FOOD FOR THOUGHT

People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.
Unknown

Smoked Sausage with Scrambled Egg

PEERING into the fridge for ingredients to rustle up something for a lazy Sunday breakfast, I settled for this smoked sausage with scrambled egg because it was just a question of chopping up, beating up and then tossing together some readily available ingredients to make a hearty dish that only needed to be gobbled up.

What I used:

4 Sadia smoked chicken sausages
4 rashers bacon
4 eggs
2 onions
1 yellow pepper, deseeded
1 big tomato, blanched and peeled
1 green chilli
2 tablespoons Amul butter
Salt
Pepper

Chop the tomato, yellow pepper, onion, bacon and sausage into bits. Cut the green chilli as you wish...I cut it into fat diagonals. Lightly fry all the chopped ingredients in the butter. Beat the eggs and stir them in. Sprinkle some salt and freshly ground pepper. Cook on slow heat, stirring now and then, till the eggs get soft cooked and the mixture looks like lightly scrambled eggs.

The Taste of India

A beautiful article on how Amul became the Taste of India. Did you know that Amul is today the biggest dairy brand in Asia-Pacific? 


Milk and the man
Vinita Krishnamurthy


Within a short span of time, it became the ‘Taste of India.’


FOR once the Amul advertisement has got it wrong—their latest offering feting the founder of India’s White revolution on his 90th birthday features a cow and calf looking up at India’s most popular milkman. That Dr Kurien pioneered the use of buffalo milk seems to have been overlooked by the intrepid ad makers. The rest of the advertisement, however, is bang on target. A visit to the Amul dairy in Anand evokes a sense of admiration for the people behind the movement and pride that it should have started in India. The rather overpowering smell of milk is offset by the awe-inspiring milk silos and squeaky-clean equipment.


What makes the Amul story so attractive is that it starts with research and ends with successful application and implementation. Apparently, Kurien had been told that the high fat content in buffalo milk made it impossible to convert it to milk powder. After several failed attempts he managed to make the first batch of buffalo milk powder, which he reportedly emptied on his happy assistant’s head. Every step and strategy in the Amul story is worth studying for anyone involved in social science, basic science and management. The co-operative movement gave direction to random production and introduced quality assurance ensuring safety. It automatically eliminated wastage since the excess produce was converted into products with a longer shelf life. The supplier gained from being paid for the raw material and the consumer gained from a choice of products. Operation Flood then spilled over from Gujarat to become the largest supplier of milk and milk products to the huge market in Mumbai. Within a short space of time it became the ‘Taste of India.’


The ultimate test for any business model is that it should be viable wherever replicated. The co-operative movement started in Anand has been successfully implemented in several states of India. The White revolution, unlike the Green revolution, has stood the test of time in that milk and milk products do not have to be imported. Bridging the urban-rural gap with a customer-supplier relationship and making it economically viable for both is tailor-made for our country.


The success story even inspired Shyam Benegal to make the award-winning film aptly called ‘Manthan.’ And why not, when the protagonist is a winner surrounded by beautiful women wearing lovely baandhini printed odhnis in an otherwise drab landscape! A short ad-film on Amul plays the signature song from the movie accompanied by a concise testimonial that sums up years of struggle, hard work, success and empowerment. The visuals have recently been updated, and include a woman at a computer terminal and girls clicking pictures on their mobile phones. Clearly, the Anand Milk Producers Union Ltd has come a long way-- perhaps the way that every venture should go. May you live longer, Dr Kurien!


Courtesy: Deccan Herald, 8 December 2011

Mackerel in Banana Leaf

IN a mood for mackerel but fed up of the usual curry or fry? Try this lovely recipe for stuffed mackerel wrapped in banana leaf and pan-fried on very gentle heat. And in the bargain, stuff yourself with healthy omega-3 EFAs (essential fatty acids) found in this fish.

For 6 fresh mackerel

Grind together:

2 heaped tablespoons coriander seed
3/4 tablespoon cumin
15 dry red chillies (Byadgi)
4 flakes of garlic
A lime-sized ball of tamarind
2 tablespoons freshly grated coconut
2 tablespoons vinegar
1/4 cup of water

Chop fine:

3 onions
4 green chillis
1 tomato
2 tablespoons green coriander


You will also need:

1 tablespoon ginger-garlic paste
3 tablespoons *coconut oil (or
any other cooking oil)
Salt to taste
One big banana leaf, washed and wiped dry

With a sharp knife make three gashes on either side of the scaled and cleaned fish, apply a little salt and turmeric inside and outside and set aside.

Heat two tablespoons of the oil in a vessel and fry the chopped green chillies and onions till the onions are transparent. Add the ginger-garlic paste and fry for a minute or two. Then add the finely ground masala and fry for another 5 minutes, stirring now and then. Add the chopped tomato and green coriander and cook till the tomato softens. Add salt to taste and sprinkle just enough water to ensure the masala is not too dry. Cook for one more minute, and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, using a kitchen scissors, cut the banana leaf lengthwise along its spine to get two halves. Next cut each across into three pieces, to get six pieces in all.

