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Recipe: Irresistible Carrot-Ginger Cake

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This is something I’ve never done before – sharing the recipe for a dish I’ve recently added to the re:store menu – but this cake is so divine that I can’t help but want to shout about it from the rooftops! Despite my interest in healthy eating, I’ve never really been one for vegetable-based cakes. But this carrot-ginger cake is simply outstanding. From the moment I took my first attempt out of the oven, I was stunned. And every slice since has simply vanished in a matter of hours in my home, and from the re:store kitchen. And for all the love you, my well-wishers and friends, have shown me, this recipe is just a small gesture of gratitude.

I am always on a quest for perfection, and to me there are four types of cakes that every baker should master: chocolate, vanilla, vegan and carrot. These are the basics, and over the years I have strived to do better and better with each kind. Flavour-wise, there are many ways to innovate on these basics and tweak them to suit your palate. My friends Michael and Sujata’s cook once shared a carrot cake recipe which used pineapple and coconut, for instance. That was what I used to bake until I found my own way of literally spicing it up. When I melded the zesty taste of ginger into what I’d use to think of as the somewhat boring carrot cake, I knew I had hit gold.

Ginger is the rhizome of a flowering plant by the same name, and is widely used in Indian cuisine for its fragrance, spiciness and health benefits. It was one of the first spices that Europeans imported, so world cuisines have also used it for centuries. It is great for treating nausea and appetite loss, has anti-inflammatory properties, and is believed to lower blood sugar and to help reduce the risk of heart disease.  For this cake, I used stem ginger soaked in sugar syrup as well as freshly grated ginger.

Carrot, like ginger, is also an edible root – and it is an extremely popular vegetable in Western cuisine. In India, it is added to salads, stir-fries (known as poriyal in Tamil) and even a milk dessert called gajar ki halwa. It also has a range of health benefits, including better eyesight and lowered cholesterol, and is a source of potassium, antioxidants, vitamins and fibre.

Two nourishing ingredients – and one delicious dessert. This cake is so appetizing that icing is completely optional! Also, it is lactose-free, which means that those of you with dairy allergies can indulge without stress!

Irresistible Carrot-Ginger Cake

Ingredients
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup plain flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
⅔ cup vegetable oil
1 ½ cups grated carrots
½ cup sweet ginger in syrup (substitute: ½ teaspoon dry ginger powder)
½ cup chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

Grease an 8’ inch square pan and line with butter paper. Dust with flour.

Sift the flour along with the soda, baking powder and salt – as well as the ginger powder if you’ve opted to use it. Set aside.

Combine the eggs, oil, sugar and flour until well-mixed. Now add the carrots, fresh ginger and walnuts to the mixture.

Pour this batter into the prepared tin. Bake for about 45 minutes to an hour, until the tooth pick comes out clean.

Once baked, allow to cool. Turn onto a wire rack.

As I said earlier, icing is completely optional. But if you’d like the extra sweetness, or just the visual effect, decorate with the cream cheese frosting that is traditionally paired with carrot cakes. It has a slight tang to it, and lifts the flavours nicely.

Serve – and prepare to watch the slices simply vanish from their plates. This carrot-ginger cake is irresistible. Don’t take my word for it. Try it out yourself, or if you’re in Chennai, buzz me and put in your order!

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Recipe: 3+1 Overnight Oats – Post-Workout Pudding

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At 8am every morning, I make a beeline from my trainer to my kitchen, open the fridge and devour a big bowl of my 3+1 overnight oats. This post-workout, protein-rich pudding replenishes my body and keeps me from taking a bite out of anything that gets in my way, including the Dark Prince’s head! Fortunately for him and for me both, this wonderful pudding is always waiting for me in the morning. Chilled, nutritious and oh so filling. My starvation ebbs away. And I am prepared for my day.

I’ve been exercising ever since my firstborn, and I am obsessed with staying fit and healthy both emotionally and physically. Over the years, I have developed a clockwork diligence with regards to my fitness regime. I supplement this by eating good, home-cooked food, as you know from this blog. I find that a strict diet is not necessary, as long as you eat fresh food, made cleanly and with nutritious ingredients.

I also listen to my body. For instance, when I feel lazy or lethargic, I know I have overeaten. All of us have this capacity. We just have to stay aware, especially as we get older, and listen to what our bodies tell us about how they feel, what they need, and how to address it. Some of this is also a part of my Macrobiotics training, and there are easy ways to incorporate some of those methods into daily life.

Whether you have an intense exercise regime or not, what you have for breakfast has a huge effect on your productivity for the rest of the day. This brings us back to the power pudding that I eat every day. Replenishing protein is my key need, as a gym enthusiast, and I always look for innovative and creative ways to bring more of it into my diet. I hit the jackpot with this delicious – and indeed, decadent! – 3+1 overnight oats.

This pudding is built on just three basic ingredients, which need to be refrigerated overnight. All you need are oats, milk and chia seeds. These are the key elements. Beyond this, you tweak the recipe based on your own tastes, seasonal availability and so on. You can use any type of milk you choose, be it vegan almond or soy milk, skimmed milk, slim milk, coconut milk or good old regular milk.

The +1 for me is usually a fruit. I reach for dates, bananas and berries through the year, and when I have them on hand, any lovely summer fruit. As you can imagine, based on the proliferation of mango recipes on this blog every summer, they were a frequent recent addition to my morning pudding this year. Every fruit has its own range of benefits, as well as sweetening or adding texture to the pudding. You could also add honey or maple syrup if you want to sweeten it. And for an extra boost, mix in protein powder, spirulina powder or açaí powder.

