Cook with Priyanka: Egg

Monday, 16 June 2014

Spiced Carrot cake with walnuts (with eggs/eggless recipe-both)

Happiness is when your beloved Husband bakes his first cake while you're asleep and that too without any occasion. Sushant baked his first cake early morning, without any of my directions and also without any recipe. I was surprised to see the texture, it was just perfect. He woke up early morning and baked it. We didn't have any such plans but still he did it. Felt like I was on the top of the world. Though he was beaming a lot after it, but anything for this lovely cake :)

As it was a morning surprise hence I clicked it on the bed only. After a lot of tantrums, he wrote the recipe and sent to me, hence sharing with you all.

Ingredients :

All-purpose flour/ Maida – 1 and 1/2 cups
Baking powder – 1 and 1/4 tsps
Baking soda – 1/2 tsp
Cinnamon powder – 1 tsp
Nutmeg powder – ½ tsp
Brown Sugar – ½ cup firmly packed
Granulated white Sugar – ¼ cup
Grated carrots – 1 and ½ cups
Walnuts – 1/2 cup chopped
Vegetable Oil – 1/2 cup
Large Eggs – 2
Vanilla Essence – 1 tsp

Method :

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and dust a 6” diameter round pan.
Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg and cinnamon and keep aside.
Coat the chopped walnuts with a tbsp of flour mixture and keep aside.
In a bowl mix the brown sugar and the grated carrots and keep aside for 8 to 10 minutes.
In a large bowl whisk eggs, sugar and oil together. Now add the vanilla essence and whisk.
Now add the grated carrot+sugar mixture and mix well. Add the flour mixture in small portions and gently fold in. Also add the walnuts and fold in.
Transfer the mixture to greased pan and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into center comes out clean (cover loosely with foil if over-browning). Stand in pan for 5 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Enjoy warm with any ice cream or with coffee or tea.

Notes :

If you don't have brown sugar simply replace it with white one.
For the eggless recipe, simply replace 2 eggs with 1/2 cup of thick yogurt/curd and follow rest of the same recipe.

Please do share your experiences and feedback with me in the below section of comments or on my Facebook page. I too have a You Tube channel please do visit for all the video recipes. All the links mentioned below :)

YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/user/cookwithpriyanka

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/cookwithpriyanka

Thanks & Happy Baking
Priyanka and Sushant

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Goan Style Egg curry (Coconut based gravy)

Hi all, today I am very excited as I am going to do a guest post on my blog. This is my very first guest post and I am so happy that it's none other than Mr.Sushant Varma (My husband). He is a very good cook and more important - loves to cook. He is an IT professional and doesn't get much time, but whenever he is free he does it, specially on weekends. Last weekend we went together for a group meet of Chef at Large, its one of the biggest foodie group on Facebook having more than 32000 members. There we had a secret ingredient swap (Every member got an ingredient, which was not revealed to other members, then they were shuffled and distributed back). Me and Sushant both are the members, hence we both participated in it. He got a fresh whole coconut, with which he had to prepare a dish.

So he decided to prepare a Goan egg curry. We prepare egg curry frequently but the normal way its made, never tried it before but must say will be switching to this curry now more often. Won't be taking much time and straight away directing to Sushant.

"When I left home for my further studies, had various choices with food and had no idea about cooking. I went to New Delhi and had almost same options on most of the food joints with the same kind of taste. As very well said that “Necessity is the mother of invention” (for me cooking was an invention). I started cooking, but with a big question mark. Tried and failed many a times but somehow learnt the basic stuff. Then went to Mumbai for work and spent almost 3 years there. Great place with great people must say. There I learnt lot many varieties and got to know a lot about Goan food from one of my Goan friend. When cooking converted to passion from necessity never knew. But as an IT professional it’s so tough to take out time and continue our passion. I got married and that too with a foodie. Bas phir kya tha the journey began. Still I don’t get a lot of time, but can see my passion through my wife’s eye. So after a very long story here is the Recipe."

Recipe is for 2 portions, you can always increase the ratio as per the people.

Ingredients-

Eggs : 4 nos
Onions : 2 medium
Garlic : 4-5 cloves
Ginger : 1” piece
Fresh Coconut : ½ cup (remove the brown part)
Coconut milk : ¼ cup
Tomato paste : 1 tomato (I used concentrated hence 1 tbsp)
Tamarind pulp : 1 tsp
Whole red Chili : 1
Cumin seeds : 1 tsp
Coriander seeds : 1 tbsp
Turmeric Powder : ¼ tsp
Red chili powder : ½ tsp
Garam Masala : ½ tsp
Salt : As per the taste
Coconut oil – 2 tbsps (You can take any vegetable oil too)

Method -

Roughly chop ginger, garlic, onions and coconut.
Boil eggs
Heat oil in a pan. Once hot, add whole red chilies, cumin seeds, coriander seeds and then garlic and ginger. Once done, add onions and sauté till they change the color to pink. Add coconut and again sauté till you get nice golden brown color. Add the powdered spices and tomato paste and fry until oil oozes out. Add tamarind pulp and stir. Now cool down the mixture and blend to a paste. In the same pan, pour it back and cook. Add coconut milk and stir continuously till a boil comes. Add salt and boiling water (if required). You can adjust the gravy consistency by adding water. Now add the boiled eggs cut into two and cover the pan and simmer for 5 minutes. Garnish it with green coriander. Enjoy with Chapati, or steam rice.