Simple Yogurt Parfait

I am always humbled how at every turn in my life, I have been offered real friendships by amazing people. The kind who’ll call you on your silliness, who’ll listen patiently to your travails & offer you sanity when all around you, things fall apart. The best thing about these friends are that they offer you the chance to be yourself.

The last time I visited one such dear friend, her husband & she offered me the healthiest breakfast, which included an improvised yogurt parfait.

Here’s how I went about trying to recreate her lovely breakfast item using leftover strawberries & oats & bunch of other goodies.

What We Used (for 2):

Rolled Oats* – 1/2 cup

Almonds – 1/4 cup

Sweetened Shredded coconut – 1/4 cup

Cinnamon – 1 tsp

Chopped Strawberries – 1/4 cup

Honey – a little less than 1/4 cup

Water – as needed

Yogurt – 1 cup

Pure Vanilla extract – 1/2 tsp

Sugar – 1 tsp (optional)

Sliced Peaches* – as needed

Baking Sheet, small saucepan, small bowl – 1 each

How We Did It:

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Spread oats, almonds, shredded coconut & cinnamon on a baking sheet. Toast for about 15-20 minutes or till the mixture turns golden brown.

• In a small saucepan over medium flame, stir together the strawberries, honey and a tiny bit of water for about five minutes.
• In a small bowl, stir well the yogurt, vanilla extract and sugar.
• In a bowl (I used an ice cream serving bowl), spoon the strawberry confection, smooth & spoon the oat mixture, smooth surface and spoon the yogurt combination on top. Top with sliced peaches.

Note:

*The best kind of oats to use are rolled oats. Cook’s Thesaurus has a clear little explanation of the difference between rolled oats & quick oats. If you have no rolled oats, I have seen others use cornflakes, which are sadly, less healthy than the oats. I am thinking you can skip the toasting if you are using cornflakes or any other kind of cereal.
*You can also use any kind of fruit you wish for the topping. And you can even add more sugar if you like your parfaits sweeter. I have also seen recipes where the layers are repeated, so you have a taller parfait. In the end, it all depends on you & your’s personal taste.

Spinach & spiced Mozzarella stuffed Tomatoes

Stuffed tomatoes are such an easy addition to any meal. We had ours with an assortment of lovely food for our lazy weekend breakfast.

This post is dedicated to my parents who came, shopped and equipped. They thought of everything our kitchen would possibly want from mandolin slicers to gigantic stock pots & so calmly organized the pantry that I didn’t need to do anything but use it after they were gone. Thanks to them, we have a whole array of spice jars, spices & other what nots that we use to create all sorts of flavor for our dishes.

What We Used (for two):

Roma Tomatoes – 4

Chopped shallots – 2 shallots

Chopped green chillies – 2 small ones

Chopped Spinach – 1/2 cup

Chopped bean sprouts – 1/8 cup

Garlic & Ginger paste – 1/4 tsp each

Salt & Pepper – to taste

Mozzarella Cheese – 1/4 cup

Curry Powder – 2 tsps

Dried basil – a pinch

Olive Oil

Frying pan, greased baking dish, small bowl – 1 each

Melon Baller – 1

How We Did It:

• Slice and keep aside the top of the stem end of the rinsed tomatoes. Core tomatoes using a melon baller. Chop and reserve the core.

• Heat oil in the frying pan. Saute the shallots. When they turn translucent, stir in the chopped tomato cores, green chillies, spinach, bean sprouts, ginger & garlic paste with salt & pepper.
• Once the spinach has wilted, take off heat and put aside.
• In a small bowl, mix the mozzarella cheese with curry powder and dried basil. I wanted a hint of spice in the cheese and stopped at little less than 2 tsps of curry powder. If you like more of spice taste, as always, adjust accordingly.
• Preheat oven to 375 °F.
• In a greased baking dish, add a little salt & pepper to the inside of the tomatoes and rub olive oil on the outside of the tomatoes. (If you wish for the tomatoes to stay upright, cut off a v. thin slice off the bottom of the tomatoes)
• Place reserved stuffing of spinach and veggies in to the tomatoes. Top with mozzarella cheese.

• Bake for 15 minutes or till the cheese on top has melted.

<

Almond Hummus

Hummus is among the top five items that I routinely crave & get very nostalgic for. To say it was prevalent in the countries I grew up in, would be an understatement. No, it was more like ubiquitous. Every street corner, every big or small restaurant in the Middle East had the shawarama stand with its towering spit of meat roasting for hours, along with the gorgeous dense chickpea mixture that is a hummus.

