Spaghetti Marinara with Chickpea Sweet Potato Balls

These Chickpea and Sweet Potato Balls were actually meant to go into sandwiches as burgers. But the first time round I didn't freeze them enough and made a huge burger out of them which threatened to disintegrate all the time I was trying to fry it. It had to be topped off with melted cheese and sauce to make it stay together. So I decided to fix it with a binding agent- mashed rice and top it off with bread crumbs. The Marinara sauce was an experiment I made earlier this week. This was my first attempt at a homemade pasta sauce. The only other time is when I tried to create my own mushrooms in white sauce dish in the first month that I started cooking. Anyone with the least experience in cooking can tell you that a homemade pasta sauce is definitely not level 1 cooking. So you can imagine that the only reason that mock alfredo sauce tasted good was because of all the cream I put in.

Marinara Sauce is one of those 3-4 ingredient recipes which are a quick fix and a much healthier option to store bought sauces. I flicked this recipe out of the New York Times cooking section and modified it. One piece of warning however is that Indian Tomatoes do not work as well as you want them to in this recipe because they are much more sour than their international counterparts. A good idea maybe to replace them with cherry tomatoes or attempt a re-calibration of the taste with a little sugar or ketchup.  The chickpea and sweet potato balls are my own concoction based on some taste memories of aloo tikkis.

Also spaghetti marinara is not a very traditional combination. The marinara sauce freezes well and can be typically used over pizzas and possibly smaller pastas. In fact after I made this sauce, I tasted it for the first time over fusilli pasta. But bolognese is something I cannot make, so I guess this was my way of making Spaghetti Bolognese with meatballs.

On my Kitchen counter:

Spaghetti

For the marinara sauce:

3 medium sized tomatoes

4-5 garlic cloves

Olive oil- 3 tbsp

Salt

Oregano

Chilli Flakes

Mixed seasoning (Italian)-optional

Ketchup- 2 tsp or Sugar 2 tsp

For the sweet potato balls:

2 sweet potato tubers

Handful of chickpeas

Chaat masala

Salt

Red chilly powder

Garam masala powder

Breadcrumbs

Cooked rice

Vegetable oil to shallow fry

Boil the chickpeas and sweet potatoes each for 13-15 minutes until soft and well done.

Mash together and add salt, add the chaat masala, red chilly powder and garam masala powder.

Add the cooked rice and bring together to a moulding consistency. 

Roll it in breadcrumbs and shallow fry over medium heat in vegetable oil.

Keep turning them so they cook evenly.

Can freeze left overs as burger raw material or as pre-made patties/bullets.

Spaghetti must be placed in a pot of boiling salted water with a few drops of oil.

Cook for 10-12 minutes. 

Drain and shock with cold water.

Mash together the tomatoes with a little water. Keep them slightly whole to ensure a good texture.

Chop up the garlic cloves.

In a pan, heat up the olive oil.

Saute the garlic cloves until they turn slightly brown.

Add the tomatoes and the juice.

Also add the oregano,salt, chilli flakes and the mixed seasoning now.

If you are going to add sugar, do that as well now. But I lean towards the sweetness of ketchup.

Let the water evaporate and the sauce start to thicken.

When the oil and the sauce start to turn red, add the ketchup.

Keep stirring to prevent burning and the sauce will continue to thicken.

Once the sauce comes together and the tomatoes are cooked through and turned a bright red, take off the heat.

Once cooled, the leftover sauce can be placed in the freezer for future use.

What better to start a Sunday Morning than Truffles

The chocolates I like the best are Belgian Chocolates and the ones I can eat any number of are chocolate truffles. Truffles are the creamiest and most melt in the mouth chocolates I have ever had. Even when I was a cash strapped student on an exchange trip in Europe, I found money to bring back quite a few boxes of chocolate truffles from Belgium.

So last week when a chocolate craving occurred simultaneously with a cooking bug, I decided to make my own. When I went hunting for chocolate truffle recipes, I found a blog with a bunch of easy to use recipes with clear instructions. It's called ' How to Cook That' and has a bunch of recipes that I would like to try out later. However, the one which I used seemed idiot proof enough for me to follow without any disasters occurring. :). This one was from Simply Recipes.com.

