Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon

If the premise behind posting this recipe was a real-life assignment in a college or school, I would have failed.Or been thrown out of school. Well, OK, not that serious, but I probably would be in detention for a while. Herein is a lesson on How Not To Be a Good Member of a An Otherwise Earnest Little Food Blogging Group:

1. The very charming Simran of the equally charming food book club This Books Makes Me Cook announces that the book "Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously" by former blogger Julie Powell as a contender for the May book choice.
2. Yes, May 2010. Lets do a little fact check. Star Date Now: February 2011.
3. Back up to May of last year. Sulk, because I don't want to read this book. Because I watched the MOVIE version THREE times. And I didn't like it. All.Three.Times.
4. Secretly conspire to NOT have the book chosen by trying to buy out the other book club members. Fail at mission as the book is overwhelmingly chosen.
5. How can someone watch a movie THREE times if they didn't like it, you ask. Easy. Be stuck on a three-stop-layover aeroplane where this was the ONLY movie available to watch. Three times over.
6. Except for the two hours you squeezed your head between the gaps in the seat in front to spy on what was playing on the other passengers mobile DVD. No I didn't. Really. It was cartoons.
7. And you start mimicking Julia's shrill accent to the flight attendant when they come around with peanuts...."Bon Appetit!"
8. For an excruciating 15 hours of flight time which feels like 67 years after adding two kids to the mix, and this is the ONLY movie that you get to watch can make someone feel a tad "underwhelmed" when asked to review the book that sprouted the movie. So I read My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prudhomme (her auto biography) instead.
9. And in case anyone wants to do a psychological analysis of my deep-seated resentment. The answer is quite simply Jealousy. Yes, I'm jealous of blogger Julie Powell. That she got to blog way back in 2002 when some of us were not even born. Oh wait, I mean some of our blogs were not even born. And then she comes up with this great idea to cook all of Julia Childs recipes. And then she gets the book deal. And then she gets the movie deal. And then Meryl Streep. Oh my. Meryl Streep!!! I'm JEALOUS.
10. Have an overwhelming urge to try Boeuf Bourguignon - a stew of beef in red wine with mushrooms, pearl onions and bacon (pronounced BUH-YOF BOOR-GWEE-NYON (heh heh, that's me pulling a Dictionary sounding thingy heh heh)) because it
• factors so prominently in the Julie and Julia Project (movie/book/blog) - its the dish Julie Powell slaves over, burns to a crisp because she gets drunk and/or falls asleep and finishes perfectly the next day only to be stood up by her important journalist dinner guest
• gained notoriety amongst cooking circles as the quintessential French recipe captured absolutely perfectly by Julia Childs
• has a lot of bulleted steps, which I seem to be a fan of
11. Host a Valentines Day pot-luck and pick the theme FRANCE for your unsuspecting guests, and decide "This is it! This is the time to try this dish, once and for all!".
12. I did like this dish, and I thought it was worth the effort (see the mixed reviews from my powerful critics a.k.a. my family, below).

So in a nutshell, in the time it could have taken to, I dunno, maybe birth a child (9 months exactly May 2010 - Feb 2011), I finally made Boeuf Bourguignon, all three components of it

• beef stewed in red wine with onion, carrots and bacon
• sauteed mushrooms in butter
• brown braised pearl onions and 3 hour cook time later I present it to you, along with these pointers and reviews from my critics a.k.a. the Family.

Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon Recipe - Completely sourced from her publisher's website Knopf Doubleday. I copied the entire recipe, so I am not cutting and pasting it here, instead I'm adding my pointers and the mixed reviews from my critics.

1. This dish takes some time. Be prepared. It's mainly cooking time, but there are a couple of prep steps, the most time-consuming being the searing of the beef prior to cooking it in the stew.
2. The recipe calls for the searing to be done in small batches to get the right crust. Of course, I cheated by using my largest non-stick pan so I could get more done, and possibly paid the price by not quite getting the crust that a cast iron or steel skillet would have given you. But then I had less clean-up. *snicker*.
3. Bacon needs to be sliced, boiled and then fried in butter. Julia? WT? I know, heaven help her. But she lived to be 91, so she must have known some s^*t. This process, though completely weird to me, removes all the salt from the bacon.
4. Two of the three components are basted pearl onions and sauteed mushrooms, they taste really good as individual dishes, and I questioned why they needed to be thrown into the powerful stew and lose their identity. I used frozen pearl onions and defrosted them prior to cooking. Here is the odd thing, two days later, when I was reheating leftovers, the onions still stood out in the stew. Julia. You are one smart cookie. 

Now the reviews:

• My mom preferred the stew straight out of the oven, bubbling with heat. I preferred it a day or two later, re-heated of course, I felt the flavors had really become pronounced over time. This is a really rich stew with meat that becomes fork tender after the long cook time. I also like the fact that there are quite a few vegetables included in it.
• My dad thought I had cooked the beef in cough medication. He didn't like the strong wine flavor. This critique has issues of its own.
• The dish was almost finished by all the guests, they must have liked it?
• I didn't give it to The Kids - Too Much Wine I thought...
• The Husband Who May Have Been On His Crackberry/Blackberry The Entire 3-4 Hours That The Dish Took To Make:
• Me: How Is it. Its BUH-YOF BOOR-GWEE-NYON. It's Julia Childs. It's this really long recipe. It's the one from the annoying movie we watched. Remember, the one with the lady that I am so jealous of. How is it? What do you think? Do you think it needs salt? It's got a bottle of wine in there.... a WHOLE bottle.
• THWMHBOHCTE3-4HTTDTTM: Good. Good. good-good-good. Needs a little salt.
• Me: How is that possible! It has BACON in it! And stock! How can it need more salt???!!!
• THWMHBOHCTE3-4HTTDTTM: Good. Good. good-good-good. Needs a little salt.
• Me: I think I am going to stick my head in the oven now.
• THWMHBOHCTE3-4HTTDTTM: Good. Good. good-good-good. Needs a little salt.

