I always thought that without taking a look at internet and my blog I can’t start the day.  But when you are sick and can’t lift your head it doesn’t matter, I learned that yesterday. My hubby always says that you need to be fit to do all the fun things.

In my house yesterday we all were sick. My princess got something from her mother’s day out center and she was coughing for a few days, and on top of it she started vomiting. And finally with a dose of antibiotic she is better. In the mean time both me and hubby got sick, I got my cough at highest degree, even started throwing up. Finally yesterday I went to see the doctor and got a lengthy prescription of medicines and with my first dose of antibiotic and steroid feeling better today.

Coming back to this recipe, I was eying this recipe of Parmesan cheese cream crackers from   Mark Bittman for a long time. When Deb of Smitten Kitchen made this cracker, I took both the recipes as the starting point to make my version.  I added some spices, without them I think I am leaving out something. So got in pantry added chili powder, gram masala, shallots and cumin seeds, of course there is Parmesan cheese and cream. I reduce the baking temperature to 375F from 400F. These are delicious crackers. I found out that cumin and Parmesan cheese can become friends.   You don’t know how much you are munching at a time.

Another good thing about these crackers is that it is easy to make using a food processor. If you don’t have a food processor you can do it by hand. I took out my food processor and made it using them. Put all the ingredients including flour,  butter, spices, shallots, cumin seeds and cheese mix everything  make a dough with cream. Don’t try kneading the dough once it comes together; chill the dough in the refrigerator 30 minutes.  After chilling spread the dough into ¼ inch sheet and cut out 1 1/2 inch thin rounds. Prick with fork  to prevent extra puffing while baking and bake at 375 F for about 15 minutes.

You can munch it as snack or it is a great appetizer for parties. You can use them as cocktail crackers.  Try some time.Make sure to serve warm.

First  gather your ingredients and a food processor.

 In the bowl of  food processor add flour, butter, cheese, green chili, shallots,  salt, chili powder and garam masala and pulse together, gradually add cream to make it a dough.

Chill the dough for about 15 minutes and then spread it into 1/4 inch thick  sheet and prick with fork and cut out  1 1/2 inch rounds. 

Bake them at 375 F  for about 15 minutes and let them cool in baking sheet for about 5 minutes. 

These at best when they are warm.

                                                          Print recipe

Spicy Mini Cream Crackers by Swathi  @ Zesty South Indian Kitchen Preparation time: 20 minutes Cook time: 15minutes Serves: 8 ( 120 crackers) Ingredients        2 cup all-purpose flour, more as needed 3/4 cup finely grated fresh Parmesan cheese 3 tablespoons unsalted butter 1/2 cup cream 1 chopped shallots ( substitute with red onion) 1 green chili 2 teaspoon  sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon red chili powder ½ teaspoon garam masala ½ tablespoon cumin seeds       Directions Preheat oven to 375 F. Put flour,  butter, cheese, green chili, salt, shallots, red chili powder, garam masala and cumin seeds   in bowl of a food processor. Pulse until   you get bread crumbs like  also everything well  combined. Add about 1/4 cup cream let machine run for a bit until a dough forms. If it does not come together, add more liquid a teaspoon at a time, until mixture holds together but is not sticky. I chilled the dough for about 15 minutes,  you can skip this step but you need  little  flour while spreading the dough. I didn’t need much flour. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface until 1/4-inch thick or even thinner, adding flour as needed. Prick the dough with a fork prevent less puffing while baking.   I cut them as 1 ½ inch rounds and bake them an inch apart on your baking sheet . Bake until moderately browned, about 15 minutes. Cool on a rack; serve warm or at room temperature or store in a tin for a few days. Variations You can use poppy seeds, sesame seeds instead of cumin seeds

I am linking this delicious crackers to Hearth and Soul blog hop 111 hosted here. 

 

Hearth and soul Blog Hop 111 : 7/31/12

Hearty Welcome to another edition of Hearth and Soul blog hop. I am happy to be part of this wonderful 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 got my attention and  are

1. Crispest Hash browns from Premediated leftovers
2. Harissa paste from Elsa Cooks
3. Chipotle chicken salad wrap from Mizhelenscountrycottage
4. Spelt Breakfast muffins from Wine lady Cooks
5. Garden minestrone soup from Gluten Free SCD an Veggie!

