Pesto. Lots!

Its no news to readers of this blog that I love Pasta, right? And that I dream of Basil? Well… That and that I also love pesto. I’ve never tried it, but I guess I can eat basil pesto in almost everything, if you feed me. :) But then, fresh basil is little hard to find in Hyderabad. You need to be present when the vegetable load is being stored in the super market. You get there even 10 mins late, and Basil’s all gone. Guess am not the only one in love with this herb.
So during this week’s grocery shopping, I was delighted to find bunches of fresh basil , which I promptly picked. All of it. And made pesto with it all. Right now, I have enough pesto to make pasta for a full week. And the entire fridge is smelling like basil , inducing mouth-watering feelings in my head. :)

When I decided to finally drag my lazy self into the kitchen today, I decided it has to be dry pasta, with no sauce, and only pesto as the seasoning. I added the veggies and sautéed them in lot of olive oil, added garlic, and just a little oregano and red chilli flakes. And two big scoops of pesto. Needless to say, I am currently a very happy woman, with her stomach full of awesome pasta, and house smelling of fresh basil. :-D

Ingredients (Good enough to season Pasta for 5 people)

Basil Pesto - 4 Tbsps
Olive oil – 4-6 tbsps
Onions – Diced thin, 2 medium sized
Green , Red and Yellow Peppers – Sliced very thin – 1 each
Cherry Tomatoes – sliced into half – 10-15
Aubergine/Brinjal – Stove roasted, and mashed into a pulp – 1/2 cup (optional)
Red Chilli Flakes – 1 tbsp
Dried Oregano – 1 tbsp
Sea Salt – To taste
Garlic cloves – sliced very thin , 10-12

Pasta – Cooked per instructions on the box – 1 cup (for two people)

Parmesan cheese – 1 tbsp worth shavings

Instructions

Sauté the onions, peppers , garlic and cherry tomatoes till they all are cooked.
If using roasted aubergine, add it to this mixture.
Add the pesto this , and mix well to coat all the vegetables
Season with Oregano and chilli flakes and add salt to taste

This mixture can be cooled and saved in the fridge for later use also.

Mix 1.5 cups of this sautéed mixed vegetables with cooked pasta, and serve hot.

Garnish with Parmesan cheese, if using.

Nutmeg Cranberry Cake

The original recipe for this cake is Arundati’s, and I’ve even replicated the cake couple of months back. But this time when I began to make it, I added some modifications. I reduced the liquid content because I felt the batter would be too runny. I added some berries, and I made the entire cake with AP flour.

These ingredients make a decent 8” cake , and can feed a dinner party easily. You can add some rum glaze to this to spice it up, or have it as it is.

Ingredients

1 C AP flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp finely powdered dry ginger
1/2 tsp powdered nutmeg
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 C honey
1/2 C yogurt
1/3 C thick cream
A pinch salt
1/2 C dried cranberries

Instructions

Butter a 8” round cake tin or line it with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 185C.
Sift all the dry ingredients together.
Mix all the wet ingredients together.
Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients in it. Gently fold and then fold in the dried cranberries.
Pour into the cake tin and bake for 30 mins, or till the tester comes out clean.

Spaghetti with roasted tomato and aubergines…

 

I know its no news to whoever reads this blog that I love pasta. And pasta is dancing in my mind’s eye all the time. In its spaghetti form, in its fusilli form and as Lasagne. (Yeah, Penne is not a personal favourite). What makes or breaks the pasta is its sauce. The freshness of the ingredients, the right balance of the herbs in the sauce and the method of making the sauce, that determines the taste of the pasta.

While searching through my blog for some red-sauce based pasta, I found this recipe in which I blend all the ingredients after they are cooked. That looked like the best way to make my own sauce back then, but on giving more thought, I came up with this one. Puree the tomatoes separately. And then adding them to the onion-garlic mixture with herbs. Trust me, this one tastes so much better, and you can feel all the veggies.

Also serving the pasta with mozzarella chunks was something I read on a site, and thought was a cool idea. If you love Mozzarella but think that its stringy texture will interfere with the texture of the pasta, sprinkle the chunks after your pasta is done.

I added aubergines to this to have another flavour in the sauce, but you can totally omit them and make yourself a Arrabiata pasta. Typically, you’ll need two ladles of this sauce to make one serving of pasta, for one person.

Ingredients

(Serves 4-6 people for main course)
Ripe red tomatoes – 1 kg
Aubergines, diced into thin slices – 1/2 kg
Onions, large – Diced – 2-3
Garlic cloves – crushed – 15
Dried basil – 2-3 tbsp
Dried oregano – 2-3 tbsp
Red chilli flakes – 2-3 tbsp
Sea salt – to taste
Olive Oil – 3tbsp

Instructions
Pierce a fork into the tomato, and put it on a high flame directly. The skin of the tomato starts burning, and it gets roasted. Do this for the entire batch of tomatoes, and let them cool.
Once they cool down, peel the skin off and crush them in a mixer/blender.
Heat this liquid till the water evaporates, and you are left with thick tomato puree.

In a pan, heat the oil, and sauté the onions and garlic. Once they turn baby-pinkish, add the aubergines to this, and sauté till all are cooked. Add the herbs for flavour, and salt to taste.

Now add the tomato puree and boil. Check the salt to taste.

This sauce can be saved or frozen in the refrigerator to be used later.

To make pasta, cook the pasta per the instructions , and toss it with the sauce. Serve hot with Mozzarella cheese chunks.

The freshness of the tomato will hit you, and before you can recover , the cheese will melt in  your mouth. And then its the savouring of the other herbs and spices in it… Trust me, this recipe will never go wrong.

An Iranian Dinner, may be? (Part 1)

I fell sick and all, but this has been a good week as far as food is concerned. We’ve had guests for 3 days in a row, and I made different stuff every evening. First it was some basic Arrabiata Pasta which the husband praised as my best ever, and the friend who was visiting was forced to say the same too ;), and then it was something based on Middle-Eastern food. I will be cooking Thai for the last set of people visiting us.
Last time I was visiting Blore, we were invited to visit N at her brand new home. Since her housewarming gift was back in Hyd, and I wanted to pick up something for her, I decided it would be a book. A cookbook. In my opinion, what better gift than a cookbook for a MasterChef!  I saw this Arabian dishes book and immediately picked it up for her. And when I was flipping through the pages of this book, I realized how much I love this book, and how much I’d want a copy for myself. Sitting right there in her massive entertainment area, I booked another copy for myself on Crossword. So by the time I was back home in Hyd, I had the book waiting for me to be picked up in the Mailroom. Since then, everytime I open the book, it has been a Flavour Fest in the kitchen!
What I loved about the Middle-Eastern cooking is the interesting mix of flavours. And the usage of daily ingredients in a different way, or a different dish altogether. Like Yogurt, for example. We’d eat it, drink a diluted form of it, make Kadhi with it, or Raita to be eat with it. These are the same things that the Persians or Armenians would do too, but with a different mix of herbs/spices to this. I loved the idea of Garlic-Yogurt sauce for example, our basic Raita  but with garlic in it, and with Za’atar sprinkled over it. Very interesting.
Another point that has made the Middle-Eastern cuisine a hit in the house is the fact that there are a lot of rice dishes. Being a South Indian vegetarian family, rice plays an important role in our daily khana , and there are a lot of rice dishes in the Persian/Armenian/Mediterranean cuisines. And the fact that the book itself is for vegetarian food only always gives me tonnes of options for every course, should I decide to make this for dinner.
So for this dinner I was planning, I wanted to make a simple cheese pilaf, an Iranian vegetable stew and some yummy garlic-yogurt sauce. In short, as simple as rice, stir-fry and a Raita to with it all. However, I decided to add a little twist to the first two dishes.

