Soft Stuffed Buns

Deliciously Soft Bread Rolls Stuffed with Vegetables

 

I just love stuffed buns. To me, they are a mystery that only the first bite can resolve. Looking at one, you can never guess what secret is stuffed in them. They look just like any other bun but one bite changes it all. I simply love the mystery of taste that a stuffed bun presents. Not to mention, they are healthy and make up the perfect breakfast or snack.

 
I like making bread. It’s one of the few recipe techniques that I can modestly admit to know. Oh well, modestly be dashed, I’m good at making very few things, so might as well shout from the rooftops when I master one. So yes, I am good with bread and bread-ly things and so you will find me making a lot of those here.

Understanding Yeast-

Yeast is the magical ingredient that makes your dough rise and turns it into bread.

The secret to break making is to know your yeast and to develop a relationship with it. There are two types of Yeast commonly available. The Active Dry Yeast, which needs to be dissolved in water for a few minutes before mixing with the flour and the Instant Yeast, which can be directly added to the dry ingredients. In my recipe I have used Active Dry Yeast. You can easily substitute it with Instant Yeast, just reduce the amount of yeast used by about 20% and add more water to mix the dough. I personally am partial towards the Active Dry yeast as it always gives me a good result, you can however go with whatever you have in your cupboard. Remember that Yeast is a living organism and with time and exposure to air, it can go bad. Store your Yeast in air-tight containers and in a moisture-free environment and they will last longer.

 So now that you know all you need to know about yeast, let’s get down to the recipe. I have made a simple vegetable stuffing here but you can stuff a bun with almost anything under the sun. You can make it sweet or savoury, veggie or stuffed with meat.

What you need:

All-purpose Flour – 2 cups

Yeast – 1 tsp
Sugar – 1 tsp
Salt – ½ tsp
Warm Milk – ¼ cup
Melted Butter – 2 tblsp
Oil – a bit
Water – As needed
Egg – 1 (optional)

For the Stuffing

Mixed Vegetables – 1 Cup (Potatoes, Carrot, Beans, Peas)

Capsicum/Bell Pepper – ¼ cup
Tomato – 1 small
Onions – 1 small
Green Chillies – 3-4
Cilantro / Coriander leaves – few sprigs
Ginger-Garlic paste – 1 tsp
Turmeric, Chilly, Coriander Powder – ¼ tsp each
Cumin Powder – a pinch
Salt as needed

How we do it:

Line a cookie sheet with aluminium foil/parchment paper and grease it with a little oil.

Take half a cup of lukewarm water and dissolve the sugar in it. Add the yeast and stir till mixed. Leave it for 10 minutes. The yeast water will get all frothy. If your yeast does not get frothy it means that either the yeast has gone bad or the water temperature was too high and it killed the yeast.

Frothy yeast

Mix the flour and salt in a kneading bowl. Add the yeast water and milk and knead it till a rough dough is formed. Now add the butter and keep kneading until the dough becomes soft and elastic.

 A little science lesson here- Kneading stretches the dough and forms gluten which is this springy thingy that makes those pockets of air in your bread, making it soft. So the more you knead, the softer your bread will be.

 

Coat the dough and the inside of a bowl with a bit of oil and cover with a cling film/moist towel and let it rest for about an hour. The bowl can be the same that you used to knead the flour. The dough will rise and become double its original size, the bowl should be big enough to accommodate that.



    Before    After the doug has risen to double A little trick that I employ to ensure my dough rises fast is to keep the bowl in a microwave (I use a micro-safe kneading bowl) and zap it for just 10 seconds. Leave it in the microwave itself (ensuring it’s switched off) and leave it to rise. Another option is to turn on your oven for a few minutes till it is just warm. Turn it off and keep the dough bowl in it for the rising period.

 

The extra warmth will make the dough rise faster.

 While the dough is rising prepare your stuffing (recipe below).



Once the dough has risen to almost double the original size, punch a few holes in it and knead it again for a few minutes. Make equal sized small balls and roll out each ball. Put a spoonful of the stuffing into each and pinch the ends to form a ball shape.

 

Place the bun pinched side down on the greased baking tray. Do it for the rest of the dough. Do not place the balls too close to each other on the sheet. Cover with a cling film and keep for another 45 minutes.

In the meantime prepare an Egg Wash, which is just a well beaten egg. Alternatively you can also use milk. Preheat the oven at 180^oC.

After your bun dough has risen again, brush with the egg wash or milk to coat the top and sides well. Place in the oven for about 12-15 minutes until the bun has properly browned.

Another trick that I use here and which works for me is that after about 10 minutes I take the sheet out of the oven and coat it once more with the egg wash and put it back in for a few minutes. This makes my buns browner.

