5th October

I am not very fond of thick soups and prefer clear soups. So much so that I don't even like any traces of cornflower or any such thickening agent in my soups. When I say clear it needs to be a clear light soup. Thus when asked to make pumpkin soup for an ongoing contest in Instagram, I was in two minds. Pumpkin soup is rarely clear, rather never clear, its usually a thick creamy soup. And as I said, I am not very fond of thick soups. So the question was how to make it palatable so that I will not hate it after I make it. I started looking at traditional pumpkin soups on the net. 

That's when I came across is amazing Thai version of the pumpkin soup. The creamy soup is a very interesting. Instead of the popular American pumpkin soup, the Spicy Coconut Pumpkin soup which traditionally made in Thai cuisine and loaded with fresh citrusy flavors from the lemongrass and kaffir lime.

It ticked all the boxes of the flavor profile I felt I would love- sweet, spicy, tart and a lil salty. It is made with pan fried onions, red pumpkin, pepper cloves, a hint of cinnamon, star anise, galangal, coriander root, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, chunks of fresh coconut, turmeric, garlic cloves, birds eye chili, lemon juice, fish sauce and finally coconut milk. It is filling, warm and comforting. It eventually turned out to be just a perfect autumn soup after all! 

Even if you miss a few ingredients here and there just do a dare to yourself and play around with some of the herbs to get something even more appetizing and unique.

Ingredients :

• Red Pumpkin - 1 cup, peeled and cubed
• Onion - 1 sliced
• Garlic cloves - 3-4 , chopped
• Ginger/ Galangal - 1/2 inch, finely chopped
• Lemongrass - 1/3 rd stalk , bruised
• Bird's Eye Chilli - 2
• Turmeric Powder - 1/2 tsp or Turmeric Root - 3/4th inch
• Kaffir Lime Leaves - 4-5
• Coconut - 6 -7 pieces
• Peppercorn - 4-5
• Star Anise - 1 petal of the star
• Cinnamon powder - 1/4th tsp
• Coriander powder - 1/2 tsp or Coriander Root - 1 tbsp. , diced
• Thick Coconut milk - 1/2 cup
• Fish Sauce -  2 tsp
• Lime Juice - 2 tsp
• Salt as per taste
• Sugar - 3 tsp
• Refined oil - 1 tbsp.
• Vegetable Stock - 2 cups (approx.)

Method:

1. Cut all the vegetables as mentioned above and keep it ready for next step.

Note: I used two different types of pumpkin here as you can see in the image. One with a light yellow shade and the other red. You can use any color of pumpkin to make this soup but the more it is pigmented the more vibrant the soup will look.

2. Take a pan and heat the oil on medium. First add the sliced onions. Sauté for a minute.

3. Then add the ginger, garlic and bird's eye chilli and sauté again for a couple of minutes.

4. Now add the remaining - dry red chilli, coconut pieces, pepper corn, star anise, pumpkin pieces. Sauté for about 3-4 minutes and let the pumpkin start to sweat.

Note: I have added two different type of chillies. The dry red ones for color mainly and the bird's eye chilli for the heat. You can vary the spice level as per your taste. The one I made was considerably spicy and maybe too much for kids.

Note 2: If you are using turmeric root, add at this stage and sauté it with rest.

5. Add 2 cups of vegetable stock or water to the pan . Add salt, sugar, kaffir lime leaves, bruised lemon grass, turmeric powder, cinnamon powder, coriander and fish sauce. Fold everything in and bring it to a boil.

Note: we are not adding too much liquid at this point because pumpkin itself also gives off water.

Note 2: If you feel that adding both kaffir lime leaves & lemon grass might be a bit too much citrusy, you can skip either of them and add only one.

6. Turn the heat down and let this simmer covered for about 10 - 15 minutes or till the pumpkins are mushy or easily break under the pressure of a spoon.

Note: If you are using raw turmeric root, then remove it now. Also remove the lemon grass.

7. Now slowly add the coconut milk and give it a stir to mix in. Let it simmer for about a minute on low flame.

8. Now take it off heat and let it come to room temperature before blending it. Add the lime juice now to the blender. Preferably first pulse it in batches and then one final time blend it all in. You can add more water/ stock if you want a runny soup.

