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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

How Crazy Would It Be To Do a Juice Cleanse

{Blueprint Renovation Cleanse}

Remember a long time ago when Oprah lost a bunch of weight and then rolled out the pounds of fat she lost in a Radio Flyer wagon on her show and told the world the miracle of how she lost the weight by starving herself sticking to a liquid diet? Despite the fact that she gained all of it back basically the next day (since CLEARLY you can’t lose 67 pounds in a matter of weeks unless you’re ~~on the Biggest Loser~~ eating disordered), juice fasts have been popular ever since. I blame Gwyneth Paltrow. Bitch.

But just like running a marathon or watching a football game, doing a juice “cleanse” has never really appealed to me. I looked at it as a way to lose (water) weight fast to fit into an age-inappropriate dress for a high school reunion or something, which, I mean, let’s face it, wouldnt apply to me anyway since my body type is still that of a perky, hipless 16-year-old. SHUT UP, YES IT IS!!!!!!!!!!!

And then, during my Whole Foods ritual of defensive cart-pushing (you have to be on the lookout for distracted shoppers!), I spied a bottle of something delicious looking: Cashew milk with agave and vanilla bean. The label said “Blueprint” and had a pretty blue lid. I nearly put the bottle in my cart before rushing to beat the lady with the cart overflowing with frozen Amy’s meals and “Organic” potato chips before I realized the drink came with an $11 price tag! If I’m paying over $10 for a beverage, it better make me drunk or beautiful, or both, and as far as I could tell, it definitely wasnt going to make me drunk.

Despite the fact that I considered $11 superfluous for one beverage, I couldnt stop thinking about it. Curious, I took to the ol’ internet to see if anyone else had seen these pricey little drinks. And that’s when it all changed.

Blueprint is actually a NYC-based cold-pressed juice cleanse company. Like, all they do is make juices that are supposed to clean your system out (read: pee and poop) and give your digestive system a rest to re-energize the rest of your body, and even help you lose weight. An $11 juice that makes me beautiful?? Tell me more! They offer a few different cleanse systems that can be delivered right to your door for however long you want. So, if you want to do a mini-cleanse, pick the three day option. If you wanna do the Gwynnie “I’m Better Than You” cleanse, pick the 6 day option. And so on. They also started selling their juices through Whole Foods to make ~~more money~~ them more accessible to the masses, which is nice so you don’t have to pay the $40 overnight shipping.

{The Green Juice is the first juice of the day and is a nutrient-packed concoction
of romaine lettuce, celery, cucumber, apple, spinach, kale, parsley, and lemon. Sounds...terrible.}

In case you arent catching on, this shit’s expensive! We’re talking nearly $200 for a three-day cleanse. Did you know you could just starve yourself for free??? But despite my better judgment, I’m intrigued. The juices actually sound good (pineapple, apple, mint? Um, delicious!) and I’m really curious about this whole giving your digestive system a rest thing. Would I actually feel more energized if my pipes were empty? Could I really reallocate that energy to something like working out or judging people??

For those of you about to say something asinine like “okay, but just make your own juices!” BLASPHEMY!!! No, but seriously, there’s like 6 cups of kale in just ONE of the 6 daily juices…and that’s only one of the ingredients. So, the grocery items needed to make each juice would clearly be no more cost effective than buying the pre-made cleanse. Right??

So, I’m curious Cupcult—should I do this cleanse? The few people Ive spoken with that have done it already have nothing but great things to say (so far Ive learned that they didnt feel hungry because they drank so much and that it doesnt make your pee turn weird colors), but I’m curious if any of you have ever done this or another cleanse. How did it go? What should I know before doing a cleanse? Did yours make your pee turn weird colors??? I’m very concerned about this. I need answers!!

Thursday, March 6, 2014

How to Fix a Broken Hollandaise

The Eggs Benedict Florentine you see here was posted on my Twitter page during our trip down to the Santa Maria Inn. It was delicious, but it reminded me of my days, long, long ago, as a brunch cook dealing with the nightmare of the end-of-the-service broken hollandaise.

Its the ultimate Murphys Law in the kitchen, the hollandaise is fine until you get down to those last few orders and then it "breaks." The egg and butter separate, and you are basically screwed.

