Filed under: Random Facts
I just came across these pretty cool video and accompanying website for “Eat the View“. Per their site… “Eat the View” is a campaign to plant healthy, edible landscapes in high-impact, high visibility places, whether it’s the “First Lawn” or the lawn in front of your child’s school.
You can sign the petition here, and support their campaign to start an Organic Garden at the White House. Maybe you’ll be inspired to start your own garden next year. I know I have more plans on what I am going to try in our potted garden on the front porch next year.
I tried out Manjula’s Nan Khatai Biscuits last nite. I forget sometimes about the differences in culture and word choice, and this became evident quickly when I watched the video Manjula made for these Nan Khatai. She describes them as “egg-less biscuits. Very delicious. Easy to make. Light and crunchy, great to serve with tea.” Perhaps the tea should have been my first tip off, but all I heard was “egg-less biscuits” and then got lost in my brain thinking, EGGS? Eggs don’t normally go in biscuits do they? I didn’t think so? Am I thinking wrong? And then as she begins to talk about sugar and mixing it with butter it dawned on me. Biscuits!! Cookies!! Everything began to fall into place. So I tried making them. Here’s my result.
One of the most interesting things about them, is that they contain 3 different kinds of flour, which is not customary in most cookie recipes I’ve tried. Of course I haven’t been making Indian cookies very often. You need All Purpose flour, the one most often associated with baking, Semolina flour, the one most associated with Pasta, and Gram Flour or Besan (which should not be confused with Graham Flour), the flour most associated with?? I’d never heard of Gram Flour before I started reading Manjula’s Blog.
Graham Flour, as the name is pronounced, is a type of whole wheat flour and has a coarser element that contains both the endosperm and the bran and germ.
Gram Flour is a flour actually a flour made from ground chana dal, which is a type of lentil that is similar to the chick pea (just like that used in Hummus).
The cookies were delicious. Crispy, reminiscent of short bread, but with a nuttier flavor, (they are topped with almonds and pistachios) The recipe uses ground cardamom that is added to the dry ingredients that is distinct and was new to my taste buds. The only disappointing thing was how few it made. I only got 16 cookies out of the recipe. Perhaps I’ll have to double it next time. 
