Buttermilk Soup - Kadhi

When talking about comfort food, how can one not mention "Kadhi". This buttermilk soup has been a part of various cultures...atleast the one's I've known.. Be it a Gujrati Kadhi, or a Maharashtrian Kadhi, a Punjabi Kadhi, or a More Khozumbu down South...its pretty much the same ingredients but uniquely distinct flavours...But if one were to analyze Kadhi's importance in Indian cuisine, then the only logical answer that I can think of is most Indian cuisines are hot and fiery and to counter that, buttermilk is used. Kadhi, hence, becomes an instant seller as its full of flavours, tangy, and most importantly a comfort food to most people.


I've tasted all the versions of Kadhi..and I enjoy them all..The best combination of Kadhi is with Onion Pakoda or Onion Fritters. But really when it comes to cooking...I'm very experimental...I have my own version of kadhi..which tastes good as well.. Basically its a concoction of all the above types....:)

Ingredients: Makes approx 2 servings
3 cups sour buttermilk,
1 onion, chopped length wise into thin slices,
8-10 garlic pods, chopped length wise,
5-6 curry leaves,
2-3 green chillies, slit lengthwise,
1-1/2 tsp cumin seeds,
1 tsp fenugreek seeds,
1 tsp turmeric powder,
1 tbsp cornflour, mixed in 2 spoons of water,
1 tbsp oil,
Salt as per taste,
Fresh green coriander, chopped,

Method:
1.) In a bowl, mix buttermilk, salt to taste, and turmeric powder. Mix well and set aside.
2.) Heat oil in a pan, add cumin seeds and fenugreek seeds. Add the onions, green chillies, garlic, and curry leaves. Mix well and allow the onions to turn golden brown.
3.) Add the buttermilk mixture and mix well. Keep the flame low.
4.) As the mixture starts coming to a boil, add the cornflour/water mix. Keep stirring continuously. Turn off the heat.
5.) Garnish with fresh coriander and serve hot with onion pakodas.

Sneek Peek:



Truly divine!!!

Scrambled Eggs - Egg Bhurji

Off late, there's lots happening on the home front. We've been having guests off and on and dinners are exotic...Mostly I'm out shopping for groceries and marinating and cooking and cleaning...etc..etc.. Phew!!! Its hectic and tiring, yet am quite delighted to do so..

This afternoon I thought of making myself some simple and basic food for lunch..and what better than a simple Egg Bhurji, served with some dal, rice and pickle...Awesome combination...isn't it..I know your mouth is watering as well :-) This is comfort food and very simple and fast to make..I love Egg Bhurji and I can eat it just as is...Delicious...

Ingredients: (Serves approx 2 persons)
4 eggs,beaten well,
1 large onion,finely chopped,
1 tsp cumin seeds,
1 large green chilli,finely chopped,
4 tsp oil,
Salt as per taste,
Green coriander, finely chopped,

Method:
1.) Heat the oil in a pan. Add the cumin seeds. As it splutters, add the green chilli and onions. Stir fry until golden brown.
2.) Add salt as per taste to the beaten eggs and mix well.
3.) Pour this over the onions and mix well. Once the eggs have scrambled, keep stirring until you see the water has evaporated and oil starts to seperate. The colour of the eggs will turn golden brown and slightly crispy.
4.) Garnish with fresh coriander and serve hot.

Sneek Peek:



I enjoyed a scrumptious meal today and am off for a quick nap...:-)

Semolina Pudding with Saffron - Rawa Kesari

If there is one sweet dish that I can have at any time of the day or night..its Rawa Kesari. I love it..and any version of it is fine...plain, or with pineapple...From the time I remember flavours, I know Rawa Kesari. I love the way my mami makes it..she adds loads of ghee..and you know me..I never count my calories :-)

Both my MIL and FIL are wonderful cooks and this dish is prepared by my FIL. I cannot take any credit of the entire process except the photographs!!! And just because my FIL knows that I blog..he's taken extra care to decorate it so beautifully...I just don't have any words left.....except..Thank You!!!


Here's how he made it...

Ingredients:
1 cup semolina, dry roasted slightly,
3/4th cup sugar,
2 cups water,
5-6 tbsp of ghee,
1/2 tsp cardamom powder,
Few cashews and raisins for garnish,
Few saffron strands dissolved in 2 tsp of warm milk,(optional),

Method:
1.) Heat 2 tbsps of ghee and fry the cashews & raisins until golden brown in colour. Remove and set it aside.
2.) In the same pan, add the remaining ghee. Add the semolina and fry for sometime. Add the sugar and keep stirring continuously.
3.) In the meantime, in a another vessel, bring the water to a boil.
4.) Add the boiling water to the semolina/sugar mixture. Keep stirring continuously so that no lumps are formed.
5.) Add the saffron dissolved milk and the cardamom powder and mix well.
6.) Garnish with fried cashews and raisins.

Sneek Peek:


Have it hot or chilled, it tastes awesome any which ways...For all festivities, Rawa Kesari is a must in our house...there is never a dearth of people to hog it you know :0)



This is my second entry for Food In Colours hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and the original brainchild of Harini from Tongue Ticklers.