Follow   Hearth and soul blog hop at 

Facebook

Pinterest

and Twitter

Please link  to any one of the host sites,

Alea of Premeditated Leftovers

April of 21st Century Housewife

Penny of Penniless Parenting
Elsa of  Elsa Cooks
Judy of   Savoring Today

and me

Swathi of Zesty south Indian Kitchen

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.

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How to Make Ghee

I have seen my grandma make ghee from butter. But my mom never did it, for her if anything is readily available in the store why waste my time on that.  Here in US, ghee cost about triple the price than what we get for in India. So my hubby told me don’t worry about ghee you can simply skip that. 

But smell and taste of ghee is so intoxicating that I can’t leave that one out from my pantry. So I decided to make it at home. I like to use unsalted butter.  Since the fat content is less in the butter here, ghee will be slightly mellow in the taste.  May be next time I will try European style butter. 

Ghee can be consider as brother of clarified butter as when you initially heat butter you will get browned butter or clarified butter. Then upon slightly more cooking you can get ghee. Ghee is mainly fat, all the moisture is removed and milk solids are caramelized/browned and will settle down while cooking and is strained out. The final product gives a rich nutty taste. Ghee has a longer shelf life, both at refrigerated and at room temperature. At room temperature it will be grainy liquid and if refrigerated it is hard. Make sure to use a thick spoon while taking the ghee out. 

Ghee and Indians have long relationship, we use it in our cooking, medicine ( Ayurvedic medicine) religious rituals ( worshiping God, marriage, death and all) and everywhere.  We even feed our young babies with mashed rice and little bit of ghee. Yes it is true my no-tooth prince likes it. 

Ghee has high cooking temperature than any other oil, so feel free to heat them. While making ghee one thing you need to make sure that there should be no water near, in pan, strainer, and bottle/jar. Don’t stir  while making ghee.  As even tiniest water drops can spoil the ghee by causing bacteria to grow in them. 

Once you have made the ghee, you can make almost all Indian sweets, ghee rice, biriyani, biscuits you name it; and curries like Paneer Makhani, Kofta curry, even ghee roasted potatoes yumm. 

If you are in hurry, don’t try to make Ghee, you are going to waste your time and money. I did that; I was juggling two dishes and making ghee on stovetop and ended up with burned ghee. So take your time and use medium-low flame to make ghee. Within 28 minutes you will get fully aromatic ghee. 

First grab  1 lb of unsalted butter.

Then  gradually heat the butter in  a thick bottom  sauce pan  until it melted and white foam develop in the top.

Continue to heat the butter in  medium low flame resulting formations of bubbles and later  bubbles breaks out.Milk soilid gradually settle in bottom of the pan.  Remove the ghee from the fire when you golden brown color sediment in the bottom of pan.  Set aside for cooling for some time, then strain the ghee using a  metal strainer . 

Enjoy the  Ghee and start making delicious dish with it. 

                                                               Print  Recipe

Ghee by Swathi  @ Zesty South Indian Kitchen Preparation time: 1 minutes Cook time: 25-30 minutes Serves:1 ½ Cup Ingredients        1  lb stick butter           Directions Heat butter in thick bottomed saucepan. Use  low heat while butter is melting and  increase to medium low. As  butter  melts you will see lot of  foam  developing in the top at first then bubbles starts to form around 10 minutes of cooking You will hear noise while bubbles are forming. Bubbles starts to breaks out  it will continue for about  another 6 minutes. Then milk solids starts  settling in the bottom and you will see golden color of ghee along with brownish  substances sticking in bottom of pan. It will take  about another 9 minutes. Nice aroma  ghee will be coming at that time. Remove the ghee from the fire immediately. Otherwise it will continue to cook resulting  burnt ghee. Once ghee is slightly cooled down. strain it using a stainless strainer to remove the milk solids. You can store ghee in room temperature then it will grainy liquid. If you refrigerate it will be hard. I like to store at room temperature. Enjoy as much you wish. Variations You can add some cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, curry leaves or betel leaves,  little salt  while making ghee.

I am sending this  post to Alea and April's Gallery of Favorites

 

Baking Partners: New Baking Group Announcement

Group of Home Bakers Helping Each Other To Achieve Baking Perfection 

Baking a homemade bread, cake or cookies will give the best outcome. However in order to achieve the best results, a  perfect recipe and  right techniques are required.

