Black Currant Rock Cakes, perfect for tea time.

If you love your tea or coffee with some biscuits or cakes to nibble along, then these are the perfect cakes for such times. Tea time spent in the company of friends is always amazing. When calling over friends or guests for tea and snacks, then these can be freshly made and kept ready to serve. It is quite a simple recipe that does not take much effort and all the ingredients are almost always readily available at home. My friends loved them when I took some of these baked goodies for one of our tea time gatherings. The kids too love them but insist on replacing the black currants with chocolate chips.

I am sure they will not refuse these black currant rock cakes. Though these are called rock cakes, but they are soft to bite and crumbly. The appearance is rock like, so they’re called by that name.  As the sugar content is less, they are my favourite, and each bite is a delight with hot sips of tea.

Ingredients:

Refined flour-300 g

Freshly ground cinnamon- 1/2 tsp

Egg-1 (lightly beaten)

Milk-150 ml

Dry Black Currants-1 bowl

Unsalted butter- 100 g

Sugar-75 g (powdered, keep some of it aside for sprinkling)

Baking powder- 1 tsp

Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C fan- assisted. Grease the baking tray and keep it ready. Sift the baking powder and flour. Add ground cinnamon and powdered sugar to the flour.

Mix the flour and sugar together. Rub cold butter in the flour. Add the dry black currants, lightly beaten egg and milk. Stir all the ingredients together. Do not overmix.

Scoop out spoonful of the mixture and drop on the baking tray, keeping distance. Sprinkle some sugar on each scoop of mixture.

Bake in the preheated oven at 180°C fan-assisted for 20 minutes or till they are of golden colour. Cool the cakes completely before storing.

Do not be fooled by the rocky appearance, these are soft and tasty bites that you would love to bake often. Enjoy!

Chocolate covered Strawberries, a quick dessert.

Strawberry is a highly nutritious and versatile fruit, a delight to the eyes packed with lots of health benefits.  It is delicious to eat and is a rich source of Vitamin C, Potassium, Folic acid, fibre, packed with antioxidants, which makes it a must-have. Almost all kids love them, they taste great on their own or mixed with other fruits and vegetables. The colour, flavour, and taste of strawberries make the salads, desserts delightfully appealing and colourful. Making a dessert out of them is one dish that no one will refuse to eat. Covering the strawberries in melted chocolate is the easiest dessert to make, one that turned out beloved by my kids. I had never eaten this or tried this dish, but had seen pictures that made my taste buds tingle. When I saw fresh strawberries of the perfect shape in the supermarket, I knew it was time for me to try it out. The kids loved them so much, all of them got finished in no time. My junior, while finishing his last bite of the strawberry, told me he would not mind eating a box full of strawberries coated with chocolate. So friends, lets getting making this healthy tempting dessert.

Chocolate Strawberries:

Ingredients:

Fresh strawberries-1 box

Chocolate Bar of choice.

Method:

Wash the strawberries under running tap water, taking care that all the dirt gets washed away. They should be completely dry before dipping them in chocolate.

Take a bar of chocolate of choice, I like the Lindt milk bar and even dark chocolate would also be best to use, and break into pieces in a microwave bowl. Melting the chocolate in microwave is the quickest method of melting it, but care should be taken while doing this. The chocolate should be melted not more than 30 sec at a time. Then it should be stirred with teaspoon and again microwaved for 30 sec. It needs to be just warmed enough to melt it.

Dip the strawberries into the chocolate and swirl it so that all side are evenly coated. Let it stand on a rack to get  the perfect shaped chocolate strawberries.

Allow the chocolate coated strawberry to cool at room temperature.  As I like the chocolate cold, I put it in the refrigerator after it was set. Enjoy them as dessert or pop them into the mouth as soon as the chocolate gets set.

Surmai/Kingfish fry

Fish is a very healthy food, rich in protein and also a major source of the long chain Omega-3 fatty acids, the essential fatty acids required by our body. These fatty acids are called as the essential fatty acids as they are not produced by the body and hence we need to get them from our diet.

Fish flesh is very delicate and hence  gets cooked fast. Care should be taken to prevent the flesh from breaking during cooking any of the fish dishes.

I generally use the Kingfish in fried, grilled or for making curry. It can be used to make Kebabas, fishfingers, biryani and a few other dishes too. Using the regularly used Indian spices for marinating the Surmai pieces that are thinly cut and then shallow frying it in pan or grilling it makes it very tasty to eat. The gravy of this fish is also very good to eat with hot steamed white rice, I prefer the Goan style of cooking for the curry. The fish gravy recipe will follow shortly, it is in my list of new recipes to add to blog. Do keep visiting the blog for that recipe.

