Chocolate and Cherry Palmiers

Chocolate and Cherry Palmiers

Palmiers or elephant ears, is a dish of European origin, not sure if it is French or Germans that originated it. Does no really matter as it just tastes so good you would not want to research the origin but just the recipe. These are so easy to make if you have puff pastry in your fridge. I do not make my own puff pastry and hey, don’t judge me for that, even the best of bakers like Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood once confessed they don’t either. I actually made them for the first time to offer to my son’s friends who were meant to visit us for navaratri. However, I had to cancel their visit due to my daughter’s illness. Anyway, the point is that even if they had come, I did not make near enough of these as it turns out. They literally go flying and I kept making them throughout navaratri as we had a constant flow of guests. This is one version of this dish and I intend to post more of these so you get a variety of flavours.

½ sheet of puff pastry

2 tablespoon or so of chocolate spread like nutella

5-6 glace cherries, chopped

Spread the puff pastry sheet and smear it with the chocolate spread evenly, upto the edges. Dot with glace cherries here and there and use more if you want.

Roll both sides of the pastry so each half then meets at the centre, gently press. Wrap it and refrigerate for atleast 30 minutes or put in freezer for 10-15 minutes. This is important as puff pastry always needs to be cold and has to go in a very hot oven, else, it will not puff.

Cut into about 1.5cm thick slices and place on lined baking tray with good space between them. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200degC for about 8-10 minutes, until golden.

Cool and serve!

Cauliflower Keema

Cauliflower Keema

I have never had real keema so I cannot tell you if this is close but the idea of this dish is to cook minced vegetable. It is cauliflower that I picked for this dish and result was quiet good. I used it to stuff into dosa to make keema masala dosa one evening and then layered it over a very simple pulav rice for packed lunch. I used tandoori masala which is typically used for non-vegetarian dishes and I think it helped. Here is the recipe without any more rant…

1 medium cauliflower, grated

1 onion, finely chopped

1 small tomato, cubed

3 cloves crushed garlic

1 small piece of ginger, grated

1 cup green peas

2-3 green chillies, chopped

1 teapsoon cumin seeds

1 tablespoon ghee and some cooking oil

1 teaspoon coriander powder

1 teaspoon chilly powder

1 teaspoon cumin powder

1 heaped teaspoon tandoori masala or garam masala

Turmeric powder

Some chopped coriander leaves

Heat some oil and ghee in a heavy bottom pan and add cumin seeds. Once it becomes golden, add onions and fry till they begin to change colour and also add garlic, ginger and chillies

 Add the grated cauliflower and some turmeric powder, mix and fry for a couple of minutes

Add all the spice powders and the tomatoes and peas. Fry for couple of minutes, add salt and cook covered until veggies are well cooked. You may want to add few spoons of water so it does not burn

Allow it to cook on low flame uncovered for a couple of minutes so all extra water vaporises and you are left with a dry-ish curry.

Serve with rice or rotis or dosas