Taste & Create: Thali - Black Sesame Chutney

This is the final Taste & Create Thali recipe from Seduce Your Taste Buds... and it's the visually stunning Black Sesame Seed Chutney...

It's such a gorgeous, glossy, black colour!

PJ's chutney is very creamy looking... I'm not sure how I caused mine to look so different...? I wonder if it's because I used dried, desiccated coconut rather than fresh grated?

The seasonings are very similar to the ones used for the tomato riata and the two accompaniments complemented each other beautifully!

One factor that most excited me about this dish was that I got to make my own chutney with speed and ease rather than my usual (but fantastic) shop-bought mango chutney... :)

This one is well worth knocking up!

Taste & Create: Prawn Scampi

This was a tasty little pasta dish I whipped up for Taste & Create this month...

I was once again paired with the lovely Tamy of 3 Sides of Crazy... I was entranced by her recipe for Lemon Garlic Shrimp Scampi... and you should be too!

The finished dish was light and refreshing, easily whipped up after a long work day!!

:)

Taste & Create: Broccoli Soup

Did you know that in Sweden it is traditional to have soup on Thursdays? Specifically; yellow split pea soup because yellow split peas are associated with Thor and Thursday is, after all Thor's Day!

This recipe is not for yellow spilt pea soup. This recipe is for Broccoli Soup. This is because we had approximately a million (AKA 2) broccolis and no spilt peas (I used them making soup for last Thursday!)...

This soup that I made for Taste & Create this month is simple, tasty, vegan (if you let it be, I didn't) and requires very few ingredients. It's fantastic for Students and Real People alike! It also came out the most fantastic shade of green:

See?

I fried the cumin seeds and garlic in butter as PJ of Seduce Your Tastebuds recommended in butter because I like butter. And I think garlic tastes better fried in butter, over oil... But, as oil is such an easy substitute; I still think it's fair to store this recipe as a vegan option.

The potato gives the blended soup a creamy texture without the addition of milk or cream. PJ pressure cooks her potatoes and broccoli; but I don't have a pressure cooker in my student kitchen so I boiled my potato and steamed the broccoli over it... Feel free, however to boil your broccoli and potato together; bearing in mind that the broccoli won't need quite so long to cook as the potato and over-cooked broccoli is a kinda funky colour...

I really enjoyed this soup, and hope you do too!

Taste & Create: Thali - Tomato Riata

This is my penultimate Taste & Create Thali recipe from Seduce Your Taste Buds... :)

It's a year, one month and 23 days since I posted my original review of 6 of PJ's delicious recipes... and today I will tell you, in greater detail about the 6th: Tomato Riata...

I really loved all the colour matching going on with the riata in this particular bowl...

Now, you may be like me, and of the belied that riata always contains cucumber. And cumin. And mint. Yes? No? Well; it turns out - we're wrong. Shocking, I know!

If you check out PJ's Menu page and scroll half way down (ish) she has a whole HOST of riata dishes! Only one of which contains "cucumber" in the title... So there. You learn something new every day.

This riata is a little more acidic tasting than its more conventional contemporary - but tasty none the less! I recommend giving it a go even if only to say that you have...

Taste & Create: Thali - Sambar

Taste & Create Thali recipe from Seduce Your Taste Buds #4!!

For today's Sambar recipe, you will need 3 teaspoons of yesterday's Sambar Spice powder recipe...

Hand ground Sambar Spice

Sambar, as a general rule is not my favourite way to serve lentils. I chose to make this recipe in the hopes that making my own Sambar, completely from scratch, would teach me otherwise.

It didn't.

Don't get me wrong! This Sambar is lovely! My friends and family think it fantastic! It's just not to my taste...

The original recipe called for "drumstick" which is not something I'd encountered before... PJ offers a variety of alternatives at the end of her post; I used peas because that's what I happened to have at the time.

So today, I will provide you with the recipe and encourage you to come to your own conclusions...

Clockwise from top left: Garlicky Spinach Rice, Aloo Fry and Sambar

Taste & Create: Tahli - Sambar Powder

Taste & Create Thali recipe from Seduce Your Taste Buds #3!!

You're going to need today's Sambar Spice recipe for tomorrow's Sambar Curry Recipe... It's pretty simple, really - just the ingredients together and away you go!

