Baking Escapade # 1 - A cake……….. a chocolate cake!!

I went over to Meeta’s to check the guidelines for MM # 12 for the ice cream I made with inspiration from Anita’s recipe of roasted banana ice-cream…spent more time than I should have….i looked at all the offerings for her birthday party and drooled over them….the thing is I can cook comfortably for a party of up even 40 people…but baking has eluded me so far….I’ve not been able to bake something with finesse or to my satisfaction and both…..cooking is instinctive, and you can go along making things up…for baking, you go by the book (mostly) and that’s next to impossible for me….last week I tried a very ambitious baking project and mucked it up…..it was hilarious…..i was ruing the time and energy, not to mention the resources that were wasted ….but I believe that failures are the stepping stones to success…only how many I will have to step on is the question that haunts me!!

Ok back to what I was saying….I spent the better part of an hour over the recipes that made it to Meeta’s birthday party …..There were so many cakes and baked goodies that it made me think I needed to give my burnt baking hands another go……and this one by Anupama of food n more had me hooked. i had to give it a shot….

So armed with all that inspiration I set myself up in the kitchen for an early evening baking date….K was still a good couple of hours away and so if I flopped then I could always dump the disaster in my ever forgiving trash can and the chimney would take care of the rest of the traces of my escapade ……

I looked at the recipe that Anupama followed from from Tarla Dalal’s site and just tweaked it as much as I dared(mostly because i didnt have cocoa powder and used a slab of chocolate instead and reduced the amount of condensed milk that the original recipe called for.….the result left me grinning like a Cheshire cat!!

The resultant cake has the consistency of a brownie. Has a very lightly chewy top and moist centre…..the scallops resulted from some of the butter paper that got into the batter!! I wish I had some walnuts to add!! Now that I didn’t muck this up, I will try it again with walnuts!! I gloated over my chat conversation with N, a dear friend of mine who’s also quite the accomplished baker when she isn’t dashing in and out of Boston with her work….she tantalized me today with descriptions of some of the cakes, cookies, brownies and biscotti’s she’s made over the past few years…I promised myself to bum some of the recipes off her…so N watch out!!

Foes turned favorites!!

Food makes up some of the most vivid memories of my life so far….watching my mother make it, tasting it and endless discussions at the dinner table….when I began cooking post marriage ….. I would most naturally alter the way I made something based on how it tasted….a little bit of this, a dash of that, till it became at least a poor imitation of what my mother and peddi had cooked up….then I turned vegetarian, and I had to summon a lot more thought into making weekend cooking more interesting and wholesome (cos I always thought meat was more interesting at the table)….some of the stuff my mother used to make that I had insulted and rejected, suddenly began to provide succor to my table….

one such is the “mukkala pulusu or karam pulusu”…..it always had loads of vegetables in it and I wanted to believe they were rejected by all the other dishes that we being cooked and derived strength in collectively being simmered in a pot…..imagine to my stunned surprise that K took to it (it is an Andhra preparation I think) like a fish to water and now it is made on at least two weekends a month ……it goes well with plain dal (meetha dal, mudda pappu) and is a good substitute to sambar. The left overs can always be mopped up with dosa on Monday morning (since batter is made on Sunday!!) and making a vegetable side dish is optional since it already contains a medley of vegetables (whatever’s in your fridge really). It is also very accommodating with as many or as few vegetables that you have on hand and treats them all equally…. You can always dress up the meal by serving it along steamed rice, papad, ghee and pickle…and suddenly you have a table full of food!!

that’s exactly what we had for our Sunday lunch today….mukkala pulusu, mudda pappu/ meetha dal, aratikaya (raw banana) vepudu, potato and carrot vepudu and curds ……….now for that afternoon nap!!

celebrating the rains!!

I love the rains and wait for the monsoons to arrive…for me it is a lovely time of the year…the temperatures drop, the earth looks green, and its all very romantic…sipping garam chai, watching the traffic go by, the hazy lights, eating a hot snack, snuggling in bed with a good book, or watching a movie all covered up with a razai…..i am also painfully aware that for many people of my country, it is a harrowing time….i am safely perched in my fourth floor apartment, with a car, warm dry clothes and so many pairs of footwear that one getting wet wont matter too much……people who are daily wage earners don’t get employed for the day because it is pouring, the timing of the monsoons can make or break the fortune of the farmer…..in Hyderabad in the last two days as many children have been sucked into open manholes….which were left open in the first place to drain the water logged roads quickly…….as I grew up…in age and experience, I realized that it was possibly the most difficult times for people less privileged than I was…..and I am truly grateful for all that I receive……….