Homemade Instant Garlic Bread

Breakfast is an important meal for all and especially considering at home we have only the breakfast and dinner together, its even more important to make sure that I make something which is liked by everyone. Its really difficult to come up with something new for breakfast everyday. I myself don't like to repeat the same dishes, leave apart the weird faces my hubby and son make :(

Yesterday, I bought a loaf of triangle shaped sandwich bread thinking I'd make sandwich's for breakfast today. I had decided to make a vegetable sandwich but as luck would have it..I got up a little late and everything just got delayed. I decided to switch over to a faster option of Instant Garlic Bread..

Here's how I made it...

Ingredients:
Bread slices,
4 tbsps salted butter,
7-8 garlic cloves, crushed or very finely chopped,
Oregano seasonings, (I've used the one's you get from Pizza Hut/Domino's)Chilli flakes, (optional), (I've not used it here)
Salt as per taste,

Method:
1.) Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees.
2.) In a small bowl, mix the butter and the crushed/chopped garlic. Check and adjust the salt.
3.) Butter the bread slices with this mix and sprinkle oregano and chilli flakes.
4.) Toast the bread until the sides start to turn brown.
5.) Serve immediately.

Sneek Peek:



This tastes divine...especially when served along with a pasta dish...But like I said..its a tastier option than serving just a regular bread & butter for breakfast.


We love garlic bread...and we finished it all :) Yum Yum... :-0)

Orange Cake with Orange Glaze

A few months back, for Christmas, I had a small tea party. I had decided to make an Orange Cake from a paper cutting I had resevered for sometime. Shortly, after the tea party, I went off on a vacation and this post just did not get published. When Aparna announced the FIC-Orange this month, I knew what I had to do :-) Food themes like this, inspire you to get your posts out however lazy you might feel..:-0)

I had never made an Orange Cake before and this recipe was fairly simple. Thought of giving it a try. Good quality oranges are available during winter here (though nowadays oranges are available all round the year)especially the imported ones.

The orange glaze is the best part about the whole cake which I realized only after eating it!!! This cake makes a perfect tea time cake, if you have some oranges handy..


Ingredients for the basic Orange Cake:
2 cups flour,
1 cup powdered sugar,
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened,
2 eggs,
1/2 tsp salt,
2 tsps baking powder,
Zest from one orange,
1/2 cup orange juice,

Method:
1.) Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees for 10 mins.
2.) Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder thrice and set aside.
3.) In a bowl, beat the eggs. Add the sugar and butter and beat until creamy. Stir the zest and the juice of the orange at this point.
4.) Fold the flour mixture gently. Scrape down the sides and mix evenly. Pour the mixture into a greased pan.
5.) Bake in the centre of the oven for 30 mins or until skewer inserted comes out clean.

Ingredients for Orange Glaze:
Juice from one orange,
1/4 cup sugar,
2-3 drops of orange colour (optional),

Method:
1.) Mix the sugar and the orange juice and place it in a small pan.
2.) On low heat, keep stirring the mixture until the sugar is dissolved. If using color, add at this point.
3.) Once the cake is done, remove it from the tin immediately and transfer onto a plate or turntable.
4.) If the cake has puffed up in the middle, turn it over so that you have a smooth surface.
5.) Pour the glaze over the cake immediately. Allow it to cool down completely and then cut into pieces.

Sneek Peek:


The cake came out well, except that it had puffed up a little in the middle. I had to press it down a bit, so that the glaze gets soaked in properly.


The taste was awesome and we all loved it. The butter was a little less (the original recipe called for 2 cups of butter!!!) and hence the cake was slightly on the dry side. But since I was serving this for tea..it was fine. It went very well with the mood of Christmas as well!!!


The glaze had the right amount of sweetness, tang, and flavour and had soaked in well. Overall, quite an orangy experience!!!

Sending this off to Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen who is hosting the Food In Colours for the month of February, the original brainchild of Harini of Tongue Ticklers

Conversion Table and Common Substitutions

A genuine problem faced across the culinary world is the conversion aspect. We love to try out recipes from various parts of the world..but a look at the recipe and there you go again...pounds, ounces, grams, cups...Gosh! that looks complicated...Lets try the recipe some other time....

Tired of this..one day I went to the local market and got myself a kitchen weighing machine with a maximum capacity of 5 kgs. If you don't have one already, try and get one here..trust me its quite something!!! The weighing machine helped me to have a common platform to work on..GRAMS/KILOGRAMS! I always prefer to convert the recipe to grams because that way I cannot go wrong with the measurement. When measuring using cups, there is always a possibility to "add more" or "add less" than what the actual recipe calls for. For example, when a recipe calls for 1 cup of flour, we don't know whether it should be 1 leveled cup or 1 heaped cup. Adding more or adding less, drastically changes the end result of product in its texture and taste.

Now that I had a kitchen weighing machine, the next thing I needed was to convert the recipe to my desired platform...Honestly, there are lots of conversion sites available when you google it..however, not every conversion site gives you the appropriate information.

