Pepper 'n Spice

It's my birthday today. My daughter threw a surprise party with my family. There were different colored balloons. And for the birthday cake-she insisted on a three layered cake, with a layer of her Cadbury dairy milk chocolate. She also wrote down the recipe in a piece of paper too, to be followed by the letter. This is a recipe sans butter and milk, for all you who are lactose intolerant. My ultimate aim is to bake a good cake that's sans all-purpose flour too, maybe with just oatmeal flour. The birthday cake magic ingredients are... Oats flour -1/2 cup (Quaker oats blitzed) All-purpose flour - 1 cup Baking soda - 3/4 tsp Cinnamon powder - 3/4 tsp Organic brown eggs - 2 Sugar, powdered - 1/2 cup Olive oil - 1/4 cup Vanilla extract - 2 tsp Cadbury dairy milk chocolate - 4 bars Apple juice - 1/4 cup In the dry bowl, mix flours, baking soda and cinnamon. In the wet bowl, beat eggs till foamy. Add sugar, vanilla extract and beat again. Add oil and combine well. Add dry ingredients...

An incredibly easy dish once you have prepared the marinade. The marinade is the usual basic tomato gravy that we add for aaloo mattar,  mattar paneer.. The marinade needs.. Olive oil - 1 Tbsp Carom seeds - 3/4 tsp Curry leaf - a handful Onion - 1 big, peeled Green chili - 1 Ginger - 1 and 1/2" Garlic - 4 or 5 Tomato - 2 small Coriander powder - 1 tsp Chicken masala - 1 tsp Salt - 3/4 tsp Heat a saucepan and add oil. Add carom seeds and curry leaves. Sautee for a minute. Add thinly sliced onion, minced chili, ginger and garlic. Stir for 6 or 7 minutes until onion becomes soft. Add chopped tomato. Stir for 2 minutes. Add spices and stir until the raw smell of masalas disappear. Allow to cool. Grind to an almost rough paste. Chicken drumsticks - 500 g or around 6 of them Potato - 3 medium, peeled and cubed Olive oil - 1 Tbsp Wash chicken well. Marinate chicken and potato together with the ground masala. Refrigerate for 2 hours.  Preheat oven to 200C. Place chicken and potato mix...

 This is an extension of the basic sourdough bread recipe . I replaced wheat flour with oats flour and added garlic bread seasoning along with salt while kneading the dough. So, 120g of oats flour and 224g of all-purpose flour, the rest remaining the same. Also, for a different touch, I sprinkled a little sesame seed on the top just before baking. These are pics of some plants (the top one is a bougainvillea) in my neighbor aunty's home.

 This is a simple breakfast. Break eggs on greased saucepan and sprinkle "some stuff" on top.  Cook till done. That's it. So the simple ingredients are.. Organic brown eggs - 2 Carrot - 1, peeled and grated Curry leaves - a fistful Salt - a pinch Pepper - a pinch Olive oil - 2 tsp Heat a saucepan and drizzle oil. Break the eggs (try not to break the yolk, if you want two beautiful round yellow eyes for your dish).  Sprinkle carrot, curry leaves, salt and pepper. After a few minutes, upturn the egg. Cook for 2 more minutes, until well done. We paired the eggs with ash gourd juice. The juice had blitzed gourd and curry leaves. The strained juice was mixed with plant collagen, turmeric powder, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It was not too bad, actually quite nice :-) While taking the breakfast pic to post on my blog, I spotted a bird among our neem branches and money plant leaves. I have been seeing it only since lockdown ... probably more birds visiting now that pollution le...

