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Caramel Apple Pie

We picked our own apples and peaches last weekend from Larriland Farms (which you should totally visit) if you live near Baltimore. Since we got a lot of apples, we decided to bake an apple pie. Curiously, even though apple pie is an American cultural symbol, it did not originate in the US, and was consumed long before the European colonization of the US (ref). Let us now move on to the recipe:

Ingredients (serves 6)
For pie crust: (you can completely skip this part if you use store bought pie crusts)
3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cups unsalted butter, cold and cut into pieces (about 1.5 sticks)
2 egg yolks
3 tbsp ice cold water
pinch of salt

For caramel:
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp water
1/2 cup red wine
1/4 cup heavy cream (we actually used milk since we did not have heavy cream)
a few drops vanilla essence

For filling:
5 medium sized apples (we used Gala Apples)
1 tbsp all purpose flour
1 tbsp ground cinnamon

Procedure:

We first make the pastry crust. In a large bowl, combine, the flour, salt and the pieces of butter slowly. It is recommended that you use a pastry blender, but since we don't have one, I simply used my hands. Crush any pieces of butter into the flour till they are mixed in fairly well. There will be a lot of clumps at this point. Add the egg yolks and continue to mix. At this point, the dough will start coming together. Add the ice-cold water slowly, taking care not to make the dough too wet. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for an hour.
Meanwhile, peel and slice the apples thin and store them in a bowl full of water and the juice of one lemon to prevent them from browning.


Next, we make the caramel sauce. In a pot, add the sugar and water, and keep stirring on medium heat till all the sugar is dissolved. Remove from flame, and add the cream and wine slowly. Return to heat and add the vanilla essence. Continue to cook till the quantity is halved. Keep aside.

Now we make the pie crust. Remove the dough from the fridge and allow to cool for about 15 minutes till the dough is pliable enough to be rolled. Cut the dough into two separate balls. On a wooden board, roll out the dough balls on a floured wooden board into flat circles large enough to cover your pie pan. Lay one of them flat inside the pie pie pan and press it tight.


Strain the apples from the lemon-water and keep aside. In a large bowl, add the flour and cinnamon powder. Add the apples and toss them well till they are coated with the flour-cinnamon mixture. Now place a layer of apple slices on the bottom of the pastry. Shingle the slices so as to reduce any gaps. Pour some of the caramel sauce evenly on the apples. Now place more apples and repeat the process.


Place the second pastry circle on top of the pie to make the top layer of the pie crust. Cut slits on top of the pie so that steam can escape. Now, ideally you should cover the pie with the pastry layers and pinch the sides so that they are sealed. Unfortunately in my case, I had one store bought crust, and I made the other one myself. So the two of them were not the same size. I realized that this is not a very bad thing as my pie still turned out great.


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the pie pan into the oven. Cover it lightly with a piece of folded aluminum foil. This is called foil tenting, and is done so that the crust does not cook faster than the apples. Bake on middle rack for 25 minutes. Remove the foil tent and cook for about 30 more minutes till the top crust is cooked and the pie is bubbling. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at-least 1 hour, else the pie will break apart.


Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice-cream.

Homemade Guacamole and Chips

Few snacks are as wholly satisfying as guac and tortilla chips.

For tortillas:
4 tortillas (pick your favourite)
2-3 tsp cooking oil (your favourite)

Procedure:
Stack the tortillas and coat one side of each with a little oil. Cut them into sections using a pizza cutter. Lay the pieces on a baking tray and bake them in an oven at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. Flip them over halfway through and check that they are not getting burnt. Repeat if necessary. Healthy tortilla chips.


For guacamole:
4 avocados, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
1 tomato diced
1 onion finely chopped
juice of one lemon (optional)
1 tsp mexican hot sauce
salt to taste

Method:
Add all ingredients in a mixing bowl....squoosh to the desired consistency. There you go!

