French Toast: Middle Eastern or Mediterranean?

I've been baking cookies. You know, trying out the bazillion "Best Choc-Chip Cookies Ever!" recipes floating around the food blogosphere. I've succumbed to all the tricks and tactics of the trade: adding an extra egg yolk, using cake flour, stuffing it with chunks of chocolate, refrigerating cookie dough for 36 hours, resisting eating raw cookie dough for the 24+ hours. The whole nine and a freaking half yards.

So you know what my post is going to be. Not Chocolate chip cookies. Had enough of them  for a while.

Middle-Eastern French toast.

I'm sorry for the build-up. Please go do some cardio+crunches(20 reps, 3 sets), and I'll have about six batches of Chocolate Chip Cookies prettily ready for you in a couple of days!

Middle-Eastern French Toast was the result of a happy accident. By that, I mean I overheard my 8-year-old sister instructing mum on how she wanted her french toast. It could also mean that I stole a slice of her French toast (and swooned) as I'd rather my metabolism went for a toss than eat Ragi Kazhi for breakfast. P.S.: It isn't a frou-frou thing. I like Kazhi, just not the ones made with Calcium-enriched Diabetic food.

Sumi had this brilliant idea of adding pinches and pinches of saffron strands to the French toast egg mix... she probably thought it'd make it taste like kheer or sheer korma.



She isn't at the age where she understands how much each milligram costs... and if I tell her that mind-altering drugs cost less, I'd be killed by mum for a) "spoiling your sister and making her exactly like you" b) even if it's been two years since I graduated Medical school, Mum chooses to believe that her 24-year-old daughter has no clue about the existence of "drugs" or where babies come from; simply because unmarried girls mustn't know/speak of "these things".
I'll spare you the lengthy diatribe this post is evolving into... and teach you how to make Middle-Eastern french toast.

It's easy, you'll know how to make it already (I use the base recipe from i am baker). To go along with it, I suggest a simple, luxurious dry-fruit milk we make only (justifiably) in the month of Ramadan.

Middle-Eastern French Toast:

Ingredients:

2 eggs
1/2 cup + 2 tbsps milk
2 tbsp sugar
a pinch of salt
3/4 tsp rosewater
7-8 strands of Saffron
5-6 slices bread


Method:

Heat the 2 tbsp milk until it's boiling. Add the saffron strands to it and squeeze the extract out of it. Keep aside the saffron to infuse in the milk until cool.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, milk (both the plain and saffron-soaked), sugar, salt and rosewater.

Silly me forgot to do the saffron-infusion before hand. You must, though!

Heat an non-stick pan or griddle. Add a pat of butter or ghee.

Dip a slice of bread into the milk mix. Do not let it soak too much, as there won't be enough egg-milk mix for the rest of the bread.

Cook the dipped bread on medium-low, about 2 minutes on each side.

Do NOT use skim milk and wholewheat bread. Please.

Take it out and serve hot with Saffron honey and butter!

A dusting of confectioners' sugar is pretty handy when you're out of honey.



Could not resist a couple of bites fresh off the griddle, pre-photo session!



Dry-fruit milk:

Ingredients:
1 cup whole milk.
5-6 walnuts
4-5 almonds
4-5 unsalted pistachios
5 raisins or a couple of chopped up dates
a pinch of saffron
1 tbsp sugar (or more, per your liking. Remember, dates are sweet!)

Method:

Feel free to use and hold off on the dry fruits of your choice!

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap/lid, and refrigerate overnight (minimum7 hours).

You can eat it by itself or with the french toast!

Suddenly can't wait for Ramadan. For more reasons than one.

Pimp My Pastry. Back-to-back episodes.

I have a secret. It's an embarrassing one.

I spend nearly an hour each day just looking at food blogs.

Not about the commercial use of Mycophenolate Mofetil in India for Myasthenia Gravis. Not about various religious worship in contemporary culture. Not even tidbits on Dexter Season 6. Food blogs. I'm doomed. The knell has sounded.

You'd think that eye-feasting on about 40 recipes per day would have me trying new things left-right-and-centre, right? How wrong you are.

Sometimes, when you need to impress peers or you need to not feel like a failure or just have a comforting bowlful to gobble up, you make stuff from standby recipes that you love and cherish. And it's OK to make your insecurities public these days. People make a lot of money off it on television. I need to get out of my scrubs and get me a Snooki-pouff.

So. I thought I'd put up a few photos demonstrating how your trusted recipes can be jazzed up. I played around with my cocoa brownies.

Made Chocolate-chip cookie rolls out of my most-treasured cinnamon roll recipe. Thank you, Pioneer woman. Let the unadulterated parade of eye candy begin! Even though my photos never do the dish enough justice.

Dulce de Leche brownies:
(idea from David Leibovitz)

Make a batch of fudgy, gooey brownie batter. Don't bake it just yet.

Brown the butter, add dark chocolate, whatever it takes to make it happen.

Make a batch of Dulce de Leche with one can of Nestle's Milkmaid.

Pour half the brownie batter into a greased pan. Add 1/3rd of the cooled Dulce de Leche in random spurts.

