I honestly didn’t think of eating chickpeas for breakfast, but then, I previously hadn’t considered eating mung beans for breakfast, and yet mung beans work well for breakfast – Fahim loves it. So when Fahim’s mom suggested making these, I was excited.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t realize at first that Fahim’s mom intended the chickpeas to be for breakfast. I thought they were going to be a lunch and dinner curry. Then the next day, when Fahim’s mom starts cooking it, that’s when I figured out – finally! – that this was meant for breakfast. That, and I think it might be because someone pointed it out to me.

Tempered Chickpeas

Serves 4-5

Ingredients

• 2-3 tablespoons oil
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 1 sprig curry leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 2 teaspoons crushed red chilli peppers OR
• 5 dried red chillies, broken into pieces
• 1 – 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 300 grams dried chickpeas, cooked and drained (or about 600 grams cooked chickpeas)
• 200 grams coconut, freshly shredded (optional)

Directions

1. Put the oil into a hot pot. Add the onions and fry for a minute, then add the curry leaves and fry another minute, stirring constantly.
2. Add the mustard seeds and continue to stir constantly.
3. A minute later, add the crushed red chillies or dried red chillies. By this time, the onions will be browned.
4. Add the salt and chickpeas and continue stirring while it cooks for another 2 or 3 minutes, then remove from heat.
5. The chickpeas can be eaten as is, or can be mixed with the freshly shredded coconut.

Personally, I love freshly shredded coconut, so I opted for added coconut to my chickpeas. Fahim and his father prefer theirs as is. Fahim’s mother prefers coconut added, but much less than I would add.

I was surprised at how much I liked these chickpeas for breakfast. Very surprised. I even liked them without the freshly shredded coconut, which I happen to love, although the freshly shredded coconut definitely added to my love for them. Love love love. Yup.

This is another way we like our chicken. It’s one part Mama Farook’s recipe, one part mine. In other words, inspired by her cooking with some tweaks.

The biggest tweak is the use of Dijon-style mustard.

We’ve only recently discovered that we love Dijon-style mustard in our curries. I make my own, mixing mustard powder with vinegar and a bit of salt, then letting it sit at room temperature until it’s ready, which for us is two days since that still gives it a bit of bite, which we like. Then it goes in the fridge and the jar I made lasts less then a month.

And happiness reigns.

And this chicken dish is one of those little happinesses.

Spicy Chicken Curry

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons oil (we use coconut)
• 4-5 curry leaves
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 3 green chillies, sliced lengthwise
• 5-6 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon cayenne
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 teaspoons prepared mustard (Dijon or the like, not ballpark mustard)
• 750 grams chicken, cut into pieces (about 1 1/2 pounds)

Directions

1. Put oil into a hot pot, then add curry leaves and onions and temper for a minute or two.
2. Add the green chillies and temper another minute.
3. Add the garlic, seasonings, and mustard and mix well. Add the chicken and a little water if necessary to prevent sticking and cook until the chicken is done, stirring occasionally, about 30-45 minutes.

Notes

If you don’t have curry leaves, omit – there is no substitute. Adjust salt to taste. Use any hot chillies you like, seeded or not as you prefer, or omit if you don’t want to add them. If you want to tone down the spice levels further, replace some or all of the cayenne with black pepper.

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

Pound cake is so named because it contains a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Although, in practicality, it’s just a ratio by weight of the main ingredients, so it can be quantities that are more or less than a pound. As well, small amounts of vanilla are usually added.

For ease of use, it seems that bakers would usually weigh the eggs first, then make the rest of the ingredients match the egg weight. Seems practical.

There are also variations on the theme – lemon pound cake, chocolate pound cake, pound cake with fruit added, and so on. Other variations include the addition of vanilla extract, baking powder, salt, and so on. Oil or sour cream might be substituted for a portion of the butter.

At first, I thought I’d never made pound cake. Turns out, I’ve made plenty of cakes called pound cakes (yes, I do have that bad of a memory), as evidenced by the recipes I’ve got kicking around, but none were true pound cakes in the original proportions.

