This morning while I was emailing Arjun some shops to go to in Barcelona to bring back olive oil and chorizo, I got distracted by blogs filled with photos of padrón peppers and patatas bravas. But what really stuck in my head was something I hadn’t tried in Barcelona before: chocolate with salt and olive oil. A little more digging revealed a popular dessert at Tapas 24: Xcolat with olive oil and salt. That’s a project for another day, but today, I needed something quick to get a taste of all those flavours together, and the perfect solution lay in Ferran Adrià Family Meal Cookbook.

This recipe isn’t even really a recipe. It’s four ingredients put together in a couple of minutes to give you something perfect for breakfast that most certainly qualifies as a dessert. Toast thickly cut slices of crusty bread, soak in bit of fruity extra virgin olive oil, topped with chocolate and popped into a warm oven until it’s soft and shiny and finally sprinkled with large crystals of sea salt (Maldon). I used a honey, almond and hazelnut bread because that’s the bread I waited all week to try.* Next time, I’m going to use a plain baguette because that won’t leave any room for distraction from the star flavours coming together: olive oil, chocolate and sea salt. Also, in the recipe in the cookbook, they don’t melt the chocolate, but instead top it with flakes of chocolate, which might be worth a shot as well if you don’t want a gooey chocolate spread.

I made the toast two ways:

1.  For the first batch, I drizzled the olive oil on the toast after I spread with melted chocolate and salt.
2.  For the second batch, I soaked the bread with the olive oil before I topped it with the chocolate and salt.

My preferred toast? The second one because the olive oil percolates through the bread lending a bit of softness to the bread and making the flavour of olive oil come through that much more.

I had three slices of toast, washed down with a glass of Beillevaire cold raw milk. Couldn’t get better.

* In my neighborhood, I frequent two boulangeries. One of them is Au 140 – which makes the most gorgeous strawberry financiers and kouign amanns, and has a bread menu for different days of the week. This is the one I go to for all my French bread needs. It’s almost always packed, and notoriously so on Sunday where the queue trails three shop down. The other bouglangerie is the one around the corner where I mostly go to buy Kesra (a Middle-Eastern flat bread made with semolina), which I discovered, worked excellently with Indian food – almost as good as nan. Whenever I walk back up with my French breads from Au 140, I clumsily try to hide it from my corner boulangerie worrying that he might feel bad about me buying bread elsewhere (as if). He greets me with “Marhaba” and “Shukran” assuming I speak the language. And because he always says it with such a big smile (so rare in France), I don’t want to tell him I don’t.

I’ve got to admit, I’m not one of those people who always picks a corner piece of a brownie or the first slice of a freshly-cut pound cake. I’ll let others have it. I much prefer the soft, gooey or buttery (as the case may be) interior. Inadvertently, one fine afternoon, I came across a hazelnut cake that changed my whole perception of crusty bakes, making it quite possibly the first time I’ve truly appreciated the crust of a cake.

I love this recipe for so many things, I might as well bullet point it:

• Did I mention the crust? Oh boy. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed the crust on a cake this much. Ever. The firm, buttery and almost crunchy crust is such a pleasure to bit into. The contrast of textures from the moist, crumbly crumb and the crust is unbelievably good.
• It’s not overtly sweet. I absolutely loathe biting into a cloyingly sweet dessert. And while the recipe sits firmly on the not-so-sweet side of the spectrum, it also means that I can top it with pieces of milk chocolate for the classic hazelnut-milk chocolate flavour. For this, I dotted the slice of warm hazelnut cake with the milk chocolate and popped it back into the oven (switched off) that was still warm from the baking.
• Hazelnuts are quite possibly my favourite kind of nuts. And a cake that’s got hazelnuts constitute 50% of the dry ingredients, is bound to make it to the top of my list.

To make the most of that much extolled crust, you’ve got to eat it warm, as soon as it’s out of the oven. I scarfed down three slices just like that. As for the rest of the cake, I managed to finish it within 24 hours, sliced sliver by sliver trying to tell myself that it was a small cake and that it didn’t have that much butter.

