Creamy Spinach tossed Spaghetti

You know what I realised recently?
I enjoy home entertaining. It's fun planning a menu and listing out ingredients and cooking for people.We recently had a little lazy afternoon lunch and cocktails thing at home and this spaghetti was one of the dishes I made. When I started cooking I didnt really have a recipe in mind for the spaghetti but I think this came together pretty well.

 You can serve it as a main or a small portion as a warm salad, works well both ways. Anyway, it was such a hit that all the entire bowl was over by the end of the evening and I had'nt managed to get a single photo.
So the next morning, I made another batch and packed it up with a few plates and props to get a few nice photos in what was the last of the sunny days.
                                                       Let me tell you a little secret.......

                                                          Ive fallen in love with basil.
 It can completely turn a dish around.The one thing you have to be careful of though, is not to add it too early in the cooking process otherwise it turns black and looks limp.
It's best to add in at the very end, or if the food has to be reheated for service at a later stage then add it at that time !!
Many people tend to confuse Tulsi with basil, however although they are closely related their tastes are very different. Basil used in Italian cooking, is a little sweeter while tulsi has an overpowering sort of spicy taste to it.

We went to the local YMCA and quickly snapped a few shots before being shooed out by the watchman.
Hmpfh.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. I'm slowly getting more confident with this. :) Whaddya think?


Creamy Spinach tossed Spinach

Spaghetti            200 gms
Spinach leaves   200gms(washed)
Garlic                   30gms
Onion                   20gms
Fresh Cream         50ml
Fresh Basil              5gms
Cheese                 (optional)
Olive oil                  20 ml
Salt                        to taste
Black pepper(crushed or powder) to taste

Method:

• Cook the spaghetti in boiling salted water, till aldente. Blanch the whole spinach leaves in salted water and set aside.
• Chop the garlic finely and slice the onions. Drain out as much water as possible from the spinach and roughly chop it up with a knife.
• In a pan, heat up the olive oil on med. heat. Add in the garlic and saute for a few minutes. Add in the onion, and cook till it begins to sweat/becomes transparent.
• Next, add in the chopped spinachand saute for a few minutes. Pour in the fresh cream and stir to seperate the spinach.
• Finally, add in the cooked and drained spaghetti and gently toss or stir it to evenly coat it with the spinach mixture. Sprinkle the cheese and season.
• Add the basil leaves and give it a final stir.
• Serve hot :)

Trams and big yellow taxicabs

Theres some comfort that comes from knowing that amazing things can happen in the spur of a moment.I recently got the opportunity to travel to a few cities and cook in peoples homes for a project that came out of the blue.It amazed me how everything just fell into place. I guess I should stop worrying about the future so much and learn to trust that everything will ALWAYS work out. (corny, i know, but it's true !!!).
Also , I discovered that they sell passionfruit in Kolkata for 10 bucks!!! WHATTT!! 
I know, might seem like a minor development to everyone else, but to me, I'm like : "Oh.My.God." =)
  Between the one incident where a rat scurried over my foot in Delhi, full day power cuts in Chennai, making Idli batter in the hotel room, eating masala rabit and amazing seafood at Anjappars in Chennai,laughing mindlessly till 1 am at the hotel coffeeshop and cooking in kitchens that sometimes were literally 5x3 ft, I got to say, it.was.amazing.

Sadly, I did'nt think it was necessary to carry my camera around to Delhi and Chennai and missed out on a lot of fun snaps. Here is kolkata...

          The yellow ambassador taxis are hard to miss. Theyre everywhere and adorable!this is my favourite picture

          At the market, happy happy picture

              Passionfruit?

                Old houses with these little charming post boxes !

             At the market, tomatoes on the street...

                             Cycle rickshaws, so amusing!!!

Oh, and just a word of caution , little bengali boys seem to have a knack of following you around if you're cooking the food . deal with it. :)

Watermelon and Ginger Granita

It's officially the last days of summer.
Or whats left of it anyway.
One minute its happy and sunny and the next ithe sky is crowded with grey clouds.  Last chance to gobble up something icy before you move to to garam chai and vada pav on rainy afternoons and what not.
So the next few posts are going to be dedicated to scrambling for whatever cold, icy, summery goodies before the season of sludge and mudspots begins. :/
     

 

I made this watermelon and Ginger granita a while back.I like granitas because the flavour of the main ingredient really comes through since it's basically just frozen and not diluted .Plus, they're the laziest ,easiest frozen desserts .EVER.
Juice. Freeze.Scrape.

