Hoplelessly Romantic

No, I do not believe in fairy tales, I think a candle light dinner would make me too nervous to speak and I am too old for a hand in hand walk by the shore. Love flicks make me doze off at times and teenage romantic novels get a perfect zero. Neither do I have any love letters or a rose saved amidst the pages of my dairies, nor do I dream of being proposed through an airplane dragging a banner. Well old-fashioned chivalry does win me at times, but then isn’t it a signature of a perfect Englishman.

Reading a book by the window on a rainy day with a cup of tea, ummm…. isn’t that romantic. Of course it is when the book is by Jane Austen and the likes. I do not care if it is mortifying for a 20 something going on to 20 something plus, to live in the Jane Austen world. Having devoured the irony and humor filled books numerous times, falling in and out of love with the characters; I sometimes do try to put life in them with the ones I meet in my daily life. Till date haven’t found anyone like Mr. Darcy though. And I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Darcy only exists in the Austen World.

Jane Austen in a subtle manner has personified the sensibility and the stature of the woman in all the living times. And I think if all gentlemen would read Jane Austen, they would appreciate and understand women better and this would lead to an improved co-existence. The same is applicable to women, who have not read it yet.

We all live in the Austen World and each one of us in their lives must have experienced or would experience a Austen moment. So think twice before you degrade Austen as chick lit, and also understand that the lit in it comes from 'Literature'.

And there is a new truth to be universally accepted that a woman in possession of a Jane Austen novel is a sensible and sensitive woman.

For the book club I read ‘The Watson’s’ an incomplete novel by Jane Austen, and completed by her niece. Austen fans who haven’t read it, would find it interesting at the beginning and dissatisfying at the same time, due to its short length and abrupt turn in the story and too predictable plot. And guess what I did bake a fruit cake; don’t know which book it is from.
I will try to post the pictures if I am able to get any.

Expecto Patronum

Charmed, yes I am and still under the spell of those super seven. Well, the seven Harry Potter books, that's what. And I must say this, I didn't know what I was missing till I read them all. And now I miss them so much, that it is an agony even to think about it.

Never read any of them, since the 10 years of their existence. A curiosity to read about the much acclaimed,turned into an obsession and sadly enough ended to remain as a passion. And now I can understand the grief of those who have been growing up with Ron's idiosyncrasies, Hermione's adroitness and Harry's bravery. Before, I never understood the need to queue in front of a bookstore on a cold night just to purchase a nth sequel to a kid's book for twice or thrice the original price.

Well I sat through 5 sleepless nights and took me 4 trips to 3 libraries to read all of them in one go. If only I could have said 'Accio' for them to come flying to me. And guess how was I after it ended. Zach thought probably I am a victim of a 'Confoundo' charm. He overdid it though. I just asked him, if it is ok for me to 'apparate' instead of taking the train and also if I can practise 'Wingardium Leviosa' on him........:P. I think he needs to grow up a bit, won't you agree.

Till now, you guys must have guessed that 'Harry Potter' was the Book of the month for September. As for cooking I think I am under 'Impedimenta'. So, today just some talk about it. The lovely spread at dinner, lunch and breakfast cooked by the hardworking elves and the delicious food cooked by Mrs Weasley cannot go unnoticeable. The most difficult part for me was to imagine edible Chocolate Frogs, Peppermint toads and Cockroach Clusters. I found the idea absolutely detesting. The Every Flavor Beans, might be more or less like the Jelly beans with weird flavors. Never knew about a tart made of Treacle, until Hagrid made one and also his rock cakes. The pumpkin pasties, sherbet lemons sound intersting. One thing I want to taste and so to make is the foaming butterbeer, probably some butterscotch/vanilla flavored soda.

For many their childhood or a huge part of it ended with the seventh Harry Potter book, but for me those books are a secret passage to mine, and of course a very handy one. There is a chance for you guys to go back to your childhood as well, we are doing Enid Blyton's Naughtiest Girl this month. The only thing you need to do is post on the last Sunday of October.

Harry Potter did cast a 'Aparecium' spell on Crazy Curry, and I would try my best to make that spell work.

I am right now amidst moving into a new house. The only thing which I wish now is for a wand, so that I can just wave it to pack all my things and use a 'Locomotor' charm to load them in the truck. In case you are wondering, I can do all this and much more, am a RavenClaw for nothing you know.

So I am off in search of my wand. Till then in case you want to try your hands at some spells or charms, you can use this portkey for your journey to the magicland.

The Panmarino

After making a number a of rolls and cakes, I thought it was time for me to venture further into actual bread baking. Read through a lot of books to understand the whole concept of rising and kneading the bread. The best I found was 'A bread baker's apprentice' by Peter Reinhart. I liked the way he has explained the science behind each and every step in bread baking, so very helpful for a amateur like me. Also the introduction to pre-fermented starters in bread baking helped to understand the alchemy involved in the process.

