Let's Catch Up!

This weekend is a catch my breath kind of weekend. The time when I take a breather from work, from the adventure that is yet to unfold. A time to enjoy snow and tramping around in it to feel the crystals crunching noisily under my boots. A time to feel time passing by instead of always trying to catch up with it. A time to give my laptop its well deserved holiday. A time to pop into the kitchen to create something I love and share it with the world instead of keeping the photos hidden in my laptop.

Last night, my husband taught me to make a Chicken Saltimboca with some smoked cheddar melted  on it. He used to eat the dish occassionally when he lived in Boston all those years ago, as a single man. It was a restaurant dish, to be had in one of the tiny North End restaurants, which weren't as expensive as the last time we visited. You could make it at home, but at our home we stayed away from fatty food as much as we could, especially bacon!

Definitely not a great photo, blame two tipsy cooks for the sloppy presentation!

But this time we decided to release the tight hold on our stomachs and indulge. He layered the bacon on the salted-and-peppered chicken cutlets and I whacked them with a rolling pin to fuse the bacon and chicken together. Then as he melted butter, I lightly floured the chicken cutlets, first bacon side and then the other. As the chicken browned, he opened a bottle of champagne. We had hardly toasted and sipped when the chicken was done and we needed to make the sauce. I decided to toss the mushrooms in the same pan, with a last minute addition of some butter, to make the sauce. A Marsala type sauce for the Saltimbocca. He made rice with aromatic spices - cardamom, cinnamon - and dried fruits and nuts. The pilaf's fragrance competed with the sizzling bacon and steadily browning chicken.

A memorable meal, need I add? I got the recipe from the Whole Foods website.

At the end of the meal, we shared dessert. A layered mousse cake from Whole Foods. Perfect!

What did you do this weekend?

I've been baking....

I didn't expect to be back and not have a post in for any of the weeks in this month, but I think some of my baked goodies can be blamed for it. I tried and managed to create a swiss roll for P's birthday early this month, but it looked like a five year old made it, which would have excused its Frankenstein appearance. Try as I might, I didnt feel like displaying it although I managed to whip cream by hand (with a non-electric whisk) and learn the easy art of making chocolate glaze although coating the cake with it was not simple at all and I was near tears at the end of the day. However, P was all overcome with emotion at the fact that I had baked and iced a cake from scratch like a 50s housewife and surprised him with it after a dinner of chicken biryani.

Better things followed, of course, and a trip to Marshalls and a few cake pans later, I made my first toffee apple cake (recipe from Angry Asian's site) with a rum caramel glaze - which has now become my husband's favourite cake - and my first banana walnut loaf (customized from a foodnetwork.com recipe) - Lan, your banana bread recipe is next...didnt attempt it at first as I didn't have a lot of ingredients.

Feast your eyes on these....



Exhibit A: Toffee Apple Cake



Small-diced apples melted beautifully into the cake -
next time am going to dice them thicker just to see the difference

I roughly crushed walnuts to add to my banana bread, which turned out well but I could have reduced the time it spent in the oven. The bottom half seemed to have cooked darker than the top half of the loaf.

Exhibit B: Banana-Walnut Bread

But not too bad for the first time, yes? Looking forward to making more loaf cakes in it.

These were my successes for this month. Next month, I want to learn to make breads - focaccia mainly - and layer cakes. I've got a possible dinner party this weekend and I'm wondering what to make for dessert. Any suggestions? Or should I go with the toffee apple cake? Topped with Vanilla Ice-cream and Butterscotch sauce? Or something more exotic?

Say Hello to the Bombay Duck and the Pomfret

No matter where we live, we've often come across varied recipes for fried fish. Here are two fishes that are essentially part of the Mumbai region (once called Bombay) in Maharashtra, India, and are identified with its cuisine (although their names seem to be something out of Alice in Wonderland). I've been feeling very overwhelmed by the different climate, familiar cooking smells, favourite foods...returning to the city after a year, picking up where I left off with family, friends, relatives, all the important people in my life...I lost track of time and didn't realise how soon three weeks sped past and I realized guiltily that I haven't updated my blog yet.