This is a long recipe, but do not despair. It only took me 9 months...errr.. 3 hours to do.

Julia Childs :  Obituary from USA Today

Morocco, The Caliph's House and Kefta Tagine...Here's Looking At You, Kid.

When I was in the second grade, we had a show-and-tell session at school, which was followed by a parent-teachers conference. At the dinner table that night, my mother calmly asked me to recount what I had told the teacher that morning about the last vacation we had taken.

 "Uhm, I dunno," I mumbled back.

 "Really? Because the sweet lady asked me how our trip to MOROCCO and MAURITANIA had been?!" my mother countered, staring me down from across the table.

 My dad chortled, I feigned innocence and everyone returned to their dinner. The story hasn't been forgotten, and I still get teased about the incident to this day. I, on the other hand, still cannot fathom where those two exotic and yet inaccessible countries had entered into my otherwise staid schema of normal 7 year old activities like dolls, fighting with the neighbors kids and stealing chocolate cake.

Had I been subjected to re-runs of the movie Casablanca as a baby?
I distinctly recall Sesame Street characters from my infancy, but definitely no Bogart.

Had a caregiver incessantly sung "As Time Goes By" to lull me to sleep? Highly unlikely, the constant stream of nannies that had passed through our household had not known English too well to be able to master that feat.

Chalk it up to unsolved mysteries (not so much, my parent's theory was that we had visited Mauritius earlier that year, and unable to bend my tongue around that name, I had come up with two fairly similar but highly unlikely destinations to enthrall my class with), but the fact remains that Morocco and the mysterious splendour that is Casablanca has been high up on my bucket list of places to visit (there is is an insatiable 7 year old in all of us, right?)

So I could totally relate to this months book choice at This Book Makes Me Cook which was The Caliph's House by Tahir Shah. Tahir Shah gets increasingly frustrated with his monotone, humdrum life in England, where the incessant grey skies and the conformity and boredom of his staid life starts to threaten his sanity. Against the warnings of his well-wishers and even family, some of whom ironically wish they could escape the same monotony that Shah detests, he packs up and sets off to Casablanca with his little daughter and heavily pregnant and highly sceptical Indian wife.


Morocco had always been refuge for Shah's wanderlust, he had travelled there as a child, and its mystery, landscape, heritage and culture re-ignites his passion for life and sets him on an even more personal and deeper quest, to retrace the last days of his grandfather's life there.

Ominous signs throughout the authors endeavour would have scared off lesser mortals like me. The day Shah signs papers for a derelict Moroccan mansion known as Dar Khalifa, a suicide bomber ignites a bomb, killing several innocent by-standers and Shah is grazed slightly in a terrorist attack that jolts the otherwise secular country into the throes of fundamentalist strife. It only gets worse, the princely house he has acquired is in a state of complete decay and borders a shanty town or bidonville, complete with rogue characters and a crumbling infrastructure.

The house also comes with three resident caretakers, part and parcel of the deal and who cannot be shaken off, who then appear to sabotage the authors every move to renovate the house, due to their unwillingness to change their ways and their steadfast belief that the house is possessed by jinns, supernatural beings that are honored and feared in North African Islamic culture.


The book is a lively account of everything Tahir Shah, his children and what sounds like his long-suffering wife, go through in restoring the house to some sense of normalcy. It is no lie that we deal with inept technicians and shoddy workmanship at times in the Western World, but they are small fry compared to the cast of characters, some ghoulish and some absolutely comedic, and outlandish scenarios that befalls the author as he tries to convert his dream into reality.


Interspersed with Shah's very light-handed account of his trails and tribulations is a fairly insightful look into how things are done in the mystical country of Morocco and the day-to-day life of its citizens, some of which may seem obtuse and unimaginable in our minds, but is reality in that part of the world.

There is a silver lining to this story, while it may not seem apparent as you read through the book. Here is a glimpse of the renovated house in Casablanca from NY Times and BBC reports of the place, which the author has turned into a bed-and-breakfast type resort.


While I enjoyed the book thoroughly, the parts where the author tries to find out more about his late grandfather and some of his secret dealings felt a little out of place in this story and lacked depth for me.


And to cook something from this book, I chose the tagine, which is the signature dish of Morocco. Typically a stew of protein and vegetables that is lightly spiced, the dish gets its name from the use of a special dish with a turret lid, which slowly re-utilizes the vapors of the food to produce a fork-tender product. In that case, since I am woefully lacking a tagine dish, I should have probably renamed my dish Kefta Calphalon Non-Stick. But, as in my second grade show-and-tell, lets just pretend we went the authentic Moroccan way.


