Sangam Dal

Sangam World Centre is my Indian home, its where I lived for 7 months on my first trip to India, its where I have returned to time and time again, on my own, with my rangers, my parents, Papa Owl and it is where I took Little Owl to visit earlier this year.  Sangam is one of the World Centres run by the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and is based in Pune, India. Today, 16th October, marks the 48th Birthday of Sangam and to celebrate I thought I would share with you one of my favourite recipes from the Sangam Cook Book.  I have adapted the recipe to use ingredients readily available in the UK.

 

Ingredients

½ pint of red split lentils (200g)

oil

½ tsp tumeric

¼ tsp mustard seeds

½ tsp cumin seeds

large onion

½ bulb garlic

¼ tsp hing (asafoetida)

2 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp garam masala

½ tsp ground coriander seed

tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tbsp jaggery (unrefined sugar)

6 tbsp coconut milk powder

Method

1. wash the lentils thoroughly until the water runs clear.  Place in a saucepan with a pint of water.  Add a tsp of oil and ½ tsp of ground turmeric.  Cook slowly until soft.
2. Meanwhile add 3 tbsp of oil to a second saucepan, ¼ tsp of mustard seeds and ½ a tsp of cumin seeds until they splutter.
3. Finely chop the onion and add to the saucepan, fry for 2-3 minutes.
4. Finely chop half a bulb of garlic and add to the saucepan along with ¼ tsp of hing, 2 tsp of chilli powder, 1 tsp of garam masala and ½ tsp of ground coriander seed
5. Add the cooked lentils, the tin of chopped tomatoes, a tbsp of sugar and 6 tbsp of coconut milk powder
6. Stir well and simmer for 10 minutes.

Part of the reason that I love this dish so much, is how versatile it is.  We often eat it as a main, served with rice and chapatis, but it can also been eaten on its own as a soup or as a side dish to a larger Indian meal.

Notes on Ingredients

Hing is a pungent smelling spice that really makes Indian recipes come to life.  I bought a tub of hing when I was in India which I expect to last me for years as it is to be used sparingly.  I believe the spice asafoetida is the same thing, and this is commonly available in supermarkets.  Garlic - feel free to cheat and use the pre-prepared stuff, although it can get expensive.  I often do a bit of both or add some garlic powder to top it up.  Jaggery is completely unrefined sugar which I have yet to find in a supermarket.  I tend to use unrefined brown sugar or just normal granulated sugar, however the BBC website suggests muscovado sugar as a good alternative.  Coconut,  the original recipe asks for 6 tbsp of grated coconut, feel free to do that but in reality, that's far too much work for me.  I've tried various coconut milk products and I really like the coconut milk powder as it gives you more versatility.  Coconut is a natural thickener and so I use this powder in many recipes instead of cornflour. 

This recipe has been reproduced with the kind permission of Jen Barron, World Centre Manager, Sangam.

 

Baking with a Toddler

The lovely Baked Potato Mummy recently posted The Importance of Baking With Toddlers.

"Do it" she said.  "It'll be fun" she said.

Papa Owl has done some baking with Little Owl, mainly when they have been visiting his parents, and it did look fun, so what could there be to loose?

Now I don't exactly come from a long line of bakers.  My mother is to baking as hurricanes are to camping, but to be fair, she has never set fire to the house and all injuries were non-life threatening after hospital treatment.

I dug out Little Owl's hat and apron which she was given last Christmas, and also a baking tray with cake cases which I picked up at the supermarket a couple of weeks ago and got started.  "All of the gear and no idea" kept springing to mind, which is also a family trait.

Doesn't that look fun?  The perfect toddler activity, learning to use the knife, sorting out the cake cases, delicately filling the tray with cake mix, edible cakes at the end?!!

Let me tell you.  This was a NIGHTMARE!!!  Little Owl was determined to eat the cake mix at every opportunity including when it was just butter in the bowl.  She would press her hands down on the scales so I was unable to measure anything accurately.  The ripe bananas were so ripe that they got up and took themselves to the bin leaving me with one small banana for a recipe that works best with two or three, ok so that wasn't Little Owl's fault... but....

Little Owl loves to play in mud kitchens, and can often be found pouring and mixing, but given the task of pouring the milk in the bowl and it ends up all over the table.  Mixing became eating.  Don't even mention sieving the flour. We played tug of war with the bowl, the spoon and just about everything else.  The kitchen was a mess.

Cakes finally in the oven and I sent Little Owl into the living room to play with her toys, while I tidied up and thought about pouring myself a large gin.  Something caught my eye and I turned round to see Little Owl with her oven glove on one hand and her other hand on the door of the oven!!!!

ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When the cakes finally came out, they tasted crap.  More banana needed.  Little Owl was then on a sugar high for the rest of the day and I was twitching for gin.

So look at the pictures and don't ever be fooled again - baking with a toddler is HARD WORK!


To be fair to Baked Potato Mummy, she can bake better than me and therefore produces edible food, she mentions courgette quiche, and Little Owl did love it.  Baked Potato Mummy also made some brilliant suggestions on how cooking with older children can help their maths skills, including measures and conversions, and ratio questions if you want to use a recipe for different amount - which appears on both the Higher and Foundation GCSEs.

Birthday Cake

This post has been lurking in my 'to-do' list for the last month, forgive the time delay and enjoy!

So tonight's the night. The night I bake a cake for little owls 2nd birthday.

I have, um, not a lot of experience in the cake baking department but have somehow set my ambitions quite high this year.

I blame pinterest.

If I succeed I will be a cake baker extraordinaire.

If I fail?

I will be quite sad and pop to the supermarket on the way home.

Or get papa owl to bake one.

The cakes I have made have always come out a bit wonky so I thought I would have a go at a hemisphere one from Lakeland.

