There has been a long silence on my blog. But that's with a reason. There has been a lot going on in the past few days. Remember I told you how I was caught between making productive decisions, weighing out their pros and cons and hoping for the best. A lot got sorted and matters did get clearer with time. I feel a lot better. There was a lucrative offer that I turned down unwillingly for a good reason. Instead, the daughter and I planned an overseas travel to join my husband for a holiday. It seemed dicey initially, but all fell in right place, the right time and we did travel as intended. So there was packing and unpacking, unsettling and re-setting, the jet-lag and weather change, an adaptation to a new country, a new home and new kitchen.

It's taken time to get into grooves of routine in a new place where I am vacationing for 3 long months. For these months, I am on a sabbatical from work, devoting my time wholly to the family; my husband and daughter. I had been looking forward to this personal time and space for a long time, particularly to spend some quality time with my growing daughter, hence this break was thoughtful one and a big welcome. Three months may be a too short period to justify the time spent, yet I wish to make every use of this and enjoy her company.

My recipe post for today and, may be, for next couple of weeks comes from my kitchen in India. In a bid to wrap up the pantry staples and close the kitchen before we moved out, I consumed the last batch of Ragi (Finger Millet Flour) to bake these biscuits. These Ragi biscuits (as they are commonly referred to in Indian bakeries) are gluten-free and delicious. If you are not gluten intolerant you may consider using equal qualities of millet and all purpose flour for easier handling. They are simple to make and easy to put together. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Ragi Biscuits

2 cups finger millet flour (ragi flour)
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup clarified butter (desi ghee)
1/2 tsp. cardamom powder
1 tsp. baking powder

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven at 180 C.

Roast ragi flour in a thick bottomed pan / kadai on a medium low heat, for about 5-10 mins till the raw smell goes away. Take off the heat and add the powdered sugar, melted ghee, baking powder and cardamom powder to it. Mix well.

Make small balls of the dough and keep it on a greased or (lined with parchment paper) baking tray. Poke an almond each into the biscuit dough. Bake at 180 C for 12 minutes. Allow them to cool completely. Store in a cool dry place.

Notes:

* Roasting Ragi is very essential, else you will end up with muddy tasting, flavourless biscuits.
* Instead of cardamom powder, you may flavor them with vanilla seed powder.
* These biscuits are quite delicate since ragi flour does not have gluten in them. If you are not particular about being gluten free, you can substitute half of the ragi flour with whole wheat flour and bake as suggested.
* These biscuits are quite nutrition and can be fed to kids as a snack box item.

I have a recipe featuring nuts back to back and my apologies if they are not your take. It simply shows how much I have been nuts about nuts these days! Seriously, the fact is that despite my profound love for them, thanks to this appreciation towards dry fruits and nuts I have inherited from my dear dad, they've always remained in the hind of this blog. For no particular reason, I have been on nut binge off late, indulging in them more than warranted, though I have rarely felt guilty about them. To an extent, the other day, I added roasted walnuts in a typical south Indian styled beans stir fry and felt mighty good devouring them. These Honey Loops & Nuts Chikki made up our sweet treats during mid-day breaks and post meal snack the last week through. Yet, I say, it doesn't justify my love for these roasted treats, almonds and cashews in particular.

Indeed, I have my freezer loaded with them in kilos that should last me a year. Dates, raisins, figs, almonds, cashews, walnuts and handful of apricots. Handful, because dried apricots are tough and not really my favourites. But among the rest it's hard for me to make a choice.

We are just back from a short vacation in Goa. A vacation to commemorate our wedding anniversary and his birthday. We basked in the serene beauty of Goa’s pristine beaches, green foliage and golden sand. Out there we soaked up the sun, got a massage in the spa and relaxed all day long. We discovered moments of togetherness with the sand castles we built together for our daughter as the frothy waves swept them gently, watched the sun go down the other side of the coast and took long strolls on the private beach. We revived our energies as we went swimming, biking and street hoping (Goan streets and markets never fail to amaze me). No vacation is worth the vacation without good food, so we certainly made our's worth as we binged on loads of delicious good food.

