Pesto Pinwheels....and oh, were're back :)

Wow it’s been 14 months since the last post. It’s interesting how the pursuit of resources (read earning for  your living) to pursue your passion (read cooking/baking) often engulfs you and you don't actually pursue your passion!

But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been cooking. If there is one thing that keeps us sane among the vagaries of life, it is food. The medium of sharing our culinary experiments and adventures, however, has expanded beyond this blog, namely Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I have just about become more active on social media. Well, after a lot of initial hesitation like anything else I do.

However, the blog is special for many reasons. A lot of recipes are associated with events and when we think about them, it takes us back to all the excitement, goof-ups, road trips, events…basically all the little things that make our lives fun.

So we have decided (again) to consciously revive this food blog. Last weekend, we made some pesto pinwheels. In one sense, it feels full circle as attempts to bake bread when we were in the US really spurred us to post more on the blog then. Now that we’re in India, the smell of bread  has pretty much had the same effect on us. So here’s to a new and hopefully more sustained inning J

Ingredients

1 ¼ c maida (all purpose flour)

1 c aata (whole wheat flour)

½ c + ½ c and another tbsp. water*

3 tsp vital wheat gluten**

¾-1 c pesto sauce (we used homemade but store bought is just as good)

2 tsp salt

½ tsp sugar

1 ½ tsp active dry yeast

1 tsp olive oil

1 tbsp melted butter.

* the amount of water depends on the extent of kneading and if you’re using machine versus hands to knead. The idea is to use as less water as possible to make nice, smooth dough that doesn’t stick to your hands after kneading.

** we’ve realized that maida and aata, particularly aata  in India have less gluten content than most all purpose flours available in the US so it is good to add some gluten for some spongy, porous bread.

1. Take ½ c lukewarm water and add sugar to it. Then add the yeast granules. Cover and let it rest for 10 mins. The water should be frothy, which means the yeast has ‘woken up’. If it isn’t, stop immediately and get a fresh batch of yeast and repeat.
2. In a stand mixer (hands are just as good) with the dough hook attachment, add the flours, salt, gluten, olive oil and mix it dry for a few seconds. Then add the yeast water and knead for some time.
3. Add the next ½ c water and knead some more. You’ll have to scrap the sides with a spatula and knead again a couple of times.
4. Keep kneading (5-6 mins.) until you have a nice, smooth dough without any dry spots. The dough shouldn’t stick to the hook and when you press it against your fingers, it should (more or less), come off cleanly without sticking. Add the remaining 1 tbsp water only if the dough is too dry. If the dough is too wet and sticky, try kneading for some more time. If it continues to be sticky, add some flour.
5. Remove the dough from the mixer, shape it into a ball and place it in a greased bowl. Cover it with a wet kitchen towel and let it sit for 2 hrs or until double in volume.
6. Remove the dough and release the air gently. On a floured surface, roll it into a rectangle (about 15” x 8”). Basically, the rectangular sheet should be at least ¼ inches thick.
7. Spread the pesto uniformly on the sheet, leaving an inch gap on all sides.
8. Now roll the dough into a cylinder and cut pinwheels with a knife.
9. Place the pinwheels into the final baking dish. Make sure they’re separated by at least an inch.
10. Cover with a wet kitchen towel and let it rise for another 1.5-2 hrs or until (nearly) double in volume.
11. Preheat oven to 200C. Place a rack in the lower third.
12. Remove the kitchen towel and apply melted butter wash to the dough.
13. Place the baking dish into the oven and bake for 12 mins. Then lower oven temperature to 180C and place the dish in the middle rack and bake for another 10-15 mins. You could even broil it for a minute from the top.
14. Remove from the oven.
15. Dig in! These are had best when they’re hot.

The pinwheels came out pretty well. Thanks to the gluten, they were soft and quite porous. Overall, quite soft, pillowy and delicious. Give it a try. Nothing beats baking bread and sharing it with your loved ones. I think we’ll be doing it more often.

And posting here more often too, hopefully!

Tomato Saar

Raji's death has left me a little more than shaken and I wanted to come back and blog more and keep at it on working on my promises. I wanted to get to know all of you a little better, so here I am with a different recipe today. Something that is homely and something that you need to eat with your hands and lick your fingers for. Something soul-satisfying. Food does cure. After the previous post, I haven't made Brinji yet, but I made some South Indian food. The food I grew up on. Remembered my grandmother who fed us for over 50 years continuously and who I tremendously missed in the last one month.

