Curry Powder

A curry powder to go with shallow fries... (Apologies for the weird formatting, am posting this from the phone, lest I forget the recipe, as has been the case off late)

Peanuts - 1 Cup
Coriander seeds - 1/2 Cup
Cumin seeds - 1/4 Cup
Red chilli - 5-6 (I use the Byadigi variety)
Sesame seeds - 1/8 Cup
Garlic - 8-10 cloves

Dry roast all ingredients. I roasted peanuts separately and deskinned them and garlic separately and kept aside. The rest of the ingredients can be roasted together.

Let these cool and grind them together.

This powder can be stored in the refrigerator for at least a week.

I shallow fried Kandola(aa kakarakaya)and added this as masala.I also intend to use this as curry masala for another stir fry with coconut milk ala Thai style later this week.

Veg Thai Red Curry with Brown Rice

Yet another Thai recipe! Well, its no news that I love Thai food, right? :) So does the husband, so it’s a hit in our house anytime I make it, in any format.

I am aware of the fact that the husband likes Thai food only because it looks very much like the South Indian food, especially the Thai Red curry, which is why I make quite some stuff with Thai Red Curry paste as the base. Check out my Thai Red Curry Poha recipe here.

Fresh Vegetarian lasagna, and a lot of fun!

Tell me which self-proclaimed-kitchen-goddess doesn’t dream of making fresh pasta. Well, moi aussi.
But this post is not about fresh pasta. This is about fresh lasagna, the easier one of the lot!

Couple of days ago, a friend invited a bunch of us, girlfriends over for lasagna in the evening. The evening was fun, full of laughter, conversation and great food. And I sat there and marveled as she counted her recipe of making fresh lasagna sheets. So simple, and I hadn’t tried it yet!

How to make Vegan Parmesan Cheese

*peeks into the blog*
Hello. Hi. How are you guys doing? All the four of you that visit my blog regularly ? :-)
Thanks a lot. No, really.
I’ve been away, and how! I won’t even give silly excuses on how life was busy or work was hectic or anything. I’ve been lazy. Plain lazy. And feeling a bit burnt out. Don’t ask me, of what! :-)

So to start blogging again, here is a simple post.
Something so simple, that you can make it in a jiffy.
Something so essential that your dishes will not taste the same once you start using it.
And something so nutritional yet tasty that it’ll pump you up instantly.

Hummus, the Ethiopian way

Hummus is a beauty that goes well with almost anything – bread, rotis, or as a dip, and is an all-time favourite even in our highly-Indian-food-loved household.

When I soaked the chick-peas the other night, I had something else in mind… trying out the Ethiopian Hummus.
Now, I haven’t eaten that before or even heard about it, had it not been for a friend who messaged me on my FB page asking for a recipe for this. Some reading up pointed me to some recipes and the story behind Berbere mix, and this link which had a good recipe.

Peanut Butter–Homemade

One of these days I am going to run a poll on FB and Twitter – the question is going to be – ‘Who doesn’t love Peanut Butter?’. And I am going to convince those who don’t like PB that its the best thing that has happened to mankind. Yes, I believe it is! Try it with jam for bread for an awesome breakfast. Use it as a frosting for cakes. Make brownies with this. And cookies… ummm… In short, PB is truly the best thing that has happened to mankind. :)

Well , for someone who is as crazy about PB as I am, its kind of strange that I did not know how PB tastes for the first 27 yrs of my life. I ensured that I made up for all the lost time, but yeah, the first time I tasted PB, I felt I was slipping into heaven – Peanut heaven, and I wanted to stay there. I was shuttling between HK and India then, and the only thing I ate during my time in India was PB + Jam with bread. That is how much I loved it.

One love… Garlic bread!

 

Is there anyone under this big, bright, beautiful, blue sky who doesn’t love Garlic bread? One person? Show me one person who doesn’t and I’ll make him a convert. :-D

I was lost in this big world of numerous garlic bread choices, wondering which one to make my favourite, and then my dear friend, Nandita told me how to make my own garlic bread. Its the simplest ever method to make your own garlic bread, though not from scratch.

Mortar, pestle and two smoking garlics...

Except that there is no mortar and pestle here, and its three and not two garlics, which are not smoking. You get the drift, right? :-)

Look, how cute they look!

So when I posted the pic of my mortar and pestle with some cute little garlic cloves in there, Priya thought they looked sick, and called them names. And didn’t stop there. When she visited her hometown, she got some really good-looking , plump garlic cloves, sooo plump that I almost thought they weren’t natural, which is why I was very judgemental of them.

