Our Compliments to the Guest

Here’s an easy way to give a dinner party. Invite a cook as guest of honor, then send him or her into the kitchen.

This ruse produced a great Indian dinner at the home of Mira Advani in West Los Angeles, although the hostess wound up doing more cooking than she planned.

The guest cook was Shujaat Husain Khan, a musician from New Delhi here to teach sitar at UCLA. Khan specializes in a single dish, chicken with yogurt and onions, which he makes on concert tours when he gets the urge for a home-cooked meal. Khan calls the dish On-the-Road Chicken because he has made it all over the globe, even in remote Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia.

The recipe requires simple ingredients that are available almost anywhere. If Khan can’t find one of the seasonings, he leaves it out. The chicken is, however, the only dish he makes, so Advani prepared the rest of the meal. Born in a part of northern India that is now Pakistan, she is an expert at Indian dishes.

Advani’s menu turned out to be rather elaborate. She made two vegetables--stuffed baby eggplant and green beans sauteed with curry leaves and mustard seeds--along with soupy toor dal (lentils) and a yellow rice pullao that contained fenugreek leaves and raisins. She also served a cucumber-yogurt raita, bread and dessert.

Wine was supplied by other guests, including Champagne to go with the appetizer, sev puri. Advani bought the ingredients for this at an Indian market. The dish, which looks complicated but is really an assembly job, is composed of tiny, flat puris (deep-fried bread) topped with potato cubes, tamarind and mint chutneys, yogurt and a hotly seasoned mixture of crisp snacks called bhel mix.

Advani decorated the room with glittering shawls from India, set out the food buffet-style in colorful bowls she designed and made herself and played one of Khan’s recordings as background music.

Guests sat on silken pillows at a low table and ate in traditional Indian fashion from thalis, stainless-steel trays containing bowls for the food.

Here, the menu is narrowed to five dishes: the appetizer; Khan’s chicken; one vegetable--the green beans; plain rice, preferably fragrant basmati rice, instead of the fancy pullao; and Advani’s light fruit dessert, an exotically seasoned mango mousse spooned over sliced mangoes.

For bread, Advani served crisp roasted pappadums (lentil wafers) and the tandoori bread naan, which she purchased. She also placed a cardamom-scented Indian sweet alongside each bowl of mangoes and accompanied the dessert with mango-flavored tea.

Menu

Sev Puri

Shujaat’s On-the-Road Chicken

Green Beans with Mustard Seeds

Steamed Rice

Sliced Mangoes with Coconut Mango Mousse

Chef’s Tip

For the ground hot red chile called for in these recipes, you can use New Mexico chili powder, which is available in most supermarkets.

Countdown

Morning of party: Prepare coconut mango mousse and refrigerate.

2 hours before: Boil potatoes for appetizer, drain and cool.

1 hour before: Saute onions for chicken. Slice mangoes and refrigerate.

45 minutes before: Add seasonings then chicken to onions and complete cooking.

30 minutes before: Steam rice.

15 minutes before: Cook green beans. Aseemble appetizers.

After dinner: Place mango slices in dessert bowls and top with mousse.

Shopping List

24 small puris

2 small white potatoes

1 small container tamarind chutney

1 small container mint and cilantro chutney

1/4 pound bhel mix

1 pint plain yogurt

5 large onions

9 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

2 pounds green beans

2 serrano chiles

1 small package black mustard seeds

1 lemon

1 package fresh curry leaves

1 bunch mint leaves

1 bunch cilantro

1 coconut

7 to 8 large mangoes

1 pint low-fat milk

1 pint low-fat cottage cheese

1 (4-ounce) bottle rose water

1 (7-ounce) bottle kevda water

Staples

Oil

Ground hot red chile

Garlic

Turmeric

Ginger root

Sugar

Salt

Basmati or long-grain rice

Honey

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SEV PURI

2 white boiling potatoes, peeled

1/2 cup yogurt

1 teaspoon water

24 small flat puris

1/4 cup tamarind chutney

1/2 cup bhel mix

1/4 cup mint-cilantro chutney

Ground hot red chile, optional

The puris, tamarind and mint chutneys and the bhel mix are items to be purchased at Indian grocery stores. The tiny puri bases come either flat or puffed. The flat puris (called papri) work best in this appetizer, but if you can find only puffy puris, carefully break open the tops and place the toppings inside.

