Poster I Made

Eggless Carrot Cake

After making a cake from the mix and using eggs, I wanted to make a something without eggs and with something that I have at home, without any artificial flavours. With this intension I started my search with Google as usual. There were several versions of the cakes one with dates (I shall try that later though), with carrots, strawberries and so on. I picked up the carrot versions, looked at about 4-5 different reciepes and came up with my own. I tried it a couple of times to get to a recipe that gives a cake that is as soft as any other cake with eggs. And here is the final version that I reached:

Ingrediants: 2 cups All-purpose flour 11/2 cup sugar 1 cup milk 1/2 cup orange juice (or 1 tbspn lemon juice) 3/4 cup oil 1/2 teaspoon orange zest 11/4 cup grated (or finely chopped) carrots 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 cup of chopped nuts (I used cashewnuts and resins) seeds of 2-3 cardomons (powdered)

Procedure: First prepare sour milk by mixing orange or lemon juice in the cup of milk. The first time I made this cake, I added only leamon juice. But in the later versions I used th orange juice, since I buy an orange to make the orange zest, and in order not to waste it, I make orange juice out of it and added to the milk. If the orange is not sour enough, I added some lemon juice and kept the milk for about five minutes.

I used navel orange for the zest. This type of oranges generally give good amount of zest and rough enough to grate with a small grater. While making the zest make sure you grate only the orange part of the skin. If the white part gets into the zest, the cake does not taste good.

In a mixing boil, I mixed the orange zest and oil, later added the sour milk to it. I mixed it well until the oil mixes with the milk. Later I added the sugar. When I used icing, I added only 11/4 cup and I felt that it would be better to add more sugar. 11/2 cups is fine. You can add more sugar if you would like it sweeter but do not add more than 2 cups or else the cake becomes too sticky.

Slowly, I added the all-pupose flour and the baking powder. Mixed it well without lumps. In fact I used the food-processor so that it would be grinded smoothly. If the batter is too thick, we can add some milk, but one thing is that once the carrots are added, it does not stay so thick if the carrots are juicy. Finally, before baking, add the nuts and carrots and the powdered cardomon. Bake it for an hour at 350F in a pre-heated oven. This cake must be baked longer than the regular cakes because it takes some time for the carrots to cook well.

Apple Pie

A next step in my baking effort.I do not want to boast much about this recipe. I should say this is the result of my efforts in using my favorite search engine "google". I should better change my "five things I cannot live without" column in my profile in orkut to include Google. "Why fear when google is hear...".

Here is the recipe for the crust: http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001127perfect_pie_crust.php
And is the recipe for the filling: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizHk-3yxVXJVMnHcRV7g4CzOUVsO1JaKST8pyung-EYLNImEqzRDuDDhiF8TeEHbDYvcfXH6Mk3EnSxo_iwLueI75UQDPAReUW5dZDTislL6gOTP_53b3-7uOUIuTHmCIHvGr1K94JsvRc/s1600-h/Picture+008.jpg And thats it my apple pie is done.I simply followed the steps for the crust exactly as it is. And for the filling, I mixed together apples with lemon juice sugar, flour and honey slightly different from the exact filling recipe. Other than that the procedure is the same.

Sweet Potato & Spinach Cutlet

A few weeks back, when I was watching some indian channel, there was a cooking show showing some recipe with Sweet Potato and spinach. It has the shape of a aloo tikiya. I do not exactly remember the recipe and I made something like a cutlet for a sunday snack, (not exactly a cutlet but I named it so) with sweet potato and it tasted very nice. So here is my version of the recipe in the cooking show.

