Passion Fruit Curd

Fruit curd is sinful, plain and simple. You're using copious amounts of cholestrol-filled ingredients and topping it with generous helpings of sugar.

The complicated taste however is definitely worth a few spoons on a cracker. We had a large number of passion fruit land up at home, courtesy of a generous grower. The first thing that came to mind was to dunk them in some potent spirits and let them stew for a couple of weeks. A majority of the fruits went into glass bottles drowned in vodka to rest for a couple of weeks.
The remainder aged in their place till they had to be either eaten or thrown away.

The idea for passion fruit curd came from a recipe on Meeta Weimar's website. She has an amazing blog with some pretty recipes. I doubt I'd have the patience to make her cakes and biscuits simply because I'm not into it at this point. What caught my attention was her recipe for fruit curd. It looked crazily simple and the wife confirmed the same.

Here is what I finally used

1 egg (the recipe asks for yolk)
2 passion fruit pulp
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter

Method

1. whisk the egg thoroughly to make sure the whites are not separate. You want the mass to be as homogeneous as possible. Create a double boiler where only the steam from the water heats the vessel with the egg and stir continously

2. Add the sugar and pulp and continue stirring until the mixture thickens.

3. Remove from the heat and add the butter. Mix to blend in the butter. The recipe asks for chilled butter, but I just used normal home made butter that was at room temperature

4. Once the mixture has cooled down to room temperature, transfer to a container and chill.

This is best eaten with a fruit bread or something that allows the taste of the citrus curd to mix with a bland base. All I had at hand were some strawberries which I drizzled the curd over. Lovely smooth taste with the crunch of the passion fruit seeds.

You could supposedly try this with any citrus fruit. Its a great appetizer to have with even plain bread.

Pita Pita

Pita's are probably the simplest breads to make. They're quick and you can have them on the table in about 3 hours flat. Simple veggies, preferably the salad types slathered with some amazingly simple dipping sauces - hummus, babaganoush, tzaziki and muhammarah are some of the common complements.
I'd made pita's about 5 years ago but was disappointed with the irregular pockets that it developed. I believe my rolling has improved since then and I can roll out a chapathi fairly evenly.
I decided to do a wheat mix, not so much to make this healthy than to have a better texture to the bread. Here's the recipe for the pita I made

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat flower
1 cup water, warmed to a little higher than ambient
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp instant yeast

Mix all the ingredients till they come together. You can vary the water to suit your mix. What you need in the end is a slightly wet ball of dough. Let this double in size (about 1hr for me). Knock the dough back down, make equal size of balls (a little larger than golf ball size) and place them under a wet towel allowing them to rest for 10 mts. Pre heat the oven to the highest temperature possible (250C for me). If you have a stone, that would be perfect. I have a stoneware tava that I used upside down.
Roll out the ball of dough to the thickness of a paratha and cook in the oven for between 3-4mts. Take out the pita and place them in a paper bag for them to retain the moisture and remain soft for a while.

I made the muhammara sauce by eyeballing the ingredients - roasted red bell peppers, toasted pecans (can use walnuts), bread crumbs, garlic, olive oil & salt. The only ingredient that required a bit of prep was the pomegranate syrum that I created by slowly boiling pom juice over 15mts. Whip these in the blender till you get a smooth paste.

I created the pita pocket by just cutting through the middle of the bread.
Slather the sauce into the pita pocket and add basically any veggie you can find. I had some left over chickpea and gherkins along with a bit of thick curd.

Mungaru Male - Runny Nose & All

The unofficial announcement of the arrival of the south-west monsoons has happened - cloudy days, intermittent rain, wet apparel on the clothes lines and runny noses. Chicken soup comes to mind as a natural remedy in such situations. However, I wasnt keen on a heavy meaty broth early in the morning. Decided I'd try something lighter and quicker to make.
We've had some very good peaches available in the market over the last few weeks. They cost a packet, but taste divine. With our whacky ideas, a couple of them were dunked in vodka to infuse over the next few weeks. We've got a batch of coffee liquor and passion fruit in progress. Looks like we'll have a fair variety to choose from when the rains are in full swing.
Back to the morning preperations. I've never been a tea person, but with left over fruit offal (peach skin), I thought I'd make an exception. A peach tea seemed a good idea with muggy weather for company. Here's the recipe

2 cups water
1/2 cup peach skins (you can use the peach flesh, but I think thats a waste of expensive fruit)
1 tsp tea (any variety is fine)

Add the water to the peach skins and bring to a simmer. Add the tea and let simmer for 5mts, strain. Add a touch of honey (not too much, honey overpowers prety much anything else) and drink!

Sultry Summers - A time to wrap

The monsoons are on the horizon and Bangalore is feeling it. With cloudy mornings, muggy days and thundershowers in the evening, lunches are a simple affair at home, more so Sunday lunches.
The idea today was to make something simple and light. The first thought that crossed my mind was a burrito. But with no beans available, we settled for an alternate - tortilla chips.
Tortilla chips and salsa are as addictive as congress peanuts. Memories of the Mexican restaurants in the US are of unending bowls of chips and salsa accompanying spicy burritos, re-fried beans and guacamole.The tortilla chip seems fairly simple to make - you deep fry triangle-shaped pieces of corn tortilla's and whip up a quick salsa with ripe tomato's, jalapeno's, lemon juice and coriander.
We've got a few kilo's of ground corn flour that was made fresh at the mill near home. Looking up recipes, we decided to make the chip from scratch. It somehow did not work out as advertised in the recipes on the net. We landed up with something resembling brittle porridge, refusing to stick together in order to roll these into tortillas. We settled for polenta - seemed easier to make. The polenta will probably be breakfast tomorrow.
In all the rush to get the tortilla chips together, I decided to cut corners and make a quick wrap with lettuce, cheese and tomato's along with some freshly made chapathi's.
I made a quick layering sauce out of store-bought yogurt. Added to this the missus had some relish made last week. Turned out to be an amazing combination

Recipe for the spreading sauce
2 cups yoghurt
1tsp salt
1tsp dijon mustard (mine is still curing, so limited this to just 1tsp)
1/2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp paprika powder
1/2 tsp pepper

Give all these a quick whisk and refrigerate about 30mts.

Smear the sauce on an open chapathi rolled out as thin as you can and add shredded lettuce, tomato's, cheese and relish. Fold like a wrap, and that's all there is to it.

The relish and yogurt makes things that extra bit nice.