Kuzhi Paniyaram

I love recipes that salvage leftovers, or make more interesting stuff with leftovers than the 'main' dish. This is one such meal. While a lot of people actually make their dosa/idli/paniyaram batter for Kuzhi Paniyaram and make it regularly, we don't. Not because we don't like it. Just that I've never thought of it. We never had this, as kids at home. I mean, who had leftovers of Dosa! :)

However, I saw Cham's recipe for this and wondered about how cute they look! We tried it once. And I loved it. I mean, I'm obsessed that way. Obsessed about figuring out interesting recipes for what I think is leftovers :D Like the way I ruined a good lemonade by adding a highly concentrated 2 tbsp of strawberry syrup left over from a dessert experiment. All because I couldn't see it lying in the fridge. I love emptying the fridge. I feel efficient :D Which is why I can plan meals for the next two years and dream about an empty fridge. It gives me peace of mind when I plan and make a things-to-do list. Okay, I digressed. My OCDs don't end and this post isn't a forum for that!

Coming back, we met her and she fed us fat, juicy looking, crisp-on-the-outside-but-spongy-on-the-inside Gunta Panganaalu. I love this name :D Reminds me of Shetty uncles from my childhood in Bangalore. Anyway, I loved the recipe and decided to pester my mom-in-law to finally get me an abel-whatever pan from India. She got me a non stick pan which was small. I wanted a large cast-iron one dreaming of making rounds of Kuzhi Paniyaram to feed hungry people. I have this vision of my house being the abode of abundance with people forever coming over to eat and all that. Much like the old times in India used to be. Its a different thing that A thinks rather differently about this! He gets scared at these harmless dreams. Okay, again, I digress.

So, when my mom-in-law got me this, the time was opportune. Want to know why? I thought I will show her how efficient a home-maker I was and how well I fed her son who looks so scrawny that people thought I ate his share of food too! So, the day before she landed, I ground up TONS of Idli/Dosa batter, so my fridge will look like the classic South Indian housewife's fridge. Big utensils with nicely risen batter. To make anytime and everytime. Since the word efficient doesn't apply to me for any part of my life, let alone my home-maker self, the idlis turned red. Ya. Red. I threw a tantrum because now, I didn't know how to show I was a good wife. I didn't wake up at 4 AM like the mom-in-law. I didn't pack fresh lunch for my husband. He took leftovers because I believe food tastes better the next day :P, I didn't get up lovingly to watch him eat cereal in the morning. Now, this Idli batter also threw me off course!

In sheer anger, I threw a lot of batter and sat there waiting for her to come. Come, the next day, without any pretence of jet lag, my mom-in-law was up at 4 poking in the kitchen. She saw the rest of the batter and decided to make dosas for bfast. She realized something was awfully wrong with the batter in probably 10 seconds. So, then she made this. Her son, after 2 years, ate hot breakfast and left for work, happy! She made sure I had my fill since I'm the breakfast person and I snacked on these the whole day.

*scene change - time moves - a year later*

I come back from India to see old batter in the fridge. While I've become really efficient, my OCD hasn't really gone down. I decided to make a weekend breakfast out of this batter. I could've made Dosa, but, but, the memories of my mother in law rustling up some Kuzhi Paniyaram was too hard to forget. So, A got this for brunch one Saturday morning. It turned out to be brunch thanks to picture-taking. And may I say that it was brilliant! I loved the way it looked and how fast it cooked and how much less oil (oxymoron there!) it took.

Its a great idea of breakfast or even a snack and a great idea to finish up your batter. Add some onions and some coriander and ta-da, you have a spicy, filling meal ahead of you! I'm not posting a recipe since I've linked Cham's recipe to this. I make it more or less similarly and her recipe has worked wonderfully for me. Thank you, Cham :)

Poor Man's Brioche - BBA!

Forging (not!) ahead on the BBA, we present to you a cousin of the beautiful Brioche. Imagine our surprise at the class system in bread making. This brioche we made is called the Poor Man's Brioche and lacks the bright, rich yellow color of a Rich Man's brioche. Guess why. There is less butter and less eggs.

