Jam Tartlets

 

I woke up last morning thinking, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"

 

I was running very late for a tea party. One whose deadline had been extended partly at my request. Could I blame it on jetlag? Could I blame it on two festivals that are very important to me that I absolutely had to prepare for? Could I simply say I forgot? No.

I knew I had to do something about it. I just didn't know what.

'I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!' the Queen said.

'Twopence a week, and jam every other day.'
Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said,

'I don't want you to hire ME - and I don't care for jam.'
'It's very good jam,' said the Queen.
'Well, I don't want any TO-DAY, at any rate.'
'You couldn't have it if you DID want it,' the Queen said.

'The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day.'
'It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"' Alice objected.
'No, it can't,' said the Queen.

'It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't any OTHER day, you know.'
'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!'

 

Have I confused you enough? There was a time when I thought about mad people in third person. Now I know enough to talk about them in first person.

 

“Do you think I've gone round the bend?"
"I'm afraid so. You're mad, bonkers, completely off your head. 

But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

 

Alice, oops Anita, invited us to a Mad Tea Party. I had attended a couple of these in the past. Just around the time when I realized that, I, like everyone else, was a bit mad. But what would I do at a tea party? I, the one that doesn't even drink tea that much.

 

“Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."
"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."
"Nobody asked your opinion," said Alice.” 

 

 

The writing was everywhere. I simply had to attend this tea party and since today is not just any other day, I decided to make jam tartlets.

 

For the pastry:

1/2 cup Flour
1/2 cup Wheat Flour
1/3 cup Butter

2-3 tbsp Ice Cold Water
1/2 tsp Salt


Place the flours, salt and butter in a bowl and mix together till the mixture resembles small peas. Gradually add the water and knead gently till it forms a dough. (Do not knead as you would for chapati/poori dough.) Roll out the dough and stamp out circles.


For the filling:

3 tbsp Jam

To proceed:

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Prepare a mini muffin pan by greasing it a little. I used a non stick mini mufifn pan.

Place the pastry circles in the muffin moulds. Spoon 1/2 tsp of jam into each mould. Bake for 20 minutes. Allow the tartlets to cool a bit.

 

Sit down with a cup of tea or coffee, serve yourself some tarts and have yourself a party. Remember:

 

“Yes, that's it! Said the Hatter with a sigh, it's always tea time.”

Peanut Sesame Powder

 

 

When I was relatively new to the world of blogging, I didn't know too many people. I thought that participation in events was only by invitation. I felt like an outsider. I read about people receiving gifts from other bloggers and wondered how much longer it might be before I would be considered part of the "inner circle".

I then realized that there was no such thing. Most bloggers considered all other bloggers as being in the inner circle. Friendships were formed quickly and before I knew it, I received a lovely package in the email. A letter, some methkut, some murabba, some tea bags, an agarbatti holder and this little bottle of "Sesamum Chutney". The sender was Nandita!

 

S and I were hooked on to this Sesamum Chutney and we savoured even the last speck from the bottle. We ate it with everything. Sprinkled it on buttered toast, ate it with chapattis, had it with dosais and even mixed it with hot rice.

 

I tried to recreate the chutney at home nearly 5 years after I had received the parcel. It turned out quite similar to the original and I will be making this so often.

 

6 Garlic Pods

1 cup Peanuts, roasted and skin removed

1/2 cup Sesame Seeds, roasted

2 tbsp Cumin, roasted

2 tbsp Red Chilli Powder

Salt to taste

1 tbsp Oil

 

Grind the ingredients (except the oil) together. Add the oil a few drops at a time during the grinding. The oil keeps the entire mixture from becoming lumpy.

 

This is a very versatile chutney that can be used in many ways. You could also mix some in a bowl of yogurt for a quick raita. I am certain it will go very well even as a spice mix for vegetables. I must try that next.

 

Soraikkai Thuvayal

 

 

Meals. At times, they're something I put together in a jiffy. At others, they are painstakingly thought through. Ever since A started eating regular meals, I have started putting more thought into what I put on the table. All the same, I don't want A to have conventional ideas of what a meal must be and must not be. So, it doesn't have to be rice or roti. A meal could be dosai, pasta, soup and a sandwich, rice-dal-sabzi, parathas... as long as it has carbohydrates, proteins, fats and a good portion of vegetables, it is a meal.

