It’s so funny, the last time I had written on the blog, we were naively hoping for the lockdown to open on the 15th of April. In fact, the moment I clicked submit, I was notified on my phone that we will be in lockdown until May 4. Now, I think there may never be a time of complete freedom all of this year. Being an introvert, time alone at home has not been as hard as I thought it would be I do miss Natasha who practically lived with me and my office! I miss not seeing my team which was one of things I loved about being a manager, actually seeing my people and not just their work.

That being said, the traffic on the blog is going strong. I have had more people visit the site in April than I had all of 2017! The community on Instagram also grew to 20,000 followers which seemed like a goal come true that I wasn’t really keeping tabs on. Every time I cross a milestone on social media, I remember this birthday cake that Aakanksha got for me in 2019. The cake was for an office party. It was a chocolate cake with a picture of my Instagram profile on the day of my birthday. At the time it had 2,300 followers. It’s crazy to think of the growth in a little less than 18 months of that day. But then again, a lot has changed since that day as well. I was thinking of running a tiny campaign to celebrate some of the old recipes on the blog that had a great story like the chicken shawarma or the garlic fried rice. It was among all of these recipes, I found some of the super old recipes from my college time (like the hangover eggs and the chai spices chicken with orange soy sauce). I loved those recipes because of how innovative they are. I realised that they came out of a sense of need— a lack of ingredients or the emergency of finishing perishables that are becoming more perished than what they looked like when they were bought.

The lockdown has made re-think innovative recipes that might fit the blog but at the same are accessible for people’s kitchen. This recipe for a soda bread comes from my research to make a loaf of bread without yeast (magically, all groceries stores have seemed to run out of yeast). This recipe uses baking soda (or soda bicarb) as a leavener instead of yeast. The bread turns out a little less airy but you do see bubbles which is amazing! I loved the texture of the bread, the deformed imperfect form, and most importantly that it takes 15 minutes to prep and 30 minutes to bake. I LOVE any bread that takes less time to prepare than an episode of Money Heist! I hope you like this recipe and as always keep safe, healthy, and just keep cooking!

Glimpses from the week

Ingredients

• 400g All purpose flour / white flour

• 100g wholewheat flour

• 2 - 3 tbsp Extra Flour /(either flour, for dusting)

• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda or soda bicarb

• 1 1/2 tsp salt 500ml buttermilk — you can make this with 500ml or whole milk with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, mixed well and left alone for 15 minutes.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 220C

2. Line tray with baking paper. Whisk both flours baking soda and salt in a bowl.

3. Add buttermilk, stir until it’s too hard to stir anymore.

4. Sprinkle 2 tbsp Extra Flour onto the work surface, scrape out the dough, sprinkle with more flour. Gently knead no more than 8 times, bring together into a ball

5. Transfer to a tray, pat into 2.5cm/1” thick disc.

6. Cut a cross on the surface using a serrated knife.

7. Bake 20 minutes. Turn oven down to 200C Bake further 20 minutes, or until the base sounds hollow when tapped in the middle.

8. Transfer to rack and cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing.