The Necessary, The Indispensable, and the Indulgent

Good, creative baking, like good photography, doesn't depend on the tools that you use. It's all about you and your perceptions, intuitions, and inherent talent. Although, with both photography and baking, having certain tools does make the process easier, more fun, and generally a better experience. Here are some images of certain baking tools that are my favourite!

Pastry brush and mechanical sifter. The pastry brush is perfect for greasing cake tins. I used to use spray olive oil before, but the butter brush makes it a lot better.. texture-wise, as well as ease of removal wise. The mechanical sifter is another God-sent invention. It makes a thousand times easier and faster to sift flour although sifting icing sugar can be a nuisance with this. It gets stuck and jammed.
This white sifter is the old-fashioned sifter that works amazing for icing sugar. The rolling pin is a pink silicon rolling pin that is perfect for rolling out dough for biscuits, bread, etc... the dough doesn't stick to the pin as it would if it were wooden. A rubber spatula is another indispensable tool that is used to gather excess dough/mixture. It also helps in folding in- a challenging but easy baking technique.

This is a flat-bladed knife for applying icing/frosting over cakes. This picture is here for entertaining purposes only... look at the reflection! Thought it was fun! =)

I CANNOT live without these! *sigh* my little measuring cups..

This I got from Lakeland in Mirdif City Center. The numbers on the measuring jug are slanted so that you don't have to crane/angle your neck in order to read the measurements once you've placed liquid inside the jug.

Mini muffin tins that work great for making little tarts!

Silicon tart tins! Easy extraction! And a whisk- obviously.. we all know what that's for.. and a wire rack that makes cooling amazing! If you leave cakes or other baked items in their tins or trays, they might overcook.. and the taste is different.. wire racks are amazing for all round cooling.

The best part! This usually gives the theme to your cupcakes! I'd love to learn how to design my own!

Spices, Pasta, and Flour

My favourite part of the entire kitchen is a little shelf that I have where I store all my spices, pasta, flour, sugar and rice. I've placed them all in transparent jars and labelled them in adorable pink round stickers. It makes it very easy to locate things and is also amazing for when I feel creative in the kitchen. All I have to do is stare at the shelf and visualize all the spices I'd like to use.

So, in a little burst of creativity, I decided to play around with the spice jars, and pasta and flour containers and take some photographs. Here are some of them:

:)

Supermarket Series: 1 > Spinneys

So I got this idea a while back to visit the many different supermarkets in Dubai and pick out what I liked best or what I thought would work really well in certain types of foods. First up is Spinney's.. only because it's closest to where I live!

Here's a small selection of what I like from Spinney's..

These are dried berries and cherries with raisins. It is made from authentic dried fruit and one packet contains 170g. Manufactured by Forest Feast. Great for muesli, fruit cakes, or even a healthy yoghurt snack!

Plum tomatoes! Also known as Roma tomatoes, this is the perfect type of tomato to use for making sauces. The texture of the interior makes processing these tomatoes just right. Here is one recipe from the Food Network that uses plum tomatoes for a sauce: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ciao-america-with-mario-batali/fresh-plum-tomato-sauce-recipe/index.html

Dr. Oetker's lemon and orange sugar slices! Great for decorating cupcakes with or even just munching on. These are suitable for vegetarians, too.

The carton in the background is Cawston Press's original fruit apple and ginger juice (1% ginger extract). 10 whole apples are pressed into every carton - according to the bottle! - and this becomes one of your five a day servings of fruit and vegetables! A 100ml serving contains 44 calories. Once you open the carton, be sure to refrigerate it and use it within five days!

The other bottle is Waitrose Sparkling Lemonade with Lemon Juice. There are no artificial flavourings and one serving of 250ml contains 115 calories. Refrigerate once open and consume within three days. The ingredients are carbonated water, sugar, lemon juice from concentrate, citric acid, flavouring, acidity regulator- sodium citrates, preservatives - sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate.

Enjoy! =)

Tomato and Herb Pasta

This afternoon while at university, I decided that I really needed a cooking session to unwind. I wasn't in the mood for anything complicated though so I chose to make pasta. Easy, simple, tastes good, and guaranteed results. I made a spaghetti with tomato, walnuts, breadcrumbs, and coriander. I'm thinking that perhaps rigatoni, fusilli, or penne would have worked better with this, though... just cause there wasn't so much of a sauce in this pasta.

