Pineapple and Spinach Salad

I suddenly had this fit of inspiration and decided I wanted to do a Mango and Spinach Salad. Unfortunately my fit of inspiration was a few months too late so then i decided to settle for Spinach and Pineapple instead. This is a nice fun Salad to have and will give you lots of fun Caribbean sort of flavours. The winner in this though, is the dressing and you guys should feel really lucky I'm actually sharing this salad dressing with you!

Once again Thanks to Sarah for the beautiful pictures she always takes! Love you!

Salad requires: for 2 people
20 gm bean sprouts
Half a pineapple the skin, seeds and core (middle portion) removed and chopped up
Half a bunch of spinach leaves washed, dried and torn roughly by hand
Some crushed roasted peanuts for garnish (like 1 or 2 tablespoons)

For the dressing you will need:
1 clove garlic chopped fine
4 tbsp coconut milk
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
2 tsp oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar

Method for the dressing:
Heat oil in a little vessel and add garlic and saute
Add chilli powder and saute some more
Add Coconut milk and sugar, mix and bring to a boil
Switch off the gas and add the Soya sauce

You will get this beautiful sweet salty and rich red liquid that almost resembles a very strong Red Thai Curry

To make the salad:
Mix all the Salad ingredients together, drizzle the salad dressing on top and garnish with crushed peanuts

Voila!

This is not the best picture of this as we had hungry guests at home that were downing this salad at an astonishing pace and we were trying to keep up so this photo was taken in a little bit of a hurry!

Burgers

This is a treat for one and all, especially when you have children in the family. It is wasy, everyone can assemble the burgers themselves with their own preferences and you can have a fun and interactive meal with your loved ones

You will need: this will make 5 Burgers
5 Burger Buns (with sesame on top)
Some pickles sliced (optional)
Lettuce
Tomatoes - sliced (probably 2)
Onions (if you like them) - sliced into rings (one is enough)
Cheese Slices
Tomato Ketchup, Mayonnaise and Mustard

For the Burger patty you will need: 
500 gm minced beef or lamb
2 slices white bread
1 egg
2 tbsp coriander seed powder (dhania powder)
1 tbsp cumin seed powder (jeera powder)
1 tbsp green chili paste
2 tbsp ginger garlic paste
1 onion grated with the water slightly removed (I like to just whizz this up with a hand blender - so much easier)
1 - 2 tbsp salt
2 tbsp whole wheat flour

You will also need: some breadcrumbs

Method:

• Take the minced meat in a large bowl
• Wet the bread with water, squeeze some of the water out and put into the bowl of meat
• Add the rest of the ingredients for the burger patty and mix it all up - it's best you get in there and mix it all up with your hand, really nothing like it. But if you are icky about these things, take a large spoon and mix it all together
• Divide into 5 portions and make them into a burger like shape
• Roll the ready patties lightly in the breadcrumbs

If you have a sandwich maker with the grill attachments, you can use that otherwise you can just use a regular frying pan to cook the burgers

For the Grill:
Heat the electric grill, take a brush or a tissue with oil and lightly oil the grill. place the burger patties on the grill, cover and cook for 5 - 10 minutes or till it's reached the desired done-ness

For the Frying Pan:
Take an oil spry or brush the non stick pan with very little oil
First fry for 1 minute each side on high heat, then cover and cook the same for around 5 - 10 minutes or till you have the required done-ness

Toast the buns, take everything out onto the table where everyone can assemble it themselves with whatever ingredients they like

TLC Bakeware Quiz

go on this site and take this quiz! It's quite nice to get a quick lowdown on the different kinds of baking tins and equipment that is used

http://tlc.discovery.com/games-quizzes/cake-boss-bakeware-quiz/

Dress up your Chocolate cake

So this is a great tip if you want to make an easy premix cake and make it look really fancy and delicious.

You can take any premixed vanilla or chocolate cake and make it look and taste like a million bucks. Plus you have the satisfaction of baking a cake on your own at home!

