Purplesque

Coffee colored memories

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:01:03 -0700

American coffee was the biggest culture shock we had on our first visit to the US. I almost gagged at my first sip of the Starbucks Roast. This was not coffee. Where was the milk? The sugar? The sweet stickiness that was supposed to coat the back of your throat?

Coffee, desi style

Several packets of Equal and half-n-half later, we ended up discarding the coffee.

These days, I drink several cups of black hospital coffee to get through the day. But at home, the old cravings tend to come back.

Indian style whipped coffee

- 4 tbsp sugar
- 2 1/2 tbsp instant coffee (yes, I know)
- a few tbsp water
- 3 cups milk (or an equal mixture of milk and water)
- A sprinkling of drinking chocolate

- In a small glass or metal bowl, mix together the sugar and coffee.

- Now with a spoon, add a few drops of water at a time, until you have a paste of toothpaste consistency. Tilting the bowl, start beating this paste with the spoon. It will change color as you beat it, becoming lighter and increasing in volume. When it starts feeling tight, add another few drops of water.

- After ten minutes of wrist and elbow exercise, you'll end with the whipped cream seen above. (If you've ever beaten butter and sugar for a cake, you know what I'm talking about.)

- Boil the milk. Add a generous tbsp(or more) of the cream into a mug, and pour the boiling milk from a distance into the mug. Gently stir with your spoon until the cream is dissolved. A fine foam will rise to the top. Sprinkle with drinking chocolate if you like. Share with loved ones.

Whipped! CLICK July 2008

The picture above goes to CLICK July 2008. This month's theme is Coffee and Tea. I'm super-excited because they asked me to be one of the judges for this month's event...makes me feel all grown-up and important. :)

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Weeknight dinner- Curd Rice

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:34:03 -0700

With microwave semolina idlis and coconut cilantro chutney.

The hardest part of this recipe was mashing my perfectly cooked, long, separate grains of fragrant Basmati rice into the creamy mush that is curd rice. [That's conditioning for you.] The mashing is important to give it the creamy texture, though, and for a proper melding of flavors.

White rice, yellow idlis, green chutney

Curd Rice (recipe adapted from here)

- 1 cup raw rice (medium grain is good)
- 2 cups water
- 1 cup milk
- 1 cup sour plain yogurt ( Activia plain yogurt comes closest to homemade.)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- a pinch asfoetida (optional)
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 1 tbsp ginger green chilli paste
- a few curry leaves (I used dried ones that my mother mailed from her kitchen garden in India.)
- 1 tbsp chopped cilantro
- a handful of seedless grapes, or pomegranate arils, or fresh cherries

- In a saucepan, soak the rice in the water for 20-30 minutes.
- Place the saucepan on high heat and bring to a boil, covered. Then lower the heat and simmer until all the water is absorbed. Keep the lid on as much as you can.
- Turn off the heat, and add the salt and the milk to the rice, stirring and mashing the rice with the back of your spoon. The rice will absorb most of the liquid. Cover, and let it cool.
- Once cooled to room temperature, add the yogurt and mix it in.
- Heat the oil in a small skillet.
- Add the asfoetida and the mustard seeds. Let em pop.
- Add the curry leaves and the ginger green chilli paste. Saute for a minute.
- Add this tempering to the rice along with the fruit and the cilantro. Mix well.
- Chill in the fridge for half an hour.

Serve with your favorite hot pickle.

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The debate

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:11:46 -0700

To move or not

Pros of current apartment:
- Brand new - and spanking clean
- Big, beautiful, white kitchen, with new appliances (you know how I love to cook)
- Attached baths to both bedrooms (A and I have separate bathrooms!)
- Walking distance to library and current place of work

Cons of current apartment:
- Small closets
- No cross ventilation
- No patio
- No place to grow plants/herbs (This really sucks- fresh herbs are expensive!)
- No view (But I do get to hear church bells)
- Isolated- no like-minded people

Pros of proposed apartment:
- Bigger, more spacious (Giant closets, cathedral ceiling)
- Extra room for a study
- Patio with a great view and a small vegetable bed (for growing herbs! and tomatoes!)
- Walking distance to future place of work
- Plenty of friendly neighbors
- Greener (Lots of beautiful trees/trails for walking/biking)

Cons of proposed apartment:
- Small, dingy kitchen (No, it can't be fixed)
- Old apartment, old appliances (and old carpet)
- One and a half unattached baths

If you actually read through the list, its only fair to give me your opinion. :)

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The city at night- Photo Quest # 20

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:37:37 -0700

I've been wanting to do this ever since we moved here.

