Sundried tomato and roasted garlic bread

Tell you what, I'm really enjoying baking bread. I can say quite definitively that I'm no longer afraid of working with yeast - instant or fresh. I've actually got into the rhythm of baking two loaves of bread (sometimes three) pretty much every other Saturday. They're mostly a mix of white and wholewheat bread for everyday use, and sometimes I bake a third loaf which might be a flavoured one, to go with soups and suchlike.

The bread loaves get sliced - and I'm getting pretty good at cutting even, thin slices, even if I do say so myself - divided into half-loaves and fed to the freezer, stored in bags labelled with the date of baking. That way I get to rotate recycle use up the bread, oldest ones first. Yep, I'm THAT organised. It's kind of disconcerting, even to me. Or especially to me, because only I know just how alien this behaviour is to me.

Now that you've all been made aware of my weekend baking activities and the resulting follow-ons - which information I'm sure has been of great interest, by the way - let's get to the sundried tomato and roasted garlic bread that is today's recipe. By rights it should have been posted two months back, because that's about when I made it... but never mind that. The bread is really nice with soup, but I was happy to eat it by itself, with no adornments, because it was that tasty. Can't say better than that, can I? 

By the way, if you don't like a strong garlic flavour, use less of the roasted garlic paste... and if your thing is to wilt every living thing within a 10-metre radius with your breath, by all means use MORE garlic paste, as much as you want. At least Dracula won't get you.

Recipe for: Sundried tomato and roasted garlic bread

Ingredients:

3-1/2 cups (15 oz) strong white bread flour
2-3 tbsp olive or other oil of choice
2 tbsp double concentrated tomato paste
1 tbsp roasted garlic, roughly mashed
1/4 cup chopped sundried tomatoes in oil (but leave out the oil)
1 htsp salt
About 300 ml warm water
1/2 tbsp instant yeast

Method:

1. Place the flour in a deep bowl and mix in the instant yeast and salt.
2. Then add the roasted garlic, tomato paste, and chopped sundried tomatoes

along with 250 ml of the warm water and mix together till the flour begins to form a rough dough. Cover and let it rest for 10 minutes to absorb the water.
3. Now knead again, adding as much of the remaining 50ml water as required, to make a dough that is not exactly sloppy but also not hard or dry either.
4. Pour 1 tbsp olive oil on your worktop (make sure your worktop is clean first!) or kneading board and spread it around a bit. Turn the dough out onto the oil and start kneading, pushing the dough away from you with the heel of your hand, turning it a quarter, then repeating the pushing/turning movement. Add more oil to the worktop if the dough starts sticking again, and continue kneading. Occasionally scrape your hand clean of dough.
5. After about 8-10 minutes, the dough should be elastic and only a little tacky. Now grease a large bowl (I use Pam spray, but you can use more oil if you like) and place the dough in it, turning it around to completely coat it in the oil. Cover the bowl and place in a warm place for the dough to rise and more or less double in volume. This can take between 1-2 hours, or even longer - there's no way to accurately predict how long it might take, so I can't give you a precise time.
6. Once the dough is risen, punch it back down. Sprinkle a couple of tbsp extra flour on your workspace and put the dough on it. Shape it into a round ball, place on a baking tray (flour the top of the dough lightly if you like) and cover with a clean tea-towel. Let the dough rise again for 45 min to an hour. Use a sharp knife to slash a 1-cm deep cross into the top.

7. Preheat your oven to 180C/350F and put the dough in to bake. Let it bake for 25-30 minutes - the top should be a nice golden brown and the bottom should sound hollow when tapped.

Remove the loaf to a wire cooling rack and let cool completely. Serve sliced, with soup.

Mediterranean-style aubergine

I think this is the second recipe on my blog that involves aubergines. In five years plus of blogging, only the second recipe. There is a very good reason for this – I hate aubergines. Pete likes them, though, and occasionally guilt overcomes loathing and I make something specially for him, with the purple horrors as the star ingredient. (The guilt has to build up slowly over the years, as there is an awful lot of loathing to overcome.)

Anyway, this is very definitely an aubergine lover’s dream dish. It’s supposed to be served as a side with grilled lamb chops, but if you’re vegetarian, feel free to dive right in. It’s a pretty dry dish – it might even do well as part of a tapas spread, come to think of it. The onion base tastes absolutely delicious with the garlic and balsamic vinegar and pine nuts, and I am going to make the dish again, at some point, with bell peppers - although I’d probably leave out the raisins. Should do very nicely over spiced couscous, methinks...

