"Mmm. Food." tries Vegan!

I'm a big believer in chocolate and butter and sugar. That's how the world goes around.

But my favourite type of thing to eat? Grilled chicken breast on top of a hearty fattoush salad. Broiled teppanyaki-type fish with wilted greens and rice. Nutella.

I absolutely love light, healthy food, cooked with the freshest of ingredients and minimal cooking techniques. I abstain from posting these from the blog, because my Stats-meter always shows heavy leanings toward Falooda and Chocolate Biscuit Cake.

Even then, if the dish is good enough, I will break my own rules and post it for the world to see. Case in point: Oven Roasted Chickpeas, Muhammara and Garden Pesto Pasta.

My family is another whole story... they don't go a day without eating poultry, meat, fish or worst-case scenario, eggs. And I go rogue. I make Vegan food.

You heard me. Vegan. No meat. No eggs. No dairy. No honey, even!

The sister-in-law said even "poor" people didn't eat this way... and that she wasn't brought up eating "this type of food". The brother said he was 99.99% sure that it was unlawful to shun all that God made rightful (Muslim men love bringing up religion when it suits them). On a side note, annoyingly-ignorant match made in heaven. I told them that I wouldn't be offended if they didn't taste, and that I'd make enough only for me and my health-freak of a mother.

So for today, I give you a savoury dish and a dessert... the tiniest steps you can take into Vegan-dom. There are plenty of amazing, exclusively Vegan food blogs like Chocolate-Covered Katie (from where both recipes du jour have been adapted from) and Oh She Glows. However, if you're hesitant about starting with Chia seeds and Virgin coconut oil, these two dishes could be your happy crutches into the land of all things Vegan.

The first is my excuse for Nutella. I'm a Nutella-holic. I make my own from peanuts. I buy bottles of the stuff from a whole-sale retailer. No lie.

The second is an Italian spin on Hummus. Pizza hummus! I had to add Parmesan cheese and de-Veganise it, but that's just me.

Chocolate-Banana-Peanut butter fudge:

Ingredients:

2 tbsp peanut butter
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp coconut butter (can substitute with extra peanut butter)
80 g over-ripe banana
a pinch of salt

Method:

If you want to make your own coconut butter, just whiz around 3 tbsp of freshly grated coconut in the mixie/food processor until it forms a smooth buttery/chutney-like mix.

Add the peanut butter, salt and cocoa powder, and blend some more.

Add in the overripe banana, and give it a final blitz.

Taste the mix, to see if you'd like a teensy bit of brown or white sugar.

Pour it out into a bowl and freeze until firm. You can also refrigerate and eat it like frosting/Nutella.

Pizza Hummus:

Ingredients:
1/2 cup garbanzo beans, drained (chickpeas that have been soaked and pressure-cooked)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (sub with nutritional yeast to keep it Vegan)
1 cup cherry tomatoes (or regular)
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 an onion (un-chopped)
1/4 tsp dried basil
2 tsps tomato paste/ketchup
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Microwave or boil the tomatoes until the skin bursts.

 If you're microwaving, poking all over with a fork prevents them from splattering out.

In a medium sauce, heat the olive oil. Add the peeled, deseeded tomatoes, half an onion (unchopped) and the garlic with some fresh basil (if available).

Let it stew on medium heat for around 15 minutes.

Once this has cooled down, remove the onion. Blitz the rest of it in a mixie/food processor, along with the ketchup. Add in the chickpeas/garbanzo and blend will until no chunks remain.

Add in the dried basil and the cheese and give one final whirl. Taste it.

Add more olive oil for richness, extra salt, pepper and ketchup to taste. You might need more of the "pizza sauce" if the consistency isn't that of hummus.

Serve with crackers or veggie sticks.

My sister-in-law, the veggie-hater, ate the whole bowl, albeit with plenty of extra shaved parmesan.

My brother nearly cut his hands trying to get the last bits of the Chocolate-PB fudge out of the mixie cup.

I'd be more smug about the whole thing if they had bothered to save me some.

Peanuts, two yu-Mmm-y ways.

First, my posts become erratic (to put in kindly). And now I'm going on a much-needed holiday, which means that there won't be any million-calorie food photos for you to wake up to, for another week. That needs to be made up for. How about two recipes, then?

