Honey Mushroom Rice Noodles, Topped with Spicy Candied Peanuts.  Photograph © Salonee Gadgil

An easy way to spruce up a bowl of noodles, is to introduce a garnish that provides a textural anomaly. Here’s one of my favorite ways of adding a little punch & crunch: Spicy & Sweet Candied Peanuts :

You need :

• Half a cup of peanuts
• 3 Table spoons of Sugar
• 1 tea spoon of Honey
• Half a tea spoon of chili flakes
• Half a lime
• Half a tea spoon of butter

Roast the peanuts in a dry pan, and leave them to cool. Chop them roughly.

In a non stick or aluminium pan melt the butter. Pour in the sugar and chili flakes. Squeeze the lime into the pan, this speeds up the caramelization of the sugar. As soon as it starts melting and turning brown, mix in the honey and toss in the peanuts. Move them around in the pan till they are fully covered with the dark viscous gooey liquid. You can now take them out onto some butter paper and leave them to cool. The caramelized sugar will solidify as it cools and encase the peanuts in a spicy tangy crunchy glaze. Once cooled, you can crack these into small bits or chop fine and use as a garnish !

Dumplings of Duck

Spicy tender chunks of duck encased in sweet sticky rice: a harmonious melange of flavors that had me cooing, drooling and gurgling like a mindlessly excited infant. My fondness for Dim sum began when I traveled in China, where I ate innumerable variants of this snack made quite literally to ‘touch the heart’, as the word translates from Cantonese. Though designed to be mundane street side food, the dish is pretty open to interpretation and often gets elevated to gourmet status. There was certainly nothing mundane about this particular steaming dish I chanced upon at Trikaya, Andheri W, Mumbai. They were sweet with a spicy edge, tender yet packed a meaty bite and light yet very satiating !

photographs © Salonee Gadgil  / Bellyfirst