pumkin scones

I love pumpkin season, although I live in the desert and we don't celebrate thanks giving. But my home town is known for its heavy use of pumpkins, so I think it might be my DNA acting up (chuckle ).

Pumpkin scones makes 6 

Ingredients:

• • 2 cup flour
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tbsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp powdered cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp powdered  nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp cloves, ginger
  • 6 tbsp cold butter, cubed
  • 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
  • 3 tbsp milk
  • 1 L egg

• sugar glaze

  • 1/2 cup powdered sugar
  • 1 tbsp milk

• spiced glaze

• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1 to 2 tbsp milk
• 1/4 tsp powdered cinnamon
• Pinch powdered ginger
• Pinch of powdered cloves
• Directions
• 
  
• Mix all the flour and other dry ingredients, then rub the butter and flour mix together until it takes the consistency of bread crumbs.
• 
  

Add in the pumpkin puree, milk and egg, with a wooden spoon mix in the flour/butter, and dump the whole lot on a lightly floured surface, knead the dough until it just come together (make sure that you don't work the dough too much otherwise you'll end up with tough scones).

shape the dough into a disc that is 1-2 inches thick and then slice it like a pizza into 6 equal pieces, place them into a baking sheet and bake at 180 C for 12-15 minutes   
let it cool a bit before you glaze it

for the glaze:
dissolve the sugar into the milk completely  add the spices for the spiced glaze. cover the scones with the spiced sugar glaze and then pipe over it the plain sugar glaze in a zigzag pattern .

enjoy with a cup of coffee :)

• 
  

The bread budding of the Arabs: Um Ali

Every Ramadan my mother will announce that she "at last" found the perfect recipe for Um Ali. While she still searches for the perfect recipe I found mine, when it comes to cooking I follow the motto " if it ain't broken , don't fix it", if it tastes good I stop my search. The only change I made is that I don't use raisins, I never have been a fan of them as a child and I still don't like them much. 

Potato filled flat bread: aloo paratha

 For a long time my family always have had paratha plain and only accompanying keema, sometimes we will be "adventurous" and eat it with some egg and cheese. But it was always plain unfilled, and never homemade.
when I graduated from the university I was unemployed , so I started exploring cooking and world cuisine, and started learning more about types of bread and cheese etc. And there was a world of parathas to explore. but of all the types out there, aloo paratha stole my heart; it's a carb feast: bread filled with potato, perfect.


I personally don't like my potato filling to but overly spiced , for a more authentic paratha check the recipe from the source

Aloo Paratha Adapted from ( Manjula's Kitchen) 
makes 6
Ingredients

[Dough:]
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup water 
Pinch of salt

[Potato Filling]
2 medium potatoes, boiled
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
2 tablespoons chopped parsley or coriander
1/2 teaspoon garam masala 

Directions:
Mix the flour and salt, and add the water bit by bit and mix until a soft dough is formed, knead it on a lightly  floured surface for 5 minutes, let it rest for 10 minutes 

divide the dough and roll it into 6 golf sized balls and cover with a wet tea towel and again let it rest for 10 minutes while you prepare the filling.
for the filling, mush the potatoes with the salt, herbs and all the spices, and divide in 6 balls that are slightly larger that the dough balls.

now to make the bread, take one dough ball and flatten it a little with your hand and then place the filling ball in the middle and wrap it with the dough, try to cover the filling completely, roll it a bit. press it to form a disk and roll it with a rolling pin untill it's as thin as possible, the filling might poke out of the dough but it's a;right.

heat a frying pan, once it's hot enough (drops of water should sizzle) place the paratha and fry for few secons, once it starts to puff flip and press it to let the air out. prush it lightly with oil (or ghee) and flip while pressing the air pockets few times to get an even colored bread.
enjoy it with milk-tea

Yamanote atelier

Not to long ago something amazing happened in my city, the first proper Japanese bakery opened.
Four years ago I had my first taste of a Japanese cake, it was a bite of a vanilla roll cake, but it changed the way I think of cakes; it was fluffy and airy while the cream was so light , the whole thing melted away in my mouth like a piece of cotton candy.

Holiday Baking

Finally I managed to get again in the kitchen and cook something, although it wasn't very intense session, all I did was to bake few biscuits for the holiday ( Happy Eid al Ad'dha), but I feel so satisfied and productive.

(continue reading to see what all I made)

how big is your mouth

Ever since I started cooking, my golden rule was "never handle meat", the mere thought of cooking meat scared me, I always had this feeling that cooking meat needs some talent and experience, once I see a recipe that calls for meat I sigh and flip the page. One day I was craving beef burgers and my mum was out, so I had to summon my courage and make my own burgers; after flipping in some cookbooks and scraps of magazines I decided to use a recipe in James Martin's easy British food , but I did some modifications and 'till now I made burgers with the same recipe four times, and every time my family ask " when will be the next time you make more", hah~.

so yesterday I made some, and as always I remembered to take a picture after I started to eat, a trend is starting.

Beef burgers (Mai's way)

(makes 6 good sized burgers)

1 Fry the chopped onions in a little oil to take off the rawness.
2 Mix the minced beef with the onions, chopped gherkins, mayonnaise, mustard, Tabasco... then season well with salt and pepper.
3 Take a ball of the mixture and shape it into a burger then make a small indentation in the middle of it, put the cheese in it and enclose it and reshape into a burger.
4 Put in the fridge to firm for a 30 minutes.
5 Fry in a hot saucepan for 6 minutes on each side, for a well done burger, if you like it medium done cut out the cooking time to 4 minutes. If you are lazy (like me) you can just throw it in a 190C oven for 45ish minutes or less, and they will be perfect, just remember to splash some olive oil on the burgers before you pop them in the oven.


