Home Alone

With Rahul working late and Arnav away at his grandparents place, I got so engrossed reading that time just passed by without making the slightest of sounds. There was no desire of venturing out at 8:00 for a dinner out or ordering out, so I decided to do what the husband does - look into the refrigerator - see what has to be finished and then decide on the recipe. With carrots, radishes and some frozen peas, I thought about a salad with some leftover bread - dumped the idea as quickly as I thought about it since eating raw radishes wasn’t exactly my idea of pleasing the palate. The Sichuan pepper which I had been in search of for the past year and a half and finally found was staring at me accusingly stating that I hadn’t yet touched it after all that I went through to find it. So it was time to make the amazing Chinese five spice powder which was so freely available in all supermarkets in the US but you just can’t find here. The mortar and pestle got from Coorg was useful to grind the Sichuan pepper, fennel seeds, star anise, cloves and cinnamon. I always feel the stone ground spices are better than mixer ground ones - more oils are released with the pressing and tearing the spices. I used roughly the same quantity of each of the ingredients except for the cloves which I feel is a stronger spice and so could mask the aroma of the others.

Made ribbons of the carrots and radishes with a vegetable peeler and dunked them along with peas in boiling water for about a minute. Then fried about half a teaspoon of sesame seeds in about a teaspoon of oil and tossed the vegetables in it with half a teaspoon of the five spice powder and some salt. The subtle aroma of the sesame seeds with the spice was delightful with an accompaniment of brown rice cooked with salt and lemon peel.

No Idiot Box, No Problem - Mango Panacotta

No television at home for the last 4 months means there's been so much time available for experimenting with food. With the mango season in full bloom, other fruits seem to have taken a backseat.
A simple mango panacotta seemed to be an easy enough way to play around with what was available at home. I'm no a dessert person, but panacotta allows you to enough leverage to create something unique everytime. This one was simple enough to create in under 20mts (though it set for 4 hrs).
A touch of nutmeg makes a world of difference to anything sweet, no exceptions here.

Sun dried tomato and pumpkin risotto

TGIF... so goes the saying. I wholeheartedly believe in this. The kitchen's always the place to be - either dreaming up new recipes or throwing away the spoils of summer.
This evening we decided to make risotto to complement the excellent baguette the wife had made the day before. Its been a while since I've come back to risotto. The earlier attempts were desperately trying to get the flavouring ans stock right. This time there was more time to contemplate what needed to go into the dish.
Started out with boiling half a pumpkin which I thought would give it a good orange hue with a hint of sweetness. Turns out the pumpkin lost almost all its colour and hardly had any taste left. Combined a chunk of this with some freshly dried tomato (last batch before the rains here) and gave it a quick whisk in the blender.
I've got a packet of Italian arborio sitting up in the pantry waiting to be used, but didn't want to use that precious cargo before I got my recipe right. I chose the highly versatile short grained (idly) rice that is a perennial in any South Indian home.
A dash of garlic in a little olive oil with the pumpkin-tomato puree and half a cup of rice got things started. Stock was replaced with plain hot water, poured a cup at a time every 6-7mts until i was able to completely cook the rice. An addition of some agri parmegiano grand padano completed the pot.
The dish was served with home made baguettes and fresh butter. Lovely taste with the tomato giving it a beauiful yellowish-brown color. Next time the original arborio comes out with some mushroom and parsley.

The Rice of the Incas

Quinoa (spelt Kin-vah) has been a traditional South American staple for centuries. Its supposedly as common as our millets here. The missus and me, being frequent visitors to Heidi Swanson's website, where she uses quinoa extensively, often wondered what it would be like.

I happened to lay my hands on some red quinoa in the course of my travels. After a packed Saurday night schedule, neither of us were in a mood to make anything elaborate for breakfast. I took it on myself to try out this cereal. The instructions said it could be treated as rice and cooked as such.

I'd decided to try something simple which wouldn't overwhelm the grain. I tossed some onion and garlic into a soup pan and then mixed in the quinoa, toasting it well in the olive oil. 2 cups of water and 20mts later, my grain was cooked, with a translucent look. I added some newly bought grand padano, toasted pecan halves and pine nuts and fresh coriander.

The texture was nutty with a delicious bite, but certainly something that is an acquired taste. The olive oil and salt balanced the nuttiness with the cheese providing just the right amount of sourness.

This is definitely wort exploring more. Apart from its obvious health benefits, its a great texture grain to add into any salad.

My first Baguette

With the missus getting really good at breads, I decided it was time I did some experimenting of my own. My bible on this has loosely been The Breadbakers Apprentice. The problem is the time you need to invest in getting the traditional process completed - about 20hours, of which you need to be in the vicinity for the last 6. Given work schedules, this is only possible on the weekends.
I wanted to see if I could get this done in the course of a work week.
The original poulish was kept for around 14hrs and the rest of the ingredients were added in using a slightly modified recipe found here.

The resulting bread was ok, not great, but just about ok. The adage 'Practise makes perfect' is definitely true in this case. All in all, the left overs of the baguette go into making some perfect summer gazpacho - now thats something I'm really looking forward to.

Lazy Fridays

The best part of Friday evenings is that you don't have to run against time to get something ready for dinner. Its also a great time to get into the kitchen to get those biceps working and work up some fresh pasta.


The fun thing about pasta is that you can use pretty much any veggie as a filler with minimal fuss. Come to think of it, you're having chapati's with veggies--very Indian.

Its also simple food to chomp on when you have guests, great for kids to experiment with (different shapes) to keep them occupied enough to eat it as well.

I personally love fresh pasta with a dash of olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper, hydrated sun dried tomatos and a generous sprinkling of romano. Way to my heart....

The Havarti Chronicles - part 2

So here I am, a few months after my first attempt at a hard cheese.

Delighted with my second attempt. The cheese is edible! and just about aged - around 4 weeks. The difference being the constant monitoring over the first few weeks to make sure there was no mould developing, once the mould developed, cleaning it, rubbing with olive oil and tightly packing it in clingfilm. This demands that I increase my production to be able to sample more batches and improve on where I need to. Plan to increase batch size to at least 3 litres and build the necessary equipment to manage it – maybe even a cheese press :-)

Thrilled that simple buttermilk can help create this kind of texture and taste. This one is haphazardly infused with fresh basil - as an afterthought so its not very uniformly distributed.

The challenge is to get fresh milk, being summer there seems to be a sudden shortage at the local cowshed's.