Blackberry Cobbler

Now it was the blackberries’ turn to surrender. Blackberry, such an ugly fruit yet so delicious. Blackberry cobbler. So easy, I could bake this in my sleep. This is definitely one of my favorite baked dessert. By the end of it, we were scraping the bottom of the pan to savor the last bits. It does look similar to the blueberry buckle I made earlier, but the taste is anything but similar. Blackberries are more tart and sweeter than blueberries.
Ingredients:
1 cup flour (sifted)
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
½ cup melted butter
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups fresh blackberries
2 tbsp sugar (to sprinkle over blackberries)
Method:
Mix sugar, flour, baking powder and milk together. Add milk and whisk. Now add the melted butter and mix well. Butter your baking dish. Pour batter, tip the blackberries evenly over the batter. Sprinkle the 2 tbsp sugar over this. Bake in your pre-heated oven for 50-60 minutes in 180C.
Serve it warm/hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The tanginess of the berries and the creaminess of the ice cream…it’s something else!
PS: if you have friends coming over from the US or any place else, ask them to get these kind of berries instead of the usual chocolates and perfumes fair. I’m waiting for raspberries!

Blueberry buckle

This time around I got my hands on fresh blueberries and blackberries (courtesy, USA return Mr.Rao). My first time tasting fresh blueberries, wasn’t as much as I’d built it up in my head. Nevertheless, I had to bake something. Instinctively I thought of a simple sponge with blueberries. Didn’t seem enough though, so I looked up some blueberry desserts online (girl’s gotta bake, people). I found something very similar to what I had in mind, but with a streusel topping. Streusel is a buttery crumbly topping you’d find on pies and certain cakes. You can try this even with strawberries I suppose. In a nutshell, I was going to bake a Blueberry Buckle!
Ingredients
Streusel topping:
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
¼ cup chilled butter
¼ tsp cinnamon powder
Cake batter:
1 cup sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
½ cup butter (room temp)
1 cup sugar (powdered to make life easier)
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1/3 cup warm milk
1 ½ cups fresh blueberries
Method:
For the streusel, combine all the ingredients in a bowl and using a fork mash the chilled butter till it resembles coarse bread crumbs. Keep aside.
For the cake batter, combine the dry ingredients and keep aside. With your hand blender or even a fork, cream the butter till fluffy. Add the sugar and cream it till well combined and fluffy. Now add the egg and vanilla and mix well. Now add the flour mixture and milk alternatively and fold it into the butter mixture, without whisking or ever beating it.
Pour the cake batter into a greased baking tin (8 inch) and smoothen the top with a spatula. Tip the blueberries evenly across the batter. Top it with the streusel and bake for 50 minutes or till the top is nice and brown in color. Make sure you do the tooth pick test. If it comes out clean you know what to do. Take it out and let it cool.
Serving …must: Warm/hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, please!
I have some in the fridge I need to polish it off clean ;)
PS: I am going to bombard the blog with more dessert recipes. Kindly put up with my sweet tooth. I have to cater to its needs from time to time.

Xian

First of all thanks a lot Karthik for inviting us for lunch over to Xian. We discovered one of the best spare ribs in the city.
Xian is located near the Ulsoor Lake. You might just drive pass it as because it has no flashy sign with the restaurant’s name. We assume that the interiors are on the cusp of completion, however that fantastic ginormous yin-yang on the ceiling, didn’t go unnoticed. The abundance of natural light just made it pleasant.
We started off with an array of starters: Spare ribs, chilli prawn balls, bacon wrapped prawns and crispy spinach with vegetables. The spare ribs like...stole the show! We aren’t big fans of the fat part of pork, but talk about being cooked to perfection. The meat just separated from the bone with one effortless stroke of the fork. It was tender, juicy and succulent. The sauce of the ribs could be served as a dip to turn any boring finger food yum! Well we held a mini conference over the last piece of ribs at the table. Moving on to the main course, we went for the Malaysian flat noodles with mixed meat, pickled prawn in black bean sauce, shredded lamb, Thai red curry with steam rice and sliced pork in char siu sauce. Yet again the pig stole the show. We guess Xian knows how to cook their pork and come up with lip smacking sauce to go with it. The Thai curry was another favorite at the table. There was a perfect balance of coconut milk and the spices. It was impressive to see ingredients like galangal and kaffir lime leaves to bring out the best flavors.
The crispy spinach with vegetables and pickled prawn in black bean sauce weren’t memorable. Basically, the flour over powered the taste of the spinach and the corn starch was just too evident in the black bean sauce. But the most disappointing of the lot were the chilli prawn balls and bacon wrapped prawns. The coating of the corn starch was used excessively for both these dishes that it made them chewy and heavy. The chillies in the prawn balls were over powering and were hard to go down. The flavor of bacon was totally lost in the bacon wrapped prawns. We definitely recommend any of the pork dishes, especially the spare ribs and the Thai red curry. And as someone said, good company always enhances the taste of food ;) thanks Karthik, Snigdha and Sreeja.

Thai red curry(chicken)

Pickled prawns in black bean sauce

Sliced pork in Char Siu sauce

Malaysian flat noodles with mixed meat

Shredded Lamb

Spare Ribs

Chilli prawn balls

Crispy spinach with vegetables

Bacon wrapped prawns

Roast Chicken

We had this picture in our minds, one large roast chicken, well stuffed, a bottle of wine...basically we were in a mood for something fancy yet not much investment of stress. Even while preparing, there wasn’t much thought put into it...lot of learning from accidents this time. So when we were getting our pedicures done, we put down a small list of basic stuff (since our hands were free) of the roast chicken and headed off to the supermarket.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken (skin on and cleaned)
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
3 teaspoons of dried mixed herbs (oregano, parsley, rosemary and the likes)
2 large onions
1 large pod of garlic
10 cooked baby potatoes
2 tbsp soya sauce
2 tbsp of tomato ketchup
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp butter
approx 1 handful of cashew nuts and raisins each
salt to taste

Method:
Marinate the whole bird with balsamic vinegar, mixed herbs and half the pod of garlic chopped. Leave it covered for about 30 minutes.
In the mean time, get on with the stuffing. Sauté the finely chopped onions in hot olive oil till it turns golden brown. Now add the garlic, cashew nuts, raisin, tomato ketchup and soya sauce and let it cook for about 5 minutes. Keep aside.
Now, stuff the chicken with this mix and seal the opening with toothpicks or use a sterilized needle and thread to stitch it up.
Heat butter in a heavy bottom saucepan, preferably non-stick...now place the chicken breast down and cover it for about 10 minutes or till you fork it and realized that it’s done, pour any remaining marinade on the bird. Post 10 minutes, turn over the chicken and let it cook till the skin turns golden brown.
Serving Suggestions:
Cream of mushroom soup with garlic bread sticks goes perfectly well with this deadly dish. Also, good old mashed potatoes on the side of the chicken and steamed / grilled veggies (carrot, peas, baby potatoes). So what we did was, we enjoyed the steamed veggies with caramelized onions with red wine. We poured ourselves a nice glass of Jacob's Creek Vintage Merlot.
This was just how we wanted a tiresome day to end, and it was healthy! :)