To that end, I decided that, at least once in my life, I had to have a true pound cake. Well, except I didn’t make it with one pound of each ingredient, but rather, 250 grams, or slightly more than half a pound… </nitpicking>

Pound Cake

Ingredients

• 250 grams butter, at room temperature
• 250 grams sugar, superfine if you can
• 250 grams eggs, at room temperature
• 250 grams flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 177C/350F/gas mark 4.
2. Beat butter until smooth and creamy.
3. Add sugar (superfine works best) and beat until fully incorporated and light and fluffy.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, and fully incorporate before adding the next. Don’t worry if the batter looks curdled.
5. Add the flour and mix until just incorporated.
6. Pour into a greased 9x3x5″ loaf pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
7. Let cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the baking pan and cool completely.
8. Serve plain, with a dusting of icing sugar, with ice cream or whipping cream, fruit, or anything else your heart desires. Enjoy!

Because superfine sugar doesn’t exist here, I put the sugar into my whir whir and beat it into submission…er, whipped it until it was very fine. Butter and eggs need to be at room temperature to maximize the amount of air that can be whipped into them. And, as with all cakes, cookies, muffins, and so on, you mix the batter just until the flour is incorporated since you do not want to develop the gluten in the flour, which would make the cake/cookie/muffin tough and chewie, and not in a good way.

I contemplated serving this with lemon curd and whipped cream, but I must admit that laziness got to me. We ate it plain and enjoyed it very much that way.

Fahim tells me that, when we lived in our first house, we would buy these packages of masala papadam and I would heat them up in the microwave, which, by the way, is not the proper way to prepare papadam, but apparently we liked them that much.

I gotta be honest with you – I don’t recall that even a single little bit.

But my memory is bad.

So one day, we bought a pack. These are masala papadam – there are different types, made from different flours, with seasonings or not. These ones are made with oorid flour, pepper, cumin seed, salt, and sodium bicarbonate. When I did a search on oorid flour to find out what, exactly, it was, it appeared that its from a type of split pea or dal, and is sometimes called urid dal, urad dal, or split undu, and is made from dried black urid lentils.

I wasn’t entirely sure of the best way to properly cook them up, so I waited until Fahim’s mom was in town and asked her. She kindly provided a demonstration.

Perhaps an explanation of papadam is in order. Papadam are very thin dry discs of dough. To cook up, they’re usually cut or broken into quarters, then fried. Upon frying, they puff up a bit, with some types puffing up more than others. Papadam are frequently sold with rice and curry packets here. The place where we get our rice and curry packets uses a different type of papadam that puffs up a lot more, frequently leaving a huge air pocket in the middle. They’re crunchy crispy and provide a contrast to the rice and curries.

To prepare the papadam, cut or fold the papadam so it breaks off into four quarters. One at a time, insert a quarter into a shallow amount of hot oil – Fahim’s mom put about an inch of oil into the pan. It’ll make all sorts of happy noises while it puffs and curls and frolics in the oil. Make sure all of it is immersed, then quickly remove when it’s a very light golden brown. Cook it too long and it can taste bitter. Drain on paper towels or the like.

That’s it!

Given that papadam are so easily available here, and I’m lousy at rolling anything out thin and keeping it intact, it’s quite likely that I won’t try making these from scratch, although I might just change my mind at some point. We’ll see.

Here in Sri Lanka, we have a type of leaf that’s locally called a cabbage leaf. I don’t know if it’s a close relative to cabbage or not, but it sure looks like it to me, so I’m happy to go along with that assessment. The cabbage leaves are rather tough when raw, but cooked this way, they end up being soft and flavourful.

This is another recipe Fahim’s mom taught me. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a huge fan of cabbage, but this is another recipe that won me over.

Mama Farook’s Garlic’d Cabbage Leaves

Ingredients

• 1-2 tablespoons oil
• 3-4 curry leaves
• 1 small onion, minced
• 2-3 green chillies, minced
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2-3 cups shredded cabbage leaves

Directions

1. Add oil to a hot pot, then add curry leaves, onion, and green chillies and temper for a minute or two.
2. Add the garlic and salt, mix thoroughly, then add the cabbage leaves and let cook, stirring occasionally.
3. The cabbage is done when the leaves are wilted and dark green, about 3-5 minutes.