My new santoku knife

I don't even remember the time when I started dreaming about a good kitchen knife. I recently bought a set of four knives with a knife block, but the past several days, I have been drooling over the idea of owning a santoku knife. I checked out a couple of them in the stores and the price range was very broad. I have never used one before, so I wanted to try out a moderately priced one to see if I really like it, before investing in a more expensive one.

I bought one this evening, and loved using it for the first time. I think one of my favourite parts is how you can scoop up cut veggies into your hand using the knife.

Tamale Pie

This is a real comfort food recipe and a very easy one to make. I tried looking for the provenance of the recipe, but was not really able to find anything concrete. Drop me a line if you know about its origins. This dish is usually cooked with ground beef, but we decided to use ground chicken instead.

Ingredients:
1 store bought pack of ground chicken
1 store bought pie crust
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 large onion
2 tsp freshly ground cumin powder
3/4 cup fresh corn
1 red bell pepper diced
1 cup tomato sauce (puree)
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp cooking oil
1 tsp hot sauce
salt to taste

Procedure:
Heat oil in a pan, and add the chopped onions and garlic. Saute till the onions are translucent. Add the cumin powder and sauté for a minute. Add the ground chicken and keep stirring till the minced chicken is white. Continue to stir making sure there are no lumps. Add the diced bell pepper, corn and tomato sauce and stir well till the tomato sauce is well soaked into the mixture. Add the hot sauce and cook for a minute.



Carefully arrange the pie crust in a baking tray/vessel. Pour the mixture on to the crust. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. Top with the shredded sharp cheddar and bake for 10 more minutes.

Homemade Kulfi

This is an improvisation on a brilliant mango ice-cream recipe that we have tried and loved. With a cool improvisation, it turns into an awesome kulfi recipe.

Ingredients:

1 can condensed milk
1 and a half cans evaporated milk
1 box cool whip
half cup almonds, pistachios and cashews
1 tsp ground cardamoms

Grind the dry-fruits in a food processor into a fine consistency. Mix all ingredients together along with the ground dryfruits in a large vessel till they form a thick smooth paste. Make sure there are no lumps. Freeze for at least 8 hours. Garnish with raisins.


PS: For the original mango ice-cream recipe, replace the evaporated milk with a tin of mango pulp (aamras), and avoid the dryfruits. I promise, it is the best mango ice-cream I have ever eaten.

modprobe for tun driver failed

My school uses the Juniper Network Connect client software to provide a VPN solution. So the typical usage scenario is that you go to vpn.organization.com and login with your credentials. Then you click on the start button against the network connect. Then it installs a java client on your machine and you are connected to the school network, and all is dandy.

This was working fine till I installed Linux Mint 9 Isadora on my laptop and one fine day it just stopped working for me. Every time it would try to install the client, I would get an error message saying:

modprobe for tun driver failed

I searched for solutions online and I found this: http://mad-scientist.us/juniper.html
The guy is providing a custom script to help you install the client on your machine, but I realized that I did not have to go so far. I also found some people saying that the juniper client has had issues with openjdk on certain linux systems. So I went ahead and uninstalled openjdk from my box:
$ sudo apt-get remove openjdk-6-jre

Next I installed sun's jdk and browser plugin:
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-plugin
I restarted the browser, went back to vpn.organization.com, and everything started working fine, even though I continued to get the modprobe error.

My Dum Biryani

I decided to make the vegetable biryani because I was catering to at-least one vegetarian. So here goes...