I decided to flavour the rice before I bake it, and make a tomato based vegetable stew. I used copious amounts of garlic since that is a house-favourite (God save you if you don’t eat garlic and have been invited to dine in our house ;)) and dried dill. Dill happens to be a very famous herb in this cuisine, and I’ve discovered its beautiful flavour and aroma only after adding it to the butter.
I only spent 45 mins in the kitchen to make all these, but the compliments I got for the food… well… I know for sure that this will be cooked over and over again , for the both of us and for the friends visiting us.

Cheese Pilaf (Serves 3 , with this as main dish)

IngredientsBasmati Rice – 1.5 Cup, washed
Garlic Cloves – 5-6 , crushed in a mortal pestle
Butter – A dollop or 1 tbsp
Dried Dill – 1 tbsp
Black Pepper – 1 tsp, crushed
Sea Salt – to taste
Boiling water – 3 Cups

Cheddar cheese slices – 4-6
Dried Dill – 1 tbsp
Black Pepper – 1 tsp, crushed
Toasted sesame seeds – 1 tbsp

Instructions
Put a thick bottomed tawa on medium heat, and add the butter to in. Once butter heats up, add the crushed garlic, dried dill and sauté them. Now add the rice to this and mix well enough so that the butter evenly coats the rice. Add the black pepper and salt to this and sauté the rice. Add boiling water and close the pan with the the lid. Cook the rice till the water evaporates, and the rice is separated and dry enough. Let this cool down.
Once the garlic rice cools down, spread half the quantity in a shallow baking dish. Spread the cheese slices on this. Sprinkle some dill and black pepper. Spread the remaining rice and the cheese slices on top of it. Sprinkle again with dill and pepper. Bake this in a pre-heated oven at 185C for 20 mins or till the cheese turns golden brown.
Remove from the oven to set, garnish with the toasted sesame seeds.
Serve hot, with the stew for accompaniment.

An Iranian Dinner, may be? (Part 2)

 

To go with the cheese pilaf, I decided to make a vegetable stew. The recipe that caught my fancy, and suited all the ingredients  with the ones I had at home was the Iranian Vegetable stew. But it uses a white sauce base with flour and I am not a huge fan of anything white with flour in it. So I tweaked the same recipe to be made with red sauce. As my cooked dubbed it, this regular rajma but without the rajma masala, and with Dill in it.

The only flavours you will notice when you take your first spoonful of this stew are the freshness and the tartness of the tomato puree , the crispness of the spinach and the flavour of Dill and garlic.

Iranian Vegetable Stew (with red sauce, serves 3)

Ingredients
A mix of chickpeas & kidney beans – 1 C, soaked overnight and pressure cooked
Tomato puree – 1 C (I make this at home)
Onion – one medium sized, sliced very thin
Spinach leaves – 1 bunch, chopped coarsely
Garlic cloves – 6-8, crushed in a mortal-pestle
Dried Dill – 2 tbsp
Black pepper – 2 tbsp, crushed
Sea salt – to taste
Red paprika powder – if required
Juice from half lemon – if required
Olive oil – 1 tbsp
Coriander leaves – 1/2 cup, chopped fine

Instructions
Heat the olive oil in a pan, and sauté the onions and garlic in it. Add half the quantity of the dill and black pepper and sauté these together. Add the cooked peas-beans mixture to this and mix.
Now add the tomato puree , spinach leaves, salt and red paprika powder. Cook on medium flame for 10 mins.
Add water if required, to dilute the stew.
Once the stew is cooked, remove from heat.
Stir in lemon juice if the stew requires any more tartness.
Garnish with coriander leaves and serve with the pilaf.

Garlic Yogurt sauce is another favourite in the house, mostly because of the inclusion of garlic into everyday boring Raita, and the usage of spring onions in it. Not only for soothing the spice in anything Middle-Eastern, you can also use this as a Raita for the regular Parathas and Biryanis.

Garlic Yogurt Sauce

Ingredients
Fresh Yogurt – 1 C, beaten smooth
Garlic cloves – 4-6 , chopped into very small pieces
Spring onions – a bunch, chopped very small, including the green stalks
Sea Salt – To taste
Za’atar spice – 1 tsp
Toasted sesame seeds – 1 tsp
Coriander leaves – a small bunch, chopped fine

Instructions
Mix the first four ingredients well in a bowl, garnish with the last three ingredients and serve along with pilaf.

Roasted Pumpkin & Sweet Potato soup

 

I made this soup entirely out of intuition and based on the vegetables I had in the fridge. The idea was to use similar tasting veggies and make something healthy. The minute I saw the diced pumpkins and sweet potatoes, I decided to curry them with traditional Indian curry spices. And since I was making this as part of an Italian themed meal, I added some Italian herbs afterwards and sautéed onions to top it up. At the end of it, it tasted like a medley of Indian curry with some spices, but very tasty. :-)

Ingredients
Sweet Pumpkin - cleaned, peeled and chopped - 2 Cups
Sweet potato - cleaned, peeled and chopped - 2 cups
Coriander powder - 1 tbsp
Cumin powder - 1 tbsp
Red chilli powder - 1 tbsp
Turmeric - a pinch

Garlic cloves - 8-10
Red onion - Diced - 1 cup
Spring Onion - cleaned and chopped - 1 cup
Dried Thyme - 1 tbsp
Dried Rosemary - 1 tbsp
Dried Sage - 1 tbsp

Olive oil – 2 tbsp
Sea Salt – To taste

Fresh mint, for garnish

Instructions
In a deep pan, heat one tbsp oil and sauté the pumpkin and sweet potato pieces with all the powders. Let this be on medium heat for 5 mins. Add some water and close the lid of the, and let the vegetables cook.
After 10-15 mins, when both the vegetable pieces are cooked thoroughly, you can either mash them or blend them with a blender to resemble a thick puree.
In another small pan, sauté the onions and garlic with the dried herbs. Let this be on heat till the onions are golden brown.
Add some water to the puree, and get it to a desired consistency. Add salt to taste. Once this soup reaches the boiling point, stir in the sautéed onions. Garnish with fresh mint sprigs and serve hot.

Baileys Irish cream–Homemade!

Yes… I did it! Baileys at home. And it is awesome :-D

Though it is not anywhere near to making your own liquor (like the wine-making experience, which did not turn out great, btw, I still haven’t been able to finish it or serve it to anyone), this is the closest I got to making an awesome drink.

I obviously did not have access to Irish whiskey, so I had to make do with the Scotch one. I also skipped the chocolate syrup, and added 2 tsps of instant coffee instead.

Recipe Courtesy – Cupcake Project

Ingredients
1 C (or 200ml) light cream (I used Amul cream)
14 oz (or 400 gm) sweetened condensed milk (1 tin of Milkmaid)
2 C whiskey (I used Blender’s Pride)
2 tbsp instant coffee
2 T Hershey's chocolate syrup (optional)
1 t vanilla
1 t almond extract

Instructions
Combine all ingredients in a blender and set on high speed for 30 seconds.
Bottle in a tightly sealed container and refrigerate. Shake before using.
Apparently, it stays good for upto 2 months.

Since I did not use any chocolate and it was only coffee, this bottle of Baileys tasted very coffee-ish, and was perfect for after-dinner-drink, with some ice cubes. I also added a little more alcohol than what was in the recipe, it had a distinct musky whiskey-ish flavour too.

So when I had this alongside the original Baileys I had , they both looked and tasted similar. Very similar.

And now, am set. No more Baileys from Duty-free. :-)

However, after seeing the amount of cream and condensed milk that goes into this one, I doubt if I will drink it as often as I thought I would.

Even liquor now adheres to the law – the law which says that –

Thou shalt fall out of love with a dish the minute thou learneth to maketh it.

Update: Though I originally posted this post on Nov 26th, I got some great shots of the Liqueur only y’day. There was no way, I was going to let the pics go waste, and hence reposting with slight changes to the recipe and new pics. :)

Banana Blueberry Cake

By now, I guess its no secret that bananas are my favourite fruit-to-bake, right? Well… turns out they are indeed my favourite, its a pleasant surprise. I have begun treat it like a comfort bake. Anytime I want to bake something and I can’t think what , I go over to Banana. Muffin, Marble bread or cake . With chocolate chips, milk chocolate or melted chocolate. With cinnamon, vanilla, brandy or rum. I feel I’ve baked them all. And yet I go back to searching for more banana based recipes. I went through all the sites I bookmarked to find this one by The Singing Chef. I wanted to use up the blueberries I got from my US trip, and that leftover small batch of rum-soaked raisins, also the cream and condensed milk from the Bailey’s experiment were in the fridge asking to be used.

