Duronto travel and Orange Cheesecake

A lot of people had been asking me this question, “why travel by train? Its 30 hours journey!” I just answered, firstly, I am short of funds and air tickets are very costly, and secondly, I have not travelled in long distance trains and I want to experience it and enjoy it. And so, my tickets were already booked 60 day in advance, just because there are just two decent trains that go from Bangalore to Howrah and hence getting tickets can be quite troublesome at later stages.

On the travel day, I was all prepared, armed with my books and “Grey’s Anatomy” DVDs. I had a lower berth in a 3AC coach (is the new general coach. so they say). I prefer lower berths because that gives me access to the window as well as the charging point (you know these android phones are such a power drainer). So the journey started, and I was ready for 30 hours of eating, sleeping, reading, watching and listening. I had no idea that the listening part would overshadow everything else. Two of my co-passengers who seemed to be colleagues were continuously chattering about their workplace, workplace politics and a lot of other things. One of them seems to dislike every food served on the train and had to voice that pretty loudly. As for me, the food was much better, though the usual things were not right, like palm oil in the parathas and rice-starch in the daal, but still, it is ok and I did not fall sick.

Being in 3AC entitled us to three course lunch, starting with soup and breadsticks and ending with a sweet dish or an ice-cream, evening snacks and tea, three course dinner, a morning bed-tea, then breakfast and tea again, and again a three course lunch just before disembarking. This is pretty good for Indian Railways Standard. Even the toilets were clean and even had toilet paper (limited stock though). The Duronto express has no scheduled stops in between, so all the passengers were tied together for this 30 hours and hence travel friendship is not un-common. But for me, well, I am not much of a talker and given the two of them were already eating up a lot of footage, I decided not to involve in the office gossip. The rest passengers in the coach were female, and being a single man makes me very susceptible and hence I kept quiet, except for once when one of the ladies asked for a hajmola tablet.

The 30 hour journey was over eating and sleeping, it was kinda boring, but thanks to Gibran and Grey, I was kept amused. It was quite surprising to find escalator in Howrah station, though it worked only one way (Up). The first thing that I always do when I enter a local train is but a jhalmuri. This jhalmuri was made awesomely and it tingled all my taste buds, so much that my mouth is watering even now when I am writing about it. Well, I reached home station much after the jhalmuri was over, and surprisingly the first rickshaw-wala I asked, agreed to carry me and my luggage home, guess it was my lucky day.

Coming to the recipe now, you might be asking how train travel is related to the recipe; well, it is, because the major ingredients for this recipe came with me from Bangalore to Howrah on the train. To identify which ones, read along.

Ingredients:

                For the base:

·         150 grams or 1 and half packets of digestive biscuits, you can use any biscuit you like, even Oreo to give a chocolaty twist.

·         75 grams or 3/4th cup butter (melted), unsalted or cooking butter preferred.

For the filling:

·         50 grams or half cup butter (melted), again unsalted preferred.

·         150 grams or 1 and half cups of castor sugar, you can pulse grind normal sugar.

·         400 grams of cream cheese, I used two packs of Amul normal cheese spread. This came with me on the train.

·         25 grams or 1 tablespoon of plain flour.

·         Zest of two oranges and juice of one orange. Buy fresh oranges for good zest, just use your cheese-grater and rub finely, so that no white portion is grated.

·         3 eggs, separated.

·         200 ml of cream. This also came with me on the train.

·         2 teaspoon of vanilla extract. (optional)

For the topping:

·         2 oranges, peeled and separated.

·         200 gram or 2 cups of normal sugar.

·         1 cup of water.

·         2 tablespoon Orange liqueur (optional).

Equipment:

·         1 round cake tin lined with baking paper, if using microwave, use glass bowl, lining not required.

Procedure:

The final product

1. Preheat oven to 170 C, no pre-heating required if using microwave. Crush biscuits using pulse mode of your mixer. This can be done by putting biscuits in a plastic bag and banging it with any blunt object.
2.  Mix biscuits crumbs with melted butter well, and transfer in the tin/bowl. Press by hand evenly to create a nice base. Cover with cling film and pop it inside fridge to chill.
3. Bring cream cheese to room temperature or soften it. Take a big bowl and mix cream cheese, butter, sugar, flour, orange zest and juice, vanilla, and egg yolks. Beat this mixture until smooth.
4. Whip the cream in a separate bowl and fold in with cheese mixture.
5. Beat egg whites separately until stiff. Remember, the less oil in the egg white, the more easy it is to beat till stiff.
6. Fold in fluffy egg whites to cheese mixture, keeping as much air as possible. Since we did not add any baking powder, the air in egg whites is the only thing that will make the cake soft.
7. Pour this in the tin/bowl on the biscuit crust. Bake for about an hour, for 30 minutes in case of microwave. Cake is done when the top looks firm. Cool inside the oven for some time, then cool outside.
8. Run a knife around the sides to loosen the cheesecake from the side of the tin/bowl. After cake has cooled completely, put in fridge to chill.
9. For caramelized oranges, de-seed the oranges. In a thick bottomed pan, place all the sugar, with the water. Heat up the pan, dissolve the sugar first, then increase heat and constantly stir until it gets a nice caramel colour. If the mixture is too sticky, add little water carefully and then add the liqueur and the oranges. Cook for some time and switch off the heat. Let cool.
10. Cut cheesecake in slices, top with the caramelized oranges. Enjoy the bliss.

Note: Do not store cheesecake with the topping, as the liquid may make the biscuit base soggy.