Tostados with cheese

Ingredients
Corn Tostados
2 cups of mozarella cheese
Finely diced 1 small onion, tomato
pepper
Olive oil
Crushed garlic (optional)

Step 1: Put a generous amount of mozarella cheese on the tostados with some olive oil and bake at 350F.

 

Step 2: Once the cheese has melted, sprinkle the diced onion, tomato, and pepper. Serve hot.

El Pescado

Escabeche

Freshly caught fish (el pescado in spanish) is hard to find in restaurants. A freshly caught fish which is also cooked well is an even rarer find. So it was my good fortune to have stumbled on such fish on not one, but two recent occasions.

Grouper with corn risotto and mango ginger sauce

First, was at a seafood specialty restaurant called Tarpon Bay, Hyatt Regency in Bonita Springs, Florida. I ordered their grouper with a mango ginger sauce and a risotto and it was outstanding. I also tried their mixed seafood paella, which I liked. Ceviche was also available, though I did not try it myself. Pricey, but worth it. My other recent run in with fresh fish was at Purple Patch - a Filipino-run restaurant (with an Indian cook) in Washington DC. I ordered a dish called Escabeche featuring a full fried red snapper in a soy-based sauce for reasonable $22.  While none of the other menu items I tried, including their fried guajillo pepper chicken wings and coconut-based shrimp curry, struck me as particularly Filipino, this fish was very similar to what I tried while visiting the Luzon islands.

Not a place I would go again to, but I will alway remember the fish...

Indian-style stuffed chicken

Ingredients       
1 full small chicken

For marination
Yoghurt
1 teaspoon each of chilli, coriander, turmeric powders
1 tablespoon ginger-garlic paste

For the filling
1/2 diced onion
1/2 diced bell pepper
2 cups of finely chopped spinach
4-5 almonds and walnuts
Hard boiled eggs
1 tablespoon garam masala
Salt and pepper to taste

For the gravy
1/2 onion
1/2 tomato
1 potato
2 bay leaves
2 cloves
4 pods cardamon
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon chilli, turmeric and coriander powders
Salt and pepper to taste

Step 1: Marinate the chicken generously with yoghurt, 1 tablespoon ginger-garlic paste, chilli, turmeric and coriander powders and keep aside for about 1 hour.

Step 2: For the gravy, saute onions, tomatoes, bay leaves and cardamon pods in ghee. Add the potatoes and let them cook slightly in chicken stock.

Step 3: Saute the onions in the remaining ginger garlic paste. Add the bell pepper, spinach, almonds, walnuts, and finely cut eggs into the mixture and let it sit.

Step 4: Stuff the chicken with the filling, and let it bake in the gravy for 1:30 hours at 400F.