi. Then count 10 in english and finally count 10 in punjabi.
The idea behind this arithmatic excercise is that the roll remains rolled. and all that is inside, settles in.
Now take an aluminium foil and gently lift your rolled roti and put it on the foil and start rolling it again.
straightening the ends of the foil if needed
and keep rolling
and rolling
till you reach the end, and repeat the circus act i. Keep your fingers pressed on the roll.
Circus Act 2.
Now remember the person who peeved you, hurt you, disturbed you , crossed your path and twist his right ear in clockwise direction.
repeat the same action on his left ear in anticlockwise direction.
and do it firmly
CIRCUS ACT III
Grab the roll in your palms and press it firmly so that it keeps it cylinderical shape.
CIRCUS ACT IV
We are prefectionists... No? .. So roll the roll.
Now go ahead and make some more rolls like this till you are finished with your roti, kabab or spinach leaves.
And now watch the beauty with your aching back.
Let this roll rest for some 30 minutes before you put it in the fridge for some more time before you finally put it in the freezer for future use. You can keep them as long as 3 months in the freezer and once again remember the guru mantra, keep the ingredients as dry as possible.
Today we just rested it for 30 minutes in the fridge and for another 30 minutes in the freezer. Then we took them out.
Now take out the foil.
Cut the rolls into Chakris like this.
Insert a toothpick at the loose end, so that it does not tend to open up. This is again dual technology. The toothpick not only
ties the loose ends, but also helps in picking up the Kabab and eating it !!!!!
Take your griddle. Lightly oil it. and just let the chakris get sorta shallow fried. Remember everything here is cooked; your rotis, kabab, spinach leaves all are cooked.
But you are sorta reheating the Kabab to make it eat-ready and also adding roasting flavours.
and plate them either with the toothpicks.
or without the toothpicks
Hip Hip Hurray. Now where is that "Moov" tube ?
Some Post- Mortem :
I have been trying to infuse more color to it, by trying various layers of say cheese, grated boiled vegies and so on and so forth, but if we add more layers, this chakri tends to become thick and unmanagable. Though I have been sucessful as long as I have been able to keep the chakri layers to just 1 or 2 at the most.
I did experiment with cheese slices, salamis and you name it. Once the lack of spinach leaves made me experiment it with cabbage. I took the finer leaves, boiled them and though I was successful I did not quite like the taste.
I have also tried to do away with the roti, but the results were not so good, though i have changed the flours, spiced them and what not.
Once i did another great experiment. I drew a virtual horizontal line in the chapati and filled the upper half with keema and the lower half with crushed and kneaded left over cooked
rice and rolled the roti !!!! The final product showed half circles of keema and half circles of white rice. Not bad !!!!!!
But we leave the left over cooked rice for prantha stuffing after adding few spices and crushing them to stuff the pranthas with.
You can sure continue to add newer ideas. The joy of cooking knows no bounds !!!!!!!
But since our motto here is to have Idiot-proof, can't-go-wrong type of recipes, so I have stuck with my most stable recipe of chakri Kabab. Even the name was invented by me after lots of trials and name changes, the exact idea came on a Diwali day !!!!
CAUTION:
And don't forget to keep the things DRY.
FOR BUNNIES :
The bunnies can do a variation. They can boil the nutri nuggets. Squeeze and rinse them twice or thrice to remove any unwanted flavours, then grind them in
dry grinder, add in the same spices, knead and use it instead of keema and still call it Chakri Kabab. What else ?
OK. Guys.
Here you are again. This time it is original. Designed, invented and perfected by yours truly.
A HUMBLE REQUEST:
Kindly read it slowly and thoroughly, probably reread it. Don't try to read the page, try to read the mind of the writer. You would probably love it as much
as I loved it while making. Though lots of my friends visiting our household have enjoyed it, but today it is FIRST TIME that it is being broadcast in the cyberspace.
I have tried to be as explicit and commentate as possible and do hope that you would have no difficulty in making at your home and enjoying it with your friends.
Ready folks ?
So here we go.
You have to have few things made, then assembled and finally the dish comes out.
Part I.
Take some 100 Gm of Chana Dal and soak it for about 3 hours. This is how it looks like after the treatment.
I am proud of my butcher. He never underweighs. I bought 500 Gm of Keema [ Minced Mutton ] and I got 500 Gms.
and transfer it into a bowl.
Now take you spice plate and measure the following spices.
