Savoury Semolina Cake

Here is another evening teatime snack for you. I have minimally adapted this semolina cake from Anjum Anand’s cook book - Indian food Made Easy, that I borrowed from the local Library few weeks ago. (Oops! That reminds me I have passed the return date already, and I see myself getting a warning letter!). I remember Anjum preparing this cake on one of the cookery shows long back, while I used to live in Southsea, Portsmouth. It sounded very healthy and I wanted to give it a shot then and there, but again, it got lost in the lot of other bookmarked recipes I have. She, in her book mentioned it by the name ‘Handvo’, but when I searched for the recipe online, it showed me up many different versions of the cake which uses pulses rather than semolina. Whatever it may be, this cake was so easy to prepare with minimal work, and just the right type of snack for a lazy evening. I served with sweet aubergine pickle, my favourite, but you can also serve it alongside sweet mango pickle/chuntney.

Sweet mango pickle/chutney was what I came across on some site that is served with this type of cake. When I first thought about the sweet pickle being served with this savoury cake, all I thought was, Eeww, how would that pair?! But, it really does. A very good, tantalizing combination of flavours! Some things have to be endeavoured out in the weirdest way to comprehend its magical blend, isn’t it?

That also brings back an old incident into my mind. One of the colleagues of my husband, who hails from Malaysia, brought some fried beef on her way back from Malaysia. She was kind enough to offer us some of the food that she brought- an egg curry, some beef fry, that is all I remember. Both the egg curry and the beef were so sweet, I don’t know what they were, but both of them had loads of sugar in it. The Egg curry resembled our Humble Mutta roast and the beef was kind of caramelized with sugar. It was very strange blend of flavours and was unpleasant for me and couple of others who tried it as well!! You also get used to the taste you grow up with, whatever it may be.

 Anyways, this so called semolina cake or Handvo is spongy on the inside and crispy on the edges. It is filled with variety of vegetables giving some texture and bits to bite into. It is light, filling and easy to assemble with less fuss. Handvo hails from the Gujarati community which used so lots of pulses and this is Anjum’s cheat’s version of it. No soaking and grinding of pulses is required here unlike the authentic handvo. You may use any vegetables you have in hand like courgettes, cabbage, beans, peas, carrots, spinach, fresh fenugreek leaves etc. You can also give it in your kid’s lunch boxes.

Savoury Semolina Cake
Preparation time: 15 minutes
serves 6-8

Ingredients:

1 cup, 165g semolina/Farina/Sooji

100g, slightyle less than a cup chopped beans

1 medium size, 75g, ½ cupful grated carrot

40g, ¼ cup chopped onion

11g, 1 heaped teaspoon grated ginger

½ - 1 teaspoon red chilli powder

1/4 – ½ teaspoon turmeric

1 green chilli chopped

3 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

¾ cup thick yogurt

½ - ¾ cup water

½ teaspoon cumin seeds

½ teaspoon soda bicarbonate

1 teaspoon white sesame seeds

Salt -to taste

Preparations:

1.Preheat the oven to 200 degree Celsius. Line a 1 kg loaf tin with baking paper and oil it well.

2.Mix together semolina,vegetables, ginger, spices and salt.

3. Add yogurt and water and mix to make a thick batter. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

4. Heat oil in a small pan and throw in mustard seeds. Cook until they start to splutter, to throw in the cumin seeds. Let the cumin seeds leave its aroma. Stir this aromatic oil into the batter prepared earlier.

5. Stir in the soda bicarbonate and immediately pour the batter into the prepared tin. Sprinkle over the sesame seeds.

6. Bake in the preheated oven for about 35-40 minutes. As with any cake, insert a tooth pick/skewer in the centre of the cake. If the skewer comes out clean and the edges are crisp, the cake is ready. Let it cool in the tin, and then serve along with any sweet pickle and tea.

N.B: The orangey colour of the cake was not very appealing to me. The chilli powder, which is dark deep red and the turmeric imparted that colour vibrant yellow colour to tehe cake! I would definitely be reducing or not even using them both next time I make this.

Beans Mezhukkupuratti (Kerala Beans Stir-fry)

This is one of the most easiest preparations of vegetable and it easily goes with plain rice. Mezhukku puratti in malayalam literally means ‘smeared in oil’. Mezhukkupuratti can be made with different vegetables like beetroot, carrot, raw plantains, yam, potatoes,brinjal etc but with slight variations depending on the vegetables. This recipe is minimally adapted from my one of my favourite books on kerala recipes ‘Lalitha Pachakam’ by Nikhila Govind.