Stuff the fish with the cooled masala, patting some of it on either side too. Lay the fish, one on each leaf and wrap them up snugly like babies in blankets. Secure with string.

Heat one tablespoon of oil in a frying pan on gentle heat for a minute and arrange the bundled up fish in it. Let it cook on very, very slow heat for about 8 minutes on either side. Untie, unwrap and serve.

*When cooking traditional Mangalorean seafood dishes, I prefer using coconut oil for authentic flavour. Fallen out of favour with doctors, nutritionists and health freaks at one time, coconut oil is now making a huge comeback as a cooking medium as well as a substitute for butter in baking. Ask the coastal folk of south India, especially along the Konkan and Malabar coasts, who've been using it since time immemorial. Out there, no kitchen worth its cooking oil will be complete without it!

Brownies, biryanis and chicken kababs...

IT was a pleasant afternoon at a residents' welfare association fete in Kammanahalli where I went at the invitation of a friend.
I will shamelessly admit that as always for me, it's the food at such fetes that is the main attraction. The fun and games are secondary but one also gets to meet and greet people that one hasn't seen in ages.

It was after a long time that I got to gorge on some lovely, mildly flavoured mutton biryani, with the meat cooked just right without being tough and chewy.

There were varieties of snacks on sale at ridiculously low prices - Rs.10 a brownie, piping hot chicken kababs at Rs.20 for a plate of three meaty pieces and a mere Rs.5 for a chicken croquette that wasn't all mashed potato masquerading as chicken. Aside from having more than my fill for need and greed, I brought home a parcel as well. Burrpp!

Dried Prune Compote

I HAD nearly forgotten a container of hard-as-rock dried prunes (about two cupfuls) that had been lying around for a while. They looked utterly useless at first but after staring at them for a whole minute inspiration struck.

And that's how I got down to making this dried prune compote.

First I let the dried prunes soak overnight in some scalding water. The following day the prunes had softened beautifully and doubled in size. It seemed like they had acquired a new life from their hopelessly dehydrated state. Then I pitted them, chopped them up roughly and put them in a heavy-bottomed saucepan to boil on slow heat along with the water in which they had soaked, a cupful of sugar and the juice of half a lemon. While it was cooking away, further inspiration struck...there was this bottle with some dregs of dark rum in it. Now I felt that a bottle with such measly contents did not merit so much of storage space, so in went the rum into the prune mixture and the empty bottle straight into my dry waste bin.

I cooked the mixture till it thickened a bit before taking it off the fire and letting it cool. And then I served some of it up as a topping to transform a plain old Amul vanilla ice-cream into a heavenly dessert and stored the rest in the refrigerator for use on another day.

PS: I sliced the block of ice-cream with a heated knife, which caused a mild sizzle and tiny bubbles to appear on the surface. I had to work doubly quick to click the picture, lest the ice-cream begin to melt and lose its shape, because unlike in the ice-cream ads, this was real ice-cream and not mashed potato dressed up to look like ice-cream!
   

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
I find that a great part of the information I have found was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
Franklin P. Adams

Betel Leaf Parcels

WANDERING aimlessly through the wild and untended garden at my parents' home near Mangalore earlier this month, I came upon a betel leaf vine that had spread expansively on the ground like a leafy carpet, clung tenaciously to a tree trunk and had even stretched itself further to gain a stranglehold on the outer walls of the water tank! No wonder it's called Nagvalli in Sanskrit, which means "serpentine creeper".

The green profusion refreshed my memory of an article I had read about a betel leaf

wine, one of the concoctions of Coorg housewives who have a knack for making wine out of any fruit, including grapefruit! In comparison to a wide variety of fruity wines that I've sipped - [more recently an apricot by Lindisfarne Winery that we picked up along with a crumbly Cheshire cheese at The Cheese Shop in Chester, UK] - and even a vegetable wine such as beetroot, a "leafy" wine seemed quite a novelty.

Not new to making a few mean wines myself and with the leaves available in abundance for free, I thought it would be worth a try. It would be easy enough to source a recipe from the Internet, I reckoned, and proceeded to gather a thick wad of betel leaves that I brought back with me.

The search for the wine recipe, however, drew a blank but led to other interesting discoveries, such as the use of betel leaf as a food wrap in cooking!

Cabbage, pandan, turmeric, colocasia, banana, grape, jack fruit and even teak leaves are widely used in ethnic cuisines. Think patrani machi, cabbage leaf rolls, pathrode, patholeo and dolmas, but betel leaves seemed a bit offbeat.

From the dozens of recipes on the Net, I chose the Vietnamese Betel Wrapped Beef because it didn't sound too daunting for a first attempt. Moreover, my mother-in-law used to add a couple of betel leaves when making ghee from home-churned butter, which enveloped the entire house and beyond with a delicious aroma. If betel leaves could make a more fragrant ghee, then shouldn't it be the same with meat? I wasn't sure if such assumptions worked, but was brave enough to try.

Making a few changes to suit our tastes, I replaced cornstarch as the binding agent with ground Bengal gram dal and the Madras curry powder with *baffad powder besides fortifying it further with some green chilli, ginger and garlic, in addition to the scallion, black pepper, fish sauce and salt listed in the original recipe.

