Cream cheese crackers with coriander and carum seeds

Cream cheese is a very versatile ingredient that can be used in breads, biscuits, desserts (of course!) and frostings. It carries the flavour of whatever ingredient you add along with it. It provides that light, fluffy texture to savoury dishes without having to add too much butter/oil. It is, however, difficult to store for too long in the refrigerator. I have seen that securing the lid with a cling wrap works well  and the cheese keeps fresh for about 10 days. I have a huge tub of cream cheese sitting in my fridge and you will see that I will be using it in everything I make the coming fortnight!

These lovely cheese bars can be flavoured as per your desire. You could use other combinations: garlic/thyme, grilled paprika/rosemary, curry leaves/asafoetida etc. Make them sweet with chocolate chips, cinnamon, apples etc; the choices are endless. They are very quick to make with no fuss and no mess. Store them in an airtight container to keep them crisp and fresh.

Portion: Makes 50 crackers
Ingredients
110 g all purpose flour
50 g salted butter
100 g mascarporne or Philadelphia cream cheese (room temp)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
Fresh chopped coriander
1/2 tsp carum (ajwain) seeds
1 egg white
Dried onion seeds (kalonji) and sesame seeds for decorating

Method

Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, carum seeds, fresh chopped coriander along with the butter and cream cheese to make a soft dough; do not work the dough too much. Transfer the dough to a clean, lightly floured surface and roll it out into a flat rectangle, about 1/2 inch thick. Use cookie cutters or a pizza cutter to make 1.5 inch wide and about 4 inch long crackers. Transfer very carefully to a tray lined with a baking sheet and greased well. Give the crackers a light egg wash with a soft, silicone brush. Sprinkle the sesame and onion seeds on top.

Bake in a preheated oven at 175 degrees Celsius for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown. Enjoy with a steaming cup of masala chai!

Grunge mushroom soup

Gimme soup and salad. Everyday. And I'll be a happy soul.

I live on good soup, not on fine words.
Moliere 


Ingredients
500 g mushrooms, thoroughly washed, roughly chopped
1 pod garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
4-5 leaves of fresh sweet Thai basil
100 g leeks, chopped fine
50 g low fat cream
3-4 tbsp skimmed milk
2 tsp grated Parmesan
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp pomace olive oil
1 tsp salted butter
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 cups vegetable stock (see recipe below)
Salt to taste

Method

Vegetable stock
When I make a soup, I always take the trouble to make a stock that complements my soup rather than the vegetable stock cubes available in the market. While I chop my veggies for the soup or salad, I boil some water in a saucepan. To this, I add everything that I would throw into the trash can: the outer layers and bulbs of my leeks, the stalks of basil leaves, the wafer like peels of the garlic, some mushroom stems, some leftover stalks of bell peppers, celery, thyme, rosemary, lemon rind, ginger peel or anything that could add that extra flavour to the stock. Cover the saucepan with a lid and allow the stock to boil for a good 10-12 minutes on a low flame. Strain and use in soups, curries, broths, and even to knead dough. So feel free to experiment with your vegetable stocks and you will be amazed at the finesse that you achieve in flavouring your dishes. Remember to maintain a balance of flavour, something that you will learn as you go along. Some experiments will result in eureka moments when two completely varied ingredients strangely and wildly go together. Other times will lead to frantic attempts at eliminating that funny smell that the neighbours complained about by running to the exhaust fan and by opening the windows!

Making the soup
Heat the olive oil in a shallow pan. Add the chopped garlic and leeks and sauté lightly. Add the chopped mushrooms and fresh basil. Sauté till the mushrooms soften and begin to cook. Season with salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce.  Allow the mushrooms to cook completely; take the pan off the heat and set aside.