 

One night, I decided to make wheat doddaks for dinner. A few years ago, I added moong flour to the batter and have not stopped since. Thus, the wheat and green gram doddak was born. My carb and protein elements had been taken care of. In order to convert it into a full meal, I grated some bottle gourd into the batter and made little doddaks for A. Now, that was a full meal for him. It had all that I wanted in his meal and it was something he wanted too (to be able to eat by himself).

But why all this talk about doddaks in a post about a thuvayal? Because putting in grated bottle gourd into the batter may make it a meal for my little one, but we adults need something to go with the doddaks. And since I have been known to make a thuvayal out of just anything, I decided to make the vegetable element of our meal into a thuvayal.


This recipe deviates from my usual thuvayal but is a keeper recipe.


1 cup Bottle Gourd, peeled and diced
2 tbsp Coconut, scraped
4 Red Chillies
1 tsp Mustard
1 tsp Cumin
3 tsp Urad Dal (Black Gram Dal)
1 tsp Chana Dal
1 tsp Sesame Seeds
1/4 tsp Fenugreek Seeds
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
3 tsp Oil
1 tbsp Tamarind Paste
Salt to taste




 

Heat the oil and fry the red chillies, mustard seeds, sesame seeds, fenugreek seeds, asafoetida, chana dal and black gram dal for a couple of minutes. Add the bottle gourd and fry for 2 minutes. Cover and cook for 5-7 minutes. Grind the mixture along with the coconut, tamarind paste and salt.

Serve with the doddaks. Serve on buttered toast. Serve with rice. Serve with chapatis. In short, serve it just about any way you like.

Cherry Berry Yogurt Tart

A few years ago, our blogs were our blogs. Fellow bloggers and other readers would come to our blogs, read our posts and comment on them. I remember very clearly the time when I lived for those comments. Because they were my only connection to my readers. (Julie & Julia, anyone?) I still wait eagerly for comments to posts that I put up. Today they are few and far between. But many lines are blurring and I now have multiple connections with my fellow bloggers and readers. Facebook is one of those connections.

Last year, a few random conversations led to the formation of a Baking Club and all of us made a Mango Cake. I got a little busy in the months that followed and couldn't keep up. Over the next few months, my blog suffered from lack of attention. In the last few months, it has picked up speed again.

 

A more recent chat on Facebook led to the revival of this club. The one I fondly called The Sisterhood of Travelling Cake Tins is now christened that. And since today is the 100th birthday of Julia Child, the theme for this episode is her Baked Yogurt Tart. Keep a lookout in the blogosphere today. You are bound to see multiple yogurt tarts from my dear friends and fellow bloggers. And given that Cook For Julia is being hosted by PBS, you will see many other Julia Child recipes too.

This recipe is adapted from a Julia Child recipe found here. I used readymade frozen puff pastry for the base. You can find my tried and trusted recipe for shortcrust pastry here. I omitted the nuts from the recipe.

1 recipe Shortcrust Pastry dough/Puff Pastry

For the filling:

2 cups Yogurt

3/4 cup Sugar

3 Eggs

3/4 cup Flour

2 tbsp pure Vanilla Extract

1/2 cup Cherries, pitted and halved

1 cup Mixed Berries (I used raspberries, blackberries and blueberries)

Icing sugar, for dusting

Heat the oven to 400F/200C.



Roll the pastry doughinto a 12 inch circle of 1/4 inch thickness and fit it into a 9" round springform pan. Cover the top with baking paper and blind bake for 20 minutes with pie weights, rice or beans.

Remove the weight and the baking paper and allow the tart shell to cool. Set the oven to 325F/160C.

 In the meanwhile, beat the eggs and the sugar together. Add the yogurt and the vanilla extract and mix well. Add the flour a little by little and fold it into the mixture. Pour the mixture into the cooled tart shell. Do not fill to the brim, only about 2/3. Add the fruit. (The tart will look like this at this stage.) Bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool. Cut into wedges and serve.

Packed with fruit and the goodness of yogurt, this is one keeper recipe.

Happy 100th birthday Julia! Happy Independence Day! And a toast to dear S and I. We lost our independence this day six years ago when we got engaged formally.

Here are the links to the other posts from the sisterhood:

Aparna: Baked Yogurt Tart (Tarte Au Yaourt) With Fresh Orange & Pistachios, In An Oatmeal Crust
Nandita:Baked Yogurt Berry Tart
Arundathi:
Arundati:Baked Yogurt Tart with Blueberries, Almonds and Orange Zest in an Oatmeal Pie Crust</
Monika:Baked Yogurt Tart with Fresh Figs and Blueberries

Kesar Pista Kulfi

A couple of weekends ago, we visited a friend for a potluck dinner. I had made a lot of Bisi Bele Huli Anna and my friend decided to make some curd rice. She had also made some very nice sabudana tikkis as a starter. And just when we thought we could eat no more, she brought out some kulfi.


