My jhola

Powder yellow serenity | Recipe: Lemon Curd in Vanilla Bean Cake

2012-01-27T00:49:00.000-08:00

I don't exactly remember when I first tasted lemon curd although it could easily have been at Radha Kaku's Radha kaku was my great grand aunt (I don't believe I haven't written a post on her) and had a very strong influence in shaping my passion for food. At a time when baking was still rare in Indian households, she would use processed cheese tins to make bread loaves in and use ajwain in her pizza dough to emulate the aroma of oregano.

One of my most vivid food memories of Radhu kaku is from when I was in school. Amma had to go out of town for a few days to tend to her ailing sister and because Radha kaku lived very close to my school, she was asked to bring me my after-school, before-dance-class evening snack. I will never forget the daintily packed high tea that I got to eat all those days. When the school bell rang out another day and children poured out the gates, I would run out and get into Madhav kaka and Radha kaku's spacious old Ambassador and settle in snug between them while a prettily embroidered napkin made its way across my lap. I was then given a beautiful open-faced sandwich or warm, subtly spiced aloo tikkis, a glass of warm Bournvita and a painstakingly carved orange basket stuffed with a fresh fruit salad or jelly. I would then be guided into skilfully and modestly slipping into my dance class uniform in the car (I could have just as well done it in the loo in school!) and a hug later, I was out to (not) dance with a full belly.

Good times, those. But, I digress.

Last week, I saw some Italian lemons at the local supermarket and picked them up immediately, eager to get a little whiff of their much celebrated zest. That aroma is just the finest perfume I can think of. Not too tart, not too sweet; just right. This delicate, dreamy sort of fragrance that makes you feel elegant. It reminded me a little of Radha kaku. I asked around Twitter and Facebook for suggestions on what I should do with them but I think I always knew that I wanted to make Lemon Curd. I used Rachel Allen's recipe, and it turned out SO beautiful! I just had to make a simple vanilla cake and slather the lemon curd all over it. I broke all my new year diet resolutions thanks to this recipe, and I still have some the cake beckoning me from the kitchen table.

I hope that powder yellow serenity invites you to try this recipe.

Ingredients:
For the Lemon Curd:

75 gms. butter
150 gms. caster sugar
3 lemons, zest grated and juiced
2 eggs
1 egg yolk

For the Vanilla Bean Cake

3 eggs
1 egg white (left over from the curd)
150 gms. caster sugar
120 gms. butter
150 gms. flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1 vanilla bean, split
2 tbsp. milk
3/4 cup lemon curd
1 tbsp. icing sugar

Method:

For the Lemon Curd:

Place the butter, sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice in a thick-bottomed saucepan and stir continuously over low heat until the butter has melted. Take the saucepan off the heat.
Beat the eggs and egg yolk thoroughly in a separate bowl.
Add the beaten eggs to the butter mixture and whisk to combine.
Return to low heat and whisk continuously until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Cool and transfer to jars.

For the Vanilla Bean Cake

Sieve the flour and baking powder together.
In a food processor, place the eggs, butter, sugar, and seeds from the split vanilla bean. Process until smooth and creamy.
Pour into the flour mixture and fold lightly.
Transfer to an 8-inch cake tin and bake at 180 degrees centigrade for about 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Remove the cake from the pan and allow to cool completely.
Carefully slice the cake into two horizontally using a long and sharp knife.
Slather a generous amount of lemon curd on one half and sandwich the other half over it.
Decorate with a dusting of icing sugar.
Place proudly on newly acquired cake stand adorned with doily and show off at tea time.

Giving in | Caramelized Onion, Mushroom, and Paneer Tart

2012-01-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

For quite some time now, I have been complaining about the lack of baking material in India--especially the complete absence of ready-to-use pastry. You know that from here, don't you?

All this time, while I was busy swearing at Indian supermarket chains for not bringing baking stuff to India on a scale that I'd appreciate, a small part of me was up for a challenge. I was driven to experiment with recipes and substitutions to come up with stuff like this. It made me a better cook, I think. And it made me proud when I got something right. Then, a local supermarket displayed a ready-to-use blind-baked shortcrust pastry shell. An 8-inch pastry case for a whopping 400-odd rupees. I sneered and walked on. There was no way I was paying that much money for something I could make at home with just a little effort. Life went on, and then another store did the unthinkable. They brought in phyllo pastry. Ready-to-use. Flaky pastry of any kind is my nightmare. I can't. I just don't have the patience to make a thousand layers of pastry. I picked it up without batting an eyelid. Please don't ask me how much I paid for it.

I loved it. I made this tart today, and I have some sheets leftover as well. It baked itself to crispy, golden perfection and held the gooey, caramelized interior with good strength. And it looked so pretty! Although I must admit, I still think it is criminal to pay that kind of money (not saying how much, not even now) for even rare pastry. I wish my local Iyengar bakery wala would just sell his Khaari biscuit dough to me!

Caramelized Onion, Mushroom, and Paneer Tart

Ingredients:

3 sheets of ready rolled Phyllo pastry (I think my SPring roll wrappers/samosa pattis will also work here)
1 large red onion, sliced
2-3 button mushrooms, sliced
Half a cup of fresh, soft paneer
2 tbsp. grated cheese of choice (I used a mix of cheddar and mozzarella)
2-3 sprigs of thyme
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
1/4 cup melted butter
1 tsp. olive oil

Method:

Heat the olive oil in a pan and saute the onions in it until they turn a golden brown.
Place one sheet of phyllo on a chopping board . Brush with melted butter and fold in half. Do this to the other two sheets as well.
Place the folded sheets one on top of the other, brushing butter in between.
Crumble the paneer on top of the phyllo pile, leaving about half an inch of margin on all sides.
Sprinkle the cheese on top of the paneer.
Spoon the caramelized onions and mushrooms on top. Season with salt and pepper and finally, add the thyme.
Fold the sides of the phyllo toward the center of the tart so you get a nice border that seals everything in. (Thank you for the idea, Donna Hay)
Brush the folded sided with melted butter.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees centigrade for about 10 minutes or until the phyllo turns golden.
Serve warm with a light, leafy salad or by itself.

Recipe video: How to make Undhiyu

2012-01-15T22:46:00.000-08:00

The last time I wrote about Undhiyu (albeit with a different spelling), I promised you better pictures. This season, I am back with something even better--a video spanning the lovely colors of my local vegetable market and a step-by-step recipe tutorial.

As you can see, I love Undhiyu, and I love all the traditional cooking utensils that my grandmother has preserved so well all these years. If you have a grinding stone, please grind your masalas, every now and then on it--I promise you, it tastes different! And please make this lovely dish before the winter goes away, taking with it all the lovely, tender Surti Paapdi!

Vanilla and Coconut Panna Cotta with Fresh Strawberries | On Gourmet Company

2012-01-13T02:43:00.000-08:00

My love for strawberries continues. Check out my super simple recipe for Vanilla and Coconut Panna Cotta with Fresh Strawberries on Gourmet Company's recipe section.

It's one of those recipes that make itself. I like to make this a day in advance so it's perfectly set for a party the next day. Also, I do it in individual glasses to save myself the stress of unmolding. Try topping with mangoes, fresh figs, or a combination of papaya and pineapple in season!

Recipe video: How to make Meen Moilee (Kerala-style Fish in Coconut sauce)

2012-01-09T10:40:00.000-08:00

I treasure my utensils and kitchen appliances with more love than my wedding ring. And if I were to choose between my Kerala-style clay pots and some modern, fancy cooking instrument, I would most definitely choose my clay pots. I love the earthy smoothness of their surfaces and I love the aroma that wafts in my kitchen when I put one on the stove to heat. And there are some dishes that just should be made in a clay pot, not in a thick-bottomed non-stick saucepan. Meen Moilee is one such dish. I don't trust a Meen Moilee that has not been made in a Meen Chatti or Kerala-style claypot for cooking fish.

Here's a video that starts with my fisherwoman delivering my quota for the day followed by a simple recipe for a delicate, light, Kerala-style fish curry made in my favorite clay pot.

Meen Moilee
Ingredients:

2 medium-sized pomfrets, sliced
Salt to taste
1/4 tsp. turmeric powder
Juice of half a lemon
1 onion, sliced
1 tomato, sliced
1 tbsp. oil
1-inch piece ginger, julienned
2 green chilies, slit
2 pods of garlic, sliced
8-10 curry leaves
1/4 cup water
1 and 1/2 cup thick coconut milk

Method:

Clean and dry the pomfrets on a dish cloth.
Sprinkle with salt and turmeric powder and allow to marinate for a few minutes while you prepare for the rest of the recipe.
Heat oil in a clay pot and add the ginger, chilies, garlic, and curry leaves, followed quickly by the onion. Saute for about a minute until the onions turn translucent.
Arrange the pomfrets on the bed of onions and add the water. Cover and cook for 3-4 minutes.
Add the coconut milk and simmer for a minute or so until the fish is just cooked.
Tip in the tomatoes.
Turn off the heat and serve hot with plain rice.

Recipe video: Jowar Hurda/How to make Jowar (Sorghum) Raita

2011-12-28T04:33:00.000-08:00

The Japanese have their cherry blossom parties; Maharashtrians and Gujjus have their Hurda or Ponk parties. Unfortunately, most urban dwellers have no clue what this is. With the exception of a few pockets in the city, the tender sorghum kernels are not even seen.

In this new video, we have tried to (re)introduce the huda or ponk. If you live anywhere near Pune or Surat, I urge you to go and discover this dying social tradition.

Note: This is My Jhola's first video shot outdoors, and with a voiceover. Tell us what you think!

My recipes now on Gourmet Company

2011-12-22T09:08:00.000-08:00

So it looks like the year is ending on a good note. Today, Gourmet Company launched Saee's Corner, a recipe section on their website, authored by me. Every week starting this month, I will write a recipe using a core ingredient from their fabulous array of gourmet selection.

Here's an overview of happening this month:

Mixed Mushroom and Noodle Broth

Almond and Apricot Thumbprint Cookies

Mushroom and Pasta Quiche

Berry Pavlova

Head over to Saee's Corner on Gourmet Company's Website for the recipes! I'd love to hear what you think of them.

Recipe video: How to make Gingerbread cookies

2011-12-17T21:11:00.000-08:00

Every year, we celebrate Christmas with as much (if not more) enthusiasm than we celebrate Diwali. We put up the tree and do gifts. I bake the customary cake, and we munch on cookies and guava cheese. There's just something so warm and comforting about Christmas--come, take a look!

These cookies are so easy, you'll want to make a huge batch and gift them to everyone.

Oh, and don't forget to subscribe to the My Jhola channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/myjhola

Gingerbread cookies

Ingredients for the cookies:

3 cups of flour
1 and 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. dried ginger powder
1 and 3/4 tsp. cinnamon powder
1/4 tsp. clove powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. grated lemon zest

Ingredients for the icing:

2 cups icing sugar
a few teaspoons of hot water
Food coloring of choice

Method:

Sieve the flour in a large mixing bowl. Add the baking powder, baking soda, powdered cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. Whisk lightly to incorporate air, and keep aside.
In another mixing bowl, beat together the butter, egg, and brown sugar until pale and creamy.
Add the molasses, vanilla extract, and lemon zest and beat again until combined.
Add the flour mixture and knead lightly with a wooden spoon to a soft dough. Wrap in cling film and rest in a cool spot for about an hour.
Roll out to about 1/4 inch thickness and cut cookies in shapes of choice.
Lay the cookies about half an inch apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment.
Bake in a preheated oven at 190 degrees centigrade for about 7-8 minutes.
Cool completely on a wire rack.
Meanwhile, make the icing by beating together the icing sugar and hot water, a few drops at a time. You want a thick and shiny icing that is easy to pipe.
Divide into three-four bowls and color with food coloring.
Spoon into piping bags (or just use resealable bags or simply toothpicks) and decorate the cookies as desired.
Allow the icing to set (a couple of minutes) and store in an air-tight cookie jar.

Fragrant Grilled Lamb Chops | Recipe: Grilled Lamb Chops with Sumac, Rose, and Spices

2011-12-14T11:23:00.000-08:00

I'd choose lamb over chicken any day. And yet, I have not a single recipe for lamb on this blog. In all these years. You know why? Because I spend so much time and love making it and savoring it that it becomes like a private bedroom thing that I don't want to write about. No, really.

Most Indian homes pressure cook their mutton/lamb to aid quick cooking--which is all good. But for me, lamb is sacred. It needs love. It needs attention. It needs time. One of my favorite ways to cook lamb curry is to marinate it for several hours and then cook it slowly, over a couple more. The resultant meat is fall-off-the-bone tender, juicy, and so flavorsome, it makes you forget how long you waited for it. Yesterday, I went and got me these lovely lamb chops. When asked if I intended to fry them, I nodded in the affirmative, half my attention with a mince-seeking toddler. Turned out to be a good thing, because then the butcher flattened the chops for me a bit by beating them down with his cleaver. Helped get an even chop to grill.

I just went by instinct, and what evolved was a beautifully tender and fragrant chop. Of course, my standard rule of letting it sit in the marinade for almost 24 hours had something to do with it, too. I think. Point is, try it.

Ingredients:

8 lamb chops
1 tsp. Sumac
1 tsp. red chili powder
1/2 tsp. cumin seed powder
1 tsp. dried rose petals
1/2 tsp. turmeric powder
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 inch piece of ginger, minced
Juice of 1 lime
salt to taste
a small bunch of cilantro stalks, finely chopped
juice of one orange
1/2 inch piece ginger, finely chopped or grated
1 tsp. honey
Olive oil

Method:

In a large resealable bag, place all the ingredients except the orange juice, chopped ginger, honey, olive oil, and some of the cilantro stalks.
Massage everything together, seal the bag, and leave it in the fridge for a couple of hours, preferably overnight.
When you want to make the chops, bring the chops to room temperature about an hour in advance.
Combine the orange juice, reserved cilantro stalks, honey, and about half a tsp. of live oil. This is the basting liquid which will prevent the chops from drying up as they cook. The honey will impart a lovely glaze, too.
Heat your griddle or grill pan or other contraption of choice, and brush or spray some olive oil. Place the chops on the hot grill and cook on the first side for about 3 minutes. Turn, baste the side that's up and cook for another 3 minutes. (Cooking time may vary more or less according to how you like your meat, the thickness of the chops, and the heat applied.)
Remember to baste continuously. When cooked to your liking, take off the pan and allow to sit on the board for 2-3 minutes before serving.
Serve with a sprinkle of cilantro.

Celebrating strawberries | Recipe: Chocolate and Strawberry Tart

2011-12-13T04:50:00.000-08:00

I'm a sucker for all things seasonal--strawberries top my list because they come for only a while, and I love them. In season, there is no point in time that my fridge will not see them. I start getting uneasy when there are just a couple left, and then I have to go out and get several more boxes.

I returned home yesterday after over a week to a near-empty fridge, and promptly ordered some strawberries. You know, just to ensure the house doesn't suffer from lack of staples. Then, I discovered a bit of leftover shortcrust pastry dough lying in a bag, waiting to be picked. I had only recently re-shared this recipe for a quick chocolate and strawberry tart so the combination of strawberry and chocolate was fresh in my mind. It had to happen. I was going to write about how I used milk instead of cream and didn't add any sugar when I realized how much butter there is the crust. All my dreams of finally writing a healthy dessert recipe just went out the window. But then, it is a dessert--what else is it going to be, if not decadent?

Ingredients:

100 gms. flour
50 gms. + 1 tsp. butter, chilled and cubed
1 egg, lightly beaten
7-8 strawberries, sliced
1 cup whole fat milk
1 tsp. cornstarch/custard powder
1/2 cup dark chocolate, chopped
1 tbsp. icing sugar
Spring of mint to decorate

A perfect shortcrust pastry will shrink a bit from the sides of the tin. Eureka!

