Chocolate Chip Cookie 101, 201, so on and so forth.

If you've ever seen the "About Me" page, you would've read the bit about being "The Girl Who Makes Chocolate Chip Cookies."

After all that build up and a year-and-a-half's worth of frantic food blogging, I realised that there isn't ONE honest-to-God Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe on the blog. Shame on me.

My excuse is that I make these little babies so often that I don't pause to take photos of the process. I've been making the TollHouse cookies since Time Immemorial (actually, 2002). They've almost never gone wrong on me and I don't believe in fixing things if they aren't (can't bring myself to say ain't) broken. Then the food-blog lifestyle happened.

And thus began my search for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie in the Whole Wide World.

After much experimentation, the thing I've inferred is that term "Best" is purely subjective. I love my cookies to be cakey and chewy, with a high chocolate:cookie dough ratio. I don't do crisp, biscuit-type cookies. I'll scarf down packet after packet of Walkers' shortbread, of course. But if there was a plate of biscotti versus a plate of cookies, I'd be pigging out on the cookies.

As would my trusted merry band of guinea pigs.

"B****, please. Don't be up in my space when I'm watching ToyStory3 for the 1000th time."

P.S.: We eat rice by the sack-and-drum full. However, we do not let our kids swear. I swear.

Nigbe's "B****, please, I'm eating" poker face. The expert judges don't give anything away.

It's an easy recipe... that automatically means it's easy enough to screw up. I'll show you pictorially (and spare you the thousand words), on what you should and shouldn't do.

The butter has to be softened and at room temperature, as per Nestle Tollhouse's original CCC recipe. I heat my butter until it's just about melted; this helps to melt down the dark brown sugar and imparts a robust flavour to the cookies. It's boring to wait around for the butter to soften... even at Madras, where it takes about two minutes.



The recipe originally calls for an egg and a egg yolk. Since our Indian eggs have very little albumin, I dump two full eggs in. I suck at separating whites and yolks, anyway.



Use the darkest demerara sugar you can find. Light brown sugar works, not as good as dark though. Not only does it stay a little granulated, giving your cookies some crunch, it melts into a delicious, chewy caramel goodness. As for the white sugar, use granulated, not powdered!

For cakey cookies, use All-Purpose flour (maida). Alton Brown recommends Bread Flour only, the NY Times recommends a blend of Bread flour and Cake flour, but this is a moot point at Madras. For authentic cookies, use AP flour. You can experiment with wholewheat once you master basic CCCs.

Oooh. The most important part. The chocolate chips. Could you buy a log of disgusting cooking chocolate and chop it into chunks? No.

Could you throw in whatever chocolate you have on hand? The pre-made chocolate chips you find at Nilgris and other supermarkets? HELL, no.

No. No. No. No. And no.

Use only chocolate that you love eating. It doesn't work otherwise. And make sure you chop big fat chunks out of it. Since I found Galaxy Smooth chocolate bars on sale, I bought eight bars of it, ate four, and used the remaining for these cookies. How I wish I were lying.

I've used milk and dark chocolate chips in the ratio of 2:1. It gets too sickeningly sweet, otherwise.

Beat the eggs, sugar and butter as much as you want. After you add in the flour, chocolate chips and other random mix-ins, get a hold of yourself.

Always, always, always add salt. Eat the cookie dough, if you don't feel very strongly about Salmonella. Even if you don't have the time to refrigerate it for 24 to 36 hours, stow it in the fridge for at least half an hour. It is a whole lot less messy and has a deeper flavour that way.

That texture, that grittiness, that colour, that's what you want.

Browned edges, pale-ish centre. That's the cookie cooked. Let it cool for a couple of minutes before you take it off the pan/sheet.



Ooooh. Yes.



Cool completely on a wire rack before you throw it in an air-tight box. Remember, baked cookies keep up to three days. If you freeze the dough in the form of balls, in a Ziploc bag, it lasts for a couple of months. Refrigerating cookie dough is permissible for up to 5 days.

Nothing like a plate full of freshly baked cookies, though. That's Love, that is.

Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe:
(Adapted from Baking Illustrated)

Ingredients:

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1.5 cups milk and dark chocolate chunks.
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped. (optional)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 325 F or 160 C. Line a baking tin with aluminium foil. You don't have to grease it.

In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and salt. Mix well and keep aside.

In another bowl, melt the butter and let it turn lukewarm. Add in the sugars and beat for around 2 minutes. Blend in the eggs and vanilla essence until combined.