You will need any basic premix cake - I would suggest Betty Crocker's chocolate or vanilla cake. This will basically require you to put in water, oil and eggs and mix it all together till all lumps have disappeared








Tip No 1:
Invest in a spring form pan (something that has a detachable bottom and a clip on the side so that you can take the cake out. Take a medium sized one I assure you, it's totally worth the investment


Tip No 2:
Butter the pan and after you butter the pan, take flour and shake the flour all over the pan so the whole inside of the cake tin is coated in white powder.

Bake the cake using all the instructions on the cake box

Make sure that you buy the following for the icing:
1/4 cup sugar
500 gm Chocolate (any cooking chocolate will do - Morde is pretty good)
250 gms fresh cream
A handful of chocolate shavings
Icing sugar

Method: things to do whilst the cake is baking
Take 1/4 cup sugar with 1/4 cup water, heat it till the sugar has melted. Leave aside to cool
Melt the chocolate, heat the cream, add the chocolate to the cream and mix together and leave aside to cool

• Once your cake has been baked, and considerably cooled then take it out of the cake tin
• Once it's cooled fully, then carefully cut the cake into half horizontally
• Put some sugar syrup (but little as the bottom may get soggy with too much syrup)
• Put a little of the icing in the center of the cake
• put the top half on top of this and again put some sugar syrup on the top of the cake. Do not use all of the sugar syrup your cake will become deathly sweet
• Pour the rest of the chocolate icing on top of the cake and dollop it all over your cake making sure that you put it properly on the side
• Put the chocolate shavings on the center of the cake and dust some icing sugar on top

You will end up with a cake that looks so brilliant and amazing and you can brag about baking it yourself too! Talking about having your cake and eating it too!

Sunday Treats: Steamed Fish

This is going to be a little more work than what my usual recipes entail but I promise you it's totally worth it. Thanks to my sister Sarah for taking such brilliant pictures

Before Starting you will need the following Ingredients:

1 fillet of Surmai

For the Marinade you will need:
1/4 cup light Soy Sauce
1 half inch pieces of ginger chopped fine
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp sesame oil
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Zest of half a lemon
1/2 tsp white pepper powder

You will also need:
1 spring onion (only the green part - you can use the white part instead of onion for your other cooking)
1/2 inch piece of ginger cut into thin sticks
2 tbsp sugar
1 red chili chopped (you can use green chili if you don't have red)
lemon juice of half a lemon

And finally:
Some Green Spring onion for Garnish
Some Coriander for garnish

Now comes the hard part: The equipment. 




You will need to steam this fish, which means you will need a steamer (duh!). If you don't have a traditional bamboo steamer like in the picture, you can use your rice strainer.









Just make sure that your rice strainer only has holes on the bottom, like this one here and that you have a lid that can cover the whole rice strainer

You will also have to have a chat with your fish provider to give you the Surmai in fillets. You will get 2 fillets from the Surmai. Make sure that you take a tweezer and take out the bones from the centre of the fillet and that you clean and wash the fillet after so you can land up with some truly beautiful looking fish

My personal suggestion would be to deep freeze the other fillet and keep for another day because 1 fillet is enough for 4 people. Plus only half the fillet fits into the steamer in a bowl at one time (I was lucky to have a two tiered Steamer so I could do 1 fillet at a time) but otherwise if you're doing half a fillet at a time at 15 minutes for each steaming... you're going to be pretty exhausted by the end of this whole culinary escapade. 

You also need a wok or a kadhai to steam the fish. Like you see in this picture I have put water below in the kadhai, then put the steamer on top. You should put around 1 - 2 cups of water depending on how big your wok is. The wok has to be rounded so that the water does not touch the food and only the steam touches the food. 

OK I promise you it is VERY simple once you have got the equipment

Method:

Marinade the fish in the above mentioned marinade for 15 minutes in ceramic or heat proof bowls that can go directly in the steamer. 

