Category Archives: A Piece of Cake: my Mint newspaper baking column

Recipes: Pearl Millet Crackers With Dukkah and Fresh Rosemary Cheese

Posted on by

11

IMG_3518

Well I must say, I was slightly anxious about logging on to Eat and Dust today.  It’s been almost 6 months since I’ve been here – I thought the blog police might have snuck in and closed me down on the grounds of extreme neglect!

The fact is, for the past year I’ve been working on a book about Old Delhi, and for the past few months I’ve done virtually nothing else. Anyway, I finally sent off the first draft  last week then  promptly collapsed in a heap. When I  eventually picked myself up again one of my first thoughts was “My poor blog!”

But what to write about?  I’ve hardly left the house recently except to walk the dogs so I have no new street food joints to report (although I intend to put this right very soon).  Also, my own cooking has dwindled to the bare minimum – so no new dinner recipes to suggest.  I have, though, in the interests of staying sane, managed to keep doing a little  baking.

Bizarrely, for someone so keen on sugar, deep-frying and ghee,  I suddenly seem to be thinking healthy  thoughts. Worrying, I know, I’ll be sending fan mail to Gwyneth ‘no carbs’ Paltrow next!  Anyway I’ve been experimenting with all the wonderful grains that are available in India and I have to say it has been a revelation.

According to my husband, whose job it is to pronounce on such things, this recipe for pearl millet crackers with dukkah may well be my best yet. I’m not sure how I feel about that as these crackers are little more than a dinner party twist on what food historian K.T. Achaya once dismissed as the “staple dietary item of the common folk”, bajra ki roti.

Yes, pearl millet may well be the main form of nutrition for over a third of the world’s population and in India, where it is known as bajra, it is widely used to make warming winter rotis but it rarely, if ever, attracts superlatives. And although millet has been around for over 10,000 years, I’d never used it in my baking before.

But it turns out bajra, or pearl millet, has a delicate sweet, earthy, nutty flavour which made me wonder where it had been all my life. A few minutes in the oven and a sprinkling of the wonderful Egyptian roasted nut and spice mix called dukkah transformed it into total deliciousness.

Incidentally, I’ve become completely addicted to Dukkah recently – my favourite winter soup this year, during the dark days of the first draft, was a roasted carrot soup with a sprinkling of dukkah and yogurt.  It’s worth keeping a tub of it in the freezer – I can’t think of many things that wouldn’t be improved by it.

I was so excited I also decided to make a simple cheese to go with the crackers, a sort of firmed-up ricotta made from milk and buttermilk (chaach).

Just making these recipes made me feel gratifyingly rustic, as if I’d just spent the morning on a farm, especially when I used the whey from the cheese to bind the crackers. But the flavours were a revelation and the combination of spicy, nutty crackers and creamy, herby cheese was, as my husband will testify, anything but home-spun.

Bajra and Dukkah Crackers

Makes 16-20 crackers
Ingredients
200g bajra flour
100g maida (plain flour)
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
30g butter
Approximately ¾ cup (about 200ml) whey or water
Dukkah to sprinkle on top of the crackers
Method
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Sprinkle a baking tray with flour.
Sift the flours, sugar, salt and baking powder into a bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour with your fingertips. Add enough of the whey or water to make a soft but not sticky dough.
Lightly flour a clean work surface and rolling pin. Then divide the dough into walnut-sized pieces and roll them out as thinly as possible, no more than 1mm thick. Keep checking the dough isn’t sticking to the surface and sprinkle a little more flour if necessary. The pieces don’t need to be neat—in fact they look nice rugged and rustic. Carefully lift the rolled out dough on to the baking tray. Brush a little water over the surface of each piece and sprinkle on the dukkah (although you could also use sesame or caraway—I made a couple with dried pomegranate powder). Bake for 6-8 minutes until the crackers are lightly browned and crisp. The crackers keep well for a few days in an airtight container.

Dukkah

Ingredients
½ cup hazelnuts
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
2 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp white peppercorns
1 tsp rock salt
Method
Put the hazelnuts in a heavy frying pan and roast over medium-low heat for a few minutes until a little browned, then add sunflower seeds and roast for a few more minutes. Tip them on to a plate to cool, then add the sesame, coriander, cumin, fennel seeds and peppercorns to the pan and heat until fragrant and popping. Be careful not to let any of the nuts or seeds burn.
Put the nuts and seeds into a pestle and mortar with the salt and grind gently—you want to retain a range of different textures. Store for up to a month in the fridge or longer in the freezer. Dukkah can pep up almost anything—salads, hummus and lentils, but my favourite winter lunch this year has been a roasted carrot soup sprinkled with dukkah and a good dollop of yogurt.