This cake recipe is adapted from one of my new favourite blogs, A Tale Of Two. I was mixing and sifting within minutes of reading the recipe! I’ve changed quite a few things: I halved the recipe and baked it in a loaf pan, I didn’t add any nuts into the batter, I reduced the baking powder because the 2 tablespoons of baking powder in the original recipe scared me (but they tell me, you can’t taste it!), I also added a wee bit more salt than the stated pinch and thought it gave the cake slathered in chocolate such a well-rounded flavour, I didn’t seperate the eggs either – I began to, but then the yolk broke into the whites so I just threw it all in together. In the end, I made a cake that’s a far cry from what Anne and Philine intended it to be, but I’m sure they like this one, too.

I’m a lazy cook when it comes to cooking for one.

I’ll go to great lengths to cook a meal when I have company, and even take a three hour drive to break bread with friends – but when it comes to fixing myself a meal, I’ll look for as easy way out.

I usually shop for groceries and produce a few times a week, and don’t really stock up my refrigerator. If you peek inside, you’ll usually find jars of jams and mustards, cheese, butter, cans of coconut water and Elderflower syrup and what ever Indian household can never be without: ginger and fresh green chillies (garlic as well, but that sits on the counter-top).

On an average day at home, I try to ignore my hunger pangs until the tummy growls are too loud to disregard. Then, I’ll loiter about my apartment and grab an apple and a glass of cold milk to keep me satiated for a little while. If I’m lucky I’ll find leftover rice that I’ll fry with kimchi from a jar and a fried egg on top.

And then there are days like these when I feel a bit more inspired to cook for myself and rustle up something delicious from what’s lying around. Like this chunky sauce that came together so beautifully, I felt proud: garlic infused olive oil with chopped up toasted (imperative) pistachio, a fistful of parsley, hand pounded black pepper – so it’s not as fine as from a pepper mill – and lots of grated Pecorino Romano cheese. Oh, my.

I tossed it together with some tagliatelle pasta, but I imagine it’ll be so good spread on toast or in a sandwich with some meat and cheese.

Super easy. Super everything.

What do you eat when you are alone?

Peppery Pecorino, Parsley and Pistachio Pesto

Makes: About 1 cup

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
40g pistachios, toasted and chopped
A handful of parsley, chopped
50g Pecorino Romano cheese, grated

Add the oil and garlic together into a pan and heat it gently until fragrant. Turn off the heat, then add the rest of the ingredients in the given order. Easy!

For as long as I’ve know the value of cooking in a copper pot, I’ve yearned for one.

Every time we’d pass by a shop window at Dehillerin or catch a glimpse of them in kitchens, I’d sigh at the sight of them, hoping that I’ll save up a little money and own a copper pot some day. When I was back in Bombay earlier this year, I even stopped by at a restaurant ware shop at Crawford Market hoping to buy some copper ware at a bargain price. A closer look revealed a not-so-perfect finish, and as it turned out they didn’t have the pot in the size I was looking for. Truth is, I was glad they didn’t, because I didn’t just want to buy a copper pot, I wanted to make a copper pot memory for myself. I had a romanticised image of cooking perfect sauces in shiny copper pots in Paris, and buying a dusty pot from a cramped up shop wouldn’t quite cut it. And because copper cookware is synonymous with France and her assiduous chefs, I decided I’d buy my first copper pot in Paris to make for a memorable story, whenever it might be.

On Saturday morning, I set out to visit the Vide Grenier in the dreamy part of the city, Montmartre. Vide greniers are the equivalent of garage sales or boot sales, except that the French organise themselves along the length of the street or sometimes in cuter settings like the Village Saint Paul. With the arrival of spring, Vide greniers and brocantes (flea markets) are organised across the city on weekends and are a great place to go vintage shopping for second hand clothes, records, clocks, typewriters, cutlery, your very own Amélie gnome and things you never thought you’d need, but can think up ten excuses to buy just because they’re so pretty and so French.

As I pottered around the market, fidgeting with vintage French jars and flipping through old prints and comics, I spotted a table crammed with a bunch of things I can’t remember because the only thing that struck out to me was a stack of three copper pots. Copper pots! (breathe…) Behind the counter were two young boys and an older man, probably their father. I went up to them and asked the price. One for €5. I’m quite pathetic with registering French numbers, and it only got worse because my brain was ready to recognise two digit numbers but I got a single digit thrown at me. I asked again just to be sure. “Cinq Euro,” he said. And what if I bought all three? “€12,” said the seller. While my mind said, “Woah oh oh ohh!” I pretended like I didn’t care and even went on ask him to sell all the three pots for €10 being the compulsive haggler that I am.