Notes

I use virgin coconut oil for an authentic Sri Lankan taste. If you don’t have coconut oil, use any unflavoured oil.

If you do not have curry leaves, omit. There is no substitute.

Use any hot pepper that you like, seeded or not as you prefer. If you prefer it less spicy, you can use less or omit.

I chop up the stems of the cabbage leaves, but not the thick central stem of the plant. I also use other leaves, like raddish, beet, rutabaga, or any other edible vegetable leaf, either in combination with the cabbage leaves or by themselves.

This is an easy dish to put together quickly, and the garlic and green chillies gives the cabbage a great flavour.

This post originally appeared on the Cooking Manager blog as a guest post back in early February of this year, Cooking Manager is run by Hannah Katsman whom I first met over on Twitter. Cooking Manager has a lot of good, useful information, so check it out!

I’m not a long-time sourdough baker – I’ve only been baking sourdough (wild yeast) bread for the last couple of years. Since I don’t digest commercial-yeasted bread well, I use sourdough exclusively, which also means trial and error in converting recipes to sourdough.

One of my first breads was a sweet bread that I regularly made for breakfast. Problem was, while it tasted great, it didn’t consistently rise, even after 12 hours. Plus, even on occasions when it rose, it looked butt ugly. What was going wrong?

Turns out I was using too much sourdough starter in my bread recipe. After much research, I learned that a good amount of sourdough starter is about 10 to 20% of the flour weight in fermented flour.

Since I know that’s going to be confusing, let me use an example with easy math. I like easy math.

Let’s say you use this recipe to make bread:

• 1000 grams flour (about 10 cups, depending on how you measure flour)
• 650 grams water (2 3/4 cups)
• 20 grams salt (4 teaspoons)
• 2 packages dry yeast

And let’s say your sourdough starter is 100% hydration (that is, a 1:1 ratio of flour to water by weight), then, with a 20% fermented flour target in mind, I would use this:

• 800 grams flour (1000-200, since I want 20% or 200 grams of the flour to be fermented in the sourdough starter)
• 450 grams water (650-200 because the starter is equal amounts of water and flour)
• 400 grams sourdough starter (200 grams flour + 200 grams water)
• 20 grams salt

You can use less sourdough starter than 10% fermented flour for sure. It’ll take longer to rise, which is a benefit to some people, like if you want the bread to be more sour. But in most cases, I wouldn’t use more than 20%. I say most because I do have a recipe or two where I do exceed the 20% by quite a bit, but those are the exception, not the rule.

What happened to my butt ugly sweet bread when I reduced the fermented flour amount from about 26% fermented flour down to around 12% fermented flour? Ugly old lady butt dimples disappeared, and instead, I had smooth, lovely bread. And it rose! Consistently! Every single time!

And my husband sang to me, “Baby butt, baby butt, baby butt buns, oh gimme my baby butt, baby butt, baby butt buns…” But he’s a little crazy.

I’m sure the question “Why 20%?” must be occurring to someone. I asked it, too.

If you use too much sourdough starter in the bread, then there isn’t enough food from the fresh flour for the wild yeast to feed on. With insufficient food to feed on, the bread doesn’t rise since live yeast produces carbon dioxide as a biproduct, and what’s what gives bread its air holes.

As well, fermented flour has gluten that’s been overdeveloped (gluten develops naturally when flour becomes wet), which isn’t a problem when the fermented flour is used at low amounts, but when a lot of fermented flour is used, it can’t support the dough properly, hence the ugly dimples and inability to rise.

I saw tamarillos, or tree tomatoes, at the grocery store a few weeks back. I hadn’t seem them before and had no idea what to do with them, but couldn’t resist picking up a few *coughninecough* and seeing what inspired me.

Tamarillos should not be confused with tomatillos. They aren’t the same. I mention this because *cough* I might have confused them myself a time or two…

The first photo is of the tamarillos the day I bought them. They were still very hard, so unripe. I left them at room temperature for a couple of days, which was all it took for them to reach the point of being soft at slight pressure. Notice that they’re much less yellow, more red.