New Home, and some Thanksgiving!

Yep, for me, Thanksgiving has come a little early. :-D There is a long list of people I have to thank for something big on this blog!

Did you notice the URL? Yes… I bought the domain – TheMealAlgorithm.com, mainly because I wanted to know how it feels to have your own domain, what with everyone having one of their own, and I having no clue on how to go about it. Well, for starters, it feels great. :-D Its been two days and I haven’t been able to get over it till now. :-)

There was some major confusion, cluelessness and mayhem before I actually bought the domain. I wasn’t sure how to start about it, and what to do and all. GoDaddy.com was recommended by everyone, but when I actually was about to buy the domain off it, there was some problem with the payment options, and I had to cancel my order.

Then I asked Nags of Edible Garden [which you should totally check out if you want to understand the nuances of food photography. Check out her blog for the tips. I did all my prop-shopping after reading how she uses her props] what she did for her domain. After talking to her and figuring out if I can host the domain on Azure, I went ahead and bought the domain from Google, which again was powered by GoDaddy.com, but the process was easier.

And then came the problem of the template. All the food bloggers’ templates I like are based on white, and I knew that was what I wanted too. But my non-existent HTML and web-designing skills didn’t let me pick and choose any template I wanted and could customize. After checking atleast ten different templates and trying them all on the blog and not liking any, I turned to Twitter. I asked for folks how they design their blog templates, and got plenty of help.

All of these guys helped me with template options, on how to customize the blog or a suggestion on how to go about getting a domain and I took the ones that applied the most to me.

Anita Menon
Mala Bhargava
Amit Agarwal
Saleem Pheku
Rads
Monika Manchanda
Shripal Gandhi
Maxdavinci
Thanks a lot, guys!

I went with Madhu’s suggestion of starting with a plain white template, and customizing it the way I wanted. And it worked great. Atleast I love my blog template, and feel comfortable coming here , to my own blog. :-)

Then came the header. I wanted a plain header, nothing fancy, but I wanted it to have a design which would imply what the blog is all about. Well, my creative abilities are again non-existed, and so I wanted to go with a simple flowchart, making something I am good at, but the husband thought of something better. Something which resembles me a lot more, and he customized it to suit this blog.

Yes, the code in the blog is his idea. He wrote it in the Visual Studio IDE, and I made the flow chart using Visio 2010. And I integrated them all using Microsoft Powerpoint 2010. And lo… the header was ready, and am in love with it!

Now that everything is ready and set, all I have to do is to get into that kitchen of mine and cook… :)

[Cross posted in my other blog – The Green Tea Evenings, which is where I write about everything except food!]

My first love…

In the kitchen, is this. My mortar and pestle.

After the initial excitement of having acquired this awesome pitcher is gone, mortar and pestle is back as my favourite item in the kitchen.
I crush garlic in this, and I staunchly believe that the only way to get the flavour out of the garlic and relish it is by freshly crushing it in a mortar and adding it directly to the dish.
I also use this to make ginger-garlic paste, crush peppers , cloves and cardamom. Basically, it is THAT one item that is most frequently used in my kitchen.
What’s yours?

Roasted Tomato puree

Once I discovered this method of making tomato puree (from N’s blog, in this awesome soup recipe) and its brilliant woody taste, I have not resorted to any other puree recipe. I use this puree in soups, for my pasta sauce, for my lasagne. In short, for everything and anything that needs tomatoes or tomato puree.

This puree keeps well in the fridge for up to a week, and longer in the freezer. I buy a kg of tomatoes at once, roast them on the stove, and store the puree in the fridge for the week’s usage , especially if I know what we would be eating that week, or if I am expecting any guests.

The beauty of this puree is that you don’t need to sieve it to remove the solids of tomato, or boil it after blending to thicken it. Because of the roasting method, the tomato is cooked/roasted at the same time, and hence does not need to be boiled. All the water content in it goes out of the tomato from the blisters it forms while being roasted.

Try this, and I promise you will never go back to regular puree.

Ingredients (6 medium tomatoes make 2 Cups of puree)

Tomatoes –6 medium tomatoes, washed

Instructions

Pierce a fork into the tomatoes and hold them on the open flame of the stove. Tilt and twist the fork to ensure that all sides of the tomato is getting roasted. After a while, you will hear pop sounds, and the skin of the tomato like it is having blisters. This means, the tomato is cooked.