Method:

To make the pastry, place the flour, chilled butter, and a pinch of salt in a food processor with the chopping blade on.
Pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Gradually add half the beaten egg and continue to process until the mixture just comes together. Add more egg, if necessary. (If you’re making the pastry by hand, use a fork or a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the flour and bind the dough with some beaten egg.)
Wrap the pastry dough into a sheet of cling wrap or in a freezer-proof bag, and refrigerate for about half an hour.
Remove and roll out the pastry between sheets of cling wrap to about ¼ inch in thickness.
Carefully transfer the rolled out dough to a tart tin and press to line. Trim the excess dough.
Prick the pastry with a fork, and fill with half a cup of dried beans. Bake blind, at 180 degrees centigrade, for about 15 minutes until the pastry appears firm to touch. Remove the beans, and bake for another five minutes. Remove and cool completely.
Meanwhile, make the chocolate custard--heat the milk in a saucepan and add the chopped chocolate.
Whisking continuously, add the cornstarch/custard powder and cook for a minute until thick but of pouring consistency.
Pour into the cooled tart shell and chill to set.
Decorate with sliced strawberries, sprinkle with a little icing sugar, and bejewel with a sprig of mint, fresh from your window garden.

Fiction: Thank you, Dolly

2011-12-09T10:40:00.000-08:00

Avanee with Dolly; Me with Dolly

About 25 years ago, Dada (my maternal grandfather) brought me this beautiful doll from one of his trips abroad. I was smitten the moment I saw her--she was pink skinned, wore that lovely blue and white ensemble, and had the prettiest eyes. In a phase of absolute uncreativity, I named her Dolly; never to change it.

For many, many years after that, Dolly was my best friend. When a kid in class told me I couldn't possibly get selected for the annual day dance because I was ugly, I told her; not my mum. When Amma told me I couldn't get a cross-eye-creating fringe (or any other haircut), I went and cut Dolly's hair. I dressed her up when I was invited to a playmate's house because I knew I was invited only by virtue of being the girl with the best doll. (This playmate's father managed a cold storage/factory, and we would often get to see peas being shelled, blanched, and frozen--an activity I always looked forward to. While the friend carried my doll around for the employees to marvel at.) But then, you couldn't blame them. I mean, look at her! Even my great grandmother was impressed--when she came to stay with us one holiday, she knitted her a pretty red and yellow sweater with a hat to match. Dolly made you fall in love with her. And she always understood. When I felt low, I would slide under my bed with her and just be. Somehow, her soft tummy made for the perfect pillow for a sad kid's head to rest on.

Yesterday, Amma pulled her out from the deep recesses of her loft, and handed her to a bemused Avanee. Dolly is now yellowed with age, her plastic skin refusing to clean up. Her hair is knotted beyond repair, and the soft tummy that I once found comfort in is now giving way. She looks scary; but frankly, she looks tired to me. I was sure Avanee wouldn't take to her. She had a doll back home that she wasn't particularly obsessed with, why would she want this scary looking thing? But when she reached out and held her, I was almost jealous. Since that moment, she has not left Dolly's side--for meals, for naps, for playtime--Dolly's always with her. Avanee pats her to sleep the way I once did, and feeds her mock treats. She has long conversations in a language none of us understand, and sings her songs.

Just about an hour ago, however, Dolly did me a big favor. She put Avanee to sleep. I have been having trouble weaning, and Avanee has been having trouble going to sleep with anyone else but me. Today, the three of sat on the swing--Avanee, Dolly, and I--and in minutes, Avanee had rested her head on Dolly's lap and was off to dreamland. After months and months of incessant crying and milk-demanding at bedtime, this was a blessing.

Looks like I still need Dolly. Avanee may have found a new doll; but today, I have found my best buddy.

Recipe video: How to make Masale Bhaat (Spiced rice)

2011-12-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

I know, this makes it two rice recipes back-to-back. But it's one of those things--those modes one tends to fly into. You know, like when you return from a holiday in Kerala and make coconut-based curries for a week. And if you've been reading for a bit, you'll know I've written about the masale bhaat before. But then, that was in the dark ages of the point and shoot camera. This time, I've got you a step-by-step recipe for my favorite Masale Bhaat shot on video. Like most of my recipes, this one is also made from pantry staples, and can be cooked up in no time, just before those last-minute guests come over for a comforting meal. It makes for an excellent main for a festive occasion. Serve with poppadoms and yogurt.

Masale Bhaat

Ingredients:

2 tbsp. ghee
1 cup rice
2 cups water
1 long green chili, chopped
1/2 inch piece, finely chopped
5-6 curry leaves
1 tsp. mustard seeds
1/4 tsp. asafetida
1/2 tsp. turmeric powder
1/4 cup cashew nuts, halved
1/4 cup fresh or frozen peas
1/4 cup raisins
salt to taste
1 tsp. jaggery or sugar
1 tbsp. kala/goda masala
Juice of half a lime
Fresh cilantro, chopped, for garnish
Freshly grated coconut, for garnish

Method:

Heat the ghee in a heavy-bottomed pot.
Temper with mustard seeds and wait for them to pop. Add the asafetida and turmeric.
Throw in the green chili, ginger, and curry leaves.
Tip in the cashews, peas, and raisins. Saute until fragrant and until the cashews turn a light gold.
Wash, drain, and add the rice. Season with salt and add the masala. Saute for a few minutes, until the rice is well-coated and each grain separates and looks opaque.
Add the water, jaggery, and lime juice, and cover and cook for about 10 minutes on a medium flame, until all the water is absorbed and the rice looks cooked. Sprinkle more water if you're using a very aged variety of rice.
Garnish with cilantro and coconut.
Serve hot.

Eggs to the rescue | Recipe: Quick Weekday Egg Biryani

2011-12-04T10:53:00.000-08:00

On a busy day, I turn to eggs. You know that from here, don't you? I can eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and crack a couple for dessert if I feel like it. But the reason I really, really love them is that they cook so quickly and lend themselves to so many flavor combinations, adding nutritional value as they go along. This recipe is something I cook up when I barely have time to breathe (which is often enough). It gets prepped as you shower or attend to other important things, and the cooking is a breeze.

And yet, it is surprising how so little effort can cook you up such a voluptuous dish, bursting with flavor. If you're like me, you will enjoy the bits of green chili that I like to throw in, just to up the reading on the spice meter; but if you skip it, the sky will not fall on your heads either. Of course, feel free to also skip or replace a spice or two here and there according to how lazy you are to get to the spice jar. The fried onion is there because a biryani seems incomplete without it; however, if you don't have the time or the inclination to slice and fry, just skip it. I eat it this biryani with a portion of cold, plain, natural yogurt--it makes for a simple and gratifying meal. If you're pressed for time this week, just stock up on eggs, and you're good to go. Ideal for a hot family dinner after a long and tiring day. Especially if it is cold in your part of the world right now.

Note: Don't get intimidated by the number of ingredients; they're all pantry staples, and they don't need any further processing, so to speak. I'm sure they're within arm's length from your stove.

Quick Weekday Egg Biryani

Ingredients:

1 cup rice
3 eggs
1 medium-sized onion, sliced (optional, but recommended)
1 medium-sized onion, cut into big pieces
2 medium-sized tomatoes, cut into big pieces
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 inch piece of ginger
2 green chilies, finely chopped
1 small bunch of cilantro stems, finely chopped (optional)
1 tsp. cumin powder
2 tsps. coriander seed powder
1/2 tsp. garam masala powder
1/4 tsp. turmeric powder
1/2 tsp. red chili powder
1/2 inch piece of cinnamon
2 cloves
3-4 black peppercorns
1-2 green cardamom pods
1 bay leaf
1 small bunch of cilantro, chopped
1 small bunch of mint, chopped (optional)
2 and 1/2 tbsp. neutral-tasting oil such as sunflower/rice bran oil
Salt to taste
1/2 tsp. sugar

Method:

Put the eggs on the boil. When hard boiled, peel and halve the eggs.
In a rice cooker, pressure cooker, or large, thick-bottomed pot, place the rice, 1/2 tbsp. oil, whole spices (cinnamon, cardamom, peppercorns, cloves, and bay leaf) and 2 cups of water.
Add salt to taste and cook until almost done. The water should have evaporated. Fluff up using a fork.
Fry the sliced onion until golden brown and crispy. Remove and drain.
Place the ginger, garlic, chopped onion, and tomatoes in a blender and grind to a coarse paste.
Heat the 2 tbsp. of oil in a large wok or similar utensil.
Add the green chilies and chopped cilantro stems. Fry for barely half a minute, until fragrant.
Tip in the ground paste and cook until the oil separates.
Add all the ground masalas--turmeric, red chili powder, cumin powder, coriander seed powder, and garam masala. Cook until the powderiness disappears.
Salt the paste, estimating for the eggs and the paste itself. Remember, you have already salted the rice.
Add sugar to help caramelize the flavors.
Tip in the rice, halved eggs, fried onion,chopped cilantro and mint, and toss lightly. Cover, reduce the flame to minimum, and cook for a few minutes, just to help the flavors to mingle. Serve piping hot.

Hic! | Recipe: Cranberry, Orange, and Cinnamon Vodka

2011-11-29T08:30:00.000-08:00

I'm delighted with that beautiful blush!

My first drink was offered to me by my father soon after I turned 18. Much to Amma’s disapproval; but he said he’d rather initiate his daughter than wait for her to go drink on the sly. That drink was a gimlet. And since that first glass, I have always liked a bit of tang in my alcohol. I can’t down those syrupy cocktails and I don’t think I have the guts for whiskeys. What I do like, however, are fresh, simple drinks that can really pick up one’s mood. With those, I am always up for experimentation.

After tasting Nikhil’s licorice-scented spiced rum at a recent potluck and reading about Rushina’s adventures with alcohol, I was very tempted to do my own take. I had some vodka leftover from making my vanilla and spearmint extracts (coming soon) so I emptied it into a bottle and threw in whatever aromatics I thought would work together. The next opportunity I had to test it out was at a family get-together that primarily comprised a bunch of single malters. I was very hesitant about taking my bottle of experimentation along, but with an encouraging push from MK, I decided, what the heck.

I am happy to report that no other bottles were opened that night and several questions about the recipe came up. You will have to take it from me when I say that this vodka is one of the best I have ever tasted. The tartness of the cranberries, the freshness of the orange rind, and the sweetness of the cinnamon, just accentuated by that additional bit of sugar made for a lovely mélange of flavors. The mint and lime only helped freshen and lighten the flavors even further. This is a perfect drink for a hot summer day (which is what we’re having here in Mumbai even as November comes to an end).

Look at that mad pink-red!

Ingredients:

750 ml. good quality, unflavored vodka
1 cup dried cranberries
Peeled rind of 1 orange
1 stick of cinnamon
2 tsp. caster sugar

Method:

Bruise the orange peel, cinnamon, and cranberries using a rolling pin or mortar and pestle. Do not get overambitious and grind. All you want to do is release the aromas.
Place all the ingredients in a wide-mouthed bottle or jar and cap shut.
Leave in a cool and dark place for at least two weeks. The vodka turns a bright pink-red.
Strain before use.

Makes for a perfect party drink!

To serve:

In a whiskey glass, muddle a few sprigs of mint and a wedge of lime.
Fill the glass halfway up with ice and pour one large peg of the prepared vodka.
Stir lightly and serve immediately.

I am a food blogger

2011-11-28T11:10:00.000-08:00

Last night, I had a bit of a breakdown. I had been fighting it for a bit, but in my mother’s home, in the midst of warmth and security, I gave in and let it all out. As an Arts student, I have always been ridiculed for my choice of vocation. And had it not been for my supportive family, I probably would have buckled under pressure and quit school and turned into a reclusive anti-social element (not that I’m too far away from being one now, but you get the idea).

There was a temporary phase in my life when I did well, academically. I was studying English Literature under the fine tutelage of the city’s best teachers, enjoying every moment of every class, every hour of library silence, every exam, even. It showed on the mark sheets, and for the first time since primary school, I was in the “cream” of the class. When I finished my Masters and went on to take several jobs as editor, teacher, and instructional designer, I was happy with my work. Happy that I was respected—or so I thought. Then, when I discovered I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to quit and be a stay-at-home mum. Around that time, my love for food blogging was blossoming, and I knew I was in a happy place. Apparently, however, it’s not something that garners respect in certain circles.

My parents and brother are super-enthusiastic; my father gifted me the camera I use so that I could take more “professional” photographs. My brother shoots and edits all the videos I put up on this blog. I am blessed to have a supportive husband in MK who pushes me to experiment, to write, to expand my horizons. It is he who has helped me accept the fact that my real happiness is in a career that has something to do with food. It fit in perfectly with my decision to stay at home and watch my daughter grow. Surprisingly, I have been more regular and have probably bettered my craft since Avanee’s birth. I wrote 30-odd posts in 2010, the year Avanee was born; and one year since, I have already crossed 60 posts. In a strange way, I think Avanee’s birth gave my life direction.

So, having decided that food is the way to go, I am seeking work, enjoying my “struggle” as I go along. There are up days and there are down days. And there are the days when you wonder if you’ll ever be able to wean your toddler and find your independence. But the worst kind are the days when someone comes along and says something nasty and discouraging without even realizing it. And although your head (and your husband) tells you not to pay attention to it, you do. You think about it all the time, you lose sleep over it, and one day, sitting next to your mum after a particularly perfect meal, you break down and let the tears roll, wallowing in self pity for a few minutes. Not realizing, that although you’re still your mum’s daughter, you’re also your daughter’s mum now. And she’s watching you. She’s looking at you with a smile and trying to tell you that’s it’s OK. And when that adorable smile makes you burst into tears some more, she climbs up on your lap and gives you a tight hug. She’s all of 19 months old, and to her, whatever you do is perfect. She just doesn’t want to see mummy cry.

Nothing else could have strengthened my resolve like my daughter’s encouraging hug. Everything else can eat dirt.

I am a food blogger. And that’s what I’ll be.

Mrs. B’s Sukka | Recipe: Chicken Sukka

2011-11-24T00:27:00.000-08:00

If you’ve been reading along for a bit, you probably know by now, how much Mrs. B means to me. She entered the family when MK’s gran was still around (nearly 11 years ago) and now works with me. I sometimes think she is having a rather prolonged menopause because she is quite often in a bad mood. But I don’t think I’ll ever find anyone more dependable than her. She has never ditched me when I needed her the most, and for that invaluable quality, I am ready to put up with her under-the-breath-muttering and taking-off-without-telling.

She does an excellent job with seafood as you know from here, and can adapt to my sudden irrational diets as you know from here. What you don’t know is how loving she can be if she wants to. The other day, I was asking her where she gets her gaavthi chicken from because my source has now become inaccessible. She spent a minute trying to explain the location to me, and then gave up.

Today, she got me this lovely bird. Marinated it in the morning and came back at tea time to cook. It is a simple, rustic preparation called the “sukka,” literally meaning “dry.” Evidently, the dish is named after the relatively dry masala as compared to the usually very liquid curries of the Konkan. The chicken itself is fall-apart tender, yielding itself to the fiery, bold spices that encase it. Another thing that was very new to me was roasting the chicken feet. I usually don't get the feet when I buy chicken, but she got them along happily and roasted them on the naked flame until they were blistered black. This, she said, added that smokiness to the dish. I was a little turned off, but boy, was she right!

Although the sukka was meant for dinner, I couldn’t stop myself from eating some straight off the pot, even before she could turn the gas off. It made for the perfect accompaniment to rice bhakris. What more can one ask for? I love you, Mrs. B.

Chicken sukka

Ingredients:

1 chicken, portioned
2 medium-sized potatoes, cut into large pieces
3-4 cloves of garlic
½ inch piece of ginger
Juice of 1 lemon
2 onions, sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
3 tbsp. dried coconut, grated
1 tbs. poppy seeds
3-4 cloves
2 black cardamoms
2 bay leaves
5-6 black peppercorns
1 inch stick cinnamon
1 tbsp. red chili powder
½ + ½ tsp. turmeric powder
1 tbsp. + 3 tbsp. oil
1 tsp. sugar
Salt to taste
Fresh cilantro, chopped

Method:

Clean the chicken.
In a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder, make the marinade using the ginger, garlic, lemon juice, ½ tsp. turmeric powder, red chili powder, and some salt.
Rub the marinade on the chicken pieces and leave to rest for at least 2 hours.
In a pan, heat the 1 tbsp. of oil. Add the 2 sliced onions and sauté until translucent.
Add the coconut and poppy seeds and sauté further until the onions and coconut turn golden brown and a nutty aroma emanates.
Remove and grind to a fine paste, using as little water as possible.
If you've got the chicken feet packed, clean them and roast them on a naked fire until blistered black.
In a large wok, heat the 3 tbsp. of oil and add the whole spices—cinnamon, black cardamom, cloves, and peppercorns.
When fragrant, add the chopped onion and sauté until translucent.
Pop in the marinating chicken and sear.
Add the ground paste and a little water (about ¾ of a cup). Season.
Cover and cook on a low flame for about 15 minutes, checking frequently.
When done, add the chopped cilantro and serve piping hot with rice flatbreads (bhakris) or any other bread of choice.

