A seductive experience: Orange-chocolate cake

Long time back I had made chocolate brownies with a hint of orange. It had the most divine taste.  I carved for tasting that once more. Of course I lost the original recipe long time back (I discarded that recipe book when I moved from Charlottesville to Denver) but I have been experimenting with many different chocolate cakes and attempting to infuse in the orange flavor.
Yesterday, I decided to make Chocolate cake with ragi flour.  The impetus for it was that I had to return a container to my aunt and of course, one cannot return back an empty container especially if it came with food as it did.
I checked few of the websites and introduced my own changes. 
The dry ingredients:
1 cup  Maida
1/2 cup ragi flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 tblsp cocoa powder.
These were mixed together thorougly and added to the wet ingredients:
3/4 cup yogurt
1 cup  jaggary melted and filtered (this is essential because the jaggary usually contains lot of soil and needs to be filtered).  After filtering, the liquid came to 1 cup.
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup milk
The wet ingredients were beaten together before adding the dry ingredients. Once the two were nicely mixed, I added fresh orange peels (about 2 tblsp).
I baked it in a 8" prepared pan in a pre-heated oven for about 20-25 minutes at 170oC.
The cake was amazing. It had just the hint of orange I was expecting.  There was enough for me to take to the lab who of course finished it. When I went in to the lab after a meeting one of my student was eating the crumbs so I am assuming it was good.

Oh, I did give two pieces to my aunt who in return gave me banana bread. So we are now quits. At least I hope so.

Banana -chocolate chip cake with peanut butter icing

It all started with an article on NDTV site extolling the virtues of peanut butter. In the end there was a recipe for banana peanut butter cake.  I love peanut butter but I do not trust the recipes from this website because there always seems to be something not quite right about them.  And yet, I could feel the taste of the cake and I knew I had to make it.
I looked up quite a few of the recipes on the internet and then fell on to my tried and trusted banana cake recipe.  I added broken chocolate bar (Dark Chocolate from Amul) as substitute for chocolate chips.
The frosting turned out to be a challenge. I knew I had to beat butter and peanut butter together to create the frosting but I was too lazy to do the beating by hand as I do not have a mixer.  Then I found the icing recipe at this website.  The icing turned out to be little too thin but that was okay because the cake soaked it all up and became soft and moistened.
The next day morning I took 75% of the cake to the lab and gave the remaining to Sumitra for her two boys.
The day was busy as we had a new project trainee (my Ph.D. student, Popy, who is now teaching in Bangalore, sent me her M.Sc student for training) and then there were interviews for the direct Ph.D.  In the whole rush I forgot to inform my students that I had made a cake for them.  But, no problems! When I rushed in around 1pm to tell them about, the cake had been found and consumed.  They assured me that it was good.  And today morning, Sumitra told me that her children had loved it and they had said thanks.  
This is a cake I would love to make again though this time probably with a good thick frosting.

Of birds and wasps

The past Sunday when I went to water my plants in the balcony I noticed a small nest with two eggs next to the pot of fern.  It was the laughing dove who had used the space to build a nest.  I would think it a little bit inconvenient but turns out that the bird was smart.  From the outside the nest is completely hidden situated as it is between two pots both bearing ferns.  The dove, apparently the male does the incubation, has been sitting on the nest for 6 days.   It will be another week to 10 days before the eggs hatch. 

The upstairs neighbour of the dove is the rock pigeon who just finished giving birth about a month back.  The pigeons take great pleasure in strewing the balcony with all kinds of rubbish.  As the balcony is off-limits for Sumitra it is in an appalling mess.
 On the other balcony inside the cupboard that I built to keep all the discarded newspaper and gardening stuff the wasps have built a nest.  I have to be carefully while putting the newspapers into the cupboard as they have a nasty habit of stinging when least expected.
The rains this year, mercifully, have been plenty for Delhi.  The chrysanthemums have been planted. The hibiscus are blooming and I am looking forward to the parijatam tree to blossom sometime next month. In the kitchen garden front, apart from the spinach,  this year I am experimenting with cucumbers and tomatoes.  The only disappointment has been the rajanigandha or sampangi plant which has not bloomed at all.
Finally I got around to making pineapple upside-down cake. It is one my favourite cake and I experimented using fresh pineapple. It came out good or at least Sumitra's two sons enjoyed it.