The quantities listed here will make more than you need for the Sambar; but the spice powder will keep will in an airtight container for future use...

I had a great time blending these all together by hand with a mortar and pestle! But use a spice blender, if you have one... or whatever else you have available to you. :)

You'll need:

1/2 cup coriander seeds

1 Tbsp gram dhal

1/2 Tbsp fenugreek seeds

Red chillies, to taste (I used 1)

1/4 tsp Asafoetida (hing) - this is an anti-flatulence herb and won't affect the taste of the Sambar Powder if you can't find any to use.

1-2 tsp oil

Dry roast the coriander seeds until fragrant.

Add the oil and the rest of the ingredients and fry briefly until all oil is absorbed.

All to cool before grinding into a fine paste.

Store in an airtight container until needed.

Taste & Create: Thali - Garlicky Spinach Rice

Further catch up on my rather delayed Thali collection today... and this instalment is Garlicky Spinach Rice!

This rice comes out the most extreme, green colour - it's fantastic!! As I have mentioned before spinach is my favourite food; so this dish was always going to be a winner!

The three chillies ground into a paste (with more garlic, fresh ginger and water) give it a bit of a bite... So either label it as not for the faint of heart, or use fewer chillies to dial it down a bit...

This recipe is fairly similar to a Greek one I've presented previously; only with extra garlic and chilli and ginger added... Puréeing the spinach also make this final dish much greener than the previous one! I'd be hard pressed to pick a favourite out of the two; the Greek dish being much richer and this being more punchy - you should try them both out and see which you like better!

Taste & Create: Thali - Aloo Fry

Hej, hej!

Remember my Thali from Taste & Create way back? Well... I've been paired with PJ of Seduce Your Tastebuds once again and I feel this is the optimum opportunity for me to finally get around to posting the full recipes I made last time... thus reminding both you and me how awesome they are! (It's a sign from the Gods, I tell you!)

Top: Tomato Riata, Aloo Fry, Garlicky Spinach Rice
Centre: Black Sesame Chutney
Bottom: Sambar made with home-made Sambar Powder

Although I really liked (most) of the dishes I made... Far and away my favourite (and the one I've made most often since) was PJ's Aloo Fry...

The crunch provided by the whole spices and slightly crispy fried potatoes in this dish really blew me away. Think; pan roasted, Indian spiced roast potatoes!

*drool*

Most of the spices required here (mustard seed, cumin seed, coriander seed) are not all that "unusual" and if, as a student, you were to go out and buy a packet - I'm sure you'd find many reasons to use them again and again. (Packet curries very rarely stand up to their homemade counterparts). The fenugreek (kasuri methi) leaves are a liiitle bit more unusual... and although they definitely add an enjoyable extra dimension to the dish; I hope I'll be forgiven for suggesting that you can probably get away without them if it's beyond your means.

Do try this dish out! I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Taste & Create: Chicken Acapulco

(sorry guys, this is super late)

For Taste & Create this month, my first in aaages I was paired with Sid of Sid's Sea Palm Cooking. SSPC is a really interesting blog with an eclectic collection of recipes from the Southern USA, Mexico and Denmark... I really enjoyed looking through the Danish recipes and trying to work out what they were for without first clicking the link for a translation. Swedish and Danish are quite similar, and I was fairly successful! :D

Ultimately though, I chose to make a Mexican recipe: Chicken Acapulco with Pico de Gallo!

(thank  you, blogger for re-flipping my images. I am most grateful. Not.)

Mexican recipes are kinda hard to get right in my neck of the woods (suburban NZ) because we simply don't have access to authentic ingredients... But I love almost anything that comes in a tortilla so I chose to give it a whirl! And I'm glad I did!

At it's most basic, this is what I would call a chicken burrito with cheese melted over the chicken while it was still in the pan... but the result is so much more than that!

Cheesy, cheesy goodness!

I had a slight issue in that Sid called for a specific meat marinade but I was able to google the name of the company and check it's listed ingredients... I made my own marinade using the ingredients listed and although the result might not be the same as the packet (I have no way of knowing!) it was still pretty darn good! Kinda sour and salty with a bit of heat from the mustard powder and paprika.

Soy sauce, paprika, mustard, lemon juice, garlic and onion whizzed together with cider vinegar, oil and water; it's a winner!

