Thai-style Coconut Rice With Edamame and Canary Beans Curry

Ever wonder why cats are always the villains of the pet world?

If you watch movies with furry, cute animals that speak, you know exactly what I mean. Babe, Cats and Dogs, any horror movie where there's always a black cat lurking around to do something mean at a crucial moment to the poor, horrified human already tormented by other unseen forces... Even Garfield-- although lovable-- is lazy, greedy, selfish, sarcastic and downright mean.

Often all that meanness is directed toward the animal considered a cat's arch enemy: the dog. That supremely lovable, bumbling, angelic dog who looks at you with huge, soulful eyes, makes that irresistible, whiny sound at the back of his throat, then rolls over for a tummy rub. He is always the one being taken for a royal ride by the cunning feline who gets into all sorts of trouble and then places the blame squarely on the dog.

Yes, no wonder there are so many people out there who insist they are dog people.

But ask someone like me who lives with both these creatures under one roof and we'd set the record straight.

In our home, our two cats-- Pubm and Pie-- are the good kids. The ones we never have to worry about. They eat their meals when you feed them, they groom themselves until they're squeaky clean, and on evenings when you sink in the couch tired after a long day's work, they don't immediately demand to be taken for a walk-- instead they curl up in your lap like soft, furry stress relievers.

Reading, Writing And Hemingway

I must have been 13 or so when my dad caught me standing on my toes at his bookshelf, trying to stealthily nudge out a copy of The Godfather from the top shelf -- that was where he kept the books he didn't want me and my brother to get to.

Imagine my surprise when he dusted it off and handed it to me with a casual, "It's a great book. Just ignore the dirty parts." (Meaning the sex, of course.:)) I paid no attention to that bit of advise but that's another story for another day.

I thought of that incident when I began to write this post because although I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, there was something else I was first, thanks to my father: a reader.

For my birthdays, my dad's gift to me was usually a book-- an Enid Blyton or a mystery by Agatha Christie or by Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. In my early teens it was perhaps a Charles Dickens or a P.G. Wodehouse. He encouraged me to read almost anything so long as it was what he considered good literature. He was also the most lenient when it came to books, letting me stay up past bedtime if I pleaded with him to let me finish a chapter.

In the summer holidays from school, he would often drop me off at the home of his older sister, Akka, because he knew it was one of my favorite places to go -- you see, she had a fabulous collection of books. Sitting in her living room in Vile Parle, a suburb of Bombay, the noise of women cooking in the building next door mingling with the drone of the airplanes flying to and from the airport nearby, I discovered Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, Jawaharlal Nehru's The Discovery of India, R.K. Narayan's Malgudi Days, and Oliver Goldsmith's the Vicar of Wakefield, among many, many other new friends. Akka, a portly woman in her 50s with a generous disposition that she hid behind a stern exterior, also had a deep love for trashy romance novels and to my delight she didn't mind sharing those with me either.

Whole-Wheat Irish Soda Bread

It takes under an hour to make an Irish soda bread, but that's not the best thing about it. The reason I love this bread so much is because it is beautifully textured and light and intensely flavorful.

I pack more flavor and health into my soda bread by making it with whole wheat. This is a great bread for those days when you would love a homemade loaf don't have the time to bake a yeasted one. Soda bread, as the name suggest, of course uses baking soda and not yeast as a leavening agent which means it does not have to go through all the rising and kneading that yeasted bread does.

Try not to knead your soda bread dough too much--instead treat it as you would a pie dough. The resulting bread will look a little rough around the edges but it tastes superb. That is because not kneading the dough keeps the gluten from getting too active and results in a tender, lighter loaf. The cream of tartar used in this recipe also helps give an airier crumb, but if you can't find it, use 1 tbsp baking powder instead.

Ratatouille and Rosemary Polenta Spiked With Miso

One can't possibly say goodbye to summer without at least once cooking up a pot of ratatouille, a delectable dish filled with the vibrant flavors of the vegetable garden.

To me a ratatouille symbolizes the beauty of French cuisine: its dazzling simplicity. While the thought of cooking French food can sometimes appear intimidating because of its sheer reputation as one of the world's haute cuisines, a good deal of it is really neither complicated nor difficult nor fancy. Instead, like a ratatouille, it's just great food made with the barest minimum of accoutrements, which allows the beauty of the few ingredients used to sparkle through.

A ratatouille uses summer's classic vegetables: eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers and tomatoes. A dash of salt, some pepper, a few savory herbs-- again gifts of the summer-- and you have a dish that can satisfy any appetite.

Fat-free Brownies

Well, almost.

The only fat in these vegan brownies comes from 2 tbsp of flaxmeal that works as an egg substitute in this recipe and from some wonderfully nutritious walnuts. And since that is all healthy fat rich in Omega-3 fatty acids as well as fiber and protein, who could possibly complain?