Run a knife through it, creating a swirly pattern. Go on, run amok.

Add the remaining brownie batter. Repeat the same dab-and-swirl thing with the rest of the Dulce.

Bake for 5 minutes less than the stipulated time. Check for done-ness. It's good to underbake than to overbake brownies.

Cool for around 15 minutes. Cut into slices and dive head-first in.

Ooooh. Yes.

I've unlocked the secret to happiness. And simultaneous obesity.

Chocolate chip cookie rolls:

Make half a batch of cinnamon roll dough.

Roll the dough out in the usual manner.

Chop up about a cup and a half (or so) of Lindt dark chocolate into chunks. You can also use chocolate chips but it won't kick ass as much.

Dab the roll with 1/2 a cup of melted (salted) butter, coarsely ground brown and white sugar (together totalling around 1 to 1.5 cups, max) and 1/2 a cup of chopped up almonds/pecans/walnuts.

Roll it up. Makes several rolls.

Bake as you would for the normal recipe.

Top with cream cheese frosting or just scarf it down straight from the pan. The leftovers can be cooled to room temperature and frozen for up to 2 months (unfrosted). You can eat them selfishly over the course of a week.

If you have any doubts regarding the techniques and measurements, refer to the original post. God, I feel like Padma Lakshmi and my Biochemistry Professor at the same time. All this butter surely has to dull one's brain.

Ramadan Kareem, Part 2/Herbed Grape-and-Cheese Panini.

Ramadan is drawing to a close. I'm going to miss sleeping for long hours, nights spent in prayer and frantic Eid shopping. I'm going to miss dusk spent around the dining table, the sweetness of the first date after long hours of fasting and being given a free pass to laze around work/chores. And being a seasoned foodie, missing out on my daily dose of nombu kanji comes as a big blow.

Amidst the flurry of last-minute activities, it's hard to cook up a decent iftiari. This leads to a lot of deep-fried food being bought and on Day 28, I've long exceeded my grease quota. I can't face another soggy samosa that has been twice-cooked in its own steam in the takeaway foil-box.

To prevent a mini-fight (fight is the wrong word, really, since that leads to an invalid fast) of sorts, I tend to make a lighter dish that everybody says is unnecessary or claims to not want, but gobbles up along with their samosa-vada-cutlet, any way.

This is one of those classic raid-your-fridge sandwiches. Good, crusty, wholegrain bread. A hunk of good cheese. A handful of plump, sweet grapes. You've got yourself a sandwich.

I can't extol the virtues of a panini maker enough. Enough praises have been sung/spoken on this blog, but please, please get one.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to be a little bit of a bread snob and say that you can skip this recipe if all you've got is white Modern/Wonder bread. In that case, I'd toast my white bread and spread jam on it or make french toast. Not this panini. I've completely adapted this from Jamie Oliver's pizza recipe, and you know it's sacrilege to use trans-fat/mass-produced/plastic food in a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Also, the cheese can be anything except sliced pre-packaged American cheese. Feta, good. Cheddar, good. Parmesan, good. Pecorino Romano, great! The salty cheese holds it shape, and contrasts beautifully with the sweetness of the honey, the herbiness of the rosemary, the crustiness of the bread and the grapes were a hot, yummy mess at the end of the grilling. Whew.

Herbed Grape-and-Cheese Panini:

Ingredients:

8 slices whole-grain bread

4 tbsp honey (I used saffron honey)

1 tsp dried rosemary

1/3 cup crumbled Pecorino Romano cheese

24 grapes

Olive oil or butter, for greasing

Method:

Cut the grapes into half. Deseed the grapes and keep them aside.

Take two slices of bread and butter them on one side. I skipped this part. On the unbuttered side, arrange the sliced grapes, cheese. Drizzle with honey, sprinkle with rosemary.

Close the sandwich with the other slice of bread. Pop it into the preheated panini maker until the sides are golden brown. Repeat with the remaining slices of bread.

I used Extra Virgin Olive Oil for greasing, because I wanted a more savoury sandwich. The others however, liked their sandwich, pancakes-style, with a pat of butter and some more honey.

This should ideally be served steaming hot.

And rest assured, I'll be making this in different forms; on a cracker (post-gym food!), as bruschetta and as Pizza (the way Jamie intended it to be).

Get some water boiling for the tea, grill these babies and wrap yourself in a blanket. Nobody can fight/be unhappy with butter and honey and bread in their system. Tested and true.

Kashmir. Love at first bite.

And I'm back from another long hiatus; something that I've been taking a little too often. And before I start posting about cakes made from Snickers and ice-cream made from cherries, I thought I'd post food photos from my vacation instead.

Which was in Kashmir, of the Jammu & Kashmir variety. The air there is... different. It smells different, you take in lungfuls of it and exhale with unadulterated bliss. It smells of saffron chai and roses and snow and a wee bit of gunpowder residue. Wish I could've bottled it up and brought it back with me.

The locales are unadulterated eye-candy; there's so much to drink and eat in. And that gets literal when it comes to the food. You feel hungry, 24/7. It's the cold air. Doesn't make me a glutton.

