Chirag Desai

Today we celebrate five, a whole, complete number and a stepping stone to many more.

Five is…for fighting. For the British Security Service. For those individual fingers that make a solid hand.

What I did to my tyre this fine morning.

Put together some onions, garlic, red and yellow peppers and corn and you get delicious home made style pasta! All in our secret tomato sauce- a secret because of its secretive ingredients.

Want a taste? Let me know, Ill make some for you. Even the garlic bread!

For now, enjoy the photos from my kitchen.

I have now taken my infatuation with the creation of the perfect cheesecake to the next level. Trying to figure out different ways to make the cheesecake set is an interesting if difficult feat. I trawl through cookbooks religiously on a regular basis, for a little light reading of course, as any aspiring cook would do.

Though some would bake the humble cheesecake for the new york style, others put gelatine in to set the cream cheese. I have found the perfect alternative, inspired by the bite sized demonstration, using white chocolate in the cream cheese helps it to set firm. Whats more, it actually tastes of that creamy velvety chocolate and adds a new level of richness to the cheesecake, as opposed to the tasteless nature of gelatine or agar agar.

Whatever the event, try this cheesecake on for size, you will not be disappointed. Different variations of the fruit coulis can be tailored to your own tastes, as per my previous mango cheesecake, but remember not to overdo the sugar content. A cheesecake should be sweet and I prefer the coulis a little tart to offset the balance of sweet cream cheese and crunchy nutty biscuits with sharp fresh fruit. Remember folks practice makes perfect, keep experimenting and find the balance that suits you, if mascarpone (which is amazing by the way) is too cheesy for you, stick to Philadelphia. If you would like a baked cheesecake, experiment with the recipe that uses eggs, but always follow these simple rules.

1. Biscuits: usually a biscuit with a crunch, digestive biscuits, hobnobs, shortbread.

2. Cream Cheese: Philadelphia, mascarpone, cottage cheese, low fat cream cheese is all fine.

3. Toppings: I love berries on cheesecakes, and most recipes point you in this direction, but look at the fruit you have in your fruit bowl, I found a mango and tested out my hypotheses; largely being that cheesecakes are amazing with most fruits, as long as you consider the sharpness and sweetness of each fruit on its own and alter the sugar content of your cheesecake to match. Chocolate is also a great topping. Use your imagination.

4. Have fun. There is no point of being in a kitchen if you are not going to have a little fun, a little drama when the utensils crash and the blenders hum, is what makes the cheesecake or any other dessert turn out beautiful.

With regards to the title ‘How to cure a cheesecake infatutation’: if any of you ever figure this out, please do not contact me. I like to be blissfully unaware of the fat and calorie content of my cheesecakes, for what is a dessert if not a little indulgence every now and then.

I have three words for you. White chocolate clusters. Little bites of heaven. Indulgence at its best. There are no rules, so go crazy. You need good quality White Chocolate, Brazil nuts, (sultanas or raisins if you fancy) and some biscuits. The biscuits need to be crushed, the white chocolate melted, and Brazil nuts chopped. Mix together to form a gooey white chocolaty mess. Spoon into bite-size clusters on baking paper (or as per picture into mini cup cases), leave to cool, and then decorate with milk/dark chocolate.

It’s a winner every time. Its uncomplicated, fun to try with children, and requires very little effort or fuss. So get chocolaty, I promise you these little bites of heaven are as scrumptious as they look.

12 oz white chocolate

10 oz dark/milk chocolate (for decorating)

7 oz Brazil Nuts (chopped)

7 oz Biscuits (crushed up)

note: raisins, sultanas, cereal, sweets, chocolate chips can also be used, be inventive and have fun.

Cheese and Chive muffins. I like experimenting in the kitchen, this is the first time I have tried making a savoury muffin, and I must say they were delicious. I used a recipe my mother uses, and it wasn’t too hard to follow.

ingredients:
1 egg
¾ cup water
1 cup self-raising flour
½ tsp salt
125g grated cheddar
1 tbsp fresh chives
½ tsp pepper
coarse sea salt (optional)

method:
mix all ingredients together until just combined.
Spoon into muffin cases and sprinkle with sea salt.
Bake at 190 degrees F for 15 minutes.

A late night after movie chocolate craving brought me right in front of Starbucks, one of the only cafe’s open at midnight. After going through the selection of desserts, I decided to devour a Molten Chocolate Cake (who can say no?)

Now before you go all how-can-you-commit-a-sin-against-the-holy-grail-of-molten-chocolate-cakes(Chillis to the non enlightened crowd) I merely wanted to try it. Besides, I didnt have much choice a that time of the night. So how was it? Bad.

Dont get me wrong here. Molten Chocolate cake in my opinion, has to be made in a particular manner- Rich chocolate cake with a soft, liquid chocolate center. Oh, and served hot.

Naturally when a friendly(sarcastic) waiter asked if I would like my cake heated up, I was taken aback.. But of course it needs to be served hot! Cardinal rule in molten goodness isnt it? So it was popped into a microwave and was merrily swirling around while I made myself comfortable, ready to dive into the warmth of molten chocolate heaven, with rich, moist cake and oozing molten center (yes I was dreaming Chillis here)

What I ended up getting was lukewarm cake — I admit it was rich and moist and not crumbly — with a HARD center. You read that right, it was not a liquid center, rather like having a bar of chocolate stuck into your cake. I finished the cake bit and left the center. Sigh.

Apart from bursting my dream sequence bubble, Im sure I could hear a snigger or two from the Chillis.

Lesson: Never mess with Chillis.

PS: I was so disappointed, I only took one photo.

We took some time out from our busy trip — ok I lie, we had a lot of free time to cook — to put together some Dahi Vada. For the initiated, Dahi Vada are an Indian ‘chaat’ item popular all over India made by first making ‘Vadas’ which are soaked in water, and then served after dipping them in flavored yoghurt, topped with coriander and spices. Wikipedia is kind enough to tell me that it is called as thayir vadai in Tamil and perugu vada in Telugu, mosaru vade in Kannada and Doi Bora in Bengali.

Yup, another one of naihar’s specialties! One of the Vadas looked like a cute little pig. Hence the decoration :)

The National:

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has said that Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry E-mail and Blackberry Web-browsing services in the UAE will be suspended as of October 11. The suspension is a result of the failure of ongoing attempts, dating back to 2007, to bring Blackberry services in the UAE in line with UAE telecommunications regulations.

Oh, brilliant. Coming hot at the heels of this news where they were “clear” that “we don’t have plans to stop them” by the TRA Spokesperson, this is starting to get ridiculous. As such, we have issues with Skype, and restrictions over everything else. All the 20 years of building free zones and all that fun stuff to bring businesses to the UAE comes to nought if you’re not going to let businesses communicate.

Yes yes, they’ll either then announce, “Oh it was a misunderstanding,” or the even better, “Look BlackBerry caved and we found a solution” memo before the deadline. But still, this is a huge issue for businesses. It leaves an unsettling doubt. Not a good sign. The right way would have been to give BlackBerry the deadline, sort out the issue, announce that you’re working with RIM and then announce it when you have a solution. Golly, I don’t even work in PR.

I’m an iPhone lover myself, but one thing’s certain, businesses run on BlackBerry. Plus, after hearing this, the iPhone or the Android are hardly out of danger, are they? I can already see the announcement: “We don’t like their App Store/Marketplace.”

How does one explain an erroneous successful transaction?