A and I decided to be poor in terms of butter than be too rich for our waists and tried the Poor Man's Brioche from Peter Reinhart's Bread Baking Apprentice. We're lagging behind big time on this challenge and don't mind it as much. With my tooth ache, apartment hunting, trip planning (more details later!) and other issues, we've hardly found time to cook or bake anything luxurious. Dinners end with salads or couscous or bulgur. Of course, thanks to my tooth ache, salads are out and am feasting on rice since that is the only thing I can eat without using my teeth to bite. You know?

Anyway, this brioche was outstanding! For being a poor man's brioche, it was quite rich and we could taste the butter in this bread. We'd love to try out the Rich Man's Brioche sometime in the future, but I guess that's not anytime now! We ate up this bread just like this - did not make French Toast as planned or even a sandwich. It just disappeared in the night and I had it with some soup the next day for lunch.

The one thing about Peter Reinhart's recipes are that it works to a T. It works just like he says it does. We have several cookbooks including some from popular authors and there are anomalies here and there. Sometimes, we find stuff too buttery, too bland or too spicy. But with Peter Reinhart, I could do this blindly and reach where he wants us to. His instructions are simple, brilliant, the ingredients very simple and easily substituted with common everyday stuff in some cases. So, if you're looking to buy a good bread book, go no farther. Pick this one up!

Coming back to the brioche, the crust was brilliantly golden and it glistened. We didn't bake it in Brioche pans since we didn't have any, so ended up baking it in a regular loaf pan. Next time, it will be in that cute little Brioche tin! While the photos themselves may not show the luxuriousness of this bread, the shining crust and the brownness is for real. A was in raptures seeing this bread and claims that so far, this is his fave bread in the book. Me? We'll see. We have a lot more bread to go through and I love herbed, spiced breads more than anything else. So, wait and watch! :)

Go check what the other challengers are doing with their bread in the Flickr slide at Nicole's. Some of them've gone far ahead, and lent us valuable lessons from the mistakes and the learning they've garnered from this book. Thanks to all of them for that. Check Nicole's blog to see if you can join! :)

Pancakes- Bookmarked at that!

Okay, I'm stealing Nupur's idea. Don't tell her, ok? I love her blog and have been following it even before I started food blogging. And she is an inspiration. Her A-Z series is a treasure and her regional recipes take the cake! Her recent endeavor to cook through her list of bookmarks has me hooked. So, I decided that I will steal the idea from her and cook and post it every Friday evening/weekend. I hope to finally cook the bookmarks. Since we very smartly formatted the computer without saving my bookmarks, thankfully, my bookmark list is more recent, and hopefully has less numbers. Yes, hopefully.

Also, I do think its important to post whatever you cook from someone else's blog. I haven't been posting what I cook from other blogs all these days and I'm ashamed of my selfishness :| So, going forward, I will be posting a lot of recipes from all your blogs :) Every weekend. Today, since this idea just struck me, I decided to go with SJ's pancakes, something I have pictures of since I planned to send them to her. As always, what enticed me was her picture of the pancake. Like I've mentioned before, I'm a sucker for breakfasts. Every weekend, I expect a large breakfast - Indian or International. I can eat breakfast all day and these pancakes (that she flicked from Alton Brown) fit the bill.

We made some orange compote to go with it and boy, were the pancakes good or what!

Ingredients

2 oranges, peeled and cut into small pieces
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cornstarch

1. Peel the oranges and chop into small pieces. Make sure to remove all the skin or fiber ( I forget the name of the process. Anyone?) Chop the peel into very fine pieces.

2. Add sugar and cornstarch to the oranges and cook until the juices flow out and it becomes a thick fruity mass. We made it in the microwave though. Unfortunately, I don't remember the time!

Serve warm with pancakes and top your pancakes with nuts and honey/maple syrup! I hate my pancakes doused in syrup unless its a chunky fruit sauce. So, this compote worked out brilliantly for me. A loves his pancakes drenched, so he made his bit of the compote thinner and watery.

We loved the pancakes and its a keeper of a recipe. And - my pictures aren't any good as hers. So, do check her pictures and get tempted! :)

We've cooked from almost all your blogs and I've probably even mentioned it to you sometimes. However, we want to go one step further like Nupur did and post the recipes from your blogs that have become our favourites! Also, if we miss out on acknowledging any of your recipes, please do let us know and we will immediately rectify that :) And a million thanks to Nupur for this brilliant idea.