When I went to source a recipe for kefta tagine, my first stop was the remarkable Sousou Kitchen, your one-stop shop for all Moroccan goodies. And if blogging wasn't hard already, you should check her site out, she has VIDEOS of every recipe prepared! I also wanted to incorporate what I had seen at Almost Bourdain's fantastic site, where her spicy egg and meat tagine had caught my eye.


Kefta Tagine (adaption from both Almost Bourdain's Moroccan Kefta Mkaoura and Sousou Kitchen's Kefta Tagine (this is a video link)


For the kefta/meatballs:
1 lb ground beef
2 Tbsp parsley, chopped fine
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper powder
1 Tbsp olive oil


1. Mix all ingredients except oil, and form small balls. Heat oil in non-stick pan, add meatballs, and toss till cooked and lightly brown on all sides. Remove from pan, drain on paper towels and reserve. Wipe pan and re-use for sauce.


For the Sauce:
1 medium onion, chopped
3 medium tomatoes, diced
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp black pepper powder
1 heaped tsp crushed garlic
1 large potato, diced into large pieces
1/2 tsp turmeric
large pinch saffron
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 - 1 cup warm water
chopped parsley/coriander for garnish
Salt to taste
* cooking times are approximate given how thick you want your sauce to be


1. Heat oil in a non-stick pan. Add onion, saute till they become soft, then add garlic.
2. When the garlic and onions have started to brown, add in the spice powders (except saffron and salt) and stir. Add tomatoes and continue frying over medium heat till the oil starts to separate out. Add potatoes, give them a quick stir fry and then add some warm water to form a gravy. How much water you add depends on your preference as to how "soupy" you want the stew to be. You may have to add some more water later on as the potatoes cook, so do not add too much water at this step.
3. Let the sauce simmer, covered,  for about 10 minutes to develop the spice flavors..
4. Add salt to season the sauce, and add in the meatballs and the saffron. Adjust the sauce consistency by adding more warm water if you wnat more gravy or reducing it further in the next step.
5. Let the sauce cook further, covered, for about 5- 10 minutes to let the kefta absorb the flavors of the sauce.
6. Remove from heat, adjust for salt, garnish with parsley or coriander.
Serve with middle eastern flatbread or rice.

So we read stellar books every month at This Book Makes Me Cook, chaperoned by the very efficient Simran. 

There is yet another  internet Book Club that also Cooks Their Books (who knew?) and they sweetly asked if I could be a guest judge over at their place as they read Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing The Mango Trees.
Confused? Yes? No? Read my guest post over at their place , and then you can also read our reviews too.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Book Review - And Duchess Potatoes on the side..

I've returned to This Book Makes Me Cook, a delightful little Internet "Cooking The Books" reading group that I chanced upon a while back, after a lazy summer where I neglected everything blog wise.
I'm glad I picked this month to return, else I would have missed out on reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society which had been on my back burner for a while as it had come heavily recommended by two of my enthusiastic reader friends.
 So I picked up the book late on one of those blissful rainy weekends where the stage has practically set itself up for a good read, thunder rolling outside, rain pelting the windows, the amorous glow from a well positioned lamp, the bed covers drawn just high enough to not interrupt the frequent page turning.


And then I thought "What on earth is this book on about?".


I couldn't figure it out for the first five pages. The text was in the form of a series of letters back and forth between people that hadn't even been introduced to me and I felt a little lost. I put the book down, bemoaned the choice, but returned later that night and gave the book one more try. Darn it, if anything, I had to unearth what the Potato Peel Pie was about!


And that was when the magic happened.


The characters grew on me, the letters started to make sense. New characters came and went, but their stories lingered on. The protagonist Judith, an authoress with an independent feminist streak frowned upon by society and her era, is stuck mulling about what her next novel should be about as she is hounded by publishers, friends and editors. She chances upon a book club filled with haphazard characters. They have formed a reading group in Guernsey as a ruse to avoid detection by the Nazis that they were feasting on hidden, contraband foods, namely a roasted pig. She is drawn by their story of hardship, friendship and perseverance and inevitably travels to meet them at the expense of some of her personal relationships and commitments.


The story telling is gentle, humorous, sad and poignant and Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (yes, two authors wrote this book!) effortlessly transport us from our comfortable suburban confines to the windswept, rugged Channel Islands. Your heart winces at the stories of hardship and the fate of some of the characters and you manage to crack a smile or two at the witty dialogues that are intermittent in the story. If you are a fan of British writers of the Wodehouse and Blyton ilk, then this book will probably appeal to you as it did to me.


Now onto the cooking part of this book club!


Unfortunately, the Potato Peel Pie described in the book was as awful as it name suggests, Potato Peels layered with a smattering of beet juice. Can I get a collective Eeeewwwwww.....


To turn the gist of the book completely on its head, I chose to serve up the rather royal and decadent Duchess Potatoes which I ogled for a very long time at Cynthia Nelson's brilliant Tastes Like Home.


While everyone else in the Book Club rightfully made intellectual attempts to imagine what meagre offerings the characters of the book had to endure, I decided to cook something that they NEVER would have had the chance to eat.

