Kitchen Chemistry

I have been drafting posts for a while now. But nothing I write really agrees with my mood. So I have a stack of unpublished posts on blogger.
One thing that agrees with my current state of mind 100% is baking. It has been a delightful one month back home. I have been experimenting happily in the kitchen. So I thought I will share some of my happy monsoon-special recipes with my readers.

Banana-walnut cake

You need...

1 1/2 cups flour (you can also replace this with whole meal wheat flour for a healthier version)
2 eggs
1/2 cup melted butter (in India, you can use homemade butter too. No need to buy processed butter)
1/2 cup sugar (you can replace this with Kanak Gool. Talk about self-endorsement haha!)
1 cup mashed banana (it is a good idea to just mash the bananas by hand. It gives the cake that rustic feel)
1/2 cup crushed walnuts (crushing in a pestle and mortar instead of grinding in a blender also adds character to the cake)
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg/ nutmeg powder
1 tea spoon baking powder

How you do it...

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
2. Melt the butter and sugar in a glass bowl
3. Add eggs and whisk until everything mixes well
4. Slowly add flour and baking powder; maintaining the consistency of the mixture
5. Add mashed banana, nutmeg and crushed walnuts. If the mixture is too viscous, add some milk.
6. Cover a baking tin with a thin film of butter. And add the cake mix. Make sure that the cake mix does not occupy more than 3/4th of the baking tin to allow for the cake to rise.
7. Bake for about 40 minutes. Test whether it is cooked using a skewer (for beginners, if the skewer comes out clean, Bingo!)

I am actually crazy enough to sit in front of the oven and watch it rise. But I understand that not everyone has such an unhealthy attachment to their work of art. :)

How you serve it...

Goes well with tea, coffee and happy company.

Variation: Apple cinnamon cake
Instead of using Banana+walnut, you can replace the fruit element with apple+cinnamon. In this case, unfortunately, you can only use white sugar to maintain the aesthetics of the cake. :)
If you wish to make this variation, peel the apples and boil them until they are soft. Blend apple and cinnamon into a paste and add it after step 4 above.

Happy Baking!

Crispy Chicken with Cherry Tomatoes

Okay I followed this one word to word from a periodical called "The Women's Week" and it seems that I can follow recipes as good as the analytical procedures. :)

This Italian recipe makes a perfect combination with a bit of garlic bread and wine.

The picture is again not as flattering as it should be but it sure tastes yummy!!

You Need

Chicken thigh fillet
New Potatoes (the ones we use to make Dum Aloo)

Cherry Tomatoes

All of the above in a 1:1:1 proportion depending upon how many people are eating.

Fresh Oregano Leaves

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Red Wine Vinegar

Salt & Pepper

How You Make It

1) Put the potatoes in salted boiling water and forget about them. Then cut the fillet in thin vertical strips and put them in a bowl. Toss the chicken with olive oil, salt and pepper till it gets uniformly covered. Then transfer it to a pan on high flame and toss it for ten minutes.

2) Put the tomatoes in a bowl and pour hot boiling water. Leave it alone for a while.

In a pestle and a mortar, pour in the oregano leaves and bash them up real nice. ( Do I talk like an Aussie?). When you are done "bashing" them, pour about 1/4th cup of extra virgin olive oil and a dash of red wine vinegar and bash everything up again. :)

3) In the meanwhile it is a good idea to pre-heat your oven to a good 200 C. By now the potatoes get done so pour them out in a colander and peel them. Then just snub each one with your thumb to get it all at your mercy. :D

4) Dip your hands in the hot water with the tomatoes and pinch their skins of. It is not really necessary but pinching them would make them mingle more easily with the potatoes and chicken in the oven.

5) Add the bashed up oregano leaves to the chicken, add potatoes and tomatoes with a bit of salt and toss everything nicely.

6) Lay out the mixture on an oven proof baking dish in one layer and leave it inside the oven for about 40 minutes. The end result should be uniformly golden-brown potatoes and chicken with a bit of it's own gravy.

