Happy holidays + an edible gift idea!

Happy holidays! I am off on vacation to Colombia, and am super excited since this is my first trip to South America. In the spirit of holiday edible gift-giving, I'm taking this starter Indian spice kit to our hostess in Medellin. She actually lives in Italy, in a small town with limited availability of spices. I wanted to take her a traditional Indian spice box, which typically contains 7 identical open-top cylindrical containers that fit inside a larger round steel box, but didn't think it would transport well once she started using it, since the spices would all get mixed up. My version features these cute magnetic spice containers from Bed Bath & Beyond, set within a bamboo caddy (actually one rack from a 3-piece steamer), along with an insert (see image below) with tasting notes and instructions for use, the companion CD to Camilla Punjabi's 50 Great Curries of India, and refills.

Contents of Spice Box: Karamedhu Podi (South Indian Vegetable Seasoning), Haldi (Turmeric Powder), Kuzhambu Podi (South Indian Curry Powder), Dhaniya-Jeera Masala (Coriander-Cumin Powder), Garam Masala (Best-known Indian Spice Blend), Panch Phoron (East Indian Five-Spice Blend), and Kasuri Methi (Dried Fenugreek Leaves)

What I'm eating now: Shakshuka

If you're a lover of runny yolks, look no further: I have a wonderful idea for your lunch today. Or impromptu weekend brunch party. Or weekday dinner. Yes it's that good, and what's more, it's cheap, healthy, and comes together in a flash. You can make it for one, two, or up to eight people. Technically you could scale it up even further, but that would need a really large pan, which I'm guessing most of us don't possess. Best of all, it really is a one-pot meal. Sold already?

Shakshuka is a Tunisian dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce. I think of it less as a recipe and more of a blank canvas, though. In the mood for Middle Eastern? Stick with the traditional version. Craving some Indian spice? Swap out the harissa for garam masala and add a splash of coconut milk to the sauce. More in the mood for Mexican? Jazz it up with cumin & coriander, serve with dollops of sour cream and sliced avocado.

Recipe: Shakshuka (serves one; scale up if you have more people)

2 large eggs

1 large ripe tomato, chopped (if out of season use equivalent in canned)

1 shallot, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 jalapeno or hot pepper, minced (more or less to your taste)

2 t harissa

1 t sweet paprika

1 T olive oil

Salt & pepper to taste

Pita, Crumbled feta & chopped parsley or mint for serving

Heat the oil in a small skillet. Add the onion, hot pepper and garlic and cook for a few minutes, till soft. Add the tomato, spices and season to taste. Once the tomatoes have collapsed (about 2-3 minutes) crack the eggs over the surface of the stew, spacing them evenly. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes, or more depending on how you like the eggs. Serve at once, topped with crumbled feta and chopped herbs. Have plenty of bread available to mop up the delicious sauce!

Diwali, via the Silk Route

Happy Diwali! This is a really fun, festive time to be in back home, with lights, color and good food everywhere. Growing up in India, I would eagerly await the arrival of all the gift boxes laden with sweets and dry fruits, and tuck in merrily without a care. Oh to have the metabolism of a teenager again :(

As I've grown older, though, my palate has gradually moved away from the candy-like sugariness of many Indian sweets, towards those with interesting flavors and textures. And as I reflect on my favorites, I realized that many of their ingredients - almonds, pistachios, saffron - came to India from outside, back when caravans traversing the Silk Route dropped these off and picked up ivory, textiles and spices in exchange.

So as a nod to the people who brought me my favorite once-foreign-and-now-quintessentially-Indian foodstuffs, I decided that my Diwali sweet for this year would be baklava. To give it an Indian flair I used our classic badam-pista (almond-pistachio) combination in the filling, and flavored the syrup with cardamom and rose water. The results are delicious! Even though baklava is not a traditional Indian sweet, it fits in perfectly with an Indian meal. I might even try a version with a saffron syrup next time. Now if only the caravans had brought filo pastry with them, I could have learnt how to make that in the kitchen of my grandmother as well...!

Recipe: Almond-Pistachio Baklava, adapted from here.

