Madhu Knits and Cooks

Two Sleevers Palak Paneer - An Unfortunate Miss

It saddens me that my latest Two Sleevers Indian Instant Pot cookbook attempt was a bust for a few reasons.  First, I'd love to find an amazing new Palak Paneer recipe.  Second, I would love if I could find an amazing Palak Paneer recipe that is as easy to make as this one.  Third, I have been really liking my past Two Sleevers attempts, so it's unfortunate to break that positive streak.

Fourth, I can't fully identify what we didn't like about this final dish.  It was well-spiced, maybe slightly overly so, but also somehow lacked something to bring it all together.  It also had this slight tang that I didn't quite like.  Unless I figure out how to soften this taste, I'll probably continue to search for other recipes.

The recipe is quite simple to put together - saute most of the ingredients together, and then quickly cook on high pressure before quick releasing the pressure.

This was my first time using the quick release feature, which was a bit scary and fun to see all the steam so rapidly escape from the pot.

You then blend the cooked spinach mixture with an immersion blender, before adding the paneer and serving.  I do think that reducing the water by about half would also been good in the future to avoid too watery of a sauce.

Super quick and easy for a weeknight - sadly, it just didn't work.  Back to the drawing board!

Egg Yolk Chocolate Chip Cookies - A Salty, Buttery Treat

I continue to bake my way through Claire Ptak's Violet Bakery Cookbook with the Egg Yolk Chocolate Chip Cookies being another delicious stand-out that I will be baking again and again.

These cookies are crisp on the outside, slightly softer in the middle, full of a delicious salt flavor, and super, super buttery.  I really loved these cookies, and so did the others who sampled them.

You start with your standard cookie approach - creaming together the wet ingredients, and then adding in the sifted dry ingredients.  For my chocolate chips, I used a hodgepodge of leftover chocolate bits in my pantry - mini-chips, chunks of bittersweet bars, and some regular, semi-sweet chips as well.

The recipe then calls for scooping the dough with an ice cream scoop, which I did, but I think my scoop was not quite the size of Ptak's, so I ended up with approx. double the number of cookie doughs than the recipe intended.

Then you freeze the cookies for a bit before baking them.  I ended up baking my first tray of cookies the day I made the dough, and the second batch later in the week.

These cookies were super simple to bake, and turned out wonderfully even though I think I over-baked them.  I look forward to making these again and again!

King Arthur Flour's No Knead Bread - Another Great Bread Recipe

Could there be an even better version of my favorite bread recipe?  Thanks to King Arthur Flour, the answer is yes!  The KAF No-Knead White Crusty Bread recipe draws from my recent favorite Simple Crusty Bread approach, and provides more detailed guidance to result in a perfectly baked loaf.

The more detailed KAF guidance provides both weight measurement guidance that I followed as well as details on how to substitute a dutch oven for the baking itself.  I also followed related guidance to keep my standard inclusion of rye flour to only 20% of the overall flour weight as to not depress the bread rise too much.

(hello scale, I love you!)

By following the weight guidance instead of the volume measurements, I ended up with a much thicker and dense dough than my usual no knead doughs, which are quite loose and shaggy.

Like my preparation of the original recipe, I did half the amount of dough I made to ultimately produce two loaves instead of four.

I baked the loaf in a 7 1/4 quart dutch oven, pre-heated in a 450 degree oven (480 in our new, not-quite-calibrated oven).  I baked the bread for 28 minutes in the covered dutch oven, and then an additional 8 minutes with the cover off.

The result, when cooled, was great - full of decent holes, great crust, and a much better rise than when you bake on a pizza stone.  I'll be making this again!

Claire Ptak Cinnamon Buns - Biscuit-Like Morning Treat

To follow up on my January visit to the famed Violet Bakery in London, I checked out owner Claire Ptak's cookbook from the Queens Library.  The book has produced a few winning recipes to date, the first being the untraditional cinnamon buns.

These cinnamon buns are untraditional in that they are not made from a yeasted batter, so result in a much more dense bun, and also do not have any sugar in the dough itself.  So the dipped sugar topping and the cinnamon / sugar layers inside the buns are key to giving the buns their sweet flavor.  The dough otherwise has the flavor of a standard unsweetened biscuit.

