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.

Eggplant

I've probably mentioned my fondness for eggplant (aubergine, baingan) before in this blog. It's another of the 'uncool' things I like, along the lines of ghia and tinda. Somehow in North India, baingan is by and large regarded with either revulsion or a total lack of enthusiasm. However, down South, there are any number of creative uses of the baingan, from stuffing the little purple ones with spices to vangibhath( a spicy rice mix with eggplant, ideally made with the long, green variety), making a 'kari' or simple soth indian style vegetable out of it with mustard seed tadka and coconut garnish, to adding it to sambar (huli) or gojju which is an intense sauce made from a thickened tamarind mixed with jaggery and spices, and of course, the heavenly but takes-forever-to-make bagaare baingan for which I have a great recipe that I'm going to put up some day in the winter. One of the innovative uses I've put baingan to is using it as a base for pau bhaji. It tastes great, doesn't have the usual intense, smoky flavour which would fight with the pau bhaji masalas, if pressure-cooked and adds a better balance to the pau bhaji, apart from cutting down on the potato content of the bhaji. I've even served it to my baingan hating uncle who lapped it up until he found out what he had been eating!

When A and I were studying in France, we'd often come home not feeling like cooking, since our schedule was hectic, to say the least. We'd take out lebanese food from a nearby take-away but the whole point of the tiredness was that we didn't want exotic, we just wanted 'home' at that point. So we'd get some pita bread, mujaddara - which is basically masoor dal cooked with rice, and the babaganoush, which tasted pretty similar to bharta. That and yoghurt with pickle would make a typical tired-day dinner, and pretty satisfying too.

Bharta is a dish that I am very partial to, and it is also one of the simplest to make. One can dress it up any which way but it's fairly basic and goes well with almost anything.

Ingredients:

1 large, round purple eggplant/ baingan

1 onion, finely chopped

2 tomatoes, finely chopped

2 green chillies, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tsp cumin seeds

2 tsp oil

Bunch of coriander to garnish

1. Wash the eggplant, dry it and roast it on a gastop or in an oven, turning it over from time to time, till fully cooked all the way inside. The outside skin will be charred black and the kitchen will reek - be warned! Peel off the skin once the eggplant has cooled down, and mash the inside flesh finely.


2. Put the oil on to heat.


3. Once hot, add the cumin seeds.


4. Wait for them to brown a bit, then add the green chillies, onion and garlic. Stir and cook for a few minutes until the onions are on their way to browning.


5. Add the tomatoes, stir to mix and cook, stirring occasionally until the tomatoes are mushy.


6. Add the eggplant, mix everything together and cook for a few more minutes so the flavours meld together.


7. Add salt to taste and sprinkle coriander on top before serving.

Bharta tastes great with rotis, mosaru anna (dahi chawal - curd rice) and even with crusty bread for a snack. I've even enjoyed it with crackers, but that could be just me! Another fun thing to do with leftover bharta is to park it in a glass dish, sprinkle mozzarella or parmesan cheese on top and pop in the oven till the cheese melts.

I also have a 'rustic' recipe for bharta that I once read in a film magazine as Jackie Shroff's recipe. It's a quick and fun way to cook and it really does make a difference to the taste of the bharta.

Ingredients:

1 purple large, round eggplant

2-3 cloves garlic

2 green chillies

1 onion

1 tomato

2 tsp oil if you must!

1. Wash and dry all the ingredients.
2. Cut 5 narrow slits in the eggplant and put in the garlic cloves and the green chillies.
3. Roast the eggplant over the gas stove ( wood/ coal may be more authentic but what to do, I'm a city chick!) , turning from time to time, until charred on the outside and cooked inside.
4. Remove eggplant and put the onion and tomato on to roast while eggplant cools.
5. Take out the garlic cloves and green chillies and put them into the serving bowl. Peel the charred skin off the eggplant and park that too in the bowl.
6. Once the tomato and onion are roasted, add those to the bowl, having first peeled both.
7. Mash everything up (use your hands, this is fun!) together, then add salt to taste. At this stage you can go all slick and add the oil or some coriander. But the real joy of this is the robust flavour and smokiness of all the ingredients so I prefer not to make it dainty! At best, I slit a couple of green chillies and toss them on top of the dish.

Though it is completely non-decorative, especially as compared to other party food, I like to serve this when we have people over and it always goes down a treat. And you have the added benefit of a story to go with it!

Eggplant afghani style

I love eggplant/ aubergine/ baingan cooked most ways - grilled in olive oil, bhurta style, sweet and sour kashmiri style et al, but one of my favourites is a recipe that I read many years ago. It claimed to be an Afghani recipe, which tickled my fancy for exotic recipes, and it's been a summer family staple since. It's easy to make, tastes great on anything from bread to crackers to roti or even by itself and is easy on the eye too. It's also a great dish to serve when entertaining, because it looks more complicated than it is. I've even taught my maid to make it and she does a pretty good job though the presentation could be better.

For those of you following my blog, I have to admit it - I'm not a by-the-numbers anything, much less a cook. It bores me rigid to measure out ingredients and so on, except when I'm baking, in which case exactitute is of the essence. So make sure you adjust the measures as per your taste - I do!

Eggplant with yoghurt, afghani style

Ingredients:
1 big round purple aubergine or 4-5 long purple aubergines cut into 1 cm slices
1 big onion, grated
2 tomatoes, grated
1 tsp cumin powder
1 cup yoghurt, hung
2-3 cloves garlic, finely mashed (add less or more depending on your fondness for garlic. I love it)
salt to taste
2 tbsp oil
chopped coriander for garnish

1. Sprinkle salt on the eggplant and leave aside for some time



2. Add the garlic and salt to taste to the yoghurt and mix well



3. Pour some of the oil into a saucepan and heat till nicely hot.



4. Shallow fry the eggplant in the oil, turning the slices till nicely cooked and browned on both sides. If you're calorie conscious (and who isn't, these days), you can grill the aubergine in the oven which may take longer to do.



5. Set the eggplant aside to cool



6. Pour the rest of the oil into a wok and heat



7. Add the cumin powder, then the onion and cook, stirring frequently till almost brown



8. Add the tomatoes and stir to mix, then cook on a slow flame till well cooked.



9. Remove from the stove and cool



10. Get a shallow serving dish with a wide base and layer first the eggplant slices, then the onion-tomato mix and then the yoghurt



11. Top with coriander and pop into the refrigerator to chill until cool or cold - tastes good either way

Feel free to omit the cumin, it isn't essential.