JINGLE BELL ROCKS.........

JINGLE BELL ROCKS
Christmas has arrived.............I just love this time of the year. The festive spirit of everything getting started, buying gifts, wrapping gifts, making home made goodies to gift, buying and decorating the Christmas tree, the house wafting with smell of cinnamon, orange and vanilla. Each and every year I am equally excited for Christmas. Christmas has been a very very important festival for me. For me Christmas is just not about party and dinner it's about prayers and  family gathering too. I love the sound when the church bell rings, when the quire sings, the mid night mass, the fire work and people wishing each other in the church when it strikes 12 at night and just after the mass coming home and gathering with friends for drinks and dinner. There are families who start preparing for the dinner prior to a month or two. Preparing the glazed ham, turkey, cranberry sauce, bread sauce, ginger bread turkey filling, brandy cream, Christmas pudding, short breads, ginger bread man, mince pie...the list wont stop. Festivals are for food and gatherings and both are things which I just love to do, cooking for friends and family and having a nice gathering. When I cook I love the whole idea of laying the table with variety, with heaps of food with different choices and Christmas gives me the reason to do what I love.


As a child I remember that each year for Christmas I use to force my parents to take me to the shop to buy Christmas cake as I was the only one in the family who wanted to celebrate Christmas as my family is Hindu. But with time and years passing by I made Christmas a quintessential affair in my family. Now when I am not there in India with my family they still follow the ritual of getting the Christmas tree and going to the church. I remember me and my mom use to buy gifts for my younger brother ad sister because I made them believe SANTA :-) Me and my mom use to keep the gifts near their bed and in the morning the joy in their faces we use to see were priceless. Christmas is such an innocent and beautiful festival. I don't know why some people waste it by going to night clubs and spending this wonderful festival in that crowded and noisy place. Christmas is about experiencing the good food at home, friends and family coming over, the Christmas carols, laughing and eating in a serene place like "HOME"        


Sitting thousands and millions of mile away from home at this auspicious occasion I still want to keep up the ritual. I miss my family very dearly at this time so I am all set to bake a cake tomorrow. My rocky roads and chocolate mousse has been made and kept in the fridge to set. Chicken is marinated and kept in the fridge too. All i have to do is make a nice Fattoush salad and cous cous for tomorrow night. You must be thinking why did i left the baking for the last minute well it's all my room mate's fault as he assured that that are plenty of flour to make the cake and at night when all shops are closed what do i see!!!!  OH NOOOOOOOOOO..........there is no flour at home :-(  anyway I will manage. But I suggest never to leave anything on your friends.......n last minute.


As, you all can see that this blog has got delayed so without any further waste of time i'll start with the recipes.

CHRISTMAS CAKE  

12oz plain flour

• 1tsp mixed spice
• 4oz ground almonds
• 8oz currants (although I changed this to chopped dates)
• 8oz sultanas
• 8oz raisins
• 4oz cherries
• 8oz butter
• 8oz soft brown sugar
• 6 eggs beaten with 8tbsp milk 1 tbsp black treacle

Mix flour, spice and ground almonds together. Mix fruit ( I let mine sock in a good glug of brandy for about an hour). Beat butter and sugar to a cream, beat milk and eggs together. Mix together all ingredients. Add the fruit last. Bake for 2 hours. First hour 180C (Gas 4), then slowly 150C(Gas2)

CHOCOLATE MOUSE:

150 gms mini marsmellows

50 gms unsalted butter

250 gms chocolate (dark)

4 tbls water

METHOD:

Melt them all together.

Beat around 280 ml thick cream with vanilla essence 

Fold in with the chocolate and marshmellow mix.

Pour it in separate cups or dishes

Put it i the fridge till it sets

When ready serve with little white chocolate shavings on top.

CHICKEN ZA'TAAR:

500 gms chicken breast/drumstickes/ thigh fillet

Olive oil 1/2 a cup

Parsley chopped

salt

Za'taar powder ( a middle eastern mix of spices)

2 onions cut into 4 pieces.

Marinate everything together and put it in high oven for 20- 25 mins 

Serve with Fattoush Salad.

Fattoush Salad:

Oven crisp the pita bread

Chop tomatoes, cucumber, spring onions, mint.

Snip the crisp pita bread in the salad 

Put lemon juice, olive oil and salt on top and toss.

Sprinkle little Sumak in the salad if available.

   Here I sign off and wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.............I have to take a good sleep as I have got a long day tomorrow. Merry Christmas.  

ENTRÉE FOR A CANDY TOOTH!!!

I know, I know it sounds little weird . You must be thinking that what an entrée got to do with a candy tooth!!! Well. I have an answer for this :-) "An Entrée is a savoury dish which is the first course of a meal which is also known as "Starters" For me it's an absolute cliché and I as a cook  would like to add a little rebellious act by breaking the rule of a three course meal. I rather start my three course meal with a touch of decadence :P  And why not because I believe that starting your meal with something sweet enhances your appetite and later when you are ready for the rest of the meal you'll find yourself craving for savoury more then ever, your savoury dish is going to release more flavour to your taste palate. I am sure you'll experience it yourself. Whenever i get guests at my place I have always followed my way of starting a meal...........By Sweets :-) and to my luck I have never gone wrong. By saying this I should also mention that starting a meal with something sweet is not completely my invention............Back in India in a region called Gujrat believes in serving a little bit of a sweet at the beginning of a meal. We Indians also believe that sweet is a lucky element to life. Any good work that starts with having something sweet adds a lucky charm.


