My Precious

I don’t think there is a single person in the world who has ever hated an immersion blender after owning one. There can never be. Immersion blenders are my favouritest kitchen gadgets of all time. These magical sticks can literally transform a lifeless kitchen into an able and lively one. You can say that’s funny but I feel like I can accomplish anything when I use my Cuisinart hand blender.

And what caused this sudden flood of excitement?

I ran out of mayo. I am lazier than ever to go to the grocery store. So I decided I would make mayo. I have seen it done and figured it shouldn’t be that hard a recipe. I looked into my barren fridge again and realized I had just one egg.

Mayo Experiment no.1: So maybe I let the whole “I can accomplish anything with my stick blender” get to my head. I chucked in all the ingredients without measures and started the emulsification process. To my dismay, it was one smooth drink and never turned into the gloppy mess that we want. There goes my mayo down the drain!

After the failure of my 1st experiment, I forced myself to look into the internet for an “eggless mayonnaise” recipe. I swear I was laughing when I was searching for an eggless version. I am totally against eggless anything and find eggless recipes an excuse to cook the real thing. Nevertheless, I found one that had ingredients I could manage to procure immediately.

Mayo Experiment no.2: Bumped into The David Blagh and found this beauty of recipes. I made the very first one and this time I tried the stream-your-oil-in version to make the mayo. Delish! Seasoned the mayo with some pepper at the end of it. Just so delicious it is as good as the real thing. On second thoughts, even better than the real thing. Why? Have you ever had a look at the label of a store-bought mayo bottle? They add so many other ingredients besides eggs, oils, vinegar, lemons. I read the label off my old bottle and the first ingredient was enough to put me off -”Modified potato starch”.

That said, do try the eggless version or the regular egg version. Making mayo at home is so simple and far more cost effective and tastier and safer than store bought ones. Bon Appetit!

Creamy Egg Salad Sandwich

I know… it’s been ages since I’ve published a post. It has been super busy and super exciting with mom and dad here. Traveling almost every single weekend, loads of shopping and many movies to catch up together on Netflix! Yes… the one thing most people living in America can’t do without!

Off late, I have been on a pretty food cooking spree. And that means healthy, yummy and beautiful-looking (I know many of my Indian friends are going …. what on earth??! Since taste surpasses texture in Indian cuisine… Ok, that may not be entirely true… but I can hardly think of any Indian that plates up every single meal. There. That’s my point) Thanks to my recent craving for colorful and pretty salads, I have begun to explore. Finally, I can say I am starting to think fibre can also be tasty. And that is something I will reserve to talk about in another post.

Last night, I was thinking to myself… how hard can it be to just get a bowl of cereal, pop a slice or two of bread in the toaster, crack an egg, beat and whip an omelette or simply make a porridge of oatmeal or millets? Let me tell you. Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day pour moi. Why? Because I grew up drinking a runny sweetened porridge that we call “kanji” before heading to school or college. Mom would always have them waiting at the dining table and all I was expected to do was drink it up and dash to school.  Breakfast was always something I knew, in the back of my mind, was good for health. Yet, something I never got around to make a habit until quite recently. Now I manage to get something every once in a while. It’s still not as good but something nevertheless.

So this morning after what I thought was another futile attempt at waking up early, I was woken up by my brand new community with the gazillion sounds of a gazillion bulldozers that are clearly not supposed to run at 8AM. Not good for the sleepy soul. A couple of coffees later, I decided I wanted to get myself a good breakfast. And to me, a good breakfast has to have eggs. I popped open the fridge only to find I had barely any veggies or other ingredients. My mind started doing its own weird thing and took me to an airport late at night. Most airports close their best restaurants by 8 or 9pm. The only places that are open then are small cafes that serve coffee, cakes, salads and basic sandwiches. And I thought… creamy egg salad. When I told my mom I was going to make us some creamy egg salad sandwich, she cringed her nose and said she wasn’t too comfortable knowing that it would have yellow mustard in it. I convinced her if she tried this, she wouldn’t be disappointed. She loved the sandwich and was pleasantly surprised at how the flavors had blended well covering the sour flavors of yellow mustard.