Fresh Rosemary Cheese

Makes a small cheese approximately 12cm wide
Ingredients
1 litre full-cream milk
1 litre buttermilk (chaach)
Juice of half a lemon
1 tsp salt
A small bunch of fresh rosemary, chopped
Method
Heat the milk and buttermilk in a large pan until it just reaches boiling point. Stir in the lemon juice for a minute or so until the mixture separates into white curds and greenish whey. Tip it all into a sieve (but keep the whey for bread or cracker-making!). Put the curds into a bowl and stir in the salt—you could also add other flavouring like toasted cumin or cracked pepper.
At this stage, the cheese is ricotta and could be served as it is with the crackers. If you want a firmer cheese, either wrap the curd in a piece of muslin or put it in a perforated metal paneer (cottage cheese) mould. Put the muslin or mould on a plate, then weigh it down with something heavy to press out the liquid. Leave it in the fridge for a few hours. When the cheese is as firm as you want it, take it out of the mould and sprinkle it with the chopped fresh rosemary. The cheese will keep for a few days in the fridge.

A Syrup Steamed Pudding for our Daughter Leaving Home

Posted on by

5

Tissues at the ready – here’s last week’s sad Mint column to mark  my daughter leaving home along with a recipe for her favourite pudding…
By the time you read this, our daughter will be looking back on her first week of university in the north of England, probably relieved that the initial few terrifying days are behind her; hopefully starting to settle into her course and make new friends. Meanwhile, back in Delhi, her parents are still stifling a sob every time they pass her empty bedroom and marvelling at how one family member can take with her 60% of the household noise.
For us, of course, this moment has come too soon but then our little girl has always been in a hurry to get on with life. She arrived suddenly and dramatically while her father was still filling up the birth pool; she talked before she could walk and is now cracking on with her dream of studying acting at the tender age of 17.
As the East Riding of Yorkshire starts to wonder what’s hit it, we’re wondering if we’ve done enough to prepare her for the rest of her life. After seven years of living in India, we worry whether she’ll ever get the hang of using a washing machine, shopping in supermarkets and the Green Cross Code (a 1970s British road safety initiative—“Stop, Look, Listen, Think”).
The only thing I know for sure is that on the night before she left home, she ate all of her favourite foods, choosing pakoda-like cauliflower fritters, spicy chicken couscous and a steamed syrup pudding. Steamed puddings are traditional British fare, essentially a cake mixture which is steamed in a bowl rather than baked in a tin. There are many versions, including Christmas Pudding and Spotted Dick, but in our family the syrup variety is the only one we ever make.
One of my own earliest food memories is of the unbearable anticipation of the sound of the pudding basin rattling away for hours on the stove. The soft, sweet, sticky taste is like a great big hug on a cold wet day—guaranteed to soothe away most of life’s little disappointments. So far, the only thing I’ve found it hasn’t worked for is Empty Nest Syndrome.
 Syrup Pudding with Fresh Vanilla Custard
Serves 5
Ingredients
For the pudding
4 tbsp golden syrup
100g butter, plus a little extra for greasing
100g caster sugar
100g plain flour
2 level tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2 tbsp milk
For the custard
500ml single cream (or 250ml thick cream and 250ml milk)
1 whole vanilla pod, split in two
5 egg yolks
2 tbsp caster sugar
Method
You will need a 1-litre pudding basin with a tight-fitting lid (mine is plastic with a plastic lid but my mother used a glass bowl covered with greaseproof paper tightly tied on with string). Fill a kettle and when the water has boiled pour about 2 inches into a large pan and place over a low heat.
Lightly grease the inside of the pudding basin. Spoon the golden syrup into the bottom of the basin.
In a large mixing bowl, weigh out the butter, sugar and flour, then add the baking powder, eggs and milk. Beat together with a hand-held mixer until completely smooth, then pour into the basin on top of the syrup. Smooth the top of the mixture and put on the lid—this has to fit snugly so that no water gets into the sponge during cooking. Carefully lower the basin into the simmering water, cover the pan with a lid and let it bubble away for an hour or so. Check every so often to make sure the water hasn’t evaporated—if it’s getting a little low, add more hot water from the kettle.
To make the custard, first separate the eggs and put the yolks in a large bowl with the sugar. Mix the two together well. Put the cream into a thick-bottomed saucepan, scrape the vanilla seeds in, add the pod and bring to the boil. Take off the heat and leave to cool slightly. Then pour the vanilla cream into the egg yolks, sugar and whisk well. Clean and dry the pan, then pour the custard mixture back in.
Over low heat, and whisking constantly (to avoid lumps and curdling), bring the custard to boil. It should be perfectly smooth and in no way resemble sweet scrambled eggs. If you think the mixture is in danger of curdling, take it off the heat and place it over a bowl of ice, then whisk like fury.
When the pudding is ready, lift the basin out of the water and remove the lid. Place a large plate on top and flip the pudding over on to it. It should be golden and sweet smelling with a little puddle of syrup.
Serve hot with the fresh custard.

Chocolate and Pear Tart with Lime Syrup

Posted on by

6

With a general preference for all things sweet, buttery and if at all possible, deep-fried, I don’t think I could ever be accused of pushing a health food agenda. It is nonetheless gratifying when the two coincide. If recent reports are to be believed, for instance, the key to eternal life is eating vast amounts of chocolate.

First there was that dream newspaper headline: “Chocolate ‘may help keep people slim’”. I wonder how many people read no further before rushing out to gorge on brownies? If they had they would have seen that while chocolate is also thought to be good for blood pressure and cholesterol levels and jam-packed with antioxidants, it is also full of those enemies of eternal life, fat and sugar.