We are a small group of home baker friends, who love and want to learn more about the nook and corners of baking.  We are planning to try out recipes from books/magazines and cooking shows.  Every member gets a chance to present their choice of recipe and share important points with the rest of the group.

Main purpose of this group is to learn the techniques, critic the procedure if there are ways to improve, and to eat a delicious food.

Rules are simple, we will choose one recipe  and send it out to the group by 16th of every month and  the reveal date will be 15th of the next month . On that day we will  blog about it. A linky tool will be open during that time and each member can link their post.

First month we are going to do a recipe, 2nd and 3rd month will be a theme and the 4th month we will be back at  a recipe. By doing in between recipes, we will able to learn more.

All enthusiastic bloggers interested in baking are welcome, please email me   at favoriterecipes12@gmail.com.

We will appreciate the use of logo or worded link that will help to spread the word.  A bunch of thanks to Tina for designing this beautiful logo

If you   want to make it a gluten or vegan free diet, you can do those modifications also.

If you would like to help spread the word about Baking Partners  please feel free to grab any of the buttons or banners below and display it on your blog! Simply copy the code below the graphic that you want to display and paste it into your blog. Thanks so much for the support :)

Some of the graphics that you see here were created by

    Tina  ( Pinay in Texas Cooking Corner)

For graphic shown above, copy the code below










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My hubby is a fan of cheesecake, and he always tells me to bake a cheese cake. I was reluctant to make cheesecake because   if I make 9 inch cheesecake he may take a slice and after that I have to finish it. Finishing calorie laden cheese cake is a not easy job for me. So I turned down his requests for long time. Last week I decide to make bite size cheese cake. 

Every month I visit an Indian store specially selling the ingredients from my home town. The last week,   when I visited there were boxes of Marathon mangoes kept for sale. They are actually Ataulfo mangoes which are a cousin to Alphonso variety popular in India. Seeing mangoes I got hooked immediately and asked my hubby shall we buy. His answer okay we can buy, but you need to finish it immediately. A box comes about 16 mangoes. How I will finish them, so I told him okay I don’t need it. But Paul (store owner) told us he can give us half of box.  So we bought mangoes. You know we Indians have weakness towards mango and jackfruit.  After coming home, I made Mamabazha pulissery (Ripe mangoes cooked in spicy yogurt gravy) Mango lassi (Mango yogurt drink). Then few were left. So I decide to try mango cheese cake. First my idea was to make a glaze with mango. Then decide to go for a mango glee.

I was searching for mango cheese cake recipes using fresh mango puree than the canned one and found this one in Epicurious. After reading the reviews, I came to conclusion that I need to add some lemon to bring out the mango flavor. Still after baking I found mango flavor is not much, so made mango glee to go with it. It is simple and easy to put it together.  I added sour cream, lime juice along with mango puree and   corn flour/cornstarch to thicken the mango cheesecake. I didn’t use vanilla extract as it may overpower the delicateness of mango.

After baking mango cheese cake for 22 minutes, I let it cool for about 2 hours and then added mango glee on the top. Let it cool once again overnight and served next day. It is delicious, if you are mango lover goes for it.

I am dedicating this blog post to Barbara Harris who left us after battling with cancer. I didn’t know her personally, but came to know only through her blog post. She is a wonderful blogger and a nice person who courageously fought with cancer and created awareness towards and for the many that are battling yet.

My mother-in-law is a breast cancer survivor. My hubby did research in Cancer medications and treatment at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, N.Y and he always mention about the people of all ages who came to Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Also I remember meeting an old lady at a hospital restroom. I was there for regular check with my gynecologist while pregnant with my daughter. When you are pregnant the bladder works very lazy. Every 5 minutes you need to visit rest room. So I was making my trip to restroom after the appointment. One old lady asked me how to operate soap dispenser. I showed her. Then she suddenly started talking. And told me she was there to get a checkup also, and doctors found that she has stage 4 rectal cancer, it has already spread to her kidney, spleen and even intestine. She told I don’t know how long I will survive. And she told she was worried about her hubby. I told her, don’t worry God is there, he will take care of you. He will test, but not harm us. Both I and she know in the back of mind, that it is difficult to survive when you have stage 4 cancers. That day I realize the value of life, everyday is real gift from God. Enjoy it and thanks Him for that.  While leaving the restroom, I saw the old man who was patiently waiting in the front of rest room   for his wife. While looking at his face I can see the pain. I haven’t seen that lady after that. I hope somewhere she is surviving; I don’t want to think that she has left this world.

