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Auntyji's Khatta Macchi

2011-03-23T01:47:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone.. it's time to fish!

Fig. 1. Auntyji's Khatta Macchi

This is from my Mom's recipe collection. Mom got this recipe from their childhood neighbour "Auntyji".

Every neighborhood has a motley assortment of residents. Some befriend us, some are just polite acquaintances, some quarrel with us and some ignore us. Almost every family knows an Auntyji in the 'hood. She's our building friend Chickoo's Mom, or she is Mom's polite companion when together they wait at the bus stop for us kids to return from school. Sometimes she's the neighbor who picks up our milk when we take off for a day and forget to update the doodh-wala. And sometimes she is the bagal-wali Auntyji with the beautiful rose garden who is always on the look out for notorious gulab-chors (rose-thieves).

Auntyjis enter our lives and leave our lives as they move on with their own. Some leave with Chickoo, the building friend. Some leave with the school bus. Some Aunties leave behind real packets of milk while some leave behind memories of fresh, fragrant roses and ethical conundrums about ownership and longevity versus joy, beauty and spontaneity.

Mom has some marvelous stories to tell about her Auntyji and her family who were friends with Mom's family. Sometimes you get a real lot from family friends. So much that you can pass it on even to the next generation! We may not be neighbors with Auntyji anymore. But Auntyji left with us one very treasured heirloom! Auntyji's Khatta Macchi has been made and relished by my Grandma, my Mom and now me!

On behalf of my Mom and our family, thanks to Auntyji for this recipe and all the memories that came along with it.

Ingredients:

Surmai (I used Tilapia) - 1 lb.

Onions - 2 medium, finely chopped

Jeera/Cumin seeds - 1 tsp.

Methi/fenugreek seeds - ½ tsp

Tomatoes - 2 medium

Green chillies - 1

Curry leaves - 4 or 5 leaves

Tamarind concentrate paste - about 1/2 teaspoon

Ginger paste - 1 teaspoon

Garlic paste - 1 teaspoon

Haldi - 1/2 teaspoon

Chilli powder - 1 teaspoon

Cilantro leaves for garnish

Procedure:

1) Fry chopped onions with jeera, methi seeds, tomatoes. Grind this to a paste.

2) Heat oil, add chopped green chillies, curry leaves, ginger garlic paste, haldi, chilli powder, tamarind paste, salt and the above ground paste.

3) Add water. When boiling, add fish. Cook. Garnish with cilantro leaves.

I served this with rice and dal. Yumm!! :) Thanks, Auntyji for your eternally loved recipe!

Cheerio and thanks for reading everyone!

Anhinga

2011-03-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone..

I haven't stopped keeping an eye out for birds and little creatures. Just recently I spotted this bird sitting on the banks of a pond. Wings wide open, waving a lazy sunny welcome to Soorya-dev!

Fig. 1. Anhinga

I looked it up on the net and found that this is an Anhinga. A boy Anhinga (because of the full black body). This is a "darter" or sometimes called a snake bird, which is certainly a very apt name. It swoops into the water.. all the way in. And then swims with its whole body underwater.. except for its head and long neck which entirely stick out into the air. Looks exactly like a snake dancing on the water! ;)

After all those underwater acrobatics, it is sitting out on the banks now sunning itself to dry out its wings. And you thought birds don't have to dry their laundry!

Bhapa Doi and 1st Blog Birthday!

2011-03-08T00:30:00.084-05:00

Hey everyone!!

Fig. 1. Bhapa Doi

Reminds me of a poem we learnt as kids..

ABCD-EFG,
come on Leena play with me!
HIJK-L-M-N,
it's Leena's birthday, she is ten!

Well.. today it's my blog's birthday and it is ONE! :D

When I started reading food blogs, I used them primarily for the recipes, and then for the encouraging food clicks. Over time though I started really reading the posts. And I realized that most of the blogs I liked had posts that essentially told simple stories of the daily lives of many many women everywhere. And that is what makes me visit them again and again..

Reading food blogs is like peeking into someone's kitchen window. And the thought that another ordinary person, not some celebrity chef, but someone pretty much like me, is doing pretty much the same things as me gives me an incredible sense of companionship! It also encourages me to think about doing the things they are doing that I am not. And as you all know by now, I am always on the lookout for inspiration.