Beans Mezhukkupuratti (Kerala Beans Stir-fry)

Cooking time : ¬10-12 minutes

Ingredients:

2 ½ - 2 ¾ cups, 300g French beans washed and cut into 1” pieces

1/3 cup finely chopped onion, a small onion

¾ teaspoon Black mustard seeds

2 Tablespoon coconut oil (Can substitute with veg.oil, but it is not authentic and the flavour would differ slightly)

1-2 Green chilli slit into 2

2 twigs curry leaves

2 dry red chillies crushed

3-4 garlic cloves finely chopped

¼ teaspoon turmeric powder (optional)

Salt to taste

¼ cup – 1/3 cup water

Preparations:

1. Heat oil in a saucepan or wok. When smoking hot, add mustard seeds. As soon as they splutter, throw in curry leaves and red chilli flakes. Sauté for few seconds making sure not to burn them.

2. Reduce the heat and add in chopped onions, garlic and green chillies. Sauté until onions and garlic go soft. Add turmeric powder and sauté for few seconds.

3. Add in the cut beans and salt. Stir well. Add enough water, cover and cook on low flame until the beans are cooked and water is all absorbed. Serve hot alongside rice. You can also add a handful of coconut slices while sautéing the onions if you like them.

I am sending Beans Mezhukkupuratty to Kerala Kitchen event started by Rose of Magpiesrecipes.

Falafel (Middle Eastern Chickpea Croquets) with Tahini Sauce

Falafel doesn’t need much of Introduction. Even though this dish is of Middle Eastern descend, and supposedly known to be originated in Egypt, it’s widely popular throughout the world. Falafels are one of the most popular Arabic street foods found in nook and corner of Middle East. They are made of a chick peas and/or Fava beans and are flavored with herbs, garlic and spices. They have crispy and crunchy outer coating with fluffy texture and amazing plethora of flavors in every bite; just to make you crave for yet another bite. They are usually shaped into patties or round shapes and are then deep fried. I have come across many baked versions of falafels, which I have not ventured into. I am yet to gamble into baked version. Frying is quite easy but definitely unhealthy compared to the baked version I have to agree. This is my first success with felafels and I am quite happy with the result. Normally my recipes evolve and change as I keep making them, but I don’t think this would need any modifications. These were that good. I would try baking them, and the result would be updated as soon as possible, so that you can try the healthier version too.

I spent most of my childhood in UAE where these were available in plenty and I was grownup having these little golden nuggets once in every while. For me, falafel has lot of nostalgia to go with it. There used to be, and still there, this small Lebanese shawarma shop (Tarboush) few buildings away from the college where I studied and they had the best shawarma and felafil in town. I had the best falafel from there and never had a better falafel from any other place. Hot, crunchy and instantly fried I used to grab a few on the way back home. My siblings too love them. The guy there, used to give me couple of extras as I used to be a regular customer there. How sweet! Now looking back, I have never had the slightest of clue that these could be prepared at home too! Those days, when I never knew ABCD of cooking, who would have ever thought that these could be replicated at home?

Packed with flavours, I used to be addicted to this chickpea croquets and used to have them once in every while after my classes. We also get falafel sandwich wrapped in pitta bread or Arabic Bread, widely knows as Qubz or Khubz, drizzled with Tahini sauce and some lettuce, tomatoes and pickles gherkins. Nothing could beat the taste of freshly prepared falafel. It smells and tastes AWESOME! While preparing this, as usual, I started researching on net and came up with 359,000 results!!!Not that I went through all of them, but the ones that went through were different from another so that I started reading reviews. As usual, most of the recipes had positive and negative comments. So I had to mix and match many recipes according to the reviews. A day in falafel research. But was well worth it!

The recipe that I started following had flour added to it and while I was just about to mix the flour, I read somewhere that adding flour and egg is not traditional. So I opted out the flour and tested by frying a small ball of falafel without using flour and it worked. Loved the texture and tasted great. So I followed the recipe without adding flour. I have come across many recipes using canned chickpeas, but also read many reviews mentioning canned chick peas don’t work well. I am not in a position to clarify this further, but I won’t be using canned chickpeas for falafel. After all, it’s just the matter of soaking peas.