Repeat this for all the tomatoes. Let them cool, and peel off the skin of these tomatoes.
Blend them in a mixer-grinder to make a tomato puree.

That beauty called Hummus!

As I was licking it away with Rotis today, I realized that I don’t have a recipe of Hummus on my blog. And which self-respecting blog doesn’t have the recipe for Hummus, tell me? :)

And so, here it is!
The much spoken about, the most loved , the healthiest and the easiest dip ever – HUMMUS!
Ta da!

Now, the recipe for hummus itself doesn’t differ from blog to blog , its the same all over. What might differ is what is added to the hummus to get a flavour after its done. I have some ideas towards the end of this post.

Ingredients(For two people, for two days)
Chick Peas – 1/2 C, soaked overnight in water
Garlic cloves – 8-10
Extra virgin olive oil – generous quantities
Sea salt – to taste
Lime juice – juice of half a lemon

Instructions
Pressure cook the chick-peas till they are soft.
Once the peas are cooled, in a mixer blender, blend all the ingredients. Drizzle olive oil to enable the blending.
The resultant mixture should have a smooth texture.

Ideas
1. I have a recipe book which talks about adding some yogurt to the chick peas while blending it. Though I am yet to try this version, its a good idea. Certainly ups the health quotient of the dip, and adds a certain tangy flavour too
2. There is a variant of Hummus which is flavoured with basil pesto. Either you can swirl in pesto after the hummus is made or blend the chick-peas with basil leaves while preparing the hummus
3. Garnish Ideas – Parsley, Red paprika powder, Ground pepper, Extra virgin olive oil, Toasted sesame seeds – Any or all of these together give a great taste to the Hummus
4. Hummus can be used as a dip for crackers, side-dish for rotis, or with bread for sandwiches.
5. I have once eaten a version of Hummus which used sesame oil instead of olive oil while blending the peas. Great flavour. And healthy too.

Make your own Chilli Flakes!

 

Am sure Domestic-Goddesses have been doing this since forever, but I just bumped into this idea, and so, here it is.

Every time my Mother-in-law visits, she makes some podis for her son – KaarraPodi, KandiPodi, ChutneyPodi. And after all those podis are done, there is always a surplus of red chillis in the house, which I almost never use. Using it in the tadkas also will take me atleast two years to completely use up all the chillis we stock.

And so I thought I’d roast them a bit, and make my own batch of chilli flakes. For the non-Indian food.

Instructions

Place the red chillis on a baking tray, and grill them for 3 minutes, or till you smell the chillis in the kitchen. :-)
Put them in a mixer-grinder jar and run them under the incher. Just once.
Just enough to mince them but not grind them.
Store in an airtight container.

Pesto!

 

The first time I ate risotto with pesto swirled in at N’s house is a memorable day. It was like the food was singing to me, in a very pesto-ish tone, and a green hue. Yes, its possible to feel all this and much more with food. Especially, with anything related to basil. Its like smelling spring. Somehow reminding me of childhood(though Italian Basil didn’t feature in my childhood food stories, that’s the whole magic!).

The first time I made my own batch of pesto was another memorable day. Those were the initial days of me getting back into my kitchen, and the minute I made the pesto batch , I felt a very gloating Domestic Goddess like feeling, something was swelling in my heart, and something was smelling good in my house, wait , that has to be the fresh smell of Basil in my house! :-)

I’ve made pesto in smaller quantities ever since, but only off late did I start making big batches of pesto, and started freezing them in ice-trays. To eliminate any chance of my pesto ruining itself and catching fungus. And to ensure that I have pesto stashed anytime of the month/year. Its not like we have to freeze all our herbs in India, but Italian Basil is still not available in abundance here, and hence these desperate measures.

If you are an Indian, especially a South Indian and are used to make those chutneys for the Idlis and Dosas , then you are already half-familiar with the pesto making process. It is basically a basil based chutney. But with cheese. There are many variations of Pesto. You can refer to these links for some of them -

Jamie’s Pesto
Nags’ pesto recipe

Ingredients
Basil leaves – Washed, a bunch
Pine nuts – Toasted, a handful
Extra virgin olive oil – 4-5 tbsps
Garlic – 2-4 cloves
Sea salt – to taste

Instructions
Ground all the ingredients in a mixer-grinder , drizzling the olive oil generously. The resultant mixture should have a smooth texture.
Pour scoops of this into the ice-tray and freeze it. Once frozen, remove them and store in zip lock bags for future use.

Use one cube of pesto while cooking a meal for two.

