Peanut Butter Squares

Being a relatively new blogger and having a zero competitive drive, I've never participated in any food contest before. But I do like watching other people sweat it out ;)

Anyways, just for fun, I'm gonna enter the Peanut Butter Celebration Contest by The Peanut Butter Boy.

So here's a shocker. I've never had peanut butter before now. Ever. There were all these uber costly foreign brands that I wouldn't touch and only this year, we have two local brands that have come out with it. When I saw it on the shelves, I was quite happy. Tasty stuff :)

This is a peanut butter version of an Indian fudge like dessert that we make at home using almonds. Seriously, its irresistible and should never be made by anyone trying to watch their weight! But it uses only four ingredients and is so easy to put together, I'm going with it. Onwards, good people....

Peanut Butter Squares

1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp milk
1 tbsp ghee (clarified butter, do not substitute with butter!)

In a non stick pan, place the peanut butter and sugar, mix it up well and stir for 5 mins on a low flame. Increase the heat, add the milk and keep stirring for five minutes. Now add the ghee and stir constantly till the ghee separates and the mass doesn't stick to the vessel. This should take 5 to 6 minutes. Remove and transfer it to a small deep plate. You don't have to grease the plate, there's plenty of ghee for that in the squares. Allow it to cool. The ghee will be soaked up. Cut into rough squares.

Wheat Gluten Stir-Fry

Yesterday, I opened my inbox and had a pleasant surprise-- an email from myself! You see, last year about this time, I came across a cool site; FutureMe, which allows you to send yourself an email to be received at any point in the future. I thought it wouldn't work, that I'd remember what I wrote or the date or something but I didn't- after more than a year, I remembered nothing at all. And in the mail, I told myself to trust my instincts, because "it is difficult for you to recognize what you want because you want everything so much". And that actually helped me now about something that was bothering me a bit :)

It feels good- there's something special about listening to yourself from the past :D Try it. And don't just send yourself a corny joke, ok?!

Wheat Gluten was one of the first things I learnt to make when I started cooking and Delicious Asian Food is the beautiful blog that taught me. I use wheat flour whereas she uses all purpose flour, but the method is the same. This stir-fry is simple and very flavorful.
















Wheat Gluten Stir-Fry

Wheat gluten balls- 15
1 inch ginger
1 large carrot
One half of a Bell pepper of each color
1 large red onion
2 tbsp tomato puree
1/2 tbsp chilli vinegar
1/2 tbsp dark soy sauce
10 to 15 mint leaves
1 cm piece of veg stock cube
salt and pepper to taste
Cooking oil

Press and chop the bit of ginger into small pieces. Slice the onion, bell peppers and carrot into large slices.

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the ginger, stir and add the onions. Cook till the onions become translucent. Add the chopped bell peppers and carrot and stir for 2 minutes. Add the gluten balls. Pour in the tomato puree, chilli vinegar, soy sauce, veg stock cube and mint leaves. Season with salt and pepper. Stir on medium flame till the veggies are just cooked through.

Grapefruit Basil Sorbet

Now this sorbet is good, and you don't have to take just my word for it. When Kutti came over today, she licked half a teaspoon of melted sorbet clean! She also had a few good things to say about the Sapodilla fruit I recently posted about. So there! A connoisseur has verified my recipes. What more do you want?! :D


Coming to this, its a regular sorbet, but its special to me because both the ingredients are home grown :) Nothing different otherwise, except that I made it with the pulp and 'infused' the flavor of basil into it. It's intense and perfect, though the grapefruit might be a bit too intense for some :)

Grapefruit Basil Sorbet

1 medium to large grapefruit
6 fresh basil leaves
1.5 cups water
1.5 cups sugar
1/2 cup yogurt
1 pinch salt

Peel and remove the fresh of the grapefruit. Put it in a blender with 1/4 cup of water and blend. This came to 1.5 cups grapefruit juice. You can use a juicer/extractor if you want only the juice, but I wanted the pulp as well. Pour into the vessel you plan to freeze the sorbet in.

