THANDAI WALI KULFI (Indian Ice cream with nuts and flavours)

THANDAI WALI KULFI

(Indian Ice cream with nuts and flavours)

This is the 2^nd Anniversary post of the blog.

“Some journeys don't have endings, they lead to new beginnings. These are the journeys that lead to great adventures !” by Alex Haditaghi.

I totally agree with the above quote and can say that, that is what exactly I am feeling after two years of this blogging journey. This journey so far has been so exciting and thrilling, that I look forward every day to writing my post, and interacting with all my wonderful readers. And now I am ready to take my culinary blogging experience to much higher levels by learning different types of cuisines and sharing it with the world.

I cannot believe two years have already passed, since I started this blog. When I first started this blog, I never thought that it will bring me so much joy. And after two years, I can say, I have thoroughly enjoyed this journey of blogging. It is giving me a lot of delight, a feeling of accomplishment and self-satisfaction.

Like it is said that “The journey should be as beautiful as the destination”. Now I can say that this journey of blogging is really beautiful, and I am so much involved in the journey, that right now, I do not want to think about the destination. Normally, the journey can be made beautiful, either by the places/things or people you meet on the way. In my case, this journey is beautiful because of the beautiful people, I met here. So here I would like to thank all the people I met in this journey- all my blog readers, visitors those who visit my blog, my fellow bloggers, everyone who come, read and comment on my creations.

One more thing I would like to mention here is that, after completing two years of blogging, I can proudly say I have many friends now, to whom I met only through this journey of blogging. They are so many that it is difficult to mention all the names. But still, some have really touched my heart, someway or the other. So here, I would like to mention a few names.

The first one is Nikki, her blog is not about food but about living life better, where she covers so many aspects of life. I met her around one year ago. She is a veteran blogger, who started her blog 6 years ago. She has a vast knowledge of blogging and internet, which she is ready to share with everyone. She is very good at heart and always ready to help others, even if she has to go an extra mile for it. She is always encouraging, supporting and appreciating new bloggers like me. She has also started a Facebook community for new bloggers, to help them in getting recognition for their work.

The second one is April and her blog is about family, travel, food and style. She has been my friend for the past two years. From day one, she helped me in many ways including appreciation of all my creations and by encouraging me to do a good job as a blogger. I met her with the blog hop party, “Hearth and soul blog hop” which she is running for more than five years.

Next is Jessica, her blog is about healthy living style. She is giving tips, on her blog to lose weight, which she herself experienced and lost 50 lb. She is a very good friend of mine. She is also a veteran blogger, who not only has a most beautiful face but also a beautiful heart. She helped me in my journey of blogging many times without even asking. She recognized my potential and always appreciated and encouraged my work.

The next one is again a veteran blogger, Lisa, and her blog is about vegetarian food, with emphasis on spicy Indian and whole food. She is a veteran vegetarian from last 23 years and produced more that 1000 unique vegetarian recipes on her blog. Even after one year of blogging, she gave me the chance to host “My legume love affair”, which is a monthly ongoing blog hop since 2008. The same blog hop I am hosting again in this month of May 2016.

The next is Angie and her blog is about food and gardening. I met her through the blog hop “Fiesta Friday” which she is hosting from the last 120 weeks and still continuing. She is always giving a chance to new bloggers to co-host the event and get experience. These types of blog hops support new bloggers by sharing and learning from each other and making new friends this way. She gave me the chance to co-host Fiesta Friday in the month of December.

Now coming to the recipe of Indian styled ice cream (Thandai Kulfi), which is rich, yet a healthy ice cream with an awesome taste. This is healthy because it is loaded with nuts like almond, cashews, pistachios, pumpkin and poppy seeds. It is flavoured with cardamom, fennel seeds and saffron. Yum, you can imagine the taste, when all these ingredients, are combined together with milk and served chilled on a plate.

RECIPE

INGREDIENTS

• 750 ml Milk
• 12 Almonds
• 10 Cashews
• 15 pistachios
• 5 green cardamom
• 1and 1/2 tbs pumpkin seeds (white)
• 1 and 1/2 tbs poppy seeds
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• 5 black pepper
• 1 tin condensed milk (410 ml) and more sugar to taste
• 5-6 threads of saffron

METHOD

• Soak all dry ingredients except saffron, for 6-7 hours or overnight.
• Boil milk on low-medium heat and reduce it to half, it may take two hours.
• Make the paste of soaked ingredients in a blender, mix it together with saffron threads, in the milk and boil for 10 more minutes.
• Add condensed milk and let it cool.
• When cold fill in kulfi molds or Popsicle molds and freeze.
• Serve chilled as shown in the pic.

