Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza

This is an amazing deep dish pizza recipe. I love the crust this recipe makes, it browns well and is not very bread-like ( by that I mean thick and chewy ) unlike some recipes.

I have tried a lot of deep dish pizza recipes and this is by far the best among them. That said , it is still not the crust that you get at UNO's. But it is close. Thanks to Cook's Illustrated for putting out this recipe earlier this year, which I got through Annie's Eats blog. I have modified the recipe a little to my style and the results were great.

My husband knows of my struggles to make the perfect pizza crust and Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza crust has always been my downfall. So when I announced that morning that we are having this for lunch, he took an extra serving of breakfast. I think he thought he will have to go hungry at lunchtime or he will have to make a quick trip to Taco Bell !

So when it was done and out of the oven he peered at the dish suspiciously and then took a tentative bite and said with a surprised note in his voice ' that's pretty good! '. Well thank the culinary gods for this recipe for I do not know for how long he would have tolerated eating either burnt crusts or half baked crusts in my quest to find the perfect crust for a deep dish pizza.

This is quite simple to make and does not need days of proofing. I made a lot of sauce and used about 3/4 of the sauce recipe on the pizza. I bake my pizza in an aluminium cake pan. Next time I will make it using the original Cook's Illustrated recipe, from 30 Bucks a Week's blog, which makes 2 pizzas, as it was so delicious. Use a good quality crushed tomatoes can for this recipe.


( UPDATE : I made this again and this time made some changes to the crust and it is even more Pizzeria Uno type. Loved it....made the necessary changes below. )

Red Velvet Cupcakes

These are the most amazing, moist, melt-in-your-mouth cupcakes I have ever tasted. Thanks to NY times and Elisa Strauss for this recipe. I am crazy about everything that is cakes and cupcakes and this is going to be my number one cupcake.

The cream cheese frosting is from my favorite cupcake shop here in DC called Georgetown Cupcake. I love their red velvet cupcakes and the frosting is amazing with just the right amount of fluffiness, sweetness and tanginess from the cream cheese. However I could not duplicate their red velvet cupcake, so when this recipe came along I decided to try it out with their frosting and much to my amazement it tastes even better, if that is possible. The taste is very much similar with the hint of cocoa flavor in the cupcakes but the difference is in the textures, the NY times recipe has such a light and moist texture much more preferable than the Georgetown's moist but slightly dense texture.

Methi Matar Malai

This yummy methi sabji is a favorite at our home. I have adapted Sanjeev Kapoor's recipe. This recipe comes from the Punjab region of India. This dish is made up of methi leaves, or as they call it in English, fenugreek leaves and green peas cooked in a rich cream based gravy.

Methi leaves are not always available and tend to be very costly. In the summers I sometimes grow my own in my backyard. But the other day there was some fresh methi leaves on sale here so I grabbed up as much as I could. We had methi that whole week and my son got sick of it.

I love the bitterness of the methi leaf combined with the sweetness of the plump peas. It is very easy to make and it tastes like you slaved in front of your stove for hours. As it was a weekend, I wanted to spend most of my time with my family, so I made this dish with some hot puris. Traditionally this would go very well with some hot naans, but I did not make it this time. We all sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of the TV watching a Hindi movie eating our delicious lunch.

Sweet Corn Cake

Rich and sinfully delicious, these sweet corn cakes are very addictive. The texture of this is more like cornbread instead of cake. I got this recipe from the book  Top Secret Restaurant Recipes. I got it for my birthday. I love cookbooks as presents.

The first time I had this corn cake was at a Chi-Chi's restaurant in Erie, Pennsylvania, one bite and I was hooked. The cornmeal, corn nibblets and sugar all come together to form a combination of a mildly sweet, soft cake perfumed with the scent of corn. I have had this in every Mexican restaurant ever since.

So when my sis-in-law sent me this book for my birthday and it had this recipe, I knew I had to try it. The results was one of the most delicious corn cake ever, just like they serve in the restaurants. Try this recipe and I assure you that you will not be disappointed. This would be a wonderful addition to our Thanksgiving table. Some have even reduced the butter required in the recipe by half. I did not do that, but will definitely try that next time in efforts to make this dish a little bit healthier.