Recipe for: Mediterranean-style aubergine

Ingredients:

4 cups baby aubergines, quartered
4 cloves garlic, thickly sliced
2 small onions, sliced very fine
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
8-10 baby plum tomatoes, cut in half
3 tbsp sundried tomatoes
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
2 tbsp pine nuts
2 tbsp raisins
2 tsp caster sugar
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
Salt to taste

Method:

1. Heat 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil in a large pan and add the garlic and onion.

2. Cook for about 5 minutes over a medium heat, until soft and just starting to brown. Remove from the pan and reserve.

3. Turn up the heat a bit, add the remaining olive oil to the pan. Add the cumin seeds.

4. Now add the aubergine and fry it, stirring often, for 7-8 minutes, until the aubergine is soft and starting to brown.

5. Sprinkle in the raisins and pine nuts and stir it all together.

6. Throw in the reserved onion and garlic,

plus the halved plum tomatoes and the ovendried/sundried tomatoes.

7. Cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes begin to soften.
8. Sprinkle 2 tsp caster sugar and 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar, 2 tbsp white wine vinegar over the aubergine. Stir together until well combined. Add salt to taste, check for seasoning, then remove from the heat.

9. Serve warm with couscous, or at room temperature as a snack.
Garnish with a few mint leaves sliced into strips.

RECIPE: MEDITERRANEAN-STYLE AUBERGINE

Ingredients:
4 cups baby aubergines, quartered
4 cloves garlic, thickly sliced
2 small onions, sliced very fine
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
8-10 baby plum tomatoes, cut in half
3 tbsp sundried tomatoes
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
2 tbsp pine nuts
2 tbsp raisins
2 tsp caster sugar
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
Salt to taste

Method:

1. Heat 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil in a large pan and add the garlic and onion.
2. Cook for about 5 minutes over a medium heat, until soft and just starting to brown. Remove from the pan and reserve.
3. Turn up the heat a bit, add the remaining olive oil to the pan. Add the cumin seeds.
4. Now add the aubergine and fry it, stirring often, for 7-8 minutes, until the aubergine is soft and starting to brown.
5. Sprinkle in the raisins and pine nuts and stir it all together.
6. Throw in the reserved onion and garlic, plus the halved plum tomatoes and the ovendried/sundried tomatoes.
7. Cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes begin to soften.
8. Sprinkle 2 tsp caster sugar and 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar, 2 tbsp white wine vinegar over the aubergine. Stir together until well combined. Add salt to taste, check for seasoning, then remove from the heat.
9. Serve warm, stirred into couscous, or at room temperature as a salad. Garnish with a few mint leaves sliced into strips.

Sun-dried/oven-dried tomato coconut thogayal

How do you come up with new recipes? Or new variations on old recipes? According to what I’ve read about professional chefs and from what semi-professional food bloggers write on their super-professional looking blogs, they spend hours (days, weeks, years... a lifetime?) experimenting with new flavours and colours and fusions and whatnot. They’re never discouraged by failure, they never tire of trying the same recipe over and over until they get it right, they spend every spare moment away from their actual jobs on perfecting a recipe – and when the dish makes its triumphal entry onto a menu or a blog, it’s to the exciting fanfare of self-blown trumpets ably backed up by the fluting of friends, fans and family.

All very impressive, and all very well... but what I’ve always wanted to know is - who actually eats the end results of those endless experimentations? It’s easy enough with the successful results, but what if the recipe isn’t to anybody’s taste? What about the downright failures? (Ok, the dustbin would be the grateful recipient there, fair enough.) What about the not-so-successful-but-not-dumpworthy-either results? These experimentally creative folk must have mighty accommodating families. Because mine, sadly, isn’t made that way. My family is thrilled to eat the nice things but completely remorseless about shunning the less edible. And if something is not to their taste made one way, there’s no chance that they’d try it made some other way – ESPECIALLY on an experimental basis.

Can’t blame them. I’m that way too. If a recipe is a failure for whatever reason, I never look back. I certainly don’t have the patience or the willingness to try it different ways till I hit upon the right one. There are billions of recipes out there, a few million of which I want to try, so repeatedly trying one recipe just isn’t going to happen. Plus, there’s the question of cost, not to mention food wastage. I’m the first to admit that I could probably do much better in the latter department, so deliberately making something again that wasn’t a success the first time around – nope, not happening.

Now, how I happen upon recipes is through sheer chance - I don't have the imagination or the creativity to actively invent something. My kind of invention is passive. Oh bother, there's that bit of stuff left, I don't want to store it in a teeny box in the fridge... heck, let's see what happens if I just use it in this recipe. And that's how my variations evolve. This one came about because I wanted to finish up the last of the oven-dried tomatoes I'd made two weeks back. So much for experimentation...

