Sweet orange marmalade and some equally sweet awards!

Have you ever smelled an orange blossom in an orange field? If you haven't let me tell you that it is one of the most delicate and refreshing scents ever! I stayed in southern California for a couple of years and our winter weekend gateway there used to be hiking in the nearby hills where due to the elevation it would somehow seem more wintry (well, relatively atleast :D). We used to start early in the morning; hike during the day; grab a cup of coffee and then head back down in the evening. While driving back to the city we would pass through these gigantic orange fields in bloom and oh boy, I would just open up the car windows and let the most refreshing citrusy scent fill up my nose and my mind!

Its amazing how our mind associates foods with memories! Last weekend local farmer's market carried such fresh and sweet varieties of navel oranges, satsumas, mandarins, meyer lemons that for a moment unknowing to myself I flashed back to those SoCal winter evenings! I couldn't resist picking a few navel oranges for some home-made orange marmalade. The store-bought marmalades are okay but I feel they are a tad too sweet and not orangy enough. So I usually make my own take on it. Contrary to perception orange marmalades is one of the easiest things to make. I usually make a very small amount that I can finish off in a couple of weeks, so I don't need to worry about the nitty-grittys of canning.

(Follow the read more link below for the rest of the recipe)

Sweet sesame tikkis and a wish for a very happy sankrant!

For a third year in a row I made the same distressed phone call to my mom yet again "but may be its a really tiny step in the recipe that you missed telling me last time! Why doesn't my til-gul ever turn out like yours?!?". You probably got the context right, after tries and tries of tilgul (til=sesame seeds, gul=jaggery/unrefined sugar, tilgul is a traditional Indian sweet made from sesame seeds and jaggery) somehow my tilgul just never comes out right (officially I have blamed it on the quality of jaggery available here btw :D)! My mom makes the best tilgul ever and I have taken her recipe, read and re-read it, even double-checked the instructions from Ruchira! (For all the non-Marathi folks out there, Ruchira is like a bible of Marathi cooking! I got my copy as a wedding gift from my grandmother who was sleeplessly worried of how I'll ever manage cooking an eatable dinner for my husband :D). Anyway, so I tried and tried but always the jaggery would make the tilgul either too soft or too hard! Now mind you it would taste yummy just the texture would suffer and my poor husband would always encourage me by saying "stomach knows only tasty" :)

So, this time when I made the same phone call last weekend my mom had her answer ready "Just skip gul, use sugar, that will surely work". Hmmm, tilgul without gul! Then she told me a recipe of a tilgul that I had very much liked as a kid and seeing as that one did not have jaggery, I decided that may be it wasn't the craziest of ideas to make tilgul with sugar! And what do you know, this was by far my best til-gul.. ever! In all fairness though it should be called sesame tikki or sesame snaps but hey, today is Sankranti and I have a til-sweet for you, thats all that counts, right?!

(Follow the read more link below for the rest of the recipe...)

Parsnip soup with kale and roasted garlic

Have you ever had it happen to you that you are roaming in a grocery store picking up your onions, chilis and potatoes and all-of-a-sudden a packet of an unknown vegetable or a spice jumps into your cart and won't take no for an answer :D Well, that happens to me a lot! My husband calls it 'impulse-buy' but tchk-tchk I know better than that.. see, its a divine intervention! Okay, okay, I know I am an addict for buying new (to me) fruits and vegetables that seem to be in season without having any idea of what I am going to do with it. Then they sit in the fridge patiently waiting to be used up. A week goes by, no super-great cooking idea strikes me, and at the end of the week, I end up using them in my sure-fire way: by soupifying them!

Parsnips were my last week's impulse buy. They are in season now. I have tasted parsnips long back but this time they looked so fresh and crunchy that I had to have it! To be honest a parsnip soup was not on my mind when I bought them but it turned out to be great! I added kale purely for some color zing as parsnips are relatively pale in color but roasted garlic and rosemary are the main flavorings. This is a light soup and has more delicate flavors than my usual hearty soups. I enjoyed it with a bowl of leftover spaghetti and it turned out to be a great combination!