Pear-chocolate muffins

For the past one week I have been feeling the taste of pears and chocolate.  And I knew I had to make some thing that contained both of them.  I first thought I would make a cake but later settled for muffins. The muffin recipe presented by Vegan Dad is wonderful as it can be adapted so easily to different combinations and permutations.
So I used the basic recipe -2 cups flour (1 cup flour and 1 cup oats), 1 cup milk, 1/2 sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup white sugar), 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 cup oil. For spices I just added ginger powder (again I simply felt the combination of pears and ginger would be fantastic).  For fruits I added chopped pears and pomegranate seeds.  Since walnuts were handy, I added a handful of chopped walnuts.  The mix was poured into muffin tins and topped with a square of dark chocolate ( I used Schogetten Dark Chocolate which fortunately was already in ready-made squares sparing me the job of chopping them into perfect squares).

Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate chip (walnut) cookies

I like my oatmeal cookies to be soft and chewy filled with raisins and chocolate chips and walnuts- all the things I love.  As my parents are winding up the trip and preparing to return back to their place in Chennai, I decided to make oatmeal cookies for them.
Cooking with my mother in the kitchen is an art and only my sister-in-law has it perfected. I prefer to do all the cooking when my mother is not there.  So I waited till she took her afternoon nap before attempting these cookies. The recipe, of course, comes from my favorite book, Cookiemania.  The recipe calls for 2 eggs which was replaced with 1 cup applesauce.  I found chocolate chips in Nature Fresh shop in Vasant Vihar and black raisins in FoodHall in the DLF mall.
For the cookies, one needs to cream 1 cup butter and 2 cups of sugar (1 cup white sugar and 1 cup brown sugar) together.  Add 1 cup applesauce (or 2 eggs) and beat till the mixture is fluffy and creamy.
The original recipe calls for 2 cups of flour which I replaced with 1 cup maida and 1 cup atta.  Mix the flour with 1 tsp of baking soda.  One needs to add salt too but since I used salted butter, I omitted the salt. 
Add the flour mix to the butter mix slowly, mixing thoroughly after each addition.  Once all the flour is added, mix in 2 cups of oatmeal.  Then add 1 cup raisins, 1 cup chocolate chips and 1/2 cup walnuts.
Drop 1 tablespoonful of batter onto a greased cookie sheet.  Make sure there is about 2 inch space between each batter drop as these cookies tend to spread.
Bake at 190oC for 10 minutes or so till it is browned.
It is a rich cookie but oh so satisfying.

Craving for muffins- Lemon-Coconut muffin

I have been going to the Monday market Vasant Kunj for vegetables with my upstairs neighbours.  Last week was a disaster as I forgot to take my purse (it has happened many times and I have not figured out how I manage this part. Probably the same way I discovered I had put money in the fridge along with milk and butter I had purchased).  This week I made sure that the purse was in my bag before I left the house.
The fist thing I saw was big fresh lemons and I decided that I would make either lemon cake or lemon something.
Yesterday it crystallized. I wanted lemon muffins.  I looked through sites in the Internet before finalizing on one. The recipe called for one egg. I debated what to replace the egg with. I had bananas but I wanted only the lemon and coconut flavor.  Adding bananas always results in subtle or overt banana flavour depending on how much one has added. The other option was yogurt but the recipe already had 1 cup of yogurt. Finally I decided to wing it. If the batter was too dry, I would add some liquid.
This morning I made them.  I completely omitted the eggs. The 1 and 3/4 cup flour was replaced with mix of maida, oats and atta as I did not have enough flour.  As the yogurt was too thick, I added little milk.  Here they are:

I had one for breakfast along with ragi idly.  It was a satisfying meal.