Spice box | Black and White Wednesday No. 7

2011-11-22T22:10:00.000-08:00

This is my contribution to Susan's weekly Black and White Wednesday event. It is a picture of dried red cherry chilies and cumin seeds--one of my favorite things to temper my Indian dishes with.

This is my everyday spice box--phodnicha daba, as we'd call it in Marathi. All families have their own selection of spices that they use for everyday cooking. Mine contains mustard seeds, cumin seeds, split black gram daal, red chilies, fenugreek seeds, turmeric, and asafetida. (I have another similar box for ground spices.)


Cumin seeds


Dried red chilies


Ground turmeric

Mustard seeds

Seasonal indulgence | Recipe: Tiramisu Liqueur Cake with Vanilla Mascarpone and Strawberries in Syrup

2011-11-21T04:05:00.000-08:00

As a foodie, any excuse for cooking is welcome--one goes all out of the way to cook the best recipes, confident of the oohing and aahing that you will hear as they're brought out. But that's for family and friends. When you're meeting other foodies, it gets a teeny bit trickier. It's got to be ridiculously good. I was meeting a bunch of food bloggers this past weekend, and I wanted to make something seasonal and indulgent. What I ended up making was this:

I don't recommend making this often--it's a heavy, sinful dessert cake, full of calories and all things evil. But it does seem perfect for a special occasion such as meeting friends. Feel free to substitute with seasonal fruit--fresh orange segments with a little bit of cinnamon, fresh figs, raspberries, mango, even.

The cake itself is a little dense, but it should be because it needs to carry a whole lot of mascarpone and fruit on top. And with the freshness of the mascarpone and strawberries, it doesn't come across as too dense. It's a lovely, easy-to-put-together-cake. Try making it for your next party!

Tiramisu Liqueur Cake with Vanilla Mascarpone and Strawberries in Syrup

Ingredients for Cake:

300 gms. flour
280 gms. demerara or other brown sugar
300 gms. flour
300 gms. butter
6 eggs
1/4 cup tiramisu liqueur
1 Vanilla bean, scraped
1 and 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. instant coffee powder or 2 tbsp. brewed black coffee

To soak the cake:

1 tsp. baking powder or 2 tbsp. brewed black coffee
1 tsp. sugar
Grated rind of an orange, about 1 tsp.

For the Vanilla Mascarpone:

1 and 1/2 tubs of Mascarpone (about 375 gms.)
2 tbsp. icing sugar
1 tsp. good quality Vanilla extract

For the Strawberries in Syrup:

2 cups large, fresh strawberries; halved
2 tbsp. sugar
2 tbsp. water
1 tsp. Vanilla steeped vodka or 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Grated rind of orange, about 1 tsp.

To finish:

Icing sugar
Mint leaves

Method:

In a food processor or stand mixer or large mixing bowl, place the butter, sugar, and eggs. Beat until thick and creamy.
Add the vanilla and beat again, for a moment.
Sieve in the baking powder and flour. Fold lightly.
Add all the rest of the cake ingredients and combine.
Decant into a greased and lined 12 inch round cake pan and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees centigrade for about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Invert onto a plate and allow to cool completely.
Meanwhile, make the syrup. Place all the ingredients except the strawberries in a saucepan and bring to the boil.
Allow to simmer for a minute. Tip in the halved strawberries and allow to cool.
Next, lightly beat all the ingredients for the vanilla mascarpone together. Refrigerate until required.
Prepare the soaking syrup by simply combining all ingredients together.
To assemble the cake, slice any possible crowns on the cake to obtain an even surface.
Prick holes through the cake to allow the syrup to seep in. Spoon the syrup in haphazard manner.
Top with the prepared mascarpone and spread on top of the cake.
Place the strawberries, halved side down all over the cake. Make sure you allow some of the syrup to get in so that it bleeds into the white mascarpone.
Sprinkle with icing sugar and decorate with a sprig of fresh mint.
Serve cold.

Note: Special thanks to Godrej Nature's Basket for procuring the mascarpone and strawberries for me at short notice and to Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal for pointing me to them.

Warming up to bread | Recipe: Pita bread and Hummus

2011-11-20T03:21:00.000-08:00

I've got a lot of feedback on my Baguette post--readers telling me they loved the recipe and that they are slowly warming up to the idea of baking their own bread at home. I've had a friend write in and tell me that she made the baguette for the first time and her son loved it so much that she is determined to bake bread at home quite regularly now. It makes more sense when you think of it this way--would you buy your everyday chappatis/rotis from the local restaurant? Bread is no different.

Allow me to convince you with this simple recipe for Pita bread that I've adapted from here.

Ingredients:

3 cups flour
2 tsp. fresh or 4 tsp. dried yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. olive oil

Method:

Place the flour in a large basin or mixing bowl.
In a smaller bowl, place the yeast and sugar and pour over some lukewarm water. Leave in a warm spot for about 15 minutes until frothy.
Pour the frothy yeast into the flour and mix well to form a soft dough.
Next, mix the salt and olive oil on the side of your basin and work into the dough. The resultant dough should be soft and smooth like a baby's bum.
Cover with cling film or damp cloth and leave in a warm spot to double in size (about 15-20 mins.)
Knock back the dough and divide into six equal portions. Leave to rest again for about 5-10 mins.
Roll out each dough to about inches in diameter.
Slap onto a lightly greased and dusted baking sheet and bake for about 5 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees centigrade.
Watch in pride as the discs of flour puff up like well-blown balloons, bursting at the seams.
Remove and cool.

Eat, toasted or plain, with freshly made Hummus:
Ingredients:

1 large cup chickpeas, soaked overnight and cooked until tender
2 tbsp. Tahini
4 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup good quality olive oil
Juice of 1 medium sized lemon
Salt to taste
Zaatar/Cumin seed powder/Chili powder to sprinkle on top

Method:

Place all the ingredients in a blender and grind to a smooth paste. Top with a liberal glug of more olive oil and sprinkle condiments of choice.

Recipe video: 1 Bowl Chocolate Orange Cake

2011-11-15T23:01:00.000-08:00

This is a perfect cake or those sudden cake and chocolate cravings. It is a lovely moist cake with the aromas of orange coming through in the avatars of marmalade and orange zest, complimenting the smooth dark chocolate ganache beautifully. Make the cake on a lazy afternoon or just an hour before your impromptu party, and bask in the glory of the oohing and aahing of your guests.

1 Bowl Chocolate and Orange Cake

Ingredients:

180 gms. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
80 gms. cocoa
180 gms. brown sugar (I used demerara)
200 gms. butter
4 eggs
2 tbsp. orange marmalade
Zest of 1 orange, chopped julienne
Juice of 1 orange, freshly squeezed
100 gms. good quality dark chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup cream

Method:

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy.
Add the eggs and beat again until smooth and frothy.
Add the marmalade and beat again, very briefly, just to combine.
Sieve in the flour, baking powder, and cocoa. Fold in light movements.
Add the orange juice to adjust the consistency. The batter should be thick but easy to pour.
Pour into a greased and lined baking tin of choice. (I used an 8-inch round, loose-bottomed tin) and bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees centigrade for about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Invert the cake onto a serving dish and leave to cool.
Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in a microwave or on a double boiler. Add the cream and mix to obtain a smooth and glossy ganache.
Pour over the cooled cake and spread in a deliberate haphazard fashion to show off the sensual curves of the ganache. Allow the ganache to drip along the sides of the cake.
Decorate with orange zest julienne.

To playschool or not to playschool

2011-11-15T04:31:00.000-08:00

Avanee is 18 months old. She looks older because she has a full head of hair that’s usually tied up in little ponytails on either side of her head and is very active as compared to most kids her age. From the time she opens her eyes in the morning to the time she (finally) shuts them for the day, she is constantly up and about, often driving me and other caregivers up the wall with her incessant yapping and dangerous window climbing. She is almost toilet trained, is very communicative, and LOVES being around other kids.

About a month ago, on a very, very frustrated afternoon, I contemplated the idea of sending her to the playschool bang opposite my building. No no, not because I wanted to finally take my food pictures with some real props over an hour or so instead of just sitting stuff up on the window sill and clicking while she pees—because she needs to be around kids her age. MK laughed at the idea that his little princess might actually be ready for school. (Knowing him, he probably imagined her getting married and skipped a heartbeat, but that’s another story.) I was so delighted at the prospect of having her out of my hair for two hours a day that I dashed opposite and checked out the place and convinced them to give her a trial. (I know, bad mommy.) I almost bought a school bag and water bottle and tiffin box. I imagined her in their cheerful multicolored uniform. In the happy knowledge that the week-long trial starts tomorrow, I took a nap in the afternoon, next to my darling daughter, who probably thought our trip to the playschool was a fun one-off outing. (Poor her.)

And in my state of drugged-like sleep, I felt guilty to the point of tears. (No, it’s not PMS.) Guilty of having disguised my being a bad mother under the wraps of her need for activity and same-aged company. So what if she already sings “Eeya eeya oh” on cue and points to all body parts correctly? Do I really want to stuff her in a uniform at this age and have her recite the alphabet everyday? She’ll be the youngest in class and she’ll have to do another year of playschool anyway—am I OK with that? ~~Will she be able to cope~~ Does she really need those two hours away from home, from simple, unstructured life? Am I really such an epic failure of a mother that I can’t deal with another few months of Lakdi ki kathi 12 times a day and jumping off pillows 7 times a day? Even if I complain about other things, am I not happy to see her swing to my bad singing, watch her eyes sparkle as she sees a bird at the window, do her little dance-in-abandon as she sings “Am-ma, Ba-ba” in steady trance?

Do I really want to throw my daughter in the inevitable rat race of life a few months too early? I don’t think so. Springdale, you can wait.

Home-style happiness | Recipe: Baguette, Mushroom and Bell Pepper Bruschetta, and Black and White Wednesday No. 6

2011-11-09T02:31:00.000-08:00

When a Birdy’s outlet opened up bang opposite my house, I did a little jig to celebrate easy access to decent bread. (In this area of Thane, it is rare to find anything beyond a blue packet of sliced commercial white bread.) I had dreams of eating fresh garlic bread with a casual pasta on cold nights and fresh egg salad sandwiches in sliced bran bread. I stocked up on good coffee so I could dash out and get a warm croissant to go with my 4 o’clock cup. All of that came crashing down as I sampled one disastrous, piece of cardboard bread product after another.

So while I should be napping while my daughter naps and catching up on some much-needed shuteye, I have been spending an afternoon too many baking simple, everyday breads for my family to enjoy. And every time, I realize how easy and satisfying it is to make my own bread. What can better than the knowledge that the bread you’ve made contains the best of ingredients, no commercial additives, and is perfectly safe for your toddler to enjoy? What better than tearing out a piece of home-made bread and dunking it in a hearty soup for a quietly happy dinner with your husband? What better than watching your daughter gnaw at the chewy crust of freshly baked bread as soon as she's done with her afternoon nap?

This simple baguette is a rustic beauty. It is chewy in texture because it contains no fat, and goes very well with broths, soups, and hearty stews. In the rare case that you have some left over, make sandwiches.

Ingredients:

225 gms. plain flour
10 gms. fresh yeast or 20 gms. dried yeast
10 gms. sugar
5 gms salt
1 tbsp. poppy seeds (optional)
1 egg, lightly beaten (to wash; optional)

Method:

Place the yeast and sugar in a small bowl with some lukewarm water in it. Allow to froth.
In a large basin, make a dough using the salt, flour, and the yeast mixture. Add more water if necessary.
Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead well for at least five minutes or until you can stretch the dough a foot in length without it snapping.
Cover and leave to rest in a warm spot until it doubles in size (about 20 minutes).
Knock back the dough. When you punch a hole in it, it should not spring back, but collapse in submission.
Knead lightly and shape into a long loaf, as thin and as long as your oven size allows or as you like it.
Make slits along the diagonal and allow to rise again.
For a golden crust, brush with egg and sprinkle with poppy seeds. Else, just sprinkle with water.
Bake at 175 degrees centigrade in a pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes.
Allow to cool completely before slicing.

Tiny tea pot

And this is my entry for this week's Black and White Wednesday event, hosted by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook. It is a tea pot from a play set that my great grandfather gifted me when I was a young girl. I don't see such well-crafted, proportionate play tea sets these days. Sigh.

Other Bread-related posts on this blog:

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After eating slices of the baguette for every meal after it came out of the oven, I still had some leftover. It seemed like the perfect occasion for a light lunch of soup and bruschetta. Here's what I am eating as I type this:

Just saute some garlic, onion, bell peppers, and mushrooms in olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Add your choice of herb (I added thyme) for flavor, right at the end. Toast slices of the baguette and spoon over the mushroom mixture. Eat with a cold soup for a very satisfying meal.

Another way I like to eat is to spoon some of my slow-roasted tomatoes over the toasted baguette and eat warm with a side of leafy salad.

Festivity leftovers | Recipe: Pistachio and Cranberry Cookies

2011-11-08T03:08:00.000-08:00

Once Diwali is over and the ingredients for your Christmas cake have been soaked in copious amounts of alcohol, you are left with huge amounts of nuts and dried fruit. Stuff that will definitely go to waste before you know it. That is, of course, if you live in humid climates or have a tiny kitchen or an overfull refrigerator or all of the above.

That’s pretty much the reason behind these cookies today. You’ll want to try these. Excellent recipe to make with kids, makes for a very good light snack, and looks pretty, too. The cookies turn out a nice combination of crisp and chewy—the fat content is just right to leave your fingertips dry and your throat un-itchy.

This cookie recipe is made from pantry staples, so you don’t have to dash to the supermarket before you start, and you’ll do those leftover nuts and dried fruit some good too. Feel free to experiment—almond and raisin, hazelnut and chocolate chip, cashew and fig—these should all do well in this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup pistachios, shelled and chopped roughly
1 cup dried cranberries
1 and ½ cups flour
1 egg
100 gms. butter
1 and ½ cups castor sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
Grated zest of 1 small lime
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Method:

Place the butter and sugar in a stand mixer or food processor and beat until pale.
Add the egg, vanilla extract, and lime zest; beat again until well combined.
Add the rest of the ingredients and bind to a soft dough.
Shape into small balls, the size of a small lime or betel nut and place quite apart on a greased cookie sheet.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 120 degrees centigrade until the bases are golden and the tops appear set and dry.
Cool on wire rack until completely set. Enjoy with a cup of coffee.

Other cookie recipes on this blog:

Trikaya's Vegetable Gold | Farm visit

2011-11-03T03:03:00.000-07:00

On the drive back home from the Trikaya farm in Talegaon, I felt deprived. Of fruit and vegetables. Not that I live in a desert. Like most people living in the city, I buy my vegetables from the local supermarkets and vegetable markets. Most times, I come home happy, thinking I have bought fresh produce. Other times, I know I am making a compromise; especially on exotics like herbs and fruits, knowing fully well that they’ve been sitting in commercial refrigerators for several hours before landing up in my shopping cart. It’s a price I am usually willing to pay.

On Samar Gupta’s idyllic farm in Talegaon, I realized what a bloody illusion I’m living in. I have been buying near-dehydrated, brown-stalked, thyme and inhaling its aromas as it roasts with my tomatoes, convincing myself that life is at its best. I have been buying brown-edged iceberg lettuce and dunking it in iced water to crisp it up. And I have been looking at those large packets of cellophane-wrapped dragon fruit with one eyebrow up, just happy that I now have access to exotic fruit from countries I have never seen. Hmph.

Minutes after our group of foodies reached the farm, Samar tore us away from admiring the tablefuls of freshly harvested produce to touring the farm. Whatever I say in order to describe the farm is going to be insufficient to convey to you, dear reader, what a treat it was. I hope my pictures do some justice in showing you a glimpse of the wonderful produce that one of India’s best exotic produce suppliers has on offer.

Great respect going out to Samar Gupta, who’s evidently so passionate about what he does, that his eyes sparkle as he talks about it. He educates you and makes you fall in love with his vegetables and fruits. He has a team of committed gentlemen who do the rounds of the 25-acre property several times a day and experiment with dehydration and preservation techniques. He’ll sit you down to a good meal, allow you to fiddle in his kitchen with his gorgeous vegetable gold, and offer you a nice pot of freshly brewed coffee at the end of it all. He’ll pack you off with goodies, and if you’re like me, you’ll wonder why you don’t live on the farm. And for several days after the trip, you’ll look at your supermarket’s veggie section with utter disdain, absolutely uninspired to cook.

