Experiments in the Kitchen: Been There, Done That

Greek festive cake

2011-12-30T22:28:00.004+05:30

While growing up, Christmas was the most muted of festivals. I remember it as the time when we got this sudden windfall of a week's holiday in winter before the grind for the final school exams began. We put it to good use. A Lego manger or a building with a spire denoting a church was set-up, paper wings were stuck on the Lego women (and men) and we ostentatiously helped with the cake. Even 25 years back, the cake had been institutionalised as the sign of Christmas. Local shops had a dozen plastic wrapped "plum" cakes set out and those of us who had bake-savvy Mothers, had one baked at home. We had the enviable job of chopping the dry fruits. More of the fruits went into our mouths than into the cake, but it was a very fruity version nonetheless. My mother used to bake hers in a pressure cooker. A triumph of her skills, which I have never been able to replicate without her supervision. This year, my husband (clever man!) made a trip to Berlin during Advent. The German Christmas markets being in full swing, he obliged me by getting a real Dresdner Stollen. A kilo of it. I am so thrilled. Christmas fell on a Sunday this year. And with a 6 day working week for me, it passed me by very silently. Making a cake though still remained as the most celebratory moment of Christmas. I baked a Choreki, the Greek festive sweet bread made as a braid. The recipe was from the estimable New Complete Book of Breads, with a surfeit of dried fruits thrown in. When it comes out of the oven, the smell of fennel seeds declare all the good things Christmas is expected to bring. It is glossy brown, when it comes out of the oven.

Ingredients
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon yeast
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon roasted, ground fennel
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 Tablespoons each chopped almonds and white sesame seeds
1 Tablespoon raisins
White icing sugar to sprinkle
Oil fo greasing

Methods

Soak the raisins in water. In one-forth cup of milk, mix the salt and teaspoon of sugar. Add the yeast and let it rise in a covered place. Beat the 2 eggs in another bowl. Heat the rest of the milk, the sugar, butter and add the fennel. Heat for a few minutes and set aside to cool. Mix all the mix ingredients together, except for half of the beaten eggs. Add this to the flour, and start kneading. It will take about 10 minutes. Add a sprinkle of flour only if it remains sticky after thorough kneading. Cover and let it rise for an hour.
Add the raisins into the dough and knead. Divide the dough into three balls and roll it into ropes. Make a braid out of the three ropes and drop it into a greased loaf pan. Let it rise for another hour or until doubled. After this, brush the top with the rest of the egg and sprinkle the nuts and seeds on it. Bake for 40 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 180 Celsius. Check for done-ness. Sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.
For a cake it fails the requisite sweetness that my husband insists on :). So for those with a sweet tooth, add another 1/2 cup sugar.

Plantain yoghurt dessert

2011-12-04T19:17:00.005+05:30

On our trip to Kerala a few years back, we had ripe plantains in desserts, practically everyday. Plantains in their ripe form can be served very simply with just a drizzle of palm or date syrup. I wanted to make a frozen dessert with ripe plantain and came up with this. Yoghurt gives it substance. Cardamom gives it allure. The ghee adds an element of richness.

Ingredients
2 ripe plantains
300 gms rich yoghurt, strained
1/3 teaspoon cardamom, ground
2 Tablespoon ghee
3 Tablespoon molasses

Method

Strain the curd to remove as much possible. Chop the plantain. Heat the ghee in a pan. Add the plantain and molasses and cook it for 3 minutes, so as to soften the plantain and mix the molasses. Add the cardamom and mix it in again. With a blender puree the plantain and yoghurt. Pour into shot glasses and freeze. Slip the frozen cones out by dipping the glasses in hot water.

With white wine roux

2011-11-19T20:29:00.007+05:30

Though the white roux is the basis of many French dishes, I have avoided making it at home, because it reminds me of so many bad "Continental" fare smothered in white sauce, served here in India. Recently however I have revisited the many versions of white roux based sauces after reading Elizabeth David's "French Country Cooking. It had been on my cookery book list for a very long time. While most dishes in the book expect one to have bacon around, the Fish section is full of great ideas that can be incorporated on produce here. We had been provided by beautifully cut bhetki fillet by my parents. Normally, I use them to make the Fish Fry so beloved of Bengalee celebrations. I have been using them however this to try out a few ideas from the book because so many of the recipes ask for white fish fillet.

Ingredients
6 pieces bhetki fillets
1/3 cup white wine (I used Madera)
1/2 cup double cream
1 Tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon tarragon
2 teaspoon butter

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Lay the fillets in a flat shallow dish greased with 1 teaspoon of the butter. Salt them. Sprinkle half teaspoon of tarragon. Pour 3/4 cup white wine and put into the oven. Bake over just about 10 minutes. Keep it in the oven. While the fish is being cooked, add 1 teaspoon of butter to another pan. Melt it and add the flour and mix it thoroughly in. Continue to stir and cook for 3 minutes. Strain the wine from the fish. Arrange the fillet on a plate and keep warm. Add the strained wine little by little and mix it into the butter-flour roux at very low heat. It must be without lumps. Continue stirring until the sauce thickens, about 3 minutes. Add the cream and stir it in. A smooth sauce should be the result. Switch off the stove. Pour the sauce over the fish fillet.

The book has also inspired Sitabhra who actually fished that book out of a pile of discounted ones to new heights :). Below is another Elizabeth David inspired recipe of beef in brown sauce made by him, again using white roux !

Ingredients
250 gms beef, cubed
2 small onion, sliced
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 bayleaf
3 teaspoon salt
5-8 fresh basil leaf, torn
1 cup white wine
1 teaspoon flour
3 Tablespoon butter
1-2 teaspoon honey

Method

Bring the wine, bayleaf, pepper, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 onion to a boil. Let it cool down completely. Add the beef cubes to the marinade and let sit at room temperature for an hour or in the refrigerator overnight. Fry in a teaspoon of butter the onions until they start browning, about 4 minutes. Drain the beef cubes and strain the liquid into a cup. Add the beef cubes and brown them in the butter. This should be done at meadium heat to seal the meat but not burn the onions. Add half of the drained marinade and top it with another 1/2 cup water. Add a teaspoon of salt and pressure cook for 15 minutes. Cool pressure cooker. Once the beef is cooked retrieve it and set aside. In another pan, melt the butter. Stir in the flour and cook for 3 minutes. Add the rest of the wine marinade slowly while stirring continuously. Add the gravy from the cooked meat. Add the honey and mix it in. Cook for 5-10 minutes until the sauce thickens. and becomes glossy. Pour sauce over beef cubes. We had it with potato mash flecked with scallions. It should go well with rice or bread too.

Eggplant sauted in mint and vinegar

2011-11-13T12:51:00.002+05:30

When I first started pottering with recipes and read about brinjals or aubergines referred to as eggplants, I was puzzled. In northern India where I grew up, brinjals though slightly rounded at one end, are hardly egg-sized. Or maybe they can be compared to roc eggs! They are large, shiny, and darkly purple or in winter glossy white. In southern India however, the local varieties, be they pale green or variations in purple are much smaller, even pea-sized. Brinjals, particularly, fried or sauted is everyday food. We used to get through stacks of bread slices or rotis with a few slices of deep fried, salted brinjals, as children. All they needed was a dusting with salt and turmeric before deep frying. Needless to say, sauted brinjals figure largely in my kitchen even now. I have featured pickled brinjal before. This recipe has distinct Mediterranean overtones. Its worth the extra effort since it can be stored rather well for a week or two. Great mixed with pasta, sandwiched between bread or rolled into rotis.

Ingredients
12 small brinjals, diced into 1/2 inch cubes and salted
1 and half Tablespoon red wine vineagr
1/2 teaspoon anchovy paste
10 mint leaves, minced
A few drops of honey
1/3 cup vegetable oil
Salt to taste

Method

Salt diced brinjals. Heat the oil in a kadai. Drain the diced brinjals of any liquid and fry them. Cover for a couple of minutes and cook for 3 more minutes uncovered. In the meantime, make the dressing with the vinegar, anchovy paste, honey and mint. Taste and add honey and salt if necessary. Anchovy paste itself is very salty, so go light on the salt. Drain the fried brinjals. Mix them with the dressing. Cool and store in glass jar.

Mushroom tomato sauce

2011-11-07T19:22:00.004+05:30

Shortly after I moved to Germany for my Ph.D, I was visited by two close friends , Faaizah and Nadeem working in England. My artless comments about Heidelberg must have convinced them that whatever modcons of civilisation the charming town contained, it must lack the wherewithal to supply me with Indian spices. So my Christmas hamper (and it was a wonderful one, I can remember most items it contained even now) had half a dozen bottles of Indian spices, "packaged and marketed" by Sainsbury's. Among them was nutmeg. Nutmeg is not commonly added to daily fare in India, and it was certainly my first rendezvous with the spice. While many Indian spices can be put in spoonfuls, nutmeg MUST be used only in pinches . With the result that not only did my bottle of nutmeg last me my sojourn in Germany (four and a half years), but I carried that bottle with a couple of intact nutmegs back when I moved back to India! That bottle still serves me well, though stocked with nutmeg from Coorg or Kerala nowadays. Nutmeg comes wrapped in layers. Indeed it took me a minute to realise the first time I purchased nutmeg in India, that several layers would need to be removed before I saw something familiar to the original contents of the Sainsbury bottle. The following sauce uses nutmeg and can be used equally well with pasta, rice or bread. The bread that I ate with it was made by my neighbours, Amritansu and Anita. They have bought a bread machine. And using it to its fullest potential. The bread was handed over to me the moment I unlocked my door. They had timed it beautifully. May they continue their good work :). I have presently a wonderful cheese table at hand. My husband Sitabhra did a splendid job of stocking from Germany on his recent trip. I couldn't resist sprinkling some of the Schnittkase he lugged back to India. But really, the sauce is great even without such ornamentation.

Ingredients
2 large tomatoes, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
10 button mushrooms, sliced
2 cups Bak choy, coarsely chopped (spinach can be used as substitute)
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
2 basil leaves
1 Tablespoon grated cheese

Method

Wash and chop the vegetables. In a dry pan cook the sliced mushrooms for about 5 minutes, until they shrink and brown a little. Keep moving them so that they don't stick. Remove from the pan and add oil. Lightly brown the garlic and add the tomatoes. Add salt and sugar and cook uncovered for 7-10 minutes. Add the Bak choy (or its substitute). Stir to coat it with the tomato sauce and let it reduce. This should not take more than 3-5 minutes. Adjust the salt to taste. Add ground pepper, nutmeg and basil leaves cut into chiffonade. Stir everything well, cook for another 2 minutes. Sprinkle with the cheese and serve warm.

Sweet potato soup

2011-10-18T21:11:00.001+05:30

I have been on a rampage to try out new soup recipes. This one was concocted while reading through the The Africa Cookbook. by Jessica Harris. I picked it because unlike so many other cookbooks on Africa, this really does cover the whole continent, not just the northern coast and South Africa. Also it does not consider Egyptian food as a limb of Arabic food. The book was picked up on my trip to Berkeley last year. I got a whole lot of cookbooks along with this from a splendid called Moe's. I wish I could have bought more books; but bearing in mind the narrow ledge of top-heavy luggages versus what a fellow must bring back after a five month sojourn, I desisted. This recipe is evocative of extensive use of sweet potatoes in African cuisine and is simplicity itself. It also uses a widely used Egyptian spice mix, the dukkah. I made a jar of it, and much like the sakura denbu-like fluffed fish from Taiwan, I have been sprinkling it on everything!

Ingredients
For Dukkah (Adapted from The Africa Cookbook)
1 cup almonds, toasted (any other nut would do)
1/2 cup coriander seeds
6 Tablespoons sesame seeds
4 Tablespoons cumin seeds
2 Tablespoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fresh mint leaves, roasted

For soup
300 gms sweet potato, peeled and sliced
50-70 gms mooli/white radish, peeled and sliced
6 spring onions, white part only, sliced
1 clove garlic
3 cups vegetable broth
Salt to taste
2 teaspoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon dukkah

Method

For the dukkah, roast all ingredients except the mint. Let cool and then grind to a coarse powder. It must remain as granules. Transfer to a glass jar. Roast the mint leaves in a oven overnight, beforehand (dried will do too). Sprinkle a little on top and seal it. Just transfer a few tablespoons out when you want to use it.
Heat olive oil in a vessel. Saute the spring onions and whole garlic for two minutes. Slice half radish and saute it. Put the chopped sweet potato and stir for another 5 minutes. Add the broth and salt and cook covered for 10 minutes. Uncover, cool and puree to a smooth, runny soup. Taste and season. Transfer to individual bowls and sprinkle dukkah over it just before serving.

Roasted Tomato soup

2011-10-14T23:26:00.001+05:30

This is a lazy person's tomato soup. A handful of ingredients. An oven for roasting the vegetables. A blender to puree it into a smooth concoction. The ingredient which added a new dimension is a few spoonfuls of what I believe is sakura denbu. In Taiwan from where it was bought, they called it "Yo som". We bought it from a sea food market. The market was divided into three sections. Fresh seafood to be made on the spot according to customer's instructions. You practically ate off the lurid, red plastic covered table covers. The other section had fresh sea creatures to be taken home. The third part had all sorts of processed items from the harvest of the sea. Fish sticks, fish pastes, dried prawns, fish and all sorts of seaweeds. The fluffed fish or sakura denbu as I will refer to it as, came in two flavours. We took the one which was the milder. I have been adding it to roasted or boiled vegetables and making a complete meal of my lunches. It can be stirred into any soup. Adds a mild fishy note, a lot of umami and animal protein to boot!

Ingredients
6 large tomatoes, halved
1/2 mooli/white radish, peeled
4 large cloves garlic
2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoon sakura denbu
2 Tablespoon vegetable oil
3 cups vegetable broth

Method
Switch on oven to 180 degrees celsius. Oil a roasting tin or baking sheet. Arrange the halved tomatoes. Slice the mooli and arrange it in between. Strew them with salt and pop them into the oven. Wrap the garlic in a foil and put into the oven along with the rest of the vegetables. Bake for 20 minutes. Tip the vegetables into a large vessel. Squeeze the garlic into the vessel. Add the stock and cook for about 5-7 minutes at low heat. Add salt to taste and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Switch off the burner and let cool. Puree it until smooth. Note that addition of the sakura denbu will add a saltier note. Season according to taste. Just before serving add the sakura denbu. Stir it in Have it warm.

Red bean soup

2011-10-08T22:50:00.003+05:30

Last month, I dined on soups for a fortnight. Only soup. These were not clear, unctuous and classic consomme naturally. I wanted to make a meal of them. They were all full-bodied, hearty and yes, very healthy. The soup featured in this recipe is a common enough item on our daily menu along with other dishes. I used fresh beans for this recipe, but soaked dried beans will do as well. I buy the fresh beans from a vegetable and fruit soup which peels them ready for the customer. I can never resist buying the little half-moons; green fava, creamy butter beans, red beans and pink and white speckled lima beans. They cook in 5 minutes in the pressure cooker. I used red beans for this recipe. And added half a cup of black coffee which would have otherwise been put down the drain. I was tempted to put it in since cardamom flavoured coffee (or tea) are a favourite of mine. Apart from giving the soup a more intense colour it didn't make any difference.