Cake brownies

At the end of my first year at graduate school, the Charlottesville public library had a sale. That is where I purchased my first library. Amongst the books I picked up was a book titled Cookiemania by Jeri Dry and Alix Engel. It was a second hand book. One of the recipes was for Chocolate Munchies. Against this the original owner (hopefully) had written "Jeremy does not like these".  I often wonder who Jeremy was and why he did not like these cookies.
I worked through the book, making many cookies, except for chocolate munchies (after all Jeremy must not have liked it for a reason), for my friends and family. The major problem is that almost all the recipes call for eggs and when I want to make these for my students I have to work around the egg issue.
This week I decided to make Brownies. There are those who swear by fudge brownies and those who swear by cake brownies. I do not care as long as it is chocolate.
The Cake Brownie recipe in the book is fabulous with a rich frosting. When I made them yesterday I omitted the frosting.
So here is the recipe.
1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup oil, 1 cup water, and 4 tablespoon cocoa should be mixed and brought to boil. Remove from fire and  add it  to 2 cups flour and 2 cups sugar mixture. I also added chopped vanilla pod instead of vanilla essence.
Then the original recipe calls for 2 eggs. I replaced it with 1/2 cup applesauce and 1 teaspoon baking powder.
To the above mixture, I added applesauce, baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 cup buttermilk and vanilla essence.
I stirred in some walnuts (I did not measure this) and poured the batter onto a 9 X 13 inch greased and floured pan.

The brownies were baked at 180oC till done.

Jugnu Bread (Zucchini Bread)

Last year when I got my oven I made zucchini bread and gave it to Sumitra, my maid. She loved it. Unfortunately, she could not pronounce zucchini and called it jugnu bread. So Jugnu Bread it is.
I made it yesterday for the lab meeting today.  The recipe is from allrecipes site. As I love to experiment (and drive my students crazy  by coming up with new experiments just when they are heaving a sigh of relief of getting their thesis done) I made some changes. I replaced the 3 cups of flour with part maida and part atta.  The 2 cups of white sugar was replaced with 1 cup sugar and 1 cup jaggery.  Oh, the zucchini was replaced with a mix of zucchini and carrot.
Since many of my students do not eat eggs, the 3 eggs were replaced with 3 mashed bananas.
Here it is:

Banana cake with lemon sauce

I love banana bread but all the recipes I had used eggs. Most of my students do not eat eggs so I have to  constantly experiment how to replace eggs in the recipes I have. 
I have this wonderful cake recipe book published by Better Homes and Gardens. I  purchased this when I was a grad student at UVa (currently in the news for all the wrong reasons and more about that later) and once I made the ice cream cake from this book for my friends because one of them wanted to eat an ice cream cake. There is a lovely pinapple-orange upside down cake recipe too- absolutely delicious cake but again calls for eggs.
I turned to it yesterday looking for recipe to adapt and there it was- Nutmeg cake with lemon sauce.
This morning I made it.  It is a rich cake calling for 1/2cup of butter and 11/2 cups of sugar. As the sugar crystals are large, I grind them to powder along with vanilla pod. Today I also added half a piece of nutmeg.  I usually melt the butter and beat it into the sugar.  It called for 3 eggs which I replaced with the puree of 4 over ripe bananas. That too went into the butter-sugar mix. 
For the flour, the recipe called for 2 cups of flour and I did not give in to my temptation of adding atta into it. I used 2 cups of maida as recommended. If you are using eggs, you need to add only 1 tsp of baking powder. If bananas are replacing eggs, then you need to increase the baking powder. For each egg, add extra 1/4 tsp of baking powder.  So I added 1 3/4 tsp of baking powder.  And 1 tsp of baking soda.
The recipe also called for 1 cup of butter milk or sour milk (add lemon juice to milk).
Alternatively add flour and milk to the butter-sugar-banana mix and fold them in. Pour the cake batter onto a 13 X 9X 2 inch pan and bake at 180oC for 30 minutes.
The lemon sauce is also very rich. I heated 3/4 cups of sugar with 5 tablespoon of corn starch and 1 cup of water till the mixture became thick. Then 2 tablespoon of butter was stirred in along with lemon juice and lemon peel.
Once the cake was done, I poured a little bit of sauce over it as I was planning to take it to the lab meeting. However, the appropriate thing is to serve the cake with sauce.
The picture of the cake is here:

