Myriad Musings

One of the perks of working in the US is the lovely pastries served for breakfast when you attend morning conferences.  Unhealthy but tasty.  I have always shied away from attempting such things at home after a disastrous pate-choux experience - they were lovely in the oven, all puffed up and golden, but flatened down to a spatula as they cooled!  All that butter and eggs just wasted! Then I happened upon the Artisan bread in five minutes a day and they had a lovely recipe for a Brioche dough and a lot less butter and egg intensive than the memory of my previous pastry attempt.  Their Danish fruit pastry looked a lot less finicky than attempting the eclair and bought back happy memories of my days in the US.  I modified it a little and got started.  Brioche Dough 1/2 cup lukewarm water 2 tsp honey 1 tbspoon fresh yeast 100g butter melted 3 eggs lightly beaten A pinch of salt 2.5 cups maida (APF) 1/2 litre milk made into paneer 4 tbspoon...

Being a vegetarian by birth as well as by choice, I almost never pay any attention to the savoury foray's of the masterchef contestants.  Then I decided to take part in Cook Like a Star blog hop.  In the long, growing links below my own modest ventures, the antipasto scroll from Mich's  piece of cake blog caught my eye.  They reminded me a lot of something called "dizzy dog"(?) my son favours at Hot Breads.  I doubt this is on offer anymore because it did not figure in their online menu. Gau had his sports day heat yesterday; He is long on enthusiasm, short on height.  He has not made it into the top 5 in 100m race since pre-school days.  He desperately wants to.  But he hasn't. I wanted to make something nice to perk him up today, when he faced his more successful co-competitors and this scroll fit the bill perfectly. Changes first.  And the inspiration behind them. I hadn't cooked greens in nearly 10 days, no time to get to the roadsi...

We found the episode where the contestants made Grant King's Seafood both fascinating and repulsive in equal parts.  What is squid ink?  How does one eat something so black?  Gau and I had a inconclusive discussion about whether squid ink qualifies as vegetarian or not - Gau says veg since you don't necessarily have to kill the squid to get it(?), it is sort of like milk from cow.  Vegetarian but not vegan.  Ink from a living squid would be muscous-y.  So it is gross and isn't muscous of a non-vegetarian animal also non-vegetarian? etc.... The hilarious part is, we make something called vadam, where we cook tapioca in water along with spices and green chillies, cool it to a handle-able temperature, pour soon sized mix  onto muslin cloth and then sun dry it.  This sun-dried wafer is then deep fried and served alongside rice + gravy + vegetables.  Javvarisi Vadam.  JAVVARISI VADAM: Ingredients: 1 cup Javvarisi  (tapioca)  ...

 For Gau and Me desserts are a synonym for chocolate.  Gau insists I add chocolate chips or chopped chocolate bar to anything sweet I make.  But  I have already mashed up 2 of my favourite Masterchef season 4 recipes into 1 and made a single chocolate mousse tart, and I still have the dough for 1 tart shell sitting in my chiller.  I will go back and make the orange topping for another chocolate mousse tart, but not just yet.  Oranges are just beginning to come in, once the market is flooded with Kamala Orange, I will have my pick of sweet ones for the tart. I had decided to change directions all together and tackle a fruity dessert for a change - Kylie's camera friendly Apple and Strawberry Crumble Tart.  But, Gau, after stealing his dad's slice and licking the bottom plate of the tart pan clean insisted I had to do another chocolate based one. And as it happens, in yesterdays 9 pm Masterchef Australia episode, Audra made the chocolate frangipane ...

One of the few masterchef desserts were the three of us agreed the dessert was drool worthy and MUST BE tried at home is the episode were Audra gets her Masterchef Apron.  This was No Grading On A Curve, this was absolute exemplar cooking.  Gary and George awarded her the Apron (top 24) Without tasting the rest of the participants food. Remember? She made a Dark Chocolate and Raspberry tart with cherry port jelly . Audra's Dark Chocolate Raspberry tart from Masterchef Season 4 She had actually forgotten milk and eggs when she went foraging and ended up inventing this dessert on the fly.  Totally awesome no?  I had bookmarked this recipe and promised my son I would make it.  Someday. Now most masterchef recipes, forgive me, have two main issues; They are not complete and they tend to go over the top in terms of time/ingredients/techniques.  I found Audra's recipe a tad excessive.  500g of chocolate in one Tart?  500g of butter too?  I...

Life with Gau is a constant tussle between developing good habits for work, play and food and letting him simply have fun.  Whether the struggle is at its most intense when it comes to regulating game time or food intake is a toss up.  Weekends exemplify both.  He has firm ideas about what I should cook and serve. He considers it blasphemous that I add beans when I make burger patties for him.  He thinks baking fries is a terrible idea.  He will never try kanji or ragi dosa unless I bribe or yell.... You get the idea? Saturday mornings start very lazy for us and then there is a rush to get Gau to his music class by 10.  He usually insists on eating out Sat morning, eating just the Pooris in Sangeetha without touching the vegetable laden side dishes.  The battle is stacked against me 3 to 1.  Today ash had a very long sleep in and I was able to persuade Gau to come into the kitchen and help me make Pear Pancakes. An adaptation of Kim Boyce's Pe...