Delhi

My college has a compulsory rural research project component in it, which in the words of a MICAn means HOLIDAY! So the destinations mostly are Mcleodganj, Goa, Konkan and Kasol. We do manage to get a few days off to visit an actual village and get some data out by interviewing people or by imagining that we interviewed people.

If you know me, then you would know that any excuse to travel is just an excuse to eat. I very conveniently took off to Delhi 5 days before I was meant to get there, so I could catch up with my best friend and eat my way around the city.

I visited Chandni Chowk, Paranthewale Galli, Karims, Hauz Khas Village and Big Chill.

The dahi chaat at Chandni Chowk was very different from what we get at Bombay. It had papdi and dahi vada in it.

The chaat wala who sold sooji ka pooris

Dahi chaat!

I have wanted to visit Paranthewale Galli since a college senior blogged about it, along with a picture of a brilliant Rabdi Parantha. The paranthas here are fried, rather than being toasted. I strongly recommend the Rabdi Parantha. 

From top: Mirchi parantha, Rabdi Parantha and Khurchan Parantha

Another place to visit, while in Chandni Chowk is Karim's. Go there for the kebabs and the amazingly soft and buttery naan. The best naan I have ever had. 

 Every one in Delhi will definitely ask you to visit Hauz Khas village. Do go there, there is a great ruin and a lake and a beautiful garden there. There are also a lot of these kitschy shops and boutiques and tiny but expensive cafés all around. Jayesh and I went to one such.

Café Zo, serves Mediterranean food. It also is overtly done up and the owners in a bid to make the place all mediterranean-y have put in textures on everything, so it is an eye sore, at least in daylight.

The food wasn't all that great either.

Lunch at Cafe Zo: Panko encrusted stuffed mushrooms, Greek Salad, Chicken Tajine with Couscous and Pizza with grilled chicken and caramelized onions. 

Another place which people insist you visit is Big Chill. It is full of these old movie posters and is known for its milkshakes. The servings are huge so DO NOT over order like we did. Not that you will regret it, the food is great.

Clockwise from top left: baked potato with cheddar and mushrooms, baked mushroom, cheddar and penne; fusilli with tomatoes, basil and olives; chicken lasagna and chocolate decadence. 

 Delhi has lots of awesome places to eat at. Go with a friend who knows the place and will take you to all the ruins and tell you about the architecture. Delhi is beautiful and full of stories. Your history text come alive.

P.S Cupcakes

Most Postgraduate colleges in India are situated in far off towns, or if they are close to a town, then auto rates are astronomical. All this leads to one thing: extremely hungry and starved for decent food MICAns. 

Pooja and I, thought of baking and selling cupcakes and cakes on campus. We sourced ingredients locally, bought chocolates from Bombay and brought all our baking goods from home. 

We call ourselves "P.S Cupcakes". From freshers' party gifts to birthday cakes and cakes just for the heck of it, we have covered it all, in a month. 

We baked these boob shaped cakes for a friend's birthday. 

This is the chocolate mud cake covered with ganache for another friend's birthday.

The brownie batter, before it went into the oven.

I leave you with my (our) new favourite recpe for chocolate cake, it is dense moist and a crowd pleaser.

Mississippi Mud Cake

Ingredients

• 125 gm dark cooking chocolate
• 100 gm butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup hot water
• 1/4 cup bourbon
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup self raising flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 160C.
2. In a large heatproof bowl, combine chocolate, butter, water and bourbon
3. Heat over boiling water, until the mixture is smooth
4. Allow to cool slightly, and add the flour and cocoa mixture
5. Mix in the eggs
6. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until firm to touch.
7. Use a chocolate ganache on top.

Yield: 500 gm cake
Prep Time: 00:15
Cook time: 00:40
Tags: chocolate, mud cake, egg

A photoshoot for the cupcake business.

So, I had posted about starting a small home-run cupcake business, right? So before that I created a Facebook page for it. Social media is a brilliant thing, trust me (plus I had to use my newly acquired digital media skills from my internship). So the page was well received and was shared by many and Tina (Piu), who is a senior from college, aka Sharan's friend, offered to do a photoshoot to promote the business. I agreed, obviously.

She and another friend, Vini came over on Sunday to watch and photograph me while I baked. They made me move out of my kitchen (!) to my bedroom (!!). The study table was brought before the window and all the ingredients were brought there.

I baked a chocolate cupcake with a peanut butter soft center and also mini-cupcakes with a vanilla icing. You will find the recipe for my cupcakes below, feel free to use your own frosting, but I frosting recipe is coming soon.

You can head over to Tina's blog for the pictures, here is also the Facebook album.

She also sent over a few pictures, so these are a few of my favourites:

I have always envied food bloggers who would have photos like this. So cool and all. Now, I have my own! 

Notice the nails?