The brownies themselves are chewy, delicious, luscious. And what makes them extra-guilt-free is the fact that you have the option of making them with whole-wheat pastry flour.

Pooris: Vegan Cooking Class

I wanted to share today step-by-step instructions for a very simple yet decadently delicious Indian bread, a Poori or Puri, to flag off an occasional series on my blog that I'm calling Vegan Cooking Class. I will post here detailed instructions and photos for recipes that appear simple enough but can sometimes befuddle even an experienced cook.

I intend to add here every little detail I can think of, and everything that can go wrong, to ensure that when you cook things are as fool-proof as possible.

So why the fuss about pooris, you'd say? Well, pooris are simple enough to make once you know how, but trust me, they are not as forgiving as, say, a roti or a chapati. For instance, making the dough too sticky, rolling them out unevenly or frying them at the wrong temperature will not allow them to puff up. And while you might have an edible bread, it won't be just right. And you wouldn't want to settle for that, would you?

10 Honest Things About Me

I chat with you so often about so much, I was a little at a loss when lovely and talented bloggers Stephanie of Peace, Love and Cooking and Shri of Tasty Touch gave me the Honest Scrap award which calls on me to list 10 honest things about myself. What could I say that you hadn't heard before?

Besides, I really don't spend a lot of time analyzing myself. I am...just me. So I thought about it a lot and finally came up with something I thought I could share. Read it if you care. If not, wait for my next recipe. I won't be long! :)

1. I try not to attach too much value to the material things in my life. I don't ever want to be someone who absolutely cannot live without some thing.

2. For as far back as I can remember into my childhood, I've never bought into religions and into any of the many "isms" created to separate us from each other.

Almond Bars With A Citrusy Glaze

A blogger friend left me a message saying she wanted to go vegan but doesn't think taking milk from a cow is cruel because there's no bloodshed.

I understand her hesitation: many of us believe in the "California cow" myth-- you know, the one perpetrated by those cutesy ads where dairy cows gossip, graze on idyllic green pastures all day and lie lazily in the sun. The one where, we are led to presume, they will willingly offer their udders to some smiling milkmaid and her soft, gentle hands.

But the reality looks more like this. Dairy farms are usually places where hundreds of cows are packed into muddy lots where they stand in their own feces most of the time, or in small stalls so tight they can barely move. They certainly don't see any green pastures or even the blue sky. Their tails are docked (amputated) without any painkillers -- is that something you can even imagine? They are then injected with astronomical amounts of hormones to make them yield unrealistically high quantities of milk. Some cows get so heavy because of all this hormone-pumping that their legs break under their weight. The excessive milking causes their udders to become painful and swollen and often infected.

For those who believe dairy cows are just fine because they don't have to die to give milk, consider this: the average life span of a cow is around 14 years but most dairy cows are slaughtered for their meat around four years of age which is roughly when their worn-out bodies stop producing milk. They are crammed into open trailers and driven hundreds of miles to the slaughterhouses, packed in so tight that they can't sit or rest during this, their final journey. Many collapse from heat exhaustion and are just left there to die. Those who survive will die in a day or two anyway. And here's how that happens: when it's time, they will be prodded with forklifts, sprayed in their nostrils with water and dragged with chains to get them into a box where their heads will be lopped off and their bodies carved into meat for steaks, burgers, roasts and whatnot.

It's A Vegan World: Malaysian. The Roundup.

This past weekend I was at the amazing D.C. VegFest, an event celebrating cruelty-free living and the most delicious vegan food.

The place was buzzing with cooking demos and speakers like Rory Freedman of the fabulous Skinny Bitch books. Best of all, I made some great new friends like Marya and her beautiful, vibrant, smart-as-a-whip four-year-old who's been raised as a vegan since birth.

Then there were the super vegan eats from designer cupcakes to sizzling Indian food to mouthwatering vegan pizzas. All of which really made me wonder why anyone in their right senses chooses to eat dairy-loaded desserts and oil-soaked pizzas piled high with dead animals. Hmm...

Meanwhile, we've had our own little celebration of compassionate eating going on here at Holy Cow! -- It's A Vegan World, an attempt to explore the vegan possibilities in global cuisine. And trust me, not since Christopher Columbus has anyone had an opportunity to do so much exploring.

This month's theme is Indian food, but today I am here with the roundup of last month's theme-- Malaysian.

Green Beans and Potato Curry with Trinidadian Spices

Cooking up all this Trinidadian food made me think of V.S. Naipaul, the literary genius and Nobel prize winner who hailed from Trinidad, although he later became a British citizen.

Naipaul, like many of Trinidad's natives, traced his roots further back to India-- he was the descendant of indentured Indian laborers shipped into the Caribbean by the British colonizers (that's why Caribbean food has strong overtones of Indian cuisine). I was a kid when Charu, who's married to my cousin Neetu and who was a journalist for a Bombay newspaper, got the enviable job of interviewing Naipaul and accompanying him as the writer researched some of Bombay's venues for a book.

