Yogurt, Fruit and Nut Tart - Fancy Srikhand

After a period of silence Gourmet Lab returns with a 'easy on your love-handles' dessert which has all the comforting flavours of a breakfast. The title of this post sounds like a healthy breakfast, doesn't it?

I took a scrumptious classic Indian dessert 'Srikhand' and made a fancy and a eye-catching dessert. After all we all eat with our eyes first, don't we?  Srikhand is basically a thick yogurt sweetened with sugar, favoured with saffron and cardamom. For little more richness and texture pistachio and almond are added to the sweetened yogurt.

I kept almost all the flavours of Srikhand intact and added few more ingredients to complement the existing flavours.

Yogurt, Fruit And Nut Tart - Fancy Srikhand

There are 3 components of the tart - tart shell, yogurt filling and the fruit topping.

Tart Shell
1 cup of whole wheat almond cracker crumbs (If you can't find almond cracker, use gram cracker instead)
1/2 cup almond flour
5 TBS unsalted brown butter
I didn't use any sugar, because crackers were pretty sweet. If you are using gram cracker, you can add 1/4 cup sugar or according to your taste.


To make the brown butter, heat the butter in a pan on medium heat till the milk solid in the butter turns light brown. At this point butter should have a nutty aroma. Don't over cook the butter, or the milk solid will be burnt. 


To make the cracker crumb, put the cracker in a food processor and pulse it till you have a fine crumb.


Mix all the ingredients and press the crumb in a pie or tart pan. Use the bottom of a bowl to press and smooth out the crumb in the pan. Bake the tart shell in a preheated 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 20 minutes or till the crust gets brown.


Yogurt filling
4 cup thick Greek yogurt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon lime zest
1/2 cup chopped pistachio
1 teaspoon cardamom
Saffron strands soaked in warm milk


Put the yogurt on cheese cloth and hang it over night to take the excess water off the yogurt.  Add rest of the ingredients to the yogurt in a bowl and mix them well using a rubber spatula.


Fruit Topping
1 cup raspberry
1 cup diced mango
1 TBS honey
1 TBS lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest


Mix all the ingredients in bowl and let it sit for 10 minutes till all the flavours mix well with each other.


To finally assemble the tart, take the baked shell and add the yogurt filling in the centre and smooth it out starting from centre toward the edges of the shell using a rubber spatula. Add the macerated fruit to decorate the tart.

Mixed Berry and Ricotta Tart

It has been a while since I posted anything. With the move from New York to London, I have hardly cooked for the past few days. My temporary kitchen still lacks basic things to make any meal. But the food in London has been wonderful so far. The portions are small compared to USA but taste wise I am not missing much. There are lot of restaurants of various cuisines from all over the world. But the food is little pricey here even by Manhattan standards.

Bakeries, pastry shops and cafes are in abundance around central London which we have been exploring over the weekend. They have lots of French desserts - they all look yummy! Inspired by the dessert shops around here, I thought of posting the recipe for a fruit tart I made when I was in New York.

Mixed Berry and Ricotta Tart

Ingredients for tart dough

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup cold butter

1/8th teaspoon salt

1 egg mixed with little cold water

Preheat the oven to 400 degree F.

It's very easy to make tart dough. The flour to butter ratio is 2:1. The only important thing to keep in mind is that the butter should be really cold. That helps to keep the tart flaky.

In a bowl mix flour and salt. Cut the butter into the flour with a fork and mix it well. The flour and butter mixture should end up with a sandy texture. Add the egg to the mixture. Bring the flour together to make a dough ball. Don't over knead the dough, otherwise it will make the tart tough. Wrap the dough with plastic wrap and rest it in the fridge for 30 minutes. If you have extra dough then at this point you can freeze it. It freezes really well up to a month.

If you want you can use food processor to make the dough. Food processor makes the task easier and less messy.

Roll out the chilled dough into a 1/8 inch thick round sheet on a floured surface. It should be larger than the tart mould. Carefully transfer the sheet to the tart mould. Trim the excess dough off the tart mould by rolling the rolling pin across the mould rim. Chill it for 30 more minutes. The idea is to keep the butter solid. So when heat hits the dough, butter melts and creates air pockets which keep the tart flaky.

This dough can make a 8 inch tart. But I made a 6 inch tart and froze rest of the dough. Once you have the tart dough handy you can whip up any sweet and savory tart within no time.

First partially bake the dough without any filling. Line the dough with parchment paper and add pie-weight or dried bean on the parchment paper and bake it for 10 minutes. The weights ensure that the dough doesn't puff up. Then remove the pie-weight and bake the tart dough for another 5-6 minutes till it starts looking a little brown.

Tart filling

4 oz ricotta cheese

1 egg

Zest of one orange

Fruits (Berries, mango or whichever fruit you like)

Mix all the above ingredients except the fruit well.

Fill the half baked tart shell with the filling and bake it for another 20 minutes or till the filling settles.

