15 February 2007

Schezwan sauce

For the first time in my life I celebrated Valentine's Day!!! In all the years I've known V and the two years we've been married, I don't remember celebrating this day. V'days usually passed by like any other regular day. Contrary to my previous post, I'm a big cynic when it comes to Valentine's Day! Too commercial, and well, any day can be special, isn't it? But what if something can be done to bring a change into our otherwise drab lives……? Ah, now that thought clicked! And all you blog buddies inspired me to churn out a nice warm dinner for V day! After mulling over various ideas, I finalized the menu.

What was on the menu on Valentine's Day? Indianised Chinese !!! So for all those Indo-Chinese cuisine lovers, here's what I cooked ….. Hot and sour soup, Spring rolls with Schezwan sauce, Shrimp Schezwan Rice, Chilli Chicken gravy and for dessert there was Honey noodles with vanilla icecream and Chocolate-strawberry cakes with Strawberry icecream. And guess what, both of us being complete foodies, enjoyed every bit of the dinner!!!

Will keep posting all these recipes one by one. I have not used ajinomoto or colour in my recipes. Here's the first for schezwan sauce :

Finely chop 2 tbsp each of ginger, garlic, onions and celery stalk. Heat oil in a pan and fry the onions for a minute. Then add ginger, garlic, celery stalk and 2-3 tbsp red chilli paste and stir fry for another minute. Add salt, pepper, ajinomoto(optional), 1 ½ cups of tomato ketchup and colour(optional) and cook for 2 minutes.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW!!! That can be a nice dip!!!!! Sounds simple to make :)

KF said...

Hmmmm...enjoyed valentine's day...Please post all ur items soon..What's special for weekend?

FH said...

Hi J!! Arvind LOVES Schezwan Chicken!!Looks yummy.Glad to hear that you had a nice day yesterday!Good for you!:))

Mishmash ! said...

Looks like someone had a bash :)Simlpe nice dip recipe :)Waiting for more.

TNL said...

nice recipe! I love Schezwan Sauce!

Trupti

Sia said...

this is my this weekends menu:)

J said...

Thankyou ladies, will post more recipes soon!:)

Mandira said...

Wow, what a spread. Do post the recipe for all of them. Would love to try the soup and the honey noodle dessert. Hope you ad a wonderul V Day.

Pravs said...

Hey.. thanks for coming by my blog.
cuttlefish is similar to squid or octopus.
I love chinese food...indo-chinese is especially good with that bit of indian touch to it.

J said...

Thankyou Mandira and Pravs! Will post the other recipes soon. :)

Sumitha said...

I love Indo Chinese dishes too,have blogged a few in my blog too,i cant wait to read the recipes!

J said...

Thanks for stopping by Sumitha, will post the rest soon!

Anonymous said...

hey ... i already made the sauce and its turned out good. Will post my response on schezwan rice tommorrow.

J said...


Supriya - Thanks for the feedback! Do let me know about the rice too. :)

patch_adaams said...

Hey.....Great stuff.I am a doctor by proffesion but cooking is my second wife...actly I havent even got the first one yet...Great recepies.Schewan just looks tempting,it desevers to be made and eaten.I am off to my kicthen.

J said...


Paatch adams - Thanks for the visit and hope you liked the dip!