And I some how got it into my head that it would be really pretty if I baked a rainbow cake.

You know - those really pretty ones you see on pinterest?  Those tricky looking cakes...

Now the idea with pinterest is that people share tutorials on all these wonderful ideas, but for a novice like me, I was a bit scared to look, what if they were too hard?

So I buried my head in the sand and sailed up that famous river in Egypt.

But last weekend I realised I would be sad if I didn't at least try so I quickly ordered myself some pretty food colourings from and started seeking advice from my friends on facebook.

The cake tin said it needed a 6 egg recipe.  I have been told that you double the value for eggs and that gives you the ounces for butter self raising flour and caster sugar.  This is very much like a D grade maths GCSE question.

My plan is to make up a mixture for each egg, add the food colouring and then start again with the next mixture. 6 eggs = 6 colours, 7 in a rainbow but who can tell the difference between indigo and violet anyhow!

I'm a bit worried it won't fit but I've measure the tin and know it holds 3 pints so I'm going to check that the mixture for 1 egg is less than 1/2 a pint (been told also to aim for 2/3s full as cake should rise - haha!)

Wish me luck!

Recipe

1 egg

2oz flour

(1/2 teaspoon of baking powder)

2 oz sugar

2 oz butter

 

 Don't the colours look fab!  And the best bit is - they were going to fit in the mixing bowl!

 

 So now it was time to put it in the oven and wait... it felt like such a long wait...

 

I was pretty please with the result, it looked like the colours had merged, they weren't the straight lines I was hoping for,  but it did appear to still have some variance in its colours, so all was not lost, and besides - I'm a novice - I'm just pleased there was cake that looks like it was edible.  I covered it in chocolate, sprinkles, silver balls and a lion - Little Owl's favourite things - at least the shape wasn't a failure!

But then... when I cut into the cake and found....

Isn't this the best cake you have EVER seen?!!!!  And it tasted amazing too!  I'm chalking this one up as a success!

Easter Crafts with the Guides

Last week I went to help at a Guide Unit as they were short of a leader for the night.  Its been over ten years since I regularly helped at a Guide Unit so it was fun to be back with younger girls again.

This was their last meeting of term before breaking up for the Easter holidays so they had lots of Easter activities planned!  They were such brilliant ideas that I thought I would share with you.

The first was an Easter basket to collect all the eggs in. I was really impressed with these and excited to have a go!

1. You will need 13 strips of paper and one square. A 30cm (12 inch) ruler was used as a template for the strips and the square has to be the same width as 4 strips.
2. Weave 8 strips of paper together
3. Place the square over your woven strips to form the base
4. Fold the ends upright and then weave another two strips around the base
5. Repeat to form a second layer
6. Fold the ends over to neaten.  Obviously try to do this better than I did! Might be worth trimming them too!
7. DO NOT TAKE OUTSIDE WHEN WINDY!!!

Gutted.

Never mind there was chocolate to cheer me up. 

The girls got to make chocolate nests and a bunny egg holder for their Easter Eggs to sit in!

Too much chocolate?  Well there was a brilliant wide game to burn off some energy too!

The girls were given a grid of paper with a list of suspects (Peter Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit etc), a list of locations and a list of potential murder weapons (including carrots of course).   Clues were hidden both inside and out which the girls had to find.   Crossing of the clues as they found them, eventually they would be left with one suspect location and weapon.  What a brilliantly simple idea.

Can you believe the Guides squeezed all of this into 2 hours!

Happy Easter!

How to crack a coconut!

For a recent recipe I had to use a fresh coconut.  All was good until I was about to start... faced with this hard nut, I wasn't even sure where to start!

Luckily my brother had some wise words!

 A coconut has a face - two eyes and a mouth.

 The mouth is softer so you can uses a skewer to create a hole...

 ...and drain the liquid.

 I grabbed a selection of tools from Papa Owl's tool box...

 I found the big heavy one worked best!

So there you have it!

How to crack a coconut in a few simple steps!

Dinner Alfresco

Tonight Little Owl and I had dinner sat on our doorstep.  It was great fun - Little Owl waved at every car and person who passed saying "bubbye"!  We shared a bowl and fed each other - well, I tried to feed Little Owl with my fork and she accepted everything as she couldn't see what I was offering in the half light but if she didn't like the taste she took it out of her mouth and put in mine - as I said, we shared food and had fun right?

So what led us to be sat on our doorstep at dusk in October?  A scary flying thing!!!  It entered the kitchen and refused to leave!  Now I know I'm meant to be a brave outdoor type but my feelings about the great outdoors is that it should stay outdoors and NOT be in my kitchen.

I turned out all the lights shut the kitchen door, opened the back door into the utility room and switch on that light in the hope it would follow it.  It didn't.  I left it as long as I could but dinner needed cooking.  In the dark.  Scary flying thing was on the window.

Have you ever tried cooking in the dark in your own kitchen?  You should!

Dinner cooked and scary flying thing was still at the window.

I had a choice - dinner in the living room with sticky fingers all over the carpet and furniture or dinner on the doorstep - which would you choose?

Banana Flapjacks

If you love bananas and you love soft flapjacks then you will love this recipe!

You will need...

4oz butter

2oz sugar

1-2 bananas

2tbsp golden syrup

5oz oats

sultanas to taste

pre-heat the over to gas mark 3 (160°C)

 

Melt the butter



Add the sugar and golden syrup



Add the banana and mix until smooth

Stir in the oats

add sultanas, raisins or chocolate chips

  

Put the mixture in a tin

  

Cook in the oven for 35 minutes.

Meanwhile you can have some fun with some homemade play dough!

Little Owl making play dough cakes

  

Leave to cool on a rack

Enjoy with a cup of tea