Ingredients:

1 cup , 200g dried chickpeas

1 medium onion, roughly chopped -120g

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

1/3 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro

1 tablespoon chopped mint (around 10 leaves)

1 teaspoon salt or slightly lesser

1-2 green chillies

4 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

¾ teaspoon baking soda (Soda Bicarbonate)

¾ teaspoon sesame seeds

Vegetable oil for frying

Preparations:

Checkout this awesome video of falafel preparation by Titlinihaan, suggested my cousin, Saleema.

1. Wash chickpeas, put them in a large bowl and top the bowl with cold water to cover them by 3-4 inches. Let them soak overnight or 12 hours and then drain them completely in a colander.

2. Using a pestle mortar, roughly crush cumin and coriander.

3. Place the drained, uncooked chickpeas in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Process until you get grainy mixture, that resembles breadcrumbs. Tip the minced chickpeas into a bowl. Keep it aside.

4. Add roughly chopped onions, chopped herbs, chillies, spices and garlic into the food processor again and pulse until coarse. Add minced chickpeas into this and pulse until well combined. Mixture should not be fine, but grainy as couscous.

5. Tip the whole mixture into a large bowl. Sprinkle in the baking soda, sesame seeds and salt. Mix well using a spoon until thoroughly combined. Cover and refrigerate for a minimum of 1 hour. (I am not sure what the wait is for, but I read in many places that the mixture needs to be kept aside for sometime before frying. Absolutely no harm in experimenting with a little mixture, but I forgot to do that. So fired them all after an hour).

4. Form the chickpea mixture into balls about the size of walnuts or patties or use a falafel scoop to form shapes. I formed balls with 2 tablespoon of mixture.

5. Heat 3 inches of oil in a deep pan or wok and fry 1 ball to test. Oil should not be too hot so that you get felafels that are cooked only outside leaving the inside uncooked. Keep the heat to medium and fry the balls until they are almost brown. Drain on paper towels.

6. Serve along with Tahini sauce or you can also serve as sandwiches. For falafel sandwich, stuff pita bread of Khubz with falafels, chopped tomatoes, onion, green pepper and pickled gherkins and then drizzle with tahini sauce. You can use choice of vegetables you like. Yum!

Tahini Sauce

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Serves: 4-5

Tahini sauce is one of the easiest dips ever, takes under five minutes to whip up and can be prepared ahead of time. It is made of raw tahini which is sesame seed paste and is easily available in any Asian or Middle Eastern Stores. Tahini is also the main ingredient for hummus, Moutabbel and many Middle Eastern dishes. Tahini is slightly bitter in taste, so to mellow down the bitterness and add flavor, lemon juice and/or yogurt is added. You can thin out the sauce by adding water according to your preference. It varies from person to person and my recipe here calls for slightly a thicker version, as thick as yogurt. Once you get the basic recipe in hand, you can add more lemon juice or yogurt to mellow down the unpleasantness of the sauce to your liking. I have given two ranges of the ingredients, start using lesser amount at first and then increase it to suit your palette. I have used the lower range throughout here, except for water where I used 3 tablespoons.

Ingredients:

¼ cup tahini paste (sesame seed paste)

1/3 – ½ cup yogurt

2-3 tablespoon of Lemon juice

½ teaspoon salt or as required

2- 4 tablespoon water

Preparations:

1. Stir the bottle of tahini paste well prior to use as the oil stays on top and the paste sediment at the base. In a bowl, add the required amount of tahini paste.

2. Add lemon juice and stir. The mixture will start getting real thick and start to get lumpy.

3.At this point, add yoghurt and salt and mix well using wire whisk to get a smooth sauce.

4. Add water and thin it out as per your preference. I added 3 tablespoons.

N.B: The sauce keeps well in the fridge. But it tends to get thicker when refrigerated, so you would need to thin it out with water.

Prawn and Pesto Pasta Salad

I and salad don’t go well together most of the time unless they are sinfully dressed up. I love dressed salads, just like this one. Pesto and mayonnaise is a varied combination and we absolutely loved it. This is a fresh salad that is fragrant, mild, creamy and bursting with flavour. The nutty tasting pesto with fragrant basil and mayonnaise pairs well with this pasta salad. It is a meal in itself and very filling hence this salad found its way to one of my hubby’s lunch box menu as well. I came across this simple recipe on the pack of frozen prawns and so the recipe definitely has prawns in it. For vegetarian option, Just opt out Prawns. I can see myself making different salads with same pesto - mayo drssing. How about new potatoes added to these pastas?And chicken instead of prawns?Adding some cooked pulses like cannellini, Garbanzo etc.?Many options and I am sure they will taste as good as this one.