Note
1. There are some variations of pesto in which you can use toasted almonds instead of pine nuts.
2. You can do away with the parmesan cheese. Its quite expensive in India, and I prefer it fresh on my pasta, not in the pesto. I don’t normally put any cheese in my pesto.

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. :)

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!

Winey tales & Winemaking – Day 1

I tasted my first ever home-made wine when I was exactly 18 yrs old. :) It was when my married-cousin(the word married is important here. In our family, girls are allowed to do anything they want only after they are married:) ) decided that I was old enough to have wine, that she shared the wine she made with me, and I, in turn, shared it with my 15-yr old brother. We’d drink it chup-chup-ke coz alcohol and daaru-talk was strictly prohibited in our house and that is how we finished the whole bottle Akka shared with me. But then, Mom always knew we were drinking it, and she surprisingly didn't have a problem with it, may be because she thought that since it was home-made, it wouldn’t be alcoholic or something. Back then, I didn’t know what getting high meant, but looking back now, I am almost sure that did give us a little high. It was either the alcohol in the wine or the sugar-high, but it sure did feel good. Yeah… I started young :P

The next time I drank wine was around 10 yrs later, I fell in love with it. It was the sweet port wine that S got from Goa, and that became my sole reason to visit Goa henceforth. It was the one thing I asked people to get me from Goa, and the only thing I carried every time I visited that place. After this interest in wine, I tried the wines made by the Nasik wine yards, but never quite liked the taste of any of them. All of them were too sweet and acidic to my taste, and I stuck to my port wine, till Sangria happened! :)

The first-ever time I tasted this nectar was in Hong Kong, in one of the organic cafes of Sohos, and that was it! I got hooked. Seeing my excitement every time the word Sangria was uttered, the husband took it upon himself to make Sangria for me at home, and with practice he grew great at it. He also could not get the taste of the Sangria we first had, but nevertheless, it was the best I had in all of Hyd. The juices he mixes to the wines, and the powders to add spice, make it unique and tasty every time he makes it, and this became the preferred way to have wine in our house, for us both and for the guests we entertain.
After that initial escapade with home-made-wine, the thought didnt even cross my head for years. Only when S told me that his aunt was a master-wine-maker, and that she used to supply the whole family with bottles and bottles of her-much-famed-wine, did the thought of making my own wine strike me. On one of the family outings, I asked the dear lady how she did it, and if she would be kind enough to teach me how to make it. She agreed almost immediately, and that got the whole family excited! (Yeah, even I didn’t know we were a family of Bewdas :P ) This talk happened in June 2010, when she was about to leave to the US, and since it wasn’t the right season for grapes, we decided to postpone the grand activity till Dec, when she returns and when the grapes are sweet.

Its almost December now, and she will be coming back soon. As much as I am excited to try it with her, the little imp in me wanted to try her own version of wine. The visit to the farmer’s market yielded in a good purchase of grapes, the time seemed right and hence this attempt.
I was clear on a couple of things before I started to make my wine -

1. I was not going to make the simple recipe that Akka used to make wine with. Hers was to add 1 kg of grapes with 1 kg of sugar and one packet of yeast. And keep it in a plastic bucket for a week, and then sieve it and bottle it. Simple it did sound, but the taste would still be that of grape juice which is not what I wanted.

2. S is allergic to the sulphites in the wine. We discovered this after he fell sick every single time we had wine during our stay in Hong Kong, and with a little research and experimentation, we discovered it had to do with the wine. Hence, I was certain that I was not going to use the sulphite tablets in my wine.
3. All the recipes I read online for wine-making had yeast in it. Now, I wasn’t sure where to get wine yeast in Hyd, and didn’t have the patience to wait till I get it. Since mine is not on an enterprise level, I wanted a recipe which did not use any yeast, and I got this one, which I followed.
I mashed the 1/2 kg grapes with my hands, and removed the seeds as much as I could and filled the juice and pulp into the two broad-mouthed-bottles I had cleaned earlier.

Fingers-crossed with anticipation, I am going to wait for the juice and pulp to ferment for the 7 days. The next step is to remove the mold, dilute the juice with two parts of distilled water, and add sugar. It would ferment more later. All this fermentation would happen with the yeast and bacteria present in the grapes alone, with nothing external. I love the fact that this would be almost-natural.

Once I see that this step is crossed without any hitches, am gonna get more grapes and start a second batch.
God, please let this experiment passs, and most of all, please give us the restraint to not drink it before its completely done. That is for the next couple of months! Sigh! :)