22 November, 2005

Baked a cake

This is getting dangerous. Every time I have some free time and I am not too tired, I end up in the kitchen cooking up something or the other. Ash was having pot dinner at his house and I decided to use that Saturday's holiday for some better use. So it was time to get baking.

I have no skills to make a cake, but when you have the ready-to-eat why worry. The instructions on the cake made it look like a real simple thing, so it wasn't that big a challenge. All was going well, until it was 20 minutes into the oven, when the cake started to burst it's stomach. And instead of shaping like a nice flat plateau it shaped up like a swollen volcano waiting to burst out it's lava.

But I believe, in food presentation is very important. So to cover up that big burst I whipped some fresh cream and covered it carefully to make it a very natural shape. I think it was a pretty messy finish, but I am glad Mom & sister appreciated the same and give me the thumbs-up to take it to Ash's party. Well, at the party nobody even realized it was a packet cake- I can't wait to tell them or have them read the true story here.

03 November, 2005

Free Style Salad

Three days of holiday and I had not stepped into the kitchen for even a moment. Diwali means restrictions on food - No onion, No garlic. Which basically limits my choice of food which I can experiment with. Thursday evening out of sheer boredom and a pang of hunger I finally stepped in. One look at the stuffed up refrigerator and I decided that it's going to be a nice cold salad before the dinner is served tonight.

I was in no mood to dig out any recipes or see any books for help. So it was a free-style salad that I mopped up. Lots of vegetables like cucumber, tomatoes, cabbage and olives - sliced, pieced or grated as you feel. (That's the best part of free-style).

Some tips from the not-so expert chef on ways to make the salad interesting.

  • Use olive oil, gives salads a very distinct taste
  • Salad Dressing - I hate dry stuff (This is one of the only reasons I hate salads, at times)
  • Make sure the vegetables are cut fine - large pieces can be a little irritating

So that's it for now. Saturday night could be pot-dinner at Ash's place. If I get free time, I am going to cook up something too.