Prawn and Pesto Pasta Salad

Serves 2 as a meal or 4 as side.

Ingredients:

200g, 1 ¼ cup Cooked prawns

125 g any pasta shapes, I used my favorite - Penne.

100g, 6 cherry tomatoes quartered

½ cup, 100g canned sweet corn

2 spring onions, chopped into rings

3 Tbsp Mayonnaise

3 Tbsp shop bought pesto

Preparations:

1. Cook pasta according to packet instructions. Drain and let it cool.

2. In a bowl, add cooked pasta, cooked prawns, corn, tomatoes, spring onions and stir well.

3. Add mayonnaise and pesto sauce and mix well. Adjust salt and add pepper powder if desired.

Notes:

 

1. You can adjust the pesto depending on how strong you like the flavour. I love the flavor of basil and hence added much. You can reduce it to 1 or 2 tablespoons instead of 3.

Malabar (Kannur) Fish Curry - Tangy and tasty!

Here’s a treat - one of my favourite recipes ever. For culture and cuisine as rich as Malabar, and most of their recipes requiring intense labour and complicated, there also prevail some simple everyday recipes that are really easy to make, yet tasting different in its own way. The style of cuisine and can tell you a great deal about the history of people of the area. Even within the same cuisine, a dish will taste different when they are prepared by different cooks and households. I so believe the difference lies in their attitude towards food they prepare. For me, I prepare sweets and desserts with so much of passion, love and attention and they come out good every time I make them. On the other hand, I make spicy food mostly for survival and I had faced disastrous results many a time. This is what exactly happened with this fish curry of my mom. I have been trying to recreate my mom’s fish curry ever since I started cooking and it never even reached anywhere closer to hers and got worser and worser. Annoyed at this persistent failure, I stopped trying her recipe, went on with few other recipes on net and stuck to them. That is when I decided, I have to watch her cooking and weigh the ingredients, and yes, I did that.

Last time, when I went to visit my family back in Abu dhabi, I also took my digital kitchen scale along, so that I could get the accurate measurement of my mom’s recipes. I was tired of trying her recipes with the approximate measurements she handed over to me long back and me struggling to perfect it. There was no other choice than standing by her side and weighing each and every ingredient she added to her dishes, that includes spices as well. And one such recipe that I jotted down is this awesome fish curry. It’s very simple and really tasty if you get some fresh fish in hand. I mostly use frozen fish as it is difficult to get hold of fresh fish always.

In this curry my mom uses raw mango, gamboges or even tamarind as souring agent. It is purely personal choice. As tamarind causes acidity for my dad, she prefers gamboge and raw mango. Gamboge is soaked in hot water to soften it and release its juice while cooking. Back home, my mother in law uses fresh gamboge in her cooking. She picks them fresh from the plant that grows in our kitchen garden. They are pale green and spherical in shape that resembles pumpkin but just the size of a British lime. They turn yellow when ripe and falls off the tree. They are either used fresh but most of them are cleaned, cut into sections and dried for longer shelf life. They are black once dried and are mostly used in fish and prawn curries. Also known as Malabar Tamarind. This curry is my mom’s version and you can find the same curry with slight variation through out Kannur.

This post goes to Kerala Kitchen a wonderful hub of Kerala Cuisine founded by Rose of Magpies recipes. This month event is hosted by Sarah of Spoonful of Delight.

On another note, Biny Anoop has shared a wonder award for Innovative Blogger and to tell you Biny, I am so touched. Thank you for all the kind words and appreciation.

Malabar Style (Kannur) Fish Curry

Cooking Time:30 minutes

Serves 4

Ingredients:

275g – 350g Any cleaned fish like King fish, sardines, mackerel, salmon etc

1 medium size, ½ a cup, 90g onions, finely chopped

150g, 2 small ones or 1 large, slightly more than ¾ cup tomatoes, finely chopped

5-15g, 3 small sections of Gamboge (Kudampuli); depending on the sourness of the fruit.

3 large Garlic cloves finely chopped

2-4 green chillies

2-3 twig curry leaves

1 ½ - 2 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon Fennel seeds (Sunf, perumjeerakam)

1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds

10g, 2-2 ½ heaped teaspoon mild chilli powder

3 level teaspoon Coriander powder

¼ teaspoon turmeric powder

2-3 Tablespoons coconut oil.