Take the tart out of the mould and let it cool completely, ideally on a cooling rack. Fill the tart shell with your favourite fruits. I used raspberry, blueberry, mango strips and blackberry sauce (blackberry and sugar ground together and passed though a sieve to discard the seed).

Walnuts and Chocolate Chip Biscotti

I don't like sugar in my coffee, but I like to dip something little sweet and little firm - something like biscotti, the double baked cookies. I fell in love with them while watching a cooking show on television. The slender and sexy look did the trick for me. Then when I ate them for the first time it was like heaven in my mouth. After finishing my Masters, when I was looking for a job, I made a batch of biscotti and they accompanied my morning and evening coffee everyday during my job search process. Luckily I found the job soon, otherwise I would have needed to go on the serious dieting schedule.  I just can't resist these baked goodness.

Walnuts and Chocolate Chip Biscotti Recipe

2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup sugar

Pinch of salt

1/2 cup or 1 stick of unsalted butter

2 eggs

1/2 tsp of orange zest

1 tsp of coarsely ground fennel seed

1 cup dark chocolate chips

3/4 cup chopped walnut

Preheat the oven to 350 degree F.

Cream the butter and sugar using a wooden spoon or a electric mixer. Add one egg at a time to the mixture. Add orange zest to the mixture. Keep aside this wet ingredient mixture.

Combine flour, salt, baking powder and fennel seed together in a bowl. Then incorporate the dry ingredient slowly into the wet ingredient mixture. Fold in the chocolate and walnuts in the mixture. At this point the batter should feel like a soft dough.

Line a baking sheet with a parchment paper. Make two (2 inch thick and 5 inch long) logs out of the dough and put them on the parchment paper. Bake them for 35 minutes in the preheated oven.

 

Take them out of the oven and then cool for 10 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degree F.Then cut those logs at an angle using serrated knife. If you try to cut the logs when they are still hot, you won't get a clean cut of the biscotti. Since the dough is still soft, it will break while cutting.

Bake the biscottis for 20-25 minutes or till they get golden brown in a 300 degree oven. Transfer the biscottis to a cooling rack and hold them there till they have completely cooled down.

Non-traditional English Trifle

We had some friends over for dinner last weekend. For dessert I made a non-traditional English trifle.  Instead  of lady-fingers, I used home-made lemon yogurt cake - which was very light and it didn't have butter for a change :)  I layered cake and mango-yogurt sauce and topped it with chopped mango and black berry sauce.

Someone in my house thought that the pattern I made on the dessert looked like Chinese armor and named it a 'Ming Mango Cake'. I won't mention the name of that person - who couldn't stop laughing for at least half an hour.

The yogurt cake had cardamom and saffron in it. I had some Swedish cardamom rolls couple of weeks back which was made by a student in my class. The cardamom flavor in the roll was enticing as well as surprising. In many Indian desserts cardamon is used as a flavoring agent, but I had never had cardamom in a baked good before. Since the non-traditional English trifle is English with Indian flavor, I used cardamom and saffron instead of vanilla. Actually, I used saffron because I have always liked the 'kesar pista'  flavored Indian ice cream. Kesar is the Indian name of saffron and pista is pistachio - which I have used in the mango-yogurt sauce.

The mango sauce is inspired by lassi - mango-yogurt based Indian drink. The black berry sauce added one more level of complex tanginess to the dessert along with piquant taste from mango-yogurt and sharpness from the lemon-yogurt cake.

Non-traditional English Trifle Recipe

Lemon-yogurt cake

11/2 cup flour

11/2  tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1  tsp cardamom powder

1 cup whole milk yogurt

1 1/2 cup sugar

3 eggs

Few saffron strands

1 tsp lemon zest

1 cup vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degree.

Stir all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. In another mixing bowl combine yogurt, sugar, eggs and mix them well. Add oil to the wet mixture. Slowly add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet ingredients and mix them well. Add lemon zest and cardamom to the batter. Soak a few saffron strands in a little bit of warm water and add it to the batter. The warm water helps to bring out the flavor and color in saffron. Line a loaf pan with parchment paper. I used a disposable 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 1/2 inch loaf pan. Pour the batter in the loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes or till a fork comes out clean of the center of the cake. After the cake is done, let it completely cool on a cooling rack.

Mango-Yogurt sauce

1 quart whole milk yogurt (try to use Greek yogurt which is much thicker)

1 30 oz canned mango pulp

1/2 cup chopped pistachio

If you are not using Greek yogurt then put the yogurt on a cheese cloth and squeeze out the water from the yogurt. Then add mango pulp and chopped pistachio to the yogurt. I added the entire can of mango pulp to the thick yogurt. Since the pulp is sweet it doesn't need any extra sugar. But if you don't like the strong mango flavor, you can go easy on mango pulp.