The benefit of this non-yeasted approach though is that buns are super easy to put together, and do not require the several rises of yeasted doughs which have made cinnamon rolls an extreme rarity in my home.  

You start by melting some butter and preparing the cinnamon sugar, so that it's ready to be put into the dough right away.

The dough comes together in a similar manner to biscuits or pie dough - blend into the dry ingredients some chilled butter cubes via a stand mixer or a fork, and then add in some milk (unsweetened soy milk in my case) to bring the dough together.

(also, welcome to the kitchen my scale friend.  I love you!)

After letting the dough rest for a bit, you then roll it out - my dough rectangle is approx. half the size of what the original recipe calls for as I halved the recipe to get 6 buns instead of 12.

Put each of the cut cinnamon buns into a prepared muffin tin and bake.  What surprised me the most about the post-baked buns is how much they popped out of the pan!  The irregular shapes of the baked buns was really lovely and felt truly "homemade."

Roll the tops of the cinnamon bun into sugar, and serve while warm or re-heat in the microwave before devouring!

Two Sleevers Paneer Biryani - Delicious Weeknight Side or Main Course

The Two Sleevers Indian Instant Pot cookbook continues to outperform with a seemingly untraditional, but delicious, paneer biryani recipe.  

I used a pre-made garam masala blend, which made this dish a complete breeze to put together.  Basically, saute some onions in oil, and then add the ginger, garlic, and chiles.  

Add the spices, paneer, and frozen vegetables, and then without stirring, pour the pre-washed rice on top of the vegetable / paneer layer.

Pour the water over the dish, and set the Instant Pot to cook for 5 minutes.

Let the pressure release naturally, and voila, perfectly spiced and delicious paneer biryani!

The only change I may make moving forward is to add an additional quarter cup of water because the one cup called for the recipe didn't quite submerge the amount of rice I had and my husband thought the rice was undercooked.  I liked the more stiff rice (felt more like authentic biryani), but I'll probably try this slightly increased water approach to see if I can please all of the palates in our family.

This is both a great weeknight dish, as well as a fantastic dinner party dish.  Look forward to making it again!

Moving Mountains Blanket for Baby Delilah!

As you loyal readers know, I can't bear the thought of a baby being cold, so when I learned a friend's baby was due in frigid January, my mind immediately went to knitting patterns!  

Given baby Delilah's natural tones-themed nursery, I decided to knit a white baby blanket.  The pattern I selected - Moving Mountains (take heed Delilah!) - wasn't quite the right size, so I modified it to create the newborn crib / travel size that I wanted.

The size I created was enough to create a 22 1/2 inch square blanket, which then grew to a rectangular shape post-blocking.  Full project details below!

Moving Mountains Blanket for Delilah

Pattern:  Moving Mountains by Aimee Alexander, modified to 85 stitches cast on

Yarn:  Cascade 220 Superwash, 1.8 skeins in color 871 (white)

Needles:  US 9 circular

Measurements:  Pre-blocking measurements of 22 1/2 inches square, and post-blocking measurements of 26 inches tall by 22 inches wide

(Don't take my word for it, Delilah loves her blanket!)

Boterkoek - Dutch Butter Cake or Cookie? Regardless of Category, a Great Year-Round Treat!

Milk Street, Milk Street, how did I cook before you?  Chris Kimball's global recipe guide continues to outperform with my most recent Milk Street attempt, the Boterkoek, a Dutch shortbread cookie-like butter cake.  

This beautiful cake / cookie is baked in a springform pan and uses just 7 ingredients - with eggs being the main distinguishing ingredient from traditional shortbread.  The cake is very lightly flavored by a bit of lemon zest, making it a simple treat that can be enjoyed at virtually any time of the day and at any time of the year.  The thickness and crumbliness of the cake makes it feel like a more winter-y, tea-time snack, but the lemon flavor gives it a summer-like refreshing flavor.  In short, bake it all day, every day!

You start by buttering and flouring a springform pan, before making two separate egg mixtures (one white, the other white + yolk).

Then cream together the butter / sugar / lemon zest, followed by adding in the egg yolk mixture and the flour to make a thick, cookie-like dough.

