Chilli Pickle

When I was in Pune at Smita's place she offered me "Phodni Chi
Mirchi" made by Kusum Maushi, her aunt and boy, did I hog on it!

So itwas my duty, nay solemn duty to make it here in Goa.

Between the taste I recollected and the phone calls to Smita I
recreated the recipe.
Then as per perdition of Smita Bai I found the
recipe that I had jotted down in the now numerous books that I seem to
have collected.
Here is the authentic recipe as dictated by Maushi.

¼ kg chillies,
1 cup red mustard
2tsp methi
¼ cup salt
1tsp hing
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 cup lime juice
1 cup oil
1. Wash and dry chillies cut into pieces.
2. Fry methi/fenugreek in oil, drain and powder.
3. Powder mustard, add lime juice and run the mixer.
4. Add the turmeric powder, hing salt and mix.
5. Add chillies.
6. Make a phodni( Oil And mustard )cool and pour over the mix.
Store in fridge.

Dressed up Lemon Zest Cake

In the morning, I decided that my cake needs some dressing up, so I heated up about ½ cup Mapro’s Strawberry Crush, 1 cup water , 1½ tblsps of corn flour and  ½ tsp of gelatin soaked in water (about 1 tblsps for a few minutes) in a double boiler till the mixture thickened.

Cooled and poured the strawberry mixture on the cake.

Dessert after dinner was great.

Egg-less Lemon Zest Cake

It's been a long time since I have tried anything new and ages since I
baked. I am seriously addicted to Farm ville and Cafe world on
Face book so I hardly have time to do this anymore.


But I just happened to be surfing and I landed on this blog "Evolving Tastes" and there is this cake that the lady has tried and WOW !


I just had to try the cake out!


But as I had run out of Maida/cake flour I decided to try it with
wheat flour/atta. I mixed the ingredients with increased quantity of
baking powder and soda but was reluctant to experiment with the amount
of liquids. So the resultant batter had a sticky soft dough
consistency. I could not shape it in any conventional shape, by then I
was worried if anyone will like to eat the so called cake. So I just
baked it.

The result was amazing, not only the cake eaten but my family did not
allow the cake to cool!

They just kept on breaking off pieces of the stuff.

Mind you, all this was complaining, as long as the cake lasted, that
the weather was too hot to eat hot things like this.

So I decided to bake two cake now one following the recipe and one
with the" Mad Scientist" at work. So here is my version of the recipe.

You will need these as ingredients:
1 ¾ cups wheat flour
¾ cup sugar
1 ¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt
2 tsp lemon zest
1/3 cup curds
¾ cup milk
1 cup water
2 tablespoons oil + a little more for greasing your baking tin
½ tsp vanilla essence
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Method:

1. Grease the baking tray and pre- heat the oven to 180C. I use auto
bake in the microwave.
2. Sift flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt. I did it
so that all the ingredients are evenly mixed.
3. In a large bowl mix the milk, water, oil and sugar. If you are
using Castor sugar it is a good idea to allow the sugar to dissolve a
little.
4. In the bowl add the curds, lemon juice and just swirl it a little
and mix all the dry ingredients add the lemon zest too.
5. Transfer to the baking tray and bake till a knife when inserted
comes out clean.
6. Remove from the tray and allow it to cool.

Eggless Cookies

My friend Vidya was on a lookout for cookies without using refined flour or maida. One evening, she came to my place with balls of cookie batter and told me to preheat my oven to 180C and bake them.
The cookies got fantastically burnt as we were chatting and forgot about them; also since I always use auto bake option I am not sure about the time I need to bake them.
But we managed to taste the one lonely cookie that had managed to escape charring and loved it.
So I baked a small batch the next day on of course auto bake and they were good. (it requires 15 minutes) You could try baking at 120 C till they are golden brown. My daughters, the chocolate worshippers since they wanted chocolate flavor so I made them with cocoa and chocolate chips. Next time I am going to smuggle in a few oats.

The ingredients are very simple
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup Bombay Rava
1 cup besan
1 cups ghee
1 cups powdered sugar
1tsp baking powder
2 tblsps curd (optional)
4 tblsps cocoa
Chocolate chips
Method:
1. Beat the sugar and ghee till fluffy.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well to form soft dough.
3. Since my dough was very dry I used curd to bind the mixture.
4. I let the dough rest in the fridge for 1 hour and baked about 12 cookies. As I was feeling lazy I let the dough stay in the fridge for 1 day and baked again I was surprised that they turned out much better than the earlier days.