I know this is a really violent recipe with a lot of bashing, pinching and snubbing going on along with a lot of components being subjected to abject boiling water scaldings. :)

How You Serve It

Chicken on the side with crisp bread and a glass of cold white wine to wash it down with.

A crunchy salad that does not have an elaborate dressing would make it perfect!

How You Burn It

Boy! I am still thinking how after the amount of olive oil that just went down my throat.

A complete sabbatical from carbohydrates the next day and an early morning run with ACDC ringing in your ears. ;)

So much for a Christmas Break!! I guess I really enjoy cooking. :D

Chocolate Chip Muffins

One of the greatest luxuries of my life is to have a warm muffin and a petite cup of cappuccino over an hour of gossip or a nice book.
So I decided that I should learn how to make muffins and I did!!
So here's the tried and tested recipe of walnut-chocolate-chip-muffins. :)

You Need

1/2 Cup of butter @ Room Temperature
1/2 Cup granulated sugar
2 Large eggs
1 Teaspoon Vanilla extract
2 Cups of all purpose flour
1 Teaspoon salt
1 Teaspoon baking power
1/2 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 Cup chopped walnuts
1/2 Cup chocolate chips

How You Make It

1. Take a bowl that has ample radius and depth to accommodate splattering of batter. :)
Add to it butter and sugar and with a powerful hand-mixer beat it into a fluffy mixture. Keep going at it till you think that the earth has stopped spinning and the mixer has turned into an extension of your hand.
2. In the same bowl, after switching the mixer off for a minute, break an egg and beat it into the previously done mixture. The egg will make things easier and more fluid but do not haste things up. Break the other egg and beat it after the first one has become "one" with the butter and sugar.
3. Add vanilla. Then gradually begin to add the flour following the same rule of not giving up mixing. If you pour in all the flour at once you are very likely to get flour agglomerates and conglomerates all over your bowl making it impossible to smooth it out. So be patient and keep adding a little bit every time.
4. You may need a bit of milk to keep the consistency and the viscosity of the mixture intact. So when the mixer starts getting lost in the batter, do add a little bit of milk.
5. Add the salt, soda and baking powder to make the final batter.
6. Stop the mixer and add the embellishments. Walnuts and chocolate chips can be mixed with a regular spoon.
7. Butter-line 12 cup-cake papers and spoon your mixture into each one just a bit above half the volume.
8. Set the oven at 200 C ( yeah the recipe I read said 400 without any unit and I had to do a lot of Googling and maths in order to figure out the temperature in Celsius)
9. Slide the tray in and keep it on for 15 minutes till the tops become light golden brown in color.
10. Remove the muffins and allow them to cool.

**The readers are encouraged to replace chocolate chips with 2 mashed bananas OR 1 cooked and mashed apple OR blueberries and/OR sultanas with the same recipe. **

In the meanwhile, it is a good idea to lick the batter spoons and try and estimate how good your muffins would taste from the batter-spoons. :)

How You Serve It
My flatmate Shruti knows best how to. You butter them and warm them up.
They should be accompanied by a cup of tea and lots of early morning breakfast laughter. :)

How You Burn It
By having just half a bowl of salad the night before and a swim and a jog later in the day. :)

Merry Christmas!!
Cheers!!

How to make AMAZING Gajar Halwa in minimum effort. ;)

You Need

1. Carrots ( A kilo maybe because the end result is really good)
2. 1 Can of Condensed Milk ( People in India SHOULD use Khoya/Khawa)
3. Sugar ( I have not worked out the exact quantity so keep the whole pack ready)
4. Nuts ( Almonds and Cashews pre-soaked in water for 20 minutes and sliced)
5. Ghee ( About 3-4 Table spoons for a kilo of carrots)
6. Cardamom ( 6-8 crushed)
7. A decent frying pan


How to do it?