Trying to make a shawarma was out of bounds for our kitchen & our skills. But hummus could be very easily taken care of. So easy it was, that we made two versions of it. One a slightly unorthodox version, made from almonds & the traditional other made from chickpeas. The almond hummus turned out to be the fan favorite so here’s the recipe for it, with modifications & thanks from drBenKim’s website.

What We Used:

Almonds – 2 cups (soaked for 12 hours, then rinsed)

Tahini – 2/3 cup
(If you have tahini, a paste made from ground sesame seeds, that’s fantastic. I didn’t have any and chowhound suggested substituting with sesame oil. Which I did, for I trust the foodies at chowhound most implicitly. If you are using sesame oil, use about 1/4 cup)

Water – 1 1/2 cup
(My suggestion is to add 1/2 cup first and then keep adding the water as you blend, till you reach your desired consistency)

Sliced Garlic – 3 cloves
(because I like me some garlic, but you are not a fan, use 2, as the original recipe suggests)

Juice of small lemons – 2

Sea salt – 1/2 tsp

Chopped fresh cilantro – 1/2 cup

Cummin Powder – 1/4 tsp

Coriander Powder – a pinch

Blender

How We Did It:

• Place all ingredients in a blender and puree. Yes, it’s really that simple!
• Serve with pita bread, chips, crackers or toasted bread.

Our Verdict:
These are milder than traditional ones made from chickpeas. And one of our guests said it was more cooling, which I kind of understand but also wonder if that was so only in comparison with the chickpea one. I guess tasting and adjusting for spices while you blend would be good, if you are not into mild flavours.

Basic Turkey wraps with Mint & date dip

Ok.
These did not come out as originally planned. It started life as a Turkey Kathi roll with Mint dip, via Padma Lakshmi – her of the Salman Rushdie, Top Chef fame – through my source of all things gastronomical, the Food & Wine website. Mishaps, however, occurred along the way, from tortillas failing to behave when I folded them to my soul shirking from frying them. I had to admit defeat & accept what the recipe really wanted to be – a basic Turkey wrap.

The metamorphosis irked me at first. I am usually fairly successful in creating from F & W. But after I accepted the wayward recipe, I found the results quite mouthwateringly healthy with sprouts, basil & pomegranate powder in them. They were a little unwieldy to hold but if you eat them as soon & as fast as you can, you’ll be alright!

What We Used for the Turkey Wraps

Ground Turkey – 1 lb

Garlic Paste – 1 tsp

Ginger Paste – 1 tsp

Finely diced onions – 1/4 of an onion

Chopped sprouts – 1/2 cup

Finely diced habanero chili – 1/2 a habanero (You can substitute small green chilies for the habanero, but since the habanero is way more hot, substitute two for 1/2 a habanero)

Finely chopped basil – about 1/2 cup

Madras Curry Powder – 1/2 tsp

Pomegranate Powder – 1/2 tsp

Salt & Pepper – to taste

Oil

Frying Pan – 1

How We Did It:

• Heat oil in a pan.
• Add onions, sprouts, garlic paste, ginger paste and salt.
• Once the onions wilt, add the habanero and basil.

• After a couple of minutes, add the ground turkey, madras curry powder, pomegranate powder, pepper and fry (The curry powder gives it a savory flavour, whereas the pomegranate powder gives it a bit of a tangy taste).
• Once the turkey is browned, add to tortillas, wrap & cut in half.

What We Used for the Mint Dip

Mint – 1 cup

Chopped Dates – 3 (Prunes can be substituted for dates, if you are out)

Red Rooster (Siracha) Sauce – 1/2 tsp (or according to taste)

Fresh squeezed lemon juice – 2 tbsps

Water – 2 tbsps

Salt – according to taste

Blender

How We Did It:

• Place all ingredients in a blender and puree till smooth. Once smooth, check for salt & season accordingly. Spoon dip on to the wrap and eat away .

We had ours with lemon tea over a beautifully cool evening. Enjoy!!!

Tiny fish Fritters

We found these at the local fish market – these tiny fish whose name in English we are unaware of (incidentally if any of you do know the name, please enlighten ).

The boy believes this is what his people call kaski mas & google says this maybe what the Italians call Bagiggi. And I definitely know my grandmom dries or fries them at our place.

Either way, we had fun making fritters out of these tiny little things.