1 Table Spoon full of salt.
1 Tea Spoon full of red chilli powder
1 Tea Spoon full of coriander powder
1 Tea Spoon full of Garam Masala
1 Tea Spoon full of Sonth [ Dried Ginger Powder ]
1 Tea spoon full of Cumin Powder
1 Tea spoon full of chat masala
1 Tea Spoon full of Seekh Kabab Masala. This is another spice that we use in Kababs. I bought it from International Trade Fair. This is made in Pakistan.
[ you can omit it or try to buy it in the halls exhibiting international merchandise at International trade fair held at pragati maidan, delhi every november, you might find me there searching for some more spices]
And this is how your spice plate looks like. See the seekh kabab masala at almost 5 o clock position ?
Pour the keema in the pressure cooker.
A table spoon full of ginger garlic paste.
Pour in the spice plate
and soaked and drained channa dal.
Add half cup of water
Try to have a good "dekho". I do sometimes talk to my food and feel in unison with it [don't laugh, years of experience would get you to this stage]. But today I only looked and didn't talk and made a mistake.
Put the Cooker lid on. LIght the fire and after the first whistle, reduce the flame and let it cook for about 10 mintes from the first whistle.
Put off the fire. Let the cooker cool off a bit. Open the lid, and if there is any small qty of water left in the cooker, just reduce it, so that your minced mutton is almost dry. Now take out your dry grinder
and put the keema in it for grinding.
Grind the keema. Since it is dry, you would have to open the grinder time and again and push the keema with the back of the spoon so
that the blades of the grinder get some purchase. After a couple of attempts, this is how it would look like
Take it out in a bowl, and notice how dry it is.
And I made a BIG MISTAKE. Stupid me. Now what am I going to do ? I was looking at chickloo who was also flaberghasted. Meekly she told me
that she too forgot. In our household, keema without saunf powder is just unthinkable. I think the photography and posting is taking its toll.
WORLD'S GREATEST TIP:
Add Saunf powder to any mince mutton dish and it would just add a new dimension to it. Saunf taste is so complementary to the taste of mutton
I can't redo the whole thing again. Then suddenly somethng struck me. Just watch.
Part II
Making chapatis. This is damn simple and anybody can do it, no big deal. Ha, ha. How Naive.... No . everybody can't make good chapati.
Here is the formula.
ok. roll your chapati. We need rather thin one for this kabab.
and put it on your tawa
Count 10 and turn it
and now let it cook till you can see small air pockets in the chapati at random places. it takes a count of about 20 -22. Just turn it
and watch the magic.
The chapati become a gol gappa without doing anything to it. The science behind it is that by count of 10 you just sealed in the pores quickly on one side and then turned and cooked over the other side by a count of 20 till the steam started forming now turning it back, heats the half cooked first side and you have a perfect specimen.
Make 4-5 rotis.
Part III.
Now take some fresh spinach leaves and cut out the stalks.
Till we have about 30-40 leaves.
Take a pan. Pour in some 1.5 liters of water into it. And add half a tea spoon full of vinegar
and half a tea spoon full of salt.
COOKING TIP:
Addition of salt and vinegar helps to keep the spinach green. If you have some cauliflower and you suspect that it might have some insects in it just immerse the cut cauliflower in water with salt and vinegar, the scoundrels would come out yelling for help.
Ok. on to kabab now. Light the fire and let the water with the salt and vinegar come to boil. Once it has started boiling, drop the spinach leaves for just about a minute and a half to blanch them.
and immediately drain in a colander
and wash it with cool water. Since it is winter time so the tap water does a fine job, otherwise you can immerse the spinach leaves in iced water.
draining and immediately putting in cold water stops the cooking process going on in the leaves and they remain beautifully green.
Now take a plate and put your clean kitchen napkin in it and put in spinach leaves by ones or twos
and pat dry them. Drying is very very important. You would have noticed that all the ingredients; the roti, the kabab and the spinach leaves are as dry as possible.
Meanwhile take your chapati and put the pat dried spinach leaf on it.
and continue doing so
Kyon Maja aa raha hai ke nahin ?
till you reach
Now put your kitchen napkin on the spincahed chapati
and press it hard
this would further dry out the spinach leaves. Look how the napkin left its impression on the spinach leaves.
Now take that cooked and ground keema a bit by bit and flatten it out
and place it on the spinach.
and repeat
till you are done
Now some plastic surgery.
flatten the keema and cut it to desirable sizes to fill in the blanks left on the roti.
After plastic surgery, do some micro-surgery, and flatten out the keema at the rims so that the chapati is full.
take some more bits for the finale
till you have reached your Master piece. Shahjahan would have loved you.