9. Now sieve the entire thing through a juice strainer to get that beautiful smooth finish.

Garnish it with some roasted pumpkin seeds, bird's eye chili and a nice swirl of coconut cream. Serve it hot or cold as per your liking.

Pro Tip: Sweet potato or carrots can also be used in this recipe replacing pumpkins. It can also be paired with roasted shredded chicken or prawns for some additional proteins.

2nd October:

We are into October already and it still feels like monsoon. The Met department says that rains will go late this year. That means more gloomy days ahead. So anyway, this week I was doing some recipe Contest on Instagram and the recipe that we had chosen to create were fall recipes. But unfortunately I checked that I didn't have any fall décor with me in the house. Amazon India also didn't have much to offer if I wanted a quick delivery within two days. So I decided to go back to the drawing board and make some fall leaves myself. 

In case I haven't already talked about this, I love making any kind of crafts from a very young age and I had started painting frequently after moving to my own house last year. I hadn't painted much during the lockdown, was focusing more on creating new recipes. So when I started this fall leaf project, I was totally overjoyed. Painting always makes me feel happy. That's the power of creation.

In the end it turned out to be one fun project that you can do with your kids and this is very less messy too, at least under the guidance of an adult. So bring out your color and papers and lets make some beautiful fall leaves.

Materials Required:

• A4 sized white paper - 2
• Newspaper - 2 full sheets ( 1 sheet having two joined pages)
• Acrylic or water color - Orange, red, yellow, brown
• Water - 2 small cups
• Brush - 1
• Pencil - 1
• Scissor - 1

Remember you need to start the project at least a day before you want to use the paper leaves. I started two days before.

1. Take about 2 tbsp water in each of the small cups or saucers and add one color in each. Mix them well with the water with the help of a brush. E.g. I went ahead with the following colors together:

Paper 1 : Brown + Orange

Paper 2 : Yellow + Red

You can also have other combination like : Magenta + Red, Red + Brown, Green + yellow etc.. Just use your imagination according to the theme you want.

2. Spread the newspaper first on the floor or the table wherever you are making the craft, remember we don't want messy stains. Now place the two A4 papers at a distance form one another

3. Now as suggested above, take the brown color water and gently at an angle pour it on the first A4 paper. Now on top of that pour the orange color water. Now gentle hold the paper on either sides in your hands and first tilt it to the right so that the watery colors start covering the right side of the page and then tilt it to the left. DO these very gently, as we want the colors to mix creating some light uneven patterns. You can repeat the tilt a couple of times to cover the entire paper. If you still feel the colors haven't covered the paper, you can use your brush to coat the white areas. Let the color texture be uneven, don't use brush all over the page. That will give a realistic feel to the final leaves.

Note: Please not the papers will be very soft at this point so handle with care or else it might tear.

4. Now repeat with yellow and red for paper number 2. 

5. Leave these papers to dry overnight. 

6. Next morning we continue on the project. Now fold the paper just the like the picture into 1.5" folds (each side of fold to be 1.5"). The white part to be folded over so that we can draw on it. This will yield maximum of a 2 inch diameter leaf.

Note: You can scale up the size of the leaves as per your requirement, just make the folds bigger.

7. On the half start drawing the outline of a leaf. It can be a simple curve or pointy edges ones. Go creative with the leaf shapes. Basically you need to just draw one half, when we cut it will give us symmetrical similar shape for the other half too.

8. Cut the papers along the drawn line. If the kid is small to handle scissor, any elder can help with the cutting. Now you will see you have got a beautifully textured leaf. Start drawing the veins with a black pen or pencil as I have done.

Additional Tip : Use a punching machine to punch some hole into the paper leaves to give a moth eaten feel

That's it you have your perfect DIY paper fall leaves. Use it as your photo props or decorating the house for Halloween.

September 24

The other week I had got a bunch of small red apples. I'm not much of a fruit lover ( I know I am weird) but I just got them because they were so cute! And I thought that maybe if I get smaller apples I might just be able to coax myself into having them. And obviously they are good for health right? 

