Ice Cream Sandwiches for Milestones and Hot Days

I’ve always been bewitched by Ice Cream Sandwiches. Not many companies made it and on the rare occasions that I would get to eat it; I was always in awe that ice cream could be held together by two cookies! They are very popular in Singapore (being one degree above the equator, that’s fair enough!) and that’s where I had one, every day of my trip. No exaggerating! There, they use wafers to make the sandwich but I much prefer the cookies…so much more yummy! A very popular flavor there is Durian ice cream sandwich. The fruit may stink like old socks but the ice cream tastes divine. Summer just kicked in last week and the Bangalore heat has gotten as bad as Singapore this year. No really, we were at 35 degrees yesterday! The heat made me crave for the ice cream sandwiches. After looking for them in most ice cream parlors and turning up negative, I made them myself. (Not the ice cream darlings, bought that one). And since this is the month I got married in and the co-resident and I completed five years of being together, I dedicate the (cheesy) heart shaped ice cream sandwiches to him. Ha ha ha , I can just imagine him going red in the face… well, he can cool off with an ice cream sandwich can’t he?

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Prep time: 30 mins + cooling time

Makes: 10 sandwiches

What you need:

500 ml Ice Cream slab (I used Amul Vanilla)

For the chocolate cookies:

100 gms All purpose flour (Maida)

¼ tsp Baking powder

¼ tsp Baking soda

20 gms Cocoa powder

40 gms Butter

50 gms Powdered sugar

1 Tbsp Water

What to do:

Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa powder together in a medium sized bowl. Chop butter into small chunks. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Now add a tbsp of water to it and beat for few mins more. Add the dry ingredients mixture in two parts and beat with an electric mixer on low speed until the mix is incorporated and rolls into a ball. Now wrap the cookie dough in a cling film and refrigerate for 10 mins.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Remove the dough from refrigerator. Sprinkle some All purpose flour on your working surface and roll out the dough into a 1/4 inch thick rectangle. Use your cookie cutters to cut out shapes. (I used a heart… ahem ahem… go ahead and laugh, it looked cute!)

Place the cut out cookies on a baking tray and bake for 12-15 minutes at 180°C. Let the cookies cool on wire rack for a while and store in air tight container

Assembling the Ice cream sandwich: Bake the cookies. Place one cookie (under side facing up) on a plate. You need to work really quickly in the coolest part of the kitchen now. Cut a slab of ice cream as thick as you want the sandwich to be. (I used ¾ inch). Quickly cut the ice cream using your cookie cutter and place the shaped piece on top of the cookie and sandwich it with another cookie on top. Now quickly transfer it to the freezer for it to firm up. (I used a Tupperware box lined with butter paper to store the ice cream sandwiches).

Serve chilled just out of the freezer :)

Strawberry Griddle Cakes for a Fancy Breakfast

Yes, I know it’s another recipe with strawberries back to back. But I have so many in my fridge that I need to use them and use them in innovative ways! (lest the co-resident realize my evil plan of ‘waste to wealth’). I have a supermarket weakness. If something looks fresh, is in season and the store has a buy one get one free offer – I’m hooked. Rest assured, I will be carting loads of it back home! Come on now, who doesn’t like a good bargain? Thankfully Strawberries are such accommodating fruit that you can pair them with almost anything and achieve success. Now coming to Griddle cakes. First of all, don’t let the name take you on a wild goose chase. Another name for a frying pan is a griddle and griddle cakes are nothing but pancakes that are just a little firmer. So you can call them Strawberry pancakes if you please… but I much prefer the fancier sounding name. (Fools the co-resident into thinking he’s getting something radical to chew on!) I served the Griddle cakes with some strawberries in wine instead of the routine ‘drizzle the pancake syrup on’. And since that means I’m having wine for breakfast, it automatically becomes a fancy brekkie! (Ok, so I have low expectations…Sue me!)

