Easy sugar cookies.

I feel like the sugar cookie is something that, for the most part, everyone loves.  Some people have different aversions when it comes to things like oatmeal raisin (raisins?  ew!) or chocolate chip (some like thick and fluffy, others like thin and "greasy"), but no one can really complain when it comes to good 'ole plain sugar cookies.

I like my sugar cookies thick, fluffy, chewy and soft. I played around with the proportions and ingredients  and settled on the recipe below.

I love mine with some almond flavoring, but you could definitely flavor these to your liking.  I love the twist that almond extract gives these cookies, but using another extract won't affect the texture of the cookie.

Lactation Cookies, or Galactagogues, mothers milk makers, milkin cookies.

I know what you're probably thinking: lactation cookies?! Really,?

Hey, I'm willing to give anything a try at this point if it might help us, even if it's an old wives' tale I read about on the internet. I've done it before and I'll do it again . It's not like this is going to turn you into a milk cow if you're not in a position in life where you'd like to increase your milk supply. But for those of us looking to promote healthy lactation, why not, right? Even though the recipe calls for some slightly unusual ingredients, these actually taste really good. Like an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie with a slightly nutty extra kick
These are super yummy and help boost your milk supply! The recommended "dose" is 4 cookies per day (good luck limiting yourself to that many). This recipe makes a lot - about 60-70 cookies - so it can be halved if necessary.

I N G R E D I E N T S

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
4 Tablespoons water
2 Tablespoons flaxseed meal (no substitutions)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups thick cut oats
1 cup chocolate chips
2 Tablespoons Brewer's Yeast (no substitutions)


I N S T R U C T I O N S

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.Mix 2 T of flaxseed meal and water, set aside 3-5 minutes. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Stir flaxseed mix into butter mix and add vanilla. Beat until well blended.

Sift together dry ingredients, except oats and choc chips. Add butter mix to dry ingredients. Stir in the oats and then the choc chips. Drop on baking sheet and bake for 8 - 12 minutes

Tandoori chicken, Butter naans, and Mint chutney

Tandoori Chicken and Butter Naan... the chicken pieces turned out to be so soft and juicy after grilling and the naan was so soft and yummy... Its a very simple recipe can make it with the big chicken pieces or whole chicken, i kinda like it more in small pieces so this is my version of it... Lemme know if you guys like it i will post the recipe soon.

Chicken Croissants

An experiment that worked out great!! The buns were soft and delicate, a perfect compliment to the yummy filling in the center! And without all that butter that goes in regular croissants too!!! ;-)

Filling Recipe:

Ingredients:

Quarter kg boneless chicken breast, chopped into small pieces
2 small capsicum, red and green if possible, grated or chopped finely
2 tbsp sweet corn
1 grated carrot
1 small onion, chopped finely
1-2 green chillies, chopped
half tsp garlic paste
1 tsp chopped coriander
salt to taste
half tsp grinded cumin powder
a pinch of tandoori masala (optional)
juice of half a lemon
1 tsp soya sauce
1 tbsp butter

Instructions:

Heat the butter in a non-stick pan, add the onions and stir fry until they're translucent. Do not brown them. Add the chopped capsicum and grated carrot, stir-fry for about 5mins until they start to soften. Add the raw chicken pieces and keep stirring until they start browning. Add the chillis, garlic, salt, cumin powder, tandoori masala and sweet corn. Saute until the chicken pieces become tender and well-done. If the mixture sticks to the pan and the chicken is not yet done, add a tbsp of water and cover until ready. Make sure that the mixture is completely dry. Finally, add the coriander and soya sauce, mix well and switch off. Pour the lemon juice on the mixture, and whilst still hot, use a wooden spoon to smash the small pieces of chicken so that they become shredded. Adjust salt/chilli to your taste.

PS: You can smoke the mixture with a coal and some oil to give it a nice bbq aroma. This mixture should be enough for around 16 croissants.