Ingredients
100 gm red beans
1 small tomato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 inch galangal, grated
1 clove, crushed
1 cardamom, crushed
1/2 cup black coffee
Salt to taste
Ground black pepper to taste
2 cups water
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1 spicy sausage, chopped (optional)

Method

Soak the beans in clean water. Heat the oil in the pressure cooker. Saute the onion and galangal until translucent, about 2 minutes. Add the clove and cardamom and saute for another minute. Add the tomato and salt. Cook until the tomato is incorporated as a mush, about 5-7 minutes. Add the drained beans, water and coffee. Pressure cook for 5-7 minutes. When cool, season according to taste with salt and pepper. Heat it through to incorporate the extra salt. Take a ladleful of the soup and crush the beans in it. Put it back into the main bowl and stir it in. This makes the soup a little thicker, which is how I like it. It can be skipped if you want yours thin. Chop and add the sausage. Serve warm. Needless to say it can be had with rice, flatbreads and pastas equally well.

Venetian Carrot Cake- a la halwa

2011-09-24T23:57:00.002+05:30

Ever since I saw the Venetian Carrot Cake on one of Nigella Lawson's programme I had it in my mind to make it. It naturally reminded me of the justifiably famed gazar ka halwa (carrot halwa) that is made with the surfeit of carrots in winter. Carrot halwa used to be a very seasonal fare back when I was a child when carrots were really around at affordable prices only in the cooler months. Perhaps it was just as well; halwas are not for the calorie freak :). Neither is this cake! It might lack the clarified butter and high fat milk added to halwa but it makes it up with the three eggs. It was the use of olive oil in a sweet cake paired with nutmeg and lemon which intrigued me. I made a few changes to the ingredients listed in Nigella's recipe, so maybe I should call it Indian carrot cake. I upped the amount of grated carrot. Used ground cashew instead of almond and pine nuts and increased the amount of lemon zest. Mine didn't rise at all. But inspite of that it is a soft, moist cake. The so much larger allowance of nuts of course makes it taste quite different from carrot halwa, but it is very likely, the canny Venetians took the idea of the cake from their trading partners in the Orient!

Ingredients
2 tablespoons toasted coarsely chopped cashew
1 and half cup cashew ground to flour
3/4 cup cashew ground finely but with visible bits
Carrots, grated 200-250g
75g golden raisin
60ml rum
150g caster sugar
125ml regular olive oil, plus some for greasing
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Juice half a lemon

Method

Ground the toasted cashew into various degrees of coarseness in batches. Tip the cashew flour and next most finely ground nuts into a large bowl. Zest the lemon into it. Boil the rum with the raisins until they have plumped up. Cool. Grate the carrots. I made a big batch of grated carrot and left them overnight in the refrigerator, so that they dried out a bit. Mix the carrot into the nut flour. Add the raisins along with the rum and stir thoroughly. Cream together olive oil, sugar, vanilla extract, grated nutmeg until it is creamy. Add the eggs one by one to the creamed mixture, beating thourougly. Add the lemon juice last. Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients and fold in, so as to wet it. Grease a 9 inch cake pan with olive oil. Pour the batter. Smooth it over. Strew the top with the coarsely chopped cashew bits. Bake for 40 minutes at 180 degree centigrade. Test by a fork to make sure it is completely cooked.

Lemon cashew tart with banana bread crust

2011-09-05T23:45:00.010+05:30

Sometimes a dish is born out of adversity. So it was with this pie with a cashewnut filling and a banana bread crust. A low-fat banana-bread recipe failed and got blitzed into crumbs that then went onto encase a cashew frangipane. This is one way of using up a cake which has not risen to your expectations. Similarly, any leftover crumbs will do the trick. I have written down the ingredients of both the crust/bread and the filling. The bread/crust was baked before, then blitzed in a processor with more butter to be made into a pie crust. The nut filling can of course be made of other nuts; almond frangipane being the commonest in pastry shops. The addition of the lemon juice and zest is what makes it special. In this case I used a 7 inch tart pan. The sliced pear was added to add a bit more fruit, but is open to reconstruction.

Ingredients
For the crust
1 cup white flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 and half ripe banana
5 Tablespoon jaggery
1/2 inch ginger, minced
4 Tablespoon skimmed milk
8 Tablespoon butter

For the filling
3/4 cup cashew, unsalted, ground
1 egg
2 lemons, used for juice and zest
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup white sugar

4 Tablespoon butter
1 pear, peeled and sliced thinly

Method

In a processor, put together the banana and all ingredients of the crust except half the butter, until it forms a dough. This can also be done by hand. Starting from scratch, the ingredients come together into a fairly sticky dough. Bake in a greased loaf pan for 40 minutes at 180 degree centigrade. Blitz to disintegrate it into crumbs. I added 4 tablespoon of softened butter at this step. Press the crumbs evenly into a thick crust in a tart pan. Bake for minutes. Let cool.

Grind the cashew into powder with salt and half of the sugar set aside for the filling. Grate the lemon zest and juice the lemons. Melt the butter in a pan. Remove it from heat and whisk in the egg until a yellow mass forms. Add the lemon juice and zest. Stir thoroughly. Add the ground cashew and then whisk again until a thick paste is formed. Taste at this stage to adjust the tartness of the lemon. It should be sour but not mouth puckeringly. Add a few tablespoons of sugar if necessary.

Garlic Chicken

2011-09-02T21:20:00.010+05:30

My husband has two firm rules when he cooks. More butter is better. And there's no harm in adding a few more cloves of garlic. One of his signature dishes, this garlic chicken certainly upholds those aphorisms. The dish never fails to win him accolades; my mother still reminisces about the first time she had it! This recipe calls for a marinade of few hours; but I have known it to be a resounding success even without that step.

Ingredients
300 gm chicken, in pieces, bone in

For marinade
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 shallot, minced
3 tablespoon alcoholic liquid; we had gin at hand
1 teaspoon vinegar
Pinch of Herbes de Provence
1/2 teaspoon salt

Green capsicum, half, diced
2 large onions, diced
10 cloves garlic, sliced
2 inch ginger, minced
2 Tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon honey
Salt to taste

Method
Prepare the marinade. Marinate the chicken pieces for 30 minutes to an hour at room temperature or inside the refrigerator. In the meantime chop all the other condiments. Heat the wok and melt the butter. Add the onions and cook them for 10 minutes until translucent and they have started to pick up brown flecks. Add the ginger and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the garlic, chicken and salt. Pour half of the marinade, stir, cover and cook for 10 minutes. Add the capsicum and coat them with the onion mixture. Open and stir it once in a while. If it is too dry add a few teaspoons of water. Cover and cook until the chicken is just done. This dish is best done in a wok/kadai/pan. Avoid the pressure cooker. The taste is more intense when stirred and cooked with juices released by the chicken. Serve warm with rice.

Pasta with greens and corn

2011-08-23T14:58:00.010+05:30

I sometimes wonder whether I would have recognised many dishes from India 500 years back. More and more we are incorporating ingredients which we didn’t know exist a century back! Of course the traditional basis of meals in most countries do remain same. We still thrive on rice and lentils for example. All this high faluting thought occurred to me while making the following pasta. Which itself is of course, pretty new kid on the block (though how the Chinese did not manage to export it across the Himalayas puzzles me, given we are just at their doorstep and noodle-making was an old industry there!). And then the corns which arrived much later than the Portuguese (here also the Chinese had apparently nothing new to learn). Practically nothing in this dish is per se Indian, not even the nutmeg which admittedly we are very familiar with but came from a Pacific island far east. Any green can be used; I had a bunch of Chinese (again!) Bak Choy begging to be used up. The cheese (Morbier) was decidedly French being brought over dutifully by a collaborator of my husband’s, who brings over a basket of French soft cheese everytime he visits us from France! But other cheese can also be used as long as they melt a little. The dish takes very little time to make.

Ingredients

2 teaspoon butter

250 gm pasta; I used the ear shaped ones

6 Tablespoon Morbier, grated

6 baby corn, sliced

3 teaspoon salt

300 gm bak choy leaves, roughly torn

Spring onion, 4 white part only, sliced

Nutmeg, grated

Method

Slice the baby corns thinly and cook it in salted water for 5 minutes, so they retain a little crunch. Drain. Melt the butter. Add the greens after tearing them with your hands. Sprinkle salt. Cover and cook for a minute. Add the baby corn, more salt and the nutmeg. In the meantime, boil the pasta in salted water and cook until al dente. Drain and add to the vegetables. Mix thoroughly. Season it with more salt if necessary. Turn off the heat. Add the cheese and mix it in. Serve immediately.

Pretend Fish

2011-08-21T23:06:00.000+05:30

This image was taken after we had made substantial inroads into the meal. Indeed this is the rest (note the missing tail) of the small fry, so to speak! The "mother fish" had already been consumed!

Here Comes The Pretend Fish

Once in a while one discovers a dish which is completely unpretensious, easy to make, and is a major hit at a party. The Pretend fish recipe was in one of my cookbooks, on Italian seafood. It mentioned that it was easy to put together and with time short on hand, that was a laudable point in its favour. It also helped that it was a fish dish which epitomised boneless-ness! Eating fish is an acquired art. I find that many people cannot manage to separate the fish bones and justice to fresh fish prepared in the usual Bengali style. This dish being made of tuna flakes took the pain out eating something fishy :). If you have the mashed vegetables ready, it takes about 10 minutes to put together. My cookbook had mentioned only potatoes. I used a mixture of root vegetables and plantain along with two cans of tuna.

Ingredients
400 gm potato
100 gm carrot
100 gm sweet potato
100 gm plantain
2 Tablespoon Bengali prepared mustard, kasundi
1-4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoon coriander stalks, finely minced
1 teaspoon capers
1 cup mayonnaise, good quality
300 gm tuna, flakes

Method
Peel and boil the root vegetables with salt. Boil the plaintain separately and peel. Mash all vegetables. Add mustard, more salt, chopped coriander and tuna. Taste for salt and add more if necesaary. Shape the mashed mass into the shape of a fish. I got 2 fishes of varying size. Pat and smooth the shapes. Put spoonfuls of mayonnaise and coat the sides completely. Once its uniformly coated, use more to make the scales and ridges on the tail. Add a few capers to make the eyes. Keep at room temperature before serving.

Hotpot

2011-08-20T22:51:00.004+05:30

I am in the mood for using Chinese ingredients. The refrigerator is very well stocked with them now. And it helps if they cook with the minimum fuss. So I settled on making this hotpot recipe. I had it very frequently when I shared a kitchen with some Chinese friends in USA. They would put in a super-rich sauce out of a satchet. A set of ordinary ingredients would be transformed into something steaming and magical. The weather was awfully cold in Omaha. Most of the time we had it standing in the kitchen right next to the rice cooker where it was made. Practically anything can be added, as long as the stock remains clear. My friends would even add corn-on-the-cobs, though it does take a long time to cook. Back at home, I set my rice cooker on the dining table, arranged the prepped vegetables/ meat/seafood that were available around and started on making the hotpot only after we were all ready to eat. This is the ideal winter one-pot meal. I stress the one-pot part! The hotpot spice is basically lots of garlic, ginger, red chilli, salt, soya and bean sauces made into a paste and stored with oil. My Chinese friends could never tell me the exact recipe. But I intend to work around with these ingredients by and by to have something similar on hand.

Ingredients

3 cups water
2 cups home-made broth; I used chicken
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 medium carrots, thinly sliced
½ cup sweet corn, frozen or 8 sliced baby corn
1 inch ginger, crushed lightly
2 cloves garlic, crushed lightly
300 gm boneless skinless chicken; I had a few pieces pre-cooked

200 gm paneer, cut into 1-inch cubes

A handful of prawns; I had frozen ones on hand

Crab legs; 3 frozen ones
200 gm mangetout, trimmed and sliced
2 medium scallions, chopped

1 to 2 teaspoon hotpot sauce

1 pack dried egg noodle

Salt to taste

Dipping sauce

2 dry chilli, crumbled

1/4 lemon, juice

A pinch salt

A pinch sugar

3 Tablespoon oil; I used garlic flavoured groundnut oil

Method

Cut all vegetables into thin slices. It will take less time to cook that way. The ingredients I used are all quick-cooking. So I only brought the broth to a boil and in quick succession added the rest of the components according to how long they would require to cook. I added the egg noodle at the last in a strainer to retrieve it more easily. One can just boil it once the broth is ready, right in it. Anything which requires longer period to cook can be added into the broth at the beginning. Don’t overload the cooker; the ingredients need to shimmer. So in a group, encourage guests to add as they need.

The amounts suggested would actually feed easily 4. But making it in small volumes doesn’t make sense. The broth can be drunk in any quantities. The strained cooked vegetables/meat can be used as topping for rice or noodles.

The dipping sauce just requires the most cursory mixing. Traditionally sesame oil is used instead of groundnut.

Serve steaming in bowls and provide chopsticks for everyone.

Sumptuous meals in Taiwan

2011-08-05T21:45:00.019+05:30

I suppose one always learns new ways of cooking the oldest vegetable dish when one has been dabbling with a new culture. The eggplant dish served at the Academia Sinica canteen is one. It is plain garlic, soya eggplant. We had it twice a day. For breakfast and lunch! But the novelty of preparing such a dish with soya made an impression on me. Just garlic, eggplants, oil and and seasoned with salt, soya sauce and a pinch of sugar. That's the ingredients list!

Method

Cut eggplants into cubes. Salt them. Heat the oil. Add a handful of chopped garlic and add the eggplants. Cook them for 5 minutes and coat the garlic flavoured oil. Add the soya sauce, salt and sugar. Mix in thoroughly. Add a few tablespoons of water, cover and cook for another 10 minutes. The eggplants should be soft by this time and dry. Taste to adjust seasoning. That's it!
I found many vegetables cooked this way. Long green beans were also commonly prepared this way in the Academia cafeteria buffet.

Before we left our hosts to us took a Hakka place. Hakka cuisine uses lots of pickled elements. Salt baked duck and pork belly in pickled vegetables were two memorable dishes. The stir fries are probably the only ones which I can hope to recreate at home.

At a marina fish market we ate right off the tables set next to the stalls. Our hosts did all the arranging so we tried all sorts of things. Like the deep sea fish which tasted just like jelly. Super fresh sashimi. Mussels made the Taiwanese way. It was the biggest fish market I have seen. And they contained fish and its sea brethren in every form. Fresh ones on ice and in tanks, processed into dry fish and prawn and finally in tinned and packed form. We picked a huge jar of a variety of sakura denbu. Perfect for sprinkling on rice and noddles or mixing into soup.

Another sumptuous meal coming to an end. I adored the items we had at a tea house in Shinyi on the way back from Pingxi. The village was called Pingli. The herb rice was my favourite at that meal. I shall certainly be trying to recreate it. And a gorgeous whole fish steamed to perfection.