Naturally, because I had no idea in the world what to do with these tree tomatoes, I turned to Google and this recipe for Aji de tomate de árbol or tree tomato hot sauce showed up.

Hey, we’re always up for hot sauce, so I thought, why not?

It took a while for me to finally getting around to making it. Just when the tree tomatoes became ripe enough to do something with, Fahim’s parents came into town. They’re not as adventurous with their food as I am, so I tossed the tamarillos into the freezer to await a better day.

Today, I took those tree tomatoes out and made my own version of this hot sauce.

Tamarillo Hot Sauce

Ingredients

• 5 tamarillos, fresh or frozen
• 1 small onion, minced
• 12 red chillies, minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 lime, juiced

Directions

1. Remove outer peel and seeds of the tamarillo.
2. If using frozen tamarillos, mash them lightly. They’ll break apart rather quickly. If using fresh, then dice.
3. Throw all ingredients except lime into a small pot and simmer for a minute or two, then add lime juice.

This many red peppers meant that it had a nice subtle bite for Fahim and I. If you’re a normal human, depending on what kind of peppers you use, you might want to use less.

With half as many peppers or less, it would make a great pasta sauce to be matched with bell peppers, olives, onion, and tomato. Or it would make a great pizza sauce.

A friend asked me to take pictures of the insides of the tamarillo. Because I ended up freezing them, they became really really mushy when I thawed them, and that’s not so conducive to taking pics. But because Fahim and I love this hot sauce, we’ll be getting more tamarillos, and I’ll take more pictures then.

Fahim loves him some cream puffs.

He’s told me that his mother used to make them years ago, so I should be able to make them, too. So, one day, I hunted up a recipe and made them.

My first batch was a flop. It was a recipe from one of those sites where you can leave comments and ratings for each recipe, and this one was highly rated. A few people had problems with the recipe, though, and said as much, but then other commenters broke in with criticisms like “This is so easy. How stupid would you have to be to screw it up?” Which wasn’t exactly, ah, heartwarming, you know?

I looked around some more, and found a better recipe at the Joy of Baking. The list of ingredients was identical in both recipes, but in the Joy of Baking recipe, it said to keep stirring the dough in the pot until the dough forms a thick ball.

Then, beat the dough until the dough becomes lukewarm – this releases a lot of steam.

Considering that I live in a high humidity area, these two steps, which both reduce the amount of moisture in the dough, are probably what makes all the difference in the world from dense awful cream puffs to cream puffs that rise and expand like you wouldn’t believe!

Choux Pastry

Ingredients

• 70 grams (1/2 cup) all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 57 grams (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
• 120 ml (1/2 cup) water
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 205C (400F, gas mark 6).
2. Sift together flour, sugar, and salt.
3. Put butter and water into a pot over medium heat and bring to a boil.
4. As soon as it boils, remove from heat and add the flour mix.
5. Return the pot to heat and stir constantly until the dough comes together to form a thick ball.
6. Transfer the dough to a mixer (or, in my case, food processor that pretends to be a mixer) and beat on low speed until the dough is lukewarm and the steam has been released.
7. Add eggs gradually to the dough while continuing to mix it until it forms a thick paste.
8. Spoon or pipe mounds onto a baking sheet (you can line it with parchment paper if you like).
9. Bake 15 minutes, then reduce the oven to 177C (350F, gas mark 4) and bake an additional 30-40 minutes or until the cream puffs are a nice golden colour and dry inside.
10. Turn the oven off and let the cream puffs dry out another 10-15 minutes.
11. Fill with whipping cream, custard, icing, or whatever your heart desires.

