Many Months later...

Have been a lazy, lazy blogger...but then you know that by now. However, thankfully I have not been a lazy, lazy cook. Here are some of the more interesting food innovations I've come up with over the past few months:

1. Pasta sauce inspired by Baingan ka bharta

I loove Baingan, or aubergines. And I love the way that my cook makes Baingan ka bharta - she slowcooks the onions until they become almost caramelized, and that gives the Bharta a wonderful sweetish taste that sings well with the taste of smoked Baingan. Anyway, as I was greedily scoffing it one evening at dinner, I thought - what better than to combine the earthy flavours of this with pasta? And thus, a culinary star was born.

I didn't want to over-tip the Indianness of flavours, so I steered away from the spice rack I would have beelined for, for a Bharta. I used freshly cut basil from my garden.

I thought the smoked baingan would look less attractive served over a pasta, so I diced it up finely and slow-cooked it in vegetable oil until it was melty-soft. The onions and tomatoes were also cut and cooked the same way. I added salt to taste, a dash of olive oil and a generous grating of parmesan, topped it off with the aforementioned basil and served it over farfalle. Delicious. But next time, I'm going to try it with smoked aubergine and see which ones lives up to my culinary dream better.

2. Cheesecake pie

Chubbocks read this recipe in a storybook and wanted to try it out. one of my objectives for this sumemr is to teach him to cook, so I thought this would be a good, easy one to start with. It was easy-peasy, looked professional and tasted fab - definitely a keeper for when I have guests over.

Ingredients:
1 pack of Philadelphia cream cheese ( about 200 gms)
1 carton of lowfat cream ( 200 ml)
Honey to taste
Vanilla - 1 tsp
15 biscuits - depending on size. Use Digestives for better texture.
100 gms white butter, softened
About 20 strawberries, cut into halves, and assorted berries (canned will do)

Put the biscuits into a ziplock bag. Take your rolling pin out and bash them about - a great stressbuster too - but don't crush them too fine into powder. Add the softened butter and make it into a dough. Spread it out with your fingers to fit the bottom of a 9" diameter nonstick pie pan and park the pan into a cold fridge for a couple of hours, till the crust sets.

Meanwhile, put the cream cheese and the cream into a mixing bowl. Add the vanilla and the honey and beat into a smooth paste, but be careful not to overdo it, else the cream will turn into butter!!! Spread it out on top of the crust and put it away to chill.

Just before serving, top with the cut strawberries and the mixed berries. Add a dash of finely cut basil if you like.

3. Eggs and beans

Yes, not your usual combo, right? But anyway, I have to eat a lot of eggs on my diet, and am always looking for ways to make it fun. So I thought I'd experiment with Szechuan green beans topped with Chinese fried eggs, and whaddaya know, it worked!

Szechuan green beans - Top and tail fresh green beans, stir fry until somewhat soft on high heat in sesame oil, along with diced onions and finely chopped green chillies. Add a dash of soy sauce when done.

Chinese eggs - Fry eggs on medium heat in a dash of sesame oil. Add finely chopped fiery green chillies and finely chopped coriander leaves while the egg is still cooking, adda  dash of soy and leave until the egg is firm.

Top beans with eggs. Enjoy!

4. Raita/ dip with aubergine chips

Tastes great with any pulao/ chips/ crudites...

Take a couple of small aubergines and slice them really, really thin ( 1 mm). Deep fry them in oil until firm - they taste delicious, BTW.

Beat a cup of homemade yoghurt with a couple of minced garlic cloves and salt to taste. Decorate with the fried aubergines just before serving.

Strawberry Fever

I had never tasted strawberries, though I had heard about them from my parents when they returned from England. Strawberries held a peculiar fascination for me, since my favorite authors from childhood, all British, from Enid Blyton to Noel Streatfeild, had mentioned them as inevitable accompaniments to summer. I used to wonder what they tasted like, tasting them in my imagination as something out of the world. Perhaps nothing could have lived up to the taste conjured up by my mind.

As it is, in my growing up years, I had to stay away from many food stuffs since I had Bronchitis. Ice creams, heavy milkshakes, grapes, bananas…My parents used to keep trying to make up for this – mom would pressure cook a banana once in a while. My aunt would boil grapes in water to make grape juice. Dad would buy me an icecream cone when we went to India Gate – just the cone, because the icecream would have made me ill. Then, when we moved to Bangkok when I was twelve, it was liberating in many ways. The hot climate and the Bronchitis treatment I got there meant I could finally have icecream. And milk shakes. And fried foods. Even bananas. Strawberries, alas were unavailable there too, but the flavour was ubiquitous, so my sister and I, in our first three months there, had everything we could lay our hands on that had strawberry flavor – milk, icecream, cream biscuits, wafers…

Sadly, though, after the first three months, that syrupy sweetness palled on us and we moved onto other flavours, never to return to strawberry flavor with the same fervor. Somehow the artificial strawberry flavour seems to fous more on the colour than on replicating the intense taste of the strawberry. Even the colour is off-putting - more like Digene or Pepto Bismol than anything else, hardly any relation to the vibrant red-pink of real strawberries. And the taste is just blandly sweet - no fragrance and certainly no tartness to round out the sweetness. Artificial strawberry flavouring is actually revoltingly similar in taste to Digene!

Much later, by the time I was in college in Delhi, I suddenly found little plastic baskets of fresh strawberries being sold at those Diplomat haunts, INA market or Khan market. I had no idea how to pick them so I usually ended up being cheated by the shopkeepers into buying baskets which had red sour fruit on top and green, sour ones at the bottom. I really wasn't sure whether the song and dance about strawberries was just another example of British cuisine. But I was entranced by the way they looked - the lovely heart-shaped fruit, the intense colour, and the whole delicate body being crowned by pretty little green leaves.

Then, on my first visit to Europe, I was in the Eurostar going from London to Paris and found that they were selling punnets of strawberries. I had never seen strawberries like this – they were the size of the peaches we get back here in India. Despite the expense on my limited budget, I had to try them – and finally understood what all the scrumptious mystique was about. Juicy, sweet and yet delightfully and addictively tart, I could have made a meal of them, and nearly did. Ever since, every winter in Delhi, between January and March when the strawberries are out, I pounce on them, hoping to recreate the same flavor that I experienced in England. But maybe that's something that just belongs there, amidst Wimbledon and Boat race night, driven by the terroir?

However, what I can manage is to make strawberries and cream, the cream slightly whipped with sugar to add a little more sweetness to the largely tart flavor of Indian strawberries. Fluffily and palely pink if you refrigerate it for half an hour, it looks like a visual representation of Cloud 9. Add a few ruby-red pomegranate seeds and you're not quite sure whether you're supposed to eat it or just stare at it in delight!