(Follow the read more link below for the rest of the recipe...)

Raspberry Flavored Applesauce

When life gives you an overload of apples what do you do? Don't sweat it -- just make applesauce! Last week we had a situation where we ended up with lots and lots of apples sitting on the counter-top waiting to be used! Good part about my lack of sweet tooth is that I am always looking for some not-so-sweet ways to prepare a light fruit based sweet dish which we'll love and won't seem like a mere idea of a dessert to our guests :) This one fits the bill perfectly!

Raspberry adds a nice pinkish red hue to the sauce which I loved! Surprisingly it also paired really well with apples. Lemon juice is necessary to bring out the apple flavor and cardamom just puts the whole dish together for me! Next time I want to try this with some apple liquor, I bet it will add a nice edge to this dish :) I did a test taste and was so pleasantly surprised by these apple-raspberry flavors that in a hurry to eat it all I did not even care much about the picture!

(For rest of the post follow the read more link below...)

Spicy black eyed peas with kale: cooking your way to a happy and prosperous new year!

When I was a fourth-grader in a little town our school teacher once told us that whoever studies very hard on the new year's day gets excellent grades and wins all the academic prizes in the next year. You know how it goes, right? at that age a word from your favorite school-teacher is like a word of a God! We all took her very seriously and made it a point to study hard on the new year's day. It was sort of like a tradition that we followed in our class; the point of which was that the direction you give to the first day of the year, thats the direction your rest of the year takes :) Now I look back and laugh at the innocence with which we studied on 1st of Jan hoping that good marks and prizes will follow, but all along I think somewhere there was a hidden innocent satisfaction of trying to shape up the new year to be :) Such do-no-harm traditions are my favorites!

I learnt of a similar new year's day tradition recently which is observed in the southern United States and best of all this is a food tradition! In southern US it is traditional to eat a meal of black eyed peas alongwith some greens (usually sautéed collard greens) with cornbread on the first day of the year. The symbolism behind this is really cute! The black eyed peas swell during the process of cooking (from dried to cooked). The swelling of the peas indicates prosperity in the coming year. The greens indicate 'greens'=money for the new year! and the spiciness of the food is symbolic of the the spice in your life for the year ahead! More than the symbolism though I just love to follow this food tradition because I simply just love black eyed peas and would not pass up a single opportunity to cook a big batch of these delicious legume!

Being a lazy and greedy person that I am though I decided to cook all the prosperity, wealth and spiciness in one single pot instead of making multiple dishes :) hey, one pot meals rule, right? Anyway, so here is to prosperity, wealth, spiciness and happiness to all of you in the coming new year! Happy New Year!!

(Follow 'Read More' link below...)

Beets and greens salad with mint, almonds and lemon

Last few weeks have been a sweet overdose for me.. You know what I mean, right? Cakes and cookies and chocolates and truffles and sweet breads: you name it and this holiday season I have ate it! Since I am one of those minority people who are low on a sweet-tooth, a sweet overdose of this magnitude is likely to take me off sweets for a while.. or may be just for a few days, we'll see, depends on how hard the box of cookies and chocolates sitting on my dining table stares at me (like that Geico add where the money stares at people!) :D

Anyway, today morning I just wanted to eat a simple and light lunch to make up for all the desserts that I have had last few weeks (and particularly yesterday!). I looked in the pantry and saw a bunch of golden and red beets that I had bought from farmer's market last week. I instantly thought of my favorite beet salad! I started making this recipe a year or so ago; the origin of which comes from one of my most treasured cookbooks "Vegetarian cooking for everyone" by Deborah Madison. This is a great book and I'll highly recommend it to anyone who cooks or wants to cook simple vegetarian foods most of the time (no ties with Amazon). I refer to this book not so much for the ready to go recipes but more for the information about a vegetable, like its flavors, how to store, methods of cooking, ideal pairings etc. The book is particularly good in describing flavor pairings for vegetables and seasonings. I guess I use this more as a reference cookbook where I get an idea of a recipe and then eventually make my own version of it. That being told, the book does have excellent recipes too :)

Edible Christmas fruit tree and a wish for a very Happy Holidays!