Having said that, I shall return to my dreamy sighs and leave you with pictures to drool over. Thank you, Rushina, for inviting me to this trip.

Dehydrated Karambola (Star fruit); highly addictive!

Spoon tomatoes--the cutest things I've seen!

Palm heart--excellent for stir fries and soups.

Kumquats--citrus gorgeousness

Black cherry tomatoes

Snow peas

Mulberries

Pink dragon fruit

Starfruit/Karambola--so sweet and juicy, nothing like the stuff you get outside schools!

Red raddish

Thyme with plump, healthy stalks!

Dehydrated starfruit (karambola)--chewy and pretty

Fragrant orange mint

An array of herbs and greens

A variety of mulberry that looks like a caterpillar but is tastier than the regular mulberries when ripe.

Mulberries beginning to ripen

Mulberry

Kumquats again

Figs

Blushing pink pomello

Raw jackfruit

Marigold

Baby lettuce plants

Babies in the making!

Baby lettuce ready to be transferred

Easily my favorite part of the nursery

Orchid

More orchids

Support equipment

Orchids like a polka dotted summer dress

And more orchids!

Yellow dragon fruit--smaller but juicier!

Giant, fleshy, custard apple

Ginger torch

Sweet tamarind

Harvested pink dragon fruit--could be white or pink on the inside!

Bhut jolakia--the spiciest chili in the world!

The man--Samar Gupta

Rushina stir-frying greens for lunch!

Chives

Galangal

Chorizo bread made by Rushina and her husband.

Stir-fried freshly harvested greens

Nikhil's zesty salad with candied orange peels, candied nuts, and lettuce from the farm.

Rushina's comforting, refresing fragrant soup with lemon grass, kaffir lime and galangal from the farm.

My slow roasted tomatoes with freshly picked thyme added on the farm.

Harini's freshly baked bread--so fresh, it was still warm when we reached the farm, a good two hours away!

Harini's creamy cashewnut and parsley dip

Freshly picked and stir-fried edamame

Black and White Wednesday No. 5

2011-11-02T01:09:00.000-07:00

Tapeli; traditional Maharastrian copper utensil used for cooking rice.

Every time I go to Pune, I go to the Tulsi Baug Market, which is Pune's treasure trove for everything copper/brass. I've been there a couple of times, and yet, I always find something new I want to buy. I saw this beautiful pot and knew I wanted it. My grandma often tells us stories of her childhood, and descriptions of gigantic tapelis sitting on charcoal and wood stoves, bellowing fragrant rice steam are standard. If not for anything else, definitely bought this pot to admire its lovely beaten texture and shape. And of course, to hold a piece of my grandma's dreamy childhood stories.

Today, it is my entry for Susan's Black and White Wednesday event.

Recipe video: How to make Mango burfi (Fudge) and Diwali wishes

2011-10-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

I hope you're having a lovely Diwali--surrounded by loved ones and so drunk on happiness that the diyas and lanterns are all dimmed by the warm glow in your heart. And I do hope you're eating copious amounts of traditional, sinful food. We've got the rest of the year to think about calories.

On that note, I'll leave you with a recipe video for mango burfi (fudge) that we're eating this Diwali.

Note: I'm uploading both Vimeo and YouTube versions because there are people that prefer one over the other; but if you have a system that supports high definition, I'd say look at the Vimeo version.

Mango burfi (Fudge)

Ingredients:

4 cups paneer/ricotta, crumbled
3 cups sugar
2 cups sweetened mango pulp (I used canned)
2 cups milk powder
Edible silver leaf for decoration
Slivered pistachios for decoration

Method:

Place the paneer/ricotta, sugar, and mango pulp in a thick-bottomed vessel and cook on a medium flame for about 15-20 minutes or until the mixture comes together and threatens to thicken.
Add the milk powder and cook for another 5-10 minutes or until the mixture begins to leave the sides of the pan. Turn off the heat.
Pour onto a greased baking tray and spread to about three-fourth of an inch thickness.
Allow to cool for at least 4 hours, the last hour or so in the refrigerator. This will make the burfi easier to cut.
Decorate with carefully placed edible silver leaf and pistachios and cut into squares.

Window Garden and Black and White Wednesday No. 4

2011-10-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

Like most people in Bombay, who have no access to backyards or dainty vegetable patches, I live my herb garden dream through my wrought iron grille windows. As you've seen from here. Here's another glimpse!

A new cherry chili plant in bloom

These will be plump, juicy, red tomatoes someday!

My faithful, 5-year-old curry leaf plant that survived a nasty attack by pigeons.

Mint! Finally! Just stuck some sprigs in from my local market shopping, and voila!

And here's this week's contribution to Susan's Black and White Wednesday.

Garlic, salt, and pepper

Recipe video: Nut chikki (Brittle (How to make nut chikki/brittle)

2011-10-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

Lonavla. That tiny spot on Maharashtra’s map that looks like a piece of broken chikki. The entire town is perennially wafting with the aroma of caramelizing sugar or jaggery. Chikki, the desi version of Brittle comes in many avatars—the most popular being the peanut chikki (ground peanuts and whole) and the cashewnut chikki. And then there are those that make your job in choosing difficult—sesame seed chikki, puffed rice chikki, roasted Bengal gram chikki, mixed nut chikki, coconut chikki, stuff-you-never-thought-of-chikki—the list is endless. Some are made in caramelized sugar and liquid glucose while some are made, more traditionally, in caramelized jaggery. I like them both—they have distinctive flavors and differing depths, and they complement the nut they carry with surprising but delightful differences.

I love chikkis because they’re all good sources of instant energy—ideal for a non-chocolate person like me. Packed with the goodness of nuts, they make for an excellent on-the-go snack. This festive season, you might want to make this easy sweet and gift a box of healthy warmth to friends and family. It gets done in minutes, and looks gorgeously warm, don’t you think?

Here’s my simple recipe for Mixed Nut Chikki (Brittle)

Ingredients:

1 and ½ cups cashews, halved
1 and ½ cups almonds
1 and ½ cups pistachios
3 cups sugar
1 heaped tbsp. liquid glucose
1 tsp. ghee
½ tsp. green cardamom powder (optional)
A pinch of saffron (optional)
Cornstarch for dusting

Method:

Place all the nuts in a pan and toast them lightly over medium heat. Cool and chop very roughly just to release their flavors.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment. Grease it lightly and dust with cornstarch.
Place the sugar in a thick-bottomed pot or wok and melt on a low flame. One the sugar turns a light amber, quickly add the liquid glucose, ghee, cardamom, and saffron in quick succession.
Add the nuts and switch off the heat.
Turn the nuts in the pot so they’re well-coated.
Transfer immediately to the parchment and flatten with the help of a greased spatula/rolling pin or other instrument of choice.
If you like perfect squares, make cuts on your chikki sheet while it is still warm. This will make the breaking easier when it cools. I like my chikki rustic and broken randomly, so I skip this step.
Allow to cool completely (about 15 to 20 mins.)
Break into desired sizes and store in an air-tight jar, away from heat and humidity.

Recipe video: Grilled Chicken with Tomato and Pineapple Salsa | How to make Grilled Chicken

2011-10-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

It's October, and the air conditioners and fans are working overtime here in Mumbai. With the change in weather, there have been a few changes in my kitchen--gone are the warm, fuzzy recipes that made you want to curl up in your bed with a book. What's here is fresh, zingy, light food. Food that requires minimum time in a super-sunny kitchen.

Come, look what we're eating!

Grilled chicken with Tomato and Pineapple Salsa

Ingredients for Grilled Chicken

2 chicken breasts
3-4 cloves of garlic
2 red chilies
Juice of 1 lime
2 tbsp. olive oil + for spraying on the pan
Salt to taste

Method:

Make shallow slits along the diagonal of each chicken breast.
In a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder, mince the garlic, red chilies, and salt.
Add the olive oil and mix to a paste.
Apply on each side of the chicken breasts.
Squeeze on some lime juice and leave to marinate until you make your salsa.
When it' time to grill, heat your grill pan or skillet or other pan of choice and spray on some olive oil.
Grill the chicken breasts for about 3-4 minutes on the first side and for about 2 minutes on the second.
Serve hot with a cool salsa or salad.

Recipe for Tomato and Pineapple Salsa here. Except, I used cherry tomatoes this time because I found them burstingly fresh when I went shopping for the shoot.

Other recipe videos on this blog:

Black and White Wednesday No. 3

2011-10-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

Phew! Just in time for this week's Black and White Wednesday!

Bread in a basket

Trapped!

Jewels Fit for Royalty | Recipe: Coffee and Orangette cake | Black and White Wednesday No.2

2011-09-28T04:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to the Mumbai launch of Café Coffee Day’s new premium coffee, Mysore Royal. I have been a loyal Dark Forest drinker for quite a while now—I like my coffee mellow and free from chicory. When I read about Mysore Royal in the invite, therefore, I was a little skeptical. Perhaps I’m getting old and I question change for no reason. Anyway. I went to the event in anticipation of meeting Sunalini Menon, the coffee goddess as she is rightly known.

I happened to reach a tad early—the only other people present were photographers/videographers, PR people, and the CCD people, all busy prepping for the event. There was only one person who really, really seemed to want to get it right, though—the silver-haired Sunalini Menon, elegantly dressed in raw silk, was busy meticulously correcting the angles of the cups and French presses on each coffee table. She was recapitulating the order of events with the barista, Merwin, and softly reprimanding the café staff for not getting something or other quite right. I fell in love with her instantly. I like women who want it perfect. So as tempted as I was to walk up to her and make the most of the empty room, I decided to respect her time and just watch the pro do what she does best. I busied myself photographing the lovely display of the variety of brewing equipment that Sunalini was to take us through. My skepticism about the coffee itself began to reduce as I photographed the elegant box it was packed in.

In time, the room was full of people, and after a brief introduction, Sunalini got down to Mysore Royal—the coffee, its origins and beginnings, the magical way that it transformed itself as it allowed itself to be brewed in a traditional South Indian coffee filter, the gorgeous Siphon with equal ease. If it was thick, luscious, and bitter with one brew, it was light, aromatic, and teasing in another. My table partner, Rushina, and I had moments of enlightenment as we sipped the coffee and thought up recipes and food pairings. If you’re a coffee drinker, you’ll want to try this. It is a coffee that hints at so many subtle flavors without letting go of its own identity, that no cup you make yourself will ever be the same.

As I drove home, my mind went back to Sunalini’s suggestion of pairing it with oranges. “Have it with some orange juice,” she’d said. Hmm. Too much acid for me, I thought. But then I thought it’d be perfect in a cake. After weeks of resisting temptation, I finally got round to baking it today. I have to say, Sunalini was right—the marriage of flavors was perfect. The depth of the coffee was lifted by the lightness of the orange, and the drizzle of dark chocolate ganache on top complemented everything together so well, I had quite a generous slice. Or two.

Coffee and Orangette cake

Ingredients:
For the orangettes:

Peels of one orange—I used Valencia
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of water
Water for blanching
50 gms. dark chocolate

For the cake:

2 eggs
200 gms. flour
120 gms. sugar
Juice of half an orange
100 gms. butter
50 mls. coffee decoction
1 tsp. baking powder
2-3 orangettes, not dipped in chocolate (optional)

For the ganache:

50 gms dark chocolate
2 tbsps. Cream

Method:
For the orangettes:

Carefully peel the orange and remove the fibrous white bits.
Cut the peel into strips, about ¼ centimeters in breadth.
Blanch the strips of peel in water. I blanched them twice in order to remove any trace of bitterness.
Make a syrup using the sugar and 1 cup of water. Tip the strips in this syrup and cook until they appear translucent. The white bits, especially.
Strain and dry on parchment for 4-5 hours. I allowed mine to cool overnight.
(Preserve the fragrant syrup for something else; it has all the oils from the orange!)
Melt the chocolate over a double-boiler or in the microwave.
Dip the dried strips of orange halfway into the chocolate and cool on parchment.

For the cake:

Sieve the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl.
Chop the un-chocolate-ed orangettes into small pieces and toss in the flour.
Place the eggs, sugar, and butter in blender and combine until creamy.
Add the orange juice and coffee and blend momentarily.
Pour the wet mixture into the flour and fold lightly.
Decant the cake batter into a greased and lined pan of choice and bake at 170 degrees centigrade for about 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Remove from the pan and allow to cool.

For the ganache:

Place the chocolate and cream in a microwave-safe bowl and give it a go for 30 seconds or until the chocolate has melted.Combine.

To assemble the cake:

Spoon/drizzle the ganache over the cooled cake.
Bedeck the cake with jewel-like orangettes and enjoy with a cup of your favorite coffee.

Store the leftover orangettes for a special treat!

****

I shared this piece with Sunalini Menon, and the graceful woman that she is, she responded promptly and with glowing praise. I am sharing her response here:

Dear Saee,

What a beautiful write up and as for your cake, it is so mouth watering. I should get down to baking it sometime soon. I shall also send the recipe to my friends in the hope that they get down to it earlier than myself and send me a slice of it too!!!

It was a pleasure meeting you in Bombay and I hope that I would have the pleasure of showing you my lab, which is a museum containing all the artifacts that I have collected in the 30 odd years that I have been in the fascinating world of coffee.

You are a great photographer too. I was thrilled to see the café filled with so many women journalists. It made my day!

Hope to see you soon in Bangalore.

With warm regards,
Yours sincerely,
Sunalini

*****

I'll leave you with this week's Black and White Wednesday picture:

Milk pot!

Recipe video: Tempered Tomato and Coconut Soup | How to make tomato soup

2011-09-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

No matter what part of the world you grew up in, I’m sure a teeny bit of your childhood memory store is occupied by tomato soup. Be it as the canned tomato soup that your local restaurant served up with deep fried croutons or as the thick tomato soup your mum served with bread sticks. Tomato soup seems to be one of those things that has passed the test of time. Even today, no matter irrespective of if you are dining at the local Udpi’s or at a fine dine restaurant, tomato soup is sure to feature on the menu.

In Maharashtrian and South Indian families, tomato soup is more commonly known as saar or saaram or rasam. This recipe for tomato saar is a family favorite, and often appears on most festive menus. I, however, often make it on wet, cold days and eat it with bread for an instant shot of comfort and warmth. If the weather is changing in your part of the world, I urge you to try this easy tomato soup recipe and experience that warm fuzzy feeling that I get as I sip on it.

Presenting to you, ladies and gentlemen, My Jhola and Twisted Viewfinder’s third recipe video, Tempered Tomato and Coconut Soup.

Tempered Tomato & Coconut Soup from My Jhola on Vimeo.

Ingredients:

8-10 ripe tomatoes
1 cup fresh, unsweetened coconut, grated/scraped
Salt to taste
Sugar to taste
1 tbsp. ghee or clarified butter
5-6 curry leaves
3-4 dried red chilies
½ tsp. mustard seeds
A pinch of asafetida

Method:

Score an ‘x” on each tomato and place in a large saucepan.
Cover with just enough water to come up to about 3/4ths of the tomatoes. Bring to the boil and simmer until the tomato skins are wrinkled, and the tomatoes are cooked through.
Place the cooked tomatoes in a blender along with the coconut and puree until smooth.
Pass through a soup strainer and return to heat.
Season with salt and sugar.
In a small iron or other metal ladle (or similar utensil), heat the ghee.
When smoking hot, add the mustard leaves, curry leaves, chilies and asafetida. Turn off the heat.
Plunge the ladle into the pot of soup and serve hot with bread of choice.
If feeling fancy, spoon a bit of the tempering onto each soup bowl just before serving.

Previous recipe videos:

Freedom or Recharge? | Short story

2011-09-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

As the car drove out and onto the flyover, she let out a small sigh. She was far away from home now—far enough, anyway. Away from the toddler meal planning dilemmas and the maids and the general mundaneness of life. Now, she was too far to turn back and check if her daughter had finally stopped crying. She asked the driver to turn on the radio—how long it had been since she listened to the radio—nothing after World Space shut shop. She found the standard of radio jockeying on the local radio quite low, and she kept switching stations every two minutes, but was strangely unirritated all the same. Finally, she found a station playing old Hindi film songs, and she settled down in her seat.