Cut the basil leaves lengthwise into three or four strips. Add it to the water with the pinch of salt and place it on the stove in a pan. Stir occasionally. As it begins to boil, add the sugar and stir till it dissolves. Reduce heat and stir for a couple of minutes. Pour it into the grapefruit juice and allow it to cool completely.

Put it in the freezer. After an hour, remove it and blend it along with the yogurt. The basil leaves will become dark specs after blending- not really noticeable. After 4 to 5 more hours in the freezer, whisk and serve.

Shakshuka, fast and furious

One of the many admirable things about us humans is the way we combine our imagination with that cheeky sense of fun. Imagine a non vegetarian dish that is so delicious, it breaks through the stoic self-control of austere vegetarian monks- could it possibly be called anything but "Buddha Jumps over the Wall"?! Of course not!

:D Gotta love us.

Did a little research after I came across that one. Priest Stranglers, Toad in the hole, Pea Wiggles,.....lots of such names, some of it quite suggestive as well ;) Some sound funny only because they're from a different language. The first time I heard of Shakshuka, I thought it sounded like a martial arts move. Picture it- you leap through the air, legs splayed, right arm raised in a sharp upper cut and scream "Shakshukaaaaaaaaa"! Right? No? Come on, it totally fits.

Anyways, this isn't authentic coz I added too many extra things in it, left out some and it's a quick recipe. But hey, my Shakshuka can beat your Shakshuka any day. Shakshukaaaaaaaaaaaa....


Shakshuka

1 small red onion, chopped
2 tbsp chopped bell pepper
4 to 5 large ripe tomatoes, chopped
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 cup veg broth
1/4 cup peas
1/4 cup corn
2 eggs
1/2 tsp chilli powder
salt to taste
coriander/cilantro leaves
Vegetable oil

Actually, it'd be better if you boil the tomatoes and then peel and chop them. But I forgot....heck, ok, I was too lazy.

In a pan, heat a tbsp of vegetable oil. Add the chopped onions and bell pepper and saute for a few minutes. Add the tomato paste, chopped tomatoes and veg broth. Add the peas and corn as well. Season with salt and chilli powder. Simmer and allow to cook till the corn and peas are cooked and there's some liquid left. Break the eggs into the base. Break the yolks with a spoon, cover and simmer. If you like your eggs runny, remove it well under a minute. I don't, so i let it cook for 2 minutes till it firmed up. Add chopped cilantro and serve with bread.

Sapodilla Lemon Juice

If I could travel to any point in time, I would not go to the future. I would go back, to the ancient past. To the age when humans made the truest discoveries- of their own sentience, their place in life, on earth. When everything was NEW, and everything had to be discovered.

What was it like, back then? How did they experiment to survive? It boggles the mind, and excites me no end just thinking about it. Especially the fact that humans were so few in number that they could live with the earth.....and isn't it amazing that after all these centuries, after the rise and fall of countless civilizations, we still carry with us some of the knowledge of the early days? Not all, not even most, but some.

How does my uneducated grandma know which leaves heal bones faster? Which bark yields healing smoke. Which flower can cool the body, or coagulate blood....coming to the subject of this post, how does my mom know that the sapodilla fruit is good for the tummy, that it can placate an upset stomach? We talk about folklore and old wives tales and things that have been passed down for generations, but really, it is almost magical to me, this knowledge. It is not a thing of science, but of experience. It is....heavy and deep, the years and minds that it has seen and survived.....and it is to be cherished.

I did not know that sapodilla and lemon would taste so good together, but they do. After my watermelon-muskmelon combo, this is a good home-made juice combination.

Sapodilla* Lemon Juice

1.2 cups loosely packed fresh sapodilla flesh- peeled, deseeded
1 cup water
4 to 6 tsp sugar
1 small lemon or 1/2 big lemon- juice
2 tbsp yoghurt

Blend all the ingredients together. If its too thick, add a bit more water. Serve in glasses rimmed with cinnamon sugar.

