Ramzaan F(e)asting at Mohd. Ali Road

This is a ridiculous time to put up a post about Ramzaan feasting - but then I recently took up a task on my to-do list at work which has been languishing there for more than three months...... so you get the pattern. :-D For me the fact that the job finally got done (finally being the operative word here) is more important...... :P

Anyhow, so way back in late August/early September last year (yes, its been 6 months!) I got invited to join an exploratory expedition into the winding by-lanes of Mohd Ali Road during the holy month of Ramzaan. Muslims fast during the day for the entire month, and can only eat during the night, so the narrow alleys sprouting off from the arterial Mohd Ali Road in South-Central Bombay come alive at night during this time. Not only is it a food fiesta, but also a time to deck up, shop,catch up with friends/family......all amid the multi-hued splendour of a thousand and one stalls and shops.

We were lucky to have with us H, who knew the entire area like the back of his hand AND knew all the best places to eat at. Being a practising Muslim meant he had fasted the whole day and could not partake in all the gorging - when one has not eaten the whole day, you cannot begin stuffing you face with rich food right away, else the tummy protests. :) So he only nibbled at the spread of food we tasted, while we indulged in an all-out feeding frenzy. :D

To start off, H took us to this restaurant at the end of a dark dead-end alley. During normal (read: Non-Ramzaan) days it would have been a small nondescript eatery, but during Ramzaan, it was a DESTINATION - with tables spilling over onto the road under strings of bright lights. We began our epic food yatra with payaa - a gravy dish made by slow-cooking lamb/beef trotters with spices in enormous cauldron-like pots. The piece de resistance was the bara handi - a blend of payaa from 12 (bara) different cauldrons (handis).


Surprisingly the payaa was not spicy - it was bursting with flavour, but was easy on the chilli. We got thick wads of tandoor-fresh roti to mop up the sauce with and cold Thums Up to wash down all that richness.

Next stop was a roadside stall (again, with seating consisting of plastic tables and chairs on the pavement) selling only one thing - roasted chicken. It had all the makings of a tandoori chicken except for the fact that it wasn't grilled in a tandoor, but on a open charcoal grill.


You could choose your pick from three offerings - eloquently named Laal/Hara/Safed'(Red/Green/White) - no zaffrani/hariyali/nawabi window-dressing for these guys!

We chose to have one of each like well-behaved epicureans (rather than asking for all the chicken the guy had to offer like gluttons!)....and regretted this restraint on off the first bite of the steaming hot chicken...


....such succulence! Such superb balance of juicy tenderness and smoky charredness! Such a glorious bouquet of spices and tastes! It was easily the best tandoori chicken I have ever had in all my....err... considerable years. The red chicken was significantly spicier than the other two, and we quickly made up for our mistake of ordering only one of each by ordering 2 more pieces to share. :D
Luckily, H wisely shepherded us out of the place before we could order another round, luring us by promises of more treats to come. Else we (OK, OK, I!) would have happily stayed there all evening, downing endless pieces of grilled chicken!

Pushing our way through the throngs on the brightly-lit streets, we went to Hindustan Chhota Kabab, a place specialising in, you got that right, kababs. Here we were met by a revelation - these 'kebabs' were small (grape-sized or slightly larger) and sold by the dozen! Not only that, but they were deep fried, rather than grilled. Made of mutton mince these were spicy, oily and served in a newspaper lined by leaves.




Personally I found them too oily and spicy rather than flavoursome, but I can imagine them being an addictive snack with a beer or two (or more! )

H had saved the best for the last of course. After what seemed like miles (but was only a few hundred feet) of trekking through narrow lanes bursting with decorations and lights and music and CROWDS we reached the main road and the shrine of sweets of that area - Suleiman Usman. This bakery/sweetshop has been a culinary landmark for generations and is particularly sought-after during Ramzaan. We betook of creamy, comforting phirni set in earthenware bowls and piping-hot, fresh-from-the-kadhai malpua.

Each malpua was easily the size of a dinner plate - golden, gleaming with syrup, redolent with the aroma of pure ghee, and drizzled over with creamy rabdi. My personal reason for loving malpua is the textural contrast between crisp, crunchy latticed outer edges and the soft, pillowy centre....such bliss!

