Veggie Quiche

I think I am officially going to the start the "How to clean out your fridge of soon expiring ingredients :)" section

Ingredients
Cheese - I used shredded mozerella 2-3 Tblsp and 1 slice of Swiss
Eggs - 3
Onion, tomato, green peppers, spinach, garlic - to taste ( you can omit any of them)
Betty crocker pie crust dough - I use half a pack and got 5 cupcake size mini quiches
Salt
Pepper
Italian seasoning
Milk - 1/3 cup
Method
1) Fry onions, garlic, tomato, spinach garlic with some salt and pepper in 1 tsp of olive oil until the veggies are tender.
2) Beat eggs + milk in a bowl. Mix in the shredded chesse. Add the fried veggies and mix well.
3) Prepare and roll out the pie dough as instructed and cut into circles and press down onto cup cake tins (of course you could roll out the pie dough onto an 8" round pie tin - which I did not have and so I just made it in a cupcake tin)
4) Preheat the oven to 400 degree and throw in the pie-cupcakes to cook for about 10 minutes. It does not have to be browned but it should look semi cooked.
5) Laddle in the egg+veggie mixture until it fills up to the top.
6) Cut the swiss cheese into rectangular pieces and place a couple of pieces on top of each quiche.
7) Bake for about 25 - 30 minutes or until a fork comes out clean.

Guess what?  Here is a picture of the final product :)

Super cheesy bread lasagna

You heard it right. I did say super cheesy :) It is one of those recipes I probably won't repeat often or not at all unless I had the same unique situation or I am cooking for guests. What's the situation you ask?
Well, I had 3/4 pack of grated mozzarella cheese, 4 slices of swiss chesse, 6 slices of bread and 1/2 bottle of alfredo sauce - all needed to be used within the next week. This forced me to come up with a  recipe and "Bread lasagna was born."  Of course, I plan to give away at least half of what I baked :)

Here goes...

Layer 1 -  Chunky Tomato Sauce:
Tomatoes 6 small chopped, onions - 1 big chopped, garlic- 6 pods roughly chopped, spinach - frozen 1/2 cup, Italian seasoning, bell pepper 1/3 chopped and salt

Fry onions and garlic till golden brown in 1 tsp of oilve oil. Add bell pepper and cook for 1-2 min. Add the salt and seasoning and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add tomatoes and spinach. Mix well and close with lid. Allow to cook for about 6-7 minutes. 

Layer 2 (Pasta):

Elbow macaroni - 1/2 cup, broccoli - 1/2 cup frozen chopped, peas & carrot mix - 1/2 cup frozen, salt - to taste, alfredo sauce - 1/2 bottle

Cook the pasta in about 4 cups of water. Once cooked add salt and veggies and cook for about 5-6 minutes and remove from gas. Drain and add the Alfredo sauce and mix well and set aside.

Layer 3 (Bread):
Toast 6 slices of bread on both sides

Layering:
1. Take a 9"  square baking pan. Place 2 bread slices and 2 halves of a bread slice on the bottom until it more or less covers the base. 
2. Place 4 slices of swiss cheese on top
3. Spread a layer of the chunky tomato sauce
4. Spread the pasta on top
5.  Spread 1/2 of the mozzarella cheese
6. Spread a second layer of the chunky tomato sauce

7. Place the other 2 slices and 2 halves of the bread on top
8. Cover with the remaining mozerella cheese
9. Bake in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes.

Rava Upma

I've had some pretty superb Rava Upma versions (courtsey Vidhya (sister) and Harini (sister's sister-in-law) and this one ranks right among them.
http://vegetarian-planet.blogspot.com/2009/08/ravasooji-khichadisemolina-khichadi.html

One alteration I made was substitute the the cloves, cinnamon, etc for 1 tbs of  pulav masala (I did not have the ingredients on hand.)

Half Mint Half Dulche De leche Mocha Brownie

The basic recipe I used was from here and the  idea for mint came from here  and dulche de leche brownie came from here

What I used ( Apart from the other ingredients in the recipe)
Dark Chocolate Pearson's Mint Patties - 10
Dulche de leche (From previous post) - 2 Tbls
Mocha Expresso - 1 tbsp- prepared using 1/3 cup of water
Light Brown Sugar ( instead of white sugar)

Changes:
1) Added the prepared expresso right after adding the coco powder ( made no other change to proportions)
2) Initially filled the 9" pan with 2/3 of the mix
3)  Lined the 10 patties on on half of the 9" tin. Added dollops of the dulche de leche on the other half.  The Dulche can be mixed in gently using a knife (do not overmix)
4) Add the rest of the batter on top and bake for about 25 minutes.
5) Let it completely cool and chill in fridge for  hour. Cut into pieces and freeze.
PS: I am coffee lover and the next time I bake these brownies, I would up the expresso level to about 2 tbsp.

Dal Makhan-less

Ingredients
Butter - 1 Tbl
Dal Makhani Masala (MDH) - 2 Tbl
Whole Black Urad Dal - 1cup
Rajma (Kidney Beans) - 1/3 cup
Channa Dal  - 1/4 cup
Tomato - 5 small ( Blanched and pureed)
Onion - 1 (Pureed)
Ginger-Garlic paste - 2 Tbl
Almond Milk - 1/4 to 1/2 cup
Salt - to taste
Cumin seeds - 1 Tbl
 Olive Oil - 1 tsp
Coriander - 1/2 bunch chopped
Turmeric - 1/4 tsp

Method
1) Soak the dals together overnight. Cook in pressure cooker with tumeric, half the chopped coriander and salt. Mash half the the cooked dal.
2) In a kadai, heat olive oil
3) Add cumin seeds and wait until it splutters
4) Add onion puree and ginger garlic paste and fry for about 5 min
5) Add the masala and butter and fry for about 3-4 min
6) Add tomoato puree and cook for about 5 min
7) Add the cooked dals and boil for about 5 min
8) Add the milk and cook for about 1-2 min.
9) Remove from stove and garnish with coriander.
10) Serve with Chapathi or Rice

The buttery texture comes for the mashed portion of the dal, you do not have to add too much butter to get the texture. Dal makhani recipes on the web recommend anywhere between 1/2 stick to 1 stick of butter and 1/2 to 1 cup heavy cream. I'm fairly sure that those recipes would taste wonderful. However, 1 Tbl butter with 1/4 cup almond milk tasted really really good as well :)

P.S: I have always noticed eating a dish after a few hours (or even leaving overnight) helps marinate the flavors better.

Dulche de leche - from divya's blog

Link: http://www.divyascookbook.com/2011/02/how-to-make-dulce-de-leche.html

Can it get easier than this?

Paneer Masala Bread - Show me the curry - Not very successful for me :(

Link: http://showmethecurry.com/breads/paneer-masala-bread.html
I think when I baked my first ever cake from scratch, I discovered my inner "crazy" baker :)

Alas, the debacle ...
I was too bored to drive to the Indian store and decided to use cottage cheese from the local market (Baaad choice...). It had too much moisture (which I unsuccessfully tried  to remove using a cloth (probably should have bought a proper cheese cloth) and that caused all the problems. After I spread the cottage cheese + masala on the dough, rolled it up and set aside to rise, the water from cheese seeped through and made the entire rolled up dough extremely soggy to a point where I could not even lift it off the plate I had it on. I ended up mixing the dough and filling, adding more flour and baking it as a bread(-ish). Result -  it was bearable, did not get any of the cottage cheese taste but got a fair bit of masala and right amount of salt. I will probably cut into slices, toast and eat it like plain bread...
Well, there is always a next time :)