While at a store, have you ever seen a wee babe let out a piercing scream?
You know, the kind that makes you fear for the expensive wines?
Worse, have you been at a store and had your own wee babe let out a piercing scream?
You know, the kind that makes you want to pretend this is someone's child.
Someone other than you, that is.

Well, I've been in the former situation many times before I was a parent and a few times after.

The times before I had a wee babe of my own, I thought to myself... perhaps the child is hungry... maybe she's tired... Oh, that poor mother, I wish there was something I could do to help. I'm a kindhearted soul that way. I never got annoyed at the screaming irrespective of how loud, how close, or how persistent. I smiled my kindest smile to the parents and was certain that it would never be like that for me.

When I took Tej to stores (we mostly just went to grocery stores) he was an angel. He slept, or sat strapped to my chest in his baby wrap and gurgled at me, occasionally sucking on my chin. If other, mostly older babies had their screaming episodes, Tej looked at them with interest. He never joined in. The two of us went about our business, paid for our goods and walked back home.
If you had to pick a sound track for us, you would be spot on choosing Louis Armstrong singing What a wonderful world.

For over a month now, Tej is happy and alert when we go to grocery stores. The main attraction of this joyous jaunt being - sitting in the shopping cart and being pushed around. Now children learn remarkably quickly and while my son was perfectly content with just being pushed around a few weeks ago, he soon demanded to hold the shopping list (which he invariably ate and then I couldn't remember what we needed), then he insisted on holding cans (so I had to rush to the first aisle that had cans and give him one to hold), then came the 'I want to touch Everything' stage, which also fortunately I could entertain as long as we were in the produce aisle. All I had to do was make a circuitous way to the coconuts, Ooh-ing and Aah-ing along the way. The moment he touched (and now sees) a coconut, he clambers back into the shopping cart. Yes, yes, I'm also very devious despite being a kindhearted soul.

Now of course he grabs things on his own, especially in stores where the aisles are narrow and holds on to grabbed object with pride till Mama's done shopping. When we get to the cash registers, I simply make a switch. I pick up one of our items that has already been billed out and again, Ooh-ing and Aah-ing I hand it to my son, replacing it with whatever it was he had acquired as we bustled through the aisles. Hey, you call it devious, I call it ingenious.

Moving on.

On our most recent trip to the store, my son, through quite a remarkable amount of arm-stretching and some brute strength pulling, acquired a foil baggie of something. I absentmindedly tried taking it from him in order to replace it on the clip it hung from and was instead confronted by a shrieking noise. I kept pulling and I kept hearing shrieks. Which is when my (still) sleep deprived brain made the connection that the shrieks were coming from my son. I looked at him. Clearly, that was HIS red foil baggie. I apologized, kissed him on the forehead and giving him my grocery list as a peace offering, we went on.

You know what I was thinking right? That I would do my devious 'switch' at the cash register.
It didn't happen. When we got there, Tej's hands clenched the bag so tight his nail beds looked white. I offered him apples, bananas, a can of tomato paste... no deal. I said, "Fine, at least let me pay for it."

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!

I looked around me. There was an older couple behind me, looking annoyed and impatient. There was a young man with a skull cap and headphones on, who looked my way - so clearly Tej had drowned his music out. There was another mother a couple of registers down whose eyes darted from Tej to her own child, probably worried if he'd set her baby off as well. And in the midst of all this, the lady at the register said, "Don't worry about it, I can still ring it out." She stretched that handheld bar-code reader towards Tej's hand and 'beeped' the bag. At which point, of course, my son let go of his precious acquisition in a quest to obtain that fascinating, red light bearing, beeping, coiled wire adorned object.

Tej: "Mmm... Mmmm... Mmmm...."
Lady: Oh honey, I'm sorry! I cannot give this to you.
Tej: *wide eyes
Me: I'm so sorry
Lady: Oh don't worry about it. He's probably hungry or tired.
Me: Umm...
Lady: Is there anything else I can do to help?
Me: No, thank you.

And as she waved goodbye to Tej I could almost hear her think, "It will never be like that for me" 

Well, you know, I did have nine solid months with my baby being perfectly well behaved in grocery stores with absolutely no effort on my part. I suppose what we need now is new tricks to keep him entertained. After all, I think what he really wants, is to be involved.
So sing on, sweet Satchmo, I can still hear you over the shrieks and I'm loving every bit of it.

Oh! That was quite a tangent wasn't it. The reason I told you all that was because I wanted you to know that I recently bought a bag of freeze dried raspberries (which I really didn't want) thanks to my son. When we got home and tried them, they were so tart my face was puckered for five minutes.