We were so lost in the sugar-and-ghee induced daze that the malpua had brought on that, when it suddenly started raining - puring!- it took us several moments to shake off the stupor and run for shelter. Needless to say, we followed the 'women and children to be taken to safety first' principle, and pushed the plates containing our precious malpua and phirni into safety of the makeshift pandal before taking refuge ourselves. :D


All in all, it was a fun evening with plenty of good food and great company. But on a personal note, it was like a culinary pilgrimage - a long-standing item in my Foodie To-Do list was finally ticked off. So what if it took me 6 months to write about it!

Restaurant Review: Cafe Basilico, Bandra West

First of all - apologies for the HUGE gap between posts. Its not that I have been too busy to eat out (Cafe Gulshan, Out of the Blue, Cafe Basilico, Kobe, Cafe Madras) or whip up something in the kitchen (Chocolate Pie, Brownie Cupcakes) - but the time to write out a meticulous post with all details covered has proved to be elusive.

Anyhow to cut to the chase, last month has seen an orgy of eating out - 4 times in one week IS too much, don't you think? Flagging off the eat-a-thon was dinner with friends from work at Out Of The Blue, which I shall blog about after I visit it again - for research purposes, of course. :D

Second off was a leisurely (read: three hour long!) high-tea-turned-dinner at Cafe Basilico at Pali Naka with a fellow foodie friend. VS is a US-based lady who, like birds, heads south (aka back home to India) every winter. This time, we were determined to check out some of the niche, quaint eateries that are the hallmark of Bandra West. Basilico was a natural choice for 'afternoon tea' after an afternoon of window shopping.

When we walked in, the inside seating area (all dark modern square tables and chairs and huge picture windows) was empty. The outdoor seating area had a couple of late-lunchers going strong.

With us being one of only three occupied tables, service was swift. Menus, glasses of water, table napkins etc were dispensed in record time. It took US much longer to decide what to begin our "tea" with. :)

After deliberating the menu options (and confirming that the Lamb Peri Peri that VS remembered as me having and lavishing praise on two years ago - there's a foodie for you! - was not available till 7:00 PM) we started off with a serve of the Thai Chicken Wings.

Yes, these are chicken wings, not prawns

These wings were unlike any wings I have ever had (very few, to be honest) or seen (too many! I adore TLC!) . These were stuffed chicken wings - stuffed with spiced chicken mince. Kinda bizarre, but very tasty, nevertheless. Even more bizarre? They gave us a steak knife and fork to eat these with. :-D My caveman (woman? person?) instincts were so damped down by this!

The only quibble was that the wings were slightly chewy - which meant getting a neat no-sauce-running-down-your-chin bite was impossible. (I abandoned the knife and fork after the first wing where the knife spilled the innards of the wing all over my plate) And yeah, the fact that there were only 4 wings in one serve which meant VS and I polished them off pretty rapidly. (We were hungry! Hadn't had any lunch! :P )

Next up, we asked for the Spicy Vietnamese Chicken Sandwich. I had misgivings about this choice - the words 'soy-marinated chicken' conjured up visions of too-salty chicken and not much else. But I SO GLAD we went with VS's choice!


The sandwich appeared to be a cousin of the famous banh mi and was a delightful combination of crunchy-yet-chewy baguette, tender morsels of chicken drenched in a sweet-spicy sauce, just-enough mayo and shreds of onion and lettuce. Such a treat for the taste buds! Especially when alternated with the crunchy fries served with the sandwich. The tumble of lettuce served on the side was doused with a light sweet-sour dressing, rounding out the offering. If asked to survive for the rest of my days on only one dish, this sandwich would be in the top 3 spots for sure.

To digress - the waitstaff would whisk away our plates and cutlery after every 'course' and replace them with new ones. Which made me feel remarkably swish. (Especially since the last few weeks have seen me on a mission to discover the city's cheap eats)

By the time we'd worked our way through the wings and the sandwich, it was past 7:00 PM, so...................
..............Yes, you got it right, we ordered the much-salivated-over Lamb Peri-Peri. Minus the lamb. In a vain bid to be virtuous, we ordered chicken instead. :)




And...... it wasn't the treasure trove of deliciousness that I (and VS, by transitivity) remembered. :( Maybe it was a case of over-expectation. Or maybe the dish needed lamb. Or maybe my memory had embellished the dish and made it seem brighter, better than it was? Either way, the Chicken Peri-Peri was nice, but just that. Not lip-smackingly awesome. The Peri-Peri sauce was not very spicy, the bed of rice-potato-vermicelli had way more rice and way less starchy, more-ish potato than I remembered.....sigh. We all outgrow our deities some time, I guess.

