Poached Plums & Red Wine Reduction

I bought some plums last week and quite forgot about them. It had been raining whole of today and called for something really special and this is what I made.

Ingredients

10-12 plums, stone removed
1/2 cup red wine
Cinnamon stick
Vanilla
1/4 cup sugar

Prep time: 5 mins (including uncorking a bottle of wine)
Cook time: about 30 mins (including wine syrup)

Method:

In a saucepan, add the wine, cinnamon sticks, sugar and vanilla and let the sugar melt and blend. To this add the plums. Cover and poach until tender. Remove the plums and let cool. Reduce the wine further until it become syrupy. Store separately.

Serve the plums, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and drizzle some wine reduction over it :-)

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Brownie in a cup - Microwaved

I realized I've not been fully utilizing the microwave. I've so far used it for just re-heating dishes and steaming vegetables and at times, making pulao. I always thought I needed an OTG to make / bake certain dishes. I am not a pro baker and my portions are going to be mostly for two. There are fundamental differences in the way a microwave and an OTG operates. If we understand this, then perhaps we can work wonders (on a smaller scale, of course. And I will also refrain from the heated debate - is the microwave good or bad)

I've been trying to lose weight and have been moderately successful. To celebrate a milestone I made this microwave brownie (recipe adapted from Cheryl Rajkumar's Kitchen Kemistry).

The recipe itself is fairly simple and calls for ingredients that we can normally find in our kitchen - Flour, Butter, Sugar, Cocoa Powder, Chocolate syrup. What I didn't have was chocolate chips. Instead, I used about 2 squares of grated Bourneville (dark). I also reduced the amount of sugar(and hoped it'd alleviate some of the sin.). The original recipe called for 11/2 minutes but mine cooked in a minute. The cooking time varies with each microwave, so it's recommended to start with a minute and increase as required.

I brought the cup and fork to my bed, sat down to message Cheryl and even before I could hit Send, I'd finished eating the brownie. It was delicious and a perfect dessert for that late night craving without having to spend too much time cleaning up.

The experiments with the microwave have begun!

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