Your copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is finally here. The weekend's just around the corner. You have muted all the WhatsApp groups you're on and finished all pending work. This weekend can't get any better, right?
Wrong.
What if you had a glass of Felix Felicis to sip on, while you are devouring the pages of the new Harry Potter book? No, we're not kidding you.
Mumbai-based blogger Shirin Mehrotra has figured how to make a convincing Felix Felicis. And like the real deal, 'if taken in excess it causes giddiness, recklessness, and dangerous overconfidence'. You can thank the dark rum and wine that goes into it, for that.
Unfortunately, us Muggles have our limitations: the drink isn't golden in colour, but the recipe's pure gold anyway. Besides Harry Potter recipes, 34-year-old Mehrotra is also recreating recipes mentioned in other books, all listed in her blog called Foodchants (click on The Literary Kitchen section). "I love reading, cooking and writing and wanted to combine all three into something interesting for the blog," she said in an email to HuffPost India. "The idea was to give my own interpretation to the dishes mentioned in the books that I was reading."
Mehrotra has many more Potter-based recipes coming up, and also plans to eventually open a book-supper club. Here are five recipes that she has brought to life.
FELIX FELICIS – 'HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE' BY J.K. ROWLING
"When I re-read Half Blood Prince earlier this year, I was fixated on Felix Felicis -- the luck potion that Harry wins in Professor Slughorn's potion class and later uses to extract the crucial memory from the professor. I would imagine its taste -- a mix of sweet, sour, bitter with a hint of some sort of spice. Also, remember how it made Harry appear a bit drunk? So, maybe a bit of alcohol too," says Mehrotra.
Ingredients:
Dark rum – 60ml
Palm jaggery syrup – 2tsp
Orange bitters – 2-3 drops
Lime juice – ½tsp
Cinnamon powder – a pinch
Water/soda/Rose wine
Method:
1. Take all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake well
2. Pour the mix in a glass and top it up with water, soda or rosé wine and gulp it down
GINGER NEWTS (TIBETAN KAPTSE) -- 'HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX' BY J.K. ROWLING
"Earlier this year I read Harry Potter books, again, because there was no way I wasn't making recipes from HP series for The Literary Kitchen. The only dish that stands out for me from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the Ginger Newts... However, it was a bit of a challenge for me to make biscuits that look like lizards. Honestly, no one in my family -- including me -- would even touch those biscuits. So I altered the idea a bit and made something inspired by my latest trip to McLeodganj. I had taken a Tibetan bread baking class from a local chef and learnt to make these deep-fried Tibetan cookies called Kaptse (pronounced Khapse)," Mehrotra explains.
Ingredients:
Whole wheat flour – 2 cups
Egg – 1
Sugar – 4tbsp
Water – 6tbsp
Oil – 6tbsp
Salt – ½tsp
Oil – for deep frying
Method:
1. Take flour in a bowl and mix salt.
2. Mix egg, sugar, oil and water in a separate bowl.
3. Add the mix to the flour and knead it into soft dough.
4. Divide the dough into three and roll each one into thin sheets.
5. Cut the sheets into 1-inch wide strips.
6. Cut the strips diagonally into roughly 3-inch long pieces, then make a lengthwise cut in the centre of each piece, then take one end of the piece and put it through the cut from the front.
7. Heat oil in a wok and deep fry the cookies till they turn brown.
8. Let them cool down and eat them with tea.
HOT CHOCOLATE - 'CHOCOLAT' BY JOANNE HARRIS
"The first book that I picked this year is also something that I crave for, almost every day. Joanne Harris's Chocolat is as dark as a glass of pure dark hot chocolate. Vivian Rocher threatens the power of the Church with her chocolate boutique in a French village when she opens it on the first day of Lent. The priest declares war but people warm up to her truffles, chocolate espresso and the sense of freedom she brings with them. She pours glasses of hot chocolate to make friends, to liberate people and to give them pure joy.
Vivian has a knack for knowing the kind of chocolate her guests would love. She adds Chantilly for Josephine and Kahlua in Mocha for Armande. When I imagined her making a glass of hot chocolate for me, I thought of cinnamon and dark rum," Mehrotra tells us.
Hot Chocolate
Yields – Two Glasses
Ingredients:
Milk – 1 glass
Water – 1 glass
Good quality dark chocolate – 50-100 gms (chopped)
Cocoa powder – 2 tbsp
Cornflour – 1 tsp
Cinnamon powder – ½ tsp
Salt – a pinch
Sugar – 2 tsp
Old Monk or any dark rum of your choice – 60 ml
Method:
• Mix cocoa powder, cornflour, cinnamon and salt with a little water (about 2 tbsp)
• Heat milk and water and stir in dark chocolate and sugar.
