Garlic-Basil Bread/ Garlic-Basil Ciabatta

Here is something so easy and yummy to munch on! I grabbed a ciabatta loaf the other day from a nearby store and thought of making some garlic bread which we really love. But I ended up making these as I had loads of basil lying around. So easy to make, and takes minimum effort and time.

Ingredients:

1 Medium ciabatta loaf, 160g
2 Tbsp butter at room temperature
1 Heaped Tbsp Mayonnaise (I used lighter than light mayonnaise here)
½ Tbsp light Olive oil
3 garlic cloves chopped very finely
2 Tbsp chopped basil
½ cup grated mild cheddar (reduce as per wish)
Salt – if needed
Pepper - to taste (I haven’t added any)

Preparation:

1. Slice ciabatta into 1 inch thickness at an angle. I got 8 pieces.

2. Mix together soft butter, mayo, minced garlic, olive oil and chopped basil. Spread this mixture on the ciabatta slices.

3. Place these Ciabattas on a cookie sheet lined with baking paper. Sprinkle grated cheddar on each slice and bake for about 8-10 minutes at 180 degrees until the cheese on top melts and starts taking golden patches here and there. Serve along with any soup or just have it as a starter. I served it alongside Moussakka.

N.B: You can use cheese of choice like Parmesan, Mozzarella. If you are using parmesan, you might need to reduce teh amount as the flavour is quite strong.

Strawberry Cream Gateaux

“This is one of the best cakes you ever made!”. That was the verdict of Mr.Shabs when I baked this gateaux for his birthday. Not a sweet person, not a chocolate person, he has his own inclination when it comes to sweets and bakes. Nothing like me, in fact just the plain opposite I would say. He likes plain cakes with butter icing and if it is strawberry flavoured, that would be just his kind of cake. I always prepare some sort of white cake, mainly butter based, then use cream and strawberries as filling for his birthday. But whenever I made, he mostly came up with the verdict that the cake was not as soft as we get from bakeries!!So I kept tweaking and changing the recipes to get a spongy base and it was only then I realised that husband likes sponge cake and not the regular butter based cakes!!!!!!The easiest base, that uses no butter!

Another exiting part is that there is a Kerala Kitchen event happening every month and last month it was hosted by dear Rose of magpiesrecipe. Check out the marvellous spread at KeralaKitchen. I had sent my Kallummakkaya Nirachathu for her event, and just for her event.She was kind enough to pass me the ‘Best Dish’ prize in the event. How good is that? Thank you Rose. I am so hounoured.

Meanwhile I will let you have my recipe for the gateaux, it is taken from my cake decoration book. I started relying on the book completely without making any modifications as it has been giving me the best results, just the one I have been looking for. In the actual recipe, the sponge recipe is used for making Swiss roll, which I dint want to make for the Birthday Boy, so I Just baked it in a 6” pan that is really deep. If you don’t own a deep pan of the same size, just use 7 or 8 inch pan and adjust the cooking time as necessary. Of course, when the pan size increases, cooking time reduces. The cake was simple to make, tasted superb and was so spongy that I found it a bit hard to get neat slices!

And on another note, I thought I will let you also know that my picture din’t win the prize even though it qualified for the finals due to vote (like). There were better pictures that suited the event, and they won, which I thought was was reasonable :). You can check them out @ Perizia . Did I tell you, I got a photography book last week and the book is just brilliant. The book is for the beginners and it covers every essential details of photography to biuld up to professional photography. The book explains aperture, shutter speeds, ISO, white balance, all the controls of the camera, how to shoot in low-light setting  and anything you need to know with illustration which makes it real simple for an amateur photographer. I am now learning and discovering new stuffs with the tips from the book and believe me, I am loving it. Name of teh book is 'Photography for Beginners, Vol.1" by Debbi Allen .It has over 190 pages and is associated with Samsung. It also includes a free CD which I have no clue about as I haven't gone through it yet. You can explore their site at http://www.dphotographer.co.uk/. I shall try to shoot some pics following the tips from the book and try to share it here, if time permits.  Meanwhile let's hop over to the recipe.

