What happens when you have to leave your city

I have not blogged for almost 3 weeks now. It feels weird. It wasn't intentional, no. I just couldn't help it.

I left Bombay on the 23rd of this month to start my PG at MICA. Before that it was just 2-3 weeks of whirlwind shopping, goodbyes, farewell lunches and dinners and baking.

I have been at MICA for a week now and have had absolutely no time to come online for more than 15 minutes. Our classes haven't started yet, but the orientation keeps us busy.

I baked a lot (thrice) in the 2 weeks before I left, my waistline is proof of that. Here is what I baked.

It was my sister's 17th birthday, so I decided to make something lavish. This cake is called a Rich Dark Chocolate cake. Why? It has 250 grams of dark chocolate in it. This cake means business. It is a round hunk like gouda and has no allusions of being spongy light.

To make it a but more jazzy I slathered the cake with a Cointreau sugar syrup. Which is just equal measures of sugar, water and cointreau. The icing is a white chocolate icing from here. I added 2 tbsps of Cointreau to it too! 

This is what the cake looked like after 10 minutes of being cut. 

I had promised a Khushi that I would bake cupcakes when she visited me, in exchange for a ballet performance. I baked 40 mini cupcakes. The cakes were Devil's Food Cake and the icing a white chocolate butter cream icing. 

Then came my friend's 21st. So I baked yet again, last time before leaving Bombay. This cake was also the Devil's Food Cake generously doused in the Cointreau sugar syrup and topped with a Cointreau butter cream. It was a big hit!

Any icing imperfections can be hid under chocolate shavings. I learnt that when I baked this.

There! That is what I baked. I will post again about what I was fed.

My first meal in Ahmedabad was also great. A yummy Gujju thali.

How have you all been? Any views on mess food? My mess is pretty amazing. 

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! ;)

Happy! Happy!

Yesterday was a fun day! I was to go for my farewell lunch organised by some friends. See the cake below? That was for me! It was a chocolate fudge cake. It was divine and not too sweet, as sometimes fudge cakes can be. It was soft and moist and gorgeous. 

My friend had borrowed my recipe book for it (i know!) and this was the first cake I had ever baked. I trust this book and all it's recipes with all my heart and I am glad it didn't let her down. 

The top view of the cake. The prettyness courtesy, my arty friend. 

There was also paneer chilli and stir fried noodles. Both were amazing. the noodles was simple and mildly garlicky. The paneer was great, soft and spicy.

Another reason for yesterday being a good day was my friend who was vacationing in the US, came back and with her came my new laptop (Nemo. yes we name inanimate objects) and her gift for me, the gorgeous recipe book you see below.

Her choice was great because all the ingredients are easily and cheaply accessible in India. They even suggest substitutes that can be used, which I find very useful because some books can be pretty obstinate that way. 

Oh the pictures in tho book! AAH! They are so pretty and look so delicate with tea china. I have a secret obsession with tea china since we did a cultural paper on Jane Austen and had to display things from her era. My mother produced this gorgeous tea set from the depths of her kitchen attic complete with miniature victorian paintings on it! (In case you are nit picking, I know Jane Austen didn't write about the Victorian Era, but the tea set looked very English). Also one of our favourite professors who looks as delicate as the tea set herself, fell in love with it. 

What keeps you happy these days?

P.S It is my sister's birthday in a week and I will get to try the new book!

List of places to eat in Bombay: Part I

A couple of days ago I started to work on my list of places to eat in Mumbai before I leave for Ahmedabad. Though what I had in mind for the day didn't work out, I went to a couple of places on my friend's lists. 

The first one was Vini's favourite frankie guy. Aga Brother's at Colaba. You know a joint is right for you when you see this sign in their shop. It definitely goes in line with my philosophy of : Eat Hard, Workout Harder. 

It is a nice cozy Parsi joint which serves chaat and other usuals. 

 Do not be fooled by the Tibbs ka stall outside, because this frankie is definitely fatter than the Tibbs ones, which look like they have been dieting. The veg one was nice and tangy with the right amount of masala in it.

