The pop up diaries

focaccia, chaat, mushrooms, oh my!

Hi Spice Club! It’s been awhile and that’s because 

I popped up! And then went to India! The turnaround between the two was quick and I haven’t really written anything outside of the unfiltered thoughts that go in that pocket of my notes app that no one can ever find.

I wrote most of this on a 3am flight from Mumbai to New York, after a filter coffee and masala chai I consumed in an effort to use up my last 500 rupees and stay awake. Jokes on you, jet lag. My foot is tapping because of caffeine jitters, I’m typing like there’s a deadline, and the guy at the other end of my row has decided to occupy and snore on the two empty seats between us, so I’m trying to distract myself. (I’m letting you know the context in case the rest of this sounds chaotic. But popping up was also chaotic, so this is fitting. Anticipate many parentheticals.)

When I think about what I want to do in these little digital spaces, my mood changes every month. Some months, I’m writing. (But clearly not recently given how overdue this is.) Other months, I’m filming, and I guess last month, I felt like cooking until I was so exhausted by food that I constantly wondered how people who work in actual restaurants handle being around food all day while also maintaining their own relationship to food. (I found out I can’t – at least not in the way I’d like to.) In the future, I see myself thinking about food more than cooking, but I suspect I’ll be doing a lot of that in med school which explains my urge to be active in the kitchen right now! Here is the menu I came up with:

Sometimes I feel insecure about whether I can actually cook well, which is why I will never be one to say “this is the best [x] you’ll ever have” because uh…who do I think I am? What if you’ve had better? Maybe the people who try the things I make are just being nice to me and appreciating the labor! That’s what I do sometimes. But alas, friends are the only taste testers I had, so I just emphasized the need to be brutally honest. (And they were!)

Anyways, it all started with the faithful King Arthur. I’d only made focaccia a couple times before but figured a savory bake would be easy to prep in advance. (Yet also difficult to store in a freezer shared by 3 people so thank goodness for friends with nearly empty freezers.) Focaccia is also extremely forgiving! I used a mix of recipes based on my schedule, since focaccia requires some babysitting. My favorites were by Grateful Pizza and Nicola Lamb. After testing the base a few times to see what texture I liked and how to store them, I made the final versions. I started with baking and freezing, but when I realized how much space thick pieces of focaccia take up, I tried freezing the dough, thawing overnight before baking, and then baking the last six focaccias the day before at Public Records.

I wanted the rest of my menu to include a mix of traditional Indian food and fusion twists. That’s how I landed on aloo tikki chaat made the way my Bihari family eats it –with white peas, chutneys, and lots of coriander and dried red chilis. And kheer, a creamy saffron-pistachio-rose rice pudding that I’m pretty sure I burnt (more on that later).

I also knew I wanted to serve a thing on a dip, which is how I ended up with 12 packs of oyster mushrooms in my basket at Hong Kong Supermarket – to make oyster mushrooms on tofu ricotta with crispy chickpeas and curry leaf chili oil. The lady ringing me up quite adorably held the mushrooms up to my face and was like, “This is the same as the last one. Do you still want it?” And since the pop up was in the morning, we had masala chai coffee cake, which sounds really simple but it was the recipe I had to test the most. It was either too dense or not chai-y enough or too chai-y or ugly. We got it to work eventually!

There’s lots I would do differently. I burnt some of the kheer in the process of scaling up a recipe intended for 4-6 servings. I didn’t accurately estimate how much I’d need of every component of the aloo tikki chaat, so we ran out of white peas (essential, imo) earlier than everything else. I left the focaccia in an 175 degree oven for a tad too long, so to anyone who ate the focaccia after the first hour, I’m sorry! And thank you for complimenting it anyways!

That being said, this wasn’t a test of whether I could run a one-woman kitchen and execute everything perfectly as much as it was about wanting to do something good! See people eating food and mingling! Find out whether I could handle the process of testing recipes more vigorously than I’m able to do for my videos and the pressure of having actual people (my mom and friends don’t count) taste what I make.

The day after, I couldn’t fathom that it happened and immediately started thinking about the next thing. I almost had a menu for a wine bar pop up figured out, but it didn’t take long to realize that doing it all again so soon wouldn’t be very good for me. So here I am, seated uncomfortably (still on that flight) behind my screen, writing these recipes instead — also a place I like to be (when I’m not embarking on international travel).

THE RECIPES

THE FOCACCIA

Like I mentioned, try out the recipes by Grateful Pizza or Nicola Lamb! Both worked out perfectly for me so there was no reason to make any tweaks.

Tadka focaccia: Bake with thinly sliced potatoes and onions. When the focaccia is done, heat 3-4 tbsp olive oil in a small pan. Add cumin seeds and mustard seeds. Let them sputter for 30 seconds before adding curry leaves. When the curry leaves are toasty but not burnt, pour the tadka on the focaccia. You can also set aside the tadka in a bowl and spoon it over a warm piece of focaccia before serving.

