Chocolate Christmas Cake

I made this Christmas cake with a twist (Yes! It has chocolate in it:) during New Year break. Though I enjoy watching Nigella's shoes on the telly, but I have never really tried out any of her recipes. Hubby has placed an order for a fruity rummy christmas cake well in advance, so I decided not to disappoint him and baked her famous Choco X'mas cake for New Year's. I did not follow her recipe to the T, but have tweaked based on preference and availability. The result was soo amazing that I still can't believe that I had myself baked the cake in my puny oven:)

I found the recipe from here after reading praises on her website as well as other blogs. The only changes I made were in the ingredients: Nigella has specified prunes, raisins and currants as the dried fruits for the cake. I used chopped almonds, cashews, cherries, dates, raisins and currants (keeping the same total quantity). Since I did not find any coffee liqeour in the market, instead I used dark rum and soaked the chopped fruits overnight.

The aroma when the cake was baking was simply overwhelming...therapeutic should describe it aptly:)

So this cake was not just a traditional christmas cake, but also healthy and tasty...also not very difficult to bake. Just remember to plan well in advance so that all the ingredients are with you.

Happy Baking!!

Christmas Road Trip - Malvan, Sindhudurg

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We were really looking forward to the 3-day break we got for X'mas this time (25-27th) - I guess the hectic work schedules and long hours at office really take a toll on one's mental peace:) So hubby and me decided to go off on a nice road trip, which would be relaxing, pleasant, and fun. Both of us did not want to hit the usual Goa jamboree...so after some net search, we finalized on Malvan - a small coastal fishing town, 80 - 100 km before hitting Goa. And let me tell you - it was simply purrfectt!! Malvan had everything we were looking for - a small quiet tucked-away town with a great white sand beach (Tarkarli beach about 6 kms away), the famous Sindhugurg fort, and great cheap seafood!

Though there are quite a few tourists from Pune and Mumbai this time of the year - most of us were here for a quiet time, and not party-time. I think it was a perfect vacation. Let me describe our three days with some nice pics we took -

25 Dec (Friday) - We left early at 5:00 in the morning, and it was biting cold initially, but we stopped for tea on the highway and prospects were much brighter thereafter! The sunrise was spectacular (p'haps bcause we NEVER rise early enough to watch it!) and the traffic was minimal in the morning. We covered good ground and reached Kolhapur by 10:00 am - including a couple of pitstops for b'fast and pics.

In Kolhapur, we took the Rankala Lake exit from the city and then the Gaganbawra route through the Western Ghats. This is awesome route - once we crossed all the sugarcane fields on the plainlands, and touched the mountains, the riding was smooth, though slow - but we really loved it! The temple on the edge of the mountain looks like some out of the world monastery in Spain:)

From Talere, we entered into NH-17 (Mumbai-Goa highway) and after some more biking - reached Malvan by 2:00 in the afternoon. The place were we had booked (Madhuban Village Resort) is a really nice cozy place with clean room and bathroom, and a sturdy hammock outside in the garden. It was 2-3 minutes walk from the closest YD beach, which is mainly used by fisherfolks. Lunch we had at Geetai restaurant (Chaitanya was bursting at its seams, so we went in here instead). Fish a la Malvani style was delicious, though slightly spicy at Geetai. Evening we strolled on the beach and watched the sun set in the Arabian Sea. Dinner we had big juicy prawns and pompret at Madhuban - cooked by Mrs Sadaye, the owner of the place - it was yummy beyond words.
26th Dec (Saturday) - Started with some lazy b'fast of pohe at Madhuban, and later on we hit the Tarkarli beach. Check out the live starfish we found there - we then put it back in the sea. (Pic of the starfish coming soon!)

Post some scrumptious seafood at Chaitanya's (highly recommended) - the Surmai fry filled the big steel thali, and afternoon siesta, we went to the famous Sindhudurg Fort, which was built by Shivaji. Its only 15 minutes by boat-ride from the Malvan jetty, and again, is a must-do if you are there.

We were back at Malvan by 6:30 - 7:00 in the evening, and for dinner, we went hunting for veg thali (too much of seafood does not really suit us landblubbers:). Watched Rab ne bana de jodi (sic!) on the telly and retired for the night.

27th Dec (Sunday) - After another lazy b'fast at the resort, went to Tarkarli beack and said "goodbye, see you again soon" to the sea, and hit the road again. The traffic was much high now, since many holidayers were returning to Mumbai and Pune, and we reached home at 8:30 in the night.

A few things-to-do at Malvan are still waiting to be done like snorkelling, stay at MTDC boathouse at Tarkarli, dolphin spotting, and crab-eating. Guess , that warrants another visit to Malvan/Tarkarli sometime:)

Bhuna Kaleji

Now this is a typical Punjabi dhaba food, which is very popular in the northern part of India. We both like this spicy chicken liver dish with hot parathe. Recipe is fairly simple:

1. Saute 2 chopped onions with ginger-garlic paste in oil.

2. Add spices like turmeric powder, salt, coriander and jeera powder, and garam masala. When the onion starts leaving oil, add chopped tomatoes and green chillies to the wok.

3. Saute till you get a nice dark coloured spicy masala. Add the wasked and diced liver pieces and toss in the masala. The liver gets done in 4-5 minutes. Serve while hot!