January has been a hectic month for us and our families. 2 weddings aren't easy to organize or even just attend. Clothes co-ordination, inviting people, socializing, arranging for a million little things, travelling, guests - all this and more can drive one crazy. However, I think we managed it with aplomb!

One of my cousins got married in Chandigarh and we were guests to an absolutely amazing spread of Punjabi food. I don't think any restaurant- five star or not can equal the kind of food served at this wedding. The Dum Aloo was to die for and I could kill for a meal like that. I hardly ate though. The tension of the wedding, running around and everyone falling sick around me made me gobble food just so I could eat something. A, of course, did full justice to the food and can possibly write another Ph.D thesis on the food at this wedding. Brilliant, brilliant food. That said, the next wedding was down South. My sister's, to be precise. I think it was just right because after an overdose of paneer and Rotis up North, we were more than ready to settle down  to 'elai saapadu.' (elai = plaintain leaf, saapadu = meals)

My sister got married to a Konkan guy. So, I'm trying to master some Mangalorean/Konkan recipes. Not. It doesn't really matter for A and me which region good food belongs to :D We are both on a regional food spree and loving it! So, we tried this Tomato Saar from Arch's blog The Yum Factor. I've tried several recipes in my non blogging days from her blog. I love her simple style of writing and that she posts a modern take on authentic Konkan recipes.

Tamilians are known for their Rasam. And Tamilians like us, settled in Karnataka make the #worldfamous Mysore Rasam on most days. I grew up on one type of Rasam and ended up hating it for most part of my life. I saw it just as spiced water. I think it was because the same Rasam was made every single day. Of course, my mum tried to change it up once in a while with her fantastic Lemon Rasam and Pepper Rasam. Now when I cook on an everyday basis, I love Rasam and I love trying out different types of Rasam. We don't cook South Indian food enough thanks to sheer laziness. But there are weekends and some weekday nights that I crave for Rasam Saadam and Thair Saadam (curd/yogurt rice).

The South Indian that I am, nothing equals slurping your Rasam Saadam with Rasam dripping down your arms. And Thair Saadam or curd rice? That dish belongs to the heavens, I'm telling you. Also, I firmly belong to the category that says eating rice is satisfying to one's soul.

It was one such day when we were in Atlanta when we tried this Tomato Saar. I was bowled by the flavours in this Saar. I'm not  a fan of coconut and was rather sceptical about coconut in Rasam. Isn't Rasam supposed to be light and all that? But this totally changed the way I looked at Rasam. Now this is a regular. I love, love, love the addition of jaggery in this Rasam. Karnataka cooking is known for adding jaggery and it lends that caramelly sweetness to our cooking. Most people ridicule this and call our Sambar sweet. I say, so be it. There has to be some regional variation, no? This is ours. We like it like this. A little sweet from the jaggery and the coconut, sourness from those tomatoes and the thickness of this Rasam could qualify for a soup too. No need to call it Mulligawtany anymore ;)

I made this recently, after a long time and remembered that I should post this in honour of my new brother-in-law who smiles for everything :) This Saar should make anyone smile. Do try it as an alternative to your everyday Rasam. You will love the change in flavour that it brings to your mundane, everyday Rasam.

Thanks Arch for a wonderful recipe. One of those recipes that have stuck with me irrespective of the minor variations.

Here is the recipe.

Thank you.

A lot of bloggers have written about Miri of Peppermill or Raji. I didn't know her, and didn't make an effort particularly to know her. My loss. 

I first saw her name as a very 'composed and grounded' commenter on Anita's blog. Soon, on Manisha's too. I have to admit that I didn't go to her blog to check it out even when she was reading all my favourite blogs, all my friends' blogs. You know how it is. Way too many of us and way too much food to talk about in a day. And her blog was postponed to check for another day. 

