Buckwheat Galette/ Buckwheat dosa

Galette, the recipe in today's blog may sound fancy but it is just another name for crepes. There are two forms of galette, one is the thick crusty variety and the other is a thin crepe like variety. I present here my version of the thin crepe like variety. I love dosa and crepes of any form. Any flour lying around the house becomes dosa batter for a quick meal at home. And buckwheat flour is no exception .....

The first time I had galette was in a small french cafe in NJ. The name and the description of the dish so reminded me of dosa (not to mention that it was one of the few vegetarian options in the menu) that I decided to try it. The dish was a big buckwheat crepe/dosa filled with sauteed spinach - needless to say, it was a wonderful, hearty meal and the inspiration for my recipe here.

A few quick ideas for the filling are:

Savory filling
Potato masala filling (Masala dosa version of galette?)
Spinach with ricotta or cream cheese filling
Mixed vegetable filling or Ratatouille

For the sweet version:
Any fruits with mascarpone cheese or caramelized bananas with ice cream would be wonderful. Chocolate filling - perfect!

With a bit of imagination there sure are a hundred possibilities.

After a long day's work I was in no mood to make the filling and then make the crepes. So I took the short cut !! I grated carrots, ginger and cilantro and mixed it right into the batter. I am sure any other vegetable and/or herbs would work just fine. Normally the galette recipe calls for eggs, but I didn't have any. So I substituted it with some oil and it works perfectly well. The whole process of mixing the batter can be done in a food processor. I normally grate all the vegetable in the food processor, then add the flour on top of this and continue with rest of the steps.

Ingredients:
1 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup olive oil or vegetable oil
1 to 1-1/2 cup water
salt to taste
finely grated carrots (optional)
finely chopped cilantro (optional)
2 tsp minced ginger (optional)

Method:

1. Mix both the flour and salt.
2. Now add any vegetable or herbs that you would like. (If you aren't going to add any, skip this step).
3. Add the oil, buttermilk, mix well and slowly add water. Add just enough so that you get a thin pourable consistency (like a dosa batter or crepe batter).
4. Heat a girdle or a crepe pan if you have one.
5. Pour a ladle full of the batter and swirl the pan so you get nice circle with uniform thickness.
6. Cook on medium heat for 2 min or so.
7. Remove it from the pan when the galette looks brown underneath and the top portion looks cooked.
8. You dont have to cook the other side but if you are not very sure if the top portion is cooked, you can flip it and cook the other side for 30 seconds or so.

Fill it with a filling of your choice or just roll it up even without it and serve with chutney and yogurt on the side.

This is a good dish to have for breakfast, lunch, dinner or anytime in between.

This will be my entry for WYF: Breaksfast event hosted by EC of Simple Indian Food blog.

Rava Kesari/Saanja (Semolina Sweet Pudding)

I cant believe its been almost 9 months since I blogged.....When I started out I was pretty sure I would keep blogging no matter what, but as always, its easier said than done. Well, in my defense I did have a real busy few months with lotsa good things and a bit of recession induced not-so-good stuff. Anyway, things are promising to look better or so I would like to think :-) - enough personal stories I guess. Moving on to the recipe for my blog, I thought I should come back from my hiatus with a sweet treat. Here is a simple Indian dessert that I made for Varalakshmi viradham. This is one of the least time-consuming and easiest desserts that I know of and has always been my "go-to" one ....

Ingredients:
1 cup rava/semolina
1-1/2 cup sugar (adjust to taste, can range from 1-1/4 cup to 1-3/4 cup)
2 cups water
A few drops of red or orange food color
1/4 cup ghee/melted butter
1 tsp powdered cardamom
2 tbsp raisins
2 tbsp cashew pieces

Method

1. In a large saute pan, heat 2 tbsp ghee.
2. Roast the raisins until it plumps up; set aside.
3. Roast the cashews until golden brown; set aside.
4. Roast rava for a 3-4 minutes, until it turns light brown; set aside.
5. Boil 2 cups of water in the same pan.
6. When the water comes to a rolling boil, add the sugar. Let it boil for a few minutes, until the sugar dissolves and the water gets a little viscous.
7. Add the food color and then the roasted semolina.
8. Stir vigorously so that no lumps are formed.
9. Keep stirring until semolina absorbs all the water, about 3-5 min.
10. Add the ghee slowly, half a tbsp at a time.
11. After a few minutes the whole mass will start pulling away from the side.
12. Check to make sure semolina is fully-cooked (by now it should have).
13. Add the cardamom powder, raisins and cashews. Mix well, switch off the heat.
14. Serve warm.

Adjust ghee and sugar according to your taste. I sometimes add as little as 2 tbsp or so of ghee. The more fat you add, better is the taste but feel free to adjust the amount as per your requirement. Also, the ratio of semolina to water depends on the variety. If you are using a coarse semolina it might need more water. I normally start with a nominal quantity of water. If the semolina absorbs all the water and still looks uncooked, then I add a ladle full or so of boiling water and keep doing this until the semolina is cooked well. You can adjust the quantity of the ingredients in this recipe right until the end of the cooking process to get the desired result.

Enjoy!