Sungurko Khuttako Achar

This is one of the receipes that Pooja gave me. I have made this one and its AWESOME.

This is the closest I can get to Pooja's home cooking. Oh I must write a post on food that I grew up eating. Not in my house. In Pooja's house. I used to take a detour while going home after school, just to eat in her place...OK. So now the knowledge is public!!

 

Anyway, here is what we need to do; and this one I quote Pooja:

 

"Ingredients:

Sungurko khutta (Pork trotters/feet)- 1 kg

Garlic sliced - 2 tbs

Ginger cut into thin strips - 2 tbs

Onion - 1 medium sliced

Tomatoes - 1 large sliced

Black jeera (OK I had to look up Wikipedia to see the english for this. Here are the English names  fennel flower, nutmeg flower, Roman coriander, blackseed or black caraway and finally black cumin. This is the star of the dish so do not miss this one out. Picture if the thing here.  Oh and btw when you use this to make Aludum..yum yum. I need to put that on this blog too) - 1 1/2 tsf

Green chillies - depends on how hot you want it

Tumeric - 1 tsf

Salt - to taste

Oil - 2 tbs

Method:

Cut pork feet into medium sized pieces. Rinse well. Boil for 3-4 minutes, rinse well and clean the feet thoroughly.

In a thick bottomed saucepan add all the ingredients except the black jeera, 1 tbs oil and the garlic.

Cook in medium heat adding a little water every now and then till cooked.

Once the meat is cooked to your liking, temper the black jeera and garlic in around 1 tbs oil and add to the pork."

 

And thats it! Delicious stuff...and of course if you have black dal and rice to go with this...perfection!!

My Philadelphia Trip- Continental Restaurant and Martini Bar

It has been sometime that I have written in my blog. I wont say I have not eaten good stuff while I am away. Its just that I have been eating decent food..and I have been on a diet. So well, I did not have much to write about. Until now.

So we decided that we need a vacation-at least a Mini-vacation. So we decided to visit Philadelphia over the weekend. We have a good friend there so we thought it would be fun to visit the city as well as him. So we went. Since this is a food blog I am not going to say much about the city. But this much I have to say. Philadelphia has this old city charm which was fascinating to see...especially in America. Words like quaint, pretty, charming, etc floated in my head in every street and every corner in the city. Even Mono got carried away and called some coffee shop 'cute'. It was hilarious. There were some portions in the city which distinctly reminded me of Darjeeling. Maybe it was the Brit connection. Basically we had a lot of fun in the city.

However, what we enjoyed the most there was the food. Day 1 we reached a little late so we just grabbed some beer (by we I mean Mono and Carter, while I sipped on my Diet Coke). And after that we went to have some dinner. We had some pretty good sandwiches. But it was Day 2 when we started our culinary journey in Philly.

We went in for brunch at this place called Continental Restaurant and Martini Bar. This was one of the restaurants that we went to under restaurant.com deals (For more on these kinds of Deals visit Carter's blog here). Anyway, since we were told that the portion sizes were pretty large, we decided to share 2 entrees between the 3 of us. And I am glad we did, because for most parts the orders were pretty large. Anyway, we had french toast with caramelized banana; and omlettes with applewood bacon and cheddar. It was awesome. The french toast caramelized bananas were sooo good.  The french toast was not soggy. One of the best french toasts I have ever had. And somehow they managed to make the bananas have the right amount of sweetness. It was delicious. We wolfed it down. And the omlettes were ...it was light and fluffy and had bits of delicious bacon in it. What can I say...no one really goes wrong with bacon. But this was just...really good.

They had a whole section of dessert, but we ended up not having them because we were quite full by the time we were done. There was also a martini bar in the place, which seemed pretty popular. And then there were plans of coming back later on. Somehow we never managed to...but  then that was only because Philly had SOOO much more to offer.

One thing is for sure. This place. I will be going back to when I go back. Maybe we will get some dessert and martini then.