I didn't know what to do with them. I couldn't just throw them away. So I thought to myself:
What goes well with raspberries?
Dark chocolate.
Do we have dark chocolate at home?
Yes. Chips.
Shall we make raspberry- chocolate chip cookies?
Yes. We should. Clearly, the universe has willed it.

Recipe below: This really is quite delicious.
Yields approximately 46 cookies using a cookie measuring scoop to portion out dough balls
(I could tell you exactly what measure mine is, but I would have to get up and trek all the way to the kitchen. I'll tell you soon though, I promise) 

All purpose flour - 2 cups
Eggs - One whole egg + one yolk
Brown sugar - 1 cup
Granular white sugar - 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons
Freeze dried raspberries (powdered) - 5 tablespoons
Butter (room temperature) - 1 and 1/2 sticks
Baking soda - 1/2 teaspoon
Salt - 1/2 teaspoon
Vanilla extract - 2 teaspoons

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F

Sift the flour, baking soda, salt, and powdered raspberries.
Cream the butter and sugars together until well combined. Add the egg, egg yolk, vanilla extract and whisk again. I use a hand-held electric mixer to get this done.

Add the sifted flour-raspberry mixture to the butter-sugar-egg mixture and mix it till just combined.
You might see a few threads of dry flour in this mixture but be careful not to over mix. I stopped using my electric mixer at this point and switched to just using my hands.

Portion the dough into little balls and flatten them on to a parchment lined cookie sheet.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. It takes 17 minutes in my oven.

Lavender Shortbread Rounds

This recipe made approximately 32 shortbread rounds, I think... I'm not sure how many I ate before I counted them.

This recipe has been modified from the family baking book, however, the tips are entirely of my own devising.
There were some tears and some despair followed by joyous epiphanies. I don't usually break down and cry over a recipe gone awry, but this was for Tej's birthday party and I so wanted to do everything right.

I share with you all my wisdom and then some. Have fun!

Ingredients:

All Purpose Flour (white flour/maida) - 2 1/4 cups
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Unsalted butter, softened - 2 sticks or 16 tbsp
Confectioners' sugar - 1/2 cup
Granulated sugar - 1 tablespoon + more for sprinkling
Dried lavender flowers - 1 tsp (for a stronger lavender flavor, use 2 tsp)

Preheat your over to 300 degrees F.

Process the lavender flowers along with a tablespoon of sugar in a clean coffee grinder or food processor until you get a 'mostly fine powder blend'. This lavender-sugar will look a little blue-grey in color (picture on top) compared to the confectioners sugar (below).

Sift the lavender-sugar, salt and flour together and set it aside.

Cream the butter and confectioners' sugar together until light and fluffy. This took 6 minutes in my kitchen with a handheld electric mixer. 

Add the flour mixture to the butter-sugar mix until combined. Turn the mixture out on to a lightly floured surface and mix till it comes together in a ball.

Portion into little balls and flatten to make small discs about an inch or inch and a half in diameter and just about, less than half an inch in thickness. Lay them out on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and poke holes using the tines of a fork.

Sprinkle the cookies with granulated sugar.

Space the shortbread rounds leaving at least an inch of space all around.
Bake for around 40 minutes. When ready, the biscuits will still be white.
Cool on a wire rack.

Troubleshooting:

Dough too dry - add cold water one tablespoon at a time into the flour mixture until it comes together.

Dough too sticky - Wait a few minutes, leaving the dough uncovered and try again. Check the dough every 2-3 minutes.

Dough too wet - allow it to stand at room temperature for a few minutes, it usually becomes more dry as time passes. If not, add flour one teaspoon or even lesser at a time and try kneading it again.

You absolutely need to:

- Use confectioners' sugar, do not substitute with granular sugar. If you don't have any confectioners' sugar, grind granulated sugar and corn starch together in a food processor/ grinder till you get a fine powder blend of the two. The ratio I have had success with is 1 cup of granular sugar and 1 1/4 tablespoons of corn starch or arrowroot powder.

- Set your oven at low temperature

Storage:

Shortbread keeps for a long time, we've had a batch of cookies that kept for a week in an airtight container with no changed in flavor. They might have kept for longer without going bad, but we finished them in a week.

Bread Pudding, the way it's Meant to Be

When I was a little girl, my mother's Parsee friends used to make me bread pudding. Their recipe was simple and the end result, delicious.

Back then, white bread wasn't evil, eggs weren't akin cigarettes (bs, imo), sugar was sweet and people would eat, all of the above, albeit in moderation.