Ingrediants:
Servings: 7-8 Cutlets
One medium sized sweet potato
One small potato
spinach (that makes about 2 table spoons of puree)
1 tbspn of green peas
1 tbspn chopped cilantro
Red Chilli powder- as per taste
Black Pepper powder - 1/2 tspn
Bread Crumbs - one cup
shredded cheese - 2 table spoons
oil - 2-3 tbsps needed for frying
Salt to taste

Procedure

1. Boil the sweet potato and the potato. Peel the skin and mash them. 2. Microwave the spinach for a few minutes and grind it to a smooth paste, something like spinach puree. 3. Add the spinach puree, peas, salt, chilli powder, black pepper powder and chopped cilanthro to the mashed potatoes and make a sort of dough. 4.If the dough is watery add a little bread crumbs to make it free from moisture. 5.Make the dough into balls. Press it in the middle, put some cheese inside, close it again so that it is as if the cheese is stuffed inside the cutlet. I used paramesan cheese, however you can use mozerella or goat cheese according to your preference. 6. Now flatten the balls like a cutlet and roll them in bread crumps. If you wish to have a thick crust, add water to a little maida (all purpose flour) , dip the cutlet in it and then roll it in bread crumps. 7. Put 2-3 table spoons of oil in a pan and toast the cutlets until both sides get a golden brown color.

Hmm Yummy!!... You can serve it hot with tomato sauce or coriander chutney. The cheese inside the cutlet melts when the cutlet is toasted and makes the cutlet juicy and tastes awesome.

Chocolate Fudge

Having a conventional oven in every house, I wanted to use this oven some how or the other. Obviously, wanted to try a cake. With so many readymade cake mixes available, it was the easiest for me to make.Apart from the cake mix the other ingrediant is egg. I never knew how to break it or beat it. I tried several cake mixes pillsburry, Hersheys and different flavours like the German chocolate, Chocolate. Probably the fluffiness that we get also depends on the flavour and the brand of the cake mix. Hershey's Chocolate mix was the best.


Ingrediants:
Hershey's Chocolate fudge cake mix
3 large eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 1/2 cups water
butter to grease the baking pan
All purpose for dusting



Procedure:
Mix all the ingrediants. Mix well without lumps. How fluffy your cake will be, depends upon how well you mix the ingrediants. Mix them slightly and leave it for about 10-15 minutes and then mix them well. This way it will be easy to make the batter free of lumps. Pre-heat the over to 350F. Grease a baking pan. Dust it with a little maida. Put the batter in this baking pan and bake for about 30 mins. If you put a knife inside the cake and take it out, it comes clean with out any part of batter sticking to it. This is the indication that the cake is done. Thats it a tasty chocolate fudge is ready.

Pav Bhaji Receipe

Though I am a south Indian and cook traditional Andhra dishes every day, I like to learn new receipes may it be indian or any other cuisine. One of my favorite dishes, Pav Bhaji, originally comes under north indian cuisine, is nowadays in every fast food center. The more the varieties of vegetables, the tastier it is. I use the Pav Bhaji Masala that is available in any grocecy store.

Ingrediants:
Cauliflower - 1 cup florets
Peas - 1/2 cup
Tomato - 1 medium sized
Onion - 1 medium sized
Potatoes - 1 medium sized
Other vegetables (Beans, Bell peppers, carrots) depending on what you have.
Pav Bhaji Masala - as per the spice required
Green Chillies - 3 to 4
Ginger - a small piece
Butter - 2 tb spns
Cumin seeds / Jeera - 1 teas spoon
Jeera powder - 1 tea spoon (optional)
Dhania powder - 1 tea spoon (optional)
Coriander - for garnish (optional)
lime juice - 1/2 teaspoon (optional)

You can add also add vegetables like cabbage or Zuccunni but do not veggies add Okra, ridge gourd , brinjal, bitter gourd :)

1. Heat butter in a pressure pan. Add Cumin seeds and allow them to splutter.
2. Add finely chopped chillies, ginger and onions.
3. Cook the onions for a few minutes.
4. Add to it the vegetables. And Pressure cook it until the veggies are well cooked.
You can either use a food processor to finely chop the vegetables. You can do for all the veggies except the bell peppers and potatoes. Bhaji tastes good when these are some what bigger pieces. If you do not have a food processessor you do not need to chop them finely.

5. Mash the cooked vegetables with a masher. If you choped them as big pieces, you need to mash them well.
6. Add salt, pav bhaji masala, jeera powder and dhania powder.
7. Bring this to boil until the masala mixes well with the veggies.


8. Add the butter and boil for a few minutes.
9. Garnish it with Lime juice and coriander.

This can be served with Pav bread or with chapattis.