Neetu's sister, Maithili, was my best friend, and I'd spend a lot of time at their home. Every day Charu would return with stories that I don't remember any more but which, I recall, dovetailed perfectly with Naipaul's fame as a rude, cranky, egotistical and eccentric character. But there was no doubt that Charu was enjoying every minute he was spending with this legendary personality.

Just how lucky he'd been became clearer to me when I read my first Naipaul book (also Naipaul's first): a short novel written in 1957, called The Mystic Masseur. The book was made into a movie some time in the last decade with Aasif Mandvi (the "brown guy" on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart) in the lead role and it was pretty good too.

Mystic Masseur remains, to date, my favorite Naipaul work because I'm a sucker for intelligent humor and irony, and this book has loads of it. The story centers around a Trinidadian of Indian origin, Ganesh, and the hilarious journey he makes from an unsuccessful masseur to a super-succesful mystic who "miraculously" heals people, to a politician.

What makes the book truly remarkable is the beauty of Naipaul's writing, the delightful character of his words and how beautifully they capture the colloquialisms of the English spoken in Trinidad:

"My mother distrusted doctors and never took me to one. I am not blaming her for this because in those days people went by preference to the unqualified masseur or the quack dentist.

'I know the sort of doctors it have in Trinidad,' my mother used to say. `They think nothing of killing two three people before breakfast.'

This wasn't as bad as it sounds: in Trinidad the midday meal is called breakfast."

You could definitely have my Green Beans and Potato Curry for a Trinidadian breakfast, along with these delicious stuffed rotis that I posted yesterday. Here's the recipe, adapted from a Sri Lankan curry from World Vegetarian. Enjoy!

Green Beans and Potato Curry With Trinidadian Spices

Ingredients:

2 cups french-cut green beans (I used frozen)

2 medium potatoes, diced

1/2 tsp turmeric

2 sprigs fresh curry leaves

1 large onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp finely grated ginger

2 green chillies, minced

2 tsp Trinidadian spice mix (recipe follows)

1/2 cup canned or fresh coconut milk (should be quite thick)

1 tbsp canola or other vegetable oil

Salt to taste

Lemon juice to taste

Heat oil in a skillet. Add the curry leaves and onions and saute until the onions turn translucent, about 3-4 minutes.

Add the garlic, ginger and green chillies and saute another minute.

Add the green beans and stir-fry around 2 minutes. Now add the spice mix and turmeric and stir to coat the vegetables.

Add the coconut milk along with 1/2 cup of water, the potatoes and salt to taste. Bring the curry to a boil over medium heat, then cover, lower the heat, and allow it to simmer for 15 minutes or until all the veggies are tender.

Stir in the lime juice.

Serve hot with Stuffed Rotis or with any flatbread.

Trinidadian spice mix:

2 tbsp coriander seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

10-15 black peppercorns

1/2 tsp fennel seeds

1/2 tsp of mustard seeds

1/2 tsp fenugreek (methi) seeds

Roast all the spices together in a small, dry skillet until they turn a couple of shades darker. Be vigilant and stay with them-- you don't want them to burn.

Grind into a fine powder in a coffee grinder or spice grinder. Store any unused spice mix in an airtight jar in a dark place.

***

I'll be posting the roundup of IAVW: Malaysian this weekend, so stay tuned for some great recipes. And don't forget to send your entries for IAVW: Indian to Graziana at Erbe in Cucina all of this month.

Have a great weekend, folks!

Trinidadian Rotis Stuffed With Split Peas

I was visiting yesterday with my friend Roshani and we got to talking about Trinidadian food. Before long, I had a serious craving for something hot and spicy and Caribbean.

By the time I got home, the thing uppermost in my mind was to get into the kitchen and make something divinely Trinidadian.

I was in luck. My favorite cookbook, Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, had quite a few choices. What I really wanted to make was Doubles, the dish Roshani had been raving about and which is a fried bread topped with a spicy chickpea stew and mango chutney. But I settled instead on a healthier choice that required no deep-frying: A roti or a flatbread stuffed with a spicy lentil mixture.

I don't easily change other cooks' recipes the first time I make them because hey, how could I improvise on something when I don't know if the original tastes better? In fact, the only reason I do make changes when I cook a recipe for the first time is when I need to veganize it because this is, after all, a vegan blog, or to make a recipe healthier, or when I don't have the exact ingredients on hand.

I did healthify Jaffrey's recipe: for the roti, I cut down on the fat, used canola oil instead of butter (a much healthier alternative), and I substituted whole-wheat durum flour for the all-purpose. I didn't make any changes to the stuffing, however, which was delicious except--again--to cut down on the fat.

The great thing about these breads is not only are they exotic and delicious, but they are also very well balanced nutritionally-- the lentils and wheat together form a perfect protein, which is great for anyone looking to eat healthy. I served this with a gorgeous Green Beans and Potato Curry with Trinidadian Spices, and I'll be posting that recipe tomorrow.