I am sending this recipe as my blog post entry with Tasty Tuesday and with Meatless Monday and Cook Blog Share and Hearth and Soul blog hop and with Happy,healthy and green party, and with Welcome home Wednesday and way wow link party and with My two fav things on Thursday, and with Real Food Friday and Happy Friday pretty party, and with Fiesta Friday, and with Sweet Inspiration link party. and with what do you do this weekend.

VEGAN MERINGUE AND HOW TO MAKE AQUAFABA

VEGAN MERINGUE AND HOW TO MAKE AQUAFABA

This is a guest post from my daughter Rachna on mother's day

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Rachna :
For Mothers’ day, I thought what better way to celebrate it than to take over the responsibility of writing a post on her blog. As a former food blogger myself, I know what a responsibility it is to run a food blog, but also what joy and excitement it brings! This blog is like another baby of my mom’s, she relishes in all the posts she writes, blog events, anniversaries, and competitions she takes part in. And this baby is turning out to be a treasure box repository of recipes and how-to advice, that I hope to refer to whenever I need to cook something special. To contribute to that repository is an honor and I hope I can do that more often. Now onto my first contribution post on Aquafaba.

Eggs add a lot of qualities to a dish, especially a baked recipe. Mostly it adds a spongy texture to cakes, gives the sponge body, form, and shape. Egg whites also have the quality of foaming and increasing in volume, once air is incorporated into them. But for those following an egg-conscious diet/vegan, it has always been a challenge to replace eggs with a suitable plant-sourced replacement ingredient, one that would bring about the same desired qualities. For the most part,there are several egg replacement options for cake sponges, like bananas, condensed milk, applesauce, yoghurt-cream combinations and then you have the store bought egg replacer. Most cakes come out fine with some or all these alternatives, but there was no ingredient that could mimic the foaming of egg whites until now!

There have been some experiments with flax gel foams, but some trials are proving it to be less reliable, sometimes the foam collapsing when exposed to any heat, and that it may not be recommended for French macarons. And then we have aquafaba! You know how sometimes things are just in front of your eyes, and you don’t realize the importance/quality of them until someone else shows it to you, aquafaba such a thing. Aquafaba is the water that most beans are boiled in (or come with the beans in their tins) and lots of times discarded. DISCARDED, yes!! It’s like a colleague from work (who has a background in the oil and gas industry) was once telling me, when they first discovered natural gas, it was a byproduct of petroleum extraction. Upon its discovery they didn’t know what to do with it and so they burnt it up in flares for several decades before figuring out a way to extract it and use it. And now it is a precious bio fuel that the earth is running out of. What a waste!

There’s a sense of blasphemy associated to that, realizing you were discarding something with such wonderful qualities! A lot of people were throwing it away and not knowing its amazing capability to foam up. And off course, we can’t discuss aquafaba without thanking the French chef and software engineer respectively, Joel Roessel and Goose Wohlt, who discovered its ability to foam. Since his discovery in Dec 2014, there have been many experiments going on with aquafaba by ardent foodies and many online resources on this, and also a facebook discussion page on Aquafaba – Hits and Misses! So of course when I first read about it, I had to go make some of my own, and since dried chickpeas is always available in my pantry, I decided to make mine from scratch. And I made the basic meringue out it. And it came out great and was really yummy! 

Since aquafaba is such a new discovery, there are many claims and experiments going on and many are shared online, and I will share all my research tips that I have read that I feel are credible - with an asterisk (*).

1. Soak about 3 cups of dried chickpeas overnight or for 6-8 hours. Add enough water for the beans to soak, as they will quadruple in size.

2. Discard the water they were soaked in, as this water is said to contain toxins that cause bloating and gas for some after consumption. (* However, some people are reporting a thicker aquafaba when using the soaked water for boiling the chickpeas).

3. Boil the chickpeas in at least 6 cups of water in a pressure cooker until the chickpeas are well cooked. This depends on the type of pressure cooker, I cooked them 10mins on high and then 15 more minutes on medium flame. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, they will probably cook at least an hour on medium high flame in a regular pot. (* Some people are reporting success cooking the chickpeas in their slow cookers, and getting a good amount of aquafaba).

4. Once chickpeas are done, drain the chickpeas in a sieve and leave them dripping for a couple of hours. This will drip out all the aquafaba you need. (* Some people are recommending to cool and refrigerate the chickpeas for a few hours in the liquid they were boiled in, and then drain them in a sieve – so as to extract more aquafaba, but I have not tried this)

Alternatively, skip the previous 4 steps and open two cans of unsalted chickpeas, and drain them for a few hours. I decided not to do this as I didn’t want any preservatives in my aquafaba.

5. If the aquafaba is not part jelly like it may be too ‘dilute’. Here you need to guess it thickness, it should look like regular egg whites, if too water, just heat it up and reduce some of the liquid until you see it jelly like. I had about 300ml that I boiled down to 185ml (boiled off about a third of the water). When it started looking like jelly like or egg whites, then I had the aquafaba for the recipe.

