Indian as Apple Pie event!

One of my favorite cookbook authors, Anupy Singla Gupta, held a cooking demonstration at Williams-Sonoma to treat Chicago bloggers to breakfast.  I have been Facebook stalking her for several years, so I was thrilled to snag an invite.  She has two cookbooks; one is all slow cooker and the other is all vegan, but they are like a Venn diagram with some overlap in each cookbook.  All of my Indian slow cooker posts have been from her first cookbook, and the recipes I tried out last year for roasted chana dal green beans and Punjabi-style cabbage were from her new cookbook.

She decided to make chai (Indian spice tea), tofu scramble, and hand-rolled aloo paranthas.  Her spices and ingredients are so high quality and wholesome, I was drooling before she even started passing out the samples.

Here she is showing us the elements of her hand-crushed spice chai:  cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, and cloves!

She crushed those items and boiled them in water, then added a little soy milk before serving.  It was delicious tea, and I normally don't enjoy spiced chai.

Her tofu scramble began by roasting some spices in grapeseed oil, then adding crumbled extra firm tofu.  The yellow turmeric turned the tofu yellow like eggs, and the black salt she added gave a distinct eggy smell to the tofu.  It seriously could be eggs, yet it contains no cholesterol or saturated fat.  

To eat the scramble, she rolled some roti by hand, then folded in some spiced potatoes to make aloo parantha - stuffed roti.  Although everything was delicious, this was probably my favorite part of the entire demonstration.  I need, NEED, to begin making these at home.  They were so much more delicious than tortillas or naan you can get at the store, and she said you can fold in any kind of leftover - lentils, garlic, onions, potatoes, you name it!

I am planning to do an entire kick of recipes from her cookbook to showcase these amazing recipes.  Although I love cheese too much to ever become vegan, I have morphed into a quasi-vegetarian over time and love eating vegan recipes frequently.  Thank you for your invitation, Anupy, and thanks for a delicious breakfast!