Bhutanese Butter Tea  (SUJA) 

Bhutanese butter tea known as Suja is also served at many occasion.

Recipe :
Ingredients :

1. 3 Spoon of Butter
2.Tea Leaves(Actually there are tea leaves specially for preparation of Suja)
3. half Spoon
4. two litres

Directions :

• Put tea leaves in water and boil till it you see the water turning brown.
•  Pour the mixture through seep and take only the black tea
• Put some butter and tea  spoon of salt.Please note not to add to much salt.
• Churn it nicely the three ingredients.
• You can use mixer for this purpose.

Suja is Ready.The taste will be  slight salty buttery tea.It can be served with meals as well as snacks.

khabzey..bhutanese home made biscuits

                                                             Bhutanese Khapsey (Snacks)

Bhutanese make khapzey especially during Losar(New Year) and it is considered especial for any celebration or occasion. These Khapzey can be  sweet or salty.

Recipe

Need to be very careful when cooking khapse. The hot oil is extremely dangerous and you don’t want it to splash on you. The utensils we use should be  free of water, as the water will pop in the hot oil.

•   4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sunflower oil (or any cooking oil. For softer khapse, use a little more oil.)
• 1/3 cup sugar  (more sugar if you like ).Or,  can also make sugar-free khapse by  leaving the sugar out.)
• 1 cup milk
• 1 quart of sunflower oil for deep frying

 Preparation the khapse dough.

Dissolve the sugar in 1 cup of warm water Combine flour, oil, sugar   Mix everything together to make a smooth ball of dough and Knead the dough for   several minutes. Roll out the dough to about a 1/4 inch thickness. (When you roll it out you can put a little flour down on the rolling surface so that  it won’t stick, but not much. If you put too much extra flour, it will make the dough suck up too much oil while cooking.)

 Cut the dough in strips (maybe about an inch or a little less), then cut those strips into diagonal pieces. Try to make the pieces the same size, so that it can cook at the same rate. Slice a slot in the middle of each piece of dough. Pull one corner of the piece of dough through the slot in the middle, creating a twist. You can make any shape from this.

Cooking Process

 Pour 1 quart of sunflower oil into a large, deep pot or pan and heat the oil on until it starts to smoke a tiny bit. The oil  will be hot enough when you can drop one piece of dough into the oil and it pops up to the surface right away. Carefully lower the khapse dough pieces into the oil. You will need to make multiple batches, and it is better if you don’t fill the pot or pan too full of dough pieces. Fewer khapses in one batch is better. Cook the khapse on high heat until golden brown, moving them around fairly often, and very gently, with a long-handled utensil. They cook pretty fast in  few minutes. Remove the khapse from the oil with a slotted spoon or large straining utensil, letting the oil drain over the pan. Cooked khapse can be kept on paper towels as to absorb as much as possible of the oil.

Eating and Storage

You can sprinkle some powdered sugar if you like, but usually we eat these just as they are, with sweet tea or Suja (salt and butter tea)  Store the extra khapse in an air-tight container and you can keep  them quite a while, though they do of course get hard over time ;-)

Kewa Datsi (potatoes with cheese and chilli).

Bhutanese kewa datshi (potato with cheese)

One of the famous and popular curry in Bhutan. It is liked by all children and foreigners because of less spicy... and the test is unbelievable and its very easy and fast to prepare and cook.
whenever i visit foreign country, i cook kewa datshi for my friends and they all like it...you should try it too!!!

Kewa Datshi recipe

• potatoes (depending on number of families)
• Bhutanese cheese (semi-dry cottage cheese or any white cheese that melts easily)
• chopped red onions  and, if you want, tomato
• oil & Salt
• red or green chilli
• rice, if you want to eat more than the potato

Cut potatoes into smaller pieces. Put the potatoes and some oil and salt in a saucepan or pot. Add some water and boil it After few minutes when the potato is cooked and small amount of cold water and the put the chillies. Adding amount of cold water is that later the curry wont be too hot. Don't want too much water in this dish, but don't let it dry up completely neither. Cut the cheese into small pieces and when the potato is almost cooked, add the cheese to well melt and mix. Soon it is ready.We can serve hot with red or white rice or any rice.

I was a fan of kewa datsi since childhood. I felt that life would be difficult without kewa datsi. Now that I can cook myself when ever want something easy to cook this recipe is the one I choose. We can eat kewa datsi even with wraps or bread. Tastes so good.