Basil. Mushroom and Tomato Omlette or egg crepes.

We love eggs. Yes, we are an egg loving Tam Brahm family. I think we will very soon drop the Tam Brahm title because of our non Tam Brahm-ness.

It has been pouring in Bombay this past week and it makes the weather very gloomy and depressing. Stuck home you are left with nothing to do but while away your time in front of your laptop or the Tele. Then a sudden thought drifts into your mind. There are eggs in the fridge and mushrooms. So you jump up and head to the kitchen with a mission. Long forgotten is the humble roti subzi made for lunch. You are now whipping up something awesome, which will forever convert your omlette hating sister, who is now asleep.

One, bite down,she proclaims that this is the best omlette ever. And you modestly agree.

The pictures below were taken when I made the same omlette for breakfast. So here goes.

Ingredients:
3 tomatoes, chopped
5-6 big mushrooms, chopped
Basil (i use dried basil)
4 garlic pods chopped fine
butter or oil for sauteing
4 eggs
salt for seasoning

Chop up the tomatoes real fine. Like this:

Heat oil in a pan and let it become nice and hot.
Add the garlic an let it fry till it become fragrant. You can let it fry till golden, if you like.
Now add the basil and fry till you get that heady aroma of basil and garlic.
Now add the tomatoes and toss.

Did I say toss? Yes, I am a tosser now. I have taken the sage advice of Julia Child and have fearlessly tossed my way through this omlette. I suggest you do the same. And it is better if no one is watching, if you make a boo boo, you can always put it back in the pan.

Then add the chopped mushrooms and toss again.
Let the mixture simmer and cook till the tomatoes have cooked down and the water has evaporated.
You can add the salt now.

Beat your eggs nicely and add some milk if you like.

Heat oil or butter in a pan and pour some egg mixture and twist and turn the pan till it coats the pan evenly. Like this

Let the egg cook till the sides come off the pan.

Place the mushroom and tomato filling on one side very gently. Gently because I made my omlettes thin, so they were in danger of getting torn. Keep the gas on low while doing this, you can take your own sweet time and your omlette won't burn.

Now take a wooden spatula and gently start to lift up the other side. Fold it over the filling very gently.

Slide it onto a plate. Yes, slide not lift with a spatula or you will stand in danger of breaking the precious omlette.

Toast some bread. Butter it, my sister drowns her toast in butter. And enjoy.

You can add cheese to the filling. There wasn't any at home. The cheese will complement the filling and reduce the tartness of the tomatoes. I personally love the tomatoey taste, but you know, just in case you want to indulge and have a great figure.

I think this omlette qualifies to be a crepe. It is too thin to be an omlette and some omlette purists will kill me for this.

It is a great breakfast, lunch, dinner, mid-day snack, mid-night snack any time of the day food.

Enjoy and have a Happy Sunday! 

Here come the rains! Bring out the Bhajiyas.

It is here. The bombay monsoons. Love them, hate them they are an inextricable part of the Bombay experience. If you ever do come here you have experience the lashing wrath of the rain gods.

I dislike the rains. Mostly because it makes travelling very difficult. I had to travel 1.5 hours to reach college from home. As college was on the other side of the city I had no idea how much it was raining there. It could be pouring here and all sunshiny at college. So during monsoons we would get up and frantically call the hostelites and anyone who lived near college to assess the situation.

After all this tamasha too, we would have to bunk college or the government would declare a holiday and many days would be spent at home watching movies, reading, eating soup, bhajiyas and having chai. Or better still days are spent wearing old clothes being soaked to the bone eating roadside samosas which always taste better in the rains.

Now that I have waxed eloquent I will shut up and get it the point. Which is this.

Mirchi stuffed with potato masala bhajiyas. The thing to have this monsoon.

I wont bother with a proper recipe, because there isn't one.

Just mix mashed and boiled potatoes with salt, and red pepper (mirchi) powder and stuff it in the fat green chillies that are easily available these days.

Dip it in a paste of gram flour and deep fry.

Have it with ketchup, mint and coriander chutney or kasundi.

We have ours with kasundi, which is my dad's greatest discovery to date.

Kasundi is a bengali mustard sauce which is amazingly pungent and just yum.

So if you are stuck home this monsoon just have these look out your window. If you are lucky you may see the neighbouring guys playing football in the mud! ;)

Sugar and Spice cookies

Studying for exams is like preparing for an impending doom. Especially when it is the Mumbai University which turns all thinking students into rote-learning answer spewing automatons. So while I study the most boring aspects of finance, I knew I just had spice up my life. 

I had this recipe stashed in my one-note (pure awesome isn't it?) folder since long. I don't know who it is by, if you recognise it drop me a line I will link back to you. 

The recipe called for brown sugar, all the stores nearby happened to run out of it at the same time, so I just substituted with normal caster sugar and added two tablespoons of maple syrup for the wetness provided by the brown sugar. You can also sub maple syrup for honey. I was supposed to use molasses, which I doubt you will get in India, so just use maple syrup or honey instead. 

Recipe for Sugar and Spice cookies, as adapted from the net

Ingredients: 

1 cup caster sugar (or brown sugar)

2 tbsp honey or maple syrup (not needed if using brown sugar)

1/2 cup butter (i used a mixture of unsalted and salted butter)

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

2 cups flour (maida)

2 tsp cinnamon powder

1/2 tsp ground cloves (or nutmeg, I used cloves)

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt (not needed if using salted butter)

Method: 

1. Sift all the dry ingredients except the sugar

2. Beat the butter sugar and vanilla till light and fluffy 

3. beat in the egg till it is creamy

4. Beat in the dry ingredients till combined

5. Refrigerate the cookie dough after covering it for a while before rolling it out on a floured surface and then cutting it

6. Bake in a 180C oven for 15-20 mins or till the bottom of the cookies become golden in colour

Let the cookies cool before you eat them. My home is full or dough eating monsters. Cookie dough is heavenly, but don't eat too much. 

You can also sprinkle the cookies with sugar and cinnamon before baking them. You can easily make around 3 dozen cookies with this recipe. 

The cloves add the right amount of spicy hit which makes this cookie amazing. My finance blues are gone!

Don't let the dull weather get you down, mac 'n' cheese it up!

So, my sister threw a fit yesterday about wanting to eat Mac 'n' Cheese, after watching it on Masterchef USA (more about Masterchef USA later). In India you don't get packaged Mac 'n' Cheese that easily. I know it is available at those high funda hypermarts, but food out of a box hasn't been my thing.

So I made her MnC (it is too long to type) with plain pasta, white sauce and cheese. I added some shredded processed cheese to the white sauce and sprinkled some on top while it was baking and well, it was quite cheesy. Not as cheesy and trans-fat filled as packaged ones but enough for me.

Well, this post is not about the Mac n Cheese, it is about how the weather in Mumbai became sad, dull and over clouded today. Being a summer/spring person, I was put off immediately. So I pulled out the left over MnC and jazzed it up with left over tomato soup (home-made) and blitzed some watermelon to make a pulpy juice and I was set to chow in front of the laptop.

I think soups and pasta make a wonderful combo. If you are in no mood to boil the pasta and make sauce, just dunk pasta in while you make some instant soup (tomato or vegetable cream) and add cheese and some pepper you have your very own cheesy pasta.

This kind-of recipe is meant only for those of you who think any pasta with cheese is good enough.