Now add in the flour mix. It's better to fold in by hand, but if you must use the beater, do it at the lowest speed and STOP when it's moderately combined.

Stir in the nuts (if using) and chocolate chips.

At this point, refrigerate the cookie dough (after eating several spoonfuls raw, of course) for at least half an hour. Using a ice-cream scoop or a soup spoon/ladle type thing, form balls out of the cookie dough.

You can Saran/cling-film wrap the bowl with the dough in it, so that it doesn't absorb any of the refrigerator smells.

Place about 1/4 cup worth of cookie dough on the sheet. Space the cookies, as they tend to spread and bake.

Bake for 15 minutes and check if the edges are mildly brown and hard. The centres have to be puffy, soft and tan. Rotate the sheet once during the baking process so that all of the cookies get equal heat.

Take it out and cool it on the sheet for 2 minutes. Let it completely cool on the wire rack.

Enjoy!

Variation:

This is fun variation I found at Kevin and Amanda's site when I had a hankering for Red Lobster's Chocolate Chip Cookie Lava Cake.

It's supremely simple.

You can do this in a muffin tin or biscuit tin. Press down about quarter cup of cookie dough. Add a square or two of chocolate.

Stuff back with more cookie dough.

Bake away until the edges are golden brown! After a minute or two, turn out the cookie/cake monstrosity (in a GREAT way).

Serve with vanilla ice cream and fudgy sauce of your choice.

This is Lust. This is.

Carrot Cake for Mum.

You know how we detest certain food as kids but cannot dream of living without now?

Case in point: tea. I never liked the cups of milky chai, spiced with dried ginger (sukku) and elaichi that my mum would plonk in front of me. With a plate full of Britannia Marie that smelt vaguely of michar (mixture). Why couldn't I have fun after school snacks like "Ice Milo" and the last bits of Chips Ahoy! she hid in her dresser? Like all normal kids have?

Not with my mum. No chicken nuggets, no french fries, no pricey Squeezy Kissan Jams. My mum has no use for precious people. No hiding shaved carrots in idli batter, no happy faces drawn on roti with Milkmaid. She (rightly) knew that was just watering the fussy little gourmand in me.

Guess how I turned out anyway?

Yes, I can be finicky and a half. However, when I'm on duty (especially on nights, ICU, ER and double shifts), I drink plastic cup after plastic cup of bad hospital tea. I can recognise the sound of the tea trolley from just about anywhere. After all the childhood drama/trauma.

Back in the days of Fullhouse and Sweet Valley Twins & Friends, I'd come across various food I hadn't an inkling about. Never had a problem with Enid Blyton: fried tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs and jam tarts were easy enough to imagine. With the American books, I had these road blocks. What was Eggplant Parmigiana? Mallomars? And yes, carrot cake.

Who made anything other than beans-carrot poriyal with carrots? It's bad enough that they offered carrot juice (and tomato juice) on Air France. Carrot cake?

My doubts were put to rest when I sampled a slice of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting at a Malaysian food court. Don't ask me why I was having carrot cake instead of miscellaneous native food. I was fourteen, and that is my excuse. I was a convert.

I still have trouble trying to convince the younger ones to try carrot cake, but this recipe could change their minds and your life. This could be our basic go-to carrot cake recipe. Yes, I said ours. No big deal.

You can play around with it, adding in cardamom and medjool dates for a more Middle-eastern flavour, or stick with Vanilla for the old-fashioned bakery flavour. And no, it isn't low-fat in any way, shape or form, but I can guarantee that the other nutrients edge out the calorie-counter.

I like the tropical flavours in this cake... you could make this with tinned pineapple, dessicated coconut and the like, but India wins in the Ingredients department for a change. You get these ingredients all year around at Madras. Fresh. Yes.

Sam's Famous Carrot Cake:
(Recipe adapted from: Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

3 eggs

3/4 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup milk + 1 tbsp vinegar)

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 cups shredded carrots

1 cup shredded coconut

1 cup chopped walnuts

2/3 cup pineapple, chopped

1/3 cup fresh pineapple juice

1 cup raisins

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 8x12 inch pan.

Soak the raisins in the fresh pineapple juice for about an hour. Or you can boil the raisins in the juice for a couple of minutes. I used Real Activ Fiber Plus's Mixed Fruit juice, so there would be robust pineapple and carrot flavours.

In a medium-sized bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

In another large bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk (or milk with vinegar), oil, sugar and vanilla. Beat on low speed for 1 minute. Add flour mixture and only FOLD it in, with a spatula.

In a medium bowl, combine shredded carrots, coconut, walnuts, pineapple and raisins with all the juice.

