Fish In A Bag

They say you can never go wrong with fish. Cooks easy and tastes yum anytime. My experience is that it can go horribly wrong if you don't get the cooking time right or try a marinade that doesn't go with the fish you've chosen.
I happened to cook an interesting dish at the Herbs and Spices restaurant, courtesy the missus, ireboot & Manjeet (the guy who owns the place) a few years ago. The lady g'gifted' me an experience on my B'day and Manjeet was there to guide me in the kitchen. Needless to say, it was an unforgettable evening, probably my best b'day till date.
Back to today. I'd wondered whether I'd be able to replicate this dish at home with an Asian variation. The first time, the marinade and accompaniments were continental with fennel and white wine. Here's the recipe

Ingredients
1 whole fish (preferably one that will fit in your oven easily. I chose black pomfret), cleaned
2tbsp dark soy sauce
1tsp oyster sauce
1 stalk lemon grass, crushed
1tbsp grated galangal
1tsp oil
salt and pepper
1/2 cup white wine

Prepare the fish by making slits across the body.

To make the marinade, add the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Pour this over the fish. Gently rub the marinade into the slits and make sure you've coated the fish well. Cover and place in refrigerator for at least 1hr.
Preheat the oven to 220C and begin preparing the bag. Cut out enough length of parchment paper so you'd be able to place the fish in and fold over. Before folding, add in 1/2 cup of white wine. I did this to allow enough liquid to create steam in the bag.
Start folding the parchment from one end, folding over as you go along so it resembles the picture below

Place in the oven over a rack and let cook for 15mts. My biggest fear was the bag would give way at the bottom considering the liquid in it. This seemed to be unfounded since the label on the packet said it was built to withstand temperatures upto 420F. Here is what it looked like in 15mts and on my plate.

Cut out the parchment carefully making sure you allow the steam to escape before opening it all out. Eat as is  or with some hot fragrant rice.

Notice the marinade had no chillies. I kind of liked it that way. The marinade had turned into a sweet/salt syrupy mix that you could spoon onto the fish as you ate it. Happy with the result. Cooked 4yrs ago, and hadn't forgotten. Thanks Manjeet :-)

Soupy Sundays - Potato and Leek Soup

I'd decided on cooking soup for Sunday dinners for the rest of the year, so in essence, that gives me 5 more weeks of doing this. It's more to get into the habit of cooking and writing than anything else. Its also an opportunity to taste the great foccacia the missus makes for the soups.

Well, this weeks soupy Sunday was about simplicity and treading a beaten path. With showers on over the weekend and junior's cough taking its time to settle down, I thought a thick one-pot meal would be ideal. Potato and Leeks soup is a very common soup and a great one to cook if you want to just get things done in the kitchen and retire to bed early. Here's the recipe

Ingredients

2 medium potatos, skinned and diced into 1/2 cm cubes
3 leeks, stalks removed, cleaned and diced finely
1 cup milk
2 cups water
Salt and pepper to taste
3 cloves garlic (optional)
Finely chopped green stem of leeks to garnish (optional)

Start with cooking the garlic cloves in a mixture of 1tbsp butter and 1/2 tsp oil. Cook on low for 10mts till the leeks soften. Add the potato's and cover with just enough water. Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer for 20mts or till potato's are soft. Remove the mix and place in a blender with about half a cup of water from the soup.Blend as desired. I let a few chunks of potato lie in the mix. Add this back to the remaining liquid in the broth and stir in the blended mix. Add the milk and stir, all the while simmering the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste. Ladle out hot into bowls and serve with bread.

Playing with Fire - Roasted Pepper Dip

Roasting red and yellow peppers has gotten really addictive since I tried it a while ago. The process is simple enough and for the amount of baking we do, it certainly is convenient, especially as you pre-heat the oven when making bread.
Once roasted, the skins peel off real easy and the resulting pepper is sweet as ever. Turning this into a dip is super easy - depends on what you want the final product to turn to muhamara or just a plain dip with fresh baked pita pockets.

Ingredients
4 roasted and skinned peppers
2tbsp olive oil
1tsp balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
a pinch of chilly powder - as per your taste,remember, these peppers have a hint of heat still left in them


Blend all the ingredients together. The resulting dip can be used as a spread, dip or marinade for light meat like chicken. My pairing was with some terribly good sourdough from Breadworks which, in my opinion, continues to be the best sourdough source in Bangalore.

