pear rucola and walnuts salad in pineapple vanilla dressing

Nothing inspires me more than nature and fresh produce. When we see fruit bearing trees in season it is the most humbling experience. The way the branches bend down with the sheer weight of the fruits and the way these fruiting trees invite hoards of chirpy birds towards them, brings the truth to light that no matter what, you can always look up to nature and find your answers. That after every lull there is abundance of happiness.

Last week we were on a week long vacation to Raju's cottage Goshaini (Teerthan Valley, Himachal Pradesh) during the fruiting season of most fruits they have in their orchard. Peaches were dwindling down but plums blushed on the trees like plump round garnets and rubies, luscious Apricots were so abundant that the trees were shedding fruits by the kilos.

Apples hung studded on the branches like someone had tied them up in tight bunches. Rajiv Bharti, the owner of the home stay and the orchard said the fruits were good this season and while Plums and Apricots had reached their prime by now and were already going to the local markets, Pears will be over soon but the apples will keep coming till late August as he has many varieties of apples that ripen one after the other.

One good thing to know is that Rajiv never uses pesticides of chemical fertilizers in his orchards and yet he is not worried about reaching some organic market or distributor. He sells all his fruits in local Kullu mandi (wholesale fruit market of Kullu, the nearest town) and it comes to city markets along with the regular fruits. Good to know people are avoiding chemical means of growing foods not because they want better price for their produce but because they believe in the natural ways of farming. May his tribe increase manifolds.

It was our second visit to this home stay and we have already decided to go there twice a year if not more. It is such a recharge for us. This time Lata, Rajiv's wife packed some fresh fruits for us and we have been eating them religiously every single day since we are back. Actually many times a day to say the truth.

We love Pear and Rucola salad in many ways, one with mango sauce dressing I have already posted but this time I wanted the salad to be a little more flavourful and added an absolutely divine dressing.

Yes the dressing is made using minced pineapple, dry ginger powder, pinch of smoked paprika and real vanilla extract. And this dressing blew my mind away, even in this salad which is more on the sweeter side with so much fruit in it.

Did you know real vanilla is easily available now? You can order online or buy from specialty stores but please don't use the vanilla essence ever. You wouldn't want chemical flavours into your food and real vanilla is known to be a great antidepressant and mood enhancer. No wonder it is the most commonly used flavours for desserts, everyone naturally feels leaning over to vanilla.

ingredients ...
(2 servings)

large pears 2, sliced thinly or cubed the way you like
rucola leaves a handful or as much as you can handle
chopped candies ginger 1 tsp
chopped dehydrated papaya 1-2 tbsp
toasted walnuts about a dozen or more, broken into quarters

The dressing 
fresh pineapple cubes minced finely 3-4 or pineapple juice 3 tbsp
dry ginger powder 1/2 tsp
smoked paprika powder a generous pinch
salt to taste
vanilla extract 3-4 drops

procedure ...

Mix the dressing ingredients together and let it rest for about 20 minutes. It can be kept overnight or at least for 24 hours before use. Keep it in an airtight jar if you refrigerate this dressing.

Mix the salad ingredients together and pour the dressing, give it a good toss and serve immediately. This salad keeps well for a couple of hours even after mixing so it can be a make ahead salad or a great salad for lunch boxes too.

The first time I experimented with this dressing was when I tossed it with apple slices and that was also good. Interestingly that day I made this salad for both of us in a large bowl for our big evening snack but ended up finishing the bowl all by myself. Yes I am totally capable of ding that.

Make this salad if you love hints of vanilla in a fruity salad with a hint of paprika heat. It is an interesting mix of flavours and vanilla is not too prominent, though it makes the salad a very happy kind of delicious. I told you Vanilla is a mood enhancer.

Imagine this salad playing it's mood enhancer role during the lunch break in office? You could use a mix of apples and pears or even just peaches in this salad too. All these fruits behave really well with vanilla.

