Around the world in three pancakes

Like all of you I was doing a ton of cooking at home throughout Covid. Naturally I was on the lookout for easy recipes that would fill us up and also provide a good change from the usual. The other day I was thinking back on all the cooking skills and recipes I picked up during the past year, and I realized a lot of my newly picked up culinary skills were in fact around making different types of pancakes! Pancakes are fabulous, aren't they? Pretty easy to whip up, highly customizable and filling.

Certain cooking patterns evolved due to the nature of crisis we were in. We used to go out for grocery only about once in ten days during Covid, so when we did we really used to stock up on fruits and vegetables. Towards the end of the ten days we often ended up with apples going a bit soft. Who likes to eat a soft apple? Exactly, no one. And that's how the first recipe was discovered:

German Apple Pancake

We made this roughly every other Sunday throughout 2020. It was a simple joy, something to look forward to in times when we were cooped up at home all the time. Caramelized apples, drenched in a luscious batter, baked to perfection, topped with maple syrup, and takes all of 25 mins to make. What's not to like?

One time a team mate was crowd sourcing new breakfast ideas from the team and someone suggested okonomiyaki. I was intrigued and soon after, an "Okonomiyaki Kit" was on its way to my house from Amazon!

Okonomiyaki

It is a savory Japanese pancake with lots of cabbage, often pork or other meat (though most times we had it without any meat) but what I love about it is really the toppings which take it to another level. Luckily my kit had all the toppings in their authentic form. Okonomiyaki sauce (tastes a bit like bbq sauce without the smokiness), kewpie mayonnaise, nori (seaweed) flakes and bonito (fish) flakes. S and I enjoyed drawing squiggly lines of kewpie mayo and the okonomiyaki sauce on our steaming hot pancakes just flipped from our trusty cast iron pan.

The last type of pancake I want to share with you is not really a pancake. It has no eggs or flour, and it is fermented. I'm talking about the Indian uttapa. During the pandemic, I learnt to make uttapa batter from scratch by soaking rice and udad dal, grinding it in a blender and letting it ferment over 12-24 hours. Yes, it is certainly the most involved recipe out of the three! The toughest part was figuring out if it is fermented enough. Is it fermented too little? Too much? Is it too frothy? If it smells sour, is that good or bad? I did use the phone-a-friend option quite a bit at this stage in the uttapa-making journey. I left no stone unturned to make sure my batter was fermented right. A friend suggested keeping it in the oven with the light on. My cousin suggested leaving it in the afternoon sun (covered, of course). Finally I realized the secret was in the blender. After I got a suitable blender (Preethi brand) my batter was finer and fermented more easily. 

Uttapa

 It was a labor of love and so satisfying when I finally tasted a homemade-from-scratch uttapa that I had been missing for some months as we weren't eating out.

Cashew Vegetables

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

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 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 good stir to the sauce, because the cornflour tends to settle down 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.

Chicken Hariyali Curry

This recipe was recommended by Shraddha, a close friend of mine. We were neighbors when we were growing up and used to spend hours talking about school and boys and the world, when we were not playing badminton or dabdaispais (I feel like this must be the first attempt of someone spelling this word on the internet). Like most kids, we used to engage in things like writing cryptographic messages, having silly "passwords" and one thing that at the time seemed particularly appealing in its audacity... we used to throw and exchange food from our windows. Doing that successfully without a single adult noticing what we were upto used to give us a rush I suppose? I have no idea.

Fast forward to 2019 and we are still bonding over food but in a far more meaningful way. We both love cooking and baking and love trying out new things and pushing our limits. Last month we made garam masala from scratch (not together as we live on different continents). Last weekend I attempted a chicken curry recipe that Shraddha has been raving about. We had it with warm garlic naan and it was very tasty.

Based on this recipe from the Hindu.

You will need

For the marinade

yogurt                           2 tbsp
garam masala               1/2 tsp
red chilly powder         1/2 tsp
garlic, crushed              2-3 cloves
salt to taste                       

For the curry
chicken breast               1/2 lbs
onion, chopped             1 cup
cilantro                          half a bunch
mint                               4-5 springs (~20 leaves)
green chillies                 2
dry red chillies               2
full fat yogurt                1/2 cup
garam masala                1-2 tsp
salt to taste 



Method

1. Chop the chicken. Mix the ingredients for the marinade, add the chicken to it. Make sure all the pieces are coated well with the marinade. Marinate for at least a few hours. I did it for 24 hours and the chicken really soaked in all the flavors.
2. In an electric blender, blend together the cilantro, mint, green chillies and dry red chillies. Set aside.
3. In a heated sauté pan, fry the chopped onion until it just starts browning.
4. Add the marinated chicken and sauté until it is mostly cooked.
5. Add the cilantro paste and let it cook for about 5-10 mins. Keep stirring occasionally.
6. Add a couple of spoonfuls of the hot gravy to the yogurt and mix well to temper it. Add the yogurt to the pan on low flame, mix well.
7. Add salt to your taste.

Serve with rice, naan or roti.

Chana Dal Wade AKA Chattambade

You will need
chana dal 1 cup
dry red chillies 2-3
jeera (cumin seeds) 1 tsp
curry leaves 1-2
hing (asafoetida) 1/4 tsp
freshly grated ginger 2 tsp
salt to taste

Prep
1. Wash the chana dal and soak it so that it is fully submerged for 2 hours.
Then drain the water completely.
2. Grind the chana dal together with all the other ingredients until the mixture forms a coarse paste. Add water if needed, but be careful as too much water can make it harder to form patties.
        This happened sooner than I expected and I ended up with a paste finer than I would have liked.
        The bite from dal gives great texture.

Method
1. Make flat-ish patties out of the ground mixture.
2. Heat oil in a shallow pan and place 4-5 patties in the hot oil.
Cover the pan and let it cook for about 3 mins. Then turn the patties over and fry them on the other side for 2-3 mins or until browned.
Serve with ketchup or other dip of your choice.

Hummus Tartine

Hummus is a wonderful thing. I had never had hummus until I came to the US. It soon became one of my favorite things to order in a middle-eastern restaurant. For home use, I never really took to supermarket hummus... there was something always off about it. I prefer the homemade version a lot more.

It's very easy to make.

Makes 4-5 tartines

chickpeas AKA garbanzo beans             1 15oz can
garlic                                                        2-3 cloves
extra virgin olive oil                                  1/4th cup
sesame seeds                                         1/4th cup
lemon juice                                              2 tbsp

salt, pepper, red pepper flakes to taste


Method

1. Dry-roast the sesame seeds until light brown. Put aside.
2. Chop the garlic and fry it for a couple of minutes. This is to avoid the taste of raw garlic, especially if you plan to store the hummus for a few days.
3. Blend the sesame seeds and the olive oil until the seeds are crushed and blended with the oil.
4. Blend the chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes with the above sesame paste.

Serve at room temperature.