Whatever you choose to add to the base of three ingredients, it becomes a full and wholesome breakfast. With carbs, protein, fruit sugars and the additional goodness of an extra handful of nuts or other ingredient of your preference, a serving of this pudding is perfect to get you through the entire morning. And it’s so creamy and tasty that it’s like having dessert for breakfast!

3+1 Overnight Oats

(Yield: 2 cups)

Ingredients

3 tablespoons oats

1½ teaspoons chia seeds

1 cup milk of your choice

½ cup fruit of your choice

It’s very important that you make this pudding the night before you plan to consume it, as it needs time to set. Simply blend all the ingredients and pour into 2 cups. Garnish with nuts, if desired, and refrigerate. Don’t forget to add the protein, açaí, spirulina or other healthy powder if you wish to.

Enjoy it the following morning, right after your workout or before your busy day starts. If you have a very sweet tooth, like I do, you may add 1 teaspoon of honey or maple syrup before you eat it.

This 3+1 overnight oats pudding is one of the healthiest breakfasts you can have, regardless of how demanding your schedule is. It is also, hands-down, one of the tastiest. Give it a try as a replacement for your current breakfast dish, and tell me how it works for you!

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Recipe: Loaf of Love – Birthday Banana Bread

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June is my birthday month, which means one word, and a very special one for re:store at that: CAKE! As I mentioned in an earlier post, my mother once attended a baking course at a catering institute in Chennai when my siblings and I were still in school. For an entire month, she’d bring home the most delectable samples. We couldn’t wait to get home and eat them! The smells and memories of that adventurous time when she started making all these new desserts for us are still with me, and a huge part of the inspiration behind re:store. During that course was when my mother had started to maintain a cherished notebook of baking recipes, which was gifted to me eventually. One of those recipes is what I’ve pulled out for you today – banana bread.

Growing up, I was not a great fan of the extremely nutritious banana, so this was a great way to make sure I ate it. Bananas have been proven to dramatically reduce the risk of heart disease, thanks to being packed with potassium. They improve the digestive system and are said to be beneficial for everything from asthma to weight loss. They are carb-rich, so they boost energy quickly. They are also naturally sweet, which means any dessert you put them in requires less sugar.

Lately I’ve been nostalgic about my growing years and it led me to dig out some old photos from back then. Here are two: an old studio portrait of my mother, who as you know inspires most of my work, and a shot of me from my teenage years by my dear friend Rags Raghavan, who has taught me a great deal about using the camera. Looking at the portrait of my mother, I feel grateful for how re:store has grown from my imagination into what it is today. My mother was in her 20s when it was taken and was about to be married. She went on to become my first, most important culinary mentor, and still is to this day. I remember days spent after school helping with chores in the kitchen; back then I didn’t realize the values I imbibed would be such an important part of me and my journey with re:store. Many of my cooking methods are identical to those of my mother’s kitchen. Grow your herbs yourself, never waste a morsel, always feed and care for staff, and a bunch of other values and tips. Even today, I pester my mother for traditional Gujarati recipes on my weekly visits, and she happily obliges.

Nowadays, I take so many photos digitally, carefully styling and selecting the best ones. Back then, we had manual cameras, with film rolls that had to be brought from abroad. You couldn’t edit those pictures, and you could not take so many either. My first film camera was a gift from my father-in-law, and my kids and family were my first subjects. I still have a soft spot for the old photography methods. They feel authentic to me in a way that I still try to replicate somehow in my modern shoots.

More than being commercially successful, what matters to me is that I am passionate about what I do. I enjoy styling my shoots so much. I am proud to say I work with pleasure!

Food and photography are two sides of re:store, and two big parts of my heart. So without further ado, here’s my birthday gift to you…

 

Birthday Banana Bread

(Yield: 1 loaf)

Ingredients

150 grams unsalted butter

200 grams sugar

3 eggs

110 ml buttermilk

3 bananas

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

350 grams flour

100 grams walnuts

 

Prepare a 10′ loaf tin, by buttering and dusting with flour.

Beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after every addition. Once the eggs have been blended well, add the bananas and buttermilk.

Sift the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Fold into the batter. Now add half the broken walnuts as well.

Using a spatula, blend the batter well once more, then spoon it all into the loaf tin.

Take the remaining finely chopped walnuts and sprinkle on top to decorate.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until a skewer comes out clean when inserted.

Allow to cool and remove from tin. Slice and serve with a hot beverage of your preference.

I’ve chosen to share this banana bread recipe with you because while it’s a cake, it’s also one of the healthier desserts you can have. If, like me, you have an eye on your fitness, you certainly won’t feel like you’ve cheated on your diet plan. If you’re a fan of banana and looking for something slightly more decadent, try the deep-fried deliciousness of my banana-methi fritters!

I always think of the recipes on this blog as a gift for those who live far away from my kitchen – if you can’t treat yourself to one of my homemade cakes, you can at least try to make it yourself!

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Recipe: Keep Your Cool – Spiced Buttermilk & Homemade Yoghurt

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I must have yoghurt with every single meal – a meal is never complete without it, and I am never full! I have tried over the years to go vegan and all that jazz but my love for yoghurt makes this impossible. I can give up milk, but yoghurt? Never. In fact, I loved it so much as a child that my mother had to ration it – she restricted me to a single cup per meal. But how I loved that one cup!

In South India, we take our yoghurt seriously. It has to be perfect – it should not be too sour, it should not have a thin film on top, and it should be smooth not broken. This is how it must be served at the table – and you can be assured that it is served at every table.

