Comfort food

 

Its wonderful weather in Bangalore and it makes me think of home-made food.

A semi-tragic tale with a happy ending

I completed a year as a wedded women recently, and to celebrate this triumph, I decided to bake a cake. I have baked a total number of once before. I made gingerbread. Which was okay.And which I ended up eating mostly by myself.

So I wanted to be careful this time. I decided to bake a simple chocolate cake.

At the beginning of this year, I was browsing Kroma and acquired myself an OTG(Oven-Toaster-Grill). It took me a day to discover that this despicable machine is neither a good oven, nor a decent toaster nor is it a respectable grill. It is a beautiful, curved, chrome and steel contraption which can do nothing well. But since I have brought it, I insist on using it.

So I did bake the cake. It was doing well for itself, rising beautifully till I decided to open the oven and have a better look. The cake could not take this behavior and it collapsed into itself. So now I had a depression in the middle of my cake, like a moon crater.

When I finally took it out, I discovered it had a dark burnt layer at the top as well as the bottom. the reason, I had used normal sugar instead of powdered, which sunk to the bottom of the cake and made a caramel base to my cake. The top layer? Well, I can't explain that.

Despite of this, my cake tasted alright actually. And we all ate it with ice-cream and milk. After all what can go wrong if there is chocolate in it?

More about food

As long time readers know I am a bit of a foodie, and during my culinary internet reading i have discovered this nice little website called Bon Apetit. I have used a few recipes from this website; this one using green beans was particularly delicious, and now I will never use beans in any other way.

Scrolling through the site, searching for chickpeas, I discovered this wonderful article, which led me to this blog by the author, Molly Wizenberg, The Orangette. This blog sucessfully combine my two favourite things; writing and food. Delicious.

Reading through an entry about Scotland has waken a insatiable urge to eat haggis with neeps and taties. I mean, Robert Burns even wrote a poem about Haggis. Doesn't that just convince you it will be delicious?

Stack of cookbooks

When I got married, my mother gave me two classic Marathi cookbooks; one for daily cooking, and one for party cooking.
As I explored Bangalore, I came upon bookshops and interesting cookbooks. I find cookbooks as good reading material. I see them more as a DIY kind of book.

I bought two more books after this photo was taken. Then I went ahead and painted a little picture of my cookboks in a nice little pile.

 And then I noticed that, not only do I collect cookbooks, but I am also drawn to books about food or with food names in their titles.

Hm, not sure what to make of that.

Things to do with Eggplant

Influenced by Home Cooking, and the chapter, "Alone in the kitchen with an eggplant", I have started interacting more and more with brinjals. And yes, it is one of the most versatile vegetables ever! (Beaten only by the potato,  perhaps).

So here, have a collage about aubergines.

Roti-making for the dummies

I recently have managed to make rotis, so here are my handy hints for all you roti-making amateurs out there.