Over time I realized that it would be good to record all the food I was making for my own future reference. I was cooking anyway. Might as well take pictures and post my version of the recipe. I find that taking a picture and writing it up serves as a tangible reminder at a later date when I am super-busy, eating only Maggie and have forgotten that I can cook! ;) I cannot argue with a picture of my own fish curry or rasgulla. Well, a year has passed, I am stilling writing, still referring back to old pictures and am encouraged to cook more!

A major reason this blogging continues is readership! People visit this site and visit again. Some stay on and give advice, tips and feedback! Just last week I cooked red chard for the first time.. and I got two more recipe suggestions in reader feedback! Thanks everyone for your companionship! It is greatly valued!

Let me also give a big shout-out to Aparna, whose blog, Apy Cooking, happens to have the same birth date as mine! Happy Blog Birthday, Aparna! :)

On to Bhapa Doi..

I had to make something sweet for the happy occasion.. so I made this baked version of Mishti Doi called Bhapa Doi that I found at Bong Mom's. Sandeepa is the Goddess of simple recipes. And even then I made one change here. I didn't have evaporated milk. So thus was my recipe:

Ingredients:
Sweetened condensed milk - 7 oz (about 1/2 can) Add more if you like it sweeter.
Plain Yogurt - 2 cups
Saffron/Kesar - a few strands

Procedure:
1) Strain the whey from plain yogurt with a cheesecloth. I left it in a colander in the refrigerator for a day.
2) Mix the condensed milk, strained yogurt and a few strands of saffron/kesar in a small oven-proof dish. Taste and see if you want it to be sweeter, then mix more of the condensed milk.
3) Place the dish in another oven-proof pan filled with water. Bake in the oven preheated to 350 degrees. I had to bake for almost 1 hour. (I baked it till the top of the mixture was somewhat set i.e. did not coat my finger when touched gently.)

Thanks for sharing this recipe along with your updates about later trials, Sandeepa! The Doi tasted fabulous! Perfect for my blog's anniversary! :)

Cheers and thanks for reading, everyone! See you around!

Aloo Chard

2011-03-05T19:20:00.001-05:00

Heylo everyone!!

Fig. 1. Aloo Chard

I know I have been very remiss.. Haven't been visiting online much, haven't been posting much and quite honestly haven't been cooking very much either. Shame-shame na.. But I'll be good now.. I'll cook and post and blog-hop too! Well, I'll try anyway! :)

Back to the food.. This post is about Red Chard. And notes to myself about using it in future.

When I go grocery shopping, I try to get something I "didn't get last time". That is actually not as easy as it sounds. Especially if I have been slacking off from the blogosphere. I tend to relapse into my old ways of buying the same-same stuff over and over. Spinach, bag of salad, onions, tomatoes, beans, carrots.. Really! And how would anyone be induced to cook with that same-old same-old!!

So every now and then I remind myself to just go with the seasons and cycle through all the fruits and vegetables over the year. But quite honestly I have little idea of what is in season and what isn't.

I try to reason that probably the in-season foods must over-fill the market in season, right? So instead of doing research and homework about it, I just hop over to the grocers and look around to see which vegetable is available in plllennty and pick up some. That way, on an average we end up eating most veggies at one time or another.

A few days ago I got a big bunch of Red Chard. I had never eaten Red Chard before, knowingly that is ;). So I wasn't quite sure what I would make with it. I wasn't even sure it was in-season at all. There was plenty of it. And it looked good and fresh. So I said.. hey-ho, lets go for it! Maybe it is the season for Red Chard!

One bunch of Red Chard had maybe 10 huge leaves in it... with giant red stems.
1) I added one leaf to a dal (I do that with spinach). Ok. Not as soft as spinach.
2) Then I made a simple stir-fried bhaji with 4-5 of the leaves. Pretty decent.
3) I added 2-3 leaves along with the stems to a mixed vegetable soup (with cauliflower, tomatoes and carrots), cook, blend, add water, pepper, bullion cubes and you are ready. The chopped up stems, added towards the end, taste nice and crunchy. "Ekdum suBBak!!" *** Must make again! ***

But I was still left with two huge leaves.. That's when I made this stir fry with potatoes. I vote for the soup and this sabzi absolutely any day!! (That's why posting here). This sabzi was so simple and so flavourful..!!

