Bombay Foodie

Up until 2017, there used to be only three kinds of chocolate: dark, milk and white. Then callebaut invented Ruby. Made with purple and pink cocoa beans, this sweet and slightly sour chocolate has been my favourite ever since. Ruby tastes even better as a ganache, and is best paired with like minded berries and tart fruits. Since strawberries are now in season, I took it as a sign to make Ruby Trifle. It brings together three elements you have seen on bombay foodie already: - Dorie Greenspan's Loaf Cake - Balsamic Strawberries - Ganache , but made with ruby chocolate this time around In a glass or a bowl, add a layer of sliced cake. Add ganache, then balsamic strawberries and end with a final layer of ganache. I sprinkled a layer of glittery fairy dust on top and finished with a slice of strawberry and some ruby chocolate buttons. Then chill the whole thing for an hour to set and you have on hand a pretty, pretty dessert.

Tomorrow is Holi which means it's also the time for the original Indian milkshake - the thandai. The drink marks our transition from spring to summer. With poppy seeds and melon seeds and a whole lot of nuts and spices, the end result is meant to have a cooling effect. There are many fans of the original thandai but I've never been a fan - mostly, the colour and flavour of saffron never sits right with me. So this year for holi, I'm shaking things up a bit. This version has most of the traditional thandai ingredients except I got rid of saffron. And I added two blue ingredients: blue poppy seeds instead of the white ones, and butterfly pea flower instead of the traditional rose petals. The end result is smoother than your regular thandai and while it didn't turn out to be blue, it's a very pretty shade of white. The recipe is easy enough for you to make in time for Holi tomorrow. Enjoy the festival of colours, and the drink. Here's the recipe. Ingredients 1 tbsp...

  It's been a couple of years since I added a new post here. Covid wasn't the only culprit. Blogging's just not as much fun as it used to be. Today's bloggers are serious professionals, not the fumbling hobbyists of my time just making friends and bonding over food. But the two years I wasn't blogging, I found myself coming back to visit, to look up my own recipes. The blog has, over last so many years, become the equivalent of my personal recipe diary. So I'm back! Maybe there will be more posts and maybe there won't. But I made these awesome waffles and I needed a place to stash the recipe for next time. I also felt I need to mark the day - it's been a whole 14 years today since the first cookie recipe was uploaded to Bombay Foodie. So these colourful, celebratory waffles feel just right. Here's for the recipe. Ingredients 1/3 cup plain flour 1 tbsp brown sugar or jaggery 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/3 cup buttermilk 1 tbsp melted butter Berries and hon...

I first heard of Momofuku not in the context of their legendary ramen or fried chicken but because I was intrigued by cereal milk. One of the outposts of the group is Milk Bar where, with Christina Tosi at helm, they dish out desserts that are straight out of a kindergartener's dream. There are many, many good things about Milk Bar but none as good or as intriguing as cereal milk. Think of that little bit of milk that's left at the end of your breakfast, infused with the flavour of cornflakes and sugar that you just ate. That's what cereal milk is, and at Milk Bar they sell whole cartons of it. Having never had the real thing, I got hold of the Milk Bar cookbook instead and set about making, first, the cereal milk and then a cereal milk panacotta. But because I never do things by halves, I then also made a dark, dark caramel to go with it and some candied sesame seeds I've been thinking about even since I first saw them on food52 . You can make all components ...

There are many things I don't buy; cakes are softer and cookies more buttery when you bake them yourself. But I had a fear - possibly because of a failed batch years ago - that homemade crackers won't be as crisp and as nice as store bought ones. Fear no more. These rye crackers beat anything I have ever eaten or bought. Plus there is the added advantage of eating them warm, right out of the oven. I only made these because snack shops are closed and I had run out of things to dip in my hummus but these are good enough to make every time you have a hankering for something crisp. Super easy too! Here's the recipe. Ingredients 1/4 cup rye flour 1/3 cup plain flour 1/2 tsp salt 2 tbsp olive oil 2 tbsp cold water sesame and poppy seeds for topping Mix together the two flours and the salt in a bowl. Make a well in centre and add olive oil and water. Bring everything together and knead into a soft dough - it should be moist but not sticky, add more water if you ne...

