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Vegetarian pot pie

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I love pot pie or rather I love the concept of pot pie, the actual pot pie often disappoints . The base of the crust base is often soggy and a little under baked.

My solution is to bake the crust separately. Here I used store bought puff pastry (all butter) and baked according to the instructions.

I make a lot of different potpie fillings, some are traditional (mostly bechamel based) and others like this malai paneer one are curry based. I used cranberries in place of my regular raisins today and I use less cream to make the sauce thicker.

Assemble just before serving, the pastry is crisp and buttery and the filling is creamy and full of veggies. A perfect Christmas lunch.

Brazilian Cheese puffs ( Pao de Queijo)

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It’s always tricky to bake something you have never actually eaten before. If you don’t like it, is it because you did a terrible job or because the taste is so new to you.

Luckily, there is no such conundrum with this recipe, it combines the best qualities of gougeres with mochi. Imagine a crisp crust with a glutinous but airy center. This is what the British call a “moreish” recipe, you cannot stop at one.

I looked up several recipes online and settled on this one from the NYT . It starts like a choux pastry recipe but with tapioca flour and then the cheese is folded in.  I always weigh all my ingredients- especially in a brand new recipe. Also- a stand mixer seems essential for this recipe, this is just a super tacky dough.

Ingredients:

  • 335 grams tapioca starch (about 3 cups)
  • 2 tsp kosher salt 
  • ¼ teaspoon baking powder
  • ⅔ cup whole milk
  • 2/3 cup water
  • ½ cup canola oil
  • 1 ½ tablespoons butter, softened
  • 2 large eggs
  • 94 grams grated Pecorino Romano cheese (about ¾ cup)
  • 94 grams grated Parmesan cheese (about ¾ cup)

Boil the water, milk, butter and oil together.

Add to the starch, baking powder and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer. Dump the liquids in and using a paddle attachment, mix at low speed till the ingredients come together (4 minutes for me).

Add the eggs- mix on low for 4 minutes, scrape the bottom and paddle and mix again for 4–6 minutes till the dough gets tacky and forms strands with the edges.

Add the cheese and mix for another  minute. Scrape the bottom of the bowl and cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Divide the dough using a bench scraper into 8ths and then into 32s. Make 32 small balls using tapioca flour to dust your hands.

Bake at 375 for 20-23 minutes till pale golden brown. Bake only as many as will be immediately consumed. Apparently these get hard as they cool. We did not test this hypothesis since all the puffs were consumed within 10 minutes.

 

No Knead Rye Bread

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My life changed when I read Mark Bittman’s column on no-knead bread.  I found out that professional baking ovens had steam injectors which injected steam at the start of the baking process. This is what led to the shatteringly thin crust and soft centers of the artisan boules I loved. Jim Lahey said- just start the baking in a dutch oven- bake your loaf covered for 30 minutes and then uncovered. Brilliant in its simplicity!

The no-knead recipe not only saves time but allows complex sourdough flavors to develop with regular active dry yeast. 5 minute artisan bread a day by Jeff Hertzberg is my favorite bread cookbook. This recipe is inspired from his book.

Ingredients:

3 cups lukewarm water (680 gm)

Active dry yeast – 1 tbsp

Caraway seeds- 1.5 tbsp

Kosher salt- 1 tbsp

Rye flour 1 cup (120 g)

All purpose flour 5.5 cups ( 780 gm)

Cornstarch wash: Boil 1/2 cup of water with 1/2 tsp of cornflour in the microwave till glassy (1-2 minutes).  Cool

Add the yeast, salt and caraway seeds to the water and stir till they dissolve. Dump in all the flour and mix without kneading. I use a danish whisk and mix it till all the flour is hydrated. This will form a goopy, wet dough and the whole process shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.

Rest covered till doubled in size (2-4 hours)

Refrigerate for at least 24 hours. The dough will undergo a second slow rise in the refrigerator and can be stored for 14 days.

Baking day! Remove 1 lb of dough. Dust your bench and your hands and fold the dough onto itself till it forms a smooth ball. This is the trickiest and most important step and should be quick (less than 2 minutes) . The flour dusted smooth surface is critical for the final rise and texture of the bread. There should be no crags or cracks on the surface. Rest for 40 min- 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 450 F. Heat a cast iron dutch oven or a baking cloche for 30 minutes.

Just before baking , brush boule with cornstarch wash, sprinkle with caraway seeds. I place it with the parchment in the cloche and bake covered for 30 minutes and then uncovered for 5-10 minutes till top is brown and the loaf sounds hollow when you tap the bottom.

Rest the bread for 10 minutes before slicing.

Gruyere Biscuits

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These are from Paul Hollywood’s book How to Bake. They are flaky and cheesy and extremely dangerous to bake when you are alone at home. The recipe makes around 20 cookies and I may have eaten at least 7 while the cookies were still warm.

I love recipes with 3 ingredients .

Ingredients:

75 g all purpose flour, 75 gm shredded gruyere ( I used an aged dry one) and 75 gm unsalted butter (cold in 1 cm cubes). Salt and pepper to sprinkle

Using a food processor or a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour till the mixture resembles bread crumbs, add the cheese and knead very gently till it just forms a soft dough. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes at least.

Flour your surface, roll dough out to 5 mm thickness ( I use 5mm rubber bands on my rolling pin) and use a 5 cm biscuit cutter to cut out the biscuits. Bake at 400 F for 10 minutes till just brown around edges.

Remove to a cooling rack and cool (or not). Paul Hollywood says he enjoys these with champagne- they taste pretty good even without any

 

 

Vegan philly cheese “steak”

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When I ate meat, the philly cheesesteak was one of my favorite sandwiches. It’s grilled veggies, protein and cheese sauce. It’s always delicious.

This is my version. I used seitan inspired by a delicious vegan reuben that I had at Modern Love (Isa Moscowitz’s restaurant). Unlike other fake meats, seitan has been popular in East Asia for centuries. It is really good when crisped up with a little oil.

For my vegan cheese sauce, I used another Isa Moscowitz recipe – I’ve blogged about it before. Here is the link. Feel free of course to use real cheese, which I often do

The recipe is practically non-existent. Fry onions and peppers in oil with a few cumin seeds till brown. Fry seitan in 1 tbsp of oil till edges brown a little.

Pile on a roll ( I used a whole grain roll) and add cheese sauce.

Ginger Garlic and Broccoli Thai pizza

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Think of your favorite wood fired pizzeria pizza with its slightly charred crust with large bubbles. This is that kind of pizza but at home.

The toppings are inspired by Jim Lahey’s thai pizza from my favorite food site – Serious Eats. Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread changed my life but I’m not very fond of his pizza recipe. It’s too tacky and I like oil in my pizza dough. For my  dough- I used the olive oil dough recipe from my favorite bread book- Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day.  I will write a post about that recipe another day. Today- I want to talk about Thai pizza

Sauce: It is a regular bechamel sauce. Ingredients: 1 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp butter, 1 cup milk. Cook the flour in the melted butter for one minute. Whisk in the milk to make the sauce lump-free. Cook till the sauce bubbles and thickens. Add salt and pepper. Cool

Toppings: Finely chopped ginger, garlic, jalapenos,  baby broccoli.blanched for a minute

Cheeses: Provolone and Mozarella

Heat your oven to 500F with a pizza stone. Roll out or toss your pizza dough fairly thin. Spread the white sauce sparing half an inch at the edge. Sprinkle on the ginger, garlic and jalapenos. Add chunks of the broccolli. Add the provolone and torn pieces of the fresh mozarella.

Slide pizza on pizza stone ( I use parchment) and cook for 10 minutes.

These are flavor combinations that shouldn’t work but they somehow do. Cheese, Ginger, Garlic, Chillies- it’s a winning combination.

Puttanesca sauce

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The story goes that the prostitutes of Naples attracted customers because this sauce was so fragrant. I really like that story. The kids in Lemony Snicket (which is a very sly book) cook this for their guardian. My version doesn’t have anchovies, I’ve added gochuang, miso, shitake mushrooms, tamari and other ingredients to my puttanesca at different times. Today- I just skipped the anchovies.