The little corner is cut off because I wanted to taste it and
I forgot to take the picture before cutting the cake.





It is when I tasted it that I realized that I have the perfect banana cake- the one I had been searching for a long time. 

Dal with mooli/radish leaves

On the way back from Kosi Kalan on Sunday, we stopped at Ballabhgarh market as both my aunt and I had to buy vegetables and fruits.  We went slightly berserk at the sight of fresh vegetables and only the fact that darkness had set in stopped us from going on a rampage. As it ended up I purchased mooli.  I made mooli parantha and then not wanting to waste the leaves, I decided to make a dal.  I had some mixed dal which I soaked overnight (this I realized is absolutely needed otherwise the dal does not get tender) and pressured cooked it till it was mashable. I heated the oil and added cumin seeds and 1 chopped onion. Then seeing ginger on the counter top, I added little bit of it. Once the onions were tender, I added tomatoes and stirred till they started becoming tender. Meantime, I sorted the radish leaves and washed them. They were also chopped and added to the onion-tomato mix.  The leaves immediately wilted and once they were done, the cooked dal and salt was added.  For spice, I added the sambar powder and the dal was done. It tasted really good. I had it with a rice dish given to me by a colleague.

Currently I am attempting  to make eggless banana bread once more. Let us see how it turns out.

Warming up with soups

Now that days have become shorter and evening cooler, I tend to include more soups in my diet. Winter is always delightful with wide range of vegetables. On my grocery day I picked up fresh peas and carrots so today I decided to make peas-carrot soup. It was simple. I gave tadka of jeera (cumin) and sauteed one onion, one carrot and few shelled peas. I then added water and allowed the vegetables to slowly cook. I flip-flopped about what spices to add then decided on using sambar powder. So that too went into the pot along with salt. Once the vegetables were done, I allowed it to cool (I learnt the hard way that patience in this matter is always a virtue or else you will end up with soup splashed all over the kitchen and one self).  Once cooled, I pureed it in the blender. Before eating I warmed it up and added garnish of coriander leaves.
Here it is:

As an aside, Nanku Ram today decided that we should plant coriander in the garden.  Sumithra has been telling him to plant it but he has been resisting the idea. Today he finally decided that on Sunday we will plant coriander. So hopefully, this winter I will have fresh dhaniya from the garden.
The garden is now being readied for winter flowers. We pruned the hibiscus and the pavazha malli tree.  Plots have now been prepared to plant nastriums, allysium, poppies, pansies, and of course petunias.  We have started the seeds for all except pansies (which failed to germinate) and petunias.  Once the plants have become hardier, we will transplant them into the prepared beds.

Shrikhand

Shrikhand is an acquired taste. I remember eating it for the first time in Baroda. I was unsure about it. I am still unsure about it. I think it is okay in small teaspoonful doses but not in larger quantities.
Today I made  Greek yogurt. After making yogurt parfait, I had some leftover yogurt and on the spur of the moment decided to make shrikhand.  Basically, you need to beat powdered sugar and cardamom into the curd till it is smooth as silk. You can add nuts- I added almonds- as well as saffron-which I did in miniscule amount, so that it still retains the white colour of the yogurt.