In the last month, the world seems to have gone crazy around us. Not only has coronavirus created an unprecedented health emergency, it is causing us to relook at our lifestyle and life choices like never before. Most people I know are working from home and because I live in Mumbai and work out of a startup hub, I am getting increasingly aware of another kind of panic gripping my friends and colleagues. If you think that eating out puts you at risk and you have never cooked before, chances are you are scratching your head on what to eat for dinner. I know of some fine folks stocking up on copious amounts of gin and 50 packets of maggi right now. But in case you are looking for a bit more variety and nutrition, here are some ideas for things you can cook even if you are an absolute novice cook. Also, read to the end for a nifty list on what to shop for when you have a pantry devoid of any supplies. It's a short list and I'm going to show you how to cook a whole week of me...

This polenta is like a hug in a bowl. Coarse cornmeal cooked until creamy and then topped with cheese, honey and mint, this dish is as perfect for breakfast as it is for a lunch or a lazy dinner. What I like best though is that the porridge present a perfectly blank canvas for other flavours. On other days, I've topped polenta with a creamy mushroom sauce. Once, I felt fancy and set the polenta in a tray and cut it into dainty squares that were topped with whipped feta and caramelised onions. What's most important though is that base. Polenta can very easily go wrong so here's my tips for that perfectly cooked, creamy flavour: 1. Use a lot of liquid. This recipe used 6 times the volume to cook polenta in. And while there's nothing wrong with using plain water, mixing in something richer (milk in this case) gives you better results. 2. You want to add polenta slowly, almost like it's a rain shower, and you want to keep whisking it while you are adding th...

Have you heard of ruby chocolate? Up until 2017, chocolate used to be brown, dark brown or white. Then Callebaut came up with another colour: ruby chocolate is naturally pink. I first tasted Ruby last year at London's Fortnum and Mason and was instantly taken in by the unique flavour. It's sweet like white chocolate but there is a lingering sourness, a light tang that sets it apart. Ruby chocolate has become easier to get hold of in Mumbai now so after I had my fill of the chocolate in its natural form for a few months, I turned to what else I could do with it. The first recipe to cross my mind was naturally brownies. This fudgy concoction is set to showcase the chocolate and for my first attempt, I used my trusted recipe from Dorie Greenspan. Some adjustments had to be made though. Ruby chocolate is sweeter than the dark variant I normally use in this recipe so I reduced the sugar content. And I noticed the pink gets pale, almost brownish, in the batter so I added a l...

I love baking Plain Jane cakes. The ones you can whip up quickly in a bowl and the ones where you do not need to fuss about frostings and such. I specially like the kinds you can bake on a weekend and leave in the fridge to snack on during the week. The brown butter banana cake from food52 checks all the boxes. As an added bonus, there is no need to even bring out a whip; you only need a blender or a food processor. The original recipe is for a loaf cake but I adapted mine to fit a 6 inch springform pan. If you are comparing recipes, you will notice that my cake recipe is halved but I kept the full recipe for peanut streusel. That's because the peanuts and oats add a real crunch and more is really a lot better in this case. Here's the easy breezy way to get your cake fix. Ingredients For Streusel 40 grams butter (I use salted Amul butter) 1/4 cup brown sugar 1/3 cup oats 2/3 cup salted, roasted peanuts For cake 50 grams butter (I use salted Amul butter) 1 c...

I've been on bit of a Thai food kick this past month. Which means that the fridge is also chockfull of Thai ingredients. So I started to think what else I could do with them. Which means there have been a few experiments. Here's the most successful of them thus far: a kaffir lime rasam. As far as fusion foods go, this isn't too much of a stretch. Lime rasam is already a thing and kaffir lime adds a lovely new dimension to flavour and fragrance of this rasam. Here's the recipe. Ingredients 2 tbsp arhar dal 4-5 kaffir lime leaves 1/2 tsp salt pinch of turmeric powder 1 tsp sesame oil 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp mustard seeds pinch of hing (asafoetida) 1 tbsp rasam powder 1 tbsp lime juice In a pressure cooker, add arhar dal, 2 kaffir lime leaves, salt and turmeric with 3 cups of water. Boil until the dal is fully cooked and you have a watery stock. Heat the oil in a pan. Add hing, cumin seeds and rai. Wait a minute for all the seeds to start sputtering,...