Add the carrot mix to the batter. The batter will be very heavy, so use a proper spatula and all your arm power.

Pour the mix into the prepared baking tin. Bake for around one hour, or until a skewer/toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Take it out, let it cool for around 10 minutes. Loosen the sides of the cake from with the tin, with a knife.

Turn it out onto the serving plate. Let it cool for another 15 minutes before serving.

I served this plain, as a snack cake. You can added a dusting of icing sugar or go all out with a cream cheese frosting.

Or serve this to your mum, embellished flowers plucked by your sister from God-knows-where (neighbours' weed garden).

For all those cups of tea.

Homemade Pumpkin Puree. Toasted Masala Pepitas.

If you religiously follow FoodGawker and TasteSpotting, you would have realised one major fact. It's Fall!

Yes, Fall, of the autumn variety. Fall, in my opinion, is the best season, food-wise. Considering the mercury tends to dip a little during these months in Madras as well, indulge in all of the gorgeous apple and pumpkin recipes!

And if you've had enough Apple Crisp and Minestrone soup for a month, try something with pumpkin in it. Don't be dubious. I was. My Vegan Pumpkin bread was received with as much happiness as a batch of brownies, and that totally changed the way I looked at pumpkins.

They can be used for something other than haphazardly carved Jack-o'-Lanterns. Think soups, pastry, pies, curries and a host of other random deliciousness.

Almost all of the aforementioned recipes call for pumpkin puree. Warning: not even the snootiest of groceries at Madras stock these. In fact, they usually have no idea what you're talking of. Instead of harassing your America-based friends on Facebook for tins of Libby's Pumpkin puree... make your own.

Ask your kaigarikaar/sabziwala for Sugar pumpkins, the kind you use for making halwa. If you can track these down: yay, Step One cleared (yes, I'll save the enthusiasm for Step One of the USMLE variety). Let it ripen to the fullest. Cut it open, gut out the insides. Toast the seeds and flavour it with powders and potions of choice. Puree the gloriously-scented pumpkin flesh and use away!

Homemade Pumpkin Puree:

Ingredients:

1 huge sugar pumpkin

Method:
Cut the pumpkin vertically into two halves. I'm tempted to say saggital section.

Scoop out the pumpkin seeds and innards, just like you would do for a papaya.

Cut into smaller sections, leaving the pumpkin peel/skin on.

You can see that I've packed a lot of the wedges in because my roasting tin was too small and I didn't want to bake twice. You totally shouldn't do that.

In a big roasting tray, arrange the wedges, cut-side down. Pour in a little water, so that the water level is about 2 cm.


Bake in a preheated oven (325 F or 180 C) for around a couple of hours. The pumpkin should be blistered on the outside.

Test one piece by digging in with a spoon. It should be soft with no resistance whatsoever.

Scoop out all of the flesh. When cool, blitz it in a mixie or use a hand blender to puree it.

Once pureed, pour the pumpkin into a bowl lined with muslin/cheesecloth or just use a huge-ass tea-sieve. Like you would for making hung yogurt. Let it filter for about an hour... plenty of pumpkin liquid would have steeped down.

Pour the pumpkin puree into a freezer-safe, airtight box and store in the freezer until you need it! Or you can just cling-film it and refrigerate if you're planning to use it in a couple of days.

Oh. P.S. Bonus recipe coming your way, since I post once in a long white.

Who wants to throw away those cute little pumpkin seeds that are bursting with nutrition and guilt-free nuttiness, right? Toast them and make a post-gym snack! Next best thing to them being dunked in dark chocolate and candy-coated, M&M style.

This is also something you can peck away at (my brother did call it bird-feed) while watching random episode of Criminal Minds/Rizzoli & Isles/Jersey Shore. Except that I don't watch Jersey Shore. Not every episode, first telecast and such like.

To change the topic very quickly, I give you:

Toasted masala pepitas:

Rinse the pumpkin seeds so that there are no pumpkin flesh/fibre sticking to it.

Dry them off with a kitchen towel or tissues. Except for scented-facial tissue. Don't ever do that.

Spread the dried pumpkin seeds on a baking tray lined with foil. Rub a small knob of butter onto the seeds.

Sprinkle over salt, red chilli powder/garam masala, garlic powder and tabasco sauce. Or use olive oil, italian seasoning, garlic powder and salt. Soy sauce, chilli powder, butter and tabasco. Whatever strikes your fancy. In various permutations and combinations.