Soupy Sundays - Mushroom Soup with Focaccia

Winters here in Bangalore and it sure is chilly. The bright sun doesnt seem to be warming things up a lot so the garden is suffering. Wilted Poblano's and Jalapeno's and dying papaya saplings make a sorry tale.
Once the moping is done, its time to satiate the stomach. Decided to make the rest of the Sundays in the year 'soupy dinners'.
With the missus' ability to churn out breads at the drop of a hat (foccacia seems to be the mood), I added a complement of Mushroom soup with some really fresh looking button mushrooms bought over the weekend. This one is real easy and takes less than 20mts to make.

Ingredients
1/2 an onion, chopped into slices, dont worry about cutting these fine
1 packet of button mushrooms cleaned and roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup of red wine
1/2 cup milk (optional)
3 cups water (no broth here, I prefer it to be all 'mushroomy')
1/2 cup cream (optional)
1tsp cornstarch
salt & pepper to taste

 Add the garlic to hot oil in a saucepan . Add onions and cook till they brown. I like them to carmelize before deglazing the pan with the red wine. Once done, add the mushrooms and let them cook for about 5mts, taking care not to crowd them in the pan.

Once cooked, place all contents in a blender and puree to a fine paste. Remove and replace in the pan with the water. Bring to a gentle simmer adding the milk and cream. Simmer for a couple of minutes more and add salt and pepper as per your tastes. Pour and garnish with whatever you have lying around. I used Chopped chives from the garden and some roasted pepper dip. Serve with warm toasted bread. Luckily, we had freshly made foccacia

Notice there's no chilly here. I like my soups muted and like the main ingredient to stand on its feet with just a hint of salt and pepper.

Roast Chicken - Beer Style

Maggie Beer's got a great recipe for roast chicken using verjuice which looks really awesome. Though i didnt have verjuice, I thought i'd substitute a rather local ingredient which I have used before in other recipes - pomegranate juice.
Roasting a whole chicken can be quite an exercise if your oven is not big enough. With a 40L oven, i just about had enough space for the right air circulation, coupled with a convection fan, not something you see very regularly on most ovens you get in India. Here's the recipe

Ingredients

1 whole clove garlic
1 chicken with skin and cleaned
1 sprig rosemary, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lime juice
1 cup pomegranate juice (fresh, no canned)
Salt and pepper for the rub

Maggie suggests cooking the garlic in hot water for a few minutes before you roast it. I stuck with keeping them in foil for the entire period of roasting

mix the salt, pepper and rosemary and slather over the chicken, making sure you go under the skin and inside the cavity as well.

The rest of the recipe pretty much resembles hers, so I'm no going to repeat, except where I substituted verjuice for pomegranate, which gave it a bit of a delicious sweetish taste. Accompaniments were fresh baked bread and a side of guacamole.

Junior's Day Out

Junior's starting to develop a taste for fish. That gives me some company at home. The missus suggested I use no pepper or chilly to start off. That left me with a simple lemon-butter sauce to pour over a simple broiled fish.

Sunday mornings are always busy at the local fish stall. Junior wanted anything with a tail and zeroed in on a basket of medium pomfret. He proudly picked one up and handed it over to the owner to get it billed and specifically mentioned that he wanted the tail on ! That was probably the best entertainment that those gathered at the stall would have had in a while.

Here's the recipe

1 whole fish, cleaned, preferably one that will fit in your oven
salt and turmeric rub - 1 tsp salt and a pinch of turmeric

For the lemon butter garlic sauce
juice of half a lime
2tbsp butter
1 tsp oil
2 cloves garlic

Make slits on the fish and rub in the salt and turmeric. Keep this marinated for a couple of hours.
Pre-heat the oven to 200C and place the fish on a grill with a drip pan below to catch any droppings.
For the lemon butter sauce, start with lightly heating a pan with a blob of butter and oil so that the butter just melts. Add chopped garlic and cook for a minute. Take the mix off the flame and add the lime juice with a little salt to taste. This sauce is fairly bland and made specially this way for junior. You could spice it up with some chilly flakes and a touch of soy sauce.

Remove the fish from the oven and pour the sauce on just before eating. Enjoy !

