Chocolate biscotti

I am quite enjoying this story telling form of presenting the recipes for a change.

    Biscotti for me is something like cake rusk and I like the chocolate and nut version of it the best.
I have yet to get a deliciously crisp texture to my biscottis and you can be rest assured that I will share it with you all.

    All you have to do is to take three tablespoons butter and half a cup of powdered sugar and cream it well. Add an egg and beat with a whisk or a egg beater till well mixed.

     Sift one cup of flour , one fourth cup of cocoa powder , half a teaspoon of baking soda and one fourth teaspoon of baking powder.

     Add one tablespoon of the sifted flour at a time to the butter egg mixture alternating with one fourth cup of water at room temperature.

   You will end up with a thick sticky lumpy mixture . Add half a cup of chopped cashews and stir into the batter.

    Line a cookie sheet with an aluminuim foil and grease it  and pat the mixture into an inch thick oblong log.You will have to moisten your hands to get a neat job.

     Bake in a preheated oven for 25 minutes , while still hot , cut into one inch thick slices with a serrated knife.

      Lay the slices flat and bake again at the same temperature for five mintues and turn over the slices and bake again for another five minutes.

     Allow the biscotti to come at roomtemperature before storing them.

Baked and sliced fish

We had a pleasantly busy Sunday today. I found a great shop here in Vizag which has a delightful collection of baking items.

I went crazy looking at the latest stuff which has come into the market which makes baking lots more easier and the turn out better.

           After spending over an hour in the small but well stocked shop famous to all cooking enthusiasts by the name "la choclate", I  came back a little tired and I had little time and energy to prepare a grand meal so I did a quick fix with the following ingredients and the result was good.

        I had baked whole mackerels yesterday in an aluminium tin for about 20 minutes at 180 degress celcius, and after they had cooled down, I deboned them and mashed them gently with the finger tips and stored the mixture in the  fridge for use today.

        The mashed fish was about two cups and I put  it in a mixing bowl and added the following…one cup of fresh bread crumbs ( now this is simply a little stale bread about a day or two old and kept in the fridge so its not like really dry like a rusk but  it crumbles the moment you rub it between your hands).

        Then I added two finely chopped onions, half a cup chopped coriander leaves , half a teaspoon of ajwain / bishop's seeds, one teaspoon of fennel powder/ saunf, half a teaspoon of dry ginger powder/ sonth , one teaspoon of black pepper powder, five tablespoons of olive oil, two eggs and salt to taste.

 I just gently mixed all this stuff and pressed it into a greased loaf tin. 

I baked it at 180° for about thirty minutes and once done , I cut it into thick slices and served immediately with hot buttered toast.

Jaggery cake

Jaggery cakes have a pleasant rustic flavour. Jaggery is high in iron content and a good alternative to sugar. The pleasant smell of jaggery reminds me of the summer and winter holidays we would spend with my grandparents at their farms where a big lump of jaggery was the daily dessert .

         I love tea made with jaggery too.....sounds too rural but it tastes heavenly with a fragrance of spices brewed with the tea. The caramelised colour of the tea is so delicious and a spicy snack is an absolutely irresistible combination . My sister often jokes that inspite of being born and brought up in cities I have an absolutely rural and rustic preference for food. I guess I haven't forgotten my roots.

       Village life in India has its charms and setbacks as well. But as a child one just sees the enjoyment part of it so thats how I want to keep the memories of the countryside visits. 

        Here goes the recipe of a jaggery cake which has always been my favourite in the winter months.

I had been wanting to put a jaggery cake since a long time and what best time than during the thick of the winter season .And  incidentally  this cake tastes best when it is eaten “hot hot”, either straight from the oven or warmed in a microwave for about 20 seconds.

Ingredients:

In American measuring cup of 250 ml

1.             ½ cup white sugar powder it after measuring it.

2.               125 grams butter

3.             1 egg

4.             1 cup grated jaggery or like I did , I just made a rough assessment by placing the big pieces in the cup and it seemed as if they would amount to about 1 cup ( just saved my effort of grating it)

5.             2 ½  cups  flour

6.             1 ½ teaspoon baking soda

7.             1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

8.             1 teaspoon ginger powder

9.              1 cup water

Method:

1.            Place the jaggery and water in a pan and let it melt and combine well .

2.             Cream the butter and sugar and add the egg and mix well with an electric beater or a whisk.

3.             Sift the flour with the baking soda and the ground powders .

4.             Add the sifted flour and hot jaggery water alternatively to the  mixture and beat well.

5.            Pour in to greased tin ( I used a ring shaped tin here ) and bake in a preheated oven at 180° for fifty minutes.

“A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”La tzu.
I am of the same opinion and beleive that walking on the metaphorical "off the beaten track" is far more intersting and exciting than just visiting the usual famous places.
      There is such a treasure of variety in India and just a little careful look around can reveal such amusing and heart warming sights .Thats what I tried capturing in my snaps and hope that you find them as pleasing as I did.
    I will not showcase here the pictures of the beautiful temples in the famous temple cities of Bhubneswar and Puri,  because I am sure you would have seen far better snaps of them, taken by professional photographers .     

All along the highway I found these cute little hay stacks. The paddy is harvested and what is left behind is dried and collected in these hay stacks to add to the fodder for the animals throughout the year . These hay stacks dotted the fields and gave such a charming effect to the whole atmosphere of rural and peaceful living. 

Another thing which struck the metropolitan me was that the bullock carts are still used as one of the modes of local transport and watching them was such a visual delight.

