If Yan can cook then Ken can bake....

Baking is often referred to as an "art". The very act of assembling all the ingredients, mixing them in the right proportion( this bit is really important, while baking a cake if you were to add a little more of this or a little less of that, you could end up with either a gooey mess or a rock hard cake) . Once you have mixed everything together you need to wait patiently for the magic to begin. The lovely smell of cake/cookies wafting through the house is an instant mood uplifter. Just what the Doc ordered for you when you were feeling low. I find anything to do with cooking therapeutic and baking especially makes me feel really good.

Unlike cooking where you kinda control every stage, thicken the gravy if it is too watery, add a boiled potato if the salt seems high, add some dhania/jeera powder if the dish tastes too bland, in baking you can do very little once the process of baking begins. Hence the excitement/anticipation: will the cake rise or won't it, will it be soft or hard, will the chocolate taste too bitter or just right, will it have an eggy smell or will the vanilla essence do the trick? I guess that is what makes the process of baking so much fun. At some level it almost seems like child's play( my thirteen year old has baked this one) but at another getting the recipe right seems like a challenge. There are recipes for triffle pudding which go: you need a badly made cake :-)

Raindrop had come home with a freshly baked cake about a week ago. The kids just loved it and gobbled it up in no time. They had been pestering me to get the recipe from her. Thankfully she obliged. The rest as they is for you to see and for us to sample.

Raindrop's Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Maida: 1 cup

Castor sugar: 1 cup( about 3/4th cup of granular sugar when ground will give you a cup of powdered sugar)

Eggs: 4 large ones

Vanilla essence: 1 tsp( one of the few chocolate cake recipes that has vanilla essence as an ingredient, cake has a lovely chocolate flavor with a hint of vanilla)

Vegetable oil: 3/4th cup( I used Sundrop but I have tasted cakes made with Olive oil and they taste as good, so all you health conscious foodies you could try it with olive oil)

Cocoa powder: 1/2 cup

Baking soda: 3/4 tsp( I also added 1 tsp of baking powder though this was not part of the original recipe, soda helps the cake cook and baking powder helps it rise)

Amul butter: To line the tin

Method

This is the bit that I really love. Mix all the ingredients together( unlike other recipes which ask you to mix dry ingredients first, eggs separately and then fold in the flour bit by bit this is just one quick easy step and you are done). Transfer to a greased dish( grease the dish with some Amul butter).

Bake in the conventional oven at 200 degrees for about 45 minutes or till cake is down( In a microwave with convention cooking it should take about 25 minutes). I use a square oven. Baked with the lower coil only for about 30 minutes and then both lower and upper coils for the last 15 minutes.

Check if cake is done by inserting a toothpick or fork. The toothpick or fork should come out clean.

If serving it to children, decorate with cake toppings as shown.

Happy Baking! This one tasted delicious and is "almost gone" as I write this post.

The hills are alive with the sound of music......

Just back from a trip to the Kumaon hills. Days were crisp and sunny, nights were cold. We had lovely Kumaoni food during the day, some soup and barbecued chicken sitting around the bonfire in the evening. The mountain air, all that trekking did wonders to our appepite. My kids seemed to wolf down food like there was no tomorrow. They seemed hungry all the time, at meal times/in between meals times and post meal times. We sampled some really different and nice stuff- Single( a sweet made with sooji, dahi, banana and saunf, resembles a jalebi: yumm!), Kapa( palak in a light besan gravy where the taste of palak dominates unlike in a kadhi), choley( cooked with chopped onion, tomato, ginger and garlic- not a thick gravy like their Punjabi counterparts) and many more. Surprisingly even my kids loved all of the above. We were quick to replace our regular tea with herbal tea( brewed with fresh herbs plucked from the garden and a dash of honey), nimboo pani was sweet and flavorsome( you guessed it, the nimboo plucked from the Lime tree in the orchard). What we have carried back is loads of herbs: rosemary, thyme, jumboo, basil etc. etc. and some apricot and cardamom preserve. We had rosemary chicken for dinner today. Polished off , so sorry no pictures accompanying this blog. I reproduce the recipe below and promise to add a picture the next time I make this dish, which should be pretty soon.