Recipe for Aloo Chard:
Season some panch-phoran (equal parts of cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, kalonji, fennel seeds and mustard seeds) in hot oil. Add the chopped leaves with chopped stems and cubed, pre-cooked, peeled potatoes. Add salt and a tiny bit of turmeric. Mix and cook in the microwave till the leaves wilt. Squeeze some lemon juice!

Aahaha.. we ate this just like that as a snack! The Aloo-Chard combo is perfect and the panch phoran makes it just spectacular! Super!!!

Cheers and thanks for reading!

Turkish Paneer Kababs

2011-01-22T11:09:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone.. food-time!!

Here is a party appetizer I made recently, for a Turkish potluck with vegetarian guests! :)

Fig. 1. Turkish Paneer Kababs

The original recipe of my Kababs, Izgara Kofte from Turkish Cuisine, calls for meat. But I went ahead and made it with paneer to make it vegetarian. I served it with Roasted Garlic Hummus and pita. For my future reference, the above Turkish food blog has a great collection of recipes. I have also made Adana Kabab from there with minced chicken and that too turned out great, but I took no pics that time.

Ingredients:
Paneer - crumbled, about 1 and 1/2 cups
Onion - 1 medium, finely chopped
Bread crumbs - 2 slices of fresh bread crumbs made in a mixer/chopper
Dried Parsley Flakes - 2 tablespoons
Red Chili Powder - 1 tablespoon
Black Pepper - 1/2 teaspoon
Salt - to taste
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon

Method:
1) Mix all the ingredients well. Add a few drops of water if needed.
2) Roll up into tiny flat cutlets.
3) Brush the cutlets with some olive oil and place on a greased sheet. Bake in the oven at 350 F, for 20-30 minutes. Flip once around 10-15 minutes. --OR-- Pan-fry the whole lot.

These were fabulous and a welcome change from my usual potato based vegetable cutlets. Cheers!

New Year begins

2011-01-22T10:56:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone.. it's still January (barely).. so I will go ahead and wish you all a Happy New Year! :)

The new year dawned and I went for a run. When I returned and stretched I could feel every muscle in my body! And I suddenly felt thankful!

I am thankful for these legs, lungs, arms and a back! For the ability to use them all! Every little thing I lift with these arms, every step I walk up the stairs, every brisk scrubbing of vessels with my hands, every time I lift a laundry basket, bend over the dishwasher, every hour I sit glued to a desk and my back doesn't complain, I am thankful to have a body!

I am thankful for everything I have!

I am thankful also, for the strength to sustain everything I do not have! When my body complains or when things I want do not happen, I am thankful for the strength to endure. And I am thankful to have family and friends that give me this strength! Not only do I get strength, but also joy, cheer and a whole lot of laughs from you all. Many thanks!

I am verry thankful to have this blog and readers! It's been fun all of last year to cook, run, write and receive feedback from your clicks, comments and replies! Thanks!

Wish you all a good year!

Coconut Vanilla Macaroons and food fiction

2010-12-20T00:19:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone.. the last of the desserts..

Fig.1. Coconut Vanilla Macaroons

I spotted these on Champa's blog Versatile Kitchen. The recipe is simple:

Roast 2/3 cup of all purpose flour till it smells sweet. Then add 1/2 teaspoon salt and a little less than one 14 oz bag of sweetened flaked coconut in it. Mix well. Now mix 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence with a little less than one 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk. Add to the dry mix above. Mix by hand. The "little less" is because I did not want them to be too sweet. So use your judgment for sweetness. The "dough" should be thick, moist, sticky and pliable. Now make small flattened balls and place on a greased baking sheet. Use oil on your hands if needed. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 350 F, till the coconut flakes are lightly toasted. That's all! How quick and simple! And eggless too!!

Now it's time for another silly story. This story sends good wishes to people who have SAD. And it goes to Jaya of Spice and Curry who is hosting the event Chalks and Chopsticks started by Aqua.

Raushni Suryavansham and the terrible Dark

Raushni Suryavansham was the name of our favorite girl.
She was ever bright and sunny, and her life was a whirl.
Up and about, always busy and fulfilled,
Perfect was her life, like Mango Lassi, chilled.