Once cooled, coarsely grind the above mixture in a blender. In a deep bottomed pan, bring together the ground mixture, vegetable stock, skimmed milk, low fat cream, a dollop of butter and extra seasoning as per your personal preference. Place the pan on medium heat and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes allowing the flavours to fuse and create their magic. Remove pan from heat, transfer to a soup bowl and finish with a generous sprinkling of grated Parmesan. Serve with some sesame buns and a fresh green salad.

Banana or Custard apple muffins: Choose your fruit!

My previous post talks about my recent discovery and fascination with a new baking supple store in Bangalore; well not a ‘new’ store but one that I ‘newly discovered’. My shopping spree at this store included these very dainty looking polka dotted muffin cups. Not only are they bake-proof but they have a plastic sort of lining within which allows you the leisure of not having to grease your muffin cups. Just get them out of the cupboard, pour you batter and bake! No fuss with the muffin trays and the parchment paper! At one rupee per cup, I think it’s a fair deal. You need to buy a minimum of 100 pieces, but that has never stopped a keen baker.

I am a big fan of custard apples and managed to get some really sweet and flavourful ones from a fruit vendor close to home. So I substituted my trademark banana muffin recipe for custard apples. It did take me some patience to deseed the fruit, but I can say with some relief that the results did bear fruit; pun intended. I always bake this recipe in my loaf tin and never realized that it can make up to 16 medium sized muffins! Imagine my little cousin’s delight when she came home to visit us for her Diwali break and was absolutely thrilled to find not only my grandmum’s chaklis and pedas but my muffins and brownies too!

You will be pleasantly surprised to know that this recipe works perfectly well even when you just dump all the ingredients into one big bowl, mix well and bake! You don’t need to actually follow the recipe; but for the perfectionists out there here’s the detailed recipe anyway!

Prep time: 15 min

Cooking time: 60 min    

Serves: Makes 16 muffins

Ingredients

If using bananas:

175g unsalted butter, softened and chopped

175g brown sugar

110g caster sugar

½ tsp ground cinnamon

3 medium or 2 large bananas, mashed

3 eggs

300 g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp clear vanilla essence

If using custard apple:

Replace the bananas with 2 custard apples, deseeded and pulp mashed; remove the cinnamon powder from the recipe.

Method

Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease your muffin cups or muffin trays.

First, cream the sugars and butter in large bowl till you achieve a smooth and matt finish.  Separate the egg whites from the yellows. Beat the egg whites till soft peaks form. Add the egg yellows to the beaten whites and beat some more. Add the vanilla essence and whisk for a minute. Sift the flour with the baking powder.  Add the flour and the whisked eggs to the creamed sugars, alternating them; folding gently till you see a smooth batter without any lumps. Fold in the fruit purée and cinnamon powder (no cinnamon powder for custard apple muffins). Spoon carefully into muffin cups, ensuring that only 3/4^th of the cup is full (allow space for the muffins to rise in the oven). Place muffin cups on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Bake at 170°C for 1 hour or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

Serve muffins warm with a cup of English breakfast tea. Delightful!

Baking Supply Store/ Baking Ingredients in Bangalore

All Bangalore bakers rejoice! Just as I did, when I came across IBCA, Institute of Baking and Cake Art on Mission Road (under double road flyover) in Bangalore. I used to notice this dilapidated building while I was studying at St. Joseph’s College of Arts and Science during my graduation days. I always thought it wasn't a functional institute and never bothered to Google it either. So, it was a Eureka moment when I found a post online that mentioned something about bakery supplies being available at IBCA. I was absolutely thrilled to find that their website is not only comprehensive, but lists their complete collection of bakery and confectionery products with prices and availability. You will be amazed at the range of products they house, some of which are only found in whole sale bakery supply stores in godforsaken Chickpet/KR Market areas. The phone numbers on the website are quite useful, as you can call them in advance to find out if they have what you are looking for (in case you can’t find it on the website).

Note: Please excuse my shoddy photos, I am visiting Bangalore for a yearly holiday and don’t have a decent camera with me! These were taken on my phone!

The store itself is a humble, dingy little room with one single counter to buy your supplies and one table for billing. I was a tad disappointed when I got there, expecting it to be more spacious with everything laid out in shelves for me to ogle at. But the disappointed was soon overpowered by a sense of fulfillment at finding supplies which I've struggled with, supplies with guaranteed quality used by commercial bakers, all available in one place. I could sense that people around me were beginning to get irritable while I hogged the single counter at the store and kept asking “Show me this”; “What is that?”; “I want this!.” It was nice of the sales girls there to entertain my whims. I must have driven them to the edge of their patience. But any keen baker will know what it feels like to have discovered a good, reliable, bakery supplies store in the heart of the city.

Start penning you wish-list down because this place has it all: from whipping cream, brown sugar, colorful and feisty ready-to-bake ramekins, sugar flowers, various other sugar decorations, glitter dust in all possible colors  clear vanilla essence, food colors  gelatin granules, measuring cups/glasses, cake turn-tables, dark/milk/white chocolate (to name a few)…to the most rewarding find: instant dry yeast (IDY) by Gloripan. Bread bakers, heave a sigh of relief. You can now stop hunting high and low for IDY, stop fretting and fuming about ‘travelling’ just to get your yeast. This is premium quality IDY. The best part is that you can buy it in 100 g packs and don’t have to buy the whole 500 g pack which is sold in whole sale shops. Using freshly bought yeast will ensure that your yeast is active and ready to rise away! As Peter Reinhart always says, “May your bread always rise”.

They also have baking and cake art courses at the institute- short ones, like 1-day, 3-day and 7-day courses, as well as long courses that last up to 14 weeks. The courses are heavy on the pocket, but may do you good if you want to channelize your baking career. For home bakers, I would suggest that you simply buy everything in the shop and keep baking till you get that perfect crust on your bread or that perfect slice of cake. For more information please refer to their website; it is quite informative.


IBCA address: Institute of Baking & Cake Art, 46/3, Mission road, Bangalore - 560027. Landmark: Above Noble stores.
Email: ibcablr@yahoo.com;
Telephone:  +918022106619;  +918032021185
Mobile: M.K.Gaur:  9379969606; Nalini: 9341721680
Website: http://ibcablr.com/
Training timings: 10:30 am to 4:00 pm
Office/Store timings: 9:00 am to 6:00 pm; Sunday holiday


I am certain that Bangalore has many such hidden stores yet to be explored. I know that General Food Additives in Sheshadripuram is one such place, but have never found the patience to visit, as I live down south. The store is a retail branch of an otherwise whole-sale company. They have a huge range of cake and ice-cream making supplies available readily (surprises include liquid glucose, self raising flour, ready made rolling fondant, cream of tartar, hazelnuts and many more).


General Food additives address: PO Box 2016, #175/3, 1st Main Road, Seshadripuram, Land mark - Opp HDFC Bank, Bangalore 560020, India.
Telephone :  +91-80-2336 7878, 2336 0517
E mail : ramachandra.tk@gmail.com
Website: http://www.generalfoodadditives.com/products.htm
Store Timings :  10:00 am to 1:45 pm  4:30 pm to 7:30 pm; Sunday holiday
Note: Cash only, no cards accepted.

All in all, my day at the candy store was a grand success. I couldn't resist myself from using the dainty polka-dotted muffin ramekins at the earliest occasion possible…and what better occasion than to treat yourself for such a wonderful discovery. So I baked and baked, till my eyelids gave way. But it was so worth it.

Herbed and oven charred aubergine bruschetta with sautéed asparagus

Bruschetta is now on the menu of every small diner in town, but it’s the same old tomato and basil or mushroom and anchovies. I am a big fan of aubergine and love it on my pizzas and lasagnes, so why not on bread? This is a great antipasto dish for dinner parties where you want to spend less time in the kitchen and more time with the gossip girls. Leave them in the oven at a low temperature and serve them as and when you like. No last minute ‘deep frying’ or ‘tossing with the dressing’. It’s fresh, fast and simple (like Donna Hay would say it).

I do make a longer version of this recipe sometimes. And that just involves spreading a layer of tomato salsa on the focaccia before placing the aubergine on it. I usually make the tomato salsa a day in advance; it only develops more flavour overnight with the balsamic vinegar in it (see my recipe for tomato salsa). But keep it simple and try this one first. You can always add and subtract ingredients, depending on what you find at the local grocer’s. Use different combinations of herbs, but not all at once. Use nuts if you like.

This recipe started to take shape when I came to mum’s place and saw this huge bed of sweet Thai basil in the kitchen garden! I just wanted to make something with it, and I think this recipe clearly brings out its beautiful oriental flavour and aroma.

If you multitask (all women know how to do this), you can get this done in as less as 15-20min. Isn’t that real quick?

Prep time: 10min

Cooking time: 25min

Serves: 4 pieces

Ingredients

Focaccia bread, sliced to get rectangular pieces

50g mild cheddar, grated

1 large aubergine, sliced and immersed in ice cold water

For the sautéed asparagus

5-6 stalks asparagus, keep only the top tender half

2tsp olive oil

20g softened salted butter

A pinch of ground black pepper

Salt to taste

Herb-mix for the aubergine (grind coarsely and keep aside)

10 leaves sweet basil

1 sprig rosemary, leaves only

4-5 pitted black olives

½ tsp lime zest

3-4 cloves garlic, peeled

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

A pinch of ground black pepper

Salt to taste

50g sour cream (home-made or bought); to serve

Method

Preheat oven to 150°C.

Marinate the sliced aubergine in the herb-mix for 5-10min. In the meantime, heat olive oil on a skillet and mildly sauté the asparagus stalks with some salt and pepper. Make sure they are nice and crunchy. Keep aside.

On the same skillet, heat some olive oil and cook the marinated aubergine slices. Cook them on both sides, till they are brown and soft (should take about 5-6min). Do not overcook.

Slightly butter the top and sides of the focaccia, place 2 aubergine slices on each piece, top it up with some grated cheddar and bake in a preheated oven for 5-10min. Remove and serve hot with the sautéed asparagus and some sour cream.

Note: To make sour cream at home, use a 60:40 proportion of single cream to milk. Heat the milk till it is warm; add it to the cream kept at room temperature. The final mixture should still be lukewarm (so heat your milk accordingly). Add a tbsp of sour yoghurt to this mixture, stir gently with a spoon, cover and allow to set for 4-6 hours (in summers; 7-9hrs in winters). This process is the same as setting normal yoghurt, which we do everyday at home. To get a thicker sour cream- use whole fat milk, whole fat cream, or just tie up the ready sour cream in a muslin cloth and leave to drain in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours.

Rigatoni with crude almond-chilly sauce served with a rocket and rosewater salad

When I want to make a pasta dish, nothing can stop me. Regrettably, I don't have a pasta maker at home, so I have to do with commercially available pasta. Somewhere along the way I will get one of those nice pasta makers, with the fettuccine and ravioli cutter. But for now, I must be content with what I can get.

This sauce is my trademark recipe. And everyone who has ever tasted it has asked me for the recipe. It is a tomato and cream based sauce; but the real heroes are the almonds (or walnuts, whatever suits you). I make many versions of this sauce, but the most quick and crude one, as this, involves no blending and no fine chopping. Everything is just cut up coarsely and simply simmered in a saucepan and poured over cooked pasta. I used rigatoni, but use whatever you have handy- spaghetti, fettuccine, fusilli- basically any pasta. If you are serving this for a dinner party, you could blend the sauce to make it smooth and even. But, for me the crude version fits best; I like the textural effect on my palate.

