Egg Bhurji/Burji (Spiced up Indian Scrambled Egg)

Egg burji often sees our breakfast table on the weekends, especially if my lunch is going to be late or we are going out shopping. This is one of the easiest recipes and  was passed down to me by my dear friend Simi Reji, my husband’s friend’s wife. Several years back, they had stayed over at our place while we were in Portsmouth; some six years or so ago when I didn’t blog and I didn’t really cook great. Wondering what to make for breakfast that day, she told me there is an easy recipe that could be made with very little ingredients and in no time. That was when I was introduced to this humble recipe and I have been making this on a regular basis ever since. They are in America now, but I remember her every time I prepare bhurji.

There are several versions of egg burji, but this is how I prepare, how we like it. This is a straight forward recipe, quite easy to make and a versatile one. You can modify the recipe to your liking and throw in cooked vegetables if you fancy. You can also add little bit of ginger along with onions.  Below given is my usual recipe that I make again and again without any modification. I sometimes opt out capsicum if it is not available and adjust the heat in the bhurji depending on the chilli I use. Reduce the chilli powder if you are going to use hot green chilli. As I use mild chilli powder, I add quite a bit of it. You can play around with the recipe; however, it will taste great.

Egg Bhurji/Burji (Spiced up Indian Scrambled Egg)

Ready in 20 minutes

Serves 3-4

Ingredients:

4-6 large eggs, lightly beaten with a tsp or two of water **

1-2 tbsp oil, coconut oil or vegetable oil

1 large onion, 130g, finely chopped

6-8 curry leaves, finely chopped

1 medium tomato, 120g, finely chopped

¼ piece of green capsicum finely chopped

1-2 green chilli

1-1  ½ tsp mild red chilli powder

½ tsp turmeric powder

a pinch of garam masala

2 tbsp chopped coriander leaves.

Preparation:

1. Heat a medium size non-stick pan to moderate heat and add oil.

2. When hot, throw in chopped onions and salt sauté until it is soft.

3. Add in the chopped curry leaves and green chilli if adding and sauté for a minute.

4. Add tomato and cook it covered until soft.

5. Add in the chopped capsicum and sauté for a minute.

6. Add in chilli powder and turmeric and cook on medium heat until the spices are cooked, for a minute or two.

7. Add the beaten egg and let it cook for 30 seconds or so until it starts cooking. Keep stirring, scrambling the egg until it is cooked to preferred consistency. Add a good pinch of garam masala on top and add coriander leaves and mix well.

Serve hot with Toasted bread.

Notes:

I add water while whisking eggs to prevent the burji going really dry. By adding water, you get burji that is slightly wet or not rubbery. But you can opt it out if you like your bhurji to be really dry.

Spiced up Carrot and Apple Muffins

Rishan’s school is now closed for Easter and I am looking forward to trying something healthy and include as much as fruits and vegetables into his diet. He is not a picky eater, but when he goes to school, he is quite concerned about what he carries in his lunch box -  No Indian Food, no cold food and but only couple of sandwiches that  he loves. So, it’s not always possible to make his diet wholesome and healthy.

 Here is a one of our favourite muffin recipes that I made quite a few times and he carries in his lunch box once in a while. These are great whilst warm and are packed with fruits, seeds and carrot without any pronounced taste of any. The seeds give a bite to the muffins which could easily be omitted if you dislike. These cup cakes are moist, healthy and simply delectable. As the muffin uses oil instead of butter, it stays soft and moist without going tough unlike many butter based cakes. The spices nutmeg and cinnamon works very well with carrot and apple and make a perfect combination. These are delicious plain and you wouldn’t want to laden yourself with calories by frosting it. You may use cream cheese frosting if need be. The recipe is adapted from the Gulf News cookery book that I possess so fondly. It was gifted to me by my dear uncle about 15 years back.

Spiced up Carrot and Apple Muffins

Serves 6-12

preparation time: 15-20 mins

Bake time: 20-25 minutes

Ingredients:

75 g (1/2 cup  -1 tablespoon) Plain flour

½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp  ground cinnamon-
¼ tsp  freshly grated nutmeg

Pinch of salt
1 large organic egg

40ml, 4 tbsp olive oil/sunflower oil

70g caster sugar
½ tsp vanilla essence

55g- ½ cup grated carrot
50g grated apple, unpeeled

1 tbsp milk
25g raisins

25g sunflower seeds

For 12 muffins:

150g all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg (freshly grated if possible)
Pinch of salt
2 large organic eggs

80ml sunflower oil (I used olive oil)
140g castor sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

110g grated carrot

100g grated apple, unpeeled

1 Tbsp milk

50g raisins

50g sunflower seeds

Preparations:

1.Set oven to 175°C and preheat for 10 minutes. Line the muffin tin with individual muffin cases.
 

2. Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl.
 

3. Beat together eggs, oil, vanilla and castor sugar, and then mix in the grated carrot, grated apple, raisins and seeds.
 

4. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the liquid. Using a large spoon, stir just enough to moisten the mixture.
 

5. Don’t worry about lumps, these will bake in and are part of the muffin texture.
 

6. Spoon about 2/3^rd full into each muffin cases, and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the skewers/toothpick inserted in the middle of muffins comes out clean without being sticky.

Notes: You can add little chopped walnuts if you need that extra bite. You can also omit seeds ans raisins.