The kulfi tasted so good that I had to try it out at home. The recipe is so simple, it is almost as if there is nothing to it. Also, my traditional way of making kulfi involves boiling the milk with condensed milk. This method involves no cooking. I blended all the ingredients in a blender, but I think I should use a hand whisk the next time. The blending left some froth on the top of my kulfis.


1 can Evaporated Milk
1 can (400g) Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 tin (170g) Cream


For the topping, grind together:

1 tbsp Pistachios
1 tbsp Almonds
a pinch Saffron
1/4 tsp Cardamom


Mix the evaporated milk, condensed milk and cream. Whisk together until well blended. Add the topping and mix again. Fill the kulfi moulds with this mixture and freeze until set. When set, dip the moulds in warm water, unscrew and hold over a plate. The kulfi slides out effortlessly.


This is a keeper recipe for me even if everything came out of a can!

Carrot Beetroot Chocolate Mini Muffins

Baking for little children is fun. I find instant approval or disapproval when a child tastes what I have made. No pretense, no niceties. I have rediscovered baking with butter in the past year and I find that the texture of the cakes is really nice. I have nothing against baking cakes with oil, just that once in a while, butter is better. And when I bake for children, I feel I must use butter.

I was on my way to meet a dear friend and remembered that I had promised her daughter chocolate muffins. So I made these very quickly. But then I had just grated some carrots to make parathas for A, so I decided to sneak some in to these muffins as well. Then I thought beets would also make a good addition.

The best part about this entire recipe is that one cannot even taste the carrot or beetroot in the final product. They just seem to make the muffins super moist. I know this one is a keeper.

3/4 cup Flour

1 1/2 tbsp Cocoa Powder

1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 cup Sugar

a Pinch Salt

1/4 cup Butter

1 Eggs

1/4 cup Grated  Carrot

1/4 cup Grated Beetroot

1/2 tsp Vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350F/180 C. Sift the flour, cocoa, and baking powder along with the salt.

Cream the butter and the sugar until fluffy. Add the egg and beat again. Add the sugar and vanilla and

beat well together. Fold the flour cocoa mixture into this.

Prepare the mini muffin pans by lining them with paper muffin cases or spraying them with baking spray.

Stir the grated carrot and beetroot into the batter and pour into the prepared muffin cases. Bake for 12-15 minutes.

Little A polished off two of these almost as soon as they were out of the oven. The batter makes 16 mini muffins. I packed some in a box and took them to meet some old friends and their children. Gone in sixty seconds may be a better title for this recipe!

Kaju Barfi

Indian sweets is one area I have steered clear of. You could easily blame it on two things. One is the hard work involved and the other is definitely a scar from the olden days. I remember trying to make one sweet which just didn't set. I added sugar, more sugar and then some. At the end of the experiment, all one could taste was sugar and it still had to be eaten using a spoon. My mother was very encouraging and very forgiving. Far more forgiving than I have ever been on myself.

Last year, at Deepavali, I made my version of the 7-cup cake. The recipe will come up soon. It took me another 9 months to try my next Indian sweet. I usually don't stock the amount of sugar and ghee that go into Indian sweets. After years of making cookies and sweet buns for Janmashtami, this year I decided I must introduce little A to mithai as well. I found this recipe in the Milkmaid Gold Collection and modified it a little.

1 1/4 cups Cashews, powdered

150g Khoa, grated

1/2 cup Milk

1/4 cup Flour

1/2 tin Milkmaid

1 tbsp Ghee

1/4 tsp Cardamom powder

a few Saffron strands

Grind all the ingredients except the cardamom and saffron to a fine paste. Grease a heavy bottomed pan with 3/4 tbsp ghee and add the paste. Add the cardamom and the saffron. Heat the mixture over an even medium flame until the mixture comes together as a ball.

Grease a plate with sides (I used two 8" cake tins as I don't have thalis in my house). Transfer the mixture and spread evenly. Cut into diamond shapes and store in an airtight container.

Since this was my very first attempt, I didn't add any ghee to my pan at the start, which explains the little burnt bits. The original recipe didn't ask for any extra ghee. My barfis needed some extra love.

Happy Janmashtami all of you!