I visited Manisha in June 2011. It was visit long due and we knew we wanted to meet after all those email conversations. We thought similarly about a lot of things and I really wanted to meet Medha. That girl fascinated me. I ate well, keeping true to the belief that grad students don't leave food when they see it. One night, I think it was Medha's birthday night, we decided to cook something special. She suggested Brinji - something that she'd eaten when she'd visited Anita's home in Delhi where she met Raji. She thought I'd know about it since I was a South Indian. Frankly, I have no clue about ingredients or food or the Science behind cooking. I had no clue if this was part of my heritage as a South Indian. The mixed rices in my home were very conventional. Brinji was something I'd never heard of. She made Brinji that night. We had some guests too, Medha's friend and her family who came to visit. It was a table full of food and a house full of people eating that Brinji. I wasn't sure how it'd be. You see, I'm not a huge fan of anything coconutty. I've only lately (shamefully enough, after eating Thai food) come to appreciate the nutty sweetness of coconut. I took a small serving in the name of 'oh, I can't eat much, been eating all day' and didn't want to stop eating. Only, I wasn't in my house to put my feet up and stuff my face.

I have this stupid rule that I wouldn't eat much in front of guests. Why? Not because I want to tell them I eat less, but because I'm worried it's not going to be enough. That night, I wanted to sit down and polish that Brinji off because I LOVED it. I guess Miri was like that. She seemed very unassuming, someone who didn't really write about her illness or her struggle with it. Or, how she had to change her career because of this illness and the pains she went through being a modern woman (the pressure on us to have both- home and career is unimaginable - again my narrow focus). But all this made her the wonderful person she seemed to be. It's a pity I didn't take the time to write to her to tell her how much I enjoyed that Brinji of hers. 

I came back from the US a couple of weeks after, and at my first coming back party, I made Brinji. I made it consecutively for 3 parties after that. Once at my parents', then at my friends' and twice at my place. I should've written to her and let her know how much this dish had taught me - my own food heritage that I had no clue about, cooking rice on the stovetop without a cooker, falling in love with coconut and just my own happiness and satisfaction of coming back home. 

As I write this post, I realise that every single time I've eaten Brinji, I've been insanely happy. Happiness because of achievements, because of events, because of the people around me. Manisha's family and friends, my own family that I came back to, that quiet night when A and I snuggled and ate this Brinji at 12.30 AM when we had one of those conversations, with my friends who went ballistic over Brinji. I was going to make Brinji in memory of this woman who I never knew. There was this sense of shame and guilt that I crib way too much about my life, my weight (without working on it), my career, people around me, trends in food blogging, and there was this one person who just did what she wanted because she loved it and lived what, in my eyes, was a pretty full life. I was stunned when I read the news on Facebook and it shook me enough to stop thinking of my own problems. I have none. I kept making Brinji, remember? 

I kept back all the ingredients for Brinji the night Raji passed away. It's okay. I'm going to make it again this weekend. For me and A to sit down and make a pact that we wouldn't crib. About anything. I'm going to draw strength from that Brinji. That thought itself makes me feel so much lighter. 

This post is possibly more about me and Brinji, but then I didn't know her to talk about her. And this is the legacy that I think Raji left for people like me - good food and a strong sense of spirit, to appreciate my own life and people around me more. So, thank you, Raji. 

RIP.

Pasta Sauce/Marinara

Happy New Year to all of you. Or, rather the 4 of you who read our blog :D This post could be reflective and sentimental for rather obvious reasons. It's the end of the year and no one thinks and analyses and dissects every event in 2011 and every person met in 2011 more than me. It has been a fantastic year in all senses of the word. I graduated from the top school for communication studies (Yeah, baby!), came back to India, my beloved India. And of course, to the best husband in the world. I get to praise him once a year, so do tolerate the mush. 

Now letting the past slide away gently, moving onto 2012- I have a ton of plans, ideas and this year is possibly going to be the culmination of a lot of plans that remained 'unstarted' in 2011. Cooking lists is one such plan. Since I came back in 2011, highly excited beings that we were, we made a cooking list. A cooking resolution of sorts to say that we will try making, say croissants this year. Of course, I spent most of my time ducking from butter in 2011 too. We have a similar list this year. Only, I don't remember where I kept it! So, fodder for the next post, that will be. 