Evaluation of expressions in if Statement in Java

It was never in my mind to write a blog on a subject like this. I was unable to think of an apt title for this blog. This does not explain any internal details of java or the if statement in particular. Its just that I wanted to share my experience in coding one such statement.

I always thought and also want to put into practice the coding style that I have learnt academically. But is it always true, that we use "good" coding style in our daily work. In this current world, where a new programing language comes up each day, there are very few languages that actually stand up. Though 'C' is the base for most of the languages, I hardly write 'C'. Whenever I have a choice, I go for Java. Its probably the IDEs that "gives me impression" that I can write well in Java.

The experience that I had today, has proved that I do not think while coding. I have something similar to this in my code:

String text;
......
......
if (text.equals("") || text == null){
.........
}

In the snippent above, I have taken great care to make sure that my program does not crash under any circumstance. Though I know, that the string variable will be assigned some value, I still handled the situation that when it is not initialized. I am always proud of myself until, such a program threw an exception and behaving in a weird manner. My program was throwing an exception at the "if" statment. And the exception was a "Null pointer exception". Even the dumbbest in Java would say that the variable is not initialized and thats the reason for this exception. Yes, the variable has not been initialized but I handled the situation to say something. Why does it still crash? I struggled over this for 3-4 hours why this happened. Finally, I could....
I changed the statement as follows;
if (text==null || text.equals("")){
.....
}

And it worked perfectly. I was very happy when it worked. But did not last for a second, as I figured out the reason for it. For the if statment, not always the two expressions (operands) are not evaluated when it is a OR logical operator. The second expression is evaluated based on the result of the first. If the first is true, the second expression is not evaluated since it has to execute the if statement. Unlike the OR operator, for the logical opertor AND, the second expression (operand) is evaluated only when the first expression is true. In this case, the first expression throws an expception and hence it did not check the second.
I was under the silly thought that since the second expression is true, the result is going to be true and the error is handled. And it took me such a long time to figure out!! I answered hundreds of such questions while preparing for GATE and Subject GRE examinations. I remember such a question was also asked severals time in several classes related to object oriented programming. How stupid of me to still commit such a silly mistake even after (theoritically) answering such questions? Had I tought a moment while writing this step, I would have saved 4 hours of precious time...My reluctance to think a second has costed me 4 hours. I am not such a busy person to grieve about the time I spent in fixing it, but my crib was over why I could not apply what I learnt?

Journey to my first blog

Finally, I started my blog today. If I have to say "very honestly" ,I wanted to start a blog, since very long time, but have been too busy to spend time on writing blogs. If I have to be honest, its true, I wanted to start my own blog from a long time, I was having trouble in starting a blog or to put it simple lacking the confidence. This reminds me of the poem, Arambimparu nicha manavulu vignayasasamtrastulai yarambimchi parityajimturu vignayattulai madhyamul dhirul vignanihanyamanulagucun dhrutyunnatotsahulai prarabdarthamu lujjagimparu sumi pragyna nidhul gavunan that describes three categories of people, one who does not start a work with the fear of taking the risk, other who stops the works unable face the troubles in between, and the third kind finish the work successfully overcoming all the adverse situations. I cannot say to which category I belong to until I finish and post my first blog at least. (though hoping to enter the last category). Recently, I started wondering why I have to start a blog and what do I write in my blog. Do I need confidence to write the blog. I came accross this page, http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/you-should-write-blogs which instilled in me the confidence. The author mentions the reasons for not writing a blog, "no time, what do we write", the general human tencency to give reasons. Now that I decided to write a blog, the second question, what should I write in the blog. I looked at Eric Brill's Blog. FYI, Eric Brill is a famous computer scienctist specializing in Natural Language processing. Google for Eric Brill, you will find his autobiography. And here is the link to his blog, http://research.microsoft.com/~brill/blog.htm Did'nt you start laughing looking at his blog? Yeah that was my first reaction too. I expected his blog to be so so informative, but could not stop laughing at first, but as I went on reading, I started my own blog. Hurray! I finished my first blog...Hope to post some more soon.....