Nevertheless…I love the rain…I am a water baby….a true blue crab….and so the whole year around I wait for the monsoon….to me everything seems better in the rains…even watching the reruns on TV or solitude…..

It’s the weekend after all and I am feeling a whole lot better than last week, added to which I was feeling so jealous of all the lovely recipes and pictures put up by fellow food bloggers, I decided to treat ourselves with one of the ultimate comfort foods….tasty, wholesome, nutritious, comforting and perfect for this weather…..Venn pongal or kara pongal and coconut chutney to go with it. we had this for brunch. The recipe is my mother in law’s, simple and back to basics kinds…this is also my entry to WBB#12, the popular Weekend Breakfast Blogging event started by Nandita of the Saffron Trail Fame now hosted by Trupti of The Spice who loved me

 

 

Post the publishing of my blog, I have felt excited and anxious most times I cook something that I think is blog worthy…..you see I spend a lot of time trawling food blogs and I am both anxious and happy to bring forth my humble offerings….i love the fantastic pictures that are taken and the way the food is presented….and those are two areas that I need to work on…and I hope the food I cook and the posts I write are interesting….i haven’t tried to make anything from blogs for a few weeks now and part two of the celebration of the monsoons and my better health was making icecream….as soon as I read Anita’s post on roasted banana ice cream I had to try it…..of course when I got down to actually making it today I panicked because I hadn’t half of the ingredients it called for except the bananas!! So with inspiration from my favorite a mad tea party, I made my own version of roasted banana ice cream after looking for recipes that called for the stuff I had on hand…its really quite simple and very very satisfying. Thanks anita for the lovely post and inspiration….

this is my entry for July’s Monthly Mingle hosted by the very talented Meeta…the theme is I Scream for Ice Cream….scream on!!

The verdict: BIG HIT…in fact I’m having the last of the icecream as I type out this post…….!!

i’m feeling blue………

i am swamped….with work… a writing assignment i took on with a deadline looming right over my head and with feeling a little under the weather….K and i have notoriously low resistance and a little change in weather brings on the sniffles that last a few days…..so he got it first and now i have it….it’ll take a couple more days for me to feel fit…in the meantime, cooking has been very functional…not inspiring enough for pictures and a post…i’m looking forward to my first blogging event though…and hope to participate….now to just finish this assignment on time……meanwhile i have done only two things of importance…added my favourite blogs to a blogroll….and watched Sivaji!! there are compensations in life afterall!!

the monsoons are here………

we were lashed by the first of the ‘real monsoons’ yesterday…..of course with the environment being what we have made it today, as K and i drove back home we saw varying degrees of rain…..where we stay it poured and poured and it was heavenly to smell the wet earth…..its on days like these that we seek comfort food…..of course for me, that would mean most kinds of food….hot and spicy for the rains, warm and gooey for when you are feeling blue and cold and sweet for a hot summer!! i’m just trying not to be unfair to different food groups!!

and in weather like this, i tend to make a one dish meal…… like khichri or bissebelebhat or a spicy pulao….or a spicy pasta dish……….one of my favourites….i can eat it any way…..….Pasta is a favorite of mine, red sauce, white sauce, cheesy, bland, spicy…many forms and many moodsand so I made my version of Pasta Arrabiatta……….. i used Angel hair spaghetti, which is much thinner than the regular one….

Weekend overdosing…………………..