So I went with standard flavoring that's vanilla, you can substitute with a bunch of alcoholic/ non alcoholic extracts or solids like mint and such.  The coating was with cocoa powder and grated nuts (walnuts, pista and almonds).

So you will need:

1/2 cup Cream ( you can use heavy cream if you get it, I just used fresh cream)

226 grams Chocolate chips ( I used the last of my Ghirardelli milk chocolate ones- you can use semi sweet or bitter sweet if you like ) 

1 tsp of vanilla extract 

Cocoa powder

Assorted nuts

How to make it:

Place the cream in a heavy bottomed pan and bring to the boil. 

If you plan to add solid flavoring like cinnamon or mint, add at this point. Once you bring the cream off the stove, strain it and take the cream. Bring to the boil again and proceed with the recipe. If adding extract, do so at the next step.

Place the chocolate chips into another bowl and pour the cream onto the chocolate. Mix gently to melt and combine the chocolate. If it does not melt and combine completely, use the double boiler method to create a smooth ganache.

Add the flavouring now and combine well.

Place the mixture in the refrigerator for 2 hours until it solidifies. 

Spoon out small quantities and roll into balls or other shapes. 

Allow to set again overnight this time in the refrigerator.

The next morning coat the truffles in grated nuts or cocoa powder thoroughly and consume or store up to a week in the fridge for later consumption.

Don't forget to take pictures to show off these deceptively professional looking and tasting yet amazingly easy to make truffles!

Weekenders

This weekend started with a trip to the movies with Yennai Arindhal. Ajith and Trisha look very good and Arun Vijay is brilliant, that's about the best thing I can say about the movie. Also the fact that the sight of some watercolors in the movie, inspired me to learn a new technique of painting yesterday. I figure that Gautam Menon has a serious case of writer's block. While I am with him on the idea of making trilogies and cop movies, I cannot presume to understand why he chooses to tell the same story in the same fashion over and over again. I can only say I am glad that I watched it at a discounted ticket price.

'Single Wife' - I finished reading this book yesterday morning. Thanks to my recent reading habits, Scribd app chose to recommend this book to me. Grace is a creative, intelligent woman who is very satisfied with her lot in life. Things change when her husband walks out of the house one day. Initially she suspects that it is like one of his usual disappearances, when he returns after a few days of being incommunicado. Each time he goes missing, based on his reaction on returning, she keeps whittling down the people she informs about his being MIA. This time, she distances herself from the occurrence and refuses to talk about it to her friends and family, still pretending like he is around. She begins secretly investigating his life, discovering things that she did not expect and does not want to know. On the other hand, she misses all the information about her husband on the media and therefore remains puzzled by certain gifts and surprises that she receives. The novel is about her choices and how she decides to proceed with her life.

Did some baking experiments over the weekend. Baked 4 cookies a batch to get a feel for my oven as they call it. Ended up with some burnt, some crisp, some perfect and some soft. I made nan khathai biscuits this Saturday.  Nan Khathais are considered an Afghani/ Iranian invention- nan obviously meaning bread like the butter naans we eat. Khathai is debatable, some people believe it stands for Cathay- meaning China. The best thing about this cookie is its unique taste and texture. Unique taste- because of the cardamom, ghee and yoghurt and texture because it is crunchy out and melty inside.