The first bread I baked was, the Potato-Rosemary bread, Italians call it Panmarino. This is not a very good representation of the rising and kneading of my maiden attempt, still I have tried to capture as much as I could.

The bread is made by using Biga as the pre-fermented starter.

Day 1

For the Biga
1/2tbs instant yeast
25 cup unbleached flour
2/3 cup water

Sift the flour and the mixing bowl. Add the yeast and water. Mix it to make a dough. It will be sticky. Transfer it to a floured surface and knead it for 5-6 min to make it smooth and pliable. Coat it with oil.Let it rest for 3-4 hours at room temperature to ferment.

Knead it to a soft dough, transfer it to a bowl, cover with a plastic wrap and then keep it overnight in the refrigerator.

It will last for 3 days in a refrigerator or for 3 months in a freezer.

Day 2

Approximately 1.5 hour before making the bread dough, remove the biga from the refrigerator, cut into 8-10 pieces and let it sit at room temperature to remove the chill.

For the bread dough

11/4 cup of Biga
3 cups of unbleached flour
1 1/4 tbs instant yeast
3/4 cup water
1 cup mashed potatoes
2 tbs coarsely chopped rosemary
4 tbs roasted garlic
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs salt
1/2 tbs black pepper

Semolina for dusting

Sift flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the biga, mashed potatoes and rosemary. Mix with water and oil to form a sticky dough. Add more flour if the flour is too watery or water if too stiff.

On a floured surface, knead the dough for 10 min. It will be smooth and pliable. Flatten dough. spread roasted garlic over it and again knead the dough to a ball for 1 minute. This is done to let the flour absorb the moisture from the garlic.

First rise: (2 hours)
Coat the dough with oil, place it in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it ferment at room temperature for about 2 hours.

Remove the dough from the bowl, divide in 2 equal pieces.

Shape the pieces. I had a new loaf pan and wanted to use it, hence I shaped the dough to form a normal loaf.

For that, flatten the dough in a rectangle, then roll it into a cigar, while sealing the edges with each turn. And then place it in a oil coated loaf pan.

Second rise

Coat with oil and let it proof or rise at room temperature for 1 to2 hours or till it doubles in size.

Baking

Preheat the oven at 400F. Brush the roll with oil. I scored the dough with a knife to de-gas. Place the pan in the middle rack of the oven and bake for 20 min. Then rotate the pan and bake for another 10-15 min.

Remove the loaf from the oven, let it cool in the pan for 10 min, then cool on the wire rack for at least an hour.

The Panmarino goes to DK's AWED:Italiano

Current Mood: Baked
Current Music: Another one bites the dust (Queens)
Current Book: Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

Expedition Extraordinaire

There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams.
- Jerome K Jerome (Three men in a boat)

Camping on some desolate rock at the end of the earth. According to Calvin, the place where his parents take him camping every year, and what all things go into building his character.

Calvin's Dad : Ta Da, we're here
Calvin : Good old itchy island, home of the nuclear mosquitoes.
Calvin's Dad : Bug bites build character.
Calvin : YeaH, and last year your said diarrhea builds character

Sleeping, inside a cave, on a newspaper below the stars, on the patio (verandha) of a temple, and at such many places while trekking through the numerous forts built by Shivaji maharaj in the Sahyadris. We carried our own food , climbed hills and mountains on foot, drank water from the flowing streams, have taken rides in a truck to a matador to reach our destination or home.
Don't know whether this has built any character in me, but on one of such expeditions, I met an adorable man. But that story can wait.

Well, lets go and meet the three Victorian young men who are on an expedition in a boat on the river Thames. J, Harris and George, the three musketeers along with a Fox terrier, set on a voyage to sail through the river accompanied by the idiosyncrasies of each other and always finding themselves in situations, not far from the reality.

I am talking about the masterpiece comic book 'Three Men in a Boat' by the author Jerome K Jerome. The book is full of anecdotes which on second thought seem to be real, and happened with us or witnessed by us sometime or the other. The characters, even though fictitious put in us a feeling of knowing someone somewhere who is exactly the way described. Just like Uncle Podger or friend Harris.

Also the food and the cooking incidents are hilarious. The burnt scrapes of scrambled eggs, Irish stew cooked in everything and with anything. And yes, they are those 1870's English gentlemen you love their tarts, apple, jam , rhubarb and more.

So you guessed it right, what's coming next is a tart full of some lovely filling in it.