Duchess Potatoes (entirely sourced Cynthia's recipe which was featured in the Stabroek News and her Taste Like Home website)


4 large potatoes


Salt and pepper to taste
1 heaped Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp sour cream (optional)
¾ cup grated cheese (I use my personal fave Monterrey Jack)
1 egg, lightly beaten
½ teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon water
Parsley - to garnish (optional, I omitted)


1. Wash and peel potatoes. Slice into big pieces and add to salted, boiling water. Boil till potato pieces are cooked and are fork-tender. Drain from water and mash potatoes in a bowl.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
3. Add butter, sour cream and cheese to potatoes while it is still hot. Mix thoroughly and taste for seasoning (add salt and pepper to taste).
4. Mix in beaten egg. At this point the potatoes must have a very soft consistency, like thick porridge.
5. Pour the potato mixture into a Zip-loc bag or clean cellophane or wax paper cone, and snip off one end of the bag to form a piping spout.
6. Pipe the potatoes into oven proof ramekins going in a circular motion. Transfer the bowls onto baking sheet/tray.
7 Sprinkle paprika mixed with water and stir into a paste. Brush or spoon onto the tops of the potato mixture. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes or until the edges are golden-brown.

Under The Tuscan Sun - Pizza with Onion Confit, Grilled Sausage and Peppers

The Book Choice for February at "This Book Makes Me Cook" club was Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes.


The highlight of the book to me is, of course, some of Mayes' recipes, written casually with little fuss and highlighting the strength of the local produce of Tuscany. I chose to make the Pizza with Onion Confit and Grilled Sausage from her Summer Kitchen Notes collection. I'm not sure if there is something in the water in Tuscany, but this recipe resulted in the largest pizza base I have ever made. It rose spectacularly and was soft and bread-like in the same vein. Like pizza toppings on a giant dough pillow.

You know, Book Clubs are really good things, because they force you to read books that you would not have glanced at if you were left to your own devices. Sure I had heard of this book before. Who hasn't, it was re-made (and possibly butchered) into a romantic chick-flick (of the kind I thoroughly detest) starring Diane Lane.

So I was a tad prejudiced when I picked up the book. And these negative feelings continued to multiply.

So who can plunk down and buy a magnificent Tuscan Villa that they happened to see when strolling through Cortona? (View from author's house "Bramasole" . Image courtesy cnn.com)
How many of us have lifestyles that allow us to spend part of the year feeding intellectual minds as a professor in the not-so-shoddy-itself Bay Area, and then pack up without a whim and spend the rest of the year plucking apricots and restoring a villa that had water features dating back to Etruscan times.
But the most jarring piece for me was - who was feeding her cat in San Francisco when the author kept moving back and forth between Italy and the US!

OK, I jest not.

Those feelings of animosity slipped away as I started getting more engrossed in the book. Frances Mayes does have a wonderful way with words. Her prose and ability to detail the tiniest patterns of life in this charmed area are mesmerising, and I did get quite absorbed in her vivid recollections of the painstaking home remodeling project that she took on.

Her description of the food and lifestyle of the Tuscan region is breathtaking, and she has pretty much convinced me that I need to pay a visit to this area at some point. And in case you think none of the book is true, I stumbled across this blogger who got to see the actual house.

I kind of lost her towards the end of the book, when she takes on what I felt was an unnecessary religious tone, complete with macabre ancient Christian and Roman practices, interspersed with jolting memories from her charmed, but rather strange Southern childhood and experiences.

In addition, the author quotes a statement from legendary French cookbook authoress Simone Beck whom she took a cooking class with (remember Simca from "Julie and Julia"?) that rang so true to the type of calculating, non-risk taking cook that I am...

no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?"

One spring when I studied cooking with Simone Beck at her house in Provence, she said some things I never forgot. Another student, a caterer and cooking teacher, kept asking Simca for the technique for everything. She had a notebook and furiously wrote down every word Simca said....When she asked one time too many, Simca said crisply, "There is

If you are interested in joining "this Books Make Me Cook" club, drop Simran a line at Bombay Foodie.

Onion Confit is the result of "melting" or cooking onions softly in a little bit of olive oil and Balsamic Vinegar. The resulting mix is a sweet and tart confluence of caramelized onions. I love the confit! Prejudices re-emerge, as Mayes softly chastises us to use Balsamic Vinegar that has been aged a minimum of 12 years. My brand was probably aged 12 minutes at the local H-E-B grocery store, no dimpled Tuscan maidens churning out the olives in this joint. Sorry Frances Ma'am.

And in case you are wondering why you can't really see much of the Confit in the pizza I made, that is because I deceptively hid them under the grilled peppers (my own addition) to prevent the inevitable outburst from my esteemed dining clientele at the din-din table.

"M-O-M-MMMMM - are those BROWN WORMS?!!!"
Pizza with Onion Confit and Sausage and Grilled Peppers (adapted from "Under The Tuscan Sun" by Frances Mayes)

Confit
Thinly slice 1 large onion and "melt" in a frying pan on low heat with i Tbsp olive oil and 3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar.
Onions should be caramel colored and limp. Season with marjoram, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper.
SausageI used 1 Polish kielbasa - grill or saute sausage and slice into thin rounds.
Bell peppers
Wash 1 red bell pepper. Lay on cook top (I have gas burners) and rotate on medium flame till the skin begins to char. Remove from heat, let cool, slice and deseed.