Whilst waiting, put the rest of the ingredients (except for the garnish) in a separate bowl and keep aside

Steam the fish for around 15 minutes or till cooked. You should put it on a medium heat and you'll know that the fish is cooked when it turns from transparent to white and a fork goes in really easily

Take the fish out of the gravy and place on your presentation plate

Mix the marinated gravy with your bowl of Ginger, spring onions, lemon juice and chilies.

Stir it together briefly and pour onto the fish. 

Garnish with Spring onions and Coriander

Woo Hoo .... I've taken a long time to explain it, but if you have all the equipment, this shouldn't take you more than 20 minutes to make, max

English Names of our fishes

Guys first let me give you a low down on the English Names of the various fish we get in the market so it makes it easier for you to figure out what these fish are like and get more recipes for the same:


Rawas: Indian Salmon Fish
Rane: Red Snapper Fish
Gobro: Rock Cod
Rohu: Greas Carp Fish
Murdoshi: Lady Fish
Pomfret: Butter Fish; can be substituted with cat fish
Surmai or Visonu: King Fish
Sangtam: Cat Fish (A fresh water fish)
Shevto: Muliet Fish
Bangda: Mackerel


If you want to find the fish you are looking for in the local market here are what they are called:

Clams: Teesrya
Crab: Kekda, Kurlya
Lady Fish Kane, Nogli
Pomfret: Paplet
Prawn: Jhinga, Chingri, Chemen, Sungat
Sardines: Pedvey

Healthy Hummus Rolls

Hetal, Hope you enjoy this recipe!

This is seriously great and easy to make too! It's healthy and great to have at anytime. You can wrap these up in foil and have them cold as well and they taste as good and is a great lunch idea to pack and take with you. I especially love these for my movie evenings so that we can all sit in front of the TV with our rolls and enjoy a great meal with a good movie. Oh and did I mention they were low on the calories too?

The other day I had posted the Best Spicy Chutney Ever and this is one of the dishes that you can slather this chutney on (depending on, of course your tolerance for chilies) and absolutely enjoy it

I would say you should provision for 2 roti rolls per person, they are pretty heavy. You can get your rotis made in advance or on the spot, doesn't matter (so long as the rotis aren't like 2 days old or something)

Ingredients:
4 rotis
2 chicken breasts (or around 2 cups boneless chicken)
OR
2 packet mushrooms (around 250 gms)
Half a cabbage (put in that slicer so that it looks like shreds)
Hummus (I'm going to post the recipe soon, you can just buy a jar or make your own)
Spicy chutney (see recipe here)
1 carrot cut into sticks and soaked for at least an hour in Vinegar
Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
mixed Herbs 9the dried ones that are normally in your kitchen cupboard forever)


Method:
Take the Chicken (after the obvious cleaning and washing) chop it up into small bits, take 1 teaspoon of olive oil in a non stick pan, saute the chicken, add salt pepper and herbs and cook it (this will take you not more that 5 minutes)
OR
If you are vegetarian and are using mushrooms: clean and cut the mushrooms into quarters, take 1 tsp olive oil in a non stick pan and saute with salt pepper and herbs. keep on the heat till the water dries out

After that everything is just assembling the roll together

Take the roti, put a generous amount of Hummus on it, put some of the cabbage, add a few sticks of the carrots, put in the chicken or mushroom, dollop on the spicy chutney and roll it up together. What would be a good idea is if you roll these up in foil so when eating you can unwrap them easily and they stay together very well

I kind of call this my version of the Shawarma but only this one is totally non greasy and totally easy to make at home!

Sorry guys I don't have a picture but hope to get some good pictures of my food in my next post!

Olive Tapenade

Easy Peasy

That you can do is take any olives (I prefer black ones), take out the brine they are in, take out the seeds of course and dunk it all in the blender with the following:

A good glug of good olive oil (1 bottle needs at least 1/3 cup)
2 fresh red chillies (roughly chopped up for easy blending)
Some fresh Basil leaves (just a few)

Just whizz it around for a bit till it forms a good paste, put it back in the original bottle without the brine in it and shove it in your fridge.