Strawberry Griddle Cakes with Strawberries steeped in Wine

Prep time: 30 mins + cooling time

Serves: 4

What you need:

125 gms self raising Flour

1 pinch Cinnamon and Salt

½ tsp Baking Powder

30 gms Castor Sugar

1 Egg

1 Lemon, juice of

125 ml Milk

150 gms fresh Strawberries, diced

Salted Butter

For the Strawberries in Wine:

200ml Rose Wine

1 tsp Vanilla essence

50 gms Castor Sugar

200 gms fresh Strawberries, sliced

What to do:

To make the Strawberries in Wine: Heat the wine and sugar in a large pan until the sugar dissolves. Bring the liquid to a boil toss in the strawberries, take off the heat. Add the vanilla essence, cover the pan and set aside for the fruit to steep in the liquid until cool.

To make the griddle cakes: Sift the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking powder in a large bowl. Stir in the sugar. Make a well in the center and tip in the egg, milk and lemon juice to make a batter. Add the diced strawberries to the mix. Mix well till small bubbles appear on the surface of the batter.

Heat a non stick frying pan and add a little salted butter. Add spoonfuls of the batter to the pan to make small thick pancakes. Cook on medium heat until bubbles start to appear on the surface of the griddle cakes – about 2 or 3 mins. Flip and continue to cook for another 2-3 mins. Repeat with the rest. Serve warm with the wine steeped strawberries.

Note: If cooking in batches, keep the cooked ones warm in a low oven while you finish the rest.

Strawberry Milkshake and My 100th Post

It’s my 100^th post today. I can’t believe I had enough material to go this far (apparently I do!) Bloggers say that lasting the 2 years is the biggest challenge. You need to be interested in what you blog about and let’s face it, people need to be interested in what you write about. You might say that you give a rat’s ass about what people think…but that’s not true. You need an audience to appreciate art. (Ok, in my case … the art of blabbering!) If nothing else, I have at least 100 failsafe recipes that I can always fall back on! I’ve also come to realize that I care as much,  (if not more) about my pictures that accompany each blog post. So the journey for me has been about taking baby steps to produce pics that I am proud of. (Here’s the link to my first post and picture. (Click Here) No, am not ashamed, it’s a learning curve right?) :P

Talking of learning curves, was I going to put up some insurmountable culinary challenge as my 100^th post? Hell No! Most of the inspiring recipes for me are ones that you look at and decide instantly, “I can make that …tonight or right now”. It’s recipes that look simple and delicious and goad you into thinking that you can create them with a flourish of your hand. So here’s the Strawberry Smoothie recipe. No fuss, all Love!

P.S. Thanks for stopping by…

Strawberry Smoothie

Prep time: 10 mins

Serves: 2

What you need:

200 gms fresh Strawberries

400 ml of Milk, cold

2 scoops of Vanilla Ice Cream

2 Tbsp of Sugar

What to do:

Take the green tops off the strawberries (he he he!), Wash them under running water. Toss them in a blender with the Sugar and whir around for 3 mins till you get a lovely red puree. Now Add the ice cream in and blend for 1 min. Finish by adding the milk in and run the blender for 2 more mins till you get a nice and frothy mix. Check for sweetness. (you can add more sugar if you want at this point – what are you like carzy??)

Pour into a tall glass and enjoy making a milk mustache!

I love this pic below... Something about it makes me feel like I'm floating on a cloud :)

Easy Vanilla Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting

Once you get the basics right then everything else is a breeze. My first cupcake was a vanilla cupcake. Somehow adding the chocolate as an additional step made it feel like advanced baking! Now here’s the best part. I made my first cupcake (in my whole life) in March last year! After which I've been stuck with the cupcake bug and been driven to try all kinds of mini joys. So now you know that I wasn’t born with a ladle in my hand nor did I have supreme baking talent. The key to success is the 3P’s - Practice, Practice, Practice! (Like the joke - Rumor is that a pedestrian on Fifty-seventh Street, Manhattan, stopped Jascha Heifetz (the greatest violinist of our time) and inquired, "Could you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?" "Yes," said Heifetz. "Practice, Practice, Practice!" So there you go … if I can bake, so can you. And starting you off is this Basic Vanilla Cupcake Recipe. And just to add some pizzazz, we have a nice and easy Nutella frosting. Have fun!