And yes, it had to be eggless. So I adapted the recipe to suit the ingredients I had at hand.

So after The Great Kitchen Shopping Escapade I had at Agro Mech over the weekend, I wanted to use my new stuff. Those mini Bundt's and that one big Bundt pan, to be precise. I decided to make a Bundt cake – Banana Blueberry Bundt Cake with rum soaked raisins , it is!

Recipe Courtesy – The Singing Chef

Ingredients
1 3/4 cup Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
¼ tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
3/4 cup Brown Sugar
1/4 cup Raisins (soaked overnight in dark rum)
1/4 cup Blueberries
2 Bananas (overripe), peeled and mashed
3 tbsp Milkmaid/condensed milk
1/3 cup Oil
2 tbsp Yogurt
2 tbsp thick cream

2 tbsp Rum (optional, better if it is the rum from the rum-soaked raisins)

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 185C and sift the dry ingredients together.
Oil and dust the pan with flour.
Beat together the mashed bananas, cream, yogurt, condensed milk, sugar, and oil.
Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients and fold in the raisins.
Gently mix in the rum, if using.
Bake for 45-50 mins or till a skewer comes out clean.

This being my first time baking in a Bundt pan, and me not being sure how to use butter paper for a Bundt pan, I was very worried about the cake coming out clean. Surprisingly, all I had to do was cut through the edges of the pan gently with a knife, invert the pan to a plate and beat the bottom of the pan. And the cake was sitting pretty on the plate. I loved the flavours in this, the rum soaked raisins, the blueberries and the faint taste of bananas. Next time I make this, I am going to add in a few drops of Brandy flavour also. Or increase the rum content. And think of a nice topping/icing for this cake, may be rum-chocolate-based.

You can have slices of this cake for chai. You can also eat it with jam, for breakfast, may be. Or team it with the chocolate peanut butter and eat. I am going to do all of these with this cake. :-)

Eggplant Lasagne. My first ever!

 

I’ve cooked pasta many times but never lasagne. At first , it seemed to be a very complicated dish. Cooking the sheets, the vegetables and then lining them seemed to be a lot of work. Little did I realize then that this is what happens with a regular pasta also, and the only thing different with lasagne is that it is baked.

So when I made up my mind to actually cook Lasagne, the search for the perfect sheets began. They had to be eggless, and should not be close to their expiry date (if you shopped in the super markets around Kothaguda junction in Hyderabad, you’d know what I am talking about). After a lot of search, I found the a batch of eggless sheets, which were bought right away. And the keeda to cook lasagne has been fed into this brain of mine.

Last week, when I was clearing up my fridge on a lonely evening, I made a big batch of red sauce, in the hope of it easing my work on a Pasta day someday. It happened to be today, and the entire assembling of lasagne took me exactly 20 mins. And another 40 mins to bake it. There, sumptuous dinner was ready in 1 hour.

I did not follow any recipe to do this, except just the basic idea on how to cook the sheets, the lining of the lasagne and the vegetables in the dish, and the baking time. It was all guesswork on how the ingredients would be lined up, and I think that is what happens in all the cases.
In order to appeal to the Indian palate, I decided to season the eggplants when they were being roasted, so that there would be a distinct flavour and a taste when we get to only the eggplants. I also poured some salt on the cheese to ensure that the cheese does not render the dish salt-less. And that worked in my favour. I also sprinkled some black pepper powder along with the salt to make the cheese have some spice too.

I baked this in a 9x4 inch very thick glass dish, and the contents served the two of us, with a little more left. Guess it will be good for 3 also.

Ingredients
Red sauce (homemade or store bought) – 2 cups
Lasagne sheets – 8-9, cooked per instructions on the box
Eggplants – 8 small sized ones, washed and diced to be thin inch long pieces
Olive Oil – 2 tbsp
Cajun seasoning – 2 tbsp, or a mix of Oregano and Red chilli flakes
Sea salt – Per taste
Black pepper – if required, per taste
Mozzarella cheese – 1 cup
Cheddar cheese – 2 slices



Instructions
Pat the lasagne sheets dry with a kitchen towel.
In a deep pan, heat the olive oil and roast the eggplant slices in it. Add salt and seasoning to this, and let it be on heat for a while.
Meanwhile, pour one layer of the red sauce into a deep baking dish, and line the lasagne sheet on it.
Remove the eggplant from the stove and line a layer of this in the dish on the sheet.
Line the dish with lasagne sheets, Mozzarella cheese, red sauce, lasagne sheets, eggplant layer and a lasagne sheet lining.
At the top, spread the red sauce in a thin lining and top it up with Mozzarella and Cheddar cheeses.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 185 for 40 mins, or till the cheese gets a golden brown colour.

This particular photo was shot after I was done half eating. I loved the look of the layers in my plate so much that I couldn’t resist shooting this.

The minute I put a fork full of lasagne into the mouth, there was a medley of cheese, tomato sauce, the seasoning on the eggplants and it was heaven. :-)

Chocolate Peanut Butter… yum!

Peanuts have always been a favourite in our house. Apart from the usual addition of peanuts to poha , bhendi curry and peanut butter, I also eat peanuts as they are, with some jaggery. It is a sort of comfort food for me. When I am down, I eat it. When I don’t know what to eat, I snack on it. And when I feel like eating something healthy and yet sweet, this is it for me. It is the best combination, EVER. Trust me.

I got only one box of Nutella into the house so far, and had loved it, so when the comparison of Nutella with this recipe came in, I knew I had to try this, right away.

To suit my storing jar, and my taste , I used the ingredients in a different ratio. The jaggery got liquidy very soon, and I noticed that I needed more than 1/4 cup of olive oil as was given in the original recipe. And since I like chunky peanut butter, I did not blend this into a thick paste.
In short ,this recipe is so flexible that you can change it to suit your taste and style of eating.

Right now, I need help. To stop eating this. :)
Tomorrow, it is going to be bread toast with this chocolate peanut butter. :-D

Recipe Courtesy – Chinmayee at Love Food Eat

Ingredients
1 cup Roasted skinless peanuts
1/3 cup jaggery
1/4 cup cocoa powder (I used Cadbury’s)
1/3 cup olive oil (I used extra virgin)
Salt

Instructions
Mix the roasted peanuts, jaggery , cocoa powder and salt in a mixer grinder. Blend it till it reaches your desired powder-y state and becomes powdery. Transfer the contents of the mixer jar into a vessel , drizzle olive oil and keep mixing the ingredients till a jam-like-consistency is achieved.

For more ideas on what to eat this with, and some beautiful pics, check out Chinmayee’s blog!

About

 

Writing stuff in the ‘About Me’ section is very hard. Even for someone who talks as much as I do. Especially if the person in question, in this case the author of this blog, that’s yours truly has a multi-faceted personality. Did I see you roll your eyes? Well, I did too, when I thought of these lines. Now that we’ve brushed the initial awkwardness of the situation under the carpet, lets get to the point. About me, that is.

I have a typical profile – I work for a software firm. I love to read books, and like many women my age, I love to hang out with friends, and love to shop [even if the entire shopping experience is done in 15 mins flat. There is no therapy like retail therapy, babeh!] and I’d like to think of myself as some sort of a geek, so don’t burst that bubble if you figure out I am not. [Did you not notice the header of my blog? Cool stuff, no? :-)] Also, unlike many people my age, I also love to spend time by myself, in my own space.

So I am some kind of an extroverted loner, if that word exists in the dictionary , that is.