Pizza DoughDissolve 1 package of yeast (I used Fleischmanns rapid-rise) in 1/4 cup warm water for 10 minutes.
Mix the following: 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, 3 Tbsp olive oil, 1 cup of cool water and pour into a mound of 1-1/4 cups of flour.
Knead on a flat surface till elastic and smooth or pulse in food processor until dough forms a ball, then remove and knead by hand.
Place dough in an oiled and floured bowl and let rest for 30 minutes.
Roll into 1 large or 2 smaller circles and brush with herbed or chilli oil.
Scatter sausage, onions and peppers over the surface. Sprinkle 1 cup grated Parmesan or mozzarella cheese and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes.
Makes 8 generous pieces.

This Book Makes Me Cook - Climbing The Mango Trees .... and a Hurricane

This month we're cooking the books with "Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India" by well-known Indian cookbook authoress AND award-winning actress Madhur Jaffrey.

"Well-known, you say? Well how come I haven't heard of her then, 'eh?"

Oh, sorry, you must have missed the TWENTY-SIX Indian cookbooks, three novels and an Autobiography that she wrote.

"Patooey, I don't read cookbooks, I only follow someone prestigious whom I've seen (on Food Network, ahem *cough*) or watched in action".

Ah, yes, that would have been hard given this James Beard winner also ACTED in a number of Merchant and Ivory blockbusters, had the lead role in the movie "Cotton Mary" and performed in Theatre and TV in England , India and the US. Oh, and I forgot about that part she had in "Law and Order" .

"Law and Order - oh! Was she that Psychiatrist chick! Now I know her!!!"

Despite the pedigree, I frankly have never researched or used a Madhur Jeffrey recipe. Why? Because I'm the one in italics above. Duh.

So I picked up this book on a whim from the library one hot September afternoon two years ago.

"Two years ago? Cheat! This was the Book of the Month selection THIS mon..."

Ah..patience, mon ami...

This book lays out a privileged childhood in a well-to-do and aristocratic family in Old Delhi. Jaffrey's family clearly were part of the creme de la creme of society, and had strong rapport with powerful political figures in pre-partition India.

While we are allowed a glimpse into her patriarchal family, and their splendid hill-station vacations with an army of servants, it is her description of the food that she grew up with and that she encountered that makes this book worthwhile. I feel Jaffrey's true strength shines whenever she encroached the subject of food as evidenced by the numerous times I ran to the kitchen starving after reading another mesmerizing account of fried breads sopping up juicy meats and curries!

The biography part of the book sadly, falls short. She tries to explain some of the relations in the family, like one particular over-bearing uncle and her unhealthy sister, which was enthralling for me, but she chooses to abruptly end the book with no form of closure or any idea of how the rest of her family fared. She also reveals very little of herself post-childhood.

The redeeming grace in the book is a large collection of Indian recipes at the end.

And as I read this book, September 13th 2008 rolled around, and with it, Hurricane Ike which landed in our town with the ferocity of a Category Two storm. It was the third costliest hurricane to hit the USA and caused the largest evacuation in our neck of the woods.

Did we evacuate? No.

We woke up to fallen debris, trees uprooted and electricity poles down. Our house was intact, but we had no power. The library that I took this book out from was destroyed, its books lay strewn as a soggy mess.

So. What does one do when they have no electricity and a book that obviously doesn't need to be returned in a hurry?

One sits down, and starts writing out all the recipes in this book into one's journal. Nice and neatly because we have all the time in the world. No TV. No Phone.

One then waits for the electricity to come back on. It does not, so one returns to writing more of the recipes. Albeit a little messier, because this whole no electricity thing isn't as romantic and great as it was first cut out to be. It's getting HOT in here. No A/C.

Day 8. Our street is the last to get power back, because, OF COURSE (!) the worst electrical damage occured in the line that our street uses. At this point, recipe notation and chicken scratch handwriting starts to reflect the demented state of mind of recipe-copier who starts chasing public utility vehicles when they turn into her street. It's bat crazy time at home now and the hand-writing below shows it. But I still kept writing...

So on that note, I will NEVER forget this book, because I had it with me for a good couple of months (side note, library is back in operation now) and I used it to provide some much needed distraction in that crazy time.

This also serves as proof that in the event of some natural disaster or alien attack or World War, I am NOT the person to be with, because I will be the one to do something left brain like, say, I don't know, SCRAPBOOKING whilst everyone else is running for cover or building generators from car engines.

The End.

To complete the review, I chose to make the Spicy Caulifower Bake - Cheese Vali Gobi.

Counterfeit Appams

While reading Ladies Coupe for This Book Makes Me Cook this month, I was struck by the passage where the central character in the book picks up a white, fluffy appam (Coconut flavoured rice pancake - a specialty from Kerala, India) from the railway station food vendor.

Well, "struck" was as far as that went, because I have a history of making appams that are the polar opposite of the mouthwatering visual that author painted in the book. My appams have not risen, or have risen to sourdough extremes, or were hard as an actual coconut and never quite the ethereal white color that appams are famed for.

So as I sat desolately, my cousin G chanced upon me and I mournfully told her about my appam woes. "Have no fear!" G exclaimed. "Have you tried Sprite appams?"

Sprite appams? I asked incredulously... And therein, G reeled me in hook, line and sinker into the deceptive world of making "instant" appams, without the 12 hour fermentation time.

DISCLAIMER: These appams are counterfeit. They are nowhere close to the real-deal appams that are made with long grain rice and lovingly coaxed into little bubbles of heavenly clouds.

