Bread Uthappam

Bread uthappam

I love the smell of freshly baked bread but am not a fan of bread itself. I do like a few types of bread but not the everyday loaf. However, for some reason I had been meaning to make bread dosa. I always keep a loaf of bread at home and more often than not, end up throwing it by the end of the week. My thinking was that if recipe worked then it would be a good way to avoid wastage. I fancied something hot so I added green chillies but you could skip it. It is not very dissimilar to rava dosa in terms of ingredients but it tastes different and importantly 2 of these are enough to fill you up. Ideal breakfast or dinner. I usually keep tomato thokku/chutney in the fridge so had it with the uthappam but any tangy chutney would suit I guess.

Recipe adapted from Manjula's kitchen

Yield: 3 uthappam

3 slices wholemeal bread
3 tablespoons semolina
2 tablespoons maida/all purpose flour
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
chopped coriander leaves
2 green chillies finely chopped
1/4 cup yogurt
Cooking oil
Salt to taste

Grind the bread to fine powder, mix all ingredients together and add little water to form a batter like dosa batter

 Heat a pan and pour ladleful of batter to make thick dosa. Drizzle oil around

Cook both sides like normal dosa and serve with a nice chutney

You could put all ingredients in a food processor and blend but I was lazy to take the bigger mixie jars out so ground the bread in small jar which is always on the mixie in my kitchen.

Biscuit Pudding

Biscuit Pudding

While doing winter de-cluttering and organising, I found a few packs of biscuits. Although biscuits do not tend to get wasted, I wanted to try some dish with them. I chose biscuit pudding and when looking up recipes, I learned that it is rather popular in SriLanka. I have adapted Tarla Dalal’s recipe here...

Note: 

1. some people who do not like coffee may prefer to have he biscuits dipped in milk rather than coffee

2. replace dark chocolate with milk chocolate if you prefer

12 Rich tea biscuits or Marie biscuits

1 tablespoon instant coffee powder

5 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoon custard powder

1 ½ cups milk plus 3 tablespoon milk

100g dark chocolate, melted

Grated nuts for garnish

Dissolve coffee powder in hot water. You need enough water to quickly dip the biscuits in it. Dip the biscuits very briefly then break them into pieces and put in individual serving bowls

Dissolve the custard powder in 3 tablespoon milk

Heat the rest of the milk until it is just about to boil. Now add the dissolved custard powder and make sure you stir well. Cook on low flame until it coats the back of the spoon.

Now add the sugar and melted chocolate and stir well. It will thicken but still be of pouring consistency.

Pour this on the biscuit and garnish with chopped nuts

Vegetarian sausage stir fry (Masala Quorn Sausage)

Vegetarian sausage stir fry (Masala Quorn Sausage)

I grew p as a vegetarian and have never tasted non vegetarian food so there is nothing I miss really. However, I guess it is not the case in this part of the world and there is a desire to replicate the non-vegetarian content and make meat substitutes. A variety of such ingredients is made by Quorn. They apparently use a form of fungi to make the meat substitutes. I found no reason to use them in my regular cooking but my kids are used to having them a school or day care as they try to make vegetarian and non veg dishes look similar. My son started asking me for sausages (vegetarian, ofcourse) at home and that is why I buy them now and then. This dish is incredibly simple to make and can be had as a quick snack. You can also use this to stuff inside wraps. The sausage itself, being processed food, has salt in it so I tend not to add any more. I usually add very little salt in my cooking anyway so if you need a bit more, feel free to add.

1 pack quorn sausage

½ teaspoon ginger garlic paste

Turmeric powder

½ teaspoon coriander powder

½ teaspoon cumin powder

Dash of chat masala

1 spring onion, chopped

Cooking oil

Heat some oil preferably in a non stick pan and cook the sausages as per pack instructions. Once done, let it cool and then slice into bite size pieces

Heat bit of oil and add the spring onions, ginger garlic paste, turmeric powder and sauté for couple of minutes until raw smell goes off.

Add the sliced sausages, the masala powder and sauté for couple of minutes and it is ready to serve.