A friend pointed out that this looks like I am talking to my cupcakes. Though no true at this moment, I do that quite often. 

I made coloured sugar! So easy and so pretty!

You can contact Tina anytime on her Facebook page. You should check out her wedding photography. Amazing!

What do you think of the pictures?

Devil's Food Cake cupcakes

By Sanjeev Kapoor

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp soda bicarb
• 60 grams butter
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 eggs
• 60 grams cooking chocolate
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line your cupcake trays
2. Sift all the dry ingredients together
3. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beat till incorporated.
4. Melt chocolate in 1/2 a cup of boiling water and cool. Then mix into the egg mixture
5. Fold in the dry ingredients. Add the milk, lemon juice and vanilla essence, till all well blended.
6. Fill cupcake trays till 2/3rd full and bake for 20 mins, or till it passes the knife test.

Yield: 12 big cupcakes and 6-8 small ones

Prep Time: 00:10
Cook time: 00:20
Tags: chocolate, cupcakes, egg

Pancakes

Bombay is expensive. We all know that. But you start noticing how high the prices are only when you live in another city.

In Ahmedabad, students like me can actually think about going to a 5 star for a buffet. And we do, regularly. To the Courtyard Marriott. The breakfast buffet there costs Rs. 450 and they also have a 25% discount for students from select institutes.

So the all you can eat features fresh fruits, salads, 3-4 kinds of cheese, croissants, muffins, breads, any egg preparation, Indian breakfast, some chinese-y things, a huge range of fruit preserves, a range of muesli and chocos and fruit juices, waffles and pancakes.

Their pancakes are great, I love having them with a generous dollop of butter and trying them out with all the preserves and jams.

So, this post is really about pancakes. We have all tried to make them at home for breakfast and for dinner.

I like mine buttery and slightly salty. This recipe is just that. The outsides are so crispy and nice and the insides soft. It takes a while to cook. But follow the directions and it will be heaven.

A cupcake shop!

I know a lot of people who love food, they are the best kind, and most of them want to have a restaurant of their own sometime in the future. 

Future.. when? After we are all done paying our student loans (me), having slaved for the corporate overlord and or having satisfied your parent's expectation of having a nice, well-paying and settled life. Everybody needs some capital to start a restaurant business, and according to Mr. Bourdain 95% of them tank. 

Honestly, I can't wait that long, or even to see whether it will succeed or not. So, I have decided to open a cupcake store from home, only for a month.

Why? Because Navi Mumbai needs cupcakes. There isn't a single cupcake store here. 

All that said and done now, please head over to my facebook page to know about the menu and to know how you can order. 

Feta Love, Cupcakes and Hairbands!

Who has a new obsession?

Me! Yes. Me! (JD reference).

Obsession #1: Feta
Have you ever eaten something that just exploded in your mouth, smooth and flavourful?
It happened with me and Feta at the Kala Ghoda Café. I ordered a salad with feta in it. And since then greek salad is the only kind I have ordered. I have even saved it up after finishing the salad to add to my pizzas.

So when J and I went to Yellow Tree Café, which is the sunshine-iest of places I have been to, I had to order it. And it didn't disappoint me. Though I would have liked my salad with cherry tomatoes and not big chunks of tomatoes.

The cafe has big windows and happy yellow walls with happy coloured stuff on it

The lovely salad with the out of place large tomatoes

We also ordered sun-dried tomato pesto chicken sandwich and cilantro chicken sandwiches that came with curly fries. The sandwiches come with a garlicky tomato sauce and mustard sauce. Both these sauces complimented the sandwiches really well. Just added that extra bit of zing.

The sundried tomato pesto chicken

The curly fries look more dominating than the cilantro chicken sandwich, no?

The yum sauces

We then went to find Lulu's cupcakes. If you subscribe to BPB (if you don't you should) then you would know who she is. She turned out to be close by at an exhibition and we got to have her chocolate cupcake and red velvet cupcake. The chocolate was soft and the frosting smooth and rich. The red velvet has an amazing cream cheese frosting.

Lulu's cupcakes

Obsession #2: Hairbands
At the exhibition the first stall I encountered was selling hairbands. I couldn't stop myself and was bought two of them. One very classy and the other bright. This obsession, according to some of my friends marks my transition from a tomboy to a girl. I don't know about that, but I do plan on adding to my tiny collection.

Tell me about your recent obsessions!

Starry Starry Cupcakes!

So what do you do when a friend invites you over for a nice Kashmiri lunch with 13 other starving PG kids interning in Mumbai?
You gang up with another one of the invitees and spend a fun afternoon baking and frosting cupcakes.

What recipe did we use? This one. We just subbed the chocolate chips with grated dark chocolate. Also made vanilla ones subbing the cocoa for more flour.

