Grilled Chicken Burgers with Caramelized Onion

Very simple. Most of this dish is just assembling to be honest. And it's so good for you. It ticks all the boxes: vegetables, carbohydrates, protein, good fat (olive oil)...

You can omit the cheese and mayo if you want to make this healthier.

Ingredients
4 hamburger buns
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, sliced thinly
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons water
500g chicken mince, seasoned
4 Boston lettuce leaves
4 slices of tomato
4 dill pickles, sliced
Mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard

Procedure
Slice open the hamburger buns and toast them cut side down on a heated but not oiled grilled plate.
Remove and set aside.
Shape the seasoned chicken mince into four, not too thick (otherwise they won't cook that well on the inside while burning on the outside), patties. Grease the grill plate with half the olive oil and cook the patties until cooked through... around 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the remaining olive oil in a pan and fry the sliced onions. Once they're cooked, add the balsamic vinegar, water, and brown sugar. Stir until onion caramelizes.
Arrange one lettuce leaf and one slice of tomato on each bottom half of hamburger bun. Top with cooked chicken patty, and pile the sliced dill pickles and caramelized onion on top. Spread mayonnaise on top half of the bun and place over the burger. Serve with mayonnaise and ketchup.

Spicy Tomato, Mint, and Olive Salad

This is the quickest salad ever. I know, I know. I say that about a lot of stuff. "The quickest cake! The quickest cookie!" Well this is the quickest salad. Relatively speaking. The quickest salad I've ever made. But I 

don't make many salads so I'm maybe just talking through my head…

It's a Turkish dish called domates salatasi and is wonderfully flavoured with mint and chili. We had it for Iftar 

today and it was very refreshing. This would work amazingly with warm bread and some nice goat's cheese.

Ingredients
4 medium tomatoes, sliced
1 onion, sliced
2 red chillies, finely chopped
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Juice of one lemon
A handful of mint leaves
A handful of whole black olives

Procedure
Place the tomatoes, onion, and chilli in a salad bowl. Mix together the lemon juice and olive oil. Drizzle over salad. Top with mint leaves. Season. Garnish with olives.

Peach and Raspberry Pie

It's here. Ramadan is finally here.

It's most definitely my favourite month (and that of almost everyone else I know!). There's such a feeling of community spirit that surrounds the entire month- from getting up at 4AM and sharing the first (or last, depending on how you look at it) meal of the day with your family, to breaking your fast with family and friends, to sending food to the neighborhood mosque so those less fortunate than you can enjoy a hearty meal as well, to sending food to those you care about, to going to the mosque at night and meeting everyone for special Ramadan prayers- all of these bring with it such a feeling of peace and harmony.

And more than just the community feeling, the sense of spirituality within oneself is even more overpowering. Ramadan is not just a month where you don't eat from sunrise to sunset- it's only one aspect of that- and perhaps the aspect most easily noticeable. Ramadan is about freeing yourself from worldly trivialities and from material concerns. It's a sort of asceticism where you look deep inside yourself, challenge yourself spiritually, connect with God, and strengthen your faith. It's supposed to be a month of reflection, where you are grateful for all that you have and where you evaluate where you are spiritually. It's a month of askance and forgiveness. And personally, I think Ramadan is the one of the best gifts you get being a Muslim.

Yes, you do feel hungry, and yes, you do feel tired- but the aim of the abstaining from food is to be able to empathize with those who have to experience this on a day to day basis, and I think with what is happening in Somalia just now, this fact is especially poignant. While you 'suffer' for about 15 hours, what keeps you going is that you know there's going to be a feast for you when the sun sets. Can many other people say the same? I think worse than the feeling of hunger is the feeling of not knowing whether that hunger will be satiated, the feeling of not knowing what is to come. We should all unchain ourselves from our selfish preoccupations and focus on what we can do to improve the situation of those who have to endure hunger, thirst, exhaustion, fear, and doubt on a day to day basis.

Sadly, in this world where money is tried to be made on just about anything, Ramadan has become commercialized. Media industries have played on the lazy factor that not eating tends to create by preparing year long for television shows to be specially aired during this month. The shows are all day long and are, to put it bluntly, pointless. How many soap operas can one watch? I know people who are obsessed with their shows and make a list of which ones to watch, when to switch channels, and which airing of the show to watch so they can watch another one.

I know people who make countless amounts of food, and ironically make food the entire focus of the month. Ramadan, quite surprisingly, is now associated with iftars (the meal when you break your fast- which probably lasts less than an hour). Supermarkets and restaurants have put out such intense marketing campaigns and the day before Ramadan, the supermarkets were packed and all the shelves were empty. I know many other people who eat from dusk till dawn (the time when we do not fast) and sleep throughout the day (when we are supposed to abstain from food). Is this the purpose of the month? I highly doubt it. The general, basic requirements of the month are to do your prayers (like always but perhaps more diligently), refrain from food from dawn till dusk, and to read the Quran. Sure, you do all of that, but then you watch TV for hours, eat like a someone who hasn't for weeks, and sleep for 12 hours a day? What's the point? Is food really that important?

