Lasagne

Made Lasagne last night. It was yum!

Onion Rings & Garlic Breadsticks

                                          

Had a dear friend coming over in the afternoon & wanted to make something for her & thought I'd try out my new recipe for Onion rings & I also made some garlic sauce to go with it. I do love the garlic sauce a lot. Guess I try to find opportunity to make it so often! I could've baked these instead of deep frying, but I thought I'd try the fried version for now & will bake the next time. Now for the recipe:

Onion Rings:

2 Large Onion
2 Tbsp Corn Flour

75gms Plain Flour

Pinch of Chilly powder

1/2 tsp Sugar

1/2 tsp Baking soda
1 egg
125ml Milk
Salt & Pepper to taste
Oil for frying (alternatively you can bake it)

1) Cut the onions into 1 cm round slices & seperate them as rings
2) In a bowl mix together all the dry ingredients & set aside

3) Mix the egg with the milk & whisk together

4) Transfer the wet ingredients to the bowl of dry ingredients & whisk together till the batter is smooth & free of lumps
5) Heat the oil  & drop each onion rings to the batter & fry them till light golden brown & then turn & fry the other side.

6) Season with salt before serving

This can be served with Garlic sauce also called as Thoum.

Been a while since I wanted to make Garlic Breadstick & finally did it last night. Made the dough the same way I do for a pizza & for the garlic butter, take a little softened butter (unsalted) & crush a few cloves of garlic & add oregano & a little salt & mix together & before baking add the butter on top of the breadsticks & voila! u've got your breadsticks.

I had a little  dough left after making the breadsticks & I made these rolls.

Roll out the dough into a rectangle & spread some garlic butter in the centre & spread some grated Parmesan cheese & few Olive pieces. Cut them as you would do for a cinnamon roll  & bake for about 20mins.

Roasted Potato

Roasted Potatoes or broiled potatoes are quite easy to make. I make them on days when I'm pressed for time. This can be had with a sandwich or as a side dish. Now for the recipe:

Ingredients:
3-4 Medium sized potatoes with the skin
5-6 cloves garlic thinly sliced or minced
1 - 1/2 Tbsp of dry or fresh parsley
1-1/2 Tbsp of dry of fresh Basil
1/2 tsp Salt
Olive oil

1) Wash the potatoes thoroughly such that the outer skin is free of mud and dirt
2) Slice the potatoes into small square pieces so that thy cook through well when grilled
3) Preheat oven to 225C
4) In a bowl add the garlic, parsley & basil & olive oil enough to coat all the potato pieces. Add the cut potatoes & mix well with all the ingredients. All potatoes must be coated well with all the ingredients.
5) On a baking sheet drizzle a little olive oil & transfer the potatoes. Grill the potatoes on top rack at 225C for about 10-15 mins (depending on the oven).
This can be served with garlic sauce.

Chicken in lemon sauce:

This does not take too long to make but yes it take about 20 - 30 mins in all. We made this on Friday night after we got home from night prayer. I hadn't prepared dinner so made this along with the potatoes & had with son bun as a sandwich. I had some garlic sauce which I prepared 2 days back. So that was the sandwich spread. We loved the lemony taste & the chicken & the onions was not too crispy but just tender & right.

Ingredients:1 Chicken breast piece cut into thin strips

2 Medium sized onion

Juice of a lemon
1Tbsp Parsley
2tsp Ginger Garlic paste
Salt to taste
1) Preheat the oven to 250C
2) Cut the breast pieces into thin strips, slice the onion into medium sized pieces & not too thin. To this add the juice of a lemon, ginger garlic paste, parsley & salt & mix well. Transfer this to an aluminium foil & seal the contents with the foil
3) Bake the chicken in sealed aluminium foil for about 10 mins.
4) After ten minutes carefully open the closed foiled & grill the chicken till lightly crispy, about 10mins.
5) Transfer to a serving bowl & use as a sandwich filling.
Alternatively instead of grilling, it can be baked for a further 10mins at 200C & served with Lemon sauce.

