Summery Sunday Brunch

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I know its a bit random sharing photos of a side dish. But I just loved the green on yellow, a lovely colour combination, so bright and summery. 

And just in case you are wondering these beans were sautéed with cumin seeds and dill in a dash of olive oil and served with baked chicken. My idea of a perfect Sunday brunch.

Food Discovery Friday - Pink Radish!

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Food discovery for today has to be the pink radish, for it is such a contrast to the radish commonly eaten in India. Back home a radish is usually white and extremely pungent, so pungent that it would make your eyes water. They certainly always made mine water and I never liked them. So imagine my surprise when I saw these small pink jewel like vegetables in the radish section. They looked so pretty, I had to try them and I am glad I did, they taste much milder and sweeter than the radishes I am used to.  

As the weather slowly gets warmer, I am beginning to like salads again and salads are the perfect place to put pink radishes. Being so mild, they lose their flavor on cooking, so they are best enjoyed raw and combine very well with most types of salads – you can toss some with mixed leaves to create a pop of pink or mix them with potatoes to make a Russian style salad, they also go well with cucumber and apples.

However, the recipe that I really like combines them with oranges. It makes for a very colorful salad with the zingy citrus flavor a perfect partner to the peppery radishes. Adding Parsley enhances the sharp citrus theme of this salad and the green looks gorgeous next to the pinks and oranges. I like to call this my Vitamin C salad, as all the ingredients are rich in this Vitamin; in fact, Parsley contains more Vitamin C than oranges!  

Here's the recipe. It serves two people. 

10-12 Pink Radishes

1 Large Orange

Handful of chopped Parsley

Juice of half a Lemon (for the dressing)

Slice the radishes thinly in round disks. Peel the Orange and remove skins and seeds from the slices, chop these in half. Now just combine these with the Parsley and Lemon juice. And you're done! 

My vitamin C salad sitting on the window sill and matching perfectly with a Cherry tree in bloom.  

No I do not have an in-house stylist, it's just a happy coincidence.Thank you Nature!

      

Want to share my breakfast?

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Just wanted to share images of my simple breakfast.  It’s just tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise sandwiches, you cannot get any basic than that. But sitting by the window, with the Sun shining down on my plate and working its magic, even the simple meal appeared special.

 



Easiest party snack ever!

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So this is a very impulsive post, I was not planning to write about this at all. Last night we had some friends over for an impromptu board-games night. It was all spur of the moment and although they were coming post-dinner, I wanted to rustle up some nibbles, to go with the wine. 

I rushed home from work in a blind panic (the kind when you know you have half an hour to clean the living room and the kitchen and make snacks!). 

Invented in such panicked circumstances, this is not a very sophisticated recipe. Nevertheless, it is delicious and I will wholly recommend it as a party snack. It would also make a great starter for an Indian meal, because the filling is an old Punjabi recipe very similar to aloo saag. I have just added one English twist - strong cheddar! 

Anyway, moving on to the recipe, you would need; 

For the filling:

1 tablespoon mild olive oil

1 large red onion, chopped roughly

2 medium tomatoes, chopped

2 fat cloves garlic, chopped

1 cm piece of ginger cut in strips

2 large potatoes, boiled and mashed (I microwaved them for 5 minutes)

2 handfuls chopped spinach

Salt and red pepper to taste

½ teaspoon garam masala (if you don’t have this you can add oregano)

100 gms cheddar, roughly chopped into small cubes

Shop bought puff pastry sheet

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a pan and lightly fry the ginger and garlic for one minute to release their flavor,

2. Add the chopped onion and sauté until it turns pink and transparent,

3. Now add the tomatoes, mashed potatoes, salt, red pepper and garam masala,

4. Once the tomatoes soften, add the spinach and cheese, mix well and take the pan off the heat.

5. Cut the puff pastry sheet into twelve 8 cm squares and line a shallow muffin pan.

6. Prick the pastry shells with a fork and spoon some filling into each, you can fold them or leave them open as I have done.

7. Bake at 200ºC for around 20 minutes or until golden brown. 

I did not bother to brush with egg mix, who has the time and besides they look good enough as it is. Also, I prefer mixing in the cheese because it tends to burn when sprinkled on top. 

Serving tip: Mint salsa goes very well with this snack.

   

Welsh Cream Tea in the Brecon Beacons

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Here are some photographs from my recent trip to Wales. We stayed in the village of Penderyn near Aberdare and enjoyed two whole days of walks and rides in the Brecon Beacons National Park. On the last day, we decided to regain some of the lost calories and treat ourselves to a Welsh Cream Tea. 

