Meetha, Doubled, Tripled

It was an evening when my heart ruled over my head. There was a buffet waiting in the restaurant but I stubbornly decided to go out of the hotel, find a store and buy myself a snack. It was too early for dinner, but I could do with a snack.

The hotel in which I was staying shared space with several blocks of apartments, and there was a store somewhere amidst all those apartments. I took the long walk over to the other side, located the store and bought myself two packets of chips and a bar of dark chocolate with almonds.

I didn't wait to get back to my room. I opened one pack of chips and tried them - not a fan of assembly-line chips, I rarely buy them, but this was not bad, I thought, reflecting on the taste and detecting a hint of clove! It was only a 35 gm pack, so most of it was gone by the time I reached my room. I am fond of hotel rooms - I love the fact that they are 'housekept', unlike my own house, and I try to leave them in as pristine a state as I find them. I tried to enjoy the room, sitting in the chairs, reading at the table, watching the TV, and sinking into the big bed underneath a cool blanket (it should be a warm blanket but the air-conditioning keeps it cool, even after you turn off the AC).

Two meals of conference food were bad, and though I tried to wriggle out of one, given that it was laid out in the open for humans, mosquitoes and other flies to flock to it, my gracious hosts didn't let me go back to my hotel hungry, shooing off the caterers who advanced every minute to pack up. So I had to eat something there and after trying a few bits here and there, managed to down some rice and dal and escaped to the sanctuary of my hotel room. The irritation of not having had a fulfilling meal went to my head and I reached for the chocolate, dreaming of the breakfast buffet ...

Second day of conference and I had planned to go out to lunch with my friend, but a text message from the powers that be put paid to that plan - I had to call Friend and tell her to have her lunch, I'd call her when I was leaving ... the silver lining to the disappointment was that I got to eat a little bit of the double-ka-meetha that was being served.

Rich, moist and spongy. It must have haunted me, because back home the next day, I went shopping for a loaf of bread and proceeded to make it as per a recipe in Pratibha Karan's 'Hyderabadi Cuisine'. I made one change - instead of the rose water she mentions in the recipe, I used orange flower water because I have a full bottle of it and haven't used it yet since I acquired it two years ago. I didn't use the almonds, just a packet of cashews. And oh, I also didn't stick to her direction to use 2/3rds of a cup of ghee. I used less.

Or probably more. Because I didn't measure it, used it in tablespoons.

So here's what you do. Take 10 slices of bread, cut off the crusts. (What do you do with them? Dump them if you're not environmentally-friendly, dry them and crumb them if you are, or glaze them and lattice the pudding with them later. Glaze them how? I don't know, I just assume it can be done.)

Fry the de-crusted slices in tablespoons of ghee till they are golden brown both sides.

Meanwhile, to 500 ml of boiled milk, add 200 ml of cream and reduce to half, stirring now and then, in simmer mode right through.

Make sugar syrup with 1 cup of sugar and half a cup of water.

Put the fried bread in a greased baking dish. Pour the milk-cream reduction over the bread, and the sugar syrup as well. Sprinkle with saffron and cashew nuts.

Bake in a pre-heated oven - no temperature was specified so I put it somewhere between 130 and 180 C, fancying that I remembered some baking instruction that heavy cake batters needed lower temperatures. Whether I remembered right or not, it was a good thing to do because the milk reduction took its time to reduce further and everything got brown and toasty, cashew nuts included, without getting burnt.

Eat it up, share it, throw it out - fast - it's extremely heavy and can clog arteries and everything else that can be clogged. It's that delicious!

Dessert Bread Vegetarian Humour Hyderabadi

A Date With A Broken Heart

In my previous post, I mentioned how we ran away from home two Sundays ago and finished off the day in a restaurant where the service was very slow. For that meal, I had ordered a 'health salad' - fruits in a citrus-honey dressing topped with dates, a tender coconut drink with lime and mint and Dil Ke Tukde, the restaurant's fancy name for Shahi Tukda, the Hyderabadi dessert of fried bread topped with cream and nuts.