 In tribute to Barbara this month's Monthly Mingle is dedicated to A Taste of  Yellow and is hosted by Jeanne of Cook Sister which is based on  Barbara's popular event , LiveStrong with a Taste of Yellow event.   I am sending this cheesecake for it.  Here goes the recipe.

First get hold of your ingredients

Preheat oven 300F and line the muffin tin with paper liners and set aside. Remove skin, seed and chop mangoes into small cubes and blend to form a puree and set aside.

  In a food processor grind glucose biscuits/gram crackers into fine  crumbs and add melted butter and mix everything  to combine well. Spoon around 1 1/2 tablespoon + 2 teaspoon of crumbs into prepared muffin cups and press down  well. 

 In a bowl of kitchen-aid stand mixer add sour cream, cream cheese, salt, sugar, lime juice , egg and corn starch and combine everything to form a smooth batter.  Finally fold in mango puree and set aside. Gradually  add about 2 3/4 tablespoon of batter into prepared muffin cups.Bake for about 22 minutes still center comes out little bit wobbly.

Cool the cheese cake in refrigerator for about 1 hour. while cheese cake cooling make the  mango glee. Bloom the gelatin with water for 5 minutes and then heat mango puree and lemon juice to bring to boil and then add gelatin and set aside for about 20 minutes to cool and add  top of the cheese cake and cool the cheese cake once again for overnight or at least 8 hours. 

Serve chilled. Enjoy.

                                                                           Print Recipe

Mango Cheesecake with Mango Glee by Swathi  @ Zesty South Indian Kitchen Preparation time: 15 minutes Cook time: 22 minutes + cooling time 8 hours or overnight Serves:9 Individual sized cheesecake Ingredients     Crust 3/4 cups  glucose biscuits ( I used Parle G) / graham cracker crumbs 3 tablespoons  plus 1 teaspoon  unsalted butter, melted Filling 2 large very ripe mangoes (each about 13 ounces), peeled, pitted, coarsely chopped about  1 cup mango puree 1 8-ounce package of cream cheese, room temperature 1/3 cups  sugar ¼ cup  sour cream 1 teaspoon lime juice 1 large egg ⅛ teaspoon  salt 3 tablespoon corn flour/ corn starch Mango Glee 1/2 cup mango puree 1 teaspoon lime juice 3 tablespoon water 11/2 teaspoon gelatin powder           Directions    For crust: Preheat oven to 300°F. Line the muffin tin with cupcake liners and set aside. Pulse the glucose biscuits into fine crumbs  using a food processor.  In a medium bowl add melted butter and stir until evenly moistened. Press  11/2 tablespoon + 2 teaspoon of crumb mixture firmly onto bottom (not sides) of prepared muffin cups.      For filling: Puree mangoes in processor until smooth. Set aside 1 cup mango puree .Beat cream cheese, sour cream, sugar , salt, and lime juice  in large bowl until smooth. Add egg 1 at a time, beating well to combine well. To this add cornstarch and combine  everything.  Add 1/2 cup mango puree and beat until well blended. Pour 2 ¾ tablespoon of filling over crust in muffin tin. Bake cake until set and puffed and golden around edges (center may move very slightly when muffin tin  is gently shaken), about 22 minutes. Cool cake 1 hour.     Mango glee While cake is cooling bloom gelatin for 5 minutes in water at room temperature. Then add  ½ cup of mango puree, lemon juice in a saucepan and bring to boil. Once it starts boiling add gelatin and combine very well. Set aside for cooling for about 20 minutes. Then gradually add glee over the cooled mango cheese  cake. Refrigerate uncovered overnight, serve chilled along with cut mangoes if you need.   Variations You can make mango glaze instead of mango glee, or even serve with fresh fruit.

 I am  linking this delicious mango cheesecake to  Hearth and Soul blog hop hosted here.

Also to  Monthly Mingle is dedicated to A Taste of  Yellow and is hosted by Jeanne of Cook Sister which is based on  Barbara's popular   LiveStrong with a Taste of Yellow event .