First Award Ever!!!!

I wanted to thank Reva from kaarasaaram.com for the lovely event she hosted and the appreciation it got my way! I have never won an award at my blog and am super duper excited!!!! YAY!!!!


I am really looking forward to receiving my cookbooks :D!!!!
    

Simple (One Bowl) Chocolate Cake

It is 40C in Delhi and we are literally melting in the sweltering heat... regular fare for us includes rice, lentils, veggies or indian bread (roti) and all I feel like doing is sipping on tons of Leomande or Tang and maybe nibble on some loaf cakes in the evening with Cold Coffee.

In times like this I do not feel like entering my kitchen and standing next to the pre-heated oven...

This definitely calls for a one bowl chocolate cake recipe with some whole wheat flour, yogurt and ground almonds... (makes you feel less guilty about missing that workout!)

I am still in the process of perfecting the recipe...

Anyone, have a healthy wholesome chocolate loaf cake recipe please leave a comment... till then why don't I leave you with a picture!

Mango Coconut Macaroon Tart... (Still can't seem to get enough of Mangoes!)

Things have been moving full throttle in the summer... after the baby got over a bout of cold and cough... it was the hub and the MIL that followed suit. The temperatures in Delhi are touching 40 C and all I can think about is sitting in my air-conditioned room and not stepping out. The only thing the heat is not stopping me from doing is eating... and I better watch the scales or I am going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe for my vacation!!!!

Besides the million things are craving my attention on the home front I have an aunt who passed away recently in a very untimely manner - but when I think of her - a very cheery face comes to my mind who was always smiling and ready to get into a kitchen and cook up a storm for her guests at a mo's notice - a very nice way to remember someone I must say and I wish I could always be remembered smiling but that is not one of my best traits - (*Note to self: Smile more often and spread happiness... it's very contagious)

Coming back to the tart, the heat, maid issues, baby adjusting to school have all been eating away on my time and earlier I managed to pack my baking at around 4-5am but by the time I hit the bed, I am asleep before my baby and manage to barely struggle out 7am. And, if I told you I had help to clean and swab and dust and put my utensils away some of you who do not live in India would be jealous but trust me I would not survive here without all the people helping me!

I wanted to bake something different (No chocolate) and got my hands on some desiccated coconut. You know I was obsessed with strawberries for a while but as the summer trudges along, mangoes are now, holding my interest! I wanted a nice nutty and nutritious tart base and had some ragi flour lying around (I had earlier used it while making biscotti and it had imparted a nice nutty, almost chocolaty flavor to my biscotti) - so in it went with a small amount of almonds and butter and that was my tart base. Now, all I needed to do was think of a filling and was very inspired by www.smittenkitchen.com!

Ingredients for the Tart:
1/4 cup almonds
1 cup ragi / millet flour
1/4 cup all purpose flour
a little lesser than 1/2 cup butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200C.  I just pulsed everything together in my mixer and cooled it a bit in a my fridge. Though, the pastry was still soft to roll out I almost had to roll it into the tart pan I was baking it into. It fit a 6" round tart tin.I blind baked it with beans. I rolled out the tart and put it in my tart tin. Forked it a bit. Put a parchment over it, added some lentils and beans (trick from Rachel Allen bake) and then baked it for about 20 minutes.

Ingredients for filling:
3 large egg whites
6 tablespoons brown sugar
1 large mango cut into bite sized chunks
100grams desiccated coconut

Method:
Stir together egg whites, coconut and sugar. Now spoon the mixture into the tart tin and add chunks of mango to the tart so the fruit is visible. Bake for 20-25 minutes till the peaks are browned. The filling of the recipe is taken from a book called Super Natural Everyday - waiting to lay my hands on it and the pairing they have used is Blackberries and Coconut and some pistachios pressed into the filling in the end (fresh blackberries are almost impossible to lay your hands on in the summer in India). I thought Mango and Coconut were yumm too!

The tart was really yummy and the filling really moist and coconutty. The only problem I had with this tart was that that mangoes kept losing moisture as the day waned... so I would put some sort of preserves on top of the mangoes after the tart is baked to preserve them if you are serving this later... must say this tart didn't last past a few hours! The base was very very soft and biscutty and perfectly paired with the coconut and mango!


