Deccan Herald, India, October 2015

Hurray for Hummus!

I admit, I'm hooked on hummus. This Levantine dish is such a nutritious, healthful snack and I can literally eat tubs of it. Like most people, I used to buy the ready-made variety until I started reading the labels more closely and noticing all sorts of preservatives, additives and artificial ingredients I didn't recognize. I did some research and found that making ones own hummus is, in fact, ridiculously easy. It tastes so much better and fresher when you can control the quality of the ingredients and it's completely vegan. Best of all, it requires no cooking, proving that some of the nicest things in life are often the simplest!

It's not an exact science, so adapt proportions to your own tastes but here's how I make my Roasted Red Pepper Hummus:

• 1 can of chick peas/ garbanzo beans (drained and rinsed but save some of the liquid and a few whole beans to garnish)
• A couple of dollops of tahini (you can buy this in a jar. It's basically sesame seed paste)
• Juice of one lemon
• A few spoonfuls of extra virgin olive oil
• A couple of cloves of garlic (I like the caramelly sweetness of roasted garlic so I roast them in a hot oven for a few minutes, but you can use them raw if you prefer)
• A piece of flame roasted red pepper/ capsicum (again, you can buy this in a jar if you don't want to roast your own)
• Salt
• Paprika or chilli powder

Puree all the ingredients in a blender or food processor with a few splashes of the chick pea liquid. I use the NutriBullet, which is my current favourite new appliance (and what I use to make vegetable blasts). Don't blend it too smoothly — the paste should be a bit coarse. If it's too dry, add more of the chick pea liquid.

Garnish with leftover whole beans, drizzle with more olive oil and dust with the paprika or chilli powder.

I like eating mine with rice crackers, vegetable sticks and the theme from Lawrence of Arabia playing in the background.

Let me know how yours turns out.

Culinary Counsel, GQ India, March 2014

I’ve never understood the big deal about sushi. It costs a bomb and never fills you up. What am I missing?
If chocolate is the crack of the gastronomic world, sushi is the smack: It’s just as addictive, and it will cost roughly the same to support either habit. The first time I was invited for a sushi meal, I politely sampled everything that was served, thanked my hosts and then promptly went around the corner and ordered a hamburger. I wish I’d never gone back and given it another try because, soon after, I found my mind wandering to thoughts of it – and before I knew it, sushi had me so inextricably enslaved, I was fielding calls from my accountant who, after seeing my credit card statements, wanted to clarify if I was just a patron of the local sushi joints or an investor.
My advice? Run as far in the opposite direction as you can. If friends suggest sushi for dinner, say you’re allergic; if it’s offered to you at a party, say it’s against your religion. Do whatever you can to resist its siren song. If not, you’re doomed to end up like me: a wasabi-addled chopstick jockey, desperately picking the last grains of vinegared rice off empty sushi platters for two – that you finished, singlehandedly.

The Perfect Margarita

 

It all started with an unwelcome potted plant. It was the middle of a sultry New York City summer and I had been sent one as a gift on the opening night of a play I was in. I’ve never had much of a green thumb, so I wished it good luck, exiled it to the farthest corner of my apartment’s balcony and proceeded to forget all about it.

Glitzylicious

Although I'm not a vegan, I've always thought highly of the concept. So, when my friend, and ex-head of PETA India, Anuradha Sawhney, asked me to contribute a recipe for her new cookbook, The Vegan Kitchen: Bollywood Style!, I was all too happy to jump on the bandwagon.

Below is an excerpt from the book with my recipe:

Rahul Khanna, the suave and debonair Bollywood actor, gave me this recipe, saying “Potatoes are one of my favourite comfort foods and I am always looking for healthful ways to cook them. This recipe gives me my comfort food in a healthy avatar and is a sure-fire hit on the dining table.” I tried Rahul’s way of cooking the potatoes and the potatoes turned out stunning! They looked like deep fried potatoes as they had such a fabulous reddish brown colour to them! I serve Rahul’s dish now every time I have people over. To vary the taste sometimes, I toss them in roasted sesame and Thai sweet chilli sauce and serve them skewered on toothpicks. Either way, they are finished first!

CRISPY, SALTED BABY POTATOES
4-5 servings

Ingredients:
500 gms baby potatoes
1 tsp oil
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method:
Soak the potatoes in a bowl of water for 30 minutes to loosen any dirt on the skin. Rinse and scrub them well with a brush so they become squeaky clean. Soak them again.
Put a non-stick or even a ceramic pan that has a handle and a lid over high heat. When hot, add the oil and the wet potatoes. If a few drops of water go in with the potatoes, it is fine, do not drain or dry them.
Cover the pan immediately. After about 4 minutes, shake the pan vigorously so that the potatoes get dislodged. Leave the lid on.
Reduce the heat to moderate and keep shaking the pan every 3 minutes.
After 12-15 minutes, open the pan carefully, making sure that no water that may have condensed on the lid falls back into the pan.
Check if they are cooked. The skin should be crisp and the potatoes should be tender from inside. Pierce one with a skewer; it should feel soft all the way through.
If not, cover the pan again and cook on low heat, till tender.
Do not cover the pan once the potatoes are cooked, else they will lose their crispness.
If you are serving them immediately, add salt and pepper and serve in an open dish.
If you are not serving them right away, leave them in the pan, without any seasoning, and cover with a light net cloth.
When ready to serve, reheat without covering, season with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

You can purchase The Vegan Kitchen: Bollywood Style! here.

The Perfect Dirty Martini

 

As with my taste in humour, I like my martinis dry and dirty.

The dryness of a martini refers to the amount of vermouth used in the drink, with a very dry martini having little or no vermouth.

Noël Coward once said that a perfect martini should be made by “filling a glass with gin, then waving it in the general direction of Italy” (which along with France are the two major producers of vermouth), meaning the less vermouth added to the gin the better the resulting drink.

And a dirty martini contains a splash of olive brine.

Here’s how I mix mine...

You will need:

• A chilled martini glass (a few minutes in the freezer does the trick)
• A splash of dry vermouth (I like Noilly Prat, mainly because its name is so silly)
• A large shot of your favourite gin (or vodka, if you prefer)
• Olive brine to taste (that's the clear, salty juice that olives are bottled in)
• Ice
• A cocktail shaker
• Green olives to garnish (you can use a twist of lemon rind, if you prefer. I won't judge)

Add the vermouth to the martini glass. Swirl it around. Toss it out. (It's best to stand downwind of dinner guests when doing this. Aim for a sink.)

Pour the gin (or vodka), olive juice and ice into a cocktail shaker and shake until chilled (for the fitness conscious, simply holding the shaker while running at 12 km/h on a treadmill will accomplish this, too).

Strain into the vermouth-coated martini glass (or directly into aforementioned dinner guests' mouths, if this is round #3 or higher).

Skewer the olives onto a cocktail pick and drop them into the glass (or rub the lemon twist around the rim and then drop into the glass) as a garnish.

Ahhhh...

My Life on a Plate

Food blogger Kajal Tejsinghani gets me to spill the baked beans.

And that, ladies & gentlemen, is the way to do Sunday breakfast...

“Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you who you are,” famously quipped the wise 19th century gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. A witty epigram we at Firstpost have taken to heart. Today we have the dashing Rahul Khanna telling us of his love for coffee, English breakfast and dirty martinis.