“The easiest diet is, you know, eat vegetables, eat fresh food. Just a really sensible healthy diet like you read about all the time.”
Drew Carey
Baby Mustard Greens Indian Stir Fry … quick, as spicy as you like it, simple and fuss free. Fresh produce is one of the highlights of winter in North India, and mustard greens a quintessential favourite. Someone asked me the other day if I only bake, and I almost gawked! I cook more than I bake, or maybe equal amounts. I love to cook, and love trying new stuff. I just don’t blog it often enough.
So turning a corner near home yesterday, I chanced upon this young lad selling a cartload of farm fresh vegetables. The greens caught my glad eye and I hit the brakes. They weren’t the normal greens we see everyday. They were tiny, or rather baby, mustard greens … fresh, tender and absolutely delightful. All I could think of was ‘I wish I had my camera‘. The next best thing was of course to buy some, take it home and shoot! So I bought a bunch of stuff for a princely Rs100 {less than $2} and raced home in excitement.
North Indian winter is incomplete without a meal of sarson ka saag and makki ki roti. It’s a dish I make often through the winter, yet this year I haven’t got there for some silly reason. The upside of course that winter is longer and colder this year, so there’s plenty of promise of the dish showing up in the days to come. Since that is a more involved dish to make despite the several shortcuts I take, the Baby Mustard Greens Indian Stir Fry seemed a simpler option.
A quick consultation with Sangeeta who rules the roost for fresh produce and is a ‘food knowledge bank‘ in my eyes, and I knew what I would make. I cooked up a simple stir fry … loads of green chilies and loads of flavour, and served it up with one of my favourite non vegetarian dishes – a chicken korma. Kept the leaves whole for this since they were small and tender, yet you can always chop them up.
Also feel free to reduce {or increase } the green chilies. they add a nice touch of heat served alongside the mild and flavourful Awadhi Chicken Korma, which incidentally is one of our family favourites. That korma, shared here and seems to get better each time we make it! It’s simple and uncomplicated too, with staple pantry ingredients.
[print_this]Recipe: Baby Mustard Greens Indian Stir Fry
Summary:Baby Mustard Greens Indian Stir Fry … quick, as spicy as you like it, simple and fuss free. Fresh produce is one of the highlights of winter in North India, and mustard greens a quintessential favourite.
Prep Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 30 minutes Ingredients:
750g baby mustard greens, leaves picked
1 1/2 tbsp mustard oil
1 whole dried red chili
1/2 tsp asafoetida
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 green chillies, finely sliced
1 medium tomato, chopped
Salt to taste
Method:
Wash and spin the baby mustard leaves in a salad spinner to get rid of extra water. {You can chop the leaves f you like]
Heat oil in a wok, add the whole red chili when the oil reaches smoking point, and discard it once it blackens.
Add asafoetida, green chillies and tomato to oil and stir fry to mix.
Add all the leaves, reduce heat to simmer and cover and cook for 5-7 minutes until the leaves wilt.
Open, season with salt, stir to mix well, and simmer for another 10 minutes or so until the leaves are cooked.
Increase heat and stir fry until dryish. taste and adjust seasoning.
“I am starting to think that maybe memories are like this dessert. I eat it, and it becomes a part of me, whether I remember it later or not.”
Erica Bauermeister
Dark Chocolate Oat & Walnut Pudding {eggless} … with the festive season well underway, it’s always the more the merrier when it comes to desserts. Leave it to me, and I would pretty much try and squeeze and recreate every dessert to fit into wine glasses, or any glasses for that matter. There is something quite ethereal and fun about it. Convenient and quick too!
This is what the year is probably going to be like. Quick recipes. Fun too. Hopefully will get a handle on the techs behind the camera. The healthy, or rather healthier twist is also going to rule. Feels like a lot more chocolate through winter, and then loads of summer fruit in the hot months. So much to look forward to.I am a huge believer in individually portioned desserts, preferably in glasses. It’s fun to layer in them, fun to see the visual delight they offer and fun to see kids faces light up while holding a stem glass. That I also play around with different sizes and kinds of glasses is a personal choice. I need to break the monotony of life, of setting, of serving and of course of taking photographs.