Now you're probably thinking how messed up I am for blogging about all of this in a food blog, right before I post a recipe but here's what it is: I don't have work or university this month, I am completely free, and I miss cooking. And so I am helping out the household by making meals so we can send food to our family, friends, and the mosque. And yes, one of my aims this month is to try making new things I haven't made before, and I plan on blogging about them- but what's wrong with sharing food with those you love if you do it in moderation?

****

Ingredients
for the pastry
1 cup plain flour
90g chilled and cubed unsalted butter
2 tablespoons icing sugar
2 tablespoons iced water
for the filling
3 egg yolks
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tablespoons corn flour
1 cup milk
170g white chocolate, chopped
50ml whipping cream
for the topping
3 peaches, sliced
70g raspberries

Procedure
Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a 23cm loose-based fluted pie tin.
Sift the flour into a bowl and add the cubed butter with your finger-tips, mixing till you achieve a sand like texture.
Add the icing sugar and mix in. Then, make a well in the center and add the iced water. Using a knife, make a cutting action through the dough until the mixture comes together.
Roll out the dough on a floured surface until its big enough to fit base and sides of tin. Place in tin and refrigerate for twenty minutes.
Place a sheet of wax paper on top of tin and fill with uncooked rice. Place in the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the wax paper and uncooked rice and bake for a further 15 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Then, make the filling. Whisk together egg yolks, caster sugar, and cornflour until pale. Heat the milk in a pan until almost boiling and separately melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Gradually pour the milk into the egg mixture, whisking CONSTANTLY. Sieve the mixture back into the milkpan and cook over low heat until mixture thickens, about 4 minutes. Remember to constantly stir.
Once mixture has thickened, fold in melted white chocolate and whip in the cream. Allow to cool to room temperature and then place in the fridge for 15 minutes.

After that, pour the custard onto the pie crust and arrange the peaches and raspberries on top.

****

I've never been lucky with pie crusts. I have never had a glitch free experience while making one. Today, after I rolled out the dough and while lifting it to the tin, the mixture kept on sticking to floured surface. Then, I added some MORE flour and then the mixture kept on breaking. Eventually, I went caveman style and pressed the dough gradually into the tin. When it finally came out of the oven, I ended up pushing the loosebased tin up and so a quarter of the crust lining broke off. And then, obviously, when I poured the custard in, it sort of dripped out and down..

I've been craving peaches for the past five days and decided that I would pair them up with raspberry a la peach melba style..

It's now in the fridge, recovering...

Lemon and Mint Cupcakes

And I'm back. In Dubai that is. And back to blogging so it seems. I just spent almost two months in the wonderful city of London doing an internship. I loved my job- I learnt so much, both about the nature of the work and about myself. And more than anything, I fell even more in love with the city. I discovered new places, did different things, spent so much time just wandering around, and truly relished the city by fully absorbing its sights, sounds, and smells. And with that exploration and discovery, I found out how much I'm inclined to certain things. Those things being small businesses, entrepreneurship, tiny alleyways, the absolutely beautiful roadside cafe or bakery, and just the idea of walking and walking to places (which I almost never get to do in Dubai).

Maybe the thing that you might find funny reading that previous sentence was that I discovered how much I like entrepreneurship- since Dubai is in some ways considered to be the embodiment of that. And it is- in many ways. But mostly, I find businesses in Dubai to just consist of bringing the latest foreign fad to town. Or bringing the newest chain store which- gasp- doesn't have a branch in Dubai. Entrepreneurship should be the total opposite. It should aim to create a culture of its own, a following of its own, ideas and techniques of its own, and most importantly, an identity of its own.

But anyways, on to the recipe. I got back to Dubai- and the heat- with a longing for lemonade. Or anything lemon and mint, really. And almost suddenly, I had an idea of lemon and mint cupcakes. Lemonade cupcakes, in some ways. I wanted to put 7up in the cake batter (something like Irish soda bread, haha) but decided against it.

Ingredients
115g unsalted butter, softened
115g caster sugar
2 eggs
115g self raising flour
Juice and zest of half a lemon
-for the buttercream
66g butter
5cups icing sugar
2.5tbsp milk
Juice and zest of half  a lemon
1 tbsp mint leaves, finely chopped

12 mini lemon slices and 12 sprigs of mint- for decoration

Procedure
Preheat oven to 180C and line a 12 cup cupcake tray with liners. Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy for about eight minutes on medium speed. The key for the sponge is for it to be very light and so beating the butter and sugar for a while really helps. Add the eggs one at a time, beating in between. Add the flour and fold in, followed by the lemon zest and juice. Fill the liners with batter and place in the oven in the lower rack for 15-20 minutes so that the top of the cakes reach the middle of the oven. When the cupcakes are done, bring them out of the oven and let them cool till room temperature before icing them with the buttercream.

