Rose Flavored Soybean Milk

I've never had soy milk. I have this 'thing' about packaged processed milk. It's my mom's fault, this prejudice. She put it in my head and it refuses to budge. Mothers! (cue to shake head) So, in spite of the amazing nutritional benefits of soy milk, I've never tried it. Which is why I was quite happy to find out how to make it. This version makes ordinary soy milk and the sweetness and flavoring is added to it by preparing a syrup.



Rose Flavored Soybean Milk

500g soy beans
8 cups water
Syrup-
1/2 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp rosewater
red food color (optional)

Soak the soybeans in plenty of water overnight. Drain and process in a blender with the water. You might have to do this in batches. Pour it into a cotton cloth held over a wide bowl. The milk will collect in the bowl. Discard the contents left in the cloth. Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat on medium flame till it boils. Stir often. Simmer for a few minutes, then remove. You can strain it through a sieve if you wish.

For the syrup, place the water in a saucepan. Add the sugar and bring to boil. Simmer for a few minutes until syrupy. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and rosewater. Add the food color if you want to. Cool completely and store in the refrigerator.

To serve, stir a spoonful or two of the rosewater syrup into a glass of soy milk.

Rainbow Sponge Cake with Passion Fruit Icing

I don't care, I don't care if every Tom, Dick and Harry (or their female counterparts) in the foodie blogosphere is making a rainbow cake. I have to make one too. So there.

Ahem. I took a trip to Bangalore last week and visited my brother and sister-in-law. The trip was real fun- the best part being the pastry supplies that I hoarded. The other best part was the electric mixer that the generous duo got for me. I was going to buy one, but it turned up as my gift! :)

I used to beat batter and make dough by hand.....let me tell you, people, if I ever cross over to the dark side and practice evil, that would be my trademark torture device- a spoon or whisk, a bowl of eggs and sugar. With my midnight cape flying, the dungeon walls glowing as the light from the bonfires play across it, I'd command "Beat it! Ah hah ha ha ha hah." And the chains would rattle as the poor suffering souls beat and beat and beat...

But thankfully, I'm a good person, angelic actually...what?... anyways, the point is- I have my brand new mixer and I commemorated it with this multicolor sponge cake.

My passion fruit icing didn't quite make it onto the cake because of a teensy mistake, heh heh, so I patched it up and converted it to ice cream, but I must say- passion fruit icing is the best flavor ever! Next time, I'll make it right and put it in a moist layered cake.

This cake is for my brother and sis-in-law. Don't worry, you two, you'll actually get to eat it soon enough ;)















Rainbow Sponge Cake with Passion Fruit Icing

4 eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 cup flour, sifted
1 cup superfine sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp baking powder
5 liquid food colors (or more)

In a bowl, beat the egg white till firm peaks form. Add the vanilla essence and baking powder and beat till stiff. Add the yolks slowly and continue beating. Spoon in the sugar as you beat. Gently fold in the flour.

Divide the cake batter evenly into five (or more) bowls. Add a few drops of food coloring to each and mix gently. Grease and flour the cake tin and add the first colored batter in the center. As it slowly spreads, add the second one in the center of the first. Continue this slowly with the remaining colors as well. Place in a preheated oven for 20 mins at 175 C.

Passion Fruit Icing-

2 ripe passion fruits
1/2 of one lemon
1 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp butter, at room temerature

Place the pulp of the passion fruit in a sieve. Using a spoon, press down on the pulp and collect the juice in a bowl underneath. Juice the lemon as well. To this, add the icing sugar and butter and beat till well mixed. Chill in the freezer for a few minutes before spreading onto cake.

Note: I bet this frosting is better with cream cheese, so I'd recommend reworking the recipe with it added in.

Hasperat

I know you don't have to be a genius to come up with a sandwich filling, but I really do love finding different 'established' recipes. I don't just spontaneously use soy sauce or something out of my experience when I'm making my own, so the variety is welcome. And if its a vegetarian recipe that I don't have to 'adapt', I'm truly grateful.

But the last place I expected to find one was in an episode of Star Trek! Hasperat is a Bajoran snack, Bajorans being an alien species, of course. Oh God, my inner Trekkie is rolling around in ecstasy.....I SO want to live on a space ship in a fictional universe!

This one has been in my recipe file for awhile and the reason its been put off so long is because I have to make my own tortillas....and my own hummus...which means I have to make my own Tahini too.....I have to move somewhere else soon, people. Really. But its worth it, I love hummus! And this alien snack too!

Oh and by the way, it is described officially as "...set one's tongue on fire and bring tears to the eyes". But its toned down here so as to not bore a hole through the human tongue ;)

Hasperat
altered from Vegan Yum Yum, I found two other versions with cream cheese instead of hummus - here and here.

2 10″ Wheat Tortillas
1 Cup Hummus
1 Small Cucumber, sliced very thin (about 1/2 cup)
1 Carrot, shredded (about 1/3 cup)
1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp Chilli Vinegar
1/2 bunch fresh coriander leaves
Hot Chili Sauce/Tabasco

Slice the cucumber very thinly and place in a large bowl. Add the carrot. Add soy sauce and rice vinegar and toss. Let marinate 30 mins.

Spread the tortillas with hummus, making sure you cover the entire surface. This will help the sandwich stick together. Arrange the cucumber slices in one layer, slightly overlapping. Add carrot, and sprinkle the fresh coriander leaves on top. Drizzle lightly with Tabasco sauce.

Roll up the wrap, tucking in the ends, and place on a hot grill pan to slightly warm and create pretty grill marks. You can do this in a regular pan if you don’t have a grill pan. Slice and eat immediately.

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.