By this time we were full, but not unbearably so. :D So of course, we had to order dessert. Basilico is the only place I have visited till date which does about 5 versions of cheesecake. (Most places serve only frozen blueberry cheesecake, few others serve the aforesaid FBC plus one baked variant of cheesecake) Basilico serves - get this-

1. Baked Philadelphia Cheesecake
2. Baked New York Cheesecake
3. Baked Blueberry Cheesecake (with the blueberries inside the cheesecake, not on top)
4. Baked Cranberry Cheesecake(with stewed cranberries on top of plain cheesecake)
5. Frozen Blueberry Cheesecake

And this is in addition to a vast array of chocolate-based desserts (Baked New York Chocolate Mousse Cake, Chocolate Mud Pie, Chocolate Flourless Cake, Gooey Chocolate Cake....droooooool) and the usual suspects of brownies, tiramisu and chocolate mousse.

We ordered a wedge each of the Baked Cranberry Cheesecake and the Baked New York Chocolate Mousse Cake. The cheesecake was right at the top of the heap, vying with those served at Ovenfresh and Out Of theBlue for the spot of best cheesecake in town. VS wasn't too keen on cheesecake (her order was the chocolate mousse cake) but one bite and she was a convert. Light, tangy, yet incredibly smooth and creamy, the cheesecake was a stuff of dreams. And the base - crumbly, buttery, sugary - was the stuff of wet dreams :P

The absence of photos of the dessert tells you just how...errr....compelling they were... :D

All this fabulous food wasn't exactly inexpensive or even reasonably-priced - but given the exotic menu, the great food (often one sees menus with super-exotic descriptions - which the food falls short of), good service (paying upwards of Rs 300 per dish means no one can evict you because you have overstayed your welcome - we saw one PYT nursing one mug of coffee for 2 hours!) and great location, it was well worth the price. So the next time you have a session of catching up to do with long-lost (or migratory) friends - you know where to head.

Cafe Basilico
Pali Naka
Bandra-West
Telephone Number: 022 55055555/ 55039999

Restaurant Review : Koolar & Co, King Circle, Matunga (E)

Can you believe it - despite living in Mumbai for most part of my...err.... considerable years ( :P), I had never eaten at an Irani's? That is to say, a true-blue corner cafe with a crusty old owner at the cashier, old ceiling fans whirring away, old dark wooden furniture, old posters framing the walls, old waiters - basically, everything old,everything from a bygone era. The Irani cafes are a Mumbai culinary landmark, a must-visit in a city that has precious little to offer tourists other than its fine colonial architecture and immense culinary diversity.

I filled in that vital missing piece in my foodie jigsaw yesterday, by having a late Saturday lunch at Koolar & Company at King Circle in Matunga (E).


Koolar has everything an Irani should have - an amazing location at the V-shaped corner where two streets meet, mirrored walls, ancient ceiling fans, wooden tables with red-and-white checked tablecloths, creaky wooden chairs and a kitschy mish-mash of curios for decoration.


At Koolar, the decoration included a hanging clock - the kind seen on old railway station platforms (ostensibly from VT railway station, but likely a fake from Chor Bazaar!), a metal lamp suspended from the ceiling (straight from the Arabian Nights, complete with elaborate lattice work) bumping shoulders with 2 other lamps with - get this - Pepsi-branded lampshades.


As for the framed posters-oh my! They included:

1. Marilyn Monroe in her famous white-skirt-flying pose from The Seven Year Itch,
2. The first-page of the newspaper carrying the headline of the sinking of the Titanic,
3. An unknown-to-me busty Hollywood blonde wearing the tiniest miniskirt known to mankind,
4. A Harley Davidson ad, AND,
5. Charles Bronson, in a dapper suit

Plus, the sheer variety of things available for sale at the counter was breathtaking. Get this- there was detergent, bottled water, chips, biscuits, bread, cakes, cola, soda, cigarettes, eggs, butter, deodorant, shampoo, mayonnaise - everything one could possibly remember as running low at home while on a Sunday morning breakfast jaunt!

Taking in all this glory made the already-short wait for our food seem even shorter. First up was the kheema pao.