But then one day Raushni, met a terrible Monster!!
Dark-vader was his name, (atleast that's what he announced her).
He said, "Hoo-haa!! I am Dark-vader!! People fear me and run!
Raushni Suryavansham.. my reign has begun!!"

For many days and many nights she was haunted by Dark-vader,
She lost all her joy and josh to the Energy Invader.
Raushni's sunny soul was gradually exhausted,
And one day, darling Raushni simply couldn't get out of bed.

Then Raushni's Dad had an idea! He got broad-spectrum energy-savers.
Mom made Coconut Vanilla Macaroons - Raushni's favorite flavours!
The roasted flour and toasted coconut had an irresistible aroma
which wafted slowly to Raushni's room and she awoke with a delighted "Oh, Ma!"

It smelt like summer. Was it summer? No.. the Dark Monster was still in sight
hovering around.. between her and her macaroons.. like a terrible terrible Blight!
"Hoo-haa!!" said Dark-vader, "People fear me and run!!
I am terrible! I am mean!! And I fear no one!!"

This monstrous Dark-vader had made her life Helly!
And now, the impetuous blighter was coming between Raushni and her belly!
Raushni WOULDN'T take it any more! She sprang out of bed.
"I'll take you up on your word and RUN!!" and kitchen-wards she sped.

She scooped up a warm macaroon and popped it into her mouth.
Summer and Winter had imploded.. it was like she had flown South!
Dark-vader was close at her heels. But instead of being afraid,
Raushni charged straight at her Bully with a mean Coconut Grenade!

"Hoo-haa!!" she bellowed with fury, "I am Raushni Suryavansham!!
Dark-vader, you better run.. for this is the land of the SUN!!"

Dark-vader had met his match! He grabbed his dark cloak,
heading straight for the nearest rest-room, (terror-struck old bloke.)

Raushni had won back her joy. She would never fear Dark anymore!
Under bright lights, with foodie delights, she danced, "Teri Ore, teri ore!"

Thanks for reading everyone! Best wishes to anyone suffering from mild or severe SAD.

Hello Dolly!

2010-12-11T02:00:00.001-05:00

Ok.. I will admit it right away.. I made these because I loved the name.. :D

Fig. 1. Hello Dolly Bars!

Plus they are made of chocolate! And they are supremely quick and easy to make!

I saw them on Delish. This is a blog I found via One Hot Stove and I have been tapping it for my bakes ever since! There are delicious and super-quick recipes tempting me to pig out every time I check out this blog! So it is apt that this post should go to Blog Bites for the Holiday Buffet!

Ingredients:
Graham Crackers - simple honey flavoured ones, 9 crackers, crushed into a coarse powder.
Butter - 6 table spoons, melted
Chocolate chips - 1 cup
Toffee chips - 1/2 cup
Coconut flakes - 1/2 cup
Sweetened Condensed milk - about 7 oz or 200 gms (I used a little less than half of a 14 oz or 400 gm can).

Procedure:
1) Crush the Graham Crackers, add melted butter to them. Mix lightly. Press into a 9 x 9 inch square pan.
2) Then add layers of the chocolate chips, toffee chips, marshmallows, coconut. You can use any fillings of this type. I skipped the marshmallows this time. But intend to add those too next time! ;) Really, you can be very creative with the fillings, change them or their quantities.
3) Then pour condensed milk over everything. If necessary add more or less of the condensed milk.
4) Now bake this at 350 F for about 25-30 minutes till the coconut is slightly browned.

Do not try to cut them up immediately. The chocolate chips are way too soft at that point. Wait.... Wait for an hour, two hours, even three hours if that is possible. They cut up real nice if you wait.

The nice square pieces are all gone now. The ones in the pic above are only the corner pieces that are left. So I stacked them to take the pic and hoped nobody would notice the odd shapes! ;)

But square or corner.. these Hello Dolly Bars sure are Delish pieces of work!

Cheers and thanks for reading!

Nankattai

2010-12-02T08:00:00.013-05:00

Hey everyone.. Happy December! 'Tis the season to make goodies!