Beghrir (Semolina Pancakes with Honey)

I have always been fascinated by Arabic food. I like its simplicity, diversity and varied  flavours. I assume most of them do. They are mild, full of flavour and require less manual labour compared to Indian cooking. Dint I tell you about the book that I borrowed from the Library, the Moroccan one? I am so in love with that book and I hope to cook some dishes from that book apart from flipping the pages every now and then. Some of the recipes I wanted to prepare require spices and pastes which need to be pre-made at home or rather bought from super market, which is slowing me down in trying most of the recipes. Once they are sorted, I am hoping to share you some nice tagines on buttery couscous, kemia, salads, pickles and sweets. But for the time being I will offer you this easy peacy airy pancakes called Beghrir. Long back when I was little we used to live in the Arab neighbourhood and my mother had learned this pancake recipe from one of the neighbours. But she used wheat flour and plain flour instead of semolina. Those pancakes had similar taste too, apart from the difference in the texture.

As per the book, these are great favourite for breakfast or a sweet snack. Bubbly and airy on one side and smooth on the other, they melt deliciously in the mouth with a drizzle of honey, lashings of butter or a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon. I just slather it with butter or desi ghee (clarified butter) and sprinkle some sugar on top, just fold in half and enjoy. I guess these are best eaten with honey whilst warm.

Beghrir (Semolina Pancakes with Honey)

Serves 3

Ingredients:

113 g/ ½ cup plus 1 ½ tbsp  fine semolina/farina/sooji

125g /3/4 cup plus 2tbsp plain flour

¾ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt
1 large egg

¼ cup warm milk

1 ½ tsp yeast

1 tsp sugar

1 ¼ - 1 ½ cups of water

Butter to baste on the beghrir

Honey to serve

Preparations:

1.Mix yeast in warm milk and sugar and leave it aside until it dissolves and becomes frothy.

2. sift semolina, flour, salt and baking powder in a medium sized bowl.

3.Make a well in the centre.Whist the eggs slightly and add it in, along with yeast mixture and water and using wooden sponn start drawing flour from sides of the bowl. Beat in the mixture for about 5 minutes, until light and smooth.  You need to have a thick pouring consistency batter. Add more water if need be. Cover and leave to prove in a warm place for4-6 hours or until its frothy.

4.To make Beghrir, heat a non stick frying pan, wipe it with  little oil.  Pour a small ladleful of batter and swirl the pan to make a thin pancake of about 8-10 cm in diameter. Let it cook on one side until the surface looks dry and is perforated with bubbles. Gently rub with melted butter; lift it out of pan and transfer to a heated plate. Cover to keep it warm until you cook the rest of pancakes.

5. Heat the honey gently and serve the pan cakes immediately with the honey drizzled on. You can use caster sugar instead, flavoured with cinnamon powder.

NB: This is halved measurement of the original recipe. You can double the amount and make as required.

American Super-light Pancakes

Some foods can be so simple and easy to make yet taste great. One such food is these superlight American pancakes. I know pancakes are not something so great to blog and brag about, but this one worth a post. There are number of ways to make pancakes and they vary from region to region, and countries to countries. These pancakes appear on our breakfast table most weekends and we just love it.

This is one of the simplest breakfasts you can make; instant and doesn’t require any fermenting or any waiting. These are not thin like French crepes, but soft, wonderfully fluffy, thick and sweet pancakes; literally speaking, cakes made in a pan! Other day, I added two handfuls of fresh handpicked blackberries, crushed into the very same batter and made some blackberry pancakes. They were awesome with all the goodness and sweetness from the berries. This is one recipe where you can rechristen it the way you would fancy, like adding few sliced bananas, raisins or apples into the batter. I also tried adding some orange rinds along with half a teaspoon of vanilla in the batter and it was great with a hint of orangey flavour.

 

 

You can serve with you own choice of  berries, honey, maple syrup, clotted cream or toasted bananas. I always almost serve it along with maple syrup and toasted bananas, which are favourites so far. For toasting bananas, once you are done with pancakes, in the same pan add a knob of butter. Slit a banana into two and place it on the hot pan. Let it get cooked on one side for a minute until it gets slightly caramelized, and then flip over and cook on the other side for another minute or two. You really enhance the flavour of banana by cooking it. Try it. If you want to make caramelized bananas, add some sugar to pan. When it caramelize and take an amber colour, add slit bananas and then cook on both sides until covered all over with caramel.

Ingredients:

175g self-raising flour

2 tsp baking powder

125g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence or 1 pod of vanilla bean scraped

250 mls milk, whole or semi-skimmed

A pinch of salt

Softened butter or vegetable oil for cooking

 Preparations:

1.Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar.

2. In another bowl, break eggs and gently whisk to break them up. Gradually add in milk and mix well. Add vanilla essence and mix again.

3. Make a well in the dry mixture. Gradually add this milk mixture in the flour; drawing the dry ingredients in as you whisk. Eventually you should have a slightly lumpy batter. Don’t  over mix the batter or it will make the pancakes heavy.

4. Heat a heavy non-stick frying pan until you feel a good heat rising. Add a small knob of butter and/or trickle a little oil along with butter, this will avoid burning of butter. Spoon 2-3 tablespoons of the batter into the pan. (If you want nice neat edges with perfect round shape, stand a 8 ½ cm (3 ¼”) round metal cutter in the pan to contain the batter. The resulting pancakes will resemble crumpets).

5. Cook until bubbles rise to the surface and the batter started getting firm. Loosen from the bottom of the pan and flip over for a few seconds to brown on the other side.

6. Repeat with the remaining batter, stacking the hot pancakes under clean towel until ready to serve.