And yes, if you are reading this page, you might have already noticed that I own this blog, which means, I also love to spend my time in the kitchen and dishing out some good meals for the husband, and for some obliging unsuspecting friends who take constant risks with their lives by setting foot into our house and asking me to cook something for them. :-P

I love my job and what I do on my desk, and totally love the company I work for. My job keeps me very busy , so busy that I do not have time to cook at all. Which is why I have a cook, who cooks my breakfast, lunch and dinner too. A food-blogger and has a cook at home, something fishy about this, right? Well, the cook is to take care of the stomach. And to ensure the husband doesn’t charge at me with some kind of a club in hand every evening when I am busy working. And what I do in the kitchen, the source of all of these recipes is to take care of the mind. My mind. My stress-buster. My outlet at the end of a tiring day.

To summarize, I set foot into the kitchen to keep myself excited. To answer the question that bothers all of us – What next?

The husband has a pretty cool name for it – he calls it The State of Perpetual Anticipation – SPA. [Go ahead, use this term if you like it. The idea is to get it into urban dictionary ;-)]

That’s what this is about. In fact, that’s what everything I do is all about. I like to keep myself guessing what I will do next. I like to plan what my next day will look like. My Kindle has lists of books that I will be reading, and more often than not, I am planning my next vacation when I am already on one. My OneNote page has a hundred must-try recipes, and at least ten work-projects that I would love to spend my time on. That’s what I do – ensure that I do not host a devil’s workshop up here, in my head.

Well, I digress. This blog was started when I pleasantly rediscovered my interest in the kitchen after years of neglecting it. Initially it was a way for me to keep track of my recipes, but if it helps others too, am not complaining.

It also happened to be the time when I met some awesome food bloggers online and in real life, who are more or less an inspiration to me. [Check them out on my Blogroll] Like they say, there are no coincidences in life, right?

I started with baking, and graduated to cooking themed meals. And now I’ve realized I enjoy cooking better. I can innovate, experiment and create some good meals without them turning into disasters. I do not follow instructions or measurements from the recipe the dish is inspired from. I just go with the flow. Which is why I cannot often reproduce the same dish twice. [And now I make quick notes on my phone as I am adding the ingredients, so that I can blog about them later :-)]

Baking requires anyone to follow instructions, quantities and think about a dozen other parameters. These days, I bake only when I need to – visiting a friend’s house, a friend’s birthday or having people over. And sometimes baking is a better stress-buster than cooking is.

All the recipes I post on this blog are personally tested by me on the guinea pig, the husband. Some of them are inspired by recipes I read online, and some of them are my own creations. In the former cases, I will always give credit to the original recipe, and I would very much like it that you give me credit too if you are to post one of my recipes in your blog. And I will be glad if you let me know when and if you do so, I would love to check it out. :-)

If you have any questions on any of the recipes, ask them in the comment box, which I'll answer there, which might help the future readers.

I am a vegetarian, and I do not eat eggs and I am as close to being a vegan as possible, which is why you’ll find only vegetarian and eggless recipes on my blog.

I shoot all the photographs on my blog, and I watermark them to assert that. Needless to say, the photographs are entirely my property and any unauthorized usage of the pics will be inviting my wrath.

I am a Mangalorean (Udupi/Shivalli, to be precise) living in Hyderabad

You can read more about me on my other blog – The Green Tea Evenings.

If you still have not had your fill of me, here are some links -

• Book reviews – Only Books, Goodreads Reviews
• Goodreads profile – Link
• Twitter profile – Link [Follow me there!]
• My mother tongue is Tulu, and at times I feel a need to belong…
• Flickr page – Link [Add me as a contact!]

Thanks for dropping by to check out the recipe, and being interested enough to actually know about the author. And drop a comment or two if you would to talk to me more.

Thai weekend, may be?

Turns out its not really a alone weekend for me then.
The husband has decided to make guest appearances amidst all his travels, and I have plans lined up with friends. But then, when isn’t that the case! :) (I know… even at times when I feel that I need some time for myself, I cannot but think how lucky I am to be blessed with so  many friends, that I can never be lonely. Alone yes, lonely, never! :) )

Since guest appearances have to be honoured with something special always, and since this particular guest also has all meals of his day this weekend planned out, I did not want to overwhelm his stomach with anything heavy. Not making anything wasn’t an option, coz I still had to eat. And cooking for one is not really fun if you have to do it 5 times in the same week. So I decided to go with something light on the stomach.

Now, Hyderabad is not as chilly as I would’ve liked it to be, but people say its quite cold. The first time this season I felt the chill was when I was having dinner with a friend in a roof-top restaurant. She said she was cold, and I said it was quite pleasant. (Oh well… I am someone who has stayed out in the night at 10 PM in Seattle with nothing on me except a thin T-shirt and linen shorts , on what was the coldest night that week. I didn’t even have cash or a mobile phone at hand, but that’s another story. And yes, I lived to tell the tale.)

And every blog I go to talks about making pumpkin soup to beat the chill… and yes, I got piqued. Pumpkin is something I have not worked with before. I have never tasted a pumpkin, and I do not even know how to say if it is ripe enough or not. But this morning at the vegetable market, I saw Shal, my friend buy a slice of pumpkin. I asked her what she did with it, and she went on to give me options on what all you can do with it. And that’s how I got thinking. I asked the vendor to cut me a slice of ripe pumpkin and got home thinking about what to make with it, and what herbs would go well with this. Oh yes, I have been thinking about what should get into this soup since morning, and by evening I had a pretty good idea. I know, I know… the processor is kinda slow that way :).

It had to be something spicy, something with stuff I had at home and had to adhere to the weekend rule. The rule that says -

Thou shalt not spend more than 30 mins in the kitchen on a weekend.

So I grabbed the stuff I had in the fridge, and in my kitchen garden (yeah, I am a big show-off that way :-P ) and got to work.
Since just a soup isn’t enough to feed two people for dinner, I also decided to make some salad. And since the garden largely supports the Thai theme, that was what it had to be.

The guest who also happens to be my alpha, beta and only tester , testified that he loved both the soup and the salad. The spices were just-enough and he loved the blend and taste of pumpkin. So then, pumpkin is here to stay in the household afterall.

Thai Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients
Pumpkins – diced and cubed – 2 cups
Onion – small sized, sliced – enough to fit in 1/2 cup
Garlic cloves – diced – 6
Turmeric – a pinch
Cumin seeds – 1 tbsp
Red chilli – 1
Olive Oil – 1 tbsp

Thai Basil leaves – 10-12 – shredded
Lemon Grass – 1 stalk
Diced Coconut – 1/4 cup (or coconut milk)
Coriander seeds – 1 tbsp
Onion – small sized, sliced – enough to fit in 1/4 cup
Red chilli - 1
Salt – to taste

Instructions

Microwave the pumpkins at full power for 2 mins, so that they are slightly cooked and do not take a long time to cook on the stove.
Heat oil in a pan, and sauté the onions, garlic, cumin and red chilli in it. Add the microwaved pumpkin pieces to this , sprinkle turmeric and cook for about 5 mins, or till the pumpkin is roasted/cooked. Once cooked, remove this from heat and let it cool.

In a blender, mix the onion slices, coconut, coriander, another red chilli and the roasted/cooked pumpkin till it becomes into a pulp. You might have some coconut pieces even after the pulp is all done, let them be as is.

Heat this on the stove in the pan again. Knot the lemon grass stalk and put it in the pulp mixture. Add half the basil leaves to this and salt to taste and bring this pulp to a boil. You can add water to dilute it and suit your consistency.

Garnish with the remaining basil leaves, and serve hot. This recipe make 2 big cups of pumpkin soup.

Cucumber salad (with Thai dressing)

Ingredients
Cucumber – peeled, cut into 1 inch long sized pieces – 1

For the dressing
Juice of half a lemon
Soya sauce - 1/2 tsp
Roasted peanuts – crushed – 1/4 cup
Red chilli flakes – 1/2 tsp

For the Garnish
Green pepper & Oregano – enough to sprinkle on the salad
Coriander (Cilantro ) leaves – Just a handful

Instructions

Mix all the ingredients for the dressing and pour it on the cucumber pieces. Toss and garnish. Serve cold.

