Broken Wheat Pongal

While December 2010 saw cold waves through the country, January, this winter continues to be a chilling season for us, but with a reduced intensity. The weather has been chill and crisp in the dawns and early mornings, while it gets very hot in the noons. Nights turn to be colder again with winter breeze hitting and foggy mornings greeting us again. It's comforting however to wake up and enjoy a cup of hot tea, envelop ourselves in warm winter clothes and head towards chill morning walks to the nearby layout where beautiful flowering trees adorn the streets and birds sing in their full glory.

We love being the nature lovers and this walk amidst the beauty of nature helps us begin our day on a positive note, to unwind ourselves, preparing us for the hectic, tumultuous work packed day that lies ahead of us. As we walk through the foggy mornings, geared with binocs, which happens to be my husband's favorite gadget off late, we pause at the chirp by the birds we hear. DH takes his time and pleasure in bird watching, a hobby that keeps him active and going through the day. I am clueless on what species they belong to, but I do get a regular dose of knowledge from him in this aspect. An excitement on his face is worth capturing a hundred clicks when he spots rare species!

While that keeps him occupied, I spend my time to see the beauty of nature through greenery, flowering trees, fruits, cactus, even weeds, in various shapes, forms, bounty colors that leave me amazed on how God has made this world such a beautiful place. I love these walks through trees lining the layout streets, be it the banyans, the almond trees or the floral beauty of bougainvilleas which adorn the fences of the villas, the withering leaves in different shades of greens and browns make me happy and the time spent worthwhile.

Back home, this creates a mood for me to make dishes that are comforting and immensely satisfying. Warm dishes which compliment the cold weather that we have now. Dishes which are traditionally simple, infused with flavors from earthy spices like ginger and pepper which create an aromatic breakfast when served on the table. The spices are naive and basic, making the dish humble. An addition of a dollop of ghee or clarified butter creates a magic and adds steep exotic flavors in this dish.

Broken Wheat Pongal

INGREDIENTS

1 cup moong daal
1 cup broken wheat
2 tbsp clarified butter/ghee
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp chopped ginger
3 chopped green chilli
1 tsp whole peppercorns
A sprig of curry leaves
Salt to taste
A handful cashew nuts

DIRECTIONS

Wash and clean the moong daal and broken wheat and keep it aside. Lightly crush the whole peppercorns and keep them aside.

Next, heat two tbsp of ghee in a wide mouthed pressure cooker pan. Add cumin seeds. When the cumin seeds turn fragrant, add chopped ginger, green chillis, torn curry leaves and whole and broken pepper. Stir and fry them for a few seconds.

Now, add the moong daal and the washed broken wheat to the above spices. Add sufficient water to this. Add salt to taste. Close the cooker and allow it to whistle thrice. If you do not have a pressure cooker at hand, use a regular cooking pan and cook the daal and wheat till they turn soft and mushy.

Meanwhile, roast cashew in the ghee and keep aside. Once the cooker cools down, add and garnish with the roasted cashews.

Traditionally, rice is paired along with moong dal to make this Pongal. However, I made an attempt to use broken wheat as a substitution for rice. It barely makes any difference. This dish is best served hot with tomato raita or any chutney of your choice. I like to call it our 'South Indian Khichdi' which does good when one is ill and down with poor health.

Subtly flavored earthy spices complement each other so perfectly. We are at the fag end of the winter season and this is such a comfort dish I love to binge on, a dish that brings out warmth with every bite, perfectly suited to bid goodbyes to the winters, welcoming the sunshine that the summer will bring along.

Read more >>

Food Event: USA Pears Festival

Friday, the 14th January was an eventful day for us Bangalore Bloggers. USA Pears company called out for a bloggers and media meet at Caperberry to celebrate and promote USA Pears festival. This event came into light when Madhuri of Cook-Curry-Nook contacted me asking if I would like to be a part of this bloggers event. I lost out on similar events in the past and didn't surely want to skip this chance. Least, to meet the bloggers whom I have associated with virtually till now. I was looking forward to this.

I quickly nodded a yes to Madhuri, but still unsure on the back of my mind if I would be able to make it to the event. Considering that Friday is a working day for me I pondered if I would actually get a day off from work, since it was festival time and many at my workplace would have planned leaves in advance to get a nice stretched weekend. However, I was fortunate to get a day off and consider lucky enough to attend this event which was scheduled at noon 12.30 pm - 2.30 pm.

It was a quiet food testing and tasting event attended by few bloggers and media personnel. Caperberry on Dickenson Road, a neat and an aesthetically designed art studio cum restaurant was a perfect host to this event.

The imported Pears offered by USA Pears for tasting were sweet with a buttery texture, unlike the Chinese counterparts which have grainy texture similar to apples. Though I have tasted California Prunes and Apples from the same company and also and used them in my recipes earlier, these imported Pears were the first time for my taste buds. To begin with we had an introduction to US Pears from their representative, Rachana who explained well their distinction from the Chinese counterparts. This sweetness and texture make them fantastic ingredient in cocktails, drinks and desserts.