These pots looked like they had collected dust in someone’s attic for a while, and a tell-tale sign that these really hadn’t been used was a perfectly smooth copper finish on two pots with a horribly large black stain on the largest pot and a green a patina of time (which is still sitting in the kitchen, covered in lemon slices). So, my theory is that these  boys who sold me the pot really didn’t get the importance and value of copper. They didn’t care that this was a French handmade artisanal pot. I imagine that they had used the largest pot and heated it up without any liquid or fat that caused that ugly black stain on it, following which they thought that something was wrong with the pots and that they’d just much rather use ‘regular’ pots so all the three were stacked up and put away for a long time. Another theory to support the fact that these were new is that they still had the instruction sheet for the copper pots sitting in the pot. Or maybe their mom asked the boys to man the counter for a while and they just blurted out €12 without knowing what they actually retail for, which is almost €300 for all three! I make up theories and stories in my head all the time.

Without thinking twice, I told him I’d take all the three copper pots. Packed up in an old plastic bag with a parting wish of a “Bonne Brocante“, I continued down the street to look for more such finds. An hour of rummaging later, I popped back into the métro with a bagful of pots and pans rattling away.

As soon as I returned home, I began cleaning my new pots: a little wash, a bit of scrubbing off the rust on the heavy iron handles followed by an hour of rubbing the copper with tamarind pulp to bring that shine back rendered two gorgeous copper pots, the kind I’d always wanted to own. Cleaning two pots (in the picture above) was a cinch, but the third one had a stubborn black stain that no amount of tamarind would reduce. Nor lemons or acetone. I’m just going to wait for my copper polish to arrive. And I’ll probably get the interior retinned to get a sparkling silver inside.

And just like that on a Saturday morning, I got three copper pots and made a happy memory for myself.

The first thing I cooked in my copper pot? Crabs!

PS: If you do plan on visiting a a Vide Grendier or Brocante, I’d suggest visiting a Vide Grenier for better bargains. At Vide Greniers, the sellers essentially want to get rid of whatever they have so it’s cheaper but at brocantes, the sellers know the value of what they’re offering all too well, so it’s not always a great bargain. For this, Brocabrac is a fantastic app that lists details of these sales all over France. There a nifty My Little Paris guide for all of the sale schedules in the next few months.

Update 29/4/2013: That jam pan I wanted? Found it at the vide-grenier yesterday. Spent three hours scrubbing it back to new while watching Modern Family. Sunday well spent.

Everybody must have a good chocolate cake recipe. Everybody. The kind that you scribble down in your notebook, the kind you memorise, the kind your friends keep asking you to make over and over again. And I think, that with this recipe, I’ve found one I love and can see myself going back to, time after time.

It’s not like I’ve not made good chocolate cakes before, but nothing made me save the recipe or go and scream from the rooftop about it (the internet being my rooftop). But this cake? I’ll categorise this one as a great cake. It has a fantastic, moist crumb. And the ganache, silky with full fat cream. At first it might seem a bit runny, but let it rest a bit and you’ll have a lovely spreadable consistency. If you want a thin shiny coat of ganache, simply make half of the ganache and pour it over the cake when it’s still a bit still runny. And if you’re planning on making a thick ganache icing – because that’s clearly the way to go – pour over a third of the icing to lock the crumb in so that icing the cake will be a breeze.

The only thing I’d say is to be sure to eat this cake at room temperature. Refrigerating it firms up the cake because of all that butter in it, and makes you think that it has dried up. You don’t want that. I made the cake three days ago, and it’s been perfectly fine sitting on the table at room temperate (with the single digit temperatures here). Needless to say, I’ve been shaving off sliver after sliver of it and even eating it for breakfast at 7 AM (because I can).

I made this for Arjun, so it had to be without any fruits. Just an overload of chocolate. But next time I’m going to sneak in some fresh raspberry coulis between the layers before I spread the layer of ganache. I’m also hoping for a party of some sort soon so I’ll have an excuse to make this again, doubled up and sky high.