SURMAI/KINGFISH FRY

Ingredients:

Fish Masala powder- 2 Tbsp

(The readymade packet lists these ingredients as-red chilli powder, turmeric, cloves, mustard, dry coriander)            

Lemon- 1

Salt- to taste

Oil- 2 tbsp.

Kingfish- 8-10 thinly cut pieces.

NOTE: We can also use dried coriander and cumin powder, red chili powder, turmeric, salt, oil for marination if we do not have readymade fish masala powder. Add a pinch or two of garam masala if you like it spicy, but I do not prefer to add garam masala when I use the homemade corainder powder. 

METHOD:

Apply turmeric and salt over these washed and thinly cut pieces of Surmai or Kingfish. Apply lemon juice on both sides of the pieces.

     Mix the oil and the fish masala together, and apply it over the turmeric, lemon and salt coated Surmai pieces. Or you could just mix all the ingredients and apply to the fish pieces and keep in the refrigerator for 30 mins or more for marination. The longer the marination time, the better the taste.

 Heat a fry pan and add 1 tbsp oil to it. Then add the masala coated fish pieces to the pan and fry the fish for 5-10 mins, turning and cooking both the sides evenly. (We add  a little more oil and cook it bit longer if we want it more crispy.)

Serve it hot with salad of choice or either Tomato or Chilli Sauce.

Tip: We can also dust this marinated fish with rice flour before frying it.

Enjoy 🙂

ashu

Brown Sesame Chicken, a bitter sweet experience.

The fondness for greens once made me incorporate fresh fenugreek leaves into the chicken gravy and the taste lingered on. Since then I started making use of fresh leaves in some of my non vegetarian dishes. This particular recipe is a favourite at home and something that I loved creating the first time round. Whenever a dry chicken dish is desired, this is one of the recipes the kids too love. The fenugreek leaves impart the dish a light bitter taste, and the onions give it the sweet taste, hence a bitter sweet experience.

Brown Sesame Chicken:

Adding sesame to the dish lends it the desired nutty taste, as well as the crunch. It acts as a source of fibre too. Sprinkling dry roasted sesame on the dish, as garnish, gives it a more appealing and desirable look. Food that is appealing to the eye results in tingling the taste buds. Eating home cooked food that is made using the fresh herbs is always a satisfying experience. Go ahead, try making this recipe and find out if it holds true for you too!

Lets get cooking my Brown Sesame Chicken recipe:

Ingredients:                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Chicken- 800 g (washed and coated with little turmeric)                                                                                          

Onion- 2-3 medium sized

Fresh coconut- 1/2 grated (approximately 50 g)

Garlic- 5-6 cloves

Dry Kashmir chilli- 2 (It imparts a nice red colour.)

Red Chilli powder- 1 tbsp.

Garam masala (ground whole spices) – 1 tsp.

Salt- as per taste

Oil- 2 tbsp.

Fresh fenugreek leaves- 1 bowl (50 g)

Sesame – 50 g (Dry roasted)

Fresh green Coriander- finely chopped for garnish

Method:

The onions are chopped roughly and sautéed in pan with 1 tsp. oil till they are almost brownish in colour. The chilli should also be sautéed along with the onions in the pan. The fresh coconut too is cooked in pan till it is almost brownish in colour, taking care not to burn it.

These ingredients- coconut, garlic, red chilli and onion should be ground to a fine paste, little water can be used to get the fine paste.

 Heat oil in pan on medium flame, add half the quantity of roasted sesame seeds, and then the finely ground masala paste. Cook it for 5-7 min on slow flame, add the red chilli powder and salt, and keep for 1 more minute. The oil should leave the ends of the fried masala, then add the cleaned washed chicken to which turmeric was coated. Mix all the ingredients and let the chicken cook on slow flame, no water should be added. When the chicken is almost done, add the finely chopped fresh fenugreek leaves and mix so that it gets nicely coated with the chicken and the masala. The leaves need to cooked only till the raw taste is gone, hence should not be cooked for too long. They should be visible, as well as green in appearance. Put off the gas flame, then sprinkle the garam masala on the cooked chicken and mix.

Garnish it with freshly chopped green coriander leaves and sprinkle the left over dry roasted sesame on top of the cooked chicken.

Enjoy!