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Tag Archive for 'Chicken Tikka'

Debuting Chilly Paneer at Street Food Festival This Weekend!

Published on August 19, 2010 in Recipes and Specials. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Kasa’s kitchen is buzzing as I write this in preparation for the second annual San Francisco Street Food Festival this Saturday in the Mission.

The festival is a quintessential San Francisco event.  From 11am to 7pm, you’ll be able to sample some of the most wonderful food this city has to offer from fine dining restaurants, taqueria style restaurants, trucks and even carts.  (I’m pretty sure Mr. Creme Brulee Cart is beating egg yolks like crazy right now!)

The general format is that each booth has three bites to offer — a large bite for $5 to $8, a small bite for $3 and a beverage for $3.  The organizers have added a lot more space for the event this year (they expect 30,000 people) to allow for maximum eating!

On the menu from Kasa, we’ll be doing Gobi Aloo and Chicken Tikka kati rolls for $5.  Even if you’ve had our Chicken Tikka rolls before, it’s a mind-blowing experience to eat that lovely marinated chicken straight off a charcoal grill!

For our small bite, I’m going off menu and cooking up a personal favourite of mine: ”Chilly Paneer”.  It’s an Indo/Chinese creation found in hundreds of street side vendors that usually have a sign up saying  ”Indian/Chinese/Mughlai/South Indian”, and for the Chinese section they have two dishes: Chilly Paneer and Hakka noodles.

I LOVE chilly paneer!  It’s a delicious, craveable, spicy,  fried cheese dish in a chilly sauce, served over rice. Mmmmm…even as I write this, I can’t wait to start cooking it tomorrow.

And for our beverage, a cooling Mango Lassi!

Well, I have to run and juice a case of limes.  I hope to see you all tomorrow and in case you want to try the recipe at home…here it is:

Paneer – 1 packet – sliced
Red Bell Pepper – 1 – sliced
Green Chillis, finely chopped – 4
Soy Sauce – 2 tbsp
Vinegar – 1 tbsp
Plain flour – 2 tbsps
Cornstarch – 3 tbsps
Black Pepper, freshly ground – 1 teaspoon
Green Onions, finely chopped – 2 bunches
Garlic, finely chopped – 2 tbsp
Ginger, finely chopped – 2 tbsp
Sugar – pinch
Oil to fry
Salt to taste

1. Mix the paneer with the plain flour, 2 tbsp cornstarch, black pepper, ginger and soy sauce.
2. Fry the paneer pieces in hot oil and drain.
3. For the sauce, heat a little oil in a pan, add most of the spring onions, bell pepper and garlic pieces and fry until light brown. Make a paste with remaining cornstarch and a little water and keep aside.
4. Add about 2 cups to the pan. Once it starts boiling, add cornflour paste and stir to thicken.  At this point, add the vinegar, sugar and salt to taste.  Add the paneer and cook for a few minutes.
5.Garnish with the remaining green onions

**Recipe adapted from the famous Tarla Dalal.

Let me know how it goes or have any questions!

Anamika

anamika@kasaindian.com

The Resiliency of an Entrepreneur

Published on May 12, 2010 in Balancing Restaurant Life and Family Life, Existential Ruminations, Kasa Behind The Scenes and Running A Restaurant. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

So Suresh (my wonderful husband, co-owner of Kasa, Google employee) is speaking next week at the San Francisco Small Business Conference about how small businesses can use online tools to manage their business (using Kasa as a case study).  It got me thinking about entrepreneurship and how much resiliency is required to be successful.

When we meet other small business owners, there is a definite and instant camaraderie, an unspoken understanding that we belong to the same club.  No matter our product or service, our shared painful, exhausting, rewarding and sometimes humiliating experiences bond us together (even if we mercilessly compete with each other).

Acquaintances often ask us to share our experience of running a restaurant as they consider embarking on their own dream venture, so this post is for those brave souls.  I will say that Tim, Suresh and I are still seriously in learning mode even after 2 years, but so far this is a collection of what I’ve learned.

If you’re confident about your food and can raise enough money to get started, then you’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg. Thereafter, no matter how much preparation and due diligence you’ve done, chaos will ensue.  This is some of what we have been dealing with:

  • Smelling of Chicken Tikka ALL the time
  • Not seeing your children and family for days at a time (no exaggeration)
  • Being self critical to an extreme and disciplining yourself with an iron fist
  • Scrubbing things clean for hours
  • Lifting stuff so heavy, you permanently have shoulder or wrist aches
  • Controlling your emotions, not showing how upset or angry you are
  • Stopping yourself from stalking and throttling an ignorant yelper (although mostly people LOVE US ON YELP, and we LOVE them…   :)
  • Paying attention to mind numbingly boring details
  • Thinking, eating, sleeping and dreaming your restaurant
  • Listening to everyone on your staff’s issues and dealing with them
  • Going wherever necessary with your menu to shamelessly promote your restaurant
  • Making mistakes and moving on optimistically
  • Learning Spanish at 10pm at night after a long day at work
  • Watching your friends have a social life on the weekends without you since it’s your busiest work time
  • Trusting your instincts and confidently hiring (and firing) people
  • Forgetting about privacy – your phone is on 24/7
  • Having unyielding faith in your food and concept
  • Giving up everything you own to the bank, including your first born child
  • Did I mention…smelling of Chicken Tikka ALL the time!

On the flip side, there is nothing more I would rather be doing with my life as I love Kasa deeply — despite the occasions when I feel I can’t take the stress any more, like the time I checked myself into a hotel for the weekend, told Suresh and Tim I wasn’t coming in and switched my phone off.  I pretended to be a tourist with my English accent, walked the city, met a bunch of friendly Americans who gave me recommendations on where to eat, shopped and went back to Kasa recharged.

Most importantly, prepare to pace yourself and take a vacation before a breakdown.

If you’re still up for plunging ahead despite all this, then you’re as mad as we are and we look forward to bonding with you as a comrade in arms one day.

Anamika

Running Around Like Headless Chicken Tikkas

Published on March 22, 2009 in Balancing Restaurant Life and Family Life. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .
One evening, I was teaching my daughter about nocturnal animals.
“There’s owls and bats,” I said. “Can you think of any other nocturnal creatures?”
“Mama!”, she replied.  That made me laugh so much because it is true.
I’m made for the restaurant business.  I like to start work late and keep up late through the night.  I love it when the evening rolls around and the sky darkens and the moon comes out.  It literally makes me happy.   Perfect, except when you have kids that need to be in school by 7.50am.  It’s the hardest thing in the world for me to wake up, so our household wakes up 20 minutes before leave time and everyone runs around like headless chickens to get out the door.  For that extra 30 minutes of precious sleep, I’ve always felt it’s worth taking on 10 minutes of intense stress.
Then I saw this poem that my daughter wrote at school.  My heart broke a little:
Jiya’s Poem – Age 4
I wish I were two again so my mommy didn’t work as much.
I wish I was born first so I could be bigger than my brother.
I wish I could live in two worlds so I could be with my mommy’s mom and my daddy’s mom at the same time.
I wish I were a toy.
I wish I were a rocking chair so I could rock.
Clearly I need to spend more time with my little one.  I’ve looked at my calendar and both our days our pretty swamped, what with my cooking and her school and karate and swimming.  The only time I see open are mornings.
It’s hard being a parent, but giving up sleep has got to be one of the biggest sacrifices we make.  So here it goes… from tomorrow morning, an earlier wake up so I have extra extra time with the kids before they go off to school and start their crazy days.
Best of luck to me..

Anamika