A few months
ago…
You cannot spend the days
of your life indulged in absolutely nothing. Human minds are wonderfully
designed in such ways that they somehow find means to revitalize their dormant
self’s with interesting and challenging ideas. This could relieve you from monotonous
diets, meaningless hobbies, depleting gray cell and diminishing self-esteem. I
for instance shake myself up with food cravings. Since I have a lot of time and
patience I go with it real slow. I cannot afford to make a mistake here unlike
my past unaccountable spinster life. So, I spend a lot of time researching on
recipes, watching cooking videos, reading blogs and finding the right
ingredients …real slow. So far I have been experimenting with recipes within
India and I can proudly state that inspite of being an amateur most of the
dishes turned out pretty good. Still, I gradually started feeling my enthusiasm
about it swaying until a few weeks ago. I was going through a food blog and
here I came across some interesting Arabic dishes. Woooooooh! After almost a
year there on the web page I find a popular recipe for Shawarma. I knew I had
to try it out, there was no second thoughts. I went through the ingredients and
the cooking procedures …okay the recipe seemed simple, a few ingredients were typical
Arabic spices obviously hard to come by in America and besides there were
limitations of home style cooking, not having a rotisserie for instant.
A few weeks
ago…
I was walking through the
aisles of spices and sauces in a shop and there! I could have missed it but
lucky me …the one ingredient that was standing between me and my Shawarma
recipe. I grabbed the bottle, made sure it wasn’t my fantasy, didn’t bother to
check the price; you normally don’t for noble causes and bought the rascal home.
I had a stock of a few spices I bought from my various shopping- spree. Well,
none of them were used in the recipe I picked for my task, but during my
research I found them listed in a few other Shawarma recipes. So, here, I
decided to bend the stick a little- alter my chosen recipe, use two of the
spices I have instead of the one I don’t have.
Yesterday…
I finalized the one recipe
I am trying out and watched its video… The recipe seemed easy enough so I planned
my menu thus - to make pita bread (Kuboos equivalent), a shredded chicken
filling and a mix of vegetables to go along with it into the wrap and also a
side dish of hummus or tahini sauce, which one I haven’t decided yet. Wow! I am
so excited but I am not as confident as to rate it high. Just give it my best
and hope it turns out decent. I want it to be a surprise to hubby when he comes
home after work mainly because he too shared my love for Shawarma.
Today…
10 am
Today looks bright enough
and beautiful with light showers. I...cut, cleaned, marinated and refrigerated
the chicken with all the spices and condiments…roasted and ground the
ingredients for the sauce. Pita bread!! Oh I totally forgot.
55 minutes past noon.
My chicken shreds are marinating in a variety
of spices and flavor. The recipe says marinate for two hours I’m gonna keep it
for a while longer than that.
1:15 pm
Okaay! Imagine Arabs
cooking Sambar. It’s gonna be really tough for them. The lady in the video made
it sound so easy. Well it’s not …her food processor ground the sauce
ingredients into a fine watery paste in less than one minute. My Indian mixer
grinder is taking more than 15 minutes and all my patience to even break the
contents into tiny bits let alone grind it into a fine paste. It’s taking hell
lot of time. There is no time even to consider making hummus… just how they say
too many cooks spoil the broth… I fear too many first time recipes might spoil
the meal so I think I will cut down Hummus and stick to the sauce alone. So it
will be chicken, veg mix, tahini sauce and pita bread. OOPS! I forgot the
vegetables …those green leafy …abundant in all the stores…left for the last
minute…forgotten!! So it’s gonna be pita bread, chicken shreds and tahini
sauce.
5 pm
I am done.
Pita bread - Flour …fermented…kneaded…rolled….baked.
Marinated chicken strips - grilled and sauce – white, watery slightly bitter
but tasty done.
Okkay! Personally speaking
they turned out to be not that great but not bad either. I have my doubts on
whether it will be a pleasant surprise for hubby as I anticipated. Pita bread
turned out rough and slightly crispy at sides. I did everything as per the recipe;
I mean every ingredient and all. But it turned out to be hard and crispy at
places instead of soft and moist as any bread is supposed to be. The chicken
for which I had such great hopes turned out the same. I mean I waited for the
key ingredient for months. They were supposed to come out moist and soft
instead they look more related to candy sticks. Now when I think of it, I feel
like I should have strictly followed the recipe and should have shallow fried
it in olive oil (I went around the recipe and grilled it to save manpower).
DAMN. I believe it’s because I left the two in the oven for too long. Too much heat
takes away the moisture or so I read somewhere…Anyways.
Well, all hopes are not
lost. I would serve this to hubby without ever telling him it’s meant to be a
Shawarma. So he would never compare and judge with the original. Instead he would
just have it as one of my latest experimental dish. Yea, that sounds like a
plan.
6:00 pm
Hubby came home famished,
God bless! He said the sauce was good ...said it repeatedly two, three times.
He commented that the Pita bread and chicken were stiff (tell me about it). But
he loved the sauce…I had one and 3 quarters Shawarma (discarded the crispy
parts). He had four, luxuriously loaded with the stiff chicken and the life
savior sauce.
Around 9 pm
After a hard day’s work, I
went for a walk to relax myself. I came home a little earlier than hubby who
was back after his usual volleyball match. Normally, he would come home yelling
for dinner right from the doorway, but today nothing. It was like any other
normal day in our life, except, we had an extra early mammoth Dinnneeerrrrrrrrrrrr!!
“Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget
food. You can go a week without laughing.” Joss Whedon
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