For 15 betel leaves I used:

400 gms minced beef
1/2 cup scallion, finely chopped
3 teaspoons fish sauce
3/4 teaspoon black pepper powder
1 1/2 tablespoons baffad powder
2 tablespoons ginger-garlic paste
3 green chillies
3 tablespoons Bengal gram dal, soaked for about an hour to soften
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons cooking oil

Grind the dal together with the green chillies, ginger-garlic paste and the baffad powder and mix well together with all the other ingredients (except oil). Form into sausage-like shapes, about 2-3 inches long. Place them on the back of the leaf, about half an inch below the pointed tip and roll downwards towards the stem. Secure with toothpicks. In a foil lined baking tray, drizzle some oil and arrange the parcels, drizzle some more oil on top and grill in a microwave oven (which is what I did) or bake in a preheated oven for about 25 minutes, turning them over and basting them in between.

*baffad powder: a curry powder commonly used
in Mangalorean and Goan cooking

PS: We unwrapped the 'parcels' and discarded the leaves before tucking in. The meat had well and truly imbibed the betel leaf  flavour - sharp and smoky with a slightly bitter tinge. Although it was a nice change from the usual and everyone ate it happily, deep down I know it will remain a one-off attempt. Try it once if you're brave enough like me!

THOUGHT FOR FOOD
When life gives you lemons, find someone who has vodka and throw a party.
Ivan Minic

Lemon Bars

WHO can say no to these lovely, scrumptious lemon bars with a shortbread base and a tangy lemon filling? I had first baked them for our church fete last year and they got sold like hot cakes. Since then, I've made them a number of times and yet again yesterday as a special treat for my friend Lorraine's birthday.


What you need:


For the base:
260 gms maida (refined flour)
225 gms unsalted butter
60 gms powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

For the filling:


400 gms powdered sugar
4 eggs
50 gms maida (refined flour)
Grated rind & juice of 2 lemons
A little icing sugar for dusting


To prepare the base, cream together the flour and butter. Add the powdered sugar and salt and knead together. Press evenly into a greased and lined cookie tray. This quantity fits a 10" x 10" tray. Ensure the lining paper stands at least half an inch above the rim of the tray to prevent overflow of the filling down the sides.  Bake for 20 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 170 degrees C. Cool.


For the filling blend together all the ingredients till smooth. You can add one or two drops of yellow food colouring if you like and a dash of lemon essence, but this is not really needed, as the lemons have a strong flavour of their own.


Pour this over the base and turn back into the oven for another 15-20 minutes or till filling is set. Cool completely, mark squares and dust over with icing sugar. Yields 24 pieces.


PS: Four limes may be used if the lemons are unavailable. However, they'd still be a poor substitute for the sunshine yellow lemons with their invigorating, citrus fragrance.

Whey & Celery Refresher

I'VE never had any use for whey, except as a home remedy for an upset tummy, and so, down the drain it went whenever I made "hung curd" for dips or a cheesecake. Litres of it have since gone down the drain but that was before I attended the Upper Crust Food & Wine Show at the Lalit Ashok recently.

In his demo, Chef Mani Pathak elevated this same whey, that I thought was waste, to a sophisticated drink by using just a couple of simple transforming ingredients.

I tried it out for the first time today and yay (!) does it feel great to have moved from "away with whey" to "a way with whey"!

What you need:

400 ml whey
100 gm cucumber, peeled & deseeded
100 gm celery sticks
Salt to taste
A few drops of Tabasco



Keep the whey chilled. Chop the cucumber and the celery sticks. Blend both together and strain to obtain the juice. Mix with the chilled whey. Add salt to taste and a dash of Tabasco. Serve in shooter glasses.

Snake Gourd Salad

I’VE always found cooking vegetables a huge challenge, particularly all those boring members of the gourd family. So it was something of a pleasant surprise to find a refreshing salad made out of snake gourd - an instant hit with all at home.

It was at ‘Sri Lankan’, the ethnic restaurant at The Grand Oriental hotel in Colombo that we first tasted it. This restaurant lays out an authentic buffet of local food, cooked in a homely manner. At the live appam counter I remember how we watched in fascination as the chef poured a ladleful of batter in the heated chatti, twirling it deftly to give the appam its unique shape and texture – soft and fluffy in the centre and crisp and lacy around the sides. Now before I get carried away by the divine and delightful appams, let me go back to where I began.

Ever imagined eating RAW snake gourd? At least I hadn't until that day, and it wasn’t at all difficult to single out the ingredients that comprised this wonderful salad, the zing provided by the combination of black pepper, coconut, lime juice, salt and sugar. Try it once and decide for yourself if you're going to add it to your repertoire of salads like I did. For this salad, I normally choose the short variety of snake gourd. And it should be tender.

For one small snake gourd
you will need:

Half a green capsicum, sliced thin
1 small onion, sliced thin
1 green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
Juice of a quarter of a lime
A large pinch of sugar
A dash of freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons of fresh, grated coconut
1 tablespoon of fresh green coriander, chopped
Salt to taste

After scraping the thin skin off the snake gourd, slice it in half lengthwise and clean it of all the pith and seeds. Wash, wipe dry and then slice thinly across. Toss it with the rest of the ingredients and lo and behold your salad is ready.