Easy Vanilla Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting

Prep time: 10 mins

Baking time: 20 mins

Makes: 10-12 cupcakes

What you need:

½ cup unsalted Butter, room temperature

2/3 cup granulated Sugar

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1½ cups Maida or cake flour

1½ tsp Baking powder

¼ tsp Salt

¼ cup Milk, room temperature

For the frosting:

5 Tbsp Nutella

2 Tbsp Milk

What to do:

For best results,  follow the method in the given sequence as is. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degree C. Grease or line your muffin tin with paper cups. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. This ensures that all the three dry ingredients mix evenly and removes lumps.

With an electric mixer or hand mixer, beat the butter for 1-2 minutes. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Start with a low speed and increase to high speed. This process incorporates maximum air bubbles, making the cupcakes, soft and airy.

Add the room temperature eggs, one at a time. Beat the mixture until smooth after each egg, about 30 seconds. If the mixture curdles, stop adding the eggs, beat until smooth before adding the remaining eggs. If you do not add room temperature eggs, the volume of the baked cupcakes will reduce. Add the vanilla extract. Beat for 2 minutes.

Now slowly beat the sifted dry ingredients into the mixture in three batches, adding the room temperature milk between each flour batch. Start and end with the flour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as required, and ensure that the batter is evenly mixed. Do not over beat.

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Fill ½ to 2/3 of the cups in the first muffin tin. Bake for 17-20 minutes. Insert a toothpick into one of the cupcakes in the oven and ensure it comes out clean. Remove and cool on a wire rack.

Now beat the Nutella with the milk until you have the consistency of hot fudge. Pipe or spread the frosting on the cupcakes once they have cooled completely. Simple and delish!

P.S. Click here for another version of the vanilla cupcakes. This current recipe makes a lighter, fluffier cupcake, whereas the older one is more moist. Take your pick J

Ham, Bacon and Green Apple Quiche

So today has been a frustrating day. I made a cheese cake which did not set and made a Mexican Chicken Mole which had too much cinnamon! And on a hot day tempers can flare everywhere! Clearly some days are not for culinary adventure or rather just any culinary venture. Every woman who rushes home from work and still wants to whip up a fancy meal a la Nigella, is living in a dream world if she doesn’t have failsafe recipes to fall back on! It’s times like these that I have even more reverence for a good recipe, a blogger who tests the recipe and finally a book that publishes only tried and tested recipes. That is why you can be rest assured I am not putting up dubious recipes on my blog. I don’t want to inflict the pain of failure on anyone. (No, seriously, that’s how it feels when a recipe screws up!) So it’s with supreme confidence that I am posting the Ham, Bacon and Green Apple recipe. It worked liked a charm, tasted supremely good and was a breeze to make. Now who doesn’t want that in their repertoire?

Ham, Bacon and Green Apple Quiche

(Recipe adapted from BBC Good Food India, Jan 2012)

Prep time: 20 mins

Baking time: 25 mins

Serves: 4

What you need:

8 Ham slices

8 Bacon slices

½ Green Apple, halved and sliced

2 Eggs

200ml Cream (I used Amul)

1 large Onion, sliced

A pinch of Nutmeg

1 cup dried Breadcrumbs

50 gms Butter, salted

6 Sage leaves, chopped finely

Handful of grated parmesan

Salt and Pepper to taste

What to do:

Put the breadcrumbs and softened butter in a food processor and mix till you get wet pasty crumbs. Now empty the contents into a 8 or 9 inch flan/pie dish and press the mixture to coat the bottom and sides. Pat down with your fingers to get an even layer and use your knuckles to push the mixture into the sides. Cover with cling film and toss into the refrigerator to chill while you make the quiche mixture.