And since we are talking about lunch boxes, please tell me what do you like as a lunch box salads. Do you prefer savoury kind of salads or fruity ones? Do you want to carry salad meals to office or want the salad as a side dish to break the monotony of packed lunch? Any favourite ingredients that you like in your salads? Comment here and enter to win something interesting and useful for your office lunch boxes.

You can check a few giveaway options I have posted in the lunch box series earlier and wait for a few more announcements. The giveaways will be delivered only on an Indian address unfortunately, so if you are outside India you can provide an Indian address whenever required. Please don;t forget to mention your mail id in the comment section so I can contact you if you win.

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food and coffee pairing session with Bonhomia and a recipe of apple peach walnut salad with home made feta cheese

Coffee and food pairing sessions make sense if you are someone who likes entertaining with a lot of coffee being served. I would probably have one shot of coffee during a meal or snacking session with friends, but when you are to learn the intricacies of coffee, you got to gulp down a lot of caffeine in one sitting. I was ready to take this caffeine assault greedily when Bonhomia hosted a coffee and food paring session at Le Bistro du Parc.

Le Bistro du Parc is a standalone French bistro located at the edge of a park in Moolchand market, a nice place to sit and relax while dining with the company of old trees. The bistro, founded by Naina de Bois-Juzan serves French cuisine using locally grown seasonal ingredients, not too difficult as we are growing almost everything now. The fresh ingredients make a difference and that is evident at Le Bistro du Park, of course I could witness the finesse with which the ingredients were handled too. More about that later.

Bonhomia is a premium brand of coffee that makes coffee blends packaged in capsules compatible to Nespresso machines, the coffee blend capsules are made for a single shot of coffee and are packaged in boxes of 10 capsules each. Now that is a convenient way to enjoy great coffee in the comfort of home. Coffee that gives a perfect crema, as I had learned with Illy coffee master barista Nicola Scognamiglio from Italy.

The coffee blends that go by the names like 'Free love', 'Dark deeds', 'Black viel' and 'Vanilla artisan' are blended creatively. Mr. Tuhin Jain (CMO, Bonhomia) introduced us to the nuances of Bonhomia coffee blends and that these are all sourced from high altitude coffee plantation of south of India. Mr Kunal Bhagat joined us later and discussed how these capsules of coffee are made locally using the best coffee beans.

A Tomato tartar prepped with lime juice, esplette pepper and basil wrapped in a pickled ribbon of radish was served in dainty portions along with the blend Free love. The freshness of the salad bites fits well with a medium strength espresso shot.

Next was garlic bread topped with baby romaine folded around goat cheese, sun dried tomato and radish microgreens paired with Dark deeds served as Americano. Sharp edgy flavours raising the bar to a stronger full bodied coffee blend.

Next came dainty bites of stuffed puff pastry with olive tapenade and confit peppers paired with Black veil, the most potent coffee blend of the day. It was served as cappuccino but I tried the espresso shot too and it is indeed a very robust coffee blend.

The dessert platter had an assortment of miniature almond financiers, lemon Madeleine, crisp meringues and pistachio tuiles with some fresh fruit bites. Vanilla artisan blend served as macchiato is perfect with dessert and the pairing was received well.

Now it was a lot of caffeine in my bloodstream. The food was beautifully done, the dainty lemon Madeleine proved that the French bistro is worth it's salt. The finesse in every little detail is very evident, the taste hits the spot perfectly.

And then I had to make the next meal that could hydrate me and be filling at the same time. I made this apple peach walnut salad with home made feta cheese and home grown rucola greens. Nothing could have served the purpose that day. The salad was so good it got repeated for the weekend breakfast too. Yes we do eat unconventional things for our meals.

Home made feta cheese makes so much sense for me, the reason being I love the creamy feta so much and the packaged feta is just too expensive. So I have to do the effort of making feta, it takes some time but I try and make large batches and refrigerate for about 2 weeks. Will share the recipe of feta cheese sometime soon. Have not been able to photograph the process for the purpose.