Strawberry Cream Gateaux

Serves 8

Ingredients:

½ cup plain flour (Measure, then sift)

3 large eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla essence

Zest from half an orange

7 Tablespoon caster sugar

Praline:

50g Almonds, toasted

75g caster sugar

For the filling and frosting:

284 mls tub Double Cream

1/3 cup condensed milk

Grated zest of ½ orange

Few drops of vanilla essence

150g chopped strawberries

To decorate:

200g strawberries

Preparations:

1.Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celcius. Grease and line a very deep 6 inch pan or a7 inch pan.

2. In a bowl whisk the eggs sugar and orange zest on high speed for about 10 minutes until thick and pale and leaves a thick trail when the beaters are lifted.

3. Fold in the flour with a metal spoon, being careful not to knock out any air. Pour into the prepared tin. Bake for about 35-40 minutes or when a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Turn the cake on the wire rack, peel the parchment paper and leave to cool completely. Once the cake is taken out o foven, place the almonds in the pan and bake for about 5-8 minutes until lightly toasted.

4.Meanwhile make the praline and filling.

5. To make praline: Roughly chop the toasted almonds. Heat a pan and add sugar. Let the sugar melt and start to boil. DO NOT STIR WITH A SPOON HERE. Reduce the heat and let the sugar turn golden in colour. Take it off the heat, add the chopped nuts, mix well and pour the whole mixture on an oiled aluminium foil. Let it cool completely. (Beware: Pralines are extremely hot and it can cause serious burns. So keep yourself aloof). Once they are completely cold, break them to pieces and crush them in pestle and mortar or food processor. Or pop them into a ziplock bag and bang it with a rolling pin until you get coarse bits.

6. To make filling, whip cream along with zest until soft peaks form. Add vanilla essence and condensed milk and whip until stiff. Take out 5-6 tablespoons of this cream mixture and mix it with chopped strawberries, keeping aside the rest of the whipped cream to frost the cake.

7. If it is a 6 inch cake, you will easily get a three horizontal slices. The cake will be tall and can be sliced into 3 without much hassle. If the cake is of bigger size like 7” or 8”, you might be able to get only 2 layers. I baked mine in a deep 6” inch pan and so I had three layers.

8. Place the top most slice on serving plate. Slide in few pieces of baking paper underneath this slice of cake so it collects all mess caused while decorating the cake. Just slide in a bit so that you can pull them off after all the decoration is done.

9. Spread ½ of the strawberry-cream mixture, and place another slice of cake on top of the cream. Spread rest of the strawberry-cream mixture and place the last layer of the cake, i.e. bottom part of the cake which is flat. Gently press the cake down. Frost the cake all over with the cream that was reserved.

10. Using hand or palette knife, stick praline over the sides and decorate with sliced strawberries. You can use a bit of cream to stick the strawberries to the cake lest they fall. Once the decoration is all done, you can slowly slide off the bits of baking paper you placed under the cake.

N.B: Since the sponge has no fat in it, the cake will keep only for a maximum of 3-4 days of preparation and should be refrigerated throughout to keep its freshness.

Some 'Likes' Please!

Hello there,

This post is nothing related to food. It's a bout a photography competition held by perizia where my following pictures are selected. The selection for the final round is based on the number of 'likes' you give on each photo. You would have guessed it now. Yes, I am in need of some ' likes' as i posted my pictures way late in the competition. If you  liked my pictures, pls go to their contest page, 'like' the contest page and 'like' my picture (s) if you liked them. - Snowbound britain, melting moments and mother nature are my photoes. Hope You liked them. Popular pictures (One with the maximum number of 'likes' qualifies it to final seven).Pls 'like ' my pictures on Perizia contest page! You wud have 2 click 'like' on perizia contest page 1st. 

Updated: Deadline for accepting 'likes' is on 2nd April. Please hurry up friends. 

1. Click 'like' on the link below.
http://www.facebook.com/perizia#!/album.php?fbid=153920561335329&id=144655288928523&aid=31876 - perizia reflection contest page

2. Then click on 'like' on following pictures with links:

A) http://www.facebook.com/perizia#!/photo.php?fbid=155391021188283&set=a.153920561335329.31876.144655288928523&theater - melting moments

B) http://www.facebook.com/perizia#!/photo.php?fbid=155458674514851&set=a.153920561335329.31876.144655288928523&theater -mother nature

C) http://www.facebook.com/perizia#!/photo.php?fbid=155459414514777&set=a.153920561335329.31876.144655288928523&theater - snowbound Britain

Thanks,
Shabs.