This watermelon and Ginger granita can literally be made by a toddler, in my opinion. ( Just be careful when you hand him the blender, though !! ) It has just three ingredients and requires no effort whatsoever.Also, there is something therapeutic about cleaning the seeds from the watermelon... :)

 

Also, just a word of advice, If you are using a hand held blender, be ABSOLUTLY sure to turn off the main power switch before trying to clean out the blade just incase the wire accidentaly hits the power button while you are cleaning it and your index finger almost gets sliced .
......
...
...
...
In half. :/
In other news, I might be considering renaming this blog to 'A series of unfortunate events in my kitchen'.
Those two are *totally* unrelated, just incase you were wondering !!
:p

Watermelon Ginger Granita


Watermelon chunks (deseeded)
Fresh Ginger   (peeled)
Lime juice

• There are'nt any specific quantities for the three, all you need to do is blend them together and adjust according to your taste.
• You can also add sugar if you like.Or mint. Or Vodka.
•  Once, it's well blended, pour it into a shallow, wide container (steel or plastic) are freeze!!
• To serve, run a fork along the surface of the frozen juice to obtain icicles :)

Professor cupcakes

You know what has been missing on this blog lately?
Cupcakes!!
I mean c'mon it's called 'Cupcakes Vs the World ' right? there must be more cupcakes !!
I have been having a lot of ideas for cupcakes lately, some fancy, some plain ol' classic ones and some very very pretty ones!!

Here is a batch of cupcakes I had to make for a birthday order. These were for a science professor and I wanted to do something a little different !! :)
Excuse the pictures, they were taken later in the evening just as the light was fading and I was in a big hurry to manage a close up of every cupcake..

Instead of keeping the base of the cupcake plain, I lined them with blue lines in order to make it look like notebook paper :)

               Tiny little books. This was an obvious choice, I know but they were so cute I could'nt resist.

             A little algebra for the geekier ones.

        Oh, and for the record, I. hate. trignometry.

                      I totally do NOT get the point.It feels like one of those random games you make up when you're a five year old and you have nothing to do in the afternoon and feel like making you an imaginary language or something.

Anyway, moving on......

    Hey, this guy was one short of the big five-oh!!!

   Might as well make it as jhataak as possible ,right?

And let me just say, this little blue bow simply makes me happy. 

:)

Mostly because it reminds me of that guy from the movie 'Up'.

Not the chubby kid, the grumpy sweet old man :)

                       It took a few times to get the bubbles on this one right, but it was well worth it.

 Nothing beats the 3-D effect!!

                                      And finally, the scholarly owl....Notice how he just graduated?? :)
                 

                             All six together!! Now all we need are a few geeks and its a party!!!

                The base as well as all the cupcake toppers are handmade from Gumpaste. It takes a little work and imagination but the ideas and possibilities are endless!!

More cupcakes coming soon!!

Easy-Peasy Chocolate cake

I've been on a little bit of a health kick lately.
You know, egg whites, grilled chicken ,green tea, soup for dinner.. blah blah. the whole shazaam.
Before, you say anything, I know that the picture above definately does'nt prove it, but in my defence the cake is from a few weeks back.
Really.
Pinky swear.

I've even managed to sneak in a KFC zinger  burger somewhere among all the healthy stuff :p
I can't remember the last time I've wasted this much time. What with the last two years spent training, completing journals and cleaning tiles in the college corridors with toothbrushs (catering college woes :/) and waking up at 6 am , the last one month has ben nothing but bliss.

       Summer is my favourite time of the year , Simply because Blue skies and sunny afternoons make me very happy. It's hard to explain. However, the only complaint I have is that my hair seems to take on a life of it's own during summer. It behaves like a spoilt, pampered child   and I literally have to tie it up kicking and screaming on most days even to make it look remotely normal :/
         Over the past few weeks,I also managed to take my first baking class at home, something I've been wanting to do for quite a while now and the chocolate cake here is something that we made on the last baking class which co incidentaly was Mothers day!! :)
I think chocolate cake is utter comfort food. Its the one thing that always works..
feeling grumpy in the morning?
Cant decide on dessert after lunch?
 Lazing around on a summer afternoon with nothing to do?
Think a cup of plain ol' tea just isn't enough?
Birthday?
Fever?
doomsday?
 Day before exam? (notice how Doomsday immediately made me think of the day before exam :/ hmmm )
Late night chocolate craving?
Apocalypse?
Midgets taking over the world?
< Insert chocolate cake here>


I mean, it's pretty much the solution to everything.
Its easy to see why chocolate cake like this, thats easy to make and even easier to gulp down should be loved. No no, not loved. WORSHIPPED.

I love hundreds and thousands sprinkles.
They are so so pretty and just plain happy :)
And not to mention jazzy and jhataak (yes, im allowed to veer off the english language a little!!
(Don't judge me!!)

