Parting Shots

Hi

My intern in Germany is over, and I am back to IIT. That does culminate my cooking adventures in Karlsruhe, but certainly does not end this blog. This summer has been best summer I have had so far, and it got only better with all the fun I had cooking. I had always wanted to learn how to cook, but somehow never found time.

This blog will be dormant for the moment, for IIT-life offers neither the time nor the facilities needed for cooking, but I will surely post updates whenever I go home and make something.

The blog recieved more readership and appreciation than I had expected when I started it. Thanks a lot to all you people who read, commented or just kept coming back. Special thanks to Anasuya, Piyush, CP and Sindhu.

My mother deserves a bulk of the credit. She supplied most of the recipes, kept up on the encouragement, and first and foremost, gave me an excellent standard for pitting my dishes against - her own cooking. Also, my grandmother (nani), whose fingers ooze nothing short of magic when it comes to cooking.

This is just a long and sentimental post, but I mean every word of it. So once again, thanks all of you, and I will definitely be back!

Cheers

Antariksh

24th July 2009 - Fest - Chocolate Cake

What?

I wanted to make some sort of a cake during my stay here and since this was the last day, and I luckily had some maida left over, I went for the plunge. For the chocolate, I used the Bourvita-esque drinking chocolate I had purchased here.

How did it look?

No, the white thing is not flour. It's powdered sugar

Improvement

• The sugar here is not as sweet as the one we find in India, which I realized later; the cake could have done with more sugar. Apart from that, though, it was pretty satisfactory.

24th July 2009 - Fest - Besan ke laddoo

What?

Today is my last day here, and there's so much I want to make... I always wanted to try makin sweets, and rawa+besan ke laddoo are pretty easy. Also, that would help me finish the last bit of besan I have left. The recipe my mother gave looked delightfully simple, and yielded excellent results!

How did it look?

Improvement

• I was told that the balls need to be rolled when the mix is still hot, or otherwise they will fall apart. In my case, the mix was too powdery, so I added some milk. I don't know if that was expected, but the laddoo came out fine after that.
• I didn't have a lot of besan left, so I could make only 5 laddoos, but they turned out well, and that's what matters the most to me...

UP NEXT: Chocolate Cake

22nd July 2009 - Dinner - Corn, Paprika and Peas!

What?

I bought a can of Mexico-Mix from the Supermarket. It basically had corn, red pepper and peas, and I just sauted them a bit with some garlic butter and mix-veg masaala, and tossed in cubed boiled potatoes. Boy, corn does make stuff very very tasty.

How did it look?

Improvement

• You can experiment a lot with vegetables in this case. Today, I have carrots, beans, peas and corn, and I am gonna see how it turns out.
• This dish did well with some drops of lemon juice.
• The overall flavour is a slightly light, so I didn't spoil it by adding unnecessary red chilly powder

22nd July 2009 - Dinner - Gaajar ka Halwa

What?

I have a lot of sugar and ghee left, so what better way to use it than something sweet! So, Gaajar ka Halwa it was!

How did it look?

Improvement

• What I made was pretty bare-bones. For better results, condensed milk must be used, and stuff like ilaaychi etc add to the flavour
• I did make sure not to commit last time's mistake of adding too much milk, which had made the halwa soggy
• The carrots you get here are orange in colour, not like the red ones common in India. So, obviously the halwa also turned out much less red than what we are used to seeing. Although that doesn't change the taste, it still makes the Halwa look, erm, unrealistic. Well, can't help it!

21st July 2009 - Dinner - Raajma

What?

The last round of Raajma. Saath mei.n chapaati and rice. Except, I only have maida now, so that chapaatis are nice, round, thin and white, and like chewing-gum.

How did it look?

21th July 2009 - Lunch - Suji/Rawa ke Cheele

What

Credits to Rohit Shroff (affectionately (?) called CP) again for suggesting the dish and giving a decent recipe. It was a cheela sort of preparation again, only with rawa/suji/semolina. I didn't have a lot of time, so I skipped the onions etc, and just filled it with mashed potatoes so that it would be filling for lunch. That, and half a litre of milk with cocoa would do nicely for Lunch!

How did it look?

Improvement

• A lot can be done. Some chopped onions, better stuff to fill and so on.
• To save time, I made thicker ones, which don't taste as nice as the thinner ones. Compromises!
• FLIPS! Today was fun. As my time in Germany nears its end, I am desperate to try as much stuff as possible. I just had to do the flipping again. I practised more, just to be sure, and then took the video. Vanity! The first time I tried the flip, it was half-hearted, and resulted in a half-flip, which neatly folds the cheela. The full flip will lose points for bad landing though. It's fun practising this stuff. So, I tried to do that again, and voilà!