सामग्री (serves 8 )

3 cups basmati rice
3 medium sized potatoes
3 large carrots
half a cauliflower
2 large onions
1.5 cups yoghurt (dahi)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp whole garam masala (corriander seeds, cumin seeds, cinnamon, black cardamom, cloves...you know, the whole shebang)
1 tsp haldi powder
1 tsp red chilli powder
2 tbsp pulav/biryani masala (store bought...or if you are adventurous, you can make your own)
half cup finely chopped cilantro (hara dhania)
half cup finely chopped mint leaves (hara pudina)
salt to taste

विधि

• First of all, soak the basmati rice in warm water for at-least one hour in advance. Finely slice the onions and fry them in adequate quantity of oil till they acquire a dark brown color. Keep it aside. In the meantime, chop all the vegetables into bite size pieces. (make them larger than usual i.e. if you are cooking a sabzi)

• In a large pan or kadhai, add some oil. When the oil gets hot, add the whole garam masala and saute for a couple of seconds. Add some jeera, and ginger garlic paste. Now add the chopped vegetables.  Add the red chilli powder, haldi powder, biryani masala and salt to taste. Saute for 5 minutes. Keep stirring occasionally. Add half the quantity of yoghurt, and half the quantity of the chopped mint and cilantro. Make sure that all the pieces of vegetables are coated nicely. We need to cook these vegetables to about 70-80%. Try to cut into a piece of potato. It should not be too hard, and at the same time, don't allow them to cook all the way.

• In another pan, bring a quart of water to a rolling boil. Add some oil, and some whole garam masala to the water. Add the pre-soaked rice to the water. We need to cook this rice to about 70-80%. This will take only about 3-4 minutes in the boiling water since the rice has been soaked for an hour (keep checking the rice). Drain the excess water and keep the rice aside.


• Now comes the part where we layer the vegetables and the rice in a medium sized container (I found the pressure cooker container to be ideal size for this). Add half the rice to the cooker. Add a little more than half of the cooked vegetables on top of the rice. Add the rest of the yoghurt on top. Heat this up a little on low flame while mixing it up nicely. Check for seasoning and add more salt if needed. Add a layer of the fried onions.

• Now add all but a little of the remaining rice on top of the onions. Stack the remaining cooked vegetables on top of the rice, and add the rest of the chopped onions.  Finally top with the last bit of the rice. Garnish with the remaining chopped mint and cilantro

• Cover the cooker with a flat plate, and seal the edges with a bit of dough. Place this vessel into a double boiler as shown in the image below. Cook on medium flame for 30 minutes.

• Open the cooker after 30 minutes to a beautiful aroma.

• Serve with boondi raita (recipe for that in another post).

Some Like it Cold

Vichyssoise soup is a thick vegetable based soup that is very often served cold.  There is some debate about whether this soup is a French or an American creation. This soup can be served both  hot and cold, but I wanted to cook it because I had never tried a cold soup before. The following is the recipe:

सामग्री (serves 5)

1 leek

1 bunch scallions

1 large zuccini

1 red potato

1/4 head cabbage

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

2 tsp sugar

salt to taste

1/2 cup whole milk (I used this instead of heavy cream)

2 and a half cups water (or chicken broth)

1/2 stick butter

1 tbsp cooking oil (use your favourite)

विधि

Roughly chop all the vegetables and keep aside. In a large saucepan, add the butter, oil and ground nutmeg. Let the butter melt. Add all the chopped vegetables, salt and sugar and stir till the vegetables start to cook. Add the milk and water and bring to boil. Reduce the flame to medium and simmer covered for 20 minutes.

Remove the pan from the flame. Use a hand-blender to blend the contents of the pan to form a think soup like consistency. If you don't have a hand blender, use a tabletop blender or food processor. Fill only up to 1/3 the capacity of the blender at a time. Refrigerate the soup for at-least four hours.

Before serving, check seasoning, and stir in some heavy cream if you like (or not, if you are afraid of the calorie mafia. you can also substitute heavy cream by whole milk). Garnish with freshly chopped parsley. Serve with toasted baguette.

Blank Un-numbered pages in a latex manuscript

I recently submitted my MS thesis to the university graduate school. After a couple of days, I got an email from them saying:

Your manuscript requires three blank, unnumbered pages: one at the beginning of your manuscript, the second one after the copyright page and the third one at the end of your manuscript.

Now, since my thesis was formatted using latex, it took a little bit of searching. The solution was quite simple, but not so easy to find. Thanks Night Walker.

