29.4.14

Green Pea Hummus


My toddler has an unusual love and hate relationship with peas. He claims that he likes them, but will spit it out the moment I give him some.

So the other day I was telling my mother about it and she said,
"Probably its the skin that he dislikes. Try pureeing the peas and see if he likes it that way."

Ever since I had been on the look out for a recipe with pureed green peas and this green pea hummus hit the spot. The recipe is   A Cup of Jo and then decided to make one using my favorite hummus recipe... the one from Around My French Table.

Day one, he had it as a dip with his steamed veggies.
Day two, he had it as a spread over his beet pancake.
And on day three, I just mixed it with his khichdhi and un-suspiciously he ate it all without complaining once about the taste or texture of his food.

I guess Maa was right. It was the skin that was bothering him all this while and in the hummus everything felt fine ! Mmmm it is not for nothing that they say..  moms know best ! They really know it all...

27.4.14

Green-as-Spring Veal Chicken Stew #French Fridays with Dorie


This week the Doristas were assigned to cook Green-as-Spring Veal Stew. We do not eat veal, so I tweaked the recipe a bit and cooked a green chicken stew instead.... I almost followed Dorie recipe, except that I left out the tarragon and returned the veggies into the pot of simmering green sauce along with the meat. I thought the orange of the carrots and the greens of the leaves and herbs presented a pretty contrast. Husband disagreed. He did not like the green at all.. though he thought that the soup was nice. I thought it was lovely. The dill and the lemon was very refreshing and the stew as a whole paired wonderfully with plain rice and Aloo bharta, a Bengali style mashed potato, that we had made to go with it. I guess the toddler felt the same way for he ate his chicken and rice without any fuss.


From experience I have learnt that chicken recipes do not need as much lemon juice as veal ones. So I reduced the amount of lemon juice in the stew and added slices of lemon as garnish. That way I could squeeze in the extra juice I wanted and husband could steer away from it.  

Green-as-Spring Chicken Stew


Recipe by Tanusree Khandai
Prep time: 15 minutes                                                                                                 Total time: 2 hours
Serves : 4 adults + 1 kid

Ingredients
  • 2 Chicken legs
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 2 cups water
  • 3 small carrots, trimmed, peeled and quartered
  • 2 celery stalks, trimmed, peeled, and quartered
  • 1 onion, quatered
  • 3 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 + ½ tsp dried thyme
  • 1 bay leaf
  • salt and freshly ground white pepper
  • 2 cups arugula leaves
  • 2 cups spinach leaves
  • ⅓ cup fresh coriander
  • ⅓ cup fresh dill fronds
  • ½ cup heavy cream
  • 2-3 tsps fresh lemon juice*
  • lemon slices for garnish (optional)
Cooking Directions
  1. In a large vessel, bring the chicken broth and water to a boil. Drop the chicken legs, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
  2. Stir in the carrots, celery, onion, garlic, 1 teaspoon of thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper, lower the heat to a gentle simmer, cover and cook the vegetables along with the chicken legs for 45 minutes.
  3. With a slotted spoon, scoop out the chicken legs and vegetables, cover and keep them warm while you make the sauce.
  4. Toss in the arugula, spinach, coriander, dill and ½teaspoon of dried thyme in the liquid that is left in the pot.
  5. Cook the greens till the leaves wilt. 
  6. Switch off the heat, let the mixture cool down slightly, then puree them in the blender.
  7. Return the green sauce to the pot, stir in the heavy cream and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, adjust the salt and pepper and simmer the mixture for 5 minutes.
  8. While the sauce is simmering, pull off the meat from the chicken legs and slice them into bite-size pieces.
  9. Finally return the cooked vegetables and the chicken pieces into the pot, simmer everything for 5-7 minutes.
  10. Switching off the heat. Then garnish with lemon slices and serve with rice or noodles.

Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about this stew. You can find Dorie's recipe for Green-as-Spring Veal Stew here. For more such delicious recipes order your copies of Around my French Table and join the Doristas in this tasty adventure.

I shall be sharing this recipe at some of these parties




23.4.14

Chocolate Swirl Babka Muffin Buns # Baking Partner's Challenge


Babka, as most of you know, is a traditional Easter coffee bread from Europe. Apparently, babka is also the word for grandmother in Polish...  which is why a traditional babka bread was usually baked in a fluted round mold with a center tube and was said to resemble a women's full skirt from centuries past. The babkas as we know them today are elaborately flavored and heavily downsized... They are strueseled, swirled in chocolate and cinnamon and baked in ordinary loaf pans.. This version, nevertheless delicious, is believed to have descended from the Eastern European Jewish tradition.

22.4.14

Baby Bok Choy, Sugar Snaps and Garlic en Papillote #French Fridays with Dorie


Cooking something 'en papillote' means wrapping the food in a pouch and baking it in the oven.. That has been my husbands favorite method of cooking for sometime. Ask him to cook dinner and thats what you see him do next. Of course neither of us knew that he was cooking 'en papillote.' It was a method that he had tried on impulse and it seemed to work pretty well...

This week the Doristas were assigned to do just that. Wrap quartered baby bok choy, paper thin slices of garlic, halved baby white onions and sugar snaps along with orange zest, mint, salt, pepper and olive oil in a aluminium foil and bake them in the oven at 400°F for 15 minutes and serve immediately..



19.4.14

Toddler friendly Tuna Cakes


Bringing your child up in a country where you have not grown up yourself can sometimes be confusing. Specially when planning their meals. Had I been raising my son in Kolkata, West Bengal, I would probably not twice about which fish to buy and feed my toddler... Catfish it would be for most of his meals.. and sometimes Rohu perhaps. They would always be fresh, bought from the local fishmongers selling their early morning catch...

I am pretty sure, families who have been living here for a while and are keen on fresh catches and farm fresh products know which sources to tap and make an effort to tap  them for their everyday needs .. But not us... not yet. We are still finding our way into the system... so largely depend on canned products and frozen food  for all our fish. And all of all the preparations I have tried with canned Tuna, these Tuna cakes happen to be our favorite. Both toddler and I love them... 

The other day the toddler even thanked me for making them :))..


He can sometimes be surprisingly sweet !

He also thought these Easter Eggs were pretty...


and wanted to eat all three...  :)))

Happy Easter everybody !
~ the Khandais

16.4.14

Barley Risotto with Mushrooms & Spinach


Growing up I always identified barley with sickness. You have barley soup when you are sick, that is the way I have always known the grain until I came across Dorie's Vegetable Barley Soup with taste of  Little India. It was a revelation. Who knew root vegetables, garam masala and barley could team up so well to create such a hearty bowl of soup !  So I realized that barley could be interesting... even tasty provided the recipe is good.. But barley risotto ??? That seemed like a completely different story. I wasn't too sure how it would be until I sampled some on Sunday. And frankly speaking was taken by surprise at how good it turned out ! 

Okay. Barley is one of the healthiest grains in the world... but that is not why I thought of cooking it risotto-style. It was the photograph of  Toasted Barley Risotto with Spinach and Herb puree in the April Issue of  Bon Appetit that attarcted me... and the fact that "Barley Risotto" sounded weird and healthful at the same time... I spotted the recipe while flipping through the latest magazines and soon enough was on my feet cooking my version of barley risotto with mushrooms and spinach....

13.4.14

Passover Brownies


Come April and my search for chocolate-y recipes begin.  When two family birthdays are aligned a week apart, this tends to happen. No ?  My mother and my husband.... both big time foodies.. in particular chocolate lovers, celebrate their birthdays in April... so come April my search for everything chocolate-y peaks  and sometimes leads me to boxes of chocolates and sometimes to cookbooks full of chocolate-y treats.... like The Ultimate Brownie Book ..