Chocolate Chocolate Cake

Adapted from: Tartine (USA | UK | India)
Yield: 6-8 servings

Chocolate Cake

125g flour
30g cornflour
40g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
125g yoghurt
30g water
115g butter
275g sugar
125g eggs (2.5 eggs)

1. Preheat oven to 170ºC. Line a 9 inch round cake pan with parchment paper.
2. Whisk and then sieve together all the following: flour, cornflour, cocoa, baking powder,baking soda and salt.
3. Whisk together the yoghurt and water in another small bowl.
4. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until the butter has lightened in colour. It won’t dissolve into the butter because there is more than twice the sugar, but that’s fine. Next, beat in one egg at a time, making sure it’s fully incorporated before add the next one. Also, make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a silicone spatula between additions.
5. Next, switch to a spatula and alternately mix the dry ingredients and the thinned yoghurt until fully incorporated into the batter. Start and end with the dry ingredients.
6. Bake for 40-45 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
7. Let it cool completely on a cooling rack before cutting.

Chocolate Ganache
300g dark chocolate
375g full fat cream
30g butter, cut into small cubes

1. Place the chocolate in a bowl.
2. Bring the cream to a full boil in a thick bottomed pan.
3. Pour it over the chocolate and let it rest for a few seconds before you being to whisk it gently to bring the emulsion together.
4. Finally, stir in the pieces of butter until fully incorporated. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature until you want to use it.

Assemble the Cake

1. With a serrated knife, slice off the domed portion of the cake.
2. Next, cut the cake into half horizontally. Place the bottom half on a plate or a cake board. Spread a thick layer of ganache on it making sure to leave a little gap around the circumference – otherwise when you place the top half of the cake, the ganache might ooze out.
3. Place the top half of the cake. Spread a thin layer of ganache on the cake – you could pour it while it’s runny or spread it with an offset spatula when it has firmed up slightly. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, then finish icing the cake with the rest of the ganache.
4. You might need to refrigerate the cake between coats of ganache for ease of icing.
5. Always serve this at room temperature or slightly warm with a drizzle of caramel sauce and a little ice cream on the side.

[If you are reading this as an email or in your RSS reader, view the video on the blog]

I’m so excited to share with you my first little film! Here’s what Arjun and I usually do on Sunday mornings: visit the Place des Fetes market and come home and make a meal together with whatever we find at the market. In this video, we potter around the market and bring home some gorgeous blood oranges to bake with.

Making this video was so much fun. From getting the market vendor to let me play with his fruits, despite the “Ne toucher pas” sign everywhere, to having an egg roll down the table and crack open while filming, I ended up learning a lot: camera angles, lighting, storyboarding, editing, 7 hours of Lynda Premiere Pro tutorials, etc.

I spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to pick the right music only to come back to something I already had only my computer, but failed to take into consideration: one of my favourite Swedish bands, Detektivbyrån. As much as I enjoy French Musette and the music from Amélie, I wanted to veer away from the the clichés.

This is my first video, and it isn’t perfect (spot the unmanned tripod reflected in my mixing bowl at 2:58!), but I’m just so thrilled about having acquired another skill that I hope to continue to work on and get better at.

This video is all thanks to a two week Skillshare class I took by Katrina Tan Conte, which gave me the much needed kick in the pants.

Blood Orange and Olive Oil Cake

Adapted from: NY Times
Yield: 8-10 servings

3 blood oranges*
1 cup (200g) sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup (125g) yogurt
3 large eggs
1 3/4 cups (200g)all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

To serve:
Vanilla blood orange compote and crème fraîche

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170ºC.
2. Brush a loaf pan with butter and dust with flour. Tap off the excess.
3. Zest the 3 oranges. Rub it into the sugar and stir in the cinnamon.
4. Supreme 2 oranges as shown in the video. Cut the segments into half.
5. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
6. Juice 1/2 an orange and mix it together with 1/2 cup yoghurt. In another bowl, whisk the 3 eggs together until pale and frothy.
7. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar with all the wet ingredients: yoghurt and orange juice mix, the whisked eggs and the olive oil until they form a homogenous mixture.
8. Fold in the dry ingredients mix with a spatula, followed by the pieces of orange along with its juices.
9. Bake for 50-60 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
10. Serve with the blood orange compote and crème fraîche or whipped cream.

