Moist Chocolate cupcakes with Vanilla butter cream frosting

Till the Olympics started in London a week before, me and S were not really into sports that much,so we didnt even bother to bid for tickets in the beginning but the whole atmosphere in London has changed our attitude towards sports,we are now hooked onto T.V watching all sorts of events and has been trying for tickets continously ever since Olypmics started.Eventhough they were releasing last minute tickets online , we were unlucky with those ticketed events,but we still we didnt give up and decided to make the most of free events like cycling ,marathon,race walk etc.We went for two events in the last few days and the Mens 20 km race walk was the most exciting one as 3 Indian were among the group,we cheered them with all our voice and we were glad that Irfan from kerala,finished 10 th and made all of us proud !Still one more week of Olympics and we are planning to go for Mens marathon race next week and then we are off to India for a month.

Coming to todays recipe its a moist chocolate cupcake which I made to take to a friends place,You can see from the pics that my frosting didnt cover the cupcakes well as I ran out of the frosting .I didnt want to make it all over again so I kind of decorated it with what I had :)

Ingredients
Flour - 1 1/4 cup
Cocoa Powder - 1/4 cup
Baking Powder - 1 tsp
Baking soda - 1/4 tsp
Salt - a pinch
Sugar - 1 cup
Oil - 3/4 cup
Egg -2
Milk - 1/4 cup
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp

Method
1. Sift flour,baking powder,soda,salt and keep it aside.
2.In a mixing bowl beat eggs and sugar well.
3.Add oil,vanilla extract and whisk.
4.Add 1/4 th of sifted dry ingredients and fold in followed by little milk.
5.Continue adding flour and milk until all used up.
6.Line a muffin tin and pour the batter until 3/4 th full.
6.Bake in preheated oven at 175 degree centigrade for 20 - 25 mins or until tooth pick inserted comes out clean.

You can find the recipe for frosting here

Barbecue Chicken

Much awaited London 2012 Olympics finally had a colourful opening here yesterday night .The best bit I liked in the ceremony was Mr Beans performance and James bonds entry !! Hope you all watched the ceremony and enjoyed that bit :) Eventhough we havent won any tickets for olympics I am very excited about it.I still hasnt given up my hope for tickets and still checks for tickets for any event at a reasonable rate !

Coming to todays topic, now I can strike one thing off from my "things to do list "in summer, a barbecue !! Have been planning to do a barbecue with our friends since a long time,but like I mentioned in my post earlier rain spoiled all our plans,but finally we got few glorious days last week and we decided to do BBQ this weekend quickly before we leave for a 4 weeks vacation to India in 2 weeks time !I prepared two item for our BBQ, Tandoori chicken and this sweet and sour BBQ chicken.Tandoori chicken was obviously the best among the two but the BBQ chicken was a change from normal chicken recipes that I usually make,So give it a go if like a change from usual ones !

Ingredients

Recipe adapted from here

Chicken breast - 500 gms

Paprika powder - 1 1/2 tbs

Honey - 3 tbs

Dijon Mustard - 1 1/2 tsp

Pepper - 1tsp

Tomato Ketchup - 3 tbs

Orange Zest - from 1 orange

Olive oil - 1tsp

Dried chilly flakes - 1tsp

Salt

Method

1.Dice the breast fillets into small cubes.

2.Marinate the diced chicken with all the ingredients and keep it aside for 1-2 hrs in fridge.

3.Insert the chicken on skewers and place them on BBQ flipping the sides in between until its cooked.

Strawberry Marshmallow Mousse

Until last week there was no sign of summer in London or in U.K ,it rained and rained and the much hyped drought turned into flood in some parts ! We didnt do anything exciting this summer like last time.Picking Strawberry,doing barbaque,beach trips we had so much plan but the horrible weather spoiled all our plans..but finally sun is out and from 15-18 degree centigrade it jumped to 28-30 just in 2 days time !! Thats the U.K weather for u :)Anyway to celebrate the rare sun here I am posting a summery dessert for u all !! It can be made in a jiffy with few ingredients and its a perfect dessert for all strawberry lovers.This can be served as a dessert on its own or if you have some sponge cake serve it with some vanilla cake and its a lovely combination !

Ingredients (serves 2 bowls)

Recipe halved from here

Strawberry - 125 gm
Sugar - 2 tbs
Marshammlows - 70 gms
Double cream - 100 ml
Water - 50 ml

Method

1.Place the strawberries and suagar in a pan with water and cook until strawberries are soft.
2.Mash the strawberries with a fork
3.Add the marshammlows to the hot strawberry mixture and mix until marshamllows are melted.Allow it to cool.
4.Whip the double cream until peaks are formed.
5.Add the whipped cream to the strawberry mixture and fold in.
6.Spoon them into 2 bowls and chill for 2 hours.

