Baafle

Share

The Malwa region is well known for it's lazy people. Second to only genetics, this is attributed to they widespread consumption of Baafle'.

Ingredients:

Wheat flour (aata): 4 cups
Maize flour (makke ka aata): 1 cup
Yoghurt: 1 cup
Ghee : 1 cup
Salt: 1 teaspoon
Turmeric: 1/2 teaspoon
Ajwaain (Carom seed): 1 teaspoon
Lukewarm water: as needed

Mix the two flours, salt, yoghurt, ghee, turmeric and carom seeds well together. then start adding water and kneading till you get a soft dough. to answer the question how soft is soft, make sure that it's not too wet (when you poke the dough with your finger, it shouldn't stick to your finger) and not too hard/ dry (when you poke the dough with finger, the dough should slowly come back to it's position). *Important* leave the dough for 30 mins to ferment.

boil water with 2 to 3 tablespoon of ghee and when it comes to a boil, add the dough balls (roll round balls and press slightly from top and bottom). don't crowd it otherwise, they'll stick to each other. remove. Boil the baafle for 20 minutes and put them in an oven pre-heated at 200 degrees (you should turn the oven on mid-way through the boiling process to make sure it's hot enough when baafle are boiled). Bake for 30 minutes (turn after 15 minutes) and you are done.

you can dip them in ghee if you are going to burn it off at soccer/ gym/ wherever. otherwise DON'T!

accompanying pics and daal recipe soon...

besan mirchi ki chutney (chilli gramflour relish - HOT)

Hola,

My father hails from Hatod, a small village on the outskirts of Indore (where I grew up). While growing up, we used to go to Hatod pretty much every other week to meet my grandmother, cousins and uncle. During festive seasons, we used to stay there for weeks, as Indians celebrate festivals at the eldest surviving member of the clan.

It also reminds me of a hilarious anecdote from uni years. We went to the village on my dad's birthday to get blessings from grandma and it got a bit late while coming back. A physics lecture had started at 2:00pm and I entered the rather small lecture room of capacity 100 at 2:25. The lecturer, Mr. Ghatpande, nice fella, went crazy - "Who the hell do you think you are :@, strutting into the class late while everyone else is on time!!!". I pulled out an innocent face (yes, i have one of those for emergency situations) and replied politely, "sorry sir, i am coming from Hatod and the traffic was real bad".

Now, for that entire semester, Mr. G assumed that I come from Hatod *everyday*, while my house was in front of the uni. In fact, he thought that I bicycled all the way from Hatod as I mostly rode my bike from home. I distinctively remembered him mentioning to me once that Laal Bahadur Shastri (India's 3rd PM) also used to walk some 10 ks and swin across a river to reach school. Needless to say, I did not correct him. A couple of other guys got into trouble because of that; "look at him (pointing to me) and look at yourself - shameful!"(the evil application of comparisons :D).

But like all good things, this too, had to come to an end. I walked into the office of Dr. Saxena, our dean, and Mr. G was there, who started showering praises on me, "look at him, sir, this kid is a model student, riding his bike (he saw me on my bicycle a couple of times) 25 kms from Hatod every single day!". Unfortunately, Dr Saxena knew that it wasn't the case and smirked, "Sir! This rascal doesn't come from Hatod, he lives 600 meters from the uni*" .... Things were never the same for me again :(

* for those of you who understand hindi, what Dr. Saxena actually said was, "Arre sir, yeh kamina hatod se nahin aata, college ke saamne rehta hai!" (he had a weird of showing that he cared :D)

anyways, back to post topic - mirchi besan ki chutney - so what happened in Hatod was that since we didn't have a fridge, we didn't make loads of food, just enough for the meal; optimization algorithms are so freakin' popular in Indian Village - Dijkstra - INDIAN! (See Goodness Gracious Me to make sense of this joke). So what happens if gluttons like yours truly get hungry at midnight. We had pickles and everything but this particular chutney was AWESOME! I used to spread it on a chapati, make a roll and have it as a snack. If you like it hot, try this out - mmmmmm :p

Ingredients (to make enough for a week for 4 people like me :D):

Gram flour - 2 heaped tablespoon
Chillies chopped into rings - 50 grams or 20 in quantity
Lemon - One whole or 6 tablespoon bottled lemon juice
Salt - to taste (1 tablespoon for me)
Mustard seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
Cumin seeds - 1 teaspoon
Turmeric - 1 teaspoon
Oil - 50 ml

Note that for this recipe, heat is kept high throughout the process.

Heat the oil and when hot, add the mustard seeds, followed by cumin seeds. add the chopped chilli and turmeric. After 15 seconds add the gram flour and stir continuously to avoid formation of lumps. After 1 minute, add salt, stir, add lemon juice, stir and take off the heat immediately...... Great, now I am hungry!

kheer recipe - happy birthday jagrat!

Today is 14th August - Pakistan's Independence Day and my friend, Jagrat's Bday. I wish all my Pakistani friends a very happy independence day and wish that the current times will soon pass to bring back prosperity in the culturally diverse region :)

Jagrat, I wish you a very happy birthday and even though we haven't seen each other in person in 7 years, I just want you to know that you are very much missed every single day.

Now *Jagrat* was a glutton (or a "gourmand", depending on how you wanna put it :D) One of his favorite desserts (not that he discriminated when it came to sweets) was kheer. Jagrat's mum, my second mum, Rekha makes the best kheer I have had ever. Her kheer with Pooris - mmmmmmm!

Here is a lame effort to fit into her shoes. Hope it is 10% as tasty as hers!