And that Pico de Gallo! Wow! It was so fresh and fantastic! And perfect accompaniment! Don't do as I did thought, and attempt to whizz it all up in a too small blender - be intrepid and cut your own... I ended up with mush. It didn't detract from the flavour any, but the texture was kinda weird.

Thanks Sid and Min ; this was a lot of fun!

Raw chicken will never be the prettiest; but it turns into some pretty tasty things!

Taste & Create: Mushroom Ragout

This month I did my first Taste & Create in months and months and months and... ages!

Taste & Create is a monthly blogging event where the lovely Min of the Bad Girl's Kitchen pairs you up with another blogger and you each get to make, and report on one of each other's recipes.

This month I was paired with Min herself and I chose to experiment with her recipe for Mushroom Ragout... I followed the index link for FAST recipes because I didn't want to have to make anything too complicated. Complicated and/or time consuming are just not valid options when you're sharing a kitchen with 11 other people (not to mention their friends)!

And it was a good choice. As Min mentions in her own post - this ragout has bacon in it! How could it be anything but a good thing!

It came together very quickly with minimal effort and dishes and maximum flavour! I served mine over boiled brussel sprouts, rather than pasta - but this is a recipe for a sauce! Put it on whatever you want! It'd be awesome in a toastie-pie sandwich!

This is a tasty ragout that I've already made twice! I thoroughly recommend it!

Guilty Taste & Create: Drunk French Toast

Almost a month to the day... I made this delicious French Toast found on my May Taste and Create partner, Min's blog: The Bad Girl's Kitchen... Since then Life has spectacularly got in way with a variety of colourful excuses/reasons anywhere from the photo's were taken on my Daddy's camera and thus I was at his mercy to have access to them to my usual "lazy" excuse to Holy Hell! I head for London (and ultimately, Sweden) in a little over a month!!!

Still, it's very rude on my part - I didn't even send Min an apology e-mail yet. But fear not! If you were to sign up for Taste and Create for July (e-mail Min before the 8th of the Month) you won't be paired with me, and so your partner will, in fact, be reliable... I'm taking a break... Did I mention Sweden yet? ALL BY MYSELF!!! London for a week with family first... MEEP!!!

Now, French Toast... or, more to the point, Drunk French Toast... The drunk-ness makes it all the more studenty! In fact, if I were flatting right now, I'd have been able to follow the recipe exactly as all my favourite people in Wellington drink Bourbon! My parents however, do not... my French Toast wants to be a pirate when it grows up... I used rum!

In future I'd use more rum... but otherwise the recipe is fantastic as Min writes it... I'm currently working 2-3 shifts/day and haven't the energy for more than a basic update right now... but I will be back! Perhaps typing from Sweden!

Watch this space...

xoxox ~ Kat

Taste & Create: Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Peanut Fudge Frosting

Taste & Create is  blogging event I participate in on an (almost) monthly basis... my post a reliably a day or two late... which is a reflection on Life and its tendency to get in the way and my own, blogging laziness - the actual process of reading my partner's blog and planning what I'm going to make is a lot of fun! That's why I keep coming back... that, and I love getting the feedback from someone else trying out my recipes.

So, if you're reading this, and you're a blogger too - you should sign up! The people are really lovely and it's a lot of fun! Also - it forces a person to post at least once a month... encouragement some of us need more than others... *ahem*

This month I was paired with Carol of No Reason Needed... her blog is a combination of food, family and Life - it's a fun and interesting read!

I had planned to make her Chicken Tetrazzini with Crescent Rolls, but I was called into work that day and my mummy made the Tetrazzini sans crescent rolls for me... but I couldn't submit something I didn't make! That would be cheating!

...So I kept on reading... and eventually stumbled across Peanut Butter Cupcakes SOLD!!!

OM NOM NOM!!!

Now, I didn't have any chocolate to melt to make the ganache suggested by Carol's daughter Dakota, so I decided to create my own peanut butter fudge frosting... and wow. Just. Wow. I'll share the recipe for that with you guys too!

Back to the original recipe - I did my best to follow instructions! I did, however make only a third of the recipe which is four cupcakes! The perfect number for two people!

In my thirding - I misread the quantity of baking soda called for and accidentally put in the full amount... I've corrected this for my version down below though... and that is the only factor that spoils these rather delicious cupcakes! I'll be making them again for sure, and I think you should too!