Lunching at Pingxi. In Taiwan meals go on and on. Not all the items come to the table together, so you never know when the nth one will be followed by n+1! We over-ate every time! A case in point was the lunch at the one shown above, where it started with 3 dishes and multiplied to 10 at the end! Most of our meals were at very unassuming places where the concept of "digging in" is followed strictly. I was told that only fancy restaurants give side plates; everywhere else its customary to use lots of tissue papers to put all your leftovers on the side nested in tissues. I went through huge quantities of tissue papers at every meal!

Bread in Taipei

2011-07-27T07:15:00.001+05:30

We had been having a very different set of food for breakfast in Taipei. Not that I am completely unused to having rice for breakfast; it put me in mind of my younger days when Ma would fill us up with steaming, fluffy rice with a dollop of butter before we went to our respective school/colleges. But the first time that we went down for breakfast at the institute canteen, I decidedly avoided the congee they offered. Rice gruel, vegetables and egg/tofu makes for a very heavy meal, and I was surprised that Taiwanese children would swallow that without a demur. On Sunday, however we were reassured that children the world over seem to prefer bread and eggs. The place was awash that morning with couples and their youngsters. Without exception all of them sported a white bread sandwich.
Bread in the form of loaves are increasingly popular in all cultures. The first evening we arrived, unsure about what was available, we had gone down to the convenience store and got ourselves a couple of buns. The ones which have a core of custard, has a shiny brown surface and goes spongy after the first bite. Most days we have had bread for breakfast since we came. And it has been mostly terrible. The day after our arrival we stumbled onto a Carrefour. I had read that they are one of the biggest supermarket chains in Taiwan. When I came to bread section, I was happy. Lots of brown crusted breads. Various kinds of shapes and all neatly labelled in plastic packets. Perhaps that itself should have warned me. In France, Carrefour's bread section is varied, decent and always carried in paper packets. I was in for a disappointment here . All the breads we looked at were so soft that they carried a dimple, once you had pressed them to check the texture. The Taiwanese obviously prefers his bread soft, but at Carrefour I didn't expect the product to undergo such a change.
There are many bakeries around the city. Almost all neighbourhoods have a few. The window display is tempting though we didn't try anything. I am hopeful that these would be better. In a rush to pick up some items which could be eaten on the run, we picked up some breads from FlavorField one day. These have been the best we have eaten here. There was a open faced sandwich with cheese and bacon. Another with tuna. A strange round roll with potato, sausage and something orangey which we couldn't identify. None of the toppings were great. But tthe bread itself would pass muster. We also got a mixed grain loaf which had a satisfying crunch and chewy texture.
It all reminds me that there is no substitute to making it yourself. But where does one draw the line btween convenience and making from scratch?

Spicy Paneer

2011-07-25T07:12:00.003+05:30

I had to clean the refrigerator out since we are away for a fortnight. I unearthed a vaccumm-packed brick of paneer. So came up with this quick dish. It looks very elegant, can be made as an appetiser for a formal gathering and takes very little time to put together. The sauce drizzled over was from Beyond kimchee with some changes made to suit what was on hand and Indian tastebuds.

Ingredients

200 gm Paneer

For sauce
Adapted from Beyond Kimchee

Substitutes
1 shallot, minced, instead of green onions
Jaggery, instead of the sugar
Pinch of ground black mustard

Method
Cut the paneer block in little less than 1 cm thick slices. Salt them. In the meantime mix the sauce ingredients. Pat the paneer pieces dry. In a non-stick pan, heat a tablepoon of groundnut oil. When hot, place the paneer slices. Cover them. Cook over moderate flame for 5 minutes each side, until golden. Drain and keep warm. Just before serving arrange the slices and drizzle the sauce. All the sauce will not be required. Store the rest in a glass jar in the refrigerator.

Orange cake

2011-07-10T18:23:00.005+05:30

In India, oranges are very much winter fruits. In some ways I am glad it is that way. Their bright orange globes and tangy aroma brings the cooler months of winter to mind while the sun scorches everything around now. I had made a batch of oranges in syrup when I bought some little oranges a few months back. They turned out to be just the thing when I wanted to make an orange cake. I took the basic recipe from Orangette. Instead of lemon and orange, I made it only with oranges. Also I used roasted, ground pecan instead of almonds. I adored the idea of olive oil in cake! I used an ordinary olive oil i.e non-extra virgin. I think that allowed the cake to retain its orange hue.

Adapted from Orangette
Ingredients
3 small orange in syrup
170 grams almonds
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
4 large eggs, at room temperature
½ tsp. table salt
1 ½ cups sugar
2/3 cup olive oil
3 Tablespoons of marmalade mixed
3 Tablespoons of water

Method
Roast and ground pecans nuts. In a large bowl put all dry ingredients, except sugar and mix. Whip eggs one by one. Add the olive oil and blend with eggs. Add the sugar, oranges and whip. Pour it over the dry ingredients and mix with hand. Oil a round cake form and bake for 45 minutes at 180 degree centigrade. Make a thin sauce out of the maramalade and about 3 tablespoons of water. When done, pour the sauce over the cake and let it cool.

Mango tart

2011-06-18T23:50:00.000+05:30

As a little boy, my husband had planted a mango seed, “aanti” as we call in Bengali. Obviously, good care must have been taken care of it, for it grew up to be a tall, strong tree. It is a prolific producer of the Himsagar variety of mangoes. Every summer we look forward to reaping the benefits of that successful planting. A few mangoes trickle down south in intact form. More often we get bottles of “Aam er aachar”, mango pickle or chutneys from the mothers. There are of course as many recipes for mango pickle or chutneys as there are households in India. They can be made from mangoes of all ages and all variety. Sour, sweet, hot or all together. A few years back I had made a yeast cake with the fabulous chutney made by my mother –in-law. The following tart was inspired this time by my mother’s ginger-chilli-mango chutney. The tart is in the form of a Bakewell Tart. It has a shortcrust base, a jam and a frangipane. Chez Pim’s shortcrust pastry recipe is as good as any. I always have a batch frozen. The jam component was replaced by mother’s mango chutney. The frangipane was made with pistachio; the marriage of mango and pistachio is very common. The recipe for the chutney is from my mother, as is the picture. I have included the measurements for the pistachio frangipane as well instructions for putting together of the tart. It tastes and looks delectable! I particularly love the three colour tone.

For the Ginger and Green Chilli Mango Chutney

Ingredients
5 large grated unripe Mangoes, about 4 Cups
1 and 1/2 Tablespoon Ginger, grated
5 Green Chili, Chopped-.
2 and 1/2 cups Sugar
2 and 1/2 teaspoon Salt

Method
Take a non-stick pan. Mix all the ingredients in the pan thoroughly. On full flame stir the mixture continuously for 2 to 3 minutes. Reduce the heat. Go on stirring till the sugar has melted. Don’t skip this step. Stirring the mixture is very important. Stir the chutney till it is bit sticky. Taste the Chutney to test the sweetness. Preserve this in clean Glass bottles. In the refrigerator it can stay for 3 to 4 months.

For the Pistachio frangipane

Ingredients

75g whole peeled pistachio (about 1/2 cup)
75g sugar, white granulated sugar

75g butter at room temperature
1 large egg

Method

Prepare the pie crust. Press it into a 7 inch pan. Trim and bake it blind for 15 minutes at 180 degrees Centigrade. Cool it. Prepare the frangipane by toasting the pistachio and letting them cool. Blend the butter and sugar. Mix all the other ingredients together. The frangipane can be used immediately or frozen to keep a very long time. Spread the chutney in a thick layer. I used up about 6 Tablespoons for a 7 inch pie. Pour the frangipane over it. Smooth over. Bake for 20 minutes at 180 degrees centigrade. Cool to room temperature before serving.

Garlic Yeast bread; curls and frills

2011-06-15T22:55:00.001+05:30

My husband insisted a record be taken of this bread. Indeed it had come out remarkably pretty, and tasty. The bread though is a basic pizza dough made with whole flour, white flour, salt, sugar, warm water and yeast. And a handful of cloves of minced garlic. I let it rise twice, for one and half hours. The fancy looks were achieved by piling little knots made from the dough and letting them rise in a loaf pan.

Ingredients
2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon fresh yeast
1 cup water plus a little more
4 clloves garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon oil to grease

Method
Let the yeast foam in half cup water with salt and sugar. Add it to the well in the mound of flour. Knead for 10 minutes. Add more water to bring together the flour into a dough. Add a little more water and work that in. Let it rise for 1 and half hour. Once doubled, work the dough again. Make dough balls and roll it into a rop. Make it into a knot and put it into the greased pan. Pile all knots and let it rise again. Bake at 180 degree centigrade for 30 minutes.

Caramelised chicken skin

2011-06-11T21:09:00.002+05:30

I fell for the "chicken skin bacon" idea on Simplyrecipes heavily. Indian dishes almost never include chicken with skin on, so I always have chicken skin accumulating in my freezer. I frequently use them as the filling for Chinese yeast dumplings. Still they do tend to languish long in my freezer. Using them in wraps once crisped up with a dusting of salt and pepper proved to be an excellent idea. Caramelising them with a shallot in fish sauce was awesome. The recipe in RavenousCouple had suggested pork belly. That's something hard to come by in the Indian baazar and perhaps best avoided. But why not with chicken skin??? The recipe is an amalgamation of ideas from both above-mentioned sites. I used palm jaggery instead of the suggested sugar since its less cloyingly sweet and has more umami. The addition of fresh green chilli instead of pepper added a kick. We had it with a pickled greens, red rice and daal. A rounded meal!

Ingredients
Chicken skin from 1 whole chicken
1 shallot, minced
1/2-1 Tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 Tablespoon jaggery
6 large prawns with shell on, deveined
salt to taste
2 cloves garlic
1 green chilli, deseeded and minced finely

Method

Clean the chicken skin thoroughly. Devein and clean the shrimps. Pat both dry. Marinate the chicken skin with the fish sauce, jaggery and minced shallot. Marinate the prawn with salt, green chilli. Rest for 10 minutes. In a hot griddle cook the skins. They tend to splutter so cover the griddle. Make sure that the skins are as flat as possible so they brown themselves. Flip them after 8-10 minutes. Cook them uncovered for another 10 minutes to brown the other side. Drain and keep warm. The pan should now have some rendered fat left over. In the same pan add the marinated prawns. The prawns should not take more than 5 minutes to cook. Flip them to cook both sides pink. Add the garlic. Cook for a couple of minutes to lightly cook the garlic. You can put the chicken skin pieces and prawns together at this point. I mounded them separately on the pickled greens.

Fish egg balls

2011-06-04T20:27:00.004+05:30

I have never understood the hullabaloo over caviar. Of course part of the reason was when I was little I used to think caviar was black ant eggs, and we had plenty of them around! Still, even as a grown up, I didn't go over the moon, when I at last had caviar daintily garnishing graduate celebratory parties (yes, they always used to be on the canapes at the bash thrown by a student completing his Ph.D. A VERY WORTHY cause for celebration!). Fish roe are middle class fare in Bengal, that riverine country where fish is staple at most tables. They are delicacies of course, more so because they are strictly seasonal. Come monsoon and the mating season, and once in a while we would be lucky to get a fat fish rich with roe. However, after seeing a programme featuring a $1000 pizza showcasing four different varieties of caviar, I felt I had been doing injustice to the homely fare!
I had about 300 gm roe from "katla" (silver carp) stocked in my freezer. Generally, it is used to make "bora" as called in Bengal or kofta. One can just leave it fried or make it into a gravy dish.

Ingredients
300 gm fish roe, roughly chopped
1/2 medium sized onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 green chilli, finely chopped
3 Tablespoon coriander leaves, finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 and half teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon black pepper, ground
3-5 Tablespoon Bengal gram flour
Mustard Oil to fry

For the gravy
1/2 medium sized onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 inch ginger, peeled and chopped
1 medium tomato or 3 Tablespoon paste
1/2 teaspoon coriander powder
2 Tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon salt
4 Tablespoon curd, mixed with another tablespoon water

Method
Chop the roe and drain it well. Finely mince garlic, chilli, onion, coriander. In a large bowl put the dry ingredients together and mix thoroughly. Add the minced ingredients. Finally put the roe and mix it in. Everything should be by hand, since we don't want the components blitzed. The mixture should hold its shape when made into balls.
Heat oil in a kadai. Add the balls, frying them golden. Drain.

For a gravy, I usually make a simple paste with onion, garlic, ginger and tomato. The paste is cooked in a few tablespoon of oil until the oil separates. Beat a few tablespoon of yoghurt and add it to the onion mixture. Add the fried balls/bora/kofta, add salt to taste and cook covered for 5 minutes. Serve hot.

Coconut oatmeal cookies

2011-05-30T18:57:00.002+05:30

A chewy cookie. I adored the Peperidge farm oatmeal cookies and have since then been trying to recreate the perfect texture. Oatmeal and grated coconut seemed an admitable combination.A little bit of Indian spices and this is a cookie which can come together within half an hour. I used grated coconut found in the freezer section. Dry coconut can also be used but a little more milk will be needed to put the dough together. The final product was a little bit like the famed Bengali Malpoa; the semolina-coconut deep fried, syrup dipped dainty. Its a beloved of all Bengalees and a must in the harvest season. The calorie levels will even out; the cookies rich in butter and the Malpoa batter deep fried to golden perfection. Very much like Malpoas, my cookies had a mind of their own when it came to shape. Roughly oval and somewhat flat.

Ingredients
2 cups quick cooking oats
1 cup flour
1 cup grated coconut
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup jaggery
2 eggs
4 Tablespoon milk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla, ground
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon and allpice, ground

Method

Preheat oven to 190 degree centigrades. In a mixer beat the butter first and add jaggery until creamy. Beat in the eggs one by one until fluffy. Add the salt, vanilla, spices, milk into the beaten froth and blend briefly. In another bowl, put the flour, oatmeal, grated coconut and baking powder together. Sift to incoprporate air and mix all ingredients thoroughly. Add the egg mixture and fold it in until all the dry ingredients come together. Drop the batter onto oiled baking sheets. Keep about an inch gap between each. Bake for 15 minutes in middle rack.

"Maankochu" Chutney (মান্ কচুর চাটনী)

2011-05-21T23:04:00.007+05:30

A paste, a cutney or is it a sauce? I haven't been able to find an appropriate English name for Maan Kochu, so I will refer to it as Mankochu. I have a propensity for roots and tubers. So when I had at my mother's place this delectable chutney, I instantly wanted the recipe. Unfortunately, I haven't come upon it in Chennai. The dish is made with the raw grated vegetable. Its necessary to try it out before embarking on the recipe, since it can itch. There's something very Bengali to smell the mustard oil as you put a large dab of this green chutney on steamy rice.

Ingredients
500 gm Maan-Kochu or root stock
1 and half cup, Coconut, grated
2 cups, Coriander leaves, Chopped
1 and 1/2 Tablespoon, Mustard Seeds
Half cup Mustard Oil
3 Tablespoon, Green Chillies, chopped
Rock Salt, your taste.
1/2 Tablespoon, Sugar
Water, According to your need of thickness of the paste.