Saag Paneer

Saag Paneer

I guess everyone has days when they just want to throw things together so a scrummy meal turns up at the end. I have hose days often because I cannot begin to tell you how tight I am on time. I try to make three side dishes for rotis on Sunday so I only have to make the rotis in the evenings after work. I try to keep things simple and avoid additional processes like grinding etc. While a traditional palak paneer would require blending to smooth puree and so on, I was not up for it although we all love it. I decided to sauté everything and it did come together quite well. Here is how I made it...

2-3 bunches of palak/saag

125g paneer, cubed

1 onion, diced

1 tomato, cut into quarter

½ teaspoon black onion seeds

½ teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon garam masala

Turmeric powder

2-3 green chillies, slit

1 teaspoon coriander-chilly powder (use just coriander powder if you do not want any heat)

Salt to taste

Cooiking oil

Heat oil and add the black onion and cumin seeds. Once cumin begins to darken, add onions, add the turmeric powder and green chillies and sauté for a minute

Once the onions turn translucent, add the spinach and tomato. We are adding tomato with spinach as we do not want it to get mushy unlike regular curry

Once spinach is cooked, add the spice powders, required salt and cook until raw smell goes.

Add the paneer and cook for 3-4 minutes and serve!

Almond Ricotta Cheesecake – Indian Kalakand with my spin

Almond Ricotta Cheesecake – Indian Kalakand with my spin

Diwali is a wonderful festival as it always brings back great memories. The purchase was big, food was big and emotions were plenty. This year, I was keen to share that feeling with my children as well and wanted to get into this habit of making Diwali special to them. Although we did not splash out on shopping for outfits like how my parents unfailingly did, I wanted us to be with people we were comfortable with. A few friends got together and had a potluck dinner and what a great evening it was! My son had his friends to play with and the firework itself took a good hour of the evening. Considering I have a little one as well, I thought potluck would be the way to go but being a food blogger I could not stop myself from trying couple of more things. As time and energy were tight, I chose to make milk sweet that literally needed to be whipped up and briefly cooked. It turned out to be so awesome that we kept trying more and more in the name of tasting, who were we kidding!! In the end, there was no enough to offer my friends and their families, ouch! To me, this is a classic Indian recipe made the western way – bake!

This recipe is dedicated to Ms Tarla Dalal. She has been a great inspiration and will live in my kitchen through the wonderful books I have.

150g coarsely ground almonds

1 tin of condensed milk

1 tub ricotta cheese, 300g or so

Pinch of saffron

Few chopped nuts

Ghee to grease bakeware

Mix together everything but the nuts

Pour into over proof baking dish hat has been greased with ghee. I wanted the cake height to be about an inch or just about so chose a suitable rectangular dish

Bake at 180degC for about 15-20 minutes. It will just begin to brown on top, sides will start to pull from the dish and it will still be a bit wobbly. Sprinkle nuts on top, cool and cut to required slices.

Enjoy this without having to slave in the kitchen for such a yummy desi treat!

Potato and Cauliflower stem sabji

Potato and Cauliflower stem sabji

Call me frugal but I just love to find ways of using as many edible parts of a vegetable as possible. When I was in college, my mom once mentioned that some of her colleagues cook the cauliflower stem. By stem, I am referring to the rib of the outer leaves that cover the curd. I then tried using it in a gravy and was quite good. Years later, I am beginning to do the same again. This time, I have used it in a dry sabji and when combined with potatoes, anything would go down with my better half. It is quite nutritious as well so that makes me even happier that I managed to use it. Avoid using the thick ones as they are very fibrous, the tender ones are ideal. Here is a simple recipe...

1 onion, chopped

About 10 baby potatoes, boiled and peeled

Tender stalks from cauliflower, chopped

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon chilly powder

½ teaspoon sabji masala or garam masala

Turmeric powder

Salt to taste

½ teaspoon amchur powder

Cooking oil

Heat some oil and add the cumin seeds. Once it browns add the onions and cook until it just begins to change colour

Add the stalks and little salt and cook covered until it is cooked i.e. soft

Add the boiled potatoes, turmeric powder, chilly powder, garam masala, more salt if needed and amchur powder and cook until all raw smell goes away.