She took off her sandals, put on her sunglasses, all dusty from the last trip she made, toddler-free, god knows when. She looked at herself in the rear view mirror and realized her lips were chapped. Had she remembered to pop in the lip balm in her handbag that morning when she removed the baby wipes. She had! Joy oh joy! She dipped her finger into her relatively unused balm and remembered those hurried trips to work. How she longed for an office—a place she could go to and get some of that intellectual stimulation. Something beyond the in-law gossip and the agonizing trips to the supermarket. As she screwed the cap of the balm back on, she happened to glance at her nails—she was never a manicure girl, blessed with shapely nails as she was, but today, her nails looked sad, and there were remnants of baby powder under them from the morning’s routine. Quickly, she attempted to clean them with the nails of other fingers. Two unsuccessful nails later, she gave up and decided to concentrate on the music and look out of the window at things she hadn’t noticed for so many months—a new flyover, an old building pulled down, familiar streets occupied by new people.

She thought of what the day held for her. It turned out to have everything she imagined, and more—a meeting with friends, a lunch without hyperactive toddlers in high chairs (and a clean shirt at the end of it), leisurely shopping for stuff that didn’t have tags that warned you about possible accidents, and loads of laughter and catching up. When it was all done and she slipped back into the car, smiling to herself, she glanced at the watch—she was more than two hours later than she’d imagined, and the smile immediately gave way to raised eyebrows. It would take her another 45 minutes to get home. And yet, she didn’t have the courage to call home and find out if her daughter was okay. Every few seconds, her mind would drift back to the giggly girl conversations she had with her friends just a few hours ago, and she would feel guilty again. Her heart would sink as she imagined her daughter running from one room to another, looking for her. Finally, the fatigue of the day and of staying awake from excitement the earlier night took over, and she fell asleep.

As she rang the doorbell, she could hear the “Amma!” that meant everything to her—a word that took away one identity and gave her a new one. When the door opened, her daughter stood beaming—well-fed, well-rested, ready to play. She dropped her bags and took the kid down by the pool, where they stared at each other like lovers united after a brief separation. A short giggle later, they broke into a run and screamed around the kiddie play area without a care in the world.

Other short stories by me on this blog and elsewhere:

Berry good cake | Recipe: Lemon and Blueberry Pound cake

2011-09-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

Blueberries are rather rare here in Mumbai. Thanks to some exotic food stores, however, we've been getting an occasional supply of good blueberries without having to trudge all the way to Crawford Market. At first, I would pop them in my mouth just like that, making the most of their berry goodness, especially after reading and hearing so much about how all berries are good for us BRCA prone damsels in distress. No trouble there--I love berries of all kind--strawberries topping the list, followed closely by the Indian jamun and gooseberry.

So anyway, as the supply of blueberries steadily rose and their prices began to fall, I started indulging in baking with them. I love how you can just pop them in whole and they will bleed their blue juices in the heat of the oven, revealing to you their tie-and-dye patterns as you pull your product out. Remember these?

Given that I am in a particularly citrus-in-baking mode, I wanted to make a nice pound cake using the blueberries and the lovely monsoon lemons that we get here--smooth, shiny skinned, with the most zesty, aphrodisiacal aroma you could imagine. Thanks to the lemons, the pound cake did not turn out dense and heavy--both flavor-wise and volume-wise. The crumb was satiny smooth, and the top was an even, perfectly caramelized gold.

Ingredients:

3 eggs
150 gms. all-purpose flour
150 gms. caster sugar
150 gms. unsalted butter
a pinch of salt
Grated rind of 1 medium-sized lemon
Juice of half a lemon
3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup of blueberries

Method:

Sieve the flour and baking powder together in a large mixing bowl.
Add the salt and grated lemon rind and mix lightly.
In a blender, place the eggs, butter, and sugar and blend for a minute until well-combined and creamy.
Add the vanilla extract and lemon juice and blend again, for just a few seconds.
Pour into the flour mixture and combine with a light hand.
Grease and dust a pan of choice and cover the base with the blueberries. Let a few berries sit on top of each other so you end up with a nice, irregular pattern.
Pour the batter on top of the blueberries. If some rise to the top, don't worry--they will sink with the heat. And even if they don't, they will look pretty as they burst in in their irregular pattern.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 170 degrees centigrade for about an hour or until evenly golden on the top and springy to touch. A skewer inserted should come out clean.
Serve warm or cold.

You could ice it with a white chocolate ganache or vanilla or lemon buttercream, but I don't see why anyone should do anything to this baby. Except, maybe, throwing in the leftover blueberries in a pan with some sugar, boiling it down to a sauce and spooning some more blueberriness on the cake.

Black and White Wednesday No.1

2011-09-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

For several days now, I've been inspired by this lovely event, Black and White Wednesday, hosted by Susan. I uploaded some black and white pictures to my Flickr and Facebook pages some time ago, and after some encouragement, I am finally mustering up the courage to participate. Here's my submission for today:

Coasters

And here are a couple of others so I can get them off my back and shoot new ones for next Wednesday!

Shelled prawns from Prawn turnovers

Back home to a dead dragonfly

Tiny fondant cutters bought for this.

Quiche and tart tins, often used for these.

Egg in flour, from an experiment gone wrong.

Fruit buns, coming soon on My Jhola.

Avanee's blocks.

Olive and sundried tomato bread, made from here.

Food processor Focaccia from here.

Burni; Traditional ceramic jar

BBB ingredients from here.

Cookies that never made it to the jar.

Homemade buttermilk from here.

Cookbookworm for a mum | Recipe: Ragda Pattice

2011-09-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

My mum insists she hates cooking. She’s an artist, a dreamer. She says she’s rather spend a day at the art gallery or reading a book or listening to music rather than think of the zillion meals she has to put on the table for the family. She’s not much of an innovator in the kitchen, and although she loves food, she’s not the type to try cooking something new on a whim.

For a mother fitting that description, you’d imagine two sad children subjected to eating boring, repetitive meals for years on end. And then, you’d see us—my brother and I. And then you’d know there’s more to the story. We’re (ahem) well-fed, sensitive to flavors, and come with very discerning palates. Of course, we’ve got Amma to thank for it, given the great variety of food she brought to the table every day. She makes the creamiest white sauce I know, the most comforting potato curry, and the warmest of pound cakes.

She has her own collection of trusty cookbooks, some in Marathi. She goes to Ruchira for traditional Maharashtrian recipes, a book called Cakes and Cookies for the obvious, Tarla Dalal’s The Delights of Vegetarian Cooking for old-world Western food and clever ideas, and a book called Party Party for Chinese and, (drum roll, please) Ragda Pattice. In spite of making recipes from these books for at least two decades now, she still refers to them. Maybe that’s how she gets the flavors right every time—that’s how a mother manages to give you the same, familiar feeling of comfort. Every time.

For those of you who don’t know, Ragda Pattice is that lovely mélange of flavors wafting from Mumbai’s street food stalls. It is a curious combination of curried peas, potato patties, raw onions, and sweet, sour, and spicy chutneys that is served hot to the waiting customer. At home, we crave this lovely dish when it rains cats and dogs, and when the soul needs a pick-me-up.

This is a recipe for Ragda Pattice from a Marathi book called Party Party, albeit with a few changes made by yours truly.

Ingredients:
For the Ragda:

2 cups dehydrated pigeon peas, soaked in water for 6-8 hours
2 medium onions, chopped roughly + 1 medium sized onion sliced.
2 tomatoes, diced roughly
1-inch piece of ginger
A small bunch of cilantro + for garnish
4-5 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp. fennel seeds
½ inch piece of cinnamon
2 cloves
3 green cardamom pods
8-10 peppercorns
4 green chilies
1 tbsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. cumin seeds
½ tbsp. red chili powder
Salt to taste
½ tsp. turmeric powder
4 tbsp. oil

For the tamarind chutney:

½ cup tamarind paste (or ¼ cup dried tamarind soaked in 1 cup water and pulped)
½ cup jaggery
1 tsp. cumin seed powder
½ tsp red chili powder

For the Pattice:

8 medium-sized potatoes
4 slices odd a-old bread
½ tsp. turmeric powder
Salt to taste
A mall bunch of cilantro, finely chopped
A little oil to shallow fry

Method:

Place the re-hydrated peas in a pressure cooker and cover with enough water just to cover them.
Add salt and turmeric and cook until soft and mushy.
Meanwhile, grind the ginger, cilantro, garlic, fennel seeds, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, peppercorns, green chilies, coriander seeds, turmeric powder, and cumin seeds to a coarse, pesto-like paste.
Grind the onions to a fine paste.
Puree the tomatoes.
When the peas are cooked, stir in the pesto-like herb and spice paste.
To make the Ragda, heat the oil in a large wok. Tip in the onion paste and sauté until lightly golden.
Add the pureed tomatoes and cook until the oil begins to leave the sides of the wok.
Add the red chili powder.
Tip in the cooked and seasoned peas. Adjust seasoning and enough water to obtain a thick-ish curry. Simmer gently until evenly cooked and until the flavors amalgamate.
For the chutney, simply place all the ingredients in a saucepan and cook gently over medium heat until you get a sweet and sour syrup.
For the pattice or potato patties, boil, peel, and mash the potatoes.
Soak the bread momentarily in a basin containing water, and give them a good squeeze. Crumble and add to the waiting potatoes. Add the finely chopped cilantro.
Season with salt and turmeric powder and knead to a dough.
Pinch off lemon sized balls of the dough and shape into patties.
Shallow fry in hot oil until golden on both sides.

To assemble the dish, place the pattice at the bottom, and ladle on the steaming hot ragda. Spoon over the tamarind chutney, top with sliced onions and cilantro, and eat on a very cold or depressing day.

Note: This is also often served with a green mint chutney and sev (very fine chickpea flour vermicelli).

Pancakes from the 1930's | Recipe: Eggless wholewheat pancakes

2011-09-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

Long, long before Betty Crocker’s red boxes made their way to India, my nine-yard-saree-clad great grandmother was busy experimenting in her kitchen with a pancake recipe. Her father-in-law, my great great grandfather, a doctor of repute in Hubli, had decided to skip dinner and retire after a high tea. Mothi Aai (my great grandmother) was faced with the challenge of making this meal appetizing and unusual enough for him to enjoy it. She had never been abroad until then, and I don’t know if she’d read any fancy cookbooks to have heard about pancakes. But this is what she came up with.

Isn’t it gorgeous? Our entire family has eaten this plateful of spongy-crispy goodness for breakfast for an after-school snack—at least three generation of us. And now, Avanee has developed a taste for it as well. It’s difficult not to like it—it is spongy in texture, with a thin rind of crispness at the edge. It has a natural caramelized flavor and no artificial flavoring. AND. It is eaten with good old home-made, white butter, freshly churned that morning, and maybe a spoonful of chili pickle on the side. What else does one need?

It is also the easiest breakfast pancake ever because it takes no time at all to put together. What’s better is, it’s made from wholewheat flour and semolina—so much healthier than the ones made from all-purpose flour. And, for people who don’t eat eggs, this one’s a winner because it contains no eggs at all. Vegans can easily supplement the buttermilk with soy milk that has a little lemon juice or vinegar added to it. The sugar may be a bit much for your liking, but because it’s not eaten with any jams, syrups or fruits, it sort of balances out. Experiment with the sugar if you feel like it, though.

Here’s the recipe—just in case you want to make it for a happy family breakfast.

Ingredients:

1 cup wholewheat flour
1 cup semolina
1 cup sugar
½ tsp. bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
2 cups (more or less according to the thickness) buttermilk
Melted butter/ghee for greasing

Method:

Place all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
Slowly add the buttermilk and whisk together until you have a cake-batter consistency batter. You should be able to ladle it easily.
Put on a non-stick or well-seasoned, heavy-bottomed griddle or skillet on slow to medium heat. Grease lightly for the first pancake.
Ladle a small cupful of batter on the heated skillet. Dot drops of melted fat along the edges in anticipation of that crunchy, chewy rind. Cover and cook for about a minute or until the batter appears set and there are bubbles on the surface.
Flip over and cook for half a minute.
Serve hot with fresh, unsalted butter and pickle.

Baklava for the pastry deprived | Recipe: Baklava with samosa pattis (strips)

2011-09-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

No, I’m still not coming to terms with the fact that Indian stores do not carry ready rolled pastry. Surely you remember this rant? I’m one of those people—the type that will slave over the most elaborate of ingredients and work on recipes that run into pages, but when struck by whim, I have no patience. I need my craving to be satisfied, and I need it now.

Today, it had to be Baklava. I had read and bookmarked several recipes that started with phyllo dough, and I’m sure I’ll get down to that one day. But this is what I made today—a quick pan full of crispy, nutty, chewy sweetness; and my dear India-based, ready-rolled-pastry-deprived reader, I will tell you, once again, that stashing a pack of samosa pattis in your freezer is not such a bad idea after all. For stuff apart from patti samosas.

Ingredients:

¼ cup pistachios, chopped
¼ cup walnuts, chopped
¼ cup almonds, chopped
¼ cup + 1 cup caster sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
Shaved rind of ½ an orange
Shaved rind of ½ a lemon
Juice of half a lemon
2 tbsp. honey (I skipped this because I don’t like honey)
1 tsp. rose water (I didn’t have any, so I skipped this)
1 cup melted ghee or unsalted butter
26 samosa pattis (strips)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade.
Grease a square or rectangular ovenproof dish with ghee.
Lay down two samosa strips to cover the base of the dish. Brush with ghee.
Place another layer of samosa strips and brush with ghee. Build about 8 layers in this fashion.
Sprinkle half the chopped nuts and half of the quarter cup of sugar on this layer.
Follow up with two layers of samosa strips and another layer of nuts and sugar.
Finish with two layers of the samosa strips topped with a generous brushing of ghee.
Cut the baklava into squares or diamonds or other shape of choice.
Pour any extra ghee you have left over the cut baklava.
Bake for about 45 minutes until the top layers are crisp and golden.
While the baklava bakes, make the syrup by placing the 1 cup of sugar in a saucepan, covering it with 1 and ½ cups of water, honey (if using), the shaved rinds and lemon juice. If you're using rose water, add it at the end. When the syrup coats the back of a spoon, turn off the heat.
Once the baklava is out of the oven, ladle the syrup onto the hot baklava, and allow to cool.
Leave to rest for at least two hours.
Re-do your cuts, sprinkle with pistachio dust and rose petals if feeling fancy, and serve.

Anything but chocolate | Recipe: Basic Chocolate cake

2011-08-30T03:05:00.000-07:00

I’m not particularly fond of chocolate. Did I ever tell you that? I don’t remember throwing tantrums for chocolate or chocolate-y things. Except once. When I was about four months pregnant, I desperately wanted some dark chocolate thins. But that was that. I know. I’m one of those.

I do, however, love baking with chocolate. Not just because people I bake for adore chocolate and can eat it in any form, any time of the day. There is something about chocolate that makes you want it. In my case, there is something about chocolate that makes me want to bake with it. I always have slabs of chocolate at home so I can melt them down and use to dip cake balls into, or make birthday cakes from. Like this one. And this one. When I go baking-stuff-shopping, I always pick up chocolate chips to make cookies from or throw into a banana bread. I like my fair share of hot chocolate once in a Mumbai-monsoon-while, and having a bar of chocolate or a jarful of 70% can really come to the rescue.

The only form of chocolate that can, perhaps, make me happy is the old-fashioned chocolate cake. By "old fashioned," I mean the kind of cake that mothers of my generation would bake at home. The kind that were made before cooking chocolate or any other fancy chocolate came to India. Amma would buy her tin of Cadbury’s Cocoa powder (strongly telling the grocer she wanted Cocoa, not Drinking chocolate) and make a very basic chocolate cake and top it with a rich chocolate glaze icing. My brother and I would spoon generous amounts of fresh cream, straight from the top of the milk pot, onto the hot cake and make funny noises while eating it. It is this chocolate cake that I crave for. Sometimes.

This is a no-fuss recipe that gets done in minutes, really. The result is a light and happy chocolate cake that will take you back to childhood. Who are you making it for today, then?