Garlic Sauce:
Juice of a lemon
4-5 cloves of garlic minced with some salt
1/2 - 1 cup of Canola oil

White of 1 egg

1) In a blend together the minced garlic, a little lemon juice & a little oil, alternating between the lemon juice & oil. The lemon juice reacting with oil & the garlic produces tiny curd like particle along the sides of the blender. You may not need the whole of the lemon juice & it can adjusted according to taste.
2) Continuously blend till the mixture appears to have tiny white pieces along the sides of the blender. Stop & scrape down the sides. Continue to blend a while longer & add the white of an egg.
3) Continue to blend till the mixture takes on a mayonnaise like consistency.
4) Once the mixture thickens, transfer to a bowl & refrigerate it overnight for the best result.

Hot chocolate cake

This is one chocolate cake which MUST be had hot & would go great with  a scoop of vanilla. Made this last evening.

Recipe:
4oz. Dark chocolate chopped ( I use selbourne)
4oz. Butter cubed
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Plain flour
2 Eggs (kept at room temperature)

1) Melt chocolate over double boiler. Once melted, remove from the flame.
2) Once chocolate is melted, add butter to it & let the butter melt in the heat of chocolate
3) Preheat the oven to 180C
4) Beat together the eggs & sugar till frothy & double the original quantity
5) Fold in the chocolate & butter mix to the beaten egg & sugar mixture.
6) Add the flour & mix
7) Grease a pyrex bowl & bake at 180C for 35-40mins.
8) Allow cake to cool in the bowl for 10mins & run a knife along the edge of the bowl.
9) Invert the cake over a serving plate & cut & serve with a vanilla scoop or butter scotch.

Once again a few days break

Busy days... B's mum, dad & bro are in town. Mum had a slight accident, she has crack on her wrist bone & has her arm plastered up, poor thing!! so me extra busy these day :-). Will be back in my mood soon. Oh! today I 'discovered' the Thoms Supermarket/Bakery. I am definitely going back there to check things out in DETAIL :-). Every time I say that B gets nervous coz it means I'll spending hours checking out every item they stock so that I can add to repertoire of where to find what :-D. Gotta hit the sack... pretty worn out.

Fish Curry

Its not everyday that I make fish/chicken curry the Kerala way. I'm not even sure I can ever achieve that 'mum's curry' taste :-). So want do you do when you are sure you can't do it the way its done? You improvise obviously :-D. B's folks will be here tomorrow & I guess I'm too nervous to even make a single dish the straight way. Its the 1st time Pappa is coming to see us in Blr & I guess I want them all to be happy with what I dish up :-D. Hmm... anyway the fish curry didn't come out like the way I make it usually & so I'm not sure what they'll think :-S.

I saw this Coffee Walnut cake in "What's cooking today!!" http://recipesfortheverydaywoman.blogspot.com/2010/09/coffee-walnut-ring.html & I couldn't resist the temptation to cook. So in the time between I kept the knead dough to rest & dal to soak, I started my baking session. Thankfully my l'le princess was asleep or else I'd have her cake batter prints all over my kitchen counter! So anyway while the rotis were being made, the cake was in the oven & I waited patiently for it to cool down & yes I did take my 1st bite.... LOVED it! Must thank Aliena for it :-). I didn't have maple syrup at home so I used the cherry syrup instead. Must ask Aliena where to find it. Wonder if its the normal pancake syrup... hmm must find out.

Sour cream - Cheese Potato casserole

That was our dinner last night. I must say I was lazy to cook dinner and yet dinner must be cooked or else I'd have a starving husband & a l'le baby :-). Checked out my fridge & I had a l'le sour cream and carrots n some pineapple. Oh well, I can throw 'em all in together & make a casserole. So off I went & boiled the potatoes & carrots, mashed them up, melted some cheese & tossed in the potato carrot mash & added some sour cream.

And off it went to the oven. Wanted to add in the pineapple but forgot so once it was off the oven, I tossed some pineapple on top & let it 'cook' in the heat.
For garnish I used a l'le dry Basil & a piece of Pineapple

Yet another chocolate cake :-)

Well don't misunderstand, I don't make the cakes & bakes for myself... On some days I love to cook on other days I wish I never had to enter the kitchen...ironic isn't it? But I can't resist the temptation to bake. When the temptation overpowers me I simply give in & bake something for friends :-).

Here's the chocolate cake I made yesterday.

Top of the cake

This time I used buttercream icing. I'm so excited about the piping bag my sis got for me from Muscat & I use every opportunity to bake for someone so I can decorate it with the beauties my sis gifted :-).
 
I didn't do a thick frosting on the cake side as its too much butter. I didn't want this 'gift' to make 'em put on weight ;-).

It must be Freekeh!

