New year 2017

Different countries of the world have distinct food traditions for New year. We tried to merge a few into our New year cuisine this time. Our budding 7 year old cook tried a hand in preparing the fruit punch for the meal.

We made a vegetarian version of the Hoppin' John( a black eyed peas dish made in Southern US) served with collard greens and corn bread. We had corn bread for New year's breakfast. Black-eyed peas is seen as a sign of good luck for the New year. The dessert was a modified version of the Norwegian dish for new year/Christmas with 12 grapes. The grapes are a Spanish tradition, each signifying good luck for each month.Served on the side with raita and fruit punch.

Hoppin' John

Ingredients:

Dry Black eyed peas - 1/2 cup 

Collard greens           - Small bunch (chopped and blanched)

Onions(chopped)       - 1 cup

Vegetarian meat*       - 1/2 cup (chopped in small cubes)

garlic                          - 2 cloves(finely chopped)

Rice                            - 1 cup(basmati or jasmine)

Caraway seeds          - 1 tsp

Mustard seeds            - 1 tsp

Red chillies                 - 1-2 

Oil of choice               - 2 tsp

salt                              - as per taste

Water                          - as required for cooking rice and black -eyed peas

Soak black -eyed peas for half hour to an hour and pressure cook for a couple of whistles. Do not overcook it. Meanwhile cook the rice until well done but not mushy.

Heat a pan, add oil and mustard seeds, caraway and broken red chillies. Once the mustard seeds splutter add the garlic and onions and saute well.Add the vegetarian meat with salt to this and saute well until they are soft and not chewy. Once it is well done add the greens and black eyed peas and let them blend together in the closed pan for a few minutes. Finally add the cooked rice to this and let it cook in low heat for about 5-7 minutes.

Then switch off and serve warm with raita or pappadam.

The complete platter(leftover corn bread from breakfast)

 

vegetarian Hoppin' John

Grapes and Norwegian rice pudding

Tips:
* we made the vegetarian meat at home with gluten and vegetables.
1.To avoid overcooking the black-eyed peas, a pinch of salt can be added while cooking or cook with less water.
2.Instead of the vegetarian meat, pappadam or appalam fried in less oil(Indian seasoned dough fried like a crispy chip) can be used. The original Hoppin' John uses bacon, so we used the vegetarian meat.
3.Caraway seeds are similar to saunf in India, so can be replaced by that or with cumin seeds.
4.Any other greens can be used, collard greens are a tradition of the Southern United States.
5. Black pepper can be used instead of red pepper.

Fruit Punch:

In a bowl or a serving cup add few slices of oranges, apples,orange zest and juice of choice( we added Cranberry -Mango).  Serve with ice cubes. To add more flavor frozen juice ice cubes can be added.

Parmesan Grissini

This was our first attempt on making parmesan grissini.It was a little labor intensive but the energy and enthusiasm of my 7 year old in the holidays came in handy for this. We gave some sticks as part of the Christmas gift ot our neighbors and they loved it.


Ingredients:

All purpose flour                  - 2 cups
Gluten                                 - 2/3 cup
Cracked red pepper            - 1 tsp
Carraway seeds                  - 1 tsp
Active dry yeast                  - 3 tsp
Warm milk                           - 1 cup
Salt                                      - as per taste
Oil of choice                        - 3 tbsp( I used canola oil)
Parmesan cheese(grated) - 1/4 cup

Mix the dry ingredients together. Slowly add the oil and the milk and mix well until they all come together. Finally add the parmesan cheese to the dough until all of it blends into the dough well. Knead the dough for 3- 5 minutes on a floured surface until it forms a smooth dough.

Place the dough in a warm place covered until it doubles. It should take an hour to couple of hours depending on the temperature and moisture conditions.

Once it is doubled, knead for a minute. Roll the dough on a floured surface to a 1/4 inch thick rectangle with a rolling pin.
Meanwhile heat the oven to 400 F.
Cut the dough into long strips about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.
Roll these strips into the form of rounded sticks as in the picture below.

Dough rolled out into stciks before baking

 Place them on a baking sheet/tray. Bake them for about 10-15 minutes. Turn them over in between.
They should bake to a firm to hard consistency.
Serve with any dip or with soup.The whole wheat tastes great as a snack with coffee or tea too.
We had ours with a clear soup the next day.
 Merry Christmas!!

baked grissini

Grissini with chocolate barks

Whole wheat version

Tips:

1.You can use just  bread flour or part Whole wheat flour & all purpose flour instead of all purpose and gluten(the riginal recipe used bread flour).
2. Instead of kneading the dough by hand I placed the dough in my Ninja food processor and ran it in the dough mode for a couple of minutes.
3. Use alternative dry spices for different flavours.
4.I used to store grated parmesan cheese. The other option could be to buy a block of Parmesan cheese and grate it for the recipe.
5. I placed the dough covered in an Aluminium foil in the oven rack. It took a couple of hours for it to rise.
6. You can reduce the amount of oil to the recipe as we did with the whole wheat version.