To break the salad’s green monotony, I also added one small red tomato, halved lengthwise, deseeded and sliced thin.

PS: In the salad pictured here there’s no green coriander because I ran out of it and it was too late to step out to get it. These things happen sometimes, don’t they? What's life without a little bit of imperfection?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Eat little, sleep sound.
Iranian proverb

Mangalore Tea Biscuits

LIKE people and places, it’s funny how certain foodstuffs too can evoke a sense of nostalgia. While in Mangalore recently, I picked up a packet of tea biscuits that my grandmother used to stock along with other goodies from the local bakery as a supplement to the wonderful treats that she herself dished out every evening for tea.

Although I have no archival evidence to support the claim, I’m told that these were first introduced in Mangalore by the bakers Andrew Pinto & Sons in the year 1850, which means they're about as old as the Indian Railways! Though not half as expensive or famous, they continue to be as typical to the region as Kayani's Shrewsbury biscuits are to Pune.

Although the original bakery has long since ceased to exist, several others now manufacture these biscuits and supply them to retail stores throughout the length and breadth of South Kanara district. Its cellophane packaging is most unpretentious but tucked between its mildly sweet contents for me are a host of sweeter memories!

No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake

READY-to-make, quick and easy packaged dessert mixes come in handy when you want to take the easy way out. Predictably, they won’t stand up in taste, richness or texture to the pudding or cheesecake made in the original, long-winded way, but they’ll do when you’re hard pressed for time and have hungry kids whose constant refrain is: “What’s there to eat??”

(If there’s no bread should they eat cheesecake?)

While in Abu Dhabi a couple of months ago, I was scouring the packaged food shelves in a hypermarket for anything new and interesting when I spotted the Jell-O Oreo Dessert Mix.

It’s a simple three-step mixing procedure, with clear instructions printed on the side of the carton. Inside were three sachets containing separately, the dark, rich Oreo crumbs for the base, the filling mix and some crushed Oreo cookies to fold into the creamy mix as well as for decoration. The only additional ingredients needed were butter and chilled milk.

Mixing and assembling took less time than it takes to shout "Jell-O Oreo Dessert Mix"… OK, so I’m exaggerating a wee bit, but well, it took less than seven minutes and once set, about that much time to polish if off.

I wasn’t out to impress anyone, so didn't bother to reach out for the flan tin which was hiding somewhere behind a stack of cake tins and set it in a glass dish instead. It doesn't hurt anyone to be lazy sometimes, does it?

THOUGHT FOR FOOD
I have long believed that good food, good eating is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime ‘associates,’ food, for me, has always been an adventure.
Anthony Bourdain

Baingan ka Bharta

WHEN I saw that big fat brinjal with its beautiful, deep purple, silky smooth skin at our friendly neighbourhood grocery store, I suddenly realised that it was ages since we had had baingan ka bharta. The dish of the day was prepared by my cook Mary (with a little help from me as the official taster) and it was superb, with a delicious smoky flavour from roasting the brinjal directly on the fire.

For 1 big brinjal chop the following:

2 medium-sized onions
1 large tomato
1 green chilli
2 sprigs of green coriander

You will also need:

1 tablespoon ginger-garlic paste
1/2 a teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon Kashmiri chilli powder
2 tablespoons cooking oil
Salt to taste

After scorching the brinjal black, peel and discard the skin. By now it will look rather pitiable and limp, but don't feel sorry for it. Remember that beauty is only skin-deep. Now mash the brinjal. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onions till transparent, add the ginger-garlic paste and green chilli and saute for a little bit on medium heat. Lower the heat and add the turmeric & chilli powders. Give it all a quick stir and put in the chopped tomatoes. When the tomatoes soften a bit, add the mashed brinjal and salt to taste and allow to cook covered on low heat for about ten minutes. Sprinkle the coriander leaves and cook for another minute. Garnish with more green coriander if you like. I love this with soft, fluffy phulkas.

PS: Some recipes also include half a teaspoon of garam masala and a sprinkling of lime juice.

THOUGHT FOR FOOD
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.
Channing Pollock

Boiled Peanut Chatpata

FINALLY this morning my housemaid and right hand, Ratna, arrived after an extended Diwali break, beaming a somewhat apologetic smile. The scowl that was forming on my face had no option but to also transform itself into a smile. Moreover, she had brought me a bagful of fresh groundnuts from their fields near Tumkur, and with that all was forgiven.

These healthful groundnuts are a great time-pass snack, boiled in salted water. Pushcart vendors boil them on stoves on their carts, the steam wafting a warm earthy smell that reminds me of village kitchens, and peddle them, stuffed in slim paper cones.

But Ratna went about it her own way. She spread a sheet of newspaper on the kitchen floor, spread the groundnuts on it, covered them with another sheet of paper and then began stomping them in a manner reminiscent of, but gentler than the vigorous crushing of grapes for wine. They made such a soft, crackling sound that I had a go at it too. It felt like gentle acupressure treatment for my bare feet.