Once done, take it out of the oven and immediately rub some butter on it. This will make the buns nice and shiny.

 

Your smooth, brown and shiny buns are ready to be devoured.

 

Making the easy stuffing:

Run all the vegetables in a food processor separately so they are all well shredded/ grated. Deseed the tomatoes and chop them finely. Don’t throw away the seeds and pulp, they can be used elsewhere.

The stuffing

Heat oil in a wok and fry the onions till they turn translucent. Add the chillies and ginger garlic paste. Now add the potatoes and fry for a minute, add the beans and carrots. Add the powders except for cumin. Cook covered on a low flame without adding water. Once the veggies are done, add the bell peppers. And finally add the tomatoes. Cook for a minute, add the cumin and turn off the flame. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves.

 

Tips:

To ensure you have the right temperature for your yeast water, do the Water-test. Take lukewarm water in a bowl and dip your finger in it for a few seconds. It should feel warm. Remember that the yeast is a living thing, if the water is too hot for your finger it’s too hot for the yeast.
 

Love to hear what you think!

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Pineaaple Payasam / Kheer

 Easy & Deliciously Fruity

 

Payasam is a milk based dessert, very similar to a kheer.

This was my first day getting really started on this blog and I thought I should start with a recipe that is not very common and something which I was making for the first time. I had some pineapple in my fridge and instead of eating it or turning it into juice, I wanted to make something different with it.  At a wedding, I once had a pineapple payasam and had loved the taste and texture of it. I had a full day in front of me and thought of whipping up something for hubby dearest. After all I knew the basics, you cant go wrong with milk and sugar right?

Wrong! And that’s how things went. Very wrong.  I may have got my payasam basics right but I forgot the very  basic principle of hot milk that it curdles when something citric is added to it.

Needless to say, my first attempt at making this elusive payasam went down the drain – literally. As second attempts go, mine wasn’t so bad, in that I managed to churn out a successful payasam. Its not all that difficult after all, just a bit time consuming, especially when you have to do the whole thing twice.

Anyways I made that mistake, so you don’t have to.

Here’s a step by step procedure to make Pineapple payasam, the right way.

What you need:

Pineapple chunks – 1 cup (fresh or canned)
Sago pearls – ¼ cup (Also known as Tapioca pearls or Sabudana)
Brown Sugar – ½ cup
Milk 1 ltr
Cardamom powder – a pinch
Saffron – a few strands (optional)
Cashew nuts and raisins as needed.

How we do it:

Cooking the sago-

Dry roast the sago pearls for a few minutes and then add boiling water to it. Keep cooking until it becomes transparent. It will take approximately 20-25 minutes. Once the sago becomes transparent, carefully drain out the hot water and immediately add cool water to the pearls. This will prevent them from sticking to each other. Let it rest in this cool water until the other ingredients are ready.

 

 

 

Cooking the pineapple-

Add the chunks to a non-stick vessel and add 2 tablespoons of sugar. Let the sugar caramelise the pineapple. Add a little water and continue cooking until the pineapple turns soft and mushy. Let it cool completely. You can now use the pineapple chunks as is but the pieces were too big for me so I pulsed them for 30 seconds on the blender so that they were just mashed and not puree.

 

 

 The milk-

Boil milk on a thick bottom pan. Once the milk is boiled, add the rest of the sugar and reduce the flame so it doesn’t boil over. Add some saffron strands which will give the milk a lovely colour. You can also add dried rose petals but if adding the rose petals, add at a later stage when the milk is almost done.

 

Putting it all together -

Now add the cooked and drained sago to the milk. Stir occasionally so that it doesn’t stick to the pan. Keep reducing the milk until you get the desired consistency. At this stage you can check the sugar and if you want, you can add some more, but remember that the pineapple will also be sweet. I put the milk on flame for just half an hour as I didn’t want it to be too thick. (Also I was impatient, remember I was doing this for the second time). Once done, take it off the heat and let cool.

Add the pineapple mix to the cooled milk and mix well. Remember people, the key word here is ‘Cooled;. Stir in some cardamom powder. You can separately fry some raisins and cashewnuts in ghee/butter and add to the payasam.

Your delicious Payasam is ready to be enjoyed.

Tips:

• Don’t blend the pineapple for too long. We still need to feel its texture in the payasam.

• Ensure that the milk and the pineapple is cool before you mix them up. I know, I know, I’m repeating myself but I just cant seem to stress the importance of that enough.

• When frying the nuts, always do the raisins first as they get brown and burn very fast. And trust me, the best of payasams get ruined by burnt fruits or nuts.

 

 

Love to hear what you think!

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