Thai Cooking Class at ICCA!

When I was participating at BakeFestDXB (http://spontaneous-euphoria.blogspot.com/2010/09/bake-fest-dxb.html), I met the girl behindhttp://www.foodonymph.com/ who told me that she and a few other food bloggers meet every month to try something new in the world of food! I was so excited to join the group and yesterday we took a Thai cooking class at the International Center for Culinary Arts in Hana Center. It was a lot of fun, I got to meet other food bloggers out there, and it was a very exciting- and delicious-process throughout. We were in pairs of two and my partner was Anja. She has a lovely blog that you can check out here: http://anjasfood4thought.blogspot.com/

I can't seem to find the links for all the other blogs!

Here are some pictures from last night as well as the menu.

Menu:

Starter:

shrimpcakes on lemongrass skewers

raw papaya salad with cashews and dressing

vegetable noodles

thai red curry fish with jasmine rice

beef stirfry

pandan leaves and coconut caramel pudding (soo moist, amazing texture, lovely!!!)

Ingredients for the papaya salad dressing.

Cherry tomatoes for the papaya salad. I had no idea cherry tomatoes were used in Thai cooking. I thought it was just a Mediterranean thing.

The delicious papaya salad.

Our noodles- done!

Crispy beef stirfry done! Have I mentioned before how much I love stirfrying?

Thai red curry fish done!

The dessert!

My amazing job at cutting and chopping! I am horrible at this! It was a big challenge for me to get this right!

Themed

These are some cupcakes that I made for a lovely friend of mine who just had a baby boy! I tend to prefer simpler cupcakes with just frosting on it in a home-made style.

Chicken Pulao - Recipe Included!

So one of my favourite dishes that are made at home is chicken pulao. I've been meaning to learn how to make it for ages now and today finally did! Here are some pictures of my experience as well as the recipe.

Chicken Pulao Recipe

Serves 12-15

Ingredients

• 1 or 2 green chillies, sliced
• 1.25kg medium tomatoes cut into fours
• 1 ½ whole garlic
• 3 1 ½ inch ginger
• 5 cinnamon sticks
• 4 bay leaves
• 3 pieces big, black cardamom
• 6 pieces small, green cardamom
• 1 handful black pepper corns
• 2 tbsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp cloves
• 9 medium onions, sliced
• 200g ghee
• 100ml vegetable oil
• 3 800g whole chicken: breast, legs, thighs separated
• 1 tbsp salt
• 2 medium potatoes, chopped
• 3 tsp chili powder
• 1.55kg basmati rice
• 2 handfuls coriander, chopped
• 2L water

Procedure

1. Blend tomatoes with green chili until thick and chunky.
2. Separately, blend ginger and garlic to a puree.
3. Heat oil and ghee in a large pot until steaming hot. Then, on high heat, add cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, cardamoms, black pepper corns, cumin seeds, and cloves. Stir until fragrant, then add onion and cook until almost brown. Hint: proceed to the next step when ghee and oil bubbles subside.
4. Add garlic and ginger mixture and cook. Color of mixture should be a rich golden and light brown.
5. Next, add chicken to pot and coat thoroughly with mixture. Add 1 tbsp salt and mix very well.
6. Put lid on and cook for ten minutes until chicken juices emerge.
7. Remove lid and stir the chicken so that the mixture does not stick to the bottom of the pot and so that the juices evaporate
8. When juices evaporate, add tomato mixture and cook until tomato liquid reduces by half.
9. Add potatoes and chili powder. Stir well.
10. Put lid on and cook for 10-15 minutes until chicken is fully cooked. Hint: oil should be present in pot.
11. Meanwhile, boil water in separate pot.
12. Add coriander to chicken and potato mixture and stir until (even more!) fragrant.
13. Add uncooked rice and stir very well. Then, add boiled water to pot and stir.
14. Add salt to taste and stir. Put lid back on and bring to boil.
15. When liquid has reduced, lower heat and simmer until liquid has absorbed.