That’s how they do it in their village, she explained, after which they’re washed thoroughly and boiled in salted water. That way, the salted water gets into the slightly cracked shell and infuses the saltiness into the kernels, she said, sounding very knowledgeable. Native wisdom. Additionally, I thought it created space for the kernels to swell up while boiling and made it easier to shell them afterwards. The shells went straight into my Daily Dump composting pot, from where they will eventually return unto the dust from where they came.

Boiled and shelled, it was now my turn to give the humble peanut a makeover.

For two cups of shelled peanuts, I chopped fine:

1 medium sized onion
Half a red capsicum (bell pepper)
Half a green capsicum
1 green chilli, deseeded
2 sprigs of green coriander

Then I tossed it all together with the peanuts, squeezing the juice of half a lime, and sprinkling about 1/8 teaspoon of sugar and 1/2 a teaspoon of chaat masala. I didn't feel the need for extra salt, but that depends on individual taste.

This tasty snack goes well with a drink but is equally great as a standalone.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
Aesop

Pistachio and Milk Chocolate Squares

HAPPY Diwali to myself! Since no festival is complete without something to sweeten the mouth, I got down to trying this interesting recipe that I stumbled upon on the BBC GoodFood website.

The link to the recipe is pasted below: www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1161643/pistachio-and-milk-chocolate-squares

Contrary to my imagination, the distinctive flavours of pistachios and chocolate made for a very happy marriage. These scrumptious squares (or diagonals and triangles as I have cut them), are indeed worth trying out.

Even if you don't have all the ingredients as specified, you can tweak the recipe a bit as I did:

For instance, if you don't have golden caster sugar, use plain white sugar, powdered. I thought of dribbling a tablespoon or two of black treacle to make up but then completely forgot about it. However, the lack of it didn't really make an appreciable difference I guess.

Next time, I must remember to first line up all the ingredients before beginning to mix.

Of the 200 gms chocolate in the recipe, 75 gms is for the cake batter, while 125 gms is for the topping. For the topping I used Amul dark chocolate, which is available in 500 gm slabs. For the cake batter, I used some chocolates that no one was eating because they didn't taste as delicious as their wrappers promised with all kinds of sweet somethings printed on them! And for good measure, they had come in a heart-shaped box. Good enough for cooking purposes though!

No self-raising flour? Just sift one teaspoon of baking powder with the plain flour. And instead of soured cream, I used plain fresh cream.

The overall result surpassed my own expectations.

Banana Cake

WHAT do you think I do when there are a couple of bananas getting overripe and no one wants to eat them? Reincarnate them into a banana cake! There are banana cake recipes galore, but over the years I’ve stuck to this one, shared by my friend Eslinda, which can be mixed in a jiffy. I’ve tried this with just-ripe bananas that are good for eating, but found that overripe ones work better because besides making the cake more flavourful, they also lend the cake a rich brown colour, which keeps people guessing whether I’d added golden syrup too.

What you need:

2 big bananas (Robusta variety)
2 eggs
200 gms granulated sugar
300 gms flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
100 ml cooking oil
A dash of vanilla essence
50 gms walnuts, lightly roasted and chopped

First preheat the oven for 15 minutes at 180 degrees C, so that it’s ready for the cake to be popped in by the time you’re done with the mixing.

In a mixing bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. Break the eggs into the same bowl and continue beating with the fork. There’s absolutely no need for the ceremony of beating them separately etc…the cake will turn out just fine in a one-bowl method. Next add the sugar, cooking oil and vanilla essence and beat some more. Once again, no worries if the sugar has not fully dissolved…by the time the cake is done, there’ll be no trace of it left, except in the sweetness.

Now stir in the walnuts, and then the flour sifted with the baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix all together until all the flour is completely moistened. The batter should be of dropping consistency. If too stiff, incorporate a tablespoon or two of milk.

Pour the mix into a greased and dusted cake tin and bake at 180 degrees C for 35 minutes or until cake tester comes clean. If using a microwave, preheat 15 minutes on convection mode at 180 degrees C and set baking time for 35 minutes.

I normally use a non-stick tube pan (ring mould) for this cake - with the heat circulating through its centre, it gets nicely browned on all sides.

PS: It’s 300 gms of sugar in the original recipe, but since overripe bananas are naturally sweeter, I’ve reduced the sugar to 200 gms. Substituting melted butter for cooking oil works wonders on the palate and what’s more, your waistline will even show that you enjoyed every bite. For a hint of spice, sift a teaspoon of cinnamon powder with the flour.

THOUGHT FOR FOOD

C is for the Calories that I exonerate
H is for the Happiness I embrace
E is for Each slice that adorns my dessert plate
E is for Every indulgence of its taste
S is for magnificent Satisfaction
E (when I don't share) is for the Envious reaction
C is for Confiscating the very last piece
A is the grade I give this Amazing feast
K is for the Kismet of this phenomenon
E is for Empty (sigh!) when my slice is gone

Put them together and it spells ‘CHEESECAKE’, it's true…
but it's the last piece! Hey! Sorry, there's none left for you.