• Add the cocoa and cornflour mix and let it boil till the liquid thickens.
• Pour the hot chocolate in two glasses, top each with 30 ml of rum; grab a book and let the drink slowly burn your throat on its way down.
POTATO CRUST PIE - 'THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY' BY ANNIE BARROWS AND MARY ANN SHAFFER
"I knew I wanted to make the potato peel pie from this book when I read the description. Only, I didn't want to use Will's recipe. I wanted to make something more flavourful with ingredients other than just potato that would make the Guernsey folks happy; they had been living on bland and almost no food for far too long. All I knew was that my pie crust would be of potatoes and potato peelings. The recipe was developed entirely at my friend Amrita's house for a lunch that she was hosting (she also taught the recipe in her cooking workshop this Sunday). We made the pie crust like potato latkes and prepared a quiche like filling with mushrooms, spinach and cheese. The addition of bacon came from the point that the literary society was found right after a roasted pig dinner, something that was kind of illegal during that period," she says.
Potato Crust Pie with Spinach and Mushrooms
Ingredients:
For Pie Crust:
Medium sized potatoes – 4
Egg – 1
Salt to taste
For the filling:
Spinach – 1 cup (chopped)
Mushrooms – 1 cup (sliced)
Egg – 1
Cheese (Mozzarella) – 1 cup (grated)
Milk – ½ cup
Basil leaves – 3-4 (chopped)
Oil – 1tbsp
Pepper – ½tsp
Salt to taste
For topping:
Crisp bacon bits or caramelized onions
Method:
Pie crust:
1. Pre-heat oven to 200 degree Celsius.
2. Grate potatoes along with the peel.
3. Lightly beat one egg and mix with the grated potatoes. Add salt.
4. Grease a 9-inch pie tray and set the potato mix in it like the pie dough.
5. Bake it in the oven for 30 minutes.
Filling:
1. Heat the oil in a pan and sautee spinach and mushrooms separately.
2. Lightly beat the egg and mix in milk, grated cheese, spinach, mushrooms and basil leaves.
3. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Pour the filling in the pie crust and put it in the oven for 20 mins at 180 degree Celsius.
5. Let the pie rest on the rack for a while before removing it from the tray.
6. Top it with bacon bits or caramelized onions and serve.
KALE CHANE KI GHUGNIYAN AUR BHUNA GOSHT -- 'DYODHI' BY GULZAR
"Gulzar has poured in all his emotions in these two lines -- the pain of Partition and the longing for his village (now in Pakistan) are apparent here. He writes many such stories in Dyodhi, a collection of short stories by him. L.O.C is about one such friendship that's victim of Partition -- that of Major Kulwant Singh and Mushtaq. The tough army man bares his feelings when he talks about the food that his friend's mother cooked," Mehrotra says.
"किसी ज़माने में फत्तू मासी खिलाया करतीं थीं। मुश्ताक़ की अम्मी, सहारनपुर में। काले चने की घुघनियाँ और भुना गोश्त खाया है कभी?"
KALA CHANA
Ingredients:
Kala chana (black chickpea) – 100 gms, soaked overnight
Red chilly powder – ½tsp
Garam masala – ¼tsp
Coriander powder – 1tsp
Jeera powder – 2tsp
Dry mango powder – 1tsp
Salt to taste
Method:
• Pressure cook the chana.
• Mix in all the masalas and let it cook until the water evaporates.
• Serve.
BHUNA GOSHT
Bhuna Gosht or Mutton is not a recipe but a style of cooking where meat is not pressure cooked but 'bhunoed'. The recipes might wary and I used the one that I have grown up with. The meat is slow cooked with all the masalas and can be eaten with roti, rice or lachcha parantha.
Serves: 3
Ingredients:
Mutton – 500gms (make sure it's the cut from chest and above)
Onions – 500gms (sliced)
Garlic – 1/2 pod (peeled)
Ginger – 25gms (finely chopped)
Cinnamon – 1 inch stick
Black cardamom – 3
Green cardamom – 4
Black pepper pods – 8
Cloves – 5
Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
Mace – 1tsp
Kebab chini (all spice) – 6
Shah jeera – 1tsp
Bay leaves – 3
Dry red chillies – 8-10 (depending how spicy you want it to be)
Green chillies – 3 (sliced in halves)
Mustard oil – 3tbsp
Salt to taste
Method:
- Wash the mutton properly and keep aside.
- Layer onions, garlic, ginger, green chillies, spices and mutton in a heavy bottomed vessel.
- Mix in oil, add salt and let it cook on medium flame for at least 11/2 hours. Keep mixing it every once in a while.
- Taste once to check if the meat is cooked; serve.
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