..... and everything else

Taking my baking experiments furthur, i decided to try the humble loaf bread. Simple, plain bread. I always suspected that bread available at stores had fair amount of refined flour though they also had whole wheat flour. Digging up the internet for many whole wheat bread recipes revealed the same thing. Then I thought of venturing all by myself, with a little help from the internet! The starting point was our plain old chapati atta. The kind I get milled if I happen to be in Pune, or if I happen to buy readymade, i buy Aashirwad or pillsbury You can also use the multigrain atta. So what i wished to try was the atta mixture we use for chapati, plus the yeast! And that is exactly what I tried! A note on yeast. There are so many brands of yeast available, and different types too. So far with my limited baking, i have bought sachets of instant yeast. This is different from active dry yeast. I have put the procedure of the yeast I use. I suggest while adapting this recipe to your needs, r...

  मराठी The one thing i miss most when not in Pune, is all that chaat : Bhel , pani-puri , shev puri ..yumm! The main ingredient in all these recipes is the tamarind sauce. This is the one that gives the taste to all these items. So there you go with the recipe Ingredients Tamarind , the size of a medium lemon** Jaggery - thrice that of tamarind Dates - 5-6 Cloves 4-5 Black Peppercorns 10-12 Black salt   to taste (about a teaspoon may be required) Rock salt to taste   (about half a teaspoon may be required) Cumin powder  2 teaspoon Optionally - half a cup of mint leaves. ** In India, the tamarind is available in the form of pressed squares/rounds, we have to pull out a round the size of a medium lemon Procedure Soak the tamarind in water. you may have to remove the seeds in the tamarind. You may put the cloves and the peppercorns in the same vessel as the tamarind to soak. De-seed the dates, in case they have seeds and soak them in water t...

मराठीत This is the sambar I learnt from my mother-in-law. So far, all those whom I have served this, have loved it! Ingredients Tur Dal   1 cup Tomato 3 Grated coconut  2 tablespoon Sambar masala powder 3 tablespoons** Tamarind  size of one medium lemon vegetables of your choice ( usually, all sorts of gourds, drumstick, brinjal, small onions, normal onions, cauliflower may be used) 200 g. Please note that this proportion may vary, but I feel adding good amount of veggies makes sambar healthy. salt to taste Red chilli powder to taste Jaggery, one teaspoon only if you prefer a hint of the sweet taste For the tadka Oil  1 tablespoon Mustard Seeds 1/2 teaspoon Asafoetida a pinch Urad Dal 1 teaspoon Dry Red chillies 4 Curry Leaves 2-3 twigs Coriander leaves for garnish ** You may use sambar masala powder of any brand like everest or MTR , else I have included the sambar masala powder recipe at the end of the post Procedure Soak the tamarind...

This post is slightly longish one. Though the title mentions about an omelet, i just write it in a flow, so it documents my perspective of looking at this country, people and events . If interested, do follow the links to know more about the jakarta fair. The omelet is called "Batavian" as Jakarta used t be called "Batavia" some time in the past. All images and text are copyright of the author. Use only with attribution. Would be better if a written permission from the author is sought before use of any content. On the day we came to Jakarta , on the twelve lane road to my apartment, along the side, we spotted a few vendors, seemingly selling eggs. Me and my husband discussed that this probably another way of selling eggs in this country. Coming from India, i was also surprised by the colourful eggs, they had the dull green ones and the golden brown ones. We would see them daily, but only after sunset. We thought maybe it would be too hot in the day to sit there...