A Perfectly Delicious Start for a New Daring Baker

Hello Everyone,
I am delighted to announce that I have successfully completed my very first Daring Bakers Challenge. I have been a silent admirer of this great blogging community since I began my blog in December 2007. Baking and I have a long and happy history. I began baking fairly regularly when I was in high school - cakes, biscuits, pastry, bread! My love affair with baking continued well into my University years, when the demands of career and travel left me with little time to boil an egg, let alone bake. Slowly, yet steadily now and with much encouragement from my husband :) I am returning to this great passion - and so I welcome Daring Bakers into my life!!

Here's my experience with the very first challenge. A couple of weeks before the challenge was posted, I ran across Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From My Home to Yours at my local library. Browsing through, I found several recipes I was keen on trying. However, as we were expecting visitors from out of town in March, I knew there would never be enough time to get started. And then I thought I'd better wait for the recipe from the Daring Bakers, and focus on my very first challenge. To my complete and utter delight, Morven chose a recipe from the very same book!!

The Perfect Party Cake was simply a breeze to bake. Its one of the simplest recipes I've seen and without doubt a guaranteed success. Its also incredibly versatile, and given citrus addition to the batter makes it a wonderful base for any recipe requiring a slab of cake! A few notes on the process:

• I did bake the cakes the day before I iced them. They stayed well overnight.
• I put both lemon and orange rind in the batter and as a result got a wonderfully fresh flavour in the cake!
• The icing is fresh cream. It turned out delicious, except that I am not so fond of vanilla essence and I doubt that I will use it again to flavour the cream.
• I filled the cake with home-made cranberry and apple preserve which gave a great tangy taste twist to this otherwise sweet treat.
• Finally, the blueberries and blackberries on the top were perfect to give both a fresh look and taste to the cake.

So, presenting Berry Delight with Cranberry Preserve, my version of Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake. A big Thank You to the Daring Bakers for organizing this event!! P.S. For the original recipe, look here March Challenge and Blog on....


All text and photographs in this blog, unless otherwise noted, are Copyright of © Annarasa 2007. All Rights Reserved. Kindly do not reproduce without permission.

Dreamy Vegetarian Pizza

So, I was surfing the internet for interesting food events.... Yup, feels like I have been doing a lot of that lately!! But then there are so many wonderfully enthusiastic chefs out there, each dreaming up new ways to challenge our skills and creativity!! I still continue to be quite literally gobsmacked at the variety and range of food events online.

Anyway, the first site to pop out from the blogosphere was Stephanie's blog announcing a Pizza Party. Just perfect I thought. And then, almost simultaneously - what exactly is a pizza? I mean I know what a pizza is, I have eaten it often enough, I bake it at home quite frequently - and yet - what is a pizza?? Quite simply, a pizza as we know it today is an Italian open pie usually made of thin bread dough spread with a spiced mixture of a.k.a tomato sauce and cheese. According to the Smithsonian, the pizza could be said to be a descendant of the focaccia or bread rounds covered with herbs and spice which made their debut in Naples around 1000 years ago. Essentially a peasant food, it was a way of recycling leftovers by placing them over thin crusts of dough and the baking them. Indeed there was no tomato on the earliest pizzas as Europeans came to know of this beautiful fruit sometime in the 16th century, and it was added to the pizza only sunsequently.

The world's first pizzeria Port'Alba opened in 1830 pizza. The pizzas there were cooked in ovens lined with lava from Mount Vesuvius. Talk about gourmet! The first truly modern pizza was the Margherita Pizza. Named to honour when Queen Margherita Teresa Giovanni, the consort to the Italian King in 1889, it featured fresh tomatoes, mozzarella cheese (used for the very first time on a pizza), and basil - ingredients that reflected the colors red, white and green for the Italian flag. Pizza was brought to the USA by the Italian immigrants. The first pizzeria in the USA was called Pizzeria Neapolitan and opened in 1905 in New York City. It however gained currency only towards the end of WW II when American servicemen returning from Europe popularised it in the States. More recently, Ike Sewell invented the deep-dish pizza. You can still find it at the Pizzeria Uno in Chicago.