Oats and Berries Milk shake !

I have to thank Julie of Erivum Puliyum a lot for introducing this healthy breakfast drink to me, believe me its a regular in my home these days,I started stocking my freezer with frozen berries so that I never run out of them.S and me equally loves to have it every morning and its super healthy ! You can find the original recipe here which is a smoothie but I liked milkshake version better than smoothie so I always add milk and omit sugar as the fruits and milk makes is sweet enough for me !

If you are not a person who eats a kings breakfast I guess just this drink should be enough for you,but for S and me our main meal is breakfast ,so we always fill up the gap with some cereals :) Eating Indian breakfast 7 days a week is something that we gave up long time back for eating healthy atleast 5 days a week .Eating cereals doesnt mean healthy does it ? but we eat sugarless,saltless muesli and S find that its much more filling than our Dosha/idly/upmav etc so he always prefer to eat muesli during weekdays and if on one day I cook something he complains that he gets hungry by 11.30 !! So thats another reason for not cooking breakfast during weekdays,but still during weekends we both love to have our elaborate Indian breakfast ! But during weekdays this drink and a small bowl cereals makes my day :) So if you are a person who doesnt have time to eat breakfast during weekdays this one is for you :)

Ingredients (serves 2 glass)

Oats - 2/3 cup

Banana - 2

Strawberries - 10 nos

Blueberries - 15 nos

Milk - 1/2 cup

Method

1.Blend all the ingredients into a smooth milkshake.

Fish Biriyani

Just when I thought I am blogging a lot these days, that phase is slowly coming down again. I have  lost
interest in cooking and blogging and I am enjoying the free time watching movies and TV ! I watched quite a few mallu movies the past few nights like 22 female Kottayam, Ordinary, Chappa kurushu, Indian Rupee etc. There was a time when used to watch all the new mallu movies online,but after having my boy I kind of lost the track of new movies, and my film were restricted to the english movies that comes on T.V. Now I am quite happy to catch up with the movies which I missed last few years ! Same is the story with Hindi movies,I watched few of the hit movies which I missed , Zindagi na mile dubarah and 3 idiots were the best among the hindi movies I watched recently.

Coming back to today's recipe,7 years ago when I came to U.K for the first time,I was surving only on the basic cooking and slowly the cooking bug bit me and I started experimenting the complicated dishes with my Amma's help over the phone :) One day ,I had a  sudden craving to eat some fish biriyani and I had some frozen king fish in the freezer , but the time was too late to call my amma in India .That's when I got exposed to the blogging world for the first time ! When I googled for fish biriyani, I came across so many blogs and I was super thrilled ! I tried fish biriyani recipe from one of the blogs 7 years ago and it was yummm, Su was  also very  impressed .Years passed , but still for fish biriyani I am following the same recipe as I love this recipe ,but I am sorry I can't find that original recipe  or  her blog (Priyas Kitchen) anymore but since I wrote down the recipe in a book I still have the recipe with me. It's a shame that many of the wonderful blogs which I came across that time are inactive now :(

Ingredients

Ghee - 2 tsp
Bay leaves - 2

Cardamom - 2-3

Fennel seeds - 1 tsp

cinnamon sticks -2

Star anise - 2

Cloves -4

pepper - 1tsp

Onion - 1 + 3

Basmati rice - 2 cups

Boiling water - 3 3/4 - 4 cup

lemon juice - 1/2 of a lime

Coriander -mint - curry leaves paste - 2 tsp

Ginger garlic green chilly paste - 2 tsp

Toamto - 2

Yogurt - 1 tbs

Coconut milk - 1/2 cup

for marination

King fish - 500 g

Chilly powder - 2-3 tsp

Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp

Pepper powder - 1 tsp

Salt

for garnishing

Cashwenuts - 1-2 tbs

Sultanas/raisins - 2 tbs

Ghee - 1 tsp

Method

1.Soak the basmathi rice in water for 30 mins and drain the water completely.

2.Marinate the fish with the ingredients mentioned and keep it aside for 30 minutes.

3.In a pan add ghee and add the whole garam maslas ans saute for 1- 2 minutes.

4 Add the thinly sliced onion (one) and saute till brown.

5.Add the soaked rice ,lemon juice,salt and add boiling water and cook till done.

6.shallow fry the marinated fish in a pan adding little oil and the place them in paper towels.

7.In the same pan add the sliced onions (3),saute till brown.

8.Add ginger garlic green chilly paste, leaves paste and fry for sometime.

9.Add chopped tomatoes and cook till toamtoes are mashed.

10.Add yogurt,coconut milk and salt and stir for 2-3 minutes.

11.Finally add fried fish to this gravy and cook till gravy thickens for another 3-5 minutes.

