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.

Thalipeeth

I have always felt a little Maharashtrian.
For that matter, I've even felt a little Manglorian, Gujrati, Punjabi, and Goan. In fact, I can work my way from one tip of the country to the other and honestly say that I have felt a little like every kind of people India is home to.

Perhaps it was growing up in Bombay (and then in Mumbai) that makes one feel this way. You grow up in the midst of such diversity. Your friends hail from different parts of the country and you spend your childhood sharing rituals and religions, festivals and food.

Of course, food was most important - the one thing that bound us all.
Truly. It did.

Whats more it wasn't even the fancy delicacies we craved, it was the every day stuff. Simple delicious dishes which your friend brought to school for "tiffin" and traded with you for your own lunch (that is provided your own Mum had packed you something of value).

My Mother worked full time and then some, so my lunch box often featured Bread, Butter, and Jam.
I probably don't need to tell you this, but BBJ has very low trade value. So when the recess bell rang and the floor was open for business, my lunch was passed over like bad stock no one wanted to touch with a ten foot pole.

Then there were those kids whose lunches seemed packed by airline caterers. Their food came packed in insulated, compartmentalized boxes. I swear, sometimes there was more than one course - for a 20 minute recess! I was moderately jealous of these kids, but the ones that almost done me in were the hot homemade deliveries. Not only were these lunches piping hot, they were hand delivered by mothers in crisp cotton sarees, smelling of food and talcum powder. I was always so jealous. And let me tell you, jealously makes a BBJ sandwich even harder to swallow.

At this point, I want to tell my mother (if she ever reads this) that I appreciate everything she did and does for me, that I love her, and that I know whatever I might have felt it was infinitely harder on her to leave me and go to work everyday, but she needed to because we needed the money. And that if we were rich, she would have never left my side. I know Amma, and I love you.

Anyway, back to my story, which eventually leads to the recipe and my initial ponderings on my multicultural-ness.

I had a friend back in school Kanchan Phadke. Kanchu was the sweetest thing. She came to school in pigtails and a neatly ironed dress, she wore glasses and was prone to colds. Kanchu also had one of those crisp cotton saree, talcum powder mothers who brought piping hot lunch to school on occasion. And on one such occasion, Kanchu and her mother shared a certain crisp pancake like thing with me which had me drooling for more in every class after recess. I went home and tried to explain it to my mother...

... It is like a chapati, but its a lot harder and thicker
... you can't tear it like a chapati, it breaks
... it has onions and green chillies in it
... I ate it with curd...
... please make it for me amma!!

My dear mother tried in vain but couldn't decipher the dish and over time, I forgot about it completely.
Until I was 21 years old and doing research at the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health, Mumbai when I sat down to lunch during a PCR run and was handed the same - like chapati but harder and thicker with onions and green chillies by Shilpa Pathak.

"What is this??? What is this called??" I pounced on her.
"Thalipeeth" Shilpa said, taken aback.
"I love this stuff"
She laughed and sat back, letting me devour it, "Eat, I'm not that hungry... besides, I had the same thing for breakfast."

I returned home and told my mother - "Thalipeeth!! Amma, it's called Thalipeeth!!"
She looked perplexed.
I explained, and since then she must have made it for me dozens of times.

I can now honestly say that I really do know lots about The Peeth (as my husband and I call it) so I can tell you about it. 

Thalipeeth when literally translated means plate (thali) and dough (peeth). It is quite possibly one of the simplest Maharashtrian preparations and one of their most nutritious staples at that.
In many ways Thalipeeth is nothing more than a multi-flour pancake with onions, green chillies and some spice, but goodness is it delicious or what! The only challenging thing as far as I can see about making it is patting down the dough on a hot skillet... I suppose it takes some amount of being tolerant to heat to do that.


Here is how you make it...

Blend together the following flours:
1/2 cup of Garbanzo bean/ Chick-pea flour (besan)
1/4 cup of Black Gram/ Urad Dal flour
1/4 cup of Moong Bean flour
1/2 cup of Whole Wheat flour
1/4 cup of Millet flour
1/4 cup of Rice flour
2 tbsp Cream of Wheat/ Rava
1 tbsp Cumin Powder
2 tsps Coriander Powder
1/2 heaped cup full of very finely chopped onions
Chopped green chillies - you decide how hot you want it
1/4 cup chopped Cilantro/ Coriander
A few mint leaves chopped
Salt

1. Mix all the different kinds of flour in a bowl and add the chopped onions, green chillies, cilantro, mint, salt and spices in.
2. Add water and knead with your hands till you get a very stiff dough.
3. Heat a pan/ skillet and grease it slightly with oil, ghee or butter.
4. Take a small handful of the dough and pat it on the skillet. Spread it around.
5. Drizzle some more oil/ghee/butter on top of the pancake and flip it over.
6. Press down on the cooked side so the side you patted down gets evenly cooked, this side is bound to have some indentations from your fingers.

Eat it hot... with chutney and yogurt.
As for me, I think of Kanchan and Shilpa every time I make this. And of course, I celebrate the little Maharashtrian in me.

Banana-Nut Oatmeal

Serves two.

1 and 1/2 cup milk

2 ripe (or overripe) bananas

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 cup quick cooking oatmeal 

1/2 cup of chopped walnuts

Approximately 1/2 a cup of water

Sweetner: Sugar, raw sugar, agave

Sliced bananas as garnish... if you so desire. 

Pour the milk into a saucepan and start it out on low heat. Mash the bananas (I usually do this in a cereal bowl with a fork) and add to the saucepan along with the vanilla and cinnamon. Let this come to a slow simmer. 

Once the smell of cinnamon subsides a little (takes about a minute from when it starts to simmer) add the oatmeal and about half a cup of water and cook till ready. 

Dish the oatmeal out into two bowls, sprinkle 1/4 cup of nuts in each and a drizzle of honey, not too much because overripe bananas are sweet to begin with. 

You can even add an extra sprinkle of cinnamon and some sliced bananas on top.