Kallummakkaaya Nirachathu/Ari Kadukka - Stuffed Mussels.

Hi all,

Hope everyone is doing great out there. This is a special post that I am posting for an event that a lovely blogger Magpiesrecipes is hosting at Magpiesrecipe. If she wouldn’t have asked me to join her event, I guess this recipe wouldn’t have appeared on the blog. It’s a lengthy recipe, lot of work, lot of typing and I don’t really expect many to be trying out his one. I prepared these almost an year ago. Wanted to post then and there, but as the post was going to be a lengthy and elaborate one, the thought of typing out made me just lethargic. These days I am not much keen on trying any new dishes or taking pictures and if it was not for Magpie, I wouldn’t have posted this recipe. She has been asking me to join her Kerala kitchen and I thought may be this would be the time for a marvellous recipe as this one to get published. Thanks Magpie for your event and the invite.

I guess the length of the name of this dish has to reflect in the intense labour that goes in making this Malabar delicacy. If you come across the Malabar specialities, these are the one of the dishes that everyone crave about and tops the list of favourite Malabar dishes! These are rich in flavour, aroma and has its own distinguished taste. Arikkadukka or stuffed mussels (Kallummakkaya nirachathu as people from Kannur (North Kerala) calls it). In this particular recipe, Mussels are stuffed with a ground rice mixture and then steamed in shell. Steam cooked rice is then scooped out of shell, marinated in a spicy mixture and then deep fried until golden. YUM!

Well, this was the first time ever that I prepared this dish all by myself. Usually, while preparing arikadukka, the labour is divided between people so as to ease out the process. Couple of ladies will do the scrubbing of mussels to remove the dirt, talking and cracking jokes in between while someone does the grinding of rice and preparing the rice dough. It would be couple of others filling the dough in to the shell, getting them ready to be steamed. See, there is division of labour here and normally these are made in huge batches of 75 or100 or even more. When there are many to do the job, it wouldn’t be that difficult, but if you need to do everything all by yourself, it can be a bit tiring. Imagine, how many of them I prepared, doing all the work by myself? Fifty of them!! Crazy, Isn’t it? I know. It all happened as I never bought mussels myself before. Back in India, these are sold by counts and not by weight. But over here, they sell by weight which is rather sensible I thought! But I was not sure how both are related as well. So when the fish monger at the farmers market asked me how many I wanted I asked him for 25 pieces. When he told me that I need to give him in weight in gram measures, I told him a Kilo! He then handed over to me a large bagful of nice, clean mussels which was fresh, live and full of flesh. I stood there a while, flabbergasted seeing the amount of the mussels and that too just for a £3. I din’t want so many, but was embarrassed to return and get a few instaed, so came back home with the lot. You know, there were 50 of them, whereas I just wanted around 20 of them!

Arikkadukka is prepared with fresh mussels - not frozen. So they have to be prepared on the day of purchase. Mussels that I bought were so clean that I dint have to do all that nasty scrubbing which otherwise takes ages. So it was one job down. Traditionally, kallummakkaaya nirachathu is prepared using parboiled rice. Rice is soaked for several hours, then ground coarsely without adding water along with coconut, fennel and onion. This needs Indian kind of mixies which uses no or minimal amount of water to do the grinding. The dough is exactly the same as the one I use for neypathal or aanapathal. But for the ease of use, I used roasted rice powder after I referred to shaheen’s recipe. Thank you Shaheen for that great tip. Don’t forget to check out her version too. It’s slightly different from mine. My way is the one that we have been making for ages at home and been eating at my relatives and anywhere in Kannur/Tellicherry. But due the intense labour that goes into its making, and bakeries coming up with these already made, these days people opt out getting them from the bakeries. Some adds, ginger, red chilli powder, turmeric and curry leaves to the ground mixture. But we always loved the ones without them. Even though this recipe takes considerable amount of time, it is easy, as I always say. The taste is worth every bit of labour.