Street corner

Night Life

The life-line

To your right is the riverfront park with an amphitheatre that seats 2500. To your left is the Amtrak station. A double-click on the picture will reveal the second bridge up front on the river. And I'm standing right behind you. :)

The river picture is my entry for Photo Quest #20. Welcome back, WPG!

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Broccoli polenta with pesto

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:08:43 -0700

The first time I tried polenta, it was out of those supermarket tube shaped packages, disappointingly bland, barely rescued by our spicy marinara. This killer homegrown version is a different ~~animal~~ grain altogether, rendering the accompanying pesto superfluous.

Broiled polenta cakes

Broccoli Polenta cakes (recipe adapted from the smashing Veganomicon)

- 1 cup stone ground coarse polenta
- 3 and 1/2 cups water
- salt and fresh black pepper to taste
- 1 cup broccoli, chopped fine ( I used frozen)
- 2 oz Queso Fresco

- Bring the water to boil in a heavy saucepan. Slowly pour in the polenta, stirring constantly with a whisk.
- Add the broccoli, salt and pepper.
- Lower the heat to a simmer and keep stirring for 10-15 minutes until it thickens to creamy pudding consistency. (Be careful of hot splatters.)
- Cover and turn off the heat. Let it rest for ten minutes, until it is thick enough to be picked up on a flat spatula.
- Pour the polenta into greased muffin pans and cool. (Silicone pans are perfect for this..don't even need greasing.)
- Once cooled, turn over on a foil-lined baking sheet, crumble half the queso on top and place under the broiler until the cheese turns golden.

Sun-dried tomato cilantro pesto

- 1/2 cup sundried tomatoes
- 1 cup boiling water
- 1/4 cup almonds, ground
- 1/2 cup cilantro, packed
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- salt and pepper to taste

- Soak the tomatoes in boiling water for ten minutes. Then, grind everything together in a food processor or blender.

Serve the polenta over the pesto, with roasted vegetables on the side, and more crumbled queso for garnish. I broiled a couple of zucchinis, tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano and vinegar, on the same tray with the polenta.

Polenta with pesto and broiled zucchini

* Omit the queso for a vegan version.
* Serves 4. Per serving about 250 calories.

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The Big Read

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:34:33 -0700

( I am exceeding my rule of one post a day, but I can't believe I missed this! Doh.)

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”

1) Bold: I have read.
2) Underline: Books I love.
3) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Phillip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 The Complete works of Shakespeare (Tried, and failed. Maybe its time to try again.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune- Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town like Alice- Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet- William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Is Hamlet not included in the complete works of Shakespeare?

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What happened last night

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:56:16 -0700

What happened last night

From here. Can you believe that this was the last thing I stumbled upon? It was so on-the-spot I decided to go to sleep. :)

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Sweet semolina pudding

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:02:30 -0700

Okay, so I really shouldn't have. We were both craving dessert, and I couldn't help but remember the Gorgeous wheat pudding recipe the folks at my favorite food blog had posted recently. Wheat flour pudding, aka aate ka halwa, was a Sunday breakfast staple in our house. Pretty much every household in India has a variation on this pudding..using wheat flour, gram flour, mung flour, or semolina. We made the semolina version tonight, which is a popular temple prasadam, served to God and people alike.

Sooji ka halwa

1/4 cup unsalted butter (or ghee/clarified butter, for a more authentic version)
1 cup semolina (or cream of wheat)
1/4 cup almonds, coarsely chopped (use peeled ones if you like, or use golden raisins)
1 cup raw cane sugar
2 cups hot water
2 green cardamom pods, powdered

- Heat the butter in a heavy metal skillet until it melts completely.
- Add the semolina. Turn the heat to low medium, and stir the semolina constantly, for about ten minutes. This is where you need patience. Stir until it gets really toasty and turns a rich gold brown.
- Add the almonds and stir for another few minutes.
- Gently add the hot water, stirring contantly. The semolina will soak it up in seconds.
- Still stirring, add the sugar and the cardamom. Stir until the sugar melts and the halwa gets a sexy caramel glaze.
- Serve warm.
- Add a scoop of vanilla icecream if you dare.