 

Now—and this is particularly heartening for someone who has started putting her glasses in the fridge and forgetting the names of close relatives—we learn that a diet high in a bedtime cup of cocoa can ward off dementia. Apparently, the flavanols contained in good-quality chocolate are believed to reduce the risk of dementia by protecting brain cells from damage. Sounds promising, but before we all jump for joy, I should point out that the research was funded by Mars.

Today’s recipe, therefore, may or may not help you live forever but it is pretty, delicious and redolent of the chocolate limes of yore. And those never did us any harm, did they?

Incidentally, I have a tart tin crush at the moment—I bought this fluted oblong tin recently and I have to say I don’t think my pies ever looked prettier.

Step-by-step

Chocolate and Pear Tart with Lime Syrup

Serves 6

Ingredients

For the chocolate pastry

150g plain flour (maida)

25g icing sugar

25g unsweetened cocoa powder

A pinch of salt

125g cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1 egg yolk, mixed with 1 tbsp cold water

For the pears

3 ripe pears

Juice of 1/2 lime

1 tbsp caster sugar

For the almond filling

100g butter, softened

100g caster sugar

2 eggs

100g ground almonds

50g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

Zest of 1 lime

For the lime syrup

The juice and zest of 2 green limes

250ml water

150g caster sugar

You will need a fluted tart tin, 35x12cm

Method

First make the pastry. The pastry shell can be made ahead and stored in an airtight tin until needed. Sift together the flour, icing sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Rub in the butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg and water and stir with a knife until combined. With your hands, gently and quickly (don’t handle the pastry too much) form the dough into a smooth ball. Wrap in cling film and leave to chill for 30 minutes in the fridge.

When the pastry has rested, it needs to be baked blind—to avoid what the great British baker Mary Berry calls “a soggy bottom”. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Put the chocolate pastry on top of a piece of baking parchment paper, then put another piece of parchment paper on top of the pastry (using parchment paper makes this quite sticky pastry easier to pick up once it’s rolled out). Roll the pastry out a bit larger than your tin, unpeel the top layer of parchment, quickly lay the pastry on top of the tin, about 2-3mm thick, and unpeel the top layer of parchment paper. Gently press the pastry into the tin, patch up any cracks that appear and neaten the edges. Take a piece of parchment paper a bit larger than the tin and lay it over the pastry. Then pour in either some baking beans or dried pulses (this is to stop the pastry puffing up in the oven). Bake the pastry for 15 minutes, remove the paper and beans, then bake again for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Peel, core and cut in half the pears. Squeeze lime juice over them to stop them going brown. Heat a non-stick frying pan and sprinkle the sugar in. Add the pear halves, cut side down and heat until the sugar turns into a pale caramel. Remove the pears from the pan.

For the filling, beat together the butter and caster sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs, almonds, flour, baking powder and lime zest until the mixture is combined. Spoon the mixture into the chocolate pastry case, then gently lay the pear halves on top. Bake at 160 degrees Celsius for about 20-25 minutes until the top is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.

While the tart is baking, make a syrup by putting the water, lime juice, zest and sugar into a small pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes until thickened. Remove from the heat and cool. Let the tart cool slightly before serving, drizzled with the syrup or a good dollop of cream.

Hot Cross Buns for Easter

Posted on by

12

It’s Easter next weekend and for me you can keep the chocolate eggs and shower me with hot cross buns, the traditional way for Christians to break their Lenten fast.  This recipe is so easy – it doesn’t  even need any arm-numbing kneading – you’d be mad not to give it a go.  I guarantee they’ll be better than anything you ever bought in a shop.

There was a time in Britain when the monarchy was given to interfering in the baking habits of its people. In 1592, Queen Elizabeth I of England issued an extremely stern edict forbidding the consumption of spiced buns except on certain days:

“That no bakers, etc., at any time or times hereafter make, utter, or sell by retail, within or without their houses, unto any of the Queen’s subjects any spice cakes, buns, biscuits, or other spice bread…except it be at burials, or on Friday before Easter or at Christmas, upon pain of forfeiture of all such spiced bread to the poor.”

Perhaps Britain has become a nation of Republicans or maybe the Brits just can’t resist a spiced bun, but hot cross buns, once only eaten over the Easter weekend, are now available in every supermarket all year round. Though a long way from being a royalist, I resolutely only make hot cross buns at Easter, enjoying the once-a-year treat and the Christian symbolism in my baking. The start of Lent is marked by using up all the rich ingredients (sugar, milk, eggs) in the kitchen to make pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. After 40 days of abstinence, people would celebrate by eating buns crammed with good things. The buns are made from a soft, yeasted, sweet and spiced dough and marked with a pastry cross to symbolize Christ on the cross. The first record of a bread marked with the sign of the cross is thought to be in the time of Pope Gregory IX when St Clare of Assisi blessed a stale loaf and a cross appeared on it. It is also thought that the spices in the bun represent the spices Jesus was wrapped in the tomb.

There is nothing better (but only at Easter!) than a thickly buttered hot cross bun. They’re also lovely with a slice of mature cheddar—though I wonder what Good Queen Bess would have made of that.

