This Thursday was the last class of course-1, it was basically a practice of making roses. I was very excited as well as sad that day, since the classes for course-1 got over. I enrolled for the course-2 which starts in April first week.
Now coming to the last cake; this week was one of the most pressurized weeks at my office. There were some unexpected problems in the project and I was really stressed, more than that I was suffering from an eye infection. So Wednesday when it was time to bake and ice the cake, I was totally exhausted. In any case, I didn’t want to miss this class, so I came home a bit early from office on Wenesday. I got this great idea of baking some different cake this time. So I followed a dark chocolate cake recipe from one of the cookbooks that I had. The cake turned out to be a total disaster – my first spoiled cake. First of all, it had become dark from outside, it was not baked from inside and it had sunk in the center. It was already late and I had no mood to bake it again. So I thought of using the same cake for my class.
Now the problem was, which color to use for icing so that the black color was not visible. I didn’t want a chocolaty icing because I didn’t want to put roses on chocolate icing. So I thought of using a very dark color for icing. It demanded almost 4 times more icing than what normally would have taken, to cover up the sunken center. I could not make it very smooth because of shortage of time. Finally when I took it to class on Thursday, I was ashamed to show it to anyone.
I somehow managed to make the roses even though my eyes were really bothering me. Everyone said I had done a good job, even though my cake looked very unprofessional. I was thinking not to post it here, but this would remind me of things not-to-do in future. So it is here.
Even after all these, I am really happy with my roses. They looked beautiful. I need a lot more practice to make perfect roses, but these were very good, may be above my expectation.
This was on the drafts for a long time now. My colleague Cyndy asked me this recipe few days ago, I heard it partially and posted Chicken tikka . She had asked this for her friend Barbara, who mailed me next day asking about tikka masala that is served in Indian stores here. For one or the other reason, I could not make it before and I finally prepared it over the weekend. It was delicious.
Few days back when I went to an Indian restaurant here, I saw a blood red colored gravy with chicken pieces in it, named as ‘chicken tikka masala ‘. The taste was good, but I started wondering why they call it tikka masala . For sure, those pieces were not tikkas – chicken pieces marinated in a spicy paste and then grilled in tandoor . After I returned home, I started wondering if my knowledge about this dish was wrong. I googled and finally I was sure that my knowledge of this dish was correct. There is one possibility that, the restaurant chefs might have added marinated pieces in the sauce but after heating it for few times, the coating of the pieces might have got dissolved in the sauce.
Like any other Indian recipe, there are many versions for this recipe. This is my version of it. It came out real good. So I thought of sending it to RP’s JFI tomatoes .
Ingredients: 8-10 chicken tikkas 1/2 cup chopped onion 1 tea spn ginger-garlic paste 1 cup tomato paste (boil tomatoes in hot water, peel and grind) 1/2 cup cream 1 tea spn chili powder 1/2 tea spn cumin powder 1/2 tea spn coriander powder 1/2 tea spn garam masala (optional) 1/2 tea spn sugar Oil Salt
Method: Prepare chicken tikkas , make sure to use small pieces of chicken for it.
Heat oil and fry onion, ginger-garlic paste. When onions turn slightly brownish, add tomato paste, all dry powders, sugar and salt. Cook for 3-4mins. Add cream, mix and now add tikkas , cook for another 2-3mins. Garnish with coriander leaves. Serve hot.
Serves : 2-3 Preparation time : 15mins
PS: I prefer to add the pieces to gravy around 30mins before serving to stop the tikka covering getting dissolved in gravy.
