Carrot Halva

Can winters be complete without the carrot halva?
The moment you set your eyes on the lovely long red carrots you have to make this! I made this twice over the last month. Most of you probably know to make it, so I'll just run thru the method I follow.

Grate the red carrots (about 1 ½ kgs) and discard the white centre part – you can reserve that to make veg stock. Heat a cup of ghee in a thick bottomed pan and add the carrots. Mix well so that the ghee coats the carrots well. Add a handful of cashews, almonds and pistas. Fry for 2-3 minutes. Pour in the milk sufficient to cover all the carrot. Let it cook on low flame till done – takes about 1 ½ hours. Add sugar, cardamom powder and mix well. Take off the fire and serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Mushroom Mutter Paneer

Mushroom is a fungus, we learnt in school - how can you eat fungus, I asked my mushroom-loving hubby. I enjoy it, he replied. I'm still to figure out what attracts him to mushrooms! All the same I use mushrooms in various dishes. Commonly believed to have little nutritional value, many varieties of mushrooms are high in fibre and protein, provide various vitamins, and minerals like iron, selenium, potassium and phosphorus. Mushrooms are also being researched for medicinal properties. For more on mushrooms, read here.

For mushroom, mutter paneer you need:

8-10 mushrooms chopped
½ cup onion sautéed and ground to a paste
1 cup boiled green peas
100 gm paneer lightly sautéed
½ tbsp ginger paste
½ tbsp garlic paste
½ cup tomato puree
3 tbsp curd
Whole garam masalas – bay leaf, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, peppercorns
3 tbsp milk
½ tsp turmeric powder
½ tsp coriander powder
½ tsp garam masala powder
½ tsp jeera powder
Red chilli powder and salt as per taste

Heat ghee/oil in a pan. Add whole garam masalas and sauté. Add onions, ginger- garlic paste and fry to a golden colour. Add the tomato puree, curds, salt and spices and fry till the oil separates. Add the mushrooms and peas and fry for 5 minutes. Add milk , paneer and 2 cups of water and cook till the vegetables are done. Adjust the consistency as per your liking. Serve hot with palak puris, rotis or naans.

Tiramisu Valentine

Going through my collection of recipes, I stumbled upon a "Date flavoured Tiramisu" recipe in an old copy of the Epicurean. I made a mental note to try it out sometime in the future. I had this recipe for a chocolate cake that I decided to bake. After making the batter I realized that my cake dish was too big and the batter too little! What resulted was a flattish cake!! So I ditched the idea of icing the cake and put it away in the fridge. I was not to be put down by this flop show. "Better convert it into something fancy ", my alter ego told me. My mind raced for ideas……. Of course, it was right there! The date flavoured tiramisu!!:) That evening I bought the ingredients required for the tiramisu. When I got home, hubby called to say he'd return really late from work. How about surprising hubby with a nice dessert, I wondered….I decided to bring my own touch to the recipe, so here's what I did…

For the chocolate sauce:

This is my addition…
¾ cup milk
1 spoon cocoa powder
3 spoons sugar
1 spoon cornflour
1 spoon cream/butter

Combine the milk, cocoa powder and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring continuously. There must be no lumps in it. Add the cream/butter and simmer. Mix cornflour in watermilk at room temperature and add to the sauce. Stir well and allow it to simmer till it reaches a slightly thick consistency.

For the date paste:
As per the original recipe
250 gm water
50 gm sugar
125 gm dates deseeded
Boil the above ingredients together for approximately 20 minutes and blend until smooth.

For the Tiramisu:
Original recipe modified by me
25 gm egg yolks
30 gm sugar
10gm water
125 gm Mascarpone cheese
125 gm whipped cream
60 gm lady finger biscuits (now I didn’t know where to find these, so I cut up my cake and used it!! :)

Beat the egg yolks till fluffy. Boil sugar and water. Pour the boiling water to the beaten egg yolk and continue beating till the mixture cools down. Add the mascarpone cheese slowly and beat it in. Add the whipped cream.

Coffee syrup:
Make one cup coffee/espresso with water, sugar and granulated coffee. Soak the cake in this.

To serve:
Pipe/spoon the chocolate sauce into 4 martini glasses (use any transparent serving dish). Now add a layer of date paste. Place the coffee-soaked cake over this. Pipe the tiramisu mixture on top of this. Again place the cake, then pipe the chocolate sauce and date paste, then the tiramisu over this. Alternate until the glass is full and finish with the tiramisu on the top. Dust with cocoa powder.
It's February and as love is in the air... I've christened my dessert "Tiramisu Valentine".