12.Layer the rice and fish masala in a oven proof dish and cook it a preheated oven at 180 degree centigrade for 10 minutes.

13.Finally fry some cashewnuts and raisins separetely in ghee and garnish the biriyani !

Spinach Cannelloni

During our holidays in Barcelona while me and S were enjoying the Spanish Paella to the core my boy didnt want to even give it a try as it looked so red and to him red means spicy ! But luckily all the Spanish restaurants had some Italian menu as well but all in Spanich though.I went through the menu and saw some thing written Cannelloni espinacho,I guessed it could be sometthing with spinach and cannelloni pasta and we ordered that for him.It took a while for the our order to come thorough but the wait was all worth,Lil A loved it and ate almost 3/4 th of it .I was happy that he didnt finish all of it so that I could taste it as well :) It was a melt in mouth kind of dish...I lovvvved it,we ordered the same dish for him everyday atleast once a day during those 5 days and he never complained ! When I came back I searched for the recipes online and saw a quite a lot and even the cannaloni pasta I got had a recipe on the packet, after going through all of it I came up with one which is not completely adpated from anywhere.I recreated almost the same taste at home and we all love it.I make this often now especially on days when he not in a mood to eat as he never say no to this.

Ingredients (serves 2 -3 )

Cannelloni tubes - 8
Spinach - 1 packet( 250 gm)
Riccotta cheese - 1 tub(250gm) ( Dont worry its not a rich cheese )
Parmasan cheese - 1/2 cup (grated)
Soft cheese - 2-3 tbs( I used low fat Philadelphia)
Onion -1 large
Tomato - 2 large
Oregano -1 tbs
Basil powder - 1 tsp
Garlic - 1 tbs (minced)
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

Method
1.Boil the tomatoes ,remove the skin ,make puree and keep it aside.
2. In a pan add olive oil and saute onions till soft and brown.
3.Add minced garlic and fry for 1-2 minutes.

4.Add tomato puree,salt,pepper,oragano,basil powder and cook for 2-3 minutes.

5.Finally add soft cheese and when it starts to boil turn off the heat.
6.Pour half of this sauce on the bottom of a baking dish .
6.In another pan wilt the roughly chopped spinach for 1-2 minutes.
7.When it is cool squeeze the water out of it and mix it with riccotta cheese.

8.Fill the precooked cannaloni tubes with Spinach riccotta mixture and place the tubes on top of sauce in baking dish.

9.Pour the rest of sauce and finally sprinkle the grated paramsan cheese on top of it.
10.Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degree centigarde for 20 minutes.

Gobi Manjurian(Dry version)

Well if you know me I have never been so active in updating my blog this frequently..These days I am so in the mood of cooking something elaborate and the summer has made it easier to click whatever I cook for dinner as we have daylight till 9-9.30 p.m .Cant really call it summer though as this time it rained so badly here and we hardly got hot sunny days :( weather is such an unpredicatable thing in U.K ,will tell u about today...when I left home to pick my boy from nursery it was shining so brightly so I deliberately didnt take my umbrella.After I walked for 1-2 minutes the sky became dark and wind started blowing ..it looked as if its going to rain cats and dogs ! Luckily I reached the nursery before rain and then it started to pour...one of the mum kindly lended me her umbrella and since there was no sign of rain stopping we started walking back home.Even the umbrella couldnt help much as it was too windy ,somehow we reached home,and the moment we reached home the sun was out shining brightly ! Its always like this here ,we cant really trust the sun when we go out .

Coming back to todays post..its a dry version of gobi manjurian,I have posted another version before which is not a dry one,you can find here.

Ingredients
For frying
Cauliflower - 1 medium
Flour/Maida - 8 tbs
Cornflour - 4 tbs
Ginger garlic paste - 1 tbs
Salt
Pepper - 1/2 tsp
Oil

For sauce
Onion - 1
Minced ginger -garlic - 1 1/2 tbs
Tomato Sauce - 6 -8 tbs
Soya sauce - 2 tbs
Chilly garlic sauce - 4 tbs
Salt
Capsicum/Pepper- 1
Spring onions - 2-3

Method
1. Make a thick batter with flour,cornflour by adding ginger garlic paste ,salt and
pepper by adding little water.
2.Dip the clauliflower florets in the batter and deep fry them until golden brown.
3.Take few tbs of the same oil and saute the chopped onions till soft.
4.Add minced ginger and garlic and fry for 1-2 minutes.
5.Add all the sauces and cook till oil separates.
6.Add whites of spring onions,chopped capsicum and saute for another 1-2 minutes.
7.Finally add the deep fried cauliflower florets and mix them well until it is well coated in the sauce.
8.Garnish with some chopped spring onions.