Here, then, is the recipe. The process for making the stuffed bread is very similar to the way we Indians make parathas, but I included some additional pictures to demystify the process.

Enjoy!
Trinidadian Rotis Stuffed with Split Peas

(Makes 8 7-inch rotis)

Ingredients:

For the dough:

3 cups whole-wheat durum flour

2 tbsp canola oil

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

Mix the ingredients and rub the oil into the flour with your hands to get a coarse, grainy texture. Using just enough water, knead into a soft, smooth, pliable dough that's NOT sticky. (You can do this in a stand mixer or a food processor). Place in an airtight container and set aside.

For the stuffing:

1 cup yellow split peas or tuvar dal, soaked at least 2 hours, drained, then covered with water and boiled until tender with 1/2 tsp turmeric.

1 onion, minced (you don't want large pieces of onion that will tear through the dough when you're rolling out the bread).

2 green chillies, minced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tbsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground black pepper

Salt to taste

1 tbsp canola oil

Heat the oil in a skillet.

Add the onions, saute for a couple of minutes until they start to turn translucent, then add garlic and green chillies.

Stir fry until the onions begin to brown. Now add the split peas, cumin, salt and black pepper.

Stir well and cook another two minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

To put together the rotis:

Divide the dough into eight parts. Form 8 smooth balls by rolling between the palms of your hands. Set aside covered with a kitchen towel.
Divide the stuffing into eight parts and again, form 8 balls.

Now roll out one ball of dough to a diameter of 4 inches. Place a ball of stuffing in the center.
Gather the edges of the dough around the stuffing and seal them at the top. Press down to ensure a tight seal.

Using a little flour, roll the ball out to a roti about 7 inches in diameter. Repeat for the rest of the dough and stuffing.
Heat a cast-iron or non-stick griddle.

Smear with just a tiny amount of oil or using a non-stick spray. Now place the roti on the griddle.

When you see bubbles forming on the underside, flip the roti over and let it cook on the other side another 1 minute.
Now flip over again and cook for another half minute. Repeat for the other side.

Serve hot with the Green Beans and Potato Curry With Trinidadian Spices, which I'll post tomorrow. Until then!

These rotis are heading over to Sia's place for the 15th helping of MLLA, that wonderful event started by Susan. Thanks, Sia and Susan!

Brown Rice Puliyodarai With Homemade Potato Chips

Tamil cuisine is rich in delicious prepared rice varieties, including tomato rice, lemon rice, brinjal (or eggplant) rice, sesame seed rice and coconut rice, to name just a few. But one of my hands-down favorites is tamarind rice, or puliyodarai.

My mom-in-law, who's passed on, used to make the best tamarind rice I ever ate. No wonder then that Desi often craves some tamarind rice with home-made potato chips, just like his mom used to make it.

I usually sneak in healthier ingredients and procedures, like baking potato chips instead of deep-frying them, but this time he had a craving for the deep-fried variety, along with the puliodarai and some sarkarai pongal. So to keep dinner from getting too unhealthy, I used some brown rice for the puliyodarai, instead of white rice which it is typically and traditionally made with. It tasted delicious, and I thought I'd share the recipe with you, along with my recipe for easy and delicious home-made potato chips.

I make my brown rice in a convenient little rice cooker, because microwaving never seems to get it to the right consistency. If you don't have a rice cooker, try this stovetop-oven method which works very well and which keeps the rice grains nice and separate (you can skip the cumin seeds from the recipe).

Brown rice, for those still hesitant to try it, is delicious with a nutty flavor that makes it more complex and flavorful than white rice. Of course it takes longer to cook, but it's not at all difficult once you've learned how-- in fact, all you need to know is how to boil water. Literally.

Plus there's the huge catch with white rice that makes brown a much better option: white rice is stripped clean of the healthy bran that adds not only fiber but tons of nutrients to rice, including magnesium, manganese and zinc.

Here, then, is the recipe for my brown rice puliyodarai. A classic made healthier. Now that's a win-win.

Enjoy, all!

Brown Rice Puliyodarai

Ingredients:

For the tamarind sauce (pulikachal)

2 tbsp tamarind paste dissolved in about 4 cups of water. If you're using tamarind pods, soak a large lemon-size ball in 4 cups of warm water. When the tamarind softens, in about 30 minutes, crush it with your fingers to extract all the juice, and discard the solids.

3 red chilies

1 tsp fenugreek seeds

1 tbsp chana dal (bengal gram)

1 tbsp udad dal (black gram)

1 tbsp canola or other vegetable oil

A generous pinch of asafetida (hing)

1 tsp mustard seeds

1/2 tsp turmeric powder

Dry-roast the fenugreek seeds until they darken slightly to a reddish hue.

In a tiny bit of oil, fry the red chilies. Remove, and use a paper towel to absorb the excess oil.

In a spice grinder, powder the fenugreek and chilies along with about 1/2 tsp of salt. Set aside.

Heat remaining oil and add the mustard, asafetida, chilies, chana dal and udad dal. Fry for a minute.

Once the peanuts start browning, add the tamarind sauce. Let the tamarind sauce reduce on a low flame until it has thickened to a consistency almost like that of molasses. Now add the chilli-fenugreek powder and stir well to mix. Check for salt and add more if needed. Take off heat.

This sauce will store for weeks if kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container.

To put together the Puliyodarai:

1 cup brown rice, cooked until tender in rice cooker per the manufacturer's instructions, or by this method. You can leave out the cumin seeds if you use the oven procedure.

3 tbsp of the tamarind sauce.

1 tsp canola oil

1 tsp mustard seeds

2 tbsp peanuts

1 tbsp cashewnuts

2-3 small sprigs of curry leaves

Heat the oil and add the mustard seeds. When the crackle, add the curry leaves, cashew nuts and peanuts and fry until the peanuts turn lightly golden.

Add the peanuts, mustard and curry leaves to the rice along with the tamarind sauce. Mix thoroughly. Add more tamarind sauce if you need.

Enjoy!

Potato Chips

Ingredients:

1 large potato, sliced very, very thinly, preferably with a mandoline. I set mine to about 1/10ths of an inch thick.

1 tsp red chilli powder like cayenne

Oil for deep-frying (you want about an inch-deep layer of oil in your frying pan)

Salt to taste.

Immediately after slicing the potatoes, dunk them into a water bath and leave them there for at least 15 minutes. This washes off any excess starch which would keep the chips from crisping up nicely.

Heat the oil to between 360 and 370 degrees. If you have one, use a frying thermometer to ensure the oil's at the right temperature. Food fried at these temperatures absorbs almost no oil, taking a good deal of the guilt out of deep-frying.

While the oil is heating, dry off the potato slices thoroughly with a kitchen towel. Put them in a dry bowl and sprinkle with chilli powder. I prefer not to salt the potatoes until after they are fried-- that way they don't draw any more water out of the potato, and you need less salt to get the perfect flavor.

Fry the potato slices in batches, making sure they do not overlap. Each side should take about 2 minutes-- they will start curling and turn golden brown and feel firm-- that's how you know they're done.

Remove to a bowl lined with paper towels and sprinkle with salt while still hot.

Eat with the Puliyodarai. Perfect.

Blast-Off-That-Cold Soup

Food can be delicious medicine, and what can be more comforting when you're down and out than a bowl of hot soup?

I hate popping pills of any kind, so when I get mildly sick, I usually turn to my kitchen to see what I can find to heal myself. If it's a cold, I'm lucky: I love nothing better than a cup of ginger tea: I just boil some water with a few slivers of ginger, add some black tea, strain it all, and then top it off with some soymilk. That, with an I Love Lucy rerun, is pure bliss.

When we were kids, my parents would make us some haldi ka doodh, or milk heated with cold-fighting spices and turmeric which is prized by cooks in India for its antiseptic properties. I make a version of it with soymilk and it is ultra-delicious.

When I have a cold, I also try to make quick soups so I can get all the comfort I need without standing around in the kitchen too long. My carrot-potato-celery soup is thick and velvety and just the perfect meal for those times when your head feels like it's made of lead, like mine did these past few days. Best of all, it takes just a few minutes to put together, thanks to some help from the microwave.

I added to this soup some old housewives' remedies proven to be great cold-busters: ginger, garlic and Vitamin C-rich foods like potato, celery and carrots as well as some sage which is one of my favorite herbs and also a proven cold-fighter. Ground black pepper and some cayenne to break through that congestion. And turmeric, of course.

Finally, for that extra dash of comfort, I topped off my soup with some homemade croutons.

So next time the cold bug bugs you, try this soup. Trust me, you'll feel way better.

I did.

Velvety Carrot-Celery-Potato Soup

(Makes about 4 servings)

2 medium potatoes, scrubbed clean and cut into a dice. Put the potatoes in a microwave-safe bowl, cover with either a microwave-safe dish or plastic wrap, and throw them into the microwave for five minutes.

2 medium carrots, cut into a small dice

2 stalks celery, also cut into a small dice

1 medium onion, minced

5 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 tbsp grated ginger

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp canola or olive oil

3-4 large sage leaves, minced very fine.

Water or vegetable stock, as needed

1/2 cup soymilk

Salt to taste

Heat the oil in a skillet. Add the onions and saute over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until they become translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add the ginger and garlic and stir for another minute.

Add the carrots, celery, cayenne, turmeric and ground black pepper. Stir and saute another 2-3 minutes until the carrots begin to soften. Now add enough water or stock to cover the vegetables, bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer, covered, until the carrots are very tender, about 8-10 minutes.

Add the cooked potatoes (make sure they are tender) and stir in.

