City Food – Julia Child Bakes Blueberry Muffins in BK Dutt Colony

The great chef’s life in Delhi.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Meet the Julia Child of BK Dutt Colony, a quiet neighbourhood in central Delhi. Having an unending curiosity for authentic cuisines, Ms Child runs Eat and Dust, a blog on food adventures in India. The escapades are primarily confined to Old Delhi, where she spends her time tasting the dishes, chatting with vendors and getting the recipes. In fact, Ms Child goes to the Walled City so often that most food vendors in the area have gotten used to the sight of her walking down the lanes with her notebook and camera. They know her, she knows them. Once she stopped by the Old & Famous Jalebi Walla in Chandni Chowk. The man at the counter was tapping on his laptop. On raising his head, he looked surprised and exclaimed, “I’m reading your blog.”

A native of Scotland, Ms Child earlier lived in Nizamuddin West. Every month when it was time to collect the rent, the landlord would come to her house with his family and a giant tiffin that would have korma, kebabs, biryanis, nans, and shai tukda. The mithai would be from Chaina Ram, the sweet shop next to Fatehpuri Masjid, Chandni Chowk.

Ms Child’s first rendezvous with Indian street food, however, didn’t take place in Delhi. It was in Amritsar, Punjab, with Amritsari kulcha. “The bread was like a piece of French patisserie being made in a roadside dhaba that was filled with flies and dust,” Ms Child told The Delhi Walla. “It tasted so good, it was hard to believe it could have been made in such chaos.” Here is the recipe of Ms Child’s ‘blueberry muffins’.

I usually make blueberry muffins as a treat for my kids and you can make them in no time! This recipe makes about 12 muffins.

Blueberry Muffins

250g plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
half teaspoon salt
85g caster sugar
1 egg
250ml milk
75g melted butter
175g blueberries

Put paper muffin cases in a muffin tray. Preheat oven to 190 degrees centigrade.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt. Stir in the sugar.

In a separate bowl mix together the egg, milk and butter.

Pour all the wet ingredients into the dry ones and stir gently until you can’t see any flour, not longer – the mixture is supposed to look a bit lumpy. Stir in the blueberries then fill the muffin cases with the mixture.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the tops of the muffins spring back when pressed.

Serve.

Julia Child’s empire