Ingredients for the cake:

1 and ¾ cup all purpose flour
1 and ¼ cup sugar
1 and ¼ cup butter
4 heaped tbsp. cocoa
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. vanilla extract
¼ cup milk
4 eggs

Method:

Grease and line an 8 inch round pan or other pan of choice.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade.
Sift the flour, baking powder, and cocoa together in a large mixing bowl.
Place the butter, sugar, vanilla essence, and eggs in a blender and whiz for about a minute, until creamy.
Add the milk and whiz for another 15 seconds.
Pour into the dry ingredients and fold lightly.
Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Invert onto a serving plate and serve warm with cream or ice cream.
Or, sprinkle with icing sugar and cocoa. Or decorate with chocolate buttercream.

Ingredients for chocolate buttercream:

50 gms. butter
100 ml. thick cream
2 tbsp. cocoa
2 cups icing sugar (more or less as required)

Method:

Place all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and combine using a hand blender or wooden spoon.
Use to top or sandwich cakes or cookies.

A perfect breakfast | Dosas

2011-08-29T02:17:00.000-07:00

There are some things I absolutely must, always have in my fridge--cilantro, coconut, yogurt, lemons, and dosa batter. If even one of these is absent, I get nightmares about having hordes of guests and not being able to serve them anything. If I have these fridge essentials, I can breathe easy.

Dosa batter. I don't know too many people, at least in Bombay, who make their own dosa batter. Well, unless they're South Indian. But a lot of South Indians in Matunga and thereabouts buy their batter freshly ground by local South Indian vendors they can trust. The general junta, however, picks up cuddly bags of batter from the supermarket or local grocer and happily makes anemically white, limp, and unnaturally soft dosas. I agree that it's super easy to simply go pick up a packet but really, is it worth it?

I make my own dosa batter. Not because I'm very worried about the adulteration in the store-bought batters but because I like my dosas crisp And brown. Have you eaten at Banaglore's CTR? That's what a dosa should be like--soft on the inside, and crisp and brown on the outside. And it's really easy to make, too. I make the batter over the weekend, and it lasts me the week--Avanee and the girls want dosas on demand, and it makes me very happy to be able to give them a good, healthy snack that is so delightful. We eat them for breakfasts at least once a week with the chutney of the day, and wash it down with good old filter coffee. Use your favorite coconut/cilantro/mint chutney or open up a pack of MTR's molgapudi, top it with some oil or ghee, and you're in heaven.

Dosa batter:
Ingredients:

1 cup urad daal (split black gram)
3 cups short grain rice
2 cups parboiled rice
2 tbsp. fenugreek seeds
1 tsp. sugar (this aids the fermentation process)
1 liter of water

Method:

Wash all the ingredients and soak them in one liter of water for about 4 hours.
Grind the soaked rice and lentil mixture until very smooth.
Add the sugar and decant into a large bowl. Remember, the batter will double in volume.
Leave covered in a warm place to ferment for about 6-8 hours, preferably overnight.
Add salt to taste just before you want to make the dosas.

To make the dosas:

Heat a heavy iron skillet/griddle or non stick tava.
Sprinkle a few drops of vegetable oil and wipe them off with a halved onion that has been immersed in water. (I like to use a fork to make the onion holding easier.)
Pour one small cup of batter on the hot griddle and spread immediately, using a flat bottomed ladle or cup, in circular motions until you have a thin film of white batter.
Sprinkle or spray a little vegtable oil.
Allow to cook for about half a minute or until browned to your liking.
Remove using a sharp spatula.
Serve hot with chutneys.

Wafting from gran's kitchen | Recipe: Patole

2011-08-26T03:03:00.000-07:00

Aai's picture, courtesy: Nirmala Purushotam

My maternal gran has been one of the biggest influences to my culinary obsession. As a kid, I would be perched atop a tall stool in her bright and airy south Bombay kitchen while she made the silkiest, thousand-layered ghadi-chi-poli. She would send me out to the living room as she roasted the semolina for sheera, training my senses to identify the perfect stage from the heady aroma wafting from the kitchen. It was she who taught me to save coriander stalks and add them in a tadka for daal. I owe a huge chunk of my ability to understand textures, aromas, and food pairings to her.

Aai (my maternal gran) always kept an immaculate kitchen, employing her Gandhian ways in keeping just as much as she needed—no indulgences. And yet, she could serve up the most glorious of meals to sudden guests. To this day, she regularly checks the kitchen for unnecessary extravagance that could potentially be wasted. Not that we always listen to her. Wink.

One of my favoritest things in Aai’s kitchen is this beautiful, ancient, brass steamer. As a kid, I remember how she would get a small charcoal stove going in her kitchen balcony, buying small amounts of kerosene and charcoal from the maid and the dhobi. On top of the reddening jewels of charcoal would sit this gleaming steamer, containing rice or sweet potatoes or whatever else she needed to steam for the day. It would sit there for over an hour, gently cooking its contents in the smoke-scented steam in its belly. The flavor of plain rice steamed in this was something else entirely.

As I saw Amma’s turmeric plant bending over with the weight of the fresh leaves of the season, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to get out the old steamer and make some Patole. These sweet, rice and coconut dumplings come from the western coast of India, and are made in the monsoon because that’s when the turmeric leaves are fresh, the new rice is sticky, and something warm and comforting is welcome. As the dumplings steam gently, the aroma of the turmeric leaf steeps into the rice flour batter, and makes it a perfect carrier for the sweet, modak-like stuffing inside, made from freshly grated coconut and jaggery. Eaten piping hot with a spoonful of freshly made ghee, it can soothe the most frazzled of nerves, and give you a mother’s reassurance about everything that’s going to be alright.

Patole
Ingredients:

10 turmeric leaves, washed and destalked
1 large cup of freshly grated coconut
¾ cup of jaggery, chopped
¼ tsp. green cardamom seeds, powdered
1 cup of fine rice flour
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup of water

Method:

Place the coconut and jaggery in a thick-bottomed saucepan and cook on medium heat until well combined. The jaggery should melt and the mixture should be dry to look at, but it should have some moisture in it.
Add the powdered cardamom and combine. Keep aside.
Get your steamer ready.
Meanwhile, combine the salt and rice flour in a mixing bowl and make a thick batter, using as little water as possible. The batter should not be runny.
Place a turmeric leaf horizontally on a chopping board. Spoon over some of the batter and spread it into a thin layer all over the leaf.
Spoon the coconut filling onto one half of the leaf.
Fold the other half over the filled half and press slightly. Place in your steamer and allow to cook for about five minutes.
Unfold on a serving plate and serve piping hot, topped with ghee.

A red and yellow happiness | Recipe: Slow roasted cherry tomatoes with garlic and thyme

2011-08-23T02:23:00.000-07:00

As kids, my brother and I would satisfy mid-meal hunger pangs by pulling out a juicy red, plump tomato from the fridge and eating it just like that. Like people eat apples. When I tell MK this, he looks at me the way he looks at Avanee when she's lying around on the floor--with a certain combination of pride and "what-the-hell-are-you-doing" that sends a smile tugging at his lips.

We grew up in a simpler time--when children were happy to dig their teeth into a humble vegetable like the tomato and have its juices run down their elbows. When tomatoes needed nothing fancy to be done to them. It was such fun, and it became orgasmic as I grew older. If you haven't done it before, I really recommend that you do--it will give you much more happiness than you can imagine.

But that's for the large tomatoes. What do you do if you get these little babies?

I am not particularly fond of the tartness of cherry tomatoes; I seldom use them raw. I sun-dried a couple of batches of them this summer, and I was so happy with them. Remember this bread? And this? This time, though, I wanted to do something that would preserve their gorgeous color. Sun-drying makes them dark--dark and almost moorishly flavorsome, but dark. Then I remembered seeing something on TV about slow roasting, and I thought I'd give it a go.

All I'll say is, I'm probably always going to have a jarful of these in my pantry now. Like, always. Last night, when MK came home from work, the house was full of the aroma of roasting, and he wandered into the kitchen like a man possessed. He prized out a tomato from the jar I had just filled and popped it in his mouth, a drop of extra virgin olive oil on his lip. And then he did that thing that he never does when I've made something new. He closed his eyes and sighed. I never get that reaction from him. He's going to eat it on toast, he says. Why not!

For lunch, as I'm writing this post, I'm eating a plateful of spaghetti tossed in the tomatoes with the extra virgin olive oil, garlic, and thyme, and while I know it is not such a great idea to post on two consecutive days, I have decided I must share this with you so you can make it without any delay whatsoever. Make it tonight and watch the tomatoes shrivel up in the oil and yet retain their color, and taste the garlic as it turns sweet and caramelized. Feel the smoothness of the thyme-scented olive oil down your throat and think about how simple things can make you so happy.

Slow roasted cherry tomatoes with garlic and thyme

Ingredients:

2 cups cherry tomatoes (or other kind of small tomato/lareg tomatoes quartered)
10-15 slim cloves of garlic, bruised
a sprig of thyme
10-15 black pepper corns, bruised
sea salt
1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil or more, if required

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 100 degrees centigrade.
In a large baking dish, spread the tomatoes, cut side up.
Sprinkle with sea salt, thyme, and black peppercorns, and pour the oil evenly.
Roast in the oven for four to six hours, checking frequently in the last hour or so.
The tomatoes should be shrunk and shriveled up, and the garlic should be a light gold in color.
Decant into a sterilized, air-tight jar with all the other ingredients, including the oil. Top with a little more oil if required. It is the oil that will help preserve the tomatoes.
Store in a cool and dry place.

Toss in pasta or spoon over toast. When the tomatoes are all eaten up, use the oil (with its burst of flavors) for a sauce base or toss par boiled vegetables in it.

Steps to salsa | Recipe: Pineapple, tomato, and onion salsa

2011-08-22T03:47:00.000-07:00

There are some things that you must have when you're entertaining. For me, it is this salsa. It is a ridiculously easy thing that you can make even a day in advance and serve to hungry guests, and get much more than just a pat on the back. Best as a cocktail snack.

I serve these with potato or tortilla chips, on crackers, with poppadoms or khakras, and just about anything crispy that needs something to up its party value. It gets made from stuff that you usually have in your refrigerator and pantry, and needs no cooking. Ideal summer food.

Ingredients:

1 small can of pineapple slices, chopped (or 1 fresh pineapple, chopped and/or cooked in sugar syrup)
2 plum tomatoes, deseeded and chopped
1 large red onion, chopped
a bunch of cilantro, chopped
a dash of red tabasco
3 tbsp. ketchup
1/2 tsp. red chili powder
1/2 tsp. sugar
salt to taste

Method:
Combine everything in a mixing bowl and serve with chips/nachos/khakras/poppadoms/taco shells/crackers.

A brief recess | Recipe: Potato and pea samosas with sweet fennel and chili dipping sauce

2011-08-17T03:42:00.000-07:00

It was in the dark space under the main staircase. The chapel was right next to it but who cared about god other than during exams? The building was otherwise beautiful—large, bright, and airy, with huge expanses of playgrounds around it. Tall conifers stood testimony to the many generations that made their way through the mighty gates. During recess, children poked out their stuffed faces through the multi-colored grilles of the corridors and called out to friends threatening to start a game without them. There wasn’t enough time to eat and play or gossip.

Seconds before the recess bell rang, hungry students would dig into their pockets or satchels for the two rupees and fifty paise they fought for in the morning. It was never easy to convince mothers about the role of the canteen samosa in one’s overall personality development. As soon as the bell rang, classrooms would burst out children racing to get downstairs before the day’s stock got over. The grumpy Catholic couple who ran the canteen would have been arguing all this while, but the ringing of the bell meant business. Within seconds, there would be a zillion hands poking through the square grille, holding out loose change and green five rupee notes; a zillion voices calling, “Aunty, one samosa! Aunty, two chatar-matar!” The bullies stood right at the back, with one leg pressed against the wall, coolly assured that someone will get them their snack. The money would go first, the snack would arrive moments later, after a dangerous journey through the square grille.

Golden, short crust on the outside; spicy, soft, green inside. An occasional punctuation of a coriander seed. Beads of sweat on the brow, red nose, and the kind of smile that automatically makes you close your eyes. A dash to the Warana stall at the gate to wash it down with cool lassi. It was always worth it.

I’ve tried to recreate the samosas I ate in my school’s canteen. Guru Kripa, the people who supplied the samosas to the canteen, always serve their samosas with this dipping sauce. I urge you to try it—you won’t regret it!

Potato and pea samosas

Ingredients:

2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. semolina
Salt to taste
1 tsp. ajwain
6-8 medium-sized potatos
½ cup frozen or blanched peas, roughly mashed
1 tbsp. coriander seeds, bruised
1 tbsp. coriander seed powder
1 tsp. garam masala powder
½ tsp. turmeric powder
3 green chilies
1 inch piece ginger, grated
A handful of cilantro, chopped
Salt to taste
Oil, 2 tbsp. + 1 tbsp. + for frying

Method:

Boil, peel, and roughly mash the potatoes.
In a pan, heat the 1 tbsp. of oil.
Add green chilies ginger, and bruised coriander seeds and fry until fragrant.
Add the coriander seed powder, turmeric powder, and salt.
Tip in the potatoes and peas. Combine and cook for a minute.
Add the cilantro and turn off the heat. Leave to cool.
Place the flour, semolina, 2 tbsp. oil, and some salt in a large basin and knead to a tough but pliable dough using as little water as possible.
Leave to rest for about 5 mins.
Meanwhile, prepare your deep fat fryer or heat oil for deep frying in a wok.
Pinch out small golf ball-sized balls of the dough and roll into oblong shapes.
Cut through the center to get two semi-circles.
Moisten the straight edge of the semi circle with a spot of water using your finger.
Bring the two straight corners together and press them together to get a cone.
Stuff this with the potato and pea stuffing, leaving a little space to seal.
Moisten the edge of the cone and press to seal.
Deep dry over a low to medium heat until golden.
Serve piping hot.

Sweet fennel and chili dipping sauce

Ingredients:

1 tbsp. fennel seeds, bruised
1 tsp. cumin seeds, bruised
2 tbsp. chili powder
1 cup sugar
2 cups water
1 tsp. oil
Salt to taste

Method:

In a saucepan, heat the oil and add the fennel and cumin seeds. Immediately after, add the chili powder and turn off the heat.
Add the sugar and water and combine.
Return to the heat and cook until you achieve the consistency of runny honey. Add salt to taste and simmer for another minute, just to let the flavors combine.
Cool and serve with samosas.

Other samosa recipes on this blog:

Fat-free patti samosas

WITty times| Recipe: Marmalade and Valencia orange cake

2011-08-09T08:08:00.000-07:00

When we were children, WIT (Women's India Trust) would rent our school's prayer hall for their exhibitions. On sale were beautifully block printed aprons, bedspreads, curtains, tea cosies, totes, and toys. There were also jars of Indian pickles, squashes, and jams. Amma would come back from the exhibition, hands full. Even today, we travel all the way to the other side of the city to stock up on their stuff. They make for excellent gifts, too.

One of our WIT favorites has been the marmalades--the orange marmalade and the 3-fruit marmalade, which has oranges, lemons, and grapefruit. It's chunky and not too sweet, and not jelly-like; quite unlike the Kissan and whathaveyou marmalades readily available on Indian supermarket racks.

Today, I made a simple tea-time cake using some Valencia oranges and my favorite 3-fruit marmalade. (Remember my love for orange cakes?)This is a really quick recipe--it comes together very quickly, and if you use tart tins like I did, teh baking time is lesser as well. The cakes came out not-too-dense, not-too-light, just right for a quiet monsoon-y tea.

Ingredients:

Juice of 1/2 a Valencia orange
Thin slices of the other half of the orange
2 eggs
100 gms. butter
75 gms. sugar
2 tbsp. orange or other marmalade of choice
100 gms. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

Method:

Sieve the flour and baking powder together in a large mixing bowl.
In a blender, crack the two eggs and add the butter, sugar, and vanilla extract. Blend until creamy.
Add to the flour mixture, pour in the orange juice, and stir lightly until there are no lumps.
Pour into greased and lined pan of choice. Top with a thin slice of orange.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 150 degrees centigrade until evenly golden (about 30 mins.)
Serve warm with tea.

And we go again | Recipe: Prawn moilee

2011-08-08T03:42:00.000-07:00

I love prawns. But you know that, don't you? From here and here and here. You know how I simply must buy them when the fisherwoman comes along, no matter how they're priced. I bought Rs. 300 worth prawns, ya. Just for me and father-in-law. I mean, that's a bit much. But look at these babies.

I made a quick version of the Kerala-style coconut milk-based curry called "prawn moilee." It's easy to make and so delicate, I have no adjectives for it. I ate it with a bowlful of simple, steamed rice, and was very very happy all day.

