Peas parathas

There is no story behind this one, just a wickedly awesome recipe. We are apparently all out of words today. A dozen drafts have been written and summarily dismissed, and in the process this recipe has been languishing in the drafts folder for decades. Something as stellar as this paratha deserves a better write up, but maybe something with so much going for it can speak for itself.
I can't spin a yarn to save my life, but I can vouch for the utter harmony of the sweet peas and freshly scraped coconut merging with some hot green chilies, the lovely green hue intensified by the earthy coriander leaves and the pleasure of dipping a hot, butter-browned paratha in some cold, sweet dahi (yogurt) with the malai* strands intact. So, on to just one of the recipes that was sure to have launched some pot bellies in the household.

Green peas paratha


Stuffing

Green peas, 2 cups
Ginger, grated
Shallot, 1
Shredded Coconut, 1/2 cup
Green chillies, adjust according to the level of desired heat, chopped superfine
Fresh coriander leaves, chopped
Coriander powder
Cumin powder
Anaardana
Salt

Heat some oil in a kadai, add the shallot and fry it for a minute or so till it softens. Add the peas, ginger and cook till the peas go soft too. If you are using fresh peas, this might take longer than the frozen ones. Pull it off the heat, mix in the masalas and grind everything together. Do not add any water. Its ok if a couple of peas remain whole. Wring all the liquid out of the coconut and add it to the ground mixture. Throw in the coriander leaves and call it a day.
Well, actually no, make little stuffing balls, or not. If the stuffing is too loose, your parathas will be difficult to roll out. You could add in some mashed potato or paneer to remedy that.
Roll out your usual paratha dough and proceed to make parathas just so.

* It still mystifies me that many people find malai yucky, I, for one, used to scrape it of the bottom of the pan after my mom finished her nigthly ritual of boiling the milk one final time. I scoop it up and dunk it in my tea, spread it on a fresh roti with some sugar, and am generally just happy to eat it by the spoonfuls. If you have never had malai dahi, you just don't know what you are missing!

PS. On an unrelated note:

This post by Varsha really made me sad. Bloggers are a tightly knit community, food bloggers even more so. Who else but our fellow blogger would understand our insane desire to recreate easily acquired restaurant food at home, the painstaking effort that goes into clicking dinner while the the hungry husband/wife grumbles, the joy and fulfillment of an afternoon spend in the kitchen. We read each other, give feedback, offer tips and generally behave like a civilized, loving family. Accusations of plagiarism create serious rifts in this community. When it comes to food, its tricky to prove the accusation unless there is a direct word-to-word lift of the entire content. Surely, I'm not the first one to bake a cake, so my recipe of a cake would be, needless to say, filched from a cookbook, magazine, cooking show, an aunt or something. What makes it different would be an ingredient I added, which again could be an idea that many others have had as well, or it could be a completely copied recipe with my experience of making it. Where do we draw the line between inspired and outright copyright infringement? For anybody, with a little common sense, this line is clear. Original recipes are far and few in between, if you have one, by all means, protect it but don't claim anyone else posting about curry is bloody copying you! While the temptation to jump up and point fingers at anything vaguely resembling our intellectual property is understandably huge, lets just reign ourselves in, gets factual evidence and until then peacefully co-exist, shall we?

I have read Varsha's blog for a while now. She comes across as an enthusiastic and prolific blogger, with a tremendous portfolio of time-tested recipes. There is always a little story before the recipe, how it came her through her grandmother etc. She hardly ever claims to have invented the recipe so in my book the vitriol against her is simply uncalled for. Judging from the tone and number of comments on her blog, I'm not the only one who thinks so. My two paise.

Baking adventures, part I

Baking is something that always has me bamboozled. Sneaky flour and its sneaky little ways. It will go into the oven looking all expectant dough like and make my house smell like vanilla and cinnamon, building my hopes up to a point where I'm dreaming about opening my own cupcake stores and such, and then the said baked product will either...
a. collapse in the middle
b. turn into a rock candy on the outside, with uncooked doughy interiors
c. stubbornly refuse to resemble any cake/pie you have ever seen
d. all of the above

So I always approach baking like an exam. Step one. Find a good recipe. Step two. Memorize it. Step three. Do not mess it up!

