Hi! I've moved.

Dear readers,

More than 10,000 views! I'm shocked, and thrilled to bits. Thank you all for liking what you see here. This blog is in the process of shifting to a new address - 

FirstWeEat.jux.com

The move is to showcase pictures and recipes in an easier format, and minimize time spent on formatting and unnecessary pages. The page will take some time to develop, but hopefully its the solution to the primitive editing skills I had here. 

Thank you all for reading!

Asmita. 

:)

Pizza at Home

I love the Masterchef Australia series. I've finished watching all 65 episodes of Season 5, but I happened to catch a rerun of Episode 17 on television, which is the Masterchef Pizzeria challenge of Italian Week! Watching Emma pounding away at the pizza dough made me want to get my hands dirty too. Here's a sneak peak of what my pizza dough looked like at one point:

The post with details of the dough and how therapeutic I find the process, coming soon.

For now, here are pictures of the pizza I made for dinner. Instead of using tomato sauce, I spread the base with some home-made hummus (recipe here), and loaded chopped tomatoes, slices of eggplant and chunks of cheese on it. It was delicious - even more so eaten the next morning with dollops more hummus on it ;-)

How many of you make your own pizza dough?

Sesame Bread - No Yeast!

As you can probably tell, I went on a crazy bread-making spree.

Problem: No fresh yeast, and the instant dry yeast was out of date. I really NEEDED to bake - call it a compulsion - and it HAD to be bread. So I googled "Soda Bread" and "Easy Bread No Yeast" and stumbled upon this wonderful recipe for the easiest bread ever, with room to add flavour and herbs and nuts of choice. Yay. :)

Recipe borrowed from

Easiest Bread Recipe Ever

I tweaked around the recipe a bit, using what we had in the kitchen (because I was too lazy to go out and buy more)

1 1/2 cups refined flour (maida)

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (atta)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp black sesame seeds

3 tbsp white sesame seeds

2 cups club soda

Combine all the dry ingredients well, making sure the baking powder is well dispersed. Add the club soda - careful while measuring it out, don't let the fizz fool you into using less. Combine well, the dough will be sort of wet. Fold everything into a greased baking pan. Sprinkle extra sesame seeds on top. Bake at 200 Celsius until done (or toothpick inserted into center comes out clean).

My mother thought it had too much sesame.. But I loved it this way, with the flavour and nuttiness of the seeds being the primary hit of the bread. The recipe for the basic bread is quite standard - other flavours such as herbs and other seeds and nuts (flaxseed?) can be added too.

I did love this. Will make more and experiment with different flavours. Next time, I'll add salt. This bread is wonderful, toasted and slathered with butter. :D

Oatmeal Chocolate Muffins

The best way to eat oatmeal is to put it in a chocolate muffin.

Truth.

1 1/4 cups flour

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup quick-cooking oats

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (best kind possible)

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Combine first 6 dry ingredients and mix well. Beat eggs + milk + oil together to blend. Add to flour mixture and stir. BATTER WILL BE VERY WET! Do not be alarmed.

Spoon into greased muffin pan. Bake at 200 Celsius for 15-20 minutes or till done.

Light sprinkling of oats on top of the batter before baking makes a pretty finish :)

Gorgeous Apple Cake

Recipe adapted from

Donna Hay's Fast, Fresh, Simple

Apple and Blueberry Cake

This is a beautiful yellow cake topped with sliced apples and demerara sugar, with a gorgeous gorgeous end result that made me super happy :) :)

1 1/2 cups flour (I used maida)

3/4 cups caster sugar

125 g bitter, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 apple, cored and thinly sliced

demerara sugar to sprinkle over the top

Preheat oven to 160 Celsius. Beat flour + sugar + butter + vanilla + eggs + milk in a bowl with an electric mixer until just combined. Spoon the mixture into a greased cake tin.

Top the mixture with the thinly sliced apples and sprinkle demerara sugar. Bake for 45 minutes or until just cooked.

Serve with fresh cream or vanilla ice cream :)

Oatmeal Bread

I really miss having a breadmaker at home. Its such a wonderful little machine - does all the kneading and proving and baking while we just enjoy the heavenly smell wafting through the house. However, ours stopped working a long time ago. I was browsing around for an easy bread recipe online, and stumbled upon this. Its perfect - stuffed with oats and super healthy.

Borrowed from

Easy Little Bread Recipe

Like she says, its not a very exciting bread to look at.. But there isn't any commercially available bread that would taste half as good.

Recipe copied and pasted from the original site.

Easy Little Bread Recipe

1 1/4 cups / 300 ml warm water (105-115F)
2 teaspoons active dry yeast (one packet)
1 tablespoon runny honey
1 cup / 4.5 oz / 125 g unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup / 5 oz / 140 g whole wheat flour
1 cup / 3.5 oz / 100 g rolled oats (not instant oats)
1 1/2 teaspoons fine grain sea salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted, for brushing

In a medium bowl, sprinkle the yeast onto the warm water and stir until the yeast dissolves. Stir in the honey and set aside for a few minutes, until the yeast blooms and swells a bit - 5 - 10 minutes.

In the meantime, mix the flours, oats, and salt in a large bowl. Add the wet mixture to the dry and stir very well.

Brush a 8-cup loaf pan generously with some of the melted butter. Turn the dough into the tin, cover with a clean, slightly damp cloth, and set in a warm place for 30 minutes, to rise.

Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C, with a rack in the middle. When ready, bake the bread for 35-40 minutes, until golden and pulling away from the sides of the pan. I finish things up by leaving the bread under the broiler for just a heartbeat - to give the top a bit deeper color. Remove from oven, and turn the bread out of the pan quickly. Let it cool on a rack so it doesn't steam in the pan. Serve warm, slathered with butter.

Makes 1 loaf.

Easiest No-Bake Cheesecake Ever

Cheesecake fanatics may refuse to classify this creation as technically a "cheesecake" but it IS :D

It is also sinfully easy and sinfully delicious :)

1 package Philadelphia cream cheese

1 can Nestle sweetened condensed milk

Juice and rind of half a lemon

1/2 tsp grated ginger

Digestive biscuits, crushed

Butter

Mix crushed digestive biscuits with just enough butter to enable packing into the base of a regular tart tin. Make sure sides and edges are adequately thick, and there are no holes or thin patches. Refrigerate.

Whip cream cheese + condensed milk + lemon juice and rind + ginger until well combined. Pour into the tart tin and refrigerate until set.

This cheesecake starts melting every time it is taken out of the refrigerator. So store in the fridge, remove only to serve.

Can garnish with more lemon zest.