I got the brownie book from library the other day and the Passover Brownies were the first ones that I tried from it. The recipe is flourless  and delivered the intense chocolate-y treat that it promised.. But I must warn you right away that these brownies are not fugdy. They are somewhat gooey... and if that is not your thing... then these might disappoint you a bit. At least my husband did not seem euphoric about them.. even though he found them difficult to resist...

11.4.14

Quiche Maraîchère # French Fridays with Dorie

Quiche Maraîchères (pronounced as maÊ€eʃe) was this week's assignment for the French Fridays with Dorie. 


Finally !      I had been longingly staring at the photograph alongside the recipe for weeks... With all the red and green market fresh vegetables, the quiche looked so pretty, springlike and so very inviting. But when it came to making it I was such a mess....


No. The recipe, though a little unusual, wasn't complicated at all.  All we had to do was to toss chopped celery stalks, leeks, carrots and red bell  pepper  in melted butter. Cook the veggies for about 10 minutes, then spoon the cooked vegetables into a 9 inch partially baked tart shell. Next whisk cream with an egg and an egg yolk,  pour the custard over the veggies and bake the quiche for about 20 minutes at 400°F. Finally sprinkle grated Gruyère or cheddar over the semi-baked quiche and bake it for another 5 to 10 minutes, or until the cheese is golden and the filling is uniformly puffed, browned and set. 

My quiche would probably have come out of the oven all pretty and dolled up had I not been over enthusiastic about letting the filling puff and brown uniformly. In trying to do so, I let the quiche bake for an extra 10-12 minutes which made it as brown as it looks below :( Anyway though thoroughly browned and somewhat over baked, the quiche tasted wonderful. I used  grated smoked Gruyère cheese on top and both husband and I thought that that cheese made it even more flavorful. We simply could not stop admiring the quiche. We loved it warm, we loved it cold, we loved it every time we cut a wedge out. It was simply fantastic ! 

update 4/27/2014: Made the quiche for dinner tonight and enjoyed it in all its prettiness...  I baked it for 30 minutes this time and was rewarded for following Dorie's instructions to the T :)   





Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about this quiche. You can find the quiche recipe here and the recipe for the tart shell here. For more such delicious recipes order your copies of Around my French Table and join the Doristas in this tasty adventure.

I shall be sharing this recipe at some of these parties.

10.4.14

Whole Wheat Coconut Muffin Buns


I am not sure if in some other world these whole wheat coconut muffin buns are standard. They ought to be.. They are cute, tasty and delicious. They are everything  you would want to wake up to on a Sunday morning or for that matter any other day of the week. I have a feeling that with a glaze of coconut syrup they might make the ultimate breakfast muffin buns... but I am yet to verify the latter..


As many of you might have recognized, these buns were inspired by the famous Dilkhush Buns. Literally translated, Dilkhush means "makes you happy" and the traditional Dilkhush buns do just that... make you happy with their pillowy soft milk bread casing and coconut-dry fruit-and-tuttti frutti stuffing.  

My muffin buns do the same... though they have a whole wheat potato bread casing rather than a white milk bread. 

Irish Whole Wheat Potato Pull-Apart Rolls


Around St Patrick's day, when I was looking for something Irish to make, I came across the Whole Wheat Potato Bread in Beth Hensperger's Bread lover's bread machine cookbook. Apparently in the late eighteenth century, potatoes or spuds as they called them, became a staple in the Irish diet. One-third of the population then, solely relied on this cheap crop.  Lack of genetic diversity, left the crop vulnerable to diseases and in 1845, the rapid spread of a plant disease called late blight resulted in the crops failure in the poorer communities of western Ireland. That led to the Great Irish Famine, also known as the Irish Potato Famine, in which approximately one million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland. The Irish immigrants apparently brought the tubers to New England, a region were potatoes are grown even today.  