Fig. 1. Nankattai by the window sill

Do you have any favorite holiday goodies you almost always bake around this time of the year? I usually make all sorts of cookies. Nankattai this year is the first in line. I will be baking crinkle cookies and chocolate chip cookies next. I like to put all sorts of stuff in those. Might add some toffee bits this time. Mint chips and raspberry chips also taste terrific with chocolate based cookies. I love baking cookies. Hope to pack a few goodies and mail them off to family and friends. Let's see how much baking I manage.

Nankattai are cookies my Mom used to bake back home. So this is her recipe. There is nothing like the warm and fragrant elaichi with a hint of nutmeg! Start off the morning with Nankattai baking hot in the oven... and you know that the day ahead will be just perfect! You can imagine having these mildly sweet cookies with some yummy adrak-elaichi-wali chai (ginger-cardamom tea).

Some of the above yummy is now officially in the tummy.. some of my cookie giftees will just have to wait for a few more batches! ;) And yes, I took the pan over to the window sill to get some real light in the picture.

Ingredients:
Ghee (I used melted butter) - 1 cup
Sugar - 3/4 cup (can add more if you like sweeter)
Baking powder - 1 and 1/2 teaspoon
All purpose flour - 2 cups
Cardamoms (elaichi) - 6-7 pods, peeled, powdered
Nutmeg powder - 1/4 teaspoon

Procedure:
1) Beat together ghee and sugar. I used melted butter instead of ghee. The texture does change a bit (less powdery) perhaps due to my using butter instead of ghee. But otherwise the taste is exactly the same.
2) Sieve together baking powder and all purpose flour.
3) Add those spoon by spoon into the sugar + ghee mixture from step 1.
4) Add cardamom powder and nutmeg powder. Mix well by hand.
5) Make small flattened discs and bake in the oven at 350 degrees F for about 20-25 minutes. Check after 15 minutes or so. My first batch was a bit over browned at 25 minutes (which is the time my Mom's recipe suggested). But my second batch (shown in the above pic) was perfect at 20 minutes.

This took me about 20-25 minutes of prep time + 45 minutes of baking time. I got about 30 cookies, each of about 2 inch diameter. So do leave space in between the cookies to expand in the oven.

Okily-dokily.. do let me know if you have suggestions for quick and easy cookies. Cheerio!

Besan ke Laddoo

2010-11-23T02:09:00.002-05:00

Hidey ho everyone...

Fig. 1. Besan ke Laddoo

Firstly I must apologize for not visiting my co-bloggers a lot lately. Just busy. Also to my readers, I must apologize for the longish duration I have not posted here. I have been cooking. But my pics aren't coming out too great. I flatly blame the dark evenings and short daylight hours for this!! Finally this pic seems to have turned out ok. So these Besan ke Laddoos are okayed to be posted. :)

This recipe is from Manjula's Kitchen. Actually I am not such a big fan of Besan ke Laddoo. Despite a humongous sweet-tooth, I never seem to have craved for them. I guessed that meant that I was not super-fond of this variety of Laddoos. And yet.. Manjula's Kitchen.. and her videos.. her videos are really are cute. I had to make them after I saw her make these!

I thought, chalo.. post-Halloween Holiday Season is officially here. So I can enjoy the making of the Laddoos, surely someone will enjoy the eating of them!

And I must admit the finished product is just really delicious! Even I have changed my mind. I think it may be because they were super-fresh.. warm and fragrant, right off the pan! Not too greasy, not too sweet... I must admit that it sure does make a difference when you make something at home and hog on it fresh and warm!

Ingredients:
Besan (gram flour) -1&1/2 cup
Rava/Sooji (semolina) - 2 tablespoons
Butter - 1/2 cup, unsalted, melted (I used about 2 teaspoons less.. just enough to be bound)
Sugar - 3/4 cup (can put slightly less also.. taste and see the mixture if you need all of it. I put about 2 teaspoons less.)
Elaichi (Cardamom) - 4 pods, peeled, finely powdered. Do this fresh.
Pistachios - 20 or so, sliced, ideally nicely sliced.. I made a bit mess with the slicing.. So ate a lot of the rejects. :D

