Mixed Fruit Crumble

How does one even begin to summarize a year which seems to have packed in so much? The year which began for in the absolutely cold snow mountains and will end in the sunny and warm tropics. On January 1, 2010, if someone had told me that the year would bring a whole host of changes, I'd have laughed and said that that is what every year does. But as I look back today on the year gone by, I realize that this year was special.

There were so many ups and downs that this year brought with it. The highs outshone the lows and I am glad that the year will be remembered for the highs and it will only be a matter of time before the lows are forgotten.

On the blogging front, both my blogs suffered as a result of the highs and the lows. There simply wasn't any time. The project 365 suffered because as the monsoons began, my travel time to and from work increased from 3.5 hours a day to around 5.5 hours one way. While I did take loads of pictures, the last thing on my mind when I reached home just a little shy of midnight was to upload the pictures to the laptop or the blog. Slowly, I was so far behind that it didn't make sense to try to catch up.

The food blog suffered because there was no time. There was also no "new" cooking that happened. It is a miracle that cooking even happened on some days. I think August and September must have seen the maximum consumption of Maggi, Subway sandwiches and McDonald's burgers. We also ate out so often because that meant no washing up afterwards (a lifesaver when your maids have been thrown out of the city for 30 days).

In our initial days in Singapore, I barely cooked and definitely didn't cook new stuff. But I realized that I could churn out 3 meals a day with just 3 pans, a 2 hob induction cooker and a microwave. For someone whose kitchen articles make up 30-35% of the entire household stuff, that is a BIG revelation. The pressure cooker queen cooked for 30 days sans the sweet sound of the whistle of her precious cookers.

I have no plans for 2011. I hope to write about my experiences in a new place in my other blog. I hope to cook with the new variety of ingredients that I have access to. I hope to be able to try out the recipes that I could only fantasize about until I moved here. I don't want to make concrete plans. 2011 is going to be the "take it as it comes" year.

Keeping in with tradition, I leave you with a dessert recipe. A little warm, a little cold. A little tart, a little sweet. Just the way this year has been: a mixture of flavours that surprises you with each bite, but leaves you with a happy feeling when the last bit has been savoured.

Ingredients: 

1 Apple, peeled and chopped

1/4 cup Cherries, halved

1/4 cup Strawberries, chopped

1 Pear, peeled and chopped

1/4 cup Brown sugar

2 - 3 tbsp Butter

1/3 cup Flour

Arrange the fruit in a microwave safe dish and sprinkle the sugar. Build 2-3 layers alternating the fruit and the sugar. Leave about a spoonful of the sugar aside. Cook oh high in the microwave for 4-5 minutes.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour and the butter along with the remaining sugar until it resembles bread crumbs or small peas. Press this mixture over the cooked fruit and bake in the microwave on high for 8-10 minutes. Allow to stand for 10 minutes for the crust to harden. Cut into pieces and serve with vanilla ice cream.

I hope 2010 was a good year for each of you. Wishing all of you and yours a very happy 2011.

Instant Pear - Apple Compote

According to Wikipedia: A compote is made of whole or pieces of fruit simmered in a sugar syrup. As whole fruit, the fruit is simmered in the syrup over gentle heat. The syrup may be seasoned with vanilla, lemon or orange peel, cinnamon sticks or powder, cloves, ground almonds, grated coconut, candied fruit, or raisins.

Until I started blogging, I used to call this dish "stew" as that is what I was told it is called. Now, I know that I can call it anything I want to. For the sake of making this 2 minute dish look fancy, I'll call it compote.This is the sort of dish that comes in handy in the following situations:

• You experience a sugar low (in Anita's words)
• You have a bad tummy but you definitely want dessert after that meal of curd rice or khichdi
• You want a sweet something but time is of essence

We all know that such situations are not exactly rare. So, here's what you'll need.

1 Pear, cored and sliced

1 Apple, cored and sliced

1 tbsp Brown Sugar

1/2 tsp Cinnamon Powder

Place the pear and apple slices alternately in a microwave safe dish. Sprinkle the brown sugar and the cinnamon powder over the slices. Microwave on high for 2-3 minutes. Allow to stand for a couple of minutes and then dig in. This is about as guilt free as it gets for me.

This is my last entry to my own AFAM event. Time is running out and I shall not be accepting any entries posted after April 1st.

Mixed Fruit Smoothie

Everyday, we carry a huge lunch bag. My mother would be surprised to see me do this. As a child, I hated carrying a lunch bag. I always wanted to carry one bag that could house just about everything I needed to take to school. All my classmates seemed to be doing that. There was just this small, teeny weeny problem. They carried dry lunch. Upma, mixed rice, parathas etc. I had a 4-box tiffin carrier. And a water bottle. To add to my woes, my lunch always included a serving of curd rice. I’ve done crazy things like pack that huge stainless steel monster into my bag (and have curd leak into the bag’s fabric!!). I figured how my classmates brought those light lunches to school. Their mothers made them eat a three course meal (the one I had for lunch) before they left for school. In an attempt to switch my breakfast and lunch, I even tried that. But there was (and is) no way that I can actually eat a three course meal at that hour!