The kheema (mutton mince) was served in a big white bowl - it was not too spicy,and with a surprising dash of sweetness. Thankfully it was not too oily either. It was served with 4 fresh pao (bread rolls), and some of the juiciest freshly-cut onion I have had in ages and the inevitable lemon quarters. Quick and fairly tasty. And at INR 90, pretty decent value for money too.

Next came the highlight of our lunch - nay, one of the highlights of ALL my eating history. The chicken cutlet was simply divine. Oddly though, it was served pre-cut - a jumble of golden brown pieces served in a bowl with sliced cucumber and tomatoes for company.


But the first bite made me clean forget the unusual presentation. Crunchy, evenly-golden thin crust giving way to a chunk of succulent, juicy, steaming-hot, perfectly seasoned chicken. Bliss! Worth every paisa of the the INR 80 price tag!



We wound up lunch with the must-have at every Irani restaurant- the double omelet (INR 40). This too, was served with pao and had a nice evenly tanned brown appearance. The omelet was not particularly fluffy but was juicy and tasty and the bits of onion and chilly inside packed quite a punch.


Other items on the menu include the Wrestler's Omelet (made with FIVE eggs), sandwiches, burgers, Irani tea (served without milk) and oddly enough - cappucino, among others.

In conclusion, Koolar, while not being exactly a cheap feed, is still awesome value for money when you throw in the old-world charm, the idiosyncratic decor and the quick service. Not to mention the simple-yet-tasty food! I am still drooling over that chicken cutlet.....

Washoku 4 - A Japanese Street Food Festival

All it took was one banner hung from Dadar Catering College (lesser known by its correct name i.e. Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition) to set my pulses racing. A Japanese street food festival - at a stone's throw from my place! How much more awesome could it get?

In a rare display of initiative (normally I am inertia personified), I put a call through to the number on the banner - and voila - by evening, the passes for Washoku 4 had been delivered at home. Priceless!

I spread the word, and by the time the festival rolled around, had 2 foodie friends along for company. Or rather, one foodie friend (T) and one world culture junkie and obsessive Teriyaki lover M. :)

Armed with our INR 500 passes (worth 5 200-Yen coupons +1 free drink coupon redeemable at the food stalls) we marched in promptly at 7:00 PM. To be greeted by thermocol cut-outs of reproductions of Japanese paintings and a smiling kimono-clad pair at the door. (It was quite funny - being almost the first guests at the festival meant we surprised the Welcome Wagon as they strolled outside to check out the arrangements - and catching sight of us, hurried aroun the corner to their post by the door - in funny mincing steps, since the kimonos were wrapped so tight!)

The festival was held on the terrace of the Institute and efforts were made to bring a flavour of Japan in the ambience, from strings of paper lanterns and a giant screen showing glimpses of Japanese landscapes to Japanese music piped through the speakers.


There was even a corner photo-op scene (get a kimono draped arund you and get a free snap taken) with paper pink cherry blossom trees in bloom beside a wooden fake-bridge over an invisible stream.

There were also stalls with free demonstrations (and do-it yourself sessions) of Ikebana (Japanese art of flower arrangement) and Origami (Japanese art of folding paper into fantastic shapes).


There were also live demonstrations of Sado, the traditional Japanese tea ceremony (once every hour).
A stall selling imported-from-Japan foodstuffs - not stuff you normally see in supermarkets - including sauces (soy, spiced soy, teriyaki, some dipping sauce i forget, Japanese mayo), ready to eat and dry noodles (udon and soba), silken tofu, green tea powder (matcha), bottled ready-to-drink green tea, golden curry sauce, miso soup sachets (made specially for Indian vegetarians, the packet proudly proclaimed), sushi powder, wasabi paste....you name it, and it was there. Expensive, but expansive as well. :)



And the food! Goodness me. 8 stalls covering:

1. Appetisers
Veg - Platter of: Vegetables Yakitori-style, Tofu with wasabi mayo, potato-and-mushroom krokke, Non Veg - Platter of: Chicken Yakitori (kebab-like grilled chicken chunks on skewers), Chawanmushi (savoury custard) and shrimp cake with spicy mayo. Droool.....