One of the things on my cooking list that I can cross off is Marinara sauce or the tomato sauce for pasta. Every single time I read posts from people saying they made their sauce, I'm all enthusiastic to be this perfect woman making my own pasta sauces and achaars (Indian pickles) Who am I kidding? I love to eat and I'm the most impatient cook in the world. So how will I let Marinara bubble on the stove for 3-4 hours? And pickle? Really, who waits until all the spices are soaked in? This time, I decided to. Plus I saw that the tomatoes were super cheap at Town Essentials (Check this out if you're in Bangalore. Uber cool!) So, the last weekend of 2011 was kept aside for Marinara. Also, I really missed my class #MM2011 and our themed dinners. We had an Italian dinner for which my classmates, H, S and A had brought some family classics. Each of their Marinara sauces tasted different and I asked them to send me recipes! This is more like S's mother's recipe that he described to me. Thank you, S!

What happened was this. We hosted, entertained and met more people than A has ever met in his whole life, or dreamt of in his nightmares. Cousins, second cousins. mother's sisters, mother's brothers, uncles, aunts, uncles of cousins, Golu/Navratri visits, Gruhapraveshams, weddings, visiting families, friends from school, friends from college, friends from work, friends from the online world, tweetups, neighbours - you name it and we've socialized with them. In fact, through December, we had guests continuously until the last weekend. We love guests. Okay, I love them. I love people. I love having them over, cooking for them. Fine, will accept. Making A cook for them while I hold intelligent, sparkly conversations laughing at everyone else and bitching about everything else. So, for the last weekend, since A is getting really old, we decided to take it slow. 'No human contact' was the brief I received. Yeah, I'm a sexy kitten, but we'll leave that for now ;) I settled down for a weekend with endless cups of chai and a pile of books and a cooking list comprising of Marinara and this achaar that didn't end up getting made this weekend.

Then Nandita called. We succumbed. We went to their house for a New Year's party. Thankfully, it wasn't one of those loud, hajaar people all over the place party. So, we made gougeres and this dessert. Turned out pretty well. I had several awkward moments while I was stuffing my face with gougeres and someone came and praised our efforts. That said, the party went well and we got back home the next morning to crash. Then, in the evening, Nandita came home again to drop stuff off and we ate yummy leftovers. Biryani always tastes best the next day. I should know after weekends of 3 years in Hyderabad eating previous night's orders. I knew I'd not get the Marinara done if I didn't start it off. Especially considering how impatient I am. Plus who likes chopping onions right? :P So, I made Nandita chop them for me while I busied myself cleaning the kitchen - parts of which she hadn't seen yet, thankfully! I quickly peeled the already blanched tomatoes (ever heard of super efficient women who leave the tomatoes to blanch and take a 3 hour nap?) and threw it all in together along with some Italian Basil and Thyme (all locally grown, yo!)  and let the mixture simmer away. Then she suggested I add some Balsamic Vinegar that I'd forgotten all about. Added some and got this rich wonderful colour. She left soon after but only after stirring the sauce a couple of times which I totally give her credit for :) considering how tasty this sauce turned out to be. Super easy, flavorful and this can be bubbling away on the stove while you do everything else on the side. This sauce surely gets all my tomatoey points and I'm going to make it a quarterly activity going forward.

 

Ingredients 

Tomatoes - I had about 20-25 large ones

Garlic - a palmful, finely chopped. 

Onions - about 3-4, finely chopped

Butter - 6 tbsp

Balsamic Vinegar - 2 tbsp

Olive Oil - 1/2 cup

Basil - A bunch roughly chopped, or just thrown in

Thyme - a sprig or two

Salt

Paprika or Red Chilli powder

1. Heat water in a large wide bottomed pan, add tomatoes and blanch them, until they are mushy enough for the skin to peel off. A suggested I use a pressure cooker and I did just that. I dumped the second batch of tomatoes into the pressure cooker and they got done wonderfully. A little too mushy but worked very well for the sauce. Keep aside after blanching and recover from the nap and the shock of leaving your gas on. Peel the tomatoes when cold.

2. Add butter to the same cooker (emptied after you take the tomatoes out, of course), add onions and garlic and salt and let it cook well. I didn't caramelise them, though I'd love to try that the next time. I was in a hurry, so added the tomatoes without chopping them. Don't worry, you can run your blender through it later. Take a wooden ladle/spatula and mash the tomatoes. Now is the time to let go of the previous year's stress.

3. After about half hour of the tomatoes stewing, add the basil and the thyme if you wish. I added thyme only because I had it and I thought the basil might be a little less. Upto you. I'm guessing adding mushrooms or any other vegetable like bell peppers (?) now will be fine. Nandita mentioned that she does make her Marinara with mushrooms. Next time, I'm going to try that.

