Learning from a disaster

Last Sunday I tried baking an eggless chocolate cake (extra moist one). I followed the recipe from rakskitchen.net. Everything was going well. I and my hubby were super excited as we both love cakes. And also we were expecting my sis in law and her two year old daughter. As per the recipe, the cake needs to be baked for 30-35 minutes. After around 10 mins of baking, the power went off and my cake went for a toss. Instead of being extra moist it turned out to be extra hard!!! But I didn’t lost hope; I will bake it once again and guess what I did with the disastrous one. I made a dessert out of it by soaking the cake pieces in orange juice and then serving in a tall glass with ice cream and Choco-chips.

Majjige Menasu

Last week my best friend cum ex-colleague visited me. Both of us met for lunch and we decided to binge on Andhra meals. There was loads of tasty and yummy stuff to eat on my plate but the item that stole my heart was a kind of special fried chilly. When I enquired about it, my friend told me that it’s very popular in south India and every other house prepares it. I came back home and did a Google search and found out its different names but the recipe remains the same. It is called taaka mirsang in Goa, majjige menasu in Karnataka, majjige balaka in Mangalore and sandgi mirchi in Maharashtra. I started with my preparation last week and its ready today. Wow!! I’m excited to have it tomorrow with rice during lunch.

Twisty Mushroom Shaslik

Today being Friday thought of cooking something different. I have set today's menu theme as 'Food with the twist’. This will include mushroom shaslik, twisty pulpy orange and doodhi-phirni. Now coming to the twist part, will tell you what the twisting ingredient in all the above recipes is. For shaslik, instead of hung curd i will use fresh cream and paneer. Pulpy orange will have rock salt, chilies, pepper, coriander and mint. And last but not the least to satisfy my hubby's sweet tooth I will prepare the usual rice phirni but will include bottle gourd too. Let’s get started...

Mushroom Shaslik

Serves-2

Ingredients:

Mushroom(Button sized) - 10 Onion- 2 Tomato-2 Capsicum-1 Lemon- 1/2 piece Ginger-Garlic Paste-1 tsp Hung Curd-3 tbs Garam Masala-1/2 tsp Tandoori Masala-1/2 tsp Tumeric Powder-1/2 tsp Olive oil-2 tsps Salt to taste

Note: In my recipe instead of hung curd i have used equal portion of cream and paneer.

Procedure:

1. Quarter onion, separate layers keeping 2 layers per piece. Cut green capsicum into 1 inch pieces. Quarter tomato and halve each quarter. Clean the button mushroom under running water. Put all the vegetables in a bowl.
2. For the marinade, grind paneer and cream in a mixer. Add salt, dry masalas, juice of 1/2 lemon and ginger garlic paste. Add this to the vegetables and mix well.
3. Heat little olive oil in a non stick grill pan. Pierce the vegetables onto satay sticks in the following order: Onion, mushroom, tomato and capsicum. Keep these sticks on the hot grill pan, drizzle some of the remaining marinade over them and cook, rotating the sticks to ensure even cooking all around. Sprinkle some oil over it. When the vegetables are lightly burnt transfer them onto serving plates.
4. Tasty twisting shasliks are ready to be served with green chutney.  

Note:
* If you are using bamboo satay sticks, do not forget to soak it in water for 3-4 hours so that it do not burn.
* I prefer to keep the marinated vegetables  in the fridge for 1-2 hrs.

I would post the recipes for twisty pulpy orange and doodhi-phirni in my next post.

Vineet Bhatia's visit to Guwahati

Cabbage in my mind!

While surfing through sanjeev kapoor's website today, I came across the new section "Recipe of the month”. The core ingredient to be use in this contest is cabbage. I decided to participate and the recipe that came across my mind is the one that I invented during the second round of Master Chef India-2 auditions in Kolkata. The recipe was packet bomb with spicy tomato chutney.

Will cook it again!

Eureka!

For today's lunch I prepared kadhi chawal.But the best part is that when the kadhi was ready, i realized that instead of besan I accidently used sattu. And to my surprise it turned out well. Let’s see if my hubby can make out the difference!!!

Black forest cake

I’m back after 4 months as today is a special day for me. I’m celebrating six months of my blissful married life. I baked my first Black forest cake. I wanted to bake a round one but could not find a round baking dish in the nearby mall, hence landed up baking a square one (It’s actually looking Ok!!!).And luckily it turned out well :-). Had a wonderful lunch with my younger brother and is getting ready for dinner. I was not able to decide what to cook for Mr. Prasad today. Well then suddenly got an idea of preparing everything what HE likes. And here is the menu, Chicken Curry, Butter Naan, Tandoori Chicken and Chilly Prawns. And of course I’m going to prepare them all.

Adapted from divya's blog and rakskitchen.net

Ingredients:

Plain flour/All purpose flour/Maida-1& 1/2 cups

Cocoa powder-3 tbsp

Sugar-1 cup

Oil -1/4 cup

Baking Soda-1 tsp

Lemon juice/Vinegar-1 tbsp

Water   1 cup

Salt-1/4 tsp

Vanilla essence-1/2 tbsp

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.Line a square/round cake tin with butter paper.
2. Mix the plain flour, cocoa powder and baking soda. Sieve them to ensure even mixing and keep aside.
3. Mix water, sugar, salt and make sure the sugar gets dissolved and then add lemon juice/vinegar to it. Add vanilla essence.
4. Add the sifted flour and mix well. Then pour the batter in the cake tin.
5. Bake for 35-40mins or until a tooth pick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
6. Let the cake cool down for 15 mins and then invert it in a wire rack

Ingredients –For the Sugar syrup

Sugar – ½ cup

Water – ½ cup

In a thick bottom pan, mix the sugar and water and boil till the sugar melts.Keep aside to cool.

Ingredients –For the cream 

Fresh cream – 300 ml
Powdered sugar – 4-5 tablespoons

Vanilla essence – 1 teaspoon

Keep cream and the beater blades in the freezer for about half an hour.

Add sugar and essence to the chilled cream.

Beat well till the cream is thick and forms soft peaks.

Keep refrigerated till use.

Ingredients for filling and garnish

A cup of canned cherries chopped finely.Reserve a few for garnishing on top.

A bar of milk chocolate – Make chocolate shavings out of the bar and keep refrigerated till use.

For assembling the cake

Cut the cake into 3 layers horizontally.

Keep one layer of the cake on the serving plate.

Sprinkle 3-4 tablespoons of sugar syrup on it.

Now spread 2-3 tablespoons of whipped cream on top of the cake.

Add the chopped cherries on top.

Repeat with other layers.

Cover the cake completely with whipped cream on all sides and the top.

Level the top and sides with a broad spatula dipped in chilled water.

Decorate the top with chocolate shavings, halved cherries and silver beads.

Keep chilled in the fridge till use.

Note:

Mine is a moist egg less chocolate cake.

Do not replace baking soda with baking powder.