½ cup hot water to soak gamboges*

1 ½ cup rice water (Fresh Kanji Vellam) **

Preparations:

1.Wash and soak the gamboge in ½ a cup of hot water for 10-15 minutes to soften them.

2. In an earthen pot (Man-chatti) or a non-stick pan, heat coconut oil. Add fenugreek seeds and just as they start to change colour, add fennel seeds and let them leave aroma, about 10 seconds. (Keep the heat low-medium and do not let the fenugreek or fennel seeds charred as it will impart a bitter taste to the curry).

3. Add garlic and stir for few seconds until they are soft and starts to take colour. At this point, add chopped onion, slit green chillies, chopped tomatoes, curry leaves and salt. Cover and cook for around 7-10 minutes stirring occasionally to avoid the mixture sticking to the pot.

4. Once the tomatoes and onions go soft and mushy, add spices. Stir well.

5. Add gamboge along with the soaked water and rice water. Cover and bring to rolling boil. Boil for 2-3 minutes.

6. Lower the heat and add fish pieces. Cover and cook on low flame for about 10-15 minutes until fish is cooked through. Check for seasoning and adjust salt. Serve hot with rice or any rice pancakes like pathiri, Nool Puttu (String Hoppers), ottil pollichathu, porotta etc.

Notes:

*Gamboge is used as a souring agent for the curry and it can be substituted with a gooseberry size tamarind which is soaked in hot water, pressed and drained. Use the strained water and discard the residue. It can also be substituted by raw mango (50g-75g, 5 or 6 pieces) depending on the sourness of the mango. If using mango, add it along with other vegetables while sautéing.

** Rice water (Kanji vellam) is the water obtained after cooking rice. It is mainly used to thicken the gravy. If you don’t have them, you can substitute rice water by mixing 1-2 teaspoon of rice to the water and add them to the curry.

If the gamboges are of good quality little will go along way. But if they are less tart, you might need to add more.

Espresso Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Coffee and I have a deep and long comradeship. It was one of my favorite Beverages during university days. I could never start my day without having a hot cup of steaming coffee and would have it frequently during exam days when my head would be steaming with pressure! As with coffee is my love for coffee flavored cakes. They are way different from coffee, but I love the hint of coffee flavor that the cake has. I have baked a coffee cake couple of years back, which turned out pretty well, but uses loads of butter and I was unaware of calories and like. I never made that ever since. At times I wish I was still unaware of calories and fat building factors, so that I can use butter free of guilt.

This recipe of Espresso Chocolate Chip Cupcakes comes from one my favorite bloggers- Deeba who blogs at Passionate about baking. I have always admired at her energy and passion when it comes to baking and Blogging. I truly admire her. I love her recipes, her write ups, her photography and herself and I never miss her recipes ever since I discovered her blog. I too have bookmarked loads of recipe from her which I now lost the count! I had bookmarked another recipe for cappuccino cupcakes which just slipped out of my brain until Finla just mentioned it was her favorite cappuccino cupcakes. I should be making that one too sometime soon.

When it comes to the cake, it was just the taste I was looking for; Chocolate, coffee and the buttery base. I just made half the batch and skipped ganache. The cakes were already loaded with chocolate chips and I thought it would leave me with chocolate overdose if I top it up with ganache. But I love ganache and it itched me to add but I skipped it just to cut down a bit of chocolate.

Espresso Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
Makes 6-7
Recipe Adapted from Deeba

Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 pinch salt
¼ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup Caster sugar
1 tbsp Coffee powder or ½ a Tbsp Espresso powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
½ of a large egg
½ cup whole milk, room temperature
1/3cup - ½ (around 100g) cup dark chocolate chips

Preparation:

1.Preheat oven to 180C. Line 6-7 mold muffin tray.

2. With a fork or a balloon whisk , whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Reserve.

3. Mix coffee powder into the milk and stir until dissolved.

4. Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla essence and egg in a mixing bowl.

5. Add the flour mix and milk alternately to the butter mix in three batches and mix well using a wooden spoon until well mixed.

6. Fold in the chocolate chips and spoon into muffin cases upto 2/3 full.

7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until springy to the touch. Cool in the tin for about a minute before putting the muffins onto a wire rack to cool completely. Top with ganache if desired. You can see Deeba's chocolate Espresso Ganache in the page.

N.B: I have halved the original recipe. Double the recipe if you want 12-14 cupcakes.