Kallummakkaaya Nirachathu/Ari Kadukka- Stuffed Mussels

Serves 20-25

 Ingredients:

1 kilo – 50 medium size fresh mussels with shell

For the dough:

3 cups Puttu Podi (Coarsely ground and roasted rice powder)

2 medium size onions chopped (200 g)

2 cups grated coconut

1 ½ Tablespoons fennel seeds

2 tsp – 3 tsp salt (NB:Mussels are really salty, you may need to reduce the amount of salt considerably here depending on your taste.)

3 ½ - 4 1/2 cups boiling water (NB:Just enough water to make a soft and smooth dough. The amount of water needed may be less or more depending on the rice powder and how well the rice is roasted).

For marinating: (This quantity of spices are for frying around 15 of them)

1 tablespoon Kashmiri Chilli powder.

1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder

Couple of pinches of salt

3-4 tablespoons of water

Preparations:

1 Grind coconut well, without adding water. Add fennel seeds, onion and grind again to get a coarse paste.

2. In a large bowl, add puttu podi and salt. Mix well. To this, add ground coconut mixture. Slowly add boiling water and mix using a large spoon until the mixture comes together. Knead it to a smooth dough, once it is warm enough to handle with bare hand. Dough shouldn’t be too soft and sticky or too hard and breaking apart. You can add more or less water as necessary. Cover and keep it aside while you prepare the mussels.

3. Clean the outer part of the mussels by scrubbing away all the dirt, if any. Discard the already opened mussels and use only the ones that are closed tight.

4. Using a blunt knife, slowly slide in the knife through the slits and open them slowly without breaking the shells apart. (I was told that leaving them in the freezer for about half an hour or so makes it easier to force open the shells). Once the shell is open, pull out the hairy substance from the flesh. Wash the opened mussels under slow running tap water, rubbing its flesh gently to clean any further dirt.

5. Make balls of the rice dough (You can divide teh dough depending on teh amount of mussels you have), wide open the shells without cracking them and stuff the dough into the shells. Take off any excess dough and shape them neatly.

6. Fill all the shells in the same manner.

7. Steam cook these stuffed mussels for about 25-30 minutes. You can stack these on top of each other and you will need to steam them in in 2-3 batches altogether. They will be slightly sticky when hot, but gets firmer as it cools down .( At this point, once it is completely cooled, you can store them in Ziploc bags and freeze them for later use. (See the tip in the notes). )

9. Slowly break open the shell and take out the cooked stuffing taking care not to break or part the mussel from the dough. It is usual that the mussel sticking to the shell, you can take them off using a sharp knife in case need be.

10. Add oil about 1 ½ - 2 inch high in a kadai/frying pan and set it on medium heat. Mix chilli powder, turmeric powder and a tad bit of salt along with water to make a thin paste. Dip the scooped out dough into this solution and slide into the hot oil. You may add as many your kadai/pan take. Fry on all sides until it takes golden colour. Drain on kitchen paper and serve with an evening tea.

Notes:

1.Traditional recipe uses soaked parboiled rice for making the dough, which requires even more time. I have substituted this with roasted coarse rice powder (Puttu podi) for the ease of making. Thanks to shaheen for this tip. Although the recipe yielded me an excellent review, I thought there was a slight difference in the texture while using raw rice and rice powder

2. Mussels are very salty. So salt should be used with caution.

3. Once the mussels are steamed, if you are not planning to fry them all at a time, place them in a Ziploc bag, around8-10 mussels each in a bag and freeze it with shell on. DO NOT take the shell off. When you want to fry these frozen stuffed mussels, bring them back to room temperature and steam them with shell on for 8-10 minutes on until they are hot. This makes them soft and bring back their texture. Then marinate them again in spice solution and fry. Chilli powder may be reduced depending on the heat level.

4. The spice amount given here is just for 12-15 of them.

5. With the leftover dough, you can just shape them into ovals and steam cook it along with the rest of stuffed mussels. These can also be fried like the other one and are really tasty as well – A non-veg version

Best Ever Brownies for Third Blog Anniversary!