\newpage
\thispagestyle{empty}
\mbox{}

Add the above block of code to your main document and you will be good to go. Essentially this creates a new page with an empty style, and adds an mbox with empty text.

Sarah Dunant: The Birth of Venus

This book is the coming of age story of a girl in 15th century Florence, (and in many ways is also the coming of age story of the city itself). Alessandra grows up in Florence and witnesses the historical events that unfold in the city, like the death of Lorenzo de Medici, the iron fist of Girolamo Savonarola, and later, his downfall, the threat of the French invasion, and a terrible plague. There is also a serial killer on the lose who some readers believe, turned out to be a famous painter.

Alessandra is a young girl full of life, who is constrained by the mores of the society around her, as she struggles to find her freedom. Alessandra's story is the central plot of the novel, although several fates of the women of that period are represented through various female characters in the story. Dunant has very cleverly blended fact with fiction to produce a masterful tale full of the colors and textures of Florence. She adds a very artistic touch by describing episodes from the lives of contemporary painters and even dropping intriguing hints about their involvement in the story.

Cooking with beer

Yes, that is right. Beer can be, and is used in a lot of dishes. If you think that is strange, read this. Apart from what you will read on that page, let me tell you that beer adds a very distinct flavor to your food that is unlike anything you might have tasted before.

We will call this particular recipe squash and tofu in thai(?) peanut sauce and serve it on top of egg noodles.

Ingredients (serves 2)

1. 2 nests egg noodles


2. 4 medium sized yellow squash


3. 1 cup diced tofu (preferably tofu patties that you get in the Asian store)


4. 2/3 cup bitter-ish lager


5. 5-6 cloves garlic


6. 1 large onion


7. 1/2 cup peanut butter


8. 1 can coconut milk


9. 1 tsp fish sauce


10. 1/2 tsp chili garlic paste


11. 1 and half tsp curry powder


12. 1 lemon


13. salt to taste

• One thing I learned about cooking tofu is that you must marinate tofu in advance if you want it to soak all the flavors. Mix 1/3 cup beer (we used bitterish lager) with the juice of 1 lemon, crushed garlic from about 3-4 cloves, 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tsp of curry powder (important ingredient!). Marinate diced yellow squash and diced tofu in this mixture for 2 hours or more in the refrigerator. Preserve this marinate for later use. Do not discard.

• In a pan, add finely chopped onions, and saute till they are translucent. Add crushed garlic from 1-2 cloves and saute for a minute. Add 1/2 tsp of curry powder and saute for a couple of more minutes.

• In a large bowl, mix a can of coconut milk, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1/3 cup beer, 1/2 cup peanut butter, and 1 tsp fish sauce (you can find this at your nearby Asian store. substitute by soy sauce if you can't find it). Add the leftover marinate.

• Add this mixture to the pan with onions. Add salt to taste, and 1/2 tsp chili garlic paste. Add the marinated tofu and squash. Cook till the gravy attains the desired consistency. Serve on top of egg noodles.

Cooking with beer

Yes, that is right. Beer can be, and is used in a lot of dishes. If you think that is strange, read this. Apart from what you will read on that page, let me tell you that beer adds a very distinct flavor to your food that is unlike anything you might have tasted before.

We will call this particular recipe squash and tofu in thai(?) peanut sauce and serve it on top of egg noodles.

Ingredients (serves 2)

1. 2 nests egg noodles


2. 4 medium sized yellow squash


3. 1 cup diced tofu (preferably tofu patties that you get in the Asian store)


4. 2/3 cup bitter-ish lager


5. 5-6 cloves garlic


6. 1 large onion


7. 1/2 cup peanut butter


8. 1 can coconut milk


9. 1 tsp fish sauce


10. 1/2 tsp chili garlic paste


11. 1 and half tsp curry powder


12. 1 lemon


13. salt to taste

• One thing I learned about cooking tofu is that you must marinate tofu in advance if you want it to soak all the flavors. Mix 1/3 cup beer (we used bitterish lager) with the juice of 1 lemon, crushed garlic from about 3-4 cloves, 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tsp of curry powder (important ingredient!). Marinate diced yellow squash and diced tofu in this mixture for 2 hours or more in the refrigerator. Preserve this marinate for later use. Do not discard.