I think I will lay off Jugalbandi for a few days..the food cravings are killing me! :)

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Vegetarian Cottage Pie with Toast

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:05:38 -0700

Life has been kinda morbid lately. So I dealt with it the usual way..get through the day with minimal possible effort, watch Extreme Cakes on TV, read through a novel, and cook my heart out.

Tempeh Cottage Pie (adpated from the Veganomicon's Tempeh Shepherdess Pie)

Tempeh shepherdess pie

- 8 oz tempeh, cubed
- 2 tbsp tamari/ soy sauce
- 1 cup vegetable stock
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 1/2 tsp red chilli powder
- 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 8 ounces cremini mushrooms, sliced
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- fresh ground pepper
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 1 cup frozen corn
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 tbsp white flour
- cilantro for garnish

For the mashed potatoes:

- 2 pounds Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1 tbsp butter
- salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
- In a skillet, crumble the tempeh into small pieces.
- Add the stock, tamari, fennel seeds, chili powder, and 1 tsp of oil.
- Cover and let boil for about 10 minutes.
- Remove the lid from the tempeh and continue to boil until the most of the liquid has evaporated.
- Drain the tempeh.
- Return the pan to the stove top over medium heat.
- Saute the onions in the remaining olive oil for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for 1 more minute.
- Stir in the tempeh, along with the sliced mushrooms and, thyme and coriander. Cook for about 10 minutes until the mushrooms are juicy.
- Add the flour, and stir until brown. Now add the milk and let it thicken.
- Add the corn and peas, and cook until heated through. Season with salt and pepper.

- In a sauce pan, cover the potatoes with an inch of water to spare and bring to a boil. Boil for about 10 minutes.
- When the potatoes are done, drain the water out.
- Add the milk, butter, salt and pepper to the potatoes, and mash well.

- Place the tempeh filling in a 10x10 inch casserole dish. Spoon the potatoes over the filling.
- Place in the preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes. The potatoes should be slightly golden, if they aren't turn on the broiler for a few minutes.
- Remove from the oven, garnish with cilantro and serve with herb toast.

No-garlic cheese toast

For the toast, I simply broiled thick cut slices from a wheat baguette on one side, then flipped them, brushed them with a mixture of olive oil, basil, rosemary, salt and pepper, sprinkled some Parmesan on top and broiled them again. Delicious with the shepherdess pie.

While I was taking pictures of the food, A came home with these.

Calla Lillies

I feel better already. :)

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Fourth of July breakfast

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:02:03 -0700

Seriously Reduced fat banana muffins with tea.

One, two, three

I used the Post Punk Kitchen's recipe (for banana bread) with some changes, replacing all the oil with apple sauce and halving the sugar. I also replaced half of the all purpose flour with fine-ground durum flour (the chapati flour available in Indian stores.) The muffins turned out very moist, sweet, and all around Delicious.

Dry Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour + 1 cup durum flour (or use 2 cups all purpose flour)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1/4 tsp chai masala ( a combo of cloves and cardamom)

Wet Ingredients:

1/2 cup applesauce (This is in lieu of fat, you can replace some or all with butter/margarine)
2 tbsp molasses
1/4 cup sugar
3 well mashed medium bananas (or two large ones)

What to do:

- Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease a 9 x 4 bread pan or a 12 cup regular sized muffin pan.
- Whisk all the wet ingredients together in a large bowl.
- Sift all the dry ingredients together and add them to the wet.
- Mix with a wooden spoon until just combined. Pour into the greased pan.
- For the muffins, bake for 23-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the muffin comes out clean.
- For bread, bake for 50-60 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Cool for ten minutes.

Eat Me

These are so good..they get all caramelized on the outside, and soft on the inside. The recipe is very play-able. Chocolate chips, nuts, dried fruit, raisins..these are all fair additions. What would I do without vegan baking Goddesses?

* Makes 10 muffins- per muffin, 160 cals, 0.3 gm fat, 36.6 gm carbs, 4 gm protein, 1.8 gm fiber.

Happy Fireworks, folks!!!

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