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.

Curry Puffs

I get manic periods of restless energy sometimes, which balance my procrastination nicely. Too bad the manic fits are few and far in between. So one such time when I had a huge backlog of utterly awful movies I wanted to watch... (Why do I watch awful movies, you ask? Because they are there.) I boiled a bushel of potatoes, defrosted 4 packs of puff pastry sheets and settled in for an afternoon of absolute suspension of disbelief.

At the end of the whole exercise, I has sore knuckles and a freezer full of curry puffs. Now all I have do every Sunday morning is to pull some out, pop them in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes and we have fresh Curry Puffs for breakfast or as we like to call em in Pune...Pattice. And only the Hindustan Bakery ones qualify as Pattice, others are just poor imitations. Since mine are undoubtedly an imitation, I will keep calling them Curry Puffs. Pattice and leisurely cups of tea remain a time honoured Sunday tradition in most Pune homes and bringing just a little bit of that to my apartment in NJ transports me immediately to my moms home... lounging about in PJs with Chayageet, endless cups of steaming ginger tea, the idle chatter, the cooker whistle going off, sunlight streaming in through open windows, the much loved ritual of oiling and washing hair. It was a happy place.

Fresh out of the oven- crumbly, buttery curry puffs.

Ingredients

Potatoes

Peas

Fresh curry leaves

Fresh grated ginger

Spices

Turmeric

Hing

Mustard seeds

Cumin seeds

Chili powder

Coriander powder

Garam Masala

Chaat Masala

Salt

Boil, peel and dice the potatoes, temper some oil with mustard, cumin seeds and curry leaves. Add the turmeric, ginger and hing. Add potatoes, peas and toss with spiced and salt. Mix and stuff into defrosted puff pastry sheets. Bake at 350 degrees till golden brown and serve hot.

These are great for making ahead and storing since they keep forever in the freezer. Just make sure you freeze them on a tray before you put them a Ziploc bag so that they won't stick together. The process could not be simpler but it is a little time consuming.

Also I haven't given measurments for anything because the mixture is so versatile and everybody has a unique way of preparing it. These are not rules, merely a preference.

Seriously, it could not be simpler guys and biting into a warm curry puff on a wintery morning more then makes up for the sore knuckles. Well, almost! :)

These have to enjoyed with Masala chai.

For my masala chai, I boil the tea water with grated ginger, tiny peice of cinnamon, couple of cardommom pods, 1 whole black pepper, and 1 clove. Then add milk, sugar and strong Assam tea. Boil slightly shy of the nice, red color, take off the heat and cover and keep for a minute. Strain and enjoy.

Crunchy French Toast and Triple Decker Sandwich

My niece came to our place for a sleep over this weekend and I wanted to solidify my place as the cool aunt. So we watched Dora way past her bedtime, had cookies and lemonade in bed and slept late into the Saturday. Sometime during 2 in the morning, she started missing her mom and woke up howling, so I had to stay up for an hour comforting her. Man, toddlers are tough customers , you simply can't reason with them. It took a lot of cajoling, pleading and threatening to get her back to bed. She finally fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion. And the hubby and I heaved a huge sigh of relief that we don't have kids....yet :)


And when she woke up in the morning, she was all giggles and sunshine as if none of this ever happened. Anyway, I wanted to cook her special breakfast and I ended up making these crunchy french toasts that I remembered reading about on FoodMayhem. I made the hubby a sandwich because he doesn't like sweet so early in the morning! Weird guy!

Crunchy French Toast

2-3 pieces of bread, preferably old
2 eggs
2-3 tablespoons heavy cream/ milk
2 teaspoons of light brown sugar
2 drops of vanilla essence
1 pinch of cinnamon powder
1 handful of assorted nuts and granola
1 tablespoon of honey and more brown sugar

Beat the eggs is shallow pan with the cream, brown sugar, vanilla and cinnamon powder. Soak the bread in the eggs for 15-20 mins. Lay flat on a baking sheet.
Mix the assorted nuts together. I used almonds, pecans and walnuts because that's usually what I have have at home. You can use whatever mixture you like. I bet cashews would taste fantastic with this! Roughly chop the nuts and the granola and toss with honey and brown sugar. Spoon the mixture on top of the soaked bread. Bake in an 350 degree oven till the bread firms up and the top becomes golden. I topped this with homemade blueberry sauce. I just boiled together blueberries with sugar and water till it thickened and resembled a jelly. The toast was perfectly soft on the inside and the nutty topping was crunchy and yummy. This is definitely decadent enough to be Sunday brunch.



Triple Decker Sandwich

3 pieces of bread
1 egg
1 teaspoon coriander chutney
1 teaspoon ketchup
1 teaspoon hot sauce
1 teaspoon pepper jelly
1 slice of cheese
1 scoop of spicy mashed potato
butter

Beat the egg, season with salt and pepper and fry it on both sides and keep aside. Take one piece of bread, toast it lightly on both sides. This will be the middle part of the sandwich. Lay down a piece of bread, butter it, put a layer of pepper jelly, cheese and mashed potato. Top with hot sauce. Put the previously toasted bread slice on top. Then put some coriander chutney and fried egg. On the last slice smear some ketchup and hot sauce and lay on top of the egg. Toast it on both sides till you see the cheese melting. Press down slightly while toasting with the help on another pan. This is a ridiculously easy sandwich, almost everything you need is in the pantry and you can easily substitute whatever you don't have with other things. There are a lot of flavors and textures going on which makes it very filling.
The best part was the cooking time for both these things wasn't more than 20 mins, leaving me with plenty of time to watch more Dora with my niece. On the flipside though, I've become allergic to D..D..D..Dora song.