baking, movies, music - ladi paav, patties, dinner rolls and cornbread muffins

Here's some of the fun stuff I baked in the past few months.

The first row of pictures is paav. I made them a few months ago. I think I used this recipe. We had them as pav bhaji. They didn't turn out as soft as I would have liked them to be. Must be because I used some whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour. Also looks like I baked them a bit more than needed. I hope to give it a try once again. Let's see when I muster up enough courage to do it again :) The yeast I used to buy in Bangalore was such a bummer. It didn't froth so much. The yeast here does froth very well. So I can't blame anything on yeast anymore.

The second row is vegetable puffs or some people call them patties. They don't look so good in the pictures but they tasted amazingly good. I used ready made puff pastry sheets like these. I had them in the freezer for months. A few times I had taken out the box but well, it seemed quite time-consuming to make when someone is over for tea. 40 mins to thaw and then baking it. I had even cut open the box once but didn't make it. So the upper layer had dried out a bit by the time I finally made the puffs. Once you have the filling ready, just cut up the sheets into rectangles of appropriate sizes. Put some filling in the center and fold it over. Bake as per the directions on the box which were 15 mins at 400 F on the box I got. The filling recipe is a winner by the way. Can be used for samosas or just as a plain subzi. Quite tasty.
For the filling,
- boil, peel and chop potatoes into small pieces.
- Chop some green chilies
- Get the peas out of the freezer or shell them and cook them in the microwave or any other way.
- Heat oil in a pan, Add saunf (fennel seeds), asafoetida, green chilies, turmeric, red chili powder, dhaniya jeera pwd, garam masala, salt, sugar
- Add the potatoes and peas, some lemon juice. Mix. cover and let it cook for a few minutes and you are done. The best flavor here is of the saunf with the potatoes. It tastes best when it is a bit spicy.

Next up is flaky dinner rolls with fake misal. I followed this recipe for the dinner rolls. They were one of the best things I ever baked. Absolutely lovely! Soft, crusty and divine. When I tasted them, I was proud of myself even though all I did was follow the recipe. :) Instead of using whole wheat flour entirely, I had used replaced half of it with all-purpose flour because I was scared by the paav experience. Coming to the fake misal. Hmm, it is not the real misal but we love to eat our sprouted moong curry like misal, with the pav and with a whole lot of toppings.
The moong curry is pretty simple.
- Get some sprouted moong. Do it yourself like I do or buy the sprouts.
- Chop up some onions. Get the ginger-garlic paste and tomato puree out of the fridge or chop up ginger, garlic, and tomatoes too.
- Heat oil, add mustard seeds and let them splutter. Add asafoetida, onions and ginger garlic
- Let the onions turn transparent. Add turmeric, chili powder, tomato puree and let it cook for a min.
- Add the moong sprouts, salt, sugar, kala masala (Maharashtrian garam masala) made by mom. Add water and cover and let it cook till the sprouts are done. It should work with any other garam masala too. It should be a slightly watery curry. Pretty simple, isn't it? Now take the curry in a bowl, add some chopped raw onions, coriander leaves, lemon juice, curd if u like, and add sev or any other farsan. Dip your bread in this delicious bowl, scoop up and enjoy!

The last picture is cornbread muffins and vegetarian chili. I had heard a lot about chili. It is one of the American favorites. I had bought a packet of self-rising cornmeal and just followed the directions on the packet to make these corn muffins. Just add eggs, milk, and oil to the cornmeal and bake it in the muffin pan. For the chili, I had looked up a lot of recipes on the internet. I don't think I followed one particular recipe but took the recipes as a guideline. I bought canned kidney beans, canned corn and canned Italian tomatoes and some tofu and vegetables which were not canned ;). Heat oil, add onions, garlic, mashed tofu, celery, bell pepper. Let the tofu brown a bit. The chili usually contains beef. Some recipes used tofu in the vegetarian version. I believe it would have tasted just as good without the tofu. Then add the can of tomatoes, beans and corn, chilli pwd, cumin pwd and let it cook on low heat for as long as you can. I let it sit for nearly 45 mins. It was good but I don't think I will make it again. I would rather make a rajma with the can of kidney beans :) Looks like Old habits and tastes die hard.

A few days ago, I watched Dev D and 13B movies. Both the movies are good. I was apprehensive about Dev D because it was supposed to be very bold and realistic and I was not sure if I wanted to see that much reality. But then there was Abhay Deol and I have always liked his movies. This might just be his first path breaking movie. Shahrukh's devdas really pales in comparison. In that movie, I thought devdas, chunnilal, infact most of the characters were quite irritating. Inspite of Devdas being an inherently irritating character (he is hell-bent on destroying his life), Dev D is very interesting and fresh. It absolutely can happen to anyone. And I loved the moment of realisation for Dev. I mean really how self-destructive can you get! You need to stop and realise one day. Speaking of realisation, I see some of that devdas in me. I feel the compulsive need to stay away from everything which can be good for me like gym, studies or anything worthwhile and I am yet to find my realisation. ;)
In the last post, I talked about Delli6. What a waste of time that movie was! And after hearing the music of DevD, Delli6 really doesn't look that good even music wise. I absolutely loved every song of DevD. I can imagine 'Emotional attyachar' playing on radios in india. Nayan tarse, pardesi....i would have to list out all the 17 songs because there was not a single song I skip unlike most other albums where only 2 or 3 songs are worth listening to. And I had completely forgotten to mention about 'Oye Lucky' music. Lovely songs there too. All of them. There is a 70 year old man and a 12 year old boy from villages singing addictive songs on this album. Both Dev D and Oye Lucky songs grow on you as you keep listening to them.
Check out this making of Oye Lucky music. This has been a long post! Hope to write again soon!