Boozy Bakes: Chocolate and Orange Liqueur Cake

Some people are excellent gifters. They know just what gifts make you squeal with delight. My fairy Godmother (yes, I have one) recently gifted me a fine bottle of locally made orange liqueur. After looking at this magical potion for a few days I decided to crack it open and bake with it.

Now I know people say that when baking one must follow a recipe. But (maybe it was the couple of swigs I had taken) I was determined to do my own thing. So after much deliberation I wrote down a recipe I thought would work. I must admit I felt like a bit of a mad scientist or a witch concocting a brew. (I even cackled for dramatic effect as I stirred in saffron spirit! You can get away with such things when you’re alone at home). Anyway, for a wonder my formula worked, and I’ve been enjoying a dark, moist, fluffy, boozy chocolate cake ever since.

Here’s my recipe for a Chocolate & Orange Liqueur Cake

Begin by sifting together the dry ingredients in Bowl 1. Then using a whisk beat the wet ingredients in Bowl 2. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones little by little and keep whisking, making sure there are no lumps. You’ll get a smooth runny batter, with a heady lusty aroma that could make even nun blush. Pour this vile sinful liquid into a greased and lined baking tin and pop it in the oven before you give into temptation and consume it raw. Bake for about 30 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.

*NB: You can increase the sugar by about 20gms if you want a sweeter cake and vary the amount of liqueur you add, I’ve used enough to give you boozy breathe. To make buttermilk just squeeze half a lemon in 100ml milk at room temperature. You can use vegetable oil instead of rice bran oil.

Woodside wishes you a Happy Brunch!

Everyone loves Woodside All Day Bar and Eatery. No really, everyone does. I’ve never met anyone who has had one bad thing to say about the place. Now this friendly neighbourhood bar just got friendlier. They’ve introduced a Sunday brunch; which is just what the area needs – eggs to order, a salad bar, pancakes, a selection of house made breads and dips, burgers straight off the grill (they make a mean ground beef burger) and thin crust pizzas. And if are still hungry after all of that, you can stock up on their hearty pasta, risotto or gnocchi mains. You can choose to eat your fill at just Rs.850. However, I recommend you indulge in their refreshing mojitos or sangrias! (The Grape Mojito is my pick). Brunch with drinks will cost you Rs.1250. A pretty neat deal!

I’ll be honest, the food is not extraordinary and pales in comparison to their monthly specials menu, which is always spot on. However, the great selection of music, courteous staff and well mixed cocktails create a shiny, happy atmosphere perfect for a summers afternoon with friends. Quite aptly it’s called the ‘Happy Brunch’!

10 Course Japanese Tasting Menu at Aoi from Gourmet it up

I may have mentioned this before; I absolutely love set menus, tasting menus in particular. I enjoy being able to comfortably sink into a chair in a pair of pants that’s kind to my belly, feet freed from the clutches of shoes while little portions of delicately plated food float my way. This, is my idea of luxury.

The promise of such luxury lead me to Aoi. Gourmet it up offers an interesting selection of culinary experiences at some of Mumbai’s finest restaurants. I was drawn to this one right away; for years now I’ve been tangled in a love affair with sea weed, udon noodles, sticky rice and other offerings from the mysterious island of Japan. I must say, my every fancy was indulged during this exquisite 10 course meal. It was the best meal I’ve had in a long long time.

Describing each course to you would be like giving you an unwrapped gift or revealing the end of a suspense novel before you’ve read it. I will not deny you this joy. I will however hint at what you should expect, which will hopefully leave you wanting more. The soup is built of a perfectly balanced broth, which brings together all the beautiful bits that float within it. The salad is a surprising mix of flavours and textures, that brightens the palette and wakes you up! I can say without a doubt that their tempura was the best I’ve ever had in the city. The soba noodles are uplifted by beautiful bits of candied ginger. The sushi is impeccably crafted. The viscous sweet curry lavishly coats the sticky rice, which along with crisp bits of vegetable and tender chicken come together to make a perfect bite. The tempura banana dessert is just the right amount of sweet, just the right amount of crunchy and just the right amount of mushy. In a word, perfect.

