Natural Selection Foods @Bristol Harbourside Foodie Festival -2012

Last weekend was a foodie festival weekend for me. All of us went to the food festival happening at the harbourside . The festival started on Friday the 13th and went on till Sunday. We choose to go on Sunday as weather wise that was the most promising one.

We went around 3 pm, it was windy but sunny and lots people were enjoying food and drink in the festival. Our tickets were sponsored by the Natural selection foods, so started looking for their stall. I didn't have to look long but waited for some time to get a glimpse of their products and to meet the sponsors of our tickets as there were many customers choosing their favourite products.

When I finally got a chance to meet them and try their products, I was amazed. Emma, my sponsor was kind enough to give me couple of bags of their products for us to try. I loved the dried berries sweetened by apple juice the most, however because I like hot food I loved the candid ginger too. But don't worry, if you have missed it, all these are available in Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s.

Here are some pictures from the day. Have a look and enjoy.  

A simple Bengali meal

We got some haddock the other day and from past experience I think the best way of cooking haddock is making fish cakes, if you are not deep frying it for fish and chips. I do love deep fried food but the rest of my family detests it. So I tried making it healthy. I made these hot and spicy bite size fish cakes, which is served with rice, “dal sedho” (boiled red lentils) and “bati posto” (spicy white poppy seed paste).

For dal sedho (boiled red lentils) all you need to do is wash and boil red lentils in salted water for 20-25 minutes or until fully cooked. You need to add in enough water so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Once the lentils are cooked, in a separate pan make the “tarka”. Heat 2-3 tbsp of mustard oil (or you can use any cooking oil if you cant get hold of it!), whole red chilli broken into 2/3 pieces and 1 tsp of whole cumin seeds. Fry for a minute or two or until you get the chilli, crispy almost burnt, remove from fire and pour over the boiled dal. Check for seasoning and serve it with hot boiled rice. You can also add some roughly chopped red onions.

Posto is a typical Bengali dish. In-fact Bengalis can be divided in to two groups on this. Ones who love any preparation of posto and the others who secretly like having it but would love to tease the other group who openly loves posto.

Ideally “bati-posto” is done in a pressure cooker, but I tried making it on hob. For this you need 100 gm or so poppy seeds (you can find these seeds in the Indian shop near spices section). Dry grind them in a coffee grinder. Add water to it and make it a smooth paste. Keep it loose. Now add and mix some finely chopped green chillies, red onions, salt and 2-3 tbsp of mustard oil to it and then start cooking it on the hob. Stir continuously so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. When the water from the posto is almost gone, take it off the hob and serve with rice.

This fish cakes are very spicy and you can have them just like that or with main meals. For this I boiled the 2 fillets of haddock in water for 10-15 minutes and boiled 2 medium sized potatoes separately till they are fully cooked. Mash the fish and potatoes together (make sure there are no fish bones left in the mash). Add red chilli powder, cumin powder, coriander powder and aamchur powder, ginger-garlic paste, 1 tsp each.  Next add salt, fresh chopped coriander, green chillies, pea nuts, all as per your taste. Mix every thing together and then make small cakes out of the mixture. Cover them well with breadcrumbs and shallow fry them in oil. Serve with rice.

4/30 Photo a day–Close-up

I had taken this picture quite some time ago. As you already guessed this is a pavlova with whipped cream and berries. A perfect summer dessert. Very light and melt in the mouth dish. The photo is a close-up look on a slice of the meringue, with the rest of the meringue in the background. I made this for a fellow foodie’s recipe testing. You can read more about it here and enjoy the visual treat in both posts. Have a great day.

3/30 Photo a day- On your plate

This is my favourite prompt of the lot. Although FatMumSlim has given the option of interpreting the meaning literally or it could be your to-do list. I decided to go with the literal meaning due to obvious reasons. I have seen many pasta clicks like this before and always wanted to take one. Never happened until recently. The dish is meat-ball spaghetti in tomato sauce and one of my favourites too.

Aloo Chaat

Who doesn’t love chaat? I love it! Although its meant to be an evening snack that people have between tea breaks but I am a huge fan of chaat and I can have it as dinner. In fact I did that once. I was in India and at home only me and my sis-in-law was there and both of us are chaat addicts. Everyone else were out and going to have dinner outside. So both of us decided on chaat dinner! It was a lovely one! Today when I was making the chaat I was reliving those memories. We had long chats over those lovely chaats she prepared.

Ingredients:

2 boiled and pealed potato cut in to small cubes

quarter of  a medium red onion, chopped finely

1-2 green chillies finely chopped

handful of fresh coriander roughly chopped

salt to taste

1 tsp dry roasted cumin powder

1 tsp of red chilly powder (optional)

Sev / Bombay mix

Sweet chilli tamarind sauce

Method:

Now this is real simple. Just mix everything together, check the seasoning and serve. I am sure you are going to love it.