The dressing... whisk everything together

balsamic vinegar 2 tbsp
lime juice 1 tsp
brown sugar 2 tsp
salt and pepper to taste
crushed walnuts 2 tsp or walnut oil few drops

Chop one large green apple and 4-5 small peaches. The Himachal green peaches are starting to come right now and I love the complex flavours they pack. Chop about 15 walnuts halves and mix with the cut fruits. Tear a handful of rucola leaves and add. Drizzle the dressing and toss the salad.

Serve immediately topped with as much feta cheese as you want. We had kept some feta cheese on the side too and kept digging the fork to pick up the creamy cubes of goodness.

This apple peach walnut salad will be really great for a summer menu, especially during day time. If you chop the fruits a bit smaller the salad can be served over garlic bread too. But we eat breads very occasionally so the large bowl of this salad will be good any time. Check out another Peach and feta salad to see how you can make variations of this salad.

No coffee with this salad please.

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pear and rucola salad with walnuts and mango chutney dressing | a keeper recipe of mango chutney

Nothing like a fresh salad with locally grown fruits and garden fresh herbs. I brought really fresh naturally grown pears from Dhanachuli (located in Uttarakhand hills) and we have been eating pears for meals sometimes. This pear salad was one of those meals that we both enjoyed thoroughly. These pears are the ones that get soft after full ripening but the fruit seller had plucked them slightly raw to get a longer shelf life. Crisp and sweet these are. Yes those roadside fruit sellers in remote hills always pluck themselves and bring the fruit to the roadsides so the people traveling in vehicles can buy them. I love going to such fruit sellers in those areas and buying fresh fruit, it is a luxury we don't have in city life.

So I wanted to use the best of the pear in the best possible way. Of course we have been biting into a pear any time of the day but that could not prevent us from having a large bowlful of pear salad for dinner. How naturally grown real fruit (real whole food) captivates your senses in a different way than chemically enhanced food like substances. Amazing.

I had made mango chutney using the leftover mangoes that we brought from Ratoul last month. These were a mix of sweet and sour mangoes and we were fed up eating the same mangoes everyday. I turned them all into this chilly mango chutney and have been using it creatively since then. For this salad I just diluted the chutney with a little balsamic vinegar and a little water and it coated the pear salad well giving it a nice sweet sour hot kick.

The salad recipe is simple. Slice the pears the way you like, bite size pieces work well. Tear some rucola or arugula leaves ( I used them fresh from my garden) and mix with the pears. Add some tender beet leaves or red amaranth leaves to brighten up the salad and break a few walnuts over it. Drizzle the mango chilly chutney over the salad bowl and mix lightly with the folk as you eat.

Recipe of the mango chutney 

ingredients

fresh (or tinned) mango pulp 2 cups
sugar 1/2 cup
balsamic vinegar 2 tbsp
red chilly flakes (or powder) 1 tsp
scissor cut whole dry red chillies 2 ( I added just for a few larger pieces of chilly visible in the chutney)

procedure

Cook everything together till the chutney thickens to your desired consistency. Fill in sterilised jars and store in refrigerator for about a month.

* Try and use a mix of mango varieties in this chutney and include tart and sweet both types of varieties. This gives it more depth of flavours. Using reduced balsamic vinegar also gives it a deeper flavour so go ahead and make this mango chutney yours with a chilly kick.

This mango chutney works really well along with sharp cheeses over toasted crostini or crackers. Or with aloo paratha as Arvind loves it. I loved this mango chutney over grilled chicken too.

Just try replacing your junk ketchup with this mango chutney and see how well it tastes in sandwiches, with fries or even to make different cheese or mayo based dips.

I am planning a fruit pizza using this chutney as a sauce and pears and tart apples as topping with feta cheese and rucola. Who doesn't like easy yummy meals?

Please do let me know whenever you try this mango chutney.

