Homemade Almond and Cranberry Biscotti

 When the store stopped selling them, and you still crave for them, there remains no option but bake them! But did you know that biscotti literally means twice baked and it for this reason that they have the crunch and can survive longer than soft cookies? 'Tis the holiday season - enjoy a few with hot chocolate!

Bread baked on a gas stove -- courtesy my dad's home-based bakery.

 

Flowers from the vegetable garden

Summer squash and its varied uses

The leaves, stalk and flowers of the summer squash are all edible. 

Fritters: Cut the flowers into long thin strips. Dip in a mixture of corn flour, turmeric, salt and a dash of baking powder thinned with water and fry in oil -- the fritters are crisp and golden yellow in color. The leaves can also be chopped into small pieces and added to the corn flour mixture and fried as fritters. These end up being more greenish in color. 

Vegetable medley: Chop pumpkin leaves, stalks, flowers into small pieces. Dice some potatoes, arbi, egg plant, pumpkin or squash. In hot oil, add jeera and mustard seeds until the mustard splutters. Add in chopped green chillies (to taste) and ginger. Put in all the diced vegetables, add turmeric and salt and let in cook covered for about twenty minutes. Stir to make sure that there is adequate water and the vegetables are cooking properly. When they all dry up, add hing and garam masala to taste. A recipe from rural Bengal, usually enjoyed with daal or kichuri -- on a rainy day with pitar pater of raindrops on the windows.

Kadhi: Take thick curd and mix with a pinch of salt and sugar. Add water to thin out the curd. In a wok heat onions, tomatoes and ginger and saute until they turn mushy. Add curry leaves and green chillies to taste. Transfer this mixture to the curd diluted with water (almost the consistency of butter milk). Add in the fritters from above and enjoy on a warm day! 

Fish Stew (Machher Jhol)

Being a Bong (a native of West Bengal, India), I am often asked about various fish recipes. I never cared much for writing those down -- but I remembered them exactly like my mom and her mother made them. Personally, I am not a fish aficionado, and I do love some preparations more than others.

Machher Jhol, fish stewed with vegetables (raw banana, papaya, potatoes, beans) is a staple diet of people from West Bengal, India. The easy availability of fish (mostly fresh water) and home grown vegetables provides the inspiration.

I am usually not the kind who wants to write long recipes -- so here is a basic outline of how this can be made. Marinate fish (salmon, tilapia, catfish all work well) with turmeric, salt and optionally lemon. Pressure cook raw banana, papaya, potatoes, beans and other vegetables you have handy. In a wok, heat oil. Add cumin, chopped tomatoes, ginger garlic paste, green chilies, turmeric, cumin powder, salt to taste, a pinch of sugar (to taste) and let it fry with all of the above ingredients until the oil oozes out of them. Add the vegetables, and allow the mixture to boil for a few more minutes. Add in the marinated fish and cook, keeping covered until fish is done. Sprinkle garam masala and squeeze lemon. Your maccher jhol is ready to serve.

A few notes:
a. Kids usually like this with a lot of lemon -- the tanginess helps to keep the odor off and also adds to the flavor.
b. You can easily use cauliflower florets, green peas, and brinjals.
c. You can also put a little ghee as a topping and garnish with coriander leaves.
d. The gravy can be thick or thin depending on your taste.
e. Additionally, you can add bori (https://food.ndtv.com/recipe-bengali-dal-bori-902821) after frying and it really enhances the taste.

Homemade cream cheese and spinach ravioli without a pasta maker

Being a non-Italian, trying to make ravioli at home from scratch made me somewhat apprehensive. The process is elaborate at best -- but something told me, it'd be worth the effort.  Examining a few youtube videos made me feel more comfortable, but I did not have a pasta maker at hand. So my skills in making Indian recipes (chappatis) came handy, except they needed to be ultra thin -- almost like roomali roti (for those unfamiliar with this term -- it means a chappati as soft as a handkerchief).

So here are some visuals from first experiment.

Cream cheese and spinach filling

Ravioli rolled without a pasta maker and cut using a simple kitchen knife. I have to work on the shapes -- that will be the focus next time.

                                 Thankful they did not disintegrate when boiled.

Nice and soft.

The final product. Had a sauce made from onions, tomatoes and peanuts -- an Indian touch to the whole dish. Also some green onions and coriander leaves to spruce it up.

Since my family is willing to be guinea pigs again, I assume it was a successful experiment. 

Grilling, salmon and butternut squash

The preparation

                     Smoked Salmon and Butter nut squash

                            Thai inspired pineapple fried rice

                      Smoked salmon and butternut squash

Tindora in poppy seed sauce

When you live in a foreign land, you try and learn to adapt to the environment. Darwinism, I think. So if you live in a place where pointed gourd is not a native, you make do with close relatives of it. I like to think that the ivy gourd is a relative of the pointed gourd. Entirely "my opinion" and may/may not be true. I did not go to the length of checking facts. Well, at least they are both gourds -- so in some sense that may be true.