To make these Indian Shortbreads as Jamie Oliver calls them you will need:
1/2 cup ghee or 1/2 cup soft butter- I used ghee
3/4 cup  powdered sugar
1.5 cups maida
1/4 cup gram flour
1/4 tsp cardamom powder & 1/4 tsp nutmeg powder or 1/2 tsp cardamom powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp of yoghurt
1-2 tsp of milk/water
chopped pista nuts (optional)

The method:
Cream together the sugar and ghee to a smooth paste.
Once it is mixed thoroughly and the sugar has dissolved, add maida, gram flour, cardamom powder and baking soda and knead together.
Add the yoghurt to bring together.
Add water/milk only if the dough appears too dry.
Refrigerate for a couple of hours to make rolling easy.
Roll medium sized balls of dough between your palms
Arrange at a decent distance from each other on an ungreased baking tray. Decent distance because we will press them down and they will expand when baked. Ungreased because we don't want it to burn from the bottom.
Press down criss cross patterns with a fork and slightly flatten the balls.
Top with some chopped pista nuts.
Bake in a pre heated oven at 190 degrees celsius for abt 10-15 minutes. They shouldn't brown on top. Just allow them to brown along the edges. I had to watch these like a hawk.
When you take them out of the oven, they will be soft. Leave them to cool on the tray for a couple of minutes before transferring them to the rack.
They will eventually cool and harden completely.

I spent the first part of Sunday lazing in Om Made Cafe eating their yummy brunch- I really liked their spaghetti and their roasted corn spread. Actually, all the tapenades and bruschettas were really tasty and refreshing as was my blueberry lemonade. They allow you to lounge there from 12 pm -4 pm. It's a good spread and a relaxing place to hang out. The latter part of the day was  used for my watercolor and charcoal experiments mentioned in the first paragraph. I finally figured how to use my watercolors instead of going over them with a heavy hand, I never knew that you had to do a coat of plain water before putting in the colors until yesterday.

Here are some of the results:

Odds and Ends

This is a brain clean up exercise, there are a lot of half page or one paragraph blog entries in my head that do not justify a whole post to themselves. It's also a blog clean up exercise, to get rid of some of the headers that will haunt me some day later because I would be unable to recollect what I wished to write about them. This happens to me very often especially with short stories, where I forget the story that I meant to write and write a whole new one altogether.

On my bookshelf this week, my obsession with food related books continues. This week has seen me reading three novels all of which have a strong vein of food and food related activities associated with them. The other recurring vein in all of them is that of loss. Probably, these two are so interwoven as we associate food with comfort, it is a source of consolation that people turn to in times of depression, sadness, separation and any other form of trauma. It is quite interesting also that there are specific traditions relating food to death, in cultures all over the world. From the way the cooking is done, to the dishes that can and cannot be served and feeding one's ancestors souls, food and death have a quirky association, albeit a tad melancholic.

The Kitchen Daughter starts off in a funeral. The heroine might or might not have Asperger's syndrome. She exhibits poor social skills and has a dysfunctional relationship with her sister. Her parents' sudden death in an accident and the subsequent disagreements with her sister about the disposal of their assets, sends her to the safe refuge of her kitchen. There she cooks her Nonna's favourite Ribolita ( Bread soup) which in the wake of its enticing flavoursome smell, conjures up Nonna as well. The rest of the book is about the new people she meets, how she associates with them as well as the shadowy remains of people she summons from their recipes. This book seriously debates the question of whether the label of syndrome associated with mental challenges limits a person and prevents them from achieving their potential or aids them in getting timely help. A well structured book that is enjoyable to read.

Aftertaste- One of the heroines I was able to relate to the most. She is a chef and has her own Italian restaurant and a newborn. Little does she know that one bout of anger and a fight with her husband's paramour will lead to her world collapsing around her ears. This is a story of losing everything and then attempting to build everything up from scratch. It's quite interesting how she goes about it and the realizations she has along the way.

Bread Alone- This was an average book according to me. I did not like Wynter at all. I found her a very indecisive wishy washy heroine. It was supposed to be a story about finding oneself. I felt that she was the same one dimensional character she was when the book began. All of the heroes were lackadaisical. No one person really sticks in your mind except maybe for Linda, the bread maker. She is so rude and angry, but at least she's something, so you remember her. Bread Alone felt like a poor man's chick flick. 

Interesting products I discovered thanks to the wonders of advertising:

Zip SIP brought to you by Aditya Birla My Universe. This is a GUI aided dummy's guide to investment. You answer a bunch of questions, assess your risk profile and then it offers you a portfolio of funds (ABG among others) to invest in.