Procedure:
1) Roast besan and sooji in a non-stick pan on low heat. Add the melted butter little by little as necessary. All of the besan+rava should be somewhat moist. But there is no need to make it greasy. Keep stirring. The silicone type spatulas are perfect for this on my non-stick pan. Continue roasting till the besan becomes golden brown, an amazing earthy fragrance fills your kitchen and the neighbours start asking if it's Diwali time again?
2) Add sugar and powdered cardamom. Mix well.
3) When the mixture can be handled, but before it cools completely, bind the mixture into laddoos.
4) If the mixture becomes too dry as you make the laddoos and you can no longer bind them together, re-heat in the microwave for a tiny bit and see if that helps. If the mixture is still too dry, add more melted butter and heat a tiny bit more. These Besan ke Laddoo simply cannot flop.
5) For garnish place some melted butter in a flat plate. Now dip one part of each laddoo in that butter and then dip that portion into your pistachio flakes. They will stick to the butter on the laddoo. Doesn't that garnish look cute?

When this was done the whole house smelt of Besan ke Laddoo.. that's a warm and fuzzy smell! :) So clearly, despite the short days and long nights.. the cold and the snow.. 'tis the season to be jolly! Enjoy the Holiday Cooking you all..

Thanks to Manjula, for sharing her most reliable and repeatable recipes!

This post goes to Nupur of One Hot Stove for Blog Bites, where she is collecting Holiday favorites.

Happy Cooking everyone!! Cheerio!

Pumpkin Kadamb

2010-10-30T21:13:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween and early Diwali to everyone!

Fig. 1. Pumpkin Kadamb

Pumpkin season and Halloween = Pumpkin recipes! We often get good pumpkins at the market in this period. And usually pumpkin pie is the thing to make. But recently my Mom sent me some "Haldi Paan" (turmeric leaves)!!!! :)

She had got them fresh during Ganesh Chaturthi and it appears to still be available some places. She knew there was no way I could get my hands on the fresh haldi leaves. So she dried them and saved a bunch for me!! And as soon as some of my family came around to visit they brought along this amazing gift of leaves!! Ya-ya-yippee-yippee-ya-ya-yeah!!

Haldi-paan are used to flavour/impart-fragrance to several somewhat super-traditional dishes. So the fragrance of haldi leaves reminds me of Ganesh Chaturthi, Diwali, Satyanarayan poojas and other such religious festivities! Ooh.. I couldn't wait to use them!

I got pumpkin, thinking I would make pie with it. Then I spoke with Mom and she mentioned she adds pumpkin to Kadamb (KuhDumb). And Kadamb also uses haldi paan! I jumped at that! :) Pie will happen next time. Now we make Kadamb!

Ingredients:
Rice - 1/2 cup, wash and soak for 5-10 minutes
Pumpkin - 1 small, sugar pumpkin (meant for pies)
Coconut - 1/4 or 1/3 cup, frozen/fresh, grated, thawed
Jaggery - 1/2 cup (I used dark brown sugar, 5 tablespoons)
Salt - to taste
Haldi (turmeric) leaves - 2 dried long ones

Procedure:
1) Cut sugar pumpkin into half. Microwave both halves till the pulp is tender.. maybe 3-6 minutes. Let it cool a bit. Scoop out the pulp.
2) In the mixer, grind the grated coconut to make it smooth and the above cooled pumpkin pulp. Add minimum water (as needed to grind.)
3) Separately grind the washed rice to coarse consistency. Again, add as little water as possible.
4) Combine ground rice and the mixture of ground pumpkin + coconut. Add sugar or jaggery and salt (just a pinch maybe). Mix well. Consistency should be like cake batter, not very thin at all.
5) Pour into a greased vessel. Cut each haldi leaf into two. Add half in the water in the cooker. Moisten the other half haldi leaf and place it on top of your mixture (like in above picture). Steam the vessel for 15-20 minutes till the mixture becomes somewhat harder.. like idli.
6) The final result should have idli-like consistency, but not spongy. I had used good old cereal bowls to get these. And I inverted the bowl over a small plate and cut the kadamb it into sectors like a pie.
7) Ideally, if I had fresh haldi leaves, I would have put the batter on the haldi leaf and folded it so that the leaf completely contains the batter. This would have been steamed. But this is not possible with dry leaves. One could do the same with banana leaves and add haldi leaves to the side like I just did.

Variations: One could add grated cucumber or grated doodhi (lauki/bottle gourd) instead of pumpkin.

Substitutions:
1) Idli rava can be used instead of ground rice. Maybe sooji too?
2) The fragrance of the haldi leaves is important. But if I did not have them, I would have just added some powdered cardamom to my batter and continued the same way. Reliable fellow that Cardamom.