Taste & Create: Seduce Your Taste Buds Thali

Eugh. I feel like a Zombie. I've gone from unemployed to over-employed in no time flat! (Not that I'm complaining per se - I'm grateful for the opportunity to be earning some savings!)But I've got a looong week of 3 shifts/day for the next 7 days so this is gonna be a brief post to get the important things out there... :)

After next week I will fill y'all in on all the details!

I had fun with Taste and Create this month! I was paired with Padmajha of Seduce Your Tastebuds and my taste buds were most certainly seduced! PJ offers a lot of tasty looking vegetarian, Indian food. Rather than selecting just one recipe to try out - I decided to chose five, and make a Thali.

'Thali' refers to the plate used to serve this meal, and is basically either a metal tray with little dishes for many curries/chutneys or a single plate with indentations. The thalis we have are of the indentation variety.

Clockwise from top left: Tomato Raita, Aloo Fry, Garlicky Spinach
Rice, Sambar. Centre: Black Sesame Seed Chutney.

The recipes I chose were:

• Aloo (potato) Fry which was amazing my favourite dish of the five! Spicy, slightly crispy and the most beautiful shade of yellow. Yum yum.
• Sambar which is a sort of runny lentil dish that I'm not a huge fan of. And, although tasty, this particular recipe didn't make a convert out of me... my guests really enjoyed it though! I really enjoyed getting out the mortar and pestle to grind my own sambar powder though!
• Garlicky Spinach Rice does what it says on the package - it's the most lurid green colour! Just brilliant!
• Tomato Raita which is a little different for the cucumber/minty raita I'd usually make. It was fun and will no doubt feature on my table again!

and finally...

• Black Sesame Seed Chutney mine looked nothing like the photo - but it was super yummy!

Now, as students, some of the spices called for may be a little odd... but, if you can buy them in only the quantities you require, can be sourced quite cheaply! I especially recommend the Aloo Fry as a good flatting meal!

Final conclusion? This was fun! And with the exception of the Sambar (which is more a reflection on me, than on the recipe itself) I'll be making these recipes in the future! The Aloo Fry was the absolute star!

Taste & Create: Rawa Dosai

Dosa are something I first tried in India last year... to an untrained, Western eye they're basically delicious, savoury pancake. When Taste & Create, which is my favourite monthly blog event, paired me with Jayasri Ravi of Samayal Arai this month I was super excited to see her Dosa Section, and I immediately hopped on over to have a look.

Most dosa recipe than Jayasri has listed require several hours fermentation which put me off in this instance - simply because I decided, about two hours before teatime that I wanted to make dosa to serve alongside. Here, it should be noted that dosa are primarily a breakfast food, I think, so usually you'd make them the night before and let 'em sit over night.

The recipe I chose to try out was for Rawa Dosai - I think 'rawa' is the term used to describe grains once ground into a flour-like consistency... but I'm totally unsure about that! We had most of the ingredients already, because we do eat a lot of Indian (or, more accurately, Indian-style) food at home - but if you don't, and I don't expect many students would... it'd be well worth going to your supermarket or local Indian market and trying to source them - these dosa are divine!

Rawa Dosai, served with a Goan-Style fish curry.

I did learn, after my very, very pale first several that it's vitally important to get the pan really, really hot before you try to cook these. Leave your impatience at the door when you enter the kitchen to cook dosa!

I was excited because I was able to cook these on our tawa - a flat, side-less frying pan, which meant I was the first to use it for it's intended purpose, but any frying pan will do - just as long as you can pick it up and swirl it! :)

A real, live, tawa... :)

These were great, and we'll definitely make them again... and, one day when I'm a bit more organised, I'll try out some of the other varieties too!

Taste & Create: Vegan Grains and Greens

Healthy, tasty Grains and Greens!

Yay for alliteration!

This post has been a long time comin'... and despite that I made the dish aaages ago (last year, I do believe...) I just haven't gotten around to blogging it. And now, here I am, once again, pushing the deadline for Taste & Create... that wonderful, monthly challenge where I'm paired with another blogger, this month Ruby of That's So Vegan!, and encouraged to try out a recipe I've never used before...

