Winter Eggless Fruit Cake

After spending a delightful 5 months with us, my parents left for India this week. I got used to having them around so much, the house feels extremely empty, and maybe the heart somewhat more so. The following morning we woke up to find our neighborhood covered in a snowy blanket. We don't usually get this much snow. My son's school was closed due to the inclement weather. 

We decided to take advantage of the snow and make our very own snowman (or snowbird) in the backyard.

Anyway, after freezing for an hour outside we came inside and planned to do some work together, as my son wanted to help me bake a cake. I thought of baking a traditional fruit cake. While working on it, I was remembering my parents even more as my last cake was a coffee cake, when my parents were staying with us. They loved it so much that they ate the cake for lunch 😊. Fruit cakes always bring back lots of nice childhood memories too. We always used to look forward to eating fruitcakes that my parents would bring home on christmas eve from the Anglo-Indian bakeries in our city. They taste significantly different from any other cake. Not sure if it were the cake or the festive season had something to do with it. They were a little hard, fruity, and looked brown. Although it used to have rum in it, I didn't use rum in my cake. If you wish you can soak the fruits in rum for a couple of nights before baking. Also, this time I decided to make it eggless, for which I followed the recipe from Joy of Baking.   

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup fine brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk at home you can make buttermilk by mixing 1 tbsp white vinegar to 1 cup of plain milk and let it sit in the room temperature for 10 minutes. you will see the milk gets curdled a little bit)

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup dried fruits and nuts (I have used raisins, dried cranberries, dried apricot, candied pecan, walnut, cashew)

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Recipe:

Mix the dry ingredients first

Melt the butter and add to the dry ingredients

Add the buttermilk and vanilla extract

Mix everything very well with a spatula

Spray oil on a loaf pan

Pour the mixture

Bake at 350F for 1 hour

A skewer inserted comes out clean says your cake is ready

Fish Roll

Fish roll is another popular fish snack. Sometime fish rolls are stuffed with leftover portions of a fish or minced meat. While in Kolkata, although we used to devour fish rolls from street food joints or snack corners, we were equally in love with my Dad's homemade fish rolls. Among some of his other delicious recipes, this one is something that I can have anytime, anywhere. However this summer, I thought of learning the recipe while my parents' visited us. This is the easier version. I watched him from a distance as he is very particular about the uniformity of each rolls. I have to admit, the end result was excellent. 

Ingredients:
White fish fillet cut in very thin slices (I took 2 Tilapia fillet)
Onion paste, quarter of a big onion
Ginger and garlic paste, each 1 tbsp
Lemon juice, 1 lemon
Salt and pepper to taste
1 to 2 egg white
Flour 2 tbsp
Bread crumb, 1/2 cup to one cup




Recipe:
Marinate the fish with salt, pepper and lemon juice for 15 minutes
Now add onion, garlic and ginger paste to the fish and marinate for 2 hours or more
now with the help of a skewer carefully roll the fillets
Whisk the flour with water in a bowl
Now roll them on the bread crumbs
Dip the rolls in the egg white
Heat some oil to deep fry

Bottle Gourd with Hilsa Head (Ilish maacer matha diye lau)

One of my caucasian friends once told me "you know, I have seen fish heads sold separately in Asian stores, they look kinda gross". To her shock, I replied, "in our cuisine we don't leave out any part of the fish either". 

I had some Hilsa head in the freezer. Unfortunately, my husband is not a fish-bone lover. I like to cook fish heads but because of him my consumption of dishes, using fish bone/head, has gone down significantly. In Bengali cuisine, fish head is cooked with dal/lentil or with vegetables or with rice. And the type of curry varies as well. This time I thought of preparing the heads with lau or bottle gourd. Bottle gourd is famously prepared with prawns. I have even heard some friends refusing to make lau without prawns. Lau with fish heads, however, is a common recipe. For this recipe I have used minimal spices to keep the aroma of hilsa intact. 

Ingredients:
2 fish heads cut into halves
3 small bottle gourds, shredded
2 whole chilies slit
1 tsp turmeric
Oil for cooking
Salt and sugar to taste

Recipe:

• Rub the heads with salt and turmeric 
• Fry (or bake for 30 mins at 400F) the heads very well and keep aside
• Heat some oil
• Add chilies, be careful of the spluttering
• Add the fish heads and the shredded bottle gourd to the oil
• Add the turmeric, salt and sugar
• Saute on medium heat very well until the water from the bottle gourd dries up

Bandhakopir Kofta (Cabbage Balls)

Cabbage curry is a well-known dish and all Bengalis probably make it quite often. The one that is slightly more unusual, is probably the cabbage koftas. Strangely, I don't remember having them in Kolkata. I remember having plantain kofta, and loving that over the plantain curry. But because of the complexity of the procedure I don't remember having much of that. As far as I remember, I had my first cabbage kofta curry in California. We used to call her grandma, and she was a well-known cook among friends and families. She was originally from Bangladesh and the kofta she used to make was out of this world. Unfortunately, my koftas are no where close to them. Now thinking of that I am wondering if this dish was more popular in east bengal. I used to make them very often right after I learned it from her. But just realized I haven't made them in a while, probably because they are time consuming.

Ingredients:

1 whole cabbage shredded and boiled
2 potatoes cubed and fried with salt and turmeric
1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds
1 bay leaf
2 green chilies slit lengthwise
2 tsp ginger paste
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 chopped tomato
1 whole boiled potato
1 tbsp flour
Salt and sugar per taste
Oil for frying the koftas and cooking
Ghee and garam masala (optional)

Recipe:

Squeeze the boiled shredded cabbage very well and let it rest in a strainer for 2/3 hours until water completely drains out
To this cabbage add the boiled potato, a pinch of turmeric, cumin powder, half of the ginger paste, flour, very little salt (please keep in mind koftas will absorb salt from the gravy)
Knead it to a fine dough, that shouldn't be too soft or too tight, you can add more flour or potato if needed
Add oil to a skillet and shallow fry the koftas one by one
Add some more oil if needed for rest of the cooking
Add the bay leaf and cumin seed to the oil
Add the ginger paste, saute for one minute then add the tomatoes
Add green chilies
Add the coriander powder, turmeric powder, salt and sugar and saute until oil leaves the spices
Add desired water for gravy (the koftas will absorb some of the gravy and become almost double in size)
Add the koftas and fried potatoes
You can add some ghee and garam masala in the end