- Sourced from The Internet

Quick Lemon Cheesecake

THIS is another one of my favourites when I’ve slaved all day in the kitchen and am loathe to slave some more in making an elaborate dessert. Trust me, it’s an instant hit with everyone and even until the dish is invariably scraped clean, no one can ever tell that it was whipped up with negligible effort. I owe this recipe to my cousin Jenny, who’s a wonderful cook and loves to innovate. Our long phone chats have dwindled to zero ever since she moved from Mangalore to distant Canada. Sniff. Sniff. Must all good things have to come to an end? This dessert will bring sunshine to anyone feeling under the weather.

What you need:

One 85 gm packet of lemon jelly mix
One 400 ml tin condensed milk
1 teaspoon Davis gelatine
200 gm paneer

Dissolve the gelatine in 4-5 tablespoons of hot water. Prepare the jelly as per instructions on the packet. Do not refrigerate yet. Add the dissolved gelatine to it. Set aside.

Break up the paneer and dump it into a blender. Empty the condensed milk too into it and run the blender for just a minute. Pour the jelly mix too into the blender and whirr for a minute. All that remains to be done now is to refrigerate it till set.

For this, you and I know that the most beautiful and correct way is to set it on a biscuit crumb base, made by mixing 180 gm of powdered Marie Gold biscuits with 75 gms of melted butter and pressing it evenly in a flan tin before chilling it to harden.

However, if like me, you sometimes don't feel up to it, have no worries. Just be happy pouring the mixture into a glass dish (as in the pic). You can also set it in individual dessert bowls - and decorate with swirls of whipped cream if you like. But my whole point is to avoid all that extra work.

Refrigerate until firm and set. For quick setting, first place in freezer for about an hour and then transfer to refrigerator shelf.

For variation, use any other flavoured jelly – strawberry, raspberry, lime, apricot, orange or whatever is at hand. But I vote for lemon.

A refreshing dessert while the crumbled paneer adds a delightfully rich and grainy texture to the cheesecake. Besides, it’s so simple to make! And don't be surprised if people pounce on you for the recipe, because they most certainly will.

PS: Now I don't mean to show off, but as a supporter of the Indian dairy co-operatives, I make a conscious decision to buy Amul products as far as is possible/practical. The condensed milk used in this recipe was Amul Mithai Mate, while the paneer was Nandini, a product of Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he needed.
Mother Teresa

Passion Fruit Plants Anyone?

I'VE got quite a few passion fruit saplings ready for distribution to people who have gardens and who are really keen to have them. With this in mind, I had emailed one of my friends, Gita, thus:
"Gita, I have some healthy saplings of the purple variety of passion fruit to give away. A friend of mine had given me some of the fruit and I had carefully dried the seeds and buried them in a pot. They sprouted and have grown into healthy little plants and I'm looking for good homes that will nurture them and see them grow and yield fruit...like sending kittens and pups to good homes who will care for them...:)

Would you like to have one or two, since you have a garden? I'd be very happy to give you if you like. See pics of the fruit. Also made a cheesecake and topped it with the pulp. It was yummmm and is on my food blog. Hope it whets your appetite!"

Gita's reply:
"Oooo it really looks yuummm...am drooling over the pics.. :) I will be most happy to take the saplings from you and nurture them along with my two cats and a dog.:)

Its so uncanny...when my Mom was here last, she asked me to plant a passion fruit creeper and was saying that she had the juice at a friend's place and loved it. My Mom will be happy too...it's as if you heard our conversation...Awesome!"

Isn't that incredible? What a coincidence! And to think that I wasn't even eavesdropping on them?! Stories like this really make my day. Meanwhile, I've been busy transplanting the plants from the pot into small plastic bags for distribution. And yes, I'm reusing plastic bags, thereby contributing my wee bit to reducing my carbon footprint!

Mangalore Buns

THIS is a tea-time treat which brings back happy childhood memories of summer holidays spent in Balkudru, a tiny little island where my grandparents spent their post-retirement days. (In the picture below taken by my cousin Joey, a Goa-based architect, the sun rises over the river Sita, Balkudru village, which is approximately 75 km north of Mangalore). Apart from my grandma's kitchen, the snack also used to feature, and probably still does, on the limited menu of the small but clean and homely wayside eateries dotting the South Kanara coast, with their long tables and benches for seating.

They’re called Mangalore Buns with good reason perhaps, although my version can more likely be termed banana puris, simply because I roll them out to the thickness of puris, not quite so thick, as the way it should be for the "buns".

What you need:

2 small ripe bananas, 250 gms flour, 2 tablepoons curd, 2 tablespoons sugar, ½ a teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon sodium bicarbonate (soda bicarb), 1 tablespoon

ghee, oil to deep fry. Although the usual recipe doesn’t call for it, I also sprinkle two or three pinches of whole jeera (cumin seed) which adds a subtle contrast to the sweetness. I have also tried using saunf (fennel seed), but prefer jeera.

In a mixing bowl, mash the bananas using a fork. Add the sugar, salt, soda bicarb, ghee and the curd. Mix well. Add sifted flour and jeera and knead well. You can add a little more flour if the dough is too soft to get a firm consistency. Alternately, if it's too dry, just sprinkle a little water and continue kneading. Cover and leave overnight or for eight hours.