I have a friend in Barcelona who visits me each year and takes back a little bit of the yoghurt culture as a starter to make her own. The temperature, quantity of culture and the quality of the milk are very important. Yet, somehow, yoghurt is also very simple to make, which is why it is made in households every single day without fail. I wish sourdough was as easy to make. If you follow me on Instagram, you’d have seen my attempts and adventures at sourdough on my Instastories!

Traditionally, in my home, we set the yoghurt in an earthenware or stoneware pot. I set it both in the mornings and in the evenings, so that we have it fresh at both lunch and dinner. Yoghurt usually sours within a day, so it is one of the ingredients that is often used in leftover-based dishes. Refrigeration can prolong this slightly.

It sets faster in the summers, within 5 to 6 hours. In cooler months, if you set it just before bed, you will certainly be able to have it first thing in the morning. But be warned that these standards are for my climate, here in India. When I visited my son in New York last winter, he had a craving for homemade yoghurt. In the depths of icy November, it took two whole days to set!

So many of my summer stories revolve around my grandparents’ home in Vijayawada. If you went down memory lane with me and my aunt’s rose sherbet or their vetiver-scented curtains which inspired my chia pudding, here is one more from my childhood memories to enjoy: spiced buttermilk. It is a flavour I remember from those summers with my cousins, when we would each be given 25 paisa to go buy ourselves a treat. Someone would get soda, someone would get raw mango slices… My favourite was guava, but buttermilk was what we were always encouraged to have, for its health benefits. What I’ll share with you today is my friend Anandhi’s recipe, made with her guidance. Its core ingredient is homemade yoghurt.

Both yoghurt and buttermilk are great for digestion, and have a cooling effect on the body, which is why they are summer essentials. If you love your dairy like I do – with apologies to my vegan and lactose-intolerant friends! – you’ll absolutely love being able to switch from store-bought yoghurt. After a while, setting it becomes a habit, and it’s always so delicious when it’s fresh.

 

Spiced Buttermilk

(Yield: Approximately 5 glasses)

 

Ingredients

1 cup yoghurt

1 teaspoon roasted cumin powder

1 teaspoon grated ginger

1 tablespoon finely chopped coriander leaves

1 finely chopped green chilli

Salt to taste

3 cups water

A dash of lemon

1 pinch asafoetida (optional)

In a blender, add all the ingredients, except the water, and whir until everything is well blended. Now add the 3 cups of water. You can adjust the consistency by increasing or reducing the quantity of water to your preference. The dash of lemon gives you a little spring of energy, and the spices add such delicious flavours to the drink. Serve immediately.

Known for its probiotic properties, buttermilk acts as a coolant in the summer months, especially when eating heat-inducing mangoes is a full time pleasure!

 

 

Homemade Yoghurt

As I said earlier, setting yoghurt is both very delicate and very easy. To set the yoghurt, the temperature of the room, the temperature of the milk and the quantity of the starter are all very important in order for the yoghurt to be plain and not sour.

In India, where summers are very hot, I add a ¼ teaspoon of starter yoghurt to a bowl and pour room temperature milk into it. I then cover it with a lid and set it aside for 5-6 hours. Do the same if you are working in a similar climate. After the stated time, open the lid and see that the milk is set and rather tight when moved a little. Now refrigerate. Serve whenever you please.

During the winters, warm the milk and increase the quantity of the starter to ½ or even 1 teaspoon. Cover, and keep in a warm place for 10-12 hours or until set.

I am not a fan of sour yoghurt so refrigerating it once set is key, so it stays fresh for longer.

I’d much rather make my own yoghurt at home, where I know what exactly goes into it, as I’m always cautious about my food as far as possible.

This is the yoghurt I use when making buttermilk, as well as my regular accompaniment to my major meals. Yoghurt with rice, yoghurt with rotli, and of course, yoghurt with re:store’s bestselling muesli. It goes so well with everything, in my opinion!

I’d love to hear in the comments about how you’re keeping cool this summer!

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Recipe: Summer Sweetness – Rose Sherbet

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My childhood summers were almost always spent in Vijayawada, where my maternal grandparents lived. If you’ve followed my blog for some time, you may remember when I mentioned their huge fridge or the vetiver-scented curtains in their rooms. So many precious memories were made there as we grew up. Maybe one reason why the scent and flavour of roses are such a vital element in the re:store kitchen is because they always evoke for me one very special taste from those long-ago days:  rose sherbet.

This is my aunt’s recipe, and she made it almost ceremonially every summer in Vijayawada. Or so it felt to me, at least, because the luscious colours and fragrance – and that wonderful, cool taste at the end of it all – were so grand. The household had a very traditional kitchen, despite the ultra-modern fridge, and there was no dining table. In one corner was a puja area, where the gods were always served first, which is why our custom is to never taste food as it is being cooked. Followed by the offering to the gods, the kids would be served. Leaves would be laid on the floor in rows, and my siblings, cousins and I would sit down cross-legged and eat. Banana leaves are popular in South India, but we also used sal or banyan leaves, known as patravali (and locally as istrakku). Leaves are not only a traditional form of crockery, they are also environmentally-friendly. They are biodegradable and are a single-use item, thus requiring no water wastage during cleaning.

Sitting on the floor expectantly, the leaf before me, I would glance up and look at the amazing array of glass bottles on the shelves. My aunt collected these in every colour and shape, and this beautiful mismatched display was used to store her luscious rose sherbet. We would each be treated to a single glass of it after lunch, so I always looked forward to the end of the meal. The sherbet would be mixed with either water or milk. The latter was a healthy concession (because this is a sugary beverage), as well as a way to get us kids excited about drinking milk.