Pictures? Here: 

The starry sparkles

Green Being mixed in

Pink colour being mixed in 

Yellow being mixed in

We had lots of fun with the starry sprinklers

This is my friend Pooja, icing the cupcakes. She is unbelievably thin for someone who loves food so much and eats as much too! 

Pizza by the bay

So, J and I wanted to have the traditional Bombay dinner at Pizzeria sitting by tables overlooking Marine Drive. Our timing though was horrible. This section is now shut for renovation. We decided to go ahead and sit inside what was formerly Jazz by the Bay, but has now been renamed (repositioned?) as Pizza by the Bay.

I haven't been there before, so I can't write a before after piece. The interiors were white and blue and the place had a distinct corporate air. Such places tend to scare me, but with the thought of pizzas we moved on. We found a table for two.

A not here about the tables which seat two, they are rectangular and not square one would be used to and the length is longer than the breadth. So J and I had to sit at the far ends. After a few minutes he got up and moved closer to me (we were sitting on adjacent sides now). The staff promptly moved his plate and cutlery. (+1 to the service)

The menu according to BPB (Brown Paper Bag, no? Go to their website now!) hasn't changed much. I was ultra excited to see the Pizza Pot Pie section. Fellow TLC viewers would have seen the segment in Best Food Ever where they cover a Chicago joint which offers the best Pot Pies. Having seen the episode often, I have dreamt of having the pie.

But before I get to the mains I'll get to the starters. In true J and S fashion, we ordered Garlicky Potatoes (so I forgot what it was called but it is the usual spicy garlic potatoes.)

The serving was more than this, ok? We ate some before J reminded me about pictures. So they were chunky wedges which actually had grated garlic in the batter. It was yum and garlicky but I had to add a little salt on mine. The mayo alongside was nice according to J. The tomatoes with herbed perfectly and weren't limp. 

We next had the rissoto with parmesan, eggplant and zucchini. It was one of the first rissotos I had had which wasn't overtly drowning in sauce. The parmesan flavour was strong. I loved it. The zucchini and eggplant well done. It was so yum. Sigh!

Now the Pizza Pot Pie. It was served in the same manner as TLC (yay!). Excitement mounted. As we tried to cut a chunk we found a watery mess running out. We soldiered on. But well.. it was quite disappointing. It was called Great Balls of Fire.It wasn't spicy and the balls (chicken meatballs) weren't properly cooked. I think the watery mess was due to baking it with the tomatoes. I wonder why they had to add them if they already had tomato pesto in it. Anyhow it was a big disappointment. 

The food overall was great. The service better. I hope all the pot pies aren't like the one I had. 

Buttercupp Bakery

Ahmedabad is a nice city. Great infrastructure, nice places to eat, shop but it has one deficiency (apart from the lack of alcohol), this place doesn't have a nice cupcake place.

Forget a dedicated cupcake shop, not even one bakery that did cupcakes. Coming from Bombay with the convenience of Theobroma, Candies, 210's and Butterfly; this Gujju land was devoid of any cupcake happiness.

Till about two weeks ago.

Buttercupp: A Cupcake Shoppe was started by Amar and his wife. They flew down from the US to start this place. Not professional bakers, them, the wife (sorry, I didn't get her name) has done a baking course here and there but is an engineer by profession.

So, we (J and I) entered this place at 5 pm, and saw this:

Empty shelves, but you can see the Banana cupcake, can't you? Say hi!

empty shelves. 

Panicked we ordered 1 each of everything we saw; red velvet, oreo and banana bread. On enquiry we found that lemon cupcakes were on their way out and there was one last double chocolate dip. We ordered those as well. 

Lemony Love

So here goes,

Red velvet: the cake tastes nice. Though it could have been a nit more moist for me. The icing was nice, but it could have tasted more of cream cheese. 

Oreo: No one can ever go wrong with oreo. 

Banana Bread: Aah! These stole the show. Gorgeously moist, with the slight banana flavoured icing and the caramelised banana on top. *Sigh!* We had two of these. (It is nice how much J indulges me when it comes to food). 

Double Chocolate Dip: Oh so moist! our teeth go right through. With a light chocolate butter cream frosting, this on was chocolate heaven. 

Lemon: J and I love lemon. And it is so easy to go wrong with it. But this one was perfect. Not overtly sweet or lemony. 

The empty wrappers. Phone calls went unattended as we sat in silence for a minute savouring the  last crumbs. 

We ate six cupcakes while we were there. Took ten back to campus. Apparently, if you eat as much as we do, they throw in a lemon cupcake and also give u a discount.

So dear Ahmedawadis. Go there. Please! Go early. Call before you go, Amar will save some for you.

The cupcakes here vanish before you can say, "Wow!". Around 20 people would have walked in the 30 minutes we were there. They were met with empty shelves, but wait, no one goes back empty handed (or stomached). They make sure you get to have something or the other.

Here they are on Facebook show them some love.