PICNIC 101- Chocolaty Oats and Apples Muffins!

The sky is clean, smells crisp; the westerly winds blow into the face just the way I would have liked. Yes, I stay in the capital of India, and yes, we do get these pristine mornings, sometime. But when we do, I waste no time in getting my feisty handsome foursome out in the sun, feeling the green under his limbs. This is undoubtedly the best time in the year to be in Gurgaon. And no weekend should go without a nice picnic, out in the sun.

Now picnics could be organised in a lot of ways than one. A casual beer and wine with barbecue on the side ought to be my favourite. Followed closely by a cook-earlier-serve-later-kinds. And the potluck, ah that takes the cake! So, the series starting now should keep you covered for each picnic event that you plan with your family and friends. In fact, I would also squeeze in a fantastic romantic brunch for 2, out on the terrace, with sun brimming in. It would be a hassle free, completely cook ahead, yet hot kind of romantic brunch, that could be served with a light champagne cocktail.

But to kickstart the series, here is my go to healthy snack for kids and adults alike. This is perfect to be taken on a long drive out of home. Its filling, yet full of good things which makes sure you are on the track for the new year resolution you so solemnly took. Alternately, if you have leftovers, you can simply pack it in the tiffin boxes for your kids to take to school, during the week. It is my very tried and tested recipe for some chocolaty apple and oat muffins. This much of ingredients make 12 big muffins.

INGREDIENTS

2 apples, peeled and sliced

1 cup of oats

1 egg

¼ cup vegetable oil

¼ cup curd, homemade works well

½ cup honey

2 tbsp. of your favourite jam, I used homemade strawberryjam that I made last year. Read about it by clicking here!

½ cup hot water

¼ cup cocoa powder

Vanilla extract

Salt

¼ cup sugar

2 tbsp vinegar

Upto 2/3 cups of whole-wheat flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

Chocolate chips or nuts, which are optional, but highly recommended.

METHOD

Trust me when I say that it can’t get any easier than this. We basically just blend everything together and bake. That is, it!!!!

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees c and get that going. Line your muffin pans with paper cups and keep it ready. I at times like to spray the cups with some vegetable oil so that nothing sticks to the paper.

Now the fun begins. Get the best blender you can lay your hands on and start blending the apples, oats, jam, egg, curd and oil to a nice homogeneous paste. I used my robust Hamilton beach smoothie maker, trust me it never fails me. If you don’t have a fancy blender, then just do the blending in a mixer grinder, starting always with the oats. Make a fine powder and then add all the wet ingredients to make a paste.

While that is mixing, mix in a measuring jug ¼ cup pure unsweetened cocoa powder with hot water, stir vigorously and keep it aside to bloom. This step really helps in building a darker stronger chocolate flavour. Add the sugar to the hot mix as well, it would help dissolve the grains.

Now in a nice big bowl, whisk 1/3 cup of whole-wheat flour with baking powder, soda and salt and keep it ready. If you are adding chocolate chips or nuts, then coat the additions in flour at this stage, and keep it ready.

Just to break up the method, you have 3 separate elements of the muffins ready. You have a blended mix of oats and apples, a jug full of chocolate goodness and dry flour coated nuts and chips. Now comes the assembly.

Let the chocolate mix cool a little before adding in the vinegar and vanilla. Pour it in the blender along with the apples and oats, and blend again. Once its thoroughly mixed, pour it on the dry mix and combine well. The batter should be in a spoon dropping consistency, adjust with the extra 1/3 cup of whole-wheat flour, if the need be.

At this time, just lick the batter to taste for the sweetness. If you use tart apples, you may need to adjust sugar accordingly. But for me, the Kashmiri apples pack a lot of natural sweetness, and the half cup of honey takes care of the rest.

Now pour onto the ready muffin tin and bake for 15 -20 minutes, till a toothpick inserted in the centre, comes out clean. Let cool and enjoy a scrumptious snack which is easy to carry, and yet satisfyingly moist and fluffy for a healthy bite!

Cheers!!

Facebook live with Veggie Smileys!!

So from now on wards, every week Zouqh is going live on Facebook with a new recipe. If you haven’t already liked our page, then don’t forget to do so right away!! We did our very first live video on Sunday. It was a moderate success, but there is always a scope of improvement. Comment like and share if you have a suggestion. I am always eager to hear your thoughts!!

This week, we made my toddler’s favourite snack- smileys. For any mother the above plate is blasphemous and she would cringe at the thought of giving this to her toddler to eat for Sunday lunch. But believe it or not, I did give this to my toddler on Sunday, and yet we were a happy duo. He was happy because he loves to have tasty finger food. I was happy because each and every component was made at home, and provided a balance nutrition to my child. The fish fingers were marinated and coated in a bread crumb mixture at home, and then stored in freezer bags. Sometimes I deep fry them, and sometimes I bake them. In any case it provides a healthy protein in my fussy toddler’s plate.