So this is a recipe I recently did for Cosmopolitan India. The criteria was interesting … an original recipe, easy to cook, shouldn’t take longer than 20-30 minutes to put together and most importantly, it should boast ingredients with ‘beauty benefits’. Create anything you like as long as it will do the skin some good.I have been working a LOT with oats of late, especially with my association with Fit Foodie. Well oats are good for the skin too, as a scrub, as a face pack, and of course ‘in a dish to eat’!! Chocolate and honey fitted right in! Just my kind of recipe, and one that went well with the theme!
So Good for You! Oats are big on anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that battle skin probs, and they work as a natural moisturizer. Dark chocolate repairs dry skin, shields against UV rays, erases fine lines and wrinkles, adds shine to locks, and promotes hair growth!
I did another interesting dessert in a glass for a magazine I write for. It was a Cranberry Cocktail Fruit Jelly, which appeared in Abraxas NU this December. The recipe is festive, it’s fun and it’s make ahead! See… On another note, I was thrilled to be featured in the VOGUE India, Food & Drink Guide 2015 … doing what I like to do best! The guide showcased ‘food bloggers who are excellent photographers’. Yours truly found mention there!
Cheers to the new year. What is your favourite ‘dessert in a glass’ OR favourite way to serve dessert?
[print_this]Recipe: Dark Chocolate Oat & Walnut Pudding {eggless}
Summary: The Dark Chocolate Oat & Walnut Pudding turned out bowl scraping good. Deeply soul satisfying, smooth with beautiful texture, it’s quite delightful for an eggless chocolate pudding. Using oats meant that it ended up being gluten free too! {Recipe can be easily halved}. Serves 8
Prep Time: 5 minutes Total Time: 20 minutes plus chilling Ingredients:
Pudding
400g 2% milk
200ml low fat cream
30g cocoa powder
35g oats, ground to fine meal
125g 52% dark couverture chocolate, chopped
75g brown sugar
50g honey
50g roasted walnuts, chopped
Topping
Roasted walnut halves
chocolate shavings
Method:
Place all ingredients in a heavy bottom pan and simmer over low heat, stirring constantly until it begins to thicken. Once it becomes as thick as a custard, take off heat, allow to cool, then puree with an immersion blender or blitz in a food processor.
Fold the chopped walnuts through {optional}
Pour into serving bowls / glasses.
Cool and then chill for 4-6 hours, preferably overnight.
Top with roasted walnuts, chocolate shavings, or even seasonal berries like blueberries, strawberries etc.
“I have more healthy cravings than my normal eating habits, like I crave fruit and cold things like smoothies.”
Kourtney Kardashian
Smoothies … you gotta love them. As the years pass by, the head wins over the heart. You know that it’s easier to gulp down a smoothie than chew through a buncha green leaves! And you also know that however good or bad it tastes, a well balanced, seasonal smoothie is going to do you a load of good. It’s pointless waiting for the new year to come and make resolutions, so I just got the ball rolling and made them before! Post the Jaipur trip, what with all the over the top indulgence and pampering, I had but one thing on my mind, get FIT!I have begun taking tiny steps. I’m eating healthier, I’m not eating out a lot, fewer food reviews, some form of exercise … and of course smoothies. I’ve also been invited to join the Fit Foodie panel on Saffola, which just gives me more reason to work towards my goal! I’ve put together a small graphic to make things easier. Play around with these three groups {not an exhaustive list} , add some yogurt, milk, buttermilk, almond milk, fruit juice or maybe water as required. I also throw in spoon or two of oats at times.Do you smoothie? Here’s a bunch of recipes to set you off if you want to join in. You can find some here too. I basically go through the fridge to find what I can use and pair. I made three versions yesterday, and surprisingly enough the persimmon one was the best. The spinach, cuke and tender coconut water was nice too. The banana smoothie we have everyday, so that was quite normal, but normal good. Such fun. The processor is such a magic machine!
The processor is a blessing in disguise for soups too, though the immersion blender works really well in most cases. A while ago however someone asked me what the difference was between a food processor and blender. I have both in the kitchen, and it set me thinking. Thought I’d try and answer the query here just in case you had similar questions. Hope it helps…
Food processors and blenders, what are the differences between them?