I have been eating great food although not snapping pictures half as fast, hence the delay in my posts. The first thing I would love to introduce you to is the Bombay Duck which is not a duck at all but the fleshiest fish - you can eat it whole...bones and all (after taking away the head and other not so edible portions)! Take a look...

Bombay Duck

The best way to eat it is fried - remove the head, fins and tail, smear the flesh with a spice mix (turmeric, chilli powder, garam masala, ground ginger paste, salt), coat it with Indian semolina (to the semolina, add a little salt and a pinch of asafoetida [optional]) and shallow fry it. Yum cubed!

Salted and Spiced Bombay Duck

Another favourite of mine is pomfret, another Mumbai speciality. I missed snapping a photo of the whole pomfret but you will find images on google. The fish sellers cut them up into slices. Add the same spice mix and coat with semolina and shallow fry.

Salted and Spiced Pomfret Pieces

I helped my mother prepare these two different fishes with the same recipe. There is a definite difference in taste because of the two different types of fish but they are both very, very delicious. Can be paired with just about any kind of drink - whether white wine or tequila, even.

Platter of fried Pomfret and Bombay Duck (the fried Bombay Duck pieces look like chicken tenders)

I also made a prawn (shrimp) curry with coconut gravy paired with white rice for a lovely, lazy Sunday noontime meal. Even more delicious if its raining outside.



Coconut Prawn Curry

 

 

I spent many more afternoons eating similarly prepared fishes. I've noticed a change in flavours - my mother adds ginger but my mother-in-law adds garlic paste and tamarind to the spice mix and skips garam masala. The fried fish always tastes amazing though! It's one of my favourite Mumbai dishes.



 

Bittersweet Chocolate Brownies

Bittersweet Chocolate Brownies

My first batch of brownies from scratch were inspired from Nigella's Everyday Brownies. Right from the start as I melted butter and sugar in the pan I had a hundred doubts - would I burn the sugar, is the consistency of the batter correct, would they rise, did I forget something....the usual things that kept me peeking through the glass oven door every few minutes of the 25 they were baking. But the first bite I took of the just cooled brownies told me it was worth it...the hour of utter nervousness, the spilled sugar, the mess of dishes and pans in the sink!

The mildly tough crust gave way to a silky, soft cake-like texture of the dark chocolate brownies. I used the recipe as Nigella gave it but added only 1/4 cup of bitter chocolate (70% cocoa) and was rewarded by a semi-sweet but luxuriously dark chocolate taste.

Click the above highlighted link for the recipe. And Enjoy!!!!

Avocado-Tomato Grilled Sandwiches with Ginger-Coconut Chutney

Avocado-Tomato Grilled Sandwiches with Ginger-Coconut Chutney

Inspired by the spinach, avocado, goat cheese grilled cheese sandwich - Green Goddess Grilled Cheese Sandwich - but without many of the ingredients I would need to make the pesto, I substituted the pesto spread with an Indian chutney - ginger, coconut, chillies and cumin ground to a paste with water. It worked just fine with the veggies and added a spicy, warm note to the grilled cheese.

Click the link above for the recipe on the original sandwich.

Below is the recipe for the ginger-coconut chutney. Makes about 1/2 cup chutney.

Ginger Chutney

1/4 cup shredded fresh coconut

3 green chillies (tiny ones - each chopped into two pieces)

2 tablespoons cilantro

1 tablespoon roughly chopped ginger (if you find the proportion of chillies and ginger too spicy, reduce the chillies but retain the ginger as it provides the basic flavour to the chutney)

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin powder

Salt (I used herbal salt)

Water (to thin the mixture as it grinds into paste)

Put everything except the salt and water into a blender and grind it as finely as possible (add water little at a time to make it a slightly thick fluid - spreadable). When it's done, take it out of the blender and add salt.