I must admit I tried, many a time to make recipes healthier. Swapping butter for yogurt, applesauce, good will, and so forth... and I've actually succeeded many times. So I do have a perfectly nice recipe for bread pudding which uses whole grain bread and natural sweeteners, but you know what, it just doesn't satisfy.

Truth be told, I love white bread. I love eggs. I love sugar. In moderation, I believe they can do no harm. Besides, our diet is otherwise rich in whole grains, vegetables, and legumes for me to not feel guilty about this indulgence.
Most importantly though, this bread pudding, like other favourites from my childhood, shall not be messed with.

You will need:
Sliced white bread (or Indian Pav Bread) sliced into small pieces - 5 cups  
Large Eggs - 6
Milk (whole or 2%) - 2 cups
Condensed milk - 1 can (14 oz, or approx 400ml)
Sultanas/ Golden Raisins - 1/2 cup
Vanilla extract - 2 teaspoons
Green Cardamom, shelled and powdered - 6 pods
Nutmeg, freshly grated - a pinch

Just be sure to:
1. Use unsweetened white bread like the kind they use to make sandwiches. Do not use sweet bread, this recipe is sweet enough as it is.
2. If you aren't familiar with or fond of the flavor cardamom imparts, then I would strongly suggest using fewer pods. As for me, I grew up in a house that on Thursdays and weekends was a cardamom scented haven, so I love the stuff.
3. You have to grate the nutmeg fresh. Pre-powdered nutmeg is just wrong. Just as wrong as pre-powdered cardamom.

A Note on the Sweetness:
This dessert is sweet. Quelle surprise!!
Well, what I mean is, if you've tried other recipes on this blog you will have realized that they are sweet enough to be called sweet, but not cloying sweet. Not sickeningly sweet. Not Italian sweet.
It is sweet though, so if you hold me in high regard and cherish me for my ability to make desserts sweet, but not too sweet, be warned that this is one of the sweeter ones. It's delicious though, so I would urge you not to make any subtractions or worse, substitutions.

If you absolutely, have to tone down the sweetness because a Tufted Capuchun is holding your favorite sweater hostage or something like that, you can do one of the following:
1. Use 1/4 cup of sultanas or (I can't believe I'm saying this) leave them out altogether.  This is what I would consider a great tragedy, but you must do what you must do for your favorite sweater.
2.  Use half a can of condensed milk and replace it with plain milk.


The How:
Begin by boiling the milk and condensed milk in a sauce pan. I usually bring this to a boil and then let it cool, but you can get by with just bring it to a point where the two are well combined and steaming. Let it sit around till it is barely warm to touch.

Grease your baking dish. Slice the bread. Toss together with sultanas and add them to the baking dish. Cover the lot with some aluminum foil (you will need this while baking and also to keep the bread from drying out in the interim).

Get your blender and add the six eggs, vanilla essence, shelled and powdered cardamom, and grate nutmeg right into the jar. Blend till well combined.

Add as much of the cooled milk as the blender jar permits. Most blender jars don't have the capacity for all the milk + eggs, so be sure to add the blended mix back into the rest of the milk and give it all a good stir.

Pour the milk/egg mixture over the bread and let it sit for about half an hour.



Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Set a pan (larger than your baking dish) in the oven, place the pudding dish in it and add water to the pan.
Cook for 50 minutes.


Remove the aluminum foil and cook for an additional 30 minutes. Oven temperatures vary, so it might take 10 minutes more or less.
Look for a firm pudding that doesn't jiggle on the pan being shaken slightly. Be careful not to spill any of the hot water on yourself.

By the way, if any of you did find your way to that article in Time, chances are what caused those people to contract heart disease might be that sliver of bacon coupled alongside them harmless, healthy, balls of sunshine.

Cranberry-Almond Oat Cookies

A variation on the more traditional Oatmeal-Raisin Cookie.
Just as delicious, if not more, owing to the toasted almonds and all.

A sweet and nutty cookie, pairs very well with both coffee and tea.

Old Fashioned Oats (lightly toasted) - 3 cups
All purpose flour - 1 1/2 cup
Brown sugar - 1 cup
Granulated white sugar - 1/2 cup
Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Cinnamon (ground) - 1/2 tsp
Dried Cranberries - 1 1/2 cup
Toasted Almonds (chopped) - 1 1/2 cup
Eggs (large) - 2
Unsalted butter (softened) - 2 sticks or 16 tablespoons + 1 tablespoon for the raisins
Vanilla Extract - 1 tsp

Optional Spice: I personally like the taste of cranberries and almonds coupled with oats very much and so I choose not to add any additional spice. However, if you feel you want a fuller flavour, I would suggest adding either grated orange peel/ orange zest, or a quarter teaspoon of orange extract/essence (very potent stuff, so go easy).