Dil Ke Tukde is a curious name for something that should give you joy, but it turned out to be rather apt because it broke my heart into several pieces. On the rare occasion that I eat dessert, did I have to be confronted with stale, fried bread fried in rancid, re-used oil, most of it so toughened I couldn't cut it with a spoon? And whatever substituted the cream on top, did it have to be so warm? The entire dish was neither cool nor cold nor hot, and only my maturity stood in the way of my pronouncing the entire day a failure because of the failed dessert.

I was determined to right the wrong, however, and this past Friday evening, bought some bread and condensed milk to make my own Shahi Tukda. However, when Saturday morning rolled around, the thought of frying bread, pounding nuts and such tasks made me weary. The Net had some recipes for a quick paneer burfi so I added to all that and came up with my own stuff. At the end of it all, there was more condensed milk than paneer in that recipe. It was extremely sweet and that kept me from eating more than one piece at a time.



Condensed milk, sweetened: 400 gm (1 tin)/ 19 tbsp
Paneer: 200 gm
Dates, seedless: A fistful
Bread: 4-5 slices, crusts removed
Ghee - to grease the baking dish

Whiz all the above in a blender. Pour into a greased baking dish, cover with foil and bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 C for 30-40 minutes or till a toothpick/knife inserted into centre comes out clean. Let cool completely and cut into pieces. It gets much harder after you put it in the fridge, and it's tougher to cut, but it is more burfi-like.

I'm sending this off to Valli's Mithai Mela.

Mithai Mela Paneer/Cottage Cheese Dates Condensed milk Sweet Burfi Bread Humour Dessert Eating+out

Cutlace, Somehow Or The Other!

This is a post inspired by one of the comments from my previous post. I had discussed some of the twists and turns English takes in India on menus across the country, to which some added their inputs. One of them was cut-lace
(aka cutlet, cutless, cutlite – on the train stops at stations, I’ve almost always heard it morph into cutlai…sse, and buttermilk becomes butt-raa-meel…).

As soon as I saw that comment, I knew what the fate of the fenugreek leaves (methi/menthikoora) in my fridge and the potatoes in my storeroom would be. (Oh yes, my potato-methi cutlets had to be a first. At least a third or a fourth – well, I don’t remember seeing such a recipe and don’t correct me if I’m wrong.)

Only, I hadn’t factored in my microwave failing me this time so when I was rewarded with potatoes lumpy in parts that refused to mash, I whizzed them in the mixie. Heh heh, of course, this was a brainwave that wasn’t one, so I was rewarded with a starchy, green paste that refused to cooperate with me in any way.

It wouldn’t form patties, nor would the moisture dry enough on the tawa and form some sort of cutlet. Trying to be innovative, I diluted it with some water and tried making a potato-methi-coriander dosa. No dice. I pressure-cooked another three potatoes and mashed them into it. Didn’t improve.

I refrigerated it and spent the rest of the day wondering how to salvage it – they probably would have made good, freehand, deep-fried treats but I didn’t want those. A friend suggested mixing them up with maida to make chapathis/parathas but we rejected the idea because of the ‘white’ flour.

Then I went in for white bread.

In my defence: It’s easily available, I used only three slices, and the larger, nobler purpose was to not let the potato paste go to waste nor did I want it to hang on in the fridge till the time another brainwave for its judicious use hit me, so here’s how I went about the whole thing, errors and all. This made about 13-14 cutlets.

Big-leaf fenugreek – 200 gm bunch, use only the leaves and tender stalks (sprinkle water on it, microwave this for 2 minutes)

Potatoes: 8 (5 microwaved, 3 pressure-cooked – sorry, can’t tell you the weight as I didn’t check but they were not very big ones)

Onion – 1, chopped

Coriander/cilantro, chopped – 1-1.5 cups

Bread, white – 3 slices (you can use other varieties too, am sure)

Salt – to taste

Chilli powder – 1 tsp

Curry powder/garam masala – 1 tsp

Oil – 2 tbsp

Whiz all these on the highest speed in the blender/mixer for just five seconds and you’ll be rewarded with a thick paste that I haven’t yet discovered an independent use for.

Now, tear three slices of white bread carelessly into the mix and mash as well as you can.

Now you’ll be able to form patties that can hold their shape.

Heat a pan with the oil, place the patties in it.

On medium heat, brown on both sides. (Mine look well-roasted, I know, I know.)

Thank God you were able to save the whole enterprise, put them in a halfway decent dish, start shooting.

