Cheesy Cake

This is one of the first cakes I ever learnt to make and making it always gives me a whole lot of joy..

You'll need:

1. 250 g of Cottage Cheese (paneer)
2. 1 Tin condensed milk ( Milk maid)
3. 1 Lemon
4. Ginger Nut Biscuit
5. Mixer / Blender
6. A Big Cake Tin
7. Butter
8. Jam / Preserve / Jelly

Okay all you have to do now to make a cheesy cake is:

1. Take the Big Cake Tin and grease the inside of the tin with Butter
   
2. Melt some Butter in a small bowl.
   
3. Now take about 3-4 Ginger Nut Biscuits depending on the size of the vessel and powder them. It is completely okay if you don't powder them fine, for one i love my base a little chunky. Now if  you don't get Ginger Nut Biscuit don't break your head over it because you could use some Marie Biscuits but the Ginger Nut Biscuits are preferable as they do well in balancing the sweetness of the cake.
   
4. Now mix the melted butter and the Powdered biscuits. Be careful the butter will  be hot. Mix well and paste the mixture evenly on the bottom of your tin. Now the base is ready, refrigerate it for about 30 minutes, so that the base sets.
   
5. Now the cheesy bit, cut the Cottage Cheese into small bits and put them into your mixer / blender, now pour a little condensed milk into the mixer/ blender and blend it. Add some more condensed milk to the mixture once its a little course and blend till thick, creamy and evenly consistent, there should be no lumps of cottage cheese. If your mixer is small you may have to repeat this step a few times.
   
6. Now scoop out the cottage cheese and condensed milk mixture into a bowl and add some lemon juice as per taste and some lemon rind  and mix it well. Now empty this mixture on to the base, which by now would be well set, and spread evenly and refrigerate this for about 30 minutes.
   
7. Finally to heat your favourite flavoured jam / preserve immerse the jam / preserve bottle in a vessel filled with water. This method of heating is essential otherwise the jam will either become too sweet or will just get burnt. Now pour and evenly spread out the heated jam / preserve on the cake sitting in the tin in your fridge and put it back to cool. You could substitute the jam with jelly if you like, what you do is prepare the jelly and while molten pour it out evenly over the cake and let it cool.

This is one of the easiest cheese cake recipes there is and the beauty of it is you can use any flavoured jam / preserve / jelly you like. I love a strawberry, blueberry and lemon cheese cake and mango, orange, chocolate, jelly are worth a try. It is a great crowd pleaser and is a quick fix option when you have guests over and need to fix a dessert. I personally love bonding with friends over coffee, cheese cake and conversation...

Happy cooking!!

For the Sweet Tooth

Hi guys,

Its been a long time since i have posted something new on the blog, but it was vacation season and I have been out and partying and learning a lot of new things while at it. I learnt how to polish off a bottle of tequila with buddies, how to shake a leg and most importantly how to bake a stupendous chocolate cake..

All you'll need:

1. 3 Eggs
2. 100 g  Dark Chocolate
3. 50 g    Plain Flour
4. 100g   Castor Sugar
5. Some Fresh Mint
6. 100 g  Unsalted Butter
7. Some Cocoa Powder
8. 6 Aluminium Pudding Tins
9. 2 Bowls
10. 1 Baking Tray
11. Hand Held Mixer
12. Knife

This is pretty simple, all you need to do now is follow a few simple steps and voila! In 20 minutes you'd have a really tasty and light chocolate cake.

1.  Pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees C for about 5 minutes.
   
   
2.  Brush the insides of your pudding tins with soft butter and then spoon in some cocoa powder. Turn the tin in a circular motion and tap it untill the inside surface is fully covered with cocoa powder.
   
3.  Now that the tins are prepared, place chocolate and butter in a double boiler or if you don't have a double boiler then in a heat proof bowl and place it over a pan of boiling water. Leave the butter and chocolate to melt.
   
4.  Beat the eggs and slowly incorporate the sugar. Mix until airy and fluffy.
   
5.  Sieve the flour into the melted butter-chocolate mixture and mix the flour till no crumbs are seen.
   
6.  Now pour the Chocolate-Butter-Flour mixture into the bowl with the Egg- Sugar mixture so that they are in the same bowl. Now mix them really well.
   
7.  Once you have mixed all the ingredients well, pour them into the prepared aluminium tins and place the tins on the baking dish and bake them for 10 mins at 160 degrees C. 

Serves 5-10 people depending on the size of your pudding tins. I use the big tins and generally get 4 or something.