Creamy Egg Salad Sandwich (Makes 4)

Ingredients:

4 eggs

1/4 cup light mayo

1 tsp yellow mustard or any mustard you have on hand

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp granulated garlic

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp powdered black pepper

1/4 tsp paprika

1 tsp chives (optional)

Method:

1. Bring some water to a running boil in a saucepan. 
2. Add the eggs and let them boil in the water for 15 mins.
3. In the meantime, take a medium bowl add in the rest of the ingredients.
4. Once the eggs are done, run them in cold water immediately. (Trick to avoid eggs going green – grey)
5. Mix it all up until it looks absolutely divine.
6. Take a slice of bread. Add 2 tbsp of the creamy egg salad and close it up with another slice.
7. Relish this Delish!

Goats Movie Review

Reblogged from Dibribac's Blog:

Predictable, predictable, predictable....

Even for someone who has recently strayed into the indie scene, this movie seems very predictable (yes, for the millionth time) and filled with some odd humour. There are many coming-of-age movies that talk about teens struggling with addiction and yet manage to keep the audience thinking.

Goats is a movie that talks about a boy who does really well in his studies even though it's not something he cares about.

Read more… 196 more words

Pasta La Vista

Reblogged from Dibribac's Blog:

A few youtube videos is all it took to make me plate up homemade pasta made fresh from scratch! And how? For a long time, I have been a follower of Laura Vitale, the daughter and genetically gifted girl born to an Italian family that has forever been in the food business. Especially the Italian food business. Laura really inspires people to cook.

Read more… 821 more words

What they don’t tell you when you take your first steps in baking?

On my way back from an awesome weekend trip near the Sierras, I couldn’t help getting bugged, what with the Wild Wild West more like Wide Wide West on the road, zoned out and zoomed in on a melting chocolate muffin pack near the dashboard. It was blazing hot outside.. I mean like the gust of hot air you feel every time you open your oven – HOT.  Reaching a 104 F with total ease, the drive back was more like a sore itch you want to get rid of. Anyway back to my muffin, as I peered at it so hard like I was going to xray the muffin with my eyes alone, I wondered why I had never ventured into baking. Full-fledged baking. Not the baking chips or making pizzas on stone baking. But the whole array of cakes and cookies and muffin… the solar system of magical goodies made from self-rising flour. This thought provoked me to use some of the trays on coming back home.

As always with any beginner, I zeroed in on making simple chocolate chip cookies … Nothing fancy. Basic choco chip cookies that I’m sure a lot of you have never gotten wrong. The first time I made them they turned out too flat and I wasn’t in exactly a baking mood/mode.. It was more like get rid of the last bit of flour in the house mode. My attempts at baking have never really gone beyond pathetic before. I have always baked good cakes but never delved too much into the yummier creations from flour like shortbreads or cupcakes or cookies.So this idea of baking choco chip cookies seemed quite enticing and extremely simple to make. That’s when I remembered this dialogue from the not-so-cool-anymore TV show “Friends” where Phoebe quotes the recipe for the delicious choco chip cookies was passed down to her by her mother who got it from her great grand aunt Nestle Tollhouse (pronouned Toulouse).

I looked at the Nestle site for a simple recipe on these cookies and off I went dashing to my kitchen counter to bake these goodies at just the thought of the smell of sweet baked flour wafting through the air and the first crumbly crunchy bite of a cookie with a sip of tea. What yumminess! I got the dough ready, refrigerated it for a bit before dunking them as small round bald balls into the oven preheat at exactly 375 F as given in their website. They were ready in 12 mins. Looked perfect. And here I was thinking — moment of achievement (more really like a Nobel Prize award with artificially whitened teeth boasting a million dollar smile and a Miss World wave in the air).

Ready to taste the sweetness of success, I imagined everything I did before making these cookies — the sweet smell of baking flour in the air and crumbly feel of the cookie in your mouth and took the first bite. What a bitch! The use of baking soda in my dough screwed up my cookie. It tasted bitter. More like a fresh cookie that went bad in the end. Thank God for those kitchen towels. I spat out every bit of what I had. The moment of disaster.

