It has been a month now of baking my own bread and it’s time for a healthy but festive cinnamon raisin bread No more store-bought stuff if I can help it. This means that I have to get myself organised before the day of the baking. I find that early morning is a good time to start because it allows the dough 2 or 3 unhurried proofings, goes into the…
My husband was never interested in cooking. In food, yes but not in how it got on his plate. But he would compensate by making countless cups of tea, an occasional fried egg, doing the dishes and trips to the grocery store, on demand, sometimes for just one or two things. For many years, it continued like this, till he had to live for close to a year in a…
Baking a good loaf of bread, much less a baguette is a challenge at which I’ve failed more than I have succeeded. It is a science, an art and an instinct (I think) that has to be cultivated patiently with hours of practice. It is actually just simple chemistry between flour and yeast but the weather, the quality and consistency of the flour (which varies across brands and countries), the…
Fresh corn on my kitchen counter for making easy muffins triggers off memories from years ago. Standing tall over the hedge, silk glinting in the sun, the cobs perched like trapeze artists tantalised my greedy little hands. I remember our tiny but bountiful kitchen garden keeping its secrets in a corner of our main garden, behind the hedge. But it could never hide the towering corn reaching for the sky,…
Grasses stand tall and cosmos congregate alongside our car, waving summer farewell. On the road, we drive past farm stalls beckoning us with their green roofs and white porches. Crates of avocado, mango and squash conspire with homemade honey and fresh cheese to lure us in. Not surprisingly, I succumb. And loaded up with a couple of golden butternut squash, a boxful of avos and a block of cheese, continue…
Baking is therapy. It cures heartbreak, stress, loneliness, homesickness and many more blue-hued maladies. Like Panadol for your heart, its quick, foolproof and offers deliciousness as a welcome side-effect. Right from choosing a recipe to measuring the ingredients, mixing them, waiting for their transformation in the oven, the satisfaction of beholding and finally tasting the results, is a simple yet effective process that helps lift my sagging spirits whenever I need…
Try avocados and caramelised onions on toast. It’s a little bite of paradise, I promise. It’s a great go-to meal on lazy days when you want a yumminess with minimal effort. Slicing and caramelising the onions is about the only task that takes about 15 minutes (actually you can do the crossword while the onions acquire their golden tan). It’s just oil (any light oil will do), onions and a…
Ripe fruit and the poetry of John Keats – I don’t know when the association began (perhaps while drowning in the pleasure of his sensuous imagery during my literature classes in college in hot and dusty India, as far away from Keats’s England as one could get); but strangely it’s a concept that makes some kind of weird logic in my head. One of the high priests of the Romantic movement, Keats…
Since avos are buttery and rich, I thought why not use them in place of butter in a cake or muffin. Since this was going to be an experiment, I decided to go the whole hog and cut out the sugar and make savoury healthy muffins. To underline the health quotient, I opted for an equal mix of rolled oats and flour. And so having decided my key ingredients, and…
I know this doesn’t look like a cupcake all gloriously puffed and pretty but it is…a cupcake with lots of fruit and the crunch of walnuts. So it’s actually a fruitcake masquerading as a cupcake but it’s moist and so light; almost like a cloud of fruit (not dense and heavy like many fruitcakes can be). It also has very little flour which is there only to give the fruit…