Hotstar live- Star content hosted on the web, happy to see a netflix like site in India, limited content right now, but hopefully it will ultimately become an option for binge watching

Italian Hot Chocolate is my favorite hot chocolate in the whole world. The first time I had it was at a small railway cafe in Italy. It was on a cold evening while waiting for a train. Italian Hot Chocolate is pretty much melted chocolate. It literally coats your insides as you consume it and fills you with warmth and happiness.

Recipe goes as follows:

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate 70% or higher

1 1/2 cups whole milk

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons corn starch

Vanilla Essence- 1 tsp 

Place a small quantity of milk along with chopped chocolate/ chocolate chips on really low heat in a heavy bottomed saucepan.

Allow to start melting, once the chocolate has melted completely, add milk, sugar and vanilla essence. Whisk corn starch into it.

Another experiment this week was butterscotch ice-cream. It was simpler than I thought reducing down condensed milk along with milk powder and sugar. The powdered butterscotch was then added after taking it off the heat and allowing it to cook in the residual heat. It's then frozen and blended until creamy and then frozen again before consumption.
The measure of ingredients:

- 2 1/2 cups or 500 ml of full fat milk.
- 1/2 cup condensed milk
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1/4 cup milk powder
- 3 heaped tsp butterscotch (or 1/2 tsp butterscotch essence)
- Yellow food colour (optional) - See more at: http://www.loveisinmytummy.com/2013/03/butterscotch-ice-cream.html#sthash.bMbrNygp.dpuf

2.5 cups milk
0.5 cup condensed milk
0.25 cup sugar
0.25 cup milk powder
3 heaped Tbsp Butterscotch chips (powdered)

- 2 1/2 cups or 500 ml of full fat milk.
- 1/2 cup condensed milk
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1/4 cup milk powder
- 3 heaped tsp butterscotch (or 1/2 tsp butterscotch essence)
- Yellow food colour (optional) - See more at: http://www.loveisinmytummy.com/2013/03/butterscotch-ice-cream.html#sthash.bMbrNygp.dpuf

Battambang, Cambodia- A Pleasant Side Note

Battambang,Cambodia is a place of contrasts. It is located in the lush countryside surrounded by villages, and yet is the second largest urban center in Cambodia next to Phnom Penh.  It has been a center of trade and development for a very long while. Battambangian rice is prized all over Cambodia and locals can be found transporting sacks of it to their respective locations. This town was the cause of a great deal of strife between Thailand and Cambodia with Thailand seizing control over the territory until resolved by the Allied Forces after World War II.

Battambang even has a story about its name. It means "Loss of Stick". There is a statue dedicated to this story on the outskirts of the town and you encounter this smiling villain as you enter or leave the town. Yes, you read that right, there is a statue to the villain of the piece. The story goes that there was a king who ruled over this province. One day a cowherd discovered a stick which gave him superpowers and thus he was able to overthrow the king and establish himself on  the throne. It was then prophesied that a holy man on a white horse would lead to his defeat. The cowherd went about systematically destroying all such holy men and at last a holy man did arrive on a white horse and steal his stick. It was none other than the son of the deposed king. The cowherd was left to lament his loss of a kingdom due to the loss of a stick leading to the name Battambang. The whole town is dotted with such strange statues, one of which looked like a mixture of Buddha, Vishnu and Shiva.

The first thing that strikes you about Battambang is how almost every hotel is located on the river and almost every government building most definitely is. You can find the remains of French shop fronts huddled over the present day shops, most of which seem to be selling wooden shrines or complicated cross stitch templates. The cross stitch templates were put into extensive use by the shopkeepers we encountered at the Psar Nath or the Central Market. The Central Market in Battambang is definitely reminiscent of the one in Phnom Penh, both built by French, though at a smaller scale and closer to the ground. The market was different from the ones in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap that were definitely positioned towards the tourists. This one was all for the locals. Even before you walk in you are assaulted by a variety of sights and smells- some familiar and some strange. Peeled coconuts, black long fish laid out in rows, vegetable sellers, people selling seafood crispies- the list goes on and of course like any self respecting tropical market it has its share of mango, tamarind and amla vendors on the street.