Tomato Cream Pasta and a good life…

 

Apparently this is the Cook-For-Self-And-Eat-Alone-Week at home, starring yours truly.

So instead of sitting and moping around the whole weekend all by myself like a lazy bug on the couch, I’ve lined up a zillion activities to do, most important of them being a spa appointment and planning to make an entire Lasagne for myself :) And when one has such important activities to do in a jam-packed weekend, one has to plan in advance. And that planning started tonight.

All through the drive back home from office, I kept on thinking on what I’d like to have for dinner (oh yes, food is on my mind ALL.THE.TIME! Either am thinking about what to cook, or how a particular dish tasted or generally craving for food. Basically, I think I only think about food! :))
Something that I really love to eat which the husband doesn’t greatly love. Something savoury , coz after having polished off an entire loaf of Banana bread this week I was in no mood for  any more dessert. And Providence gave me the answer – Pasta, of course! :-D
But tonight, I wanted to make something I haven’t made before, something new. I scrounged through the Must Try page of my Recipe notebook in OneNote (a very clever product placement, right? :)), and found some pasta recipes that I had wanted to try. And when you have great plans like this, and zero patience to stop at the farmer’s market en route home and your fridge tells you in not so many words to STFU about making anything fancy and stick to something basic because it can provide only for that, and you gotta listen to it, which is what I did, obediently.

What I could salvage from the fridge could provide for a tomato based pasta. So I decided to go ahead with it, but with a slight twist. Something creamy, and yet tomato-ey. And with lots of herbs. And something that will be done in 10 mins flat.

The recipe is a very basic creamy tomato sauce recipe, and I did nothing new except of course alter the amount of ingredients to suit my taste. Which means, more garlic and oregano and aaaah basil!

Ingredients

Fusilli – 1 cup
Tomato paste – 1 cup (I just put the tomatoes in a mixer to get the paste)
Thick cream – 1/4 cup
Olive oil – 1 tbsp.
Mozzarella cheese – For garnish
Garlic cloves – 4-6, chopped very small or crushed in a mortar-pestle
Oregano, Red chilli flakes, Basil, Black pepper, Sea salt – All per taste

Instructions
Boil a pot of water, and add salt to this once the water starts boiling. Now add the fusilli to this and let this boil for 8-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a pan, heat the oil and sauté the garlic. Add some oregano, chilli flakes, pepper and basil to garlic and let this mixture become roasted in the oil.
Now add the tomato paste to the oil, and let it boil. Once the paste starts boiling, add the cream and boil more till the paste thickens. You can add the herbs and spices again now if you wish, for some enhanced taste.
Season this sauce with some salt and add the boiled pasta to this sauce. Toss this well till the pasta is coated with the sauce.
You can garnish this pasta with any of the following - fresh basil leaves, parsley, cheese, pepper.
Serve hot.

And when I was making this pasta, I also made a big bowl of red sauce, hoping it will ease my first time lasagne efforts. Lots of onions and garlic, the tomato paste and all the herbs I could lay my hands on yielded me this sauce, and I cannot wait till I try it out.

The entire house is now smelling of fresh tomatoes and basil, I just licked off the remaining sauce from the plate, Kolaveri is playing in the background on the laptop as I am typing this, and I have enough books that will take another 20 years for me to read.

Life is good! :-)

Masala Milk

 

Every Sharad Purnima, this friend of mine hosts a fabulous dinner party for some friends of hers. We chit-chat a lot, eat dinner and have the masala milk , my favourite part. She reduces about 10 litres of milk to approximately 7 litres, adds a lot of spices that make the milk taste yummy and serves them hot. I fell in love with this milk the first time I had it, but never thought I should/could try it. This time, I stood by her when she was adding the masalas, pestered her for the recipe, promptly forgot it and came back home to try it.

I am not sure if this is the recipe for the masala milk she served, but it tastes similar, and I love this taste. Now this is a regular in my after-Sunday-night-dinner menu. I reduce about 3/4 litre milk to be 1/2 litre, the exact measurement of my milk mug, sit with this in front of the TV or the computer and get on to work. My favourite part of the evening, it is.

Ingredients
3/4 litre milk
1 tbsp MTR Badam Milk powder
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsps nutmeg powder
1 tsp cardamom powder
2-3 strands saffron

Instructions
In a thick bottomed saucepan, heat the milk. Add the sugar, Badam milk powder, half the nutmeg, the cardamom powder and heat the milk. Keep the milk on the stove till it reduces to 1/2 litre. Let the cream on the milk mix into the milk again. (I know this adds to the fat content of the milk, but trust me, it makes the milk taste heavenly). Mix in the saffron strands, and boil the milk some more.
Pour it in the mug, garnish with the mug. Sit back and enjoy the milk.

Carrot Muffins

 

Carrot muffins were on my head for a long time now, and when I bumped into this recipe, and saw the ingredients, all of which I had at hand, I had to try this. I just didn’t do the maple cream cheese frosting, and followed the recipe to the T except for the egg and apple sauce. I used coconut milk instead of apple sauce since I wanted to see if the slight coconut flavour would work with the carrots or not. Trust me, the coconut flavour worked as a perfect replacement for the apple sauce and yogurt always worked for me when I had to use eggs.

Recipe Courtesy – Cilantrophist’s Recipe

Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsps baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
2 cups sugar
1 cup Coconut milk(I used the Dabur brand)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
8 tbsp thick yogurt
3 cups peeled, grated carrots
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 185C and line the muffin tray with the muffin cups.
Whisk together the yogurt, coconut milk, sugar and the vegetable oil. Sieve together the flour, baking soda, salt and the spices.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix just enough. Fold in the grate carrot.
Pour one scoop each into the muffin cups and decorate with the walnuts. Bake for 20 mins.

This yielded 16 muffins. Soft, surprisingly light and moist, these muffins were super for a after-dinner snack, which is what I did with half of them. Took them to work to accompany me and the team when we would be attending the late night call.
After filling out 12 muffins , I mixed some rum-soaked raisins, another half a cup of grated carrots (since I didn’t want to leave just that much in the refrigerator) and baked the rest of the 4 muffins. The muffins were dense , moist , delicious and smelled of rum, which was awesome, again!

Healthy Chocolate chip muffins

 

The banana muffins I baked for this friend’s toddler last time did not reach the kid at all. Blame it on our schedules or whatever, but eventually, when we did meet, the muffins shouldn’t have been given to a toddler. So I had to make up for it , by making a new batch of muffins, this time Chocolate Chip ones. And since the main audience was a toddler, I decided to make these as healthy as possible.

Recipe inspired from Madhuram-Eggless Cooking's recipe here.

Ingredients

1 cup oat flakes, coarsely grounded in a blender
1/2 cup milk
2 bananas , mashed, to yield 1 cup banana puree
1/4 cup oil
1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
3/4 Cup brown sugar
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon Baking soda
1/4 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1/3 heaped Cup Mini Chocolate Chips

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 185 C. Line the muffin paper cups in the muffin tray.
Measure the banana puree and milk so that they both together are 1.5 cups. To this liquid, add oil, sugar and vanilla extract and keep aside.
Sieve the grounded oat flakes, wheat flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder together.
Now pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix just enough. Gently fold in the choco chips Do not over mix.
Scoop spoonfuls of the batter and pour in the muffin cups.
Bake for 18-20 mins or till the tester comes clean.

My Notes
1. These probably are the healthiest muffins I will ever bake. Wheat flour and oat flakes add to the fibre content, bananas make up for the fruit and wet ingredient thus eliminating the need to add any more fat into this.
2. Next time , I will add rum soaked raisins to this , just to up the taste content. Bananas, Chocolate and Rum seem like a great combination in my head
3. My muffins were baked in 18 mins at 185C, but to be extra sure I baked them for 8 more mins at 170C. You can check what works for you depending on your oven.
4. The muffins were slightly dense because of all the heavy banana puree, and very moist the day I baked them. But since both oat flakes and wheat flour tend to get dry if not mixed with adequate amount of liquid, there was a slight dryness to the interiors of the muffin. So the next time, I will add a 1/4 cup more liquid and see how the muffin feels the day after baking.