Cheesy chutney focaccia: Spread cilantro mint chutney on the focaccia, followed by a layer of vegan mozzarella. Fold like a burrito, make sure the cheese and chutney is stuffed inside, and flip the dough over. Repeat on the exposed dough, folding and flipping it over once again. Add some more chutney and cheese on top.

Tomato achaar focaccia: Spread Brooklyn Delhi’s tomato achaar on the dough. Fold like a burrito and flip it over. Repeat twice, so you have three layers of tomato achaar. On the top, add cherry tomatoes and olives to the dimples!

I think I baked most of these for 25-30 minutes at 425 F.

THE SMALL PLATES

Aloo tikki chaat: Recipe for the way my family makes it is on this essay about chaat from way back when. This was the item that sold out the quickest at the pop up!

Mushrooms on tofu ricotta

For the tofu ricotta: blend 14 oz. extra firm tofu (press or 15-30 minutes first), 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp white miso, 2 tbsp nutritional yeast, pinch of pepper, salt to taste.

For the chickpeas: spread a layer on a baking sheet. Sprinkle chaat masala, kashmiri chili powder, salt, pepper, and olive oil to your liking. Bake at 400 F until crisp. I think it took about 25-30 minutes.

For the mushrooms: Coat a wide pan with a high heat oil like avocado oil. Over medium-high heat, place the mushrooms on the pan so they aren’t overlapping. And now the fun part – place a heavy pan on the mushrooms. If your pan isn’t that heavy, maybe place a pot in the pan. This helps the mushrooms brown really well without you doing much! Take the pan off after a minute or two, flip the mushrooms, and let them cook for another minute or two. Finish with a little garam masala, red chili powder, and salt.

For the curry leaf chili oil: I don’t remember proportions because I eyeballed lol but here’s what was in it: dried red chilis, dried kashmiri chilis, a lot of curry leaves, thinly sliced garlic, mustard seeds, sesame seeds, salt, avocado oil. Grind the chilis until they are little flakes. Add all the ingredients to a bowl, heat the oil, and pour the oil over everything else.

THE SWEETS

Kheer: I used my usual kheer recipe but with kali jeera rice instead of basmati! The grains are short and make the kheer super creamy, but basmati rice is also lovely. Finished with some rosewater and dried rose petals.

Masala chai coffee cake: Coffee cake but with a chai masala jaggery layer and streusel. Recipe for homemade chai masala below but you can also use any chai masala you like.

chai masala

• 10 green cardamom pods

• 4-5 cloves

• 1 cinnamon stick (broken into pieces) or 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp fennel seeds

• 1/4 tsp black peppercorns

• 1 star anise

• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

• 1.5 tbsp (15g) loose-leaf black tea

cake

• 1 cup non-dairy milk + 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

• 1/3 cup cane sugar

• 1/3 cup canola oil

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 2 cups (240g) all-purpose flour

• 1 tbsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1/4 tsp salt

chai masala jaggery layer

• 1/4 cup jaggery

• 2-4 tsp chai masala

streusel

• 1/2 cup oat flour

• 1/2 cup rolled oats

• 1/2 cup jaggery

• 2-4 tsp chai masala

• 1/8 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 3 tbsp vegan butter, cubed

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 5 x 9 loaf pan. This recipe should also work in an 8 x 8!

2. For the chai masala, grind all the ingredients in a spice grinder or coffee grinder or something similar. Or a mortar and pestle! (Optional to toast the spices before grinding. I didn’t think it makes much of a difference for this cake.)

3. Start with the streusel! Add oat flour, rolled oats, jaggery, chai masala, baking soda, and salt to a bowl. Pinch in butter until the mixture feels slightly damp and comes together. You want CHUNKS of streusel rather than something that crumbles apart when cutting the cake. Refrigerate while you make the cake. The streusel can be made a few days in advance too.

4. Mix milk and apple cider vinegar in the bowl you’ll use for wet ingredients. Let it sit for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, add dry ingredients to a separate bowl: flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Then continue adding ingredients to the wet bowl: sugar, oil, and vanilla extract.

5. Combine wet and dry ingredients. Add a little of the chai masala if you want a little more of that flavor in the cake.

6. In a small bowl, mix 1/4 cup jaggery and 2-4 tsp chai masala (amount is up to you).

7. Pour about 2/3 of the batter into the loaf pan. Sprinkle the jaggery/chai masala mixture, followed by the rest of the batter, a little more of the jaggery/chai masala mixture, and the streusel.

8. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Going to leave you with just these recipes for now. New things will be coming soon, I promise! Appreciate you for sticking around <3