How to Blanch Tomatoes | Prepping Tomatoes in Different ways

When I think of gravies made without tomatoes I really wonder how one can make gravies without tomatoes. For me onions and tomatoes are something that are mandatory for a gravy. When it comes to using tomatoes, there are couple of methods used to make the best use of it.

Sometime back when we make any kurma or even a simple curry, I simply used to chop it finely and add. These days when the boys not wanting to have the tomato skin in the gravy, I have resorted to making a puree and adding to the gravy. This makes sure that you have a thicker and more gravy.

Blanching Tomatoes:

When you want to blanch tomatoes, take ripe tomatoes, wash and keep it aside.

Bring to boil 1 -2 cups of water as required. When the water is boiling, make sharp slits on the tomatoes and add to the boiling water. Switch off the flame and keep it covered. This takes about 5 mins for the skin to loosen up.

Typical blanching would require the tomatoes immersed in hot water to be immediately immersed in cold water. But I have seen that it works just fine, if I leave it in hot water and cool and puree to use in gravy.

Remove the skin with a knife and allow to cool. Puree the tomatoes and use in the gravies.

Used in kurmas, gravies where you want more gravies.

Smoking the tomatoes:

Wash and pat dry the tomatoes. Using a fork, insert into the tomatoes. Show over flame and roll over the tomatoes so that the tomatoes get burnt. When the tomatoes are done all over, remove from the fork and allow it to cool. Remove the skin when the tomatoes cool.

This gives a wonderful tastes for foods like Paneer Tikka, Baigan ka barta etc.

Freezing Tomato Puree:

When you have excess tomatoes on hand, you can puree as many as you want either by blanching or my simply pulsing it and storing it in ice trays. Once the tomatoes are frozen you can break and store them in zip lock covers and use when required.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 11

How to make Rusk | How To Make Bread Crumbs | Microwave Method

We are starting the second group in the Blogging Marathon edition 11. It's been one exciting week in the first part and hoping it will continue the same.

For the second week, I chose the Mix n Match theme wit Preps and Preserves with Bihari special dishes. I must say I have enjoyed making Thekua and so Bihari dishes are great to make and enjoy a new cuisine.

Coming to today's post it's all about making rusk and Bread crumbs at home. Rusk is great to simply eat and coming to bread crumbs, you will surely need it when you got to make cutlets and Tikkis.

Though normally one gets to making the bread crumbs from stale bread, it is advisable not to use a very stale bread. At the most it can be a day's old or best is to use fresh bread.

How to make Rusk:

Rusk is double baked bread. For this you can bake your own bread and again bake the baked bread or you can use store bought bread. Anything works fine.
 

If you like the sides as I do, simply microwave the slices for 1 min and the turn and again microwave for 1 min. Slices that are little thick needs a little longer, but the bread tends to get crispy after cooling down. So don't fear seeing that the bread is still soft after removing from microwave.

How to make Bread Crumbs:

As I said for the Rusk, stale bread is not usually advisable, though the best way to use one day old bread is to make it into crumbs for coating cutlets etc.

I basically make two ways of bread crumbs, one for binding, another for coating or breading.

When you need something to bind your food like cutlet, patties, or even ground meat, you can opt for potatoes or fresh bread crumbs. In such situations, you simply pulse the bread in your food processor or mixer and you get a fine crumb, though very soft to touch.

This helps in binding the food to be shallow fried or deep fried.

The other process that requires bread crumbs, is to coat or breading the food such as fish fingers, cutlet outer layer etc.

In this process you will need a crisp crumbs and for this you can microwave the bread and grind it to get small pieces.

Cutlets are dipped in eggs or all purpose flour and then pressed over crispy bread crumbs for an overall coating and then fried.

Sending this to Kavi, who is hosting my MEC this month and she is accepting all dishes made in microwave.


Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 11