On googling, very interesting to note that baking soda is a big NO for baker mums while most recipes on the internet mention the use of a tsp of baking soda. No. Never. Never again. My cookies came out looking like I was ready to set up shop and in reality, tastes like chocolate barf. Extremely gross. If you are a beginner, get this tip from a fellow beginner, please please avoid using baking soda. If you absolutely must, go ahead and throw in a teeny tiny pinch and nothing more. Trust me, the pinch can screw up your yummy baked goods a long way!

 

Awwwsome Tamalpais

I don’t know if it’s just me or if there are tons of people like me on earth who get frequent bouts of confusion on planning the weekend. We were always able to come up with something during major chunks of last year and it was all worthwhile. Every camping trip, hike, gambling @ the casinos, going to shows, clubbing and pubbing… every freakin’ thing was (in a supremely high pitched voice) Awwwsome! Of course, things would be awwwsome in that insanely amazing voice if only there were ideas that flowed around like free air.

There it was before we knew it had happened, we were stuck. Out of ideas. Had no clue what to do. Spent a LOT of weekends ( Sooo many that I can’t even count!) doing NOTHING. Not that that’s any inferior. The art of sleeping loooong hours on a Saturday morning or a Sunday is bliss better than the so-called heaven. So anyway, we were out of ideas on how to spend our weekends. We had visited relatives, friends, gone clubbing and pubbing, visited an awesome place and with camping that will start only around May or June, we had nothing else to think of.

Suddenly… Eureka! I realized that a lot of our sightseeing was majjjorly done around the bay area but never in here. Google I did and voila! there it was. A website that had a page long description of the hikes in Mount Tamalpais in Tamalpais Valley just a few miles north of SF.

Tamalpais is so serenely beautiful and less crowded compared to the nearby attractions – Muir Woods and Stinson Beach. We took the easy 1 mile walk and the diamond-in-the-rough 20 min hike right to the top of Mount Tamalpais. The drive up to Tamalpais Valley is needless to say, breathtaking with beautiful views of mountains, lakes, the golden gate bridge and plenty of tiny waterfalls. Once we reached the parking lot of the Mount Tamalpais East Peak, there was a gust of fresh mountain air, so unpolluted and clear.

The Mount Tamalpais East Peak is divided into 2 parts. One with a paved path that makes up for almost a mile’s walk loop leading back to the parking lot and second, a rough climb up that takes about 20 mins to reach the east peak of Mount Tamalpais. The 1 mile walk was super easy to complete as opposed to its sister and offered brilliant views of the golden gate bridge, bay bridge, the waters in between and the gazillion skyscrapers of SF Downtown. The 2nd path does not offer too many views as you go but gives you everything the 1 mile path gives you once you are at the top – a 360 deg view of Mount Tamalpais.

Anyone interested in hiking in the bay area, visit www.weekendsherpa.com.

Castor Oil

For ages, Indians have been using this pale yellow oil for medicinal purposes and very recently, I found that this also makes an excellent flavour enhancer in South Indian cooking.

Mix 1/4 -1/2 tsp of castor oil in your vatha kuzhambu. That makes a world of difference. Although be careful in how much castor oil goes into your dish as this acts a serious laxative.

A piece of my legacy

Here we go again! My quest in becoming a proficient tamil cook continues and this journey is highly blessed with the guidance of amazing cooks like my mom who also passes on my paati’s wisdom, my sis, my mil and the millions of cooks on the internet. And how can I forget my lovely adorable husband who inspires me to cook different things? Thanks to his love for food and his compulsive need to perfect everything, I have the best live-in scapegoat who makes me better as I grow. So for this kind and loving scape goat, I decided to try out yet another recipe – a south indian classic that has many in my family drooling for more. And I also know that this is one of the best, he claims, recipes his mom has perfected. My mother-in-law was kind enough to pass it on to me and I am more than kind and caring enough for my fellow Indians to take a piece of our legacy through this blog for the sake of pride in upholding it.

