Roasted chestnuts

Traders Joe’s is one of my favorite place to shop. I was there this week for my regular stuff when I came across fresh and earthy colored Italian chestnuts. I was so tempted and bought a box. I have heard a lot about roasted chestnuts, so I decided to go with it as it was really simple to make and thought it would make a prefect entry for Jai & Bee’s click event. It was the first time I ever tasted chestnuts they were absolutely delicious. A roasted chestnut tastes sweet and creamy, tender inside and has a wonderful aroma; nothing could be more prefect than a warm nutty snack on a cold winter evening.

To roast the chestnuts, pre heat the oven to 400 F
Cut an X mark into one side of each nut with a sharp, pointy knife to allow the steam escape caused while roasting and place them single layered on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast them for 15-20 minutes, the skin will pop open like a flower and the inside (nut) will be pale golden color.

Cool down, peel off the skins and enjoy.

(these are few of my fav shots)

Our verdict for chestnuts, yummy!!!.. as Suganya said they tasted more like jackfruit seeds. So what am I going with the remaining ones, may be curry just planning to replace jackfruit seeds to chestnuts and roast few again.

Make sure to make a X mark or else the nuts will explode. Sprinkle some sea salt on roasted nuts if you like.

Apple Pie

An apple a day
Sends the doctor away
Apple in the morning
Doctor’s warning
Roast apple at night
Starves the doctor outright
Eat an apple going to bed
Knock the doctor on the head
Three each day, seven days a week Ruddy apple, ruddy cheek.
Rhyme Courtesy(Zelo)

Photo courtesy “Lakshman”.

My cousin Lakshman “the coolest” was the inspiration/force for me behind making this delicious apple pie. For Diwali we went to “Big Apple” to my uncle’s place, as usual the house was flooded with guests (few of them are visiting US for the first time). After having yummy meal including desert we were totally stuffed and uncle told us that there are lots of apples which need to consumed, though there were people to eat, but consuming two dozen apples after a heavy meal is not an easy task. So I casually told my cousin that we can bake apple pie and it’s the easiest way to clean up before they are spoiled. At this point I had no clue how to make an apple pie as I never made it in my life before. Apple pie is one of his favorites he wanted to start immediately. I was not really confident to make everything from scratch; I got an idea of making pie’s using ready made crusts. I went and googled for the recipe and found a very simple one from epicurious.com. I made few modifications to the original recipe to suit our taste. For Thanksgiving my cousin baked another batch and he sent me the pictures. Thanks for the pictures Lakshman!!. Ok let’s jump to the recipe.

Ingredients

1/4 cup apple juice
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature
5 Gala or Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced
2 tbsp cornstarch
1 refrigerated ready-made pie crusts and top (9 inch)
1 tsp cinnamon (ground)
½ tsp nutmeg (ground)
1 tbsp milk(2% or whole)

For Crumbles
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1-2 tbsp brown sugar
1tbsp butter (unsalted & cold)

Mix sugar with flour; cut in butter until crumbly. Make the crumble once you fill the pie crust with apple mix.

Cinnamon Sugar
Mix 2 tbsp granulated sugar and ½ tbsp ground cinnamon and keep aside

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine apple juice, sugar, and butter in a bowl. Add apples and cornstarch. Place one piecrust in a 9″ pie pan and fill with mixture. Now sprinkle the crumble mixture over the apples. Roll out top crust and cover pie, sealing carefully, cut steam vents or you can slice the pie-top into eight 1/2-inch-thick strips and drape over filled pie shell in a crisscross pattern; pinch edges to fasten to bottom crust. To prepare topping, lightly brush pie-top of with milk; sprinkle cinnamon sugar evenly over dough. Place pie plate on a foil-lined baking sheet; bake 55 minutes until the crust is browned and apples soft. Cool down and serve with whipping cream or vanilla ice-cream.

One for me and one for you

Notes and Tips.

To avoid apples from browning add ½ tsp lemon juice. Always use cold butter to make crumbles soft butter will turn the mixture into dough and always make this at the end. You can add vanilla essence and lemon zest for extra flavor.

Orange Carnberry Scones-Eggless

An English scone resembles a cake but is little more firm than a cake. It has a firm crust and is flaky inside. A perfect snack with evening tea, Scones are very similar to the American biscuit. Common ingredients used are flour, sugar, baking powder/soda, milk (or buttermilk or yogurt or heavy cream), and eggs.

I picked up this combination of oranges and cranberries from a food network show. They were using these in preparing biscotti. I thought this would be a great combination for any bread related recipe and experimented with scones.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
1 ½ tsp egg replacer
(Mix the egg replacer in 2 tbsp of warm water)
½ -3/4th cup milk (approx.)
2 tbsp fresh orange juice
1 tbsp fresh orange zest
2 tbsp cranberries (dried)

Procedure

Mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles course crumbs. Stir in the egg/egg replacer mixture. Add orange zest, juice and dries cranberries. Gradually add the milk until a thick dough is formed. (It may take more or less than 3/4 cup). Turn out the mixture onto a surface dusted with flour and knead lightly. Roll out the dough to 3/4″ thickness and cut into rounds with a 2″ cookie cutter. Gather the trimmings and lightly knead, roll, and cut them as well. Place the rounds about 1″ apart on a lightly greased baking sheet. Brush the tops with a little milk. Bake in a preheated 450° oven for about 10 to 15 minutes, until golden brown. Serve warm. To store, cool them down to the room temperature and store them in an air tight container. They would last for a week.

Notes and tips

You can use egg instead of egg replacer. You can also use 2% milk or butter milk instead of whole milk. Add little extra sugar (around 1 tbsp or according to your taste).This recipe makes 12 to 16 scones, depending on the size you make. You can even eat for breakfast. The best part is these scones are eggless. If you are using egg replacer, stir the milk slowly and little at a time to get the desired consistency. Other wise the dough will become runny.

As orange is AFAM for this month, I thought this will make a perfect entry created by Mahi and organized by lovely Sharmi.

I used Eger-G Egg Replacer, I bought it from Whole food market and its also available in local GNC stores. Lakshmi told me about this. Thanks Lakshmi!!!