That being said, I do love baking and how Martha Stewartish it makes me feel. There is something mysteriously wonderful about dipping your fingers in raw dough, licking the bowl clean, watching it puff up and rise in the oven, pulling out a warm cake and eating it right out of the pan, or breaking apart hot cookies with melting chocolate chips inside...

Here are some recipes I tried, which are well on their way to becoming family favorites. They are tried and tested and sorta idiotproof, if like me, you bungle your way through baking.


Pineapple Upside Down cake
This one comes from Susan of FoodBlogga. Susan always puts up the most tantalising descriptions of fruits and like. Her post on Kumquats had me running around for a week looking for the tiny but explosive buggers. This is a ridiculously simple recipe. The key, methinks, is in beating the egg whites separately. The copious amounts of butter and sugar also help. The first time I made it, I forgot to add sugar in the batter, adding it only to the pineapples and butter layered at the bottom of the pan. The sticky, goey sweetness from the upside down topping was enough to flavor the cake. The cake was slightly denser though. I followed the recipe the second time round and although fluffy, it was a tad too sweet for me. I baked it for picnics, for a Friday lunch in the office, for an impromptu dinner party...it turns out perfect every single time.

The best ever chocolate chip cookies

This is another one from Susan's stable. She baked them with pistachios and dried cherries. I didn't have cherries, so I used raisins and I like pine nuts. That's my only substitution. Double the batter, seriously! You want to pass them around, these babies will make you proud. I baked a couple of dozen big, fat ones and they were over within a week.

Stuff I made, but did not get a picture of - Heidi's Triple Chocolate espresso bean cookies. With a name like that, the cookies had to be good. There was cocoa and espresso in the batter, and chocolate covered coffee beans and chocolate chips too. Each cookie was like a concentrated shot of mocha. They were chewy with an almost fudge like interior. The batter was so richly dark, I burnt my first batch trying to figure out if the cookies were brown enough :) They didn't store so well though, and had to be finished in 2-3 days, not that it was a problem.

Coconut Banana Pancakes

These pancakes would have had a serious identity crisis, if they had been around long enough to say c-r-i-s-i-s. Thankfully, eating at the speed of lightening is among my many talents! These breakfast treats were originally meant to be the luscious Bihari Malpua's. It all started when I read about Vikram's tryst with substandard Malpua's in Pune, and then his explanation on what the Malpua should taste like. The minute I read the description, I knew I had to have it.

Vikram had outlined a deceptively simple recipe which went..."Mix this-that, fry, dip in syrup, boom!" So humming to myself, thinking about rich syrupy Malpua's for breakfast, I set to work. Mixed the this and that, let it ferment for a bit, made the syrup, still humming tunelessly, and then when it came to the frying part...well, lets just say this, it wasn't pretty. They just didn't turn out like I had imagined. Soft in the middle, a little crunchy on the outside, dripping with syrup is what I wanted. Thats what it should have been, right? Well, wrong.

I'll spare you the details but I looked at my batter and didn't have the heart to throw it away. So when my cooking experiments gave me lemons, I made lemonade, errr...pancakes. And they were lip-smackingly delicious. I'm not kidding, the smacking noises woke the neighbours up, who, obviously thought the worst! :)



Coconut Banana Pancakes

1 cup flour
1/2 cup fresh grated coconut, (if you are using frozen coconut, thaw completely before adding to the batter)
1 ripe banana, mashed
1 tsp cardamom powder
1tsp star anise essence (you could use fennel seeds/saunf)
1/2 cup yogurt/buttermilk
3/4 cup milk
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1tsp baking soda
confectioners sugar, to dust

This is a pretty forgiving recipe. So adjust the proportions according to what looks right to you. The batter should be of pouring consistency, but not too thin. The proportions given here are not exact. Mix everything together till smooth, don't overmix or you will end up with tough pancakes. Let the batter rest for a while, about 10-15 mins. Go do some exercise or something. Seriously, leave it alone!
Then pull out your pancake griddle or plain ol' tawa. Pour a ladleful of batter on a hot griddle and let it cook on one side. Once you see bubbles form on the surface, flip it over and cook the other side. Dust with some sugar and serve with syrup or a drizzle of honey


The natural sweetness of the coconut and banana made the traditional maple syrup unnecessary. A light dusting of sugar and a spoonful of honey was all these pancakes needed. The fermentation made the pancaked super soft and fluffy and the cardamom and anise gave it the just the right amount of spice, kicking the pancakes into exotic territory.

