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.