I really hope this fluffy chocolate cake appeals to your sweet tooth, and for those of you who are fans of chocolate lava, bake the cake for 5-6 mins instead of 10 mins to have some chocolate oozing out of your cake.

Happy baking!!

And to the Mountains of Italy!

Cafe Mangii 

Junction of Khar Pali Road & 14th Road,

Between Nike & Citiwalk Showroom,

Off Linking Road,

Khar, Mumbai-400052.
Work hours: All week round: 1230-1530
                                             1900-0030

Cafe mangii is a small, cozy and easy to find resto situated in the heart of Khar... The place is subtle and doesn’t catch the eye, but once you have eaten there it becomes an eater’s landmark! Believe me the first time I saw it, thats when it had opened a few years back, was like this joint looks really shady...say about a year or so later after eating there I have a different opinion.

Mangii is a small place relatively, the tables are a bit cluttered, I once heard a guy complaining to his girlfriend,” Honey, the acoustics of this place are not proper...” (Ya snob, I get you) .The colorful decor which is predominantly yellow and white makes you feel like you were sitting in a rustic Italian mango. They have while walls which give you the feel of a rustic home in a village nestled up somewhere in the mountains in Italy and the yellow color of the other walls brings back to mind a big juicy mango..Umm. It is a good feeling to have. Though the place might have poor acoustics its a really nice joint to take your honeys for nice little sit down romantic date. The music which is Spanish and not Italian does indeed set up the mood. But who cares Spanish or Italian, the food is authentic Italian and the firewood pizzas are a must have. (Never before has pesto sauce/aubergine on a pizza, tasted heavenly!)

It even passed our acid test...we love to try out the aubergine with Parmesan cheese at every Italian restaurant we go to, because it is a really tough dish to make and it takes a lot of effort and skill. The aubergine with parmesan at Mangii passed the test, a little crunchy with a lot of creamy cheese! But out here beware of the Gnocchi, its a little disappointment (according to me Gnocchi and white sauce don’t go well...)

another notable feature of the restaurant is the open bar, which has a whole load of good liquor on display. The wines here too are worth a taste.

The best way to go about your meal here is, first start with a yum firewood pizza, then go on to a really smooth pasta or a nice main course dish; may be a risotto or a cannelloni and then seal the meal with a verre of desert wine or Irish coffee, and ask the maitre’d not to hold on the whiskey. Sometimes they think we can’t tell our liquor apart and put a lot of orange essence which over powers the whiskey. But must say the orange rind does give a small kick! Recently they had hosted a fondue festival, with sun dried tomato, jalapeno fondue, an oregano and bell pepper fondue on offer. Needless to say such dishes are a rarity in Mumbai.

Out and out its a good place to go and have a nice sit down meal, with the occasional live music performance. The staff too doesn’t hover over your head like vultures or try to be over friendly, giving you your time and space. They offer home delivery as well, but the magic lies in eating the food there and soaking the mouthwatering aromas of the firewood and the piping hot food coming out of the kitchen...

 

Sorry!

Hi people.. we are extremely sorry, due to issues with the google guys we had to change our URL. you'll can still follow us on http://experimentingdays.blogspot.com

Blast from the Past : Need for Speed –Hot Pursuit 3, Taking it a Gear up...

After almost a year’s wait since the launch of the previous need for speed title, EA games is back with their latest instalment of the need for speed series.

The latest is an addition to the cult 90’s hot pursuit  series, the latest title Hot Pursuit 3 set pulses racing since the promotional videos were launched. Since then the videos have taken the web by storm and after the release of the game on the 16th of November , it has zoomed its way straight into the heart of the gamers.

 

What makes this edition of standout is that EA games has reverted back to making a hard core racing game without getting too much into a story line. Personally I feel that the story lines and excessive attention on customizing the cars killed the adrenaline rush that you got out of racing your car. This is a welcomed change and along with the line up of cars, fantabulous graphics coupled with a Need for Speed first: the option to make a career as a super-fast police or a petrol head racer in a dizzying chase; makes the game even hotter than the previous hot pursuit titles..

 











The game play features, the option to play a cop or a racer which as I have already mentioned is a NFS first. The cars too are loaded and packed with an arsenal or weapons and equipments which allow you to either to shut the anti social suspect down or evade a pesky cop depending on your career option. Another charming attribute of the game is the location of the races, Sea Crest County; where the game is based, provides a plathora of race environments which challenge the player's skills. The car line up is one of dreams, every boy would love to get his hands on one if not all of the supercars featured in this game. It delighted me, just as it will delight every other boy out there to own and to be able to race one of these supercharged beauties at breakneck speeds.