Non-vegetarians have it better though. Especially the ones who like mutton. Which totally rules me out, I'm not-at-all a fan of the meat, but the cold, cold air (here we go) justifies the average Kashmiri's consumption of it... they've come up with some ingeniously delicious ways of using it, that even I was a total convert by the end of Day 1.

We'll build on to the meat. You can vicariously feast on the fruit and tea and then the vegetarians can beat a hasty retreat.

A word of caution: you need to have a completely immunized iron gut if you want to taste Kashmir in all its glory. Pointless, otherwise. You'll have to subsist on multiple packets of Lays and cans of Coke. You can Google for photos of those. Or shed all fancy-ness and hop on the street food Express (with a wee bit of home-cooked and gourmet)!

We'll start with Kashmiri Falooda. Condensed milk, vermicelli noodles, rose syrup and ice-cream with bits of tutti-fruti.

And the ice-cream is cranked away to glory in an old-fashioned salt-and-ice ice cream machine. It tastes bloody fantastic.

You need to scoop up the tutti-fruiti, condensed milk, Rooh Afza and the ice-cream in one bite.

You can make a complete fool of yourself, stuffing your face with huge bites of ice-cream, because you won't see those folks ever again in your life. Perks of being on vacation.

Being on vacation also means throwing concerns about calories out the airplane/train/car window. Drive down the nearest Dhaba/tea shop and try the deep-fried deliciousness. And the local tea. It almost always tastes fantastic.

And in Kashmir's case, tea can be substituted with Kahwa. Green tea gets pimped up with a couple of elaichis, a strand or two of saffron, cinnamon, crushed almonds and saffron honey. Kashmiri folks sip on it all day long; and when in Kashmir... let's just say I drank a lot of Kahwa.

Kahwa and tea is omnipresent. Even in the middle of the great Dal Lake.

Although there are plenty of tea shops on land as well. You enter them with some degree of self-consciousness, worried they might hate you for acting like locals slumming it. But they dispel it with such warmth... buy a round of chai, plates of pakora and gossip with the locals.

Or you walk on the road and see a huge crowd milling around a vat of something... And they urge you to drink up a mug full of saffron-flavoured almond milk. Actual saffron, actual almonds.

The cold/temperate climate also plies Kashmir with greens and fruit like the ground has been pumped with steroids. Except that it's all organic and dee-lee-shus.

There's roasted corn sold for a few rupees.

Watermelons! Cucumbers! Juicy and sweet and even pretty!

Amchur (raw mango powder) is sprinkled on. It's like eating Hajmola and chewing Watermelon-flavoured gum at the same time. Which I guess you wouldn't know if you weren't a fat kid.

Cherries. The last time I saw cherries this pretty, they were made of plastic. And the last time I've had cherries this delicious... um. I don't think I've had cherries this delicious.

Strawberries. A fraction of the price they're sold for at Madras. Infinity times better.

Moving on to the most important meal of the day. Turns out Kashmiris don't do breakfast. They chew on some soft, freshly baked Kashmiri roti/bread, dipped in pink-coloured salty tea.

The bread was a carb-lover's dream, but for the girl who eats discarded pizza crusts? Man, oh man. Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm and in case you didn't hear it, MMM! Skipped the salty tea though. I got myself a cup of strong, milky tea and a doughnut-type pastry for breakfast.

If all this is getting a little too milk-and-cookies for you, I'll skip on ahead to the main dishes. The Kashmiri Wazawan. A host of mutton-based dishes that'll bundle you up against the cold from inside. And make you look like a baby walrus, but why fret over occupational hazards, no?

Gustaba. Balls made of mutton and fat, poached in a Kashmiri-chilli based gravy.

And that's mutton in Yakhni gravy; a lip-smacking tangy, yoghurt-based gravy that tastes out of the world.

I'd have preferred it without the huge portions of meat.

Speaking of meat that I do like: Seekh kebabs!

And freshly-grilled meat served on fluffy white chapatis.

You have a selection of chutneys I'd be happy to feast on and call it a night. Pickles, yogurt chutney, spicky, creamy concoctions I had a couple of plates full of.

My favourite one of the lot is the chutney picturised above. A mix of yoghurt, walnuts, mint and a tiny smattering of chilli. Reminds me of my beloved Tzatziki. Highly doubt the twain have ever met, though.

And since it got to be too much of a good thing, on one random night, we went and paid buckets for home-style  food. Idli dosa!

The golden triangle you've just seen is a dosa stuffed with a block of crumbled, chilli'd up paneer. Served with chutney and... a gravy. I asked them what the gravy was. They told me, all earnestly, that is was sambar. I rolled around the floor in splits. Whatever that was, it wasn't sambar. Pretty decent tasting, though. Reminds me of daal accompanying biryani... you can't put idli together with it!

That's what I thought. Only idiots hold on to a prototype/stereotype, I've learnt. The people, the place, the food... it's shattered all the bad stereotypes and fortified belief in the good ones. I got schooled, and I got schooled good.