2. Tempura (Japanese fritters, wonderfully pale-golden and crunchy)
Veg - Selection of okra(ladyfinger), casava and onion-and-corn tempura
Non Veg - Selection of prawn, rockfish and monkfish tempura

This was one of the HIGHlights of the evening - the tempura was amazingly crunchy and delicious - especially when dipped in the tangy dipping sauce served on the side. I loved it, but T and M preferred the voluptuous swathe of spicy mayo to the the water-like consistency of the dipping sauce to dunk their tempura in. :)


3. Noodles

Choice of udon (fat, slippery-yet-chewy strands of wheat noodle) and soba (pale grey noodles made of wheat and buckwheat, with a slightly nutty taste) noodles with soup of your choice, topped with finely shaved veggies, chicken/fish, pickled ginger, pickled mushrooms, 7-spice powder, grated lemon zest, spicy soy sauce....)

We had the udon with chicken mince and the soba with veggies, and while both were yummy, I love the veggie option (surprise!), for its spicy, clean miso broth. Steaming hot, and highlighted with lemon zest it was potently herb-laden, almost to the point of being medicinal, and you KNEW it was good for you!




4. Soups and salads
Choice of 1 Vegetarian soup, 1 Non-Vegetarian soup (we had this - clear soup with clams and seaweed).....

....and salad (amazingly crunchy lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, onion, (the non-veg variant had cooked calamari (squid) pieces as well) all drizzled with a tangy sweet-sour dressing. If there was ever a salad which would make me go on a salad-only diet, this was it - the superb crunch of the veggies is still vivid in my mind...


5. Sushi

One CANNOT go to a Japanese food festival and not sample Sushi! At this stall, there was the Real McCoy - a tiny conveyor belt, holding black plastic trays of sushi, just like proper Japanese sushi bars! There were 2 mini tasting platters - one vegetarian, and the other non vegetarian. While they looked the real thing, (I loved the way the peeled tomato slice was held on top of the rice with a ribbon of seaweed, to mimic the look of salmon!) neither I nor T and M liked the taste so much. Except for the tamago (omelet) and cheese one, which was soaked with a sweet vinegar. Maybe its an acquired taste....




6. Curry Rice

This tasted exactly like airplane food - stodgy, dodgy, yet tasty! After the challenge to our tastebuds and cerebral cells with the sushi, this was like homecoming - with a sense of culinary relief, we hit the familiar shores of spicy curry and rice. :) There were 2 options each in the veggie and non-veg sections.


We chose to go with the simple rice-with-chicken-curry, though in my heart I was pining for the chicken katsudon curry and rice (deep fried crunchy chicken with curry and rice, instead of the relatively virtuous simple chicken curry that we had)


7. Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is a delicious way to ensure we eat our vegetables - a pancake bursting with julienned veggies (and meat, if you prefer), all barely swaddled together by some batter, pan fried to golden-brown deliciousness.

Especially when topped with bright orangey-red confetti of chopped pickled ginger, a squiggle of Japanese mayo and Japanese Worcestershire sauce. Sticky, spicy, hot, crunchy, sweet.....all kinds of yum! :)


8. Dessert

There were 3 options to choose from here - green tea tiramisu, red bean pastry and vanilla ice cream with orange glace. We plumped for the first 2 (seemed more Japanese than ice cream!) and they brought the foodie evening to a perfect closure.

The tiramisu was very soft-set (read: barely set) and apart from a faint mustiness, did not set my olfactory sensors buzzing with any discernible green tea scent. (Maybe the green tea used in food is not the sweetly fragrant green tea used in cosmetics?)


Anyhow, it was a pretty dish, layers of green tea jelly, sponge, and green tea custard and was simple and sweet. The red bean pastry was your standard issue "pastry" (read: layered cream cake), except that the layers were sandwiched together not by cream, but with sweetened red bean paste. The top was satisfyingly cloaked with whipped cream though. :) This was easily the better dessert of the two, and my doubts about eating mushy beans for dessert were unfounded. :)


We also did some foodie shopping - I bought a pack of ready-to-eat meals (cooked udon noodles with seasoning mix) and sachets of miso soup (my tryst with miso stock in the noodles section was promising enough for me to blow up 250 Rs on soup sachets)
The icing on the cake was the pocket-book on Japanese cuisine that was thrown in for free with my purchases. Its a handy ready-reckoner with gorgeous photos, the kind thats specially printed for a packaged-foods company or a cookware manufacturer, not available in bookstores for sale.