Now about these rolls... They are fairly easy to make and taste great with soup, curry, bhaji... you name it. I believe, the potato in the dough basically does what eggs generally do to the bread, make them soft and light. These rolls are much softer and less dense that most whole grain rolls. Again, I am inclined to believe that the mashed potato is the reason for it.... In any case they are a great addition to a meal and have recently become my go-to recipe for dinner rolls... 

8.4.14

Tasty Tuesday #56 ... featuring desserts + a call for permanent hosts..

Hi  everyone !! 
Each week, since December 2013, our team of 10 amazing bloggers have been hosting this fabulous party! 


Without you, we wouldn't have a party at all. So we think you're pretty special and deserve to benefit from linking up with us each week. Here's how:

Italian Walnut Black Pepper Cookies


Walnut Black Pepper Cookies... this is yet another one from  Cooking with Italian Grandmothers and it is by grandmother Carluccia. I tell you, if not for all the other healthy recipes, for t``he  desserts alone you should get yourself a copy of the book. They all sound fantastic and are generally pretty easy to put together.... 

Now a little about the moment when I finally decided to share these sweeties with you... 


It was pretty late that night. My husband had a skype interview in India . He returned at 3:00 in the morning and before I could ask him how the interview went, 

he asked, "Are those cookies still there ?" 

"Ah... yes.. how was your interview ?" 

"We'll see..." he replied, then taking a bite said, "... these cookies are delicious.... can I have some more..."

I knew immediately that the first thing I needed to do next day was to take their photographs.. I suspected that they wouldn't survive another day in the shelf . And they didn't. The whole batch vanished between breakfast, tea and dessert.  With all its buttery-sugary goodness and hint of black pepper, these cookies kept calling us(by which I mostly mean my husband) all-day-long.....

4.4.14

Visitandine # French Fridays with Dorie

Visitandine, a simple French sponge cake with a 'pure butter-and-sugar' flavor was this week's assignment for French Fridays with Dorie.  Apparently in the pastry shops in France, they are baked in madeleine molds, financier pans, small fluted tartlet pans or tins that turn out little mini muffins. Like her friend Claudine Martina, who gave her its recipe, Dorie however likes to bake hers in a pie plate and serve wedges of visitandine at teatime or layer them with jam, whipped cream and berries for a pretty and elegant dessert. In her words, this cake "is perfect plain or paired with jam, fruit, chocolate, citrus curds, cream, frosting or glaze." Taking her cue I decided to use it as a base for a caramel apple galette.. and that turned out to be quite a treat !

The recipe for Visitandine is quite similar to that of Financier. Brown the butter, add it to the mixture of flour, salt and sugar, add vanilla extract to it then stir in the egg whites which have been beaten until stiff peaks were formed. Now bake the cake in preheated oven and thats it. You are done. Though Dorie recommended baking the  cake in a springfoam, layer cake, or fluted porcelain or glass quiche pan, I baked mine in the iron skillet.


I halved the recipe and baked in my 8 inch skillet for 30 minutes. Okay. The cake had actually started pulling off from the sides after 25 minutes.. but I let it sit in the oven for 5 minutes more... just in case... The extra baking time or the iron skillet might have made the cake a little biscuit-y. My husband however liked it ... infact he loved it so much that three of its wedges disappeared instantly.

My Rustic Caramel Apple Galette with Visitandine-base

...served with spoonfuls of rum-scented pastry cream
Finally a word about the caramel apples. Well this is the first time I tried making it. Using the leftover sugar syrup from the candied lemon peel (that I made for the Julekake) was the sole motivation behind making the caramel. I know I did a clumsy job of it... but the flavors were simply awesome. The combination of citrusy sugar and sweet apples was a complete revelation ! Also pairing the cake and the caramel apples with the rum-scented pastry cream that I made from the leftover yolks from visitandine felt like a good idea. Overall this dessert was a hit in our house and we really liked it.


Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about this cake. You can find the original recipe here For more such delicious recipes order your copies of Around my French Table and join the Doristas in this tasty adventure.

I shall be sharing this recipe at some of these parties.

3.4.14

Julekake # Eggless Baking Group

Julekake is a Norwegian Christmas bread flavored with cardamom, raisins and candied citron. It is usually sweeter and flatter than a regular bread and like most holiday breads its dough is enriched with milk, butter and eggs. Traditionally this bread made with all purpose flour, but when Priya Srinivasan of Enveetu Kitchen challenged us, the Eggless Baking Group, to bake an eggless version of it, I decided to get ahead of the challenge and make a whole grain eggless version of it..


I had initially decided to make the bread using whole wheat and all-purpose flour in the ratio 2:1.. With that proportion the dough felt tough so I adjusted by adding extra water and all-purpose flour till the dough texture felt just right. Following the pointers from The Kitchn on How to make Softer and Fluffier Whole wheat bread, I added an extra tablespoon of butter to the dough, kneaded the dough first with hand, allowed the hand-kneaded dough to rest for 20-30 minutes before kneading and poofing it in the bread machine. I am not sure which of the above tricks had worked but I was delighted with the way the loaf turned out... soft and delicious.

Candied citron or citron were unavailable in the stores so I substituted that with homemade candied lemon peel...

Homemade Candied Lemon Peel 
The candied lemon peel were a wonderful addition and I am so glad that I decided to make some at the last moment. Along with the cardamom and raisins, they made the bread slices taste like slices of a holiday cake. Though most Norwegian sites suggested a dab of butter on Julekake, we, at our place loved the bread as it is. Toasted.. but with no extra butter.

1.4.14

Tasty Tuesday #55 featuring easy dinner recipes..

Hi  everyone !! 
 Each week, our team of 10 amazing bloggers hosts this fabulous party! We're so glad that you've stopped by to party with us!


Without you, we wouldn't have a party at all. So we think you're pretty special and deserve to benefit from linking up with us each week. Here's how:

Bajra Dosai (Pearl Millet Dosai)

I guess no one really needs an introduction to dosai... In case you do.. they are crispy South Indian crepes made with a fermented batter of ground urad dal (black lentils) and rice. While plain rice dosai with a filling of potato and side of sambar is standard, there are several variations like maida (refined ywheat flour) and rava (semolina) dosai that are widely popular in South Indian households. Traditionally these crepes are consumed for breakfast. However with the increasing popularity of South Indian cuisine throughout India, people these days do not mind a lunch or dinner  of dosai along with dosa masala, sambar and coconut chutney.


This month Sowmya of Nivedhanam tried a healthy variation of the traditional Dosai. Replacing rice with pearl millet she created Kambu dosai or pearl millet dosai and challenged the Northern Group of SNC team to try it out... Now I had urad dal and pearl millet flour in my pantry. I asked her if  I could use bajra flour to make these crepes. She said I could and the same proportion of  bajra(pearl millet) to urad dal would work even if I were to substitute the bajra with bajra flour. So that is what I did.  I soaked the urad dal with fenugreek seeds for few hours, then ground it to a smooth batter and to it I added a paste of the bajra flour. As you can see the substitute worked beautifully..


However if you prefer to use pearl millet instead of pearl millet flour,  soak the same measure of the grain along with the urad dal then grind the mixture to a smooth batter and follow the recipe thereon. You can use a different combination of vegetables to top the dosai,  but I stuck to Sowmya's choice of carrots and green beans and we enjoyed the way the crepes turned out.



Now a quick word about the accompaniments..  As I mentioned before, traditionally dosai are served with sambar and chutney. But if you are in a mood to experiment, try it with this Cucumber Kootu and some South Indian garlic powder. It is a delightful combination.. even my husband with really high standards for south Indian food was pretty impressed with the combo !

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