Stack the ham slices up and cut into large squares. Chop the Bacon into strips and cut the apple and onion into slices. Add the bacon to a large skillet and sauté over low heat to render the fat. Cook until the bacon just begins to crisp. Now add the onions and sauté in the bacon fat, then add the apple slices and sauté till both turn translucent.

Add the cream and bring to a simmer, season with salt and pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. Remove the skillet from the fire and let it cool for a few minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. In the meantime, beat the eggs. Now add the eggs to the skillet and mix well into the sauce. Take the pie dish out of the fridge. It should look dry. Pour the contents of the skillet into the baking dish and sprinkle sage leaves on top. Bake at 180°C for 20 mins in the center rack of the oven. Now remove from the oven, sprinkle grated parmesan on top and return to bake for another 5 mins till the crust looks golden brown.

Serve hot immediately or chill overnight, cut into neat wedges and serve at room temperature or warm. I served mine with a nice green salad with balsamic dressing for a fantastic mid week meal!

Cafe Frappe with Bailey's

I am not a coffee drinker. (Phew! That was almost as difficult as admitting that you have an alcohol problem!) Coming from the state of coffee growers - Karnataka, (my brother-in-law even owns a coffee plantation), I am quite an anomaly. When I go to visit my relatives or friends and they offer me a cup of coffee, I’d rather say I just had a meal, than admit I don’t drink coffee. On the rare occasion that I do tell someone, they look at me like I am some sort of space alien and repeat the question till I give in. There… now their world is sane again! So why don’t I drink coffee? I like to believe that I already have so much energy, that I don’t need the buzz from coffee. I also never appreciated the bitter taste of coffee and sweetened it till it started to taste like sugar syrup! Now coming to the big question, If I don’t like coffee, why do I have a recipe for Café Frappe on my blog?? I like to think of Café Frappe as a non-coffee… more like a little chilled dessert. I get all nostalgic thinking about the first Cyber Café’s that opened in Bangalore in 1997. They used to serve Café Frappe – a foam covered iced coffee drink. It was all the rage then. Every single teenager worth their salt would hang out in a Cyber Café and sip Café Frappe! It was tres cool. And obviously I wanted to fit in, so I would order in anyway and sip it so slowly that no one would realize I hadn’t finished it by the time we left the place. Replicating this at home was quite simple; the nostalgic feeling came sweeping back! And then to get back to the present, I added a shot of baileys to my second glass… Isn’t it fun being an adult? :P

Café Frappe with Baileys

Prep time: 10 mins

Serves: 2

What you need:

1 ¾ cup Cold Milk

½ cup Ice Cubes

2 Tbsp Instant Coffee Powder (I used Nescafe Classic)

½  cup water

4 Tbsp Sugar

60 ml Bailey’s Irish cream Liqueur

To Serve:

1 cup fresh whipped cream or canned whipped cream

½ tsp Instant coffee powder

1 Tbsp Chocolate sauce

What to do:

Brew 2 Tbsp coffee powder with 1/2 cup boiling water. Set aside to cool/ refrigerate.

Blend milk, brewed coffee and sugar in a blender till you get a foamy, creamy texture. Pour in the baileys and whip for 5 seconds.

To serve: Divide the ice cubes between two glasses. Now hold the serving glass in your hand, take half a tbsp of chocolate sauce (I used Hersheys) and let it dribble onto the inner walls of the glass. Slowly fill the glass with the cold coffee leaving about an inch on top. Top this with whipped cream and sprinkle some coffee powder onto it. Serve with a straw and spoon to eat up the whipped cream. Restaurant style Cafe Frappe with a bailey hit!

P.S. For an U18 version you can just skip the baileys, it still tastes good!