The trip though short (2 nights and 3 days) was packed with energy, fun and enthusiasm. Goa carries an ethereal realm of Portuguese culture that none other city in India has seen and it leaves me amazed each time. We are back home fresh and rejuvenated after this therapeutic vacation, much to an extent that we are craving for another trip soon. :)

Perfecting the holiday mood we were in, I decided not to bake or spend too much effort in the kitchen. Instead I made and carried these Dry Fruit Rolls for our trip. These rolls are not just healthy, but sugar free. They are well suited for toddlers and diabetics. Naturally sweetened with dates and figs, these have my coveted roasted nuts that make this a decadent anytime treat. Hope you'll enjoy them as much we did.

Dry Fruit Rolls

INGREDIENTS

2 cups pitted and chopped dates
1/2 cup dry figs
3/4 cup roasted cashew nuts
3/4 cup roasted almonds
1/2 cup roasted walnuts
1 tsp. orange peel
2 tbsps. orange juice

DIRECTIONS

Chop dates and figs as finely as possible. This will help in easier blending of ingredients. Combine the chopped dates and figs along with orange juice in a pan and bring it to a boil for about 5 minutes on medium low flame. Using the back of a flat wooden spoon, mash them as much possible. Switch off the flame and allow it to cool. Medjool dates can be best used here. If not, use any moist date you have at hand. I used Lion seedless dates, which were moist enough for this recipe. Remember dried ones are tough and will not help here.

Pulse the dates-fig mixture along with chopped orange peels in a food process as much as possible with no additional liquid or orange juice. It should have a moist and sticky dough like consistency. Roughly chop the roasted cashews, almonds & walnuts and add it to the prepared date-fig dough. Scrape the entire mixture into a plastic food wrap (a butter greased aluminium foil will do alternatively). Roll the wrap over to encase into a roll. Chill for about an hour. Remove from refrigerator and using a serrated knife cut them into rolls of desired sizes.

How to make Velvet Beet Cake| Easy Velvet Beet Cakei

I have attempted to bake a Red Velvet cake on several occasions in the past. There’s a strong temptation to get the perfectly red one with beets and no fake colouring. Alas, I failed. So, I call this one a Velvet Beet cake and not a Red Velvet cake that I would have loved to call otherwise. It’s funny because, each time I got perfectly baked cake with pleasing results and good texture, it was sans that deep red colour that would qualify it to be called as a Red Velvet cake. It always ended up brown and chocolatey, often good to be christened as a nice Chocolate cake. Even the best of the beet cake recipes have not helped me.

So it stays to be a Beet cake, till I achieve the perfect palette of colours in them and share them with you here. :)

None can ever figure out that beets are sneaked in there. Not even the husband who saw me busy puree them late night and putting them together! He says he can’t imagine a cake out of beets. But why not, when we have cakes made from carrots? And you are sure to get a thumbs up. Don’t let the folks know there’s a vegetable in there. It makes them biased. Instead, let them enjoy, allow them to take second and third helpings and let the cat out of bag later. I bet you’ll get gawked looks like I did! It’s amusing.

I say this one is extremely healthy. Because I use olive oil instead of butter, beet puree makes up for the eggs, organic vanilla powder and brown organic sugar add depth of flavors instead of the refined one. So it’s eggless, butterless and certainly healthy with vegetable sneaked it. I feel no guilt when I feed my daughter the slices of this cake as she despises beets in their true form. This way though I sneak them into her and I am a happy mother to a cheerful toddler.

Velvet Beet Cake

Recipe minimally adapted from here

INGREDIENTS

1 medium sized, beetroot (boiled until tender, then puréed)
1/3 cup oil (I used Olive-Pomace oil)
1 1/4 cup organic brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. organic vanilla powder
1 1/3 cup plain flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup milk (use any vegan milk of your choice, like soy or cashew milk for vegan option)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Grease the bundt pan with oil and dust with plain flour.

