Christmas, New Year’s and all that jazz

Happy New Year folks!! The New Year is already 15 days old and I am just getting around to wishing you guys. Terrible, I tell you, terrible. Thank God, I subscribe to the philosophy “Better late than never” so I am very easily able to forgive myself.

So, how was Christmas and New Year’s, did you guys have a good break? Like i said in one of my earlier posts, DD had 2 weeks of vacation while DH and I got a week off. It was a long-awaited, much-anticipated break because, get this we had NO plans. The last 2 years we have traveled during Christmas break. In 2010, we went to visit my cousin in the East Coast for a week. It was a time for the kids to get to know each other better. We watched movies, played a lot of scrabble, saw the nation’s capital and generally basked in the warmth and affection that only family and some very close friends can provide. Last year, we did our big Disney trip. While both trips were fantastic, coming back to regular life was painful.. We were tired (both times we came back with just a day to go before school and office reopened). That one day,we spent taking down the lights and the Christmas tree and locating lost library books and finishing pending homework. Not a very fun day.

This year, in a complete reversal, we stayed home, slept in, ate, met a few friends, put together a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle, watched movies and ate some more. I made a couple of things for which I am going to share recipes below. We strayed from tradition and took our Christmas lights and the Christmas tree down on the 27th of December itself. Since we were all to go back to regular routine on the 2nd of January and we’d get a late start on the 1st thanks to the New Year’s eve party, we decided to wrap up all the Christmas stuff prior to New Year’s. DD was not too happy but on hearing our explanation she was a good little trooper and helped us too.

In keeping with the theme of rest and relaxation, for New Year’s eve we met at a friend’s house for a pajama party. There was food, drinking, music, some dancing and a resolution to raise strong, independent daughters (Everyone at the party is the parent to a young girl) and events towards the end of the year brought home to all of us the importance of teaching our daughters to be strong, self-reliant and to not think of themselves as second class citizens.

Thus ended Christmas and New Year’s. Now for the recipes, I promised to share. The first recipe is a really old one. When my maasi (mom’s older sister) was getting married in the 1960′s, at the wedding reception the chef served a cutlet that was the talk of the evening. My mother, being very interested in cooking asked the chef how he had made the yummy stuff. He elaborated the following recipe for her

This recipe makes about 60 medium-sized cutlets.
beetroot, medium-sized 2, peeled and grated
Carrots – medium-sized 6, peeled and grated
4-5 medium-sized potatoes, boiled and peeled
1 tsp grated ginger
2 finely chopped green chillies (Serrano or jalapeno peppers) (use less, if you’re not a fan of spicy food)
Salt to taste
Red chilli powder to taste (can also use paprika or cayenne)
Cornstarch dissolved in water to form a thin liquid (in India, use arrowroot powder) about half a cup
Bread crumbs 1 cup
Oil for frying

Fry grated ginger and green chillies/peppers. once the chillies/peppers are slightly browned and the ginger becomes aromatic add the grated beetroot and carrots to the frying pan. Add salt and cook on a medium flame stirring ever so often until all the water in the mixture evaporates. This can take a little time so be patient. Once all the water evaporates, mash the boiled, peeled potatoes and add to the mixture. Adjust salt to taste after adding the potatoes, also feel free to add red chilli powder (or cayenne or paprika) if the spice level goes down after the addition of the potatoes. Once the potatoes are nicely integrated into the beetroot-carrot mixture, take the pan off the flame. Wait for the mixture to cool and then shape into flat rounds or ovals (any shape that suits your fancy is fine).

Once you have shaped the mixture, dunk it into the liquid made with cornstarch and water (or arrowroot and water), then roll it in breadcrumbs and deep fry it in oil. If you are calorie conscious, you need not deep fry it. instead fry it in a shallow pan with a little oil. The latter process will take longer so make sure the cutlet is well cooked before you remove it from the flame. Here are pictures of how my cutlets looked.

