Bhapa Doi and 1st Blog Birthday!

Hey everyone!!

Fig. 1. Bhapa Doi

Reminds me of a poem we learnt as kids..

ABCD-EFG,
come on Leena play with me!
HIJK-L-M-N,
it's Leena's birthday, she is ten!

Well.. today it's my blog's birthday and it is ONE! :D

When I started reading food blogs, I used them primarily for the recipes, and then for the encouraging food clicks. Over time though I started really reading the posts. And I realized that most of the blogs I liked had posts that essentially told simple stories of the daily lives of many many women everywhere. And that is what makes me visit them again and again..

Reading food blogs is like peeking into someone's kitchen window. And the thought that another ordinary person, not some celebrity chef, but someone pretty much like me, is doing pretty much the same things as me gives me an incredible sense of companionship! It also encourages me to think about doing the things they are doing that I am not. And as you all know by now, I am always on the lookout for inspiration. 

Over time I realized that it would be good to record all the food I was making for my own future reference. I was cooking anyway. Might as well take pictures and post my version of the recipe. I find that taking a picture and writing it up serves as a tangible reminder at a later date when I am super-busy, eating only Maggie and have forgotten that I can cook! ;) I cannot argue with a picture of my own fish curry or rasgulla. Well, a year has passed, I am stilling writing, still referring back to old pictures and am encouraged to cook more!

A major reason this blogging continues is readership! People visit this site and visit again. Some stay on and give advice, tips and feedback! Just last week I cooked red chard for the first time.. and I got two more recipe suggestions in reader feedback! Thanks everyone for your companionship! It is greatly valued!

Let me also give a big shout-out to Aparna, whose blog, Apy Cooking, happens to have the same birth date as mine! Happy Blog Birthday, Aparna! :)

On to Bhapa Doi..

Coconut Vanilla Macaroons and food fiction

Hey everyone.. the last of the desserts..

Fig.1. Coconut Vanilla Macaroons

 I spotted these on Champa's blog Versatile Kitchen. The recipe is simple:

Roast 2/3 cup of all purpose flour till it smells sweet. Then add 1/2 teaspoon salt and a little less than one 14 oz bag of sweetened flaked coconut in it. Mix well. Now mix 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence with a little less than one 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk. Add to the dry mix above. Mix by hand. The "little less" is because I did not want them to be too sweet. So use your judgment for sweetness. The "dough" should be thick, moist, sticky and pliable. Now make small flattened balls and place on a greased baking sheet. Use oil on your hands if needed. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 350 F, till the coconut flakes are lightly toasted. That's all! How quick and simple! And eggless too!!

Now it's time for another silly story. This story sends good wishes to people who have SAD. And it goes to Jaya of Spice and Curry who is hosting the event Chalks and Chopsticks started by Aqua.

Raushni Suryavansham and the terrible Dark

Raushni Suryavansham was the name of our favorite girl.
She was ever bright and sunny, and her life was a whirl.
Up and about, always busy and fulfilled,
Perfect was her life, like Mango Lassi, chilled.

But then one day Raushni, met a terrible Monster!!
Dark-vader was his name, (atleast that's what he announced her).
He said, "Hoo-haa!! I am Dark-vader!! People fear me and run!
Raushni Suryavansham.. my reign has begun!!"

For many days and many nights she was haunted by Dark-vader,
She lost all her joy and josh to the Energy Invader. 
Raushni's sunny soul was gradually exhausted,
And one day, darling Raushni simply couldn't get out of bed.

Then Raushni's Dad had an idea! He got broad-spectrum energy-savers.
Mom made Coconut Vanilla Macaroons - Raushni's favorite flavours!
The roasted flour and toasted coconut had an irresistible aroma
which wafted slowly to Raushni's room and she awoke with a delighted "Oh, Ma!"

It smelt like summer. Was it summer? No.. the Dark Monster was still in sight
hovering around.. between her and her macaroons.. like a terrible terrible Blight!
"Hoo-haa!!" said Dark-vader, "People fear me and run!!
I am terrible! I am mean!! And I fear no one!!"