Fun facts about Pizza:

• Americans eat almost 350 slices of pizza each second! With 3 billion pizzas being sold annually, it is no wonder that pizza is a $30 billion industry today.
• Close to 40 per cent of all pizzas sold are pepperoni pizzas. Other popular toppings include onions, extra cheese, and green pepper. The least popular topping is - you guessed it - anchovies.
• Some intriguing topping that one might be tempted to sample include oysters, dandelions, and peanut butter and jelly!!!!
• While Americans prefer meat toppings, a popular pizza topping in Japan is squid and tofu. In India tandoori chicken and chilli paneer are favourites. Brazilians enjoy green peas on a pizza while Russians top it with mockba - a mix of sardines, tuna, mackerel, salmon and onions.
• The original Italian pizza was made with green peppers and mozzarella cheese. The original Greek pizza was simply crust and vegetables - no cheese!!
• And you might be interested to note that October is National Pizza Month.

Now if that's whet your appetite, here's the real deal!!


Ingredients:
Ready prepared pizza dough (I used Pillsbury)
1 can tomato paste
1 red onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp Italian herbs
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt & Pepper, to taste
2 large tomatoes, sliced fine
1 large Spanish onion, sliced fine
1 large green pepper, sliced fine
1 Jalapeno pepper, sliced fine
1/2 cup black olives, halved
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded

Method:

1. First, prepare the pizza sauce. Pour the oil into a saucepan. When warm, add the crushed garlic, and then after a minute the minced red onion. Fry until transparent. Now add the tomato puree, a cup of water, the Italian herbs, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 10-15 minutes until you get a sauce of medium thick consistency. Set aside to cool.
2. Roll out the pizza dough as per instructions on a large cookie sheet. Set the oven at 350F.
3. Pour the sauce over the dough and spread evenly. Layer the vegetables over the sauce starting with half the cheese and green peppers. Next place the tomatoes, onions, Jalapeno peppers and olives. Lastly sprinkle remaining cheese over the pizza.
4. Bake for 10-15 minutes until the cheese is melted and the crust begins to turn golden and crispy.
5. Slice and serve your dreamy vegetarian pizza hot with your choice of condiments!!
   
   All text and photographs in this blog, unless otherwise noted, are Copyright of © Annarasa 2007. All Rights Reserved. Kindly do not reproduce without permission.

Khaman Dhokla

As my husband and I simply adore Khaman, I thought this might be the best treat to share on International Women's Day 2008. Thanks to Zorra, the web today has been flooded with warm, fragrant, and delicious messages of awareness and love!


Ingredients:
1 cup chickpea flour
3/4 cup water
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp ginger-chilli paste
1/4 tsp asafetida
1 tsp baking soda
Salt, to taste

Method:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients except the baking soda in a large mixing bowl.
2. To this mix, add the oil, water, and ginger-chilli paste and blend well to make a lump-free paste.
3. Put 2 cups of water in a pressure cooker or a steamer, and bring to a boil. Meanwhile grease a cake pan or pie dish that will fit into the steamer such that it can also be easily removed with a few drops of oil.
4. Now add the baking soda and lemon to the chickpea flour mix, blend well and pour into the pan. Leave at least a 3/4 inch space in the pan above the batter.
5. Lower pan carefully into the steamer. If using pressure cooker, do not place the weight. Cook for 15 minutes.
6. Remove the cake pan from the streamer. Let the dhokla cool. Turn out, cut into squares.
7. Serve warm or cold with your favourite chutney or sauce.

All text and photographs in this blog, unless otherwise noted, are Copyright of © Annarasa 2007. All Rights Reserved. Kindly do not reproduce without permission.

Pasta with Chickpeas and Parsley

There is nothing quite like having a few recipes for quick and easy one dish dinners handy. Amongst my favourite recipes is Pasta with Chickpeas & Parsley. This is a deliciously spicy pasta with a tremendously hearty flavour. Its completely no-fuss to make. It was perfect for our move last week - fast to make and truly yummy!!