The beetroot, carrot, potato mixture

The mixture shaped into cutlets

The final product – serve with chutney or sauce of your choice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also baked up a storm of cookies using this recipe. I didn’t use the recipe for the frosting mentioned here, using store-bought instead. This is what they looked like

Cookies – ready for baking

Cookies, baked and some, frosted

This last recipe that I am sharing here is what DH called my piece de resistance. I found the recipe on the Huffington post. It took a looong time to make. My arms hurt from all the stirring – not an issue for you if you have an electric mixer. I knew it would be rich thanks to all the eggs and the cream etc. However, I had my doubts as to how the cake would rise without any baking powder in the recipe. I wasn’t sure of the proportions in the glaze, either. All my doubts were laid to rest though once I saw the end product. This is what it looked like. It tasted heavenly, not too sweet with just a hint of the citrusy fruits coming through in every bite.

The baked cake

With the glaze

I loved it enough to add another picture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With that I hope I have added a little bit of sugar and spice to your New Year. Have a good one people. As to what has kept me so busy the first 15 days of the New Year, I will have to do a separate post.

Oh, just in case you were curious here’s the puzzle we did over the break. Sudha and Bik, you are going to love this one

The frustrating period when a puzzle won’t just come together

All complete

Food, food and more food.

So, DD’s Christmas vacations have started. Her school let off on Tuesday and doesn’t open until the 2nd of January. She and I have been taking it easy. We did some gift shopping for a white elephant gift exchange at a friend’s house on Christmas Eve. I bought out what I think is the entire bakery section at the local grocery store. I am sure 6 months from now I will toss out most of the stuff since cooking/baking’s not my forte but everything looked so pretty and jewel shades were a little too much to resist. In a fit of cooking fever, I have been trying out a few things in the recent past. So, this is a post about food with recipes to boot.

Applause, please. I hardly do food posts and more often than not my recipes are über modified versions of whatever’s available online. That DD and DH are amenable to eating all I make  and that they are still living means I have peaked already. However, the recipes I present here today have been tried by me more than once. No one’s died yet from eating any of the stuff and a couple of kind-hearted people actually went so far as to praise them. Still, try at your own risk.

I am going to start with a Biryani recipe. Biryani’s something that I hated as a child. My brother loves it so it came as no surprise to anyone that I hated it. However, with time, I have started loving well made Biryani. This is also one dish that has proven my downfall every time I have tried it. Either I don’t have all the ingredients and make it with what’s available (not surprisingly, the end result sucks) or I tell myself I will buy all the ingredients and then make it (that almost always never happens). The recipe here worked since I had almost all the ingredients available. I did not have marathi mogga and I substituted mint chutney/paste and coriander chutney/paste for the leaves. The end result was yum. DD loved it and happily ate it when I made it twice in one week (I tried it one more time just to make sure the first time wasn’t a fluke)

So here’s the recipe from Sailu’s Kitchen. thanks to her recipe, I have finally conquered the Mt. Everest that is Hyderabadi Biryani. I don’t have pictures for you but mine looked almost like the picture on Sailu’s blog, a little more green in color since I added more coriander and mint paste because I love those flavors.

Next, I present to you garlic rolls. Kamini, whom I mention in this post is the one that inspired me to try these out. I am forever looking for options for DD’s lunch box, that can be made a couple of days in advance and refrigerated or made a couple of months in advance and frozen. All I need to do on the morning of, is to thaw said item and bake per instructions. DD loves garlic bread so I thought this would be a nice spin on the same. Kamini had very broad instructions on her Facebook page, so for measurements I went with this recipe. I didn’t make any changes to the instructions for the dough, followed them to the letter. However, the quantities mentioned in the garlic butter recipe were a bit excessive in my opinion. I halved all the measurements and the rolls still turned out great. Another thing I realized is, this recipe works great with dhaniya (cilantro) chutney as well. Instead of spreading garlic butter on the dough, just spread dhaniya chutney and continue per instructions. DH loved the dhaniya version better.

Dhaniya chutney can be made by chopping up one or two bunches of cilantro/coriander, adding 2/3 cloves of garlic, 2/3 green chillies and a few tablespoons of water and grinding everything in a mixer. More water may be needed to get chutney like consistency but please use water sparingly, else the chutney becomes runny. Add salt to taste. The number of garlic cloves you add and the number of green chillies/peppers you add depends on how garlicky and spicy you want it.