This monstrous Dark-vader had made her life Helly!
And now, the impetuous blighter was coming between Raushni and her belly!
Raushni WOULDN'T take it any more! She sprang out of bed.
"I'll take you up on your word and RUN!!" and kitchen-wards she sped.

She scooped up a warm macaroon and popped it into her mouth.
Summer and Winter had imploded.. it was like she had flown South!
Dark-vader was close at her heels. But instead of being afraid,
Raushni charged straight at her Bully with a mean Coconut Grenade!

"Hoo-haa!!" she bellowed with fury, "I am Raushni Suryavansham!!
Dark-vader, you better run.. for this is the land of the SUN!!"

Dark-vader had met his match! He grabbed his dark cloak,
heading straight for the nearest rest-room, (terror-struck old bloke.)

Raushni had won back her joy. She would never fear Dark anymore!
Under bright lights, with foodie delights, she danced, "Teri Ore, teri ore!"

Thanks for reading everyone! Best wishes to anyone suffering from mild or severe SAD.

Hello Dolly!

Ok.. I will admit it right away.. I made these because I loved the name.. :D

Fig. 1. Hello Dolly Bars!

Plus they are made of chocolate! And they are supremely quick and easy to make!

I saw them on Delish. This is a blog I found via One Hot Stove and I have been tapping it for my bakes ever since! There are delicious and super-quick recipes tempting me to pig out every time I check out this blog! So it is apt that this post should go to Blog Bites for the Holiday Buffet!

Nankattai

Hey everyone.. Happy December! 'Tis the season to make goodies!

Fig. 1. Nankattai by the window sill

Do you have any favorite holiday goodies you almost always bake around this time of the year? I usually make all sorts of cookies. Nankattai this year is the first in line. I will be baking crinkle cookies and chocolate chip cookies next. I like to put all sorts of stuff in those. Might add some toffee bits this time. Mint chips and raspberry chips also taste terrific with chocolate based cookies. I love baking cookies. Hope to pack a few goodies and mail them off to family and friends. Let's see how much baking I manage.

Nankattai are cookies my Mom used to bake back home. So this is her recipe. There is nothing like the warm and fragrant elaichi with a hint of nutmeg! Start off the morning with Nankattai baking hot in the oven... and you know that the day ahead will be just perfect! You can imagine having these mildly sweet cookies with some yummy adrak-elaichi-wali chai (ginger-cardamom tea).

Some of the above yummy is now officially in the tummy.. some of my cookie giftees will just have to wait for a few more batches! ;) And yes, I took the pan over to the window sill to get some real light in the picture.

Besan ke Laddoo

Hidey ho everyone...

Fig. 1. Besan ke Laddoo

Firstly I must apologize for not visiting my co-bloggers a lot lately. Just busy. Also to my readers, I must apologize for the longish duration I have not posted here. I have been cooking. But my pics aren't coming out too great. I flatly blame the dark evenings and short daylight hours for this!! Finally this pic seems to have turned out ok. So these Besan ke Laddoos are okayed to be posted. :)

This recipe is from Manjula's Kitchen. Actually I am not such a big fan of Besan ke Laddoo. Despite a humongous sweet-tooth, I never seem to have craved for them. I guessed that meant that I was not super-fond of this variety of Laddoos. And yet.. Manjula's Kitchen.. and her videos.. her videos are really are cute. I had to make them after I saw her make these!

I thought, chalo.. post-Halloween Holiday Season is officially here. So I can enjoy the making of the Laddoos, surely someone will enjoy the eating of them!

And I must admit the finished product is just really delicious! Even I have changed my mind. I think it may be because they were super-fresh.. warm and fragrant, right off the pan! Not too greasy, not too sweet... I must admit that it sure does make a difference when you make something at home and hog on it fresh and warm!

Pumpkin Kadamb

Happy Halloween and early Diwali to everyone!