• In a pan, add finely chopped onions, and saute till they are translucent. Add crushed garlic from 1-2 cloves and saute for a minute. Add 1/2 tsp of curry powder and saute for a couple of more minutes.

• In a large bowl, mix a can of coconut milk, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1/3 cup beer, 1/2 cup peanut butter, and 1 tsp fish sauce (you can find this at your nearby Asian store. substitute by soy sauce if you can't find it). Add the leftover marinate.

• Add this mixture to the pan with onions. Add salt to taste, and 1/2 tsp chili garlic paste. Cook till the gravy attains the desired consistency. Serve on top of egg noodles.

Updated to wordpress 3.0

I have been wanting to update my blogging software from its original archaic version that I installed over a year ago. Yesterday I finally decided that I cannot wait any longer because the old version of the wordpress software was not letting me link images from external hosting services like picasa. So I bit the bullet and did the whole updating process. I did the manual update because my ancient version did not even support the automatic update.

So I took a backup of the database, a manual backup of the entire blog directory using ftp, and just followed the instructions. True to the word, it updated the web-app and the MySQL database in a matter of seconds. I really like this new interface, but I am still looking for desktop publishing applications that can simplify the blog post process easier for me because I hate to have to muck with the HTML code myself. So, I am going to experiment with a couple of publishing applications for a while.

Poaching an egg

Do you remember this scene from Julie and Julia? After watching it, I felt that poaching an egg requires some kind of black magic, and that it is extremely difficult for you to poach an egg without an egg poacher. I checked out a book by Jamie Oliver, and his advice was similar to that of Julia Child (as in the video). A google search gives you a tonne of conflicting advise. Finally, I found a way that has always worked for me:

• Take lots of water in a saucepan and bring it to a light boil. Add a teaspoon of salt, and a teaspoon of the secret ingredient: vinegar. Vinegar helps the egg white to cook as soon as the egg is dropped into the water. This is what helps you avoid the disastrous "scrambled egg soup".

• Now reduce the flame a little so that the water is not boiling hard. When the water is relatively calm, use a spoon to twirl the water in the pan so as to create a mini-whirlpool.

• Gently crack an egg, taking care not to break the yolk; and drop it into the center of the whirlpool. Drop the egg from close to the surface of the water.

• That's it. Waiting and watching: the only two things you need to do. No need to push the egg-white around. You will notice that the egg starts to cook immediately as it falls into the water, and it starts to congeal around the yolk. Cooking time varies between 90 seconds to three minutes depending on how well done you want it to be.

• Use a slotted spoon to gently scoop the cooked egg from the pan. Serve it on some good toasted bread (for those in Baltimore, try the raisin pumpernickel from Atwaters)

Poaching an egg

Do you remember this scene from Julie and Julia? After watching it, I felt that poaching an egg requires some kind of black magic, and that it is extremely difficult for you to poach an egg without an egg poacher. I checked out a book by Jamie Oliver, and his advice was similar to that of Julia Child (as in the video). A google search gives you a tonne of conflicting advise. Finally, I found a way that has always worked for me:

• Take lots of water in a saucepan and bring it to a light boil. Add a teaspoon of salt, and a teaspoon of the secret ingredient: vinegar. Vinegar helps the egg white to cook as soon as the egg is dropped into the water. This is what helps you avoid the disastrous "scrambled egg soup".

• Now reduce the flame a little so that the water is not boiling very hard. When the water is relatively calm, use a spoon to twirl the water in the pan so as to create a mini-whirlpool in the pan.

