Purple rice pudding

In my home town (Imphal, Manipur), not many people are fond of sweets. One of my colleagues in Delhi asked me once "What are the signature sweets of Manipur?" And I didn't have the answer. I didn't know. Well, there is kabok (something like sweet crunchy balls made of rice) and chini heiganl (jaggery). I rarely had sweets at home. When I miss home, I don't think of kabok or heingal. The things that come to my mind are ngari (fermented fish) and soibum (bamboo shoots).
At home, almost every dish is about chilli, fish (fresh or fermented), bamboo shoots, stews, garnished with so many variety of herbs, pork and beef for the younger generations.

But there is one gem that comes to my mind when I think of something sweet from home that I loved and still love...dark, rare, and expensive...the PURPLE RICE!
Some say it's black...but to my eyes they are purple, dark purple...and back home, it's lovingly called chakhao. The best way to have purple rice is to make pudding out of it.
The recipe is very very simple. Wash only once before cooking. Too many wash and the purple rice will lose its aroma and nutrients. I never use exact measurements to cook it. It is cooked the same as rice is cooked. But instead of water, milk is used. You can vary the amount of milk depending on how you want the pudding to be...runny or thick. Add sugar to your taste and nuts for garnishing. Although it tastes divine as it is without any garnish.

Another way of having it is my mom's way. She cooks the purple rice in plain water. And devours it with chuhi (thickened sugarcane juice).

Oh yes, plainly cooked purple rice is also divine as it is...maybe it's because of the distinctively delicious aroma it has...out of this world!

Eccles cake/Puff pastry...My way!

Being an amateur baker, that also in India, where it a little difficult to get some special ingredients, I love easy and simple recipes. In that sense, "The Cake-Maker's Bible" has really been a priceless discovery. It has 165 easy, simple cake recipes with step-by-step procedures and 800 photographs to make amazing delectable cakes for every occasion...tea party, celebrations, special occasions, you name it and it's there. Not only that, it has information on different cake-making methods, recipes for frostings and fillings, toppings...you will be spoilt for choices. If you are health concious, every recipe has nutritional notes (calorie count and fat content). I am health concious but not that concious so never gave these notes a glance :p

I am trying the recipes one by one. I found a favourite among them which I never fail to make again and again...the Eccles Cake or puff pastry. Not many cooking sites and blogs, even celebrity chefs on TV tell us how to make a puff pastry. They always use ready-made puff pastry... Making this puff pastry is so simple and so easy...flaky and so yummy...you will make them again and again. And whoever gets the chance to try my home-made eccles cake or puff pastry never fail to wonder how I did it! Good for my ego ehh!

So the recipe goes like this (modified according to how I did it):

Ingredients for making the pastry:

2 cups all purpose flour or maida
200 g butter (should be cold and cubed into thumb size, the recipe calls for unsalted butter but Amul butter works just fine)
1 tsp of lime juice
A pinch of salt
1/2 cup ice-cold water

Sift the flour and salt together. Add diced butter and lime juice to it. Using a flat steel knife (butter knife works), cut the butter in the flour till the butter is mixed almost evenly with the flour. Then pour the ice-cold water to form a not too pliable dough. The butter should look like marble chunks in between the floor. Shape the dough in a rectangular shape using your hands. Then fold the dough like you fold a towel before storing in the cupboard. Wrap the dough tightly in cling film and chill in the freezer for 5 minutes or refrigerate for 20 minutes. Repeat the folding and chilling process 4 to 6 times. It can be used directly or chilled till further use. When you cut into the dough before rolling out, you can see layers after layers of pastry...how amazing is that! I was totally amazed and ecstatic when I first saw those layers!

Fillings:

You can use any kind of filling, sweet or savoury. I have tried with chicken fillings or mushroom and chives fillings for the savoury kind. Toss them in a pan with your preferred spices till they are cooked and let them cool down before using as a filling.  For the sweet kind, mix powdered coconut, brown sugar, cinnamon powder, and sesame seeds. You can vary the amount of the ingredients to your choice, even add chopped dry fruits if you like.

Preheat the oven to 220 degree Celcius for 15 to 20 minutes. The oven should be ready in time while you finish up rolling out the dough, putting in the fillings, and giving it the egg wash. 

Before rolling out the dough, make sure it's cold but not too hard. It will crumble if too hard.

After the dough is ready, roll it out as you roll a roti. It can be just as thick as a typical roti. Cut off circular or rectangular or square shapes (any shape for that matter...Indian map, you can use your creativity here, lol). Just keep in mind that the cut-out dough need to be sealed after putting the fillings inside.

Now, after placing the fillings on the cut-out dough, fold it from one side and use a little drop of water or egg to seal it. Place your creations on a butter paper on a baking tray. Give the pastry a good egg wash (brush the top of the pastry with whisked egg). 