When I found the recipe for Mujaddara, I believed that was the my mystery dish... but after making it I was convinced that's not it... I've not been blogging coz I took a mini vacation of sorts. The best ppl in the world (well MY world) had come down & the joy of joys being able to spend time with my favourite nephew & niece! While I was there & looking through some of mum's cook books I came across something - Chicken Freekeh. Felt I must check it out & NOW i'm convinced that THIS is my mystery dish. Freekeh explains the 'greenish' thing I couldn't quite figure out... its Freekeh - roasted green wheat!!! yup and its made with chicken, beef or lamb. I was on top of the world to have finally discovered my mystery dish.
U'd think I'd jump at the opportunity, get the ingredients together & cook it... Just one problem though - I'm not able to find Freekeh anywhere in Bangalore. At least not where I've searched. I'm not as yet aware of a place/shop/outlet where one can get Middle eastern food items per se.

I spend a week almost searching the net for some clue as to where I may find these roasted green wheat. C'mon we are after all a wheat producing nation. Could it be that we really don't know about how in some parts of the world they set on fire the wheat when its green itself & use the grain as we use rice?
Freekeh is a very very healthy item to have. I read that its better than the brown rice too. And yet a lot of people are ignorant about this item. I tried making the dish with the normal broken wheat but it didn't turn out to my satisfaction. It is nothing close to what the Lebanese Flower used to make. Sigh... maybe I should go back to Auh & bring some Freekeh with me :-)... ya that's what we call wishful thinking!

Chocolate cake with whipped cream

Made a choc cake for a dear friend a few days back and clicked a few snaps of it too. I made it as a 2 layered cake with whipped cream as the icing. I put a few cherries between the two layers and decorated the cake with some cherries on top along with some chocolate shavings. I tried to make a frosting with plain cream (25% fat) but it didn't come out as expected.


Chocolate Cake Recipe:

1-3/4 cup of plain flour
3/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups of sugar
1-1/2 tsp Baking powder
1-1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp salt
2 Eggs
1 cup Milk
1/2 cup Vegetable oil
2 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 cup of boiling water

1) Preheat the oven to 180C/350F
2) Grease the baking pans & dust with flour
3) Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl
4) Add in the eggs, oil, milk, vanilla essence & beat on medium speed for 2 mins
5) Stir in the boiling water. The batter will be thin. Pour into the greased & dusted pans.
6) Bake for 35-40mins (depending on the oven)or until wooden skewer inserted in the centre comes clean.
7) Allow cake to cool in the pan for 10mins
8)Run a knife around the edge of the pan. Place a wire rack on top of the cake pan & invert it. Let the cake cool on wire rack.

Buttercream frosting or any other frosting can be used to decorate the cake. I used whipped cream & l'le bit of chocolate shavings.

Dates pickle

I've been to my hometown to attend my sister's bro-in-law's wedding & one of the item was dates pickle. I loved the taste! I'm not a fan of dates at all. I've never really liked it even when it was available in plenty in auh. Nor did I develop a taste of it afterwards & I've had dates lying around the house which neither B nor I ever 'remembered' to eat. Thankfully it was in the fridge & hadn't gone bad yet. So what do you think is the first thing I do once I'm back in Blr? Make the date pickle obviously. While at mum's place I found a recipe book which had the recipe for dates pickle. Without wasting any time I got to my work & I must say I liked what I made. Like I said before I'm neither a fan of dates nor or pickles in general. I don't like a lot of spicy food. But THIS dates pickle is more sweet than hot. It can even be had with samosa, kachori etc. Here's the recipe:




Dates Pickle:

500gm dates
2tsp Chilli powder
2bunchs Garlic
2x 1inch pieces Ginger
1/2 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp mustard
1/2 cup gingenelly oil ( I used canola oil)
3/4 cup vinegar
Boiled water cooled(I used 1-1/2cup)
Salt - to taste
1) Remove seed from dates
2) Make a paste of 1 bunch of garlic & 1 piece of ginger
3) Grind together with Chilli powder, cumin & mustard
4) Heat the oil & saute with 1 & 2
5) Slice rest of the garlic & ginger into long thick pieces & add into 4
6)Add vinegar, boiled water that has been cooled & salt & let it all boil
7) Add dates to the above & immediately take off the flame.

Take off the flame & mixed it all up & allow to cool. After cooling store it in an airtight container.