Aquafaba Meringue

I decided to make the basic meringue before trying something more complicated like French macarons and pavlova.

INGREDIENTS

• 185ml Aquafaba
• ¾ cup icing sugar
• 1/5 tsp cream of tartar
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

METHOD

• Start with the aquafaba and cream of tartar and start whisking it in a stand mixer. You could use an egg beater if you don’t have a stand mixer. (* some people are saying it may take a little longer for the aquafaba to start foaming up compared to egg whites, so be patient – certainly do not beat this with a whisk and your bare hands, you need am electric beater or stand mixer)
• The aquafaba will begin to foam. When it reaches soft peaks, add the vanilla and continue beating, add the sugar bit by bit until the mixture froths up into stiff white peaks. Continue beating, until you can pick up the bowl and turn it upside down and the mixture will not fall off. (This is tricky – if the foam is not ready, it might start sliding off the bowl)
• Once it reaches stiff peaks bowl-upside-down-it-doesn’t-fall-stage, then you can pipe shapes into a parchment paper lined baking tray or just spoon dollops of it on a tray and bake in a preheated 200F oven. Bake them for about 2 hours. If they are smaller then they may be done in 1.5 hours and if they are bigger than usual, then maybe keep them in for 2.5 hours. This also depends on if like them softer and chewier then keep them for a lesser time or if you want them crisper then keep them for a bit longer.
• Once done, let me them cool completely and then peel them off the parchment paper. They are ready to keep and can be stored in an airtight container for a couple of weeks.

I am sending  this recipe as my blog post entry with Meatless Monday, What do you do this weekend and Sunday foot and fitness party, and with Happy healthy and green party,   and with Hearth and soul and with Cook blog share, 
and with Tasty Tuesday and with Welcome home wednesday party  and with Way wow link party., and with full plate thusday   And with Real Food Friday and with My Two fav things on Thursday.    and with Bake of the week,
And with Fiesta Friday and w and with Sweet inspiration link party

 




 

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(EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT ) HOSTING-MY LEGUME LOVE AFFAIR(MLLA) # 95

(EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT )

HOSTING-MY LEGUME LOVE AFFAIR(MLLA) # 95

FOR THE MONTH OF MAY 2016

I am pleased to host My Legume Love Affair #95 for the month of May 2016. MLLA is an ongoing, monthly event since 2008, in which, bloggers from any country or cuisine can take part in this event by presenting their vegetarian legume recipes. This event was created and started by Susan of The well seasoned cook in 2008, and has been hosted by Lisa of Lisa's  Kitchen since February 2013.

This is the second time I am hosting this prestigious event/ blog party since I have started this blog two years ago. In the month of November 2015, I hosted the same event the very first time. I am really obliged and would like to give thanks to Lisa from Lisa's kitchen, who gave me the chance to host this event again in May 2016.

The 68^th United Nations general assembly have declared 2016 - The International year of pulses. Check the website below. The aim of International year of pulses 2016 is to highlight the benefits of pulse-based protein and to encourage people to use lentils in their diet. It means people have globally acknowledged the importance and benefits of lentils. Because of this global recognition, I am changing the rule of this event (with Lisa's consent) and asking my fellow bloggers to present any vegetarian lentil recipe which they have posted in 2016. I hope this way more bloggers will get a chance to participate.

Check this website

I have posted many lentil recipes on my blog and have participated many times in this event. Now I am encouraging my fellow bloggers to participate and make this event a huge success.

Legumes include all types of lentils, pulses, fresh or dried beans, peanuts etc, the list is endless. You can even include chickpeas flour or any other lentil flour too, all you need to do is to present your legume-centric dish on this event page.Rules and Guidelines for this event

1. All world cuisines are welcome, vegetarian or vegan- all entries should be egg free, meat free, seafood free.
2. All courses of meals are accepted-starters, main meal, snack, desserts etc
3. Any derivative such as chickpeas flour, any other lentil flour or even tofu is accepted, as long as the main ingredient is LEGUME.
4. For your dish to be included in the roundup, it must contain more than just a few tablespoons of legumes. Or the main ingredient of the dish should be a legume.
5. Please, ONE entry per blogger.
6. Please,  link to this announcement page, Susan's page and Lisa's page (It is compulsory)
7. This event will close on 31^st of MAY 2016.
8. Any recipe which you posted in 2016 is accepted.
9. Use of logo is optional but appreciated.
10. Please link your entries below. Round-up will be posted on 2nd of JUNE 2016 on my web page.
11. Non-bloggers can send their recipes through e-mail together with the photo of the dish; I will consider them and include them in the round-up.
12. Any questions or queries should be directed to me on- herbsspicesandtradition@gmail.com

Grab this party button and put it somewhere on your blog.

Thanks for stopping by, I can’t wait to see what you are going to share here in this event.

Click here to link