The smileys in question had carrots, green leaves and potatoes together. It was extremely tasty and my toddler finished all of these on Sunday. I saw he enjoyed feeding himself at intervals. I kept these neatly stacked in a see through glass jar. He would play, and come to grab one from the jar, eat as a snack, and back to his cars to play. It’s a sheer joy to see him feed himself, and it’s a nice feeling to be away from the chore of mandatorily sitting to feed him a meal. I let him enjoy his day, his way. And that let us both enjoy the holiday a bit better!!

I have posted the videos on my YouTube channel as well as on my FB page. Please feel free to like comment and share! Cheers!!

Ingredients

2 medium carrot and 2 medium potatoes boiled and smashed to bits

Salt to taste

1 cup Cornflour, to make a dough

Pepper to taste

Flavourings fresh or dried herbs to taste- I used chopped leaves of parsley, onion and garlic from my garden.

1 tbsp of oil

Tools required

A rolling pin to evenly roll out the dough

A chopstick with a round bottom to make eyes of the smileys

A round cookie cutter, or a jar lid.

A table spoon to make the smile.

Skinny Nutty Laddus!!

Clean & Deliciously tackling the festival calories, with Skinny Laddus.

Holi is right around the corner. And I am determined to show you a way to enjoy this festival of colours in the cleanest and purest form ever. By no means am I going to tell you to not play colours with your near and dear ones. But why not colour this season yellow with turmeric powder. For a geela surprise, stain your friend a deep crimson with fresh beetroot grated. I can go on and on about these clean procedures, but it's food that’s on my mind, and it food I want to write about.

Festivals in India are deliciously decadent. Every corner of this big country has a delicacy especially made for Holi. Neighbours take packets of mithai and visit your apartment. You too have to return the favour. But how about if you can add a healthy twist to this favour? What if you tell people, especially the ones who are struggling with weight issues that they can have this laddu without worrying about calories? Won’t there be a perfect smile on their face, a big thank you to your soul? Just to take that pleasureful thought in, I devised this healthy, yet decadent homemade sweet, that I lovingly named Skinny Nutty Laddus. It’s the technique that is important, and not substitution of ingredients. As I told you earlier, I am not a big fan of counting calories, but a bigger fan of devising such techniques that eliminate calories with ingenious processes. These laddus are made of real ghee/butter, nuts, sugar and condensed milk. It’s made of pure substances, yet you would see how I take out calories off the final product by following simple steps. I am doing all this to just make you understand that going sugar free doesn’t mean to start using chemicalized sweeteners. Ghee and butter are not your enemies. But if you can follow moderation, then enjoy these pleasureful decadence. After all we live just 1 life.

Before I get in with the recipe, let me jot down a few pointers about 3 basic ingredients I have used in this recipe. This would allow you to understand this revolutionary recipe, a bit better. :-P

• First on the list had to be besan or chickpea flour. This is a flour made out of garbanzo/chickpea which is notoriously lumpy in nature. It is actually a good source of plant based protein, and contains a fair amount of minerals and fibres. The sifting process does eliminate some fibres off the recipe, but hey- this is still much healthier than a piece of cake, frosted or not. Now this flour has a tendency of soaking in a lot of liquid. Like the ghee it soaked up in the video below. But if you can cook it to the right temperature and provide another source of liquid in that temperature, it would render out that ghee that it soaked earlier. So now you know, it is one of the best flours to use in a skinny recipe like this. And after the condensed milk was added, it rendered out a considerable amount of fat off itself.

• Nut butters are the second most important ingredient. It’s the good fat in the nut which emulsifies with the fibres and create nut butter. Mostly, you can make walnut and cashewnut butters without adding any additional fat as these nuts are full of essential oils. In the recipe I have used half of walnut and other half of peanut butter. Walnuts are bitter, so decide on your own combination of nut butters. But having said that, walnuts are undoubtedly the healthiest nut of the family. So choose wisely.

• Condensed milk too makes to the list. I used Amul’s tinned condensed milk. This article hasn’t been sponsored by amul at all, but I still mentioned the company’s name as it is one of the cleanest products on shelf. The ingredient list contains just 2 things, milk solids and sugar. And you just need these 2 for the recipe. Also the little tin of 200 gms, is easy to open and can be recycled. So it’s a win win for me.

Enough of gyaan. Hopefully you all feel much enlightened. Now to the recipe---

A step by step tutorial is uploaded on my channel in YOUTUBE. Do click here to see!

Ingredients

1 and ¼ cups of Chickpea Flour or Besan

2 Tbsp of ghee

2 Tbsp of Unsalted Butter

¼ cups of Walnuts butter

¼ cups of Peanut butter

¼ tsp of Cardamom Powder

A pinch of salt

200 gms tin of Sweetened Condensed Milk

Step by step tutorial is uploaded on my channel in YOUTUBE. Do click here to see!

