Chilka dal (masoor and moong)

For precooking and background, see this.

• 1 cup uncooked dal, pre-cooked
• 1 tsp oil
• 2 tsp dhania powder
• 1 tsp jeera powder
• 1 tsp kasoori methi (optional but totally worth it)
• 1 tsp ginger garlic paste

Heat oil in pan. Add ginger garlic and spices and cook for about a minute. Pour dal in, add salt and bring to a boil. Ta-DAAAA(L)!

Lentils

Pre-cooking Lentils
I have established a habit of pressure cooking dals on a regular basis. Now, I grew up in a house where we used a cooker whose entire top came off, and you put tiered vessels inside it with carious things in the vessels. This way we would cook rice, dal to go in the sambar, and the potatoes to make into curry all in one go. Many people in India I have learnt do not follow this system. They use what I refer to as the Hawkins system (ours is the Prestige one), where the lid fits into a hole in the top of the cooker and you can only cook one thing at a time. The other major difference is that the whistle of the Prestige cooker comes off while that of the Hawkins doesn't. More on that another time. Having grown up like that it really feels like a waste to run th cooker and not cook more than one thing in it at a time, so I usually make two batches of lentils at a time, or chana and rajma together, etc. Which means I end up with a lot of cooked-and-awaiting-seasoning dal in the fridge and boy do I get sick of it sometimes, though I am glad that often I need only five minutes to make it.

Ok, I'm rambling. The point is, here you go easy dal recipes! The oil is based on a minimum of half a cup of raw dal, which should do 2 people at one meal. I don't eat chillies, but you can always add chilli powder/green chillies to taste. You can dilute the recipes to any thinness you want - generally yellow dals tend to be thinner than the other ones.

Chilka dal (dal with the skins on)
Take your dal, green moong or brown masoor.
Dal: water = 1:3
2 bay leaves
A medium onion in chunks
15 minutes on the Prestige; 3 whistles on the Hawkins

Yellow dal (moong or masoor)
These guys cook much faster, even in an hour or less on the stovetop without a cooker. Do not confuse them with yellow tuar or arhar dal, which needs 15-20 min in the cooker. Masoor is in fact orange but once cooked turns yellow.
Dal:water = 1:3
10 minutes in Prestige, 2 whistles in Hawkins

Yellow dal (tuar/arhar)
Dal:water = 1:3
15 minutes on the Prestige; 3 whistles on the Hawkins

Down to Earth

Looking at the cooking, and talking to people about it recently, I discovered that I had forgotten why I started this blog in the first place. It has become about perfect baking mostly, while it began as a repository for easy and satisfying recipes. To make up for that, I've got my most basic cake recipe here. It's a ratio that is based on eggs, and you can scale it up as much as you like. I promise you, it's yum. x is the number of eggs, so if its one egg then x=1, and you need 25 g butter, 50 g sugar etc.

x eggs
25x g butter
50x g sugar

50x g flour

x tsp baking powder

50x ml milk
0.5x tsp vanilla essence

Beat eggs, with whisk or beater. Add sugar. Beat till mixed, or arm hurts. Melt butter. Pour into egg-sugar mixture and beat till well combined. Add flour and milk alternately till its all mixed in and you can see little air bubbles forming. Beat in the baking powder. Alternatively, you can mix it into the flour. Bake in a greased and floured pan at 150C/300F for 40 min or so. Test with knife to see if it's done.

To make this into chocolate cake, substitute the 1/4th of the flour with cocoa powder.

Well before I began baking to recipes and the like, this was my standard, foolproof, failproof cake recipe. Enjoy!

Strange culinary discoveries

Telephonic discussion with my cousin, trapped ovenless in Bangalore, resulted in some googlin and some discussion of strange culinary shortcuts. For example, you can use a pressure cooker (prestige not hawkins) as an oven! Simply heat it waterless till its hot, put the batter in a flat bottom steel vessel and put it directly on the bottom of the cooker, close and cook on low flame without the weight.

The cousin told me that discovering she had no baking powder she consulted the Powers that Internet and successfully made pancakes with yogurt and coke as a substitute.

Any such stories from ye peoples?

Apple tart

This is an adaptation of the first recipe I ever invented all on my ownsome. One day I'll give you that recipe, for now I'm saving it in case there ever is a REAL Itteh Bitteh Kitteh Cafeh someday. However, today I modified it slightly, and here we have Apple Tart.

Tiramisu cake

My dad has a birthday last month, so I wanted to bake him a cake. He's mad about coffee and cricket, and since they haven't invented a cricket cake yet, it had to be this one.

The problems I had were silly, but problems nonetheless. I couldn't find mascarpone anywhere and simply did not have the time to bake it. I also had no one to eat the cake since I was leaving town the very day of his birthday, Amma was in the US, and neither he not my grandma should be eating that much cake. I decided to use a tiny tin, and I have one-third the recipe. Not a bad result at all! Remember to treble it and bake for 2 9inch cakes, or just mosey on over to Deb's and use the original recipe.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

It's not that I'm not cooking, I just either forget the camera, or lose the recipe, or don't have the time to post. June and July was too much travelling and well work's been hard so here I am finally posting.

I finally did it! I've always been intrigued by this cake, the red velvet cake, and was heavily disappointed to discover its a mildly chocolate cake that's red. Until I ate one at the cupcake heaven on Vine Street in Berkeley. While I love me some luscious evil death by chocolate cake, there's a lot of joy in a plain ol cocoa cake. You can taste the butter. And the salt. And a lot of other things. Anyway, I managed to find some red food colouring, and it set in my shelf in the pantry for ever. Three months into living at the parental house mean I have barely cooked, let alone baked. Plus, every time I did cook, I was left with a giant slab of cake in the fridge that I ended up eating!