Now, I know better. And I carry a big (but very smart) lunch bag to work everyday. This has, on all days, my lunch, a small container with curd, and a fruit box. On some days, I even carry a small snack like a salad, a granola bar, or some crackers. The idea is to always have something in my bag should hunger pangs strike so I can reach in instead of reaching out (to crisps, corn grits, chips, etc).

Our fruit box has a combination of whatever fruits are in season here. One day S brought his fruit box home as he didn’t have an opportunity to even open it during the day. It just so happened that I didn’t get a chance to touch my box either. So, I emptied the contents of the boxes into the liquidizer and ended up with this lovely smoothie.

1 Apple, cored and chopped
1 Pear, cored and chopped
1 Orange, deseeded
1 cup Guava Nectar

Blend all of the above in a liquidizer and pour into glasses. Add ice if you like and some honey if you want it a little sweeter.

This super simple smoothie is off to Abby who is hosting this month’s Monthly Mingle. It is also off to me as my second entry to this month's AFAM.

Please send in your entries to me on or before the 1st of April. You have a week left before the fruit changes to something else altogether. So, act now!

Ginger Pear Muffins and Announcing AFAM March

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
And when she was good
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

Much as I hated having this as the nursery rhyme that best described me, I have now come to terms with it. There is nothing that comes close to describing the mischievous, short tempered child that I was (and continue to be). I was the baby of the house, the youngest grandchild on both sides of the family. My tantrum throwing, my stomping out of the room, and everything associated with that is still remembered by every member of my family. And they will probably never let me forget it.

I was born with very sensitive skin and there were (and are) very few things that actually agreed with me. So, my parents thought it best to stick to only those things, expensive as they may be, rather than deal with the allergic reactions. So, I even had a special soap. When I was a little older, I fought with Amma about that as well. Why did everyone in the house get to use that nice green soap when I had to use that brown soap? She tried to explain to me that it was special, but I would have none of that. So, I started using the green soap only to quickly revert to the “one and only” for me.

What is this boring story doing on my food blog? Why is it part of the post that is meant to announce the fruit of the month?

It is only because the two have something in common. The soap that I have been using ever since “the great revert” is proud to be the fruit of the month: Pears!

A Fruit A Month is an event started by Maheswari of Beyond the Usual. This is my first time hosting any event and I am grateful to Maheswari for this opportunity.

You can join the party as long as you follow these simple rules:

1. Prepare any kind of dish with Pears of any kind and post the recipe on your blog in the month of March.
2. Add a link back to this event announcement (feel free to use this logo):

3. Please send me an e-mail at onlineraga@gmail.com with the following info.

• Subject Line: AFAM
• Your name
• Your blog name
• A picture of the dish if you have one.
  

4. Non bloggers can e-mail me the recipe and the picture and I will include it in the round up.
5. Deadline is April 1, 2008 and the round up will be posted in the first week of April.

I am so excited about this event. I’m kickstarting it with my favourite kind of baked goodie: the humble muffin. I found this recipe a long time ago and I don’t recollect where I found it. The word document where I’ve saved it has a footnote that says, “Source: Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Café”. I bought crystallized ginger to make these, but have been munching on them everyday since the day I brought the packet home.

Ginger-Pear Muffins

1 cup Pears, peeled and finely chopped
1 tbsp Lemon Juice
2 cups Flour
½ tsp Salt
1 ½ tsp Baking Powder
1/3 to ½ cup Sugar
1 tbsp Lemon zest, grated
1/3 cup Crystallized Ginger, very finely minced
1 cup Buttermilk
1 Egg
2 tsp Fresh Ginger, ground
1 tsp Vanilla
4 tbsp Unsalted Butter, melted

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Prepare the muffin pans by lining them with paper muffin cases.

Place the chopped pear in a shallow dish, drizzle with lemon juice, and set aside.

Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, and lemon zest in a medium sized bowl. Stir in the minced crystallized ginger.

Blend the buttermilk with the egg, fresh ginger, and vanilla, and beat gently with a fork or a small whisk until smooth.

Slowly pour this mixture, along with the melted butter, into the dry ingredients. Add the pear as well. Using a spoon or rubber spatula, stir from the bottom of the bowl until the dry ingredients are all moistened.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups. Bake in the middle of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until lightly browned on top and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the pan from the oven, then remove the muffins from the pan and place them on a rack to cool.

I also baked some plain vanilla cupcakes to take along for a picnic yesterday. We took about 50 kids from an NGO on a Delhi Metro ride and showed them the Red Fort. I followed my Golden Glow cake recipe and baked them in mufifn cases for 15 minutes at 375ºF. After 10 minutes of baking, I planted some Cadbury's Gems on top. They cracked during baking and some chocolate oozed out. I thought that was a bad thing until I realized that the chocolate added to the overall appeal. The kids loved them and more than the kids, the adults from my office demanded another batch. Meeta's monthly mingle had the theme of "Drop in & Decorate" some time ago. While I didn't participate then, I am glad I made 50 underprivileged kids happy yesterday.