Spread the dough in the prepared pan, and then coat lightly with the egg white wash before making the scored, checkered pattern with a fork.

I baked the cake for 28 minutes, and ended up with a cake that cut like a thick cookie, was crumbly like a cookie, but still held itself largely together.  The cake was a hit with both adults and children alike, so I will definitely be making it again!

Instant Pot Chana Masala - My First Two Sleevers Recipe!

Several month ago, a friend raved about the Instant Pot recipes that he and his wife had been trying from the Two Sleevers blog.  Hearing my friend's voice in my head during a browse on the Queens Library website, I decided to order the Indian cookbook authored by Two Sleevers blogger Urvashi Pitre.

The first recipe I made from the cookbook - Chana Masala - was fantastic, even though I made a number of modifications to fit my even lazier cooking schedule than the easy-to-follow recipe allowed.

First, I ended up cooking the chickpeas a few days before I made the chana masala because the day I pre-soaked the chickpeas, I was just too tired at night to put together the full recipe.

Second, instead of pre-making the onion masala, I concocted my own fake onion masala (just sauteing the onion, tomato, etc. in the Instant Pot immediately before adding the cooked chickpeas).  It seemed to work completely fine for the end result, so I think I will keep doing this moving forward.

Because I omitted the Instant Pot-made onion masala, I didn't really need to use the Two Sleevers recipe because the Instant Pot was only critical for cooking the chickpeas.  I do think I will continue follow this recipe though because the inclusion of pre-made chana masala powder really brought the dish together.  I had never thought of using store-bought until reading Pitre's strong guidance that the ready-made blend was close-enough to the real thing to offset making your own.   

So the pre-made spice blend and Two Sleevers approach have won the chana masala recipe war!  This will be my go-to moving forward.

Gingerbread Pudding Cake - Magic in the Kitchen!

Two years ago, I made my first "pudding cake", a cake that has two distinct layers - a traditional cake layer and underneath a layer of pudding, which serves as a sauce of sorts for the cake.

The magic of the cake is that you bake the cake in an inverted fashion from how it ultimately forms.  In other words, the final result is cake on top and pudding on the bottom, but before it goes into the oven, it's a pudding layer on top and cake batter on the bottom.  Somehow during the baking process, not only the layers switch, but also they don't somehow just mix together into one uniform consistency.  Magic!

Above is the final baked Gingerbread Pudding cake, and below is the cake before it went into the oven.  How did those layers reverse??

The cake was also relatively easy to prepare and can easily be a weeknight cake.  You the prepare the layers separately - first cake, then pudding.

The pudding layer consists of a melted butter / water mixture, combined with brown sugar and cornstarch.

I made one ingredient substitution with this attempt - nonfat vanilla almond milk for the milk because that's what I had on hand - and I noticed no difference with the final product.  I did though over-bake the cake because I didn't realize I should only insert the testing toothpick into the cake layer to test for no crumbs.  Instead, I inserted the toothpick into both the cake and pudding layers and obviously the pudding would stay wet throughout, which led to me keeping the cake in the oven for far too long!  Lesson learned.

This is a great cake for winter - warm, rich, and moist from the pudding, and infused throughout with classic winter spices.  I look forward to making it again and again!

Thanksgiving Green Beans Two Ways - Way 2, Elevate the Tradition

For Thanksgiving green bean post 2, I have a holiday classic - green bean casserole - but made with fresh ingredients.  So no need to fight the crowds for bagged fried onions and cream-of-mushroom soup, instead take yourself to the produce aisle for some shallots, green beans, and mushrooms.  And the truly homemade version is actually a lot easier than it sounds!

This Cook's Illustrated recipe not only produced a great holiday side dish, but also provided me the perfect opportunity to cook with mushrooms for the first time (yes, the first time!  for a vegetarian!).  

You start by frying up thinly sliced shallots and then letting them cool on some paper towels.  Then, using the same pan, stir-fry the mushrooms, then the green beans, and then put all the ingredients together with some cream and broth (water in my case, which had no impact on the flavor).

And with that you are done, on to prep the next Thanksgiving dish!   When served, the green beans have a nice thick sauce, with a beautifully rich mushroom flavor.  Thanks to CI for the holiday inspiration!