So far in our chocolate series, we’ve looked at the fruity heat of chilli and the piney fragrance of cardamom. This time, we will explore two more flavour pairs, the first of which shares a lot of similarities with chocolate and chocolate making. Compared to chocolate making, coffee making has fewer steps, and two of…
Category: Sweet Tooth
Dark Liaisons : Cardamom
Last time, we commenced our series by exploring the 7 Liaisons of Chocolate with a bit of historical background, and the chilli-chocolate combination. This week, let’s move on to combination number two. “Like a puppeteer’s black velvet curtain, dark chocolate is the perfect smooth background for cardamom to show off its colors. Use the cardamom…
Dark Liaisons : Chilli
Chocolate is a universal favourite, from 5 year olds pointing at the huge bar of Dairy Milk at the store to the pseudo-intellectual “foodie” picking up notes of coffee, tobacco and 23-year old leather from a ridiculously expensive bar of 99 percent dark chocolate. There is a lot to be said about chocolate. I’ve decided…
A Tale of Pear, Fig, and Cinnamon
Poached Pears with Fig “Custard” and Cinnamon “Crumble”: A “Recipe” Christmastime calls for something special. So far, during Christmas, I’ve looked back at my first ever food article called Food and the Senses in 2019, dissected the Calcutta Christmas Cake in 2020, and collaborated with Nodee di on the Christmas dinner in 2021. This time,…
Pastry 101 : Choux
So far in our French pastry odyssey, we have looked at shortcrust and puff pastries. This week, we complete the trilogy with what is perhaps the most enigmatic of the three. This week, let’s wrap things up with a look at choux (pronounced shoo) pastry or pâte à choux. A choux dough contains the usual…
Pastry 101 : Puff
Last time, we looked at shortcrust pastry and its varieties, along with an overview of French pastry creams. Let’s now move on to our second pastry, puff pastry or Pâte Feuilletée, the base for local favourites like chicken patties and projapoti biskoot. Puff pastry feels magical, almost alive. When baked, it increased to upto eight…
Pastry 101 : Shortcrust
The word “pastry” has a different meaning in India and the West, which confuses a lot of beginners. While we use the term pastry to refer to cakes filled and frosted with cream, the term is used differently in the West, and infact, has two meanings. Pastry in the West can refer to the final…
The Pud Thickens (Part 3)
The Old and the New We’ve reached the final part of this interesting trilogy, a survey of thickening methods using five “puddings” as our guide. We’ve explored the phirni, the panna cotta and an array of baked custards. This time, we will look at two more desserts, one very old and another relatively new, which…
The Pud Thickens (Part 2)
The Custard Continuum Last time, we explored the role of starches and gelatin as thickening agents, primarily in the context of dessert. This week, we will focus on the egg. We’ve already talked about eggs in some detail in our Eggs 101 series. This time though, the focus will be on its role in custard…
The Pud Thickens (Part 1)
Starches and Gels There are a number of ways to thicken a sauce, soup or curry. Thickening helps intensify flavour and provide a better texture; a creamy clam chowder is definitely much more appealing than a watery bowl with bits of seafood floating in it. There are a number of possible thickening agents the resourceful…
The Gourmet Glutton 