For the buttercream: 
Beat the sugar and butter until incorporated, add the milk and beat. Fold in lemon juice and zest and chopped mint leaves. Beat on high for around six minutes until very fluffy.

Sorry for the picture quality... color-wise. When I edited the size, they somehow messed up and I didn't feel like changing anything, haha.

The Cake Decorating Weekend

This weekend I had the wonderful opportunity of taking cake decorating classes with both Eric Lanlard and Mich Turner who are, in today's words, epic cakemakers. I have books by both of them and whenever university work gets a little more stressful than usual, I plonk myself in bed and flip through the books whilst daydreaming. I'd rather be making cakes than taking politics notes that make no sense, really. (No, I still love my major.)

Eric, Mich, and Peggy Porschen have been the three people who have inspired me to create tiered cakes and glamourous/couture-y cakes like these mini rose cakes, this three-tiered cake, and the first one of them all- the one I decided to make one midnight: a simple two tiered imprinted cake. Their creations are the prime example of eye-candy and are awe-inspiring in their level of detail, elegance, and beauty.

The class that I took with Eric was the Cupcake Masterclass (Info for classes can be found here.) We learned how to work with gumpaste (Which I had never done before!- Gumpaste is slightly different from sugarpaste/fondant in its texture- it hardens fairly quickly), we used the gumpaste on silicon moulds to get desired shapes and then learned to how to color the figures and use glitter. Eric also showed us three lovely techniques to ice cupcakes (a wonderful swirl, petals, and one that was absolutely gorgeous and sort of looked like petals and leaves) Sadly I didn't manage to the last one really well. It was great since I tried a lot of things I hadn't tried before. The session was followed by a wonderful afternoon tea. Each of the sandwiches and pastries were presented soo beautifully that all of us gasped everytime they were brought out.  Only after I took the pictures did I realize that they were blurry- I was so excited to eat all of the goodies haha.

The class with Mich was a crowncakes and cookies master class at the beautiful Langham hotel on Regent Street. We learned how to ice and flood a cookie (I FINALLY learned how to flood a cookie- now I can use all my cutters to their full potential!) and then learned four wonderful designs for the crowncakes. I was quite proud of them- they looked so pretty I didn't want to eat them! But, also in this case, there was one technique I didn't quite master which was the candy striped cake. My lines were really squiggly and shakey :( But it was the design I loved best. The one I was happiest with though was the monochrome lace with pink icing in sashes and bows and drops. It was a great class ALSO followed by a wonderful afternoon tea. I hope I can recreate something like this on my own because my main issues seem to be getting the royal icing the right consistency and covering the cake neatly with fondant. More info on the classes here.

the squiggly cake.... but I made the rose myself!

I'm extremely glad I got to take both these classes and the icing on the cake (pun not intended) was that they were on consecutive days. I conquered my fears of gumpaste and royal icing and I'm ready to work with both of these mediums a lot more extensively than I previously had. 

Mushroom, Leek, Basil, and Pine Nut Risotto

Lately, I've been going to the vegetable aisle in supermarkets to stare at it for inspiration. I did that yesterday at Waitrose and came up with this. It's really light and summery. Before that, I came up with a corn, asparagus, and capsicum risotto recipe but I can't exactly remember what else went into it.

I haven't used carnaroli rice much- only about twice before and twice now- and I find that it takes much longer to cook than arborio.


Ingredients
4 cups chicken stock + 2 cups water
2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 medium sized leek, sliced thinly

1 cup carnaroli rice
0.5 cup button mushrooms, quartered
Freshly grated zest and juice of one lemon
3 tablespoons fresh basil
2 tablespoons pine nuts
30g parmigiano reggiano

Procedure
Put the stock and water to simmer on low heat.
In another pot, heat the butter until melted. Add onion, garlic, and leeks, stirring until translucent. Add the carnaroli rice and stir for 1 minute to lightly "toast" the rice. Add 1 cup of stock/water mixture and stir constantly until absorbed.
Add the mushrooms and one more cup of water and stir. Keep on stirring until almost all the water gets absorbed. Once water is absorbed, add another cup of water.
Check the rice once in a while to make sure it's cooked. If the rice is still not fully cooked and the water has run out, add some boiling water from the kettle and stir. Repeat the process until rice is fully cooked.
Remove from heat, stir in lemon zest and juice, basil, and pine nuts. Garnish with parmigiano reggiano.

Motcomb Street

I already posted this on my travel blog here http://sid-sees.blogspot.com/2011/06/motcomb-street.html but here are some pictures!

Motcomb Street is a wonderful little street tucked away in Knightsbridge- it has restaurants, a chocolate shop, cafes, and eateries. And everything is wonderful.

This is just a roundup! You can find the whole post (with more pictures and writing- details!) on my travel blog here: http://sid-sees.blogspot.com/2011/06/motcomb-street.html