Bake in a preheated oven for 20 minutes. To make the top brown up, change the setting to heating only the top element 5 minutes before the end time. And ting, your eccles cake is ready!

(I will add more pictures next time I make this. It is such a big task taking pictures of every step while baking...i did take pictures for the Cinnamon rolls...if only my siblings knew how to take good pictures :p)
(Updated with new pictures...)

Eccles cake/Puff Pastry

Birthday cake and cupcakes for Nao!

It was 23rd May 2014. The next day would be Nao's (my sister's boyfriend) birthday.
He loves cheesecake. So, I bought all the ingredients to make it except for the cream cheese. It is so difficult to get cream cheese and sour cream to get in Delhi. My sister said let's drop the cheese cake. We will buy it from a bakery and that's what we did.

No baking the cheesecake so baked cupcakes the night of the pre-birthday following a recipe that I found on Pinterest.

A sponge cake the next day. I wanted to try my hand at making cream frosting. I bought Amul cream and tried making a cream frosting out of it. I added cocoa powder to give it some colour (how stupid was that!). I added icing sugar and started whipping at high speed using a hand blender. The milk cream didn't get any creamy or frosty...it was still liquid with little bit of foam. It tasted weird...milky and the cocoa taste...but used it anyway...

Here's how the cake looks after decoration with the not-so-good cream frosting and few white and dark chocolate chips.

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Rolling in Cinnamon Rolls!

I have already tried baking cakes and cookies. I am kind of considered an expert now by the household members :p
Now it was time to try something new.
My sister and her boyfriend are crazy about cinnabon. I thought why not cinnamon rolls then...
I searched for an easy recipe and found one on Pinterest.

I skipped the buttermilk and the icing stuff...no creamy stuff on the top...

It took me a whole day (with the prep and the cleaning up after...the sticky dough kept swirling up and up till it went into the tiny hole of the hook holder...). It was such a mess trying to remove the sticky dough from the tiny hole of the machine!
It was hard work but the rolls came out alright!

Here are some pictures from that day...

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World Book Fair New Delhi 2014

Amidst a busy duty roster, I ran and grabbed some books at the fair. At the end of the day, while going back home, the books were so damn heavy...had second thoughts that I should not have bought them. Reached home and felt glad at my purchase :)
Of the lot, Rachel Allen's cook book feels the best till now...the recipe so simple so easy and the ingredients easily accessible!

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My baking spree/Overindulgence!

Greatly influenced and inspired by the food and cookery show sprouting on TV, I have always wanted to try my hands on baking...wishing to have an oven, wear the oven gloves and take out the delicious smelling food at the sound of the "ting" that tells you food is ready...

I finally bought myself a Morphy Richards 40 cc OTG and went on a baking and cooking spree. These pictures show my extrme behaviour or call it overindulgence!!!

This is prepared by following the steps given with a cake mix that I got from the market (I forgot the brand name).

This one is grilled mutton (after being marinated with yoghurt, chilli powder, turmeric, ans salt).

This roast chicken is inspired by Gordon Ramsay. He used Cannellini beans and sausages for the stuffing...I used lobia and giblets instead.

For this cake, I followed the recipe that I found at this amazing blog

I got the recipe from this site

For these muffins, I got the recipe from site

I am a happy woman now...for now...before the next frenzy of craziness strikes me. :D

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Onslaught of incoherent thoughts!

..................

The best weight loss program!

Fall in love...
Get your heart broken to million pieces...

By this stage, you would have lost nearly 10 kilos...

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Not again. ..my fickle heart!

Not again...my fickle heart...
A subtle ache starting from a corner in my heart.
Somewhat familiar.
An unease that I could do without.
Premonition of pain...
Am I ready to go through another one!
Again!
Is it my paranoia running into overdrive?
Or a fear beggin not to be ignored?

Oh my fickle heart...
Why so...

LOve: EaSy come EaSy Go!

Is it so easy to fall in love?

Love, Pain, and Heartache...Heartache, pain, and Love!!!

My idea of romantic love, during my school days, was quite different from others.
The only romantic love I could relate to was that of hero worship for one of my seniors [a new one every year ;)].

When some of my friends were busy playing boyfriend and girlfriend, Mills and Boon came into my life. These unrealistic romantic novels made me search for only tall, dark, and handsome man, daydreaming about the all consuming love that the female protagonist go through, imagining myself to be her, going to exotic places, and being swept off my feet by that special someone... Mills and boon set the standard so high that I was no longer interested in school boys.

Most of my school mates found their life partner, started reproducing...And there I was, still stuck in that daydream, still searching...no one to call my own!

Then, someone came into my life...thought he's the one...would last forever...

