Week 51: Savoury Semolina Cake

The book: Indian Food Made Easy (Anjum Anand)

The recipe: p25, "Savoury Semolina Cake"

I'm going to be honest, "Savoury Semolina Cake" is not a collection of words I expected to encounter in a Random Kitchen context (though I probably should have, considering this is a project that's given us "Spiced Cucumber" and "Vegetables For One"). And yet I'm instantly sold on the concept.

I mean, just look at it. What do you mean you can't? Being from a BBC series and all, the recipe is right here. And it looks very much like My Kind Of Thing - more bread than cake really (and I've been wanting bread to come up again for a while), attractive to look at yet still faintly ludicrous in the execution. I absolutely approve.

Plus it's two days to Christmas when I spin the random wheel and there's going to be no shortage of rich and, well, very English food in the week ahead, so why not try something authentically Indian? At least I assume it's authentic; the introduction in the book likens it to something called handvo, but that comparison is absent in the online version of the recipe. And in fact various sites suggest that handvo contains lentils and/or paneer and/or, at the very least, appears to be something similar but fundamentally different. So perhaps this isn't all that authentic after all - there is a "purists beware" warning attached, I suppose. Hm. Oh well, I'm sufficiently culturally ignorant to proceed regardless. Let's loaf!

The prep: I have an ideally sized tin for this particular bit of baking (thank you, Jane Asher and Poundland), which comes as something of a relief since I've spent all week battling with various recipes for gluten-free Christmas cookies, so any way in which Anjum can live up to her claim and actually make things easy is extremely welcome at this stage.

To my surprise, there's also very little I need to buy in. The titular semolina is missing from my cupboards, of course - I'm not a school dinnerlady in the 1980s, so why would I need that particular retro horror in my life? (Still, it could be worse: it could be frogspawn tapioca.)

I also pick up some fresh green beans even though frozen would be fine (the decadence!) and some proper Greek yoghurt with actual fat in it, since I'm keen to avoid a repeat of the curdling episode that dogged Anjum's first appearance in this blog.

The making: You can see the recipe for yourself, as noted above, but I'll summarise the steps anyway. To begin, onion is chopped, carrot is peeled and grated, green beans are "roughly broken up" (I do love a vague instruction), and petits pois are allowed to defrost slightly. These vegetables are then combined with the semolina, yoghurt, ginger, chopped chillies, chilli powder, turmeric and salt to form a fairly thick batter.

So far so easy.

A healthy dose of vegetable oil is then heated and some mustard and cumin seeds are briefly fried until fragrant and a-popping. The seeds and oil are stirred through the batter, followed by the bicarbonate of soda, and... oh. That's all! It's ready to go into the tin and, from there, into the oven.

Does look a bit like vomit though

Wait wait, I almost forgot something. The online version of the recipe (which I'm working from in writing this post at the in-laws' over Christmas) lists sesame seeds in the ingredients but doesn't expressly tell the reader what to do with them, implying that they should be toasted along with the other seeds. Yet the book version definitely tells me to scatter them over the contents of the tin before it goes into the oven for 35-40 minutes. I'm not sure why Anjum changed her mind or what version is supposed to be the definitive one, but it certainly comes out looking nice(r) with the sesame seeds atop the "cake":

Cracking loaf, Gromit

And just look at those slices. Colourful to the point of ridiculous - who wouldn't want to sink their teeth into something so riotously vivid?

"Green-studded radioactive orange" is my favourite colour of food

I am entirely serious here, by the way. That is absolutely the kind of thing I always want to be eating. Heck, if anything, it looks nicer and moister than the version from the TV show, which seems a bit flat and sad by comparison. Win!

The eating: This basically goes exactly as I predict: Sam is ambivalent whereas I really quite like it. It's not spectacular - how could it be with those simple ingredients? - but its humble slices are home to a pleasing blend of vegetable crunch, soggy semolina (soggy semolina) and a slow-building rustic spiciness. All in return for minimal difficulty and minimal outlay - "Indian Food Made Easy" indeed.

It's still hard to know exactly what it's for, admittedly. I think the key, from an ignorant western perspective, is to look past the c-word of the title and treat this as something closer to a bread. Not the kind of bread you'd butter and use in a sandwich, obviously - but a couple of slices are enough for a decent lunch option or, frankly, a quick and moderately healthy breakfast jolt to the tastebuds. Has to be better than another turkey sandwich, right?

Added to which, less the two slices we taste-tested, it's even a perfect fit for our tupperware.

OCD-tastic!

Definitely a success, then. I may not be wasting any of it on Sam, but I will absolutely be making this again in 2017 and beyond.

One-word verdict: Fun!