Bake heaven: The buns are best fresh out of the oven. Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint

Hot cross buns

Makes 12

Ingredients

450g strong bread flour or plain flour

7g (1 sachet) easy blend dried yeast

1 level tsp salt

50g caster sugar

2 tsp mixed spice (see note 1)

50g butter, cut into small pieces

100g currants

200ml lukewarm milk

2 eggs

For the crosses

75g flour

80ml water

For the glaze

2 tbsp milk

2 tbsp caster sugar

Method

Grease a large baking tray. Gently heat the milk to lukewarm temperature, then beat in the eggs. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, yeast, salt, sugar and mixed spice. Add the butter and rub into the flour mixture until it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the currants. Make a well in the centre of the mixture and pour in the warm milk and eggs. Incorporate all the flour into the liquid until you have a coherent, soft dough. If the dough is too sticky, add a little more flour.

On a floured work surface, knead the dough gently for 10 seconds, then put back in the bowl and leave for 10 minutes. Knead the dough again for 10 seconds, cover again and leave for about 1 hour (these timings are not a misprint—try it and see). When the dough has doubled in size, knock out the air and divide into 12 pieces. Knead each piece into a smooth ball. Put the buns on to the greased tray, place the tray in a large plastic bag and leave until the buns have again doubled in size.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Mix the water and flour to make a stiff paste for the crosses. Put the paste into a piping bag and pipe on the crosses. Alternatively, and quite traditionally, you can simply cut a deep cross on top of the buns. In fact, although I love the aesthetics of the cross, I prefer the taste of the buns without the chewy pastry on top. Bake the buns for 15-20 minutes (see note 2). While the buns are baking, make the glaze by heating the milk and sugar until the sugar dissolves. As soon as the buns are a rich brown colour on top, take them out of the oven and immediately brush with the glaze. Eat the buns warm, buttered on the day they’re made. If there are any left the next day, they are beautiful toasted and buttered.

• Note 1: Ready-made mixed spice blends can be bought but I usually blend my own using these proportions:

1 tbsp ground allspice

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp ground nutmeg

2 tsp ground mace

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground ginger

• Note 2: Using an electric surface-top oven, I kept the top and bottom elements on for 10 minutes, then turned off the top element for the remaining 5-10 minutes.

Say it with Cardamom and Orange White Chocolate Truffles

Posted on by

5

 

Multi-hued: Truffles are quick to make and make for a beautiful gift. Photo by Priyanka Parashar/Mint

 

 

 

 

 

Priyanka Parashar/Mint.

For someone with a terrible sweet tooth, I’m unusually restrained when it comes to chocolate.  The previous two recipes, for choc chip cookies and chocolate éclairs, are pretty much how I like my chocolate baking, that is, as a highlight rather than a principal ingredient. If I’m honest, I usually find things like chocolate brownies and chocolate cake just too overpoweringly chocolatey.

Occasionally, though, nothing but a full-on chocolate hit will do and while I love all the artisan, high-percentage cocoa solid varieties, I also have a weakness for things like Mars and Snickers which are more sugar and fat than chocolate. I’m also particularly partial to white chocolate which, strictly speaking, is not really chocolate at all as it contains no cocoa solids, only cocoa butter and milk solids. It does, though, make beautiful truffles and these Cardamom and Orange White Chocolate Truffles would be a particularly gorgeous Valentine’s Day gesture.

There are two types of truffle—one made with egg yolks, another that only uses chocolate and cream. I decided to do the egg-free kind but this was the first time I’d made them and I quickly realized that you can’t substitute white chocolate in a dark chocolate truffle recipe. You need a lot less cream with white chocolate, otherwise the mixture won’t set enough to mould—and I have several bowls of Cardamom and Orange White Chocolate Sauce in my fridge to prove it.

Once you know that (and you do now, so no excuse) they’re quick to make, look beautiful boxed for a present and, most importantly, they taste wanton and voluptuous, just the right side of schmaltzy and sickly sweet. A bit like Valentine’s Day itself.

Valentine’s Day Cardamom and Orange White Chocolate Truffles

Makes 12-15

Ingredients

150g good-quality white chocolate (not cooking chocolate—this is for your loved one after all!)

85ml whipping cream

Zest of 1/2 orange, very finely grated

1/4 tsp cardamom seeds, freshly ground

Sieved icing sugar or cocoa powder to coat the truffles

Method

 Step by Step guide to making truffles

Chop the chocolate into small pieces, then blitz in a food processor.

Put the cream, cardamom and orange zest in a small pan and bring to a boil. Immediately pour the cream on to the chocolate and blitz the mixture until it’s smooth and all the chocolate has melted. Pour the truffle mixture into a shallow dish and chill for an hour or so.

Handling the truffles needs to be done as quickly and coolly as possible—this is definitely not a hot-weather job. Run your hands under the cold tap for a minute to cool them down. Dust your hands with either the cocoa powder or icing sugar, depending on which you’re using. Use a small teaspoon to take out a cape gooseberry-sized chunk of the mixture. If it’s too soft to handle, return to the fridge for another hour. Roll the mixture quickly (or it will melt) between your hands, then roll each truffle again in either the cocoa or icing sugar. You could also roll them in melted white chocolate but you have to work quickly and make sure the mixture is very cold. Finely chopped pistachios and desiccated coconut also make pretty coatings for truffles.