Most of us bloggers being vegetarians did not have any difficulty in choices. Menu was limited and had veg and non veg options to choose from. The cocktails offered had a good variety to chose from and they weren't disappointing at all. Pear dominated the main course too. For the main course, I chose White Wine Poached Pears and Mascarpone Ravioli with Rosemary Butter Sauce. Bland as Raviolis tend to be, I consider the Grilled Pears Stuffed with Cherry Tomato Mozzarella and Pesto better in body and flavor. It's a must try if you plan to visit this place. It was Pears on every course, on every plate!

We hoped there would be a live demo of cooking with Pears, but unfortunately as a testing and tasting event, there was no live cooking demonstrated. Chef, Abhijit Saha took some time out to answer queries we had on cooking with Pears and was kind enough to answer them all.

We are prone to think that fruits always pair well in desserts or drinks, rather than being a core ingredient in a main course dish or a savory. This festival helped break all the traditional norms and school of thoughts. It showed us how well one could use a fruit and pair it with complimenting ingredients to create an exotic dish.

The festival offered us a good chance to taste some great imported US Pear and I hope to use more of these in my forthcoming cooking.It also gave me an opportunity to meet some of the food bloggers whom I have connected only through the web space till now.

Read more >>

Eggless Mango Cheesecake

Wishing all my readers a Happy Lodhi / Makara Sankranthi / Pongal. Lodhi, Pongal, Sankranthi, all signify a festival of harvest in different names in the vast and diverse culture of our nation. It also marks the end of winter season. This festival is celebrated in innumerable ways across the country depending on the climate, location, agricultural environment and cultural background of the people.

Though we don't really celebrate this festival with much grandeur at home, over years we've made sure that atleast a traditional sweet dish accompanies our regular lunch course, in a way saying that we did celebrate the festival in a small way :) From the time I have taken over my kitchen, what I love cooking during Sankranthi is two versions of Pongal, the sweet and the spicy one. While I have a huge inclination for the spicy version, which I like to make often apart from the festival itself, the sweeter version is more popular with my husband. It renders him some sweet memories of his childhood.

Ideally on this day, what you would probably expect from me is a post on traditional recipe here. Unfortunately, it's been a hectic day for me and I have been unable to take pictures of what was cooking in my kitchen today :( To begin the day with, it was Kharabath for our breakfast, followed by Gajar ka halwa and Sweet Pongal. I've had a busy day apart from just being in the kitchen, but I promise that I will definitely post my recipes for this in the future posts... though I know they wouldn't be as apt for the day today. But for the day, I have an Eggless Mango Cheesecake to offer you which I made a week ago.

Eggless Mango Cheesecake

INGREDIENTS

For the Base:

100 gm digestive biscuits (I used Fruit and Nut Biscuits here)
50 gm melted butter

Cheesecake Filling:

100 ml 25% fat cream
150 ml mango flavored thick yogurt (I used Amul's Aam Srikhand)
50 gm cottage cheese
4 tbsp castor sugar (or to taste)
1 tbsp agar agar / gelatin
1 tsp vanilla essence

Strawberry slices for garnish

DIRECTIONS

Line the sides of a cake tin with a cling film such that extra portions of it hang out. In case you are using a spring form pan, this step may not be required.

For the biscuit base: Put the biscuits into a ziplock bag & crush them to fine powder with the help of a rolling pin. You may also powder the biscuits in a mixie or food processor. I used Fruit and Nut biscuits for a better crunch. Remove and add in the melted butter and mix them well. Press this mixture into the base of a spring form pan or a lined cake tin. Chill this base for 30 minutes.

Pulse the cottage cheese to a fine puree along with 75 ml of the milk cream and vanilla. Whip enough to give it volume. Add in thick mango flavored yogurt. I made a cheat version by using Amul's Aam Srikhand which saves a lot of time and has a considerable thickness too. Add castor sugar to taste.

Dissolve a tablespoon of agar agar in the remaining 25 ml of cream and bring it to a boil. When the flakes dissolve, add this to the above cheesecake mix and give a final vigorous pulse so that all the ingredients are well combined. Transfer this mixture to the prepared biscuit base. Pat the tin gently to remove any air bubble that may have formed. Refrigerate the cheesecake to set for atleast 4-6 hours. Leave it in the refrigerator overnight or for atleast 6 hrs. Before serving, allow it to sit on the counter for 5 minutes. Garnish with fresh mango slices. I garnished mine with strawberry slices as mango is not in season.

Note: If you don't get Amul Srikhand at hand, pulse thick yogurt like Greek yogurt with thick mango puree till it's homogeneous. Add in desired amount to sugar if using Greek yogurt since Srikhand has sugar added in it .