Fig. 1. Pumpkin Kadamb

Pumpkin season and Halloween = Pumpkin recipes! We often get good pumpkins at the market in this period. And usually pumpkin pie is the thing to make. But recently my Mom sent me some "Haldi Paan" (turmeric leaves)!!!! :)

She had got them fresh during Ganesh Chaturthi and it appears to still be available some places. She knew there was no way I could get my hands on the fresh haldi leaves. So she dried them and saved a bunch for me!! And as soon as some of my family came around to visit they brought along this amazing gift of leaves!! Ya-ya-yippee-yippee-ya-ya-yeah!!

Haldi-paan are used to flavour/impart-fragrance to several somewhat super-traditional dishes. So the fragrance of haldi leaves reminds me of Ganesh Chaturthi, Diwali, Satyanarayan poojas and other such religious festivities! Ooh.. I couldn't wait to use them!

I got pumpkin, thinking I would make pie with it. Then I spoke with Mom and she mentioned she adds pumpkin to Kadamb (KuhDumb). And Kadamb also uses haldi paan! I jumped at that! :) Pie will happen next time. Now we make Kadamb!

Chocolate Banana Bread and Banana Bites

Hey everyone... a double recipe today! Chocolate Banana Bread and Banana Bites.

Fig. 1 Chocolate Banana Bread

Fig. 2. Banana Bites

I love eating lots of bananas. Bananas contain potassium. When I started running, my legs would be sore all the time. At some point I decided to look up what I could do to reduce the soreness. A little reading showed me that potassium intake is good to keep soreness at bay. And eating bananas is a good way to get potassium in my daily diet (I don't particularly fancy eating potatoes every day). So a banana a day keeps my soreness away! 

But my banana consumption, weather conditions and grocery frequency are three data points that do not always lie on one line. I hear people freeze bananas or keep them in the refrigerator. Please let me know if you do that and it works ok for you to make something later. 

Anyway.. as is obvious.. almost every alternate weekend, sometimes even on week days, I am left with 1 or 2 bananas that are threatening to self-destruct. And even if desserts are not the best way to get one's potassium, they are a good way to not-waste over-ripe bananas.

Mango Milkshake

Almost end of season, but finally we found Mangoes!

Fig.1. Mango Milkshake!!

Mango Milkshake = Mango pieces or pulp + milk + sugar if needed, blended all together. The Mint is just for prettiness. ;)

Do you routinely garnish your dishes? choose fancy plates and tableware just so your food looks pretty? Do you make sure you use pretty table-cloth and mats to offset your dinner plates? Did you do this before? I guess with blog-hopping I have suddenly become aware of a lot of pretty things that I never knew existed.

But I also feel the food in my own blog-photos should really look like it looks on my real-life table. Not just a set-up for a picture. Otherwise the next time I casually make that very recipe I will feel a little let down without all the pretty show, no?

Umm.. that means we will have to get entire sets of fancyware!! At the very least I could collect dishes and plates of random orders and somehow make space for them all in my tiny little storage area. Now these ideas are only hovering in my mind so far, and yet I can see them quickly getting out of hand! ;)

I guess for now I will suffice with a bit of mint garnish on my Mango Milkshake!

Basic Chocolate-Chip Cookies

Hey everyone.. I wanted to send a few friends some foodie sort of gift. So I made a small batch of chocolate-chip cookies.

Fig.1. Basic Chocolate-Chip Cookies

What do you make when you have to parcel a food-gift to family or friends in other cities? At such times one has to rely on courier and postal delivery services which may take anything from 2-15 days to be delivered. This means the item has to be non-perishable. It has to be really dry so it doesn't harbor fungus, mold or germs while sitting in hot weather in the back of a truck or store-rooms. It has to be tough/firm so it doesn't break inside the package. Are there other concerns I am missing here..? Oh, how about it should taste decent.. :D

Cookies are my standard backup for such times. They can be made reasonably dry, so they stand the trial of time. So far the chocolate-chips have never actually melted. And the cookies have almost never broken or crumbled if packaged even modestly well..