You know, like on Top Chef. Lamb, two ways, jicama, two ways or whatever. Nothing weirdly exotic, though. Of all the ingredients I could work with, I choose peanuts.

Peanuts. Yeah. That little nitrogenous legume which everyone discards in favour of masala cashews, plump hazelnuts and Irani pistachios, at my household. I'd take peanuts any day. In any and every way.

The masala pori peanuts sold at the beach? E.coli, Psch.coli. For masala pori virgins, it basically is a disproportionate mix of boiled peanuts tossed with puffed rice, shaved carrots, chopped onions, a handful of furiously red masala, juicy tomato, twist of lime, deftly dropped into a paper cone. Best ten bucks of the day.

Reese's peanut pieces? Salty peanut filling and chocolate. OK, I'm not even going to go into the details, it's a little too intimate for me to share with the world. Not like I haven't been accused of food porn enough. Still. Chocolate and peanut. MMMMM. In fact, I've eaten so many kilos of Peanut M and Ms over the ages that I can't face them any more. At least for the next few months. It's that serious.

Another peanut delicacy is the roasted peanuts you get on the Suburban trains. Women selling various roasted grams, fried daal and peanuts, screaming their wares out to the world. Makes you feel like you're in Sarojini Naidu's poem when your day hasn't involved getting cussed out at and patients dying (aka a rare good day). On a bad day, you contemplate shoving them off the train at the next stop.

For those who don't take the electric train, there's another option. The wholesale merchants who have hole-in-the-wall shops with mechanical weighing scales. We buy our wholesale peanuts, aval (beaten rice), pori, jaggery-candied pori balls from this little shop at Amjikarai and they are just unbeatable.

And while Madras is choc-a-bloc with stores of that kind, other peanut-based goodies are a little harder to find. Like authentic honey-roasted peanuts. And The Peanut Butter factory's Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter.

So I leak the two recipes that have given me such joy. A Nutella-like concoction made out of peanuts that I got from LA Times. And the other is honey-roasted peanuts you can munch on during game nights! Go nuts.

Dark chocolate Peanut Butter.

1 cup raw peanuts
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 tsps peanut oil (I used Saffola)

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Line a baking tray with aluminium foil. Spread the peanuts evenly over the sheet. Bake for about 8 minutes, shaking them and turning the tray around halfway.
When they darken slightly, take them out.

It's easier to skin them after roasting. If you're using toasted peanuts, 3-4 minutes is more than enough.

2. In a mixie or food processor, pulse/blitz the cooled peanuts.



Some of it got too dark. Make sure you remove the over-ly burnt peanuts,
even a couple of them can spoil the whole thing!

 Keep pulsing them until the oil separates out. Scrape down the bits that have splattered on the sides of the food processor.

3. Add the cocoa, sugar, vanilla, salt and 2 teaspoons oil to the food processor and continue to process until well blended, about 1 minute.

That definitely needs the extra oil!

Scrape down the sides as needed. You'll notice that it's coming together.

The spread is ready.

If it isn't the consistency of Nutella, you might want to add a wee bit more oil in. Spoon it into a container. Or start eating right away. After the spread has cooled down to room temperature, store it in the refrigerator. It'll keep for at least a week. If it remains uneaten for longer than that, let me know.

Honey roasted peanuts

Ingredients:

1 cup raw, skinned peanuts (I used roasted)
1 tbsp. honey
2 tsp. butter
1/2 tsp. salt
½ tsp. vanilla extract
¼ tsp. ground cinnamon
2 tbsp. granulated sugar

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F or 180 degrees C.

In a microwave safe bowl, mix the salted butter, honey, maple syrup, cinnamon and vanilla. Microwave for 15 seconds or so.

Massage the honey-butter mix into the skinned nuts.

Spread coated nuts on aluminium foil in a single layer.

Bake coated peanuts at 350 degrees F for 5 minutes, then remove nuts quickly and stir them around to even the coating. Bake for another 5 minutes until golden brown. Do be careful, the difference between roasted and burnt is roughly 20 seconds!

Take them out, and pour it into a dry, clean mixing bowl. Sprinkle over the granulated sugar and salt. Taste. Add on salt and sugar more if necessary.