What We Used:

Tiny fish – 1/2 lbs

Finely diced onions – 1/2 an onion

Finely diced garlic – 4 cloves

Finely diced ginger – 1/4 tsp

Finely diced green chilli – 3 small ones

Red Chilli Powder – 1/2 tsp

Turmeric Powder – 1/2 tsp

Salt & Powder – according to taste

Flour – 1/2 a cup or enough to cover the entire fish

Corn starch – 1 tsp

Lemon – 1

Olive Oil

Knife

Mixing bowl

Frying Pan

Cutting Board

How We Did It:

1. Place the entire batch of fish on a cutting board and chop roughly. The idea is to cut the fish into smaller pieces so that they can be mixed and fried easier.
2. Heat the olive oil in the frying pan over medium heat (pour just enough oil to cover the surface of the frying pan as we aren’t going for deep fried fritters).
3. In the bowl, combine all the ingredients. Adjust the flour to ensure that everything sticks well together.
4. Once the oil has heated, drop by spoonfuls on to the pan.
5. Flip to the other side and let cool over a paper towel covered plate.
6. We squeezed a bit of lemon over it and enjoyed it for an afternoon snack.

Our Suggestion:

Use minimal spices, fry an individual fritter first, eat to see if the spice combination is to your taste & adjust accordingly. We had finished making a whole batch till it dawned on us that there wasn’t enough salt .

Dragon Fruit Salsa

I have been tip-toeing around a certain fiery looking fruit at the Farmer’s Market – curious as to what is inside and yet a bit wary of what to do with what I find inside.

A jaunt around the internet, an email to M.L later and I had come across a recipe for Dragon Fruit salsa.

Here’s our version:

What We Used:

Dragon Fruit – 1

Chopped onion – Quarter of an onion

Chopped cilantro – a handful

Chopped Jalapeño Pepper – 1

Chopped Tomato – a quarter

Salt – to taste

Pepper – to taste

Lime – a squeeze

How We Did It:

• Cut the dragon fruit in half, like below:
  

• Scoop out the flesh, using a spoon
• Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl and mix.

Almost all the recipes we found suggested using the salsa over fish, but we used it with our chips and didn’t find anything amiss.

Our Verdict:

We couldn’t assign a discernible taste to dragon fruit. But what makes it interesting to eat is the lovely texture – soft flesh pitted with minuscule crunchy seeds, whose neutral flavor gets along amiably with the other ingredients of the salsa.

Enjoy!

Lahmacun

Once, a time ago, I was on a stopover in Turkey and the beautiful hotel I stayed at had the most amazing display of bread like food, ranging from the v.dense to light, fluffy, airy ones; with different textures and garnishes. My favorite among the display was Lahmacun, which technically is not bread but what my beautiful friend LS calls the ‘turkish pizza’.

It had been a difficult flight, with yet another long one after; and the hotel & it’s wonderful simple food restored me & my spirits. So much so that even now, the smell of Lahmacun with a drizzle of lemon on it makes me smile so.

Here is my attempt to recreate that wonderful dish. This simple recipe comes to you, courtesy of Zeyda Üstün at the Mymerhaba website.

Serving: Two

What We Used:

For the Dough

Flour – 2 cups
Salt – 1/8 tbsp

Vegetable Oil – 2 tsps

Water

For the Topping
Minced Turkey – 1/8 pound

Diced Onions – 1/2 an onion

Diced Tomatoes – 1/2 a tomato

Tomato paste – 1 tbsp

Diced Yellow Pepper – 1/4

Diced Eggplant – just a spoonful

Garlic Paste – 1/4 tsp

Chopped Parsley – a handful

Chopped Cilantro – a handful

Salt & Pepper – to taste

Lemon – for drizzling

How We Did It:

• Mix & knead the ingredients for the dough together. Roll out till it is very thin.
• Mix the ingredients for the topping together.
• Add toppings to the dough (I placed vegggie toppings on one half and veggie / non-veg toppings on the other half – just for variety).

• Bake in a 450 ºF for 10 – 12 minutes.
• Drizzle lemon on it and enjoy with a bowl of yogurt.

Edited to add: Mine doesn’t look exactly like the ones you get in Turkey because (after much fretting) I realized I forgot to add the tomato paste to my recipe (it was yum nonetheless).

Strawberry Jam

We got some fresh strawberries from the farmer’s market the other day and I forgot all about them – shameful of me, I know. And then the chic gods at The Kitchen smiled on me and said – a little on the overripe side to eat? Make jam, mortal!

Ok – my strawberries were not in the least bit as moldy or squishy as those ones but I was intrigued.

Could I really be Martha Stewart about it and make strawberry jam?

Apparently I could – because making jam is ridiculously simple! Ridiculously simple, I tell you.

What is a bit on the ‘got to be careful & really listen to instructions’ side is the preserving bit. You have to make sure that your jam jar has been processed in a water bath – clean the jar, place in boiling water for about 15 minutes or so, dip your tongs in the boiling water for a couple of minutes, use sterilized tongs to remove jars and place them upside down on uber clean kitchen towel and let dry. I did do all of above just to see how long or tedious it would be (and it wasn’t long or tedious) but I was only going to make quantities that would last me a week or so. If you are making jam to last longer, do read Ina Garten’s excellently simple instructions on sterilizing jars. I used a variation of her recipe to make my simple jam.