Rosemary Chicken
Ingredients
Chicken: About 400 grams
Lime juice: 1tbsp
Finely chopped garlic: 2 tbsp( I love garlic in my food so go a little overboard)
Rosemary: 1 tbsp, crush it lightly with your fingers when you add it, enhances the flavor
Chilli flakes: 1 tsp(optional, I happened to chance upon a packet of leftover Pizza Hut seasoning and added the same on impluse)
Salt to taste
Olive Oil: About 2 tbsp( you could use less but the oil does keep the pieces succulent)
Cornflour/maida: 1 tsp

Method
Marinate the chicken with lime juice, salt, rosemary and garlic( you can also add the garlic later while you are cooking the chicken) for 3/4 hours in the refrigerator.
Heat olive oil. You could add the chopped garlic at this stage if you have not added it to the marinade. Add the chicken with the marinade and cook on high for a few minutes. This I am told seals in the flavor. Keep turning the chicken a couple of times. Then cover and cook for about 20 minutes. Once the chicken is done remove the lid, add the corn flour dissolved in 2 tbsps of water and the chilli flakes. Mix well and let the corn flour coat the chicken. Please remember to use very little corn flour. Serve hot with buttered toast. Would also go well with sauted veggies and mashed potato.
I am really excited about trying the other herbs(given the success with this one), they add a mild flavoring to the dish and make it taste quite different. One however needs to ensure that the flavor of none of the other ingredients dominate.

The hills fill my heart with the sound of music......and inspire me to cook some more!

Simbalee Chickun

Looks like I am on the quest of "ek se anek". Same basic ingredients but wide variety of end products.
As with Dahi/Hung curd( refer earlier post), Chicken also lends itself to numerous preparations yes, even with the same ingredients like tamatar, pyaaz. Ever wondered why the dahi chicken that you make tastes so very different from your friends?
Whenever I think I have mastered all the possible ways of making chicken I discover yet another new way of making it with almost the same ingredients, with only a slight shift in that fine balance of ingredients.

The one I reproduce below is really quick and easy to prepare. Very few ingredients, very little chopping and unless you look closely the ingredients and the method sounds deceptively similar to the way most of us cook our chicken. But the elaichi powder( an unusual ingredient in non-vegetarin cooking, usually added either as mixed garam masala or as a whole spice) gives it a nice aroma, subtle flavor and authentic taste.

Elaichi Murg( A Sindhi Dish)

Ingredients
500 grams of chicken
1 finely chopped onion( though I tend to use two)
1 finely chopped tomato
Elaichi powder( freshly pounded): 1 tsp
Garam Masala: 1 tsp
Salt and Pepper to taste
Oil: 1 tsp( if making on a non-stick, can avoid the oil completely)

Method

• Heat a non-stick pan and add a tsp of oil, add the onion and fry till they brown
• Next add the chicken, salt and pepper and mix well.
• Add the tomatoes, 1/2 tsp elaichi powder and garam masala. Cover and cook for close to 10/15 minutes on low heat
• Remove the lid( chicken would have left a lot of water), increase the heat and dry the dish( if you plan to have this with rotis as I did then I would suggest you leave a little bit of the water as gravy), sprinkle the remaining elaichi powder.
• Serve hot.

Suggested accompaniment: Vegetable Pulao and Palak Raita. Goes equally well with rotis.

Dizzy Pazzy

During my growing up years desserts were a regular at dinner. Well, not the exotic types typically a custard with lots of fruits, kheer( sooji, semiya, chuda, chawal) or pudding. We ( me and my siblings ) would at the beginning of the meal ask: What's for Dizzy Pazzy? Dizzy Pazzy was our way of referring to the dessert. My sister with the sweetest tooth among us would very often skip the main course to save some of her appetite for the dessert. Dizzy Pazzy, can't recall how the term originated, you know how families have their own jokes, language codes etc. We still use quite of bit of that in our regular conversations much to the disgust of our spouses. Typically these references are followed by giggles and laughter which annoys them even further.
Coming back to the dessert. I did not have any particular favorite then. In fact I was not much of a dessert person, I loved the imlis, achars and khattai a lot more. Kheers were okay, custard tasted nice when it was chilled, puddings could range from being really good to terrible. There were days when the puddings would be just right: soft to touch, even textured, firm enough to be cut into individual portions and with a predominant vanilla flavor. Then there were other times when the pudding would have an eggy smell, the texture would be uneven( probably the egg had been added to hot milk) and would have a kind of semi-solid consistency.