No - these are brash, in-your-face appams that are ready in a jiffy and will provide you with instant gratification or an appam-high, the heights of which will be escalated if you cunningly serve them with a gravy rich curry to mask their inadequacies . Appam purists and Gods of Kerala cuisine - prepare your fatwas against me, I stand surrendered. Oh wait, is that another batch of insta-appams waiting for me. Sorry, gotta run...

Ingredients
2 cups rice flour
1 tsp instant yeast
1/2 cup water
1 tsp sugar + 1 Tbsp sugar (divided use)
1 can Sprite
1/2 cup coconut milk or regular milk
2 tbsp rice flour + water to dissolve

1. Prepare thickening agent - dissolve 2 Tbsp rice flour in just enough water to make a thick paste and heat in a small pan to "cook" it. When warm and thickened, remove from heat.
2. Warm 1/2 cup water in microwave till lukewarm. Add yeast and 1 tsp sugar and let it froth or bubble up (about 10 minutes).
3. Mix 2 cups rice flour, thickening agent and yeast mixture in a bowl. Add Sprite as necessary to make a mixture of medium consistency.(Rice flour should be dissolved, but overall consistency should not be too thin). I used about 3/4 of a regular can of Sprite. Add 1 Tbsp of sugar into the mixture and stir in.
4. Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and turn the oven off. Place the bowl of rice mixture in the warm oven for about three hours or until mixture bubbles/ferments. I did not do the preheat step, I turned the pilot light in my oven on and placed the bowl near the light.
5. When the mixture has frothed up, add coconut milk or regular milk (2% or skim, whatever you have on hand) to thin out the batter (do not make the batter too thin) and add a teaspoon of salt right before you start cooking the appams.
6. Ladle enough mixture into a heated appam pan or non-stick frying pan and cover till cooked.
7. Serve with a gravy based curry like Potato "Ishtu" =)

This Book Makes Me Cook - Book Review - Ladies Coupe

This month the Book Club read Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair. The story is about Akhila, a 40+ spinster who has spent her whole life caring for her family and supporting her siblings, whilst being denied a chance to live her own life.

Akhila takes a train journey to the beach resort of Kanyakumari, driven by angst and the need to break free from the shackles of her monotonous life and overbearing family.

She gets a cabin in a Ladies Only compartment (a relic of the Indian railway system - allowing women to travel safely amongst their own kind, away from the prying hands and eyes of leering males) and meets five other travellers - elderly Janaki, sassy Margaret, secretive Mari, young Sheela and socialite wife Prabha Devi.

This sets the scene for each woman to unravel her life story, and in the meantime for Akhila to gauge where she is in life and where she wants to be in contrast to her fellow travellers. It is a bit presumptuous to me that everyone joyfully spilled their guts in that train compartment, but kudos to author Anita Nair for coming up with a novel way to interject the six disparate stories together.

I can wax eloquent about how at the end of the day I found some of the stories unrealistic, but who are we to determine if it is selfish for a character to want something that is forbidden, like many of the lust-filled relationships that are portrayed in the book, or for us to question the validity of some of the scenarios that came into play; a lesbian sub-plot, tales of indiscretion or revenge, or subtle attempts at emancipation through the oddest circumstances - take Prabha's attempts to learn how to swim as a means of escaping her boredom and stoic lifestyle. Of the six characters, Mari and Margaret's charatcers were the most haunting and riveting for me. I didn't quite fully understand the gist of Prabha Devi or Janaki's tales, and Sheela's seemed inconclusive.

The book was a page-turner, and I enjoyed delving into each characters lives. I think Anita Nair did a great job in story telling, and the book certainly held my attention. Akhila's tale is haunting, and sad, and we're left hoping that she will make something of herself - the question throughout being - does a woman really need love and a man to complete her life?

If you are interested in joining "This Book Makes Me Cook" Club, drop Simran a line.

As for the "foodie" element of this book, there was an excerpt where the train stops at the town of Palghat, Kerala - and Akhila ventures out of her comfort zone to try appam - a lacy pancake and Kerala delicacy - from a railway food vendor. So I decided to try my hand at making some appams for myself, but with a trick up my sleeve....

Check out other club members reviews and offerings: Simran, Sweatha, Sheba and Bhagyashri.

Cranberry Walnut "Short" Scones

The book for the month of November (errr..let's forget that minor detail) at the This Book Makes Me Cook Club was Bread Alone, by Judith Ryan Hendricks. Coincidentally, MY choice!

I have posted my review of the book here, and as is the norm,the "short" scones are what I chose to make. I'm not really sure what a "short" scone is, I'm imagining it's a cross between shortbread and a scone? A baking mongrel perhaps?

The recipe was very straightforward, albeit messy. Whoever thought innocent looking scones would be such a handful to roll and cut? Almost every implement and work surface I used was covered with globs of sticky batter by the time I was done. The scone is buttery, crispy and fairly light, given the proportion of butter to flour that is called for. There is the sharp tang of cranberry to give you a jolt and the faint crackle of the walnuts to give you a little surprise as you chew along. However, I was not very pleased with the results. Why? Because I have an insanely sweet tooth. And get this....These. Scones.Were.Not Sweet.Enough. For Me.The gall of this woman, you scream. Sure, I've made scones before, and have downed many in my lifetime to know that they're not...gasp...muffins. But I needed more sugar in mine, and so I drizzled them with a quick lemon glaze. I liked the scones more then next day, when the tart glaze had settled in and yet the scones had retained a pleasant crunch.But that should not deter you at all, given I wolfed down 4 straight out of the oven with a glass of milk and called it a night.