I used some white wine in the pasta, to de-glaze the saucepan before adding the tomatoes. Again, superb flavour quotient. Make sure that you use a nice rich white wine. Always cook with a wine that you would think suitable to drink. Nothing lesser.

The salad absolutely compliments the pasta. It is not always necessary to serve some sort of bread with the pasta. Try salads instead. That gives you a mixture of hot and soft (pasta) against cold and crunchy (salad); and every good chef will tell you that balanced colours, textures and flavours make a good dish. Also here, the sweetness of the almond sauce is well balanced by the sharpness and slight bitterness of the rocket leaves in the salad. The flavours marry well together, and you have to try it to know what I'm talking about. 

The dressing for the salad is quite the usual; just a few minor tweaks- I used some rosewater, some maple syrup instead of honey, and some white wine vinegar (keeping in mind the white wine in the pasta) instead of the usual vinegar or juice of lime. I served the salad with a dollop of thickened sour cream, which unfortunately, I forgot to add before clicking the pictures. Some of you may find the rocket leaves a bit too tart, and hence the sour cream.

Too much said already. Here goes.
Prep time: 20-30min
Cooking time: 20min
Serves: 2-3 people

Ingredients

Rocket Salad

1 bunch rocket leaves, washed, dried and end of stalks removed

6-10 cherry tomatoes, halved

5-6 black olives, pitted and sliced

1 medium onion, sliced, rings separated and placed in ice water till serving time (this keeps them crunchy)

1 small cucumber, cubed with peel

5-6 almonds, roasted and sliced

3-4 stalks asparagus, pan fried with butter, salt, and pepper; chopped medium

100g thickened sour cream for serving

Dressing for salad

2tsp olive oil

1 tsp rosewater

2 tsp maple syrup

2 tsp white wine vinegar

Zest of half a lime

2-3 cloves of garlic, shredded

Pinch of ground black pepper

Salt to taste

Rigatoni 
150g rigatoni pasta or any other pasta, boiled with salt, drained and tossed with 1tsp olive oil
2tsp olive oil
1 pod roasted garlic, peeled
2-3 dry red chilies
5-6 almonds, room temperature
4-5 leaves of sweet Thai basil,  keep 1 sprig aside for garnish
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
Splosh of white wine
5 medium tomatoes, chopped roughly
1 red bell pepper, chopped medium
50g mild cheddar, grated
50ml full fat milk
A dash of full cream
A pinch of ground black pepper
Salt to taste

Method

Rocket Salad

In a large bowl, add all the ingredients for the salad. Keep refrigerated until serving time. Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving (to prevent veggies from sweating) and toss gently. Serve cold with a dollop of sour cream.

Rigatoni
Coarsely blend the roasted garlic, dry red chilies and almonds. Heat olive oil in a sauce pan. Add the almond-chilly mixture. Stir for 2min until the mixture is slightly golden. Now add the aromatics, the thyme and basil leaves. Use your discretion while adding these, more if you want intense flavours, less if you like it mild. But with fresh herbs, always remember that less is more. Now add a generous splosh of white wine. Allow the spices to simmer for 2 minutes, stirring gently.

Add the chopped tomatoes, pinch of salt and pepper. Simmer for 10-12 minutes or until the tomatoes are completely cooked. At this point, you could take the sauce off the flame, allow to cool and blend to get a smooth mixture. If you prefer to go my way, then just continue to keep the crude sauce on the flame and go on with the rest of the recipe.

Once the tomatoes are done, add full fat milk and cream. Simmer for 2 minutes. Please make sure not to add the cream when the tomatoes are half done, this will just split the cream. Add the red bell pepper, stir for 2-5 minutes. Add the cheddar, and take the sauce off the flame. Pour the sauce steaming hot on a bed of rigatoni, serve with a cold salad.