This is super for all sorts of sandwiches and just to eat with bread anytime!

Miracle Microwave Potato

This is the coolest trick EVER! basically, if you want to make a potato really quickly and do not want to bother to boil it or shallow fry it to actually cook it, this is the solution.

I use this when I suddenly realize that my gravy has a little bit of extra salt, or I feel like having a vegetable sandwich and there's no boiled potato, or then if I want to make a quick and easy potato dish within 10 minutes using cooked potatoes, this is it! I also have my Sour Cream to go with these. (click HERE to see the recipe for the same)

So this is a huge secret recipe and will put all you guys out there in a huge advantage especially if you like quick and easy so here it is:

Take a potato, wash it so that it's really nice and clean, prick it with a fork in 2 or 3 places, wrap it in cling film, stick it into the microwave for 5 minutes (for medium to large potatoes), and that's it!

so your Zero to Hero potato in 5 minutes has to cool, be peeled and here's my favourite recipe for them:

Ingredients
1 potato
1 tbsp lemon juice
Salt
Red Chili Powder
a pinch jeera powder
Chopped coriander leaves

Method
Chop the potato, add the salt, jeera powder, salt and lemon juice and put in a bowl.
Top with red chilli powder and coriander leaves and serve


I do have a very ugly photo of my cooked potato in the cling film but unfortunately it's too horrible to put up, so I've taken this picture from the internet - http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2011/04/fast-baked-potatoes-with-sour-cream-and.html

Restaurant Review: Mosate

It was a lazy weekend afternoon when we decided to try our luck with Mosate. I've normally had a decent food experience overall with Mosate before as well. It's great for Indian Chinese and some good Thai-ish dishes. Look it's not going to be refined authentic food and if that's what you're looking for be ready to pay triple the price and go to a speciality restaurant. However, to eat successfully at Mosate, you must know what to order because you may end up going horribly wrong and never ever wanting to re-visit.

Food: We were suggested by the server to order a fish in this special Lotchau Sauce as an appetizer and we chose to eat the prawns in butter garlic and Mongolian Chicken along with that. For the main course we had Thai Curry, the server suggested we go with burnt garlic and coriander rice instead of steamed rice and stir fried Chinese greens. I liked the Thai curry despite it being neon green in colour it was bursting with flavour and his lovely sweet sour spicy combination that is Thai food. The fish with his cute head placed on the plate (it did look kinda cool at first, then the sight just made me a bit queasy as I stared into the fish's beady little dead eyes). Moving on, the chinese greens were nice and fresh, the Prawns were upto expectations and the burnt garlic rice was brilliant. The Mongolian chicken however was not only deep fried, it tasted downright awful.

The service: The server's suggestions of the Fish in Lotchau sauce and the burnt garlic rice were huge hits; however, that fish should have been suggested as a main course because it sure as hell wasn't an appetizer. It didn't really matter because the food was taking more than 15 minutes so we told them to get everything at one go. The interesting part of that was that all our main course dishes came much before the appetizers decided to join the party!! Just made me wonder about the organization skills of the kitchen staff on that day.

Ambience: There was a strange wannabe lemony scent in the air but it wasn't a good lovely lemony, it was this kind of strange lemony smell. Fortunately this disappeared pretty quickly and we could concentrate on our meal and conversation. I don't particularly love the décor, but it isn't garish or overbearing so I can deal with it. Plus "adding" to the ambience were lots of Kitty party frou frous and we were surrounded by air kisses and designer sunglasses.

Overall: I would go there for the fish and Thai curry, or to meet a bunch of Gal pals or if half of the people I choose to go with want to eat Chinese and the other half want to eat Thai. 