Sherbet is a drink brought to India from the Middle East, as its name indicates, coming from the Turkish “şerbet”, Persian “sharbat” and Arabic “sharba”. Naturally cooling, it is a concentrate made of either flowers or fruits, which is diluted. It is sometimes spiced but always sweetened.

I had the good fortune of having my aunt visit recently. She is in her 80s now and as we reminisced about the good times, we ended up making a fresh batch of rose sherbet in my home. Now it’s my shelves that are lined with those gleaming pink bottles.

The roses we used are the pretty local ones known as “paneer roja”, which may be familiar to you as damask rose or country rose. They grow well in the tough weather conditions of Chennai, and they are so fragrant. Prepare for your entire kitchen to smell like heaven as you make this recipe. And why not? You deserve it. On those long summer days, like the ones we’ve started to have in Chennai now, it’s the perfect cheat day beverage. So cooling and so decadent!

 

Rose Sherbet

(Yield: Approximately 2 litres)

Ingredients

2 litres water

150 grams rose petals

1½  kilograms sugar

1 teaspoon citric acid

1 teaspoon rose extract

2 pinches of raspberry colour

Pick and clean the rose petals. Place them in a vessel, cover with a lid, and let them soak in water overnight.

The following morning, crush the petals well using your hands or a hand blender. The water will now change colour.

Squeeze the petals using your hands and strain and pour the rose water into a big steel pot and place it over a medium flame. Discard the petals. Add the sugar and stir constantly. Be careful not to allow the sugar to crystallise – this is a precise art.

Boil and stir until the water turns sticky when touched between your fingers. Then, turn off the flame and add the citric acid. Make sure you stir the pot well and the citric acid blends completely. Cover the pot with a net and allow to cool.

After a few hours, add some rose extract and the raspberry red colour to the sherbet. The latter is optional, but look at how delightful the drink looks when you do it! Kids will especially get a thrill from that rich colour.

Strain the sherbet, then use a funnel to pour the syrup into glass bottles. Store in a cool place. This beverage does not require refrigeration.

To serve, add 2 tablespoons of the syrup into a glass. Pour cold water until it fills the glass and mix lightly.

In my home, the favourite finishing touch is always a topping of ice cubes and a squeeze of lemon. Rose sherbet is so very refreshing, as well as so lovely to look at. You’ll have to do what my aunt did when we were kids and restrict yourself – just one sugary-sweet glass a day!

 

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Recipe: Second Helpings: Rotli Na Ladoo

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In my previous post, I gave you a fresh spin on the classic dal dhokli, a dinner staple made with leftovers from lunch. In fact, the use of leftovers was so well-designed in traditional cuisines that afternoon snacks would be planned in the morning, and dinnertime planned even while making lunch – and each would be built on the other. In India, no meal is complete without a sweet, and resourceful cooks through the generations also found ways to make sweet snacks using the remnants of a previous meal. Which brings me to the second dish of the promised trio in this series.

While I was growing up, my mother would often cook a little extra dal and rotli in the morning. Some of it would go into the lunch thali, and some of that would go into the evening’s dal dhokli. And she often found a way to make sure that there was just a little extra rotli to be turned into a wonderful after-school treat: rotli na ladoo.

Just as leftover-based dishes developed to fulfil practical needs like conserving supplies, snacks were often made at home because inexpensive candies and savouries were not freely available like they are now. The Chennai of my childhood wasn’t as developed as it is now, and we didn’t have the chips and junk food that the kids of today enjoy. But I consider myself all the more fortunate for it. From an early age, I was exposed to a culinary ethic that has kept me in good stead. Some of its features include: never wasting food as it is precious, using healthy and nourishing ingredients, and not tasting food while it is being cooked as it is first an offering to god (this trained me to be able to read a dish using sight and smell).

Today, my mother has difficulties with her eyesight but still cooks for herself and her family, using her hands and trusting the fragrances. There is so much wisdom in her kitchen, and when I visit her I still learn new things – and moreover, there are certain dishes, like her sabudana khichdi, that never taste quite the same to me when anyone else makes it. My daughter today makes those same demands of me, for things that taste of my heart and my love.

My very resourceful mother even attended a baking class when I was kid, a rarity in Chennai at the time. So our homemade snacks and sweets included some rather exotic treats occasionally, but the rotli na ladoo holds a place in my heart like no other. There are only three ingredients, and it takes all of three minutes to make it. Well, there is a fourth, secret ingredient. And you can guess what that is.

 

 

Rotli Na Ladoo

(Yield: approximately 10 pieces)

Ingredients

2 cups rotli (torn into tiny pieces or coarsely blended)

1/3 cup jaggery

1 tablespoon ghee

In a pan, add the ghee. Once it has warmed, add the jaggery. Allow it to melt, stirring continuously on a medium-low flame, making sure it doesn’t get burnt. When it starts to bubble after a few minutes, add the rotli bits and turn off the flame.

Once you’ve added the rotli pieces, mix everything properly. Now, it’s time to use your hands. Grease your palms and bind a handful of the hot rotli mixture together. Gently press between your palms to shape into a somewhat rounded shape, then very gently roll it. Be careful, as it may crumble. It’s as simple as that, but if you’re having trouble shaping the balls, you can eat the well-blended mixture in a bowl. It will taste the same, but will require utensils! Allow to cool, and enjoy.