So, coming back to my thought..... "Entrée for an candy tooth" is actually nothing to do with following any ritual or adding any lucky charm. I am trying to set a trend for people who lives to eat sweet, people who cannot give up eating sweets for the love of anyone, people who can tell lies to eat sweets, people who can steal to have sweets...............well who else are we talking about????
"CANDY TOOTH"............people who have sweet tooth :P Here in my blog I am giving another good reason to all the candy tooth to have sweets without any excuses :-) In this blog I'll share few small stories of my life which revolves around people who has tremendous sweet tooth issues :-) whether it is my mom, my grand mom or.................ME!!! And as i promised I will end with a recipe...........


I was born in a Bengali family with 22 members, being the first child i was pampered and one of my nick names given by so many people was "MISHTI" which means sweet.


Well, I think I took my childhood name too seriously. When I was almost about 3 to 4 months old my mom left me in the bed after putting me off to sleep. After sometime my mom heard a thumping noise and she came running to me. What she saw was so hilarious, I crawled through the bed and fell in a basket near the bed which had a sugar box. My mom must have left it opened by mistake and she saw me digging my hands in the sugar jar and relishing it with a wicked smile on my face..............at first my mom got scared that I fell but when she saw this notorious act of mine she laughed her guts out. Obviously this story was been told to me by my mom.


But i say why not, being a daughter of a women like my mom why wont I be like this!!!


My mom was 7 months pregnant, she was expecting me. One day one of my uncle got sweets for everyone at home as he got a very nice job. When mom saw the sweets she all of a sudden blurted out saying "You think you are going to give this sweet to all of them where as it is not even enough for me" my uncle laughed out as he had got a kilo of sweets with 40 pieces (Rasgullas) in it. He said to my mom that if she can manage to finish all this by her own than he promises to get her more sweets than this. To his bad luck my mom won :-) My mom is a person who can even relish some sugar in her mouth if she doesn't gets any desert at night.


As, a child it seems I had a fair complexion and reddish hair.....ahem**** well as I see and so can you all that its not the same any more. But as a child having a look like this I used to get heaps of attention with heaps of chocolate as gifts from people. So, my mom as a candy tooth had a scheme to snatch those chocolates from me. On the name of "Sharing is Caring" she used to ask me to share all those chocolates with her. 50-50 this is what she use to utter from her greedy mouth to bite on those chocolates which were my hard earned :P me and my mom have always been a health freak but when it comes to sweets..........well we both never bothered of gaining weight as, there is no compromise in eating sweets and we both don't believe of punishing our body by depriving it from relishing sweets :-)


Well, I am sharing my stories not to prove that how interesting my childhood was. My blog is for people who doesn't need a reason to have sweets. But i am introducing more sweets to the boring three course meal.Life is a celebration so celebrate it with SWEETS..........SWeets...........and more Sweets:-)


Whenever I get guests at my place the fastest and easy way of making an Entrée for candy tooth is making CHOCOLATE BON BON It is easy to make and can be served as a finger food.


Chocolate Bon Bon:
1 bar of dark chocolate
1 small tub of vanilla ice cream
whipped cream if using chocolate ice cream
few paper cups


Method:
Make thick shells of melted chocolate with brush in paper cups. Keep in freezer to set for 5 mins. Fill in the ice cream with an ice cream scooper and make designs with melted chocolate on top with a help of a piping bag or a hand made cello-pin wrap cones. if nothing then decorate it with grated chocolate or chocolate shavings. Put it back in the freezer. Serve it chilled to celebrate the invention of Entrée for candy tooth :-)  

  Before You all will think that i have completely forgotten about what to make for the end of the meal as a desert then...here it is......lets keep it simple yet very luscious and heavenly delicious desert. I am giving you all a recipe of two different sauces to go with vanilla ice cream again. 
A STRAWBERRY SAUCE
A TOFFEE SAUCE


For strawberry sauce you have to just cut 500 gms strawberries and put it in a processor with 2 tbls castor sugar and a juice of half a lemon and grind it and put it in the fridge. Pour it on a dollop of vanilla ice cream. 

   For toffee sauce in a pan put 3/4 cup of dark brown sugar, 3 ounces of butter, 2 big spoon of golden syrup/ dark corn syrup. Melt them together by steering it. When it starts bubbling up then add 2/3 cup thick whipping cream and bring it to one boil. Pour on top of the vanilla ice cream. This sauce is really warm and gooyee.............

So, you have a candelicious  time trying out these recipes while I start preparing for my next blog which is a CHRISTMAS SPECIAL !!  


Coming up next................JINGLE BELL ROCKS :-)