A Note on Toasting Almonds:
Chop almonds into small bits until you have one and a half cups full. Lay the nuts out on a cookie sheet and toast them in your oven, preheated to 350 degrees F. It takes ten minutes in my oven and I rotate the pan at five minutes tossing the nuts slightly while doing so.

Alternatively, you can toast almonds in a skillet or frying pan on the stove. Just be sure to stand by and stir constantly, regulating the heat if you see them starting to burn.

Personally, I prefer toasting nuts in the oven. I find they toast more evenly and it involves less busy work.

To make cookie dough:

- Mix flour, baking soda, salt

- Cream the butter, white sugar and brown sugar. 

I know I said I don't ever use white sugar in Oatmeal Cookies, but the tartness of the cranberries are best balanced with some good old fashioned, full-strength WHITE sugar. :) 

- Add the eggs one at a time, cream after each addition. 

- Add vanilla.  

- Mix the flour into the butter-sugar-egg mixture in a few installments. (It usually takes me three)

- Stir in the cranberries and toasted almonds.

- Chill the mixture for around half hour. 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. 

Portion out the cookie dough and place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. 

Depending on your individual oven it usually takes around 30 minutes to bake. 

Rotate the pan halfway through baking. 

Look for brown edges with slightly soft centers. Soft to being pushed gently with your finger that is.

 

 

 

 

In case you're wondering about the shape of these cookies, they were frozen solid when I baked them, which causes them to spread less. If you would like your frozen cookies to spread more, halfway through your baking time (when you are rotating the cookie sheet) flatten the cookie out with a flat ladle. If you aren't a stickler for flatter cookies, I wouldn't trouble myself with this too much. The difference in baking time I find is about 5 minutes less if you do flatten it. But again, this depends a lot on your individual oven. 

A Note on Freezing Cookie Dough: 

It's a great idea! Saves you the temptation of buying crappy, additive ridden cookies in the grocery store. All you need to do is:

1. Portion out the cookie dough into little balls. I use a soup ladle or an ice cream scoop. 

2. Roll them into balls and arrange them on a platter small enough to fit in your freezer. 

3. Ensure the cookies aren't touching one another. Freeze for 15 minutes. 

4. When you take them out of the freezer, the individual dough balls are frozen on the outside but probably not frozen through. Working quickly, transfer them to a plastic zip top bag and put them back in the freezer. 

5. Experience has taught me to freeze only as many cookies as would fit on my cookie sheet in one bag. No more. They don't refreeze very well. So if you've made 24 dough balls and your cookie sheet can only accommodate 6 at a time, freeze them in 4 zip top bags of 6 each. Not one big bag of 24. 

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

In a moment of what we now consider a poorly executed, not-thought-through act of budgeting, my husband and I got ourselves membership at a popular chain warehouse store.
"It's sooo much cheaper if we buy in bulk," we had said. It's true too. It is cheaper and hence logical to buy in bulk. Our logic however fell apart when we realized that it was just the two of us... and we didn't really need all that much.

Now the husband and I are generally healthy eaters. We're good eaters too. However, the reason I call our warehouse store shopping expedition poorly executed, is because we bought good, healthy food in portions larger than we could possibly consume; and the reason I call it not-thought-through is because we live in a fairly small apartment.

We had no place to store our thrifty haul.
This led to situations where we often went to bed with a few Bounty rolls for pillows.

I kid of course. Ha Ha.

But seriously, if you ever feel the need, try sliding a roll under each knee whilst lying on your back. Really helps with that lumbar curve. And you can even use their shampoo/ conditioner bottles for a few sets of bicep curls during a shower.

To elaborate on the too-much-of-a-good-thing grocery shopping, what I mean is we often came home with too much fruit, too many fresh vegetables and enough oatmeal to bring our cholesterol levels down to nada.

I once ate so many kiwi fruit I could swear my skin took on a greenish hue. Also, I haven't eaten kiwi fruit since.
And spinach! Gosh, one time we couldn't open the refrigerator without being mauled by a super sized spinach clamshell.

This led to the otherwise healthy food taking on less healthy forms.
Perfectly good peaches got made into perfectly decadent cobbler (Susheel reassured me that they were much better that way).
Strawberries were dipped in chocolate, or served alongside some clotted cream, or better still served up with some pound cake, drizzled with chocolate and served up with fresh homemade whipped cream.
We were suffering, you see!