Bake for 10-15 minutes at 350 F or 180 C in a preheated oven. Keep stirring it from time to time, so the pepitas don't burn. Pull them out, see if they're crispy. Cool. Munch away!

I'm so sorry I go Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Geek on you all the time. Give me my random moments? I'll give you true-and-tried recipes, with badly taken photos to boot.

Preferably ones that don't show my unmanicured hands (the dryness is because of living in smelly, powdery surgical gloves. Don't judge.)

Caramel Popcorn for Safrina.

That title is supposed to be a play off Naipaul's A House for Mr.Biswas. Even though I'm not big on misogynists. His writing, I'm all for, though.

Moving on to more important things; the food. You knew this post was coming. Time and time again, I've raved about caramel corn (eee! The Justin Bieber of all food. It's terrible for you, but you, like, totally know that you love-me-and-you-care).

I never got the opportunity to make it in recent times. Why? 

It's a demanding recipe that doesn't give much room for photography (somebody has got burnt each time I've made this), for starters. The main reason, however, is that it tastes absolutely fantastic and I could eat a bucket full of hot, sticky corn before thinking... not good if the bucket consists purely of butter, sugar and glorious, glorious brown sugar. And yeah. Popcorn goes in, as well.

Make this on a leisurely day when you've got lots of time and patience for the prima donna of all popcorn. And make it only for someone special. As I did.

Sarbeejaan (also known as Sarfeejaan or Dumbasssaf in local circles) loves her butter and dark chocolate. Looking at her, you'd never know. Lucky, skinny *beep*face.

She keeps me from going over to the dark side; a healthy dose of crazy in my otherwise pristine, boring medical life. Calls me out on my holier-than-thou bullshit. Gets me mad-fun things to wear/eat that I never normally would.

Borderline annoying, sometimes. Like when she calls me only for food and medical advice, but I wouldn't have it any other way (flattery sits well on me, and if I can contribute to her not looking like a TB patient with vaval-kutti clavicles in any way, I will). I draw the line on accompanying her on visits to annoying relatives, though.

Cooking with her is fun on good days. Which don't involve caramel-making.

Even when I'm going into a panic attack over the almost-burnt caramel, she plays with the leftovers in the pan.

She encourages me to add butter, cutting off my spiel on how many calories each teaspoonful has.

And if the photos are pretty for a change, it's because she took them! The nice ones, at least.

Even if only the crazies eat this, to actually make this, you need to put your nerd glasses on. It's a science, this whole caramel-making business. You can read the Snickers cake post, for a more detailed algorithm on caramel making.

So before you get that butter sizzling, pay heed:

The colour of the caramel needs to be a little more golden-brown and a little less dark brown, than you see in these photos. The difference is about 18 seconds. Don't leave the pan on fire to go read the next step of the recipe. Measure out and keep the ingredients at hand's length. I'm just saying.

Caramel Popcorn:

Source: from Christie's corner

1 cup popcorn, uncooked

1 cup butter

2 cups light brown sugar

1/2 cup corn syrup

1 tsp sea salt (or 1/2 tsp regular salt)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

Method:

Pop the corn either in a pressure cooker, microwave or using a popper.

Divide the popcorn into three smaller bowls so you can mix in the caramel effectively.

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius.

In a large sauce pan (2 litres/quarts volume-wise), over medium heat, melt the butter.

Add in the sugar, corn syrup and salt. We used 1-1/2 cups brown and 1/2 cup white sugar. Whisk it in, stirring constantly. Turn the heat up to medium high and stir until the sugar comes to a boil.

Once it comes to a boil, stop stirring. Let it boil for 3 minutes, then check the colour of the caramel. If it's golden yellow, let it continue to boil for a minute longer. If it's golden brown and the sugar has completely melted, STOP and take it off the heat.

Pour in the vanilla. It will froth up, so please be careful.

Pour in the baking powder. The caramel will bubble up. Stir constantly.



Feel free to add in some salted, roasted peanuts at this point if you feel there's
a lot of caramel made. Krackerjack!



Pour the caramel over the popped corn.



Chef and cousin-extraordinaire, and my namesake, Rabia machi, wanted her

"white hands and gold bangles" on the blog. Done.



Stir it together with a wooden spoon so all of it gets coated well.

Divide into pans and bake at 170 C or 250 F for about 30 minutes. Take out a piece, cool it, and taste to check if it's crispy.

If it's still chewy, put it back in for another 10 minutes.

Pour it into bowls, and cool completely. Store in an airtight box until completely cool.

So this is for you, Sarbeejaan, girl with a heart and appetite as huge as her hair. Next time, we'll get it just right, yes?