Masala Bread Upma

This is a perfect evening snack for a rainy day and the click was on one such rainy day some months back!

Ingredients:

• Bread - 4 slices chopped into small squares(I used wheat bread, you can use any)
• Finely chopped onions - from 1 big sized
• Finely chopped green chillies - 1
• Tomato - 1/2
• Hing - a pinch
• Tomato sauce - 1 tsp
• Chilli powder - 4 tsp
• Turmeric powder - a pinch
• Pepper powder - 2 tsp [optional]
• Salt to taste

To temper:

• Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
• Jeera- 1/2 tsp
• Oil- 2tsp
• Curry leaves - few

Method:

1.Heat oil in a tawa, add the 'to tamper' ingredients and fry for a min.

2.Add onions and saute it till it becomes light brown, then add green chillies and hing.

3.Add tomatoes, turmeric and chilli powder. Fry till raw smell goes and the spices get mixed well. Add the tomato sauce,salt and mix again.

4.Now add 1/4 cup of water and bring it to a boil.

5.Add the chopped bread and mix till all is combined well.Add pepper powder stir once.Switch off and serve hot!

Your spicy masala bread upma is ready to be served!

And I am sending this to Mahimas cooking basics event

Shortbread Cookies

A year in blogging or bonding should I ask?! Yes this blog has been a part of my life these days.Little did I expect this when I started sharmispassions?! Definitely a noooo!!!

This blog has

1.Earned me so many new friends and few are even close now.

2.Made me learn so many things about food photography.

3.Made the lazy me cook good food and venture even the baking world.

4.Made me aware that there are so many innovative recipes in world which can tempt you to taste even which u hate the most.

5.Made me learn a bit of design and photoshop(though I was reluctant when this was given to me to take up as a career).

And thanks to all of you who have made this blog lively by your motivating and lovely comments.

Now coming to todays cookies...On Vday, made up my mind to corner all the health factors for a while and went ahead with this shortbread cookies from here. Gave a variation of adding cornflour as suggested and they turned out a bit crispy and melt in the mouth texture.I did reserve few to check if the crispiness was maintained the next day too and yes it was exactly the same.

Ingredients :

• APF - 150 gms
• Cornflour - 50 gms
• Salt - a pinch
• Unsalted butter - 100 gms
• Powdered sugar - 50 gms
• Vanilla essence - 1 tsp

Method :

1. In a separate bowl sift the flour with salt. Set aside.

2. Cream butter,add sugar and beat until its smooth - it takes about 5mins. Add vanilla essence and mix well.

3. Now add APF to the butter sugar mixture and bring it to a dough. Flatten the dough into disk shape, wrap in a plastic cover and refrigerate for an hr.

4. On a flat surface roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into your desired shapes and place these cookies on the prepared baking sheet and again refrigerate it for 10-15 minutes.This will firm up the dough for the cookies to maintain their shape.

5. Meanwhile u can preheat the oven to 175deg C for 10mins. Bake the cookies for 12-15 mins The actual recipe says 8-10mins but my cookies took exactly 15mins to bake.

NOTE: If you feel like bread crumble texture after mixing the flour, sugar and butter, you can sprinkle few drops of milk to form the dough like texture for easy rolling and cutting.

This makes 20 shortbreads. This kept in an airtight container will go well for a week.

I often had this mind : What are shortbreads and how they are different from normal cookies? Here is the description from wikipedia

Shortbread is a type of biscuit which is traditionally made from one part white sugar, two parts butter, and three parts of flour. Shortbread is so named because of its crumbly texture (from an old meaning of the word short). Shortbread biscuits are often associated with normal egg-based biscuits, but they hold their shape under pressure, making them ideal for packed meals.

Shortbreads are baked at low temperature to avoid browning. When cooked, it is nearly white, or a light golden brown.

They may be sprinkled with more sugar while cooling. It may even be crumbly before cooled, but will become firmer after cooling. Hmm the taste was heavenly and just melts in ur mouth!!

Kodumai Dosai / Oothapam | Wheat Dosai

I tried Wheat dosai from here , Quite healthy and filling for breakfast!

Ingredients:

Wheat Flour - 1cup

Finely chopped Onion- 1 medium sized

Coriander leaves - 3 tsp

Finely chopped green chilli - 1

Red chili powder - 1 tsp

Jeera - 2 tsp

Baking soda - 1/2 tsp [optional]

Salt to taste

Oil

Method:

1.Mix all the above ingredients with water except oil, and make batter like we make for pakodas but slightly thinner, with no lumps formed.

2.Heat the dosa pan, drizzle oil and spread a laddle full of batter, the thickness should be like pancake. Pour 2 drops of oil on the sides, wait till its cooked.

3.Flip and let it cook on the other side too.

4.Switch of flame and serve with coconut chutney or chutney podi!

Food Photography - Choosing the backgrounds, props and angles for your food pics

Hello everyone,

Hope all is well with you! Finally with a photography post - Choosing the backgrounds, props((bowls, plates, towels, supporting props for the backgrounds etc)) and angles for your food pics.Not that I am gud at it....but wanted to share few of my learnings/observations in this 1 yr of food blogging!

The most impt thing that attracts me to a recipe is the pic, You may have used the right ingredients, with right proportions and the dish has come out perfect but the end viewer cant see/feel any of these, so ur pic should speak for all the above.

I am fond of sambar satham esp the ones served in hotels. I made this sambar satham sometime back, noone can even try to spoil it like how I did......;) ha ha anyways I m not going to post the recipe, but will surely when I excel in it!