Dough Recipe:

Recipe for Dough (makes 8 croissants)

Ingredients:

2 level teacups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
half tsp instant yeast
quarter tsp baking powder
3 tbsp softened butter
2 tbsp vegetable oil
warm milk mixed with water about half a cup (although you could need more or less depending on flour/altitude etc)

Method:

Sieve the flour and add the yeast, baking powder, yeast, salt and sugar. Stir it so that it's all well mixed. Add 2 tbsp of butter and 2tbsp veg oil. (Reserve the last tbsp butter for later). Rub into the flour using finger tips until the flour has a crumbly texture. Gradually add the warm milk+water, stirring it in with a wooden spoon at first until the dough starts to hold together, and then continuing to knead together with your hands until the dough has softened. You need this dough slightly sticky, it's a menace to handle but the result is worth the trouble. Just oil your hands slightly to help with the stickiness and keep kneading...adding a little sprinkling of flour when it gets too sticky to handle until the dough is nice and well-kneaded and formed into a ball. Apply a touch of oil all over the ball of dough, place in a container and cover with a damp towel. Place in an airtight cupboard (or even in the oven or micro-wave) and leave it to rise to about double it's original size. (40mins to an hour)


Roll out the dough on a floured surface into a huge circle of about 30cm diameter (use your fingertips to stretch the circle out when you feel you cant roll with the pin any further), then rub half of the reserved tbspn of butter all over this rolled out circle. Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife, cut the circle into quarters, then divide each quarter again to form eighths.

Take the first eighth of the circle, place your mixture of choice on the edge (where the perimeter of the circle used to be). Roll carefully towards the pointed edge (where the center of the circle used to be), tucking the pointy end underneath (you can make a small slit near this pointy end just to give the croissants a nicer appearance, although this is not a must).... Curve down the edges of your rolled up croissant to form the crescent shape.

Place the croissants on a greased tray and cover them again for another half an hour so that the dough can rise again. Switch on the oven on medium high (around 175 degrees) and in the meantime, glaze the croissants with egg yolk to give them a nice colour. Bake for about 12-15 mins depending on your oven's heat.

When ready, remove and place them on a cloth, and take the remainin half tbsp of butter, and gently touch up the buns with it to give them a nice shiny soft finish...and they would smell heavenly too. Cover the buns in the cloth for about 10mins before serving. This gives the butter time to get absorbed fully into the croissants, thereby making them soft and extra delish. Serve warm!!

Steak Calzones

Calzone is a close cousin to pizza; you could even call it wrapped up pizza because the filling is encased in the delicious dough rather than sitting on top. Anyway, these calzones. Super delicious. And here’s the thing about pizza: there’s really no perfect formula to it. So if you’d rather throw these toppings on top of a regular pizza, or into a deep dish, or inside of one gigantic calzone, do it! I won’t mind.

Calzone is basically the same as pizza but with a much prettier appearance. If you want to impress your family, make your regular pizza into a calzone, and watch them "ooh and ahh." And since the filling is inside instead of on top, it's easier to take on the road! Voila!

 Dough:

Ingredients

 3 level tea-cupsall-purpose flour

 three-quarter tspinstant yeast

 quarter tsp bakingpowder

 1 n half tsp salt

 1 tsp sugar

 4 tbsp oil plus 1tbsp butter

 water+milk (half andhalf)

 Method

 First, sieve theflour and add the salt, bp, yeast n oil. Heat the water/milk as much as you cantolerate for kneading. The hotter the liquid, the softer the bun. Add the watergradually into the flour whilst kneading until you have a soft but firm dough.Knead the dough, pounding it as much as you can to give the buns a delicatelysoft texture. The more you knead the better the result.

 Put the dough into alightly-oiled spacious bowl and turn it over in the bowl once so that thelittle oil covers the dough all over. Cover the bowl with a damp warm towel andlet the dough rise for about half an hour to 45 mins.

I should also mention that these calzones are really good reheated. So if you bake four but only eat two, or if you have leftovers, just pop them in the fridge and reheat them the next day. Deliciousness round two!

For Steak Filling:

Ingredients:

1 kg rump steak 2"cube size pieces,

2 tbsp ginger garlic paste,

1 tsp black pepper powder,

5 - 6 medium onion

2 tbsp margarine or butter,

1 tsp cumin crushed coarsely,

1/4 tsp turmeric powder,

2 tsp black pepper powder,

1 tbsp fresh chopped coriander,

1/2 tsp garlic paste,

1 - 2 not so spicy green chillies,
1/2 tsp all spice pwd, 

juice of half lemon,

salt as per taste.