Recipe for Rhubarb Tart

Ingredients:

For the Crust
1 cup All purpose flour
8 tbs, butter
1/2 tbs, salt
2-3 tbs, sugar
3-4 tbs ice cold water

For the Filling
1 cup Rhubarb Compote

Procedure:

For the Crust


Cut the butter in 1/2 inch pieces, and refrigerate for 5-7 min.
Sift flour, salt and sugar.in a mixing bowl.
Add the butter to the flour to form a crumbled mixture.
Add 2-3 tbs of ice cold water, and form a dough. The dough should not come together. It should be crumbled. Do not knead the dough.



Gather it together and wrap it in a plastic. Refrigerate for at least an hour. Remove the dough from the refrigerator, let it stand for 10 min at room temperature.

Preheat oven at 350F.
Dust with flour and roll out in a desired shape, with a thickness of 1/2 cm. Line the rolled crust on the pie pan, and blind bake it for 20-22 min.



Cool it to room temperature. Pour in the Rhubarb Compote on the baked tart crust. Refrigerate for 15-20 min or till set.




This was our July edition of the Book Club, ideated by Simran of Bombay Foodies.

This time we also had a bunch of other enthusiasts who accompanied us in the reading and cooking. Lets see what have they come up with from this book.

Simran cooks, Harris's Scrambled Egg
Rachel made a Spiced Apple Tart

For the month of August, we are reading 'Anita and Me' an award winning book by Meera Syal. If you are interested to play along, rather read along, just drop in a comment to me or Simran.

Btw, did I tell you guys, that it was that adorable man i met on an expedition, who had introduced me to 'Three Men in a Boat', on the extraordinaire expedition. And there is a sequel 'Three men in a Bummel', for the ones who loved the boat ride.

Pink is my favorite color...

....not just pink, all those bright colors of orange, blue, yellow and green, just like the 3M Post-it notes. Also the bougainvillea pink which adorns the trees guarding the big bungalows and blankets the earth.

Pink is for girls. Stereotyped feminism, just like the Barbie doll, to such an extent that all the hi-tech gadgets essentially are also launched in Pink. The 2008 Limousine Mini Cooper has a Pink edition. Not that we didn't have the Pink version of such bubble cars.

Probably that's why some Feminists, the ones against the house-wives and blondes, hate Barbies and hence the innocuous color Pink. But then some radical ones, in Scandinavia have reclaimed the color for their use.

Till the 1940's Pink, then considered a masculine color was supposed to be a boy colour and the dainty blue for the sweet girls. Don't know what made this trend turn around. And the course shows that now Pink is more of a GLBT community member.

Pink, a paler shade of red. Red is the color of my bike, so is of every Ferrari. Many phone numbers ago, I had a mobile phone with a pink cover, my boyfriend No. X had gifted it to me (It was his choice, ladies don't stare at me like that). And I had a couple of pink tees, well more than a couple, I bought because I thought I didn't have any in that colour. So Pink is not a new obsession for me.

Does it really make me a Pink fanatic, just like my friends used to call me in that period. But then why do I have to bother about it......even Victoria parades of with her secret in Pink.

I think this is the only thing I have made in Pink. Rhubarb, known as world's favourite pie plant, a vegetable, but most often used as a fruit. I got it from the farmer's market, but took me a while to find a recipe for it. I haven't seen many cookbooks mentioning Rhubarb recipes. Still I managed to make a couple of them.

Recipe for Rhubarb Compote

Ingredients

2.5 cups of Rhubarb stalks, chopped coarsely

2 tbs, lime juice

3/4 cup, sugar

1/2 tbs, salt

1.5 tbs, corn starch

3/4 cup, water

Procedure

In a pan, put the chopped Rhubarb along with the lime juice, salt and 2 tbs of sugar. Let it rest for almost 30 min in a warm place. Rhubarb will start giving out water.

Heat the pan adding to it 1/3 cup of water. Add the remaining sugar and stir. Close and cook on low flame for 2-3 min. Rhubarb will become mushy.

Dissolve corn starch in 2-3 tbs water. Remove the lumps if present. Pour the corn starch mix in the pan. The Rhubarb mix will form a pink thick mass. Cook for a min.

Taste the compote for sugar, if the tartness doesn't suit your palate, add more sugar and stir to dissolve.

Put off the heat, and let the mix cool. Pour it in sterilized glass jars and store in the refrigerator.

These pancakes filled with pink Rhubarb Compote, are going to Sia's WBB Summer Feast.

Also loved it when coupled with vanilla ice-cream.

Note:

The thin, reddish pink stalks of rhubarb give more colour and taste to the preparation.

Current Mood: Tart
Current Music: Jungle Love (Steve Miller)
Current Book: The A.B.C. Murders (Agatha Christie)

Rise and Roll

"The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight..."
M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

According to my roomie, I am experiencing a phenomena of 'Writer's Block'. I disagree. First of all, I ain't no writer so it negates the 'Writer' part out of it. And currently I am too occupied to think of anything to write, so it is not a block but trying to do too many things at a time. Anyways, later on this, right now a feature on baking.