Now put all the vegetables and liquid into a blender and blend into a puree. You can make this very smooth, although I like mine just a little chunky. Be careful because the soup is very hot and you don't want to burn yourself. (If you have a hand-blender, you can blend the veggies in the skillet itself. Lucky you.)

Pour the vegetable puree back into the skillet over medium heat, add the soymilk, and let everything warm through. Add salt to taste, then sage.

Remove from heat, top with croutons, and enjoy!

For the croutons, I just cube up any bread I have on hand, toss it with some salt and oil and sometimes a little garlic powder, and bung it into the toaster oven for about 5 minutes or until it gets that crunchy golden crust.
***
Finally, a picture of another lovely comfort-giver: my cat Pubm!

Mava Cake: A Labor Of Love

A mava cake is a cardamom-scented delicacy popularized and sold almost exclusively by the wonderful Irani restaurants of Bombay.

These restaurants, unique little bakeries and eateries opened by Iranian immigrants who came to the city in the 19th century, were usually corner joints housed in grand old British-era buildings.

In Andheri, a suburb of Bombay where I grew up, there were two just outside the railway station. When we were children, my father would treat my brother and I to a quick snack of warm-from-the-oven bun-muska (a sweet bun slathered with Amul butter) after we'd taken the train back from visiting relatives or friends.


Many of the city's better-known Irani restaurants were in South Bombay: Kyani's, Bastani's, Yazdani's, Sassanian's... You could almost describe them as the city's first fast-food joints but that wouldn't do them justice because although the food arrived fast, the atmosphere was anything but rushed.

In fact, time seemed to slow down inside an Irani restaurant. They were usually spacious and airy with at least two wide doorways-- said to be designed to keep up a smooth flow of people exiting and entering the restaurant. The floors were marble, the tables were round and marble-topped with a wooden base, and the wooden chairs were straightbacked and fragile-looking. Rumor had it that the chairs were deliberately designed to be uncomfortable to keep diners from sitting too long.

Inside, tacked on to one of the many mirrors on the walls, would be an amusing list of do nots: Do not comb hair, do not spit, do not talk politics.... Sometimes, also tacked to the mirrors, would be pictures of Zoroastrian gods.

Despite the chairs, people tended to linger. The food was invariably cheap and no, nobody really cared if you did talk politics. In fact, a popular pastime for older residents would be to go to the local Irani restaurant first thing in the morning, order a cup of tea, and discuss the morning newspaper to every last detail, often with the restaurant owner at the cashier's counter.

Your order was always taken by one of the matter-of-fact waiters (always male) with a pencil tucked behind his ear and an elephant's memory for everything you ordered. The special sweet, thick, milky tea could be had paani kam (with less water) so it would be sweeter and thicker and milkier. Or you could order Market, an unusual mix of tea and coffee. Or a plate of salty, layered, crispy khari biscuits or sweet, buttery, melt-in-the-mouth Shrewsberry biscuits. Mutton patties and chicken patties. Slim sandwiches of white buttered bread with pieces of boiled meat inside. Or the ultimate decadence-- a dish of pastries filled with all kinds of cupcakes and cakes, including the wonderful mava cake. You could take what you liked, and the bill would be written up only for the pastries you ate.

When you were ready to go, you always paid the cashier, never the waiter. At the cashier's counter, you could also order slabs of brun paav, a hard-crusted roll, or other fresh-baked breads. The warm rolls would be wrapped in a newspaper before being handed to you. Desi, who lived in Dhobi Talao for a few years, remembers buying brun paav each morning from Kyani's and dunking a roll into hot tea for a delicious breakfast.

Behind the cashier would be rows of large glass jars filled with all sorts of baked biscuits (cookies) and other goodies that you could order by weight. Desi and I never failed to pick up a few mava cakes shaped like mini loaves and always fresh baked. The scent alone was deeply satisfying, although nothing compared to the experience of biting into one. The cakes were dense and rather textured, as I remember, and not as fluffy and light as cakes usually are. The fragrance of cardamom combined with the rich sweetness of the cake was intoxicating.

Unfortunately, like a lot of good things, Irani restaurants are fast fading from Bombay's landscape. Most have been replaced by fast-food joints, pizza takeouts and pubs. The last time I was in Andheri, I saw at least one of the Irani restaurants outside the railway station had given way to a McDonald's with the same yellow arches and the same old food you can find almost anywhere in the world. What could be sadder?

Bastani's, an institution for many Bombayites, closed its doors a year or so ago. Apparently, fewer than 25 Irani restaurants remain in the city, down from more than 400 in the 1950s. To those who remember a gentler, kinder Bombay, it is truly the end of an era of great eating.

Since I left Bombay, I've missed the mava cake probably more than most other foods from back home that I don't easily find here. And although in the past I could still eat a mava cake-- or a dozen-- when I visited the city, things changed drastically when I went vegan. Because the main ingredient in the mava cake, the one that gives it its unique flavor, is the mava, or a reduction of milk, which of course is a no-no for me.