So yes I did coax myself into having a couple of them, I am doing healthy stuffs now a days so it was somewhat easy to motivate myself. But then after a while my foodie brain started to think in a disrupted manner. Why to eat apples as just apples? I mean while they are good as apples, why not use them to make something different. That's what Instagram does to you, you see. Till the time you limit yourself to cooking shows, MasterChef episodes and Facebook food groups, you are exposed to comparatively less ideas of thinking out of the box. But once you come on Instagram, there is just disruption in every food preparation you have had in your entire lifetime.

Once you step into the realm of Instagram you feel like everyone out there is a MasterChef and you are the only horrible cook left in this big bad lonely world. At least I felt it that way, I was too embarrassed to put up the simple macher jhol pictures or the beans ki subzi which tastes heavenly but not much of a looker. There was absolutely no drama in the preparation or the dish that I plated it in. I mean who would even care for your jhinger macher jhol ( fish curry with ridge gourd) with some soggy jhinge swimming around the fried fish, when they can see a gourmet fish steak lying on a bed of aromatic rice and some green ridge gourd on the side strategically placed to give the feel but not to crowd the dish? I definitely liked the gourmet version, not sure about you folks.

Thus I learnt in a few months, if you cook something which you could not shape properly simply call it deconstructed xyz and further distort the shape and present it with nice garnish. If you want to shock people just combine 3-4 elements which never on earth you would have imagined to go together. Or if you have things wilting in your pantry just make a dip or chutney out of it and present it in a nice set of crockery with all the bells and whistles. Sounds simple right? 

The truth is farther from it. Instagram is where we bring to life the concept of eating first with our eyes. And to do that the kind of efforts that goes into the background is tremendous. Each of these people meticulously plan the entire production of a dish they are going to capture in the frame much ahead of time. There is a lot of money and time invested in making each picture come to life. Food photography is expensive. And only through trials and error you will know of tips and tricks which can save you a few bucks. But still it is expensive. At the minimum you need to invest in a good camera, some decent backgrounds and of course good crockery. And after that you will still be in the beginners stage as per the Instagram standards. 

Thus when you are just starting a food page on Instagram you might feel a whole lot overwhelmed by the contents you see around you or the growing number of followers in others profile might give you sleepless nights or put your mind on a self induced pressure zone, but my suggestion is don't fret. I mean what was the point of joining Instagram in the first place? For me it was like a live journal wherein I wanted to document my food journey, interact with like minded folks, know more about food and photography and the most important enjoy the experience at my own pace. I wanted to look back in time at my feed and feel good that I created so many things which I never thought of making earlier. I will look back in time and feel this year I have cherished the fact that I could give so much time to one of my favorite hobbies - cooking.  That will be a true accomplishment rather than chasing after numbers like crazy. I do not deny the fact that as your followers graph goes up you do feel a growing happiness but then if you have good content there will always be audience to appreciate it. Unless you want to monetize right away, you can go at a steady pace, trying to build meaningful content once every two days rather than a cartload of shitty images daily.

So just take a deep breath, cook things which make you happy and don't worry about the results. 

I wanted to make something nice and filling for lunch as well as use the apples. Egg pulao was on my mind but then I decided to make a Kashmiri dry fruits pulao and add egg to it (simply because I wanted to have egg :)). And when its a dry fruits pulao obviously apples are a right candidate to throw in as well. Believe me it tastes super duper awesome. So if you have some apples which are not that sweet and do not know what to do with them apart form halwa, this is a good option. You can also add more fruits like cranberries or pomegranate to make it more fruit loaded.

This Kashmiri Pulao recipe will tease your taste buds with sweet, spicy and tart flavors. The best part of this recipe is you can reuse left over rice also for making this amazingly flavorful and textured pulao. Its a one pot fragrant, fruity and nutty pulao which can be made quickly and enjoyed.