When making the sandwich, I spread the chutney on the bread slices and added mozzarella. Then I added tomato and avocado slices on one side and covered it with the other bread slice (with the chutney and mozzarella). I heated some butter and olive oil in a pan and placed one side of the sandwich on it, keeping it there for a few minutes to fry a golden brown. After slightly pressing down on the sandwich, I flipped it over to fry on the other side.

This was a simple and incredibly tasty sandwich. Really enjoyed myself!

Zucchini and Mushroom Crustless Quiche



Zucchini and Mushroom Crustless Quiche

I've decided to dive into the world of baking through instructions rather than pay money for a class to learn the basics. I've still got my eye on the cooking classes at Le Cordon Bleu's Masterchef classes at Boston, will be fun to learn something decadent or difficult. But the basics of baking - quiches, pies, pastries, muffins et al, I plan to learn on my own.

My first effort at baking a dish from scratch - my very own crustless quiche that I spent a very happy hour preparing and another 50 minutes baking.

Pinterest helped me gather the recipes I was most willing to try and this looked relatively easy to follow: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/zucchini-and-goat-cheese-crustless-quiche-recipe/index.html

Of course, my kitchen did not have everything as desired - I substituted feta for the montrachet and used a combination of zucchini and mushroom to make up the amount for this recipe as I didn't have enough zucchini on hand. The result wasn't bad at all - I loved biting into a piece of mushroom every now and then. The next step for me in making quiches is to make individual mini quiches in the muffin pan but I suspect will need a finer shredded goat cheese rather than feta crumbles.

Do you remember the recipe you used when baking for the very first time?

Spicy Orange Barbequed Chicken Drumsticks




Spicy Orange Barbequed Chicken Drumsticks

 
Absolute comfort food recipe derived from a pineapple barbeque marinade recipe that caught my husband's attention in an issue of the Improper Bostonian, which we'd picked up during a visit to the city. I have never managed to actually read the magazine, two issues of which lie on our coffee table at all times, and was surprised that it had recipes. I was even more surprised when my husband was interested in trying out a recipe that took almost an hour to cook and involved the use of our oven.


It was great to have a spicy twist on the usual barbequed chicken which was paired with a rice pilaf and a bottle of red Cotes Du Rhone wine (since it was dark chicken meat and the barbeque sauce was spicy, the red went well with the food). All in all, it was a fantastic lunch.

Ingredients

7 washed Chicken Drumsticks (with skin)

1 1/2 cups Orange juice

3 tablespoons Barbeque sauce

1 tablespoon Sriracha sauce

1/2 tablespoon Chilli Garlic sauce (this is an extremely spicy sauce - if you'd like more of a balance between tangy and spicy, try a quarter tablespoon or less)

2 tablespoons Ketchup

Method

Preheat the oven to 375 Degrees F.

Mix the orange juice, sauces and ketchup. Heat the combination over low heat - do not bring to a boil. When the sauce is slightly hotter than lukewarm, remove from heat.

Arrange drumsticks in a baking dish and drizzle the entire sauce all over the drumsticks - the drumsticks should be well coated and the extra sauce can soak up the chicken flavours and can be poured over rice or mashed potatoes, great sides to the dish.

Put the baking dish on the topmost rack. Once it's in, cook the drums for 45 minutes to 1 hour - checking to see how brown and crispy you like the skin to be. Turn the baking dish around after 30 minutes.

Once it's done, let it cool for a few minutes before digging in. Pair with a pea pilaf or just potatoes mashed with a little butter and cream. Enjoy!

The Hundred Ways to eat a Baguette....

Slices Spread with Butter and Chutney

I bought a bread loaf from the French bakery - La Petite France - in West Hartford on a rare afternoon shopping expedition in Barnes and Noble. I got off closer to the French bakery and bought two pear tarts and a loaf of French bread. I have until tomorrow to finish it and my husband finds it a bit too tough to chew so it's going to be a solo effort.