For someone who grew up in India, I am really a chicken when it comes to eating spicy food. Hence, for a long time, I would also avoid Thai curries. But then I went to Thailand twice this year and fell in love with the food. I also realised that the curries come in a whole spectrum of spice levels, from the mild massaman Curry to the fiery green one. No wonder then that the massaman curry is my favourite and the one I cook the most once I got back from Thailand with a bag full of ingredients. It's a strange one too, with flavour influences from India and Malaysia. Originally made with beef and potatoes, I make my vegetarian version here with a mix of onions, peppers and potatoes. Here's the recipe. Ingredients 1 medium onion, peeled and chopped into bite sized squares 1 yellow bell pepper, chopped into bite sized squares 1 medium potato, boiled, peeled and cut into squares 2 tbsp massaman curry paste (look for the vegetarian version) 1 tbsp peanut oil 200 ml coco...

Last month, I discovered a hydroponics grower in Mumbai called the Herbivore Farms. They grow salad leafs and chards and herbs and once a week, send a box over to your home. The lettuces are so fresh, it just automatically makes for healthy salad eating. Then there's chard: I added it to stir fries and Asian style miso fried rice the first week. This week, I made green soup. Anna Thomas' soup is less recipe, more a canvas to do with as you please. The first time I'd made this soup a few months back, it was with spinach and coriander and spring onions. This time, I used the swiss chard and carrot top leaves. It turned out pretty amazing both ways so make use of whatever green leafy vegetable and herbs your fridge is overrun with at the moment. Anna's original recipe uses arborio rice to thicken the soup. I used a potato which works equally well. Don't be stingy with either the slow fried onions or the lime juice; both contribute to most of the flavour in th...

Buckwheat is the grain of choice when it comes to fasting in India. Every navaratri, my mom makes paranthas with what's locally called 'kuttu ka atta'. The dough is made with a combination of buckwheat and mashed potatoes, then rolled out and shallow fried in ghee. It's delicious enough to make atheists like me pretend we're fasting. But because this is fasting day food, you don't do much to the paranthas beyond eating them with yogurt. The Russians on the other hand make a fine art of topping their version of buckwheat pancakes, the blinis, with salmon and caviar and sour cream. The pancakes themselves are a bit bland though, a pale match to the dark beauties that Indian kuttu paranthas are. So why not combine the two, I thought. Make a base of mini buckwheat paranthas Indian style, then load them up like a blini. The resulting dish packs quite a punch. So ditch the idea of buckwheat as a fasting day food and go make these indo-blinis. I topped mine wit...

Some dishes take you by surprise. In the middle of a quiet dinner, they grab you and force you to sit up and take notice. It's even more surprising when that dish happens to be soup. It happened so at a dinner with my friend Chris. We started off with his lovely homemade bread and salad and then he brought this soup in. A soup with punchy flavours that also freezes well. I eventually got the recipe off Chris and I now make this often, leaving bowlfuls in the freezer for a rainy day. You should too! Ingredients 250 grams yellow pumpkin, cut into chunky cubes 250 grams potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes 1 small onion, peeled and roughly chopped 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced 1 small carrot, peeled and sliced 1 leek stem, washed, cleaned and roughly chopped 1-2 celery stalks, washed, cleaned and roughly chopped 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 10-12 peppercorns Roasted pumpkin seeds and dill to garnish Find the largest saucepan you own and heat the olive oil in it. Ad...

May and June are my favourite months of year food-wise. It's when all the best fruits are in season at the same time. For about a month, I go crazy eating my fill of fresh peaches, plums, cherries, litchis and apricots. Then monsoons kick in and all the fruits vanish at about the same time. This is the last dessert I made this year with my fruit bounty. A plate full of plums, peaches and cherries, the flavours bound together with the easiest pudding you can make. And a sprinkle of almonds to bring in a much needed crunch. Posset is a pudding that sounds impossible. But it's far less fussy than your typical mousses et al that require scary combinations of hot liquids and egg yolks. There are no eggs in this funky British dessert. Instead, your purposefully curdle cream with lime juice. It all feels like it shouldn't work but it really does end with a creamy, delicious dessert. This recipe from Food52 was made with heavy cream, but I made it with the light 25% cre...