Method
Wash the Maan-Kochu thoroughly,before peeling. Grate a little bit and taste it. If it tickles, then don't proceed. Cut the vegetable if it passes the "tickle test" into very small pieces. Keep aside.
Grind the mustard seeds, sugar and salt. Add this to chopped green chillies, coriander, and the grated coconut. Put everything together with the chopped maan kochu pieces little by little in the mixer, and blend. Add extra salt sugar if necessary. Add the mustard oil and blend. Add water little by little, only if the consistency is too thick.
One can have this spread with bread, chapati, and with hot rice.

Pumpkin noodle

2011-05-21T22:26:00.002+05:30

I find myself frequently conned into making potato gnocchi. Nothing against it, its a lovely pasta and my husband loves it! However in the sweltering Madras weather it is a lot of WORK (in capitals, yes!). So when I saw David Rocco's Gnudi con la zucca, I thought to earn similar amount of glory with some shortcuts ;-). The recipe needed to be modified, since I didn't have the listed ingredients listed in the original recipe. In spite of that it came ou very well! So here's the substituted items one can get away with.(a) pumpkin instead of butternut squash (b) Grana Padano instead of Pecorino Romano (c) home-made paneer hung overnight to drain instead of ricotta. And no egg as binder since I wanted it vegetarian.
I halved the amounts, since I had only two to feed.

We had it topped with slow-cooked bell pepper in vinegar and honey.

Sweet plantain bread

2011-05-08T11:57:00.003+05:30

I had three ripe plantains which needed using up, so I came up with this bread. I must have had sweet plantain before, but our Kerela trip memorably introduced me to the vegetable again. We were staying at a homestay run by a Syrian Christian family at Kottayam. Twice at least breakfast was mashed/baked sweet plantain. I have been using ripe yellow plantains since then in many ways. Try the milkshake with sweet plantain for example. Awfully easy! Rich, creamy and healthy. Or as a filling which I will share soon.

This time I used it in a multi-grain bread. Stunning with Pesto, Muhammara or plain old Mint Chutney. This is a bread starting from a sponge, with two phases of raising the dough so it does take some time.

Ingredients
3 ripe plantains
1/2 cup rye flour
2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fresh yeast
1 Tablespoon jaggery
1 and half cup water
White Oil to grease
1 Tablespoon of pumpkin seeds (optional)

Method

Bake the ripe plantains at 180 degrees centigrade for 20 minutes. For the sponge, in a separate bowl add the rye flour, 1 cup white flour, half teaspoon salt, yeast and the jaggery. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly and then add 3/4 cup water for making a thick batter. Cover and keep in a warm place overnight. The plantains should be baked by now. Cool them and then scrape the golden yellow flesh of the ripe plantains. Store in the refrigerator until next day.

Next day, stir the sponge batter. In a clean bowl add the whole wheat and 1 cup white flour with salt. Pour the sponge batter and mix it. Add some water to make it a shaggy dough. About 5 minutes kneading should do. Cover and let it rise for 30 minutes. In the meantime bring the sweet plantain to room temperature. Make it into a mash. Add the mash to the dough. Work it in thoroughly. Knead for another 5 minutes. The dough is likely to be sticky. Oil a loaf pan and transfer the shaggy mass to it. Smooth over the top. Poke the pumpkin seeds in if using. Cover and let rise for another 30-45 minutes. In the meantime preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade. Bake for about 40 minutes on the lowest rack. If necessary, cover the top with a foil for the last 15 minutes to prevent it browning too quickly. Let cool and unmould.

Tomato Tart

2011-05-01T14:22:00.004+05:30

This tart was made as dinner in order to avoid standing at the stove and cooking in the heat. I generally have tart dough frozen in the freezer. This time I did start from scratch. But on the other hand, I took a short cut in the mustard; using kasundi instead of making the mustard paste myself. The rest was simplicity itself. Sliced tomatoes, Fresh herbs chopped and scattered. And finaly shaved pieces of Manchego on top. Baked for 20 minutes and voila dinner is ready!

Ingredients

For dough
210 gm white flour
125 gm unsalted butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 cup chilled water, to be used with discretion

7 inch tart pan

For filling
4 large tomatoes, sliced
3 Tablespoon Bengali kasundi (mustard)
3 Tablespoon mixed fresh herbs
3 Tablespoon shaved Manchego

Method

Make the dough. I followed Pim's One pie dough to rule them all. Line the tart pan with the dough. Bake the dough at 200 degrees centigrade for 10 minutes. Take out the tart base out. Smear the bottom with the mustard. Put the tomato pieces to cover the base, in layers if necessary. Sprinkle the chopped herbs. I used a mixture of flat leaf parsley, mint and dill. Scatter the cheese on the top. Bake for 15 minutes at 150 degrees centigrade. Cut into wedges and serve warm.

Sherbets of Summer

2011-05-01T12:31:00.003+05:30

It is firmly summer here. When I was in Calcutta last week, I went about with a permanently hang-dog face after 10 minutes outdoors. The heat is scorching but even more is the high humidity. It is slightly better in Madras, but only very slightly :>.... You need to top up your liquid reserves continuously. At home we shift from smoothies and milk-shakes to fruit juices. And preparing them becomes a labour of love. Especially if you make a concentrated version which can be watered down to rejuvenate you when one gets into the house and collapses. The following are recipes made from watermelons and unripe mangoes. This is the season for them. And we are wolfing them down; gladly, naturally :).

The unripe mango one is more seasonal since they will be off the markets in a month. In south India they appear almost as soon as the Sun starts ruling. You should try to get large mangoes. Too small and the labour becomes intensive. Traditionally, my mother would roast the mango on a gas flame until soft, the classic Aam Pora. The smoky overtones add another dimension. I admit I cheated. I will come to that in a minute ;->.

Unripe Mango Sherbet

Ingredients
2 large unripe green mangoes
1 cup white sugar or to taste
1 and half litre water
1 and half teaspoon (or to taste) Pink Salt or beet nun

Method

Preheat the oven to the highest temperature. I set mine at 250 ̊C. Wash the mangoes very well. If necessary soak them for an hour in water to get rid of the sap which sometimes will run down the fruit when the mango is broken off the tree. Put the mangoes on the rack nearest and blister them. Take out the rack out 5 minutes and turn the fruit to blister it uniformly. After another five minutes, take it out. The mangoes should have softened a bit by now. For the rest of the softening, I put them in a pressure cooker with the water and cook them at highest pressure for 5 minutes. Let them cool down completely. Take the mangoes out of the liquid. Peel the mangoes. Scrape the flesh from the skin and add it to the liquid. Squeeze the flesh from the seed. I find it fastest to do it by hand. Add the sugar and boil it to dissolve the sugar. Puree the liquid. Put it back on a low flame and add the pink salt. One can use ordinary salt if pink salt is unavailable.Only this has a distinct sulphurous smell which I grew up with! Make sure it dissolves. Test to judge its salt/sugar/sourness component. Transfer to a carafe and chill it.
This is a concentrated solution so you might want to dilute it with chilled water for serving.

Watermelon Sherbet

Ingredients
2.5 kg watermelon
1 inch ginger
Sugar (optional)
Water

Method

Wash the watermelon. Remove the peel. Cut the red flesh out. Make sure the white flesh is avoided when the pulp is taken out. Remove the black and brown seeds. Peel the ginger and roughly chop it. Add the watermelon flesh and ginger into a blender and puree it. If it is too thick, add water and blend again. The watermelons here are very sweet, so sugar does not need to be added. However if necessary you can sweeten it with sugar. Serve chilled.

Mint chutney

2011-04-03T12:52:00.004+05:30

On my first visit to England, I was overwhelmed by mint in all kinds of sauces. With roast lamb, with fish and chips and even with a muffin! It didn't taste at all like the minty chutneys I was used to at home. I never figured out why. But I am happy to stick to the Indian usage of it. This chutney was made by my mother. A huge bunch of mint had to be used up, and what better way than pudina chutney?

Ingredients

A bunch of mint, leaves only, about 3 packed cups
2 unripe mangoes
3 green chillies, deseeded
1 teaspoon cumin, roasted and ground
1 teaspoon rock salt, or to taste

Method

The method is simplicity itself. Wash the leaves after stripping them thoroughly and remove as much water as possible. Peel and cube the raw mangoes. Deseed the green chillies. Add in a blender all ingredients until it becomes a paste. It can be kept a little coarse too. Store in the refrigerator.
Spread it on bread or have it with everything Indian; rice, chapattis, parathas and of course with dhoklas and samosas.

Coconut Cake

2011-03-30T23:27:00.002+05:30

I came upon Bill Granger's Coconut bread on SevenSpoons. It looked trusty but I wanted something with orange in it so came up with this recipe. Smells different but tastes similar. And I called it a cake.

Ingredients

2 large eggs
1/4 cup powdered milk
1 teaspoon orange zest
2 cups flour, more for dusting pan
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup date jaggery
1 1/2 cups flaked coconut
8 Tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
Soft butter for greasing the pan
2 Tablespoon raisins

Methods

Preheat an oven to 350°F (175°C).

In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk and butter, one by one. Mix thouroughly before adding each ingredient. Mix in the jaggery and coconut. Add the orange zest and blend briefly. It should be liquid.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, raisins and salt. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, and slowly add the egg mixture, stirring until just combined. Be careful not to overmix. This is a thick batter based cake.

Grease a Gugelhopf pan. Pour in the batter and bake in the preheated oven until the cake is golden and a fork inserted into the middle comes out clean, around 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in its tin for 15 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack. Position it again side up to cool a bit more.
An orange glaze would improve it, though I didn't try it.

Jackfruit curry

2011-03-27T22:25:00.007+05:30

My husband works on mass reactions to movies, financial events and in his spare time reads about mass mania about religious events. I wonder whether such reactions can also apply to friends cooking at opposite corners of the world??? A friend in USA had written that she had found frozen packs of unripe jackfruit. Jackfruit is common to many wet, tropical countries. And this is the season in India! So when I saw them in the market the other day I decided to go one better on my friend and start from scratch. Opening up a jackfruit, ripe or unripe requires one to know a couple of tricks. Namely, anointing one’s arms and the hatchet (that’s what works best; ordinary knives look decidedly puny) well with mustard oil. Any oil should do, but in Bengal we use the yellow, sharp mustard oil for most items. Oil all implements with mustard oil. Cut away the thick green peel first. Now the core should be visible. The meaty part surrounding the core is the best. The core is generally considered too tough. Cut the strips into cube and immediately put into water to avoid discoloration.

The dish is simplicity itself. This is a dish which my mother had tasted at a choruibhati or a picnic at a farm. She suggested that that the thakur (or the chef) may have used the following ingredients. This is our recreation of Enchor Korma!

Ingredients

2 cups cubed unripe jackfruit

4 Tablespoon cashew, toasted and ground

2 Tablespoon poppy seeds, ground

1/3 teaspoon of yellow mustard

2 teaspoon salt or more to taste

4 Tablespoon milk

3 green chillies, deseeded

2 tablespoon mustard oil and more for anointing

Method

Boil the cubed unripe jackfruit in plenty of salted water. I used a pressure cooker. 6 minutes at high pressure should do. Drain and cool. In the meantime in a coffee grinder, grind the spices to a powder. The poppy seeds, toasted cashew and yellow mustard should be then transferred to a blender with the green chillies and milk. A white liquid flecked with green. Heat the oil in a pan. Add the spice mix. Keep stirring constantly for a minute. Add the drained, cooked jackfruit. Add the salt to taste and cook in the spice mix for five minutes covered. Cook uncovered if you want the gravy to thicken. Serve hot with rice.

Son in law Eggs

2011-01-29T23:15:00.005+05:30

This is one of my husband's signature dishes. Indeed he has prepared it for my mother (how appropriate!) multiple times! He prepared it as part of my birthday dinner.

Ingredients

4 boiled eggs
4 shallots, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
4 green chilli, slivered
oil to fry
salad leaves
coriander leaves, chopped
4 Tablespoon jaggery
4 Tablespoon fish sauce
4 Tablespoon tamarind juice
4 Tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon salt

Method

Fry the boiled eggs to a light brown and drain. For the sauce, put the water in a pan. Mix in the tamarind paste. Bring it to simmer. Add sugar, salt and fish sauce. Taste and add sugar and tamarind if necessary. In the leftover oil, fry until golden, the shallots, garlic and green chilli. Arrange the salad leaves, quarter the eggs on to it. Sprinkle the fried onion, garlic and green chilli. Pour the sauce over, sprinkle the coriander and serve warm.

Orange etc.

2011-01-25T21:44:00.003+05:30

There's marmalade in the air. One of my neighbours made it a couple of weeks back. Felicity Claoke has recently featured her perfect version at WoM, so is it any wonder that I got tempted too?
The small oranges featured here are rare to come by. About one and half inch intense orange globes, I always fall for them and get a bagful. They are seedless so generally I use them in Chicken with orange, a dish where I can add the pieces with the minimum fuss. They also have very thin peel so instead of going through the procedure of extracting the zest from the peel, I can use it directly to make my home-made orange liquer. My marmalade is not thick. I am not even sure I can call it a marmalade since the whole orange except its peel is kept as it. Perhaps I should call them poached oranges! In a glass bottle, with all the orange globes on top of each other it looks enchanting. I have used the whole ranges in a dessert which follows below. The syrup is fantastic on plain old fashioned Victoria sponge cake. I am sure it would go very well with other types too, say Walnut coffee cake!

Ingredients

9 small oranges
1 lemon, juiced
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
1 cup Muscat wine (any white wine should do)

Method

Preheat the oven to 150 degree centigrade. In a oven proof bowl place the oranges. Top with water so as to submerge them. Cover the container making sure all the oranges are submerged. Roast for 1 and half hours. Fish out the oranges and cool them. Strain the orangish liquid and boil it with the shredded peel. Julienne the peel from 4 oranges, once the oranges have cooled, into 1 mm thick shred. Boil for about 15 minutes before adding the sugar. Takes about another half hour for it to be sticky. Add the wine, lemon juice and reduce it to two-third the volume. It should become moderately sticky again. Cool completely. In the meantime remove the white stringy bits, taking care to keep the oranges intact. Arrange the oranges in a sterile glass bottle. Pour the syrup on it. Make sure all the peel goes in too. If the oranges are not yet submerged, top it with some wine.
I used some of the poached oranges the next day in dumplings.

They were both sweet and savoury, the dough being made for the Rajasthani Batis that I had for dinner that day. But the tartness of the oranges were the right foil for the rich dough. Bati is the standard dough bread in Rajasthan and much of Gujarat. Filled Batis are all the rage in fancy places though the homely version is almost never stuffed. These are a sweet version. I am including the measures as I made them.