The above three-ingredient method is assuming that you already have rotlis prepared. If you don’t, and are making them from scratch, the ingredients and method are below. Rotlis are essentially theplas without the masala and yoghurt, so if you’ve tried your hand at the recipes in this post on Gujarati breads, you should find this easy.

Don’t forget that if you have lots of leftovers from the method below, you can always make yourself some delicious traditional dal dhokli, or eat it with lavender shrikhand. The possibilities for breads are endless!

 

 

Rotli

Ingredients

(Yields: 12)

1 cup whole wheat flour

A pinch of salt

1 tablespoon sunflower oil

100 ml water or less

In a mixing bowl, blend the flour and salt. Now add the 1 tablespoon of oil. Slowly add water and continue mixing, until you feel the mixture is slightly tougher to the touch than bread dough. You do not need to use the entire 100ml. Allow to sit for half an hour.

Make small lemon-sized balls. Dust both sides of the ball with flour. Now, dusting more flour as you do, roll out the dough into discs. Make them as thin as you can.

On a heated iron pan, place the rotli on a medium flame for 30-40 seconds. Then turn it to the other side. Now increase the flame, lift the pan, remove the rotli using tongs and place it directly on the flame. Allow it to fluff or rise. Flip over so it cooks on both sides. Set aside and spread ghee over it. Repeat until all the rotlis are made.

I like storing these ladoos in a “rotli no dabbo”, a traditional box used for breads. It looks beautiful, but also serves a practical purpose. Notice the intricate “jali” work that rings the box. This is a form of ventilation that cools the rotli and removes moisture.

 

 

I have fond memories of eating rotli na ladoos in the afternoons, after returning home from school. They are so perfect with a glass of milk or a cup of tea after an exhausting day! It’s funny how torn pieces of bread can be turned into a delicious snack with a little jaggery, a little heat – and a pair of hands that make everything with love.

Do stay tuned for the third and final part of this Second Helpings series. Any guesses on what it might be?

 

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Recipe: The Sweet & The Savoury – Chilla (North Indian Crepes)

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What’s the go-to dish in your home when you don’t want to think about what to make? For me it is the chilla, and it was also my mother’s staple dish. Once I began to cook, I saw that it was not a lack of inspiration but ease that makes certain dishes a part of cooking-on-default mode. Whether the dish in question is idli, upma, macaroni – or in my case, chilla – it’s something you’re so good at that you don’t even have to spend a moment mulling it.

Chilla was what we had for dinner whenever my mother was busy or tired, or if we were in a post-festive feasting slump. Chilla is a kind of crepe, made with powdered pulses and flavoured with vegetables and spices. Like all staples, each cook will have her own variations – and her family will definitely grow up on the same. My mother made two: a moong dal chilla and a sweetened variant. The deal was that only if I ate the savoury one would I be given the sweet one – which itself was quite healthy, considering it was made of jaggery and whole wheat.

Instead of moong dal, which is most often used, I prefer to make savoury chillas using chickpea flour, also known as besan. I love chickpeas because they are so versatile and so easily accessible – they’re found everywhere from Mexico to Lebanon (hummus!) to right here in India, and have been cultivated by humans for at least 7,500 years. The many names this humble and popular legume has attests to this fact: Bengal gram, garbanzo bean, channa and Egyptian pea are but some. Did you know that in the 1700s, a German writer brewed them to drink instead of coffee, and Germany cultivated them for the same purpose during World War 1?

Chickpeas are widely loved as a healthy ingredient, for they are rich in protein, which is one reason why they are so popular with vegans.

In Indian cuisine, chickpeas are eaten whole in dishes such as sundal, a fun salad that is popular on Chennai’s beaches, and in dough form to make the pastry for fried goodies like fritters, among other variations. The ingredient works perfectly in both sweet and savoury items, and is also a thickening agent like cornflour or agar-agar.

I now have great respect for the humble chickpea, but it must be said: growing up, I’d argue with my mother about having to eat it. My reasoning was that: since I used powdered chickpea to wash my face (it exfoliates the skin gently and is an ancient beauty treatment), I should not also have to consume it!

Of course, I love to have my ingredients be made or processed at home as much as possible, and by “home” in this case I mean Arumugam Chettiar’s quaint flour mill. Established in 1939, the mill uses a 10hp machine, with two grinding plates, that was imported from England by his grandfather. These machines are no longer available, and what you get now are pulverisers. But there’s nothing like old-fashioned, time-honoured methods when it comes to food. Along with chilli, ginger and other dry powders, I buy channa dal and have it ground to make chickpea powder.

 

I’m going to share both the recipes for savoury and sweet chilla with you, so that you can strike a version of my deal with my mother – whether that’s with your own kids, or just your diet plan!

 

Chilla – Savoury

(Yield – 4-5 crepes)

Ingredients
1 cup chickpea flour

2 cups water

½ teaspoon cumin powder

½ teaspoon grated ginger and garlic paste

½ cup finely chopped fenugreek (methi) leaves

½ teaspoon salt

Blend the water with the chickpea flour until there are no lumps. Add the salt, turmeric, cumin powder, grated ginger and garlic paste and fenugreek leaves, and mix the batter well. The consistency should be a little thicker than crepe batter.

Fenugreek in batter may remind you of theplas, one of the many types of Indian breads. A note about the ingredient: most people soak fenugreek leaves in water with salt, to remove the bitterness. This is something I don’t like to do because I don’t see why the flavour should be removed. With regards to these chillas especially, the taste of the savoury one is offset by the sweet one beautifully.

