Tarun Kapoor is executive chef at Doha’s Horizon Manor Hotel. Send your feedback to:
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No doubt cheese cake is the favourite dessert of the world. While many may think it hails from New York, it actually originated in ancient Greece and was thought to be a good source of energy. Cheese cake was served as a wedding cake as well during those times. And New York has played a major role in popularising this delicious creamy and cheesy dessert.
The Americans were trying to make few European cheeses locally and incidentally developed a process of making cream cheese. This led to the Philadelphia cream cheese. Of course, no story of cheesecake is complete without delving into the origins of the New York-style cheesecake.
The classic New York-style cheesecake is served with just the cake – no fruit, chocolate or caramel is served on the top or on the side. This famously smooth-tasting cake gets its signature flavour from extra egg yolks in the cream cheese cake mix. The below mentioned recipe is one of the modified recipe of New York cheese cake with the goodness of fresh strawberry.
Baked strawberry
cheese cake
Ingredients (yield 500g)
Philadelphia cheese 550g
Castor sugar 70g
Cream 90ml
Egg white 3no
Egg yolk 4no
Icing sugar 150g
Flour 60g
Vanilla extracts (few drops)
Biscuit 120g
Butter 1tbsp
Strawberry filling ½ cup
Fresh strawberry 50g
Method
Cream cheese and icing sugar till the sugar is dissolved and the cheese is fluffy.
Whip egg white until stiff peak and add castor sugar and mix.
Add egg yolk, vanilla extract and flour to cream and mix well to creamy texture.
Combine the above three mixture to a soft and creamy consistency.
Crush the biscuits and combine with butter to a crumbly texture.
Layer a ½ kg cheese cake ring with biscuit crumble and press with fingers to smoothen it.
Pour the prepared cheese cake mixture in the prepared cake ring and drizzle with strawberry filling on top.
Bake in a preheated oven at 170degree for 35-40 minutes in a tray filled with water and cake ring in centre.
Check by piercing a knife if it comes out clean the cake is cooked.
Remove from oven and allow to cool, open the cake ring and slice into desired slice.
Garnish with fresh strawberry serve cold.
Shish barak
Shish barak is an Arabic pasta dish and is made in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine that has been described as a kind of local variation on Italian ravioli. After being stuffed with ground beef or lamb and spices, thin wheat dough parcels are cooked in yogurt and served hot in this sauce. Shish Barak packs an intriguing taste stemming from the intense flavour of cooked yogurt, and then crowned with subtle aromas from the mint, cilantro and garlic.
Shish barak
Ingredients For dough
Flour 3 cups
Salt to taste
Water as required
For stuffing
Ground lamb 500g
Onion, chop 1 cup
Garlic, chop 1 tbsp
Olive oil 3 tbsp
Pinenut 2 tbsp
Lemon powder ½ tsp
Cardamom powder ½ tsp
Cinnamon powder ½ tsp
Curry powder ½ tsp
Salt to taste
For sauce
Lebneh 200ml
Tomato purees 200ml
Water 1 cup
Garlic, chop 2 cloves
Mint powder 1 tsp
Cilantro leaves ½ tsp
Lemon juice 1 tbsp
Salt to taste
Method
For stuffing, heat oil and saute onion and garlic in a heavy bottom pan.
Add the lamb meat and all the spices except pine nut and cook till the meat is cooked.
Add pinenut and season, remove from flame, allow to cool.
For the dough, knead using the mentioned ingredients to make a firm dough.
Rest the dough for 15 minutes and then flatten using rolling pin and cut using a cutter 2 inch in diameter.
Place ½ tbsp of stuffing in the centre of dough.
Fold edges in and close them on the meat, then pull edges and fold them on one another, then flatten the sides to make it look like a hat or ravioli.
Freeze the dumplings for 2 hours in air tight container.
For the sauce, combine all the ingredients in a heavy bottom pan and bring to boil.
Add the prepared shish barak and simmer for 15- 20 minutes on low heat until the dumplings are cooked.
Serve hot garnished with mint, pine nut and fried garlic chips.
Note: The traditional method involves simmering the dumplings in white lebneh sauce only, but to give some colour and impart tanginess tomatoes are used in the recipe which can be omitted also in case you are looking for the traditional recipe.
Strawberry cheese cake
