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?

Little Gherkins (Ivy Gourd) Stir Fried with Cashews and Coconut

This one's a childhood favourite and a constant feature in lunch menus at many traditional weddings in my community - my grandparents moved from their villages in Southern India to Mumbai city. Although I loved the dish, I (or anyone assigned to chop it up) used to hate chopping this vegetable, and to make a sizable quantity one needed at least half a kilo (1 pound) of it. Cutting each little gherkin into stick-like pieces was quite a job and no one ever wanted to be saddled with it, especially if you had to make it for lunch and dinner for a family of four or more. Chopping a smaller quantity (for two) is not so bad and it was a very peaceful hour I spent in the kitchen, making this dish and a few sides for it - a curry of white beans in coconut milk and some plain, boiled rice.

Stir Fried Gherkins (Ivy Gourd) with Cashews and Coconut

Ivy Gourd Stir Fry with Cashews and Coconut

1/2 pound ivy gourd (little gherkins)
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 dried red chilli
1 small pinch asafetida powder (optional)
3-4 fresh curry leaves
1/4 cup halved cashewnuts
2 tablespoons Olive oil (or coconut oil to make it more authentic to South Indian cuisine)
Salt
Water to cook the vegetables
3 tablespoons grated coconut
3 tablespoons chopped cilantro

Chopping up the gherkins - trim the ends of each little gherkin and slice it vertically into half. Slice each half vertically again into two pieces (this step is optional but the finer it is chopped, the less amount of time it takes to cook).

Add oil to a wok and heat it a little (dont smoke it). Add mustard seeds and wait for them to splutter. When that happens, add asafetida, dried red chilli and curry leaves and quickly cover the pan (the curry leaves contain water and can cause some drops of oil to splatter). You could skip the curry leaves if you want to avoid tempering them this way but they do add a great flavour to stir fried vegetables.

Add the chopped vegetables and cashews. Stir it to coat the veggies with the tempered oil. Add a little water (do not soak the vegetables in too much water as this is supposed to be a dry curry) enough to come up a couple of inches from the bottom of the wok. Cover it and cook on medium heat.

Cook it until veggies are soft (you can test by trying to cut a piece of the vegetable with a spoon; if it cuts easily, its done). Add salt, grated coconut and chopped cilantro and toss around to make sure it's well mixed.

My Veggie and Bean Bowl

Easy peasy. Great with rice and curry. Or you could eat it as is. It's really difficult to not pop in a cashew or two or three while you're tasting it.

Happy Holidays, everyone!



Cheesy Spicy Corn Muffins

I have tried making cornbread muffins a number of times before but never achieved a result worth sharing on the blog, until now. I hit on a really great recipe from a site on Pinterest - http://www.thecomfortofcooking.com/2012/05/jalapeno-cheddar-cornbread-muffins.html - and made these wonderful Jalapeno Cheddar Corn Muffins - a blend of sweet and spicy. Cornbread batter is my current favourite to make - no fuss, melted butter, easiest to mix...what's not to like? Plus it's a great weekend activity, doesnt take long to whip up and you've got an interesting addition for Sunday brunch.

Here's my nice warm plate of cheesy muffins.

Jalapeno Cheddar Muffins - the one in the center has melted cheese on top

On an impulse, just as they were about to go into the oven, I topped four muffins with the shredded cheese just to see what happened when they baked. And because I didnt want to ruin all the muffins in case the cheese burned, I only topped four muffins. After they came out and had cooled down enough to handle, I wished I'd topped all of them....the cheese-topped ones turned out great with that extra pop of flavour on top.

Love the slight crumbing

This is an elegant muffin, with a complex mix of flavours - the batter has sugar and honey, which contrast perfectly with the heat of the jalapeno. All in all, one of my favourite muffins both to make and eat!

Do try it and lemme know how you liked it.

I love how joining Pinterest has broadened my foodie horizons and also my cooking/baking skills. If you're also on Pinterest, let me know and I'll follow your site. And if you have some favourite Pinterest recipes, do send me a link. I'm always on the hunt for great recipes.

 

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.



 

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!