Green plate

Normally

Santanu has a tendency of encroaching cuisine area particularly on

weekend or on his official holidays depending on his mood. In a way,

it’s good as I get 2 days off.

We were just back from Switzerland and went for picnic at

St.-Germain-en-Laye with few colleagues of Santanu. And Santanu promised

he is going to prepare all by himself -simple vegetable-rice and **Date

walnut brownies**.

Lately I borrowed one book on vegetarian by Nicolas Graimes from one

friend which includes light meals, main courses, tarts, salads, desserts

etc. The best part of this book is initial descriptions on each

ingredients starting from seeds, vegetables, different types of cooking

oil and what not with colourful pictures. We see certain things in the

local market but do not how to prepare them. Neither we know the

corresponding English names nor are they commonly available in India.

So, its an excellent book for reference.

Last year he got ‘Pates de Dates’ from an Algerian store and it was

sitting like a brick in our kitchen. Ever since, I got this book finding

a recipe with ‘dates’ he had an eye on it.

Yum…………it came out good unexpectedly.The results are rewarding, here is

a picture of fudgy moist and candy like brownies.

***Best part is although I didn’t do anything except being a helping

hand to Santanu but everyone complimented me for the same.***

Even his friends from RFS wanted to have the recipe. These rich brownies

are great for afternoon tea and even they do make a fantastic dessert

when served with crème fraiche (whipped crème) or vanilla ice-cream. I

will be infringing copyright if I copy those here but still couldn’t

refrain myself.

**

Ingredients**

350 gm plain dark chocolate

225gm or 1 cup butter

3 large eggs

115gm or ½ cup castor sugar

5ml vanilla essence

75gm sifted plain flour

225gm or ½ cup dates-peeled stoned and chopped

200gm or 1 ¾ cup walnut pieces

Icing sugar for dusting (optional)

**

Procedure**

Melt chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of hot not boiling water

until they have melted and smooth

In a separate bowl beat eggs, sugar and vanilla.

Add this into chocolate mixture and fold in flour, dates & nuts

Bake for 30-40 min in preheated oven at 190 C

Lastly, dust it with icing sugar.

Since they had to be chilled prior to cutting, I ate my brownie cold.

Normally, I can’t resist myself from testing because of strong baking

aroma. I think the fudginess was probably accentuated by chilling, so my

sample was especially moist and chewy with a crumbly, crunchy top

innards tempered by the occasional chunk of walnut.