Ingredients:

1 14 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes

1/4 cup chopped olives ( I used green, but oil cured would be fantastic here)

1-2 tbsp capers

4-5 large cloves of garlic (about 1-2 tbsp)

2 tbsp extravirgin olive oil

1/2-1 tsp dried red pepper flakes, 1 tsp dried oregano and 2 tbsp chopped parsley

Heat the oil, add the garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes (don’t brown). Add the capers and olives and cook for another minute. Add the tomatoes and the oregano and the red pepper flakes. Cover the sauce and cook  this low and slow for 20-30 minutes.

Cook pasta, add to sauce, thin with some pasta water. Traditionally this pasta is served with parsley and without cheese but honestly, every pasta tastes better with some parmesan.

Roasted carrots

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I hated cooked carrots while growing up, they were mushy and soggy and tasteless. These carrots are jammy, slightly charred and sweet and very addictive. I first saw the carrot- coriander combination in a purple carrot recipe and I’ve cooked these once a week since then

4 carrots- peeled and chopped into equal pieces

1-2 tbsp olive oil, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, 1 tsp coriander powder

Toss together, roast at 400 F for 20-25 minutes

Recipe is 9 year old approved!

Karanji

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Karanji (in Marathi or gujiya in Hindi) is a sweet or savory stuffed mostly deep fried pastry traditionally made on Diwali day in the state of Maharashtra.

Traditional karanji recipes call for a mix of all purpose flour and semolina flour and are deep fried. I really hate deep frying ! I used an empanada dough recipe for my karanjis and baked them. The empanada recipe gives me a wonderfully flaky and sturdy pastry shell.

Dough: Melt 7 tbsp of butter, add 1/2 cup of really hot water with 1 tsp of salt. Add butter and hot water to 3 cups all purpose flour. Knead. Add upto 1/4 -1/3 cup of additional hot water to make a smooth pliable dough. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for an hour.

Sweet filling: Melt 3 tbsp of ghee, add 1 cup of grated fresh coconut ( I use frozen). Roast till coconut dries out a little and just starts browning. Take off the heat. Add 1/4 cup of jaggery, 3 tbsp of sugar, 1 tbsp of sesame seeds, 1 tbsp of poppy seeds, 1/4 cup roasted cashews, 1/4 cup raisins, 1 tsp of ground cardamon powder.

Divide dough into  4s and then into 8s. Use a rolling pin or flatten each dough ball into a 3 inch diameter circle. Add 1 tbsp of filling and crimp into half moon shapes and make a slit on top for the steam to escape. Can be frozen at this stage (freeze flat on a baking sheet and add 5-6 minutes to bake time)

Bake at 375 for 10-15 minutes. Continue reading →

Raspberry pie

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My post thanksgiving pie shenanigans. I had only 3 eggs and 2 and half sticks of butter and a bag of frozen raspberries and no whipped cream. It was almost a Chopped episode.

Crust: Shortcrust pastry dough: I used this David Tanis recipe. I cup flour (145 gm), 1 stick butter with 1 tsp salt- whiz in food processor and add 2-3 tbsp ice cold water, one tablespoon at a time till the dough just comes together. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Roll out to 1/8 inch thickness for a 8 inch pie pan- refrigerate again for 30 minutes or freeze for 10 minutes.

Add parchment paper and bean or pie weights and bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes till very pale brown (you may  need foil on the edges if they start browning too soon)

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/12884-basic-short-crust-pastry

Pastry Cream: After much research, I settled on this Mark Bittman easy recipe. It is slightly runny for pie though- it definitely needs at least 1 hour to set. I halved it.

In a saucepan- add 1/3 cup of sugar, 1 tbsp of flour, 1 tbsp of cornstarch and 1 cup of whole milk and 1 beaten egg. Whisk over low-moderate heat fairly continuously till the custard comes together (you know- when you can draw a line on the back of the spoon). Add a tsp of vanilla and a tbsp of butter. Resist the temptation to lick all of it. Refrigerate for 30 minutes with cling film over the top so it doesn’t form a skin

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015881-mark-bittmans-pastry-cream

Rasberries: Frozen raspberries, heat with sugar (3-4 tbsp) and 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar. Some grand marnier and some orange zest will be excellent in this too.

Cool everything and then assemble. Wait for at least 1-2 hours. We didn’t and it was delicious but slightly runny.