A charming rural fashion is that the women who work as farm hands carry their tiffin boxes skilfully balanced on their heads. Listening to their carefree and pleasant banter, I realised how much we lack all these small pleasures like chattering our way to the place of work  in the big cities.
     Life goes at such a easy and comfortable pace in these villages and when the ultimate aim of man  is happiness, honestly I didn't find it lacking  in  these parts bereft of gizmos and modern facilties. 

At Rambha I spotted this rumbling and run down small little home of a local and what particularly gave it an old world charm was the year inscribed on its entrance.

The bamboo stacks in the lake side at Rambha added to the beauty of this serene backwaters.

 This old man was a bakery on wheels and I must add that the cookies which we bought from him were so srumptious that it was hard to beleive that a local bakery baked such crisp and delicious goodies.
Give me some time and I will try and come up with some cookie recipes, though I must admit they can not be as good as the ones sold by this old gentleman.

       I am all for street food....the intersting assortment of piping hot snacks followed by the Puri cheesecake was a perfect finale to the deliciously intersting trip to these parts.       

Prawn tikka masala

Hello  friends , its great to be back home and back to blogging after a wonderful five day trip . I would soon be putting up some pictures of my trip to Bhubneshwar, Puri and Konark , but I am not ready with an interesting writeup as yet. Till then heres what I cooked for dinner today for my family.

   This is my version of the simplest prawn tikka masala and as usual the spices and ingredients would definetely be in your kitchen right now. Here goes the recipe….

Ingredients

1.   Two cups deveined and cleaned prawns ( I wash them in water with a half a teaspoon of turmeric powder)

2.   Two level tablespoons of ginger garlic paste ( you could even one tablespoon  here)

3.   1 ½ teaspoon of kashmiri red chilli powder ( my son found it a little too spicy to his liking, so I guess you could use just one teaspoon here)

4.   ½ teaspoon turmeric

5.   ½ teaspoon garam masala

6.   1 teaspoon chat masala

7.    Salt to taste or one teaspoon only

8.   One tablespoon oil for marination and about five tablespoons for the final cooking.

Method

1.  Mix all the ingredients including one tablespoon oil and marinate the prawns for atleast half an hour.

2.   Take the oil in a heavy bottomed pan and put the prawns in it and cook covered on low flame for about five to seven minutes.

3.   Take the cover off and on a medium flame, stir fry and cook the prawns till the masala or the marination dries up and the prawns are cooked. You will have to keep stirring in between.

4.   I don’t think there would be any need to add any water but if you feel its required just sprinkle some.

5.  Serve hot with wedges of onions.

Vanilla sponge cake / Hot milk cake 

We are going on a five day trip to Bhubhneshwar, Puri and Konark and a few more places around. I always like to carry a few home made snacks , but today I was down with a bad cold so did not have much energy to make much but I did manage a “hot milk cake” which I had been wanting to try for a long time.

In American measurement cups of 250 ml :

1.    2 cups powdered sugar

2.     2 ¼ cups flour

3.     1 ¼ cup milk

4.     10 level tablespoons salted butter

5.     2 ¼ teaspoons baking powder

6.     1 teaspoon vanilla essence
7.   4 eggs

Method:

1.    Beat the eggs and the powdered sugar with a egg beater ( yes, you have to use one here) for about a minute till creamy and almost  three times in volume.

2.    Warm the milk and the butter till butter melts but do not let it boil, just warming is enough.

3.    Sift the flour with the baking powder and then gradually fold in to the beaten eggs, don’t beat at this stage , just softly fold in the flour.

4.    Slowly add the hot milk into the batter and stir with a wooden spoon or the silicon spatula .

5.    Now the quantity of the cake is quite a bit so I would suggest that you take a ring shaped eight and a half in diameter and about four inches deep baking tin or a  ten inch diameter round tin.

6.    Bake at 180° for about 50 minutes.

Doughnuts

For those of you who thought that doughnuts were impossible to bake , here is the simplest ever never go wrong recipe where in you dont have to knead and knead the dough and then wait for it to rise and then knead again and bake for a long time.

 A hot favourite with all the children I have known, its incredibly simple to make. It wont take you more than thirty minutes to make thirty or more of these deep fried doughnuts.
I have used a doughnut cutter here, incase you do not have one but really want to make these, no sweat, take a sharp edged round  small steel glass and another smaller one , maybe the cap of the vanilla essence bottle or something like that to cut the inner circle. Now that you are armed to the teeth with all the simplest ingredients which I am sure are there in your kitchen right now, go ahead and surprise yourself that you also can make these goodies in half an hour. 

Ingredients:
In Indian measuring cups

1.           2  to 2½ cups flour

2.           1 cup castor sugar

3.           1 egg

4.           5 tablespoons refined oil

5.           5 tablespoons milk

6.           1 teaspoon vanilla essence

7.            1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

8.            ½ teaspoon soda

Method:

1.             Sift the flour with the soda and the baking powder.

2.              Mix the egg , sugar, oil , milk and vanilla essence with a whisk. you dont have to use an egg beater here as the whole idea is to just blend all the ingredients well. Just a few whips with a hand whisk will do the needful.

3.               Mix the dry and wet ingredients and  gently knead to form a dough. The reason why I insist on gently kneading is that you do not have to knead it like the regular dough for the rotis or bread, the whole idea is to just put the things together . If you find the dough too sticky then add a little more flour and if its too dry then just a tablespoon more of milk should make it into a nice soft and pliable dough. Thats another reason why I have written two to two and a half cups flour, use two cups at first and slowly keep adding more flour. Sometimes I have had to use about three cups of flour.

4.             Roll out  into 5mm thickness onto a dry surface sprinkled with flour  and cut with a doughnut cutter into doughnuts . Whenever the dough starts to stick either on the tabletop or your rolling pin, just sprinkle a little flour each time.

5.             Deep fry on medium flame till golden brown.