Blackberry sauce

12 oz black berry

1/2 cup simple syrup - which is made of 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar

Simple syrup - add sugar and water in a pan and bring it to a boil.

Let the sugar cool down a little and then blend the simple syrup and black berry together. Pass the sauce through a sieve to get rid of the seed.

Layering of the Trifle

1 lemon yogurt cake

Mango yogurt sauce

Blackberry sauce

1/2 cup freshly chopped mango

I used a pyrex 8-inch  baking dish to layer the trifle. Layer the bottom of the dish with slices of lemon cake, then add half of the mango-yogurt sauce and half of the freshly chopped mango. Add another layer of cake followed by rest of the mango-yogurt sauce. Then make the 'ming' pattern using the blackberry sauce :) Take a look at the picture - the black lines are the black berry sauce.  Then garnish the square made out of blackberry sauce with chopped mango. Let it chill in the fridge at least for a day. The longer you keep it, the better it tastes.

The two sauces are very versatile. You can make instant dessert if you have some left over sauce. Top any sweet cookie or wafer with a dollop of mango-yogurt sauce and a little blackberry sauce. It looks sensational and even tastes amazing.

I made this mini dessert by topping Nilla vanilla wafer with both of these sauces.

Lemon Pudding

The most deliciously decadent dessert I have ever made. I didn't post the recipe because it was not mine. But I can provide the recipe on request.

Banana Bread wih Nutella

Banana bread is one of my ‘rescue banana’ recipes. Banana is not only rich in vitamin, but it also acts as an anti-acid. After dinner, banana is a easy and healthy dessert with a little nutella or peanut butter on top. But sometime it just sits on the counter top unnoticed and turns black and mushy. That’s when my banana bread recipe comes into play, one recipe that demands for ripe, mushy banana that is not very appetizing on its own.

Ingredients

4 ripe bananas

1 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup unsalted butter

1 egg

½ cup honey

2 TBS granulated sugar

pinch of salt

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ cup chopped pecans

¼ cup raisin

¼ cup chocolate chips

nutella (Chocolate hazel nut spread)

Preheat the oven to 400 Degrees F.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Mass all the bananas in a separate bowl using a fork, then add melted cold butter and egg to the bowl. Mix them well. Then mix all the dry and wet ingredients. Butter the pan and add the mixture and bake it for 30-35 minutes. The house smells good, cinnamon, and banana, just like home.

I am addicted to nutella. I can spread it on any baked goods, fruits or any sweet thing. Nutella tastes even yummier with this chocolate banana cake, got to try this to believe it. After the bread cools down, spread a generous amount of nutella, sprinkle some chopped hazel nut, pecan or whatever else you have at hand.

Sweet and Savory Weekend Brunch

Weekend brunch is one of my favorite meals. Last Saturday was a gorgeous day in NYC. I was craving for something savory followed by something sweet. Eggs, some baked items and fruits are the must haves of my weekend brunch. I decided to do something simple with the egg other than making omelet or frittata. I also wanted Heini’s yogurt cultured semi-soft cheese that I bought from Gourmet Garage to be the star of the show. The cheese is very creamy and spiced with jalapeno. It is just delicious. To satisfy my craving, I finally settled on a open faced ciabatta sandwich with poached egg and lots of melted cheese.

Ingredients for the open-faced Ciabatta sandwich
2 Eggs
½ Avocado
10-15 Cherry Tomatoes
Olive oil
Ciabatta bread
Salt, pepper, cumin powder
Heini’s yogurt cultured cow’s milk cheese with Jalapeno
Juice of half a lemon

I poached two eggs according to steps listed in the simply recipes blog and I had perfect poached eggs. Thanks Elise for sharing the recipe.

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/easy_poached_eggs/

I lightly toasted the ciabatta bread with olive oil and a little salt. Melted the cheese on the bread on the stove top. Added the poached egg, sweet cherry tomato, avocado, lemon juice and drizzled olive oil on the top. Then I seasoned the sandwich with salt, pepper and a little cumin powder. The recipe serves 2 people. And here is the sandwich…



The sandwich was accompanied by pear and blue berry crisp, which I baked in individual ramekin. Here is the recipe

Fruit mixture
1 pear
1 cup blue berry
½ teaspoon of cinnamon
½ teaspoon honey
½ teaspoon mixed berry jam
Freshly squeezed and zest of half orange
½ teaspoon of all-purpose flour

Topping
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup chopped roasted pecan
Pinch of salt
½ teaspoon of granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
2 TBS of unsalted butter

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Mix all the ingredients for the fruit mixture. Divide fruit mixture into two ramekins.

Put all the ingredients of the topping except the roasted pecans in a bowl. Add butter to the dry ingredients and rub the butter till texture of the mixture gets crumbly. Add the chopped pecan to the mixture.

Sprinkle the topping on top of the fruit filling. And bake it for 40-45 minutes till the fruit gets bubbly and the top gets crispy.



And the brunch served.