Making a vegan mava cake, then, became almost an obsession. I tried to substitute the mava with different proportions of tofu, but I was never too happy with the results because the tofu always left the cake a tad too moist, although the taste was pretty good. Then, one day, I had a brainwave-- vegan cream cheese!

Although vegan cream cheese is not made with dairy, it has a lot of the flavor of regular cream cheese and, I thought, it'd make a great substitute for mava.

The result was pretty delicious and the flavor pretty close, although I'll be the first to say that the cake was lighter and fluffier than a typical mava cake, simply because I used my usual cupcake recipe as a base. The next time I might try it with a pound cake recipe, because the denser texture of a pound cake resembles a mava cake more closely.

I also shaped my mava cakes as cupcakes because I didn't have any mini loaf pans, and they looked pretty darn cute.

So here it is, the recipe of a labor of love. I've also shared with you pictures of one of South Bombay's Irani joints, Sassanian's, which we went to the last time we were in the city. The owner and his sister (left and above) told us they were having a hard time holding on in the face of competition from the dozens of fast-food chains that have descended on the city since India opened its economy in the 1990s, and which younger Bombayites find more attractive.

But I, for one, cannot imagine a Bombay without one of these cute corner eateries where one could never spend enough time with friends, where the food was always delicious and the prices always low. Here's to all those amazing Irani restaurants-- and here's hoping they survive!


Vegan Mava Cake

(Makes 10 cupcakes)

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp powdered cardamom

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup soy milk + 1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar. Mix and set aside to curdle for a few minutes

1/4 cup vegan cream cheese, like Tofutti, at room temperature.

1/2 cup or 8 tbsp vegan butter like Earth Balance, also at room temperature.

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and mix well. Add the cardamom powder and mix. Set aside.

In another bowl, with a hand mixer or a stand mixer set to medium speed, cream the vegan butter and the sugar until light and fluffy, for no more than 2 minutes. Add the cream cheese and beat until just mixed. Do not overbeat.

Add the vanilla extract.

Add the flour mixture in three batches alternating with the soymilk, beating in well after each addition so there are no lumps. Scrape down the bowl after each addition.

Line 10 cups of a standard-sized muffin pan with cupcake liners. Divide the batter equally among the cups, filling each cup about 2/3rds.

Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven about 25-28 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool on a rack. Mava cakes are never frosted, so all you have to do now is eat it. Enjoy!

This mava cake, a uniquely Indian treat, goes to It's A Vegan World: Indian, started right here at Holy Cow! and hosted this month by Graziana of Erbe in cucina.

***

I wanted to apologize to anyone who missed me for my rather slow blogging schedule this last week. I got sick and although I had every intention of putting up this mava cake post a couple of days back, my congested head said otherwise. Anyway, better late than never. Thanks for your patience!

It's A Vegan World: Indian

A quick note to point you all to Graziana's blog, Erbe in Cucina, or Cooking with Herbs, where she is hosting It's A Vegan World this month. She's made a fantastic choice, although I'll admit a small bias-- Indian cuisine!

Indian cuisine is, of course, filled with rich options in vegan cooking, and I have no doubt that many of you will find many wonderful dishes to send her as this month rolls on. I am so excited, I can't wait to get started! You can find out more about how to participate, rules etc. on her blog right here.

Meanwhile, IAVW Malaysian is still on-- the deadline's September 5, and you still have a couple of days to send in your entries, so hurry!

I have been under the weather these past few days, but I'll be back later today with a recipe close to my heart. Until then!

Whole-Wheat French Bread: A Step-By-Step Guide

So maybe French women don't get fat, but I am not French and I do. Unless I watch what I eat.

Still, I do get the urge to eat some lusciously soft, heartily crusty French bread ever so often. And when I was struck by the recurring urge to bake a French bread this weekend, I decided, for a change, to make it healthy by incorporating as much whole wheat into the recipe as I possibly could.

I had already posted a part-whole-wheat French bread recipe on this blog, but I don't bake it as often because it's a tad complicated and I am always rushed for time. There's also another that I posted not long ago that uses only bread flour or all-purpose flour. Both breads are excellent, but when I want some home-baked French bread on the fly, the white flour recipe usually wins out because it's much quicker. But as you can imagine, it's not the healthiest option.

To end the health dilemma once and for all, I decided I'd come up with a healthy, whole-wheat French bread recipe that was easy and delicious, even if I was condemned to eating various failed experiments for the rest of the year. Luckily, it was nowhere near that hard-- in fact, I succeeded at the first try.

I won't take all the credit for it-- French bread is one of the easiest breads to bake, and almost anyone can make a pretty good loaf with just a little practice.

Despite its healthy nature, this bread is also rather traditional because it uses just flour, water and salt, as classic French bread does. I did add some vital wheat gluten because I wanted the bread to be airy and light, as good French bread should be.