4. Another half hour later, add the rest of the salt, chilli powder or paprika, the balsamic vinegar and stir well. Let it cook. 

5. After it's cooked for about 3-4 hours, taste it and season accordingly. Or, let it cook further. I cooled it down completely by keeping it in the fridge overnight and blending it later the next morning. If your sauce is not chunky because you were not lazy to chop up those blanched tomatoes, good for you :) Otherwise, go ahead and blend it. I like my sauce chunky for pasta and pizza, but I like it sauce-y to use as a dip as and when I get the ' I want to eat all the garlic bread in the world' craving.

 

As you can see, it's a freewheeler of a recipe. You can change the herbs you decide to put in. Add a woody rosemary or keep it simple with basil. It's upto you. Add mushrooms for a heartier sauce. Maybe next time, I will add some carrots, some beets (Indian tomatoes are not sweet, so adding beets may not make it sweeter) and some mushrooms to up the nutrition quotient plus make it a complete meal if I run out of veggies. Roasted garlic would be awesome. But remember the patience bit? Yeah.

Also don't miss out on the butter and olive oil. I easily had about 6 medium sized (average Indian store bought pickle bottles) bottles of sauce. So, all that butter isn't consumed in one go, plus you can go low on the butter/olive oil when you make your pasta :) The oil helps in preserving the sauce. 

We hope to post more regularly this year since we have a resolution of about 25 posts this year. About 2 a month and thankfully, I'm all pumped up, so it's going to be a little busy around here :)

Thanks for coming along regularly! 

Bharwan Karela

Boy, has it been long since we posted anything around here or what! Sigh.

I'm someone with severe OCD. Especially with date/day and time. I don't start exercising on Sunday, because work starts on Monday. I don't start anything randomly anytime. I need the beginning of the month/week/year to start it. Yeah, so you see the picture, don't you? So, I postponed blogging to the first of every month. Only that date never arrived. So, finally when December started, I figured I will seize 2012. The Year of the Reluctantchefs, it shall be called, I said to A. Okay, Reluctantbloggers (before any of you point out!)

Then why today, you ask? I actually sat and thought about what I wanted from the next year. My resolutions list was made. Nothing, nothing stops me from making lists. I even know that if I start eating non vegetarian food (which may be never!), I have a list of stuff I want to eat. Remember OCD? Ya. Then, I thought I should kickstart with some of my resolutions BEFORE January, so I have time until the 1st to modify them :D This idea came about mostly because I had the wild idea of running a marathon next year. After two days of trying to stick to my resolution, I've decided to shelve that dream. See? Good I started a good month earlier ;)

With that logic, I should have started blogging too. So here is the ever popular 'Bharwan Karela recipe. So, Karela or Bitter Gourd is something people either hate or love. I fall into the latter category. A doesn't mind it and likes it when cooked well. In fact, when I was unsure what I wanted to do with the Karela and asked on Twitter, a friend @Calvinator_18 gave me his rather ingenious recipe. He says,

"Take 2 karelas. Put oil in pan, add chopped onions, salt, chilli powder, garlic, diced potatoes etc. Throw away the karelas. Serve warm."

This is reason no. n+1 why I love Twitter.

My love for Karela goes back to when I was a kid. My grandmother made this most awesome, lip-smacking, tangy Karela sabzi. Ya, I know tangy isn't one of those adjectives used with Karela, but she did this South Indian curry, which had tons of tamarind, jaggery, slow cooked to perfection. Even as a 10 year old, this was one of my favourite curries. Give me some rice, ghee and this curry, and I'm set for life. However, I'd never tried a North Indian Karela recipe. And A's colleagues spoke to him about a Bharwan Karela and we decided to try it out. We made a filling recommended by his colleague, R, added some of our own twists and I loved the end result.

Here is the recipe. The stuffing used here is my maternal grandmother's #worldfamous Besan-onion stuffing for her amazing stuffed capsicum sabzi. My cousin and I are known to eat the stuffing separately apart from the stuffed capsicums. That I love Besan is an understatement. This, I found is a unique filling because R suggested we use the Karela seeds. Even with all my Karela love, the seeds are a different story. But surprisingly enough, they tasted fantastic and weren't all that bitter. And hey, it provided for the right texture between the soft, but caramelised Besan filling with the crunch of the seeds. With that statement, I've done my quota of food writing for the year. Phew!