Note: I used ready whipping cream (Toplite)  but you can make fresh whipped cream at home by beating a cup of heavy whipping cream and 1/4 cup of sugar using an electric mixer until a stiff creamy texture is formed. Add this to your icing cone and top your cold coffee. Feel free to adjust the sugar level and black coffee according to your taste.

Sun Dried Tomato Pita-Pizza

Featured in Tastespotting.com - 19th Mar 2012

I know I have a penchant for extremely long, all-encompassing titles to the post. But trust me this one is the modified version of the original title, which was – Sun Dried Tomato Pita-Pizza with Ham, Mozzarella and Basil. When I read that, it struck me that the entire recipe was in the title itself. Wow! My job is done right? Just chuck whatever I told you onto the pita and bake it in an oven. No really, Pizza making is that simple! (If you’re not kneading the dough that is - which I am not. I don’t have the arms for it!) I also am not rich enough to invest in a Kitchen Aid, so I will be cheap and buy some readymade pizza bases and get the job done. No one has to know! I know the true blue Italians are turning in their graves, but honestly who has the time to appease everyone these days?! My motto is to ‘get the job done’. I’m pretty partial to the thin crust variety but no one sells them at the bakery, so I improvise and use Pita bread as the base. No, I’m not insane. It works as a fantastic substitute. Also even though the 3 hour reduced pizza sauce is marvelous, my sun dried tomato instant pizza sauce is such a good imitation, that no one will be able to tell the difference! The rest as they say is history, or rather my-story. Cheesy? Well a pizza has to be :P

Sun Dried Tomato Pita-Pizza

Prep time: 10 mins

Cooking time: 10 mins

Serves: 4

What you need:

4 Med Pita Breads

8 sundried Tomatoes in Oil

4 Tbsp Tomato sauce

100 gms Ham slices

200 gms Mozzarella, grated

Handful of Basil leaves

Salt and Pepper to taste

Dried herbs to garnish

Red Chilli flakes for added heat

What to do:

Grind the sundried tomatoes along with the tomato paste and 5 basil leaves to make an instant pizza sauce. Add in 2 Tbsp of the reserved sun dried tomato oil, mix well and keep aside. Check seasoning.

Divide the rest of the ingredients into four portions. Now spread one portion of the pizza sauce on the pita bread. Top with one portion of ham slices and mozzarella. Garnish with some basil leaves. Bake/ Place under a preheated grill for 8-10 mins till the cheese melts and is all bubbly. Season if required. Repeat with the other three pitas. Serve hot, sprinkled with some dried herbs (oregano, parsley) and red chilli flakes for added heat! Voila.

P.S. Go ahead and use pepperoni instead of Ham. That’s a different kind of heaven!

Here's what was featured in Tastespotting.com

Simple Chicken Curry for Complicated Days

There are days that are easy, breezy and simple. And there are days that can grate on your nerves that burrowing your head deep into a pillow seems like the only way out. Unfortunately, even that option is but a distant dream when you have to finish gazillion things in the limited span of 24 hours. It’s not every day that I spin through life in a haze. I actually like my little routines of measured slowness. (Now the definition of slow for an Aries can be very different from the rest of the world, but nonetheless!). And there have been more days than I can count on my fingers, that ordering takeaway is the norm. But when everything seems to be spinning out of control, I crave desperately for a home cooked meal. (Mommy…can I come home?). Oh wait, driving there is going to take me a good part of an hour, eating there another, and driving back another hour! I can’t spare three hours in a time strapped continuum.

