Baked /Jacket Potatoes

Jacket potato can be called as a national food of UK (of course Fish & Chips come before that).
In a nutshell, jacket potato is a baked potato stuffed with cheese/salads/chicken etc etc.
From the above description you can well understand that Jacket potato is not a healthy food....but one can always make exception at the end of a long day. It is easy to make , though takes quite some time to bake. I am not entirely sure whether this dish is as favourite in US or Canada or other European countries.


Ingredients are varied depending on what stuffing you fancy.
This is how I usually make it :

Take 1 baking potato , wrap it in an aluminium foil and keep in the preheated oven (200C). It usually takes about 30-40 minutes for a potato to cook thoroughly in an oven. If you are short on time, you can use microwave to cook it. It takes about 7min for one potato to cook in a microwave, but then you will have to sacrifice the crispy crunchy feel of the jacket (peel) .

Grate a block of cheese (prefer the one with factor 3/4 i.e. medium strong).

Chop some tomatoes, onions, cucumber , lettuce for salad.

You can make any side dish e.g. baked vegetables/roasted vegetables/couscous to go with this.

I usually make a new find, i.e. a yogurt sauce . This was invented by one of my close friends , Binnie. For this sauce, take yogurt/curd, add salt, sugar, cumin-coriander powder(dhana-jeera) as per taste. Chop/grind garlic, ginger and chillies together and add to the yogurt. Mix it all together. It is very similar to the Dahi we make for Dahi-Wada.

When the potato is completely cooked, make a cross in it by knife and stuff the cheese so that it melts. Fill your plate with salad, sauce and other side dishes and you are ready to dig into your meal!:)
Bon Appetite!!!

-Rahee

Vegetable Hydrabadi Biryani

This recipe is a combination of a few recipes I found on Internet. None of them suited my liking, so I combined them together to create this fabulous dish.

Ingredients:

Basmati rice: 3 Cups.
Potatoes, Carrots, Onions, cauliflower, Broccoli, Mushrooms ,Green peas(you can increase/decrease vegetables as per your liking)

Green chillies, Ginger, Garlic

Cashew-nuts, Almonds, Raisins

Bay leaves 2, Cinnamon powder 1 tsp, Cloves 4, Black pepper 8

Turmeric powder
Red chili powder
Curd 1 cup
Saffron 1 tsp
Milk 2 tbsp
Mint (Pudina leaves ) 1/3 cup
Coriander leaves 1/3 cup
Ghee 4tsp
Salt To taste

Direction:
1. Wash and soak the rice for 30 minutes. Drain and pass fresh water. Add salt to taste and 2 cloves and 4 black pepper seeds to this washed rice.

2. Bring the rice to boil and cook until the rice is done. You can cook it either in microwave or on the hob.

3. Peel, wash and dice the potatoes and carrots. Make small thin pieces of cauliflower, beans and broccoli. Cook all the vegetables together in a microwave or over the hob for a few minutes till they become tender. Peel, wash and slice the onions and green chillies.

4. Scrape the ginger and peel the garlic and chop into very small pieces (I prefer to grind them in a Mixer). Clean, wash and chop the coriander and mint leaves.

5. Soak the almonds in water, peel and keep aside.

6. Beat the curd in a bowl and divide into two equal portions.

7. Dissolve saffron in warm milk. Add it to one portion of the beaten curd.

8. Heat ghee in a kadhai, add the remaining cloves, pepper seeds, bay leaves and sauté over medium heat until it begins to crackle.

9. Add onions(leave some for later) , sauté until golden brown, add green chillies, ginger, garlic and sauté for a minute.

10. Then add cinnamon powder, turmeric and chili powder, stir, add the chopped vegetables and stir for a minute.

11. Add the portion of plain curd, stir, add 2/3 cup water, and bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables are cooked.

12. Once the vegetables are done add the dry fruits and nuts. Keep half the portion of Cashew nuts aside.

13. In the baking dish, spread half portion of this cooked vegetable mixture at the bottom. Spread 1/3^rd cooked rice over this layer. Spread half the saffron curd over the rice thoroughly. Then sprinkle chopped mint and coriander on this.

14. Again spread the layers of cooked vegetables, rice, saffron curd and mint-coriander. Top it with the remaining rice.

15. Place a moist cloth or a baking foil on top.
16. Put the sealed baking dish in a pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes.