For the blood orange compote:
Supreme 3-4 blood oranges over a saucepan to catch the juices. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar (or to taste), 1/2 a vanilla bean, split and scraped. and let it simmer on a very low heat for 10-15 minutes until the segments fall apart. Begin with less sugar than you think because it’s going to thicken as it cooks.

*If you can’t find blood oranges, there’s no reason why you can’t make these with regular oranges. The name and look of these is just a wee bit more dramatic.

I’ve been enjoying a few new things lately that I thought were worth a share.

Japanese Ginger Grater
Even if I just spoke about this ginger grater alone, I’d consider this a very worthy post. This Japanese grater is absolutely brilliant. I used to use my Microplane for grating fresh ginger, but was invariably stuck cleaning out the fibres that got lodged in there. This, my friends, is path-breaking. I’m not the kind impressed by kitchen tools easily because I belong to the school of thought that you don’t need a gazillion new-fangled different tools to cook. Stick to the basics, and you’ll be fine. Come to think of it, the last tool that did get me excited was the Microplane, which was so many years ago. Now the hard part of sourcing it; I bought mine from Merci in Paris for €7.90 and I just looked up Amazon and they have one as well.

The Perennial Plate
I have been watching the short films on food by The Perennial Plate on and off ever since I discovered them (thanks 101 Cookbooks!). Their latest one documents the dabbawalas of Mumbai. Made me miss home.

Jerusalem (USA | UK | India)
I’ve wanted to buy this book ever since it released. I’ve kept so many book purchases on hold only because we’ve been living like nomads (and loving it) but I finally gave in and bought this one – I’ve made the butternut squash, Brick and Krantz cake already (aka babka) and like all Yotam Ottolenghi recipes, they’ve all been pretty darn amazing.

Coconut sugar and sticky coconut syrup
As a kid, and even as a teenager, I never liked coconut. Of late, however, it’s been quite the opposite.  Every time I’m at the Chinese market, I’m constantly on the lookout for anything coconutty – I picked up coconut sugar on one visit and have been eating it straight from the jar (my new Nutella/Speculoos?). I’ve also been using it to add into Asian curries in place of palm sugar. It’s addictive. On another trip, I discovered a Vietnamese sauce Nuoc Mau Dua Ben Tre, or simply put, condensed coconut. Now, Chinese markets are filled with hundreds of exotic ingredients and I usually go there with a shopping list in hand, but blinded by my new-found coconut obsession I bought this without knowing anything about it. If you’ve used it before, please tell me what you did!

Bon Appétit Desserts (USA | UK | India)
I’ve been flipping through the pages of Bon Appétit dessert and everything in there looks so good! I have the page for the (surprise-surprise!) coconut milk bundt cake dog-eared. Cannot wait.

Skillshare Class on Video Muse
I love taking photos and over all these years of blogging I feel like I’ve figured out my style and seen it evolve with my changing taste. Making videos is something that has been on my mind, but I haven’t worked on developing my skills. I stumbled upon a class on Skillshare where we’d learn to make a 5 minute video portrait and signed up instantly.

True Coral
Ever since my editor at BBC Good Food introduced me to red lipstick almost two years ago, I’m one convert. I was recently gifted True Coral by Tom Ford (thanks, Mansi!) lately and I’ve been wearing it everywhere. Love it, love it.

Le Fooding App
Eating out at new places is almost always a well-researched process because it irks me to spend money on subpar food. On returning to Paris, I got the Le Fooding 2013 App that helps me discover new gems around the city. I like it because it’s not crowd-sourced and covers a fun mix of unconventional places in all price ranges. I even ended up finding interesting restaurants close to my home that I hadn’t heard about!

Francis Lam on Food is the New Rock
I’m always looking for new tunes and podcasts (with the BBC Food Program and Spilled Milk being my favourites) to cook to and I had a good time listening to Francis Lam last night while I chopped onions for a beef ragout.

Great news! I’ve finally put together a page with a list of all my favourite cookbooks after all the emails I keep getting for book recommendations. I’ve also added my notes and comments about the books and I hope that this proves useful to you.

Have a look, let me know what you think!