Seasoned Cornbread casserole

 

Oh well, there is no story behind this dish. I was just browsing through the Wine & Dine section of NYTimes and saw some gorgeous Thanksgiving recipes. Though that is not a festival celebrated in India, and it is still weeks away for the actual festival, I thought, why not make it this weekend !Also since the winter is finally arriving in Hyderabad, making something with cornmeal sounded just appropriate.

And there… I tried this, and loved the way it tasted. Its like a whole package – taste with great health packed in it.
Since we are not vegans, I did not feel the need to use applesauce or non-dairy milk. Yogurt did the trick for me, as usual.
Also, I didn’t have any Cajun seasoning at hand, so I reached out to my herb tray (one of most favourite items in my kitchen. This tray full of dried herbs – oregano, sage, thyme, rosemary, dill, parsley, chilli flakes, two varieties of basil, some seasonings, couple of varieties of pepper – most of these from Keya) and mixed the seasoning per the family’s palette, and that worked too.
By the time the vegetable mixture was made, the whole kitchen started smelling curry-like, and very appetizing. :-)

Original recipe here.

Ingredients
For the vegetable preparation-
Tomatoes , medium sized – 6, diced
Onion , medium sized – 2, diced
Garlic cloves 6
Bell pepper –1 seeded and diced
Mixture of kidney and chick-pea beans - 1 cup , soaked for atleast 6 hours and pressure cooked
Olive oil – 2 tbsp

For the cornbread-
Cornmeal or makkai ata – 1 cup
Baking powder - 1 1/2 teaspoons
Pinch of salt
Yogurt – 1 1/4 Cup
Garlic – 3 cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning (commercial blend, or make your own)

For the seasoning -
Equal measures (atleast 1 tbsp) of the following -
Coarsely ground black pepper
Coarsely ground white/green pepper
Dried Basil
Dried Oregano
Dried Thyme
Ground Coriander
Ground Cumin
Red chilli flakes
Chilli powder

Instructions

1. In a skillet or a pan, heat the oil and sauté the onions and bell peppers till they are cooked. Add some seasoning, approximately 2 tbsps to this so that the vegetable mixture has its own flavour.
2. Add the boiled kidney beans and the chick-peas and mix well and take the skillet off the heat.
3. Now prepare for the bread. Preheat the oven to 200 C
4. Mix the corn bread, baking powder, salt, finely chopped garlic and the seasoning. Add yogurt to this and mix well. This mixture should be spreadable.
5. In the baking dish, pour the vegetable-bean mixture and press well.
6. Now spread the bread batter on top of this evenly and bake for 30 mins, or till a tester comes out clean

My Notes

1. Since cornbread was never a favourite in the house, the next time I make it, I will add more seasoning to the cornbread batter. And also some green finely chopped green chillies, may be some roasted onions and some cilantro leaves. This is just to remove the very corn-like smell from the corn-bread
2. In an attempt to salvage the nutrients in the tomatoes, I did not drain out the water from them. This , thankfully , did not make the bread soggy but all this water settled at the bottom of the dish, along with the vegetables. So next time around, I will add some salt to the tomatoes and let the water drain by. May be I will drink the water just as it is, like how I did to the water left over from the boiled kidney beans :-)

Peanut-sesame-ish Chinese pasta

Its been a while since we had pasta, and today being a holiday, me having a pack of Lomein Chinese pasta that a friend got from Hong Kong, and craving for something peanut-y, all inspired this pasta. Some search on the internet for an inspiration, and viola, this recipe was born!

Recipe Courtesy – Broadly inspired from the Lomein recipes off the internet

Ingredients

For the sauce -
Roasted peanuts - 2 fistfuls
Sesame seeds - 2 tbsps
Soya sauce - 2 tbsps
Vegetable broth - 1 cup
Red chilli flakes - 2 tbsps
Sesame oil - 2 tbsps
Salt - To taste

Preparing the vegetables & pasta -
Onions - Length wise sliced - 1 cup
Spring onions - 1 bunch - inch-wise pieces
Green Capsicums - 1 - Chopped in one inch pieces
Carrots - sliced into thin pieces - 1/2 cup
Red chilli flakes - 1 tbsp
Garlic - 8 cloves - crushed in a mortar pestle
Lemon juice - 2 tbsp
Roasted peanuts - 2 tbsps
Sesame oil - 2 tbsps

Lomein pasta - 2 fistfuls, cooked per the instructions on the cover

For Garnish -
Cilantro/Coriander leaves - chopped
Roasted sesame seeds

Instructions

The sauce -

Grind the peanuts and the sesame seeds in a mixer-grinder. Heat the broth in a pan and add the soya sauce. Once the water+soya sauce mixture reaches the boiling temparature, add the peanut mixture, red chilli flakes. Add the sesame oil to this and whisk this mixture. Heat this till the sauce thickens. Remove this from the stove and let it cool.

The vegetables -

In a deep thick-bottomed pan, heat the oil and add the onions, garlic, chilli flakes, capsicum and carrots in that order, and heat them till they are all cooked. Crush the rest of the peanuts and add this to the vegetable mixture. Add salt to this mixture. Add the sauce to this vegetable mixture and mix well so that all the vegetables are coated with the sauce. Now add the cooked pasta and toss well. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice.

Garnish with cilantro leaves and serve hot. Super hot! :)

Banana muffins… finally!

If you’ve been to this blog before, am sure you would’ve noticed my love for any dish which involves Bananas.
As a kid, I wasn’t a great fan of the fruit. And any mention of the word Banana would ensure that I run 500 ft away from the spot. As a grown up, I would eat it only for its high potassium content , but with a grimace on my face. But as a baker, am in love with this wonderful fruit.

How can you not? Mashed bananas are such an awesome way to introduce some fruit into the dish. Coupled with walnuts, they are awesome in a cake. Add chocolate chips to this, and there, you have a perfect dessert. Cake, bread, muffins… everything that has bananas in it tastes awesome.

So when this friend insisted that I bake something for her little boy, something healthy and with fruit in it, I decided to go for it. Banana muffins. I had baked banana bread a zillion times. Banana marble cake another zillion times, and banana cake was a regular till I decided to not make it for fear of not liking it after over-exposure.  But muffins, I hadn’t. I guess the banana muffin idea sprang up after the decision to not make any more banana based stuff. But for this little boy, I decided to go back on the no-banana-decision. And boy, am I glad I did that! With this, banana has made an official return to my kitchen :)

Simplest of the recipes, takes only 30 mins to put together and another 30 minutes to bake and cool, this is just the perfect way to start a day. Or end it, if you love having a little sweet snack after dinner, like me. :)

Recipe

Ingredients

All purpose Flour – 3/4 Cup [I mixed AP flour with multi-grain flour]
Vegetable oil – 1/4 Cup
Bananas – 2 , mashed with a fork till they are liquidy
Sugar – 1/3 Cup
Baking powder – 1/2 tsp
Baking soda – 1/2 tsp
Vanilla extract – 1/4 tsp
Choco chips – 1/3 cup
Chopped walnuts – 1/6 cup

Instructions

Mix the sugar and oil to the mashed bananas and mix well. Add the vanilla extract to this and keep aside.

Sieve the flour with the baking powder and soda

Mix the dry with the wet ingredients gently, ensuring you don’t over mix this. Add the choco-chips to this mixture and fold in.

With a spoon, pour this batter into the muffin cups lined in the muffin tray. Ensure that the cups are 3/4 full.

Bake in a preheated oven at 185 C for 25-30 mins, or till the skewer comes clean

It was just perfect. The medley of almost-melted-chocolate-chips with walnuts, and the frequent banana pieces play on your tongue, as the entire muffin melts down. Yes, indeed that good ! Try it. and tell me if you don’t love it! :)

Rice… Jamaican !