Hi all,

How have you been doing? On my side, I am doing great. I was back on 19th and getting all settled after the lazy stay in Abu Dhabi. As with everyone, I tend to get real lazy when I am around my family or shud I say mom? No cooking; not even thinking about it. All what I did was baking some fancy stuffs that my siblings wanted me to bake for them. And some continental and Mediterranean dishes for my dad who loves them. Absolutely nothing elseBut the long gap of non blogging days have made me quite lazy to get back to blogging.

While I was away, I did receive many emails and messages from my readers to check on me which was very sweet. Thank you all for being so kind. I also received many queries which I couldn’t answer them then. I apologize for that; I have answered all your doubts in here. Now let me get straight to the recipe. Yesterday was my dear hubby’s birthday and we had a nice day together. Baked a wonderful cake (strawberry Gateau with Praline) for which he commented it is one of the best cakes I ever made!!Wow!!My husband is someone who is not so fond of sweets and bakes, so any positive comment on sugary stuff is a great thing for me.

Today I am posting a recipe of a brownie that I have been making again and again and again. My blog turns three today. Thanks to all my readers, well wishers and fellow bloggers for your continuous support, encouragement and inspiration. So to make this day a special one, I am sharing this delicious brownie recipe that is very easy to make, very chocolaty and fudgy - a pure chocoholic’s heaven. I am also writing this post to send to Divya's Brownie event. She is a great baker and look at her gorgeous Dulce de Leche Brownies! She never stops to tempt me.

Best Ever Cocoa Brownies

Adapted from Alice Mendrich’s Bittersweet

Makes 16 larger or 25 smaller brownies

Ingredients:

10 tablespoons / 140 grams unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups/280 grams caster sugar

3/4 cup / 80 grams unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1-2 teaspoons instant coffee powder

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla essence

2 large eggs, cold

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup walnut or pecan pieces (optional)

Preparation:

1. Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 160°C. Line the bottom and sides of the baking pan with parchment paper or foil, leaving an overhang on two opposite sides.

2. Combine the butter, sugar, coffee, cocoa, and salt in a medium heatproof bowl and set the bowl in a wide skillet of barely simmering water. Stir from time to time until the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth and hot enough that you want to remove your finger fairly quickly after dipping it in to test. Remove the bowl from the skillet and set aside briefly until the mixture is only warm, not hot.

3. Stir in the vanilla with a wooden spoon. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each one. When the batter looks thick, shiny, and well blended, add the flour and stir until you cannot see it any longer, then beat vigorously for 40 strokes with the wooden spoon or a rubber spatula. Stir in the nuts, if using. Spread evenly in the lined pan.

4. Bake until a toothpick plunged into the center emerges slightly moist with batter, 20 to 25. It took me from 32- 40 minutes to bake until I got few moist crumbs on my skewer. Let cool completely on a rack

5. Lift up the ends of the parchment or foil liner, and transfer the brownies to a cutting board. Cut into 16 or 25 squares. . (You really need to make sure these have to cooled down completely before you cut them. I never had patience to wait that long and I couldn’t ever cut my brownies neat. As you see, these brownies were cut whilst they were still warm. If you cut them when they are completely cool, you should get neat squares).

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Hasna, my friend, who blogs at het lovely space Hasna'sdelights has shared this lovely blogger award. Thank you hasna. She has been motivating me to re-blog again and is one of the reasons to blog again. I am sharing this award to all my fellow bloggers..

Kerala Puffs (Non-Veg)

Next week I am off to UAE for a couple of months to spend some quality time with my parents and siblings and let me share this wonderful recipe before I leave. I have never been a regular blogger during my stay in UAE, so I might not be able to answer your queries or respond to the comments promptly. UAE is going to have its best weather during this time of the year (December, January and February) and UK, it’s the worst. It has already started snowing today with temperature hitting minus 1. I am kind of fleeing away from horrible British winter at least this year and I think I should plan the same every year ;). Earlier I had plans to visit in June-July when it would be scorching hot there in UAE, and I had postponed my trip to a much pleasant time even though the wait was a bit long.

