Hi, It has been long since I have posted, for that there could be two reasons either I am not cooking 
or haven’t tried any thing new.. . I guess a bit of both. Well last week I made Butter Nut. Now many of my readers wouldn’t have a clue of what butter nut is as to my knowledge its not found in the UAE, India or Pakistan. I am not sure of the rest of the world but its surely available in South Africa.
Butter Nut is from the family of pumpkins, it has a sweet smell like of a melon. There are various ways of preparing a dish with Butte Nut, but this is how I prepared my first Butter Nut dish.
Ingredients:
1 medium Butternut
100ml Cooking Oil
1 Medium Onion
Whole Zeera and
Salt
Preparations:
Wash Clean and cut cubes of Butter Nut, then in a heated pan add oil cook onions till slight brown add butter nut and cook on low heat for 20mins or so.. Then add Zeera for flavor and cook for another 5-10mins.. Don’t shuffle the butter nut a lot as it will mesh.
Server with home made Rotis or Toasted Bread. Hmmmmm
For those who don’t know what a butter nut looks like here it is for you
And this is how it looks after its cooked.
Today I had made Karahi Chicken using Shaan’s Karahi Ghost Spice Masala, Didn’t follow instructions as laid out on the packet but got an idea of what to do. This is how I prepared it.
Ingredients:
400g of chicken pieces
3 medium sized Tomatoes
100ml Sunflower Oil
2tbls of Finely chopped Garlic
1tbls of ginger garlic Paste
1tbls of Red Chilli Powder
1/2 Packet of Shan Karahi Masala
Some Green Chilies
Preparations: Wash and clean the chiken and add it to 3/4 cup of water and put on boil, add Ginger Garlic Paste and Chopped Garlic and let the meat turn white and tender, then add 1/2 packet of Shan Spices and cook on medium high for 10 mins.. or till most of the water is evaported. While the chiekn is been cooked in the spices in a seperate pan pour some oil and add tomates cook till tomatoes are done. After that transfer the chicken and the spices into the pan (karahi) of tomatoes and cook on medium for 15mins add red chilli powder to give the redish color and some taste. When done sprikle green peper into the Karahi and garnish it with some Coriander… I didn’t garnish as didn’t have coriander
As always this is how it looked as for the taste, book a ticket to Durban
Tonite on my menu was Pepper Chiken in Tomato Sauce. Ingredients and Prepratations as follows:
Ingredients:
1 Medium Onion finely chopped
2tsp Chopped garlic
1tbsp Crushed Black Pepper
1tbsp Crushed Red Chillies
200g Tomato Puree
100g Sunflower Oil
250g Bite Sized Chicken Fillets
Preparation Time: 45mins to cook and 15mins to eat
Servings hmmm I guess enough for two.
Preparations: In a pot heat oil, then added finely chopped onion and crsuhed garlic, saute till onions are brown then add chicken pieces and braze for 5 mins.. At this point add salt as per taste and add black pepper mixing it thoroughly for 1min, now add the tomato puree and cook for 10 – 12 mins on medium low. After 5mins add the crushed red chillies mix it well.
Have it with toasted bread and any stir fry, thinking of it Mashed potatoes would be a good compliment to the dish. Anyway you enjoy as I did.
Today in the evening was chatting with my sis and asked what she had made for supper, so she said Mexican Dish, sounded intresting so asked her it was prepared. And this is how I got it prepared .
Things that are required:
2 small onions finely chopped
3tbsp of Sunflwoer Oil
1.5tsp of Finely Chopped Garlic
200g of Tomato Puree
250g of Baked Beans in Tomato Puree (Rest of the tin for eating while you cook)
200g of Mince
Knor Meat Cubes (Optinal for Flavor, I didn’t have it)
Black Pepper and Crushed Red Chillies
Prepartion:
In a pot fry onions till slightly brown, then Add chopped garlic and fry few minutes, add the mince and braze it till its tender, add the tomato puree and cook for 10 mins. (Advisable to be near the pot and check). Add crsuhed red chillies.when the mince is cooked add the Baked beans let it heat for 6 mins or so and then dish it out on to the Rice and enjoy.
