Manudevi's Delhi Breakfast

This is the winning dish from Mumtaz Mahal's recent "Grandma's Recipes" competition. Ms. Ritu Chaturvedi has been kind enough to share it with me and allow it to be added to the blog. This is a traditional breakfast made of three main components - the bread (or Puri/poori), and the curries to dip it in - one a sweet pumpkin, and the other a tangy potato and tomato curry.

Bedmi Poori

A bread made of wheat flour and stuffed with ground white lentil. These are heavier than the regular puris (good recipe for the traditionals here).

Ingredients:

• Dough
• 3 cups flour
• 1cup Semolina
• 1tsp Chickpea flour
• 2tsp Butter
• Salt to taste

Shakshouka

Shakshouka (or shakshuka) is a dish I first tried at Baker and Spice, Dubai. It hails from Northern Africa, but other areas over the middle east, and the Ottoman empire also lay a claim to it's invention. Simply, it is baked eggs in a rich sauce. This is fairly close to the version found in Baker and Spice, and now at least once a month at my own table - either for breakfast, or an easy dinner.

Ingredients:

• 500g Tomatoes (chopped) either tinned or fresh (a mixture works best)
• 1 red capsicum (diced)
• 1 onion (diced)
• 3 cloves of garlic (crushed) or to taste
• 2 tsp ground coriander (I like to toast mine from seed and crush)
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp sweet paprika
• 1 tsp crushed chilli
• 1 tbsp sugar
• salt and pepper to taste
• a handful of fresh coriander (chopped)
• 4 eggs

Balaleet - An Emirati Breakfast

Noodles for breakfast? With fragrant spices and omelet morsels? Doesn't sound like the kind of thing you could just whip up every morning for breakfast? Well the Emiratis do - citizens of the United Arab Emirates. Maybe not every morning, but more than just sometimes they might prepare this traditional vermicelli noodle dish.

It sounds harder than it is - it's one of those no-measure things, and tastes good both hot and cold. I tasted it for the first time at the Cultural Breakfast in Dubai, and learned how to make it myself last week at La Mere Culinere's cooking session. This is my own slap-dash version.

Ingredients:

Saffron and Honey Breakfast Cake

Friday morning is the start of the weekend in this part of the world. It is the holy day, and so we rest on Fridays and Saturdays. I am still getting used to the whole 'work' routine on Sundays, but something I have settled into quite nicely is pancake morning on Fridays. It's an institution. 

But this week, Friday came at the end of holidays where we had worn our Friday institution out a little - when you have something every day, it is no longer a novelty. And so, to mark the special day, I really had to pull one out of the hat. So, with my new-found confidence in baking, I decided to make cake. I figured if it was shallow, then it would cook quickly, so this is what I came up with.

Renewed Croissants

As my first lazy post, I would like to talk about my favourite pastry treats from the Boulangerie. We have escaped the Dubai heat during summer for the last few years by going to a cottage in the French provincial countryside so we can eat the real thing (I know, it's a bloody expensive bit of pastry). We travel with a couple of Melbournites who love their pastry a little too much, and when they arrive at the boulangerie, their stomachs take over their mouths, and instead of asking for "seess cwahsons" (6), they ask for "sayz cwahsons" (16). Result? Ploo cwahsons kay nessessaire. (more croissants than necessary).

Croissants have this habit of petrifying overnight, and there is nothing to be done about this - they are basically made of butter and air, with a little flour thrown in, and oxidation and time are not a croissant's best friends.