I halved the recipe and used an 8" square pan, since baklava is quite rich and a small piece is enough to satisfy even a pretty sweet tooth. I used only blanched almonds and pistachios in the filling, in equal quantities. I replaced the cinnamon in the filling with freshly ground green cardamom, and infused the syrup with cardamom pods instead of a cinnamon stick. I added some rose water to the syrup as well.

Summer's last hurrah

Come Labor Day weekend, and it struck me that summer was almost over, and, thanks to all the summer travel, I hadn't made ice cream in the longest time! So off to the farmers' market I dashed, in search of peaches, which will (sigh) be over soon as well.

I made peach ice cream from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, but decided to jazz it up with a swirl of raspberry. Like most of his other recipes, this ice cream recipe is perfect, not too sweet and really allowing the flavor of the fruit to come through. The raspberry swirl adds a burst of bright berry flavor and a beautiful color contrast as well.

Since I love peaches so much, I wanted to also try my hand at preserving them for just a bit longer, but having no experience at jam-making, settled on a simple peach butter instead. Most commercial fruit butters are too sweet and spice-laden for my taste, so I made mine with about half the quantity called for by most recipes, and added only half a vanilla bean to the peach mixture for a subtle vanilla scent. I thought about adding some bourbon, but decided against it, preferring to let the pure peach flavor come through instead.

Is that the limit to how much of a domestic goddess I can be, you ask? Well, the peach butter was crying out for some scones to go with it. What's a scone without clotted cream, though? Rather than dashing out to hunt for a gourmet store that sells it, I thought - why not make my own? I buy lovely cream from Amish farmers to make ice cream, and had a pint of it left over. The solution: Bake it in a low oven (180F) for 5-6 hours, chill overnight, et voila! You have deliciously thick clotted cream, ready to be spread lavishly on your scones :) It isn't as divinely smooth as the store-bought kind, but tastes just as good.

Scones + Clotted Cream + Peach Butter = Weekend brunch heaven!

Recipe: Dried fruit scones (Makes 8)

Adapted from Delia Smith's recipe

1 3/4 c white whole wheat flour (or all-purpose)

2 t baking powder

3T sugar

1/4 t sea salt

6T cold butter, cubed

3T buttermilk

1 large egg

Small handful mixed dried cranberries and golden raisins, chopped

Cream & coarse sugar for topping (optional)

Preheat the oven to 425F (220C).

In a food processor, pulse the first four ingredients briefly to combine. Add the butter and pulse a few times till the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Scatter the fruit over the top, then beat the buttermilk and egg together and add to the processor bowl. Pulse 3-4 times till the mixture comes together. Turn the mixture out on to a floured surface and knead briefly to combine. Do not overwork the dough or the scones will be tough. Pat the dough 1" thick and then cut into rounds using a cookie cutter, re-rolling and cutting out more scones from the scraps. Or, if you're lazy like me, pat the dough into a round and then just cut it into wedges. Transfer the scones to a parchment-lined sheet, brush the tops with cream and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, until well risen and golden brown. Serve warm with clotted cream and preserves. These are best the day they are made, but any leftovers freeze very well.

Chermoula eggplant with bulgur and yogurt

Happy second birthday, blog! Two years ago, the gift of some delicious home-grown cherry tomatoes prompted me to start writing about my culinary experiments. Today's recipe is another lovely summer dish, Ottolenghi's Chermoula Eggplant with Bulgur and Yogurt.

During July and August, my shopping basket each time I visit the farmer's market looks pretty much the same: eggplants, zucchini, corn, tomatoes, stone fruit. I never get tired of them, because summer produce is always bursting with flavor. But I love to try new recipes with them, so that I get enough variety. This salad is a wonderful make-ahead dish that can be served warm or cold. I had it for lunch, followed by a ripe juicy peach - the perfect summer repast. But it would also be a lovely first course for a summertime dinner or as part of the salad buffet at a barbecue. Like many of Ottolenghi's dishes, this dish combines many contrasting flavors and textures with interesting results. The eggplant is roasted with chermoula, a North African spice mixture with notes of citrus, cumin & coriander. The bulgur salad is bright with fresh herbs, while sweet sultanas and almonds add a fruity-nutty counterpoint. The toppings of cool yogurt and olive oil complete the Mediterranean feel. I used a sheep's milk yogurt that I found while browsing at a local health food store - full-fat and decadent, but worth it!