Place each truffle in a small paper case, then keep in the fridge till needed. Truffles will keep happily in the fridge for about three days.

 

Easy Chocolate Eclairs

Posted on by

16

I always assumed it would be impossible to replicate chocolate éclairs at home and even if you could—well, imagine being able to conjure up éclairs whenever you felt like it—that way lies ruin. But having promised  a pro-chocolate drive, I decided to have a go. Selfless, I know.

Finger-licking: A perfect batch of home-made éclairs needs a bit of practice and lots of patience.

Priyanka Parashar/Mint

 

 

 

 

I started by consulting Raymond Blanc, a French chef, and Delia Smith, an English cook and television presenter, hoping that somewhere between the two extremes there would be a middle way to choux perfection. In the end, I had to make five batches and call on chef and author Rachel Allen and Larousse Gastronomique before I had anything approaching an éclair. The first, Delia-inspired batch was just downright flat and soggy inside and out, Allen’s and Blanc’s were like a pile of crazy paving, with deep cracks all over the surface but still soggy inside. It wasn’t until I consulted the Gallic aloofness ofLarousse and pastry chef friend Susan Jung (yes, she of the amazing curry puffs) that things started to look up.

Larousse specifies more water and eggs than other recipes, but it was the one that worked best for me so my recipe is loosely based on theirs. Susan pointed out that choux is unlike other types of pastry, in that it is made from a wet flour and water paste which has to be lightened with egg to make the pastry puff up in the oven. The most important stage, she advises, is the adding of eggs to the mixture—the paste has to be gently cooked first to dry out slightly to enable as much egg as possible to be incorporated.

Part of the problem, as always, had to do with the vagaries of my oven, which I suspect is a problem for many aspiring bakers in India, so I’m giving precise instructions for times and temperatures.

As I say, fifth-time lucky. My son and I managed to eat about 20 each and stash away 40 in the freezer. I leave it to you to decide how lucky that’s going to be.

Chocolate Éclairs

Makes about 20 finger-length éclairs

Ingredients

For the choux pastry

125ml water

35g butter, cut into cubes

1 tsp caster sugar

65g flour (maida)

2 eggs, well beaten

For the filling

Whipped double cream

For the icing

180g icing sugar

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

2-3 tbsp boiling water

Method

To make éclair shapes, you will need a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain nozzle. If you don’t have a piping bag, make little choux buns instead and use a tablespoon to pile the pastry on to the baking sheet.

Grease a large baking sheet and preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius.

Put the water, sugar and butter into a large pan. Heat gently until the butter melts, then bring to a boil. Immediately take the pan off the heat to stop the water evaporating.

Quickly pour the flour into the liquid and mix well with a wooden spoon. Put the pan back on low heat and cook the paste for a minute or so until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan.

Take the pan off the heat and let it cool for a minute. Add a small amount of egg and beat until completely incorporated in the mixture. Continue to add and mix small amounts of egg, beating well each time until the mixture is soft and glossy. Don’t let the mixture become too runny—you may not need all the egg.

Spoon the paste into a piping bag (or use a tablespoon) and pipe 4cm strips, widely spaced (they will puff up in the oven) on to the greased baking sheet.

Place the baking sheet into the oven for 10 minutes. I use an electric stand-alone oven that has top and bottom heating elements. For the first 10 minutes, I baked the éclairs with both elements on. Then I reduced the temperature to 200 degrees Celsius for 5 minutes with both elements on. To finish, I switched off the top element for a further 5 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius to make sure the insides were cooked but the tops didn’t burn.

Take the by now beautifully puffed up and golden éclairs out of the oven and immediately split them down one side to let out the steam and leave to cool on a baking rack.

Make the icing by sifting together the icing sugar and cocoa powder, then adding enough boiling water to make a not-too-runny paste.

When the éclairs are cool, fill the centres with the whipped cream and either pipe or carefully spoon the icing on top. Neaten the icing by dipping a metal knife into a cup of boiling water and using it to smoothen the surface.

Choc Chip Cookies

Posted on by

3

 

Quick fix: Bake cookies for choco emergencies.

Priyanka Parashar/Mint

I’ve been depriving Lounge readers in the most heinous way and it’s time to make amends.

As part of the whole taking stock and moving forward process required at the turn of the year, I was looking back at the recipes I’ve done over the last year or so and to my astonishment discovered that only one of them is remotely in the chocolate category. Even then the Chocolate and Cherry Muffins were egg-free, so they hardly count as full-blown chocy wantonness.Inexcusable, I know, and I can’t really account for it except to acknowledge that my baking with fruit tendencies have got way out of hand. By way of an apology, and in the spirit of a fresh start, my New Year’s resolution is to step away from the cape gooseberries and lavish you with chocolate.

We’re going to limber up with everyone’s favourite, choc chip cookies. Like many bakers I’ve had my share of choc chip disappointment—too hard, too dry, too sweet. Trial and error brought me to this recipe, a simple one but so good it has been pinned to my fridge for years now. It’s what we make in our house when sweet/chocolate cravings have to be staunched quickly. They take about 5 minutes to make, 10 to bake before reaching biscuit perfection: crispy around the edges and chewy in the middle. Warm from the oven and savoured with a glass of cold milk, you’ll be in choc-chip heaven. Nothing you buy will ever come close.