Adai 

Ingredients:

1 cup idli rice

Kadalai paruppu and Toor Dal in such a way they make up for 3/4ths of a cup

5-6 red chillies

salt

hing

Method:

Soak rice and dals separately. After 45 mins, grind rice and chillies to a batter of idli batter consistency with a coarse texture.

Then grind the dals with some hing to a thick paste-ish batter. Mix both the batter and add salt to taste.

Make thick dosais on your pan and your adai is ready!

Suggestion: My mil suggested finely chopped onions/baby brinjal/ coriander garnish.

Gatte Ki Sabzi

During my short stint at Randstad, a member of our team brought a variety of Gujarati food for lunch every single day. Obviously being a Gujarati. This one particular day he asked me to try out a sabzi which he claimed was his favourite. A gravy with besan dumplings. The thought of besan in a north indian gravy was something I had never heard of and to me a south indian who was only exposed to north indian foods that mostly consisted of gravies made of paneer, palak, aloo, gobi. You know the typical gravies we get at restaurants and mom makes at home. But this was something different. My colleague also told me that this was a dish unique to Rajasthan. I had one bite with his wife’s fluffy tear-with-one-finger soft roti. I was blown away. The sabzi was different. Me being a huge fan of south indian ilai saapadu who severely critiqued north indian as merely a blend of the usual spices like garam and chili lacking multiple cooking techniques was stumped. I bowed to him and told him I was a fool to have thought so and that this was probably one of the best and yummiest sabzis I have ever had.

Today I was so in the mood for this sabzi. I took the recipe out and it was too bad I was out of curd. Here goes the recipe:

For the Gattes:

About 1 and a half cups of Besan/Chickpea flour

1 tbsp red chilli powder

1 or 2 green chillies

Salt

For the gravy:

1 onion finely chopped

1 tomato

red chilli powder

garam masala powder

cumin seeds

mustard seeds

ajwain seeds (optional. if you don’t have it, that’s fine. But I think the ajwain seeds add so much flavour)

ginger garlic paste – 1 tbsp

curry leaves – one string

yoghurt – beaten about half a cup

Method:

1. Mix gatte ingredients with some water until it forms a dough. Mine turned out a little sticky. But that’s ok.

2. Put small balls of the dough in a pan of boiling water. Let them sit for about 10-15 mins.

3. In the meantime, chop your vegetables ( tomatoes, onions) and heat oil in a kadai.

4. Splutter mustard seeds, cumin seeds and ajwain seeds.

5. Put the onions and ginger garlic paste together to avoid spluttering of the oil due to water content in the GG paste.

6. Add the tomatoes with curry leaves, turmeric, garam masala and chili powder once the onions turn translucent.

7. I did not have yoghurt. So I substituted that with 3 tbsp sour cream with 1-2 tbsp milk and mixed them until they had a beaten yoghurt feel.

8. Pour this into the pan and stir.

9. Take the gattes out of the water after 10-15 mins. Cut them into small cube-sized pieces and put them into the pan.

10. Cook this on low heat for about 15-20 mins.  Serve hot with rice or roti.

The sabzi turned out really good.

No, seriously!

I have to stop being so proud of myself. Yesterday, I made this Indian sweet which is basically a sweet rice pudding. Ooohhh…. That stuff was sooooo delicious. I swear I could run a cookery class dedicated to the art of making rice pudding. Yum in my tum. If you like the condensed milk types, this sweet should definitely be tried out.

Recipe: (Be prepared for a wait time of 4 hours. Trust me, it’s worth the wait)

1.5 -2 litres milk

3/4 cup rice

1/4 cup melted butter

6-8 teaspoons of sugar (add according to your needed level of sweetness)

Method:

Boil the milk on low-medium heat. When the contents reduce by 1/4 (just watch… and stir occasionally. this usually takes time about 2 hours), add the rice and ghee (mix them together before you add them to the milk). Again stir occasionally. When the rice is cooked, add the sugar. Stir and let the milk and the rice cook in the sweetness for about 10-15 mins after you add the sugar.

Best part is this sweet can be served cold or hot.

Bon Appetite!