NOTE : All the pics below in this post are straight from my camera except for the image size reduction and sharpening of pics.I really dont like much editing as I feel the natural feeling is lost.Daylight always works best!

First let us get into choosing the props: I admit that my sambar sadam was super flop so pls see only the content of the pic not the food ok?!;)

The first confusion is the bowl: the boat shaped brown one or the white one(only 2 becos I ruled out the other bowls due to shape and size).Hmm ok I have made up my mind with the white one as I felt yellow rice wud go well with white bowl.

Now having finalised the bowl, next comes the base...I am trying with a white cloth.Actually white goes gud with everything either bowl or plate or base like the ones I hve used in Marie Biscuit dessert & Masala Kuzhipaniyaram. But here I feel the white base gets totally merged with the bowl.

Now going in for my fav chocolate brown cloth.Hmm...this is kind of ok for me but not much appealing .....

Now the same choco brown napkin on the white base hmm this looks fine to me so going ahead with this setup.

TIP: You dont even need neat napkins specifically for your food pics, Just pull out ur chudis, dupatas, saris like how I did for peanut ladoos, rose milk and what not?! sometimes even ur babies nappies wud go great like what I did for the corn pic series which most of u liked :) But remember white base always has its own professionalism so just mix and match to see which compliments best for ur food.

Now coming back....the set up of the below pic is ok but looks boring without any colors.....

So for the background I m keeping some colorful vadams, does it give an extra touch to the pic?! The white plate of the vadams still merges with white but dont worry its just going to be in the background. Ok now all set, so next comes the angles.

Angles for your food pics:

This is the most important area which makes ur pics appealing.

Angle1: This is just a closer look of the above pic......hmm not bad. This is a top angle which is a most easy shot as you can cover everything on the table easily.

Angle 2:

This has been taken from a bit of side & front angle...In most cases side front angle works fine when u get closer to the food.

Angel 3:

No major difference between A2 and A3 its only the bowl base showing off

Angle 4:

Hmm now my fav...blurring the background. I usually take most of my pics in auto mode with no macro setting on. So it means any simple setting wud do to get this blur.

The simple 2 things you need to understand are :

1.Assuming that u have a background for ur food, lets go ahead....Just focus ur eyes on the food which you want to highlight...just dont let ur eyes see the other areas at all.

2.First click the shutter button halfway to lock the focus(also called as setting focus lock) then click to capture the pic. Actually this was the first tip I got when I purchased my digicam from the shopkeeper & that seem to be very useful till now. If you dont understand the locking thing read more here

Angle 5:

Another side-front angle with slight blur of the vadams

Angle 6:

This side-top angle covers all props in the pic.

I usually take around 20-25 pics per dish but I'm seriously trying to minimise it as it leads a confusion when I come to editing. Now If I am to post this recipe, the pics I'll choose will be Angle 3,5 & 6. Before I wind up, would luv to hear your choice of angles!

Also do give me ur suggestions on what food photography topics you'd like to read and whether this post reached you or not. So to end up I wud say, it all comes by experience....the more u click the more u learn :) Happy Weekend!

Rava Idly

Ingredients:

• Rava/Sooji - 1 cup
• Curd - 1/2 cup
• Water - 1/2 cup or less adjust according to consistency
• Cashews - 4 to 5 broken
• Carrot - 2 grated
• Salt to taste
• Oil - 3 tsp
• Ghee - 1 tsp
• Baking Soda - a pinch[optional I dont use it regularly]

To temper:

• Mustard seeds - 2 tsp
• Turmeric powder - a pinch
• Green chillies -1 finely chopped

Method:

1. Dry roast rava for 2-3 mins taking care not to change its color, keep aside. Roast cashews in ghee and keep seperately.Add carrots and saute till moisture and raw smell leaves, keep aside.


2. Drizzle oil , add mustard seeds and let it splutter. Then add the list under tempering, saute for 2 mins.


3. Mix rava, cashews,tempering items, with curd and mix well.Add water little by little to form idly batter consistency.


4. Pour into oil-applied idly plates and steam it for 15 minutes. Serve hot with chutney!

Potato curd gravy

I happened to receive a cooking manual attachment from my collegue, It has around 300 recipes. And my first try from that manual is this potato in curd gravy. I modified the recipe a little to suit our taste, the curd adds a nice flavour to the potatoes....a definite try for all potato lovers!!

Ingredients:

• Baby potatoes(skin peeled and boiled) - 10 to 12 apprx
• Onion - 1 finely chopped
• Tomato - 1/2 finely chopped
• Jeera, Mustard seeds - 1 tsp each
• Curd - 3 tbsp
• Ginger garlic paste - 2 tsp
• Red chilli, Dhania powder - 2 tsp each
• Turmeric powder - 1 tsp
• Curry leaves - few
• Green chillies - 1 chopped
• Oil - 1tbsp

Method:

1. Heat oil. Add the cumin and mustard seeds. When they splutter, add ginger-garlic paste, chillies and curry leaves. Add onion, tomato and fry for 5mins.


2. Add turmeric, dhania, red chilli powder and fry for 2 minutes. Let all the masalas mix with onion and tomato. Add curd and fry for 5 minutes, Stir continuously keeping in low flame.


3. Gently prick the potatos with fork to make tiny holes, now add it to the above mixture (This is to make the potatos nicely absorb the gravy). Add little water and stir well.


4. Simmer for 5 minutes, leave till gravy thickens. Its semi dry gravy so goes well with pulavs/fried rice. If you want more loose gravy then take it a bit before the gravy thickens.