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Are arugula and rucola different? Know more about the rocket greens...

Arugula and Rucola both are different types of rocket or roquette leaves used as salad greens. Both types of rocket are very flavourful and add a punch to any salad or any meal. Known as super foods, these greens belong to mustard family and are packed with antioxidants and vitamins. See more information here.

Rocket leaves have an ORAC value of about 1904µmol per gram. ORAC is Oxygen radical absorbance capacity, a measure of how potent the antioxidant is. Both types of rocket leaves, the arugula and rucola are a rich source of Vitamins A and C, polyphenols and carotenoids etc. Calcium and phosphorus, magnesium and a few more minerals are found in good quantity.

The taste and aroma of both these types of rockets is very different. Arugula is peppery and sharp while rucola is more aromatic and only a hint of peppery taste which is more complex than arugula.

There was a curiosity about my fragrant rucola leaves when I posted the peach and feta salad with rucola few days ago. Many friends were curious about rucola as they had always seen arugula and rucola being named interchangeably in US, and India both. A friend from Europe also said the same. That is when I decided to differentiate between the two so the confusion is over.

Luckily I had clicked a few pictures of both the rockets growing in my garden, arugula has already flowered and completed it's life cycle, just like the annual brassica family plants do. But Rucola is surviving well in summers and sprouting new leaves like perennials, although rucola belongs to the same family too.

Arugula is Eruca sativa, the plant grows up to the height of 4 Ft in my garden and then the branches start trailing on the ground or on trellis. Young plant produces large leaves and as the plant gets mature and bears flowers, the leaves get smaller but more and more peppery. So much so that many people just don't like it. I make pesto with the peppery arugula leaves by mixing them with some baby spinach.

This wikipedia picture makes it clear how the arugula plants look like. The flowers are a beautiful creamy white with dark veins running through the petals.

Here is how the mature leaves look. Flowering has just started in this plant.

More clear shape of the leaves and a stout stem.

The leaves are quite peppery and I had to mix some baby spinach when I made this arugula pesto.

 The flowering shoots of Arugula..

The flowers of arugula attracted a lot of bees this season.

Rucola is Diplotaxis tenuifolia, also called as 'baby leaf rocket' the plant mostly trails closer to the ground in my garden even if the stem gets a little woody. The leaves are delicate, long and may be lobed or not. Some leaves on the same plant are smooth while some are deeply indented, actually a beautiful pattern. Rucola leaves are fragrant when plucked fresh or crushed but is not peppery in taste and stays the same in young as well as mature plant.. Arugula is not so fragrant.

This wikipedia picture shows how the plant looks like. Rucola has not flowered in my garden yet, it keeps on growing and behaves like a perennial plant. Flowers are yellow as seen on the wikipedia page. For more details on nomenclature and differences between the species along with how to grow instructions this page is a good resource.

This is my Rucola plant looked when it was young. That white flower is Chamomile that was flowering back then in winters.

And then the leaves started getting serrated with deep furrows..

The rucola plant is happy when it rains. This picture is a day after rains and the plant was happy.

I had once plucked all the rucola leaves when I was going out for 2 weeks thinking I will loose all leaves anyway when the plants will not be watered everyday. The gardener is very irresponsible when we are not around. But to my surprise I saw new leaves sprouting from the stems when we came back.
The new leaves in the old plant too had smooth margins mostly.

I transplanted about 6 mature plants of Rucola in a new pot and was releived to see all of them survived but one. And all of them are sprouting new leaves constantly. Now the plant has become trailing climber type but has not flowered yet. The last time I had grew Rucola it died when we were out of town so I could not see any flowering even then.

Rucola behaves like a perennial thankfully and should keep giving more leaves for a longer duration.

Here is how it looks when the branches trail in a 10 month old plant..

I add rucola to salads, to buckwheat pizza topping, and to potato and tuna salads. Even to the beans and potato salads I make. Argula is also added to almost the same dishes but the peppery nature of arugula is better for salad without mustard dressing.