Today has been a day of experimentation, encouraged by my daughter. We tried layering the cake... but it did not work so well. But the taste with the dark chocolate... was awesome :-) It has a mixture of oats and all-purpose flour . This is the first time I am using oats flour and the texture was fine.  The magic ingredients are ... (my daughter is binge watching a netflix series called "just add magic" where they create magic recipes...I really don't know for what though.) Oats flour - 1/2 cup All-purpose flour - 1 cup Cinnamon powder - 1/2 tsp Baking soda - 1 tsp Sugar (powdered) - 1/2 cup Organic brown eggs - 2 Olive oil - 1/4 cup Vanilla extract - 1 tsp Dark chocolate - 120 g Apple juice - 1/2 cup I blitzed some rolled oats to get the oats flour. In the dry bowl, add all the flours, cinnamon powder and baking soda and combine. In the wet bowl, break eggs and fluff with a egg beater. Add sugar, vanilla extract and mix. Add oil and combine well. Add dry ingredients into...

These no-bake brownies are rich in peanut butter. You can add almond butter instead too . So I am savoring the super rich brownies as I write this, trying to remember the book I finished midnight yesterday. "Paper girls" is a crime thriller, but it's a bit more heartwarming than any of the recent one's that I have been reading. Detective Sergeant Robert with his three kids has moved away from London to Norwich to cope with the knowledge and sadness that his wife has been kidnapped and has been missing for five weeks now. His children are so cute in their mannerisms.  In Norwich, two nine year old girls are missing. They were delivering newspapers and disappeared en route. DS Robert is pulled into the case. The story talks about how he manages the cases alongside taking care of his demanding three girls. That gives a personal touch to the story. I liked a line in the book which I have heard before.."Still waters run deep".  It means that even if the brownies ...

I wonder why the fish dish is called "molee". Molee or molly is a female name in Kerala and I have at least two aunts called so. Was the dish originally created by a lady called Molly? ...and so I muse.. The special ingredients are.. Catla - 500g, cut pieces Olive oil - 2 Tbsp Carom seeds - 1/4 tsp Curry leaves - a handful Onions - 2, medium Ginger - 1" Garlic - 5 or 6 cloves Green chili - 1 Tomato - 1, medium Salt - a pinch Coconut milk - 150 ml Water - 1/2 cup For marination, Salt - 1/4 tsp Kashmiri chili powder - 1/4 tsp Turmeric powder - a little more than a pinch Lemon - 1/2 Clean the fish well by rubbing some salt on the pieces. Wash it off and clean with water. Marinate overnight. Heat a saucepan with 1 Tbsp of oil. Place the fish and fry on both sides for 4 to 5 mins. Keep aside. In a deep bottomed saucepan, add the remaining oil. When it heats up, add carom seeds, then curry leaves. Stir for a minute. Add chopped onions and minced chili, garlic and ginger. Saute...

Tuna in a can can be eaten as such, but with some spices and spring onions, it turns out to be good side dish for rice, bread... Ingredients are... Tuna - 2 small cans Spring onions - 5 or 6 Ginger - 1" Garlic - 4 or 5 Green chili - 1 Tomato - 2, small Pink rock salt, crushed - 1/2 tsp Coriander powder - 1/2 tsp Chicken masala - 1/2 tsp Kashmiri chili powder - a pinch Turmeric powder - a pinch Olive oil - 3 tsp Carom seeds - 1/4 tsp Heat a saucepan with oil. Add carom seeds and stir. Add minced spring onions (leaving the leaves for later), ginger, garlic and chili. Stir for a few minutes and then add chopped tomato. After a minute or two, add the masalas and salt. Stir for 2 or 3 minutes so that the raw taste of the masalas disappear. Add tuna chunks (after straining off the salt water) and chopped spring onion leaves and stir to combine. Tuna on sourdough bread for breakfast. Tuna with mashed potato and sweet potato for dinner. It's tuna all day ;-) So I had free time to read...