If you only have a small kitchen then you may be wondering if you really need both a blender and a food processor. The fact is that although both gadgets have blades, and a reputation for dicing and slicing, they actually have quite different uses. If you are going to be able to do all of the jobs you need to in a kitchen the chances are you are going to want to use a blender and a food processor at some point; especially if you regularly make smoothies or soups. When does a blender come into its own? The shape and blades of a blender are designed to cater for soft fruit and liquids. The name really says it all; these gadgets are excellent for blending ingredients into such delights as tasty smoothies. Depending on what fittings your blender has it may be able to cope with slicing ice for use in the smoothies; this can make them into an extra special treat on a hot summer day. These tasty additions to any menu are a great way of getting fruit into a child’s diet. You can use the pulp produced when you are juicing to create imaginative and colorful smoothies that most children will love. The shape of a blender is slender and designed to accommodate soft and liquid products, and not usually more solid produce. What about a food processor? If you are using liquids then it’s a good idea to stick to using your blender, but for anything more solid you should switch to a food processor. Food processors have blades that are designed for chopping and slicing. They also have a bowl that is larger and can accommodate more solid produce. If you have vegetables that you want to reduce in to small pieces to use in a soup then a food processor is the perfect gadget to use. It can cope with all sorts of vegetables and nuts, and in no time you will have all of the ingredients you need to make as much delicious soup as you want. Which is the best to have, a blender or a food processor? The answer to this question is really going to depend on what you need to do most. Is it more important to you to be able to blend together liquids, making drinks and smoothies; or is it more important to you to be able to slice vegetables for soups or stews? It may be that you need to do both. There are blenders that have blades which provide a certain amount of chopping capacity, and food processors can deal with a very small amount of liquid, but generally if you want to be able to blend and chop you are going to have to make room in your kitchen for both a blender and a food processor.
So I guess it’s time to SMOOTHIE! Come join me. Grab a bunch of fresh seasonal produce, pair it with a medium you like, throw in some nuts, seeds, herbs and get going. Once you’re done, what’s next? Soup maybe?
[print_this]Recipe: Fruit & Vegetable Smoothies
Summary: Time for SMOOTHIES! Come join me. Grab a bunch of fresh seasonal produce, pair it with a medium you like, throw in some nuts, seeds, herbs and get going. 3 recipes to get you going …
Persimmon Orange Strawberry Smoothie Flesh of 2 fully ripe persimmons 5 strawberries {approx 50g} Juice of 1 orange 1/2 cup water Pinch rock salt Place in jar of Thermomix, processor or blender. Blend until smooth. Add extra juice or water if desired.
Cucumber Spinach tender Coconut Water Smoothie 1 small English cucumber, with skin {approx 100g} Small bunch fresh spinach leaves{approx 35g} 200ml tender coconut water Pinch rock salt Place in jar of Thermomix, processor or blender. Blend until smooth
Banana Chocolate Oats Smoothie 2 bananas {chopped, frozen in summer, normal in winter} 300ml low fat milk, soy milk, almond milk 1 tsp brown sugar{optional} 1 tbsp oats {or almonds} 2 heaped tbsp cocoa powder Place in jar of Thermomix, processor or blender. Blend until smooth.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to grab an apple – or grapes, or strawberries. Something that’s healthy but maybe a little bit more adventurous, if you can see fruit as adventurous.” LL Cool J
Whole Grain Apple Crumble. Always room for dessert as I limp back into normal everyday life after too much indulgence of late. That weekend trip to the Jaipur Marriott spoilt me silly. Then came a family wedding/reunion. With the holiday season now in full swing, I am taking a small ‘eating out‘ sabbatical. I have to knock off the pounds I’ve gained. Got to get fit!
And that certainly does not mean no good home eating. Or baking. Fruits and whole grains are always welcome as dessert. I love to bake with them, and the family loves to dig into them. There is something comforting about a fruit bake with apples, cinnamon, walnuts and brown sugar. A nice crisp topping and it promises to be a winner.
I’ve been working with a publisher to style a cookbook and I took these cookies along for the team one morning. Fresh from the oven, it smelt divine. We dug in later halfway through the shoot and everyone loved it. There was lots of other food I cooked and styled for the book that day, that we eventually devoured. Even though we were ready to burst, there was room for dessert! Always is!