Form the day of its release it has been a pursuit to get your hands on the game...most shops were out of stock within hours of the game hitting the market or the stock hadn’t arrived yet. It was a week before I got the game and since then I have been so hooked to it that i have finished it twice. But the wait was worth it because the gaming experience is really amazing... to put it in the words of my buddy the gameplay is “imba”!

The graphics and attention to detail are amazing and the game gets as close to a car simulator as it can without losing the essence of a racing game. Hats off to Criterion and EA games! The only thing that disappoints is that there is no Ferrari in the line up of cars and that it takes forever to connect to the autolog server if the net connection is not good.

The Game is total “Paisa Vasool”, value for money. It is nostalgic in a way and brings back memories of those days in the 90’s when we all used to play Hot Pursuit and Hot Pursuit 2 and go Gaga about it all day in school and college and among our friend circles.

The game is a really engrossing experiences and I feel the game is a must play and  worth a buy  for all race game aficionados , its sure to set your pulses racing...vroom vroom!

PS: do keep an eye out for the dynamic spoilers of the Bugatti Grand Sport, which rises and falls with the change in speed, that is my favourite part of the game

 *The Rights to the Pictures used in the above blog post do not belong to me and are used here only for purpose of depecting parts of the game and not for any other monetary purposes. All rights related to NEED FOR SPEED HOT PURSUIT 3 belong to EA GAMES.

Far Far East : The Oriental Food Trip!

Global Fusion.
022-26469001, 022-26469002
Link Square Mall, 3rd Floor,
Linking Road,
Bandra (W),
Mumbai -400040

Global fusion as the name suggests is not actually global cuisine, rather it takes you on a culinary tour of the orient. One swoop of the buffet spread, which would easily run a kilometer long if placed next to each other; will give you a plethora of treats to choose from.

Priced at Rs. 577 per head for lunch Mon-Thu, Rs 720 per head for dinner Mon- Thu and Rs 850 on week ends, it is a tad bit on the expensive side..

As you enter a grim looking waiter shows you how the buffet works, they have devised a system of using paper clips to order fresh food of your choice. It works like,you go , select a dish of your choice and drop a paper clip in the front of the dish on display, in a few minutes the dish will be served at your table. The choices include the usual starters, but as you taste them , you will realize that they are perfect examples of precision cooking. The tomato soup is a must have here.It has a hint of melon,makes it savory.

The decor is thrilling from the gaudy past. Its a 7,500 sq ft. area, done up with sheer indulgence. Above a double high ceiling, to the side, bubbling water bodies with lotus look alike flowers and not to mention little goldfish who according to a little girl we met there "will eat you up if you fall in the pond!" The buffet counters are well placed and brightly lit.

Unlike other buffets around the town, the buffet here never changes.You can eat your fill and come back for more when you feel like.. They offer an unlimited round of iced tea, fresh lime soda and colas and for those who are game for drinks can order their rounds..

For the foodies, the spread here will spoil one for choice, predominantly fish, there are great options for the veggies too. The desserts supplied by Baskin and Robin are light and delightful and unlimited after a satiating meal.

Must tires out here for the veggies:
1. The tomato soup
2. The Crispy corn
3. The egg plant dish
4. The paneer dish
5. The ginger cap rice
6. The dumplings
7. The fried wakame and the shitake mushrooms

For the non-veggies:
1. Dig into the sushi bar, which has a lot of exotic fish and other things to offer.
2. The baked chicken
3. The black bean chicken goes nicely with the noodles
4. The Sashimi platter.

In all, though the prices are a tad bit expensive, it is value for money for an almost authentic platter. The ambiance makes you feel as though you were in a Chinese palace and with a helpful staff, the experience leaves you with a good taste..Must visit for all the adventure foodies!(Try the octopus!) ( Shashank reminds: Go when you are very hungry ;) )

For a Start

Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth and the two of us are indulging in our parts whole-heartedly.. we are here to entertain,do catch a front seat and enjoy the show.
But before that a little introduction to the characters we play in this life..

We are two helplessly indulgent creatures, be it in terms of talking/eating/gossiping/shopping/drinking and blah..We just can’t stop..

High on youth we are addicted to life in general and make a whole lot about small things.
This blog is for anyone who feels like indulging just a little!
Hope it makes you feel like wine and cheese...