Every course was memorable by itself. Each was dish special and not a single one seemed like it had just been thrown in as an afterthought. It is reassuring to know that such impeccably planned and flawlessly executive food can be found in a sea of mediocrity that is often glorified in our city.

All this from an unassuming little eatery, on a cramped Bandra street corner. I didn’t mind that the place was small; I felt like I was sitting inside a bento box! I’ve already planned a second visit. I highly recommend this 10 course Japanese tasting menu. It’s extremely well priced at an affordable Rs.890 per head. Here’s a link to the details on the Gourmet It Up website.

*I must also mention I sampled both the vegetarian and non vegetarian menus. Unlike what is the norm, the non vegetarian meal does not outshine the vegetarian one. Both are equally good.

Not a bear’s breakfast

I’m an advocate of sensory pleasure, so it seems hypocritical when I speak of avoiding sugar, butter and refined flours; because let’s face it those ingredients come together to become some of the yummiest food there is. I’ve been on a mission – #minus5, trying to lose 5 kilograms of chubbiness that has slowly crept up on me over the last two years. I’ve been doing the tried and tested reduction of refined sugars, fatty oils and down-sizing portions to aid my effort. I don’t have a problem following these rules, I’m head-strong and stubborn as a mule.

The only time I crave a big greasy meal is in the morning. I usually work out in the evening, and eat a light dinner, which means I wake up like a bear who’s just out of hibernation; salivating, growling and in pursuit of meat. I love warm Indian breakfasts like dosas, poha and idlis, eggs, pancakes, french toast, sausages etc. What I can’t stand is cereal. Most days I ask my taste buds to take a hike and down that awful bowl of muesli. A few days ago I just couldn’t.

I decided to please my senses a bit and rummaged in the kitchen to find dahi, a few marie light biscuits, almonds, bananas and strawberries. There’s been so much talk of layered desserts, desserts in jars etc., I decided to give this layering business a try.

Layer 1 – groundbiscuits

Layer 2 – hung curd & banana mash mixture

Layer 3 – strawberries

Layer 4 – strawberry slices topped with chopped almonds and a small squeeze of honey

This is no bear’s breakfast, but what to do? Bear’s on a diet.

Spaghetti Rosso : a bright beetroot sauce

Sage and Beetroot Sauce

This blushing sauce has become one my favourites, and I find myself making it about once a week. Beetroot is an extremely nutritious vegetable and personally, I think it’s delicious. So I keep looking for ways to incorporate in my meals. Recently I started buying organic produce when I can. So this dish, that I call Spaghetti Rosso or Red Spaghetti started with organic spaghetti, organic beetroot and fresh sage. Here it is:

Ingredients: (feeds two active, healthy people)

2 medium size beetroots, cleaned, pealed, cut into cubes

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

4-5 garlic pods sliced

6-8 sage leaves

couple of table spoons of milk

Parmesan cheese

salt, pepper, olive oil

200gms spaghetti

How it all comes together:

Start by heating a couple of table spoons of olive oil in a pan and start frying the onions, garlic and sage leaves. After the onions go translucent put in the chopped beetroots and saute them for about 7 minutes. Add salt. Put all the sauted ingredients in a blender  and purée. That’s the base of your sauce. Put it back in the pan and reduce, add pepper to season. If it gets too thick add the milk to loosen. After about 5 minutes sprinkle the cheese and allow it to rest.

Cook the spaghetti till al dente. As soon as it’s cooked and drained toss the spaghetti in the sauce. It will turn this bright blushing colour. Season with a little more cheese if you wish. Eat immediately! (it will dry out if you wait too long).

*You can make a Yellow version of the exact same dish. Replace the beetroot with Pumpkin. It also works well with sage and it just as delicious. The colour is less crazy than this red though.

Red Curly Swirls

Grain & Bagel

Dexter’s Lab *

Hearty breakfasts are the ultimate comfort food: syrup covered pancakes, perfectly scrambled eggs, crisp hash browns, french toast and cream cheese topped bagels. These make the kind of meal one dreams of waking up to. I find it quite odd that Bombay has only a handful of restaurants and cafes that open early and serve breakfast. Grain & Bagel does.