The recipe, of course, is merely a template to be adapted at will. For emergencies, I keep a pack of chocolate chips to hand but it’s best to use a good-quality chocolate (anything with more than 70% cocoa content). My current passion is a milk chocolate bar (which ordinarily would be against the rules) containing chunks of almond brittle. Chewy, crispy, buttery, caramelized, nutty and above all CHOCOLATEY perfection. So good.

Here’s to a choc-tastic 2012!

A word about size: It isn’t everything. In the choc chip cookie stakes, less is definitely more. No one needs a 12-inch cookie—I guarantee you’ll be bored to death of it by the fifth bite, so don’t be tempted.

Choc chip cookies

Makes about 16-20

Ingredients

125g salted butter

75g Demerara sugar

75g caster sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

150g flour (maida)

1/2 tsp baking powder

100g chocolate (chips or a bar of good-quality chocolate chopped into small chunks)

Method

You will need a large, greased baking tray.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Begin by melting the butter in a small pan. In a large bowl, whisk together the butter and two types of sugar. Add the egg and vanilla, and beat again.

Sift in the flour and baking powder and stir until all the ingredients are combined. Finally stir in the chocolate.

At this point, you could chill the cookie dough until ready to bake the cookies. Usually though, I’m responding to an urgent chocolate/cookie need so I make them straightaway. Spoon dessert-sized spoonfuls on to the baking tray. A little irregularity is no bad thing with home-made cookies but if you’re a neat freak, roll the dough into balls somewhere between the size of a walnut and a golf ball. Make sure they’re spaced well apart because the cookies spread a lot during baking.

Bake in the centre of the oven for about 10 minutes. If you like a crispy edge and chewy centre, take the tray out when the edges are lightly browned. If you like a crispier cookie, leave them in for a few more minutes. But watch them carefully, they burn quickly.

Note: I use a large stand-alone electric oven for most of my baking. For this recipe, I switched on both top and bottom elements and the cookies baked in about 7 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.

A Recipe for Cape Gooseberry Tarte Tatin

Posted on by

10

[first published in Mint Lounge on December 17th]

My love of the cape gooseberry, rasbhari, physalis or sometimes “Chinese lantern”, knows no bounds. Every year at this time I can never quite get over seeing in abundance a fruit which at home is bought by the handful rather than the kilo. As well as being the most cheerful-looking of fruits, cape gooseberries are perfect for baking and I always have more ideas for recipes than I have time to make.

French connection: Gooseberries lend a welcome piquancy to desserts. Divya Babu/Mint.

Divya Babu/Mint

Like old-fashioned varieties of apple and the green English gooseberry, they lend a welcome tartness to otherwise over-sweet desserts. They’re perfect for all sorts of puddings, pies, crumbles, fools and compotes. In fact one of my end-of-year rituals is making a batch of Cape Gooseberry jam as the ultimate topping for morning toast.

Today, though, we’re letting them loose on the tarte Tatin, named after the Tatin sisters, who ran a hotel-restaurant in Lamotte-Beuvron, France, at the beginning of the 20th century. The original was a tart of caramelized apples cooked under a pastry lid, then flipped over so that the pastry is on the bottom and fruit on top, then served with lashings of crème fraîche. For some reason, in our house, my husband holds the tarte Tatin portfolio—I’ve never actually made one.

I always assumed they were a major French faff (perhaps that’s what my husband would like me to think!); in fact nothing could be easier—the only thing that requires some effort is the pastry but you can even use a ready-made puff pastry for the least strenuous dessert imaginable.

Cape Gooseberry tarte Tatin

Serves 6

Ingredients

Pastry

170g cold unsalted butter, chopped into small pieces

250g flour (maida)

A pinch of salt

3 tbsp caster sugar

2 egg yolks

1 tbsp orange flower water or cold water

Cape gooseberries

400g cape gooseberries, paper casings removed and washed

100g caster sugar

60g unsalted butter

1 vanilla pod

Method

You will need a 20-23cm tin or dish that is happy both on the stove and in the oven.

To make the pastry, sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Add the butter and rub into the flour with fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar, then add the egg yolks and orange flower water. Stir to bring the mixture together. If it is still dry and crumbly, add a little water, but don’t let the pastry get sticky. Knead the pastry gently to form a ball, cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

In the oven-proof and flameproof shallow tin, melt the butter and sugar. Split the vanilla pod in half lengthways and scrape the seeds into the tin. Tip the cape gooseberries in and coat with the caramel. Make sure you use enough fruit so it’s tightly packed on the bottom of the tin—this will improve the appearance of the finished tart. Let the fruit cook for a few minutes to release some of its juice into the caramel. Then let the caramel bubble long enough to thicken, a couple of minutes—stop before the fruit darkens or gets soggy. Take off the heat and leave to cool.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Lightly flour a work surface and roll out the pastry to a little larger than the tin. Carefully lift the pastry and place on top of the fruit. Press the edges down to encase the fruit.