1. Shred the carrots ( Not too fine because then you'll end up with carrot porridge)

2. Let the pan heat up and add Ghee to it ( watch the ghee and make sure you have shredded carrots and a wooden ladle ready before it gets all heated up)

3. Add the carrots and cook with constant stirring ( Please don't take phone calls during this time because even a slight relaxation can burn the whole thing. The Gossip can wait). This is a hydrophobic recipe. So by frying the carrots in ghee we are essentially removing the inherent water that all the vegetables have. :)

4. When the carrots shrivel up, look pale and dehydrated ( Oh Gosh! What a way to put it) remove the pan from flame and start adding sugar. Let it melt into the carrots. The ideal amount of sugar is till the time it soaks the poor dehydrated carrots and makes a sugary film around them ( Yes, it is fattening but when you are doing something wrong, you should do it right!)

5. Put the pan back on flame ( but reduce the intensity of the flame) and now it is time to add the condensed milk. Well,milk should go in last because it burns faster than sugar. Do not pour the whole can at once because then you will have to wait till the the vapor goes off, forms clouds and comes back as rain!! Let the carrots be hugged by sugar and blanketed by milk. You will see it boiling. The ideal "Gajar Halwa" aroma has a hint of syrup and a bit of carrot that gets you bewitched or sick if you stick your nose inside the pan for too long. However if you have your roomies leaving their "Saturday-afternoon-in-front-of-the-computer" positions and coming to see what is going on in the kitchen you are doing a good job. :)

6. Let the members of the pan mingle and make a homogeneous mixture. Then add the sliced nuts and cardamom. Let it cook for some more time. The time to get it down is when you feel really scared to leave it unattended. :D

How you serve it

There is only one way to serve Gajar Ka Halwa. Hot halwa with cold vanilla ice cream on the side. If you are really the "entertainer", put a leaf of mint on the ice cream.

Lines like, " Aao na!! Maine apne hathon se tumhare liya gajar ka halwa banaya hain"
and a bit of eyelid batting along with that go well with the dish and should be done without the fear of sounding stupid.

How you burn it

Around 60 laps in a 25 meter Pool
OR
6 KM of serious jogging

Chicken Curry For Graduate Students

Purpose:
To make out-of-this world chicken curry on a bright Saturday morning beating all the odds that plague the poor
Graduate Student.

Ingredients:
Chicken legs, yoghurt, lemon, whole pepper (about 7-10), grated coconut (half a cup), bay leaf, cinnamon,
Ginger- garlic paste, salt, red chilly powder, lots of tomato paste and three onions (vertically chopped).

Procedure: A] Marinate
For a kilo of chicken take around 500 grams of plain yoghurt. Add a spoon full of turmeric and about 2-3 teaspoons of ginger-garlic paste to it. Squeeze half a lemon and mix well. Wash the chicken and apply the above mixture evenly to all of it and leave it aside. This has to be left alone for at least twenty minutes so please make sure that you are well fed before you begin.

B] Spices
I believe that one should always make one's own spices. So I do not recommend the ready made chicken curries that you get in the markets. Take an average sized frying pan (hopefully non-stick but anything works if you are creative enough). Add about two tablespoons of oil to it. (Please refrain from using extra virgin olive oil. =|) When the oil heats up, try throwing a few mustard seeds when they crackle, carefully put in all the groups of spices individually and shallow fry them. Put in the pepper (and stay away from the frying pan as you do it because sometimes it pops up and goes into your eye!), the cinnamon and the bay leaf. Remove all the spices when they are light brown. This procedure gets out the flavour and you can smell them distinctly in the curry. In the oil that is left, fry the onion till it becomes light brown and squishy (Sorry, I really did not have a more accurate word than this). When all the oil is lost in the onion and the spices put in the coconut on the pan. Please watch it very carefully. Coconut oozes oil. So please do not add oil in the pan to fry coconut.
When all the spices are lined up in a plate (and you have realized that the 20 minutes of leaving the chicken alone are over) chop a tomato and in the heated pan, put about two teaspoons of oil again and fry the tomato and onion.