Hide and Seek Summer

The last week has been absolutely crazy in terms of weather in Bangalore. April showers are starting to resemble monsoon deluges. Instead of cold summer salads and tangy coolers, were looking to winter soups and warm bread! Bright sunny afternoons give way to ominous clouds and torrents of rain in the evening.

One such afternoon demanded a true blue summer soup and I could think of nothing better than cold cucumber soup. Its simple to make and with cucumbers always being around, its a refreshing dish which still keeps you light. I got some general recipe's on the web and then went ahead and used my modifications wherever I felt I could weak things. Here's the recipe

2 cucumbers skinned, seeded and roughly chopped
2 cups yogurt - homemade is the best
1/2 to 1 cup milk
2 heaped tablespoons cream cheese (optional, but I'd rather use this than cream)
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 heaped teaspoon mint leaves
1 onion slivered
salt and pepper to taste

Add all ingredients to the blender, except for the onions. Pulse till you dont see any large pieces of cucumber. Refrigerate for at least an hour - the garlic works its way in over time.

For the garnish, start with sweating the onions on low flame for 10mts. Add about 1/2 cup of red wine and raise heat to high for 2 mts till all the wine has been incorporated.

Pour soup into bowls, garnish with onions and a dash of olive oil. Serve chilled and enjoy those baking Bangalore afternoons!!!

Cheesecake Riot

Cheesecakes are probably the best way of moving cheese out of your refrigerator once made. That’s actually an excuse to make the easiest and probably tastiest dessert ever.
Continuing with the fascination for cheese, last week was cream cheese time. The fact that you have an even 1:1 milk to cream kind of puts me off at times, but the finished product can always be paired with fresh bagels which makes the excuse to make the cheese all the more appealing.
The recipe for cream cheese is available at Fankhauser’s page and is very easy if you have the rennet. What I have found is that if you make the cake almost immediately after draining the cheese, without refrigerating it, you get an amazing consistency. Here is the recipe I used

Crust
1 packet (around 30) biscuits – I use non-flavoured. Marie is the best
150gms chilled butter, chopped into rough cubes
¼ cup sugar

Filling
400gms fresh cream cheese
1 ½ cups sugar (normal is fine)
½ cup coffee liquor (replace with appropriate vanilla essence if you like)
2 eggs
1 cup milk

Glaze
300g strawberries washed and roughly chopped
Sugar as desired (I didn’t measure this, adjust to your level of sweetness)

Process

1. Preheat the oven to 160C
2. Start with making the biscuit base of the cake. Crush the biscuits (don’t powder em) and add the butter and sugar to make a rough biscuit-like dough.
3. Use a spring-form pan and pat down the mixture so it forms a base.
4. Bake for 20mts making sure the crust does not get burnt
5. Remove from oven and let cool
6. Beat the cream cheese on your lowest setting of your hand mixer (invest in one, its worth it) till the cheese is smooth and no lumps remain
7. Add in the rest of the ingredients and beat on ‘mix’ till you get a thick ‘liquidy’ texture – kind of like cake batter.
8. Place the mix in the oven turned up to 170C and bake for 30mts or till the mixture has set.
9. Remove from the oven and let it get to room temperature. I’d put it out for at least 3-4hrs so the insides have cooled as well. Figured this out the hard way this time with the cake breaking apart when in the refrigerator
10. Chill in the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours
11. Serve cold with the fresh strawberry glaze


Strawberry Glaze
Cook the strawberries with enough sugar and water to form a syrupy mix. Cool this down to room temperature and pour it over the cheesecake when serving.

Cinnamon Rolls

I am having a love affair - with a book - a book about food or to be more precise a book about bread. The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhardt. I have always loved bread, but this book makes it feel like manna from the highest heavens. When I first read this book I dreamed that I was a baker in a quaint European town and would conjure up the magical loaves by the dozens. It had me on a high for weeks. And there was a time when I contemplated buying flour wholesale considering the amount of breads I was baking but immediately shot it down due to space constraints.

This wishful sinful wicked cinnamon roll recipe is an adaptation from the recipe by the Master himself. I have substituted yoghurt for eggs since I still haven’t found a source for free range eggs. I have tried the recipe with eggs and with yoghurt and there isn’t noticeable difference in the taste or the texture for a novice like me.