You can make thick yogurt at home by hanging the homemade curd in a clean muslin/thin cotton cloth and leaving it hung overnight in the refrigerator over a large empty bowl which can accommodate the running liquid out of the curd.

I have a spring form tin at hand now, but despite this I preferred to use my smaller round cake tin for this purpose. With just 2 of us, a 9" inch pan would mean a large amount of cake and we surely didn't want any overdose! The yogurt rendered a nice tart which we loved. Mango flavor is light. The cheesecake set beautifully and turned out creamy and delicious. I would love to make this cheesecake again in future when fresh mangoes rock the summers.

Read more >>

Chilli Garlic Bread

I do hope you guys had a gala year end giving a warm, fabulous welcome to the New Year. Hope you had a lot of partying and feasting in the past couple of days. We had guests over our place and with a crowd around, there is always plenty of fun, frolic, laughter and noise. Pairing it if there's good food and wine, it gets all the more better.

An onset with Christmas saw me baking the Christmas Chocolate fruit cake, followed by the New year partying and a few birthday treats, which had us dining out steadily in the past few days, to an extent that we've resolved that we've had enough of it! I had shelved my cooking on and off during the New year stretch, throbbing the luxury of cooking full fledged meals in my kitchen. It was indeed a well deserved break. However, the commencement of the new year saw us dining out on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of this month with guests and birthday treats, I sincerely hope this trend does not continue through the year long!

Festivities indeed bring a lot of glamor and color to our lives. During Christmas, we had a Secret Santa game organized at our workplace. It's interesting to get sneaky, wondering what each one of us would gift the other person to be a secret Santa and what we would get in return from our secret Santa, transporting our excitement back to becoming and behaving like kids. On the D-day, the puzzling game of exchanging gifts, then the hush-hush of unwrapping them, the excitement it brought was boundless and visibly noticed on all of us in an animated fashion reflecting the cloak-and-dagger mystery.

My secret Santa gifted me a very pretty coffee mug from Cafe Coffee Day. While I find it too massive for it's intended purpose and the fact that I am not a coffee lover, that does not stop me from using this mug. The coffee mug definitely makes an interesting prop for my photo-shoot and I love it. It also adorns well on my crockery cabinet along side our photo frames. Just fits the theme so perfectly there!

Over the weekend as the guests left, I had time all by myself to bake something for the evening supper and make time for photographing them. Weather was conducive too. Ample time for proofing was done overnight for the yeast to rise and the next afternoon it was ready to go into the oven. Interestingly, I did not follow any recipe per se and just went by my instincts and approximations.

Chilli Garlic Bread

INGREDIENTS

25 g active dry yeast
50 ml warm water
1 tsp sugar
200 g plain flour
50 ml warm water, approximately
Salt to taste
1/2 tbsp oil

Topping:

1/2 tbsp butter
1 tsp finely chopped garlic
1/2 tsp chilli flakes

DIRECTIONS

Dissolve dry yeast in warm water with sugar. Leave for 5-10 mins to dissolve and become frothy. Mix the flour and salt to taste. Add in the yeast mixture and warm water little by little till a soft pliable dough is formed. Cover with a warm towel or cling film and leave it to rest overnight in a warm place like a pre-heated oven.

Next morning, the dough should have risen and doubled in size. Punch it down gently. Knead the dough gently with some flour and oil till it springs back up when pressed. Grease and dust the baking tray with some oil and dust flour. Shape the dough to your desired style and transfer the dough gently to the baking dish. Allow to rest there for about an hour or two for the dough to rise again.

Meanwhile, prepare the chilli garlic topping. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Turn off the flame when the butter is hot, but not smoking. Add the finely chopped garlic and chilli flakes to this and mix well so that the butter absorbs all the flavors well. Brush the top of the bread with this seasoning. Leave the bread in a warm place to rise again. Once risen, bake in a pre-heated oven at 220 deg C for 1 hour or till done. Remove from oven, allow to cool on a cooling rack and slice as desired.

I brushed the garlic chilli seasoning on the bread to bake. However once baked the chilli and garlic fell apart. I suggest you press the garlic and chilli into the bread before baking instead of brushing them on top. Or just brush the warm oil to render the flavors. The bread baked warm and beautifully risen. It had an amber glow on it like that of a sun peeking out on a foggy dawn. Prominent flavor was ofcourse garlic with a hint of spice from chili flakes. I also toasted a few slices of bread under grill and these spicy golden brown sticks were fantastic with our tea.

While it will take some time to come out of the holiday lethargy, juggle back to business and get going into the mold of mundane routine, this break has helped rejuvenate our spirits and spring us back alive in action. At the moment however, we are resting in the cozy comfort of warm spiced tea with some of these homemade chili garlic toasts.

I am sending these to Blog Anniversary Event hosted by Suma Rowjee of Cakes and More.

Read more >>