Ingredients:

15-20 large-ish prawns, shelled and deveined (tails on)
1 medium-sized onion, sliced
1 medium-sized tomato, deseeded and sliced or quartered
8-10 curry leaves
2 green chilies, slit lengthways
200 ml (1 carton) of coconut milk
1/4 cup of water
1/2 tsp. turmeric powder
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/2 inch piece of ginger, minced
1 tbsp. vegetable oil

Method:

Marinate the prawns in the ginger, garlic, salt and turmeric powder for about 20 minutes.
In a thick-bottomed pot, heat some vegetable oil and fry the curry leaves and onions until the onions turn translucent.
Add the marinated prawns and saute for a minute.
Add the coconut milk and the water. Check for seasoning.
Add the slit green chilies and simmer until the prawns are cooked through.
Add the tomatoes in the last minute.
Serve piping hot with steamed rice.

Recipe video: Bread | How to make bread

2011-08-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

These past few days, I’ve seen a jaw too many drop promptly to the floor every time I say anything about baking bread at home. For a country of people that buy their bread in plastic packets from the corner grocer, baking bread at home is either ridiculously unnecessary or impossibly complex. This video is for my friends from both these categories.

When I started baking, I quickly realized that baking bread is far, far more therapeutic than baking anything from the cake or cookie category. Not only is it a healthy and convenient preparation for the family to enjoy, but it is also a wonderful way to stimulate the senses of touch and smell. I find that some of the best ideas and most sensible solutions come to me when I’m happily kneading my dough, inhaling the rich, comforting aroma of yeast, oblivious to the world outside my kitchen. And today, I invite you to the magic show.

Bread from My Jhola on Vimeo.

One of my favorite breads is a simple white loaf that is easy to make, always turns out great, and is comforting in the way it is made and the way it is eaten.

Easy bread making video recipe
Ingredients:

500 gms. all purpose flour
15 gms. fresh yeast
10 gms. sugar
5 gms. salt
15 gms. fat
½ a beaten egg (optional)
1 cup lukewarm water (plus more, as required)

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees centigrade.
Place the yeast and sugar in a cup or beaker and pour on some lukewarm water (about a cup) and leave in a warm place for about 10 minutes.
Place the flour in a large basin.
Once the yeast is frothy, pour the liquid into the flour and knead. Add the beaten egg (if using) and transfer to a large work surface like your kitchen counter. Continue to knead until you have to a soft and pliable dough, adding more water as required.
Cream the fat and salt together and work into the dough. Knead again until you have a smooth and soft dough.
Transfer to a greased bowl or basin and cover with moist muslin or cling wrap and leave in a warm place (like on top of your oven) for about 20 minutes or until double in size.
Knock back the dough and knead lightly once more.
Shape as desired and place on a greased and floured baking sheet (or on parchment) and prove again, for 20 minutes.
Sprinkle some water on the loaf and adorn with choice of topping.
Bake for about half an hour until browned to your liking.
Remove and immediately brush with fat. Allow to cool completely before slicing.
Eat, dunked in rich stews, or toasted and slathered with butter and preserves.

Note:

For a very soft crust, like for dinner rolls, brush with milk before baking and do not brush with anything after.
For a shiny, even gold, slightly chewy crust, brush with beaten egg before baking and do not brush with anything after.

Surmai stories | Recipe: Kingfish in spicy coconut curry

2011-07-22T04:13:00.000-07:00

I’d been trying to clear out my fridge for the past three days with a good success rate in preparation for the Amritsar-Dharamshala trip. (Yes, I’ll be gone a week but will come back with pictures of the rich Amritsari food traditions and warming Tibetan momos.) Until the fisherwoman came by this morning. Did she really have to dangle that surmai (kingfish) at me when I had a bunch of cluster beans to finish for lunch? Turns out, she did. And you know what’s happened to the cluster beans.

I cannot resist surmai. It was one of the first kinds of fish I ate, given the fact that it has such few bones. It’s easy to cook with and holds itself well in any form of cooking. I love it the traditional coastal Maharashtrian way—marinated in salt, turmeric, ginger and garlic paste, lemon juice/tamarind pulp, coated in a mixture of rice flour and semolina, and fried to crispy perfection.

I had quite a few pieces of the fish today, so I used some for this lovely fish fry, and with the rest, I made a delectable Goan-style curry in my Kerala meen chatti. The nuttiness of the roasted coconut and the hotness of the chili and pepper were all soaked up by the humble fish; and, eating it with a simple steamed rice was just perfect.

Ingredients:

7-8 pieces of a small-sized kingfish
1 cup of grated fresh coconut
1 medium-sized onion, chopped
3 green chilies, pricked with a fork
½ inch piece ginger
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp. black peppercorns
4 dried red chilies, rehydrated in warm water
1 tbsp. coriander seeds
Salt to taste
½ tsp. turmeric powder
1 tsp. ghee
1 tsp. mustard oil
About 1 cup of water (more or less according tour preference of curry thickness)

Method:

Wash the surmai pieces and rub with salt and turmeric. Leave to marinate for about 15-20 mins.
In a coffee blender, place the coconut, red chilies, peppercorns, coriander seeds, ginger, and garlic, and grind to a coarse paste using the water you rehydrated the chilies in.
In a clay pot or other vessel of choice, heat the ghee and mustard oil together (I know this is probably wrong, but the aroma is priceless).
Add the green chilies and sauté for a minute. Tip in the onion and sauté until lightly browned.
Now, add the ground masala paste and cook until glossy. Add water and the surmai pieces.
Cook for about 5 minutes until the fish is tender.
Serve very hot with steamed rice.

Donut diaries | Recipe: Donuts

2011-07-20T01:59:00.000-07:00

Two days ago, my nieces, Shreya and Ananya, kicked up a racket when their grandma came over to pick them up from my place. They never want to leave. Especially now that Avanee follows everything they say or do, making them feel like important people. Finally, I told them they’d have to leave because it was late but that they could come the next day and we’d do something fun.

When I was thinking about the “something fun” bit, I was reminded of how when I was little, the corner grocer would sell a pair of donuts in plastic wrappers. Fried in cheap fat and filled (?) with a dot of buttercream so sweet, it could make you blind. Every once in while, Amma would give in to our demands and buy us a pack for an after-school snack. I jumped up at the idea of making some for the girls, and enjoyed my afternoon in a kitchen full of the smell of sweet yeasty warmth, watching Avanee go at the donut holes. She even ate a whole donut (sugar and cinnamon, my favorite)!

They were ready by the time the girls came home, Ananya hungry after school, ready to be devoured. The younger one barely managed half a donut considering she hates sweets. So that’s a compliment in itself. Ananya, however, was spoilt for choice, and ate two and packed two to eat at home. My kinda girl.

Ingredients:

450 gms. flour
30 gms. fresh yeast
2 tbsp sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp. unsalted butter
100 ml. milk
Vegetable oil for frying
Toppings of choice (cinnamon sugar/chocolate ganache/sprinkles/nuts/jam)

Method:

Place the yeast and sugar in a bowl and top with lukewarm milk. Leave to froth in a warm place for about 15 minutes.
In a large basin or on a clean work surface, make a dough using the flour and yeast mixture. Knead well until soft.
Cream the butter and salt together and knead into the dough until silky and pliable.
Leave to rest (covered with cling film or a moist cloth) in a warm place until it doubles in size.
Knock back the dough. Roll out to about a quarter of an inch thickness.
Cut out donut shapes using a donut cutter or a bowl and soda bottle cap.
Allow to rise to double in size.
Meanwhile, heat oil in a deep fat fryer or other appropriate utensil.
Gently introduce one donut at a time into the hot oil. Fry on both sides until evenly golden (or if you’re like me, a shade darker).
Drain on kitchen towels and decorate as liked. Go nuts!

The Middle-East in Kerala| Recipe: Tagine-inspired chicken with root vegetables and saffron couscous

2011-07-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

When the first real showers of the Mumbai monsoon finally strike, I go into one-dish-meal mode. I cannot, cannot, cannot bring myself to make or eat the everyday Indian meal of chappatis, vegetables, salads, lentils, and rice. I need something that can be eaten from a bowl. Or something that needs little attention. Something that is warm in temperature and flavor. Something that will calm you down as you eat alone, watching the rain wash your potted plans playfully.

One such afternoon, I was inspired to make a tagine because it met all the above-mentioned needs. And because I love the shape of the tagine pot. I’ve been looking around for one for several months but perhaps I’m looking in the wrong places. What I do have, however, is my very trusty meen chetti, or Kerala-style clay pot. It’s a shallow, unglazed cooking utensil that is commonly used in Malayali households for everyday fish curries. I make a lot of my curries in this, and I can tell you the earthy aroma of the clay can do wonders to your dish and to you. It worked beautifully with the flavors of the tagine, yielding a fragrant and rich stew of chicken and root vegetables. Paired with a simple saffron couscous, it made for a very satisfying and faux-exotic lunch.

I enjoyed the mushiness of the root vegetables against the fall-off-the-bone tender chicken, the sweetness of the dried fruit, and the warmth of the spices. The smoothness of the couscous provided an apt bed for the stew, as well.

Here’s how I made it:

Ingredients for the tagine-inspired chicken:

1 chicken breast (preferably on the bone)
1 medium-sized onion, sliced
1 small carrot, cubed
1 small potato, cubed
1 small sweet potato, cubed
3 dried apricot, chopped
1 tbsp. golden raisins or sultanas
1 and ½ tsp. cumin seed powder
1 tbsp. paprika
½ tsp. ground ginger
¼ tsp. powdered cinnamon
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 bay leaf
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tbsp. cilantro, chopped
1 cup of stock or water
2 tbsp. olive oil
Salt to taste

Method for tagine-inspired chicken:

Heat a tagine pot, clay pot, or other vessel of choice.
Meanwhile, score the chicken breast slightly and rub with pinches of cumin seed powder, paprika, and salt.
When smoking hot, add the oil, and sear the chicken breast on both sides until lightly browned.
Now, turn down the heat down to low, and add all the other ingredients, except the stock. Turn until the vegetables are well-coated and fragrant. Check for seasoning.
Add the stock and cover. Cook on medium to low heat until the chicken is tender and the vegetables are cooked through.
Serve piping hot with couscous.

Ingredients for the saffron couscous:

½ cup organic couscous
A little over a cup of water
1 tsp. saffron strands
Salt to taste
½ tsp. olive oil

Method for saffron couscous:

Bring the water to a boil with the salt and olive oil.
Turn off when it comes to a healthy boil, and add the saffron strands. Turn off the heat.
Pause for a moment to enjoy the sunset come alive in your pot.
Tip in the couscous and stir.
Cover and leave to stand for about 10-15 minutes until all the water is absorbed and the couscous is soft, plump, and double in volume.
Fork up and serve hot with the chicken tagine.

By the way, what do you think of my new header? My mum designed it for me!

Avanee's first birthday cakes | Life

2011-07-15T23:51:00.000-07:00

I just realized I hadn't put up any pictures from Avanee's first birthday. Considering I write a food blog, it's quite a shame I don' have pictures of the cakes I made, don't you think?

I made three kinds-- vanilla bean cupcakes with pink-tinted cream cheese frosting, vanilla and Nutella cake covered with fondant and decorated with fondant flowers, and a Black Forest Gateaux (of which I have no stand-alone pictures). The cupcakes were a hit with the kids, and although the fondant covered cake was unintentionally topsy-turvy, it was received well. I hated the sweeeeeeet fondant, though. It was my first time with this material, and it was great fun to work with, but I couldn't bring myself to eat it. The Black Forest is always a hit, so there's not much to say about that one.

I'll leave you with these pictures from the party while I go come to terms with the fact that it's over a year since Avanee was born. Sigh.

Note: All pictures are courtesy my friend, Sonal Vaz.

Return to innocence: Roasted corn on the cob

2011-07-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

If you're from Bombay, you're probably also up right now, wondering what happened to the city. Wondering why, out of the blue, our beloved city is targeted yet again. Wondering what we did to deserve this, and if it will ever be possible to let a loved one go out for a casual walk without thinking about it.

When I was growing up, Mumbai was considered one of the safest cities in the country. As kids, we were told to "go down and play" in the evenings. We would walk to the park and to other playgrounds recommended by newly made friends, and our parents didn't think twice about it. As students in college, we traveled from one part of the city to another using whatever mode of transport, we drove to town in the middle of the night, and no one worried about our safety. As I watch news reports of the blasts this evening, the new mother in me is almost sure she'll turn into a control freak when Avanee starts school or goes to college. Who's to know what will happen when?

But we'll deal with that when we have to. Until then, one will try and keep the faith in the system, and dream of a more innocent time. A time when we could stand in the rain to grab our monsoon treat of bhutta, or roasted corn on the cob, sold on the corner down the street. Watch the guy fan his little coal stove with an old magazine; watch the little red bits fly into the cold, wet rain and sink our teeth into perfection, only to complain about the bits stuck in our teeth, later.

Yesterday, Amma roasted some corn on the cob for us. Smeared the blistered black and gold cob with salt and chili powder and lemon. Return to innocence. I hope you find yours in simple things like these.

Good night, my beloved city. We'll be OK.

Grown-up cookies for a 1-year-old | Recipe: Gingersnaps/Ginger cookies

2011-06-30T05:24:00.000-07:00

You know how, as children, we never liked grown-up cookies? Spiced, low sugar, bitter-ish cookies that looked so unappetizing? I mean, at least compared to the sugary, jam-filled, crazy colored cookies that came in plastic packs of psychedelic colors? Yeah, those.

I’ve never been much of a biscuit/cookie person. As you know from here and here and here. Ahem. But there are a few that I go weak in the knees for—mostly the dunker family. But you saw that coming, didn’t you?

Gingersnaps. Or ginger biscuits, as they’re called here. You know, the ones that the corner grocer stocks in large cookie jars, a thin layer of bad quality fat sticking to the inner wall? I hated them as a kid—I thought they were too spicy. But as the years went by and I grew out of sugary treats, I developed a taste for these. Except, I never like the after taste of bad fat on my palate. Then, while going through one of my spontaneous-buy-cookbooks, “Cookie Jar Classics,” I found this recipe. I knew I wanted to make them right away. Good thing I did—they’re fuss-free, need only one bowl, and get done very, very quickly!

I only made one change—I used fresh root ginger instead of ground ginger, and I think the result is better than what I imagine the ground ginger version to be. They turned out light and satisfying, with a little bit of bite. The ginger comes through very clearly, complimented by the hint of cinnamon. The molasses added a lovely earthiness, which went so well with the ginger and gave the cookie an even color. In spite of the copious amounts of sugar going in, they’re not too sweet. Avanee ate one whole cookie, would you believe it!

Please make them. And dunk them in tea and stare at your one-year-old as she bites into one and flashes a crumb-smeared smile.

Ingredients:

2 and ½ cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup unsalted butter or margarine
1 cup granulated sugar (I used brown sugar)
1 egg
½ cup treacle or molasses (I used the local Kaakvi, which I got on my last Kolhapur trip)
2 tsp. bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp. ground ginger (I used about 1 tbsp. of finely grated fresh ginger)
1 tsp. freshly ground cinnamon
½ tsp. salt
¼ cup granulated sugar (for coating)

Method (with my changes):

Cream the butter and 1 cup of sugar in a large bowl.
Add egg and treacle/molasses/kaakvi. Beat well until smooth.
Sieve in the flour, soda, cinnamon and salt. Add the ginger. Combine well to get a sticky dough.
With greased hands, form small balls, about the size of a small lime, and roll in the ¼ cup of sugar.
Place about 2 inches apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 175 degrees centigrade for about 10 minutes until set, and bottoms beginning to brown.
Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes on the cookie tray, and then transfer with the help of a spatula or other flat weapon, to a cooling rack. Cool completely before storing in an air-tight jar, ever so lightly.

Hating the fisherwoman; loving the fish| Recipe: Prawn turnovers/Prawn karanjis

2011-06-29T07:34:00.000-07:00

MK can’t stand my fisherwoman. I don’t blame him. She’s kind of…insistent. Unfortunately, when she comes in every other morning, I’m usually attending to Avanee’s waking up process (ahem) and am in no position to go to the door and do fish talk. So, MK has to answer the door and deal with her. Problem arises when she insists on giving us an extra pomfret in addition to our prawns. She cuts it up while pretending to throw it in out of the love in her heart, and then adds up the price to the total. If you’re a fish-loving foodie like me, you would brush this act off with pretend annoyance. Not if you’re my fish-hating husband. It’s funny to watch the two—one half-hearted saleswoman and one grumpy fish hater.

