Cashew Vegetables

 This dish is inspired by the cashew chicken at Chinese Room that I wrote about.

I had some leftover kale and mushrooms in the fridge, and concocted this dish by putting it together with bok choy and carrots in an addictive Shaoxing sauce. Shaoxing is a Chinese cooking wine that adds great flavor to Chinese sauces. I got it from Chinatown in San Francisco but you can get it online too or at Asian grocery stores. The sauce this time turned out to be mindblowing. I just hope I can recreate the magic of this sauce because I was not measuring anything when I was making it. I tried my best below to recall how much of everything I used.

Serves 2 

You will need
kale leaves                          2
carrots                                 2
mushrooms                         7-8 button or cremini mushrooms
bok choy                             1 large
garlic                                   2-3 cloves, minced
dried red chillies                  3, roughly broken
cashews                              10-12

For the sauce:
fish sauce                            1 teaspoon
rice vinegar                         1 tablespoon
honey                                  1 tablespoon
brown sugar                         2 teaspoons
shaoxing wine                     3 tablespoons
salt                                       1 teaspoon
water                                   1/2 cup
corn flour                             1 1/2 tablespoon

Method

1. Wash and cut all the vegetables.
2. Mix all the ingredients for the sauce in a bowl and set aside.
3. Heat oil in a large pan, cook the carrots on medium heat for about 3 mins.
4. Add all the other vegetables, including the garlic, red chillies and cashews. Sauté everything together until vegetables are tender, about 5 mins.
5. Give a stir to the sauce to mix the cornflour settled at the bottom, then add it to the pan. 
6. Adjust the seasoning to your taste. For some more spice, add a sprinkling of black pepper.
7. Turn the heat off as the sauce thickens, most likely within a couple of mins.

Serve hot with rice.

Rosemary Orange Ricotta Cake

Like many of you, I have been doing some "quarantine baking" as well. Baking is therapeutic. I remember making blondies on a Sunday evening just to beat a case of the Monday blues. It worked. That was long back. Ever since shelter-at-home was announced in the SF Bay Area, I have been wanting to do some baking but was out of all-purpose flour, and all the stores were out of it too, because everyone had started doing a ton of baking! Finally we found it at Trader Joe's and got a good 10 lbs of it.
I should rename my blog to "Ina Garten Recipe Tweaks" :) because many of the recipes I make are exactly that - take one of Ina's fabulous recipes, tweak a flavor here or there, reduce the fat, simplify it. She's my most favorite chef and I love her TV show. With that, I present to you a modified version of Ina's fig ricotta cake.

I looove rosemary and always wanted to bake with it. This cake goes really well with a cup of herbal tea like rooibos.

You will need

unsalted butter,
at room temp                      7 tablespoons
white sugar                         1 cup
eggs, at room temp             3
whole-milk ricotta, 
at room temp                       1 cup
vanilla extract                      1 teaspoon
orange zest                         1 teaspoon
rosemary, finely chopped    2 teaspoons
all-purpose flour                  1 1/4 cups
baking powder                    1 tablespoon
salt                                      1 teaspoon
(optional) turbinado sugar   1 tablespoon


Method

1. Preheat the oven to 325 F. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan.
2. Beat the butter and sugar with a mixer for a few mins until light and fluffy. With the mixer on low, add one egg at a time.
3. Add the rosemary, orange zest, ricotta and vanilla and mix until combined. The ricotta may make it look lumpy and that's ok.
4. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Add this mixture to the ricotta mixture and keep mixing as you do it.
5. Pour the batter in the baking pan. Optionally, sprinkle with turbinado sugar for a bit extra sweetness and a bit of a crunch to your cake.
6. Bake for about 35 to 45 mins or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes clean.*

Enjoy the cake as an afternoon snack with tea or coffee or as dessert!

* The center of my cake remained gooey while the outside was well done so I would suggest baking at 325 instead of 350 which I did.

An Ode to Pune eats

I was in India on vacation for the past month. I had a wonderful time there - filled with good food and loved ones. As always I had my wishlist of eateries I wanted to visit while in Pune but it gradually fell by the wayside as I realized that recommendations by my foodie friends and relatives trump any amount of internet research.

After trying out a number of bright and shiny new restaurants I always tend to go back to the classics, the mainstays of the Pune food scene which don't keep changing face every few years but in fact have largely the same menu and most importantly, the same great quality.

Chinese Room (East Street, Camp)

We usually go to its Karve Road location as it is closer to home. The Camp location had the same great food and amusingly, the same arrogant service which I keep going back to because no amount of arrogant treatment can keep me away from that cashew chicken. This is the only restaurant I visited twice in my trip.

Make sure to ask for the complimentary salad

Good old sweet corn chicken soup. Yum!

Cashew Chicken, Mongolian Chicken Appetizer

King's (Camp)

A family friend insisted on taking me to King's, an unassuming place right opposite Victory Theater. It is run by a Parsi family for several decades. The mutton dhansak was top notch.

Fish-o-fish (off Karve Road near Karve Putala)

A recent favorite of my parents'. Great place for seafood as the name subtly suggests. One of the highlights was the refreshing glass of solkadhi we had at the beginning of the meal.

Update Nov 2022: I just visited this place again and it was equally good. Their food quality has been consistent for years. This is certainly going to be my go-to place for seafood and chicken/ mutton curries.

Update Jan 2024: This _is_ my go-to place for seafood and chicken/ mutton curries and even biryani. This time I had tisrya masala (clams curry) with ghaavan which is a rice flour crepe - a combo recommended by the restaurant owner. It was delicious!

Bombil fry (fried sardines)

Fish Thali with prawn curry and surmai fry

Vaishali (Fergusson Road)

The decadent Cheese Mysore Masala Dosa has been my favorite dish at Vaishali for years. It lived upto the expectations yet again. The chikku shake was excellent as well. Vaishali gets a 10 for consistency. And a 10 for ambience. Going to Vaishali and not sitting in the patio is simply not an option for me!

Cheese Mysore Masala Dosa and Onion Uttapa

Pastry Corner (Law College Road)

Our favorite after-school bakery. Even today it sparks nostalgia. It has been the quintessential little mom-n-pop bakery of Pune since the 90s. The rum balls were particularly popular with the kids though I doubt they had any rum in them. For a short while, right after "air hostess", I had wanted to be a baker and open a bakery with my best friend. It was 100% inspired by Pastry Corner.

Pineapple cake

Vernekar's (Karvenagar)

New kid on the block, literally less than a five-minute walk from my house. The fish rava fry was good, and the prawn curry was to die for, only to be outdone by the surprise dessert "serradura" which was supposed to be a consolation dessert as they were out of bebinca. That stuff is phenomenal. No one can stop eating until they reach the bottom of that cup. Who knew layers of whipped condensed milk and crumbled cookie would taste like the best thing ever?

Serradura

One thing that I never got tired of throughout the one month that I was at home.

Chaha and khari. Small pleasures.