The first time I heard of nori granola, I was instantly impressed by how brilliant the idea is. The recipe by Heidi Swanson , one of my favourite bloggers, combines the salty seaweed with a whole lot of complementing and contrasting flavours. There are oats, obviously. But there are also less obvious additions like cashews, fennel and sesame seeds. All bound together by a tiny amount of honey and olive oil. This isn't breakfast cereal. This is a grown up granola that's perfect for snacking. I'm yet to try it with yogurt but I've already scattered it all over a bowl of pumpkin soup and it was delicious there too. Heidi says to use up the granola in a week so what follows is half her recipe. Ingredients 1 3/4 cup oats 3/4 cups coarsely chopped raw cashews 2 tbsp sesame seeds 1 tbsp fennel seeds 3 six-inch nori sheets, crumbled 1/2 tsp black pepper 1/2 tsp sea salt 2 tbsp honey 2 tbsp brown sugar (I used coconut sugar) 1 tbsp water 2 tbsp olive oil ...

The other day, Food52 published a story on their most popular genius dessert ever. And it turned out not to be something faffy or chocolate-y or fruity. Instead, it was the plain and humble olive oil cake . I've never baked with olive oil though I have used the more neutral oils in cakes before. This one does let the olive oil shine with all its personality. This is also one of the simplest cakes you will ever bake, so maybe that accounts for the popularity. The original recipe is for a full cake but I reduced it to a third and baked 6 cupcakes instead. Mine's also a pale vanilla colour whereas the one on food52 is a rich brown so there is a chance I underbaked it. It's quite soft and nice and tasty all the same. Ingredients 2/3 cup all purpose flour 1/2 cup + 1 tbsp sugar 1/2 tsp salt 1/3 tsp baking powder 100 ml extra virgin olive oil 100 ml whole milk 1 egg 1/2 tbsp orange zest 45 ml fresh orange juice Line 6 muffin tins and set on a tray. Preheat the...

I first saw this black bean soup on David Lebovitz's blog about a month back. I made it almost immediately and loved it. Then I made it again and then I made it a third time. I have been tinkering with the recipe and while I think the soup is now perfect and one of the best I've ever made, it no longer bears any resemblance to what David made. Which is why it seems right to share this recipe here before I forget it. The key difference is that I use canned ancho chillies and other pantry goodies whereas David uses a lot of fresh vegetables. They are both great so pick the recipe depending on what you have in the pantry or fridge. Here's my version. Ingredients 1/2 cup dried black beans 1 small onion 2 cloves garlic 1 ancho chilli (I have a jar of ancho in oil) 2 tbsp pitted green olives 1 tbsp capers 1/2 tbsp apple cider vinegar 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp dried oregano 1/2 tsp chipotle powder To garnish sour cream dried mint crushed nachos Wash and soak the b...

Valentine's Day is just a day away which means that right now, you are in one of the two categories. You either planned ahead and have dinner reservations at a trendy restaurant and a box of chocolates tucked away to bring out at the right moment. Or you are looking for excuses on why celebrating love just once a year makes no sense, driven largely by the fact that everything is too cheesy and too crowded and too sold out at the moment. I personally remain a fan of staying at home not just for Valentine's but also for other crowd attracting festivals and new year's eves etc. This usually translates to ordering in pizza. But one thing I never order in is dessert. This particular year, food52 came up with an idea so genius and so easy just in time, I haven't even had to research cake recipes. For what they have is a super simple, super easy and completely fuss free chocolate mousse. Now yogurt and orange marmalade aren't the first things to come to mind when you thi...

It was the evening of 3rd February, 2008. I had just baked my first cookie , and I was mighty proud of myself. This was the time before smartphones so I found my point and shoot camera and took a picture of the chocolate shortbread. Then, not knowing what to do with it and where to save the recipe, I went to blogger and set myself up a blog page. I thought it will be a good way to store recipes as I bake more. I couldn't have thunk that I will sit here, the morning of 3rd February, 2018, celebrating ten years of blogging. 400 recipes and countless friendships later, the blog is now an integral part of my life. As I have tried new foods, met fantastic people and gone on fabulous journeys, Bombay Foodie has witnessed and chronicled it all. My recipes may look more complex now than 2008, my food a bit more nuanced, and I am surely a better cook thanks to all the experiments and all the failures I shared with you. Thank you, dear readers, all the thousands of you who stop by each mont...