I am sure you know more about the rockets you consume everyday :-)
Please let me know if this post was helpful.

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peach salad with feta cheese, dehydrated black grapes and almonds in a balsamic red chilly flakes dressing

Peaches from the hills are the best thing Delhi gets in summers. Add plums, Apricots, Cherries and green almonds to the list too. And yes, add the occasional rains and cold breeze that comes from the hills so close by. They say Delhi has no climate of it's own and gets affected by everything that happens in the foothills and even higher mountains of Himalayas. When there is a snowfall there, Delhi starts getting colder. Not that it is happening anytime sooner, but talking about colder climate gives some relief from the blazing sun that we are experiencing these days. Thank God I work from home.

So we are enjoying litchis and mangoes from the plains and stone fruits from the hills sitting here in Delhi. The many benefits of living in a capital city. When we go to the hills we don't see any mangoes and litchi and when we go to the plains we don't see any stone fruits. Folks eat more local fruits in smaller towns, more tasty fruits, mostly plucked ripe and juicy though the variety of fruits is lesser. But life is better in many other ways. Think a life without traffic snarls and smog infested air.

In my last visit to Te Aroha, I saw freshly plucked peaches, plums and Apricots being sold on the roadside without weighing them. You get bagfuls of juicy fresh fruits for pittance.

I made plum jam with red wine and everyone loved it. Going to make it again and have decided to bring a huge carton of plums next time.

Most of the times we buy peaches that are quite hard and crisp. While I like fresh crisp peaches too, but can't seem to have a lot of them at a time. And also because we are just two people and I tend to buy more than we can finish normally, the fruits almost always get tested for it's shelf life in the several differently sized fruit baskets that I have. And through this experience I learnt that a few fruits taste better when they get slightly shriveled. Peaches are one of them.

 And the seeds also detach easily from the flesh when the peaches get a little shriveled. So I chop them and make salads because this is the only way we can consume more fruit and make it a meal. See the peach and mint salad I posted 4 years ago and make every season with minimal fuss. A pasta with peaches is also a favourite and we both love it.

This peaches and rucola salad with home made feta cheese is a favourite and I throw in a few cubes of mangoes too sometimes. But mostly it is only the peaches and rucola from the garden. Thankfully, it is only rucola that is doing pretty well in this scorching heat, all other salad greens are long gone and the herbs are somehow surviving, not looking their best with a few leaves blotched in all the pots.

ingredients
(2-4 servings depending on how the salad is served)

10 large peaches cut in bite sized wedges
handful of rucola leaves
2 tbsp sliced shallots (or baby onions)
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp red chilly flakes or to taste
20 almonds sliced
20 dried black grapes chopped (or 6 prunes chopped)
150 gm feta cheese

procedure

To make the dressing, mix the balsamic vinegar with salt and chilly flakes. Add the sliced onions and mix well.

Pour this dressing over the peach wedges and toss well to mix.

Add the other ingredients and mix well, adding feta in bits in the very lastso they don't get too crumbled when mixed.

Let the salad soak for about 20 minutes or serve after a good soaking of 3-4 hours. The salad keeps well in the fridge for a day if the rucola is not added.

Add rucola in the end, toss and serve. Don't worry if you don;t have rucola, the salad tastes great even without it.

 All the textures and flavours are interesting and combine really well with each other. The roasted chilly flakes add a mild kick in between and the subtle sweetness of fruit with balsamic vinegar is something you would get addicted to. Home made feta is way better than any feta in the markets here, make at home or get any brand you like. Any other cheese wont be good for this salad.

Apart from this peach salad with feta cheese, dehydrated grapes and almonds in a balsamic red chilly flakes dressing, which is a little complex recipe if you don't get all the ingredients in your part of the world, this peach and mint salad and the pasta with peaches might interest you if you love peaches the way I do and want simpler ecipes. Check them out and try them. And please let me know if you like.

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