It was an impulse stop; driving along the A4059, we saw a small sign for Ty Newydd Country Hotel, advertising cream teas. That was it, my sugar sensor perked up and I could see scones laden with cream and strawberries floating in front of my eyes. We just had to go in.

Apparently, we were not the only ones who had succumbed to temptation. There was a group of English gentlemen wearing tweed waistcoats and berets, enjoying their tea in the garden while puffing on their cigars. They were driving their vintage cars through the most picturesque roads in Wales. Cars that looked so magnificent, lined up in front of the Neo-Georgian building that I couldn’t help but steal a quick photograph. Can it possibly get any more English than this? 

On to the Cream tea, I believe I should spare you the words and just let you look at my photographs of tiered cake stands with homemade scones, welsh cakes, bara brith, clotted cream and jam (yes you get a cake stand all to yourself!). Just make sure you head over to Ty Newydd if you are ever in the area. It will be well worth it, I promise.

My Kitchen Table

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We had some friends over today for wine, nibbles and board games. Here, have a peep at my kitchen table, laden with all sort of goodies - a cheese board, crackers, fruits, hummus and honey yogurt dip. Ofcourse the pride of place goes to the Blackberry lattice pie made from scratch by me! 

The table runner is Concetta by Habitat.

Food Discovery Friday – Pink Grapefruit!

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All right so I have to concede. I am finding it incredibly exciting discovering the new and exotic variety of produce in Cambridge. It has to be one of the highlights in the initial phase of expat life. I can say with certainty, because I am enjoying it to the fullest!  

I love roaming around supermarkets and farmer’s markets like an Alice in wonderland. These places hold endless surprises for me, and I can happily spend hours browsing through fruit and vegetables and herbs and greens. It is hard to believe how much there is to see, and eat!

I have to say it’s a pleasant surprise for me, I did not expect to find anything exotic in the food department here. Unlike countries such as Italy or France, Britain is not exactly known for its cuisine. However, being a former colonial power, it has always been a melting pot of culture and food. Foodstuffs from all it’s colonies reached Britain’s shores and were readily adopted by the people - tea from China, spices and herbs from India and bananas from Bermuda which arrived as late as 1633. The country today is home to diverse ethnic groups and the huge variety of produce available, is a reflection of this multi-cultural society.

Also being a small island country it’s impossible to grow everything here so most of the food is imported. The supermarket shelves are stacked full of thousands of different ingredients from all corners of the world and I am having a wonderful time discovering all of them. One Friday at a time!

Each Friday I will write about one ingredient that is completely new to me – something I never ate, cooked with, or even saw before in my life. As far as possible I will try to keep it seasonal.

The Discovery for this Friday is a Pink Grapefruit! A fruit, which looks like an orange from outside, but inside, it conceals the most loveliest surprise - deep pink colored flesh. A color that will make you gasp – it is so gorgeous! I find myself cutting it open eagerly just to look at the color inside. Almost like opening a specially wrapped gift.

But for all it’s beauty the taste is a bit of a letdown, you would expect such a richly colored fruit to be extremely sweet, but it’s usually quite sour and takes some getting used to. The sourness does go away with cooking though, so many consider it the perfect fruit for baking. I decided to give that a go today morning. It was beautiful and sunny outside, after almost a week and I just had to match that with an equally bright breakfast. Yes, you can have it for breakfast on a weekday! It's one of the quickest breakfast recipes.I Promise.

The recipe is adapted from Sarai’s recipe for baked Grapefruit on her blog “Sweet Sassafras” that I really enjoy reading. I cut the Grapefruit in half, sprinkled some brown sugar, dusted a little cinnamon, chopped a few walnuts over the flesh and popped it into the oven. It was beautiful when it came out of the oven, better than I imagined. The earthy cinnamon tones add depth to the grapefruit while the brown sugar lightens the sourness. All the flavors complement each other perfectly. I am hooked is all I can say. In addition, It’s a gluten-free-feel-good start to the day, what can be more perfect than that?



Like a piece of the Sun on my plate.