Orange stuffed Bati

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup semolina
1 teaspoon salt
1 and half teaspoon baking powder
5 tablespoon ghee
4 tablespoon curd
6 tablespoon water
12 poached oranges

Methods

Preheat oven to 180 degree centigrade. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk the curd and water. Make an indentation in the dry mixture and add the ghee. Add part of the curd and start bringing together the dry ingredients. Add curd as you go. The mixture should not be dry. Kneed for about 8 minutes, until a elastic, smooth dough is formed. Rest the dough for an hour. Make lemon sized balls from it. You will get about 12 balls.
Roll out the dough balls into a flat circle about half centimetre thick. Drain the poached oranges from the syrup and place it at the centre of the flattened dough. Bring the sides together and seal it. Roll it between two palms to get a perfectly round ball. Scallop one side of the ball with a spoon to make a design. Place on oiled plate and into the oven. Bake for about half an hour or until they are brown. Allow them to cool to room temperature before serving. The caramelised sugar could otherwise burn you!

Bengalee Fish Fry

2011-01-25T21:38:00.003+05:30

Fried fish in any guise appeals to Bengalees. Indeed without the Maach bhaja, the maacher jhol cannot be attempted and there would be glaring gaps in the PaNch bhaja that precedes any seriously formal meal. This time I will be documenting the non-traditional, but beloved Fish Fry. Breaded fried fish fillet was an addition that came with the Raj but it has stayed firmly in the Bengalee culinary repertoire as aparticular favourite at wedding banquets. One reason is that it does take longer to prepare than the generally marinated fish steaks that are made into fried fish. There's also the fact that Bhetki which is generally used as the base for preparing the boneless, thin fish filet is an expensive fish. It remains therefore a treat. These were prepared by my mother-in-law who is a dab hand at all Bengalee dishes. Quite a few steps can be prepared ahead, so the final frying can be done in a flourish allowing for serving it hot.

Ingredients

550 gm Bhetki, made into 12 filets of half centimetre thickness
1 teaspoon salt
1 lemon
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
1 green chili, deseeded
1/2 inch ginger

2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 Tablespoon white flour

1 and half cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 cups bread crumbs or ground lede biscuit

2 cups white oil for deep frying

Method

I find it best to ask the fishmonger to fillet my fish. They must not be thicker than half centimtre. A good sushi knife ought to help in doing it at home. Mine are generally thicker than the requisite half centrimtre though :(. The fish was procured and thoroughly rubbed with salt and lemon juice before freezing and later thawing before use. If using freshly bought fish, proceed immediately with marinating in the ginger-onion-garlic-chilli which is made into a paste. Half an hour at room temperature is sufficient for the marination. In the meantime tip on a flat plate 1 cup, some salt and pepper and mix up thoroughly. Make the batter in a blender (or whisk) with the eggs, salt, baking powder and white flour. Drain the filets from the marinade and coat them thoroughly with the flour. Set all the filets aside one by one andd start heating up the oil in a kadai. Spread the bread crumbs or ground lede biscuit onto another plate. Lede biscuit is the preferred crumb of the old fashioned. I myself use stale bread crumbs accumulated over a period. Dip the coated filet in the egg batter, coat it immediately with the crumbs and gently put into the oil which should be very hot by now. The flame is lowered and each side is cooked to brown perfection for about 3 minutes. The thickness of the filet is thus rather important. Avoid browning too much. The crispiness and softness has an optimum value.Drain and keep hot.
Though ketchup goes well, I think the quintessential Bengalee way is to have it with kasundi.

Tengtuk and Co.

2010-10-23T23:26:00.006+05:30

When I started making bread on a regular basis, a statement from Isabel Allende’s book ‘Aphrodite’ would hover in my mind, “ There’s a limit to being domestic, and making fresh bread on a regular basis is one of them”. I confess though that making bread is a therapeutic exercise to me and out of the many, many things one can do with flour, I find it the easiest to do (amazing isn’t it ?). Much simpler than making roti, paratha, cakes and muffins :), and definitely hand-made udon noodles. I got tempted to make udon after having a very satisfying meal at a Korean restaurant and seeing the udon recipe at Viet World Kitchen. But I draw the line at making udon. I think I will stick to buying noodles and pasta in the future. The udon was accompanied along with a Tuna Soboro from Just Bento and a Ladakhi Thuk. All thuks are stews where vegetables, dumplings, meat are simmered in a broth. I had made Tengthuk quite a few times before, its awe-inspiring simplicity taking me by surprise. The first time it was prepared by a Ladakhi friend, Tashi. I was enthralled at his speed in making ribbon noodles and cooking it in the simmering broth. I just knew that a Thuk was the thing to have with the home-made, hand-made udon! The Thuk recipe was from The Ladakhi Kitchen, acquired on our jaunt there some years back. Ladakh because of its high altitude grow fewer varieties of almost all food items we take for granted here. But they make everything go a bit further. The vegetables are what I had at hand; almost anything can be added.

Ingredients

1 onion, chopped

2 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered

2 carrots, peeled and sliced thickly

2 small kohlrabi, peeled and halved

Red cabbage, sliced thinly, a handful

2 tomatoes, quartered

Water, 3 cups

2 teaspoon salt

Garam masala, pinch

1 Tablespoon oil

Method

Heat the oil and sauté the chopped onions. Add the potatoes and kohlrabi and cook them for about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook them with the salt for another 5 minutes. Add the carrots and water and cook until the vegetables are tender but retain a bite. I cooked in a pressure cooker and it took 5 minutes under high pressure. When the cooker has cooled enough to open, add the thinly sliced red cabbage and simmer for 3 minutes. Taste the salt and add more if necessary. Add the garam masala and serve warm.

Pear nut soda bread

2010-10-23T19:46:00.003+05:30

This bread was an impromptu creation to use up some long-standing poached pear and do without the yeast that I usually use to raise my bread. The result is a slightly sweet bread which is great with a salty dip or a vinegary dressing. Its also a multigrain bread having three types of flour.

Ingredients
2 cups white flour
1/2 cup rye
2 tablespoon white cornflour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup liquid from poached pear
1/4 cup water
1 egg, beaten
1 cup pecan, chopped
1 and half Tablespoon pumpkin seeds
1 and half teaspoon baking powder
2 Tablespoon butter, molten

Method
In a bowl mix together the flours, salt, baking powder and the chopped nuts. In a mixer blend together the egg until frothy and add the sugar and 2 tablespoon of the butter until the mixture thickens. Add the water and poached pear liquid and whiz once more. Add the liquid into the dry ingredients and mix together with hand. It will be a sticky dough. Butter a loaf pan. Scrape in the batter and push into the corners. Sprinkle the pumpkin seeds. Bake at 180 degrees centrigrade for one hour. Cool it before unmolding.
Serve with a cheese dip or any savoury spread. We had it with guacamole.

Fish Vindaloo

2010-09-26T14:03:00.005+05:30

I am told vindaloo has got a bad name in the West. A friend who had lived in Britain once told me that he had found no similarities between my preparation of the item and what he had tasted in the restaurants in England! I hastened to add that my recipe had been taken from Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking ! Maligned or not, the vindaloo paste is amenable to improving many dishes. Try for example the small southern Indian eggplants with it; completely transforms the dish! This is my version of Fish Vindaloo cooked with fresh whole sardines. The paste can be made ahead. Sauteing and less sweating that way; you can just make the gravy and fold in the fried fish.

Ingredients

2 teaspoon cumin seeds

2-3 red chillies

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

1 teaspoon cardamom seeds

7 ½ cm cinnamon sticks

1 ½ teaspoon black mustard seeds

1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds

5 Tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon jaggery

10 tbsp vegetable oil

175-200 g onions, peeled and sliced into fine half-rings

6 Tablespoon water

2 ½ cm cube ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 small heads garlic, about 6 cloves

Fish, 6 moderately sized whole fish, gutted and cleaned

1 Tablespoon ground coriander

½ teaspoon turmeric

1 ½ -2 teaspoon salt

Method

Marinate the fish in salt, turmeric and coriander for half an hour. In the meantime, the dry ingredients are ground in a dry grinder and mixed with the vinegar and jaggery to produce the first step of a vindaloo. Heat two tablespoon of oil and fry the sliced onion until they are flecked with brown. Drain and in a blender mix it with the vinegar paste. This makes the vindaloo paste.

Fry the fish pieces in 4 tablespoon of oil, separately (not the same oil as the onions). Set them aside to drain.

Make a paste of the ginger and garlic with a little water and fry them in the same oil that the onion was fried in. Once they are cooked, add the vindaloo paste. If it is too dry add a few tablespoons of water. Put back the fish in the paste and coat it, carefully. Cook covered for 5 minutes and serve warm.

Beef Pumpkin Stew

2010-09-26T14:00:00.006+05:30

The goulash that I have had in India are not really goulash-like. Is it any wonder that I have got corrupted too? However, this was inspired by a goulash recipe. It can safely be called a stew. I adore stews. They are mostly one pot meals and I can add whatever is at hand to make something tasty as well as healthy. The pumpkin and jaggery added a sweet note, supplementing the paprika. The vinegar balanced that out. The starch from the plantain gave the stew thickness. Needless to say, it can be done with other red meat too. We ate it with a potato-starter based rye bread, ripped and tweaked from the New Complete Book of Breads.

Ingredients
250 gm beef, cubed
1 onion, minced
1 bayleaf
1 teaspoon paprika or lal Kashmiri mirch
1 and 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 teaspoon jaggery
1 green plantain, peeled and cut into thick pieces
400 gm pumpkin, cubed
2 Tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon vinegar
2 cups water

Method
Heat oil in a pressure cooker. While the oil is heating, mince the onions. Saute onions until they pick up brown specks. Add the bayleaf along with it. Once the onions are browned add the paprika or its substitute as well as the salt. Cook for a minute. Add the beef cubes and brown them at low heat. Stir frequently. Once the colour of the meat changes, add the jiggery and coat everything. Simmer for 4-5 minutes to melt and caramelise the sweetener a little. Add the water, close lid and pressure cook the meat. In my Futura, it takes 12 minutes on high pressure to cook beef or goat.
Cool cooker before opening lid. Add plantain pieces and cover the lid. Add some water if the liquid is reduced. Cook 2 minutes at low heat. Cool completely again. Open cooker to add the pumpkin pieces. With the lid open this time, cook the pumpkin. Pressure pumpkin, makes it melt so this is best done while you watch it like a hawk! Should take about 5-7 minutes for the pumpkin to be done. Add the vinegar and more salt if necessary to finish the product. At this point it needs to be tasted to suit your family’s set of taste-buds!
The vinegar can be totally left out, but as I mentioned, this had been inspired by goulash, and I wanted a sour tang which wine usually adds.

Cheese puff pastry

2010-08-27T22:00:00.005+05:30

Cheese puffs

The marriage of cheese and flour is a comforting one. I love my cheese breads, pasta alfredo and most roué are improved tremendously on addition of a bit of cheese. It is no surprise that gougeres, the French cheese puff pastry is another embodiment of a happy relationship. The recipe for the choux pastry was taken from David Lebovitz whose site has a fairly simple recipe. The great thing with this creation is that it requires no equipment which may be considered mandatory for baking. Consequently, I made it a number of times in my recent sojourn in US. The kitchen was furnished with only the basic equipments and I had the opportunity to try out many cheeses; Monterey Jack, Colby and some Caerphilly for variation.

I doubled the amounts given on DL's site, used thyme in one batch (the other being plain cheese) instead of chives and on some of the plain ones, sprinkled “ Prawn Chamanthipodi” on the top in the second phase of baking. The addition of Chamanthipodi was duly appreciated by our Indian tastebuds. I had got packet of Prawn Chamanthipodi from Kottayam, so haven’t had occasion to make it at home. However, it can be easily attempted and Yummyoyummy has a recipe for it. This batch of gougeres were frozen (after cooling) in several layers of butter-paper and finally sealed in plastic. Bring them to room temperature before serving and heat in an preheated oven for about 10 minutes.

Extra Ingredients

1 teaspoon thyme

1 teaspoon Chamanthipodi

1 cup Montereye Jack, Colby, Caerphilly or Grana Padano, grated

Exploring Miso saute

2010-08-27T21:52:00.004+05:30

Eggplant with Miso

When I was small, I could consume quantities of roti with fried eggplant. The eggplants would be prepared as large circles, from large, shiny, bulbous ones, rubbed with a bit of salt, cumin and turmeric and then fried. A very satisfying meal which I would love to indulge in daily, if not for the stray thoughts of the large amount oil used in cooking it! This recipe uses the same sautéing principle but the amount of oil is relatively negligible and the addition of miso gives it a Japanese tang. The recipe was adapted from the Book of Miso, over which I am nowadays frequently salivating. It’s a thorough book, has hundreds of vegetarian recipes and has opened my eyes on miso usage, apart from the ubiquitous miso soup. I have used the smaller (these really look like purple eggs) eggplants/aubergines found in Southern India. Since the aubergines are cut into bite sized pieces, the initial size of it is immaterial.

Ingredients
3 Tablespoon oil
4 small eggpants
1 clove garlic, minced
1 and half spoon gingerroot, minced
3 tablespoon spring onion, greens, chopped
1/2 cup water
2 Tablespoon white miso
1/ teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon vinegar
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame seed

Method
Cut the eggplants into bite sized pieces. Salt them. After half an hour drain any water which the salt has drawn out. Pat them dry. Heat the oil in the kadai/wok to smoking temperature and add the eggplants. Shake to coat them with oil at high heat for a minute before lowering the temperature. Cover with the lid and cook it with intermittent shaking for 7-10 minutes to cook the vegetable through. Cook it uncovered for a two minutes when it is done. Mix the rest of the ingredients with a fork to make a miso mix. Pour the mixture over the eggplant and sauté for 3-5 minutes to completely coat the eggplants with the miso mix. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds. Serve warm.
It goes well with Indian staples such as rice and roti too!

Lentil Soup

2010-03-05T07:01:00.003+05:30

Staying in a guesthouse for a limited period ought to dampen my culinary adventures somewhat. I have hardly any access to the pantry elements I usually have access to.I don’t want to stock up on ingredients which I will have to leave behind when I get back home. And the kitchen itself though large has hardly any of the equipments which I take for granted. Mixer? No! Tin-opener?? No :<. So I surprised even myself when I found myself making something which could actually be put on a blog. I had more or less made up my mind that it would be relegated for the next 6 months. This is a lentil soup. Simple, hearty and requiring no introduction as to its nutritive value.

Ingredients

1/3^rd cup split yellow peas

1/3^rd cup split green peas

1/3^rd cup onion, chopped

1 Tablespoon oil

Salt to taste

3 cups water

½ teaspoon lemon rind

Method

Wash the peas/lentils in cold water a few times until the water does not change colour. Soak the peas/lentils in plenty of water overnight. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil in a kettle. In a large heavy vessel with a tight lid heat the oil. Saute onions until lightly coloured and transparent. Add hot water to the vessel. Wash the lentils once more before draining the water and tipping it along with the onions and boiling water. Close lid and cook at the lowest flame for 1 hour (or until done). In the meantime, grate ( I used a peeler here) the rind off an organic lemon, about half teaspoon. When the lentils are softened, add salt to taste. Start with half teaspoon. Let the salt be incorporated before adding more. Take off the flame, add the lemon rind, cover and cook for 5 more minutes. I ate it hot with a bowlful of plain rice.

Spinach Kohlrabi Tarts

2010-02-16T18:45:00.003+05:30

I love tarts. Particularly the smaller ones, which look delicately crafted. And when you add spinach and kohlrabi, you feel slightly less guilty on sprinkling the top of them with lots of grated cheese. The ingredients make 4 small tarts.

