Caramellized Apple

I was feeling in the mood for something sweet and tangy. I suddenly remembered one of the Iron Chef episodes where they used some Duck or Mushrooms along with Caramelized Apple on the side. I cant remember which. Anyway I hopped down to my kitchen and found a nice Fiji Apple. Personally I think Fiji is the best apple for this dish, it has a great blend of sweet and sour flavours. Red Delicious are not tangy enough and the Simla apples just taste like some powdered stuff.

Alright enough with my take on apples lets get cooking. this dish is very easy to make and takes 10 Min's for 2 apples.

Ingredients:
Apples - 2, peeled and sliced or diced
Butter - 2 tbsp
Sugar - 2-4 tbsp (Ideally we don't want it too sweet)
Cinnamon Powder- a pinch
Nutmeg Powder or grated - very little

Fiji Apples

Procedure:

Wash, Peel and slice the apples
Put a non-stick saucepan on medium flame
Once pan is hot add the butter and swirl it around so as to not burn the butter
Wait for the butter to heat up and then add the apple slices or pieces.
Flip the slices, sprinkle some of the sugar on top and wait for a 2 Min's.
Flip again and sprinkle some more of the sugar.
Wait for the apples to brown up and then sprinkle the rest of the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg powder.
Wait for a min, remove the slices from the pan making sure to get as less of the butter as possible onto the apples.
Drain the apples on a paper towel, pat dry lightly taking care not to rub the caramel on the pieces off.
Plate and serve.

Variations:
This can also be make into a dish with sauce by adding a little apple cider and some rum and reducing the resultant liquid to a nice rich flavour.
You can serve this dish by itself or with mildly spiced meats.
I have seen some recipe's where the apple slices were served with some french toast.
Go on get creative.

Chefs Notes:
Go easy on the nutmeg its a very strong spice.
We want to get the apples to get caramelized not burnt. Some of the browning is from the sugar as it becomes brown and caramelly. Some of it is from the natural sugars in the apple itself.
If you want to eat healthy eat raw apple forget the caramelized ones :).

Learn Basic Kitchen Skills from celebrity chefs

I have been able to use a knife and done a bit of cooking since I was a teenager. I was looking to revisit my basics and maybe use a Chinese chefs knife to chop up stuff finely and with great speed. I didn't find that, but what I did find is this great video which teaches basic kitchen techniques like chopping, making omelet's, roast chicken, grilling a steak, making a stew(Beef bourguignon), spaghetti sauce and even burgers.

Part - 1

This is basically an episode from the TV series No Reservations - Techniques by Anthony Bourdain. In this episode he invites a couple of his friends who happen to be pretty famous -Jacques Pepin, Thomas Keller, and Laurent Tourondel.

Buying Baking / Cooking Supplies in Bangalore

When you start cooking, initially, you realize that you do not have all the required type of equipment or ingredients required for the various dishes. My first question was - Where can I buy non stick or silicone baking trays in Bangalore? I had plenty of questions as I continued experimenting and trying out new dishes. I had to make-do a lot initially as I assembled my cooking armoury :). For example When I started cooking at home, I used a 8 inch Teflon coated pizza pan with 1 inch high sides to bake a lot of cakes and cookies etc. I had a regular baking sheet for cakes but its too big for my smaller experiments.

I found a whole lot of information from this nice lady's blog (http://sumarowjee.blogspot.com) and her readers comments. I added the rest from my knowledge and more searching around.

So here's what I could find out or know about baking and cooking supplies in Bangalore, India.

Read more »

Easy Oatmeal Nutrition Bars/ Breakfast Bars

I was searching around the net for some easy snacks and came across some great breakfast bar recipes. Most of them had a lot of stuff not available easily, here in Bangalore. I decided to change some stuff around and experiment a bit with some basic easily available ingredients.

The first time I made the bars they turned out good and crunchy. Unfortunately I had substituted Raisins (Kishmish) instead of some of the hard to find berries, like blueberries, cranberries etc. The raisins bloated up in the oven, popped out of the mix a bit and generally got slightly burnt. The bars were fine though it was just those raisins which had bloated and were rolling around on top of the bars, which I discarded.

Beerakaya Pacchadi (Ridge Gourd Spread)

Hindi - Tori Ki Chutney / Torai Ki Chutney


I am a big fan of chutneys. They make great dips and spreads to liven up any snack. This is one of my personal favorites. This chutney or pacchadi as it is called in Telugu is based on the traditional method with some slight modifications. We came up with this recipe after quite a few experiments, all of which turned out great.


My wife has over the past few years, developed a fascination with using coconut in everything. I have been threatening to export her to Thailand or Indonesia or some such place if she keeps up with the coconut rampage. And just for that, shes stepped it up a notch :).

Read more »