Notes

• I’ve used aluminum bakeware (cream puffs stuck) and glass (got a very shiny, hard texture on the bottom of the cream puffs), and wasn’t overly happy with either. Silicone was fantastic, as was a non-stick baking sheet. I haven’t used parchment paper because it doesn’t exist here.
• Cream puffs can be filled with sweet or savoury fillings.
• Best when made shortly before consuming, especially if you live in a humid area like we do. By the next day, the cream puffs are completely floppy and almost rubbery. They still taste fine, but the texture isn’t, ah, quite what it could be.
• The finished cream puff pastry dough can easily be refrigerated or frozen with no ill effects. I’ve done both quite a few times and there’s been no difference in the quality of the resulting cream puffs.
• The Joy of Baking website adds an egg wash glaze. I’ve been too lazy to do that step and mine still turned out fine.

Cream puffs are a LOT easier to make than you might think. They were a lot easier than I thought they would be.  

Fahim’s mom loves eating them plain. Fahim prefers them stuffed with chocolate buttercream icing. I’ll take them with chocolate buttercream icing, or whipped cream, or lemon curd with whipped cream, or…

What about you? How do you like your cream puffs?

No doubt the majority of us have believed, at least at one time, that kneading bread dough for 5 or 10 minutes, or longer, was necessary if the bread was going to develop properly and rise.

Fortunately, especially for those of us with problem and painful joints, it simply isn’t true.

Personally, instead of kneading for minutes at a time, I’ll do one of two things:

1. After letting the dough rest for 20-30 minutes (autolyze), I’ll knead for 10 strokes, let the dough rest for 15 minutes, and then repeat twice for a total of 3 sets of kneading and resting. Then, after another 15 or so minutes, I’ll do a few stretch and folds. Then I let the dough rise until doubled in volume, then do the same old shaping and second rise that kneaders do.
2. After letting the dough rest for 20-30 minutes (autolyze), I’ll do a few stretch and folds, then let the dough rest 45 minutes, then repeat for a total of 3 stretch and fold then rest sessions. After the last rest after the final stretch and fold, I’ll shape it and let it do the regular second rise.

Even with my severely borked joints, I can do these, and it’s much easier and much less effort than using my rather, ah, sad food processor to try to mix and knead the dough for me.

Better yet, my bread turns out just as fluffy as bread made by those who knead.

Stretching and folding is something I learned from Sourdough Home when I was looking for easier kneading methods for me. There’s a much longer explanation of the stretch and fold method there, along with videos that demonstrate it. Well worth checking out.

Oh, yeah, and while you’re at it, check out this Panda Bread. Very cute!

Among the recipes Fahim’s mom taught me is this Tamarind Fish Curry. It’s spicy, a little bit sour (from the tamarind), and absolutely delish.

This is one of my all-time favourite ways to eat fish. 

Mama Farook’s Sri Lankan Tamarind Fish Curry

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons tamarind paste
• 2 teaspoons red chilli pepper powder*
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 500 grams firm white fish, cut into serving pieces
• 1/2 small onion, sliced
• 2 tablespoons oil (we use virgin coconut)
• 4-5 curry leaves
• 1/2 small onion, sliced
• 4" x 1/2" piece cinnamon stick
• 3 cloves garlic, minced

Directions

1. Mix the tamarind paste with the red chilli pepper powder, turmeric, and salt along with enough water to form a thinnish paste. Pour over the fish and onion and cover the fish thoroughly. Set aside.
2. Into a hot pot, add the oil, then the curry leaves, onion, and cinnamon stick. Stir frequently.
3. When the onions are sllightly browned, add the garlic and cook for another minute or so.
4. Add the marinating fish and onion and enough water to almost cover the fish.
5. Let simmer until the fish is cooked and the sauce is reduced and thick, about 10 minutes.

*That’s the amount of red chilli pepper powder that Fahim’s mom uses. When I make it for just Fahim and I, I use 2 tablespoons (sometimes more) red chilli pepper powder. We prefer it hotter. We’re also insane. Unless you’re a seriously insane freak of nature, use 2 teaspoons as the maximum.

That’s it! Not complicated at all, but oh so good!

We use virgin coconut oil for the authentic Sri Lankan curry flavour. If you don’t have any, use any flavourless oil.

If you don’t have curry leaves, omit. There is no substitution.

If you want it less spicy, reduce the red chilli pepper powder or use black pepper instead.

I hope you enjoy!