Famished, cranky and hungry is not the way you should be cooking anything, but if I’m in that zone there’s no better dish to cheer me up than Simple Chicken Curry. This one takes twenty minutes of monitoring and thirty minutes of bubbling away contentedly on the stove by itself. And what’s more, it tastes like a giant hug! (Yes, food can give you a hug…. Never tried it??). I just spoon some onto a heap of fluffy white rice and finish the meal with a massive dollop of yoghurt! Bliss! If not anything else, it gets me through the complicated day being less famished, less cranky and less hungry J  

Simple Chicken Curry

Prep time: 10 mins

Cooking time: 40 mins

Serves: 4

What you need:

800 gms skinless Chicken pieces

1 large Onion

2 Med Tomatoes

1 Tbsp Ginger-garlic paste

2 Tbsp Oil

1 pinch granulated Sugar

1 tsp Chili powder

2 Tbsp thick/ Greek Yoghurt

1 tsp Garam Masala

1 handful of fresh Coriander, chopped

Salt to taste

What to do:

Peel and finely chop the onions. Chop the tomatoes. Pour the oil into a large pan set over high heat. When the oil is hot add the sugar, to caramelize and give the curry a rich color. (No, we don’t use food colouring at home… unless you want to stain your fingers!). As the sugar caramelizes toss in the onion and fry until it starts to brown. Next, add the ginger-garlic paste and sauté. Toss in the tomatoes, chili powder and turmeric. Lowerr the heat and fry for atleast 5 minutes till the pungent smell of masala’s mellow and you see the oil separating from the paste. (About 5 mins). If the paste starts sticking to the bottom of the pan, add a Tbsp of water.

Next stir in the chicken pieces. Turn the heat back high and sauté to seal the chicken on all sides, mixing it well with the masala. Now add the yoghurt and sauté well. When the chicken starts to turn white all over, lower the heat to medium, add half a cup of hot water to the pan, cover with a lid and cook for 20 mins.

Remove the lid and cook uncovered for another 7-10 mins to thicken the gravy. Finish by adding garam masala and salt to taste. Garnish with coriander leaves. Serve with hot white rice and yoghurt.

Cherry Chocolate Muffins and Love as I know it...

Yes, we all know Valentine’s Day is around the corner. And though I personally don’t do cart wheels because of it (overrated to say the least!), it does make me think about Love. It’s a bit like this Muffin. Don’t give up on me yet… I know not everything is about food, but the comparison makes it easy for me to rationalize the subject in my head! I started out with a recipe for this muffin from a completely trusty source. The recipe seemed simple and the pictures were gorgeous enough to make me want to try it right away. So I dived headlong into it. The results were ‘nice’ but I felt sorely cheated. Not because it din’t taste good or look divine, it just din’t hit the spot like how I pictured it in my overly imaginative mind. So did I mope around whilst eating it, knowing all well that this is not what I wanted? Hell no! I knew the ingredients were right but the quantities didn’t add up. So I rolled up my sleeves and played around with the proportions till it felt just right. Then I baked it… and voila … muffins like I wanted – light, fluffy, cherry filled awesomeness!

So coming to my point about muffins and Love.  Lots of people will tell you what ideal Love is and paint you glory pictures while they’re at it. You’ll dive headlong into it and when match the following doesn’t work – come out disillusioned. (Insert expletives!) Here’s where I step in and give you my two cents. (Backed by 10 years of being in love with one man – ok, in and out :P) The ingredients for love are the same. A little bit of passion, lots of respect, loads of understanding, truckloads of generosity and some space to be yourself, blah blah blah. Each one needs to work out the proportions themselves. What’s good for the goose may not always be good for the gander! And you need to work at it… it’s never going to be ‘perfect’ the first time. (It’s not called a ‘labour’ of love for nothing!) And when you get it right, finally – you can sit back and enjoy a muffin or two together. (P.S. you don’t have to labour to get this muffin right… I’ve done it for you this time!) and ….Happy Valentine’s Day!

