18 August

When I made the beetroot sorbet, I loved the flavors so  much that I wanted to use the same flavors to make more frozen desserts. Making Granita was on my mind for quite sometime now after watching the contestant of Masterchef Australia spinning up beautiful Granitas day in and day out. Among all types of frozen dessert Granita looked the easiest to make. 

Our heart craves nothing more than refreshing icy snacks in summer. Irrespective of the age, we all love popsicles, ice cream, gelatos and other frozen treats. Granita is a recent addition to the global list of frozen desserts. The cooking shows are now responsible for bringing many local recipes on the global stage. Granita is the Italian version of shaved ice but with a little twist. The texture of granita usually ranges from slushies to sorbets.

 The fun part in making a granita is, even if they melt when you take it out of the freezer, you can repeat the scraping process, and it will return back to the crystalline form. So you basically cannot go wrong with a granita ever ! 

You might have tried out many fruity flavors of granita, but trust me this beetroot rose Granita is a unique flavor you are going to love. Especially the floral rosy essence and the vibrant red color was definitely a hit at least in my home.  This is such an easy recipe that even your kids can make it themselves with a little help. So try it once and let me know.

20 July

When it rains you feel like having something delicious. The cravings get worse when you are cooped at home due to pandemic and not able to travel anywhere due to the restrictions. You need to have something delicious right at your home while enjoying the beautiful weather outside. I made this quick and easy and super delicious Pizza for lunch a few days back. I would have never believed Spinach tasted so amazing in a pizza if I had not tried it myself. It gives an awesome burst of flavor and texture to your everyday pizza and I assure you , you would love it! Thank me later!

 

February 8

I just took a fun survey and found out I prefer pasta over pizza. I think I knew it all the time but then this survey helped me get a better insight :D. Though kids of my generation will always agree that our introduction into the world of Italian food was through the Pizza only. There was a time when if you were a person who had had a pizza, then you automatically became an elite in everyone's eyes - true blue cosmopolitan! Pizzas entered the Indian food market around the 1980s but it was not until 1996 that some American fast food chains set up shop with their pan pizzas. The craze for pizza started to wane, when its relation with obesity started doing the rounds. As Indians became more and more inclined towards healthy eating, pizza got categorized as junk food. 

Over the years, Pasta became the new pizza of the Indian food lovers, especially for the urban middle classes. And during last year during the lockdown, the consumption and varieties increased multifold. Home chefs started preferring it over pizza, because it is easy to make and could be prepared in bulk and even in its reheated form it tasted delicious, unlike pizza which has to be consumed fresh. Also, you can add a lot of veggies into it and make it into a nutritious meal. I am a non vegetarian but when it comes to pasta, I love having it vegetarian. At home I usually load it up with oodles of fresh seasonal vegetables. At times there is more veggies on my plate than pasta and I I totally love it that way.

I think I have mentioned it before also, but my introduction to pink sauce in a pasta was very recent, like 3 -4 years back. I had gone to this restaurant in Koregoan Park in Pune. It is a pure vegetarian restaurant serving global cuisines. The friend suggested to try out their pasta and customized it, asking the chef to prepare it in 'pink' sauce which was not on the menu. I was intrigued by the sound of pink sauce. The friend then explained it to me, that actually it would be like a mélange of the red and white sauce. Now I am not someone who is very fond of the red sauce in a pasta, I will always side with a good white sauce. The dish was served and it looked pretty with a subtle pink hued sauce. With a tad little apprehension I took the first spoonful and was in heaven. It tasted subtle, silky, crunchy veggie loaded - perfect in every sense. 

The takeaway from that experience was that now I always try making a pink sauce and put lots of veggies in my pasta. I don't usually put a lot of cheese in my pasta hence I try to add a dollop more of fresh cream in the sauce. But cheese lovers, you can go a little crazy on the cheese content if you wish. When I am not indulging in Chinese on a weekend, its pasta what I would end up making.

PS. I got this super cute pink pasta bowl from a Japanese store in a mall a few week back and it has become my new favorite dish to have pasta in!

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January 23

2020 took a few preparations to an iconic level - dalgona coffee, babka, focaccia bread, popscicles, yoghurt cups, galette and many more such dishes which was erstwhile limited to the kitchens of specific regions, now was being made across the households globally, especially India. Homechefs brought restaurant home. I was always late to jump on the bandwagon of the food trends and thus I think when I am posting this galette recipe, half of the globe is already far more expert in making the same. Nonetheless still I feel like sharing this with you as its not the usual sweet filling galette, but a savory one.

Galette is a flat round cake of pastry often topped with fruit. Pie and Galette are both  baked desserts, wrapped in crust and filled with sweetness. A pie is a sweet or savory dish with a crust and a filling. Now, the term galette is used primarily to refer to rather rustic, free-form tarts-made with a single crust of pastry or bread dough, like a pizza and filled with fruit that is baked on a baking sheet. Galettes usually offer a better ratio of crust to filling than pie. Galette are probably the happy go lucky French cousin of the American pie. 

The trend for 2020 has been all about sweet filled galettes like - blueberry, apple etc. But with a savoury filling inside the galettes can also be had for a light supper dish. Since I am not much of a sweet lover, so when I wanted to make a galette it had to be a savory one. The one I made was with chicken and seasonal vegetables like corn and broccoli. If you want to make a vegetarian version of it, just skip the chicken and rest remains same. You can even substitute chicken with things like Paneer or more vegetables. Filling options for savory galettes are just about endless.

Personally I liked a galette better than the pizza, because its so flaky, buttery, smooth in texture and with much more filling inside to enjoy than a standard pizza. I am a filling loving person, so I don't like to go frugal with the filling. Hence a galette is always a good choice. Check out the recipe below, I am sure this would be a welcome change to all the pizza lovers.