Ingredients
4 cups spinach leaves
2 small kohlrabi
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 egg, beaten
3 Tablespoon oil
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1 cup milk
1 cup grated cheese, I used Gruyere
210 gm shortcrust pastry dough

Method
Take 4 tartlet pans. Oil them and line them with the rolled out shortcrust pastry. The rolled out dough should not be more than half centimetre thick. Bake in preheated 180 degree oven for 15 minutes. I filled the lined pastry cases with red kidney beans. Remove beans and cool. Wash spinach thoroughly in several washes of water. Drain in colander. Steam spinach with whatever water is clinging to it for 2 minutes. Cool and chop roughly. Wash kohlrabi and peel it. Cube it into 1 centimetre pieces and boil in salted water for 5 minutes. While the vegetables are cooking, saute the chopped onion and garlic in 1 tablespoon of oil. When the onion is golden, add the chopped spinach. Cook it for 7-10 minutes to remove any excess water. Add the drained boiled kohlrabi. Add a teaspoon of salt and cook it for another 5 minutes. Cool it. In a bowl whisk the egg, milk and pepper. Fill the tart cases with the vegetable mix. Sprinkle with cheese and pour the egg-milk mixture. Bake for 20 minutes at 180 degree centigrade. Cool and unmould from the tart pans.

Multi-grain bread

2010-01-31T13:01:00.003+05:30

Eating multi-grain bread always fills me with a virtuous glow. I feel that it entitles me to another helping of payesh or a spoonful of ice cream. It also allows one to use up fractions of flours of different types left at the bottom of the jar. I added both yeast and baking powder because most of the flour types I used were low in gluten. The semolina and pearl millet bits give it a wonderful texture. The recipe makes one large loaf.

Ingredients

1/2 cup semolina
1/2 cup amaranth flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup broken pearl millet
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
1 cup bread flour
1/2 teaspoon fresh yeast
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups hot water
3 Tablespoon cubed butter
2 tablespoon molasses
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablesppon white oil

Method

Bring a cup of water to a boil. Measure out the oats and broken millet in a bowl. Pour over only enough hot water to cover the grains. In half cup water dissolve the molasses and the yeast. Cover and let it rise, about 15 minutes. Measure the semolina, amaranth, bread and wheat flour into a bowl. Add baking powder and salt. Mix it to uniformly distribute it. Rub the butter into it to resemble bread crumbs. Make well in the centre and add the oats and millet mixture. Make sure they have cooled down sufficiently to handle with hands. Add the fermented yeast. Make it into a dough. All the grains must mix sufficiently, so this process takes about 10 minutes. If sticky, sprinkle the working surface with bread flour and slap down the dough until it is elastic. Lightly oil a bowl with a little oil and place the dough to rise for an hour. Once the dough has risen, it can be placed into an oiled loaf tin for the second rising. I wanted something interesting to look at and therefore divided the dough into 1 inch balls and arranged them in the loaf tin. Cover and let the dough rise for 4-5 hours. It might take longer at colder climes, but in Madras it is always good temperature for the yeasts to bloom! By the time the second rtising was complete it had a lovely cobbled appearance! Prepare the oven and heat it upto 200 degree centigrade. Bake for 30-45 minutes. It should be nicely browned on the surface. And test hollow when turned out and tapped on the bottom.
Great with cheese and any number of dips.

Khichri and Springroll: spring in the air

2010-01-25T15:19:00.004+05:30

Back when I was a child, Khichri was a staple of wet, rainy days. During the monsoon season it would be flavoured with cauliflower; in winter it would be carrots and peas. Those were really "seasonal" times! Its a great one-pot meal and if necessary, can be made like a stew. The traditional Bengali khichri can be quite elaborate. There are several recipes for that on the net. My kichri is certainly not traditional but a variant which comes together beautifully. And it is rather simple. It is however full of healthy" stuff!I wanted to use up some of the lentils left over in small quantities. Also some fish stock which was at the back of the freezer. Mine was slightly soupy. We had it with some spring rolls. Again I had wrappers and frozen corn kernels to use up.

KHICHRI

Ingredients
1 cup unsplit, unhusked Moong bean
1/2 cup broken wheat (dahlia)
1/2 cup brown rice
1 onion, chopped
5 spring onions, white part only, chopped
3 cloves, minced
1 litre fish stock
salt to taste
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes or a dash of Tabasco
3 Tablesppon white oil

Garnish:
5 black olives, chopped
A handful of pomegranate seeds

Method
Heat oil in a pressure cooker. Fry the onions and spring onions until translucent. Add the clove and chilli flakes. Stir for about 5 minutes more until they soften. In the meantime, wash the rice, broken wheat, lentil mix thoroughly. Use several changes of water. Add the fish stock to the fried onions and bring it to boil. Add the grains and one teaspoon of salt. Pressure cook it according to how you would cook lentils in your pressure cooker. When finished check how much more salt you need to add. You could also make it drier if that is your preference. It does need to be stirred continuously if you are boling off some of the extra broth. I garnished it with black olives and pomegranate seeds for contrast.

Corn kernel SPRING ROLLS

Ingredients
1 cup corn kernels
1/4 cup semi-hard cheese (I used a young Parmesan)
2 slitted, deseeded green chilli, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon Sechuan pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
Eggwash for sealing
1 teaspoon of oil
16 spring roll wrappers, square or round

Method
Blitz all ingredients except egg in a blender. Pulse it. It should not be a puree. Oil a baking tray or parchment. In the middle of the wrapper put a teaspoon of filling. Lightly brush the sides of the wrapper with the eggwash. Fold the wrapper over to form a triangle, or if you are using round wrappers, fold to form a half-moon. Press the edges with fingers and seal it into a spring roll shape. Arrange them on the tray/parchment. Brush with eggwash. Bake it for 15 minutes at 180 degree centigrade. They can also be deep-fried.

Stuffed Okra and Paneer: Radiating health

2010-01-06T18:44:00.005+05:30

At certain times of the week, it is borne upon me that we must have something healthy and use up the vegetables in the refrigerator. So when I espied half a tin of opened tuna, quarter kilo of okra (or lady’s fingers as we call it here) and a pack of paneer, I knew what I would make. The okra must be young; the larger ones though easier to stuff are rather fibrous. The paneer cubes were kept large (1 inch cube). The sauce which went was pure inspiration and was so good that I will have to repeat the dish just for that!

Ingredients

For the filling:

180gm tuna flakes

4 Tablespoon onion, finely chopped

Handful of white pepper, ground

2 green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

1 teaspoon sesame paste

Salt to taste

3 Tablespoon oil

For the sauce:

3 cloves garlic, finely sliced

1 Tablespoon white miso

½ cup water

100 gm paneer, cubed

200 gm okra

Method

Wash and clean the okra. Pat them dry. Make a slit in the side with a paring knife. Be careful that the slit does not stretch all the way to the end and doesn’t show up on the other side. Widen it with your little finger slightly.

Pat the paneer cubes dry. With the little finger make a hole in it. This has to be carefully done so that the paneer does not crack. Fry the paneer pieces to a golden colour. Drain and cool.

Whiz all the filling ingredients together in a mixer. Take a little ball of the filling and push it inside the slits in the okras and the holes in the paneer cubes. Smoothen the top and do not over-stuff.

In the leftover oil (very little of it is needed, so you can pour of excess oil) fry the garlic until golden brown. Mix the miso in 2 tablespoon of water. Add the rest of the water into the pan with garlic. Heat. Arrange the okra in the pan, cover and cook for 5 minutes. They should be just al dente. With a slotted spoon take the okra out carefully and arrange them on a plate along with the stuffed paneer. Return the pan to the heat and add the miso. Stir thoroughly to make a thick paste like sauce. Pour the sauce over the paneer and vegetables before serving.

Seasonal Pakoras

2009-12-25T22:44:00.012+05:30

This is a particular great time for foodie experimenters. On wandering through the lush vegetable market in our area on my trip home to Kolkata, I came upon items with which I had no familiarity. Both PuiN er Metuli and Maatha Maach are it seems standards in rural Bengal though. My mother who is an adventurous experimenter in the kitchen joined me to make the following dishes. PuiN saakh is one of the staple greens in Bengal. What beckoned me in the market was not the Puin itself but its exuberantly green blossom! Puin er Metuki is its name in Bengal. We made pakoras; the Indian fried snack out of it. Maatha Maach similarly has very humble beginnings. It is basically the leftover small fry (really really minute!) which is left at the very bottom of the fisherman's net. It contains myriad tiny and fishes small krill/shrimp. It must be cleaned thoroughly before use, but once that part is over, it lends itself to wonderful fishballs and fish patties.

Ingredients
250 gm PuiN blossom, stalks, flowers included
1 cup Besan (ground gram flower)
1 level teaspoon salt
1 bunch of coriander, finely chopped, about a cup
1 and half seeded green chilli, finely chopped
2 teaspoon ground pepper
Water only if necessary
Oil for frying, about 1 and half cup

Method
Chop and steam the methuli/greens for about 3 minutes. Drain thoroughly. Mix the rest of the dry ingredients. Tip the cooled methuli into the dry mix. Add just enough water to make a thick batter with dropping consistency. Heat oil. Drop a spoonful of the batter mix and fry until brown at medium heat. Drain excess oil. Serve hot with sauce of choice.

Fishballs

Ingredients
250 gm Shrimp-(small prawns, fish)
2 Tbalesppon Oil
1 onion, chopped finely
3 Tablespoon Garlic, chopped finely
2 teaspoon Green chilli, finely chopped
2 teaspoon red Chilli powder
1 teaspoon blackPepper, ground
1/2 teaspoonTurmeric powder-
3 medium sized white bread slices, ( soaked in 1/3 cup milk)
Salt, as required.
For coating the balls:
2 Eggs, beaten
5 Tablespoon toasted bread crumbs
Oil for frying, about 1 cup

Method
Clean the shrimps thoroughly. Heat the oil. Sauté the chopped onion,garlicm along with the shrimps/small fish. Stir. Add the chilli powder, chopped green chilli, pepper, turmeric powder. Mix thoroughly. Lower the heat. Mix in the beaten eggs and the mashed bread soaked in milk. Stir again. Cook the mixture on low flame stirring all the time till it is thick enough to hold its shape. Cool and shape into bite size balls (About 40 balls).
Roll them in bread crumbs. Dip them in the beaten egg. Roll them again in bread crumbs.
Deep fry the balls till golden brown.
Remove keep them on paper. Serve hot with sauce of choice.

Sizzling snacks : Elo Jhelo

2009-12-25T18:37:00.008+05:30

Like in so many fields, making Elo Jhelo are a dying art. Which is a pity, seeing that they being basically junk food, ought to take the fancy of the younger generations. My mother-in-law who excels in all things related to Bengalee cooking (and European style soups!) makes it as special treats for us whenever we come to visit her. This is her recipe.
They are to me beautiful as pieces of art and worth preserving. Packed in even plactic containers they make lovely gifts too!

Ingredients
2 cups white flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch salt
3 Tablespoon white oil as shortening
1/2 cup milk

Sugar syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
Boil the two until you have sticky syrup

Enough oil for frying. About 2 cups.

Method
In a pan boil the sugar and water to make the syrup. The syrup should coat the back of a spoon. Let it cool.
Add the 2 cups of flour into a large bowl. Add the salt and baking powder and mix them thoroughly. Add the shortening and rub it in. Warm the milk until it is lukewarm. Add the milk until the dough comes together. It should not be sticky. Let the dough rest for about 15 minutes.
Make small balls out of it, about one and half centimtre in radius. Roll out the balls into a pancake shape. The thickness should not be less than 1 mm. Otherwise it will be too fragile. With a knife cut slits into the pancake. Keep a gap of about 1 cm from the edge. From the edge of the pancake with two fingers roll in. Heat the oil until a cube of breadcrumb fries golden immediately. Drop the rolled Elo jhelo and lower the heat to a shimmer. Fry it. Make sure that it remains white and doesn't become brown. Heat the oil up again before dropping in the other elo jhelo rolls.
Drain the oil and drop it into the sugar syrup while it is still warm. It should not remain in the sugar syrup for more than half a minute. Just coat the ele jhelo in the syrup and drain. Let cool before packing.

Pink Panacotta

2009-11-23T20:44:00.008+05:30

Gulkhand Pana Cotta

My husband craves for sweets after supper. Most Bengalis have a sweet tooth. His is a pronounced one. If we don’t have two types at least, he insists on going and buying some from the sweet shop just opposite our gate. Yes. Fortunately or unfortunately its right in front. In order to stave off some impulsive buys (not that I am complaining against impulsive purchases!), I try to have something ready at home. Not surprisingly, I stick to desserts which can be made in a jiffy.

So, panacotta is made quite frequently. A pack of gelatine, heavy cream, sugar and any seasonal fruit is all one needs! The variation is endless. The featured one was an inspiration that I had on purchasing a bottle of Gulkhand. Gulkhand is a not-too sweet rose petal preserve. I had bought it as an Ayurvedic tonic but THAT in fact increased its appeal. Now, I could tell myself that along with all that cream I am having something healthy!

I like my panacotta creamy though solid, so I have gone easy on the gelatine. I use Ru-af-Za, the rose-scented concentrate we use in cooling evening drinks to give both colour as well body. Ru-af-za contains a lot of sugar, so you can reduce the amount sugar to sweeten the panacotta.

Ingredients

Makes 6

3 tablespoon Gulkhand
3 teaspoon gelatine
570 ml heavy cream
100 ml milk
60 g sugar
3 teaspoon Ru-af-za

1 tablespoon rose-water

Method

Soak gelantine in cold water for about 10 minutes. Dissolve the gelatine completely, then add the Ru-af-za.. Spread a thin layer of Gulkhand on the bottom of 6 buttered muffin tins. Combine the double cream and milk with the sugar and simmer for 10 minutes or until it dissolves. Mix the rest of the Gulkhand (about a tablespoon) with the milk-cream. Mix in the gelatine-Ru-af-za into the cream-milk mixture. Stir in the rosewater. Leave to cool.
Pour the panna cotta into the muffin tins when it has cooled down carefully so as not to distrub the layer on the bottom, then transfer to the refrigerator and leave to set for at least 3 hours.

To unmould, dip the muffin pan into a tray of hot water quickly and turn it upside down on a large plate.

In the Land of Coconut recipes

2009-11-23T20:05:00.004+05:30

Though the restaurants in Fort Kochi area were largely disappointing, much of the time on this trip to Kerala we ate very well. On the day we ventured into Matancherry, we also hunted up Rahmatullah of Biryani fame. The place was absolutely no frills. The seating arrangements reminded me of the strictly utilitarian school benches and in terms of choice; well, we were offered Mutton Biryani or Chicken Biryani. We dutifully chose both. This was Biryani at its simplest. Very little oil, the very basic of whole garam masala spices and large chunks of meat to soothe one down. And awfully reasonably priced!
Breakfast was always at the homestays so we always began the mornings on a great note. Idiappams figured twice on our breakfast menu on this trip. Both time it was paired with egg curry, Malayali style. The Following Iddiappam recipe as I saw it done by Dai Kutty of GKRiverHomestay. Its simplicity itself. Iddiappams are by themselves bland and are great for absorbing any kind of flavours. These are best eaten warm.