Transfer this to an airtight box and store at room temperature.

So. I hope the chocolate-peanut spread keeps you going for a while. Make the honey roasted peanuts and the corn syrup towards the end of the week. I'll come back and tell you how to make a caramel-brownie-cupcake-love child that tastes freakishly like Snickers.

Au Revoir.

When the Going Gets Tough, The Not-so-tough Eat Nutella.

On some days, you don't want to cook. Heck, you don't even want to eat. And definitely not go out for a bite. It's alright. From the minimal training in Psychiatry that I've had during the course of my MBBS education, and from Life and Judy Blume books, I know it's alright.

During the nights I was on duty in the Labour Ward and the days before I gave my General Medicine/General Surgery/OB-GYN/Paed exams, all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball with a jar of Nutella and a House Marathon (?ironic) on the TV. That would have been a luxury; it replaced my long-long desire to have the Frozen Hot Chocolate at Serenditipity III at NYC.

And Mum was initially happy we all loved Nutella. She used them as spice containers. So unintentionally kitschy.

But no addiction can truly be kept under control. All the surplus jars take up cupboard space and Mum is already irritated because Nutella is an expensive addition to the Indian grocery bill. It's difficult to deal with tight clothes and an irate mum simultaneously.

So. Treat it well. I'm going to once again acknowledge the number 13 in my blog address, and do 13 ways to have Nutella:

1) Add a tablespoonful to your regular oatmeal (which will have bananas and nuts and raisins, I'm guessing?)

2)Swirl it into cream cheese for an easy cupcake frosting.

3)Add a tablespoonful of Nutella and a tablespoonful of peanut butter to whitebread and grill until the insides are oozy and gooey. Recipe courtesy of my namesake and supremely talented chef-cousin, Rabia machi and Nihad.

4)A teaspoonful of Nutella sandwiched between 2 Marie biscuits and dropped into your kid sister's Scooby Doo Snacks Box will win you Sister of the Year.

5)Slices of banana and a dab of Nutella on top of your crepes/pancakes will make the best Sunday morning brunch of all time. Or a passably fancy dessert. You can serve it to me any time and I'll make you an award.

6)Nutella enveloped between two squares of Puff Pastry/Phyllo dough and baked until the inside is gooey, not scorched.

7)A couple of teaspoons of Nutella, a tea cup of milk, a stick of cinnamon  and a pinch of coffee powder warmed over a stove and whisked until frothy. Hot chocolate in an instant.

8)Instead of making French/Bombay Toast with a plain old piece of bread, try making it with a Nutella sandwich. But only if you can handle it.

9)Acidic fruit like strawberries pair fantastically with Nutella. Dip the strawberry into the Nutella, set it out on wax paper and refrigerate. You can use this to top your cakes or for the culinary-wise-challenged, this could be your go-to Valentine's Day dessert; easiest way to fool a man into thinking you can cook.

Ayire poi solli oru kalyanam etc and all that.

10)If you or your teenaged sister/daughter has a bunch of Mean Girls to impress during a sleepover, do this: Go to Subway, buy half a dozen Double-Chocolate chip cookies. Make pizzas with Nutella as the sauce, Cookies as the base and bits of nuts and strawberries can be the topping. Even if they have Eating Disorders or body issues or whatever, at least they can pose with them for photos to put up on Face book.

If you luck out and have fabulous friends or are metabolically gifted, make them any way.

11)On really, really fancy bread. Croissants, brioche, baguette slices all freshly bought from French Loaf or baked. If it's steaming hot/flaky, OMG.

12)Poke a skewer/knife into a marshmallow. Toast it over your slow fire on gas-ring until the outsides are golden brown (be very careful). Spread Nutella on Britannia's NutriGrain or similar cream crackers (graham crackers as the Americans call it) and place the oozy marshmallow on top for S'mores.

And sometimes, you don't feel like doing any of the above. Go on, drown your sorrows in the bottle. Get those endorphins and enkephalins releasing. My medical advice.

13) Help yourself to a heaping tablespoonful-neat, straight from the bottle. The true connoisseurs'/clinically depressed individuals way to eat Nutella. I've been doing a lot of this lately, but I'm not going to tell you under which category I fall into.