My friend Milu gave me a wonderful lesson on how to make a Bengali breakfast. You can see more details on her blog Nutmeg and Corianderbut here are some lighlights. This lesson was a real treat---breakfast is the hardest meal to learn about in most cultures.
These vegetables---potatoes, cauliflower, peas, onion--- are sauteed until tender. They will make the filling for luchi.
Luchi is a fried puffy bread but made of white flour, in contrast to puri which is made from whole wheat.
We also made uttapam stuffed with tomato, onion, coriander, and a little green chili.
Here is our breakfast ready to eat. It was beautiful, delicious, and wonderfully hearty for a cold morning.
I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...




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