Ah, now off this goes to Meeta's Monthly Mingle #7: Sweet Love!.

Pinnie

Pinnis are prepared in winter by Punjabis for the festival of Lohri. Pinnis are very nutritious, or so they say, since they are full of the goodness of ghee and dry fruits. Pinnis generally keep well for a week or two at the most but it is better if they are consumed soon. The recipe below is for large scale preparation of pinnis. As I was making them for the first time, I only made a small quantity, keeping the proportion of the ingredients the same. The original recipe called for 400 gm mava and 3 kopra/dry coconuts grated, both of which I omitted as I don't like kopra. Though it was my first try at it, we have already polished off an entire box of pinnis!!

Ingredients:
1 kg wheat flour
¾ kg ghee
1 kg sugar
¼ kg slivered almonds and pistachios
100 gm gondh
¼ cup milk
Cardamom powder

Method:
Heat 2 tbsp ghee in a saucepan and add the gondh – it will expand. In another pan, heat the remaining ghee on low flame. Add the wheat flour to it spoon by spoon stirring continuously. Keep roasting till pink and aromatic. Add the gondh and mix well. Now mix in the gondh, pistachios, almonds, sugar and cardamom powder. Turn off the heat and make the pinnis when it is still hot. Take a small portion of the mixture, sprinkle a few drops of milk on it and make into a ball, then elongate it by pressing your wrist. Do the same till the entire mixture is used up. Store in airtight boxes.

Chicken Burger

This recipe has been inspired from Chef Sanjeev Kapoor's programme "Khana Khazana". The recipe has been tweaked a bit, but the end result is great!! So good bye Burger King, Mac Donald's and others, here I come…!!

Ingredients:
1 cup chicken kheema/mince
1 large carrot
4 cloves garlic
1 green chilly
A handful of coriander chopped
4 burger buns
Lettuce/ cabbage leaves
1 large onion cut into rings
1 large tomato sliced
Butter/Mayonnaise
2 tsp olive oil
Chilly sauce
Worcestershire sauce
Cheddar cheese slices
Salt/pepper to taste

Grate the carrot. Pulse together the minced chicken, carrot, green chilly, garlic, salt and pepper. Do not add water. Divide the chicken mixture into balls and flatten them to make patties. Heat a skillet/ grill. Drizzle olive oil on it and shallow fry/grill the patties on both sides till done and a nice shine appears on the patties. Separate the onion rings. On the same skillet/grill, brown the onion rings with a dash of Worcestershire sauce and chilly sauce. Now slice the burger buns and apply butter/mayonnaise on the lower slice. Now arrange a lettuce leafs/ cabbage followed by the onion rings, pattice, tomato slice, and cheese. Place the top slice of the bun and serve with tomato ketchup, French fries and coleslaw/salad.

Mushroom Broccoli Pasta

Here is my recipe no. 1 with mushrooms. Hubby loves mushrooms. I frankly don't find any taste in it. I strongly believe that it derives its taste from the gravy/sauce in which it is made. Ever since he had mushrooms in cheesy pasta at one of his meetings in …… (can't remember when or where!! – shows how much I care for mushrooms!!) ; he's been asking me when I'd prepare the same dish!! How can I? I do not even know what it looks or tastes like!! Finally I relented and came up with my version of mushrooms and broccoli in spaghetti.

Ingredients:
½ cup mushrooms cleaned and chopped
½ cup broccoli florets
½ packet spaghetti
2 cloves garlic minced
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp butter
3 cup milk
1 tbsp olive oil/butter
½ cup grated mozzarella cheese
½ cup grated parmesan cheese
Herbs, salt and pepper to taste

Cook the spaghetti in plenty of salted water or as per the packet's instruction. While it is cooking, heat oil/butter in a pan and sauté the garlic. Add the mushrooms and broccoli and cook till it is soft. When the pasta is just al dente, drain it lightly and add it to the mushrooms with a little of the pasta water. While the pasta continues to cook, in another pan, heat butter on a medium low flame. Add flour and fry lightly for a minute. Add milk slowly, stirring continuously to avoid lumps. Add cheese, salt, pepper and herbs and stir until the cheese have melted and the sauce begins to simmer. Pour this over the pasta, mix well and serve. You can also bake the pasta.

Well, the final pic isn't there because we gobbled up the pasta! It turned out well, to my surprise, even the mushrooms tasted good! :)