Make lime-sized portions and roll thick. Slide them one at a time into hot oil, fry, flip over to fry the other side and remove when done. Drain on absorbent paper.

PS: It’s ideal to roll out perfect circles but I simply roll them out to any shape that they yield to. In the picture at the very top, don't you think the ONE staring you in the face looks like the map of Australia? Something I could never draw freehand. Often they resemble maps of as yet uncharted territories beyond the face of this earth. That doesn’t really matter. They taste good. Finally that’s what matters.

Patholeo

A SEASONAL Konkan delicacy I love to make during the monsoons is what's called patholi or patholeo (plural) in Konkani. The turmeric, with its huge healing and antiseptic properties is a rhizome that lies buried in the soil and the fresh, new leaves it sprouts during the rainy season, are used as wrappers for these rolls. A row of turmeric that I had planted in a corner of our building garden was thriving until a new gardener who was ignorant about these plants uprooted them all. Fortunately, I discovered the damage before it was too late and saved a few of them. From these I managed to harvest a few leaves for the patholeo.

My kids don’t relish this robust, rustic snack, whose main ingredients are red boiled rice, coconut and jaggery. Nevertheless I make it at least once or twice a year, if only to keep in touch with our traditional cuisine and also for distribution among a few of my friends and relatives who love to eat it, but think that making it is drudgery. I too thought it was hard work, until I actually got down to making them and realized that it wasn’t such a chore after all.

For 10 leaves I used:

2 cups of red boiled rice soaked in water overnight
Fresh gratings of half a coconut
Powdered jaggery – about 5-6 tablespoons or to taste
5 cardamoms, powdered
Salt to taste for the batter
A teeny weeny pinch of salt for the filling too.

Grind the rice to a thick, fine batter, adding salt to taste. When grinding in an electric blender, you will necessarily have to add water but keep the quantity to a bare minimum. Even so, the batter will be extra moist. To make it just dry enough to enable patting on to the leaf, just add a few tablespoons of readymade rice flour and mix it in with a spatula, or better still by hand. Grinding a few tablespoons of coconut with the rice enhances the taste, but I simply added about 3-4 tablespoons of Maggi coconut milk powder. A sucker for shortcuts, I’ve found that this works very well indeed and no one will be the wiser for it, because it tastes just as good.

For the filling, mix the coconut, jaggery and cardamom powder and a tiny pinch of salt. Set aside. Wash and wipe the leaves. Snip off the tip and base. Place the leaf on a flat surface, smooth side up. Lightly dip your fingers in a bowl of water, take a handful of the rice batter and pat it on to the leaf, spreading it evenly from top to bottom to cover the entire leaf.

There are two ways to fold the leaf. You can fold it from the base upwards to the tip (as shown above) in which case, spread the batter on to the whole leaf, but place the filling on the top half of the leaf, about half a cm away from the edges of the rice layer. Press the edges lightly to seal.

The leaf can also be folded lengthwise along its spine (as shown below). In this case, the filling needs to be spread from the tip to the base on one half of the leaf, keeping the spine as the divider. Fold lengthwise along the spine and press the edges lightly to seal.

The pictures above will give you a fair idea of how to go about it. Not complicated at all.

Fill up to half, a steaming vessel with water and when it begins to boil, place the rolls on the perforated separator in the steamer. Close and steam for 20 minutes.

Serve the rolls with the leaf on, but unwrap before eating. The turmeric leaves impart a lovely fragrance to the rolls, but be warned that this is an acquired taste. From those tasting it for the first time, it can evoke reactions as varied as “Hmmm…interesting” to “Hmmm…this is something different” which makes me wonder if they’re only being very polite!

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

"Cutting stalks at noon time,
Perspiration drips to the earth.
Know you that your bowl of rice,
Each grain from hardship comes?"

- Cheng Chan-Pao, Chinese philosopher

Basil Rice

YESTERDAY I had an old friend of mine, who was in town on work, over to lunch. “Do you eat pork/pork products?” I had asked him in a message ahead of his visit. [Since he's Zoroastrian, I wasn't too sure and didn't want to take a chance.] “I eat anything that doesn’t bite me back!” was the prompt reply. That was just perfect for me, because I don’t exactly fancy cooking anything that might bite me back either…crocodiles, snakes, tarantulas and scorpions may sound like the stuff of exotic (and bizarre) fare, but certainly not on my list of edibles. So I had made pork spareribs, digging out a recipe with which you can't go wrong. More on that later. But the flavour of the day was decidedly Thai - the main dish being red chicken curry. Making it was a breeze but the credit for its authenticity and taste should rightly go to a readymade red curry paste that I used.

A basil rice, I thought, would be the perfect, simple complement to the complex flavours of a Thai curry. I used the delicately fragrant, fine-grained jeera samba. Somehow, I’ve always preferred it to the long-grained basmati.