K and I have overdosed….on food and movies this weekend….it has been blissful no doubt, but I’d like to put an end to this gluttony…..I attempted some north indian fare for lunch on Saturday…jeera rice, raitha, palak paneer and dal tadka…..having skipped breakfast, ravenous hunger made sure I didn’t have time for pictures….so I am going to post the recipes here minus any pictures….. we then went bookshelf shopping before K’s book collection toppled over from the current one they overflowing from, watched Shootout at Lokhandwala…..its one of the better made gangster movies, racy and never a dull moment, but blood and gore isn’t my cup of tea…..we tried out a small Rajasthani place for dinner and had a traditional thali that was replete with rotis doused in ‘desi ghee’, curries of brinjal and onions, potatoes, and a mixed vegetable fare, dal, dahi, achar, papad and rice….. if food is supposed to bring you comfort which I am sure it does…then this was it…..back home I tried to walk off some of the guilt….then we decided to watch an old Tamil Classic…”veerapandiya kattabomman” starring the melodramatic Sivaji Ganesan, some sports and half of Jerry Maguire later we realized it was almost 4 a.m and we were hungry….coffee and some quick microwave cooked pasta with store bought pasta sauce later, we finally hit the sack at 4.30 a.m……if ‘unhealthy’ needed personification, then it couldn’t get better than this

Coalitions and Combos……..

What do you cook when groceries have all but hit rock bottom (rarely happens) and you have been putting off going vegetable shopping for more than a few days after stocks have dwindled (happens with alarming regularity)? I have bailed myself out by branding a few of these items as exotic celebratory food….for instance, a lone carrot and almost sprouted potato gets incorporated into “veg pulao” with curds to go with it, the ever obliging khichri with omelet (K still thinks this is the ‘actual combination!!) or dahi, or plain achar, macaroni cooked with soup packets with a dash of pepper and oregano from sachets left over from pizza delivery have been presented as exotic pastas… lone carrots have found themselves in fiery bissibele bhat, noodles cooked with pasta sauce, besan ke parathe out of two kinds of flour, uttapams with souring idly batter….these are just a few tricks that I have tried….i once made grilled sandwiches from left over pizza base with onion masala and tomato sauce and K thought it was one of the best meals he has had…..there’s no dearth of things that I have resorted to…..today was one such day….i had 8 pieces of self respecting drumstick, 6 baby potatoes and 2 big tomatoes and some lobia (black eyed beans)…none of them were enough to make a stand alone meal….but I coaxed them to form a coalition and this is what I am blogging about today

 

Drumstick and Potato Curry

You will need:

 

1 drumstick, scraped and cut into 2 inch pieces

6-8 baby (halved) or 3 med potatoes, peeled and cubed

2 slit green chillies

1 large onion chopped

1 large tomato chopped

1 tspn chilli powder

1 tspn coriander powder

½ tsp whole cumin seeds

Salt to taste

1 cup water

1 tspn oil

 

Method

In a pressure cooker / pan / kadai, heat oil and splutter the cumin seeds

Add the onions and green chillies and fry till tender

Add the chilly and coriander powders and fry for a minute

Add the washed drumsticks and potatoes, sauté for a minute till the masalas cling onto the vegetables, add chopped tomatoes, salt and 1 cup water and simmer covered for about 6-8 minutes till the potatoes are cooked.

If using a pressure cooker or pan, one whistle is enough. When cool, open and dry up the water to form sauce consistency gravy.

Serve with rotis or steamed rice

 

 

Drumstick and potato curry

 

Quick Lobia

 

1 cup lobia soaked in hot water

1 medium onion chopped fine

1 tomato chopped

2 green chilies

½ tspn cumin seeds

1 tspn oil

1 tspn each of red chilly powder and coriander powder

Salt to taste

A pinch of garam masala

 

Method

In a pressure cooker / pan heat the oil and splutter the cumin seeds, add the chopped onions and green chillies and fry till onions are brown

Add the dry masalas and stir for a minute

Drain the water from the soaking lobia, mix well, add salt and chopped tomatoes and water

Shut the lid and allow it to cook for about 4-5 whistles

Once the lid of the cooker opens, simmer till the most of the water evaporates

Add the garam masala powder, mix well.

Serve with rotis or steamed rice. Also goes well with bread

Lobia Curry

 

Beetroot anyone??

