Recipe: Sour Apple Sorbet

January 8th, 2012 | Posted by Lunar in Recipes | Sewing & Culinary Creations - (0 Comments)

An easy concoction if you’re in the mood for something sweet and sour!

Ingredients:

  • 3 green apples, peeled and cored
  • 1 can of Sprite (or any other lime-flavored can of pop)
  • 2.5 tbsp white sugar
  • 8 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 1/3 cup apple juice

Directions:

  1. Put a pot on low heat with apple juice, white sugar, and lemon juice. Let it stand until all sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat.
  2. Grate the apples into a puree (or you could use your food processor for that, but I don’t have one yet, so I do the manual labour of grating).
  3. Pour the warmed juices into the apple puree, stir to combine and put it into the freezer. After the mixture has cooled off significantly to form crusts of ice on the side of the bowl, mix in the Sprite.
  4. Every 40 minutes (or for however long you can manage to do so), take the bowl out of the freezer and break in the ice. It makes the blending process easier in the end.
  5. When frozen, blend the puree and put it into the freezer until ready to serve.

If you like it less on the sour side, obviously less lemon juice is key but also – if I had to do it over again – I’d add less sugar too since Sprite and apple juice I used is sugary enough. What I like about my recipe in comparison to others of apple sorbet I’ve seen is that I use fresh apple puree while others boil the apples and then puree them in the blender, which ends up taking more vitamins and nutritional value out of your dessert. Hope you try it :)

Paneer Masala: The Vegetarian Jackpot!

November 28th, 2011 | Posted by Lunar in Recipes - (0 Comments)

Granted this is no vegan dish, I’d say this is a vegetarian’s holy grail nonetheless. I had to wait till our pre-wedding fast was over to try making this dish since it has butter, cheese, and cream (in other words, the best foods in the world) and what came out as a result is definitely just what you would taste in the restaurants.

If you’ve ever had Butter Chicken, this dish is prepared in the same sauce as that except that instead of chicken, you get to bite into buttery pieces of cheese that have a sort of creamy / spongey / tofu-like texture to it, but in all the best ways. I loved butter chicken when I first tried it but unless I was the cook myself, I found that restaurants can often overlook (or to put it cynically, *HIDE*) the not-so-good-tasting/looking pieces of chicken there. I don’t know how about you but I get grossed out quite easily. So if by my stroke of luck I end up with a piece of fat / tendon / else in my mouth, I’ll immediately excuse myself, spit it out, and won’t touch that dish for at least the next 6 months to come. That’s why “meat pockets” and various other dishes made in the same way are so difficult for me to eat. But this recipe is tasty all around and throughout :)

Ingredients:

  • 1.5 ~ 2 cups diced paneer (we got ours at Costco)
  • 1/4 cup butter (won’t use all of it probably)
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp coriander, ground
  • 1/2 tsp turmeric
  • 2 tsp ginger
  • 2 tsp garlic
  • 1 to 2 tsp chilli
  • 1 cup of cashews
  • 1 big can of crushed tomatoes
  • 1/2 small can of tomato paste
  • 1 cup or more to taste of half&half cream or whipping cream

Directions:

  1. Fry up the paneer on medium heat in 1 tbsp of butter, making sure it only becomes golden-brown and crispy on all sides. Supervise it closely after first 3 minutes as it gets hard quickly if you overfry it.
  2. Put the diced onions into the pot you will be cooking your dish in and fry it in 2 tbsp of butter. Add the cinnamon and make sure the onions are relatively soft.
  3. Stir in garlic and ginger. Add turmeric, chilli and coriander and saute over medium heat. The spices release the most flavor when cooked in butter separately from all the other ingredients. (I usually put double the spices just to make sure that if I end up putting more cream, thereby increasing the volume, that that won’t end up diluting the spices)
  4. Pour in the tomatoes, tomato paste and cashews. Cover and let it simmer for 10 minutes to soften up the cashews.
  5. Add the paneer to the pot and simmer it for another 5 minutes to make sure the paneer gets reheated by the sauce. Add the cream, heat through on low heat, and serve. Make sure the cream is the last thing you add since you can’t cook it on high heat – it may curdle.
  6. Enjoy!

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