How to rectify the mistakes.
Remember I had forgotten to put in the saunf powder. So here is the master stroke !!!!!!.
I just dusted the forgotten saunf powder over it , for the first time in the history of my kabab making. And I discovered another thing today. Why not add some saunf powder
in the spice mix and cook it as usual and the rest of it just sprinkle. I did some retrospection, had I used the saunf like i always do, it would have cooked with the minced meat for sure.
But this way gave me additional way to keeping another flavour of raw powder and also more importantly dusting it gave me another go at keeping the keema more drier.. Voila.
Reaping benefits of mistake !!!!!!
and add another dimension. Add crushed black cardamom and green cardamom seeds as well.
Again for the first time in the history. I would remember bcmtouring recipe section for this innovation.
and then again we do the repeat of spinach leaf laying process. One by one.
we again put the kitchen napkin to dry the spinach leaves
and slowly the mystery unfolds
Now lift the chapati from its side and start to roll it
gently but firmly
roll it
Circus Act I
When you reach the end of rolling. Place your fingers like shown in the pic and count 10 in hindi. Then count 10 in english and finally count 10 in punjabi.
The idea behind this arithmatic excercise is that the roll remains rolled. and all that is inside, settles in.
Now take an aluminium foil and gently lift your rolled roti and put it on the foil and start rolling it again.
straightening the ends of the foil if needed
and keep rolling
and rolling
till you reach the end, and repeat the circus act i. Keep your fingers pressed on the roll.
Circus Act 2.
Now remember the person who peeved you, hurt you, disturbed you , crossed your path and twist his right ear in clockwise direction.
repeat the same action on his left ear in anticlockwise direction.
and do it firmly
CIRCUS ACT III
Grab the roll in your palms and press it firmly so that it keeps it cylinderical shape.
CIRCUS ACT IV
We are prefectionists... No? .. So roll the roll.
Now go ahead and make some more rolls like this till you are finished with your roti, kabab or spinach leaves.
And now watch the beauty with your aching back.
Let this roll rest for some 30 minutes before you put it in the fridge for some more time before you finally put it in the freezer for future use. You can keep them as long as 3 months in the freezer and once again remember the guru mantra, keep the ingredients as dry as possible.
Today we just rested it for 30 minutes in the fridge and for another 30 minutes in the freezer. Then we took them out.
Now take out the foil.
Cut the rolls into Chakris like this.
Insert a toothpick at the loose end, so that it does not tend to open up. This is again dual technology. The toothpick not only
ties the loose ends, but also helps in picking up the Kabab and eating it !!!!!
Take your griddle. Lightly oil it. and just let the chakris get sorta shallow fried. Remember everything here is cooked; your rotis, kabab, spinach leaves all are cooked.
But you are sorta reheating the Kabab to make it eat-ready and also adding roasting flavours.
and plate them either with the toothpicks.
or without the toothpicks
Hip Hip Hurray. Now where is that "Moov" tube ?
Some Post- Mortem :
I have been trying to infuse more color to it, by trying various layers of say cheese, grated boiled vegies and so on and so forth, but if we add more layers, this chakri tends to become thick and unmanagable. Though I have been sucessful as long as I have been able to keep the chakri layers to just 1 or 2 at the most.
I did experiment with cheese slices, salamis and you name it. Once the lack of spinach leaves made me experiment it with cabbage. I took the finer leaves, boiled them and though I was successful I did not quite like the taste.
I have also tried to do away with the roti, but the results were not so good, though i have changed the flours, spiced them and what not.
Once i did another great experiment. I drew a virtual horizontal line in the chapati and filled the upper half with keema and the lower half with crushed and kneaded left over cooked
rice and rolled the roti !!!! The final product showed half circles of keema and half circles of white rice. Not bad !!!!!!
But we leave the left over cooked rice for prantha stuffing after adding few spices and crushing them to stuff the pranthas with.
You can sure continue to add newer ideas. The joy of cooking knows no bounds !!!!!!!
But since our motto here is to have Idiot-proof, can't-go-wrong type of recipes, so I have stuck with my most stable recipe of chakri Kabab. Even the name was invented by me after lots of trials and name changes, the exact idea came on a Diwali day !!!!
CAUTION:
And don't forget to keep the things DRY.
FOR BUNNIES :
The bunnies can do a variation. They can boil the nutri nuggets. Squeeze and rinse them twice or thrice to remove any unwanted flavours, then grind them in
dry grinder, add in the same spices, knead and use it instead of keema and still call it Chakri Kabab. What else ?
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