Since the last one was hardly a recipe, these head over to join the party at Divya's too!

Sweet mornings

I love jams and jellies and preserves. The time honored breakfast staples don't me feel so guilty about indulging in sugary treats when I should be filling up on oatmeal (shudder!) and such.

A slice of milk toast, drizzled with some salty melted butter and a smear of jam is a perfect beginning to my day.

So imagine my delight when I found a preserves mini sampler at a Harry and David outlet. I haven't heard much about Harry and David's except that they have good fruit, and didn't get a chance to try their products earlier. Well, good fruits make good preserves and I was completely sold on the mini bottles that promise me a different jam every week! And then they are sugar free too.

So far I've only cracked open the Oregold Peach, which was a generic Peach jam, nothing special. I'm more excited about the Dark Cherry and Red Raspberry. There is also a Marionberry preserve which I'm planning to use with crepes. I do hope they will be better than the Peach.

Its been a long time since I updated the blog or taken part in any blog events and Divya's breakfast event seems like the perfect opportunity to jump back in.
So off this goes to D's

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect healthy eating habits, exhibit A: a post on chips, B: breakfast ideas more suitable for 5 yr olds etc.

Is it April First?

This is a joke, right? RIGHT???!!!

"It has long been shunned as a junk food, but now, a new study has claimed
that the humble chip can actually battle cancer.
Chips are rich in vitamin C, which boffins consider could fight the deadly disease.
It is thought the vitamin tackles dangerous free radicals, which are associated
with cancer growth, reports the Daily Star. By eating a portion of chips
- which contains five times more vitamin C than a bunch of grapes - people
may keep cancer at bay. And those already suffering with the disease
could even shrink the size of their tumours with a vitamin C rich,
deep-fried potato diet, the researchers said."

I've died and gone to heaven. (Laughs gleefully while tearing open a bag of Lay's Magic Masala.)

A couple of bags later....alright, it was three! Sheesh! Anyway, much later...

Ok, sobering up, could anybody tell me why wasn't the Vitamin C level compared to oranges or other fruits/veggies with notoriously high levels of Vitamin C, why grapes? Seems like a bullshit study to me, sponsored by chip companies.

I love chips, wouldn't give em up for the world, but even I draw the line at believing they are good for me. Its fried, and flavored with artificial ingredients, does that sound like a cancer-fighting diet to you? Indulge in moderation, get your fix of veggies and fruits, there are few things more delicious than juicy fruits and crisp veggies, eat without guilt, eat with an appetite, run, play, laugh...you will be just fine.

Classics...

Sometimes you just don't mess with the classics. So when a traditional chutney is called for, there cannot be any substitute for creamy coconut, fresh sprigs of coriander, sharp green chillies, nutty dal ground together and topped with a simple mustard, curry leaves tempering.

Maybe one odd dried red chili as well and some hing. That's it.

And then simply serve with hot idlis. Another classic.

The one in which...

...we are a little pressed for time and cannot offer you quality material but will direct you to someone that does. I have always been fond of learning about unique cooking techniques. Its an age old art and I'm amazed there is still room for creativity.

Couple of fascinating articles on truly inventive cooking methods.

The first is from Slate about a method of cooking that involves sealing food in vacuum and slow cooking it in its own juices. I can only imagine what a gastronomical delight it would be.
Sous-vide cooking by Sara Dickerman

The other link if from my favorite boredom busting site Listverse. I can spend several happy days browsing the archives. I'm a geek like that :)
Top 10 Unusual cooking concepts by JFrater.

So go ahead, click on the links. You know you want to :)

And just so I can justify this as a food blog, here is a yummy picture of veggies.