Kitchen King

A long time back when I was clearing out my husband’s kitchen, I found this small carton of spice mix labelled “Kitchen King Masala”. Obviously being a South Indian, I wasn’t very familiar with this spice powder and even had a friend comment that it was one of those weird commercialized spice powders that no true Indian cook would have in their kitchen.

Is that right? No.

Having come from India, I do know that marketing is still in the works and every spice powder has a unique taste that compliments a particular dish. True, you do not need a specific spice powder for making a specific dish. You can always mix and work with many other spice powders to get the required result. However, using specific powders makes this task simpler without having to worry too much about the chemistry between spices and just doing it right every single time.

So after wondering why someone would name a spice mix concoction Kitchen King, I decided to do a little research on the internet. And what I found was the Kitchen King Spice powder is a sort of all-purpose spice powder mix that is used as a final touch for almost every dish in a typical Punjabi household. The traditional mix that is used is marketed commercially under the name of Kitchen King as it truly lives up to its name. It can complete and round up any dish perfectly and makes complete sense to have this essential spice mix in your pantry.

I decided to then use this on a random day and the final touch that it adds is quite similar to how a sprinkling of chaat masala would taste on certain bhajis and fried goodies. Not in terms of taste but the effect of eating a well-rounded dish. So if you love Indian cooking, go get yourself a pack of this wonderful spice mix and have fun cooking!

Racist Trash

* I am not trying to generalize my opinion about all Americans. I still know people from different diversities here in the US. And there are a lot more nicer people that I have come across than two racist people mentioned in this post. All I can say is to everyone, when you see injustice staring you in your face, please stand up. Even if it is not happening to you. You could be saving lives by doing the right thing.

It has happened. The day I dreaded for so long. The day I was abused by two racist people here in the US.

Before coming to the US, I was afraid. Scared to be victim of a racial challenge that has been a perpetual event in this country of freedom and opportunity until today when I was asked to shut up from speaking my mother tongue and hide my proud identity. Why? Because I’m not English. Because I have brown skin. Because I speak one of the oldest languages in the world.

Until this very day, I knew there was a black-white divide in this country (and before all you other countries start to talk, we all know it exists in every society and at every level… we are specifically referring to Racists here) but never knew why so many African-Americans got furious for everything from petty things to gigantically immoral things. And now I know why. It is such a big deal. You just don’t realize it until it hits you in your face. All along, I was angry that the African- American community here in the US are abused verbally racially to the point where it has become a cry neglected and ignored by crass trashy racists. Now I am pissed.

Me and a bunch of my relatives were partying. It was like any other day at home. Good food and wine. At around midnight, me and my cousins wanted to get some food. We hit iHop – the typical 24 hour American fast food known for its round-the-clock breakfast menus when a trashy couple sat in a table next to us. After a couple of minutes, the man from that table walked over to ours asking us to keep it down with a ton of attitude (NO. I’m not exaggerating). That’s fine. We are civil people too and if you thought we were loud, we’ll for sure keep it down so all of us can be happy at the end of the day. We apologized despite the guy’s attitude and went on chewing through our dinner when the woman spoke of things I have only seen in movies.

“You come to our country and you talk what we talk,OK. You people can’t talk whatever shit language no one even cares about here.”

And the racist comments continued.

Was that really necessary? My blood was boiling and I could not eat anymore. I stopped right there when my cousin decided it was time we all stopped taking crap and gave them an ear load to think about which did not really stop them from talking junk. They moved to another table. The waitresses at iHop could not stand up for what was staring them and every other person in that restaurant today.

Why should we keep quiet? Why should I not travel wherever I want and live wherever I want? Why should we let them talk their racist trash and just go about doing everything like it doesn’t matter? Who is to tell me I can’t be who I am in a land that was supposed to be the land of freedom and opportunity.

I wrote a long time back that I had changed my opinion of the United States. I still stand by it. I love this country. But my hatred for the racist trash that lives here continues and so will the fight. After all, what goes around will come around.

Rigatoni Pasta Bake

* Warning * This is only for the strong hearted who dare to eat some real spicy food!

So I had this box of rigatoni pasta lying around in the pantry for god-knows-how-long. And today I decided that this had to be served on my plate. And boy was I happy I finally made it. After a lot of scouring the internet for that perfect baked rigatoni, I gave up and decided to follow the natural instincts. It turned super super super delicious and the hubby who is pretty hard to impress especially when it is made with an arrabiata sauce was in love helping himself to 2 big servings. Here is the recipe for the totally random Rigatoni Pasta Bake.

Ingredients:

One bottle of (yes, that god sent miracle for the lazy days) store bought arrabiata sauce (I bought mine from Target – the archer farms one)

1 big white onion

2 Thai green chillies – finely chopped

4-5 dried red chillies – pounded and crushed to your heart’s content

Peeled garlic – 10 -12 pounded and crushed to death

Parmesan cheese

Swiss cheese slice

Mozzarella low-fat string cheese (the one that kids lovvvv to eat)

Olive oil – around 1 to 2 tbsp

Ground pepper – 1 tsp

One packet of Rigatoni

Method:

Cook the pasta in boiling water for 12 mins or a little under the time given in your pasta packet.

While all that is happening, crush the red chillies and garlic, chop the onions and green chillies.

In a pan, pour 2 tbsps of olive oil. Once it’s hot, put the onions and let them become translucent.

Then add the garlic and green chillies. After they saute for about 1 min, add the arrabiata sauce bottle. Add some salt to taste. Let it simmer for 5 mins.

Finally top it off with the red chillies and pepper.

Now, preheat the oven to 400F or 450F depending on how fast you want it to cook.

Add the drained cooked pasta to the sauce and put this in the casserole or whatever it is that you are going to use to bake the pasta.

Sprinkle about a spoon of parmesan cheese and mix.

Now add the mozzarella cheese. You can add grated mozzarella cheese. I used the string because I didn’t have any other mozzarella cheese on me.

Add 2 slices of swiss cheese split in smaller pieces across the pasta.

Top off with some more parmesan cheese. And put it to bake for 20 to 25 mins depending on the temperature.

Serve with some Coppola Rosso or any table red. Enjoy!

First time making cupcakes with frosting

Sooooo I made cupcakes. Strawberry. With chocolate, vanilla and colored frosting. Some with coffee and sugar sprinkles on top. Did not have the confetti sprinkles in my pantry. Had to think of something innovative and wasn’t too sure if people did use coffee as sprinkles on cupcakes. But went ahead and sprinkled some coffee.