This is also going to make the perfect entry to the Monthly Mingle - a great event started by Meeta of What's For Lunch Honey... I think I may have just made the deadline :)! This month's mingle is being hosted by Cook Sister - a very scary challenge for me since I had never ever baked a tart in my life!!! But alls well that ends well I say...

Mango Pancakes - it's raining Mangoes!

A Double Post... coz I am finally back - was feeling really lost without my laptop and have been waiting to blog for the last few days...

Summer is here and there is an abundance of fruit everywhere. India is known for it's yummilicious mangoes in the summer and you have over a 100 varieties available in the country. If I am obsessed about baking and cooking with strawberries my love for Mangoes cannot be left far behind. I have grown up on  staple diet of luscious orangey Alphonso Mangoes and just can't resist picking up some when I am at a fruit vendors. Previously, I did the following Mango posts Mango Cream Cake , Mango Shrikhand,  Mango Yogurt Mousse , Mango Panna , Mangoes & Cream Ice cream .

Now, I landed up with a batch of not so sweet mangoes and wanted to do something different with them... the morning was rainy, I had my cuppa coffee in my hand and was standing in the balcony (Delhi / Gurgaon has been having weird weather the past week), reminiscing about similar weather in Koh Samui a couple of years back and how I was stuffing my face with some Mango Pancakes. Now, I could really stuff a number of panckes into my mouth at that time 'coz I was a couple of months pregnant and that totally gave me the license to eat my heart out!

Anyways, coming back to the pancakes... I wanted to put together something easy in a jiffy with the ingredients I had on hand and was googling around for an easy recipe but didn't find any so put together mine after reading a ton of them!

Ingredients:

1 up all purpose flour

3/4 cup milk & a little more incase your batter lacks the consistency of regular pancakes

1 egg

1/2 tsp baking soda

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 mango chopped into small bite sized pieces

I mixed all the ingredients, except the mangoes, for the pancake batter and let it sit on the counter for a couple about 30 minutes. As you can see from my pictures my mangoes pieces were chunks rather than bite sized and I added them to the batter when I poured it into my non-stick. The flavour was yummy! I sprinkled some powdered sugar on them and enjoyed them with a bit of honey but the rest of the family doused them with the eternal favorite Maple Syrup. I am guessing mango essence instead of vanilla essence can also be tried but they had a pretty nice mango-ey flavor to them!

I also wanted to submit this post for Healing Foods - Mango being hosted this month by the talented Reva from Kaarasaaram. Healing Food is the brain child of Cooking with Siri - a young working girl and part-time blogger! She has an amazing collection of recipes and better pictures to match so do hop on over to her blog to catch up on some great recipes.

I am so happy with the feedback that I have received for this recipe... that it has literally left me beaming! I am going to submit this post to the Breakfast Club. Krithi from http://krithiskitchen.blogspot.com
 has been kind enough to let me submit this post to the Breakfast Club #10 that she is guest hosting. It is originally hosted by  Helen from  Fuss Free Flavours, both really great blogs that I have discovered! I am so glad to be able to discover such great blogs with awesome recipes and pictures!

Melting in the mouth Mutton Kebab / Shammi Burgers from scratch...

I have been a non-vegetarian all my life except for a brief period of say 3-4 years when I tried to be completely vegetarian - but just didn't work. My hub and the child are hard core carnivores and are happy eating chicken a couple of times a week. I do cook fish and chicken in the house but I am not a fan of red meat and neither do we cook pork or beef in the house. But this kebab converted me completely.

Now, my MIL is over to spend some time with us and makes a mean mutton curry (more on that later...) but I thought it would be a treat to get her to make some Mutton Shammi Kebabs and turn them into Mutton burgers for dinner.

So, first we went about getting the Shammi recipe which is an age old and been in the family for a while and I got some pics of her cooking it too! So, you will have almost a step by step view of this dish and it is super easy!

It's basically a mix of meat and uses some lentils as a binder. An egg yolk here, some fresh bread crumbs added to the mix with tons of indian spices (garam masala) and we had our finger lickin' burgers ready. Ohh, since this was a night shoot the lighting is really bad so please pardon the pictures! We dressed the burgers up with a mayo-ketchup sauce, sauted onions and tomatoes and jalapenos - I know all of which seems hard to distinguish from the pics below!