What made this dish stand out for me was the technique used to cook the eggplant. The eggplant is halved, scored and topped with the spice mixture before roasting in a 350F oven for about 30-40 minutes. This yields a crisp skin and meltingly soft interior, almost like it's been deep-fried, but with none of the guilt! Together with the bulgur and yogurt, it makes for a healthy and satisfying meal. I look forward to trying this technique with other spice blends, like harissa, niter kibbeh or this Sichuan peppercorn-infused chile oil.

Recipe: Ottolenghi's Chermoula Aubergine with Bulgur and Yogurt (Serves 4)

Foods of my childhood: Sevai and poli

I'm always sad to leave India. Not only is it hard to say goodbye to my family, chances are it will be another year before I get to eat many of the foods I love. I'm a firm believer that terroir makes all the difference when it comes to food - so many of those dishes just don't taste the same when I attempt to recreate them in my kitchen here. Though Indian pantry staples are easy to come by in the US, some of the produce doesn't come close in taste or freshness; and some dishes are just too labor-intensive for me to attempt! The day I left, the kitchen was buzzing with activity for two such foods, sevai, homemade rice noodles, and poli,- a sweet stuffed pancake.

The dough for sevai is made by soaking parboiled rice, then grinding it to a batter. This batter is then cooked with water till a soft dough forms. This dough is then shaped into balls and steamed. The final step is to extrude the dough through an old-fashioned cast-iron press. Though this looks like a medieval torture instrument, it's fairly easy to use: just pop in a ball of hot dough into the cylinder, and twist the handle down with all your might. Et voila, fresh rice noodles, ready to eat. What makes them unique is that the noodles need no further cooking as the dough they're made from is cooked twice before extruding.They can be eaten plain, with any curry of your choice, or stir-fried with seasonings or vegetables of choice. My favorite accompaniments are sevai urulai masala (spicy potato curry) and pulisseri (coconut-yogurt gravy). The icing on the cake: plenty of fried pappadums, of course!
Polis are also a multi-step process, but the end result is well worth the effort - that is, when I'm not doing it! First, the filling is made by cooking together a mixture of cooked lentils (chana dal) and sugar, flavored with nutmeg, to a soft paste.The next step is to make the outer shell, a pastry enriched with ghee and saffron. Next, each poli is painstakingly shaped by hand, by stuffing a bit of the filling in a pastry case and rolling it out into a round. The rounds are then shallow-fried in ghee. A final sprinkling of powdered sugar and you're ready to dig in. They're delicious hot or cold!

Moroccan mezze for mum

I love being back home in India on vacation. It's always a treat to be surrounded by my family, made even more special by the appearance of all of my favorite foods at every mealtime! So to return the favor to my mum, who loves mezze, I cooked up this spread from Flatbreads and Flavors: A Baker's Atlas by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

Of late, I'm drawn to cookbooks that go beyond mere recipes, those that offer a glimpse into worlds I've not traveled to yet. The Washington Post calls this book "A wonderful journey for love and loaves", and I can't think of a better way to describe it. The husband-and-wife team of Alford and Duguid have traveled extensively across Europe, North Africa, Asia and North America chronicling people's lives through their daily bread. It's one of those books from which picking a recipe is really hard, since they all sound amazing. Fenugreek Corn Bread or Georgian Cheese-filled Breads, anyone? Finally, I chose this set of dishes since all of the ingredients are readily available here in India. The bread, scented with anise seed, is called ksra. We ate it with bessara, a kidney bean dip; harissa, the popular North African chile paste; and a herbed carrot salad. Only dessert was a departure from this region: I can't get enough of Indian mangoes while I'm here!

The mezze meal was perfect for the hot Madras weather, since everything is eaten at room temperature, except for the bread which I pulled out fresh from the oven. The different flavors and textures come together into a harmonious whole: crusty-soft bread, tangy-velvety bean puree, sweet and fresh-tasting carrots and spicy-hot harissa. I'm thinking this would be a great summer brunch as well, with the addition of some shakshuka, that wonderful Tunisian dish of stewed tomatoes and poached eggs. Now on to the next region...