Recipe for: Sundried/ovendried tomato coconut thogayal

Ingredients:

1/3 cup grated coconut
2 tbsp sundried or oven-dried tomatoes (not the kind packed in oil)
marble sized piece of dried tamarind OR 1/2 tsp tamarind paste
4-8 dried red chillies (or to taste)
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 tsp urad dal
10-12 curry leaves
1/8 tsp asafoetida powder
2 tsp oil
Salt to taste
4-6 tbsp hot water as required

Method:

1. Rehydrate the sun-dried tomatoes in hot water for 15 minutes. Drain off the water and reserve.


2. Heat the oil in a small pan, then add the asafoetida powder, red chillies, curry leaves, urad dal and garlic, and fry it all on medium heat, stirring, till the dal turns golden brown.


3. Cool, then grind the above (reserving 1/2 tsp of the fried dal) along with 2 tsp coconut and the tamarind to a smooth paste. Then add the rehydrated tomatoes and the rest of the coconut, adding 3-4 tbsp hot water, and grind again to a smooth paste.


4. Remove to a bowl and add salt to taste and the reserved fried urad dal, mixing well to combine thoroughly.

5. Serve with a dollop of ghee/nallennai (gingelly oil) added to steamed rice, or as a side dish for dosas, chapathis, idlis etc.

RECIPE: SUNDRIED/OVENDRIED TOMATO COCONUT THOGAYAL

Ingredients:

1/3 cup grated coconut
2 tbsp sundried or oven-dried tomatoes (not the kind packed in oil)
marble sized piece of dried tamarind OR 1/2 tsp tamarind paste
4-8 dried red chillies (or to taste)
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 tsp urad dal
10-12 curry leaves
1/8 tsp asafoetida powder
2 tsp oil
Salt to taste
4-6 tbsp hot water as required

Method:

1. Rehydrate the sun-dried tomatoes in hot water for 15 minutes. Drain off the water and reserve.
2. Heat the oil in a small pan, then add the asafoetida powder, red chillies, curry leaves, urad dal and garlic, and fry it all on medium heat, stirring, till the dal turns golden brown.
3. Cool, then grind the above (reserving 1/2 tsp of the fried dal) along with 2 tbsp coconut and the tamarind to a smooth paste. Then add the rehydrated tomatoes and the rest of the coconut, adding 3-4 tbsp hot water, and grind again to a smooth paste.
4. Remove to a bowl and add salt to taste and the reserved fried urad dal, mixing well to combine thoroughly.
5. Serve with a dollop of ghee/nallennai (gingelly oil) added to steamed rice, or as a side dish for dosas, chapathis, idlis etc.

Pasta with rocket (arugula) pesto

When I was new to pasta and found out that there were all sorts of different shapes available, I used to imagine that they would all taste different as well, perhaps because of being made from different things (in keeping with the varied shapes). I didn’t realise then that the pasta shapes were made with different styles of sauces in mind – thick and meaty sauces would need large shapes that would hold the sauce, pasta salads would only require small shapes with no "holding" characteristics and so on.

So when a more world-cuisine-savvy friend of mine pointed out that all pasta, no matter the shape or size, were made from durum wheat (with minor variations like the addition of egg or spinach), I was terribly disappointed.

“You mean they all have different names and look different but are made from the same ingredients?" I asked disbelievingly.

"Yes," he said, uncompromisingly.

"Are you quite sure? They're all made from the same ingredients?” I asked for the second time in as many minutes, unwilling to let go of my illusion that each had its own taste.

“Yes, quite sure,” he said again, unable to figure out why I sounded so let-down.

I persisted with my questioning even in the face of his blunt reply. “Then they all taste the same? Just the sauces are different? All the cooked pasta have the same bland taste?"

“YES,” he said, again uncompromisingly but this time with an added edge of irritation.

“But then what’s the POINT?” I wailed.

“What do you mean, what’s the point?” Full-on exasperation, there.

“What’s the POINT of having different shapes if it’s all just the same damn thing? What’s the big deal about pasta then? It’s really the sauce that matters, not the pasta itself.”

And that was when I got the lecture about diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, to use a phrase not coined by me in a context probably totally unlike the original coining.

Although I eventually learnt to accept that all pasta may just be pasta but none of them are JUST pasta, still in my heart of hearts there lingers the faint echo of my original outburst... “But what’s the big deal about pasta, then?”

On the other hand, I’ve had people say to me, on being informed that South Indian cuisine is based predominantly around rice with different “sauces” (sambar, rasam, kootu, etc) to flavour it: “But rice is just like pasta then, isn’t it?”

It has been only with the greatest reluctance that I could bring myself to admit that yes, in that ONE way rice IS like pasta... but it’s also so very much MORE than pasta! Different varieties of rice, when cooked, taste and smell different and have different textures. I’m guessing that it’s only of late that scientists have been “inventing” new varieties of rice – but even that is only reinvention (using Nature’s bounty) at best, or tampering (with Nature’s bounty) at worst.

Pasta, on the other hand, completely an artificial invention (seen any pasta fields lately, folks?), has no distinguishing natural characteristics by way of shape or size (beyond those created by humans) or taste (beyond the “taste” of the sauce in which it is dunked).