I bake crumbles a lot through winter, with different permutations and combinations. Sometimes when I’m short of time, I do the fruit filling in advance, make the crumble and store it alongside. Pop it into the oven an hour or so before dinner. It holds sweet promise of a delicious end to the day. Serve it with a good quality vanilla ice cream for extra indulgence, or maybe just unsweetened single cream. For me, just a small serving as is works. Drat, those extra pounds!!
And in other news, something special again came my way a few days ago. After the beautiful Mauviel 1830 set I received from France, a sweet lady stopped by my place one morning. She brought for me this retro porcelain enamelware set from Fujihoro Japan. I fell in love with the colours, the quality and the workmanship. Incidentally, Fujihoro has recently been featured in India Today as one of the hottest new products!
Bright yellow really works with me, as also the fact that you can cook and serve in this beautiful cookware too. One of the recipes shot for the cookbook was a Kachi Mirch ka Gosht. An absolutely lip smacking recipe which I cannot divulge as the book is yet to go into print. I cooked a murgh {chicken} version of it at home a few days ago.
With a heavy tight fitting lid and great insulating properties to allow a low simmer, the pan delivered an absolutely delicious curry. The enamelware surface has a non-porous hardened vitreous coating which does not absorb any residue from previously cooked food and is stain resistant, odourless and bacteria free once cleaned. The pan can go into the oven too {sans the lid which has a really really nice fitted wooden knob on top}. I think I just might bake the fruit crumble in the next time!
Recipe: Whole Grain Apple Crumble
Summary: The Whole Grain Apple Crumble is an autumn / winter dessert which is pure comfort food. Here’s a version of the apple crumble gone healthy. Serve with some good quality vanilla ice cream, or some unsweetened cream, or just as is.
Prep Time: 10 minutes Total Time: 40 minutes Ingredients:
Toss all ingredients for apple mix in a bowl to oat fruit well. Can add raisins and walnuts if desired. Turn into 1 litre pie dish, and make topping
Topping
Run oats, whole almonds and wheat flour {aata} in blender. Add in brown sugar and mix. Reserve. Gratein frozen butter and toss lightly together to get a bread crumb like mix {I normally pulse in processor, short and quick to evenly distribute}
Cover the fruit with the topping, pressing down gently to make sure the fruit is sealed in.
Bake for about 30 minutes until light golden brown on top.
{Tent with aluminum foil if the top is over-browning.}
Saffron Pistachio Indian Bread Pudding {eggless} …. this is a post about bread pudding, the festival season, travel, cookware, memories, possessions, obsessions, food props & styling, connects and so much more. To begin with, a bit about the dessert. Fascinatingly, almost every culture across the world has it’s own version of bread pudding. In many cases, eggs are an intrinsic part as they help to firm up the custard to offer a rich pudding. That version is often baked. We grew up with a no bake eggless version, quintessential in this part of the world. Locally referred to as Shahi Tukda, its translation quite literally ‘the royal bit{e}’! Inherent ingredients … bread of course {day old if possible}, clarified butter, sugar, full cream milk, often khoya {milk solids also known as mawa}, dry fruit. Saffron if you want to add to the flavours and give it that special touch. I love using saffron. A nice generous teaspoon and you have seductive, lilting flavours in your dessert.
Pistachio slivers, rose petals, beaten silver foil, more saffron … anything to make it even more festive. I thought it fitted right in with my newly acquired {read received as a gift} Mauviel1830 rectangular roasting pan. And there begins another connect … a food prop connect!
I am fascinated by food props. Metal, stone, wood, ceramic, stoneware. However, metal is my first love. Copper to get even more precise. Most folk who know me know well of my love for food props, vintage mostly. A trip to the Kashmir valley in March this year left me virtually breathless. The people, the places, the architecture, scenic beauty, an old world charm … Also old markets, spices and of course copper-ware. Loads of it. Old Srinagar market is filled with the most beautiful intricately engraved copper. The natives use it in everyday cooking; it’s a part of their life. There was only so much I could carry back. I had been warned about excess baggage!!
And then last week came something that I had never imagined. More copper. A gift all the way from Normandy, France. Not vintage, but something that left my heart going THUD THUD THUD!! A set of the most beautifully crafted, stellar quality copper and steel cookware form the iconic French brand Mauviel 1830! Take a look.