Cherry Chocolate Muffins
(Recipe inspired from Sin-a-Mon Tales)

Prep time: 25 mins

Baking time: 20-22 mins

Makes: 12

What you need:

1 cup Flour

¾ cup powdered Sugar

¼ cup plus 1 Tbsp Cocoa Powder

1 tsp Baking Soda

½ tsp Baking powder

½ cup Milk

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

1 Egg

¼ cup Vegetable Oil

½ cup freshly brewed Hot Coffee

¾ cup pitted Cherries, halved (I used the ones in Syrup)

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line the muffin tins with paper liners and set aside. Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda into a big bowl. In another bowl whisk the egg with the oil till well incorporated and airy. Now add the Milk and vanilla essence and give it a quick whir. (I use an electric whisk). Now slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry and run the mixer on low speed to just combine. Scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula to being the ingredients to the center. Now add the coffee and run the whisk for a 30 secs to combine all the ingredients. (The batter will be runny… don’t worry). Fold in the pitted halved cherries. (Or you could add them when you pour the batter into the muffin cups).

Distribute the batter into 12 muffin cups, filling each one 2/3 full. (I added my cherries in stages while filling the batter). Bake for 20-22 mins, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Wait till completely cooled to enjoy their true flavor.

Inspired by Sin-A-Mon's Black Forest Muffins

Anda Raita and the Art of Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

Two opposites do not make a whole or so said some really intellectual dude. The reason why that strikes me when I made this was because I could never see a dish with eggs and yoghurt as the only star ingredients. (Unless… it was a face mask!) But there are always certain days in the calendar when the same old same old bore you to death and you want to try something radical  different! In my life those days are most days and I am willing to throw down the gauntlet of doubt in the face of strange culinary pursuits. (I know that’s dramatic but it’s a Sunday so allow me my self expression!) My guise was, I’ll keep the yoghurt separate and just ease one boiled egg into it to check for taste. Prototype A. If that passes quality check (i.e. my tongue) the rest of the eggs can join the party. So was the experiment successful? Let’s make that rhetorical. Would I post on the blog if the experiment was not successful? :P Serve this as an accompaniment to biryani or by itself with some pita. So here it is my darlings… Anda/ Egg Raita - To shock and amuse your guests and finally tickle those taste buds into taking a risk.  

Anda Raita/ Egg Raita
(Recipe from Miss Masala)

Prep time: 20 mins

Serves: 6

What you need:

6 hard boiled Eggs

750 gms Yoghurt (I use Nestle set dahi)

3 Tbsp Oil

½ tsp Asefodita/ hing

1 tsp Cumin seeds

1 tsp Mustard seeds

½ tsp Turmeric powder

4 dried long Red Chillies

10 Curry leaves

Salt to taste

Coriander leaves to garnish

What to do:

Cut the boiled eggs into half, set aside. Whisk the yoghurt till you get a lovely creamy consistency. Pour the yoghurt into the serving bowl and slide the eggs into it, yolk side up. Now you need to temper the yoghurt. Pour the oil into a small pan, set over high heat. When the oil is hot, lower the heat and then add in the mustard and cumin seeds. Wait for the mustard to splutter. Quickly add in the chillies, turmeric and curry leaves and watch it sizzle. Take it off the heat immediately and tip over into the bowl of yoghurt and eggs. Ta da!

How to get perfect hard boiled Eggs?

What's a Hard boiled egg? a. The yolk should not be runny but just solidified, b. the yolk should not be rubbery and c. The yolk should retain a bright yellow colour and not get discolored around the edges. Room temperature eggs always work best for this. Also older the eggs the better they hard boil. Place the eggs in a pan. Fill with water till it just covers the eggs. Bring the water to a boil slowly. Now reduce the heat and let it simmer for 2 mins. Now turn off the heat, cover the pan with a lid and set aside for 15-18 mins. (Don’t ask me why 18 and not 20…this is a result of a lot of scientific experimentation). Now no peeking at all till the time is done. Seriously. Go read a book if you can’t resist being impatient! After 18 mins, pour out the hot water and refill with cold water. Count to a fifty. (just kidding now!). Then peel the eggs. There you have it -Perfectly hard boiled eggs!  

Note: You can store the boiled eggs within the shell in the fridge to be reused later. Please ensure you consume them wiithin 3-4 days.