Ready to serve

Paneer Pulav

Paneer Pulav

Time and again I keep proving to myself that unless one puts their heart and soul into cooking, the dishes do not come even reasonably good. That does not mean you have to sweat yourself in the kitchen but just that if either your mind or your body is not there fully, then I find myself binning more food than we ate. Last couple of weeks have been very hard as my husband was down with quite a bad chest infection and I had limited help and it was all too overwhelming. Last week and now seems to be my turn to be ill. When you have two young children and live away from family, resting while ill is luxury really. In order to keep myself going I tried to make/bake new dishes but it just did not work. I kept saying to myself it is okay, I will eventually bounce back. Anyway, that's enough rant for tonight, here is a very simple but tasty rice recipe...

1 onion, finely chopped

1 green pepper, finely chopped

1 yellow pepper, finely chopped

1 large carrot, finely chopped

About 100g of paneer, cut into small pieces

½ teaspoon cumin seeds

1 cup rice soaked and cooked so grains are fluffy

Salt to taste

Cooking oil and little butter/ghee

Whole spices – about 4 cloves, 1 piece cinnamon, 2-3 bay leaves, 2 star anise, 3-4 cardamom pods

Finely chopped coriander leaves for garnishing

Heat some oil and add the whole spices and allow them to puff up

Add the cumin seeds and once it turns golden brown, add the onions and fry until it turns soft

Add the vegetables and cook until done

Add salt, paneer and rice. You could fry the paneer to make them more chewy but I usually avoid that extra fat and effort

Garnish with fresh coriander leaves and serve with a spicy side dish or just raita

Peanutbutter chocolate fudge

Peanutbutter chocolate fudge

As I had mentioned before, we are not peanut butter people at all. However, I thought it is a good form for my son to try his hands on peanuts. I try not to give him whole nuts until the recommended age of about four so peanut butter is good enough now. I have not tried spreading it on bread but I do know he likes the chocolate spread and may not like this much. Anyway, I thought I will make something new without the need to really cook or bake and also allow him to participate. Here is a quick and easy treat...

6 tablespoon peanut butter

¼ cup icing sugar

150g chocolate

5 digestive biscuits, crushed finely

2 teaspoon oil

Mix the crushed biscuits, icing sugar and peanut butter together, add just enough oil so the mixture comes together

Spread this on a plate to desired thickness.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler (put chocolate in a bowl and place this on a pot of boiling water making sure the water does not touch the bowl), making sure no water gets into the chocolate itself. Melt completely. You could do this in a microwave oven if you want.

Spread over the peanut butter mixture and set in fridge

Cut using sharp knife, dipping the knife in hot water

Enjoy!

Jowar Methi Muthiya (Sorghum dumplings)

Jowar Muthiya (Sorghum Dumplings)

Some days I follow a restricted diet and it was one such day that I was terribly hungry. I was wondering what to make for breakfast and was looking for nothing elaborate as time in the kitchen was precious and spending it on just breakfast for me seemed unfair. I then thought of making muthiyas with jowar as I remembered seeing a similar recipe by Tarla Dalal. I had fresh methi leaves on hand and for me, that is just about enough to make any dish very appealing. I was not sure what to expect out of jowar muthiyas so methi would be enough to atleast help me gobble the dish. Luckily, my scepticism was unjustified as the muthiyas were really good. They were full of goodness and yum! My son also quite liked it and was happy to nibble while he played, making it a good finger food. I thought presenting it like lolly pops was a good idea but could not get a good picture of it.

Jowar is called sorghum in English. It is a millet and as expected, has several health benefits. It is rich in phosphorous and potassium. A cup of sorghum is said to provide about 40% of the protein recommended per day. It is fiber rich and also has some anti-oxidants making it offer some protection against cancer. It is, obviously, wheat free so great for people with allergy or caeliacs.

1 cup jowar flour

Handful of fenugreek leaves

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon coriander powder

½ teaspoon chilly powder

Dash of turmeric powder

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon sesame seeds

Cooking oil

Mix together the flour, chilly powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder, fenugreek leaves and salt. Add just enough water to make a dough

Divide into three parts and using your fist (that is why it is called muthiya), make cylinders of the dough and steam them for about 20 minutes

Cool and cut into about half an inch long slices

Heat some oil and add mustard seeds and sesame seeds

Once the mustards pop and sesame begins to brown add the cut muthiyas and roast until desired. Roast on low flame for a while if you like it slightly crispy without adding much oil

Insert tooth picks and watch them dissappear!