I need a plan ... again. Or I simply need to be careful. There is no way I am going to buy new clothing just to have it comfortably fitting. Loosening the belt from time to time isn't what I want to imagine.
Since I've started Christine & Christian, I had quite some Indian food not meaning I didn't have anything else as you can see from my previous posts. After 17 days of cooking from Tasting India I managed 22 recipes so far. I didn't have so much help with eating things up, but still I cope.
What did we have on the menu then last week? Maybe you remember the white dal from the last post. The leftovers were taking some time to be dealt with. Therefore I just made some naan bread to go with it and got any idea as well.
The dough for naan bread is quite easy to make, similar like your familiar yeast dough you might use for pizza. For the naan there was just some yogurt added, roughly spoken.
I made dough that would go for four average sized naan breads. they tasted quite good. I was satisfied. The dough for one bread, though, I decided to turn into something else ...
White dal stuff! Hm, let's rather say naan bread stuffed with white dal, almost like an Indian calzone, if there would be something like that. Samosas are prepared slightly differently. You most probably will read something about that at another time on this blog.
What else was on the menu?
There was this spiced eggplant (aubergine) salad served at room temperature. It was spicy, so it was fine.
Potatoes in curd, also a rather colder dish. That doesn't mean, though, there wasn't any chilli in there in some way.
Another quick one, sweet and sour tomatoes. While they were sweet, I couldn't detect so much the sour part in it. There was, however, something else apart from the sweetness. Oh, sure, the recipe mentioned to use chilli powder in it. Sweet and spicy would be fine.
I go on with eating more fish after I just had this Italian-style tuna, poached in tomato sauce, this time it's Indian-style fish fry. Very nicely you get the taste of ginger with a hint of lime beneath that breadcrust. Besides that the marinade included mustard and garlic. That doesn't sound too bad, does it? Yes, it tasted lovely and ... there was no chilli included.
There also was no chilli in the last dish for today ...
Do you know how long it takes to cook 1 litre milk so that it thickens? Well, it was okay in the end, although the rice pudding was a bit sweet. I guess 150 g sugar would do as well. Maybe one or to pistachio and almond more wouldn't hurt, either. At least it wouldn't hurt me. I know others, who cannot even eat a single piece of almond.
Anyway, I like to take this rice pudding along on our food trip around the world for Bloggers Around the World for as you might know, our current stop is India.
Do you notice another ingredient from the rice pudding picture? Have a guess and tell me. It shouldn't be so difficult.
In the meantime hang on and keep cooking!
It's time again to put these glasses aside, hang the suit into the cupboard and get the leather jacket, hat and bullwhip ready. Well, usually I don't wear a leather jacket and a hat for baking, but sometimes you have to whip things up. By the way, now it has been quite some time someone called me Professor or Doctor, but that doesn't matter now.
Anyway, I didn't want to call this post 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Cake'.
Just remember: "We do not follow maps to buried treasures and X never ever marks the spot." We are just baking an Arabian-styled Chocolate, Fig and Pistachio Cake (note: Arabian-styled is just for the atmosphere and for a reason revealed later).
This now is a 'leap of faith' ... "Only in the leap from the oven shall it prove its worth." Kind of. Let's start our cake adventure ...
What we need (apart from the leather jacket, hat and bullwhip):
3 eggs
100 g sugar
300 g spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
100 ml olive oil
1 tbs rosewater
40 g dark chocolate chunks (feel free to use more)
Juice of 3 lime
3 tbs honey (feel free to use more)
100 g dried soft figs, chopped up
2 tbs water
50 g pistachios, roughly chopped up
The quest begins:
Originally, the whole idea was, to bake something with chocolate and honey and ... soon things got out of hand. Such things happen, when the mind gets the chance to roam freely (ah, I hate those long drives to work).
Get yourself the average round cake tin, line it with baking parchment and - just to make sure - lightly oil it.
To the cake batter...
Cream the eggs with the sugar ... time for some whipping. Then sift in the flour and the baking powder. Pour in the oil and rosewater and while you're at it, toss in the chocolate chunks as well.
While your oven is heating up, spoon your batter together completely ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ... "Ten. X marks the spot." The marked spot is first the cake tin where the cake better goes and then secondly the oven where the cake tin goes (together with the cake batter ... obviously). 35 minutes shall be the time for the cake to remain in the oven to prove its worth.
Do you believe? I mean, will it be a nice cake? I mean not 'nice' in the 'sense' of 'okay', but ... will it taste good?
As the cake comes from the oven we are far from being through. Let the cake take its time to cool down.
Meanwhile we whip up some kind of lime, fig and honey syrup. Cast those ingrediens together with the two tbs of water into a saucepan and heat it up until most of the liquids have been evaporated. Spoon this over the cake. Time for some chopped up pistachios. They follow ...
Now you could go on and enjoy your cake. Really? Yes ... although we could have used a little bit less lime juice and a bit more honey ... hm ... eh ... maybe - that is in case you have - you could also use more chocolate. Obviously, 40 g chocolate can't be enough. 100 g would sound better. Whatsoever, I did what I did and next time there would be the chance to change it.
Before we proceed we still want to have a closer look at the cake ...
Is that close enough? Well, you can always go and whip up some cream and throw on a dollop of it.
Now we go back to the roots ... eh ... to the original reason we started all this ... We Should Cocoa #32 featuring chocolate and honey.
Hm ... I just noticed, I had all the ingredients here I got rid of some figs, limes and pistachios. Good job! You could call this quite a deal of money saving and ... "You can never have too much cake:-)" Therefore, here is another cake for Credit Crunch Munch from Fuss Free Flavours and Fab Food 4 All ... right, not Fab Foods 4 All :-)
It isn't over yet. We already know, that I'm not a food wasting kind of guy. Due to that fact and because of figs being fruits this post enters also Elizabeth's Kitchen's No Waste Food Challenge - Fruit.
For a moment you thought now, it would be over, but wrongly concluded so. I made this all from scratch and with a lot of luv. So it would be a shame not to enter this cake to Javelin Warrior's Made with Love Mondays.
We nearly forgot. The other reason - apart from the atmosphere - for calling this cake Arabian-styled. You may call me cheeky now (or crazy or ... make a suggestion), but the AlphaBakes April 2013 has the letter "A" for ... Arabian-styled Chocolate, Fig and Pistachio Cake.
Give me just a moment. I need to think a bit ...
...
Yes, I reckon that's all. Really? I guess so!
Ah, just to make sure that no one starts to panic again. The title of this post isn't suggesting that this is my last cooking adventure here. In fact the post doesn't really have anything to do with any kind of crusade. It's just a title ... just a crazy title.
By the way, should I change the blog title to "CCC - Crazy Chef Chris"? Nah, I don't think so. See thee!