 So, lot of tourists don't come to this town, but here are some reasons why you shouldn't give Battambang a miss.

1. The Norrie or the Bamboo Train- The remains of a past era when according to my tuk tuk driver and guide it took 17 hours to go from Battambang to Phnom Penh. This now runs only from Battambang to a tiny village about 20 minutes. It's a single track train which now runs on a motor but was previously operated by hand. When two trains heading in opposite directions meet, the one with the lighter load has passengers disembark and they dismantle the train to allow the other to pass. A bumpy and beautiful ride.

2. Beautiful side trips on the countryside on a tuk-tuk to Wat Ek Phnom and the Bat Caves: I didn't make it to the top of Wat Ek Phnom. But the sunset view of the bat cave and the hourly ritual of bats leaving the cave is one no one should miss. There are a lot of people who annoy the bats by whistling and clapping to disrupt their movement. But the bats inevitably find their way back to the flock. We witnessed a great purple sky sunset and the exodus of workers into packed trucks and carts from the factories around Battambang.

3. Take pictures along the river and walk. You can find a play ground for children right next to the river and benches if you want to rest your feet. Feast your eyes on French architecture which turns out to be the Electricity Board or the bank. Take squiggly light pictures of the pretty lit up hotels on the river side.

4. See how real people live. This is not a town filled with tourists. You see real people going about their lives and you will probably be one of the attractions if you are from a non-European country.

5. Last but not the least, go for the food. Jaan Bai is a restaurant run by underpriveleged children and serves yummy food even for vegetarians. It was some of the best food I have had anywhere in the world. And one should not miss trying these miniature Battambangian oranges. They are awesomely sweet and thirst quenching, perfect for the hot days in Cambodia.

The best way to get to Battambang from Siem Reap or Phnom Penh is by mini bus. I tried the bus and it was average but the mini bus was more comfy especially if you travelled up front. Hotels can help make your bookings if you call the reception in advance and most of them also pick you up from the bus stand. All in all Battambang is the perfect mix of urban and rural, tourism and life in general which makes it a great break for a couple of days.

Sweet Treats and Great Conversation

This weekend was all about nostalgia for me. I met up with my old gang of friends. We have managed to stay in touch with each other post engineering college, through ups and downs and everything in between. With everyone getting busier by the day, we only now manage to meet on special occasions. Our special occasion this weekend was J having a baby. We congregated at J's house for lunch and a pre- baby meetup. We had a wonderful time, reminiscing, laughing at remembered inside jokes and feeling like we were young, hopeful and back in college again for a time.

So, since I was visiting for a special occasion, I wanted to carry something interesting for dessert. I found this on an acquaintance's blog. So recipe credits to loveisinmytummy.com. These cinnamon cakes were perfect for dessert, not too sweet, soft and crumbly inside and a little crispy on the outside. So the idea is that they are baked like muffins but the batter has a lot of similarities with donut batter. Of course, cinnamon can only make things taste better, even diet food like awful oatmeal porridge. So I used lashings and lashings of it in this dessert, especially since I didn't have to grind it, used the great tasting Keya Cinnamon Powder. This dessert with a name like Cinnamon Donut Muffins, it sounds particularly Enid Blytonish. The other reason I like this dessert is because it uses melted better (yes! no pre planning needed) and granulated sugar, perfect for last minute or in my case late night baking.

So these muffins are quite attractive after you roll them in the cinnamon flavored sugar because they shine like burnished golden brown. But when you finish baking them, they look almost like an off white. Anyway, here goes the recipe without any more ado, brought to you in a hopefully? attractive fashion, thanks to the pic monkey recipe card tutorial.

All done and ready to go!

Philadelphia in Food

I spent the best part of this summer in Philadelphia, working. Like all my travels and most of my posts, this is all about the food I experienced in this very friendly city.