Then consume with sauce of choice.

I'm sending this off to Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging hosted this week by Haalo of Cook Almost Anything At Least Once.

Cutlet, Cutlace Potato Fenugreek Coriander/cilantro Bread

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Or is it? Bread pudding, I mean. As we are now told, white bread (and flour) is one of the nastiest things to ever happen to this world, we’d rather get our carbs from wholegrains. Yes, it’s soft and tasty, goes down better than breads made with wheat and oats and rye and spelt, but healthy it is not, in large quantities, of course. It’s the bread universe’s equivalent of chips or nuts – start with one, there’s no telling when you can stop.



Ever gone on a strict diet or altered your eating plan to make it low-carbohydrate? Sometimes, you’ll find yourself entertaining visions of fluffy, white bread, smelling all fresh and yeasty, slathered with butter and jam. If your resolve has weakened and you’ve found yourself reaching for just that one croissant spread with melty butter and jam, you’re well on the way to more!

And if that’s not enough, we have to have bread pudding as well! Another luscious, utterly satisfying, wicked, tempting, all-such-adjectives creation. Not only is it white bread, it’s soaked in a bath of eggs, sugar, cream and milk, showered with raisins and nuts and served with beaming smiles urging you to taste just a bit! As if that would suffice! And to think this super-rich dessert was the poor person’s way of using up stale bread three or four centuries ago!

If you’ve noticed that I don’t have too many dessert recipes on my blog, you would know this post is the equivalent of a blog binge – but what do you know, I tasted very little of it! Two scoops went into the fridge but the lion’s share went to feed a hungry friend who stays in the hostel, and our mid-afternoon tea group at work.

We had been talking about bread over tea, and I was telling my friends how an uncle of mine said one shouldn't waste the crusts on bread in bread pudding but save them to lattice the top. This was met by hoots and snorts of sarcasm and indignation - as if it wasn't painstaking enough to cut the crusts off the bread, you had to save them, glaze them with egg white and criss-cross them over the pudding too, had you?

I don't recall how the mood slipped into a more benign one but the little conclave had my hostel friend longingly ask me to make bread pudding. I promised her I would, but told her I would put some marmalade in it because I wanted to use up some that was hanging on to my pantry.

Oh yes, put in anything you want, I'll eat anything, she said.

Excitedly, and thinking of my blog, innovative recipes, Sitemeter statistics and a torrent of comments, I'll put in some fruit as well, mangoes perhaps, I said.

Oh, please don’t put fruit, that will make it healthy, she said.

Oh, okay, then, it will be truly unwholesome, I promised.

Though I went looking for sophisticated recipes in my numerous cookbooks and on Google, a bad night’s sleep and another search on the Net led me to this very simple, no-fuss, relatively light and healthy recipe with no added sugar. It seemed unusual too, in that it asked for lemon juice and no vanilla.

However, to honour my promise of making it thoroughly unhealthy, I had to fill it with sin – that involved substituting most of the milk with heavy, heavy cream and adding two tablespoons of sugar though none was mentioned. I do know that I didn’t use the ¾ cup of orange marmalade that the recipe called for, but I really wouldn’t claim it a saving grace. The method stays uncomplicated, and my tea group said it didn’t taste eggy despite the lack of vanilla, and that the lime juice added a nice flavour.

Here’s how you go about it:

5-6 slices white sandwich bread
3 tbsp soft butter
Orange-ginger marmalade - as much as is needed to spread on those slices – I only know I used 1 or 1-1/2 tsp per slice.
3 eggs, beaten lightly
1 cup heavy cream
¾ cup milk
2 tbsp sugar
3 tsp lime juice
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

Heat milk, dissolve sugar in it, let cool.

Toast bread, spread with butter and jam. Cube the toast (don’t cut the crusts), put in a buttered dish/casserole.

Mix eggs with cream and milk, lime juice and nutmeg.

Pour this mixture (custard) over the bread.



Bake in a slow oven at 150 C (300 F) for 45 minutes.

Try hard to ignore the sound of your arteries thickening. (G)Ulp!



PS: There are several recipes for bread pudding with alternative, wholegrain breads on the Internet.

