Ingredients: High quality bitter-sweet chocolate - 115 gm Butter - 115 gm Sugar - 170 gm Eggs - 3 Cocoa powder - 50 gm Method: Melt chocolate and butter using double-boiler method, its lot more safer than microwave. Let it cool a bit. Meanwhile beat eggs and sugar together till it form foam, then add cocoa powder, blend nicely. Add egg mixture in the chocolate-butter mixture and whisk nicely to blend all ingredients. Preheat oven to 180°C ,grease a baking pan and pour the cake batter, bake it for 25 to 30 minutes till a thin crust is formed on top of the cake. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool before serving. You can dust sugar, cocoa powder or anything you desire.
Ingredients: Cashew - 1 cup Chilli powder - 1 tsp Salt - 1/2 tsp or as required Honey - 1 tbsp Olive oil or vegetable oil - 1 tsp Method: Heat oil in a pan (preferably non-stick), add cashews and roast till it turns slight brown. Use low flame while cooking as cashews burn quickly. Add chilli powder and salt, give nice toss to the cashews until it is evenly coated. Finally add honey, give nice stir and remove cashews from heat. Serve it with hot coffee. This is a nice evening snack on a cold day.
Ingredients: Fleshy fish - 400gms Boiled potato - 1 Onion - 1 Chopped coriander leaves - 1/4 cup Green chilli - 1 Chilli powder - 3/4 tsp Ginger-garlic paste - 1 tsp Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp Bread crumbs - 1/2 cup Salt as required Method: Boil fish with salt and turmeric, peel the skin and mash it nicely. In a bowl, add mashed fish, mashed potato, chopped onion, coriander leaves, chopped chilli, ginger-garlic paste, chilli powder and salt. Mix everything nicely. Make small balls, flatten it to form patti. Coat patti nicely with bread crumbs. Heat 1 tsp oil in a non-stick tawa, arrange the patties, flip and cook on both sides, remove the patti when it turns brown. Serve hot with sauce or chutney.
Cooking bun is really easy, don't worry about the shape if you are trying for the first time.
Heat water, it should be lukewarm, preferably 95 degrees Fahrenheit to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, as this temperature is very important for yeast fermentation. Now add yeast to the warm water and set it aside for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix flour and sugar in a large bowl, make a dent in the middle of the flour and add salt and the fermented yeast water.
Knead the dough, add milk little by little to the dough while kneading, dough might become little sticky, no problem! move the dough to the working space and knead it well, this gives nice elasticity.
Place the dough in a bowl dusted with little flour and cover it with muslin cloth and let it rest for an hour.
Dough would have increased in size, remove the dough and knead little to remove all the air, flatten the dough, smear butter all over and sprinkle tutty-fruity, fold and knead the dough again.
Shape the dough into a log shape, cut it into small pieces, shape it into smooth balls, and place all the balls in the greased baking pan. Keep this aside for another one hour.
Now you can see that the balls are little risen and full, bake at 200 degrees Celsius for 12 to 15 minutes until the top of the bun becomes little golden brown.
Immediately after removing the bun from the oven, brush the top with butter to soften the crust.
Millets are very healthy and easily digestible. Its very good to include millets in our daily foods. There are many varieties of millet available, i have tried idli/dosa with samai(little millet), kudiraivali(barnyard) and varagu(kodo).
Ingredients:
Samai rice - 4 cups
Urad dal - 1 cup
Left over rice/cooked rice - 1/4 cup or poha - 3 tsp
Method:
Soak rice and dal separately in water for 4 to 5 hours.
Grind dal first followed by rice. Add cooked rice while grinding samai.
If you are using poha, soak it along with samai.
Let it ferment for 8 hours or overnight.
Add salt to the fermented batter
Idli
Grease idli plates and pour ladleful of batter in each hole of the plates.
Steam it for 10 minutes. Serve hot with chutney and sambar.
Dosa
Heat dosa pan and grease it, skip the grease part for non-stick pans.
Pour ladleful of batter on the pan and spread it in circle. Flip and cook on both sides.
Serve it hot with chutney or sambar.
Notes: You can even try mixed millets, for example 1 cup samai, 2 cups varugu and 1 cup kudiraivali.