Ingredients:
3 cups mixed pasta
1 large can chickpeas
2 small onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 large bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tsp hot red pepper flakes
Salt, to taste
Pepper, freshly ground


Method:

1. Boil the pasta with a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of olive oil in plenty of water. Set aside when ready.
2. Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the garlic and onions and cook until transparent.
3. Drain the chickpeas and add to the pan. mix well cook covered on medium heat for 2 minutes.
4. Now add the pepper flakes (you can reduce or increase the quantity according to taste), and the parsley. Blend in and cook for another 5-8 minutes or until the chickpeas are warmed through.
5. Season with salt and pepper and toss the cooked pasta into the chickpea mix.
6. Serve hot with extra freshly ground black pepper and red chilli flakes.

I am sending this across to Meeta's Monthly Mingle One Dish Dinners. This recipe is also my very first entry to Ruth fabulous event Presto Pasta Nights!!

All text and photographs in this blog, unless otherwise noted, are Copyright of © Annarasa 2007. All Rights Reserved. Kindly do not reproduce without permission.

Gujarati Kadhi

Hey Folks! I'm back after a short hiatus. February was supposed to be our home moving month, with the actual move planned for the end of the last week. However we had some rather unexpected warm and sunny weather on the weekend of 23-24 February. Given the 100 plus inches snow that we have plowed our way through since the start of this year, the ray of sunshine seemed promising, and indeed too good to pass up. At the very last minute we decided to take advantage of this good fortune that nature had sent us and move a week before planned. There was some unfinished maintenance at our new home, yet we decided to chance it :)

Moving is tough work and while I am still unpacking the boxes (does that ever end??), I made sure the kitchen was set up and functioning on 'Day One'. Now where have I hear that phrase lately?? LoL, but seriously - I needed the inspiration and the creativity to survive the sheer tediousness of the move, the packing, and the unpacking. And what better way to unwind at the end of a long day than to bring together cereals, lentils, vegetables, and spices and watch them transform into beautifully creative meals - with mouth-watering appeal....

While I am sure that many a blog here will find its way linked to 'the move', I think enough said about it for the present. Onto a dish that turns up in many an Indian home on cold winter evenings. It is heartwarming, delicious, nutritious, and wholesome - it is Gujarati Kadhi. Golden and creamy, yet amazingly light on the stomach, this Kadhi is best served with fresh steamed Basmati rice, and a dollop of ghee!!


Ingredients:
1/3 cup chickpea flour
1 cup yogurt
2 cups water, warm
1 tbsp sunflower/canola oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
8 black peppercorns
4 cloves
2 dried red chillies
6-8 curry leaves
1/2 tsp turmeric
Salt, to taste

For tempering:
1 tbsp ghee
1/2 tsp coarsely grated red chilli powder

Method:

1. Pour the oil into a deep, heavy bottomed pan. When hot, reduce the heat to medium.
2. Add the cumin, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, peppercorns, cloves, and red chillies to the oil.
3. When the mustard seeds begin to pop, and a fragrance emerges from the pan, add the warm water into the spices. Take care when doing this as the oil can sputter when water is added.
4. Now mix the chickpea flour, turmeric, salt, and the yogurt. Blend well so that the mixture is free of any lumps.
5. Gently pour this mix into the the water and spice mixture.
6. Cook the Kadhi on a medium heat stirring constantly. You will notice the mixture thicken and acquire a deeper yellow colour.
7. The Kadhi is ready when you can no longer taste the rawness of the chickpea flour. set aside.
8. Prepare tempering by heating the ghee in a small shallow pan. When warm, add the red chilli powder. Pour over the Kadhi.

The Kadhi is now ready. Serve immediately with steamed rice.

All text and photographs in this blog, unless otherwise noted, are Copyright of © Annarasa 2007. All Rights Reserved. Kindly do not reproduce without permission.