Sundays are generally my-time days. Typically I wake up early on a Sunday, tell the cook the lunch menu, wait till the maid leaves, and laze on the couch all day. Yes. All day long. I read. I watch movies or I sleep. All while I am watching the sun streaming into my living room and telling myself – this is life. Lazing around doing nothing, and not feeling guilty. Yes, the art of doing nothing.

I do this till about noon after which I have lunch, and go back to perfecting the art of doing nothing. At about 6’o clock after we , husband and I , have our chai in the balcony, one of us asks the most important question of the day – What’s for dinner? Now, after having spent the last 15 odd hours in utter laziness, its very tough for me to get my lazy ass into the kitchen and cook. Something or anything. But then, the loves-to-cook-self in me provokes guilt in me by asking when exactly I plan to cook something new if I don’t do it on the one time the cook takes off for the entire week.

At about this point, the time would be 7’o clock, and its too late for me to make anything fancy. You see, the next day being Monday and all, I need to get into the Monday zone by 8’o clock all the while watching the sitcoms I would’ve downloaded. So I quickly get into the cook-mode, go to the pantry area and make a list of all the possible ingredients, which would be next to nothing because of my late decision to cook something and get to cooking, if I find anything at all. Either this or the pizza at this awesome Over the Flame place. One of those.

Today happens to be the cooking day. By noon, I had decided I wanted to make something fancy. I wanted to eat something Jamaican. And since I wanted to be nice to the husband , I decided it would be something to do with rice. I read on some cooking site that kidney beans are an important ingredient in Jamaican rice. Some search resulted in a big box of unopened Kashmiri rajma , which were promptly soaked. Jamaican rice with kidney beans, it was going to be.

So when I had to actually get to cooking, I opened up the laptop and searched for some recipes online which would have kidney beans and rice in them, and got quite some. A mix-mash of all the recipes and cooking methods I read online added to the Indian style of making flavoured rice, I ended up with this beauty.

Oooooh yes. Beauty indeed. With a perfect combination of flavours. Coconut, thyme, some pepper for the hot palate, and caramelized onions and garlic. Perfect. Almost Indian, if we safely ignore the beans, which is why it was a hit with the husband also. I also added a dash of lime juice to the finished rice and lo, the flavours burst in the mouth as I took my first spoonful. And gastrorgasm it was, all the way! :)

Ingredients

Basmati rice – 1 cup, washed and soaked for at least 15 mins
Kashmiri Kidney beans – 1/2 cup, soaked for at least 5 hrs
Onion – 1, sliced fine
Garlic – 8 pods, chopped or crushed
Olive oil – 2 tbsp
Coconut milk – 1/2 cup + 2 tbsps
Dried thyme – 1 tbsp
Crushed pepper – 1 tsp
Salt – To taste
Boiling water – 1.5 cup
Lemon juice, for garnish, per taste

Instructions

Wash the soaked beans well, pour 2 cups of water, 2 tbsps of coconut milk and some salt to taste and pressure cook for at least 30 mins

In a thick bottomed non-stick pan, heat the oil, add the onions and garlic , some thyme , some pepper and roast them all till golden brown.

Add the washed rice and the drained the kidney beans to this, and let them roast in these spices for a bit.

Now, add the boiling water and coconut milk, rest of the thyme, pepper and salt. Close the lid of the pan and let the dish simmer for about 15-20 mins.

You can open the lid and see if the rice is cooked, which is when it is ready to be gobbled up!

Pound Cake–An awesome recipe

 

Oh well, there is no story behind this trial. None at all. Oh wait, does a craving to eat something extremely sugary and fatty count as a story? Yes? Great, that’s it then! :-)

I hadn’t baked a pound cake in all these days of claiming to “bake good cakes and brownies”, and the other day I got said craving. I just had to make this cake, coz I knew this would ensure the maximum butter intake. Some recipe searching and asking for suggestions for Twitter lead to a friend giving me this link, instructions which I followed to the T (no, I don’t have the patience to see the videos, I didn’t, and trust me, it wasn’t needed), and got the softest, tastiest cake I ever baked.

I, of course, replaced the egg with other fats to ensure that there was a soft finish to the cake. Also, the first time I baked this cake with the said measurements of the ingredients, I found it too sweet, and too soft. I reduced the sugar content from 1 C to 3/4 C, and also added a little less than 1/2 C of butter.

Ingredients:

½ Cup of Unsalted Butter at room temperature
6 tbsps thick yogurt
½ Cup of Cream (I used Amul cream)
1 ½ Cups of All Purpose Flour
¼ tsp of Baking Powder
1/8 tsp of Baking Soda
¼ tsp of Salt
3/4 Cup of Sugar
½ tsp of Vanilla Extract

1/2 C Tutti-Fruity (optional)

Instructions:

Line a 9x5 tin with parchment paper, and butter. Also, pre-heat the oven to 185 C.

Beat the butter and sugar together till they form a smooth mixture. Now add the yogurt and cream and beat well till this is a smooth mixture. Add the vanilla extract to this mixture.

Sift the flour with the baking powder, soda and salt.

Mix the wet and dry ingredients together, just enough. Fold in the Tutti-Fruity into this batter and pour into the baking tin. Bake for 50 mins to 1 hour or till a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool it and serve.

 

This is a basic pound cake recipe. I believe you can glaze it with some fruit based glaze, or pour Chocolate ganache on it , or eat it in a trifle pudding. Just about anything you can imagine to eat.

Peanut butter brownies… to welcome the holiday season…

 

I always get excited during October. Festive season. All the shopping. Happy moods all over.

After all, it is the closest to being our holiday season, something equivalent to the Christmas-New Year holidays. Everyone is in a celebratory mood right from Navratri to Diwali, so much so that , on some days there is no one in the entire wing in the office buildings. Its just contagious, this happy happy mood… and I love this mood.

So while the husband is planning to open up his 21-yr old Jack Daniels whiskey (gifted by a work colleague to him, comes in a super-sexy bottle which has all my attention – to serve as a home to one of my indoor plants :-)), I decided to bake something.

A lunch plan with a couple of friends at Prego is on the cards for tomorrow , (that is, if this whole Telangana bandh doesn’t spoil everyone’s plans!!! :-( ). Another reason to bake.

Some rummaging in my OneNote notebook in the Must-Trys section showed me some links for brownies. Something with peanut butter is what I wanted make for a while now. I clubbed both the words and Googled a bit, for some peanut butter brownie recipes. Instead of being swarmed with recipes, surprisingly I got just a couple. I mixed and matched them, and arrived at this recipe.

Ingredients

1/2 C peanut butter
1/3 C butter
1/2 C packed brown sugar
2/3 C sugar
4 tbsps thick cream (I used Amul cream)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 C flour (all-purpose)
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 C chocolate chips

Procedure

Beat the peanut butter and butter together with a fork for atleast 3 minutes till they both are blended well, and are smooth. Add the sugars to this and beat again, till the whole mixture is smooth.

Now add the cream and mix into the butter mixture. At the end, add the vanilla extract.

Now add the sifted flour, baking powder and salt mixture into this wet ingredient mix, and mix just enough.

Fold in the chocolate chips, and bake it in a preheated oven at 185 C for 25 minutes or when it passes the toothpick test. (Prescribed baking time is 35 minutes)

This batch yielded 20 pieces of brownies.

I took them out of the oven 10 mins before the prescribed baking time to let them be goo-ey and fudgy at the centre, and cut them after they cooled down. And man… what god-awesome they tasted! :-) With a rich peanut butter taste, and the crunch from the sugars, and the slight chocolate-y taste in them, I loved these brownies.

They had the almost-flaky finish on top, little dry in the next layer and gooey at the bottom, texture being just perfect.

After the Pound cake of this week and this brownie experiment, looks like I am on a self-claimed roll… This sure is a good baking week… :)

Hummus Pasta, an instant mood-lifter!