17. Fry the remaining Cashew-nuts and thinly chopped onion pieces and spread on the top of the rice after taking it out from the oven.

Fresh Cherry Sponge Cake

This recipe is something I can say my own find :P. My flatmate in Lancaster used to make a Victoria Sponge cake. I used her recipe and modified it so as to make different cakes. Over the period of last one year I made almost 15 different versions of this cake using different fruits/dry fruits/jams etc. It never fails…J and tastes just awesome! Make sure to use fresh cherries. Most of the cherry cake recipes use Glace Cherries but this does not!

Ingredients:

175g butter, softened to room temperature. Make sure to use the lightly-salted butter. It tastes much better than unsalted variety.

175g caster sugar

3 eggs, at room temperature and lightly beaten

1tsp vanilla essence (Optional)

175g self-raising flour

Icing sugar to dust the top.

For Victoria Sponge cake: 3tbsp raspberry (or any other favourite jam)

For Fresh Cherry cake: lot of fresh cherries, washed and diced in small pieces.

For dry fruits cake: Almonds, Cashew nuts, and Walnuts. Soak the Almonds & Cashew nuts for a few minutes. Chop all the dry-fruits in small pieces. Make sure to use lot of dry fruits (or as per your liking) if you like the taste.

1.Prepare 2 x 18cm/7inch cake tins by buttering lightly. Sprinkle some flour on the buttered surface. Preheat the over to 190C/375F/gas mark 5.

2.Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Keep the bowl in microwave for about 30seconds if the butter is not at room temperature. If it is at room temp, heat it for even lesser than 30seconds. Then add the caster sugar and mix it all together.

3.Keep on whisking the mixture until it turns smooth and pale. Remember, if you whisk more, the cake becomes really light. (If you are too tired to whisk, ask your other half :P).

4.Mix the beaten eggs and vanilla (if using) together. Slowly add this mixture to the Sugar & Butter mixture and whisk until well incorporated.

5. Stop whisking and sift in the flour. Using a large metal spoon, gently fold in the flour. The mixture should be thick enough to stay on the spoon and ‘plop’ off when turned upside down (this is called dropping consistency). If it is too thick, stir through a little water.

6.Now add the pieces of cherries (or dry fruits) and mix together thoroughly.

7.Divide this mixture evenly in two tins and carefully smooth the top.

8.Bake for 25 minutes or until risen and golden. Pass the tip of the knife through the centre of the baked cakes. If it comes out dry, the cake is done. If it comes out with a litter mixture sticking to its edges, cake needs more baking. The cake on the top rack may cook slightly quicker than the one on the bottom-you can either swap them midway through the baking or take them out separately.

9.As soon as you handle it, pass through a knife around the sides of the tin and separate the cake from the sides. Then turn the tin upside down and the cake will come off the tin. Keep it on the wire rack till it completely cools down.

10.If you are making a Victoria sponge cake, after cooling down, spread the jam on the top of one of the cakes and place the second cake on top of it.

11.Sprinkle with the icing sugar and cut into slices to serve.

Cheese & Chillies

I love cooking. All throughout last couple of years, I found cooking to be a great stress-reliever. Besides, one needs to be innovative and creative to cook good food.I do not consider myself a great cook. But I am moderately good cook and I enjoy trying and eating new recipes. This blog represents some of my experiments with cooking.I never thought I would love & most importantly enjoy cooking when I was a child. I owe this transformation to my coming to UK and also to Amit. Amit is my food critique. He not only likes to eat different recipes but suggests some wonderful improvements.


The name of this blog 'Cheese & Chillies' represents Western and Indian cooking styles. Indian cooking can't be complete without using chillies and the omnipresent ingredient in western cooking is cheese. That does not mean that all the recipes presented here contain either cheese or chillies:). All the photographs are courtesy of Amit Walambe. By no means, these are new recipes. For me, the reason to write this blog is to make an repository for myself. Another reason is that I search a lot for recipes and then combine/modify different recipes on web/books/ from friends to create something I like the most. This is just a list of them.

I do hope you enjoy these articles.If you need any help with one of these recipes or have any suggestions , please contact me through email (rahee dot walambe at gmail dot com).