Crispy fried chicken

My hubby is a fan of the Kentucky fried chicken, or the Col Sander's chicken as he likes to correct me:)

Therfore as always, I one day decided to make these at home. Now - Col Sanders crispy fried chicken is one of the best kept secrets, but there are umpteen variations to it on the blogosphere. I read a few here and there, and depending on availability at home, I made my own version of the crispy chicken. It turned out very well...though I will admit not 'exactly' the same as Col Sanders, but then.......who is complaining!! Certainly not me, nor hubby - who has already placed a request for another test run:)

My version of the crispy fried chicken recipe:

1. Prepare a marinade of buttermilk, salt, and pepper, and dunk the chicken drumsticks/wings/breast pieces that you would like to fry. Marinate them for anything between 1 to 24 hours.

2. In a ziplock bag - prepare a good quantity of coating. I added flour/maida, cornmeal, salt, red chilli powder, and dried mixed herbs like rosemary

3. Beat a couple of eggs and keep aside

4. Now is the messy part of the recipe - make sure all the things needed are close to each other. Pick up the chicken piece and shake to remove the excess marinade, dunk it in the egg mixture, then inside the ziplock to coat evenly, then again into the egg mixture and again in the ziplock bag.

5. Take out the piece from the bag and place them on a dripping tray, so that the flour gets some time to settle down and become soggy. Do this precedure with all the marinated chicken pieces and give them some time to settle down.

6. After 5 minutes, deep fry them in a heated wok - place as many as you can at high flame till it gets a nice golden colour on the outsie, then turn down the flame to medium and cover to cook till it gets done, At then end - again turn up the flame to high and drain out the pieces from the oil. This will ensure that the chicken gets cooked, but also retains its crispness.

Do try out this recipe - but take care while deep frying:)

Stuffed Poblano Peppers

I love this dish..because it is hot, spicy, cheesy, goeey, and yummy at the same time! Also - fairly easy to put together for those pasta nights.

We get good quality poblano peppers here in Pune, and while others buy it to make bhajjis and pakodas, I had never once bought it. Then one day I chanced upon some cookery show on TV which was showing tex-mex foods. Thats when I registered that these huge glossy peppers can be used very differently.

The recipe goes like this:

1. First char the skin of the green peppers over a flame (do not overcook - they have to remain crisp and sturdy) and immediately drop them in cold water. Remove their skins and also slit them lengthwise and carefully deseed the peppers. Take extreme care in deseeding these peppers, and also carefully remove the white pith from inside.

2. Parallely, lets prepare the tomato sauce. Blanch 2-3 big juicy red tomatoes and remove their skins and puree them. Heat some olive oil in a wok, add finely chopped onion and garlic and tomato puree to it. Season with chopped fresh green basil leaves (dry ones are also fine) and salt and pepper.

3. Grate some good quality cheddar cheese and stuff them generously in the hollowed out peppers. Press the sides to close the slit, or you can also tie a thread around the pepper. I generally just press the cheese to close the slit.

4. Gently place these stuffed peppers in the bubbling tomato sauce. It should not take more than 2-3 minutes for the cheese to melt. Serve with pasta bowl. The pepper-cheese-tomato-basil combination is highly recommended. These peppers are very hot, but the heat strikes at the end. So be careful while taking the first bite:)

Prawns in lemon butter sauce

Hubby is very fond of lemon-butter sauce - it has all his fave ingredients, butter, lemon juice and loads and loads of garlic:) Earlier we had made rawas fish in this sauce, but this Sunday we tried it out with prawns. It was heaven!! (a la Nigella Lawson:)

I will post Ashrut's recipe for this dish:
1. Thoroughly clean and devein all the jumbo prawns
2. Chop a handful of garlic pods and half an onion, and keep aside, and also squeeze some lemon juice and keep aside
3. Next in a wok, he put a generous lump of butter along with some olive oil (so that the butter does not burn). To this he added the finely chopped onions and garlic and sauted for a while till the garlic aroma fills the kithen
4. Then he added 1 tsp of flour/maida and cooked it in the butter - take care not to burn it
5. Finally he added the prawns and tossed them till they turned pink and firm and quickly added a few mls of water to get the lemon-butter sauce

Spagetti Carbonara

Though its been a while since I last posted any recipe on my blog, and though since joining my new job in September, I hardly get much time to experiment in the kitchen, I did manage to put together a few good and new dishes on Sundays.

Let me describe the spagetti carbonara which I recently made - though I did not click any photographs that day, I am sure to make this dish again and will definitely click some pics then:) I found this simple recipe in a fitness column in our newspaper, which mentioned that the eggs and cheese combination is good to add calories to one's diet and beef up. Since I seem to have lost some weight recently, I quickly set about to put this simple dish together. Its a very basic vegetarian carbonara spagetti recipe, you can make a lot of variations with this.

1. I first boiled the spagetti al dente and after rinsing in cold water, moistened it with olive oil and kept aside
2. Then I sauted some diced aubergine (the big purple eggplants), green zuchchini, and onions in olive oil. Add some salt and pepper to these veggies and check if cooked.
3. Once cooked, I tossed in the spagetti and along with it, 2-3 egg whiles beaten along with grated parmesan cheese.
4. Toss to coat the spagetti with the egg and cheese mixture. Serve hot.

I know the recipe does not sound like much fun, but believe me - the taste was very good - light and non-spicy. If I might also add, very authentic:)