Chicken corn soup is perfect for those sniffly dreary cold evenings or when your toddler only wants soup!

Ingredients:
3-4 Chicken pieces with bone
Four cups water
One packet chicken yakhni mix
Half a handful of baby carrots
Half an onion – sliced thinly
One cup canned sweet corn
Four tablespoons corn flour
1/4 cup water
One egg very lightly beaten
salt to taste
pepper

Condiments:
1/4 cup white vinegar with diced green chillies
1/4 cup white vinegar with 1 teaspoon red chilli powder

Method:
Heat four cups of water with one yakhni packet mixed in, along with chicken, onion and carrots. Bring to boil and cook till chicken is cooked through (approximately 15 – 20 minutes). Sieve through the stock, reserving the stock and chicken and discarding carrots and onion. Once the chicken is cool enough to handle, shred the meat and keep aside, discarding the bone.
Using a food processor or blender, gently pulse the sweet corn so that it is smushed, but not mush (a quick 2 or 3 pulses). Add this to the chicken stock and bring to boil. Now dissolve the corn flour into the 1/4 cup of water till a thin paste is made. Add this paste very slowly to the boiling stock and corn while stirring constantly to get to the soupy consistency you like (I only used about half to get the soup consistency I like). Add the chicken. Very slowly add the beaten egg, again stirring constantly. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with chile and vinegar mixture and/or soy sauce.

Chewy noodles mixed with a meat curry, coconut based curry and the best part – the condiments of cilantro, green chillies, crispy noodles, red chilli flakes. I’ve had multiple variations of khousey, with the two curries mixed and cooked together, the coconut curry made with yoghurt (kadhi), but our favorite growing up was the one made at my friend Maria’s house. This is that coveted recipe, tweaked a bit, but in essence the same…. still incredible! The aroma of this khousey recipe brought back days of sitting at our friends house, putting on lipstick because we were sad, first loves, careers, weddings and now our kids playing together. Here’s to my girls! I hope our daughters or sons make this one day and remember their khalas.

Ingredients:

Spaghetti – Boil one packet of spaghetti according to instructions given.

Beef Curry

Ingredients:

500 grams lean beef – cubed in 2 inch peices

One large onion finely diced

Two large tomatoes finely diced

One tablespoon ginger garlic paste

Two tablespoons ground up green chillies

Two teaspoons cumin powder

One teaspoon chilli powder

One teaspoon cilantro powder

1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

One teaspoon salt or more per taste

A few tablespoons of oil

Method:

Heat oil in a pressure cooker and saute onions till translucent. Add the dry spices of cumin, corriander, turmeric, salt and chilli powders. Next add the ginger garlic paste and green chilli paste and fry for a minute or so. Add the tomatoes till the juices mingle together, and then add the beef. Add one cup of water and cover the lid of the pressure cooker and cook on high heat for 15-20 minutes while its whistling. Lower heat, allow the steam to escape and once its safe, uncover the pressure cooker. Cook on medium high heat while stirring intermittently till the oil separates from the masala. This method is called bhuno, which is frying the masala on medium high heat. The curry should have a beautiful glossy brown color.
Alternatively, you could also cook this without the pressure cooker, but it saved me some time so I did. If cooking without pressure cooker, cook with lid on till the meat is tender and then remove lid and bhuno the curry.

Coconut Curry:

Ingredients:

Two tablespoons besan (chickpea flour)

One can of unsweetened coconut milk

One teaspoon cumin powder

1/8 teaspoon turmeric powder

salt to taste

Method:

In a heavy bottomed saucepan, dry roast the besan. Keep stirring, so as not to burn it. Once you can smell the besan and it has a lightly toasted color, add the coconut milk and the turmeric, cumin powder and salt(maybe even a little red chilli powder if desired). Cook on medium low heat, till it boils and is slightly thick (should coat the back of the spoon).

To serve, you can either mix the two curries together or serve separately with plain boiled spaghetti. Various garnishes can be used – potato chips (mmmm- slims), red chilli flakes, finely chopped corriander, finely cut green chillies or fried noodles – recipe below!

Fried noodles to garnish: Heat oil in a nonstick pan, and fry boiled spaghetti in it till golder brown. crush and use as a garnish.

Assembling the perfect bowl can be challenging, a handful of noodles, a tablespoons of the beef curry (or more), a few tablespoons of the coconut curry with garnishes of green chillies, corriander, red chilli flakes and fried noodles.