Bake the tart for about 30 minutes until the pastry is nice and brown.

Let the tart cool for a minute or two, then take a plate that is larger than the tin and place it face down over the tart. Carefully flip the tart on to the plate and remove the tin. The cape gooseberries should now have formed a wonderfully sunny, caramelized topping. If any of the cape gooseberries has rolled out of position, just push it back so that the fruit is evenly distributed over the pastry.

Serve warm with crème fraîche.


Previous Lounge columns

Monsoon: Perfect Bread-Making Weather

Posted on by

13

Well, things have certainly been a bit quiet around here – I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.  

Not much blogging but a whole lot of kitchen and garden envy

It seems like every summer I head off to Scotland with the very best of blogging intentions and every summer Eat and Dust lapses into near-silence. We had a wonderful time at home catching up with family and friends though.  At my sister’s house I even contracted a severe case of garden and kitchen envy:  my brother-in-law has built an amazing outdoor kitchen in the woods behind their house, along with barbeque area and bunk house – how cool is that?

I want this kitchen

  

 I also want a garden that produces fruit like this

We also spent a week in Corfu where our friends Jane and Emilios have a house.  Jane and her daughter cooked up all sorts of Greek wonders ( I’ll blog about them soon) which I’ve been trying out since we got back. But first…

What’s a hot sticky  monsoon kitchen good for? 

Before I go off into an Ionian reverie, I need to give you a recipe to use right now, a recipe that is so utterly  perfect for our  humid, Monsoon Indian kitchens that you mustn’t waste another second before making it.  

It’s also something everyone is always telling me is impossible to make in India.

Good bread (loaf-style as opposed to flat), they say, can’t be done  here because we don’t get  strong bread flour. Well this recipe for ‘Whey Bread’ proves that you can make a loaf better than anything you can buy with the humble plain/all-purpose/maida  flour available in every corner shop.  

It must be true – Dan Lepard says so

I’ve been making bread, mostly variations on this recipe in fact, ever since I’ve been in Delhi – I use bread flour if I have it, plain if I don’t and I’ve not really noticed any difference.  

I was chatting to Dan Lepard, baker extraordinaire, one day on Twitter and he basically said – ‘you can make a respectable loaf out of pretty much any type of flour.’  He also said that Indian plain flour is perhaps less refined than western versions so innately better suited to bread making.  Well, how about that?

This recipe is as easy as can be and very adaptable.  Don’t have cream? Use milk.  No Whey?  Water will do just fine.  But the beauty of it right now is that the humid warmth of our kitchens is the perfect environment for yeast to do its work. You’ll have a full blown rise in no time.

Here’s what I wrote on the subject (followed by recipe) for Mint…..

Last month saw the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Chorleywood baking process.  I say celebrations, but you may well feel that commemorating the invention of pre-packaged, long-life, tasteless white sliced bread is not necessarily a reason to start popping champagne corks. Whatever your point of view, back in 1961 a revolution in bread making occurred and Britain led the way in replacing wholesome, nutritious, hand-baked bread with limp white sliced loaves tasting of cotton wool.

The Chorleywood baking process is named after the town in Hertfordshire where scientists at the British Baking Industries Research Association devised a means of turning cheap low-grade flour into mass-produced bread.  The means, of course, were a highly mechanised mixing process and a cocktail of additives.  Traditionally, a loaf of bread takes up to 20 minutes to knead – the Chorleywood chaps reduced this to three by radically speeding up the mixing process.  Proper bread, though, needs proper flour and the inferior variety used in sliced white has to be enhanced with salt, sugar, fats, flour improvers, emulsifiers and enzymes.

In India, the Chorleywood process is responsible for the ubiquitous Britannia loaf and a billion bread pakoras. In fact, it accounts for 80% of bread produced in India and the UK. But if a mouthful of cotton wool ‘enhanced’ with sugar, salt and chemicals isn’t to your taste, and you’re crying out for a pukka loaf, then you’re in tune with a new generation of  food revivalists urging a return to real bread making.

As there are very few artisan bread makers in India, making it at home is the only option. And turning out a loaf at home couldn’t be easier, especially at this Monsoon time of year when kitchens are hot and humid – ideal conditions for encouraging yeast to work. This recipe, as well as being a great way of using the whey left over in paneer making, uses a method introduced to me by British baker extraordinaire, Dan Lepard. Incidentally, if you’re at all interested in starting to bake bread at home, Dan’s book The Handmade Loaf is the only one you’ll ever need. Follow him on Twitter, too, for daily dough-y wisdom.

You will need to buy some imported Fast Action Yeast but it’s well worth the investment.  On the upside, there’s no need for expensive ‘Bread Flour’, the home grown maida makes a loaf far, far superior to anything you could buy in a packet.  Dan also introduced me to a new way of kneading: instead of the traditional long knead and long rest, the kneading and resting is broken up into short bursts over a few hours.  Having tried both methods, I can confirm that Dan’s produces a much better loaf. Try it – you’ll never look at Britannia again.

