Monday, May 20, 2013

Strawberry Lassi



 Please pray for the innocent victims of today's  killer tornado at Moore, Oklahoma. Hope God will help us to get over through this difficult time. 


Last week was really crazy week for me, I  couldn’t even  do  enough posting as I wish and also blog hopping as  I dream about it. But for my princess it was really fun weekend, as we had a trip to Galveston beach, it is about 45 miles drive from our house. We started around 2 .30 and reached there around 4.00 as we getting to traffic. She loves to play in water and she played for around 2 hours and it was really hard to make her get out of water. On the other hand, my prince doesn’t want to be in the water, but just want to play with soil. He too had his share of fun. Then we took a ferry trip to cross to Bolivar peninsula and came back on the same ferry. We were able to see some dolphins also. So it was fun trip.
Yesterday, while talking to my dad who is India, told me that it is getting really hot there. Around 113 0 F (45 0 C) , he saying if you sit in front of the cooler your front part of body feels nice, while back part is getting wet from sweat. Too hot, he always tries to take a few body baths in a day to keep him cool. All over India it is getting hotter.   This time, if you visit India, you can see lots of street vendors selling cool drinks, ice cream along sides of the roads. People stop by and enjoy the drinks made of yogurt or fruits to cool down a little and also escape from harshness of sun.  So when I had a box of strawberry in the refrigerator, I thought why I don’t make lassi with it. If you are not familiar with lassi, it is a popular and traditional yogurt-based drink which originated in the Punjab region. Traditionally it is made by blending yogurt with water and spices. Sometimes it is made with fruit too. Especially mango lassi is the most famous both in India and outside. I have a mango lassi recipe in my blog.
I used 16 oz box of strawberries (around 25 no), 1 cup of 2 % homemade yogurt, 2 tablespoon of sugar and 1 cup of water. It is mildly sweet; and if you want increase the sugar adds 4 tablespoons.  I spiced them with green cardamom, and this recipe makes around 3 cups of lassi, good enough for 2 serving. My family enjoyed this lassi a lot. Even my prince wants to drink lassi; and he makes a big noise if dad was slow in giving him the next spoonful. It is really funny, every time he drinks fast and waiting for next spoon if dad becomes slow in serving him, he makes “na” “na” with his little finger pointing towards the glass.
Nowadays, sweet strawberries are available in market, grab a 16 oz box and use plain yogurt.  In my opinion don’t use vanilla yogurt if you use green cardamom as both give different aroma and flavor. Further green cardamom gives the Indian touch. So try it yourself, it is also really good to start a day as a breakfast drink.  On a quick run on calorie counter, I found that this drink is around 189 calories.
If you skip sugar and use agave nectar you can reduce the calories (170) and also using fat free yogurt will also reduce the calories. Try it you will love it.
Here comes the recipe. 


Print recipe from here
Strawberry Lassi
 Preparation time: 10 minutes
Yield: 2 (14.oz) serving
Ingredients
16 oz strawberries (about 25 no)
1 cup homemade 2% yogurt
1 cup water (use cold water or Ice water)
2 tablespoon sugar (increase the amount of sugar to 4 tablespoons if you want sweeter lassi)
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
How I made
Hull the strawberries and cut it into big chunks, add yogurt, sugar, water and a teaspoon of cardamom in a blender Jar. Blend well for about 5 minutes or until everything mixed to the consistency you want. Enjoy with or without few fresh strawberries.
Enjoy.

I am linking this Hearth and Soul Blog Hop hosted here
Favorite Recipes: Drinks recipes hosted here.

  

Hearth and Soul Blog Hop: 152: 5/20/2013


  Hearth & Soul Hop


Hearty Welcome to another edition of Hearth and Soul blog hop.  We are looking forward to a delicious, healthy, recipes as all as health related information which helps to energize our body.

We welcome posts that are shared in other events.Recipes should include healthy ingredients and can be old or new recipes or posts. Articles on real food, slow food, foraging, herbal remedies, local food, sustainable food, organics, gardening or any healthy eating information written in a positive and loving light are also welcome.