This recipe too came into being at that point of time, when I couldn't open the kitchen cupboards without boxes of Old-Fashioned Oatmeal leaping out into my arms screaming - 'Cook Me! Cook Me!'
I heard 'Cookie' (what with being up to my ears in oatmeal), so I obliged.

Old Fashioned Oats (lightly toasted) - 3 cups
All purpose flour - 1 1/2 cup
Brown sugar - 1 1/2 cup
Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Cinnamon (ground) - 1/2 tsp
Raisins (lightly warmed in a tablespoon of cinnamon butter) - 2 cups
Eggs (large) - 2
Unsalted butter (softened) - 2 sticks or 16 tablespoons + 1 tablespoon for the raisins
Vanilla Extract - 1 tsp

Makes approximately 24 cookies delicious cookies, 2-inches in diameter.
Also makes you consider renewing your warehouse store membership.

Two steps that you might not find in standard recipes that make a subtle, yet significant change in the flavor.

1. Lightly toast the oatmeal. I like to do this in a dry pan on low heat. Stand by and stir. You don't want the oatmeal to burn.
2. In the same pan, add a tablespoon of butter, ground cinnamon, and once the butter is melted and you can smell the cinnamon, add the raisins. Again, stir. Make sure all the raisins are evenly coated with butter and cinnamon. Make sure you do this on a very low flame.

If you have sautéed raisins before you are familiar with how they swell up. This time though, we don't need them to swell up. We just want the cinnamon flavor to infuse into the raisins and begin caramelizing the sugars even before we pop them into the oven. 

- Mix flour, baking soda, salt (and any additional cinnamon you may want to add)

- Cream the butter and brown sugar. I don't use any white sugar in my Oatmeal Cookies ever.

- Add the eggs one at a time, cream after each addition. 

- Add vanilla.  

- Mix the flour into the butter-sugar-egg mixture in a few installments. (It usually takes me three)

- Stir in the raisins and any residual cinnamon butter (there is hardly any if you use just 1 tbsp) and the toasted oats. 

- Chill the mixture for around half hour. 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. 

Portion out the cookie dough and place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. 

There is enough to fill out two cookie sheets, possibly more. I own only one cookie sheet so I put the dough back in the fridge while the first set is baking. 

Depending on your individual oven it usually takes around 30 minutes to bake. 

Look for brown edges with slightly soft centers. Soft to being pushed gently with your finger that is.

Apple Cake

Ingredients:

Firm Apples, Golden Delicious/ Granny Smith/ Fuji - 3 large or 4 medium 

Walnuts, chopped - 1 cup 

Raisins -  1 cup 

Flour - 3 cups

Sugar - 1 1/2 cups 

Baking Powder - 1 tsp

Baking Soda - 1 tsp 

Vanilla Extract  - 1 tsp

Eggs, large - 3 

Salt - 1 tsp 

Cinnamon, ground - 1 tsp 

Oil, neutral tasting - 1 1/4 cup

Directions: 

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F

2. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt, mix well and set aside. 3. In a large bowl combing the eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla essence. Using a handheld mixer, blend till the mixture is glossy. 

4. Incorporate the flour mixture to the wet mix in 3-4 installments. The cake batter will be very thick and sticky. 

5. Add chopped apples, walnuts, and raisins to the cake batter and mix to combine. 

6. Empty the mixture into a greased, fluted cake pan and bake for 50 minutes. 

Additional baking may be required. The cake is ready when it turns golden brown and a wooden skewer dipped in it comes out clean.

Methi Aloo

Ingredients

Methi/ Fenugreek Leaves, cleaned and chopped - 4 cups
Potatoes - 2 medium
Lime juice - 1/2 a lime or approximately 2 tablespoons
Green chillies - 1 or 2
Cumin - 2 teaspoons
Red chilli powder - 1 teaspoon
Turmeric - 1/2 teaspoon
Asafoetida - a pinch
Salt
Oil

How to make Methi Aloo:

1. In a wok, heat about one tablespoon of oil and add the cumin seeds to it. Follow this up with the asafoetida and green chillies. 
2. Ten seconds later, add the potatoes and stir fry till the edges of the potatoes have browned slightly. 
3. Salt the potatoes and add the turmeric - cook covered for about one minute. *Alternatively, you can parboil the potatoes in salted water with turmeric added to it and then sauté it.
4. Add the Methi leaves, lime juice, stir and let the mixture cook uncovered till the leaves start to wilt and release their moisture. 
5. With the heat turned low, cover the wok and cook till the potatoes are cooked. 

Serve with rotis, parathas or rice and dal.