You may replace the fenugreek with another spinach available to you, or even with finely chopped vegetables like onions, grated carrots, bell peppers or coriander leaves.

Heat an iron griddle or a non-stick skillet and pour a few drops of oil on it. I make both my savoury and sweet chillas on an iron pan. Mine is a seasoned one, hence it does not stick. But if you do not have one, use a non-stick vessel.

Wait till the skillet is hot, then turn the flame down. This is a delicate moment, because if the batter falls on a too-hot pan, it will spread unevenly. My trick for this is that when the skillet is very heated, I sprinkle a little water on it and allow it to sizzle. This cools it down just enough so that I can pour the batter.

Spoon the batter onto the skillet. Spread it in a circular motion, much like you would a regular crepe. The video below gives you a look at the technique, if you’re unfamiliar with it. For those who make dosas, you will already be experts at this.

As the chilla fries, drizzle a few drops of oil around (not on) it, so that it can be removed easily. Increase the flame. You will know when it’s ready to be flipped when the edges begin to rise and turn golden. Do not attempt to flip the chilla earlier, as it will tear.

Using a spatula, flip the chilla and allow its other side to cook as well. Both sides should be a lovely golden colour before you take it off the skillet.

Then make the next one, and so on, until you have enough. Fold each chilla in half and serve with green chutney or date chutney, both of which I’ve shared recipes for earlier on this blog. I also top these savoury chillas with finely chopped vegetables, with gives the health factor an extra boost, and makes them even more filling. Just a couple will give you a light but complete meal – provided you’re able to stop eating them, that is!

 

 

Chilla – Sweet

(Yield – 5 small crepes)

Ingredients
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ cup jaggery
1 ½ cup water
1 teaspoon ghee per crepe (oil for a vegan option)

Warm the water a little and allow the jaggery to melt into it. Stir well until all the lumps are removed.

Wait till the jaggery-infused water has cooled, then strain it so the sediments are removed.

To this, add the whole wheat flour and blend it so it’s a little thicker than regular crepe batter. You may have to adjust the quantity of water added to make it just the right consistency.

Now, pour a drop of ghee or oil on a non-stick skillet. When it is hot, lower the flame. Start spooning out about half the batter onto the skillet, in small and well-spaced quantities. These sweet chillas are ideally dessert, so they are smaller than the savoury chillas.

Using a circular motion with the spoon, make small crepes on the skillet (as shown in the video above). Keep the flame on medium, so as to ensure that the chillas don’t burn. When one side has begun to turn golden, flip it over. Both sides will be thoroughly cooked in about 2-3 minutes.

The process of frying the sweet chilla is almost identical to making the savoury one, so do refer to the above recipe for more extensive notes and tips. They do not need to be served with an accompaniment.

These delicious chillas are very much comfort food to me, and I hope they find the same place in your cooking repertoire. The sweet ones are especially popular with kids, and as I said earlier – if they crave it, offer it to them as a reward for eating the savoury one!

I’ve come to understand that most Indian palates require something sweet and something savoury in order to feel satisfied. Life is all about both the sweet and the savoury isn’t it? And sometimes, like in the fenugreek-flavoured chilla, a hint of the bitter too. But that’s why the order of eating makes such sense: after everything else, one is always assured of sweetness.

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Recipe: Start The Year Sweetly – Chakkara Pongal

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Here in Tamil Nadu, while the Tamil New Year is still months away in April, we celebrate a festival full of joy, renewal and fresh possibilities – just like how the turning of the new calendar year feels. Two weeks into every calendar year, beginning on January 14, Tamil households everywhere observe a series of rituals. Like any Indian special occasion, food and bonding play a huge part of this festival.

Pongal is spread over four days, which when we were growing up meant… school holidays! Despite being a Gujarati family, our neighbours and friends would observe the festival with delight, which meant we too participated. For me, Pongal always brings to mind sugarcane. As a harvest festival, sugarcane is an important part of the décor at this time – but it is also exactly the kind of thing a child loves to eat! My mother encouraged this, as she said that eating sugarcane made the teeth stronger. Those of you who remember those simpler times will know just what I mean. There’s a technique to it. You peel the cane sideways with your teeth, then scrape the sweet juice from it. I loved the fleshier parts between the joints of the cane.

As this is the season to give thanks for the harvest all over India, similar festivals include Lohri and Sankranti. If we happened to visit Ahmedabad at this time of year, the lasting image I have of the celebrations is of seeing the skies fill with kites on the occasion of Uttaran, as people on terrace rooftops would battle to bring the others’ down, in order to be the owner of the sole reigning kite of Gujarat.

“Pongal” literally means “the boiling over”, and the festival is all about the spirit of abundance. The pivotal moment of the day is when a pot of milk, into which every family member puts three handfuls of rice, boils over. The milk spilling over the brim of the vessel is taken as a sign of auspiciousness. As this happens, the family shouts, “Pongal-o-Pongal”!

During Pongal, a dish bearing its name is also eaten. Chakkara pongal literally means “sugar pongal”, but it is jaggery that is used – and which gives the dish its rich colour. Chakkara pongal is also popular year-round as a prasadam  in temples, which is offered to the gods and then eaten by devotees. And the sweetest, tastiest chakkara pongal I’ve ever eaten has always been served on a banana leaf at a temple.

Chakkara pongal will taste different at each temple, and each home, that you eat it in. Like all traditional staples, it will contain the memories and idiosyncrasies of the hands that made it. How is tradition formed? One ancestor would have done something a particular way, and generations to follow then say, “Our family does this”. Whenever I cook something that carries cultural attachments, I wonder: if I don’t do it, will my kids?