All the hosts at Hearth and Soul care very deeply about this blog hop, and make an group effort to be sure that every post is commented on. We also Pin and Tweet many of the entries. You don't find this with every blog hop, and in exchange for our efforts, we respectfully request that you include a link in the actual blog post you are sharing back to one of the hosts, either by worded link or using our badge. It is not enough to link using a communal blog party page. People rarely click on these links and it is unlikely they will find the Hearth and Soul hop using these sort of pages.
Among last week Hearth and Soul hop,  few recipes requires  special mention and

  1. Fava yougrut soup From Ma Niche
  2.  Lemon and ginger cake from 21st century House wife
  3. Sauteed mushroom with onion and spices from MJs Kitchen 
  4. Lentil pie from Gluten free SCD and Veggie 
  5. Chocolate Espresso smoothie from Home cook food.

and Twitter
Please link  to any one of the host sites,
Penny of Penniless Parenting

Judy of   Savoring Today
and me
One link per week, please-Must include a link back to one/any of the host sites (through worded link or badge) in individual post, not on sidebar…although we love having links on your page, as well (this benefits all of us). You will be sent a gentle reminder if no link is added to your post, we understand that sometimes people forget…but if it becomes a regular occurrence, (even though we don’t like to do it) your post may be removed. It’s just not fair to those who do take the time and show the grace to link back.-Try to link a post that you think fits into the mission. You don’t have to link up every week,link up when you can.
Please feel free to grab the Hearth and soul blog hop badge, that will help to spread the word.

    
 

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Thin Crust Vegetable Pizza: Best Pizza I ever made: Baking Partners challenge 10


Pizza is everybody’s favorite including my princess. If you ask her what you want for dinner, her answer will be pizza or pasta. Until my marriage I used to eat only frozen pizzas. After marriage I found a pizza loving hubby, and when we are staying in Utah there was a 5 dollar pizza joint, hubby buy pizza from every alternate weekend. Once we moved to Houston, we have lot of pizza places nearby, our neighbor is “Pappa John’s, and if I take a 2 minute drive I will reach Pizza hut, then there is Cicis pizza, Dominos pizza etc.
If you ask me which pizza do you like the best I will vote for “Papa john’s   followed by Cicis’s cheese pizza. I found Pizza hut’s pizza  salty to my taste buds. I haven’t tried Domino’s pizza yet. Hubby tells me it is okay. I will try one day and let you know. My order of pizza is always a veggie pizza with tomato, onion, capsicum, mushroom and black olive substituted with pineapple.  For my princess birthday we had cheese pizza, pepperoni and veggie, and among the adults pepperoni was a hit. Of course I did not make it, but Papa John did it. So for this month baking partner challenge, we decide to try pizza. Pam of Living Rancho Deluxe,  Archana of  Tangy Minds and  Priya of Ennveetu Kitchen suggested three  recipes of New York style Thin crust  Pizza. 
You will be amazed to see the regional variation of pizza available in US, around 30 varieties; you want to take a look at it peek here. Traditional New York style is thin crust pizza with few toppings, however I didn’t followed that rule, I added few of my favorite ingredients. I got lucky with my creation the third time, first time instead of thin pizza I made thick pizza, more like Chicago style.  Second time I got thin pizza however it was on the crispy side.  Then I started researching what went wrong with my pizza. In the mean time I got this book Flour Water  Salt Yeast by   from Ken Forkish  and trust me it has excellent pizza section in the book. Which explain how to get a homemade oven to work best for making the pizza? I tried his oven techniques, and the pizza that turned out is best. First two times I tried Pam’s suggest pizza recipe.  Third time I tried Archana’s suggested recipe .  While trying I learnt lot of nuke and corner of pizza making. Still I didn’t figure it yet. One day I will be going to try the flipping of pizza dough in the air (may be in dream).  Third time I also bought a steel pizza pan from Wal-Mart.  I baked my pizza on pizza stone with this pan on it as I don’t have pizza peeler in hand, and was afraid of losing all my topping without peel. I found bread flour tasted really great compared to all purpose flour pizza.  Traditionally pizza’s is baked with Caputo 00 flour, however it is not available in the local grocery store; and you need to mail order them. I may buy it next time and try.
Next task in this challenge was to make a homemade pizza sauce,  for first two pizza trials I used fresh tomatoes to make the sauce, they tasted okay but lacked the characteristic red color. So for the third attempt I used canned whole tomato which gave me red colored sauce. I also added few spices in pizza sauce. So my preference for making homemade pizza sauce is to go for canned tomatoes, which will also help you from blanching and peeling the skin of tomatoes.
There is a You Tube video link on the first recipe about how to stretch the pizza dough, and I tried the technique, and unfortunately I was able to cover only 15% of what he shown in the video. He does it very flawlessly. But I couldn’t finish that. I also read that to increase the flavor you can brush the pizza dough with olive oil before brushing with tomato sauce.  I used both freshly grated mozzarella as well as shredded mozzarella cheese as suggested in the Flour water Salt Yeast book. I sprinkled the top of pizza with little parmesan cheese.  You can’t make this pizza same day as it require slow fermentation, best will be make the dough today and bake it after 72 hours.
I made the pizza dough on Friday evening and baked the pizza on the Sunday evening, taste tester number one my princess who approved it immediately. Then my hubby who said it is delicious. It may look laborious but you will get delicious pizza in the end. Wait is always worth it. 
I made Pizza dough like this
I made pizza like this
Pizza after baking looks like this 

