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.

Baked Eggplant Chips (Vaangyache Kaap)

Serves 3-4 as an appetizer

regular large eggplant              1

salt                                        1/2 tbsp
powdered black pepper            1 tsp
red chilly powder                     1/4 tsp
amchur (raw mango powder)    1/4 tsp  (You can find this in an Indian grocery store. It adds tartness.)

Method -

1. Cut eggplant into very thin round slices of roughly 3mm width. A mandoline slicer comes in handy for this. For slices that are too big, cut in half.

2. Put all the spices and the salt in a bowl and mix well.

3. Take a large baking tray, cover it with aluminium foil and grease it with oil or spray generously with oil spray.

4. Take half of the eggplant slices on the baking tray. Drizzle oil or oil spray over them. Toss them well with half of the spice mix, making sure you rub both sides of every slice with the spice mix.

5. Then arrange them in a single layer on the tray and once again drizzle with oil or oil spray.

6. Repeat steps 3, 4, 5 for the rest of the eggplant slices.

7. Bake at 350 deg for 15 mins and then broil at 350 deg for 5 mins. Watch them frequently as they can get burnt easily. You may have to adjust the oven times according to the thickness of the slices.

The slices may look burnt when done but taste great and crispy! The thicker slices will most probably remain soft. I combined them with some crispy slices and put them in a sandwich - tasted pretty good.

We had the eggplant chips with a very simple and quick dip. For the dip, take a half cup of low fat ricotta cheese and add 2 tbsp of mayonnaise to it. Mix well to make the ricotta a bit more creamy and less grainy. 

Other creamy dips would also go very well with the chips, such as a greek yogurt-garlic dip.

Corn Patties

These corn patties make a great snack or side. They are, in one word, irresistible. Quite similar to the ones that everybody makes a beeline for when they go to Mahabaleshwar. They have a thin cover of semolina over a layer of spiced mashed potatoes, gently enveloping a flavorful filling of corn and coconut.
Along with that there was Indian style alyacha gawati chaha (ginger lemongrass tea).

The recipe -

Makes 12 patties

For the outer shell -
potatoes         3 large or 5 small
cornflour        3 tbsp
bread             3 slices
chilly powder roughly 3/4th tsp
semolina        1/2 cup

For the filling -
corn from 2 cobs
fresh or frozen and thawed coconut roughly 1/3rd cup
onion, finely chopped 1/2 cup
curry leaves, thinly julienned
chilly powder roughly 1/2 tsp

Method -

1. Cook the potatoes (err on the side of overcooking) and mash them really well. There should be no lumps as this will make it hard to shape the potatoes into a cup to hold the filling.
2. Roughly tear the bread slices into a few big pieces and then put them in the blender to make fine breadcrumbs resembling sawdust.
3. Mix the mashed potatoes, breadcrumbs, cornflour, chilly powder and salt to taste.
4. Now for the filling. Saute chopped onion in a pan. Once it is translucent, add the corn, curry leaves, chilly powder and salt to the pan, mix well. And a little bit of sugar, say 1 or 2 tsp. Then add the coconut, saute for a few mins and turn off heat.
5. To assemble the patties, roll the mashed potato mixture into little balls with your hands. They should be slightly bigger than a golf ball.
6. Shape a ball into a cup shape with your hands, add a heaped tablespoon of the filling in the cup and gently close the cover over the filling. This may be frustrating at first. It took a few mangled patties for me to get a hang of it. But believe me, it is a matter of practice.
You can adjust the sizes of the potato ball and the filling to make it easier for you to shape them into patties.
7. Spread the semolina in a plate. Dab the patties in the plate to cover them with semolina on both sides.
8. Shallow fry the patties until browned from both sides.
Serve with ketchup.

'Chickpea Chaat' - Quick and healthy garbanzo bean snack

I whipped up this easy and healthy snack on a late weekend afternoon. I tossed cooked chickpeas leftover from dinner with chopped onion, tamarind chutney ('Maggie Tamarina' is great), black salt (you can get that in an Indian grocery store), a sprinkle of sev (crispy broken Indian noodles) and plain low fat yogurt.

Similar to bhel, but with wholesome beans instead of puffed rice.

The black color of the beans is from cooking it with tea bags. I think it looks more appetizing that way, but it doesn't matter as far as taste is concerned. You can use canned garbanzo beans if you don't have cooked ones.

Namakpara - a teatime snack

Tried this namkeen (savory) cookie recipe by Sanjeev Kapoor. Loved the flavor of ajwain and jeera in it. It went well with masala chai. S devoured 4 straight with gusto!