We used to buy frozen parotta's once in a while pre-pandemic. I just had to heat it on the tava. There used to be varieties too..with aaloo, methi, to name a few. So I thought I would attempt to make the plain parotta's from scratch and it did turn out good, albeit a bit hard because I skipped on the butter. You need.. All-purpose flour - 2 cups Semolina (rava) - 1 heaped Tbsp Pink rock salt, crushed - 1/2 tsp Olive oil - for brushing Water Combine flours and salt. Add water slowly, while at the same time kneading to make a smooth dough (not too sticky or too dry). Keep covered for 20 minutes. Divide the dough into eight equal sized balls. Immerse each ball in little oil and keep covered for an hour.  Brush oil on the back of a steel plate. Using a rolling pin, roll the ball of dough into a thin sheet covering the plate. Brush oil. Hold one end of the sheet and slowly pull together. Then spiral into a flower like shape like below. Brush oil on the plate and press on the flower...

A twist to the usual crumpets  for today's breakfast....by adding spring onions (leaves, onions and all), minced green chili, shredded cabbage, italian seasoning, pink rock salt crushed and pepper. Hubby and daughter loved the crisp crumpets with all the different ingredients.

The dish in hindi would be aaloo ajwain. Ajwain is really tiny but looks similar to fennel seeds. It is a modified version of the aloo jeera recipe . I didn't pressure cook the potato separately, instead let it cook with the spices.  Do you eat slowly enjoying all the different flavours when it all explodes in your mouth...trying to guess what all might have been added to the dish? "Prerequisite to proper digestion is to chew your food slowly, not gulp it down" is a quote from "Chokher Bali", a novel by Rabindranath Tagore. The story is set in pre-British India (in Bengal). It is slow, but rife with emotions. I don't think I have read any other story where the emotions and characters were described with so much asperity. The prose is exemplary. It's about a doting mother, Rajalakshmi, who takes care of her grown up son so much that her son, Mahendra, doesn't even wish to marry. But when he does marry, he gets so attached to his wife, Asha that he neg...

This is a North Indian style chicken preparation. I took notes from another food blogger and changed the recipe to suit our needs (toning down the chili). Mainly I incorporated the spices and masalas that I had (without rushing to the store). Anyways, nowadays we don't step out too much and depend on Amazon and local fruit and vegetable deliveries at our doorstep.  The ingredients are... Chicken boneless - 500g, cubed Almonds - 2 Tbsp Carom seeds (ajwain) - 3/4 tsp Spring onions - 4 Ginger - 1" Garlic - 4 or 5 Green chili - 1 Tomato - 3 small Chicken masala - 1/2 tsp Coriander powder - 1/2 tsp Kashmiri chili powder - 3/4 tsp Pink rock salt, crushed - 1 and 1/4 tsp Water - 1/2 cup Green capsicum - 1, medium Olive oil -2 Tbsp Soak almonds in hot water for 15 mins. Drain water. Grind into a paste with a little sprinkle of water. Keep aside. Heat a saucepan and add 1 Tbsp of oil. Add ajwain and roast for half a minute. Add chopped spring onions, minced garlic, ginger and chili. S...

This dish is a meal on its own as it has both carbohydrates (sweet potato) and protein (bean). It's adapted from a site that was recommeded in the Fitbit community . The ingredient list is as follows... Sweet potato - 3 small Cowpea beans (vanpayar) - 1 and 1/2 cup Olive oil - 2 tsp Spring onions - 2 with leaf Ginger - 1 and 1/2" Garlic - 5 or 6 Green chili - 1 Tomato - 1 Pink rock salt, crushed - 1 tsp Pepper - 1/4 tsp Turmeric powder - a pinch Kashmiri chili powder - a pinch Water - 1/2 cup Lemon - 1/2 Scrub the skin of sweet potato to remove any dirt. Peel skin and chop into cubes. In a baking tray, toss the cubes along with a sprinkle of olive oil, salt and pepper. Bake at 210C for 20 minutes.  Soak beans overnight and change the water at least 2 or 3 times. Drain. Pressure cook with some water and a pinch of salt, until just soft (not too mashed). Strain off excess water. Mince green chili, ginger, garlic. Chop spring onions and keep the chopped leaves aside. Heat a sauce...