Alright, I take that last sentence back. Can’t exactly call him a fish hater after this. Or what happened today.

Prawn turnovers! God invented them, I think. My fisherwoman got me the perfect prawns today. The were just the right size, and I wanted to do something dangerous with them. Something that involved a lot of fat. I had been wanting to sink my teeth into one of my patti samosas for a while now; so, I took off from there and made turnovers or karanjis. They turned out fresh and light, in spite of the deep frying. And not fish-smelling at all. MK ate one right out of the fryer. I mean, ! That’s got to mean something!

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

1 and ½ cup all purpose flour
2 tbsp. fine semolina
Salt to taste
2 tbsp. ghee/ butter/oil (I used ghee)
Water to bind

For the stuffing:

1 large cup of prawns, shelled, deveined, and chopped
1 medium-sized onion, very finely chopped.
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 large green chili (or according to taste), deseeded and finely chopped
A small handful of fresh cilantro, finely chopped
½ cup of fresh coconut, grated/scraped
1 tsp. cumin seed powder
Salt to taste
1 tbsp. + for frying, vegetable oil

Method:

In a saucepan, heat 1 tbsp. of vegetable oil.
Add the ginger, garlic, green chilies, and onion, and sauté for about 3 minutes or until soft and beginning to brown.
Add the cumin seed powder and roast for barely a minute, until fragrant.
Add the chopped prawns and season with salt.
Turn off the heat when the prawns are almost but not quite done. They will cook through in the frying process.
Add the coconut and cilantro and leave to cool.
Meanwhile, prepare the pastry dough by mixing all the ingredients and kneading to soft dough. Allow to rest for about 10 minutes.
Now, heat the oil in a deep fat fryer or wok.
Pinch off small, lime-sized balls from the dough and roll out to a round, about half a centimeter in thickness.
Place about one tablespoonful of the filling in the center, and turn over to fold into a half-moon. Press the edges tightly.
Using a pizza cutter, knife, or similar appliance, trim the excess dough along the edges. Press the open edges again, just to make sure. You don’t want your filling to walk out into the hot oil.
Gently immerse them, one at a time, into the hot oil, and fry until golden. Drain on a kitchen towel.
Serve hot, by themselves, or with a spicy green chutney.

Amitabh Bachchan's fruit and a shortcut to happiness| Recipe: Peach and Cherry Cake Squares

2011-06-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

When I was little, and there were no supermarkets around, we would buy our stock of weekly fruit (which was usually a lot) from Amitabh Bachchan. He had the best stall in the area. And a manner so like the veteran actor, that I don’t think anyone even bothered to ask him his name. He would call out to you even on a non-fruit-buying day, and get you to caress the plumpest custard apple you had ever seen, or lure you with freshly shelled pomegranate. He stocked strawberries and peaches at a time when they weren’t very popular, and claimed to be the only guy in town to have seedless papaya at his stall. He addressed you like your long-lost paternal uncle would, and gave you a slice of gorgeous papaya as a going-away gift. All this, while discussing global warming and fruit politics with my mum.

I looked at him in awe. Imagine having 24/7 access to all that lovely fruit! My brother and I were always spoilt for choice, and he picked his favorites while I got to pick mine. We would then help Amma load all the fruit into an autorickshaw and dream impatiently about when it would reach the fridge at home, and when we’d get to sink our teeth into chilled fruit.

All of us have a special love for stone fruit—peaches, apricots, cherries (oh, cherries) plums, and as far as I am concerned, even litchis/lychees. We love them by themselves, we love them in desserts, and we love imagining picking them on that one great holiday. So come June, my fridge and my fruit basket are stocked with two batches of stone fruit—one batch chilling in the fridge; the other, slightly unripe batch, sitting on my table and sunning itself to ripeness.

Today, I was desperate for a stone fruit dessert. Something like this or this or this. But I didn’t have the patience. So at the supermarket, I bought a pack of (cowering) vanilla cake mix, came home, didn’t even take off my chappals, cranked up the old oven, mixed the mix, and threw in some peaches and cherries and grated some cinnamon (why don’t I have one of those cherry pitting gadgets?). Waited impatiently for the thing to get done, cut out a hot square as soon as the oven ting-ed, and shoved a spoonful of steam-bellowing stone fruit goodness in my mouth, just like Nigella. And it felt so good.

So that’s the recipe today—follow your childhood memories, and allow yourself some leniency.

Recipe video: Bebinca | How to make Bebinca

2011-06-19T03:13:00.000-07:00

When I saw this video on Nags’ blog, I knew that I had found the easiest way to convince my filmmaker brother to make a video for me. All these days, he was under the impression that I wanted to do a Nigella-esque cookery video, with loads of yap yap yap and puckering of lips and other seductive stuff. No offence here; I mean, I love Nigella and her sensual manner. But why would one want to be seen on camera given one’s (ahem) above-average vital statistics and un-facial-ed face? All I wanted was a simple video of the recipe coming together and transforming into a satisfying dish. The textures, the color, the homeliness of the food, the way it goes from one form to another. When we saw the beet cake recipe, I was finally able to explain to my brother what I was looking at.

This is the result of a lovely afternoon spent in good-hearted sibling talk, a director explaining to an artiste that when he says, “chalo,” he means “get ready” and when he says “okay,” he means “start.” I fumbled a zillion times, and he laughed for as many while he wiped his brow of beads of sweat. He spent several hours going back and forth and editing and “rendering” and what not, while I pestered him by asking when it would be ready. What resulted from all this, is:

Bebinca from My Jhola on Vimeo.

And while we were doing that, Amma was doing this:

I chose the Bebinca for two reasons—one, I wanted to do something that involved a lot of steps because that would make it video-friendly; and two, I wanted to do something in layers after seeing Deb’s gorgeous birthday cake. I found my answer in Deepa Awchat’s Bebinca recipe from The Authentic Goa Cookbook (so what if I had a bad experience at her restaurant, I still think she’s a talented recipe developer.) I just reduced the amount of sugar and increased the baking time for each layer by 5 minutes in order to achieve that lovely caramelization. We loved the bebinca despite the slightly uneven layers, and we're all fighting for the chewy, caramelized "burnt" bits along the edges. I know this will be made quite often.

Here’s the recipe with my changes:

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
2 cups thick coconut milk (canned works just as well)
1 and ½ cup sugar
12 egg yolks
Melted ghee (clarified utter): ¾ cup
Grated nutmeg: 1 tsp.
Salt: ¼ tsp.

Method:

Place the sugar and coconut milk in a large mixing bowl and stir until the sugar melts.
Now, add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating continuously.
Sieve the flour into this mixture and beat again.
Add the salt and nutmeg, and one tablespoon of ghee and beat again, until you have a smooth batter.
Grease a 7-inch round baking tin (I used a loose-bottom tin and lined it with parchment, just to be safe) with 2 tbsp. ghee.
Ladle in about half a cup of batter and bake in the center of the oven at 200 degrees centigrade for twenty minutes or until the top begins to brown.
Remove from the oven. Brush on another tbsp. of ghee and ladle another half a cup of batter. Return to the oven for another fifteen minutes.
Repeat the greasing, layering, and baking process until all the batter is used up. Finish with a tbsp. of ghee.
Remove from the oven and turn upside down onto a serving plate. Allow to cool for about 15 minutes (if you can wait that long).
Cut into 1-inch slices and serve warm by itself or with fresh cream/vanilla ice cream.

100 posts and a lazy recipe | Recipe: Food processor focaccia

2011-06-14T04:49:00.000-07:00

Turns out, the last post I wrote was my 100th.

This little jhola of mine has been with me through so much--I started writing the blog one boring afternoon when I was lonely and feeling utterly unproductive and useless. It opened up a new world for me. It gave me something to divert my mind--even the possibility of losing a loved one. It was there when I discovered my pregnancy, and it is here, recording my journey through motherhood and my daughter's lovely days as she grows up (a tad too fast). It helped me rediscover cooking; it taught me photography. It gave me an identity, it gave me confidence. It taught me to be proud of the choices I made. It gave me friends. I owe it so much.

My family has been my greatest support--MK, my parents, and my brother read my blog religiously, and give me critical feedback and loads of encouragement. The lovely camera I now use was more a gift for the blog than for me. My endless pottering about in strange places for props is met with light-hearted complaints, and the everyday experiments in the kitchen are quietly tolerated by the family. Mrs. B and our new staff member, S, never complain about the dirty counter and the pile of dirty utensils in the sink. What would I have done without these people?

So thank you, everyone, for helping me reach thus far. But most of all, thank you, My Jhola, for always being there for me. I love you.

******

And now that we're done with the Oscar speech for the day, let's get on with today's recipe. How to make Food Processor Focaccia. Why the food processor? Because however sexy baking bread can be, it is hardly any fun when a certain toddler wants to reach up to the counter and get a grab of the flour while you're kneading it, happily imagining you're in a sunny, country-style kitchen, looking out onto your garden, when actually, you're busy fighting aforementioned toddler attacks on a rainy afternoon with a crow cawing incessantly at your window. There. I've said it.

But you know what, this recipe worked out so beautifully, I wonder if I'll ever get back to counter-top kneading again. I mean, if it saved me dirty hands and time, and gave me gorgeous bread, why would I go back? It's a great bread-making method for people who do not own bread machines and don't like to get their hands dirty.

The recipe I followed is Sanjeev Kapoor's Focaccia recipe from Cakes and Bakes. I find the book quite foolproof, as you know from here and here. Here's the recipe with a few of my own twists in ingredients and method:

Ingredients:

3 and 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. sugar
15 gms. fresh yeast (or 25 gms dried yeast)
3 tbsp. olive oil + for brushing
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3-4 leaves of sage, finely chopped
About 1 cup of lukewarm water

Method:

Place the sugar and yeast in a mixing bowl and pour over some lukewarm water (about half a cup). Leave to froth in a warm spot for about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, place the flour and salt in a food processor and blitz for a moment, just to combine.
Once the yeast turns frothy, start the food processor, and slowly add the yeasty water. Knead at low speed until combined, using more water if necessary.
Now, turn up the speed to high, and knead for an additional two minutes.
By now, you will have a rather sticky dough. Don't panic, and don't add extra flour.
Add the olive oil and give it another half a minute.
Remove the lid of the food processor and cover with cling wrap or damp muslin and leave to proove in the food processor for about half an hour or until the dough doubles in size.
Now, add the chopped garlic and sage, and give the food processor another whirl.
Turn out onto a greased baking sheet (I lined mine with parchment to reduce washing up) and flatten into a rectangle (-ish) shape with the help of greased hands.
Make dimples in the bread by sticking your thumb in the flattened dough. (A step that I completely forgot)
Leave to prove again, covered, for about 20 mins.
Sprinkle water over the dough, and add more garlic and sage on top, if liked. (I forgot to do this as well)
Bake in a 200 degree oven for about 20 minutes until golden and done.
Remove and brush immediately with olive oil.

Waiter, there's a cake in my teacup! |Recipe: 2-minute microwave chocolate mug cake

2011-06-10T03:30:00.000-07:00

If you have a food blogger for a wife, chances are she won't ask you get her a Louis Vuitton bag or Jimmy Choo shoes when you go on a business trip abroad. She'll probably ask you for glass noodles, sauces, exotic dried fruit, and random other props for photography. And if you're an encouraging food blogger hubby, you will do just that, although you know there's no place in kitchen or pantry to put the requisitioned items. Grin. See where I'm going?

MK got me this beautiful tea set from Hong Kong last month. I've been wanting to use it since I touched it for the first time. Given a very un-nappy and over-inquisitive toddler, however, actually sitting down to tea using a tea set is a task impossible. Just this morning, she climbed up to the table, pretending to shower love, and dipped her hand in my mug of tepid tea, instead. Thank god the tea was a good 20-minute old, and the cup wasn't exactly something to write home about.

But back to these goregous, gorgeous tea cups. I fell in love with them. Including the lovely satin-lined box that they came snug packed in. I spent many stolen moments peeping into the box, wondering when I could bring them out, what I'd pour in them.

Then, on a rainy day, I discovered Sneh's blog. This jaw-droppingly awesome blog with jaw-droppingly awesome photographs and lovely, personal writing that invites you to sit with her over a cup of tea and talk about life. So anyway, I found this fantastic recipe for a 2-minute Microwave Nutella mug cake. (Mug cakes seem to be all the rage these days. And why shouldn't they be? They're super-quick, you don't need to crank up an oven, you don't need to use any gadgets, and they're utterly satisfying!) One look at it, and I knew what I'd be using my new toy for.

And then, just the day I wanted to make it, Rushina posted her take on the mug cake. With these domestic goddesses beckoning you to try the recipe, why on earth would you wait? I got Avanee and her nanny to play a game of hide-and-seek, and ran to the kitchen to whip up magic. It was done before I knew it!

I made my own changes, taking a bit from both the ladies, and was very, very happy with the result. The cake rises and then falls a bit, but it is gooey and yet light, not too sweet, and had a brownie-like sheen and crust on the top.

These definitely work well for a single-person rainy day treat, but I think they would also make for super-easy, dainty little desserts for an impromptu party. Top with fresh cream (as I did) or vanilla ice cream. Or, as Rushina recommends, even custard!

Ingredients:

4 tbsp. all-purpose flour
3 tbsp. cocoa powder
3 tbsp. Nutella
3 tbsp. milk
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. flavorless oil
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tbsp. coffee(use 1 tsp. if you're using instant powder; I used my filter coffee decoction)
a pinch of baking powder
1 egg

Method:

Measure out everything in the largest mug you own, and whip up using a fork or small whisk.
Place in the center of the microwave and give it a 2 minutes on High.
Stay armed with a spoon.
Test with a skewer or toothpick; if it comes out clean, you're ready to dig in!

Stuffed fish and a converted husband! | Recipe:Chutney-stuffed pomfrets

2011-06-08T05:08:00.000-07:00

My fisherwoman has been getting us the cutest little pomfrets this past week. They fit snug in the palm of my hand (which, I assure you, is quite small by adult standards; never mind the rest of the vitalstats) and even Avanee can eat one whole. My downstairs neighbour loves to slip them whole into coconut-based curries, the lovely aromas wafting up to my kitchen.

Yesterday, I was scheduled to spend all day away from home, but when she got these beauties, I simply couldn't resist. I thought I'd cook them and eat them today. But they turned out so yum, my non-seafood-eating husband actually ate one for breakfast. I mean, sound the drum roll, people! Thsi recipe is nothing--it gets done is 15 minutes, if not less. It's a classic Western Indian classic, and it works so well with a simple lunch of daal-chawal (lentils and rice)or just by itself, with a crunchy kachumber (spiced salad) of cabbage, carrots, and cilantro.

Here's the recipe:
Ingredients:

3 small pomfrets (or other flat fish of choice)
1/4 cup grated fresh coconut
2 green chilies
small bunch mint leaves
a slightly bigger bunch cilantro
1 tsp. cumin seeds
juice of half a lime
1/4 tsp. sugar
salt to taste
1/4 cup rice flour or cornstarch
1 tsp. semolina
2-3 tbsp. vegetable oil

Method:

Wash and clean the pomfrets. Make a slit on the side and get out all the innards. (Most fish mongers will do this for you.) Drain on a kitchen towel.
Place all the other ingredients, except the rice flour and semolina, in a blender and grind to a paste, using as little water as possible to combine the chutney.
Stuff the pomfrets with this chutney.
Combine the rice flour and semolina in a plate.
Dredge each fish, ever so lightly in the flour mix.
Heat the oil in a non-stick pan on medium heat.
Place the fish in the pan and cook covered, for about 3 minutes or until the under side begins to turn golden.
Flip the fish lightly, using two spatulas, if required. Cook uncovered for another 2 minutes.
Drain and serve immediately with salad or rice and lentils.

Revisiting a favorite | Recipe: Mango sasav/Mango curry

2011-06-06T04:50:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading my blog (ahem), you will remember this mango curry recipe. I make it every season, by the kilos, and it gets over before I can take a decent picture. When I made it again last week, I tried to get better pictures. I hope they tempt you into trying the recipe!

Here is the original recipe: Mango sasav/mango curry

Please make it before the mango season leaves us in mourning!