• Gently crack an egg and drop it in the center of the whirlpool. Make sure that you do not break the yolk, and drop it from close to the surface of the water.

• That's it. All you now need to do for poaching your egg is to wait and watch. No need to push the egg-white around. You will notice that the egg starts to cook immediately as it falls into the water, and it starts to congeal around the yolk. Cooking time varies between 90 seconds to three minutes depending on how well done you want it to be.

• Use a slotted spoon to gently remove the egg from the pan. Serve it on some good toasted bread (for those in Baltimore, try the raisin pumpernickel from Atwaters)

Sunday Brunch

As a graduate Indian student in the US, my weekend meals are a not a deterministic phenomenon. Cooking turns on weekdays are a regular thing on the schedule, but one meal I always enjoy, and hence look forward to, is the Sunday morning breakfast/brunch (depending on the time of waking up). Moreover, the whole act of cooking together in the morning is an entertaining prospect in itself.

We are big fans of cooking eggs for breakfast. And why not? The number of really good breakfast dishes you can make with eggs, and other commonly available ingredients is just plain delightful. I think half the fun in cooking eggs is sometimes not knowing till the end, how it is going to turn out. I revel in the suspense of whether this is going to turn out to be an omelette or part-scrambled.

The uncertainty at all times is due to the unpredictable nature of some of the frying pans we use.A good quality frying pan always lets you cleanly slide your cooked eggs on to the plate. I just love it when that happens. But if your frying pan is old, then it may be a bit of an effort taking the eggs off the pan, and you may not get everything in one piece.



Anyway, enough said about the dynamics of eggs and pans. Lets cook breakfast for two.First up, the eggs. You will need six eggs (6 whites and 3 yolks for those who are inclined). Add some salt and black pepper powder and beat them up till they are real nice and fluffy. Add a little milk if you wish.

Next, take a couple of button mushrooms. Chop them up into bite size pieces.

Fire up your frying pan now, and add some extra virgin olive oil (any cooking oil in your kitchen will do). Throw in the mushrooms and sauté till they are slightly brown.

Remember that mushrooms cook really quickly; so you don't want to overcook them. Add a teaspoon of ginger and garlic paste, and continue to sauté.

Add some chopped spinach to the pan, if you have any, and continue to sauté till the spinach seems to be cooked (this does not take more than a few minutes). She taught me to do the following: use a pair of ordinary kitchen scissors to chop the spinach right over the pan for small quantities. It is quick, easy and clean.

After doing this for a couple of minutes, add the eggs to the pan. Hold the handle of the pan and shake it a little so that the veggies and the eggs are spread evenly and form a uniform coat.

Let it cook for a minute or so, and then add a few pieces of mozzarella cheese into the pan. Any kind of cheese that mixes/melts easily will do. We like trying out different varieties of cheese. The last time it was goat cheese. The mexican three cheese blend that you get in the grocery store is also great for adding to eggs.

Now reduce the heat to low flame, cover the pan and let it cook for a couple of minutes till the eggs are a lot less runny. You still want to keep them a bit runny in the end - don't overcook.

In the meantime, lets make some smoothie. Nothing better than something healthy to drink along with your eggs. Take some oatmeal in a bowl, add double the quantity of water, and cook it in the microwave for 3 minutes. Take a blender, add the cooked oatmeal, a bunch of blueberries (any berries of your choice will work),a banana cut into pieces, and a generous quantity of yoghurt.Blend for a couple of seconds.

Then add some milk and some maple syrup to taste (honey works just as well). Continue to blend till you get a smooth consistency. Pour into glasses. Meanwhile, keep checking on the eggs once in a while.

We like them when they are still a wee bit runny. Lob off a piece of butter on top of your omelette and let it melt. Use a table knife (or wooden spatula) to cut it into slices while still in the pan.

Finally, toast a few slices of some really good bread from your local bakery. For those in Baltimore, she highly recommends (and I endorse) the sunflower flaxseed bread from Atwaters. Enjoy your meal!