Of Tea & Other Musings

This weekend, I celebrated my first wedding anniversary with my super awesome husband. We stayed in a lovely cottage in Kasauli with a couple of friends, and had loads of fun, complete with lovely gifts - diamond earrings from him and a Buddha bust by friends [well known fact about me: I am a sucker for Buddha paintings, statues etc!]

Anyhow, the picture was taken at sunset, which was the best part of the whole trip. The straight line you see is where the sky was divided into two parts. Of course, the crappy camera could not capture the beauty. Sorry!

The time we spent there got me thinking about the importance of tea in the average Indian's life. Being married into a Kashmiri family, I have been introduced to three different types of tea, two of which I haven't even tried.

Tea is one of the most versatile drinks ever. You can add mint, lemon, almonds, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, and so many other variants to make it lush. How do you like your tea? I like mine strong but add a lot of different flavors to it. Here's my 3 minute tea recipe:

1 cup water
1 cup milk
1.5 tbsp tea leaves (I prefer Tata)
2 cardamom pods, crushed
4 crushed peppercorns
grated ginger (depending on how much you like the flavor)
1/2 tsp fennel seeds (saunf)
some dried holy basil or tulsi leaves

Boil the water in a saucepan on high. Add cardamom, peppercorns, ginger, fennel and holy basil. Let it boil for a couple of minutes, till you can smell all the flavors. Add tea leaves and boil for a few more minutes. Finally, add milk and sugar. Wait it starts boiling and change the flame to low. Boil for another 1-2 minutes.

Accompaniments: Anything! I love tea with so many different things - biscuits, cake, paranthas, and even Maggi!

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

I bought canned pineapples this weekend and while wondering what the heck to do with them, I remembered seeing a link for Pineapple Upside Down Cake at Nigella Lawson's fan page. She's so awesome and so pretty too.

So, I made this when I was bone tired to have some warm cake love but then I got sick. Turns out, sore throat and pineapples don't really go together. The unloved cake is now sitting in the fridge, waiting for me to get well.

You can follow Nigella's original recipe if you are patient but the ingredient measures were too difficult for my non analytical brain to comprehend. So I just followed my gut feeling and got it right! Yay.



You need:

1 cup all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 cup brown or regular sugar
1/3 cup butter
1 large egg
1/2 tsp salt

4 pineapple slices

6 teaspoons pineapple syrup from the can

a little milk

Butter your baking dish and sprinkle some powdered sugar to coat it. Line up the pineapple slices. I used 4 because I made the cake for two people. You can use as many as you want! Just make sure there is only one layer of pineapples.

Add in the dry ingredients, butter, pineapple syrup and egg in a food processor and whip it. In my case, the mixture was too dry so I added a little milk. Pour it over the pineapples so that it just about covers them. We don't want a thick cake here.

Bake on 200C for 15 minutes. You can microwave it for 5 minutes if you don't want a brown cake. Enjoy!

Rocking My Boat: Cinnamon Coffee

I am trying to work, sitting in my flared yoga pants (whatevs fashion police! whatevs) but am having a pretty crappy day, thanks to a dust allergy I picked up in the morning. Maybe some warm coffee love might help! I added cinnamon and ginger to my regular coffee but my nose is blocked and I don't smell anything. Try it sometime. Its heaps good on a cold, winter day or when you are sick.

1 cup milk
1 tsp cinnamon powder
some crushed ginger
sugar to taste
instant coffee

Heat 1/4 cup water in a pan and add the cinnamon and crushed ginger. You can use whole cinnamon too if you don't have the powder. Just make sure you boil it enough for the flavor to infuse in the water. After about 3-4 minutes, add milk, sugar, and coffee. Boil and serve!

I also add two spoonfuls of condensed milk when I want some extra love. Enjoy!

Apple Crumble

Personally, I think this is a great picture. I also think that daylight is the best time for a crappy phone camera to do the best that it is destined to do.

Winters are almost here. This means we are going to get sick with the unending supply of apples and carrots! I can think of at least two dozen things I am going to try. Yum.

I made this apple crisp yesterday evening as an after dinner dessert but you can have it for breakfast too, like I am doing right now!

Don't get fooled by the picture, it really is apple crisp served in a traditional Indian style mug, called a kulhar.

The recipe is adapted from my favorite baking blog, Joy The Baker.

What you need:

3 medium sized apples
1 tbsp regular sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon powder

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup Quaker oats or any other quick cooking oats
1/2 cup cold butter

Slice the apples and place them in layers on a flat baking dish. Mix the sugar and cinnamon powder and sprinkle on each layer.

In a mixing bowl, combine all purpose flour, brown sugar, oats, and butter. Mix with your hands till the mixture resembles a crumble. If you use too much butter, the mixture will look like cookie dough, which is fine.

Throw this mixture on top of the apples and bake at 180C in a preheated oven for 15 minutes or till the crumble hardens. You can also cook this in a microwave at a HI setting for 10 minutes.

Serve warm, preferably with vanilla ice cream.

The How And Why

If you look at this picture closely, you will realize why I chose the name Two Megapixel Food for this blog. I don't have a fancy camera. I don't even have a point and shoot and no, its not because am poor, it's never really figured in my list of things to buy. But, I have always loved food and experimenting with food so I decided what the heck! I can make do with my crappy phone.

I have taken inspiration from my mom, who's a trained chef and am sure she's embarrassed by my apparent lack of culinary skills. Reading food blogs is my favorite thing to do!

By day, am a freelance writer and by night, sometimes by evening, I am transformed into an experimental cook who ends up spoiling a lot of things. My food may not look fancy but ends up tasting nice most of the time.


PS: This picture is of an Indian style cookie made with all purpose flour, gram flour and semolina with cardamom and almond flavors. It tasted nice but it was too hard. I think I broke my teeth in the process too.