This book has a lot of good recipes and soon I will be trying the Blooming Onion recipe from Outback Steakhouse. There is also the Avocado Eggrolls from Cheesecake Factory, the Pizza Sticks and Quesadillas from Applebee's, Japanese Fried Rice from Benihana, Grilled Vegetable Sandwich from Hard Rock Cafe, Potato Cheese Soup and Strawberry Tallcake For Two from Ruby Tuesday and Hot Fudge Cake from Shoney among many other delicious recipes.

 

Churma Ladoo ( Whole Wheat Ladoo )

This is one of my favorite ladoos. It is nutritious - with wheat flour and jaggery - and very easy to make. This is a foolproof recipe and the result is a delicious tasting melt-in-your mouth ladoo.

It is that time of the year again, when we slog over our stoves making sweets and namkeens ( savouries ) to celebrate one of our most important festivals. The Festival of Light or Diwali as we say in India.

Diwali comes from the Sanskrit word Deepavali which means a row of lighted lamps. On this day we light little diyas ( earthernware oil lamps ), to signify the triumph of light over darkness, of truth over ignorance and of good over evil.

On this day families get together and distribute sweets and other home made goodies and wear new clothes and burst all kinds of firecrackers. It is quite a sight to see, flickering lights from little diyas everywhere, people all dressed up in their finery and all ages playing firecrackers together outdoors.




Churma Ladoo

Besan Ke Ladoo

I would like to wish all my friends and family a very Happy Diwali. So Diwali is here again and in the flurry of getting the home all spic and span and making sweets, I have neglected to post these recipes sooner. And now that there is only one day left I thought I will post a recipe that requires minimum effort and gives maximum pleasure !

So here is my very easy to make, delicious Besan Ke Ladoo recipe. This recipe is from my college days and was part of one of the menus in our cookery class. When I brought some of these ladoos home, my mom and grandma loved them and my grandma even made me make these again for her.

The only thing to keep in mind is to let the mixture cool down thoroughly. Also do not worry if your mixture feels too soft and your balls are flattening. If this happens, make all the balls and keep them on a plate and after 15 minutes roll each ball again between the palm of your hands. The mixture would have hardened a little and the balls will maintain their shape, this time.




Besan Ke Ladoo

Pad Thai / Phat Thai ( Vegetarian )

This is the most delicious and flavorsome recipe for a vegetarian Pad Thai. Pad Thai is a national dish from Thailand and is made from stir fried rice noodles, tofu, tamarind, fish sauce, crushed peanuts, lime juice, red chili pepper and also either shrimps or chicken and or eggs.

I love Pad Thai but hate the fishy smell that the fish sauce lends to the dish. So once I naively asked my server to omit the fish sauce and the resulting dish tasted totally different and was much sweeter than any Pad Thai I have ever had. So I resigned myself to not ordering this dish and just sighing loudly whenever I saw it on the menu.

That is until I came across Chez Pim 's blog, she posted Pad Thai for beginners. And when I read that article I realized that I could easily adapt this to my taste sans the fish sauce and still maintain the flavor balance of the dish. So thanks to Chez Pim, I can now enjoy a hot steaming plate of Pad Thai whenever I want.

I omitted the fish sauce and substituted it with some soy sauce, some extra lime juice, a tad bit of salt ( as the fish sauce contributes to the saltiness of the dish ) and a little bit of chili peppers. Once you assemble all the components of the dish, you can make this dish in under 5 minutes. The Pad Thai sauce is the main component of this dish, once you get its taste right you can be assured of a properly balanced and flavorful Pad Thai.

Even though I have given measurements for the sauce, use it as a guideline as we all have different taste-buds and you should check the taste of your sauce and adjust it accordingly. Pim describes the sauce to lead with a salty flavor, followed with a mild sourness, then just a little sweetness and lastly a mild burn from the chili at the back of your throat. She also mentions that even though you can make Pad Thai to feed a crowd, you should cook no more that one to two portions at a time in the wok, just like they do on the streets of Bangkok. If you need to make more than two portions, cook them one at a time, wiping the wok clean between each session. I mentioned wok a lot, but you can cook it in a large saucepan as well. For those in India you can use a kadai too.

I omitted the eggs, you can add it if you want. Just push the lightly browned tofu, noodles and sauce to one side of the pan and crack the egg directly into the wok, let it set for 15-20 seconds and then mix everything together. Also the pickled radish is optional. It adds an interesting texture to the dish. This dish does not disappoint. its many flavors meld together to create the perfect Pad Thai.


Pad Thai/Phat Thai