Wash thoroughly and boil the beet until its soft and tender. Using a blender/mixer, purée it to a fine paste along with milk and brown sugar. Opt for regular sugar if you don't have brown sugar. Next add in oil and vanilla powder/ extract and blend further until incorporated. Set aside. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder. Add the flour mixture to the beet milk mixture and stir gently until all is well incorporated into the batter. Bake for 40 minutes or till done. Insert a toothpick in the center of the cake and test for done. Remove and allow the cake to cool on a cooling rack. Serve as is or with dollops of cream or ice cream.

Hope you had a happy long weekend folks! And wish you a Happy Monday!

I often wish Sunday's don't go by so quickly and Monday's don't come by so soon. More often, I wake up to a thought of having yet another Sunday that is an extension of the previous day or a hope that the week passes by steadily, merrily and fruitfully, welcoming yet another weekend, and that too a happy, jolly one like the one we just had.

Last week with Eid on Friday, we had a long weekend. The week that went by, we had Independence day falling on Thursday and a quick Friday that that did not seem like a working day, so that counted for yet another lovely long weekend, or at least I like to think that we had one. :)

To make this holiday worthy, we made a day's trek to the nearby outdoors and that was such a welcome break. This Dal ki roti, whipped up from the previous night leftovers made up for our outdoor brunch, just apt as a wrap-up-take-away for any time munch.

Dal ki roti is an excellent way to use up left over dal from the previous day and translate it to a delicious snack or a breakfast dish. Being a popular dish in the North, this was one of those recipes I learnt from my mother in law, who makes it extremely well and is often accoladed for the variety of delicious parathas she makes. Since I have come to learn this, it's been a regular at my home, way too often when I have left-overs of dal from the previous day. It's versatile, easy to put together, healthy and delicious. You may use any simple dal recipe for this one, either moong, tuvar or masoor dal. The one I used is here, however you can use the ones with onions in them or heavier seasoning. A thicker one makes softer and tastier parathas, so I suggest you drain off the excess water if the dal is thin. I like to pep up the seasoning a bit here with some chopped onions, a few hot chillies, garam masala, fresh coriander leaves, but it really up to your choice and taste.

Dal ki Roti

INGREDIENTS

1 cup leftover dal
1 onion, finely chopped
2 to 3 green chillies, finely chopped
1 tsp. red chilli powder
1/2 tsp. cumin seeds
1 chopped onion
1 tsp. garam masala
1 tbsp. fresh coriander leaves
2 cups whole wheat flour (varies depending on thickness of the dal)
Salt to taste
Oil for cooking

DIRECTIONS

Drain the dal if there's excess water and combine the dal with onion, green chillies, red chilli powder, cumin seeds, garam masala, finely chopped coriander leaves and salt. Combine the wheat flour into this and knead into a soft dough. Set aside for 20-30 mins. Pinch out the dough into equal lime sized portions and with the help of wheat flour, roll out into a circle of 6"-8" using a rolling pin. Heat an iron griddle and cook each roti, flipping each side as they cook. Brush oil on each side of the roti and cook till golden brown on both the sides. Serve hot with onion rings, fresh curd and pickles.

Hovering over government offices is one of the biggest nightmares one ever faces in India. Several round about trips to the officers cabins followed by incessant persuasion, pleading and bribing, yet the tasks often remain at the same state from where they started. The papers don't move ahead, the officers are unwilling to listen or answer and an even greater worry - the bribe.

My own experiences in the past have been fairly bitter. I battled to get through my replacement driving license for the lost one. My husband made several trips to the driving license offices going through those repetitive tests with the same officers, each time being refused to have cleared the test for lame excuses! He made it through the test finally by trailing a middleman by overpaying handsome charges for licenses and the bribe. A painful woe. We never got around to getting the ration card done, hence we have no subsidized gas connection. The saving grace is our local supplier from whom we buy cylinders at exorbitant prices. And so we've been carrying on that way for long.