We next went over New Kulfi Centre at Chowpatty at bhavna's insistence. Apparently you have not had Kulfi if you haven't had it there.

i managed to get Bhavna and Naqqiya in the frame. 

The have a long menu which had me thoroughly excited. Long menus are bittersweet in my opinion. You have a long list which excites you and then you have to choose one dish and then left to wonder what the others would be like.

We all chose 4 different kulfis, so we got a decent idea as to what was on offer.

Clockwise from top left: mango Kulfi, malai Kulfi, Lychee Kulfi and the NCC special or the dry fruit Kulfi. 

The mango one was nice, but typical mango kulfi like, tasted of alphoso mangoes. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it was in season and there can never be too much of mango.

The Malai one was nice and creamy. the dry fruit was the malai kulfi with well dry fruit in it. the anjeer parts tasted excellent, so the next time you go there do have the anjeer one.

The show stealer was the Lychee Kulfi. Many desserts with lychee in them tend to taste artificially sweet. But this beauty used real and fresh lychees. There were pieces of the actualy fruit in it and it did not overpower your senses. It was subtle and brilliant.

So on the list:
Frankie at Aga Brothers
Lychee Kulfi at Kulfi Centre.

Trek to Prabhalgarh in the Western Ghats

My best friend of 11 years, Paro and I had been for a trek to Kalamati via Prabhalgarh over this weekend. The last trek we went to was last year the Himalayan Expedition to Sarpass organised by YHAI. It was last year we realised how much we loved trekking and the toned legs you get thanks to it, despite the terrible and unavoidable tan. 

Paro and I being our crazy selves

Trekking never gets old. You may have done 53 treks (a guy who was along with us had, without repeating a single one) or none, but the thrill of reaching your goal, the view and the fear that may at times grip you (it caught me this time) will always be there. 

We climbed up that to reach the pinnacle where we had our break fast of Bread, jam and cheese sandwiches.

The best part about being out in the nature is the food. The organisers or your guide will know about these wild fruits and berries you can find along the way and you get to munch on them while trekking. In our case an old man at the small village where we had lunch, gave us all a basket full of these wild berries which were a lot like blue berries. I wanted to bring some home to make a pie or jam, but knew that they would get crushed on the way back. 

Tokri full of wild berries

 Another thing about the food during treks, it always tastes good. We had a simple meal of rice, dal and aloo and barbatti beans ki subzi made by the villagers, which was extremely satisfying.

A picture of the remnants of the food. 

 Another amazing part about treks is, when you come back down it is hard to believe you actually went up to the hill or mountain which forms a part of your picturesque vision. Seriously 13000ft or 2300 ft you can never believe you did it, the only proof are the picutres, dirty clothes, a shoe without it's sole and the sore limbs.

See the two peaks? We up to there. 

So what did you all do during the weekend? And anymore trekkers out there?

21 cupcakes

I love Birthdays and parties. I am the unofficial party planner in my group of friends and also the unofficial baker. A friend of mine recently turned 21 and we celebrate all 21st's as surprises.

I surprised her with 21 cupcakes!

I know I am pretty awesome :p.

I decided to bake marble cupcakes for her using this recipe.

I love the swirly pattern that you can make with this cake.

Usually a marble cake is used as a tea cake and can be quite dry. You can use brown sugar instead of white sugar to add more moistness or just add some tablespoons of maple syrup to the batter to make it soft and moist.

The cake is covered with a chocolate ganache icing.

I find ganache very easy to make. I heated 600 ml of Amul Fresh cream on low heat till it started bubbling on the edges and turned off the heat. Then I added about 400 grams of chopped dark chocolate. I used a mixture of Cadbury Bournville (which is pretty decent) and Trader Joe's dark chocolate. You can vary the proportion of the cream to the chocolate depending on your resources.

the 21 cupcakes

There is also a picture of me with the cupcakes on my About Me Page.

What have you done for your friends on their birthdays?