Wash two cups of rice and soak 15 minutes in water. Boil separately double the quantity of water as the rice, that is, four cups. Add a splash of cooking oil to it – about two tablespoons. Drain the rice and put it in the boiling water. Add salt to taste, lower the heat and cook covered. Tear up 10-12 basil leaves and add them when the water is nearly absorbed. Cook for two more minutes on very low heat till the water is fully absorbed. Garnish with cooked green peas.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The guru Neem Karoli Baba said food should be cooked with love and that people had to fill their stomachs before they could think about God. Feeding people was a big part of his teaching.


Courtesy:The Speaking Tree, The Times of India

'Fire Your Passion' Cheesecake

‘FIRE YOUR PASSION!’ screamed the labels on passion fruit juice bottles that I had picked up in a supermarket in Ooty during summer last year and from which I’ve derived the name for this cheesecake.

It was a bountiful season of passion fruit for me, thanks to a couple of friends who have the vine growing in their gardens. There was the purple as well as the yellow variety and apart from making the usual juice, which is loved by all at home, I set out to make a cheesecake as well.

For a biscuit crumb base to fit a 9” loose-bottomed flan tin, you need to crush the life out (not to worry, it isn't a criminal offence) of 180 gms of Marie Gold biscuits and mix the resultant crumbs with 75 gms of melted butter. Then pat it firmly into the base and sides of the flan tin and refrigerate till it hardens.

For the filling, whisk together till smooth 250 gms of curd cheese (obtained by draining a litre of curd of its whey) with one tetrapak of Amul fresh cream, 6 tablespoons of icing sugar, a few drops of lemon juice, a dash of vanilla essence and 1 teaspoon of gelatine dissolved in about three tablespoons of warm water. Ensure the gelatine is cooled before adding it to the mix.

Spoon the mixture evenly into the flan tin and refrigerate till firm and set. Pour the passion fruit pulp over the cheesecake just before serving. Cut in wedges and serve.

Apple Crumble

WE have had a surfeit of Apple stories in the past few days following Steve Job’s demise. As my sister had posted on Facebook, “Even God plucks the best Apples…” But that was about apples in the digital world. In parts of the world, the real world in which we all reside, it’s the apple-picking season as orchards are filled with the ripening fruit. But out here in Bangalore where apples don’t grow, I must content myself with picking apples from the fruit bowl and turning them into something delectable – this time, a pie with a crumbly top.
For a 9-inch pie dish, combine 195 gm flour, 1/8 teaspoon salt, half a cup soft, unsalted butter, 50 gm sugar and one egg lightly beaten. Mix lightly. Refrigerate the dough for about half an hour and then press into the pie dish evenly.

For the filling, peel and slice four apples. Sprinkle half a cup of sugar, a few drops of lemon juice, a teaspoon of cinnamon powder and a dash of vanilla. Toss to coat the fruit. Throw in a handful of raisins.

Make a crumble by combining a cup of flour, half a cup of brown sugar, 1/8 teaspoon salt and half a cup of soft butter. With fingers mix lightly till crumbly.
Fill the pie dish evenly with the apple mixture and top it with the crumble. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees C for about 50 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream or fresh cream.

I DID IT!

FOR quite a long time I had been visualising a food blog of my own. With the vast possibilities thrown up by the Internet, it seemed quite the thing to do - to own a bit of space in cyberworld and treat it as a playground of sorts...

It was to be a diary of all my culinary adventures and misadventures in the hotspot of my home - the veritable kitchen, and other food experiences. It began in fits and starts a couple of years ago with the help of a kindly friend and was called Ice and Spice. But somewhere along the way it got stuck and like a stubborn mule refused to move ahead. But when I did try to revive it - the blog, I mean - it seemed like I'd forgotten to do a Ctrl+S with the password...no matter how hard I tried to coax and cajole my fading memory into retrieval mode, it simply would not budge. Like the stubborn mule. Sigh! Should have kept it sweet and simple. Something like Open Sesame or Khul Ja Sim Sim would have done the trick. It felt terrible, like being locked out of one's own house after losing the house key.

Then again, it was the movie Julie & Julia that rekindled my interest as also Chitti's Kitchen, the food blog of my friend, Chitra Shastry.

But it is to Sunder, another friend of mine in distant NYC, that I owe its name. At a mere mention, he pulled off an endlessly colourful list of them, like ribbons out of a magician's hat. Now I was faced with a problem of plenty. So difficult to choose. Like choosing a name for a baby, an exercise I had last indulged in nearly 16 years ago when my daughter was born. Never one to fry my brains, I almost did a tic tac toe, before zeroeing in on Mimosas & Samosas...it signifies liquid and solid to me. I think it also sounds nice, with a little bit of rhyme and rhythm to it.

I'm going to fix myself a mimosa one of these days. As for the samosas, well, laborious as the procedure may sound, I've promised myself to make them some day, but in the meanwhile, I think they're best picked up from Kanti's or KC Das. Not so much for the samosas, as for the tongue-tickling chutneys that accompany it. Such a deadly combo of spicy pudina and sour-sweet imli. Yummmm. The better half, who I now suspect spent the better part of his student days checking out all those food joints, if not the cool chicks in and around his college on Brigade Road, recently vouched that those chutneys are still tasting the same...

May they continue to do so forever and forever. Amen.