As you may know from following this blog, millets and not rice are the original (and Macrobiotic) staples of this region. This is why a millet known as varugu, which you may know as kodo, is the main ingredient in my variation of chakkara pongal. Varugu is rich in protein and polyphenol antioxidants, and is a better source of fibre than both rice and wheat. It is also gluten-free, which makes it suitable for those with dietary sensitivities. Like all millets, its list of health benefits is long. But make no mistake, as wholesome as its ingredients are, this chakkara pongal is a sweet and sublime dessert.

 

Chakkara Pongal

(Yield – 5-6 servings)

Ingredients
3-4 tablespoons moong dal
½ cup varugu (kodo millet)
3-4 cups water
½ cup jaggery
1 tablespoon ghee
1 tablespoon cashew nuts
1 tablespoon raisins

The secret to chakkara pongal is simply allowing it to cook properly, with the occasional stir. It is a boiled dessert that is so easy to make that you’ll be preparing it from memory in no time!

Soak the moong dal for about half an hour. Meanwhile, wash the millets well and keep aside,

Add 2 cups of water to the dal and cook until par boiled. Now, add the millets and allow both to cook completely. This will take approximately 15-20 minutes. The boiled dal and millets will become and remain soft.

In a pan, roast the cashew nuts and raisins in ghee. For a vegan variant, substitute ghee with oil. Once roasted, add the jaggery, along with a ¼ cup of water. This will help the jaggery melt, releasing its flavours quickly into the pan.

Once the jaggery has melted into the concoction, add the soft mixture of millets and dal and stir well. Add some more water to loosen the consistency as you prefer. Pongal generally is not meant to be in too liquid a state. What you’re aiming for is a congealed texture. Serve hot as soon as it’s ready.

Glistening with ghee, sprinkled with cashews, glittering with raisins, and with a rich dark colour full of the goodness of jaggery… So simple to make, so good to eat. I hope you’ll enjoy a small bowl or two of re:store style, millet-based chakkara pongal with your family this weekend. As you do, just imagine us here in Tamil Nadu, doing exactly the same. Pongal-o-Pongal!

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Recipe: Spice & All Things Nice – Ginger & Jaggery Christmas Cookies

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As a child, I was fascinated by the gingerbread man. Who was this entity that was half-story and half-food? Christmas in Chennai was not like Christmas in the West while I was growing up, and so there weren’t too many of these “traditional” motifs around me. Instead, the rituals of friends, neighbours and the convent school I attended are what are most memorable to me. Still, when I enjoyed a perfect Christmas visit with my friends Sujatha and Michael in Delhi two years ago, something tickled the memory of that fascination with the gingerbread man.  Sitting out on the lawns of their beautiful house, enjoying the crisp winter weather, we shared a plate of homemade ginger snaps. A festive classic, made to perfection. This year, thanks to a bounty of presents with just the right ingredients, I’m celebrating the season with these ginger and jaggery cookies.

This recipe contains gifts from many friends. The method of course, belongs to Sujatha and Michael. The cloves are from Asha, the Sri Lankan ginger and sugar syrup that also partly inspired this recipe is from Anna (this had been introduced to me by Ramani), and the cinnamon (also from the island) from Sharanya. So in many ways, this recipe fits the Christmas spirit of giving and camaraderie perfectly. And of course: the love, inspiration and encouragement from friends, family and fellow bloggers are what make me want to share it!

I love to make blends and powders at home, as you may have noticed from earlier posts. They give my baked goods a fresh, authentic flavour. So I ground the cloves and cinnamon especially for this batch of cookies, and used the ginger powder I had prepared in the summer, as I do every year. Ginger powder is used often, and in versatile ways, in my kitchen – you’ll find it in everything from a flu remedy to a sacred dessert.

I always like to bring familiar ingredients even into fusion or foreign dishes, which is why the jaggery and the ginger feature so prominently in this recipe. Both are intrinsic parts of local Tamil cuisine, and not only taste delicious but are quite good for you too. Aged jaggery, like wine, is said to be the best. It is rich in iron and other minerals, and is a healthy sweetener. Ginger is great for digestion (always a good thing during a holiday feast!), clears congestion and has such a divine aroma!

You’ll find these ginger-jaggery cookies have a chewy centre, and the jaggery gives them an unusual flavour, just like how the sweetness of honey differs from that of sugar. While the taste will certainly differ, if you’re unable to find good jaggery to make these cookies, you can substitute it with brown sugar.

 

Ginger & Jaggery Christmas Cookies

(Yield – 12-15 cookies)

Ingredients
325 grams maida
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
115 grams powdered jaggery
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon clove powder
200 grams butter
50 ml molasses
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg

Pre-heat the oven to 160°C/320°F. Line an oven tray with foil and keep aside.

Mix all the dry ingredients, except the jaggery, in a bowl and set aside.

Now, beat the butter and the jaggery together until the mixture turns creamy, then add the egg. Beat some more. Add the molasses and vanilla essence and blend well.

Fold all the dry ingredients into the mixture and knead, using your hands. The dough will feel sticky at this point. Once all the ingredients have been incorporated and blended well, refrigerate the dough for an hour.

After it has chilled, remove the dough from the fridge and make balls, gently using your hands again. Place them on the lined tray, ensuring they’re arranged well apart so that they don’t overlap while baking. Sprinkle with some sugar crystals.

Bake for about 12-15 minutes or until golden on the sides and bottom.

