Bruschetta

After making the pedhas, I was on a roll:). P called up from work and said he wanted to have bruschetta: he was craving it ever since we saw Julie and Julia,where in a scene Julie is making yummy bruschetta.
So we decided to make a dinner out of it.

Ingredients: 1 baguette
7 to 8 firm ripe tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsps EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped fresh buffalo mozzarella
freshly ground black pepper according to desired taste
couple of sprigs of basil.(you can use dried basil too,but use sparingly because dried basil generally tends to be a little strong in taste)
Method: De-seed the tomatoes


















Cut the baguette up into diagonal slices













Heat EVOO on a skillet and toast these slices to golden brown on both the sides.You can use the oven too,Just coat the slices with EVOO and put it on the grill setting for 5 minutes for 180 deg C.

Chop the de-seeded tomatoes into cubes.Add the sugar,salt,EVOO,basil and finely chopped garilc and freshly ground pepper and the cheese.








Mix this up nicely and keep it in the fridge for an hour. Later when you are ready to eat,spoon out the tomato mixture on to the toasted bread and enjoy!

Milk Pedhas

Yesterday, I had a litre of whole milk lying in the fridge.Usually I make yogurt out of it,but for some reason we did not get to finishing the yogurt and I had a lot of left over milk. So I set out on a hunt for the perfect pedha recipe and liked Sree's recipe.
But I tweaked it and eliminated the milk powder and added very little paneer.

Ingredients: 1 litre whole milk
2 1/2 tbsps paneer
3 tbsps sugar
10 roughly chopped almonds to garnish
1 pinch of saffron strands

Method: Heat the milk in a heavy bottom wide pan. (I took our regular cooking kadai). Keep the heat on medium low and boil approximately for 2.5 hours stirring every 5 to 7 minutes. Be careful and stir at regular intervals otherwise the milk will stick to the bottom of the pan. After around 2 hours the milk will become thick and start forming a mass.At this point add the paneer,sugar and saffron. Keep stirring continuously.When the mixture starts leaving the kadai, cook for 5 more minutes and turn off the heat. It is important to stop cooking when the mixture is still a little moist, because if you overcook it the pedhas will have a burnt taste and will become hard. Once the mixture cools down, roll them into balls of desired size and top each one of it with a piece of the almond.

I am going to be a year older..Do I like it?..Does anybody??

Okay so here I am sitting in front of the computer trying to write my first ever blog..yeah I know all you seasoned bloggers will think..honey well that's how we started!..Anyway ..to cut a long story short..I am here to ramble..like many of my fellow bloggers..but still an amateur..

Well the reason for starting a blog is one being...that I follow some of the food blogs..and I love to cook..and am a decent cook..:)

So here I am..I want to bake a cake on my birthday..which is very soon..and I am looking for a good chocolate cake recipe..For some reason this birthday feels very different..the enthusiasm is lacking..not the usual euphoria that I usually myself create a week before my birthday..For some reason I have not even gotten myself to go to the salon and do the usual beautification that I go through before my birthday..oh well..enough...

So to start with I am looking for a recipe for a chocolate cake with good icing..usually the icing that I have tried either melts too fast or becomes too creamy..I could might as well buy a Betty Crocker cake mix..but now that I have sometime I would like to indulge in some cake making..at least it will get me excited:)...