Do you want a slice


 Print recipe from here

Thin Crust Vegetable Pizza: Best Pizza I Ever Made

Preparation time: 74 hours resting time + 10 minutes baking time

Yield: 1 14 inch pizza

Recipe adapted from Recipe adapted from (Serious Eats)

Ingredients for the thin crust:

·         11 ounces /2 ¼ cup/339g bread flour, plus more for dusting

·         3/4 tablespoons /14g sugar

·         .10 ounces /1 ½ teaspoon/9g salt

·         1 teaspoons /3g instant yeast

·         1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

·         7.5ounces/1 cup/ 21g  lukewarm water

Ingredients for making its NY Style pizza sauce

·         1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes or Fresh Tomatoes.

·         1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

·         1 tablespoon unsalted butter

·         2 medium cloves garlic, grated

·         1 teaspoon dried oregano

·         1/2 teaspoon pizza seasoning

·         1/4 teaspoon marjoram

·         1/4 teaspoon red chili powder

·         3/4 teaspoon salt or to taste

·         2 six-inch sprigs fresh basil with leaves attached

·         1 medium yellow onion, peeled and split in half( about 1 ½ cup chopped)

·         1 teaspoon sugar

Toppings:

·         Any sliced or chopped veggies of your choice such as capsicum, sliced onions, mushroom, also you can add paneer or sliced jalapenos or even fruit such as pineapple.

·         Any Meat as you like. Preferable pre-cooked Chicken pieces if you want. It is optional.

·         1 to 2 cups depends on the size of the pizza - Parmesan or Mozzarella Cheese grated as you like to choose.

Procedure:

For Making the sauce:

1.     Pulse the tomatoes and their juice in food processor / Blender until pureed, or puree with hand blender. Puree should not be completely smooth, but should have no chunks larger than 1/16 of an inch. Set tomatoes aside.

2. Puree the onion and garlic and set aside.

2.     Combine butter and oil in medium saucepan and heat over medium-low heat until butter is melted. Add  onion puree and oregano,  marjoram, pizza seasoning, and large pinch salt and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant but not browned, about 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, basil sprigs and sugar. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to lowest setting (bubbles should barely be breaking the surface), and cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced by 1/2, about 1 hour. Add salt to taste. Allow to cool and store in covered container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

For Making the thin crust pizza:

1.  Combine flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in bowl of food processor or in a bowl. Pulse 3 to 4 times until incorporated if you have food processor. Otherwise mix well together with the help of the whisk. Add olive oil and water. Run food processor until mixture forms ball that rides around the bowl above the blade, about 15 seconds. Continue processing 15 seconds longer. You can mix the dough with hand or in stand mixer to form soft dough.

2.  Transfer dough ball to lightly floured surface and knead once or twice by hand until smooth ball is formed.  Place the dough in a plastic container and keep it in refrigerator and allow to rise at least one day, and up to 5. I rest the dough for about 72 hours.

3.     At least two hours before baking, remove dough from refrigerator and shape into balls by gathering dough towards bottom and pinching shut. Flour well and place each one in a separate medium mixing bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and allow rising at warm room temperature until roughly doubled in volume.

4.    Preheat oven to 525°F for 30 minutes with pizza stone inside.

5. Turn the dough ball out onto lightly flour surface. Gently press out dough into rough 8-inch circle, leaving outer 1-inch higher than the rest. Gently stretch dough by draping over knuckles into a 12 to 14-inch circle about 1/4-inch thick. Transfer to pizza pan.

5.   Spread approximately 2/3 cup of sauce evenly over surface of crust, leaving 1/2 to 1-inch border along edge. Add toppings of your choice evenly and spread 1/3 of cheese over sauce evenly

6. Change the oven setting to broil for about 5 minutes.

7. Switch the oven back to bake at 525F.

8. Load the pizza into the oven and bake for about 5 minutes.

9. Switch oven to broil and bake for 2 to 3 minutes, keeping a close eye on it, until the pizza is done. (It took 5 minutes in oven) .

10. Transfer to cutting board, slice, and serve immediately.

Please take a look at what other baking partners are cooked up. If you are interested to join the group, you can e-mail me at favoriterecieps12 (at) gmail (dot)com
Baking Partners






I am linking this delicious pizza Hearth and Soul blog hop hosted here