On Thursday, last week when I took a day off from my work to get my passport renewed, I went to their offices with little hopes, or rather being optimistic about doing several rounds of visits to process my renewal. My preparedness was to witness the worst; a futile day, those chaotic queues, stampede of crowd running around like headless chicken from tables to tables into the noisy, rude officers, papers strewn all over, long waiting hours or to be even being sent back for more documents and paper work, almost admonishing the fact our government processes would ever change for good. Pocket full of cash in dire needs to fulfil any greedy officer and be my saving grace, I made my way well in time to the passport office.

Though managing a huge crowd is always a huge challenge I agree to, I was pleasantly surprised with the way the entire process was revamped to make it systematic and defined. Here I was mighty pleased that I conquered one such a battle, with no pleading, no bribing and fairly efficiently managed system that was automated and smooth, all conducted within 2 hours! 5 days post I have my passport in hand and that's a huge relief. Yes, I am all happy and elated the way it has been processed swiftly. My recent past experiences, be it getting the UIDAI or my passport have been pleasant one to say, though not entirely easy, yet it gives many hopes that our country is changing for good.

For the day I took off from work, and the day I had at hand all for myself, what best can a baker do other than bake a lovely cake to celebrate something that ended positively? Yes, I cooked up a storm in the kitchen and this Apple Raisin Cake was a result of one such celebration.

Apple Raisin Cake

INGREDIENTS

Dry Ingredients:

1 medium sized apple, cored and chopped
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
A generous pinch of spice powder (cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg powders)
3/4 cup powdered sugar (increase to 1 cup if you prefer sweeter)
2 tbsp. dry raisins

Wet ingredients:

1/3 cup salted butter, melted
1 cup yogurt / buttermilk
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. of vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees C. Line a 9 inch baking tin or a fluted cake pan.

To prepare the cake batter, combine the flour, the baking powder and soda along with the spice powder and sieve them together. Add the sugar to this and mix well. Add in the chopped apples and raisins to these dry ingredients and toss well.

In a separate bowl, stir in all the wet ingredients. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and stir using a wooden spoon. Pour the batter to prepared cake tin. Bake in a preheated oven for 40-50 mins at 180 degrees C till a knife inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

It's frustrating when I have the urge to blog to keep my space brimming with recipes, yet I can't seem to make time to load my webpage even occasionally. That's how hectic the past couple of weeks have been. Crazy and way too swift to fuel this space aptly. I hope I'll be back to blogging routine soon, but till then I leave you with a nice Chilli herb bread for a lovely Sunday morning.

I have no talks for you today, but just the right recipe for this bread and some quick snaps clicked to share with you. This delicious herb bread with a dash of cheddar cheese is great served with flavoured butter and accompanies well with soups and dips. Even better toasted.

Chilli Herb Bread

1 tbsp. yeast
1 cup warm water
2 1/2 cups bread flour
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. chopped red chilli / chilli flakes
1 tablespoon dried Italian herbs
2 tbps. grated cheddar cheese* (optional)
Salt to taste

Dissolve yeast in half a cup of warm water and sugar and set aside for five minutes. The mixture will become frothy.

Stir in olive oil, salt, chilli flakes, cheese, dried Italian herbs and flour into the yeast mixture. Gradually mix in the next half cup of water. Using a wooden spoon, stir to form the dough. Bring the dough together and knead for roughly 10 minutes. If the dough is loose and sticky, add in more flour and knead further. The dough should become elastic. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, and turn to cover the surface of the dough with oil. Cover with a damp dish towel and let it rise for an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.

Once the dough has doubled, punch it down to release all the air. Shape into an oval shaped loaf or a free form as you prefer. Place the loaf on a greased baking tray and let it rise until it's doubled in size again, about a 30 minutes.

Bake at 180 degrees C for 35 minutes. Remove and let cool on baking rack. Slice and serve with dollops of butter and cheesy dip to accompany.

*For a Vegan option, skip the grated cheese totally.