Cheers!!

LLWT- 2 with Skinny Chicken Parmesan

Let’s Lose Weight Together Part 2 (LLWT-2)

Now for a quick update on my diet, I did follow it religiously from Monday through Saturday. Obviously the hostess that I am, I couldn't say no to entertaining guests on Friday, and hence made an easy healthy meal of homemade chicken parmesan, served on boiled daliya/bulgur wheat, and the banana chocolate cake from the below post for dessert. Luckily for me, the guests were health conscious too, and they loved the idea. By Friday, I have lost 1 kg on the scale, and the 2 hour eating habit has kicked in majorly. Saturday however kind of disturbed me off the path. I had a team lunch where in I had 2 slices of pizza and 1 cucumber. Dinner was late and almost after a big party, which didnt really go very well with me. I got sick and hardly ate anything on Sunday or Monday. Basically it was a stomach bug and thankfully due to timely medical intervention, I am back to eating normal since today. 

So for now I am gonna stick to week 1 and let my body adjust back to its routine. In the meanwhile, here is the recipe of Chicken Parmesan. It is a wonderfully easy recipe involving very few ingredients. I Indianised this Italian classic and read all about my experimentation here. Also, I am extremely sorry for not clicking a pic for it. I am borrowing a picture which resembles mine from the net, and thus I declare no interest or ownership on the same. But yes, it did look a lot like this, just a bit less of cheese on top. This recipe is so simple, that even after having a busy friday at work, I could put it together in no time. I had made the Marinara Sauce a night before, and that really sped the process manifolds. However, you can easily make this dish with a store bought jar of Marinara Sauce, and I bet it would still taste this awesome! 



Ingredients

4 chicken breasts cut in equal portions
Bread Crumbs
Fresh Garlic crushed
Salt and Pepper to taste
Homemade or store bought Marinara sauce (I followed a recipe from the internet, but instead of canned tomatoes, used fresh tomatoes and cooked a bit longer)
Parmesan Cheese
Gruyere Cheese

Method

Marinade the chicken breasts with salt, pepper and crushed garlic; and set it aside for 10 minutes. 

Now coat the chicken breasts thoroughly with bread crumbs and pan fry it in a little oil, but on a high flame. The idea is to not cook the chicken fully, but to get a crispy coating on it. 

In an oven proof pan, smear on a few dollops of marinara sauce. Place the crispy chicken breasts on top of it, in a neat row. 

Cover the chicken with more sauce and garnish on top with grated cheeses of your choice. Dunk it in a preheated oven for 20 minutes until the cheese is melted and the chicken is fully cooked through. Let it rest in the pan for a few minutes and then serve it with the carbs of your choice. 

I served mine on a bed of boiled daliya, along with a fresh cut salad on the side. Cheers!!

P.S. - In case you need the recipe of indianized Marinara sauce, comment below!

LLWT- 1 with Healthy Sugar Free Muffins!!

Let’s Lose Weight Together Part 1 (LLWT-1)

Sawan ka mahina – the rainy season is here. I don’t like it at all. This is the season my restaurants suffer the most in terms of business. This is the time when water seeps inside electrical equipment, leaving my base kitchen fridge less. The microbes are everywhere, everyone is either sneezing or coughing, or throwing food that was made in the morning, but gave way till the afternoon reached. So, my point being; I hate the season. There is absolutely nothing to like in the muddy water logged city that I live in, while it rains. The incessant traffic jams on the road doesn’t help either. After each shower, there is an addition of a pot hole on every road I travel. And not to mention, the abrupt waterfall and extreme panic of coming home to a flooded living room, just because the rain was too steep, and the drain pipe couldn’t handle the pressure. Sigh… I can continue complaining for another 2 pages.

But I assume, you aren’t reading to hear my rants about the Gaon I live in!! I guess you are reading to know the secret behind why I started abusing India’s most loved season, under the title ‘Let’s lose weight together.’ If you ever get the connection, let me know too... It might help me to understand why I am so erratic these days. But if you don’t, just continue reading as I am getting to the weight loss journey, starting now.

Thanks to my work, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to lose the extra kilograms that I gained since last year. My biggest problem is that I stress eat a lot, which makes it tremendously difficult to lose the weight. Obviously treading the weight loss path alone is rather difficult. So I had a genius idea to involve each one of you reading this article today, facing similar situations in life to come together, read and get inspired; and inspire me in the process.

