My mother is in the habit of making every ingredient she uses in her cooking from scratch. In recent years, while she has ‘outsourced’ a few items such as paneer (cottage cheese) and a few spices from local stores in Mumbai, for the most part, she uses from-scratch ingredients. One important ingredient she makes at home is the ginger-garlic paste.
Ginger-Garlic paste is an essential ingredient in North Indian cooking and is used to put together curries and sabzis. The place where I have personally found it most useful is in meat marinades; as ginger is a tenderizer, having the paste on hand helps put together a quick marinade for a non-vegetarian dish. If you’ve been following OneLifeToEat, almost all my recipes use this paste.
Many of my friends use ready made ginger-garlic paste available at all Indian grocery stores (and I did too for a while). However, those pastes tend to have a lot of preservatives as well as sodium in them. The biggest advantage of making this paste at home, is controlling exactly what goes into my food. It’s really quick to make and a little goes a long way.
The one thing that held me back from making my own ginger-garlic paste at home, was the lack of appropriate implements. Now that I have a very good Cuisinart grinder, the first thing I did with it was to make my own ginger-garlic paste. Here’s how you make it:
Ingredients:
- 1lb garlic, peeled
- 1lb ginger peeled
- 2 tbsp good quality olive oil, or any vegetable oil
- 2 tbsp white vinegar
- 1/4 tsp salt
Method:
Blend all the above ingredients until it is a well-ground paste. Add 2-3 teaspoons of water if necessary, to loosen the solids in the blender. Store in sterilized glass jar in the fridge. This paste should easily last you a couple months.
An authentic Indian 'thaali' - from OneLifeToEat's most popular post in 2011
Happy happy new year to you! What a year 2011 was… I started my second graduate program here in Minneapolis, made more friends in one year than I did in the two years before that, learned a whole ton about myself, and of course, tried many more types of food and cuisines!
A big part of 2011 was doing things a little differently here on OneLifeToEat. In the midst of being busy with a graduate program, I slowly but surely started trying to take better pictures of the blog. A few even made the cut on TasteSpotting! Although that is something I wasn’t hoping for, it felt fantastic when I got the approval email. I also added a new header to the blog, and redid the layout to make it look cleaner, and more easy to navigate.
Cardamom pods
I leave you with links to the top 5 most-viewed posts last year. It was my goal through this blog to simplify and demystify Indian cooking, and the top posts show that visitors come to my blog to learn about the basics of this exciting cuisine. So, if 2012 is the year you want to learn how to make Indian food, look no further! Here’s to more food, more photography, more blogging and more fun in the kitchen!
Top 5 OneLifeToEat posts in 2011
2 Potato Parsley and Birista Frittata
3 Masoor Dal – Brown and Orange lentils
Nutella and Croissant bread pudding – A simple Christmas dinner dessert
There’s something about simplicity that is so attractive. A living room done up with simple furniture and accent pieces. An outfit put together with simple clothing and accessories. And a dish put together using simple, easy to find and use ingredients. This bread pudding recipe I discovered on Steamy Kitchen’s website is just that; It uses a few simple ingredients and voila! You have a decadent, delicious dessert that looks like it took a long time to put together.
So recently, when I was invited to an impromptu dinner at a friend’s home, and all I had at home were a few croissants, nutella and the usual suspects – milk, cream, eggs and sugar – I quickly put together this bread pudding. Day-old croissants are sliced in half lengthwise, slathered with yummy nutella, sandwiched back together, cut in chunks, and baked with a creamy custard made with eggs, cream, sugar and vanilla. I never thought the taste would be so so good.
Check out the original recipe here on Steamy Kitchen’s website. I mad a few modifications to Jaden’s recipe by using half and half instead of whole cream. I also added a big pinch of powdered cardamom to the custard, to add an extra layer of interesting flavor. This whole dish took under 10 minutes of prep time, and all I had to do after that was put it in the oven and let it cook, while I tackled other things around the house. Make it for Christmas eve dessert, or for Christmas day breakfast – you decide! I think it’ll be a hit either way. I know it was at the party I went to!
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas!