This recipe is from the Betty Crocker website. If you follow instructions strictly, I would say you should check out the original recipe. I had found this recipe long back and have been making it whenever in need of basic cookies. I make variations in terms of different types of chips, nuts, etc flavoring the cookies. Here I will detail my version, which is roughly half of the recipe listed on the website. I have also included the changes I make having read some suggestions in their comments sections to make them softer.

Brown Pittye Unde (Laddoos)

Hey everyone.. it's finally time for some sugar!!! :)

Fig.1 Brown Pittye Unde

This is a dish I made up by chance.. ok, I admit it, by mistake actually. I was making Finger Millet Cookies from Aayi's Recipes. And instead of using a real cup measure, ignorantly, I used those Corelle style Mugs! Obviously all my measurements for ragi flour and sugar were in Mugs and the butter was in terms of butter-sticks (which translates to real cup measures). So that attempt was botched in terms of cookies. My "dough" ended up dry and crumbly. And I wasn't able to make cookies out of it.

But I was able to press the dough into laddoos!! Thus were discovered these laddoos. And the best part is that they taste really great!! Even hard-core people in my family who say, "Ragi? Ugh!" have been known to love these laddoos. Mind you, I have never told them this is Ragi. That explains the arcane name "Brown Pittye Unde" i.e. Laddoos made with brown powder/flour. Sneaky, sneaky!! ;) After my cunning attempts to mask the Ragi-ness of these.. don't you go about calling them anything else! Otherwise sooner or later it may get around to my folks!

Shevaiyaan Kheer (Vermicelli pudding)

Hi everyone.. today's post is this month's dessert.

Fig. 1. Shevaiyaan Kheer

We are abstaining from sugar in our cooking this month. One of our foodies here needs to restrict sugar and carb intake. But obviously, if you tell me "don't make anything with sugar" all I can think about is sugar!! I have even gone out of my way to specifically click and ogle at the items under dessert labels on most food-blogs! And I am just the cook! What about our sweet-foodie here? Especially when the doctor tells you that sugar is the last thing you want to eat now, sugar is immediately the first thing on your mind. Psychology-shmychology!!

Anyway.. here we were. Desserts were taunting us in our dreams at night, pervading our senses in the day and when enough was enough.. we turned to SPLENDA. I cannot say much about artificial sweeteners. There is a plethora of brands and varieties out there. Lots of confusing data about what is good and what isn't. The doctor told our foodie that Splenda is ok, so that's what we are going with now.

I made some Shevaiyaan Kheer. Our foodie had missed kheers for Ugadi.. then came all the other New Years. So kheer it had to be. No Indian festival, wedding or religious community event is complete without a Kheer or Payasam! Also, Shevaiyaan Kheer is the simplest kheer anyone can make, and takes the least amount of time and effort. The shevai themselves soak up a lot of liquid and there is not much need to wait around for the milk to condense.

I looked up my Mom's recipe, but didn't have all the ingredients she had listed. So I will post Mom's specifically sometime in future. I also looked up the recipe at Aayi's Recipes. The one I have made here is my generalized combination of both those recipes to suit the ingredients I had at home.

Bengali Rasgulla

Hey everyone! Today's post is is my entry to Nupur's One Hot Stove event Blog Bites: Cookers. I don't have a rice cooker or slow cooker. So I am going to tell you about something I make in my basic pressure cooker - Rasgullas.

Fig. 1. Bengali Rasgulla

I never thought of Rasgullas as something to be made at home, least of all by me! They just sounded too exotic. It probably cannot be done, I thought. But once I made them, I was so glad I tried. I had been unnecessarily worrying about nothing!