Prawns in Butter Garlic

Just made these yesterday and it turned out awesomely delicious! This recipe is definitely high on the calories because you should totally use a good amount of butter in it (you can use all olive oil to make it slightly healthier) but it's a treat that's completely worth it

Ingredients:
1 kg Prawns de-shelled and de-veined
50 gm butter
1 tbsp Olive oil
3 spring onions chopped fine the white part and green part separated
1 tbsp coriander chopped fine (optional)
2 tsp red chilli powder
4 - 5 cloves garlic chopped
Juice of 2 lemons, plus 1 lemon for garnish
2 tbsp Maida (Flour)
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Method

• Clean and wash the prawns and marinate them with Salt and half a lemon juice for 15 minutes
• Take a pan, put the olive oil and butter together in the skillet and heat
• Add the white of the spring onions and garlic and saute for a few minutes
• Add the prawns, lemon juice of 1 lemon and sprinkle the flour on top of this
• Give it a stir, cover and cook on a medium flame. Prawns need hardly any time to cook so this will take maybe 2 - 3 minutes. Be careful you don't overcook the prawns 
• Open and add the green part of the spring onion, stir for like 20 seconds
• Add freshly ground pepper, if you want to add more salt you can now
• Take off the flame, squeeze half a lime on top of this, sprinkle the red chilli powder and garnish with coriander leaves (optional) 

This is especially delicious when you have good fresh quality ingredients and is made hot and fresh at the very last minute.

Thick Tomato Soup

I love this recipe of my Mother's it's such a lift me up especially in the winters and the rains! It's super easy to make and tastes delicious. Now I know the rains have gone but the winter is nearby and anyways this is quite an all weather soup for me so I’m sharing with you. I’ve given you the non-fat version with olive oil so that you can enjoy this soup more often.

Ingredients:

2 tomatoes, skinned and pureed

(To know how to peel a tomato please refer to my Tomato Salsa recipe or click HERE)

2 cups vegetable stock (you could use the ready cube one)

1/2 cup milk (or cream if you want it fatty)

2 tbsp Olive Oil

1 heaped tbsp Atta (whole wheat flour)

1 - 2 cloves garlic chopped

1/2 tsp Chilli powder

Salt to taste

Freshly ground pepper

Method:

· Take a vessel (non stick preferably) and heat the olive oil

· Add the garlic, chilli powder and sauté. You have to be careful here that the olive oil doesn’t smoke at this point and need to work quickly on this

· Add the whole wheat flour and stir

· Once it’s done, this will release a delicious roasted aroma and turn slightly brown.

· At this point, add the vegetable stock and tomato puree.

· If this forms lumps, then just whizz all this up with a hand blender

· Once this is smooth, add the milk and bring to a boil (cover partially, never fully)

Totally ready to go and rocking!

Best Salad ever!

I know my brother Rajiv will totally disagree, but I LOVE sweet salads filled with fruits and this salad totally fits the bill. It's so gorgeous to look at as well as to eat.

PS: I loooooooove strawberries so I put these in my salad in massive quantities but any really lovely looking and tasting fruit will do. My personal suggestion would be a fruit that’s slightly sweeter You can put any one or max two of the following: Cherries, Peaches, Bananas, Raspberries, Mulberries (though these make everything really purple and messy so you can put them only at the very last minute on top of the salad) and/or Watermelon

Ingredients:

1 Iceberg lettuce - 1 torn by hand into bite sized bits

a dozen strawberries cut into quarters (or any seasonal fruit of your choice as given above)

1 apple cut into cubes (I like the red colour and the roughage but you can peel them if you prefer the apple without the skin)

1 potato boiled and cut into cubes

Walnuts crushed

50 gm Emmenthal cheese cut into cubes

Dressing: whizz all this up in a hand blender or a small spice grinder

1 tbsp Lemon Juice

4 tbsp Honey

2 tbsp mint leaves

1 tbsp olive oil

A pinch of Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Method:

· Make sure that all your vegetables and fruits are around the same size

· Put the iceberg lettuce at the bottom of your plate/bowl

· Put the apples, potatoes and cheese here and mix all this up well

· Put the strawberries on top, douse with the luscious dressing

· Top with the chopped walnuts and enjoy!