Now, as you may have guessed from her blog's name, Ruby is vegan... which poses an interesting challenge for me as I am not. Should I go through her blog and attempt to un-veganise a carefully vegan-ised recipe? Or ought I step out of my comfort zone and try something new?

I chose to step out! And here we have, Vegan Grains and Greens, which Ruby had made previously in desperation because her college didn't appetisingly appeal to her dietary requirements.

Ruby uses a "Trader Joes" mix to get her grains... I, living as I do in New Zealand, didn't have that option - so I went for bulghar wheat instead... Make this dish as you will!

Other alterations include: using seeded big tomatoes in place of Ruby's cherries. Although, I dare say that one could stretch to tinned tomatoes outside of season and this dish would work just as well, if a little sloppily...

Also, Ruby's is a Chickpea, Tomato and Zucchini Stir-Fry - I threw asparagus in as well, along with some parsley and mint on top to up the green factor.

Random fact about me: when I was little I would eat "zucchini" but not "courgettes"... the theory being that my Grandparents would serve me "zucchini" and you have to eat whatever your grandparents serve you... eating Parent-food though? That's optional...

I served this alongside baked fish and a red pepper sauce, made by whizzing up 4 roasted red peppers from a jar with 1/4 cup of orange juice... if I were to serve the Grains and Greens as a meal rather than a vegetable/starch side, for me, it would have to be served with this, or some other sauce. Because I'm fussy like that. Yes.

Otherwise this is a tasty, healthful dish - a strong case in the argument that "vegan food doesn't mean boring food"!

Taste & Create: Chocolate Explosion Oatmeal Cookies

This month for Taste & Create I was paired with Alisa Fleming of Alisa Cooks... Alisa's blog is dairy free, not a realm in which I oft' walk so reading her blog was an interesting experience for me... further more many of her recipes are gluten-, soy-, egg- and/or nut-free... I had a great time perusing her recipes!

Eventually though, I found her recipe for Chocolate Explosion Oatmeal Cookies made with rolled oats, they are vegan, egg-, nut-, dairy- and soy free - therefore they MUST be a health food... and BOY! are they the tastiest health food EVER! :)

Beautiful, glossy, dark brown cookies...

Deliciously gooey in the centre - yes that's a broken-in half cookie... they're light enough to sit a-top a rose petal!

I was so proud of me - I was going to tell y'all about how I finally, finally followed a recipe to the letter! And then I thought about it... and how I:

•  halved the recipe...
• and then I didn't have any ground flaxseed (linseed), so I tried to replace it with wheat germ (apparently you can do that...?) but I didn't have any of that either so I used oat bran instead (I made that alternative up myself)... (ironically, if I'd been at the flat making these I would have been able to use flaxseed as directed...)
• and then I doubled the vanilla called for because we only had essence, not extract...
• and I added just the tiniest pinch of cinnamon a la Laura Vitale...
• and used all coconut cream, rather than coconut flavoured dairy-free milk and olive oil...

So, in the end, I baked like the Kat I am - to my own tune! But the cookies truly are delicious!

I do have one question though - I halved the recipe, but I made the large, 2 Tbsp sized cookies Alisa recommended... a whole 14 of them (after I ate, maybe a cookie's worth of batter... hey! it's egg free, it's all good!)... which begs the question: Have I finally found someone who enjoys eating cookie batter even more than I do? :)

Tamy's Beef and "Broccoli" Stir Fry

I love stir-fry! I like all the crunchy veggies, the spiky Asian flavours and the noodles or rice with a hint of dressing... What I don't love about stir-fry is my complete inability to make them! I always... well, to be perfectly honest I'm not sure exactly what it is that I "always" do... but I can promise you that "do a fantastic job" will rarely, if ever, follow when I'm talking about stir-fry...

Stir-fry (if you can do it, which - let's face it, most people can!) is an idea student food - quick, flavourful, healthy and, above all cheap! Very little protein is needed to make stir-fry feel like a meal - even an egg will do in a pinch!

However, I do have some schnitzel kicking around in my freezer, and Tamy of Always Eat On the Good China (who is, once again my partner for Taste & Create this month...) has a recipe for Beef & Broccoli Stir Fry... I haven't got any broccoli, but I do have some beef and a bagful of frozen, mixed veggies... So here goes nothing!

It's ALIIIVE!!! *ahem* I mean, it worked!!!