When the cookies have baked, decorate as you desire. As you can see in the photos above and below, I decided to draw delicate designs using white icing – a homage to my culture. In many places in India, intricate rice diagrams are drawn by hand on the front porch in the mornings and before special occasions. They are known as ‘rangoli’ in North India and ‘kolam’ in Tamil Nadu.

Some say a kolam is a prayer in the form of a painting, inviting the goddess and her auspiciousness into the home. Others say it is a practical thing: keeping insects away by feeding them outside the door itself. Either way, without doubt, it is a beautiful thing. I hope you’ll enjoy these photos of chewy, spicy, sweet homemade Christmas cookies – with a quintessentially South Indian sentiment. And I hope the scent of ginger fills your own kitchen soon, and that your life remains as sweet as jaggery – through the festive season and well beyond.

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Recipe: Simply Luscious – Sitaphal Kheer

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We would clamber up the sitaphal tree, pluck one right off the branches, and in our greedy delight not even check whether the fruit was ripe enough to eat before we tore it open with our hands and devoured the sweet white pulp. Then, we would spit out the shiny black seeds and collect them, for they were perfect for playing pallanguzhi, a traditional Tamil mancala game! Whenever I think of sitaphal, I think of these moments from my childhood. They were filled with joy, and I taste it again each time I taste the fruit.

 

Recently, I visited our organic farm a few hours’ drive from Chennai – and the sight of the abundant green harvest of the sitaphal trees brought back those childhood memories.

I will tell you more about our organic farm soon, where we grow paddy, varieties of gourd, numerous other vegetables, fruits – and a thoughtful selection of gorgeous native flowers that are fading from public memory. Hardly anyone wears or sells them anymore, but I take heart from the fact that there is one lady who sits by the Kapaleeshwarar Temple in Mylapore, with a colourful array of blossoms for purchase. Among them are the shenbagha and the manoranjitha. When I was a little girl, the teachers would wear beautiful manoranjitha flowers in their hair, and the classroom would be filled with their fragrance. And I would often think to myself: one day, when I am grown, I will have a house of my own with a tree that bears those flowers.

With the sweetness of all these memories in mind, and with the fruit in season in the serene landscape I dreamed of as a child, I remembered and craved a recipe that I had introduced into our family repertoire. When I got married and moved into my new home, I had enjoyed learning certain dishes from my mother-in-law that I found unusual. Among these was a fresh orange kheer. If you remember from this rose-coconut recipe, kheer is a kind of Indian pudding, with milk as the primary ingredient.

My mother-in-law’s citrusy dessert inspired my own variation. Perhaps I had wanted to bring the sitaphal I had plucked and gorged on in my childhood into my matrimonial home. And that’s how this sitaphal kheer was created. Even decades on, it remains a favourite of mine.

Sitaphal (Custard Apple) Kheer

(Yield – 8-10 cups)

Ingredients
1 ½ litres whole milk
2 large custard apples
1 ½ tablespoons corn flour or custard powder
½ cup sugar

You may know the sitaphal as the custard apple. I cannot recall seeing sitaphal sold abroad, which made me think it must be an indigenous Indian fruit, but it seems it’s actually native to the West Indies and Central America. Nonetheless, it thrives on our farm, and is popular throughout India. I wonder why it is not as well-known elsewhere as the mango. If you ask me, sitaphal is under-rated, and deserves renown.

One of the English names of sitaphal is sugar apple, attesting to its sweetness. Another is sweetsop. That tells you a lot about the taste of this fruit, if you haven’t had it. While it is not at all cloying, and in fact is quite subtle given its names, it is slightly higher in calories than other fruits too. Which means that I won’t sugar-coat it (pun intended): this recipe is a treat, and a bit of an indulgence! Still, sitaphal is also rich in potassium and magnesium, which protect the heart from disease, and Vitamin A and C. Fruit of any kind can never be truly bad for us, and sitaphal is no different.

Open up the soft, patterned green skin of this beautiful fruit, and begin to remove the seeds patiently using a spoon and clean hands. Keep the pulp in the refrigerator, covered.

In the meantime, boil the milk until it reduces partially. Vegans, you may want to try either coconut or almond milk. Keep stirring it on a low flame, making certain it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.

Put the corn flour or custard powder into a small cup, and add 2-3 tablespoons of milk at room temperature. Stir this mixture well, until it is smooth. Now, gently add this mixture to the milk in the pot. You have to be careful now to stir continuously, so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom, which it is very likely to.

I like my kheer not too thick, but you may like yours thicker. In which case, simply add an additional 1 teaspoon of the corn flour or custard powder. Or reduce the quantity, to thin it further. Adjust according to the consistency of your preference.

Add the sugar. The taste of the sitaphal is so gentle and distinctive that I find the addition of cardamom, nuts or saffron – classic elements of most kheer recipes – takes away from this flavour. But you can always add these if you wish.

Once the milk thickens to the consistency you prefer (this will take approximately 15-20 minutes), turn off the flame and cover the pot with a lid. Allow this to cool, then refrigerate for a few hours.

Add the seeded sitaphal pulp into the refrigerated mixture and blend well. Serve this chilled dessert in small bowls.

Just as I substituted my mother-in-law’s fresh oranges for sitaphal, the lovely thing about this recipe is that you can use any fruit of your choice, based on your own tastes and seasonal availability. It is a luscious dessert, and it’s equally perfect for summers (when it has a cooling effect) and for the year-end festivities (when it’s also in season). I’d love to know what you think of it – and what variations you’ll spin up in your kitchen.

 

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