As a young cook I remember feverishly whisking up a small, new batch of sauce as the rest of the tables food was going out. I dont remember when, but eventually someone showed me how to save a broken hollandaise, and my life has been significantly better since.

I was doing a little practice for my shoot tomorrow in LA with Brand New Entertainment, and was playing around with making and breaking a hollandaise sauce, so I decided to turn on the camera for a quick little demo. Enjoy!

Make Your Own Eggs Benedict

Check out my old, but still effective video recipe for Eggs Benedict. I cover the poaching, the hollandaise, and the final plating.

Monday, March 3, 2014

How to improve your blog writing

Chapter 4 -Food Bloggers learn about good writing

I felt like I was back at school when John Cooke, food writer and marketer took us through the basics of writing about food for our blogs.

John started by reading two pieces with very different styles: AA Gills Table Talk and Claudia Rodens Arabesque. The point of this was to help us understand that good writing is good writing whatever the style and that good writing tries to tell you something you dont know. Which is exactly what he then proceeded to do:

Think about why you are writing and who you are writing for, off line or online?
Write as if you are writing to one person
Where will it be read? PC? Tablet? mobile phone? Size matters!
Do your research - find out something your audience doesnt know
Avoid cliches: Drizzle not, No to Nom Nom
Edit and write again in half the space (be your own editor)
Do the overnight test - DONT PRESS THE BUTTON
Read it aloud to yourself, read it to someone else if you can
Being funny isnt easy, leave it to the comedians
Think about colour in your writing, use similes
The start is very important, make sure the first sentence grabs your audience
End by referring back to where you stared

Back to the classroom, it was our turn to write. Working in pairs, our topic was "the best meal you have ever eaten" and we had to write no more than 180 words.

I was fortunate to be paired with Kellie Anderson of Food to Glow. At first we struggled to find a topic, but then I remembered a meal eaten in Penang, Malaysia and we were off!

"The best meal I ever had was not about fine dining, there was no Michelin star chef, nor a sommelier. In fact I wore flip flops and we drank local beer. I dont remember the name, but it was ice cold and hit the spot. I cant remember what we ate, but we rode in a cable car to the top of a mountain and stepped into a different world. The menu was unintelligible but the views over Penang were unforgettable. We could have had a cheese sandwhich and it still would have been a memorable experience. I may not recall the menu but I can almost see, smell, taste and hear it some 30 years later."

Although the memory was mine, Kellie was a superb co-writer and editor and I doubt the piece would have had the same impact without her input. I am trying to avoid cliches, but in this case, two heads are definitely better than one.

I thought you might like to see the photograph, of my husband, which was in my minds eye when I recalled this most memorable of meals. When I looked at the photograph I was surprised to see that the food was visible because all I could remember was that glass of beer!

Many thanks to John for his workshop, it was good to be reminded that, just like cooking and baking, writing is a craft which requires practice and constructive criticism to improve.

Why dont you tell me about your most memorable meal?

Friday, February 28, 2014

How to Cook Hamburgers So That Someone Like Me Would Like Them

I normally dont care too much about how absolutely accurate the color profiles of my photos are. Im the video guy, so if the pictures are a little off, or my grammars aint perfect, I get a pass.

But here I was concerned that my average-at-best photography skills would give readers a false impression of exactly how cooked this hamburger was. Youll have to take my word for it, but this was a pretty perfect medium. It may have been the bright light, but the photo makes this look a little rarer than it was.

Im not a big fan of rare burgers, as Ive always believed the beef fat therein should be hot and flowing, not cool and flabby. If I want raw meat Ill make a tartar. At the same time, I do want to keep the burger somewhat pink, if possible, so it stays moist and tender.

The technique youre about to watch is fairly straightforward, but like any cooking methods, it takes a little practice. The good news is, once you get a feel for this "cook it just over halfway up" system, you should be a perfectly pink hamburger making machine.

By the way, I wont engage in any inane debates on the wisdom of eating less-than-well-done burgers. The topics been covered online, ad nauseam (pun intended). Is it potentially dangerous to eat a pink burger? Of course, but so is crossing the street. Enjoy!

Friday, February 21, 2014

On how the monstrous zucchini got Tambrahm ised

[Those who voted for me and got me into the final 6 Healthy Cooking Blogs, thank you! In the finals, my blog as of now is 5th. Feels kinda pointless asking to vote now as the better blogs lead by tons of votes, but if youve loved my work here, go ahead and vote for me. Directions here ]

My garden always surprises me. Which is why I like to take my morning tea up to my terrace garden, perch myself on one of the tiny stone benches and sharing that morning moment with the plants to the background music of the birds. While I try to get a few sips of my tea, a little fruit, a new flower and small shoot will beckon me to admire it. And I will go take a look at them while my tea sits on the bench going cold. Every morning, a new surprise, however little, that makes me smile and sets the mood for the rest of my day. It is an exercise in positivity. Many flowering plants that I assumed were dead, suddenly start showing signs of life as spring is round the corner. My lavender bushes, since 9 months didnt show one sign of flowering and I thought "Damn! The nursery fooled me with a non flowering variety!" And I was proved wrong when the prettiest lavender flowers bloomed this month. If there is a tiny bit of life left in the plant, come spring time and it will revive. Whats more beautiful in life than hope, after all?

And then sometimes a garden makes you laugh out loud. Like this monstrously huge zucchini that had been hiding under the huge leaves for nearly a month, that had missed my keen scrutiny each morning only to be found by my driver a few days ago. He showed me this green thing nearly as big as a new born baby-and I shuddered! And then laughed so hard when I knew that it was indeed a zucchini that had hidden away from all prying eyes and grown so big~nearly 2.5 kilos.

Not to show off my (old) iPhone but to give you size perspective :)
This is after a third of the zucchini has been chopped off

I kept it on my table to admire its beauty for the first 2 days, then it spent a few more days in the refrigerator. When other vegetables came in from the supermarket, this big fellow could no more occupy precious refrigerator real estate and he had to be brought out.

The husband is not a big fan of zucchinis and though we had shared enough jokes about how big this sly vegetable had grown, his enthusiasm stopped there. When I was cutting it up this morning, he said, "Please, I dont want this for lunch." Since there are very few things he doesnt like, I usually indulge his whims, but this time, I just smiled and said "We will see."

Over the six years that Ive been food blogging, Ive seen several bloggers making Zucchini thogayal. But zucchini, in India, has always retailed at around Rs.100 a kilo. At that price, why on earth would I want to puree it to death in a blender. I wanted to see and enjoy this vegetable in salads, pasta and such. But thogayal, no way!

But when you have a 5 pounder zucchini sitting on your counter top, the thogayal did indeed seem like a good idea. And boy, did it taste good or what.

Zucchini Thogayal and Zucchini Curry (both recipes below)

For the uninitiated, thogayal or thuvaiyal is a Tambrahm style of converting mildly unpalatable vegetables (Chow-chow, pumpkins, ridge gourds, bottle gourds etc) into chutneys so Tambrahm uncles will mumble good things about the food even if they are eating some vegetable they dont like. Many blogs will say you can eat Thogayal on bread or with idli or dosai or chapathi or pasta or just about anything. I wont say they are lying. But there is only one way to really savour this. Hot rice, gingelly oil (yes, oil and NOT ghee) and thogayal and a roasted appalam on the side.

And the zucchini hating husband tasted some of it, hesitantly, after he had eaten beans curry-rice and rasam and said "Please keep some for me, I want to eat this for dinner."

I guess after this, I can well call this 5 pounder- Zucchini Iyer.

Ingredients

2 medium sized green zucchinis

1/4 cup scraped fresh or frozen coconut

a tiny piece of tamarind soaked in 2-3 tsp of water

2.5 tsp gingelly oil or any other cooking oil

2 tbsp + 1 tsp udad dal

4 medium dried red chillies

1/2-3/4 tsp salt

2 sprigs curry leaves

Fat pinch asafoetida

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

1 green chilli

Directions

Chop the zucchini into medium sized cubes. No need to peel the skin.
Heat 1/2 tsp oil in a pan. Add 2 tbsp udad dal and red chillies and saute on medium heat until the udad dal is golden brown. Remove onto a plate and cool for few minutes.
Heat the remaining 1 tsp oil in same pan. On high heat, scald the chopped zucchini by tossing it around for a minute or so.
Reduce the flame, add 1/4 cup water, pinch of salt, cover and cook till zucchini is tender and fully cooked.
In small mixer-grind the fried udad dal-red chillies, soaked tamarind and coconut to coarse paste. To this add the cooled cooked zucchini, salt and scrape the sides of the mixer and grind to a paste. Remove this into a bowl.
Heat 1-2 tsp oil in a tempering ladle or small kadai. Add pinch of asafoetida, mustard seeds, once they splutter, add curry leaves and udad dal. Wait for dal to turn golden and transfer the tempering over the thogayal.

Notes

Traditionally a lot more coconut is used, so you could use as much as your health consciousness permits.

If you know this one recipe, you will have at least one way to deal with most of the vegetables that the world at large considers boring.

Another way to Tambrahm-ise Zucchini : Zucchini Curry

A small clarification here. In Tambrahm cooking, a curry is not a gravy dish that Brits seem to love. Its a simply prepared dry saute with minimal spices and the star being the tempering. I pressure cooked this for a bit as it was a mature zucchini, if yours is tender, you can simply add it raw and cover and cook till done.

Place 1.5 cups of zucchini pieces (small) in a container in a pressure cooker. Dont add water to zucchini. Pressure cook for one whistle.
In a kadai, heat 2 tsp oil. Add pinch of asafoetida, 2 dried red chillies, 1 tbsp udad dal, few curry leaves, 1/2 tsp mustard seeds and saute till udad dal is golden.
To this add the cooked (or raw) zucchini, pinch of turmeric (optional), salt and toss gently to coat with tempering, on a low flame.
Add a bit of fresh coconut and its ready to serve. Those who find this very bland can add 1-2 tsp of sambar powder or rasam powder towards the end and give it another toss.

See what people on Twitter have to say:

@saffrontrail thanks for reminding about this , though I didnt add tamarind and also didnt grind it fine .SuperIt is fb.me/1FlmX3yKa
— monika (@monikamanchanda) March 10, 2012

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

How To Make Vegan Pesto

How to make a tasty vegan pesto sauce without cheese.

Vegan pesto is all about the herbs and nuts. You won't miss the cheese.

The thing is, making pesto is not an exact science. It's intuitive. It's flexible. And lucky for us dairy-free folks- whipping up fresh pesto sauce is easy-as-pie (I should say, easier than pie, because gluten-free vegan pie is not all that easy).

You can whip up a vegan pesto from any combination of fresh herbs, nuts and good tasting olive oil that your little heart desires. You can use cilantro or basil. Or both. Or try a light and fresh combo of mint, basil and parsley- my favorite. Choose pecans or walnuts or traditional pine nuts. Even hazelnuts.

Dairy-free sauce never packed so much goodness.

More than just a pasta sauce- pesto adds a big flavor boost to all kinds of recipes. Stir it into tomato sauce just before serving. Or plop a dollop into a bowl of Italian soup. Add a spoonful to stew. Schmear some on croutons, gluten-free toast and grilled cornbread. It's a fabulous base for pizza toppings.

You can also add pesto to roasted potato wedges and grilled vegetables. Stir it into polenta- or spread it on wedges of broiled polenta. It dresses up rice and risotto, pasta, noodles, and even grilled tortillas. It kicks up salad dressings and hummus.

For flexitarians, pesto is a bright, herbalicious accent for grilled salmon, shrimp, and fish. Not to mention, egg dishes. Pesto and huevos is a match made in ovo-lacto vegetarian heaven.

So even if pesto is considered passé by some, an eighties foodie fad gone by...

Do we care?

Read more + get the recipe >>

Friday, February 7, 2014

Random Kitchen Scenes How to Slice a Ripe Peach

Ive been playing around with the idea of posting short, random kitchen tips and techniques, and this "how to slice a ripe peach" is a little experiment along those lines. Inspired by a classic sushi cut, this two-part slice is great for precise cuts on soft juicy fruit. Just make sure your blade is sharp, and try not to shave off your fingertips. Enjoy!