Only it stops being an effort the minute I butter a slice and bite into it. I can taste a medley of grain flavours - it is made from different grains including rye - and it reminds me of moist Bombay mornings with a cup of tea and a slice of brun pav which is a rough, multigrain bun of a bread - not sweet, and not soft either - my father's favourite. He could eat it every morning without the pat of butter and wash it all down at the end with a cup of strong tea. I spent most of my life at home dedicating breakfast to the softer, refined sliced bread. It's almost always adulthood when you appreciate the things you had easy access to when you were younger. And I'm glad I got this baguette home and breakfast is now much more exciting while still being nourishing.

I'm on a baguette binge for today so I hope the loaf doesn't last until tomorrow. I'm thinking of all the ways I can eat this baguette - maybe toast it and spread a mixture of roasted peppers and tomatoes on it for lunch or cut into bits which I could pan fry and stir into a soup, or even boil an egg and make a baguette sandwich.

How would you like to eat a baguette? I'm thinking of doing a live blog and putting up a numbered list here. Let me know your favourite way(s) to eat this bread and I'll add it to my list.

1. For breakfast - sliced and topped with a little butter or a spoonful of green coriander coconut chutney.

2. For lunch - dipped in a potato soup to soak and eat as breadsticks.

3. For dinner - slices topped with some chutney and then topped with sliced tomato, (boiled) potato and onion.
4. Can one make dessert out of a baguette? For example, bread pudding? I wonder....

5. Angry Asian's way - toast topped with soy margarine and pickled beets (sounds so yum) but her favourite way is to have the centre scooped out and paired with sweetened milk (read comments for the whole story).
Let me know! I'm also going to look for suggestions on food and recipe blogs and will let y'all know.

Small Plates, Smaller Portions

                                    

I had a cousin come over to stay for the last few days of spring break. It was lovely to take him around and indulge in margaritas, bar snacks and a juicy, custom-made chicken burger with a real ol-fashioned (drink) on the side. We even went to watch 'The Artist'. All of these things happened in intervals while I was cooking up a storm of comfort food, yellow dal, a spicy potato dish, lots of rice and a very spicy and rich Thai chicken curry. Needless to say, the binging took its toll this morning and I'm reducing my portions.

Last night, I cooked a dish of elbow macaroni and pesto with fried eggs and a few sticks of pork sausages (ripping off the tough skins). I ate the leftover 'mini' portion for lunch sprawled on the sofa with a new Claire Berlinski novel from the library and a glass of orange juice. I never thought I'd be the person eating mini portions. My body however seems to crave it. I'm also craving the juicy grapes I'd chomped on throughout the weekend.

I could really munch on some frozen grapes for dessert. What do you recover on after a night (or a few nights) of binging?

Cooking for One Instead of Table for One

When I'm not drooling over the food pics in Eric Gower's cookbook, I'm reading Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant - an anthology of one-person cooking articles from really creative people (writers, filmmakers, teachers, foodies) in diverse fields. I'm not too surprised to find comfort food - in different forms - ranging from recipes with canned black beans to poached eggs over asparagus, scrambled eggs on toast topped with truffle oil, polenta to a layered salmon, shallots and lentils dish. It's not just an amazing recipe book, it's a great comfort read - something to read in bed with a bowl of ice cream.

My comfort food was the Macaroni stir fry recipe - even if it happens that I'm missing a few ingredients, eggs, onions and pasta are always available along with my spice rack. In fact, eggs are very personal to me and my first choice when cooking a meal for myself. They're super easy and fun to eat, try scrambling them with rice or pasta or just over toast, they're very comforting and uncomplicated. I've even eaten boiled egg sandwiches with mustard and thousand island dressing for dinner alone, which prompted my husband to look in the fridge to see if everything in there rotted beyond recognition.

I love that these writers are all emphasizing on the simple things that are very self-indulgent, you'd make them because you want to pig out and not share. They're just as pampering if not more than the meals we make for dinner parties or for special weekends alone with your sweetie. I love that this book exists to take away the depressive air around 'Meals for One'.

Book: Alone In The Kitchen With An Eggplant - Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

Edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

Written by a lot of talented, creative people who love themselves