Lunches at Potbelly and Corner Bakery.. Enjoying a hurried mushroom melt and trying to eat crunchy chips quietly in a client meeting. Actually finding choices, vegetarian dishes I like in the office cafeteria..

Madelines with my friend.. Midnight snack and accompaniment to long overdue catch ups..Roti Canai at Banana Leaf with a foodie co worker.. Conversation was better than the food.. Missing home and succumbing to Philadelphia Chutney Company.. Living to regret the moment of weakness. 

Enjoying my share of farmers markets on Rittenhouse Square.. Knowing basil lemonade Popsicle could taste so good and getting complimented on my 'spring' shirt. Tasting veggie hot dogs as you listen to weird music at the Old st market.. Discovering you happened up on to the Old st market by mistake.. Trekking on purpose to the Ben Franklin parkway for the Fair on Parkway and getting disappointed with the 2 food trucks.

Experimental tasting with tasty kake and orange fair trade chocolate... Loving the icecreams at Franklin Fountain. Veggie burgers at Devil's Alley and Hip City Veg. Vegan cupcakes and OJ at Animo.. Falling in love with wok stir fries at Honeygrow on my first day and coming back many times.. Finishing up with a Smore melt in the mouth cookie from Insomnia Cookies..

Stumbling on to a perfect Italian place BYOB like most in Philly that I can't remember the name of because I went around looking at so many menus before I walked into one. Discovering super relaxed fine dining down the road from your house.. Having a Parisian breakfast at Parc Rittenhouse looking at the park, feeling Parisian with all the dogs around. Trying to repeat the experience at Devon and failing miserably. 

Having one pastry of each kind with Mom at Metropolitan bakery. Trying mojito icecream at a weird gelataria on 20th street.. Buying my friend tiramisu from Miel. Marvelling and getting disgusted simultaneously over chocolate pasta at Max Brenner. Having had too much of a sweet thing, biting into red chillies at Han' s Dynasty. Finally trying and liking Indian food in the US at Indeblue. Realizing a childhood obsession with Dr. Seuss having French toast breakfast at Green Eggs and Ham

Birthdays- Reine de Saba/Queen of Sheba cake

Predictably, as the title goes, this post is about birthdays. Birthdays were the most special days when you were a kid. Diwali and Fancy Dress competitions aside, it was the day you could wear color dress to school and hopefully given probability was on your side and there were no other birthdays in your class, you would be the only one. Everyone at school outdid themselves trying to think of what chocolate they would bring that year and all those with birthdays outside the school year bemoaned their loss. As we grew older, chocolates were replaced by small gifts like pencils and erasers. I remember myself giving away a glittery eraser ball which I bought in Bhutan, which did less of its job and did more of looking pretty.  There were also those times when you could celebrate your birthday in school, get your parents to bring your cake and cut it in class with all your friends, it was always awesome to get a free period in addition to cake.

At home, I had a birthday party every year all the way from year one until I think I was 12 years old. I had a bunch of friends over and games and cake and snacks. The highlight of my evening was always the bread balls that my mom made. I made them myself twice- once when I was in France and once when I was in Delhi, they are in my head very close to soul food, because it is comfort food closely associated with happy memories for me. I always tried to grab a few before the guests came in.

Anyway, all snacks aside, coming to the most important part of birthdays- cakes, I don't remember too many of my childhood cakes. I remember one Bugs Bunny Cake, the resemblance was too obvious to ignore. I had cake less frequently for my birthday and more frequently for fun. So, this birthday, I decided to put my new found interest in baking to test and make myself a birthday cake. 