Anyways, let’s discuss about today’s recipe, shall we? Puffs and recipes using puff pastry is very popular all over the world and Kerala (A state in South India) is not behind at all. Puff is one of Keralite’s favourite snacks enjoyed by everyone. Puffs filled with spicy stuffing like egg, meat and vegetables have always been a favourite evening snack. Memory of having puffs date back to my early school days, where these were sold in school canteens during the breakfast break along with vegetable samosas and crisps. But to get hold of puffs, we had to reach the canteen as early as possible, as that was the only item that used get over in no time. Light and flaky puff pastry filled with spiced chicken is just mouth-watering and a must try one. I have been making these puffs for couple of years now and I think it’s high time to post it so that you can make it too. You may use minced beef or mutton instead of chicken here. I have used mutton and chicken and mutton mince was always the favourite.

I have used an unrolled block of puff pastry which had to be thawed and rolled for use. These days ready rolled puff pastries are also available and sometimes these are rolled and cut which makes the puff making even more easy. You just have to prepare the fillings and then the rest is all easy. Ideally you should get around 10 puffs with this amount of masala, but as I have over stuffed the pastries, I just got 8 of them.

On another note, One of my readers (I guess it is Jehanne) had asked me to share some tips on photography long back. If you are reading this, please pass me your E-mail ID once more. I have been searching for it for couple of days and I am sorry, I think I misplaced it. I know I am still a beginner in photography and I don’t know many things in photography. But I am more than happy to share the little things that I know. Please leave your E-mail Id here once more, so that I can send you the draft of a photography tutorial that I prepared to send you a while ago.

 Kerala puffs

Makes 8-10 pieces

Ingredients:
1 block of puff pastry sheets, thawed – 340g

1 ½ cups (300g) chicken/Mutton minced

1 large onion chopped (I cup)

1 teaspoon grated Ginger

2 Green chillies, finely chopped

1 medium size tomato (90g), chopped

2 large cloves of garlic, grated

1 1/4 tsp Garam Masala

1 teaspoon mild chilli powder

1 teaspoon Coriander powder

1/4 tsp Turmeric powder

3 Tablespoon coconut milk powder

water- as required

15 curry leaves finely chopped

Salt - As reqd

1 egg white

1 teaspoon water

Oil - 3 tbsp

little flour- to dust the work surface

Preparation:

1.Cook the minced meat in with salt and turmeric along with couple of tablespoon of water until almost done .

2. Heat a non stick frying pan and add oil. Keeping the lid open, fry the onions by adding little salt until they are golden brown.

3. Throw in ginger-garlic paste, chillies and fry until the raw smell goes off.

4. Add in tomatoes and cook till it turns soft and mushy and oil clears from sides..

5. Add coriander and chilli powder .Stir for a min for the spices to cook.

6. Add in the prepared meat, mix well and cook until the water evaporates.

7. Meanwhile, add enough hot water to coconut milk powder to make ½ cup of coconut milk (You can use any coconut milk here).

8. When the mixture is almost dry, add coconut milk and stir continuously until the mixture is well combined and slightly wet, not too dry and crumbly.

9. Stir in the garam masala and chopped curry leaves, cook for a minute and keep aside to cool.

10. While the meat is cooking, thaw the pastry sheets.

11. Flour the work surface lightly and roll out the pastry into a large rectangle. Cut it into 8 portions.

12. Divide the masala mixture into 8 portions. Add a heaped tablespoon of the stuffing to one half of the pastry leaving about a centimetre from the edges to seal the stuffing in.

13. Lightly beat the egg whites with water and brush the sides of the pastry sheet with egg wash. Fold over the pastry to cover the filling in and press firmly to seal the edges (This can be done with fork to get nice ridged edge). Lightly brush the top of the filled pastries with egg wash to give it a glaze once baked.

14. Place all the sealed puffs on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and bake it for 15-17 minutes @ 220 degrees Celcius until the top is nice and golden in colour and the puff has puffed up well. Serve hot along with a nice cup of tea.

Notes:

1. I make these puffs with chicken and mutton. I found it tastier with minced mutton than chicken. When using mutton, the masala is lightly brown compared to chicken where it is less brownish.

2. With this amount of masala, you can easily get 10 puffs, but I over-stuff the pastry to use up all the masala and I get only 8 pieces of pastry sheet from one block. You may use a bigger block of puff pastry to use up all the masala.

3. These puffs can be frozen before baking and then baked directly from the freezer. But the baking time will increase accordingly. For freezing, place them between parchment paper to avoid sticking.