My love for food has broadened my horizons like no education can….i grew up believing that beetroot was ‘born to be in a salad’….i had sympathy for the people who ate at the varied “andhra mess’s” because they’d be served the beet with such regularity that it didn’t take Einstein to realise it was one of the cheapest vegetables…growing up as i did on a predominantly non vegetarian diet, i hadn’t tasted too many vegetables other than the ones that are cooked together with meat….so all i knew was potatoes, beans, carrot, cauliflower, gongura, drumsticks and a few others…..imagine my shock when i land in a vegetarian only hostel!! i hated Thursday lunches because you guessed it, they’d serve beetroot curry….a mash of tasteless, colorless goop….they’d cook it so much that the poor thing would turn pale…..as fate would have it, K has an inconceivable love for this beet….so i began to make and gradually fell in love….in the days when i was hard pressed for time, i loved the minimum fuss with which it would oblige me and cook itself up….so here i present my never failing
low oil beetroot stir fry

you will need

4 med fresh beetroots, chopped small

2 green chillies, slit

1 small onion, chopped fine

mustard, urad dal and curry leaves for the tadka

1 tspn oil

salt to taste

Before the lid went on

method

heat oil in a pan (i used non stick), when hot do the tadka, add onions and green chillies and fry for a minute till the onions are translucent.

add the cut beetroot pieces, stir for a minute, cover and steam for 5 mins or till tender.

the beetroot cooks in its own steam, a tablespoon of water can be added if needed.

when tender, add salt, stir well, cover and turn off the flame. let it stand for about 10 more minutes as it continues to cook.

(optional garnish - 2 tbsp of freshly grated coconut)

goes well with rice and rotis.

 

Our Lunch….Beetroot stirfry, rotis and cucumber raitha

 

Apprenticeship

Last month, i was an apprentice in the kitchen with my mother in law …. K and i hail from culturally diametrically opposite families….mine is a meat eating, garrulous, dining table conversation loving one….his is a strict vegetarian, pda abhoring, minimum dining table conversation loving, food loving one…..the both of us have crossed over…he now is all that my family is including meat eating and i am the other!! so to exploit MIL’s exceptional culinary skills that come as tightly packaged in the form of palakkad iyer cooking, i offered to apprentice with her….her intention was to throw me out of the kitchen because i needed respite…i’d have nothing of it… i typed them out for reference and hence have no pictures….but i reckon it will serve well as my first food post…..

am posting some of the recipies for posterity

Avial

4 cups of mixed veggies sliced into 1 inch sticks (yellow and white pumpkin, drumsticks, potato, carrot, beans, raw banana, yam, peas, chow chow…..any hard veggies…avoid brinjal, karela, tomato)
boil this with a little turmeric and salt to taste (can do this in the cooker) till soft and mash able with spoon. once done, make sure excess water is drained off and mash slightly with the back of a spoon.

grind together half a grated coconut, 1/2 spoon jeera, few curry leaves, 2 green chillies

1 cup sour butter milk, if not sour, add a little tamarind. add this to the veggies and heat well

stir in the coconut mixture and heat, turn off the fire, add a dash of coconut oil and a few curry leaves. Serve with steamed rice and pappadam

Keerai Molakootan

1 big bunch of spinach, blanched and pureed

2 tbsp tur dal, soft boiled with turmeric. mash with the back of a spoon when done

1/3 coconut, jeera and 1 tbsp roasted urad dal ground to a fine paste

Mix all the ingredients together, heat (do not boil)

season with mustard in hot oil

Molakootan

can be made with any veggies (pumpkin, kaddu, etc) 3 cups
1/2 cup moong dal, boiled soft with haldi and salt
1/3 coconut, jeera and green chilli ground to a paste….add all together, bring to a boil, season with hot oil and mustard

potato podimas

6-8 soft boiled and mashed potatoes.
1/2 coconut, 2 green chillies ground to a paste (with no water)
season in hot oil mustard, urad and chana dal, curry leaves, salt, add potatoes, coconut mixture, mix well and switch off the flame….do not fry

pulikyachal

Season in hot oil, mustard, urad and chana dal

add 2 cups tamarind water, simmer for about 20 mins till it thickens like a sauce with this mixture (3 inch piece of ginger, 6-8n green chillies, coarsely ground)

dd salt to taste and a tsp of sugar or jaggery

Serve with steamed rice. goes well with dosas and idlies too

I have been cooking………….