Every year around this time the same question starts popping up into my mind: what should I make for the holiday gatherings? I think everyone has atleast a few dashing staple stars; these are the dishes that you can whip up with no worries at-all, with very less preparation and they are sure to please every tummy! I am always awed by all the fellow food-bloggers who whip up these delightfully scrumptious baked goodies; seeing the pictures of which make me wish I had more of a baking woo-doo :) But with my limited baking talent all I feel comfortable taking to any holiday gatherings is usually a banana nut bread or some fruit cake!

This year though when I saw this chocolate truffles post on Yasmeen's blog I knew exactly what I wanted to make! Chocolate truffles are a type of chocolates made with a chocolate ganache inside and coated with various coatings, the most ubiquitous of which is cocoa powder but powdered sugar and toasted nuts are common coatings too. Ganache is just a fancy name for smooth melted chocolate with cream (low-fat milk or heavy cream). Occasionally ganache is flavored with flavorings such as vanilla and espresso. Chocolate truffles are named for the look-alike wild truffle fungus/mushroom variety which is a delicacy. Now the truffle-police will insist that the real chocolate truffles must be uneven and rustic to resemble the mushrooms they are named after.. but I am raised in a round and perfect laddoo tradition and what the heck I took pride in making my truffles perfectly circular and round so the pictures will look better (don't tell the truffle-police!) :D

Anyway, so here is how I made my truffles:

Recipe source: multiple truffle posts mainly Yasmeen's post, an old Joy-of-Baking article describing anatomy of a truffle and a step-by-step photo post from here.

Ingredients:

For ganache:

8.5 ounces of dark chocolate (I used Trader Joe's Belgium chocolate brand with 54% cocoa)

1/2C cream (I used mixture of heavy cream and 2% reduced fat)

1/2tsp vanilla extract

1tsp instant espresso coffee

For coating:

cocoa powder

toasted crushed slivered almonds

powdered sugar

Recipe:

(The posts linked above have a much detailed description of the method, but here is what I did in a nutshell).

1. Cut the chocolate into as many thin pieces as possible. My chocolate slab was very thick and so I chopped it very roughly into big pieces.
2. Heat the cream just until the boiling point. Add espresso and mix well.
3. Pour the cream over the chocolate pieces and let it stand for a minute. At this time if your chocolate was very finely chopped then the cream will be able to melt the chocolate. If instead you had big chocolate chunks like mine, you will need a double-boiler method to melt the chocolate. For double boiler method: heat water in a large pan to barely simmering. Place the pan holding the chocolates and cream over the simmering water and continue stirring until the entire chocolate is melted.
4. Add vanilla extract to the melted chocolate and mix it really well to get a smooth consistency. This is your ganache, cover and let it chill in refrigerator for overnight.
5. Remove from fridge when you are ready to make truffles. Place each of the coating ingredients in a separate plate.
6. Using a mellon scooper scoop out a chocolate bowl. Roll in your hands for a smoother round shape. (Heat from your hand will start to melt the chocolate making it easy to reform into a round ball).
7. Roll the chocolate balls in one of the coating plates making sure the truffle is thoroughly coated. Place  the truffle on a parchment paper.
8. Ready to serve! Serve them at room temperature or refrigerate for later use.

These were heavenly and had a perfect truffle byte! I forgot to take a photo of the truffle byte, may be next time :-)

Hearty Lentil Soup for the Wintry Soul

My favorite winter evenings go something like these: come home early from work (hey it gets dark earlier!), pour yourself a hot cup of cocoa, put on something nice on TV and sit on the sofa cuddled in a shawl and do nothing! Now you might ask what happens to the dinner? and that's where this soup comes in.. this is my favorite one pot wonder meal. Wonder because its an absolutely delicious and healthy soup, cooks entirely with the pantry staples AND most of the cooking time is unattended. Now isn't that a win-win! I am usually game for any hot soup dinner during winter and this one being with lentils is even more heartier and feeling. I usually enjoy this soup with some make-do garlic bread which is just regular whole wheat bread toasted and then flavored with some olive oil and some fresh crushed garlic!