Ingredients
2 and half cup rice flour
2 and half cups coconut milk
1 cup hot water
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon oil

3 Tablesppon, grated, fresh coconut
1 green chlli, very finely chopped

Equipment
Idli steamer
Rice mouli

Method
Bring the coconut milk and hot water to a boil. Sieve the rice flour and salt and mix. Pour the hot coconut milk mixture into the flour. As you pour, mix in the flour so that it brings the flour just together. It should be in-between a dough and a batter. The whole coconut milk mixture may not be necessary.
Mix the grated coconut and green chilli. Dai and her mother-in law oiled the mould and sprinkled a little bit of this chilli-coconut into the idli moulds. The rice mouli they had was beautiful piece of brass. A small container with a sieve and another solid piece with handles on both sides to press the dough. You fill up the container with the sieve with the batter and press down the solid piece which fits into it. The rice noodles which come out are put straight onto the idli mould. Once they are filled, the moulds are closed and placed into the steamer. 10 to 15 minutes of cooking should be more than sufficient. Take off from the steamers. Dai used a large metal spatula to unmould.

An orgy of Cheese

2009-10-20T20:01:00.018+05:30

This post about our trip to the Nilgiris in August should have been up long ago. But I didn’t have a blog running then. And we have just finished the huge amount of organic cheese we got from Acreswild. So this is going to be both a travel and food post. Escaping the heat of Chennai itself is enough to make me ecstatic. Added to that, I could look forward to a really good cheese haul!

We stayed at the exclusive (exclusive because only worker bees, like Sitabhra, and their hangers-on are allowed) Radio-astronomy Centre (RAC) Guest House in Muthorai. Muthorai itself deserves better notice. In the internet its claim to fame is the RAC and the Central Potato Research Institute. Its about 10 kms from Ootacumund, so you can drop into 'town' at any reasonable hour without too much trouble. Yet, it is on the way to all the nicer places in the Nilgiris; Avalanche, Emerald Valley, Parson’s Valley to start with. The RAC campus itself is one of the few patches of verdant green in the region; most of the area being assiduously cultivated. One can walk up or down from its gates and feel virtuous about taking some exercise! If it is not tea, this region is cultivated for its fields of carrots, potatoes, cabbages and green veggies. On our second day in Muthorai we set off for the “Emerald District”. Emerald District? The name conjured up vistas of rolling green dotted with lakes. The few sketchy routes I had found in the internet all agreed that it is within the purview of such out-of-shape city denizens like us to walk from Muthorai to Emerald Valley. The weather as we came out was lovely; lightly cloudy but not threatening (that is, by the way, very deceptive in the Nilgiris).

We climbed down from our perch at the RAC after a substantial, old-fashioned breakfast and went into the Muthorai village. From there, we followed the main road. The road is tarred, so the traffic is considerable and houses, farms, schools straggle almost half the route. En route we would stand to look at cabbage fields and carrot threshers. At cross-roads we would patiently wait for a vehicle or a local to point the way towards Avalanchi. Avalanchi, deep in the forest, is 21 km from Muthorai. There is a perfectly good bus service and to any local it must have seemed a bit mad on our part to want to walk. In fact, one very nice truck driver stopped his vehicle in order to ask if he could drive us to our destination! Away from Muthorai, the country-side became less populated. For long stretches, we would walk in quiet solitude each engrossed in their own thought, maybe stopping to click a photo or two. Then came our first real break; a tea shop. Makeshift though it was, it served welcome hot, sugary tea in small glasses. We had it with some snacks we had brought along. It was a satisfied trio which resumed walking. The roadsides by now were sporting lots of wild-flowers so the stops to admire them became more frequent.

And then, as we turned around a wooded corner, the first of the lakes came into view. Across miles of rolling hills we looked down into a lake nestled among green hills. Small houses dotted the hillsides among the tea gardens. The sky had become slightly overcast by now. A wind was blowing. It was what we had been walking for. We were loathe to move from there. Only the thought that there were perhaps better views spurred us on. The district was definitely green and as the sky darkened it looked even more wild. The whole area is riddled with lakes all inter-connected. Small, big, medium. Shores fringed with woods. Shores upto whose edges tea estates rolled. As we blissfully made one turn after another it had escaped our notice that the sky had started looking ominous. It was only when the droplets started falling I realised to my chagrin that, decoyed by the blue sky, I had decided to keep my raincoat back at the guesthouse, neatly packed at the bottom of my backpack. One hat and one umbrella were all we had to protect three of us. By the time we reached Ithalar twenty minutes later, the rain had become more persistent if not ferocious. The question arose; do we take a bus back home or take a bus towards Avalanchi, another 10 kms ahead? A bus towards Avalanchi came soon. We piled in. It was surprisingly empty, so we each grabbed the best position and rode through the winding, narrow (by this time it was unpaved or untarred too) roads. Soon, we crossed Emerald village where the dam over one of the lakes consolidates the importance of this village. Avalanchi is inside protected forest areas, so if we hadn’t been aboard the local bus, special permits would have been necessary to get into this area. One can stay only in designated forest rest houses and as I knew from previous experience, Wildlife Wardens are notoriously fickle in letting the hoi polloi in. This area was heavily forested. Branches of trees regularly scratched against the bus and poked through the open windows. Where the trees had thinned out, we could glimpse series of lakes flashing by. Half an hour later we were deposited in the Avalanchi Power Station area. It lay close to another lake. Green, fringed with woods and definitely wild. The area had been cleared specifically for the power station. It was hemmed in by formidable crags. The tops of all of them were clad in clouds and wisps of fog rolled down their slopes. Sometimes one could spy a lonely tree, lopsided and valiant in its efforts to stand at the summit. In fact, it reminded me of my views of Lake District in England. That had been a gray, chilly trip in December. This was obviously greener. But looked equally stern! We had been warned that the bus would leave in half an hour (the power station being the last stop) and it was the last one for the day! There was a lot of scrambling for the best points for photos and before long we were headed back. The rain seemed to have let up only for us. Very soon it was pelting on the roof of the vehicle and only when we were away from Ithalar did it stop. By this time, we were pretty hungry and since the lunch hour was way past, we didn’t have much hope that there would be anything left for us at the guest house. So on disembarking at Muthorai, we stepped into a shack. Never did idli and sweet tea taste so good. The idlis were plump and fresh. We dipped them into a soupy sambar, spooned some coconut chutney and gulped down huge quantities of tea with it. Having taken the edge off our appetite, we felt we could tackle the climb up to the guest house. Once we had dropped of our belongings we made our way to the canteen, having not completely given up about more food :>. We were not wrong. They had been specially kept in what looked like a hot air oven. So we had two meals for lunch. The food in this jaunt was nothing spectacular. Stolid and substantial. And warm.

The organic cheese from Acreswild Farm in Coonoor is of course another story and I was aching to try all the different things I could do with them. We had been overwhelmed by their Camembert when we had visited the Khans three years back (I must admit I had been wowed by their bungalow with ponds and cow and goat sheads and herb garden too :-)). And their Monterey Jack and Cheddar. Coonoor to Muthorai is about one and half hours drive and when we reached their old place at Coonoor we found they had moved to their new place where not only are they going to continue their cheese-making, but also give a taste of their life at little cottages inside their (former tea) estate. I am happy we had one of their employees to guide us. As it is, part of the journey was quite hair-raising. The place is not far from Coonoor town centre, but it looks like another world! The going was steep, there was no road to speak of (though I hear they have the internet!) and the fog deliberately drifted only ten feet in front of the car! When we got there, the first thing we thought was how to reverse the car and get it to climb the steep incline! The Khans are still establishing things at their new quarters. We did do a tour of their new cheese-making cottage. They are trying to be as eco-friendly as possible and doing an amazing job. Gobar-gas unit, rain-water harvesting and vegetable garden will all add to the minimum human footprint. A must visit if you are going to Coonoor. They are super-friendly and it was a pleasure interacting with them.

They sell their cheeses through quite few outlets now, so on taking our leave we trooped down to Baker’s Junction and splurged on huge amounts of cheese. This is something I miss awfully in India. Good cheese. But given India’s hot weather most places can only stick to paneer and ricotta. Anyway, we got as many hard cheeses as possible to stash and of course their Camembert (which was just wonderful spread on cream-cracker biscuits or with grapes) and their new, flavored soft cheeses. Needless to say, you can’t store all varieties for equal lengths of time. So the feta was used up pretty fast in a Greek Country Salad. And some dishes were more successful than the others. Some of the recipes were adapted from other sites, some from my cookbooks.

Cauliflower three cheese bake

This was inspired by a Greek recipe. I added some other vegetables for good measure. It made a meal itself.

1 small head of cauliflower, kept whole with leaves and core removed

2 large carrots, peeled and thickly sliced

300 gm pumpkin, cubed

1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed

2 Tablespoon coriander leaves, chopped

1 Tablespoon mint, chopped

2 cups skimmed milk

2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon of pepper

1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon of ground nutmeg

1 beaten egg

1/4 cup Gruyere, grated

1/4 cup Gouda, grated

1/4 cup crumbled Tomme de Savoie

Preparation

Bring a pan of water to boil. Chop all the vegetables (except the cauliflower) into equal sizes. Add the carrots and potato five minutes before the pumpkin and simmer. Cook for 5 minutes more and add the cauliflower for about and switch off the flame. Drain. The water can be used for other purposes like boiling rice in! In a bowl, combine cheeses and toss to mix thoroughly. Preheat oven to 180C.

In a saucepan, heat 2 cups of milk with the salt, pepper, and nutmeg over medium-low heat. When the milk is steaming, switch off and add the beaten egg mixture, whisking continuously so it doesn't boil. When the sauce thickens, remove from heat and stir in 2/3 of the mixed cheeses.

Arrange the cauliflower in the centre of the baking dish. Arrange all vegetables. Sprinkle the chopped herb on top. Pour the sauce over evenly and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Bake at 180C for about 40-45 minutes.

Greek Country Salad

The simplest Indian salads are vegetables cut into rings and arranged on a plate. I grew up on tomatoes, cucumber and onion arranged and sprinkled with salt as the staple salad. So this one reminded me a lot of my childhood.

Adapted from Horiatiki Salata, Mediterranean Cookery

For the vinaigrette and garnish

150 gm crumbled feta

12 black olives

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

4 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 Tablespoons minced flat-leaf coriander
1 teaspoon dried oregano

Mix together all components.

Salad Components
1 cucumber, peeled and cut into batons
3 ripe tomatoes cut into wedges

1 green pepper, seeded and cut into rings

1 medium sized onion, cut into thin rings

Arrange all salad ingredients and mix it with the vinaigrette.

Tuna mousse

My husband hoards tinned tuna and sardines. When the stacks of cans start becoming alarmingly high, I have to look at the food blogs for inspiration. This one was from Orangette: Bouchon au thon. There are a few changes in the ingredients. I used yoghurt and added half teaspoon of jaggery instead of crème fraiche, 2 eggs (instead of three) and coriander (not parsley).

I loved them warm! We had it with bread.

180 grams canned tuna in water, drained
3 Tbs tomato paste
4 Tbs yoghurt
2 large eggs
1 cup finely grated Gruyère cheese
1 teaspoon Salt
½ teaspoon Pepper
2 Tbs finely chopped coriander
¼ cup minced onion

Cheese shortbread

These have been made with many different cheeses, with added flavourings of herbs or spices. I have used Acreswild Gruyere, Green Chilli Monterey Jack, Cheddar, Gouda and Romano.

1 Tablespoon Whole roasted cumin with 1/2 teaspoon ajwain,

1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder with 1 teaspoon paprika,

1 teaspoon dried fenugreek leaves

and in another case 1 teaspoon nigella seeds, have all gone down very well!

I have also baked them in different shapes. In a typical 9” cake pan they come out as wedges, sliced thinly from a log (dough shaped into a log) in circle, cut into batons as cheese sticks. The basic recipe is from the Complete Book of Breads. I add skimmed milk to bring the dough together.

Dill cheese bread

Adapted from the Complete Book of Breads

Beetroot with halloumi

This was simplicity itself. Peeled, whole beetroots were boiled and thickly sliced. The halloumi was sliced. Try to maintain equal sizes for the beetroot and halloumi for reasons of stability. A tahini-yoghurt dressing was whisked up. Arrange beetroot and cheese in a tower form. Pour dressing. Some pomegrante seeds were strewn as garnish.

P.S - I sometimes make my own tahini; works quite well.

100 gm Halloumi, sliced thickly

3 boiled, peeled beetroot, sliced

1/2 pomegranate, seeds separated

6 Tablespoon yoghurt

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 mint leaves, chopped finely

Tahini

1 Tablespoon white sesame seeds, ground

1/2 teaspoon olive oil

pinch of red chilli powder

Mix all ingredients together into a paste.

Mix tahini, yoghurt, salt, pepper and mint for the dressing. Top the layered cheese-beetroot towers.

Crab cottage cheese pie

2 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup slices spring onions,chopped

1 teaspoon dill

1 teaspoon basil

400gm crab meat, fragments of shell and such removed

6 sheets of filo pastry

1 tablespoon prepared mustard (I used the Bengalee kasundi)

2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs beaten

150 gm cottage cheese (I used green chilli flavoured soft cheese)

Preparations

In medium-size skillet saute onions, add dill weed, and basil. Remove from heat; stir in crab meat, one teaspoon salt, pepper, mustard. Oil a flan tin and arrange each filo sheet so that it covers the tin. Oil each sheet and arrange the next one so that it partly overlaps. Let the sheets overhang. Spoon carb mixture into shell. Beat remaining ingredients. Pour over crab mixture. Fold the hanging bits of the sheets. Bake in preheated 180-degree oven 40 to 45 minutes until knife inserted near center comes out clean.

You say "tomato", I say "tomaataw" (Tomato Chutney, My Way)

2009-10-14T09:52:00.005+05:30

OK, that song has not much to do with the recipe, except that when it comes to making Tomato Chutney, there are more ways than one. I will be presenting the version which I learned at my mother's knees (I can hear my Mom saying, Hrmmm...). Tomato chutney is a doyen of Bengalee chutneys among with a host of other bright stars in the firmament, like raw papaya chutney and Mango chutneys, which I will add by and by. There are fond memories associated with the first time I made it. You could say, it was my first solo run in cooking. When my friends took a house (and a cooking stove) along with their first salaried jobs, some lucky, few hangers-on used to regularly join them over the weekends and try our hands at cooking. Those were heady days! The tomatoes were carefully selected for their glossy redness, and the chutney lovingly made; always in bulk! As it simmered, it filled the house with a gorgeous smell. The aroma is a perfect marriage of fresh chilli, ginger and the panch phoron.
I just have to taste it along the way while its cooking. Its sweet, sour and finger-licking; indeed this version is quite sticky.

