Stuffed Dinner Rolls

Last week I had attended an event ‘Pizza Off’ where each one of us made pizza with different toppings. I had blogged about this in my earlier post.

The dough that I brought home, I made stuffed dinner rolls, which was so tasty that I made some more the next week too to share it with my family.

I realized that once you know the basic of making pizza dough, you could play around and create different types of bread.

In the basic method, flour and salt were mixed properly. But I added mixed herbs and basil powder to the flour.

In the warm glass of water, I added sugar and active yeast (they told me Prime Yeast is the best). Mixed it well and kept it for 5 minutes.

This solution was then used for making soft dough. One tablespoon of oil was added to remove stickiness. The dough was kept covered for 3 hours to rise.

The dough was beaten once again and kept for another one hour.

 I made mushroom stuffing using finely chopped mushrooms, green chilies, crushed garlic, lime juice and vegetable-cube. You just need to stir-fry on high flame for 2 minutes.

Made a round shape, stuffed the mushroom filling, closed in and placed it in a greased baking tray and baked it for 15 minutes.

Best enjoyed with garlic sauce and plum sauce.

Pizza Making Contest At Serafina

The invitation for Pizza Contest seemed exciting, although I had no intention of participating in this contest, it would be interesting to watch other contestant prepare a pizza. I accepted the invitation at Serafina, in Palledium, Lower Parel.

I reached the restaurant to be greeted by food bloggers. The tables were set with big bowls containing flour and small plates with sugar, salt, yeast and oil.

“Do we have to participate?” I asked the host.

 “Yes, It would be more fun participating than just watching as an audience.” She said.

 And why not? Was there to have some fun, no?

While we waited for the others to arrive, I got acquainted with staff and the hostess of the restaurant. The interiors of the restaurant took me in with a warm embrace. Artistically done, the décor is beautiful with interesting murals on each wall. There is a bar closer to the entrance, where one can wait till tables are vacant An open cooking station dominates the restaurant where you can actually see a live coverage of your pizza rolled out and bake in the fire oven.

With every blogger at their table, donning the chef’s cap, the contest began. It was not a serious contest but more of a fun-contest. If you don’t know what to do, you just watch and ape others. Chef Rahul Kulkarni guided us as we dissolved yeast and sugar in warm water and used this to knead the pizza dough. Later, we were led to the cooking station and asked to work in pairs. The cook demonstrated a rolling of pizza technique. There was a strong smell of roasted pizza and it was getting difficult to concentrate on making a pizza without popping some toppings into our mouth. We worked in pairs, creatively adding the toppings of vegetables, sauces and spices and inserting the pizza into oven for three full minutes.

   The drinks and snacks were served while participants took turns to prepare pizzas. The atmosphere was affable with bloggers sharing the stories of their adventure with food. Food blogging is lot of hard work. It is not just eating and preparing dishes, there is writing and creative photography too that makes blogging successful. One blogger was telling me that she clicks on average, two-hundred-and-fifty photographs of an event. Editing and selecting few to make a blog post is a tedious task.

We waited at the tasting table closer to the cooking station. Every participant prepared one pizza and posed for a picture with their creation.  (A professional photographer clicked the picture that will arrive at snail mail after few days) Pizza was next brought to the table and explained in details about the toppings they had used; chef took a small slice to taste and graded the pizza. All the participants would then grab a piece to try. There were 20 participants and after trying so many, it was starting to taste the same. Some used extra cheese, some extra sauce; there was difference in taste as per the spices and topping used.

I wondered what was chef looking for? He tasted every pizza and had good word for everybody. He never showed any emotion of disliking any pizza. Every participant thought his/hers was the best. At the end of the contest when we stood round him to hear the results, nobody could guess the winner. Three of the bloggers were felicitated with diploma and it was a happy event for all of us. He said that he was looking for ethnic flavors, the kind that he would love to serve in his restaurant. The pizza may not have too many toppings, but there should be even distribution of flavors.

Congratulations @mumbaiguru @anujadeora and @kneadwithlove for winning the Pizza making competition

This was my creation. I had made pizza to my liking and I prefer lots of vegetables. (it’s the kind that I normally order at the restaurants) After baking I had added basil leaves and olive oil as garnishing. I wanted to add red chili flakes too, but didn’t want to offend those who don’t like it too spicy.

It was a fun evening and I really enjoyed a lot. Thank you @FoodBloggersAI and SerafinaMumbai for organizing this event. Made new food-blogger friends, learnt a lot from the chitchat with other bloggers. Brought home the pizza dough that I had kneaded during the event, and made mushroom pav the next day.

Recipe of mushroom pav coming up in next post….

Pizza at North of the Island in Tenerife

What is the difference between Samosas of India, Spring Rolls of China, and Chagio of Vietnam???, the stuffing right? ...... On the same theme, here is the new snack, with stuffing that contains a piece of white cheese, wrapped with a spinach leaf and fried in the crispy rice flour wrapping, served in the bed of sweet and sour sauce with a dash of soya sauce....imagine the taste….its yum...gone in a second leaving behind its lingering taste....but wait.....what I like the best is...er..the serving appetizer spoons...I need to buy those......

