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Category Archives: Indian

Whole wheat short bread biscuits

Posted on June 23, 2010 by Priyanka| 11 Comments

As a kid in India, I ate more biscuits then cookies. Biscuits were more of a regular supermarket thing and cookies well that was bought fresh from the bakery by my Mum every Friday. We ate a lot of assorted cookies and they would vanish in no time. I guess the craze for the cookie was more because it was not as readily available as biscuits were.

Now that there is a cornucopia of cookies around me, I crave my childhood memories aka biscuits. I could kill for some home made biscuits. These short bread “cookies” or biscuits I am showing you are straight from my cooking classes recipe book. Yeah I had taken cooking classes when I was in high school.

As usual I modified the recipe,instead of white flour, I use WW flour. The result nothing short of amazing. The husband and I ate half the batch in the process of taking pictures for this post.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups whole wheat flour

1/4 cup wheat bran

1 stick (4oz) butter chilled (Margarine to make it vegan)

1/2 cup powdered sugar

4-5 tbsp milk or water to knead the dough

First I mixed the dry ingredients i.e. the whole wheat flour, powdered sugar and some wheat bran.
To the dry mix, I added 1 stick of chilled butter. The butter has to be cold, so you break it into small pieces and work into the mix with your fingers.
Work your way through till the mixture resembles bread crumbs,something like below.

Once you achieve this, knead the dough on a flat surface sprinkled with some dry flour to prevent the dough from sticking. Knead it till you get some like this,

Get the rolling pin out and get rolling. Roll till you get it about a 1/4 “ in thickness.

Now use any cookie cutter you have and get cutting. I used these cutters. My mum used these when we were kids. So this time I stole them when I went to visit my parents. They are a bit damaged, but I’ll do anything to preserve those memories, even if that means eating out of shape cookies

I made some round too. All of them going in a 350 F oven.

13 minutes and the final product.

Let me know what you think, if you have made them before and have some tips to share, I’ll be glad to hear ya!

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Fitness:

This morning I woke up early..I know can you believe it Went to the gym did my C25K day4 week2. I was a bit irregular with my gym last week so, I am going to week 2 again. I want to be comfortable with this stage before proceeding to the next level.

I making a point to bring yoga back in my life. Once home from the gym, I did 10 sun salutations and Pranayam for 5 minutes.

Tomorrow is my Yoga day, I am excited. I am actually looking forward to it.

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Question:

I am supposed to take something for a potluck lunch on Friday at work.The theme is a picnic menu.Can you give me some good suggestions which will be quick and easy to make? I was thinking black bean and corn salad. What say??

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Posted in Cookies, Indian, Recipes, Vegetarian

Tagged Biscuits, Couch 2 5K, Yoga

Coconut Lime chicken

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Priyanka| 7 Comments

I think there are just two reasons that prevent people from cooking Indian food and mind you these reason apply to most of the Indians too. Many girls from my generation take pride in saying that, “Oh, I have never stepped into the kitchen in my life and I have no idea how to cook” This statement just makes me smile within myself.While there are people who genuinely don’t cook,some find it “cool” not to cook…What???? Really??? Any way I digress,so coming back to the reasons people are intimidated by Indian food

It is too spicy
It looks complicated.

Categorically speaking this may be true to some recipes, this is not entirely true and the curry that I am going to show you today is just amazing. It is not only easy and tasty but it also has ingredients that are going to be in your pantry barring

Cardamom pods
Cloves
Curry leaves

So here is Kerala style chicken curry. Now for all you vegan or vegetarian folks out there this curry can be easily modified, find my comments below. Onto the curry this recipe hails from the south of India. The south coastal cooking is predominated by Coconut. It is a staple and the coconut is used in all possible forms oils, soft meat within the hard shell, milk etc. Adding coconut to your meals just adds a depth of creaminess with texture from some of the meat and sweetness. It adds a cool mild flavor that can tone down the heat from the spices. This specific curry is actually not a curry, it is simmered down from a lot of liquid to almost dry lush coconutty goodness.

Without any further delay here is the amazing recipe,

Kerala style Chicken: Coconut and Lemon chicken.

Ingredients:

1 lb skinless bone in chicken
Dry whole spices: 2 cloves, 4 cardamom pods and 1 shard of cinnamon
1 large onion sliced
1 inch piece of ginger thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves roughly chopped
salt and pepper
1 tsp garam masala powder
Water 3 cups
2/3 cup dried unsweetened coconut
Juice from 1 whole lemon
Cilantro for garnishing

Directions:

In a skillet on medium heat, add 1 tbsp canola oil, then add the dry spices. The dry spices heat with the oil and perfuse their flavor into the oil.
Next add the onions, garlic and ginger. Once the onions begin to caramelize add the chicken.
Give the chicken a mix in the pan followed by salt, pepper and garam masala powder. Mix and cover with 3 cups of water.
Simmer for about 15 minutes until the liquid reduces and the chicken is tender and cooked.
Finally add the coconut and lemon juice.
Garnish with cilantro.

To make this Vegan or Vegetarian: You can use potatoes and eggplant in place of chicken. Since it will not take long to cook, the cooking time should be no longer than 10 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked.

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In other news, I am done with this semester…Hooray!

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Posted in Indian, Poultry., Uncategorized