What We Used:

Hulled Strawberries (see picture below) – 1/2 pound

Sugar – a little more than 1/2 cup (I don’t like my jam too sweet, but if you like it real sweet, go ahead and add a cup)

Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice – 1/2 tbsp

Bowl – 1

Heavy bottom pan – 1

Wooden spoon or potato smasher – 1

Cold Plate kept in the freezer for a couple of minutes – 1

How We Did It:

1. Mash strawberries in the bowl using your tool of choice.
2. Transfer mashed strawberries, sugar, lemon juice to the heavy bottom pan.
3. Stir over low heat till the sugar has dissolved. Continue cooking and stirring on low heat till the mixture starts boiling (about 10 minutes).
4. Test to see if it has jelled by spooning small amount on to the cold plate. Let cool by placing in the fridge for a couple of minutes. Tilt plate. If your jam has jelled, it will not run off the plate. [Info, courtesy Bon Appetite].
5. Once you are done, transfer to sterile jars and seal, if preserving for longer periods. If you are planing to use it in the next week or so, transfer to sterile jars and refrigerate. Enjoy!!!

Spicy Nut Mix

I don’t remember where I first saw a recipe for a spicy nut mix but I am so glad I did. We’ve experimented with the  idea and finally, have an easy 20 minute recipe that will give you tons of delectable spicy nuts that you can store away for snack times, tea times or beer times.

What We Used:

Cashew Nuts – 2 cups

Peanuts – 2 cups

Sunflower Seeds – 1 cup

Almonds – 1 cup

Walnuts – 1/2 cup

Canned Chick Peas (Garbonza Beans) – 1/2 cup

(You don’t necessarily have to add this but I had half a cup left over in the fridge, so in it went. If you prefer or do not prefer one nut over the other, you can add/subtract them from the recipe or even just add little or less of it – this recipe is that flexible )

Fried Vermicelli (semiya) – 1 cup

Raisins – 1/2 cup

Oil

Egg white – 1

Ground Cumin Powder – 2 tsps

Ground Coriander Powder – 2 tsps

Chili Powder – 1 1/2 tsps

Garam Masala – 2 tsps

Turmeric Powder – 1/2 tsp

Ground cinnamon Powder – 1 tsp

Salt & Pepper – according to taste

How We Did It:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the egg white till frothy, add the spices (cumin, coriander, chili, cinnamon, garam masala, turmeric, salt & pepper) and mix well.
3. Add the nuts, sunflower seeds, chick peas and fried vermicelli to the bowl. Mix well, till everything is evenly coated by spice mixture.
4. Spray a roasting pan with oil, and spread the spiced nuts/chick pea mix in it.
5. Bake in oven, stirring every 5 minutes or so, for 15 minutes till the nuts are toasted.
6. Add raisins, mix and enjoy! I don’t usually enjoy the taste of raisins, but when you are eating this slightly spicy mix, it is nice to get a little sweet surprise in the form of a raisin now and then!

Baked Beans on Toast

What do you do when you’ve just come out of a long overdue conference call with your girls from far away, and are buzzed with glee because you’ve stayed connected despite the years? You celebrate with a quick snack that reminds you of the times you were young and together

Ok, granted Baked Beans on Toast was not the usual fare of my childhood, but I grew up on tales of the impish Darrell at Malory Towers and the mysterious doings of Ms. Christie. And because I read so v. much, nothing reminds me more of my childhood than British food served in my books.

So, Baked beans on toast it was! This is such a ridiculously simple recipe, that I blush at putting it up on the blog :

What We Used:

Mustard oil – 1 tbsp

Canned Black beans – 1/2 Cup (but really you can use any kind of beans here)
Chopped Onion – 1

Finely Chopped Green Beans – 5 (I cheated and boiled this for a little bit first)
Finely chopped Red Chilli – 1
Finely chopped Red Bell Pepper – 1/4
Grated Mozzarella cheese – 1 tbsp (optional)
Coriander Powder – 1 tbsp (optional)

Sliced bread – 1

Frying Pan – 1

How We Did It:

1. Heat the mustard oil in the frying pan on medium flame. You could use any kind of oil, I use mustard oil because I like the strong, somewhat spicy taste of it
2. Fry the chopped onions and green chili till onions turn light brown
3. Add the green beans, red bell pepper and fry till veggies are soft
4. Now add the baked beans and salt. I like the earthy taste of coriander, so I sprinkle a bit on to the dish at this point
5. While this cooks for a couple of minutes, toast your bread
6. Spoon beans mixture on to toasted bread
7. You can sprinkle some mozzarella cheese on top of this and you are all done