So, bottomline - no, pasta is most definitely not like rice.

However, over the years, I’ve quite learnt to like pasta and I do understand about the shapes and sizes and uses.

Here’s a recipe with one of each – size, shape and use.

Recipe for: Pasta with rocket (arugula) pesto



Ingredients:

Whole-wheat pasta - orecchiette or conchigliette for choice, but penne or farfalle will do
4 cups rocket (arugula), washed and patted dry
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves



3-4 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup pine nuts (can substitute walnuts)
About 1/4 cup good quality extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup sundried tomatoes in oil, well drained
Salt and pepper to taste
Grated or shaved Parmigiano reggiano for garnish

Method:

1. Toast the pine nuts in a skillet till golden brown, taking care not to burn them. Set aside to cool.



2. In a food processor or mixie, add half the toasted pine nuts (reserving the other half), garlic, rocket (arugula) leaves and basil. Squeeze or pour the lemon juice over the leaves.



3. Now add olive oil little by little, as required, to help grind the leaves and nuts smoothly.



You might not need to use all the olive oil, just use as much as required.



4. When the ingredients have been ground up into a fairly smooth pesto, remove the pesto to a bowl.



5. Add plenty of pepper and salt to taste.



6. Cook the pasta till al dente in plenty of salted water, and drain off the water when the pasta is done. Return the pasta to the pan.

7. Slice the drained sundried tomatoes thinly.



8. Add 3-4 tbsp of the pesto to the pasta and mix in thoroughly. Taste for seasoning and add more pesto if required, making sure that every bit of the pasta is covered.

Add the sliced sundried tomatoes and stir them in,



then add the reserved toasted pine nuts. Toss or stir the pasta to distribute the pine nuts evenly.



9. Serve the pasta in warmed bowls with generous shavings or gratings of parmigiano reggiano as garnish.

Savoury methi-mustard muffins

I like baking muffins - they're so quick and easy to do. Unfortunately I enjoy the baking part way better than the eating part, because of my under-developed sweet tooth. Pete likes muffins warm from the oven but once they cool down, they lie around neglected. And his kids, aged nearly 11 and nearly 13, dont like muffins at all - yeah, practically unbelievable, but true. So I dont do muffins nearly as often as I'd like to.

However, today I was in the mood. I had a basic recipe for herb and cheese muffins, so I decided to see what I could do with mostly Indian ingredients, but with a slight western touch. To that end, I picked about a cupful of coriander and fenugreek leaves. Then, because I didnt want to use cheddar cheese with those particular herbs (yep, methi leaves are classified under "herb" rather than "greens" for this recipe!) and didnt quite know what else to add, I rummaged around in my kitchen shelves to see what I could come up with.

That turned out to be a jar of whole-grain mustard with black pepper and white wine, with about a heaped tbsp remaining. Wondering all the time whether it was a good idea, I emptied out the mustard and added it to the batter. And still on an experimental note, I sprinkled parmesan cheese on some of the muffins, and added drained, chopped sundried tomatoes in oil to the rest, and set them to bake, hoping for the best.



Boy oh boy, it turned out to be a tremendous success - Pete liked them (didnt bother trying them on the kids - they're SO resistant to anything different, it's amazing) although, since he was expecting sweet muffins, he was taken aback at first by the savoury flavour. But he agreed that they would be perfect with soup - or even parma ham (which combination he's welcome to try - I dont touch the stuff).



As for me, I absolutely loved the muffins! They would, as Pete said, be the perfect accompaniment to soup and salad for a light, healthy meal. If I can keep my hands off them before dinner, that is.

Next time I would probably add some chopped green chillies, because I think I would like the muffins even better with some added zing. Yummm....

Recipe for: Savoury methi-mustard muffins



Ingredients:

2 eggs
1/4 cup butter/margarine
1/3 cup chopped fresh fenugreek leaves and coriander leaves
2 cups self-rising flour
1 heaped tbsp whole-grain mustard
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup low-fat/whole milk (use according to preference
Optional
3-4 tbsp parmesan cheese, grated
2 tbsp sundried tomatoes in oil, drained and chopped

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C (350F). Spray/grease a 12-cup muffin pan lightly with oil

2. In a medium bowl, beat the butter/margarine and mustard till well mixed

3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between additions.

4. Mix in the chopped herbs

5. Add the salt, baking soda, flour and milk to the batter and fold in quickly but gently till the ingredients are just mixed. Do NOT overbeat or the muffins will turn out tough

6. Spoon the batter into 6 of the muffin cups, leaving the tops rough. Sprinkle the tops with the parmesan cheese.

7. To the remaining batter, add the chopped sundried tomatoes, mixing lightly. Spoon the batter into the remaining 6 cups.

8. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or till the muffins are golden brown and done.

9. Serve warm as they are, or with soup and salad.