Challenge #1: Lack of blender.
Ideally the spices should be blended into a paste by addition of water. However not all of us are fortunate, rich or resourceful enough to have a blender around. It is okay to put in whole spices. I call it the "exotic" curry. Where you never know what is going to crunch under your teeth next. Sometimes it is pepper and sometimes cinnamon. :)

C] Cooking
Add in the marinated chicken to the tomato and onion and add the spices and the tomato paste. Let it cook for a while (under pressure if possible and if you are really hungry) When it is cooked (try forcing a fork through to check), add about 3 teaspoons of chilly powder and salt to taste. Please do not add a tumbler full of cold water if you need volume. Make sure you balance it with a thickening agent like tomato paste or coconut. It is an insult to the food if you indiscriminately add cold water when it is cooking.

Challenge# 2 Lack of time and the energy to do all of this in one go.
You can fry the spices and make a paste and refrigerate and only do the marinate and the cooking when you want to make it.

Challenge#3 "What is a bay leaf?" ..Innocent questions. Please go to the nearest Indian shop and ask the owner. He/she would help you to get everything that you need.
( Please do not fall into their traps and buy the larger packets because they are cheap. Both of us know that you are probably going to make this only once and then the spices are going to lie around over the kitchen counter)
Alternatively for my friends in America, you can just "Google it up" and get your answers. But please do not freak out the storeowner by calling it "Cinammomum tejpata".

Serving
Ideally you should garnish it with coriander leaves and serve it with tomato and onion salad.
With cardamom flavoured rice with saffron. These, I agree are luxuries. So just pour in plain rice in a bowl and have curry with it as you Gtalk with someone in India. :)

The Recipe for a perfect cup of tea.

1. Three quarters of a cup of water corresponds to 1 cup of tea with milk.
2. Multiply the above fraction with the number of people you wish to entertain OR with the number of times you wish to have a cup of tea before you decide to quit for the day (or the hour or the minute)
3. Put the water on high flame. Leave it alone without trying to set it up with sugar or tea prematurely.
4. When the water comes to a good boil, reduce the flame and add tea ( about 1 tea-spoon per cup) . Cover it immediately. Ideally tea should be made at around 600C because it is leaching of the tea extract into the water. If you hurry up this process by severe boiling and leaving it open, there could be a colossal amount of loss of flavor.
5. Any flavors that you may wish to add must go in right after the tea on the same temperature conditions. Specific flavors that I recommend are Lemon grass, Ginger and Cardamom. Flavors of any kind are extremely heat sensitive. So if you put in a lot in the beginning and let it boil like a hell fire, you are being inefficient and wasteful. A good temperature regulation can extract a large amount of flavor from a relatively small amount of source (ginger, lemongrass etc).
6. Switch off the heating source. DO NOT REMOVE THE LID. Let the ingredients of your tea get to know each other well for at least 2 minutes. Let them team up to create the irresistible fragrance that every tea enthusiast longs to smell first thing in the morning.
7. It is a good idea to warm up the milk and separate the cream while the tea brews. In my personal opinion pouring refrigerated milk directly into warm tea is a sign of uncouthness and extreme impatience. It disturbs the camaraderie of tea with its other colleagues.
8. Now strain your precious tea into a cup. You will notice that it is not entirely three quarters of a cup, but it is okay as meager evaporative losses are always accommodated. Pour in the separately heated milk. Add sugar.
9. If you intend to use a tea bag instead of powder, pour the boiling hot water in a covered kettle and put the tea bag in. In any case however, the milk should be used only after elevating its temperature to a good 600C.



Additional Suggestions

1. A good tea goes well with cookies. However they should not be those really ornate cookies with walnuts and pistachios. The cookies should be only as good as not to undermine or insult your tea and only compliment it.
2. For break fast, you could team your tea with toast and blackberry jam; Black tea with lemon works wonders after a heavy lunch when you have to get back to work; In the late afternoons, it should be accompanied by an occasional cake or a muffin since you need energy to go shopping right after work.



Conclusion
The way you make tea reflects a lot about your personality, because a great cup of tea demands a lot of patience, intuition and class. ;)