Ingredients (for 8 people):

Milk, full fat - 2 ltrs
Sugar - 150 grams (you can increase/ decrease to your liking)
Crushed cashews, pistachos, almonds 100 grams
Saffron - about this much
Rice, basmati - 100 grams
Sultanas - 50 grams (I don't like them, some people do)

On high heat, bring milk to a boil and reduce heat to medium and stir occasionally to avoid milk sticking to bottom. Wash the rice and soak it (keep aside).

after 30 mins milk should reduce to 1.2 ltrs. remove a little milk (20 ml) and mix saffron in it. after a minute, put the saffron mix back into the milk.

now remove water from rice and crush the rice a bit with your hands. add to milk along with dry fruits, sultanas, sugar and after 30 minutes, you have a beautiful batch of kheer. You may sprinkle shaved pistachos and almonds as garnish :)

Best served with pooris :p

Image coming soon ...

Take care all,
Gaurav

Alu pyaaz ki rase waali sabzi (potatoes and onion curry)

Contrary to popular belief, Indian villages don't usually have naan, tikkas, biryani at dinners. In central India, from where I am, family meals are composed of quite plain and thin daal, slow-cooked vegetables (spinach, fenugreek, pumpkin, long gourd are quite popular), plain chapatis and rice. Pickle is sometimes provided with the food but if you are visiting someone for lunch/ dinner, it might be rude to take pickle/ add salt to your food since it implies that the food they prepared is not good enough and you have to modify it (yes, it can be a pain sometimes!)

on the weekends, a richer and spicier curry is cooked, ofter for lunch since a post-lunch nap is often in order. this is a recipe for one such HOT dish:

Ingredients (to serve 4-5)

Potatoes 400 grams
Onions 600 grams
Garlic 10 cloves (optional)
Ginger 30 grams (optional)
Oil 100ml
Cumin seeds 1 tablespoon
Fennel seeds 1 teaspoon
asafoetida (Heeng) 1/5 teaspoon (really optional)
Chilli Powder 1 heaped teaspoon
Coriander Powder 3 heaped teaspoons
Turmeric Power 1 level teaspoon
Garam Masala (I think "MDH" brand is good) 1 teaspoon (optional)
Salt to taste

* some items are marked optional since not everyone likes garlic in their food and not everyone's got garam masala ready at a moment's notice. The elimination of these doesn't have a tragic effect. It reduces the overall taste, but it's still pretty good.

** Adding asafoetida or not really has no effect on taste (Not sure, why we put it in then!)
(I later got this message on messenger from my wife Gunjan -

   Gunjan says:
      and asafoetida is used as an anti flatulent
      read prevents gas
      and i have proof too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida
)

Making the spice paste: add the chilli, coriander, turmeric and garam masala to about 100 ml water to form a thin paste. keep aside for later

Heat the oil and add cumin seeds and fennel seeds. When they are brown (about 30 secs), add asafoetida and onions. Stir occasionally to avoid onions sticking to base and after 2 mins when water starts coming out of onions, add chopped ginger and garlic. Stir occasionally till onions turn golden brown and oil starts re-surfacing. Add diced potatoes (i like them diced smaller - about 2cm^3) and salt and stir well. add 50 ml water to have that initial steam that will cool the potatoes. Cover with lid, turn to low and cook for 5 mins. Remove lid, turn the heat up and add the spice paste, cook while stirring regularly for 2 mins. Add 500 ml water (more if you want the curry thinner, less if you want it thicker). Turn to medium-low and cook for 10-15 more mins (10 if potatoes cut into 2cm^3 pieces, 15 if cut into larger pieces)

Garnish with chopped coriander leaves and enjoy with chapati, parathas, naan, rice, bread....

P.S. You can put peas (250gms) and diced ripe tomatoes (200 grams) as well after you add the spice paste. This would give you a bit "sweeter" curry.

Baked Vegetable in White Sauce and Cheese, lotsa cheese!

You go to any general restaurant in India and amongst the tikkas and kormas and jalfrezis, you'd have a dish called "baked vegetable". now when you try this dish, it's got nothing Indian about it, why it doesn't even have no chilli powder in it :D It's my guess that the dish was put on the menus to cater for people who are not that into Indian cuisine.

anyways, my friends say, and being the humble guy I am, I agree, that it's as good as the ones you get at the restaurants, if not better :)

so let's get on with it :)

ingredients to serve 6 (in order of importance)

tasty/ cheddar cheese - 400 grams
cream cheese - 300 grams
butter - 50 grams
plain flour - 6 tablespoons
cream - 250 grams
milk - 150 ml
diced pineapple - 150 grams
pineapple juice - 100 ml
(you can get the two combined as diced pineapple in juice cans)
mushrooms - 100 grams
carrots - 1 large
corn kernel - 50 grams
cauliflower - 100 grams
(ok, these ingredients might serve 8 in fact :D)
other veggies that you can throw in - pumpkin, beans, potatoes
black pepper - 1/2 tablespoon (or as much as you like)
salt
rosemary, oregano are optional


grate the cheese and mix the flour with milk and cream. preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

melt the butter in a deep base 3 ltr oven proof dish on gas. turn the gas to medium and add the flour mix and whisk continuously to avoid lump formation. add the cream cheese after 2 mins and whisk whisk whisk for 3 more mins. add the veggies and after 2 more mins, add the pineapple pieces, juice, pepper, salt, herbs and 100 out of the 400 grams grated cheese and mix well. bake in oven with open lid for 30 mins. if you put potatoes, use the small chat potatoes (just discovered that's a global term!) or if using the bigger ones dice them about 2 cm^3 otherwise they might be a bit tough. take it out of the owen and put the remaining grated cheese on top and place it back in the oven so that the heating element is above the dish. bake for 10 mins and the cheese should be browned by now.

have it by itself or better still, serve with garlic bread, or lachcha paratha



please do me a favor and don't eat it with rice! hope you like it as much as i love it :p

cheers
gaurav