*Sapodilla is chikku in North India, and sapota in Tamil. To remove flesh, wash the fruit well, split it in half, take out the seeds and gently scoop out the flesh using a teaspoon.

Lusikkaleivät- Finnish Teaspoon Cookies

These cookies introduced to me 'brown butter' which, though close, isn't quite ghee. I found the recipe here. I don't think the writer is blogging at present but check out her instructions for brown butter.

You can, of course, use any jam or marmalade, but please, please use blackcurrant jam on at least one! Its heavenly!!






Lusikkaleivät- Finnish Teaspoon Cookies
Makes 20 cookies

1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup flour
Jam/Marmalade
Fine sugar, for dusting

Brown the butter. Cool and it add the sugar and vanilla essence. Mix well. Sift in flour and baking soda. Mix to form the dough, which resembles wet sand. (I added a tbsp of melted butter at this stage coz my dough was too dry to hold shape)
Press the dough into a teaspoon. Use a spoon with a fairly deep indentation. The dough is quite crumbly so, handle gently. Use a knife to shave of the excess and make it flat. Gently press one end for the cookie to slip out of the spoon. Place it flat side down on the baking tray. Continue with the rest of the dough. Bake for 15 mins at 175C.

Apply jam on the flat side of one cookie and press another cookie onto it. Sandwich all the cookies in this fashion and dust with sugar.

Note: Requires patience! The dough is quite crumbly so you'll need to handle it gently when slipping it out of the spoon and placing it on the tray :)

Sogan Dolma

Stuffed Onions. The moment I imagined how this would taste and smell, my mouth started watering. I love using onions in any dish- its part of the Indian holy trinity of cooking, of course. Isn't it simply ingenious, using the layers of an onion as casings?

I admit- I get confused when searching for recipes online. I don't know if its because I'm a perfectionist or because I've got some form of OCD..... there are so many variations of the same recipe and I want the most authentic one! Just when I zero in on one recipe, I'll find something else equally jaw dropping. Then I'll try to combine the two, or three, or ten thousand. Slowly, a fog descends around my head... and my mind starts questioning it all- should I add this? Or that? What if I don't? Will it still be this if I add that? What is life? Am I me?.......

But for this recipe, I found very few listed in English, .....anyways, the whole key to making this juicy dish is the meat, which I don't eat. So to make it as tasty as possible, I went ahead and Indianized the dish- slathering it with a mix of varied spices and coconut. Its amazing!

Sogan Dolma

Place a pan of water on the stove and add a tbsp of vingear to it. Cut of a small bit of the bottom end of the onion and a larger bit off the top. Peel, wash and place the onions in the pan. There should be enough water to immerse the onions completely. Cook until tender- for me, this took 15 minutes on medium heat.

Fish out the onions and drop them immediately in a bowl of cold water. Allow it to cool.


Press your thumb into the bottom end of the onion and slowly but firmly coax out shell after shell. There might be a little tear, that's ok.

Prepare the filling-
1/2 cup rice
1/2 cup crumbled firm cottage cheese/ cooked minced meat for non-veggies
1 tsp chopped ginger
2 tbsp boiled peas, carrots (optional)
chopped coriander leaves, chilli powder, oregano, coriander powder and salt to taste.
Mix all of these together.

Gently stuff these into the onion shells and place on a plate.

Prepare the spicy rich base-

4 cloves
1 inch cinnamon stick
1 cardamom pod
1 bay leaf
1/2 a star anise
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 chopped onion

5 tomatoes
2 tbsp grated coconut
oil

In a pan, add a dash of oil. Add all the spices listed up to the cumin seeds.When it begins to splutter, add the onions and cook till they start turning brown. Remove and cool. Blend these ingredients to a coarse paste and keep it aside. Blend the tomatoes and coconut together with a cup of water. Keep aside. In a vessel, add both the pastes. Add salt and chilli powder to taste. Place the filled onion shells in the base, cover and cook on low for 30 to 35 minutes.

Serve on a bed of yogurt or curd rice.