It is so satisfying to end a memorable evening with tangible (especially edible) souvenirs of its memorable-ness! :D

Knee-bucklingly good chocolate brownies - Not!

EDIT: The recipe for the brownies has been added at the end of the post!

A few (OK, several!) months ago, the beautiful, vivacious SD had brought a treasure trove of chocolatey goodies to work - something she and her sis-in-law "had just whipped up over Sunday". There were chcolate cookies - very nice on their own - but it was the brownies which made me pause, as a chocolate-induced endorphin rush flooded me and made my knees buckle. I
kid you not. I begged for the recipe right away, as I licked every little crumb from my fingers.

Madame obliged (going so far as to ring her SIL and jot down the recipe while cradling the phone between ear and shoulder - you know!) and voila! the key to chocolate heaven was with me. In typical fashion, I promptly failed to act on it and the sheet of paper with the recipe on it remained as a bookmark in my diary for a loooooooooooooooooooong time.

Till yesterday.

In an uncharacteristic display of determination, industriousness and organisational skills, I got together all the ingredients and whipped up a pan of brownies. Or, more accurately, brownies to-be-which-weren't. :(

While the crumb was spot-on (oh so tender with a whisper of crunch) it was the inside which was my Waterloo. Sticky, gooey, squelchy, rich, oozy.....you get the picture dont you?




The taste was awesome (obviously - anything that's entirely made of chocolate, butter, eggs, sugar and nuts CANNOT taste bad)but the texture was disappointing, to say the least.

And NOW we come to the main points of this post (Yeah, yeah, there ARE some.... :) )

Point 1: Identify your mistakes so you don't repeat them.

Possible areas of error could have been:
1. Got the quantities wrong: I didn't bother using scales to measure out ingredients by weight - and Mum did say that she felt that there was too little "binder" in the ingredients I'd assembled - something to hold the brownie together

2. Got the bake time wrong: My oven has no timer nor a temperature control or indicator. I go by the eye and the old-fashioned test of inserting a skewer and see if it comes out clean. I think I pulled out the pan 5-10 minutes sooner than I should have, terrified that the crust would begin to burn and go bitter. What I should have done was cover the pan with foil and cook further, allowing the interior to firm up while the crust stayed that glorious tender brown.

Point 2: Salvage the mess you have created - or know when its un-salvageable and trash it

There was no way I was going to trash all that richness, especially when it tasted fine. (I have thriftiness ingrained in my middle-class soul). So, the way out of the chocolate morass was: Ta da! Serve the brownie with ice cream! No one demands the perfect soft-set texture of a brownie when its swamped by a scoop of vanilla ice cream - all you need is a chocolatey sweet rich base - in fact, the gooeier, the better!

As for those bits which refused to get cut in neat squares and dissolved in sticky crummage - well, I rolled up my sleeves, and rolled them up in Indian-style mini laddoos - chocolate balls! The downside was all that butter and oil from the almonds started separating and gave the surfaces of the laddoos a glossy sheen. Problem solved by simply rolling them (gently!) in some powdered sugar/cocoa, like truffles. And served as truffles, too! :P

As Julia Child says, part of being a good cook is to know how to salvage culinary disasters - AND grin and bear it, without self-chastisement or self-castigation when they turn out to be unsalvageable.

All I can say is - given my track record of grinning - I am in the reckoning for being Mere Julia's favourite student. :)

EDIT: Recipe for brownies, courtesy SD:

Ingredients:
225 gms dark cooking chocolate/chocolate compound
250 gms butter, softened (at room temperature)
2 tsps vanilla essence
250 gm castor sugar
3 eggs - beaten (my 2 cents here: dont whip air into them, just beat them lightly - we dont want airy puffy brownies)
150 gms ground almonds
100 gms - walnuts, chopped

Method:
Melt the chocolate and butter ina double boiler. Once melted, remove from heat and mix well.
Add sugar+vanilla, mix well
Ass eggs, fold them in and then fold in the ground almonds.
Add the walnut pieces and bake in a greased-and-floured baking tin/pan at 170 deg C for 25-30 mins, till a skewer inserted into the centre of the pan comes out clean
Pull the pan out of the oven and let it cool under a fan.
Cut into neat squares, you can dust the brownies with icing sugar to decorate them.

Yields 25-30 brownies (squares of 1.5 inchesx 1.5 inches)