Ingredients
2 small onions, finely chopped
700 g minced beef
8 Gherkins (pickled cucumbers) chopped
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1/2 tbsp mustard
splash of Tabasco, depending on how hot you want it
slat and pepper
6 slices of cheese, fold each to make a slice that is similar to a coin in size

Ego is a dangerous thing

Hah, remember that choux pastry I made ages ago, I finally took it out of the freezer today to bake it, and for some reason *cough*cocky-mai*cough* I managed to under-bake 50% of the patch, and there was nothing I could do to save them, in the end I had to throw them :'(, note to self : never freeze stuff unless you become a pastry chef, and leave you stupid ego out of the kitchen next time

I remembered to take a shot this time after I started to munch away, and this bit of eclair in the pic was my last bite, I took the shot and threw the yummy thing in my mouth XD.

I love chili

Today cooking lunch was on me, so after a minute of thinking I decided to go for Thai+ Vietnamese with a bit of Indonesian cuisine thrown in, I made my list that had : rice noodles, bean sprouts and many other ingredients... after preparing every thing I was craving some chili, and so I made a lime-chili dressing to drizzle on my bowl of noodles, since none in my family like spicy food I made a small amount of it. I have to say that I ended up putting a bit too much chili, and it was OH-lord-have-mercy-on-me hot.. it was hot hot hot hot, I never in my life eaten anything that is so hot before (and I ate my share of chili for the bast five years) I thought I was ready for this, but no! sitting next to my mum I couldn't talk to express my discomfort, all I was able to do is to groan and stick my tongue out, then I ran to the kitchen to grab some sugar to put down the fire in my mouth ;_;. while I'm writting this I had to stop a capule of times to wipe tears, say soothing words to my grumpling stomach, and to supply my brunt tongue with sugar. But still, I love chili!

[image source]

Battle wounds

Lately I have received some small injuries, and every time I didn't feel pain (yes yes, I didn't even feel a thing). Maybe I got stronger, or maybe I'm just too busy to feel anything. Yesterday I was dressing up to go out, and while I was fighting with a hairpin to put my hair up the forsaken thing sliced my thump open, five minutes passed and I didn't feel anything until I was applying mascara, after I lifted my hand off my face I saw a big blood stain... I freaked out, really, I was running all over the room like a headless chicken!

Today because the whole eclair making thing made me really in a good mood, and I was craving for more tonight, so I decided to make another patch and leave it in the freezer. Everything was going OK, no knifes used so basically I was supposed to walk out of the kitchen in one piece... Oh, I was so wrong. While I was beating eggs into the dough with a wooden spoon, a very hard task if you tried it yourself, I started thinking that I might end up with a blister on my hands, to check I stopped mixing and looked at my hand... oh NO blood! the spoon pulled a small patch of skin and now I have a small hole in my hands that stings. I didn't run or scream I just looked at it, took a picture and then continued beating the eggs.

and now I'm typing this post with bandage on my right hand and another on my left thump, I guess I should be more careful, tehe.

Pierre Herme Eclares

Not long ago I ordered number of cooking books as a very late graduation gift for myself - I needed a reason to justify the splurge-, and to me the highlight of the package was the amazing chocolate desserts book by Pierre Hermé; just flipping through the book and looking at the pictures is satisfying as eating chocolate. It didn't take long until I tried a recipe, and since I'm a big tart-lover I went for the nutella tart, it was a treat from me and my sister since she loves nutella so much, and what can I say it was yummilicous and also easy to do, the result was sensational, a light biscuit layer, thin layer of nutella and the best melt in your mouth ganache, and it looked amazing, it was just perfect -too bad I didn't take pictures-. One day I was invited for a dinner/ftoor in my uncle's house and I thought this tart will be perfect to take with me, little I knew that abit-low quality chocolate will give me some hard time, actually it was a nightmare, the ganache spilt while in the oven and I was in despair, and a thick layer of shredded coconut saved the day.

And because there is no Pierre Hermé pastry shop where I live, and I wanted to eat good eclairs, not that cerme-filled ribber found in the pastry shop I know covered with an awful dark stuff they call chocolate , the challenge was to make at-least-edible eclairs. In my life I tried to make the choux pastry three times, and it seemes that I made a major progress since my first eclairs were flat as a pancake; but, many years passed since then and I'm stronger in the arm and have more Patience. The recipe was straight-forward and easy to follow, and Mr.Hermé gives the steps in details so there are no "what-to-do-now" moments, every thing went smoothly and the my smile grew as I saw the eclairs puff and rise. So, the eclairs came out perfect from the oven, but because I started cooking on impulse I didn't make sure what kind of chocolate I had, and it was too late when I discovered that I had a very-sweet milk chocolate, but I had to do the chocolate glaze anyways. The result was OK, not perfect, but it put a smile on my family's faces; to me that's good enough. One thing I know for sure, next time I have some of my Friends around I'll make eclairs.

~Mai

Note: the picture isn't mine , as you know (or don't) I don't own a good camera, but I'll consider since I'm thinking of taking food blogging seriously.

to be Brit

Today I was glued in front of the T.V, four episodes of different shows that feature Chef James Martin were aired back-to-back, a bit too much you say...I don't think so. And I was inspired to try one of the recipes *damned if I didn't*, I chose scones for this task, because I never had them before. Making them was very easy, and I mimicked every move he did, the scones turned out superb. The tricky part was to stop eating them, straight out of the oven with some cream and raspberry jam, just yumm. I used a similar recipe to this one, but I added some sultanas to mine, have fun and enough supply of cream and jam

Ah, I just love James, his recipes are so simple to follow, and he cooks real proper food, not that fancy stuff that looks impossible to cook. He's good looking too :P.