Garlic rolls pre-baking

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garlic rolls post baking

Another recipe that I haven’t tried in years and years made its way to my kitchen in the recent past. There was a time when I stuffed the living hell out of all vegetables I could find. My favorites, though, were tomatoes and bell peppers (capsicum). These two vegetables lend themselves beautifully to being stuffed and baked. A friend of ours had barbecued sweet peppers over the summer, so I figured I would try stuffing and baking them to see how they turn out.

This recipe will work for approximately 25 sweet peppers. It will also work for 3 large bell peppers and 4-5 tomatoes (depending on how large the tomatoes are)

Slit the sweet peppers length wise making sure to not take the stem off. Core the peppers and toss the seeds. In a skillet saute cumin seeds – 1 tsp, onions (I large onion finely chopped), a couple of cloves of garlic finely chopped. Once the onions are nicely translucent, add salt – to taste, red chilli powder – to taste, dhaniya powder (powdered cilantro) – 1/2 tsp, turmeric powder – 1/2 tsp and garam masala – 1/2 tsp. Add 3 large chopped potatoes, add a few tablespoons of water to the skillet and cook covered for 15- 20 minutes Once the potatoes are nicely cooked, mash the mixture with the back of your ladle. Now fill the cored, de-seeded sweet peppers with this stuffing. Take an oven safe dish and coat with cooking spray or olive oil. Coat peppers with oil and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 40-45 minutes. The skin of the peppers will shrivel and start browning. That is a good time to pull them out of the oven.

Please note the process is the same for tomatoes and bell peppers. Only in case of bell peppers you will have to remove the stem to core and de-seed them. In case of tomatoes, cut a very thin slice from the bottom of the tomato, so it stands upright on the baking dish. Also tomatoes need to be cored carefully so as to prevent the stuffing from escaping from the bottom of the tomato.

Stuffed sweet peppers before baking

Stuffed sweet peppers after baking

 

Now that we’ve handled entrées and the main course, we have to cover desserts. DD’s long loved cupcakes. Every year for Christmas we bake a huge batch of cookies. This year for some reason she was insistent we try out cupcakes. My entire experience with baking consists of  making a sponge cake (recipe below) and an apple pudding recipe borrowed from the Allrecipes.com website. So, cupcakes would require research. Not only did DD want cupcakes she wanted them frosted and decorated. So I added a can of frosting, food color and some stencils to my shopping list and set out to experiment today.

I used this recipe and the results were phenomenal. I made about 30 cupcakes. Then it was onto frosting them. I whipped together room temperature frosting with food color and spread a thick layer onto the top of the cupcakes. Once the frosting had set (30-45 minutes later), I just stuck the stencil on it and went on to decorate with glitter sprinkles, dinosaur shaped sprinkles etc. This is how they looked through the process

The cupcakes waiting to be baked

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cupcakes post baking and before frosting

Post frosting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I realize, that this is a very amateur attempt at cupcakes. In my defense, they tasted great and DD thinks they’re the best, most pretty cupcakes ever made. I’ll take that.

With that I end my culinary journey. I hope I gave you guys some new ideas to try out. Believe you me, if I can make these things, any one can. They’re just that easy. Happy cooking and eating folks!!

P.S: Don’t think I forgot the cake recipe.

Unsalted Butter – 250 gms/1 cup

All purpose flour/Maids – 250 gms/ 1 cup

Sugar – 250 gms/1 cup

Eggs – 4

Baking powder – 2 tsp

Vanilla extract – 2-3 tsp.

Milk – 1/4 cup

Cream together room temperature butter and sugar. Beat 4 eggs thoroughly and add to the sugar-butter mixture. Add flour while constantly mixing. Add baking powder, vanilla extract and continue mixing. Add 1/4 cup milk ( a little more if the mixture is too thick and difficult to mix). Once you have mixed the ingredients thoroughly and it starts to get light, pour into a well greased baking dish and bake at 400 degree Fahrenheit for 30- 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown. A toothpick inserted into the cake should come out clean. Once this happens, pull the cake out of the oven, let it cool. Cut a big piece and serve with your favorite icecream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas is almost here…

and we have been busy preparing ourselves for its arrival. Here is some of what we have been doing.

Christmas Tree with the carousel, train set and the hot air balloon

 

 

 

Here’s a video of how everything looks when we turn it on. I hope you are having fun prepping for Christmas as well. I plan to inundate you with pictures of the gifts, the cookies we bake and of course the stocking. Keep visiting!!

Retirement plans in jeopardy

Last week, the DH and I were watching a movie. In the movie, there was an old bickering couple and they were arguing but in an endearing fashion. DH looked at me an said “This is how we’re going to be, Meera when DD is grown up and gone to her own home.” I responded back  ”What makes you think I am going to stick around that long? The moment DD leaves the house, I will be gone too.”

“Where do you plan to go?” asked DH.

“I am going to rent a 3 bedroom apartment in the downtown area of a town like New Orleans or NYC. One bedroom I will convert into a library. There will be wall-to-wall shelves filled with all my favorite tomes. I will have all my favorite music play when I am in the house. There will be a tiny kitchen with a few pots and pans but I will have an interesting collection of cups and colorful bowls and saucers. The curtains will be red, there will be a daybed in the living room for me to curl up and read. I will hardly cook, maybe make some eggs once in a while or bake when the fancy takes me. I will make a lot of chai though, with fragrant cloves, ginger and cardamom. I will have a TV, for sure and a huge collection of all my favorite movies on DVDs. I will dine out in eclectic restaurants, meet interesting people, hang out in old bookstores, shop at flea markets. One bedroom will be DD’s when she comes to visit. My bedroom will have a comfortable bed, more importantly it will have a fat comforter so I never get cold in the night. There will be blackout shades so the sun doesn’t wake me up on lazy weekends.” I said all this and took a deep breath.

“Sounds like a great life, when can I move in?” asked DH.

Aiyyo, looks like my exotic retirement life will involve arguments with DH over having a game room instead of a library and I will have to include more pots and pans to accommodate all his culinary desires. *Sigh*

Happy Diwali

It’s here, the festival of lights is here. My favorite time of the year has finally come. The house looks like a tornado hit it. There are signs of work in progress all over the place, chandeliers being cleaned, bulbs being replaced. A little more elbow grease is being put into cleaning up the messy stains on the carpet and on cupboards. The kitchen countertops are chock full of ingredients that will go into the making of yummy (at least I hope they will be yummy) Diwali mithai. I have dispatched DH to the store several times since my list is always one ingredient short of what’s needed to whip up the crunchy, savory, sweet goodies.

DD’s dress is all silk and shimmer and she has run excitedly to the closet several times to see it and imagine herself in it. I have to buy her the accessories that go with the dress. DH keeps coming round the kitchen asking to taste all that comes out of my kadhai and I have to brandish my hot karchi (ladle) at him and shoo him out with severe admonishments that he has to wait a couple of more days. To be honest, I’d love a teeny tiny bite of the thengvazhal and the chakli too – just to make sure they taste good, mind you, not because I can’t resist the lure of the Diwali bakshanam. Soon enough, I tell myself, I will be able to dig into the laddoos and the lick scrumptious kalakand off the spoon.

Truly, the festival of lights is one that warms the hearts and lights up the soul. Houses are resplendent what with a fresh coat of paint and all the cleaning. They smell heavenly thanks to the aroma of cardamom, nutmeg, saffron, cumin, butter. There are sounds of laughter and joy as families and friends get together to wish each other and shower affection and blessings. There is a whirl of color with women draped in wonderful pinks, reds, purples, oranges, children sport bright shades of yellow and green while the men make it all look sophisticated with their shimmery grays and tans. With all the happiness in and around us we include the earth and the skies in our celebrations too. We adorn the ground with beautiful rangolis and lamps. How beautiful they are is only limited by one’s imagination and creative capabilities. We set off fireworks that dazzle the night sky. It’s almost as if we’d like to Gods to join us in our moment of celebration.

From our hearts and houses to yours – Happy Diwali, all!! May this year bring untold joys and happiness, success, peace, prosperity, health and togetherness.

Image courtesy: Updatesvilla