Preparation Time : 20 minutes

Ingredients :

• Basmati Rice / Any fragrant Rice - 50 gm
• Stock ( Vegetable/Chicken/Mutton) - 100 ml
• Ginger Paste - 1/2 tsp 
• Bay Leaf - 1
• Fennel Seeds (Bruised) - 1/2 tsp
• Cardamom (Bruised) - 2
• Cinnamon - 1/2 inch
• Green Chilli (Slitted)- 4 to 5 
• Sugar - 1 tsp
• Salt - As per taste
• Ghee - 2 tsp
• Refined Oil - 2 tsp

Garnish :

• Onion (for Beresta) - 1/2 sliced
• Red Apple (Diced) - 1/2
• Black raisins / Manaka / Normal Raisins - 1/2 cup
• Cashew Nut - 1/4 th cup
• Almonds - 5 to 6 
• Coconut Slice - 8-10
• Saffron Strands/ Orange Food Color - 1/2  tsp

Additional:

• Potato (Halved)- 1 medium 
• Boiled Egg - 1

Equipment:

• Heavy bottomed wok

Method:

1. Wash and soak the rice in water for about 30 minutes

2. While the rice is soaking we need to prep up for the rest of the elements. Boil the halved potatoes with skin on and the egg and keep aside. 

Note: This is an optional step. You can completely skip it

3. To make the beresta, slice the onion and then fry them to a crisp in the wok. Keep it aside. You can add a little sugar while frying to give a nice caramel color to the onions.

4. Halve the cashew, chop the almonds, and slice the coconut. Now heat the wok and add enough ghee to fry the dry fruits. On medium heat toss the dry fruits in batches and take care not to burn them. Fry till they are fragrant with a slight brown color. Once the nuts are fried, switch off the heat and toss the raisins in the remaining ghee for about 30 seconds. They will get fried in the heated oil itself. Keep these aside

Note: You can brown the coconut slices a little more than the nuts for a nice look.

5. Now shell the egg, make a few shallow slits along all sides. Toss it in a pinch of turmeric and salt and coat the egg well. In the same wok heat some ghee or refined oil and shallow fry the egg turning it on all sides till it gets a little crispy cover. Keep it aside. Now in the same oil fry teh boiled potatoes with their skin on. Fry till the potato gets a little brown on the eggs and the skin starts to turn little crispy. Take it off the flame and keep aside.

6. Now take the wok and heat 2 tsp of ghee. When its fragrant add the bruised cardamom, bay leaf, cinnamon and slitted green chillies. Toss it around for 30 seconds and add the ginger paste. Fry on medium heat till fragrant. 

7. Now drain the water from the rice and add the rice to the spices in the wok. Fry the rice till they start turning white. Keep giving gentle stir frequently to prevent it from sticking to the wok. Take care not to break the rice.

8. Now measure double the amount of stock or water to the amount of rice and add it to the wok. Add salt and sugar. Give it a gentle stir. Add the fried potatoes. Now cover the wok and let the rice cook on high for about a minute. 

Note: You can replace the stock with water. However stock would impart a better flavor.

9. When the rice is 3/4th cook, open the cover and now put the flame on sim/low. Put a tawa underneath the wok before you start assembling everything. Now add the fried egg on top of the rice. Add some slitted green chillies for added flavor. Sprinkle the raisins and beresta all over the rice. At a few points add the saffron color water/ orange food coloring. Now cover the wok and make sure any openings are closed to arrest the steam within the wok. We now need to cook rest of the rice on dum for about 10 minutes or till it is completely cooked.

Note: Do not mix the orange colour with entire rice. We want to gain a dual tone effect.

10. After 10 minutes or when the rice is done. Open the cover and let the rice sit in the wok till the excess moisture is absorbed. Now you can serve the rice on a plate and sprinkle it with all the fried nuts and coconut pieces.

Pro Tip: If you want to have a lovely crunchy feel to the nuts always add nuts while serving and not while putting the rice on dum which makes the fried nuts soft.

11. The final step is to dice the apple, toss it in some lemon juice and then add it to the rice. This will keep the apples crunchy and color intact. however if you want the apples to be soft, add it to the rice when you are putting it on dum.

Serve it as it is, or with a choice of raita and salads.