Whey Bread

Makes 1 large loaf

125ml cold cream (malai)

250ml whey

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1 sachet (7g) fast action yeast

550g plain flour  (maida)

A few drops of sunflower oil

  1. Heat the whey until hand hot (not boiling) then pour into a large bowl with the malai.  Add the sugar, salt and yeast.  Whisk gently to mix then add the flour.
  2. With your hands mix quickly until you have a soft, ragged slightly sticky mass – no need to knead a this point – then cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave for 10 minutes.
  3. After 10 minutes, smear a few drops of oil on a clean work surface.  Tip the dough out and knead for 10 seconds. Put the dough back in a clean bowl and leave for 10 minutes.  You will notice that the dough has already changed structure – the yeast has already started to work on the flour, making it springier and more elastic.
  4. Again, knead for 10 seconds and leave for 10 minutes.  Give the dough a final knead, it will now be quite soft and pillowy.  This time leave the dough, covered, to rise for 1 hour, until it has doubled in size.
  5. Lightly oil the inside of a loaf tin.  If you don’t have a loaf tin, you could make a freeform loaf on a baking tray.
  6. Tip the bread dough onto the work surface and pat it into a shape that fits in the tin or an oval shape if you’re going freeform.  Put the bread into the  tin and leave to rise again for about one hour
  7. Heat the oven to 200­ºC and bake the loaf for about 45 minutes.  If you like a crustier loaf, take the bread out of the tin and bake for a further 5-10 minutes.

Laura leaving, the end of Uparwali Chai and a recipe for Boterkoek

Posted on by

11

Quick, grab the hankies, it’s going to be a weepie. Today marks the end of a particularly wonderful period of my life in India: After five years, my great friend Laura is leaving Delhi to return to her home in the Netherlands.

As well as a friend, Laura has also been a co-conspirator in a plan to convert Delhiites to the delights of pukka afternoon tea. Two years ago we launched Uparwali Chai and about once a month since then we’ve baked ourselves to a standstill, piled high the cakestands and popped up in restaurants, museums, rooftops and gardens all over Delhi.

As anyone who has attended any of our teas can testify, Laura has a huge talent for making food look and taste divine. She has an incredible eye for detail and a flair for combining precise and unusual baking techniques with an array of Indian ingredients. She transformed the humble aubergine bharta into a delicate paté and had the brilliant idea of serving it in cutting chai glasses. I’ll remember forever her Carrot Halwa Cups: a hearty Indian dessert transformed into dainty little pecan-crusted wonders. There are about 30 lucky people who came to an event last winter who will never think of her Amarena Cherry Macaroons without a lump in their throats.

We spent many happy hours planning the menus for our teas, especially relishing the challenge of theming our food for particular venues and occasions: Miniuttapams for a south Indian restaurant, Far East florentines for a pan-Asian one, Salted Caramel Macaroons for Mahatama Gandhi’s birth anniversary and cupcakes tied with rakhi bands for Raksha Bandhan.

Laura also encouraged me to finesse my own baking, ruthlessly banishing anything as uncouth as a muffin or cupcake from my repertoire and steering me gently towards daintier, more refined mouthfuls. And for that I’ll be eternally grateful.

When I asked Laura if I could have one of her recipes for today’s column, she chose Boterkoek, a traditional Dutch biscuit similar to our Scottish shortbread. It uses the same three ingredients, butter, flour and sugar, in slightly different proportions, giving the same rich butteriness but with a softer texture than the Scottish version. Usually it’s a fairly homely, rustic recipe but of course in Laura’s kitchen it becomes dinky and delicate.

Laura has decided to formally train as a chef back in the Netherlands and I’m sure she’ll be a star pupil. She’s a genius in the kitchen, her food is always inspired and she makes cooking look fun and glamorous. I’ve even had Twitter followers ask if she’d consider taking Uparwali Chai to Holland. I’m sure she’ll have a Michelin star and a book deal in no time.

I’m not quite sure how I’m going to fill the Laura and Uparwali Chai-shaped hole in my life but when I do figure it out you can be sure Boterkoek will always be on the menu.

Maybe one day I’ll even persuade Laura to come back as a guest chef.

Laura and husband Jeroen on our last night in Delhi which, of course, we spent at Gunpowder restaurant

Laura’s Dutch Boterkoek

Makes about 40 bite-sized biscuits

Ingredients

300g plain flour

190g vanilla sugar

200g cold unsalted butter

A good pinch of salt

2 tbsp milk

1 egg, beaten

Method

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut the butter into small cubes and place in a bowl along with the flour and sugar. With your fingertips rub the butter into the flour and sugar until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the milk, then mix with your hands until the mixture starts to bind together. Although there is little milk, there is a large quantity of butter which holds the mixture together. Place the mixture on the baking tray and press until it is about 1 & 1/2 cm thick. Use a rolling pin to make the top completely flat but leave a gap around the edge of the tin to allow the Boterkoek to expand while it bakes. With a sharp knife, lightly score criss-cross lines all over the surface, then brush the surface with a little beaten egg. Bake for about 30 minutes until the top is lightly browned. About halfway through, put another tray on a lower shelf to stop the Boterkoek browning too quickly. Leave the Boterkoek to cool before cutting into shapes using a pastry cutter. Traditionally, the biscuits are small squares but you can use any shape—as long as it’s nice and dainty.