A typical day for me starts with an action packed morning, leading to a stressful office day; lounging on to a traffic led evening- where I leave office to pick up my son and head back home. The night time sees me a bit relaxed, with family; either cooking a treat, or drinking a storm. My biggest challenges are these two aforementioned situations. It’s rather easy to reach up for a bottle of wine to unwind from the stressful day. And maybe, I did manage to gain all these extra kgs thanks to this one weakness in me. After consumption of alcohol, our bodies start experiencing a great depth of hunger. To satiate that hunger, we start off on the munching path which just piles on calories after calories in our body, unwanted and unreal. I can’t control my family’s urge to stack up deep fried farsaan in the cupboards. What I need to control is my urge into reaching out on to those snacks every now and then. So before, the issue mounts up to become a problem, let’s snip it in the bud. I am guilty of following this easy rather comforting lifestyle since a few months now. But better late than never. So here is my goal that I want to fix for me today, for the coming week.

Firstly, I am gonna restrict drinking high calorie drinks like wine completely. My voice has been soar for sometime now, and I need to get it back to sing my little guy lullaby. So for the next two weeks, if I drink, it’s either gonna be brandy with hot water, or just water. No wine shall pass through these lips, till my voice is back to normal.

Secondly, no deep fried food for the next two months consciously.

Thirdly, I need to get back into healthy 2 hour eating habit. 3 litres of water each day is not a problem for me at all, but if any of you are skimpy water-drinkers, please note that as well.

Obviously, these are difficult to follow in my life as I have too many distractions around me all the time. But the idea is to start amending any cheat I do with the next meal. So the amends for each chaet on the each goals would be-

Only twice in the week would I drink. And if I consume wine, then just once. Also, 2 glasses of water for each drink. Which would definitely cancel out the negative with a lot of positive.

Deep fried food should be accompanied with a lot of salad, before and after.

If ever I miss eating in the 2 hour mark, I will try not to eat 2 meals at the same time, substituting that meal with a lot of water.

So an ideal meal chart for me for the week would be-

Early morning – 500 ml lukewarm water followed with a bowl full of fresh fruits.

Intense activity                 (exercise)

Breakfast- a healthy combination of whole carbs with vegetables/egg. Eg-1 whole wheat veg sandwich or a roti-egg roll or oats upma with a lot of veggies and curd.

Mid-morning- Green tea with a healthy snack. Eg- 1 cream cracker biscuit or rasted chana or 5 pcs of soaked almond or this low calorie muffin.  

Lunch- would be a good mix of vegetables (cooked and/or raw) with whole carbohydrates. Eg- salad with ‘1 or 2 roti or boiled daliya’ and 1 - 2 bowl veg with 1/2 bowl curd/dal. If I choose to eat non veg, then I will cancel the carb and take 100 gms chicken/fish with 1-2 katori veg and salad.

Evening- green tea with 2 cream cracker biscuits or green tea with a small bowl roasted channa

Dinner- same as lunch just that I will try to go skimpy on the carbs. Eg-1 wheat chapatti with 1 or 2 bowl veg and Salad; or 50gms chicken/ fish with 1 or 2 bowl veg and salad.

Bedtime if hungry- 1 cup toned milk.

So I am aiming at following this diet for the next two weeks. It’s doable, in fact very easy too. But 1 of the weekends, I would like a treat of something sweetish that doesn’t harm my body so much. I will try to eat it more as a meal in itself as the mid-morning/evening snack, rather than an after meal dessert. Plus the sweet craving family of mine can’t be deprived of sweets for a whole 2 months, just because I am attempting to eat healthy. I know their urge in indulging into some sweets would lead them to a sweet shop, and that would be a nightmare for me. So here is a simple muffin recipe, which is refined flour free, butter free and most definitely sugar free in the most un-chemical way possible.

Ingredients

 ¾ cup whole wheat Flour

1 egg

½ cup Milk (any kind of Milk would work- coconut, almond, soya etc.)

2 tbsps. Maple Syrup or Honey

1 tbsp. Veg Oil

½ tsp. Vanilla Extract

¼ tsp. Baking Soda

Pinch of salt

2 Medium Bananas, roughly mashed

A handful of Dark Chocolate Chips

Method

It’s a rather easy way to make these super healthy muffins. All you do is combine all dry ingredients together in a bowl- flour, salt and baking soda in a bowl. Add the chocolate chips and coat it well.

In a measuring jug, dump in all the rest of the ingredients- egg, milk, honey, vanilla, oil and crushed banana. Mix well.

Now just combine the wet to the dry, and the batter is ready to be baked in a preheated oven of 180-200 degrees Celsius, for 15 minutes, or as long as it takes for a wooden toothpick inserted in the centre to come out clean. Cool and enjoy this treat for a day.

Basically the idea is to not starve you of your craving. If you crave something sweet, eat this. This batter will make only 6 muffins so it’s perfectly portion controlled.

So a best of luck to me and to you if you are with me in this ride. I starting today, and I have goal of losing 6 kgs within the next 2 months. Cheers!!