Sweet Pasta for Kids – Garofalo’s Pasta

 

I know pasta usually are made as savoury dish but when it comes to kids you need to think differently. Kids loves sweets especially colourful sweet in different funny shapes. They also love chocolates. So when I found out about Garofalo’s Pasta Competition, I thought of doing a different pasta preparation than usual savoury or meat pasta. Hence I decided to do a sweet pasta. I asked for samples and when I received them from Garofalo, it made me smile. The shapes of the pasta were so cute that any child would have lots of fun eating this pasta. They are in shape of little stars, moons, dolls and cars. So very adorable.

 

The pack said boiling the pasta for 12 minutes in water would be sufficient but I had different plans. I wasn’t going to boil in water instead I boiled in milk. I know from personal experience that for some kids it’s difficult to make them drink milk. So this will be a good way to feed them milk. But I had to make the pasta look attractive as well as taste good so here is what I did.

 

Ingredients:

100 gm Garofalo’s Kids Pasta

250ml full fat milk

4 tbsp honey (you can adjust the sweetness according to your kid’s taste)

Handful of chopped mixed nuts

Handful of Pistachio lightly crushed

Handful of dried golden raisins soaked in water 

Handful of chocolate chips

2-3 tsp of multicoloured sugar sprinkles (optional)

 

Method:

In a deep bottom pan heat the milk and bring it to boiling point then add the honey to it and give it a mix. Now add the pasta and let it cook for 12-14 minutes on low heat to prevent milk from overflowing. Keep stirring as you don’t want your milk to be burnt or the pasta to be stuck at the bottom of the pan. Towards the end add the soaked raisins and the chopped nuts and give it a stir cook it for 1-2 minutes more when you see the milk has thicken and the dish has got a creamy texture along with the pasta cooked, take it off the heat and let it cool down. Place it in the fridge for some time then pour the pasta in your kid’s  favourite bowl and add the rest on the ingredients on top of it.

Serve cold. You can serve this as an evening snacks or like a small meal or dessert. I bet kids will love this.

Cherry Chutney – National Cherry Day

It’s summer now! Cherries are in season, in fact today is National Cherry Day.

I always have some stories to tell when it comes to cherries, It all started in Morella, Spain where we nicked bags full of cherries from a tree near a gas station. I will always remember that incident as it reminds me of my childhood so much. Me and my cousins used to steal tamarind and raw mangos from our own ancestral home kitchen back in India.

 

Last year it was the day when England was playing against Germany in the World Cup Football knockout match. We decided to go to a pub in the city centre to enjoy the match in true British Spirit. On the way to the pub I spotted a cherry tree which had very few cherries left. As usual I was temped to pluck some, which I did but I also got my white t-shirt stained with cherries. It looked awful so I had to rush to a shop to buy another top to wear it to the pub.

This year I got a big container full of cooking cherries from our neighbour as a gift and was thinking what can I do with it. I was thinking of doing something other than Cherry pie and then my mum-in-law suggested that she could make chutney with them. I didn’t think twice, British cherries cooked in Indian way, would be a very interesting experiment for me. It was fabulous. Not very sweet yet tangy and the colour was so dark and rich, I simply loved it. Here is how she made it.

Ingredients:

200 gms (approximately) Cooking cherries (de-seeded)

4 tbsp sugar

1 tsp oil

1 tsp black mustard seed

1  whole dried red chilli (broken into 2-3 pieces)

1/2 cup of water

Pinch of salt

Method:

Heat the oil in a deep bottom pan and add the red chilli and the mustard seeds into it. When the seeds starts to splatter add the cherries with a pinch of salt. Fry for a minute and then add the water and sugar and keep boiling it till the sauce thickens and the cherries are cooked. Do check the sauce to adjust the sugar balance in it. It will take bout 4-5 minutes then remove from heat and let it cool down. Serve cold.

I had it just like that but you can try it with vanilla ice-cream or Greek yoghurt. It will taste good. Enjoy! Sending this recipe to an event Simple and in Season hosted by Fabulicious Food.

Courgette Paratha

I have this really weird habit of picking up things that I really don't need while shopping. I know it’s a common complaint many men have against their wives, but I think I do it more often than I realize. Especially when I am doing grocery. I end up buying things and then keep thinking what shall I do with them. That is exactly what happened when I last went to the supermarket. I bought 1 kg of Courgettes (2 packets, around 6 of them). Then I forgot about them. I rediscovered them back in my refrigerator three days after I bought them. They were buried under the tomatoes, the green beans, the mushrooms, the green chillies, the coriander etc. etc. Well, now you know how my veg. basket looks like :)

Anyway, when I rescued the courgettes underneath all these vegs, I started to worry that what do I do with them. These are similar to a veg we get in India called “Lauki” in Hindi and “Lau” in Bengali. The typical dish that we make with these are with prawns called “Lau-Chigri” which we had recently. I looked in the internet and guess what I found a recipe in BBC Good Food called “Indian Bread with courgettes and coriander”!! That was unusual!! I didn’t expect that at all!! So I thought of giving it a try and an hour later, there I was serving courgette paratha for dinner. As usual I didn’t follow the recipe word by word and started adding different things and made my own version of it. I must tell you it’s quite difficult to handle the dough when you are using fresh raw veg as it releases lot of water and  becomes a nightmare to get the right dough consistency but the finished product was good. I loved it. Hope you like it too. 

 

Ingredients:

3 Courgettes / 500gms  (pealed and grated using the coarsest side of the greater)

1 tsp cumin seeds (dry roasted and made into dust)

1 tsp red chilli powder

1 tsp garam masala powder

200 gm of plain flour and some extra for rolling the paratha

200 gm of roasted chick peas flour (we call it “Chatu” in Bengali) (you may find this in Indian store or replace with whole meal flour)

3 tbsp rice flour

2 tsp grated root ginger

3 tsp of green chilli paste (optional, I added because I like it)

Oil for frying

 

Method:

Mix all the dry ingredients in a big mixing bowl and then add 2/3 tbsp of oil in the flour mix. Give it a good mix then add rest of the wet ingredients in to it and start kneading. You will not need any water to knead as the grated courgette will release a lot of water. I found this step bit difficult as the dough is very sticky at this point. I put few drops of oil in my palms while kneading the dough, which helps to make the dough not sticking to hand. Continue kneading till you have a smooth dough. Make a log out of the dough and cut it into 12-14 equal portions. One by one take each portions and roll the in your palm to make small flat balls. Dip them in dry flour and set them aside. Dust the rolling plane with flour and start rolling each of the balls to thin parathas. Heat a heavy bottom frying pan and place one paratha and cook until you see little brown spot on the side facing down. Turn it over and cook till you see the brown spots again. Pour a teaspoon full of oil on and around the paratha and cook for 1 minute on both sides or until they are fully cooked. Serve them with your choice of veg or meat curry.

I made simple potato with onion, tomato and cumin slowly cooked on low heat. 

Food Bloggers' Cafe on Facebook

“Are you on Facebook?”
That’s what you get asked nowadays when you make new friends :) I love meeting new people, making new friends, it’s just an amazing thing to do. Besides my routine work this is one of those few things that makes my day different from the last one. To enhance on this thought, about a week ago, I created a group on Facebook called Food Blogger’s Cafe. At that time I didn’t know what I will be doing in here or any member of this group as a matter of fact. But I created anyway, just the idea of having as many  food bloggers as possible under the same roof made me create this Cafe.  Little did I know that this group will grow much faster than I thought. Just more than a week and we are already 100+ members in the group and not only that, this is an extremely active group. Members are sharing their blogs, latest posts, news, adding more food bloggers in the group. It’s an absolutely happening place on facebook.  So if you are on Facebook and a food blogger please do join the group :) and share you blog links with rest of the members.

Since we are growing so fast, I thought it will be nice to have a profile picture for our cafe. A picture that represent our group. So, I invited the group members to submit one photo of their choice that they think will be suitable as a profile photo for our cafe, which meets the following guidelines:
* One entry per member.
* Your own work please.
* Post the photo on the group wall.
* Please see all the photos before liking.
* To "Like" click on any of the photos, then on the top left corner of the photo there is a link of "See all photos".
* Self voting will not be counted.
* The photo that gets most liked will be chosen as a profile picture of our Cafe :)
* The last day of submission is midnight 31st. December 2010.
* I will be featuring every entry with a link to the member's blog on my blog in a single post.

Here are the entries I have received so far. I will continue to update this list as I receive more entries.

Vegetable Platter

Nivedita’s Kitchen

Finely Chopped

Look Who’s Cooking Too

Tasty Appetite

Yummy Food

Hephzi’s Kitchen

Kalyani’s Kitchen

Sandhya’s Kitchen

4th Sense Cooking

Cooking for all Seasons

And finally Mine :)

I am so glad to receive such a great response from the group. So thank you guys for being part of this Cafe and keep blogging. To like or comment on your favourite photo please visit the group album by clicking here.
For food bloggers who haven't joined the club yet, please do so and enjoy making new friends.
Wishing everyone Happy Holidays :)