Rice preparation as per normal practice
This is how it looks 
Yesterday being sunday, decided to have mince as didn’t have chiken and was not in mood of making anything in meat (takes time to cook) So deforsted the Mince since afternoon and at around 10PM started cooking. And this is how it went.
In a pot (I used an aluminium one) heated 100ml approx of sunflower oil, then added whole pepper, cinamon stick and seaseme seeds fried it for a while and then added one small onion finely chopped as the onion changed its color added the mince (keema, which was washed throughly), cooked the mince on medium high until the mince was half done and then added the masala’s, first added the zeera poweder and mixed, then added red chilli poweder mixed, then a bit of tumeric and mixed. Added salt as per taste. After a few minutes of cooking on medium heat added one medium sized tomato diced.Mixed it well and then left it on Medium Low heat for approx 15 – 20 minutes. Added a bit of oil a bit later and also 100ml of water towards the end but dried up the water before serving.
Had the mince with Dawn’s Oinion Paratha’s which are impoted from Pakistan, tasted nice.
Till next time cheers
A night before (Friday Night) had asked my cousin ‘Batool’ what to do with Coconut Milk and sweet corn with chicken, so following her instructions this is how I prepared it on Saturday evening (20th May).
In Butter added one medium diced onion… after a while added clean chiken, sautéed for a few minutes untill the chicken got white.. then added a can of Coconut Milk and cooked for some time after the milk was boiling.. then added Sweet Corn 3/4 can.. Added Crushed Black Pepper.. and salt.. Towards the end added chopped green chilies.
Made Rice but it was a disaster, so had it with toasted bread. Shared it with supper at a friends place.
This is how it looked
This one here was made two weeks back.. 9 or 10th of May, and the time was round about 9PM or so. How did i get the idea of this was an extension to the my previous “Butter Pepper Chicken”.
The preparation/marination of this chicken was as follows, with 250g – 300g of boneless chicken, added mayonase and lots of pepper, little bit of chilli poweder and salt as per taste. (In urdu we say hazb-e-Zaiqah). Marinated the above mxture and left if for overnight. But I think if had left it for an hour or so would be allrite too (Actually went out that night after started cooking 
).
In a frying pan (I have got a non stick one which is cool as don’t have to worry much about scrubbing after cooking), heated two spoons of Flora Margarine, (one can use butter) and then added the marinated chicken.
Cooked on high for 5 mins and then reduced the heat so that the chiken doesn’t burn. As usual tossing and turning, while it was frying added a bit of Zeera powder for flavor. Total cooking time excluding the marinating part was approx 30mins.
If you have tried it before something similar or have tried the above would like to know from you side how it went. I know that I am not quantifying the ingredeints, I cannot casue I like to have slightly different taste every time I cook, but try to keep the ingredients the same. Till next time happy cooking
This will be my first post in this category and its not my first experience with cooking, what made me thinking of writing this one down was the feeling of achievement.
I would had no intentions of posting and sharing if it didn’t taste that good . Well here it goes it was 10:45PM and was feeling for an appetite, so defrosted some boneless chicken in the microwave for 8 min and cut to pieces, I guess around 200grams or so (I don’t measure I guess). After that in a non-stick frying pan I added Margarine around 2tea spoons and fried the chicken in the margarine, as it was frying sprinkled handsome on crushed black pepper and a pinch of salt. Fried some more tossing it around making sure the chicken doesn’t burn. I added a bit of red chili powder just to give it a bit of a zing with a bit of zeera powder for flavor. Poked with a fork to see if the chicken was done. I didn’t cook it for longer as it looses its tenderness so if anyone of you are trying just be careful.
I must say that I had never tried this before nor experienced and on top of all that it just took 25mins to prepare and 10 min to gobble it down .
Well that’s all for now if you have anything to add or comment I would like to hear from you.