Soulful Creations

"Leftovers make you feel good twice. First, when you put it away, you feel thrifty and intelligent: ‘I’m saving food!’ Then a month later when blue hair is growing out of the ham, and you throw it away, you feel really intelligent: ‘I’m saving my life!’"- George Carlin     When life gives you leftovers...make a crumb pie! This crumbs for this pie come from my previous DB challenge, as usual, the first attempt at the challenge was a failure. The failure was the sponge sheet cake which I tried to do vegan (the recipe for that vegan cake was adapted from a vegan cupcake recipe found in this book, a tiny book packed with tongue tickling, mouth watering vegan cupcake recipes!). Anyway the crumbs were divided- one went into the refrigerator and the other is (still) lying in my freezer. The inspiration for this recipe comes from here . Ingredients 2 cups cake crumbs (mine were chocolate) 5-6 tbsp vanilla custard powder (I buy this from Indian grocery store, you could also buy...

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”. This month we were allowed quite a bit of variations- to begin with we could either do a Baked Alaska or Petit Fours. I do not really care much for meringues and so I chose petit fours. I also chose to half the recipe for the pound cake since it is just the two of us. For the ice cream I made Apricot-fig custard ice cream, adapted from Tarla Dalal's recipe here . Brown Butter Pound Cake 19 tablespoons (9.5 oz) (275g) unsalted (sweet) butter 2 cups (200g) sifted cake flour (not self-...

I love Mark Bittman, you know the minimalist and his simplistic attitude towards cooking- I mean even his monstrosity of "How to" series lack the usual colorful photographs that make their way through most cook books (I love his books). I do not know about you but as much as I love thumbing through the pages of such books, I rarely have tried anything from me- may be partly because I feel like my dishes would never look as radiant as the ones in the book. I recently borrowed Bittman's " How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food " from the library and going it through it like it was my way to salvation!  Here is my version of the two recipes from this book- Rice Cakes with cheese I ngredients (My changes in red ) 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 1 1/2 cups cooked rice 1/2 cup all purpose flour 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 cup grated aged sharp white cheddar 2 tsp cumin powder 2 tsp red chilli powder 1 tbsp dried oregano salt and pepper to tast...

  This past week, we had friends over- friends of ours who had moved recently- yeah and they are quite close to us now! The sambar sadam- thayir (yogurt) sadam (rice) combo sounded perfect for a houseful of 7 hungry people. This was the perfect opportunity to try my hand at bisibele bhath. As usual I turned to the trusted world of food blogs and there was I staring at this really simple recipe from Mysoorean .  Ingredients 2 cups rice (uncooked) 1.5 cups toor dal (uncooked) 4 cups vegetables (potatoes, peas, beans and carrots) lemon-sized tamarind, pulp squeezed 11 cups Water Masala 1 cup grated dried coconut 4 tsp Sambar Powder 4 Tbsp Coriander Seeds 1" Cinnamon 3 Cloves 2 Cardamom 2 tsp Khus Khus Asafoetida 1 sprig Curry leaves Tadka 3 Tbsp Oil 6 Red Chillies 3 tsp Mustard Seeds Turmeric Method Fry the masala ingredients in about a tbsp of hot oil, I added the coconut and the sambar powder after I turned the heat off. Grind to a paste with a little water...

No man is lonely eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention- Christopher Morley     This month's Vegetarian Times had some truly interesting and simple pasta recipes and this, is the adapted version of one such recipe.No stories, just a simple recipe with VT version in red Ingredients 8oz spaghetti (I used whole wheat, fettucine ) 3/4 cup whipped cream cheese ( 1/2 cup ) 2 tbsp olive oil plus extra for the pasta juice and zest from one lemon chopped parsley 1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar ( omitted ) salt for the sauce pepper to taste (I added quite a bit) Method Cook the spaghetti according to instructions with olive oil and salt In a pan, heat 2 tbsp olive oil, cream cheese and about one tbsp of lemon juice- once the cheese is in a saucy consistency, switch the heat off. Add the pasta (I did add a bit of pasta water), rest of the lemon juice, lemon zest, parsley and cheddar. Serve hot Judgement A beautiful light pasta meal you will enjoy all through the year. Now...