After making all the petty stuff and substituting baking in place of frying to save those innumerable calories (posts to come), I finally thought it was time to gather all my courage and muster my confidence and try to work in equanimity with the barm(yeast), which has failed me more than often.

My fledgling knowledge of baking, I believe didn't qualify me to venture into baking those warm aromatic loaves. Even though I stay in the city ruled by flour mills, still I couldn't make myself to do any flour wastage and hence I first tried my hands at the small dinner rolls. But whatever form of bread, small of big, one is making/baking, it does come with an eternity of wait for the 'Rising'.


Recipe for Dinner Rolls (adopted from Bernard Clayton's Book of small bread)

Ingredients
4-5cups, All Purpose flour
1.5 tbs active dry yeast
2-3 tbs oil
1/2 tbs salt
1 egg
1/4 cup warm water
1 tbs sugar
1/2 cup milk

Procedure
Dissolve sugar and yeast in the lukewarm water and let it stand for a min.
Sift flour and salt in a big mixing bowl. Pour in the yeast-water. Mix.
Now add little milk at a time and knead to form a soft and pliable dough. Use warm water if necessary.

First Rising
Coat the dough with oil and place it in a big bowl. Cover the bowl with a towel or a plastic wrap and let the dough rise for an hour and half. The dough should be more than double its size

Second Rising
Punch down the risen dough and knead again, gently. Again coat with oil, cover the bowl with the towel and let it rise for 45 min.

Third Rising
Punch down the dough again. Divide it into 13-15 balls. Place them in an oil coated baking pan, separated by 1 inch distance.Brush some oil on them. Let them rise for 20 min.

Baking
Place the baking pan in an oven preheated at 375F. Bake for 12-15 min, till the surface has browned a little.
Remove from the oven. Cool.

I made almost 15 medium sized dinner rolls.

Notes:
The rolls can be made ahead of time and then frozen. Wrap the balls after the second rising, tightly in a plastic wrap and place them in a freezer in an airtight plastic container.
Remove from the freezer almost 2 hrs before the baking and thaw at room temperature. Let them rise for at least 30min and then bake.

To shape the dinner rolls, see here.

These are rolled down to BBD#12, Small Breads hosted by dear Aparna.

Current Mood: Crusty

Current Book: Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Current Music: Norwegian Woods (The Beatles)

Smart and Spicy, Cookie

“Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.”

Robert Fulghum in 1987 at Middlebury College


I would prefer cookies and lemonade to cookies and milk in this sweltering summer heat.

Wonder, why American cookie has yet not caught the fancy of Indians, who since ages have been snacking on the crisp salty and sweet English 'Biscuits'. With Cookie Man selling cookies at Rs 400/- per kg, these soft delights have to go a long way before they have the energy to fight with the highly patronized Parle G and the likes.

Only read in books and forgotten, cookies seem to be the most favoured baking recipe of the Americans. So as I am still on a baking spree, I thought why not give these a try.

I adapted the recipe from here. It is a melange of numerous flavours, sweet, spicy and hot. The flavours burst in the mouth and one just cannot have enough of it.


Recipe for Spicy Ginger Cookies

Ingredients

2 cups All purpose flour
2 tbs packed grated ginger
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbs fresh ground pepper
1 tbs cinnamon powder
3-4 cloves
3-4 cardamom pods
1 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup candied ginger*
2 tbs baking soda
a pinch of salt

Procedure

*For Candied Ginger
Heat 1/2 cup of finely sliced and chopped ginger with 1 cup of water for about 30 min till ginger is soft and tender.
Drain the water.
Add the cooked ginger and approximately equal amount of sugar to a pan along with 2-3 tbs of water and cook on medium to slow flame. Keep on stirring till all the liquid is evaporated.
Cool, it will become hard. Toss it in sugar to coat and store in an air-tight container.

For this recipe, I added the candied ginger without cooling to the flour.

For the Spicy Ginger Cookies
Preheat oven at 350F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Sift flour, salt, baking powder in a mixing bowl. Add the ground ginger and all the spices. Mix well.
In a separate bowl, mix oil and sugar, till white and fluffy. Pour into the flour mixture. Add the candied ginger and mix well.

Add honey and form into a cookie dough
Take small portions and form cookies, flattening by hands. Place on the cookie sheet separated. They grow in size on baking. Bake for about 8-10 min till set. Remove from the oven and cool.

They will be chewy in texture and spicy in taste. I made almost 16 cookies of about 2 inch radius.

Note
The recipe calls for Molasses. They can be replaced by equal amount of honey.
There is also an egg involved in the recipe. I avoided it.




Current Mood: Spiced
Current Music: Kahin to hogi (Jane Tu Ya Jaane Na)
Current Book: Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K Jerome)