Once I got married and set up home I did not make pudding, was not quite sure how to. When we dined out I would occasionally sample some. I love the way they plate the pudding with a wee bit of cream and a cherry on top.

And then quite recently my husband's aunt shared her Caramel Pudding recipe with me.Since then it is a regular on my menu. My sons otherwise reluctant egg eaters love the pudding and I see it as a good way to slip in the eggs into their diet. As for me I try and stay away from desserts now with Woh Bachpan ki yadein.

Caramel Pudding

Ingredients
Milk: 3 cups
Sugar: 4 to 5 tsps( If you prefer your desserts really sweet you could add a few more tsps)
Eggs: 2
Vanilla Essence: 1 tsp
2 tsps sugar to caramelise

Method

• Heat the milk and reduce to 2.5 cups. This should take about 10/15 minutes.



• Remove from fire and cool, then add the sugar and mix well.



• Beat the eggs with Vanilla essence to a fluffy consistency. Add to the milk.



• Next take the container in which you are going to pressure cook the pudding. I use a small steel one. Put 2 tsps of sugar into this container and caramelise it( place it on the stove and keep stirring on high flame till the sugar turns a rich brown colour). Turn the container around so that the sugar coats the base of the container evenly. Let it cool.



• Pour the milk and egg mixture in..



• Pressure cook without the whistle for about 11 minutes.



• Remove, let it cool and then refrigerate.



• To serve loosen from the sides and turn it over on a plate. Cut into individual slices and serve.

My children love it as an after school snack, in between meals. Rarely had as Dizzy Pazzy though. Sigh!

Bon Apetit and Happy Cooking!

Yan can cook

Have been meaning to start writing a food blog. I am told by the more experienced ones who have now been blogging for a while that getting started is the most difficult bit. My sister felt that my food blog would probably sound like the cookery show 'Yan can cook'. Remember the show in the early 90's where this Chinese chap would dish up some really simple stuff and the sign off line would be something along the lines of " If Yan can cook so can you". I too started off rather disastrously in the kitchen, managing to burn a fried egg, surviving on 'Cup-O- Noodles' for the first two weeks of married life etc. etc. My husband has enough stories to fill up our cocktail evenings.
However given my passion for food I was not willing to give up. Over the years I pored over recipe books, learnt from friends/relatives/Cookery show hosts, sometimes even having long chats on food with perfect strangers on trains/flights/restaurants and learnt first to cook then to experiment and finally innovate. A willing audience in the form of my husband( who has had to 'stomach' quite a bit) and now my older son helped. Would like to share some of my favorite recipes with other foodies. Also hoping that someday maybe my children will read about them, want to try out some of them.

Since I started my cooking with Noodles( never mind if it was the instant variety and all you had to do is pour hot water- those days I thought even that required skill- getting the quantity of water right, ensuring you kept it covered for the right time, mixed with a certain defteness so that the masala did not remain at the bottom but coated the noodles evenly) I thought I would dedicate the first post to something Chinesey.

Chinese Konji( recipe passed on to me by husband's aunt) is easy to cook, easy to digest and nutritious. Tastes delicious too.

Ingredients
Basmati Rice : 1 Cup
Chicken stock cube: 1 to 2
Finely chopped mixed vegetables ( I like beans, carrots, green peas and mushrooms, feel free to add what you like best): 1/2 cups
Shredded chicken: 1/2 cup
Can also add shrimps ( tried it once and went well with the dish).
Soya Sauce: 1/2 tsp per serving
Eggs: 1
Salt to taste

Method

• Pressure cook the basmati rice with 5/ 6 cups of water and 1 stock cube. 6/7 whistles, should be a gooey gruel like consistency
• Open the pressure cooker( add water if the consistency seems too thick), add the shredded chicken, prawns and vegetables and allow them to cook for a couple of minutes( should not take more than 2/3 minutes). Add salt to taste( remember to keep the salt low as soya sauce which is added finally is high on salt)
• Add a well beaten egg, stirring continuously
• Transfer into individual bowls, add a dash of Soya sauce
• Serve hot

Best had on cold winter day or a rainy day. For my family this is comfort food. A one dish meal that is both wholesome as well as nutritious. Like an ad said " Fast to cook and good to eat".

For those of you on a diet this is a no oil dish and the quantity of rice being consumed per person is less than quarter cup so low carbs too.

This also goes well with a spicy chicken dish or stir fried vegetables (refer blog)