The chef said, “Its on the house, my new creation”.

He was introducing a new snack, Paquetos de quesos y espinaca con salsa agridulce and he wanted me to try it.

I gave him full marks.

I like restaurants that care for its clients and are always trying new creations and this Italian restaurant ‘Tasca Pizzeria Maracay’ gets a brownie point.

I actually went for pizza because that is what it specializes in. They have oven-roasted pizzas with great variety of combination. We ordered three kinds

Pizza cuatro quesos: Pizza with four different cheeses: Mozzarella, Parmesan, Camembert, rogurfort.

Pizza Stramboli: with tuna, ham and prawns

Pizza Vegetariana: with Mushroom, asparagus, black olives and capsicum.

The oven-roasted pizzas have their distinct burnt taste, that sets it apart from the normal ones.

Since most of the Spanish food has bland taste, I like restaurants that have good sauces to go with the meals. We ordered ‘Queso asado con dos mojos (cilantro and rojo pimientos’ which is actually roasted white cheese soaked in two sauces :coriander and red capsicum.

We also had a pretty looking salad, okay, it was not just pretty, it was delicious too. With the combination of rocket leaves, lettuce, black and green olives, asparagus, cherry tomatoes, red cabbage, basil, olive oil, it is hard to imagine it can be anything but tasty….

Tasca Pizzeria Maracay’ is an Italian restaurant in the north of the island at La Guancha in Tenerife. It has very good ambience with pine furniture and many artifacts decorating the walls. They have bamboo furniture outside in the open and on a bright sunny day, it’s a perfect place to spend an afternoon.

Junior Chef Cookery Workshop

My friend, Aanchal, conducts one-day cooking workshopsregularly and most of them are exotic dishes. I am always amazed at the knowledge she has of the latest trends and knows exactly what the people might be interested. Sometimes its dips/pesto and sometimes mock-tails/cocktails, sometimes infused oils and sometimes herbal salad dressing. 

I asked her, “Where do you learn these?” 

She says that she socializes a lot, visits various restaurants and reads latest cooking literature to keep herself updated.

Well, it’s a hard work then.

This week she invited me to attend the children’s workshop that she would be conducting. The menu for the day was Double Chocs-Chip Cupcakes, Mexicans Mini Pizza, Red Cheesy Pasta and  Ferraro Roche shake 

Since I love the company of kids, I was most eager to attend.

I arrived at the venue when the session was on. All children were dressed in cute personalized aprons and a chef’s hat which were especially bought for them. That set the mood and children took cooking quite seriously, willing to learn some basics of cooking. 

All children were given the typed recipes which they could refer to. As the session progressed, some children made separate notes, adding details and their observations.  

There were about 15 children of ages from 4 year-old to 12 years old.

The session started with cupcakes.

The children learnt to identify each ingredient by taste, touch and smell. 


While they mixed the ingredients they licked their finger each time, each one willing to do their part of mixing and setting, getting hungrier each minute, so much so that they could not wait till it was baked and served. 


And yes! They were too hungry to wait for decorating the cup cakes with confetti and cream……

While they waited for the cup cakes to be baked, they were to learn to make Mexican Pizza.

In group of four, children were led to the kitchen to cook the tomato sauce using ingredients such as onions, tomatoes, salt, sugar, basil leaves, oregano, garlic and baked beans. The pizza bread was toasted in the oven and back came the group to the living room to make his/her own pizza according to his/her own taste, adding assorted veggies like red and yellow capsicum, chili flakes, cheese and olives.

While the pizza baked, it was time to make cheesy Pizza. Aanchal, my friend, demonstrated the boiling method of Pasta, informed them about  the right consistency and the duration of time needed to prepare the pasta, then to mix it in the tomato-onion sauce, add herbs and cheese and bake. 

It was interesting to see the children’s focused interest in this activity. Some of them related to me about their interest and their favorite cookery program on TV. All the kids were aware of the TV program ‘Junior Masterchef’ and had their own favorite cook

The impatience was growing and children were eager to taste, Ferrero Rocher milk shake would have to wait, all children were already seated, waiting to eat, and of course, best part of attending cooking demonstration is that there is always food to taste.


After having their fill, children were ready to make Ferroro Rocher milk shake.

In a batch of four they made their milk shake, mixing Ferroro Rocher chocolate with coffee powder, milk, vanilla ice cream, syrup and condense milk with topping of cream and choco-chips.

No children’s workshop is complete without a game and gifts. 


A customized housie ticket with each child’s name printed on the top of the ticket was distributed. But wait, this wasn’t an ordinary ticket; it had the ingredients that were used during the session, very innovative and carefully organized.

There was a gift for every line and two full houses. 


By the time the session ended, children were charged with energy, they shared notes and phone numbers, they even got one cup cake to take-away to share with their family.

A lot of effort was put behind the scene, because planning a children’s workshop is no child’s game……