One site that I have always referred back is Diana's Desserts. Diana is a wonderful baker and her site has a beautiful collection of Bakes and Desserts. One of the sections in her website is called Conversion Calculator. I visit here often and I haven't seen a better conversion site than this one. It has everything that we need while baking or cooking. Its very user friendly and conversions for weight, volume, butter, length, oven and grams to cup conversion. What I love the most is the butter conversion to "stick". I was so unaware of this "stick" concept when I started baking a few months back. But Diana's Desserts solved my first problem. The site has lots of useful information...Have a look!!!

Another problem that we all face is substitutes for ingredients. I had a tough time until I found this interesting section in allrecipes.com. This section is called Common Substitutions where they have an ingredient wise table and gives you the exact measurements of substitutes. I find this very useful and handy when I run out of ingredients or I don't want to include an ingredient such as brandy or egg.

Most of you, by now, must have started to think that I'm the newly appointed Marketing Head for the above sites, but let me assure you..this post is just an attempt to help many others who have faced similar situations like me. I hope the Conversion Calculator and Common Substitutions sites help you as much as they have helped me in all my kitchen endeavours :-)

Happy Experimenting!!!

Walnut & Orange Cake with Ganache Frosting

Guess what…I had a new guest over this weekend…my mom!!! She came over on her way back from Kerala, just for 3 days..too short…I know..but I’m happy she came.. This was the first time she was visiting us, since we relocated to Blr…and I was equally excited as was my son. Oh! He was going to get a Spiderman games CD she had promised over the phone… I decided to surprise her with a nice cake..and something special it had to be.. Eureka!!! Let’s wear on the experimenting hat!!!

I’ve been on an experimentation mode for some time now.. and my blog is raining bakes from the start of the new year… Someone asked me the other day, is it the theme of the month or something… Ofcourse not!!!…but I will admit, I’m really getting passionate about baking. I’m getting better..but I’m yet to reach up there…I’ve drooled at some of the awesome bakes by some of my fellow bloggers and wondered is it really possible to get that perfection? Yes ofcourse, but only if you persistently try out new recipes, and don’t get bogged down by the response its going to get…Ahem..I’m being very optimistic here..

Like I said, the moment I wear the experimenting hat…ideas start pouring in.. I was thinking of making an orange cake.. but the last time I made it..during Christmas, it was quite simple..I had made it to serve for a small Christmas party I hosted at home.. But remember mom’s coming over..and it has to be special.. so I decided to add walnuts to the simple orange cake..and wow this could also be the time to experiment on a Ganache frosting..what say??? So Walnut and Orange Cake with Ganache Frosting it had to be…:-) It doesn’t take long to think…does it??


I had all the ingredients handy except oranges…so I decided to use an Orange Marmalade preserve instead. Since I was experimenting, the safest bet was to make a sponge cake.. Very simply put, its all ingredients measured out in the same proportion, in this case 150 gms. Since I was using an orange marmalade preserve which already has a lot of sugar, plus the chocolate ganache would also add to the sweetness…so I decided to weigh down the sugar for the cake. The walnuts and the orange marmalade together made a 150 gms…. So that’s it..i had all my ingredients weighed out and altered appropriately..


Here’s what went in finally….

Ingredients for the cake:
150 gms flour,
150 gms unsalted butter,
75 gms powdered sugar,
3 eggs,
50 gms walnuts, chopped,
100 gms orange marmalade preserve, (I've used Kissan)
1 tsp baking powder,
1 tsp orange essence (water based),
Few drops of orange colour (optional), (I've not used here),

Method:
1.) Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees for 10 mins. Grease a cake tin and set it aside.
2.) Sift the flour and the baking powder thrice and set it aside. Using a spoon mix the orange marmalade to make a smooth paste.
3.) In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the orange essence and beat until creamy and soft peaks appear.
4.) Slowly incorporate the flour into the butter/sugar/egg mixture. Scrape down the sides to ensure the batter is mixed well.
5.) Add the marmalade and the walnuts and mix well until fully incorporated. If you are using the orange colour, this would be the right time to mix the colour.
6.) Pour the batter in the greased pan and place it in the centre of the oven for 30 mins.
7.) Remove and allow it to cool on a wire rack.

Ingredients for the Ganache:
200 ml cream,
200 gms dark chocolate,
Few drops of orange essence (oil based),
Some chocolate shavings for decoration,
Silver or coloured dagrees,

Method:
1.) Place the cream and the dark chocolate into a pan and heat over low flame until all the chocolate has melted. Add the orange essence and keep stirring until everything its mixed well and no lumps remain. Allow this to cool.
2.) Frost the cake as per your choice. Decorate with grated chocolate shavings and silver dagrees.

Place the cake in the fridge and serve chilled.

Sneek Peek:


I was amazed at the results..the orange and the chocolate were married perfectly...and the walnuts added the right amount of crunch to flavours. The chilled chocolate ganache tasted awesome as well.. I was quite skeptical about the ganache as this is the first time I was trying it out...but I'm glad it came out well..


Mom, hubby and my son loved it..and mom instantly declared me a "Daring Baker" :-)


We enjoyed this chilled bake as the country celebrated its 60th Republic Day!!!