PS: this picture is not my own, it is for representational purposes only. It is taken from

coffeeandvanilla.com

Best Spicy Chutney EVER!

I love this recipe given by my mom and it yields delicious results

take a grinder (one that makes stuff paste) and put the following in it

4 kashmiri chillies (if you want it less spicy take the seeds out)

4 tbsp vinegar (white, non flavoured type)

6 cloves garlic

1 tbsp Salt (or to taste)

keep this soaked for at least an hour or two, whizz it all up and voila! you're done!

I use this in Frankies, wraps, as a spicy sauce for Khausuey and sometimes I even use it almost as a sauce to spice up my everyday meal, like on my Dal Chawal (gotta try that combo)

Thanks Mom!

Peanut Cookies

Soo easy! These peanut cookies are delicious to eat and take less than 20 minutes to make

Ingredients:

100gm flour

100gm butter

100 gm icing sugar

50 gm roasted peanuts roughly chopped

Method:

· Preheat Oven to 180 degrees Centigrade

· Mix the flour and sugar together

· In a bowl, rub the flour and butter together to make it resemble bread crumbs (preferably put this bowl on a cold surface or put the bowl in an ice bath to prevent the butter from melting)

· Gently bring the dough together, do not knead it at all

· Take Cling film at the bottom of a work surface, put the dough on top of the cling film and put cling film on top of the dough and roll it out

·Cut into whatever shape you prefer. It's totally normal that the dough is really soft so be careful when working with it

· Place onto baking tray (you can put directly onto tray, no need to grease)

· Add the chopped peanuts here on top of each cookie. You can gently press them in

· Bake for 15 minutes or until cookies are slightly golden brown

· Wait for them to cool as they will turn hard and cookie-like only once cooled

Gorge on these cookies (I never wait till they are cooled, just stuff my face with them fresh out of the oven)

They can last a week in an airtight container

YAY!

Restaurant Review: Cafe Mangii

Café Mangii has been recently renovated (I mean it’s been a few months already) and it looks and tastes spanking new and fresh.

Food: I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of ingredients, the freshness of the food and the fact that the meats were all cooked well and not overcooked. We ordered the Gnocchi in spinach which was really yummy, the Prawns in Butter Garlic Sauce are skippable and the Cajun Chicken which was juicy, tender were great (though I didn’t understand where it featured on an all Italian menu). However, the piece de resistance in the starters was this warm mushroom salad… It was so tasty and literally melted in your mouth, they had this lively slightly piqant chilli and garlic flakes that really contrasted well with the salad leaves at the bottom. Seriously mouth watering. The Grilled Pomfret in mustard sauce was cooked to perfection with a wonderful balance of mustardy and herby. The succulent pieces just disintegrae in your mouth and infuse a beautifully balanced and delicate flavour in your taste buds. The Minute steak and Grilled Chicken met expectations. The Pizza was lovely, crispy and was made in a wood fire oven.

Beverages: They don’t serve Indian Beer, but the atmosphere is such that you like to sit with a nice mocktail, wine or something on the fancier side. They also have some good Scotches on the menu. The servers have a good knowledge of the drinks and the mocktails are yummy. I would however, personally suggest a wine with the meal as the atmosphere is such.

Service: The service was really good and a refreshing change to see people who had their food and beverage etiquette in order. Our server made some really good suggestions (like the mushrooms) and was really particular about serving in the correct manner. The stellar service really notched up this place for me in my eyes.

Atmosphere: I loved the lighting, it was perfect. It was not too bright and not too dim. Really lovely little bulb lights (which my friend Tasneem pointed out to us like the ever observant designer she is :) ) and the whole colour scheme was pleasing with browns and beiges, simple and comfortable chairs and nice ivory white table linen.

Final Verdict: I likie! will come back

Address:

Junction Of Khar Pali & 14th Road, Off Linking Road, Khar (W), Mumbai

022 26498100