Vada Pav with garlic and peanut chutney powder, mint and raw mango chutney, and stuffed green chillies

This is something I have grown up eating and loving. Having a whole bunch of cousins in Pune, I couldn't help myself from getting addicted to this wholesome street food winner. And yet, what I make at home seems like such a gourmet version of what you might find on the streets for only rupees 10. It is as close to the original as possible, as this recipe is a family pass on. So I can vouch for its authenticity.

When you are obliged to live in a city up north (like me), far far away from the vada pavs, bhel puris, and kacchi dabelis of Mumbai and Pune; this is the closest you can feel to your palate roots. Being from North Karnataka; having a host of family in Pune; and my obvious love for baking and continental food; render my cuisine at home so varied that you might find it odd that on the one hand I post recipes of cheesecakes and tarts, and on the other there is the very maharashtrian vada pav or the very 'namma bengaluru' kesari bhath. My recipes are mostly adopted from mum or grandmum, and I want to make sure that they don't get lost somewhere along the way.

I hope to post many more wonders of our simple Indian cooking in the months to follow. There's always room for suggestions and requests. If I know how to make it, I'll post it. For now, enjoy making and relishing the one and only 'vada pav'.

Prep time: 1 hour 30 min

Cooking time: 30 min

Serves: 4-5 people (10-12 pieces)

Ingredients

For the vada pav

10-12 Pav (bread), halved

50g softened butter

250ml vegetable oil for deep frying

Filling for vadas

½ kg potatoes, boiled, peeled and mashed

½ tsp turmeric powder

2 tbsp vegetable oil

Juice of 1 lemon

Salt to taste

Masala mix:

6 green chillies

1 bunch fresh coriander

1 bunch Curry leaves

1½ inch piece ginger

1 whole pod of garlic (small), peeled

Batter for vadas

2 cups gram flour (besan)

1 tsp kashmiri red chilli powder

Pinch of asafoetida (hing)

½ tsp whole caraway seeds (ajwain)

½ tsp whole cumin seeds (jeera)

1 tbsp vegetable oil

Salt to taste

Water as required

 Mint and raw mango chutney

1 raw mango, peeled and flesh grated

½ bunch mint leaves

½ bunch fresh coriander

4-5 green chillies

¼ tsp cumin seeds (jeera)

3-4 cloves of garlic, peeled

2 tbsp thick yoghurt

¼ tsp sugar or some jaggery (add only if the mango is very sour)

Salt to taste

Garlic and peanut chutney powder

½ cup roasted peanuts

½ cup roasted gram lentil (roasted chana)

2 tsp kashmiri red chilli powder

1 whole pod garlic, peeled

½ tsp cumin seeds (jeera)

2 inch piece of deseeded tamarind

3 tbsp desiccated coconut, grated

Salt to taste

Stuffed green chillies

4-6 green chillies, slit and deseeded

Rock salt (kala namak)

Cumin powder (jeera)

Asafoetida powder (hing)

Dry mango powder (aamchur)

Method

 Vada Pav

Grind all the ingredients of the masala coarsely.

Add oil to a large saucepan. Add the ground masala. Fry for a minute. Add turmeric powder. Add the mashed potatoes. Add salt, and stir well on a low flame. Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the juice of a lime. Stir and keep aside, allowing to cool completely. Once cooled, divide the mixture into10-12 equal portions, and shape them into small patties.

For the batter, mix all the ingredients in a large bowl, adding water slowly to make a thick smooth batter without any lumps. Keep aside.

Dip the potato patties in the batter and deep fry on a medium flame until golden yellow.

Toast the pav with a generous helping of butter on a non-stick pan, till they are nice and golden brown.

Mint and raw mango chutney

Grind all the ingredients in a blender to get a smooth paste. Add water if necessary.

Garlic and peanut chutney powder

Grind all the ingredients in a blender to get a grainy and coarse powder.

Stuffed green chillies

Stuff the green chillies with all the ingredients mentioned above and deep fry in a small saucepan.

Assembling

Place a vada between the two halves of the pav, season with the two chutneys and serve with the stuffed green chilly!