I have a nickname…..I’m called ‘Annapurna devi’ . this was given to me by a few souls who’ve never been turned away with hungry stomachs from my door. a son (just a few younger than i) has adopted me as his mother simply because i feed him….with that kind of a reputation, the flip side is that no one ever believes me when I declare a kitchen holiday or for that matter when I say “there’s nothing to eat” …… I don’t know how I got into this……so I’ve thought that Escapades will serve as my journal…..i shall record all that I attempt in the kitchen…..and otherwise as well

I began cooking 3 years ago post marriage…till then I was as most daughters are, just the exotic kitchen helper….….i’d be called upon to set the dinner table, make the salad, make dessert at the maximum….the few occasions I did cook, it was after being suitably inspired by a cookery show on TV….i still remember my brother asking me to first feed the cat with the macaroni and cheese that I attempted and declared he would eat it only after 30 mins of observation!! I come from a family of foodies……brother included…..whole conversations revolve around food and the menu for the next meal is decided while the current one is being polished off!! my mother and aunt (peddi) were exceptional cooks…..alas we only realize when it is too late……..post marriage I appreciated fully, the dedication and relentless patience it requires to put food on the table, day after day for almost half a century……that too food that is tasty, wholesome and unforgettable. My most vivid memories are ones spent around the dining table…….i remember Christmas lunches with as many as 50 people, happily cooked by mother – peddi combo over open wood fires in our backyard…..for years Christmas day was an open house and people would be teeming over…..birthday’s had a special significance because there would be no birthday cake….just great food….and yet I didn’t think of them as ‘parties’ (which for some reason i assumed had to have strobe lights and music!!)……all this with no ‘servant’ to help…the only servants they had was my brother and i…..he’d take care of the ‘outside’ work of buying the meat and other things and I’d take care of the ‘inside’ work…taking out the plates and glasses (never thought of it as crockery), spoons, make sure there’s ice in the fridge….make the salad, desert maybe… and help clear up…..ironically the first thing I attempted to make was roti…..mom and peddi were so adept at this intricate make dough, roll out round, flat and thin, bake on a hot tava till they puffed up…that I never thought it as difficult…only now post marriage after a very observant comment by K of “you are very comfortable in the kitchen” have I realized why all this came naturally to me…..nature Vs nurture…here I come!!

All thru the honeymoon months of marriage, cooking served as an extension of playing ‘house-house’……poor K has been subjected to baffling tears, shed by yours truly just because he hadn’t appreciated my food……he just couldn’t get it…I’d nag him to the extent that he’d choke on the food and his only answer would be that I should know he was enjoying the food because he was eating so much of it….i’d say I wasn’t sure if it was hunger or taste…… for while thereafter, it became a chore I loathed…..a bout of illness during which I still had to drag myself to the kitchen (I must mention that K is severely challenged in the kitchen….maggi is all he can rustle up….not even tea and instant coffee….) prompted me to get a cook….suguna was a gem, she loved cooking as much as she doted on K, she even scolded me for depriving K of meat since i had given it up and happily volunteered to buy and cook it for K….alas we bought an apartment and moved far away within a few months and we lost her…….the new house brought a new found enthusiasm for cooking in a brand new kitchen…..i loved playing ‘House - Round II’ ….. then the fatigue of new age career advancement just hit me and hard…the new house meant more time spent traveling to and from work….less time to eat (breakfast en route to work at signals) and being too tired to eat….forget cooking…… the weekends would be a treat…of traditional south Indian spread…(I’d turned vegetarian by now) and I would look forward to spending time in my kitchen……then came the sabbatical….i chucked it all up to ‘find’ myself …….around this time, I started obsessing about food blogs…..i’d spend hours on them….reading sometimes opening them in 8 windows at a time ….marveling at what was being created….realizing that I wasn’t alone in my love for comforting home cooked food….(mind you there aren’t too many eating joints in Hyderabad that K and I haven’t tried….we were “road inspectors” all thru our courting years!) ….i tried a few recipes….just drooled all over the computer keys mostly and wondered if I could be there someday…..food bloggers just don’t know what they have managed to do….they have taken one of the most primal needs of man and cultivated it into a fine art…..there were days when I’d be reading food blogs from daybreak to daybreak….and I loved it…..

 

Food is such a perfect reflection of us…..our state of mind ….. one can tell what the family is going through simply by the food on the table, or for that matter stocked in the cupboards or fridge…..for instance, I for one who wondered what variety if at all any vegetarians would have shocked myself with and have continued to marvel at life beyond it….it changed my perception of many things….of culture, lifestyle, habit…today I understand all this so much better….i can appreciate honestly with no malice………………this then, publishing of Escapades, is something very personal that I am indulging in….it is here that I will talk to myself and anyone else who makes it thru these pages…..