Easy -Peasy Chocolate Cake:

Ingredients:
1 2/3 cups All purpose Flour
1 1/2 Cups Sugar
    2/3 cup   Cocoa Powder
    1/2 cup  Butter/ Shortening
 1 1/2 cup  Buttermilk
 1 1/2 tsp  Baking Soda
    1/2 tsp  Salt
    1    tsp Vanilla essence
    2          Eggs

• Preheat the oven to 175'C
• Line two 9 inch round cake tins with butter paper and grease and dust them with flour.Make sure that they are greased and dusted evenly.
• Beat all the ingredients in a large bowl on medium speed for about 1 min. until they are blended properly.
• Continue beating on high speed for about 3-4 min.
• Immediately pour the batter equally into the two pans and bake for 25-20 min. or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.
• Cool completely and demould the cake from the pans.

For the truffle filling and topping:

450gms Dark Chocolate
150 ml   Fresh Cream
  50 ml   Milk (optional)
Light sugar syrup

• Melt the fresh cream and Dark chocolate over a double boiler or in a glass bowl in a microwave.
• stir properly so that no lumps remain, let the mixture cool and come to room temperature.
• Add a little warm milk if required so that the truffle is spreadable.
• Sprinke the first layer of cake with some sugar syrup and then Layer the truffle generously between the two cakes.
• Sprinkle the top layer of cake with some more sugar syrup and then lightly melt the remaining truffle o that it is easier to spread.
• Cover the cake with truffle and even it out with a palette knife.
• Decorate as you want!!

Roasted almond and coffee barfi

 

In just a few days, I'll finish college.

No more sleeping during classes.

That;s what I'll miss the most :P

I took part in the Nestle Chef competition in college yesterday.As part of the competition we were supposed to use Nescafe coffee powder to create an Indian dessert.Now let me just say, I'm not very good at making Indian desserts. I don't know if it's a mental block or I just struggle with it.So when it comes to making an Indian dessert for a competition I get a serious case of the jitters. Just deciding what to make takes hours or even days. Finally I settled with roasted almond and coffe barfi with caramel sauce and gulab jamun sandwiched with a dense coffee and dark chocolate ganache on orange steeped in cinnamon .

Not too bad, eh?

 

My initial idea was to sandwich the gulab jamun with cointreau shrikhand , but let me just tell you, i tried it and almost gagged :/

Besides, the shrikhand was'nt holding shape like I wanted it to :)

We had two hours but we had been allowed to do 80 % of the prep at home, since Indian sweets are somewhat time consuming to prepare .

I prepared the barfi the night before  and tried moulding it and cutting it into a few different shapes and finally settled on a cylinder. The chocolate garnish, the caramel sauce, and the coffee glaze along with the gold dusted almonds were all prepared in college .

I need

Honey comb Chocolates

 Chocolate makes you popular.
Yes.
It 's actually that simple.
There no need to go through all the hassle of being nice and sucking upto someone. Just hand over the chocolate and everything will be just fine .:)


Let me just say this.
Whoever thought up the brilliant idea that is honeycomb was nothing short of genius.
For years and years I've been hooked on the Cadbury crunchie that Dad would bring home after a sailing trip from abroad. And after searching high and low over many years when I finally did find one in Bombay it was 50 bucks a bar!!
WHAT!!!
Now that's just plain ridiculous!!
So I decided to try it out myself.
One problem though.
Cooking sugar,sort of scares me.
I know,it's just plain ol sugar,what harm can it do. I'll tell you what.
IT CAN BURN.
Anyway, I decided to go ahead and try it out.
and you know what, it's pretty darn easy.
There is still a possibility of it burning, but its easy to make.

I'm not saying that to scare you.
really. :p
 Baking Soda is the magic ingredient here.

Here's the recipe.
You can thank me later.:)

 Honeycomb chocolates:

Makes one 8inch rectangular cake pan size.

1 1/2 cups grain sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp Baking soda/Soda bicarb

• Line a cake tin with a silpat or a little oil.
• Bring the grain sugar, Honey and water to boil in a heavy bottomed saucepan, stirring continuously.
• Reduce the heat to medium and continue to let it cook without stirring until the temperature on a candy thermometer reached 300 degrees.
• Remove the saucepan from heat, and quickly whisk in the baking soda. The mixture will begin to bubble and rise immediately.
• Quickly pour it onto the greased mould/silpat.Once it is on the silpat,do not try to spread it out with a spoon ,the airiness will be lost. Instead, while you are pouring it out itself spread it out.
• Let it cool.
•  While it is cooling, Melt the chocolate and keep aside.
• The honeycomb will harden and turn brittle once it is fully cooled.Break it into uneven pieces,and coat each piece in chocolate and let it set.
• Store in the refrigerator.
• Try and avoid keeping the Honeycomb brittle out without being covered with chocolate for too long as it tends to catch moisture and become sticky.