Where are our Southern manners?

Howdy y'all!

We currently reside in Atlanta, which is located in the 'South'. The land of the ghee (or butter!) and the home of the craving...for fried food ;). Where the hospitality is unparalleled and resources are available in abundance. Where Paula Deen uses more butter than people drink water every day. No I am not being sarcastic here. She once fried a cheesecake. Anyway, there is a certain style of living that separates the Southern part of US than North.

Just like India! We're Southerners there too ;) However, we have realized that we have paid odes and odes of tribute to our rich south Indian heritage, but as far as U.S goes, we really didn't get the opportunity to do so. Why? Not because we didn't want to....but because the phrase Southern vegetarian seems such an oxymoron ;) But one fine morning, when we were reading a featured article on Edna Lewis, we craved for a rich, Southern style breakfast. And nothing says Southern like good ol' biscuits and gravy.

This is a MUST for every Southern breakfast. If you don't agree, then 'we don't take kindly to that'. Just kidding! OK enough of our miserable attempt at trying to appear Southern....here are the recipes.

Ingredients:

Biscuits (adapted from The Neelys)

1/2 cup wheat flour (Indian 'Atta')
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup low-fat yogurt
2 tsp salt
4 tbsp butter, cold and cut into small pieces.
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda

Gravy

1 cup milk (2% reduced fat)
1 tsp half and half (we used a mini-moo)
1 tbsp butter
4 tsp soy sauce
8 oz button-mushrooms
2 tbsp cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper.

1. Preheat the oven to 450 F

2. In a bowl, sift the wheat flour, half the baking soda, baking powder and the salt.

3. Work half (~ 2 tbsp) of the cold, diced butter with your hands until you get a texture that resembles grated Parmesan cheese.

4. Add half the yogurt (~ 1/4 cup) until you barely start to form a dough. It'll be quite sticky but don't worry about it.

5. Knead it a little to form a coherent mass. Roll/shape it into a 1/4 inch thick rectangle and cut as many 2 inch squares as you can with a knife. Place these on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. We didn't find it necessary to grease the parchment paper (although we should have...how unsouthern of us to miss out on an opportunity to grease things up!)

6. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until the top is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean. Remove immediately and let it cool on a wire rack.

7. Repeat steps 1-5 for the all-purpose flour.

8. While the biscuits are in the oven, get started on the gravy. In a pan, bring the olive oil to high heat, throw in the mushrooms. sear them for a minute and then turn the heat down to medium.

9. Add half of the salt and cayenne pepper. Cook for 2-3 more minutes and set the mushrooms aside.

10. In the same pan, melt the butter on medium heat. When it has melted, add the flour. It'll form a thick mass which will be tough to stir, but its alright. Continue to work it with a wooden spatula till it turns slightly brown.

11. Add a couple of teaspoons of water and swirl the pan to coat it as much as you can. Then add the milk and the mini moo. This way, I avoid any potential 'curdling.'

12. Add the soy sauce and rest of the salt. You could change the amount of soy sauce to suit the color that you want. Add pepper. Cook until gravy has thickened a bit.

13. Add the cooked mushrooms and continue cooking till required consistency (thickness) has been achieved.

Traditionally, the gravy is cooked in animal fat. for example, on the same skillet where steaks are prepared. Ours is clearly a vegetarian version ;) And certainly way healthier than a regular biscuit. We used way less butter and absolutely no whole milk for the gravy. No lard either. But it tasted great! And the biscuits, what can I say...they were heavenly! Our recipe makes a total of 8 biscuits. We could have made ourselves a side of hash browned taters but we mustered great courage and abstinence and somehow managed not to do that!

To sum up our semi-Southern homemade breakfast in one word...YeeeeeeeeeeHaaawwwww :) ( Look for audio sound of Paula Deen laughing :P)

And since this is truly a 'quick' bread, this goes to Mansi of Fun N Fud for BBD#18-Quick Breads.

UPDATE: Sending this also to Roma of Roma's space for the JFI-Wheat event that she is hosting. This event was conceptualized by Indira of Mahanandi fame!