 Boil 1kg rump steak(cubed) in a pressure cooker with some salt, garlic, ginger and pepper untilvery tender (about 35mins or a bit more) Try to use just enough water to cookthe meat, the less water used the better, because all the flavour is retainedin the meat itself this way.r

 Once cool, drain thenshred the steak using the flat end of a spoon. Set aside. If there was any soupleftover from the boiling, do not discard. We will use it when preparing themixture later.

 Peel about 5-6 mediumred onions (white are fine too but I prefer red coz they are sweeter and give anicer overall taste to the dish). Make two deep gashes in it to form quarters,but dont cut it right through. Slice these onions using an onion slicer so youhave small pieces of thinly-sliced onions.

 In a deep pan, heatabout 2 tbsp of margarine or butter. Add the sliced onions and saute untilonions are soft (but be careful NOT to brown them. They should just turn into anice translucent colour).

 Add crushed cuminpowder, a quarter tsp of turmeric and about 2 tsp black pepper powder. Stir fora bit, then add the shredded steak and about 1 tbsp of freshly choppedcoriander, half tsp garlic paste and 1-2 chopped green chillis. Cook for about10-15mins on low heat, adding a bit of the retained soup whenever you feel themixture is getting a bit too dry (it should be slightly towards the moistside). Adjust salt/pepper to your preference and squeeze half a lemon's juiceinto the mixture. Stir then turn off the heat and sprinkle some garam masala.

Assembling the calzones:

 Once risen, make intoabout 4 or 6 balls. Roll out each ball into a circle of about half a cmthickness. Place your mixture on one half of the circle, leaving a margin nearthe circumference.

 In a bowl, beat anegg WHITE with a half tsp of water. Drizzle some of this egg white onto themixture that you placed on the dough circle. (This is a tip that helps to holdthe mixture together whilst baking so that when you eat the foldover, you wonthave bits and pieces of meat falling out...so messy!! You can do this formeatpies' mince too!)

 Dip your fingers insome water then run them around the circumference of the circle of dough. Thenfold the circle in half, using the empty half to cover the half that has themixture. Press down around the edge using a fork that's been dipped lightly inflour. This helps seal the edge and leaves a pretty design too.

 Make a slit in themiddle of the foldover (to help air escape during baking and also makes iteasier to cut the foldover in half when eating!) Repeat for the remaining doughballs...

 Place the foldoverson a greased tray and let them rise again for about 20 mins to half an hour.Then lightly brush the tops with egg yolk to give them a nice golden colour.Bake in a pre-heated oven (around 170 degrees) until they're a nice colour.Should take about 12-15 mins or so depending on your oven.

 You can apply a bitof butter when they are straight out of the oven (to give them an amazing aromaand to help soften them further). Make sure you cover them in a soft cloth forat least 15mins before serving. This makes them extra soft.

McArabia Sandwich

A While ago i had my first McArabia Sandwich.. and its really yummy.... One fine afternoon my cook bug kicked in and wanted to try this Delicious sandwich at home.. with all my home ingredient.. Seriously guys its worth a try.

McArabia Recipe

Pita Bread:
Ingredients:

All purpose flour: 1 and 1/2 cup
Instant yeast: 1/2tsp
Onion seeds/Kalonji: 1/2tsp
Oil: 1tbsp
Milk: 1/2 cup (Luke warm)
Salt: 1/2 tsp

Instructions:
Knead the dough and rest it for 30mins.
Knead it again to make it air free then divide into 4 balls and roll each one out like how we make rotis/chapatis but a bit thicker. Cook over your tava or pan on medium heat until done on both sides.

Secondly the chicken patties:

Ingredients:

Chicken minced: 1/2kg or chicken boneless cut in 1"cubes
Soya sauce: 1tbsp
Garlic paste: 1tsp
Onion: 1 medium finely chopped
Salt: to taste
Pepper: 1tsp
I added 1 green chilli chopped

Instructions:
Make 8 patties out of your mixture and to thin them just grease the bottom of a plate and squeeze down on each patty with it or just press with your hands to shape it. You will need 2 patties for each sandwich. Shallow fry them..

For the sauce:
mayo: 1tbsp
cream: 1/2cup
milk: 2tbsp
mix them together

Filling:
ice berg salad, sliced finely
1 onion cut into rings
1 no.sliced capsicum
tomato roundels
carrot jullienes
these you will use according to your preference..

Now take the pita bread..place the chicken patties top with the veggies and then the sauce..close it and serve with whatever you like fries or salad.