Instructions
Begin by assembling all the whole spices and grating the fresh ginger and slicing the green chilli. Cut the tomatoes into quarters and maybe even a little thinner depending on size. Heat the oil in a large kadai/wok. Before it starts smoking, add all the whole spices. Let them splutter, which they should do within seconds. Add the ginger and the chopped chillis. Saute them until an intense aroma comes off; about 3 minutes over low heat. Add the tomatoes. Coat with the spice mix thoroughly. Stir a few times. Add the salt and turmeric and mix in again. Let the tomatoes cook for 5 minutes then add the sugar. Thoroughly stir it until the sugar is completely dissolved. At this stage, you can cover it and leave it to its own devices for about 10 minutes at the lowest flame. The tomatoes will release copious amounts of water and will gently simmer and soften. Take off the lid and check how much liquid is present as well as the firmness of the tomatoes. The skin should be flaying off and the flesh soft. If not, cover and give it another five minutes. Taste it. It should be sweet but not over-cloyingly. Add a little bit of salt if necessary. Now increase the heat and stir. The liquid has to be reduced until it is leaving a red streak on the ladle when you spoon into it. There's a personal element here; my family like it thick. Remember that the chutney is going to congeal more as it cools. The chutney must be stirred all the time at this stage, so that it doesn't stick. Its hot work, but worth it! Should take about 10 minutes on medium heat. Taste it once more. Shut the burner and add the dates and raisins. Mix them in. By this time the chutney should have cooled slightly. Add the lime juice. Add half of it first, let it be completely incorporated and then add according to taste. How much is needed depends on the sourness of the tomatoes too! The sour and sweet must balance each other. Let it cool down completely (this takes time) before bottling it in sterile container(s). I usually boil my jars in water for 10 minutes before drying them in the oven at 200 degrees for 10 minutes.

Ingredients
2 Tablespoon white oil
2 bayleaf
1 and half teaspoon black mustard
1 and half teaspoon whole cumin
1 Tablespoon Panch Phoron
1 teaspoon grated ginger
2 green chillies, seeded and sliced
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
900 gm red, ripe, firm tomato
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 lime, juiced
2 Tablespoon raisins, soaked in water
5 seeded dates, chopped

Ingredients for Panch Phoron

The distinctive aroma of Bengalee dishes is frequently due to this spice blend made of five whole spices. Like all great things, it can lift the mundane to new heights! This is the combination of the store bought stuff. Needless to say, every home has its variants in amounts as well as in spices! Its best to make it in small quantities since it goes musty quite fast.

1 Tablespoon nigella seeds
1 Tablespoon black mustard seeds
1 Tablespoon fenugreek seeds
1 Tablespoon fennel seeds
1 Tablespoon cumin seeds

Combine all spices in a heated kadai, roast for about 10 seconds while stirring it, cool and store away from heat and light in a jar.

Picture Perfect Paratha

2009-10-04T22:15:00.025+05:30

This trip to Bangalore was a trip down memory lane. My friends, Sunit & Shweta have recently moved back to India from Canada and had been insisting that I drop in . With the 2nd October weekend around the corner, it was all arranged in a rush. We arrived at 4:00 in the morning in a delicious light drizzle and from then onwards it was delicious all the way! One day was spent in looking up old haunts. Things change of course. I was pleasantly surprised by the much-improved public transport of Bangalore. I was very disappointed that Lalita's Paratha Point, where we used to eat some good, old-fashioned, heavy-duty parathas had vanished with the intervening years.No matter! Sunit & Shwetha whistled up the following parathas the next day for a very, very satisfying brunch. Just Parathas and Raita. Did I say just? This is one of the most decadent breakfasts in India.

North Indians love their parathas, not least because of the endless variety possible. Your stuffing can be made with anything. It had however be best consumed hot. Indeed, it is very hard to resist when a paratha is piled on your plate straight from the tawa! These were stuffed with three different fillings. The fillings can be prepared in advance and kept refrigerated.
The measurements are for 16 parathas of 6 inch diameter. The trick to paratha making is making sure that one doesn't over-stuff the filling. The first rolling out of the small balls of dough is critical, as is the second rolling to form the flatbread.

For the Dough
3 and half cups white flour (you can add upto 1 cup wheat flour too)
1/2 teaspoon roasted ajwain
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1 cup oil, for frying

Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly. Add one-third cup of the water and work it to make the dough. Add water as you go. The final dough will be slightly sticky but can be made into smaller balls. Add sprinkles of flour to each small ball of dough to keep them separate once they are pinched off the main mass.

Fillings
These can be stored back in the refrigerator if not used up at one go.
Potato filling for Aloo Paratha
4 medium sized cooked potatoes, cooked and grated
2 Tablespoon coriander leaves, chopped fine
1 large onion, finely grated
1 and 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon chilli powder
2 green chilli, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon oil

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan. Saute half of the chopped onion until they pick up brown flecks. Will take about 1o minutes at low heat. Add the salt and the chilli powder to mix it in thoroughly. Add the fried onion mixture to the grated potatoes along with the rest of the ingredients (onion, coriander leaves, green chilli). Mix it up with your hand. Let it rest so that the grated potato absorbs the flavours.

Paneer filling for Paneer Paratha
110 gm ready-made paneer, grated (any cottage cheese can be substituted here, or one can make home-made paneer)
1/2 teaspoon cumin, dry-roasted and ground
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix up all ingredients with hand.

Processed Cheese filling for Cheese Paratha
110 gm processed cheese, grated
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder

Mix up all ingredients with hand.

Making of the Paratha
Heat up a tawa or heavy cast iron pan. On a well floured surface, roll out each small ball of dough into a circle, not less than half centimetre thick. Add half teaspoon filling of choice. Fold over from the four sides to completely cover the filling. Firmly close the edges and roll into a ball again (with the filling inside now). Again roll it into a circle on the floured surface. This is really the most important part. The circle must rotate all the time to allow for uniform thickness. Its a good idea to flip it once in a while so that it does not stick. Again, the thickness of the paratha is what decides a good paratha. Too thick and it wouldn't cook through; too thin and it sticks to the surface. It usually is safe to make it about 5 millimetre thick. Flip it onto the hot tawa. Quickly cook both surfaces for half a minute each. Add a tablespoon of oil around the edges to cook/fry at the lowest heat. One tends to listen for the sizzle to ascertain whether the tawa-facing side is cooked. Usually takes about 4-7 minutes (depending on the thickness). Flip it to the other side, add about a tablespoon of oil. Cook it. Golden with a few brown flecks. Keep them warm in a towel or better still consume immediately!
A raita or a chutney is the usual accompaniment. Ghee or salted butter is the other choice for an indulgent breakfast.

Accompaniments
4 Tablespoon ghee or salted butter dor serving

Raita
250 gm beaten curd
1 teaspoon ground, dry-roasted cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly goround pepper

Mix everything with a fork. I usually chop some mint into it, but plain serves the purpose very well!

Eggplants: Tickled Pickle

2009-09-28T20:54:00.008+05:30

Whenever I see or taste something tickling to my tastebuds, I have this urge to go back home and recreate it. The eggplant pickle featured below was the outcome of tasting a gorgeous pickle made of eggplants (or brinjal or aubergine) at a dinner. Eggplants are great vegetables. They can be served simply just by frying them with a little salt, or made into any amount of elaborate dish by roasting, stuffing, baking. They just absorb spices so beautifully that its no wonder that all over Asia there are thousands of recipes with them. Their sizes also make them amenable to lot of different creations. For this recipe I picked small eggplants, about two to three inches long, rotund or leggy, only they must be bright, shiny purple without any bruise. On each eggplant I make a deep cross, extending upto a centimetre or so to stem. I like to salt them for half an hour just in case some of them are a little on the bitter side. This also allows a lot of water to drain out, which I am told makes the eggplants absorb less oil while frying. The salted eggplants are drained of their water by tissue papers, patted dry and then deep fried. In fact, the drawing out of the water considerably reduces the frying procedure since the eggplants soften much faster. The whole procedure of frying both sides takes just about ten minutes. Drain the eggplants on an absorbent paper but keep the oil. The next step is making the spice mix. I started with about 750gm eggplants, so the measure is for that amount.

For 750 gm small sized eggplant
4 Tablespoon salt for salting the eggplants

5 inch ginger, peeled
6 garlic cloves, peeled
3 dried chilli pods, deseeded
0.7 cup vinegar
Make a paste of the ginger, garlic, dried chilli and vinegar. I did this with the blender.

1/2 Tablespoon turmeric, usually comes as powder
1 Tablespoon black mustard
3/4 Tablespoon fenugreek
1 Tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt
Roast all the spices in a kadai/wok over medium heat without oil until the aroma comes off, about 2 minutes. Cool them. Grind them in a spice grinder. Mix them with the ginger-garlic-vinegar paste.

0.5 cup sugar
3/4 cup Kasundi or Indian prepared mustard
3/4 Tablespoon tamarind paste
Mix the kasundi, tamarind and sugar with a whisk.

Keep about 2 Tablespoon of oil left over from frying the eggplants in the kadai. Heat it. Put the ginger-garlic , spice and vinegar mix and saute for about 5-7 minutes. The oil should separate out. At this stage, add the kasundi-tamarind-sugar. Stir continously to dissolve the sugar. This takes about another 10 minutes. Cool the mixture completely. In the meantime, in sterilised bottle arrange the cooled, drained, fried eggplants so that their stems stick out at the mouth of the bottle. Pour the cooled spice paste. If the spice doesn't completely cover the eggplants add some oil from the kadai. Before putting on the lid the bottle must be allowed to come to room temperature. Close, upturn it once so that the stems see some of the spice! Store it at room temperature. I usually find it keeps longer in the refrigerator once I have opened it. The finished product does not look great, but it taste heavenly!
I love it with rice!

Cinnamon bun

2009-09-20T13:54:00.013+05:30

My brain always goes into an over-drive when somebody invites me to a special dinner. What should I take along? Shall I ask them so that it fits in with their menu? This was to be a Id celebration. So Yusra, who hails from Hyderabad would be sure to have a spread on. Morever, her mother-in-law had arrived recently, so it would be a dinner to rival all dinner!
So I settled on buns. An odd choice you think for bringing along to Id?
These buns have two types of fillings; one a classic cinnamon-sugar and the other a more desi dates-coconut-ginger. The fondant in both cases was flavoured with apricot kernel.
The buns are made of a rich dough; eggs, butter, milk and raised with yeast. I love working with yeast. It sort of comes alive with time and it appeals to the biologist in me enormously!

I use live yeast which we are lucky to get at the Nilgiris Department Supermarkets in Chennai. Nothing wrong with dry yeast, only I am always anxious they won't rise!
I mix the warm milk, a pinch of sugar and crumble a teaspoon of yeast and leave it to rise for fifteen minutes or so. In the meantime, the rest of the sugar, softened butter, eggs are creamed together sequentially. Once they come together to form a creamy concoction (about 10 minutes at low beating speeds), I add the milk-yeast and whizz briefly. The liquids are then mixed into the dry ingredients, in this case measured flour and salt. I do all this with hand, but of course a food processor can be used too. The liquid is incoporated slowly while beating the batter continuously, until the whole of it is absorbed into the flour. Then comes the kneading part. This takes about ten minutes, so I tend to move out of my hot kitchen, stand under a fan to do this. This is a great dough to work with since the butter and eggs makes it quite oily. The dough is left to its own devices for about two hours (longer doesn't harm either). At this stage, I popped it nto the refrigerator. Of course, the dough needs to be warmed for a couple of hours for the next stage in that case.
This time I made two fillings for the buns so after the dough had doubled in bulk, I divided it into two balls. I also incorporated the some of the chopped dates into one half of the dough at this stage. While the dough had been rising, I had made the fillings; the recipes are given below. I take each dough and roll it out on a flour-sprinkled surface into a rectangle. The size really doesn't matter so much as long as the thickness is around half inch. The rectangular shape is important though. Let the rolled out dough rest for about five minutes. Spread the fillings upto the edge. Roll up into a log shape. The fillings will appear as a spiral. With the seam side down, I cut the logs, each into one and half inch pieces. And rest the pieces for five minutes or so.
The butterpaper on the oven tray was oiled and then carefully each piece was transfered. Its important to make sure that the seam is firmly closed at this stage, otherwise the spiral tends to unwind during its second rising. From each log I had got eight buns. This was perfect for my small 16 litre oven. Just enough space to between each bun to let them expand in girth. Between each there must be about half inch gap.
The waiting part now is always tedious. I always want the buns to hurry up! Another two hours or so and they are ready to be popped into the oven. 180 degrees for 25 minutes is what these buns got. Half-way through the process I turn the tray around so as to allow for equal exposure to heat.
Only the fondant now remained. The sugar and milk with the apricot kernel were melted to prepare the fondant while the buns were being browned. In about ten minutes after the buns came out I drizzled with the whisk I had been using to dissolve the sugar-milk, some drops of the fondant. I let the drops coagulate and cool completely before serving.

Yeast Buns
Adapted from "Hot Cross Buns", The New Complete Book of Breads
Makes 16 small buns

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup softened butter
2 eggs at room temperature
1 cup warm milk
3 -4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon live yeast
1 teaspoon salt

1/2 Tablespoon chopped dates for half the dough

Fillings
Cinnanon Sugar filling
3 and half Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Just mix them together thoroughly.

Coconut-ginger-date filling
3 Tablespoon finely shredded coconut
3 Tablespoon finely chopped dates
1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger
Mix them up thoroughly. I use my fingers to make sure that everything is well mixed. You can use a grinder too.

Fondant
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon milk
Ground flour from 4 apricot kernels
Melt the sugar in the milk completely. Mix in the apricot kernel flour to make it into a thick cream.

Of Peppers and Spice

2009-09-13T23:04:00.004+05:30

One of my friends had been to China recently. On hearing that food stores do have some things written in English I asked him to get some Sechuan pepper. He put in tenacious effort in tracking down the real Sechuan pepper, " huajiao fen". That's what culminated in today's Chinese style dinner. Thanks, Nadeem! I may be blogging about it, but the real foodie is the one who went to multiple supermarkets and squinted at any number of condiments in his effort to bring the right spice! The Chinese five spice powder used in the Veggie dish was powdered in a mortar and pestle minutes before being added to the dish. The mixed vegetables were accompanied by another first for me, dimsums filled with chicken filling. They came out rather well, so I have included their picture though dumpling images on the internet are dime a dozen. The images were taken by my husband, Sitabhra.
The dimsum recipe was from Chinese steamed dumplings in Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. I use this book a lot. The recipes work for me everytime!
Below is the Five spice powder mix composition. It works with a lot of dishes, but I like it particularly with mixed vegetables and rubbed on fish fillet.

2 star anise
1 Tb spoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon Sechuan paper
1 teaspoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon cloves

Dry roast the ingredients until they give out a whiff of their aromatic oils.
Grind into powder. Cool and store.

Incidentally, I later on found that Sechuan pepper is used in Indian cooking quite frequently and goes under the name of "Triphal" on the Konkan coast where it is frequently paired with fish! So next time I run out of this spice I know now where to approach!