Baked Spiced Grapefruit (Adapted from Sarai's recipe on Sweet Sassafras)

Ingredients

1 Grapefruit

½ tsp brown sugar

Sprinkle of Cinnamon powder

1 Walnut – chopped into small pieces

Method

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas Mark 6. Cut the Grapefruit in half then cut around each section so that it will be easier to scoop out later. Sprinkle with the brown sugar, cinnamon and chopped walnuts. Put it on the top shelf in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Mrs. Beeton vs. Mrs. Balbir

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English women going out to colonial India packed a number of cookbooks and household guides in their trunks. Chief among the choices available was the classic Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. It not only had over 900 pages packed with recipes, but also contained chapters on hospitality and conversation, fashion, medical advice, preparing banquets, managing servants and animal husbandry among others. It was an all round guide for the nineteenth century housewives. More so, for the newly-married women, setting up homes in a new country, it must have been an indispensible companion.

I carried a cookbook with me too. Mrs. Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery. Not in my suitcase though because I was terrified that my luggage will get lost in transit and I will, horror of horror reach England without it. So I kept it in my handbag, where it’s reassuring weight comforted me through my journey.  


I am sure you will not find me paranoid when I tell you that it is an heirloom cookbook, belonging to my mother. A book that she used as a young bride too, it had been her guide through the tremulous time when as a nineteen year old girl, she found herself in charge of her own kitchen, cooking for a large extended family. This book must have seemed like a lifeline to her. And when it came to guiding me through my trial, she knew that she could not be there physically for me, so she gave me this book instead. Hence the paranoia!

During the early years of her marriage, Mrs. Balbir Singh travelled to England with her husband too and the family spent several years in London while Mr. Singh attended Medical School.

In London, she began to teach Indian cooking and to help her students she decided to break down the recipes in clear steps and quantities. A difficult task as Indian cookery is all about approximations and finding your own style. It’s practically a verbal legacy, passed on from one generation to the next, as daughters spend many hours at their mothers side, helping, observing and learning their mothers secrets. With time, they adapt and add their special touches, so that every woman boasts of her own personal recipe for each basic dish.

Mrs. Singh’s book like Mrs. Beeton’s was one of the first cookbooks written by an Indian woman for Indian women in a practical manner about good home cooked food.  First published in 1961 the book quickly became a bible for newly-wed women in the country and abroad. It was awarded a silver medal by the Gastronomische Akademie Deutschlands in 1964 

The book and I are sharing a kitchen together since I arrived and slowly we are becoming good friends. It gives me great ideas for dinner and reveals delicious secrets to me while I cook. Small keepsakes kept and forgotten in its pages - two recipes written on yellowing bits of paper in my mother’s hand, one for mango pickle and the other for pineapple squash. One evening, I find a photograph of my brother dressed as a maharaja! So the recipe on that page becomes our dinner that night.

It is a fabulous recipe for “Tandoori Machchi”, or fish baked in a clay oven. A delicacy made popular by the cooks who migrated from Peshawar in Pakistan to Delhi. It is one of my favorite street foods and walking down the streets in Delhi, it is very easy to locate your nearest fish shop. You just have to follow your nose! These shops are tiny one-man establishments with their fronts carefully arranged to entice the passerby. Adorned with rows of skewers threaded with marinated fish.

You choose a skewer and it is baked there and then, while you wait, mouth watering in anticipation. The baked fish comes on a palm leaf, served on a bed of mint leaves and green chilies with lemon wedges if you prefer your fish extra tangy. I certainly do!

Mrs. Singh’s Tandoori Machchi

(Adapted from her book Indian Cookery)

The fish can be cooked equally well on a bar-be-que as well as under the grill.  Use three whole medium size haddock (approx. 350 g each)

For rubbing over the fish:

1 Tbsp fresh lime juice

1 Tsp salt

For the marinade:

1 Tsp coriander powder

1 Tbsp vinegar

1 Tsp red pepper

6 cloves of garlic

1 Tsp ginger

½ Tsp Cumin powder

3 Tbsp lime juice

1 Tsp butter per fish

Make deep cuts on one side of each fish, rub in the lime juice and salt and set aside till you prepare the marinade.

For the marinade: grind garlic and ginger finely, mix with coriander powder, cumin powder, red pepper, lime juice, vinegar and butter. Rub well over the surface and cavities. Leave in the marinade for one hour.

For grilling: Pass a pointed skewer lengthwise through the fish and grill for five minutes per 1 - 1.5 cm thickness, turning once. Most fish will take 5 – 7 minutes. Haddock turns white when cooked and will flake when tested with a fork.

Serve hot, with a salad of mint leaves, parsley and red onions tossed in lime juice and honey.