Srinagar means a lot to me. A childhood connect, copper-ware, shikaras, houseboats, snow, saffron, rogan josh, goshtaba, bakeries, fruit, beautiful people … For the recipe, I wanted to use saffron. I’ve done a really nice Caramel Saffron Panna Cotta earlier, so this time opted for a simple eggless Indian Shahi Tukda or bread pudding.
This Mauviel1830 rectangular pan offered me a perfect choice even though it’s a roasting pan. You can bake an egg custard bread pudding in the pan for a variation. Here is what I did. I tried to use as many of the beautiful creations from Mauviel1830 in this simple recipe. The adorable little pan was used to melt the clarified butter in. The copper bowl for whisking the milk, cream, and condensed milk, the heavy bottom saucepan for reducing the milk concoction…and of course the rectangular pan for final plating.
It’s a really nice set, and using Mauviel made my experience totally memorable. I felt royal. You got to experience it to believe it. Each piece screams quality, feels great to hold, is crafted with care, and beautiful to look at of course…… as a friend rightfully commented on FB, Mauviel1830 is an investment.
Do head off to Sharon @ The Keybunch to find my simple, rich and indulgent yet rich Indian Shahi Tukda or Saffron Pistachio Indian Bread Pudding {eggless} recipe. It’s a quintessential Indian dessert, kept light by toasting the bread. Feel free to play around with spices and or/ingredients. The recipe is pretty basic. Use cardamom or star anise, maybe nutmeg for a change in flavour. Skip the condensed milk and use ricotta, mawa/khoya and sugar instead.
“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway” Michael Pollan
Jamun {Wild Indian Java Plum} Mousse … possibly the best way to bid adieu to this humble fruit. I had a bag tucked away in the fridge for long. Forgot about them, and life went on. Then we were at threesixtyone°, The Oberoi, Gurgaon, and along came the silkiest Jamun sorbet ever. It was so pretty too.
Ruchira captured the very essence in her post here … “We were served the amuse bouche next – a Jamun or Java plum sorbet which was so creamy that it felt like silk in the mouth. The tang from the plum along with the roasted cumin and rock salt was extremely light and refreshing.”
Jamuns danced in my head all day. There’s something about the fruit. It’s astringent, and somewhat edgy. You develop a flavour for it. I knew there was to be something jamun made soon. I still remember a sublime jamun mousse we had enjoyed at Sangeeta’s place a year ago. That had white chocolate in it. I had none on hand so was a little unsure if my mousse would hold.
It sure did. Beautifully. This mousse was quite delicious. I wasn’t sure how it would be received by the kids. They took to it quite happily. The daughter was in from uni for the Independence Day weekend. She was happy to be served dessert. It’s funny how she’s suddenly begun appreciating the little things in life! Life teaches you. A lot.
There was a time when we used to forage for jamuns, climb trees, graze knees to shake the branches. Greedily picking jamuns off the ground and stuffing them into our mouths feels nostalgic now. They tasted sweeter, left our fingers and clothes purple. The stains never came off. Those memories will never fade either. There are few jamun trees left to forage now. Thankfully sales in the bazaar have increased since the wild Indian java plum has become commercially viable.
[print_this]Recipe: Jamun {Wild Indian Java Plum} Mousse
Summary: Jamun {Wild Indian Java Plum} Mousse is light, fun and a beautiful way to use produce in season. Use any seasonal berry if you can’t find these. It’s a sublime make ahead dessert option.
Prep Time: 20 minutes Total Time: 45 minutes {plus macerating, cooling and chilling time} Ingredients:
400g jamun
50g sugar
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
400g low fat cream chilled
50-75g sugar {as per taste}
1tsp gelatin powder
Method:
Toss the jamuns and 50g sugar in a bowl and leave to macerate for a few hours. Crush with fingers to remove pulp.
Place pulp in a pan with sugar and balsamic vinegar and cook to jammy consistency. Cool completely, then blend to a fine puree. Reserve about 1/4 cup for topping if desired.
Warm 25ml cream in a bowl, sprinkle over with gelatin and allow to soften. Cool.
Whip the cream and sugar to medium stiff peaks. Strain the gelatin into the cream and mix. Then gently fold in the jamun puree into the cream. Spoon gently into serving glasses, top with reserved puree and chill for 4-6 hours.