Ingredients:

6 tbsp Sugar (powdered)

5 tbsp Butter (at room temp)

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Grated zest of one Lemon

3 tbsp Yoghurt

3 ½ cups All Purpose Flour/Maida

2 tsp Instant Yeast or 1 ½ tsp Active Dry Yeast

1 to 1 ¼ cups Milk (at room temp)

½ cup Cinnamon Sugar

Cream together the butter, sugar and salt till light and fluffy. Add yoghurt and lemon zest and whip it all together. Then add the flour, yeast and milk. If using active dry yeast, proof the yeast by soaking it in a quarter cup of warm milk for 10 minutes before adding to the flour and creamed mixture. Mix till the dough becomes smooth and doesn’t stick to your hand. Knead the dough for 10 minutes till the dough is springy but not sticky. You might have to add a little extra milk or flour to achieve this texture. Form the dough into a ball, lightly oil the surface of the dough and keep it in a covered bowl. Let it rise at room temperature for about 2 to 2 ½ hours till it doubles in size.

Lightly dust the counter with a little flour and roll the dough into a rectangle ½ an inch thick. Spread the cinnamon sugar evenly over the surface from end to end leaving about a quarter inch area on one side along the length for sealing the log. Roll the dough into a tight log and seal it with a little milk. Cut the log into 1 inch thick slabs and place them flat - spiral side up on a lightly floured baking tray. Leave an inch to two inches gap between each roll so they can rise well without squeezing into each other. Cover with a lid or cloth making sure that the rolls don’t touch the covering allowing them to rise well. Let it proof at room temperature for about an hour or till they have almost doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and place the tray in the middle rack. Bake for 20 to 30 mins till they are golden brown. Cool on a rack before serving.

The best part of baking cinnamon rolls is the aroma in your house as they are baking. A tip - you need not wait till they are completely cooled if you are as impatient as I am. They taste good even hot, but make sure you are careful or you might burn your tongue.

Stewed Squid with Sannas

Squid has been a revelation. My first tryst with the cephalopod was in Goa about 15 years ago. It was love at first bite!
There's something about squid, you either love it or hate the thought of downing a tentacled creature. Cooking time is critical to this one. The oft found rule of 2 or 20 mts was my guide when making this dish. I found what looked like a great recipe a this site.
The recipe called for using an anise flavoured liquor as well - I substituted this with fresh ground anise instead along with a few more changes along the way. Here is the recipe

Ingredients
2 cups of squid rings, cleaned and washed
1 tbsp roasted fennel seeds, powdered
1 onion finely diced
1 pack of tomato puree
2 tomato's, chopped into rough pieces
1 tsp chilly powder or 1 green chilly
1 cup red wine

1. pour out 2 tbsp of oil into a flat pan and add the roasted fennel on a low flame.
2. After 30 sec, add the chilly powder/finely sliced green chilly to this.
3. Add the onion and let them brown (2mts)
4. Add the chopped tomato and let it cook
5. Add the wine and reduce the stock
6. Add the squid and start your timer. Set it for 20mts
7. Add enough tomato puree to cover the squid. I transferred this to a saucepan at this stage.
8. Season with salt as needed.
9. Garnish with coriander when done

The missus had made sanna's in the morning for breakfast which was an excellent accompaniment to this dish.

Hurried Breakfasts

With the wife at the in-laws place and a refrigerator stacked with left-overs, there was really no inclination to cook an elaborate breakfast. The plan was to scrounge around to see I could put together with the leftovers.
Junior had a runny nose the week before which was partly treated with fresh chicken broth made at the spur of the moment. That left me with a box of shredded chicken waiting to be finished. There was a half-cut apple and my faithful bottle of home-made mustard lying around as well. With bread in abundant supply after the missus' baking extravaganza for Christmas, the only accompaniment left was for a quick warm chicken salad.
Here's the recipe

1 cup boneless chicken cooked and shredded into cubes
1/2 an apple, skinned (if you wish) and cubed
1 tbsp mustard
2tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp marjoram leaves roughly cut

Heat some olive oil in a pan and when slightly hot, add the chicken. Add the mustard, apple and marjoram and take the pan off the fire. Mix together and serve warm with bread. The mustard gives it that slight kick and the marjoram provides that earthy flavour.