Turns out, it was just a dream (or a nightmare!)...that someone tore my dreams to shreds...leaving me bleeding with excruciating pain...to feel never again...destroying my world...

Amidst the gloom and darkness of my woe, a beam of light makes me blink my eye! Making me hope and feel again...not making me feel less scared, about my heart, my dreams, and my world...

Do I make myself fall? Leave my hopes and dreams at the hands of fate (and someone) once more?

Will this be the happy ending for me? Or some other ending...

That feeling!

I hate this feeling that makes me check my phone for a buzz ever so frequently...

The Weaker Species!

(Disclaimer: The words below are just random thoughts from a paranoid mind...not intended to hurt the sentiments of anyone, dead or otherwise, other than the writer herself)

I am neither a theorist, nor an extremist, nor a feminist but a human being born as a woman. And there's no denying the fact that woman is the weaker species, weak in their brain, weak in their heart, weak in their strength. Most of them dominated by men almost everywhere. Few are those who can dominate men...(kudos to them)! If you ask me if I want to dominate men, I would say no! Saying no to this doesn't mean I want to be dominated, by men or by anyone (I have a clause "conditions apply" for domination)...I am talking about striking a balance, harmony between one human being and another.

The tendency to lean on, the need to be supported and be protected are ingrained in women's psyche since time immemorial. These deep-seated signs of weakness would be really hard to uproot. On top of these, sprinkle some tradition, culture, and values (pertaining to woman only)...how much burden a woman has to bear on her tiny shoulders (a size-zero-woman's shoulder would definitely crumble under these immense weight)!

And the men's psyche has been conditioned to provide a shoulder for the women to lean on, to support and protect them (For God' sake, anomalies are bound to happen...there's are billions and billions of people on this earth! And Of course, I am no expert in this).

Is this the way God/Nature intended? (I wonder how it all started...I couldn't help but imagine a world where the role has been reversed!)

If this was the way God intended, then He should have made the weaker species mute...letting them suffer in their voiceless misery. But no, God gave them voice! Is it too much to ask for a little bit of freedom, equality, justice, and respect for the weaker species? Although their brains, heart, and strength might be weak, they have the willpower to endure anything and continue their existence on this earth...

Even though men may be stronger species, they cannot exist without the weaker species!

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Travelling in Delhi Metro (Ladies Compartment Only!)

For someone who doesn't know how to drive (nicest way of putting I don't have a car :p ), hates haggling with the auto drivers, and someone who got tired of bus travel, Delhi metro has been a saviour. It's something that allows you to commute without interacting with a single soul. It comes and opens its doors, lets you in, and zooms you away to your destination. Once you enter the metro (the ladies compartment, LC), it's a different world altogether! There's the *Fashionista (without any guessing they are the NE girls ;) ) *Wannabes *Not so fashionables *Women with dhinchak saree *Stinky ones *Bitchy one (I just know they are bitching about me even though I have my ear plugs on...woman's instinct!) *Smartphones (no need to go to any store to check out the latest phones...every brand, every design can be found in the LC). It's like some commercial is going on! Is it without any drama in the LC? No...you can see all kinds of drama there... It's a big theatre...most of the lady commuters are in a hurry, especially the aunties! God forbid the younger sophisticated wannabe ladies should be found jostling... Some of the ladies would be jostling to find space to place their bum on tightly packed seats. (I had rather stand in a corner than compete with the bums, big bums, small bums, tiny bums, fat bums, and burn some calorie in the process!) And for the guys, the ladies compartment is a fascination for them. There are some who risk their life plus being fined just to whiz through the ladies compartment! There are some who stand just next to the LC. I am sure placing just their toe in the LC must make them high! Their heads would "obviously" be turned towards the LC...God and only they would know what goes on in their head... This is one of those times where I wish I had power like Sridevi in Nagin...One stare is all I need!

Travelling in Delhi Metro is no doubt a very entertaining ride for me!

Reflection!!!

It's been nearly 10 years since I left home. Many of my friends left before me. And many went back home before me...the reasons for their going back, I do not know and I never asked. Something made me go into an introspective mood today (otherwise I am a couch potato). I started thinking "why do people leave their home town?" Leave alone others, why did I? Was it or is it for a better education, better lifestyle, better everything? Has it become better or worse? In search of this better, have I become obscure? Did I achieve what I wanted to...I didn't and still don't know what is it that I want to achieve! Do I wish to go back? Deep in my heart, the answer is yes...but not yet! I feel almost everyone would wish to go back some day. Who wouldn't want to live in the safe haven of their palem and panthou! And when I do wish to go back, other than my family, what do I go back to? How's the situation there? If the situation is so bad, am I doing anything to change it? Do I have the initiative, the ability, the capability, and the courage to make that change? I guess not! Having said these empty words, my reflection dies and I go back to my mundane life...the mundane me!