Simmer potatoes in saucepan with water to cover until tender, about 15 minutes. Remove and cut into 1/4- to 1/3-inch cubes.

Beat yogurt with water.

Arrange puris on serving tray. Top each with dab of yogurt, then few cubes potato. Drizzle with 1/2 teaspoon tamarind chutney, or more to taste. Top with 1 teaspoon bhel mix, then with 1 teaspoon mint-cilantro chutney. Sprinkle with red chile, if desired.

24 appetizers.

Nutritional analysis not available for this recipe.

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SHUJAAT’S ON-THE-ROAD CHICKEN

5 cloves garlic, chopped

2 teaspoons salt

1/3 cup oil

4 large onions, coarsely sliced

1 1/2 teaspoons finely shredded ginger root

1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons ground hot red chile

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

9 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, cut in bite-size pieces

1 cup water

1 tablespoon flour

1 1/2 cups plain yogurt

Mixing flour with yogurt helps prevent curdling.

Mash garlic with 1 teaspoon salt to make paste. Set aside.

Heat oil in Dutch oven. Add onions and cook over high heat until golden, 10 to 15 minutes. Add garlic paste, ginger root, ground chile and turmeric and cook 2 to 3 minutes. Add chicken and cook over medium heat, uncovered, 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally to cook evenly. Add water, cover and cook 10 minutes.

Blend flour with yogurt. Add yogurt mixture and remaining 1 teaspoon salt to chicken. Cover and simmer 15 minutes longer. Taste and add more salt if needed.

8 to 10 servings. Each of 8 servings:

259 calories; 704 mg sodium; 70 mg cholesterol; 11 grams fat; 9 grams carbohydrates; 31 grams protein; 0.49 gram fiber.

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GREEN BEANS WITH MUSTARD SEEDS

1/3 cup oil

2 teaspoons black mustard seeds

1 cup chopped onions

2 teaspoons grated ginger root

2 serrano chiles, finely chopped

2 pounds green beans, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

2 sprigs curry leaves

Salt

Dash sugar

2 teaspoons lemon juice

Freshly grated coconut

Mint leaves

Cilantro leaves

If you don’t cover the pan when frying mustard seeds, they’ll fly out of the pan and roll all over the stove. Once hard to find, fresh curry leaves are now stocked by most Indian groceries. A few also sell the plants.

Heat oil in nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add mustard seeds. Cover and fry until seeds cease popping, about 1 minute.

Add onions, ginger and chiles and saute until onions are slightly browned, 2 to 3 minutes. Add green beans, turmeric, curry leaves and salt to taste and stir well. Lower heat. Cover and cook until beans are tender-crisp, about 5 minutes. Add sugar and sprinkle with lemon juice.

Turn into serving bowl and garnish with coconut, mint and cilantro leaves.

8 servings. Each serving:

126 calories; 44 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 10 grams fat; 10 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams protein; 1.41 grams fiber.

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SLICED MANGOES WITH COCONUT MANGO MOUSSE

7 to 8 large mangoes

12 (1-inch-long) chunks fresh coconut

3/4 cup low-fat milk

1 tablespoon low-fat cottage cheese

2 tablespoons rose water

1 tablespoon kevda water, optional

Mint leaves

Kevda water (also spelled kewra) is intensely flavored. Add a small amount at first to see if you like the flavor. Fresh mangoes are abundant now, but when they are not available, substitute frozen or canned mangoes.

Halve 1 mango. Peel and chop 1 half and combine in blender with coconut, milk, cottage cheese, rose water and kevda. Blend until smooth and creamy.

Slice remaining mangoes and divide among dessert bowls. Spoon sauce over top. Garnish with mint leaves.

8 servings. Each serving:

165 calories; 19 mg sodium; 2 mg cholesterol; 4 grams fat; 33 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams protein; 1.95 grams fiber.