I woke up early last Saturday and headed over to satisfy a craving. The meal got off to a great start. We were welcomed by smiling faces and an open spacious dining area flanked by a huge black board with a handwritten menu. After a fair bit of deliberation orders were placed. First to arrive: soft doughy bagels with a barely there layer of cream cheese. Disappointing, for a place that’s named after bagel. It lacked the pre-requisite crunchy exterior. This was just a bun with a hole. Needless to say the bagel sandwiches too were disappointing.

Anyway, the eggs and pancakes made up for the blotched bagel. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say those were the best buttermilk pancakes I’ve ever had. I assumed all the other pancakes would be just as good. Boy was I wrong! We ordered the peanut-butter pancakes topped with apple syrup. The pancake itself was no different from the buttermilk one. There were no tangible traces of peanut butter. And the apple syrup was a ghastly looking green liquid that looked like it should be used to color a cheap birthday cake. It tasted synthetic and smelt positively sickening. The minute I poured some on the pancake the table was enveloped in a brain tingling green apple smell. It was like being in Dexter’s lab. All that was missing was the green fumes.

Yet another treat from the lab was a Raspberry Mango smoothie. Am I wrong to expect a breakfast joint to use fresh fruit? I thought synthetic fruit flavoured syrups were reserved for street side stalls and McDonalds. Had I skipped the apple-syrup and smoothie, I may have returned. But I’m pretty certain those outlandish pink and green syrups aren’t something I will ever want to subject my senses to.

It’s a shame really. Still looking for the perfect breakfast.

Location: Behind Infiniti Mall Malad.

Damages 300-400Rs per head for Breakfast

 

 

A beautiful box of thai green tea

A dear friend of mine just returned from Thailand with this little present, a box of local green tea. Just look at the box! It’s as if Thailand itself is represented in design. The indigenous design aesthetic of a country tells us so much about it’s culture, food and people. What I find particularly interesting about this particular box is how similar it is to Indian art work, that found on little bottles of balm, match-boxes, old calenders and even trucks. Even Thai script looks so much like the Telegu, Tamilian or Bengali script. Looks like Thailand isn’t as far away as I imagined.

I’m a hopeless fool for packaging, often buying things just because I like the way they are packed. Then these boxes, jars, bottles, pacets and tins sit around on shelves, because I feel too bad to open (and ruin) them. This box of green tea will suffer a similar fate I’m sure. Really, can you blame me.

p.s. Thank you Fogosa 

Rajdhani: a Royal Rajwar Feast!

I must admit, I’m not familiar with food that comes from Rajasthan and the surrounding areas. I’ve traveled to Rajasthan just once and unfortunately had a dreadful experience food wise. I’m usually very open to new flavors, but I just couldn’t bring my palette to enjoy Rajasthani food. So you’d understand my apprehension when I was invited to Rajdhani, a chain that specializes in vegetarian Rajasthani thali. Despite me apprehension I traveled all the way to Kurla market city, a place I hadn’t visited before. So my exploration of Rajasthani cuisine, a trip to a mall and some good company in fellow food bloggers all made for a very good Saturday outing.

Rajdhani only serves vegetarian thali, simple and fuss free. No menus to chose from, no difficult decisions to be made. You receive a warm traditional Indian welcome when you arrive, with a chandan tika and arti. Then you’ll be treated to refreshing lemonade or rose sherbet. A large oval thali with several small bowls in placed before you and an opulent feast begins. Beginning with a few snacks and bites, then moving onto several varieties of bhajis and dals served with puris, phulkas, etc. Food just keeps  coming your way! This is followed by rice and comforting rich kichdi, all topped with ghee of course. You end your meal with a selection of traditional sweets cooked in pure ghee. Wash this all down with chaas (spiced buttermilk). Be warned that this is an exhausting endeavor, go on an empty stomach, after a good workout! The generous staff will gently urge you to keep eating, and you will be tempted to.

You can keep asking for refills and seconds and thirds, and food will graciously make its way to your plate. But it will all happen in absolute silence! The entire staff communicates using an elaborate sign language. This helps them to pass orders without ever making sound. An efficient way to avoid the chaotic yelling associated with a thali service.