Dessert Bread Pudding Orange Ginger Marmalade

Baked Leftovers

PLEASE CLICK ON THE PIC TO VIEW IT BETTER

There are the strangest of superstitions and beliefs and I consider this as one of those – if you do something today, on New Year day, you’ll be doing it for the rest of the year. So, if you spend money today, you’ll be doing that the rest of the year (oh no!), if you eat a lot today, you’ll be gorging the rest of the year (oh no no!), whatever animal you think of, the year will go by at a pace matching that animal’s (really, what will they come up with next!), and if you blog today, you’ll be blogging the rest of the year (Yes, Yes, Yes!)
Here’s a dish that I tried out yesterday – it’s a bake of leftovers and comes in handy when you have old bread that refuses to finish. I suppose it’s something like a soufflé with bits in it, it doesn’t have the velvetiness but it rises like one when it’s baking. It’s not my own recipe but I’ve seen it in several avatars in various books, but really, go ahead and do what you want – these are just guidelines:

Sandwich bread, crusts sliced off – 4 slices
Cooked prawns/veggies – a big handful, chopped
Eggs – 2, separated (* so that’s two yolks and two whites, beaten till stiff *)
Milk – 1¼ cups
Cheese – 4-5 cubes, cut up into bits/grated/just crumbled
Seasoning: Salt, pepper, mustard powder/chilli powder

Tear bread into pieces, soak in hot milk for 15-20 minutes. Add prawns, egg yolks, cheese and seasoning, mix well. Add egg whites, fold in well. Grease a baking dish and pop it into the oven.
I baked it for an hour at 180 C which I thought was too long, but the usual test – sticking a knife into it and seeing if it came out clean – took a long time. Funnily enough, it smells like sweet bread pudding and I felt full just inhaling it – I guess it was the combination of the milk and the bread, though why sandwich bread should result in a smell so sugary, I don’t know! After a while, I even began tasting the raisins (non-existent, of course)! It tastes fine, but there’s no correlation between the smell and the taste, know what I mean? Go ahead and try it, it takes little effort and makes a filling meal!
Tags: Leftovers Bread Prawns Baked dish

WHEW!

That’s what I said after I finally finished making today’s dish, Tomato Bread Pudding. I found it pretty time-consuming, probably because I was doing a few other things at the same time.
I’d never come across TBP earlier. A few years ago, my aunt presented me Michele Anna Jordan’s The Good Cook’s Book of Tomatoes but somehow, this recipe escaped my eye. I had a surplus of tomatoes this week and I needed to use some of them, so when I spied this recipe, it sounded interesting enough to put in the blog.
My experiment resulted in a moist, very slightly pinkish custardy bread when you broke through the golden-brown crust on top. The recipe asked for half a pound of bacon but since I don’t stock any, I just left it out but added an onion fried in olive oil.
What you need:
Pure olive oil
4 cups bread, torn into medium-sized chunks
2 medium tomatoes, sliced
An onion, fried till pink (optional)
3 tbsp finely minced coriander
2 ounces Cheddar
2 eggs, beaten
2-¼ cups milk
2 tbsp commercial tomato puree
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method: Rub a decent-sized but not too large baking dish with a thin coating of olive oil. Toss bread, tomatoes, cheese, coriander in a mixing bowl. (At this stage, you can pause, admire your handiwork and go on to serve this as salad with a bit of salt and pepper!) Transfer to the baking dish. Whisk eggs, milk, tomato puree and garlic, season with salt and pepper. Pour custard over the bread and make sure it is distributed evenly.


[Photo]Bake in a 325 F oven (160 C) for 35 minutes and then in a 425 F oven (about 230 C) for another 10-15 minutes till top browns. The top browned in the first stage, though a knife inserted into the centre came out wet - I baked it in the second stage, it got browner, as you can see, but the inside was still moist (notice the pale patch in the dish, I scraped off the top to see how the inside was) - it had been 40 minutes by then, so I lost patience and switched off the oven, but as it turned out, didn’t end up tasting too bad. Don’t need to tell you the aroma from the oven was heavenly![Photo]
PS: I must say this tasted rather like the Tomato Baath that is made in South India! I knew it tasted like something but it came to me only a few hours later! I heated the leftovers well today for dinner - it tasted different, like bread and pudding, maybe the trick lay in the heating.