Jen's Short Scones (adapted from Bread Alone, a novel by Judith Ryan Hendricks)
3 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
1/2 cup dried cranberries, soaked in orange juice for about 10 minutes
1/2 cup chopped, toasted pecans (I substituted walnuts)
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
zest of 1 orange

1. Combine dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
2. Cut in butter until dough resembles large crumbs.
3. Drain cranberries and add to the dough, along with nuts.
4. Whisk milk, egg and orange zest. Add to dry ingredients and mix together until dough clumps into a ball.
5. Roll out onto floured surface, cut into desired shapes and bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for about 25 minutes.

Optional Lemon Glaze

zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
1 cup powdered sugar
1 Tbsp butter

1. Dissolve sugar in lemon juice and add zest. mix in microwave safe bowl.
2. Microwave on High for 1 minute (watch for spills).
3. Add butter to lemon mixture and return to microwave, heat for 30 seconds - 1 minute.
4. Stir glaze, allow to cool for a while and settle. Brush on top of baked scones.

Review of "Bread Alone"

After a disappointing November (in terms of posting) - I'm back! Expect a flood of tired Thanksgiving recipes, and even more eyesore Thanksgiving leftover recipes. Dear friends, you may want to turn away right now!

But first, my review of Bread Alone, which ironically was MY choice for November for the Books That Make Us Cook club.

And I was late for the party...My OWN party.

Judith Ryan Hendricks is the author of this book, and the protagonist is 31 year old Wynter who has just been callously dumped by her self-righteous, yuppie husband and is now forced to fend for herself.

Despite having a supportive, strong mother and the companionship offered by her long time friend CM, she is troubled by the memories of her handsome and wonderful (now deceased) father and why her husband fell so short of that ideal. Blaming herself for the collapse of her marriage, Wyn finds it difficult to move on, and falls into a weeping, grovelling, bratty mess.

She eventually is spurred on to find herself and stand on her own two feet, more out of necessity as her mother decides to re-marry and start a new life, her ex shows no sign of returning despite a last minute seduction ploy by Wyn, and her friend CM moves on with her own job obligations and love interest. Wynter comes across as willful and spoiled at times, but the hurtful way in which her ex deals with her redeems her behavior, and you fight along with her, in a way hoping that she will exact the revenge he so richly deserves.

However, Wyn finds the high road, and delves into some serious introspection, especially after becoming the object of admiration from two male suitors, one of which was a little unnerving for me (warning SPOILER ALERT) - given he was "potentially" a family member.

All through out the journey, Wyn falls back on her first love, being a bread maker or boulanger. We travel across her apprenticeship in France, to her own way of handling crises by baking (now, haven't we seen that theme before?) and finally to her involvement in a small mom-and-pop bakery in Seattle and her relationship with the patrons there.

I do have to credit the author for the level of detail that she went into in describing the art of bread baking. I came out of the book knowing a lot more about the science behind baking and some serious tips to implement in my own kitchen.

However, the book was a little dreary towards the end, I found some of the later chapters where with the dalliances back and forth with her suitors quite boring, and the ending was quite predictable and a let-down. But in that vein, I'm also the one who would have liked an entire chapter devoted to different forms of torture exacted on the cheating ex! Hell hath no fury, you say ;-)

I enjoyed the first half of the book, with its exacting references of California and Wyn's vulnerable, emotional state. The scene on the beach and the drive along Pacific Coast Highway as Wyn struggles to put her life together struck a chord (mainly because I had just travelled to the same area just weeks earlier!). Later on, when the book shifts to Seattle and Wyn's new life, the book becomes dreary and gloomy, ironically taking on the overhanging clouds of grey that mark the Seattle landscape, and the book lost its appeal to me.

Before Jaya clobbers me over the head for not simultaneously posting a recipe, I will seek advance immunity, eat crow and post my recipe from the book shortly...

A Review of "The Hindi-Bindi Club"

The October book choice for the Books That Make Us Cook club was The Hindi-Bindi Club , a novel with recipes, by Monica Pradhan.

I'll be honest that when I first saw the title, I half-rolled my eyes and thought "Oh great - Bollywood fiction, here we come", especially after seeing the jacket cover of the book which had a slightly voluptuous female in a come-hither pose and a barely there sari. That being said, maybe it wasn't my smartest choice to use Amazon's slightly seedy "Click to look inside" link here...

Nope, no Bollywood. No dancing around trees. And no gratuitous ...anything. Lets keep it PG here, folks.

The book trails the lives of three Indian women who emigrated to the US years ago as either trailing spouses, or in the pursuit of higher education. The book intertwines their lives and their constant sentimental pangs to go "home" with the lives of their adult daughters, who grew up in the USA and face the inevitable culture shock of being Indian, but also of not being Indian, but rather American. Standard fare for any second generation Indian who currently resides in the US. Its easy to become an American, but hard to erase the Indian within. To sound cliche, the book did strike me in ways as an Indian version of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.