That is the story of how I came to make Julia Child's Reine de Saba  or "Queen of Sheba cake". It was apparently the first French cake that she tasted and fell in love with. I was feeling particularly brave when I embarked on this bake. It helped that a lot of home cooks all over the world had tried this recipe and had a lot of advice and warnings. It was a bit of a longish process to make this cake. There was a lot of mise en place involved. But the final product is so totally worth it. It of course followed the original Julia Child recipe, which was helpfully posted at http://theculinarytravelguide.com/2012/06/13/the-jc100-reine-de-saba/

On my kitchen counter:

113 g baking chocolate- I used dark

2 Tbsp of fresh brewed coffee decoction

113g butter (softened at room temperature)

2/3 cup + 1 tbsp granulated sugar 

3 eggs- yolk and white separated

Pinch of salt

1/3 cup ground almonds

1/2 tsp almond extract- I replaced with vanilla as I didn't read the recipe properly

1/2 cup cake flour- involves substituting a Tbsp of all purpose flour with corn starch (sift it)

How you go about making it:

1. Grease 8 inch cake pan and line with parchment paper.

2. Place chocolate and 2 tbsp of coffee in a small pan and cover it. Place over a larger pan with simmering water until the chocolate just starts to melt. If you leave it too long, it will burn, so take it off and allow it to melt gradually.

3. Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy and beat with egg yolks.

4. Beat egg whites and salt to a soft peak and add sugar and beat to stiff peaks ( culinary trivia- this is a french method of baking, which leavens the cake without use of baking powder or baking soda)

5. Add chocolate which is now melted to a smooth consistency to mixture in step 3. Add the ground almonds and extract and mix well. Fold in egg white and cake flour alternately one fourth by one fourth.

6. Preheat oven to 180 degree celsius. Place batter in cake pan and push up along the circumference. Bake for 25 minutes until circumference hardens and cake is still a little oily when tested in the middle with a needle.

This is the best part of the recipe- Glacage au Chocolat ( Chocolate butter Icing)

- 57 g baking chocolate- again dark

- 2 tbsp fresh brewed coffee

- 5 tbsp unsalted butter

- Bowl filled with ice cubes and water covering them

Use same procedure mentioned in step 2 to melt chocolate to a smooth mixture. Add butter tbsp by tbsp and beat to mix well. Beat over ice and water until it cools to spreading consistency. Spread over the cake with a spatula. 

Now your cake is all shiny and ready to eat. Makes for a perfect birthday cake.

Dum Aloo- Saturday Special

Over the weekend, we had guests at home. So of course, in anticipation of this, my dormant cooking cells decided to get enthusiastic about cooking. My mother made a safe bet with mutter paneer, so I opted to get a little experimental and make a recipe that I have been reading about often- Dum Aloo Punjabi. There are so many variations of this dish, so I went through a million recipes before I hybridized the following one and then anyway veered away from what I decided. I had help too from an expert cook who was one of the guests, so she tasted my in progress dish and gave me some ideas about what I should do to make it taste better. So finally, I was happy to make a tasty dish out of it. It tasted better with dosas according to most of us than with rotis for some reason.

Start with the masala powder. Powder together 2 tbsp of coriander seeds, 1 tsp of jeera, one clove, a little cardamom and cinammon until it is a fine powder.

Soak and slightly cook about 10 cashew nuts in hot water. Grind to a fine paste. Chop up two onions finely. Puree 3 tomatoes which have been boiled in hot water and peeled. Cook the potatoes in a pressure cooker for about 2 whistles of the cooker or until boiled firmly. Then saute potatoes in oil until light brown all over the surface.

In a flat bottomed pan, add about 3 tbsp of oil and saute bay leaf+onion+ginger garlic paste, until  the onion turns completely brown. Add tomatoes and saute until the soften. Add cashew paste, above ground masala powder. Add turmeric and chilly powder depending on how spicy you want it. Also add salt and a pinch of kitchen king masala if you have some. Add two spoons of curd (Some dum aloo recipes are based completely on curd and have no tomatoes at all. But I didn't like the idea so much considering I don't like curd so much. But this curd was added as a fix to make the dish a little sour and bring balance to the additional spice it needed. and some water to combine. Allow it to boil until the raw smell goes away and the masala combines well. Add potatoes to the mixture and allow to soak on low flame for sometime. Take it off the heat and serve hot.

