Myriad Musings

Summer is HERE with its hellish heat, kids off school lazing around all day, envious me off to the lab where the ancient window Air Conditioners takes off every third day.  The kids would love interesting meals and I am loath to spend more than an hour in the kitchen.  Hubby has wisely chosen to eat at work this month. Meanwhile, I scrounge around for interesting recipes requiring minimal effort - the Perpetual Motion Machine of the cooking world.   This is my weekly schedule this summer - Cereal and Muffins/Quick breads or Cereal and Idlis for breakfast, rice + variety of lentils/beans/chickpeas+ vegetables+curds for lunch, One of my staples is the Olive Oil dough from Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day.  Nilgiris has stopped carrying Fresh Yeast in reasonable sized packages a.k.a. 100g.  I found Active Dry Yeast worked just as well!  Not just that, my Organic Atta produced no discernible change in flavour or texture, No More Maida in pizza! Yay! I did ...

My PhD research, my cooking all seem to follow a similar pattern these days; I read something or come up with a solution for 1 problem then I realise this must be tried in another, existing problem and it would fix it beautifully. I spend hours trying to adapt the new idea or technique to the pre-existing problem and sometimes miss the obvious reasons why the solution was never tried in the first place;  But, I always learn something new in the process, whether it is in research or it is in cooking. I have fallen in love with the artisan bread in 5 minutes a day idea of late, baking breads everyday for the past week. This monday when I went over the generally cracked results of the eggless biscotti baking roundup, I realised I had never thought of making a yeasted version of biscotti.  All I had to do is make it thinner and bake it longer. except. Letting the sponge/yeast develop overnight would develop the gluten to an extent where it would be impossible to have a hard ...

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...