Ingredients

4 Bitter Gourds
1/2 cup Besan (Chickpea/Gram flour)
1 cup onions, finely chopped
1 ping-pong ball size chunk of tamarind
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tsp turmeric powder
Salt to taste
3 tbsp oil
cayenne/chili powder as per taste
2 tsp garam masala

1. Bring some water to a boil in a saucepan. The saucepan should be wide enough to contain all the bitter gourds in their entirety.

2. Peel the bitter gourd partially, meaning do not remove the entire skin. Add 2 tsp salt and then dunk the bitter gourds into the saucepan. Let it cook for 7-8 mins. until tender but not overcooked.

3. Remove the bitter gourds and pat them dry with a towel. Then take a bitter gourd and snap the ends. Then cut it into 3 equal pieces. Scoop out the flesh and keep it separate. Repeat with the remaining bitter gourds.

4. In another pan, add 2 tsp oil under low/medium heat and then the gram flour. Keepstirring until the flour turns slightly brown. remove it and keep it separately.

5. In the same pan, add 2 tsp oil and the cumin seeds. Once they splutter, add the bitter gourd flesh with the seeds and fry them. Add the turmeric, chili powder and garam masala. Cook for 3-4 mins.

6. Add the onions and cook it for another 4-5 mins. Once done, add this to the gram flour. This completes the filling.

7. Stuff the scooped bitter gourds with this filling. Rub the exterior with as little salt as possible.

8. In a bowl, add about 1/2 c water and the tamarind ball. Heat in a microwave for about 1-1.5 mins. take a fork and smash the ball to dissolve the tamarind in the hot water as much as possible. strain and set the extract aside.

9. Add the remaining oil under high heat. Add the bitter gourd pieces and fry them. When the face exposed to the heat turns golden brown, rotate them and continue till all the pieces are golden brown.

10. When you're working on the final side of the pieces, add the tamarind extract. Toss the bitter gourd pieces and then close the pan. Let it cook for 2 mins.

11. Garnish with some coriander (optional) and serve it hot with rotis.

Be a little more patient than usual with the recipe and you can make it with less oil. Of course, if you are running short of time or want it really deep-fried crisp, go ahead and add a lot more oil. I like the roasted variety. Next time I may even bake this and broil it to see how it works out.

All this said and done, sudden mojo has been rediscovered for cooking. And we're back together making stuff that goes beyond Roti-Sabzi or Rasam Saadam. I promise that you will find a post every week. I haven't figured out a particular day to post yet, but then, I'm never going to do that, am I?

And hey, welcome us back! :D


P.S.- I know it doesn't look particularly appetising, but if you like Karela, this is a must-try. Trust me.

Butterscotch blondies

You know how our social life was always in shambles in the US, right? Because A wouldn't talk, meet or greet anyone remotely human. He spoke to me but I don't count. I'm superhuman. So. However, after coming back to India, all we do during weekends is either go to my mum's house which is a good 30kms away and pig out and I sleep while A watches cricket or holds hilarious one-sided conversations with my dad. Or, we are figuring out the house cleaning bit. We've decided not to have a maid and clean the house ourselves. Only, the first part of the previous sentence is about A and the second part of the sentence is about me.

Rarely, in between visits to my mum's house or my grandmother's house or trips to Chennai, we visit friends. Okay, we've visited this person precisely twice. She is A's colleague and a wonderful person. Very unlike A, highly social with something to say about everything always. A's office is full of Bengalis and I've heard and I can confirm personally now that Bengalis love their food. Or any food. A is also known to be very popular among the women in his office thanks to his Monday morning baked goods parcel to office. So, we were invited to this friend's house for chai and we took these beautiful butterscotch blondies for them. I remember seeing them on Nags' blog and the pictures stuck in my head.

However, this recipe was adapted from Dorie Greenspan's method for making classic brownies. The chocolate chips were replaced with butterscotch chips and some other minor modifications.

Ingredients

6 tbsp unsalted butter

6 oz butterscotch chips + 1/4c extra

3/4 c sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

a pinch of salt

1/3 c + 3 tbsp AP flour

1. Preheat the oven to 160C

2. In a bowl, melt the butter and 6 oz butterscotch chips. Once melted, add the sugar and stir for 1 min. Then add the vanilla extract. Let it cool.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs. Do NOT over-beat them as brownies should be dense and not 'airy'.