Taste & Create: Ginger Cake Cookies

Hmmm... I'm just a tad late with this month's Taste & Create... But, better late than never, right?

This month I was paired with Debbi of Debbi Does Dinner... Many of her recipes are aimed at being low-calorie - with a few naughty treats thrown in! :)

After much thought, I settled on Debbi's recipe for Ginger Cookies... and, after a little tinkering of my own - this is what I came out with:

Ginger Cake Cookies

Now, I named these ginger cake cookies because I substituted Debbi's 3/4 cup of vegetable oil for 150g of melted butter - this resulted in a cake-ish textured cookie - if you'd prefer more of a ginger snap go ahead and use the original oil.

The porous hardness of these cookies makes
them great for dunking!

Further alterations I made were to halve the amount of sugar called for - and to use brown, rather than white sugar. It'd be interesting, I think to experiment with relying only on the treacle/molasses for sweetness in these cookies... Another change was to substitute Debbi's molasses for treacle - because I didn't have any... To make these more student store-cupboard friendly, you could probably further substitute the treacle for the more common golden syrup...? Maybe. My final alteration was to the spicage used... Debbi recommends 1 tsp of ground ginger and 1 tsp of ground cinnamon within the cookie... I put 2 tsps of ground ginger into the cookie and used the cinnamon to spice the sugar the cookies were sprinkled with/rolled in before baking. But spice is such a personal thing - I encourage you to do with it what best suits your tastes! Oh! And I also chucked in a cup of wholemeal flour and one white instead of two white...

Overall - these were tasty little morsels they remind me somewhat of my favourite "Honey Biscuits" which I must post some time... Even if I don't make them again (my love of ginger has yet to completely mature...) I'm sure my Mummy, who was quite taken with them, will...

Below is my tinkered with recipe - for the original see Debbi's site!

Taste & Create: Lemony Peppered Chicken

Hello all!

At last, I have my entry for this month's Taste & Create challenge!

Taste & Create is a blogging community where blogger apply, and a paired up with a partner whose blog they must sample a recipe from!

(^^ Ewww... that was a messy sentence...)

Anywho! This month I was partnered with Tamy of Always Eat on the Good China... It's a real interesting blog with a bazillion recipe! I was there for days just lookin' around... In a totally non-creepy manner. Promise.

So - eventually I decided I wanted to do something with chicken, and using that as a search, I eventually came across this recipe for Lemon Lime Pepper Chicken... I don't have any limes, so mine's just "Lemon Pepper Chicken" but this is what I came up with:

This is my Boyfriend's dinner - served with brussel sprouts, lemon/sesame glazed carrots and  pesto coated pasta... Mine was the same, only smaller. And without the pasta.

What resulted was a delicious, subtle dish that was a doddle to make, and will definitely feature on my dinner table again!

I encourage you to go to Tamy's page for the recipe, if you're interested! But these are the changes I made to her recipe:

• As I mentioned before: I have no limes so I used only lemon.
• I scaled the recipe down for 2 - except for the glaze which I kept as instructed except to halve the sugar (as always!)
• Tamy has onions in her photo, so I flung half an onion in with the butter, before the chicken.
• I bashed my chicken with a saucepan before dredging it in flour so that it would cook at an even rate. (I don't have a meat mallet...)
• I chopped up the lemon skin and threw it in with the frying chicken, pulling it out before I poured the glaze on.
• I did a "Nigella" and allowed the chicken to rest, wrapped in tin foil for 10 minutes while I prepared the veggies and BF's pasta - the chicken was so juicy and tender!

It was a real successful meal, and Tamy's blog is an interesting read! So thanks to Taste & Create for introducing me to a new blogger!

Taste & Create 2: Curried, Roasted Chickpeas

I'm Tasting & Creating twice this month!

My second entry is TL&LoG'sHB's Curried, Roasted Chickpeas:



Cruchy, protein-rich Study Noms

 They're so yummy that you'll eat most of 'em straight off the roasting pan and then have to pour what little are left into a shot glass so that it looks like you actually made a decent quantity...

And, LOOK! Books! And study notes! I am a real student who actually studies! Proof!

You believe me now, right?  I made these to be my study snacks while I prepare for my upcoming Behaviour Analysis exam... much better than the traditional chocolate and junk food route! :)

Click on for the recipe: