Indian Spiced Peanuts with Toasted Coconut

Toasted coconut cupcakes

The blog Palmabella's Passions made these toasted coconut cupcakes using a recipe from Creampuffs in Venice. Gorgeous! [lien] [EN]

Indian Spice Phone Has Optical Disk Drive For 2.5 Hour Movies [Cellphones]

It's really unlikely that this Movie Phone from the Indian cellphone maker Spice would make it anywhere besides India, but it's an amazing phone because of what it's got on the back: an optical... [lien] [EN]

Indian Toast?

Bee and Jai of Jugalbandi (home to dozens of drool-worthy pictures) are hosting a new themed food photography event. The event, called CLICK, kicks off this month with the theme: Eggs! Eggs are on the weekend brunch menu nearly every weekend at our home. We are loyal to our favorite dishes, and I love a spicy, savory brunch, so it is usually a choice between Pateta par Eeda, Egg-Onion Float, Omelette, and a fourth eggy dish that I have not blogged yet, French toast, Indian style. This last dish is completely unlike American-style French toast, which is usually rich and sweet, and drenched in syrup or showered with sugar. Indian French toast kicks it up a notch, with flecks of green chillies and cilantro clinging to savory golden brown fried bread (I wonder what the French think of either of these two types of "French" toast). [lien] [EN]

Creamy Coconut-Tofu Rice

This recipe was born on a fridge-cleaning Friday night. We enjoyed it so much that I made it again a few times. One time, a friend joined us for dinner and asked for the recipe. I got the feeling that this dish had earned its place on the blog, so here it is. It just could not be simpler: vegetables and rice are cooked in a mixture of coconut milk and water. Cubes of soft tofu are added to the simmering rice. The resulting creamy rice, mildly spiced and dotted with melt-in-the-mouth tofu, is much more than the sum of its parts. Coconut-Tofu Rice Ingredients: 1 C rice (I used sona masuri) 2 C chopped mixed vegetables (eg. spinach, beans, peas, carrots) 1 t oil 1 small onion, sliced 8-10 curry leaves 1 t cumin seeds 1/2 t turmeric 1/2 t red chilli powder (or to taste) 1 t sambar masala (or your favorite spice blend. [lien] [EN]

Turmeric: The spice-and-dye

You know how that lovely yellow curry served up at your favorite hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant turns your napkin, the tips of your fingers, even your plate completely yellow? Congratulations, you have had a swift, yet definitive introduction to turmeric. Turmeric has been turning everything yellow for eons. Originally it was not used as a spice for cooking, but as a dye, primarily for coloring holy robes. Turmeric has been mentioned in the Vedas, the ancient Hindu sacred texts. It was associated with purity and cleansing. Even today, orthodox Hindu households will use turmeric water to purify everything from themselves, to objects in the house, to the house itself before a religious event. Along the same lines, Hindu brides and bridegrooms have a ceremony called ʻhaldiʼ (the Hindi word for turmeric and also the name of the ceremony). [lien] [EN]

Indian Food on YouTube: The Vah Reh Vah Chef

Chef Sanjay Thumma is my current favorite time suck. It's refreshing to watch someone demonstrate mouth-watering dishes with uninhibited joy, a matter-of-fact globalism and minimal make-up. It helps that I love so many cuisines in India, but what immediately appealed to me is his stance as a teacher. It's a very different experience to learn about traditional foods from someone who assumes, from the beginning, that his audience is not comprised of outsiders. Like a student whose teacher sets high expectations, viewers and home cooks rise to the challenge. His balance of expert advice with friendly reassurance is neither oversimplified nor condescending. He's a professional who knows his stuff, yet he doesn't gleam with that over-polished, over-packaged look of television. Each video, from 2 to 10 minutes. [lien] [EN]

Coconut cream cupcake recipe and more

Nadine Fownes at Nova Scotia News is as enthusiastic about cupcakes as we are: "... cupcakes are experiencing a huge upswing in popularity right now. Brides and grooms are serving cupcakes instead of the traditional multi-tiered wedding cake. Specialty bakeries have popped up in just about every major city and small town, their pastry chefs trying to outdo each other with unique flavour combinations and whimsical, over-the-top decorations that look almost too pretty to eat. The latest cookbooks and magazines are filled with glossy, pastel-coloured spreads of cupcake porn. The web is crowded with hundreds of frosting-fingered food bloggers posting breathlessly and endlessly about the joy of cupcakes, and only cupcakes. And in big cities like New York, Chicago, London and Toronto, where there are as many cupcakeries as there are espresso bars these days. [lien] [EN]

A first attempt at Peanut Chikki

Rich roasted peanuts trapped in a shell of complex (salty-sweet, caramel, smoky) notes- peanut brittle or peanut chikki is my all-time favorite candy. I first tried making chikki when I was still in middle school. I only remember that the episode was a messy one, and now, many many years later, it is time to give it another shot. Although chikki can be made with refined white sugar, it is more commonly made with that flavorful brown sugar that Indians know as jaggery or gud or gool. Jyotsna's essay All About Gur Things is a beautiful look at the art of making jaggery- my favorite sugar in the whole wide world. In his book On Food And Cooking, Harold McGee explains that brown sugars are sucrose crystals that are coated with a layer of dark syrup from one of the stages of sugar refining. [lien] [EN]

Nutty Chicken with Peanut Dipping Sauce

. When my darling, the Glamazon, was a wee bitty child, (pre-glamazon days, which I believe should be called the precocious years,) she announced, in response to my fathers query, "What do you girls want for lunch?" that her favorite food was Chicken Nuggets, and that is the only thing she was willing to eat. Now, my father is not a fast food eater, nor is he a pop culture follower, so he just roared with laughter, eyes twinkling. He sincerely thought she made it up. In his reasoning, there was no way there could there be such a foodstuff, it simply had to be the concoction of a fabulous four year old mind. Nuggets of chicken??? Now mind you, at that point in my young life, I had never indulged in a Chicken Nugget, but being a child, I was all very aware of their existence. My parents wouldn't have dreamed of letting us sample that sort of thing. [lien] [EN]

Coconut Cream Pie!

This was so delicious I might have to share the recipe with you. I'll give you a hint: First I used Food Blog Search. Then I wrote out my standard pastry cream recipe and compared it to Nicole's. I used the basic premise of Baking Bite's recipe, and then, I finessed like crazy. It is my belief that white sugar interrupts the subtle flavour of coconut. Now I know coconut is not a shy flavour, but it takes a bit of sweet nothings, patience, and much listening, to get to the root of coconut's true soul. There are few ingredients which do not compete to win when it comes to playing with coconut. Instead of using all white sugar, I also used raw. I also substituted vanilla sugar for some of the white sugar. (I take dried vanilla beans and their empty brittle sheaths and I break them up in a spice grinder with raw or white sugar until all is pulverized and highly aromatic. [lien] [EN]

Anita’s Molasses Spice Cookies

I may have mentioned this before, but I have to say it again: I love the holiday season. From mid-November to New Years Eve I’m all about holiday movies and baking - the latter of which is a particular joy because this is one of the few times of year I can bake gobs of goodies, then give them to people without getting funny looks. There are no “What’s the occasion?” questions or awkward “Gosh, do I have to give her something now?” moments. No, it’s just me, the local baking fanatic, who likes to give away cookies and breads to celebrate the season. It’s great. In the past my go-to gifting items have been cappuccino chocolate chip cookies, coconut biscotti, marble molasses pound cake and apple-honey challah. These treats will certainly make appearances this year as well. [lien] [EN]