Yogurt Parfait (Or Wake up to the Smell of Yogurt)

When I last visited my brother and his wife in UK, they were kind enough to get me fruit yogurt to eat in the morning as I cannot abide either tea or coffee.  Those days there was an ad airing there for a particular brand of coffee that went : Wake up to the smell of coffee.  I parodied it to Wake up to the smell of yogurt.
I have an on-off relationship with yogurt. When my allergies become bad I stop eating yogurt as it aggravates it.  When the allergies subside I start eating yogurt again. This is my on season and I noticed that the shops are selling yogurt parfait. Pretty expensive stuff for something which is essentially layers of yogurt alternating with fruits and granola.  As it is very healthy  I decided to make it at home.  All the recipes I found on the internet called for Greek yogurt which turns out to be nothing other than yogurt without whey. This is the same thing that is used for making shrikand.
So I strained the yogurt overnight in the refrigerator. It can be done at room temperature too but the yogurt acquires a tart taste, which I dislike.  In the morning I had a nice creamy yogurt which I layered on a glass bowl. I used Kiwi fruit and granola for the layers. I added honey as sweetener.  I refrigerated it for a day to soften the garnola  before having it for breakfast this morning.

This can also be had as dessert. You can add any fruit.  You can add chocolate chips or coconut shavings or nuts or raisins. 

Palak Dal

Yesterday I cut the first spinach crop. I planted it in June and went to Chennai for a break. When I came back all the saplings had dried up. Nanku Ram said that the heat had been too much for it and we will now have to wait for the rains before attempting anything more on this front. But when the first rain came the plants too sprang back into life. A fact we discovered while weeding that area. Here they are after the rains:

And my first batch harvested and washed:

Nanku  Ram told me to put it in the dal. So I made palak dal today using toovar dal. I got the recipe from Hare Rama Hare Krsna cook book. It called for tomatoes but I eliminated it.  I just did a tadka with cumin seeds and sambar powder. Finally I added some lemon juice. The recipe does not call for sambar powder but I told you I improvise depending on my mood.
Meantime, we uprooted the bhindi plants after harvesting the last crop. I thought I would never say it but I do not want to see bhindi for some time.

Let us talk of many things

The title, of course, comes from my favorite poem 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'.  I used to blog at scribblesside.blogspot.com but I cannot sign in anymore to that blog. Hence a new blog and a new beginning.

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things...

I am going to talk today about my garden.  This year my gardener was inspired by the tiny plot of land that I have carved out in my apartment complex. The university gardeners had planted some evergreen plants which I rooted out and instead planted series of roses and jasmines. It was not enough for my gardener, Nanku Ram. He decided that the time has come to plant a vegetable garden. The first vegetable he chose was bhindi.   We planted it in mid-April and by mid-May I was plucking bhindis every day. 

I took some for my parents when I visited them in June end. Nanku Ram also was able to take them home at least twice. 

Today's menu featured bhindi with potatoes. I ate this long time back in the hostel. It used to be, as was norm with most hostel food, unedible. I tinkered around a bit to get it to my taste (not to my father's who believes that bhindi should be perfectly cooked such that no trace of the green color remains. It should, preferably, be black after cooking.  And in this world there is only one person who can cook bhindi to his specifications.  And it is not my mother.).  I also realized, as I was making it today, that I would hopeless giving out recipes because I cook as per my mood. Today, I decided to use panch phoran (Bengali spice) for tadka.  As I chopped the bhindi, I changed my decision and chopped one onion too.  So this version of my bhindi-potato contained panch phoran, onion, and no turmeric.  I heated the oil, added panch phoran, and then the onions. After the onions became translucent, I added bhindi.  It was hot, so while bhindi was cooking, I came out and played few games on the computer.  Once the bhindi was done, I added two small boiled potatoes, salt and one green chilli finely chopped. Few turns and it was done.  Some times I omit panch phoran and instead add cumin seeds. Some times I add a tomato or amchur powder. It all depends on my mood.

But one thing is certain: the bhindi from one's garden tastes heavenly.