In other food related news, I finished reading the book, As Always Julia. It's a tome of a book, that I happily bought for a buck in the discount shelves outside the Strand Book Store in New York. It is a compilation of letters between Avis De Voto and Julia Child. It feels like when you are reading this book, that you are going through the whole experience of publishing Mastering the Art of French Cooking with them. It's a great book also to understand the then political and social environment albeit from a Democratic point of view. Also both of them were excellent at French and tended to lapse into it in the written form quite often. So it was good practice to read and understand French as well.

Mushroom Kurma and Ghee Rice

My mom is very suspicious of Mushrooms. She does not like buying them, but I pain her so much that she gives in and gets me for them anyway. She does not cleaning or cutting them. She just about likes eating them. So if there are mushrooms in the house, I am the nominated cook, cleaner, chief bottle washer.

I love ghee rice and mushroom kurma because the acidity and sourness of the kurma sets off the bland base of the ghee rice. However, the coconut in both of these dishes can make it quite a heavy dish. A siesta becomes inevitable once you have this combo for lunch.

Mushroom Kurma-

Ingredients: 

Onion-1

Tomato-1

Ginger Garlic Paste- 1 1/2 tsp

Oil- 4-5 tsp

Salt

Chilli Powder- 2 tsp

Garam Masala-1/2 tsp

Jeera Powder- 1/2 tsp

Coriander Powder-1/2 tsp

Turmeric- a pinch

Coconut milk- 50 ml

Lemon juice-2 tsp

Seasoning-

Bay Leaf

Saunf

Cinnamon

Method:

1. Dice/ grate onion and tomato to fine pieces

2. Take a kadai/wok and pour oil into it

3. After the oil heats up, add onions and fry till golden

4. Add ginger garlic paste to the mixture and fry till raw smell goes away

5. Add tomatoes and saute till soft

6. Add all the masala powders except salt and cook until the moisture is removed

7. Add finely chopped mushrooms and cook for 5 min

8. Add salt to the mixture and cook for 5 more minutes

9. After the mushroom wilts, add coconut milk. 

10. Dilute with water if necessary and bring to the boil.

11. Remove from flame and add seasoning and lemon juice and mix well

Ghee Rice

Ingredients

Basmati Rice- 1 cup

Coconut milk-1 cup

Water-1-1 1/2 cup depending on rice quality

Ghee- 2 tsp

Seasoning:

Bayleaf

Cardamom

Cinnamon

Clove

Saunf

Green Chilli-2 slit lengthwise

Method:

1. Wash the basmati rice well and place in pressure cooker. 

2. Add coconut milk and water.

3. Add ghee to the mixture and mix well.

4. After the first whistle from the cooker, reduce flame and allow to cook for 7-8 minutes.

5. Remove from flame and add seasoning sauted in 1 tsp of ghee. Mix well before serving.

Peas Parantha

One of the first dishes that I created and experimented on my own with, did not learn from my mom and actually managed to add to her repertoire. She has of course improved on it and perfected it. It was pretty cool because I figured the recipe mostly by taste. I had it at some restaurant that I can't even recollect now and wanted to make it at home badly enough to figure out what went into it.

It was also the parantha on which I perfected the art of making nice, neatly rounded ones, I still can't make round rotis. I noticed the way all the parantha shop guys made paranthas like modaks and picking off the extra doughy bits to make a evenly filled parantha. I can safely say I have mastered the art of repeatedly rolling out beautiful paranthas.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup peas

Jeera powder- 1 tsp

Coriander powder- 1 tsp

2-3 green chillies

Salt to taste

Fresh coriander leaves

Ginger- small piece

2-3 pods garlic

Chapathi dough

Method:

1. Chop green chillies into fine pieces

2. Boil peas for 4-5 minutes on a pan with water, until soft.

3. Drain the water and place peas in mixer grinder jar along with green chillies.

4. Add all masalas and grind to a paste like consistency.

5. Add finely chopped fresh coriander leaves and garlic and ginger.

6. Make balls out of chapathi dough, make a hollow space with your fingers and place stuffing. Close the round and roll out into a parantha.

7. Place on pre heated tava, add oil on sides and surface and cook till brown. Repeat  on the other side.