I ate so many different dishes; it was like being in the whirlpool of food! However some dishes stood out; like the dahi kadi, dal bati, the khichdi and the malpua. The absolute cherry on the cake was the paan shot at the end, which cleansed the palette and put a perfect end to the meal.

Right now Rajdhani is hosting a Rajwar food festival. The food is even richer and more decadent that usual; you will be served food as it was eaten by the Royal families of Rajasthan and Gujarat. So go and have a Royal Feast! And even if you miss it, Rajdhani serves hot, freshly cooked meals all year round, with several seasonal specials.

Damages: Rs. 250-Rs.450 per head

Nom Nom, Juhu Versova Link Road

No No! Never again

A sushi craving is always worrying, because there are so few Japanese restaurants around. There’s only one in all of Andheri West, the newly opened Nom Nom. To satisfy our quest for Sushi we headed over, apprehensive, yet expectant. When no host or concierge greeted us at the entrance, we should have taken the hint and gotten back into the car. But we went in, oh so foolishly.

Let me first begin with the visual trauma. The place is really tiny, which would not be such a problem if it weren’t so under lit. To make things worse, there are flickering candles at every table, which gave me a headache. After I put out the candle, a bumbling waiter came with renewed fervor to resurrect it. I insisted it stay off which confused and offended him.

We placed an order for two plates of sushi: Futo Maki rolls and Salmon Nigiri, then waited drooling in anticipation. The Futo Maki rolls almost unraveled when picked up. Clumsy unrefined construction. The clumsiest (and cheapest) move by far was to serve us the uneven ends of the roll that should never make it to the table. Still foolishly optimistic we waited for our Nigiri rolls. We saw them emerge from the kitchen, and while we looked at them hopefully, a confused waiter walked around the dining area with our plate of Nigiri wondering which table had placed the order. We watched as the plate encircled the room three times. Then it went to the counter where five waiters and a manager stood over it speculating. Finally there was a eureka moment and we got out travel weary Salmon Nigiri; small clumps of under cooked rice with a painfully thin slither of Salmon. Looks like the place is really cutting corners to make a buck. I’ve never seen such a thin stingy slice of salmon on a piece of sushi!

By now, we were put off and pissed off. Our final dish arrived, the recommended Yaki Soba noodles. Another unsure waiter began serving us. Being the lady, he started with me, and began dumping heaps of noodles on my plate, a sumo wrestler’s portion. I had to yell to get him to stop. And when he did, he realized he had served me almost all the noodles and there were all of three left in the serving bowl. He looked at me in horror, and then, get this, ran into the kitchen never to emerge. We were left to sort out the mess.

We paid the bill and ran away just like the said waiter, most definitely to never return.

A complete rip off at Rs.800 to Rs.1000 per head.

Kinaafeh – Palestine’s favourite sweet treat

I had the great privilege of visiting the beautiful Palestinian city of Ramallah, and being shown around by a local. Just a short bus ride away from Jerusalem lies this bustling city, that is totally cut off from the outside world. It’s like a city in a bubble, a distilled concentrate of Palestine’s culture. The chaotic streets have a charm that is alive and boiling. The people are warm, friendly and love Indians. Wherever I looked I was met by welcoming smiles.

After walking around for three hours exploring the streets, Huda our lovely host insisted we try a some middle eatern sweets. Though we were stuffed from trying all sorts of street food, it was hard to resist trying something new. Something I knew I wouldn’t get a chance to feast on again any time soon.

We went to a sweet shop called Eifel sweets. The name of course has nothing to do with what they serve. Since it was post dinner time, the place was packed with families out to indulge in some late night dessert. Though the place makes a whole variety of sweets, we noticed that everyone was eating one same thing. Viscous platefuls of bright orange sat on every single table. The kitchen was churning out large trays of the same steaming dish.

This king of palestinian sweet is called Kinaafeh. It is made with sweet cheese (which is much like cottage cheese or paneer) and topped with a vermicelli like crispy layer, then soaked in sugar syrup and garnished with pistachio nuts. I was intimidated by the description and the portion, but it isn’t very sweet and just melt in the mouth. Though I resisted being served a full plate, it wasn’t long before I had polished the whole thing off. I even wanted more. But my stomach was stretched thin by this point. This experience was definitely one of the culinary highlights of my life.