However, instead of boast-blogging about "I made Rasgullas, it's all in the genes!!!" this Blog Bites event gives me the perfect opportunity to tell you all that the credit to making these goes entirely to Manjula of Manjula's Kitchen/ Bengali Rasgulla. She has videos on her website and youtube. And I used to watch those for time-pass... you know, just to watch something in the background while cooking-cleaning, when you don't have cable. I would never have actually considered making these if Manjula were not so sweet and encouraging in her video. She says at the end of the video, "..so how you can go wrong? You can never go wrong making the rasgullas!" :) By that she doesn't mean that it is an easy thing to make, but that one should buck up and try to do things that appear hard. It's possible that we were just worrying about nothing! And if indeed it turns out to be as tricky as it appeared, then we go about learning damage control with her help! ;) Never say never again!!!

The following is almost entirely her recipe. I have, however, made this a few times by now, so here I include just a few changes to adapt to my pressure cooker (which is smaller than hers and has a whistle). I must say that 4 out of 5 times I have made these they turned out perfect. (Once they turned out all squashy flat since I cooked them for too long, not knowing the correct whistle/cooking time-estimate. The gullas lost their patience in the cooker that time.)

Just fyi, I don't know what is the difference between Rasgulla and Bengali Rasgulla, which is what these are called on Manjula's blog. So if anyone knows, please enlighten me!

Ingredients:
2% milk - 4 cups
Lemon juice - 1/4 cup
Water to dilute lemon juice - 1/4 cup
Sugar - 1&1/2 cup
Water for sugar syrup - 4&1/2 cups

Procedure:
I - Making Paneer balls:
1) Boil 4 cups of milk. Add diluted lemon juice to it when boiling. Separate the paneer from the liquid by draining it using a cheese-cloth in a colander. Important - you need to wash the paneer at this point to ensure that no flavour of lemon remains in it.

2) Now this paneer is tied up tight in a cheesecloth and squeezed dry. Then this bundle is left under a heavy weight for about 1 hour to ensure that the paneer is dried well enough.

3) You will know if the amount of dryness is correct (say check after 1 hour) if you take a small marble-sized piece of the paneer in your hand and knead it with your fingers. After kneading for about 30 seconds, if the piece rolls into a nice smooth ball, then the paneer is ready. If your fingers feel wet then there is still water that needs to be drained. If the paneer is too crumbly, develops cracks in the ball, then you need to add a few drops of water. If you need more info, I have mentioned (in excrooociating detail) the method for making paneer in one of my previous posts.

4) If the paneer consistency is right, then proceed to take the entire lump of paneer on a separate plate or flat surface. Now knead the paneer very well, like dough, smearing the paneer flat over the plate and re-lumping/re-rolling it as you knead.

5) Now roll 16 small balls from this paneer. (Manjula rolls 12. My cooker has a smaller diameter than hers and the balls float on top. I make 16 smaller ones so that they don't stick to each other.)

 Fig. 2. Well-kneaded paneer balls show very few cracks

II - Cooking them in the pressure cooker:
1) Now heat sugar water in a pressure cooker (with the coil on somewhat high, to speed up). Make sure the sugar is completely dissolved.

2) Turn the coil heat to medium. Put rolled balls into lightly steaming hot sugar-water in the pressure cooker. Not quite boiling. Add about half a glass more of unheated water at this point (just so its not at boiling point) and close the lid of the cooker. No whistle put on at this time.

 Fig. 3. Paneer balls are put with sugar water to cook in the pressure cooker

3) Here I record what happened this time for me. Every time is slightly different. ;)  After steam started coming out of the cooker (took about 8-10 mins after putting on the lid), I put on the whistle. The 1st whistle went off after 9-10 mins. I turned off the heat. Left it on the hot coil till it cooled down. Usually I just wait for the steam to cool off on its own. (But for the record, this time I waited for about 15 minutes and then made the steam go out myself. I wouldn't recommend this at all for safety reasons!)

4) Rasgullas should be cooked at this point. Open the lid when cool and place rasgullas with some of the sugar syrup in a bowl to refrigerate for a few hours. Serve chilled.

 Fig. 4. Rasgulla paradise awaits!

Verdict:  Heaven!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!