I love hummus. I love pasta. Well, that’s not news for the readers of this blog, right?
I also love garlic and cherry tomatoes. Sometimes I wonder if I am really born in a community which abhors garlic, and if I was really lifted off someone else’s hospital bed like Mom always claimed. Yeah, the things I love to eat are not what Mom would generally make at home or dream of it. And I don’t even cook or eat meat!
The flavours, the ingredients , the cuisines. All of them. This just strengthens Mom’s case, right? Sigh.
So before I drifted off to talk about my confused origin, I was talking about the flavours I love. I was known to have the biggest sweet tooth on the dining table. Any dining table. But off late, I have discovered quite joyously that the sweet tooth was just an implication of a medical condition which required me to stock on sugars, and that I really do not enjoy desserts as much I thought I do. But yes, the love for pasta and anything Italian , well that’s not changed over time. Thankfully. For me, and for the husband who, once in a while relishes non-Indian food, pasta being one of them.
Yesterday, when I was passing by Q-Mart (In case you don’t know what it is, which means you are not a Hyderabadi, this is an overtly pish-posh grocery store where prices of everything is atleast thrice of what you would get in a regular grocery store. Slight exaggeration aside, this is not a place I go to everyday, in case you were thinking ;-) ), I got reminded that I had to buy one particular species of Dancing Bamboos to add to my Bamboo collection. But Providence has different plans for me (sigh. I’ll never stop being the drama queen, right? :-)) The minute I entered the store, I was drawn to the vegetable section. This place always stocks the freshest of the veggies and greens and I laid eyes on a fresh bunch of basil leaves, which I picked up almost immediately. And then there were a basket of cherry tomatoes there. Needless to say, I picked them too.
Once back home, I made some basil hummus and was wondering what I should make next to use the cherry tomatoes and fresh basil leaves whose smell was wafting appetizingly in my kitchen. Aglio Olio with spaghetti was the first thing that I thought of , its easy to make. Making this with dried basil leaves is good, but there is nothing better than this pasta with fresh basil leaves. Moreover, I can use all the garlic and basil I want, and its a house-favourite.
But then, I also wanted to use up the hummus as the sauce. I remembered reading this recipe by The Cilantropist , one of my favourite food-bloggers and decided to get inspired by it.


Hummus pasta it was, then! With generous amounts of basil thrown in. I generally add a variety of herbs to any pasta I make, but I wanted to just retain the smell, flavour and taste of Hummus and the tomatoes for this one. The thought appealed to my almost-hungry stomach so much that it started rumbling instantly! :)

Ingredients
Basil Hummus - 1 cup, slightly thinned but not pouring consistency
Whole wheat Spaghetti – a fistful
Cherry Tomatoes – 250 gms
Fresh basil leaves – a handful. Chopped.
Garlic cloves – 10-15. (You can change the quantity per your taste)
Olive oil – 2 tbsp. Just enough to roast the Hummus and Garlic
Black pepper – to taste
Salt – to taste
Olives – pitted or sliced, quantity as you desire , completely optional
Red chilli flakes – One tbsp

Instructions
Cook the pasta per the instructions on its cover.

Meanwhile, pour the oil in a pan, and char the tomatoes for about 5 mins with pepper and salt on it. Once its slightly charred, add the garlic and roast a bit. Now add the basil leaves to this and let it be roasted along with the garlic and tomatoes.
Add the hummus to this and let it be on heat for a minute. Now add the olives and pasta and toss well.
Serve hot. And tell me how you like it. :-)

Giant Chocolate Chip Blondies

 

Well, this is not the recipe for GIANT chocolate chip blondies, its just choco chip blondies. Just that, the choco chips I used were sooo big that I had to name it this way. :-)

Only after I opened the Ghirardelli 60% semi-sweet choco chips packet that the husband got from the US did I see how big the chips were. They were the size of our Gems chocolate, and since I did not have anything else handy, I had to use them, all the while wondering if I had screwed up the Blondies with too much chocolate. But as the saying goes, there is nothing like too much chocolate. The choco chips added their gooey texture which in addition to the brown sugar used in the recipe only made this dessert really delectable. Okay, these are not my words alone. Remember, I have a guinea pig at home. One which does not like desserts but periodically surprises me with requests for a second helping ? Well, he did that for these too. So there! :)

As the story always goes behind me trying out something new for the first time, there is a long yet boring story for this too. I had an especially long and stressful day at work and I returned home with a pounding head. With my cook agreeing to come in the evenings also, I did not need to cook dinner myself. I wanted to bake something to unwind, and suddenly remembered the Blondies A&N baked. Some curiosity, link hopping and Googling got me to this page which had a decent recipe, and I got to work. And like it claimed, I put together all the ingredients in 10 mins, and got them into the oven. It was all done in exactly 35 mins, and I had piping hot, gooey blondies at hand. Very very tasy! :)

I replaced the egg in the recipe with orange juice, because I always wanted to bake something chocolately and orangey. You can also use thick yogurt or cream instead of this. Just keep the quantity same. Some day I will muster up more courage and bake a full dessert with chocolate and orange in it. Some day!

Ingredients

1/2 cup of butter, melted (I put it in Microwave for 30 seconds)
1 cup of tightly packed dark brown sugar
2 tbsps orange juice
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon of baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1/3 cup of butterscotch chips (chopped walnuts and chocolate chips are equally tasty)

Method

1 Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter and flour an 8X8 pan. Whisk together the melted butter and sugar in a bowl.

2 Add the egg and vanilla extract and whisk.

3 Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, mix it all together. Add the butterscotch chips or other mix-ins.

4 Pour into the pan and spread evenly. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool. Cut into squares and serve.

Recipe Courtesy – Simply Recipes

Cherry Vanilla Muffins

 

Its a weekday, and I am generally in a happy mood. I had some stuff that I have acquired over a period of time through the US travels. I wanted to bake something because its been too long. And did I mention, I am generally in a happy mood?

Well… I didn’t have the patience to do anything heavy duty, but wanted something nice, hot and baked. Nothing chocolatey (though I have quite some choco chips waiting to be used) , nothing with coffee and no fruits either. And what better than a nice batch of muffins. I could just think and experiment with muffin batter like the sky’s my limit… :)

So last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I made a mental list of all the ingredients I had at home, and I was itching to use. The ones that stood out were the box of extracts that a friend sent from the US, and the dried cherries, blueberries and cranberries I had in the pantry. Some late-night-on-the-phone-Binging on all these ingredients gave me some good ideas.

And hence the thought of a Cherry Vanilla Muffin. I had not baked anything with cherries in it so far, and my bottle of vanilla extract tempted me to try this. Some more Binging and I bumped into this recipe to which I promptly made some customizations.

So back from work, with a hungry rumbling stomach with the sandwich and Baileys only increasing my appetite, I got on to the job of making these.  One look at my pantry revealed some very tasty and aromatic fruit infusions, and they were used too. The muffins baked in precisely 18 mins, and it took me a total of 40 mins to put them all together.

Here is the recipe -

Ingredients
1-2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp Fruit infusion – I used strong Strawberry tea. You can use anything by Twinings.
1 cup yogurt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup dried cherries, chopped, soaked in Strawberry tea for about 15 mins

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 200 C and line the muffin pan with the paper muffin cups.

Sieve the AP Flour, baking soda, baking powder, Sugar and Cinnamon powder together in a big bowl.

In another bowl, mix together the yogurt, fruit infusion, vanilla extract and oil, and beat them till they almost blend. At this point, the yogurt might curdle a bit, but I noticed that they made the muffins softer.

Mix together the wet and dry ingredients very gently, without beating the air off the batter. Pour spoonfuls of this batter, decorate the top with some left over cherries if you like, and bake these for 15-18 mins.

This recipe makes about 20 medium sized muffins.

There was a very gentle fruit flavour , the  yogurt had made the muffins very smooth, and the sugar was still a bit crystalized, adding the crunch to the muffins.

In short, they truly served their purpose – ensuring that I stay alive till I cook dinner, and get that wide grin on the husband’s face :-)