4. Once the contents of the bowl with the chocolate mixture become lukewarm, add the whisked eggs and mix well.

5. Sift the flour. Add the remaining 1/4c butterscotch chips.

6. Fold this into the wet ingredients and stir until combined.

7. Pour the batter into a greased 8" square pan (about 2" deep). Place it on the middle rack and bake it for about 25 mins. or until a skewer comes out clean. You could choose to line the pan with greased aluminum foil and then pour the batter into it.

I found these a tad sweet and couldn't eat more than one. A, the one with the sweet tooth too felt it was very sweet. The recipients, of course, very politely declared they loved it. I'd have cut down the sugar a little bit. Given a chance, I wouldn't use butterscotch chips. As much as I love butterscotch ice cream, I think I prefer chocolate or fruit desserts any day compared to something like butterscotch. A loves it though and plans to gorge on them irrespective of what I think. But then, we have a ton of butterscotch chips in the fridge courtesy my sisters who love A and his baking and shower him with chocolate or butterscotch chips. A's list to his sister who is visiting end of this year begins and ends with chocolate. The snob that he is, he spends hours reading ingredients behind a chocolate slab here and declares them unworthy to be baked by him.

So, tell me dear Indian bloggers, where do you source your chocolate from?

Oatmeal-Lemon Cookies

Shocked? Don't be. I'm back in India, back being A's most loved guinea pig. It took me a long time to settle down and finally, I'm all settled in. Not had a weekend without friends and family. I love it like I hate it #getit?

Sometime back in Syracuse, while chatting with a friend, who had gotten interested in baking had just started, we'd both decided to bake some oatmeal cookies together. Virtually, that is. Just like one of the groups. But with just both of us. Ya, we swing like that. She found a recipe and baked it and posted it here. I'm proud to say that it took me less than 6 months to make it and it took me another month to post it.

On July 5, it was her birthday and I was sitting around at home doing nothing. It had been over 15 days since I'd landed and except unpacking for the most necessary stuff (read toothbrush), I was being extremely lazy and didn't even want to cook everyday meals. So much for my 'I want to go home to cook, to eat' spiel I gave you all. Finally, when the whole of Twitter was wishing her, I thought it was time to get off my behind and make these cookies in her honour. Also I had to use the new KitchenAid without A interfering with 101 instructions. New only to me. When A came back to India last year, he bought himself a shiny red KitchenAid that he used to make cake and bread for our parents. I figured I was no less. So, decided to use the KitchenAid to bake up this really fresh tasting cookie.

I'd never have mixed oatmeal and lemon together. I like my oatmeal with chocolate or with spices like cinnamon and ginger, thank you! But thanks to her (do click on this link, coz she has a hep food blog now!), I tried this out. Another reservation was that I'm not good with cookies. Both A and I constantly mess up with cookies. If you notice, the only other cookie we've baked are the shortbread ones. We don't have the patience to cool it on a cooling rack and mostly never take it out on time. Plus, the amount of butter that goes into it? Makes you feel that a pound cake is better. Don't ask me why. My non Maths calculating brain has decided that cookies are far more dangerous.

Anyway, this took all of 10 mins to whip up and was so, so easy! I burned the first batch. No surprises there, I guess. I wasn't still used to the oven we have here. So, I had to adjust some temperature details with my oven and watch it like a hawk the second time around.

Mine weren't as flat and thin as hers. Hers look crisp, while mine came out looking dense and fudgey even ( the batch I took out really early because I was reminded that this is A's work :P) But I loved it. The delicate hint of lemon without overpowering the rusticity of the oatmeal in the cookie worked wonders with chai. The cookie wasn't sweet either. That's another thing about lemon cookies - they are overpoweringly sweet.

Do try it and tell me how you liked it!

P.S.- A is trying his writing skills (ha ha!) on Burrp these days with some rather hilarious (for me and you) reviews. Here's a sample for which he won a movie voucher. Yeah, lucky bugger!

"Typically, herbivores (a.k.a us) and Bengali food are considered antipodes. However, our love for regional cuisine got the better of us and we went to 6 Ballygunge Place for dinner tonight. Blah, blah, blah."

You are very welcome. I love making people laugh, yes.