To understand the role and importance of vital wheat gluten in wholegrain bread-making, it might help to know the difference between whole-wheat flour, which you might have often heard described as being low in gluten, and refined flours like all-purpose flour and bread flour, which have a high gluten content.

Refined flours are made by milling the endosperm of the wheat kernel which is a coating around the embryo of the grain and which contains a protein that, when kneaded, develops into gluten, giving bread its chewiness and structure and helping it to rise.

Whole-wheat flour, on the other hand, is made by milling the entire wheat kernel which includes the endosperm, the outer coating called the bran, and the embryo or the germ. Therefore, measure-for-measure, whole-wheat flour contains less endosperm than all-purpose or bread flour and therefore less of the protein that causes gluten to develop. Get it?

At the other end of the scale you have cake flour which is refined further by stripping from it not just the bran and germ but also a good deal of the gluten-creating protein, yielding a high-starch flour that contains very little gluten. This makes it perfect for crumbly, tender cakes.

A quick piece of information for home cooks who tend to substitute maida, a super-refined flour that is widely used in India to make sweets and some breads, with all-purpose flour. Maida is actually much closer to cake flour than it is to all-purpose flour because of its very high starch content.

Coming to the point of this post, when you make a bread with only or mostly whole-wheat flour or other wholegrain flours like rye, you need to give the dough a protein boost so it will yield a well-risen, well-structured loaf of bread instead of a heavy, dense loaf that you could kill someone with (hopefully not by feeding it to them :) ). That protein boost is given by adding vital wheat gluten to the recipe. If you can't find vital wheat gluten, which is sold in grocery stores like Whole Foods in powder form, I'd suggest flip-flopping the ratio of whole-wheat to all-purpose flour in the recipe and leaving out the added gluten.

I used durum whole-wheat flour, the same flour I use to make chapatis and puris, for this bread. You can buy durum whole wheat flour in five-, 10- or 20-pound bags at Indian grocery stores and even at natural food stores like Whole Foods.

Since I've often enough stressed in the past that bread-making is equal parts science and art, I thought it might help for you to see pictures of most of the major steps, so I've included them here. As always, feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Here's the recipe. Enjoy!

Whole-Wheat French Bread

3 cups of durum whole-wheat flour

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tbsp + 1 tsp vital wheat gluten

(If you don't have vital wheat gluten, use 3 cups all-purpose and 2 cups whole-wheat flour and skip the gluten)

1 1/2 tbsp salt

2 cups of mildly warm water

2 1/2 tsp yeast

Mix the yeast, 1 cup of all-purpose flour and 1 cup of water in a large bowl. Let stand for a few minutes until the mixture becomes quite bubbly, about 10-15 minutes.

Now add the vital wheat gluten, remaining flour, salt and remaining water. Mix to combine and then knead by hand about 10 minutes or in a stand mixer, on medium speed, about six minutes, until you have a very smooth, elastic and resilient dough.

Form the dough into a ball and place in an oiled bowl, turning over once to coat the top with oil. Cover loosely with a kitchen towel and set aside to rise at room temperature. (In winter, I'd leave it in a cold oven with the light on).

After two hours, the dough would have more than doubled. Punch it down to remove all the gases in it, then divide it into two. Let the dough stand, covered with a kitchen towel, around 10 minutes before shaping.

Take one ball of dough and punch it down with your fist to release all the gases and air. You will have a six-inch round when you're done.

Now, roll over more than half of the dough and, using your knuckles or the heel of your hand, press it down into the bottom.

Repeat two more times, rolling the dough over each time, until you have a cylinder. Each time, press in the seams with your knuckles or the heel of your hand. If needed, at the end, pinch in the seam with your fingers to seal it. You will now have a cylinder with tapering ends, about six inches in length.

Now using the palms of your hands and fingers and without applying any pressure, roll the dough until you have a roll about 12 inches in length. The roll should be even all over and taper off at the ends-- apply a little pressure when you reach the ends to create the tapering shape.

Repeat this with the other ball of dough.

Place the two loaves on a baking sheet lightly greased with oil and sprinkled with cornmeal, at least four inches apart because they will expand and rise.

Cover with a floured kitchen towel and set aside for an hour.

With a very sharp knife or razor, and very quickly, make three long, diagonal cuts in the top of the bread. (I used a serrated steak knife as you can see in the picture, but if you're not practiced at this, use a very sharp, thin razor blade because you don't want to deflate the dough)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Five minutes before baking, spray about 1/2 cup water into the oven to create a steamy environment. (The water helps create a crusty loaf and also it creates a moist environment where the bread bakes slowly, creating more flavor).

Place the bread in the oven and close the door. Five minutes later, spray more water into the oven.

Bake about 30 minutes until the loaves are golden-brown. Lift up the loaf to check that it separates easily from the baking sheet.

Let stand at least 15 minutes on a rack before cutting.