People from my native place drool over pointed gourd (also known as parval or potol) in poppy seed sauce. Why not try the adaption, ivy gourd (also known as tindora) with the same sauce? Simply logic -- lead to a really yummy preparation.

Simply slit the tindora in half along the longer side, sprinkle turmeric powder and salt and keep aside for about five minutes. Grid poppy seeds and make a thick paste using as little water as possible. Heat oil in a pan, add green chillies (if you like some heat) and throw in the tindora. Stir fry until slightly (but not overly) browned. Add in the poppy seed mix and let it boil until the tindora cooks and is well done. The poppy seed paste should dry up making a thick coating on the tindora.

And there you go folks -- tindora in poppy seed sauce to be had with roti, naan or rice! Enjoy!

Baby arugula and spinach salad

Baby arugula and spinach salad tossed with olive oil, pear balsamic vinegar,
dried cranberries, chopped walnuts, and dried apricots. 

From the French patisserie

Baguette toasted with olive oil and pistachio macarons at tea time.
Heavenly, I promise.

Quinoa - the ancient grain.

Gluten-free blueberry quinoa pancakes

Quinoa salad with dried fruit (cranberry, apricot, currants, pecans) and herbs

Baked Asparagus

I love crunchy food - the deep-fried, nicely crusted stuff where you can feel the crunch. And who does not? Sure, the health maniacs can give me the glares.

You see, knowing statistics tells you - at the end of the day - everything is an estimate of how good or bad they are for you. And boy can you lie, with statistics or what?

But hey, forego the crunch? Think again.

This baked asparagus, however, is super easy to make. Chop them up coarsely, stir in olive oil, garlic salt, chilli, pepper to taste, and bread crumbs. Give them a stir and line them up on a baking tray. In the oven at 375 degrees - and there you go. Healthy fries that you can drool over. Interestingly, it has the same kind of flavor as that of a traditional dish from my hometown in Bengal (India) - potol posto. Or am I imagining things just from a sheer craving! Ah well, will let you decide.

Crumbled Blue Cheese, Toasted Walnuts and Dried Cranberries in Flatbread

I made it exactly the way Indian Naan is made - except the stuffing was with crumbled blue cheese, toasted walnuts and dried cranberries. If you prefer to make it spicy, you could add a dash of pepper. 

Stir Fried Arugula

Stir fried Arugula with an Asian/Indian touch. Take about a table spoon of oil, splutter mustard seeds and red chillies; add in coarsely chopped arugula; turmeric, coriander powder and salt to taste. Serve with rice. Works like a charm, if in a hurry.

Southern Hospitality

with crab bisque and pralines. yum yum.

Crab Bisque

Pralines

An attractive container

A little indulgence on a Saturday afternoon.

Had been craving for crab curry for quite a while. Experimented with Alaskan king crabs and a Goanese recipe that is well reviewed by crab lovers. Loved the taste. Come home if you want to try some. Warning: It is disappearing fast!

Stir Fried Wild Figs (Dumur) - A Delicacy of the East.

The Indian fig tree, Gular (Ficus racemosa), is unusual in that its figs grow on or close to the tree trunk [Wikipedia]. The fruit is almost never sold commercially in large quantities because of the threat of fig wasps. This however, is quite easily available in local vegetable markets in West Bengal (particularly in Kolkata) and goes by the name -- 'Dumur'.

 The easiest recipe one can try with it is 'Stir Fried Dumur' - Cut the fruit in half or quarters(you may have a white secretion) and pressure cook (two whistles should do the trick) with turmeric and salt.

In a wok, heat oil. Allow 1/2 tea spoon of whole mustard seeds to splutter and add in chopped onions, ginger garlic paste, curry leaves. When onions brown and oil separates, add in the dumur, cumin powder, chili powder and salt to taste. Stir fir for a few minutes and remove from the flame. Serve as a side dish with dal and rice.

A more popular variant is to do the above but add in diced potatoes. This helps increase the quantity, if you want to prepare and keep for a few servings!

Savory Crepes

I love crepes. Easy to prepare and useful when bored of sandwiches. The basic recipe involves mixing together an egg, a cup of flour, 1/2 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of water, a teaspoonful of vanilla extract, salt to taste. Stir to make a flowing batter - Ladle it out on a hot pan after spraying with oil. When one side is done, flip. Top with cheese, greens (sautéed spinach or coriander), green or hot peppers to taste.

I have now learnt of several restaurants specializing in crepes in Western NY. Favorites include (1) Break'n Eggs Creperie, Williamsville. (2) Desert Cafe, East Amherst. (3) Poppleton Bakery, Corning NY.

Collard parathas

We had a surplus of collards this Fall. I experimented with them quite a bit. Several indian side-dishes were tried-primarily, by replacing spinach with collards. Learnt that the somewhat wild smell of collards was well masked with garam masala. My newest experiment involved making collard parathas, much like one makes methi or spinach ones. The collards have to be chopped and pressure-cooked before hand. I threw in a bunch of cilantro, chopped onions, ginger and garlic paste and some chopped green chilis along with whole wheat flour. Kneaded the dough and rolled them out exactly like rotis. The pictures here show the finished product. A successful experiment I'd say.