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My Diet Diaries : Flourless Pasta

The word diet often takes different meanings and perspectives for different individuals! Mark Twain once said, “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like and do what you would rather not!”. Well, most will agree to this. Now the word diet is more often used in terms of weight reduction than for eating the right balanced food. I have been in and out of diet programs  sometimes to lose weight and sometimes to maintain the lost weight. The most difficult part I thought was consumption of tasteless food as a part of the diet program. Hence I started making tasty stuff for myself so that not only me but even my family started looking forward to the  meals. I have started noting down the recipes and they are now a part of my diet diaries. Continue reading “My Diet Diaries : Flourless Pasta”

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Knife Skills

As a child, I remember helping my grandma in the kitchen when she would be making something special for us. I would love playing assistant to her and she would generally ask me to cut vegetables or fruits depending on what was cooking.  She would be very particular about the type of cut for the vegetables, its uniformity and size. Her deft handling of the knife would mesmerise me. She was a stickler for perfection and at that time I would fail to understand why she would insist on the vegetables be cut a certain way.

Why are knife skills so important? Is the food not tasty if the food items are not cut in a certain way? What are the different cutting techniques and what are the common types of cuts and shapes used? Well, these are the questions I will try to answer in this blog. Continue reading “Knife Skills”

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Banana Oats Breakfast Bread

Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up in the morning with the sweet smell of a cake or a bread baking wafting through the house? That is what always happens when I bake this delicious and healthy banana oats bread for breakfast. What makes this bread special is very less use of fat in it. (To know more about fats used in baking please refer to my blog on various fats  that are available in the market.)  Inspite of having only 3 tbsp of oil in it, it is so moist and delicate thanks to the bananas and the buttermilk. Buttermilk has naturally occurring stabilisers which help to retain moisture in the cake. Other advantage of having buttermilk is that it is acidic in nature and reacts well with the soda bicarb to produce good leavening. Banana puree is also acidic in nature and together with the buttermilk helps to make the cake light and moist.

Continue reading “Banana Oats Breakfast Bread”

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Betty bought some bitter butter…..

Well, wasn’t that an interesting tongue twister we used to have fun with when we were in the school? The bitter part of it was just to make your tongue twist 🙂 Otherwise butter is one of the most flavourful ingredients used in baking in the fat category. Fats can be classified as solid and liquid. Apart from butter, shortening and margarine fall in the solid fat category. Oils that can be used for baking fall in the liquid fat category. In India, even ghee is used for baking and can be counted in the liquid category. This blog is all about the fat ingredients that can used in baking. Continue reading “Betty bought some bitter butter…..”