*Spoiler Alert*
All the characters in the book are fairly free of sterotypes and the reasons for who they are and the way they behave is handled well by the author. In particular, I loved the character of Uma Basu Mcguiness, the Bengali woman who moves to America to pursue a higher education, meets and falls in love with an American, and has to deal with being expelled and excommunicated from her family back in India purely for that reason. In addition, Uma has a sensitive past that she struggles to deal with, her mother committed suicide after bearing four daughters because of the ostracizing dealt to women who do not bear male heirs in their caste and community . The chapter that deals with this storyline was for me the most haunting and well-written in the book. The blessing "May you be a Mother of a Hundred Sons" inadvertently led to a curse on Uma's family that would carry through to the next generation.

I thought the author Monica Pradhan inter-weaved several different life lessons and histories through the story. For example, she painfully recounts the Partition phase of India, and there is a deep assimilation of facts and stories of India's past, where the country was essentially sliced into parts following Independence, and the grief and anguish it caused to families that were separated by new borders.

However, I was confused at how abruptly some stories were cut or edited. I would have liked to understand more about Saroj's infidelity and the need for her to essentially carry on a two-faced life. For this reason alone, she ended up being the least liked character for me.
Or for that matter, the chapter on Uma and her daughter travelling back to India to exhume her mother's journals and the consequent treatment of daughter Rani's character by a sage are choppily written and abruptly ended with no real conclusion or closure.

But lets get back to the food. Each chapter ends with a dish from the region of India that each character is originally from. There is a great representation of Bengali, Punjabi and Maharashtrian food within the novel. I liked how there were recipes for well known delicacies like Chicken Curry and Ghee Rice Pilafs, and then lesser known regional or modern specialities like Bebinca and Sandesh Truffles.

I chose to sample some Bengali food because I have never eaten anything from that region of India - check out my version (of Uma's version) of Shorshe Salmon Maachh .

For other Book Club members and their reviews - see Bombay Foodie, Aparna, Aquadaze and Jaya.

N.B - I took the book on a 3 hour flight to Chicago - kept me well-entertained! Thanks Book Club and Aparna for this choice.

Bengali Grilled Salmon with Spicy Panch Phoron Sauce - Shorshe Salmon Maachh

I chose to make this dish after seeing a verion of it in the book "The Hindi-Bindi club" which was the October choice at Books That Make Us Cook, see my review of the book here.

Each chapter in the book had a recipe that resonated with the main character in the chapter. Since I have ZERO exposure to Bengali food, I wanted to try one of the recipes featured - which was a baked salmon with a mustard glaze.

I already had some panch phoron spice in stock - this is a Bengali five spice - essentially an equal mix of cumin seeds, brown mustard seeds, fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds and nigella seeds.

After I started making the dish per the recipe in the book, I realised I was going to have to make some adjustments. First, the marinade as per the book's recipe seemed too watery, it just called for the panch phoron spice to be blended with water and salt. Well, I tried that and I ended up with a watery paste with some whole seeds floating in it. The panch phoron consists of whole spice seeds, not powder, and that may have been the root of the problem. Then I realised that the salmon would just be dry after grilling it, so I decided to make a gravy to go with it, but also using the panch phoron spice.

I ended up merging the recipe with one I had seen in Cooking Light magazine, where salmon was cooked in a panch phoron "sauce" and named Salmon Kalia. Bengali Food Authenticity Police out there - hopefully, I haven't offended any of you out there with my wrangling of the dish!

Bengali Grilled Salmon (my adaptation from recipe for Shorshe Salmon Maachh in Hindi-Bindi Club - A Novel with Recipes by Monica Pradhan)

3 Tbsp panch phoron spice mix
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp turmeric
1 large salmon fillet cut into 8 pieces
1/2 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp mustard oil (I used olive oil)

1. In a blender, puree the panch phoron, onion, garlic, turmeric, salt and water to a paste.
2.Brush both sides of the salmon fillets with oil, and then rub both sides with the spice paste.
3.Refrigerate the salmon to marinate for a minimum of an hour, but use within 24 hours.
4.Spray a grill pan with non-stick spray. Heat to high. Sear each fillet on the grill until lightly browned on both sides.
5.Remove fillets from grill, and keep aside.

Panch Phoron Vegetable Gravy (slightly adapted from Cooking Light)

1 tsp salt or to taste
3/4 tsp turmeric powder
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp Panch Phoron Blend
1 large onion thinly sliced
1 large peeled Yukon Gold potato, cut into 1/4-inch strips
2 large tomatoes
1 large zucchini cubed
1 cup water
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp minced peeled fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbsp plain low-fat yogurt
5 serrano chiles, halved and seeded
1 tsp Garam Masala
a handful chopped fresh cilantro

1. Combine oil and Panch Phoron Blend in pan; cover and cook for 30 seconds, shaking pan constantly.
2. Add onion, garlic and ginger, chilli powder and garam masala, stir fry till slightly cooked then add potato; stir-fry for 6 minutes or until potatoes begin to brown, stirring frequently.
3. Add tomatoes, salt and zucchini to pan; stir fry, then add water and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender.
4. Reduce heat or take off heat completely and stir in yogurt until well blended (take off heat to prevent curdling).
5. Return salmon fillets to the pan, carefully nestling them into the vegetable mixture.
6.Cover pan and cook 10-20 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork. Sprinkle with cilantro.
Serve with a simple rice dish, I chose peas pulao.