BENGALURU:Cooking is something very close to my heart. I am a self-taught home chef, who loves to experiment with ingredients, baking, cheese making and working with different cuisines.Personally, I feel the culinary heritage of India is very rich. There has been something interesting from every decade, every region and then there are twists. The food here is as diverse as the culture and studying the nuances of the cuisine has been my passion since an early age.
While reading the book Sultans of Mandu, I figured how the cooks of the kingdom used to create a new dish every day to impress their king. They used to make a lot of kebabs which is inspired by use of unheard aromatics. That give me an idea to try out edible sandalwood and I started experimenting with it. At the beginning, I failed a couple of times but I kept trying. I was trying to add the sandalwood in kebabs and realised sandalwood overpowered everything else.
A pinch of sandalwood is all that was required to get the right balance and aid digestion.When I tried the Sandalwood Kebab in my kitchen and served this dish to my family, they fell in love with the aroma and flavour of the kebab.
Aromatic kebab
Ingredients:
Carrots- 50 g
Peas- 25 g
Boiled mashed potatoes - 200 g
Roasted chana powder-25g
Fried onion paste- 2 tbsp
Green chilli & ginger paste- 2 tsp
Cumin powder- 1tsp
Gram masala powder- 1 tsp
Edible Sandalwood powder- 2 pinch
Salt to taste
Method:
Finely chopped the vegetables and saute in a pan in some ghee
Add jeera powder and potatoes and saute it thoroughly
Mix rest of the ingredients
Make Tikis and shallow fry it in ghee
Garnish with onion rings, a lemon wedge & coriander and serve it with green mint chutney.
- Sejal Shaha,
head chef/co-owner of MAIA - Eat, Bake, Mom