Kadamb is meant to be served as breakfast or a snack. I would also think of it as a light and mild dessert.

Acha.. Happy Halloween to you all and an early Happy Diwali (.. the house smells like it is already Diwali today!)

Cheerio and thanks for reading!

Parotta Salad

2010-10-24T06:00:00.029-04:00

Hey everyone.. a good lunch-box item today!

Fig. 1. Parotta Salad

Every day I pack lunch. And I find myself having to constrain the contents based on various objections. True life examples: "When one bites into a soggy sandwich, tiny pieces of food get stuck in the front teeth. Then that doesn't look good." and "Wraps drip, hands get yucky." "Egg smells." "Food that is too Indian also smells... then people look at me funny." and then there is the questionable "This aloo-palak looks too green-green. I don't want to be called a grass-eater. So let's skip too-green stuff, too brown-stuff.. anything that might elicit comment actually."

No, it is not my kids that register the above complaints, bless their little angel-hearts. No, it is not the significant other, bless his tall, dark, handsome, Prince Charming-ness. And no, this is not my dabba-service clients either, bless their well-paying, hard-working souls.

These are all my own objections.. (eyes lower with embracement.. noticing a badly needed pedicure..)

And since it is me-myself that packs lunch, such constraints mean that I eliminate about 90% of the refrigerator.

One-pot dishes are really the most convenient for lunch-boxes. And I do make pulavs and khichdis a lottt. Fortunately the world of food-blogs opens us to many potential dabba candidates. I had seen kothu parotta on several blogs. Cham's version with chalna looks like a good one to try.. somewhat more authentic looking. I will make her version very soon too. So I am noting the link here. I also found a quick and easy version of Kothu Parotta on Show me the Curry, which does not require chalna preparation. So I note that here for quick week-nights.

I will post the real Kothu Parotta sometime in future when I actually manage to make it like the recipe says. I started out thinking that I would make Kothu Parotta. But by the time I got to the refrigerator I found myself wondering if there isn't a cold version of this dish I could concoct? A Parotta Salad? I suddenly remembered a whole bunch of salads I had seen at Soma's ecurry!

So I decided that Parotta Salad it would be! I started out with the basic idea of Kothu Parotta from what I have gleaned from these blogs - mixing cut roti/paratha pieces for carbs, a source of protein (like egg or chicken), mixed vegetables and a curry or sauce to bring them all together. I just adapted the ingredients to make it a cold salad.

Ingredients:
Carbs - 1 small cooked paratha. Preferably a day old, bit stale, dryish. Torn into bite sized pieces.
Protein - I used one small Garden Burger patty. Nuked in the microwave, cooled and cut up into bite sized pieces. In Kothu Parotta egg or chicken is used. One could use chopped boiled egg. I skip egg in dabbas.
Veggies - Since this is a salad I used the following fresh, raw vegetables:
Red bell pepper - 1 medium, chopped thin
Jalepeno pepper - 1/2, deseeded and finely chopped
Cucumber - 1 mini, unpeeled, chopped
Oranges - 2 medium, peeled and chopped
Lettuce - 2 leaves, torn into bite sized pieces.
Sauce/Curry - I used 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of readymade Arabiatta pasta sauce. This is just to flavour the paratha and burger.

Procedure:
1) In a large bowl cook the garden burger in the microwave 1 minute per side, flip once, total 2 minutes. Let it cool, chop it into small bite sized pieces.
2) Add to this, torn up pieces of cooked roti or paratha. Add 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of pasta sauce. Mix well. The sauce should be really really minimal. Just enough to coat the paratha and burger pieces. No excess whatsoever.
3) Chop all the vegetables and mix them with the burger-paratha pieces. Your salad is done!

No, there is no dressing. Why? Just because the oranges are sweetish-tart, the jalepeno is hot, the red bell pepper is sweet, lettuce and cucumber are cool and crunchy. When I added the sauced burger and paratha the whole mix turned out just perfect! So there was no need of even salt in the veggies! And because of the proteins and carbs it was a very reasonably filling salad!

A note for dabba-making, do not mix everything hotchpotch if you are packing this for lunch later. In the box first lay the sauced pieces of paratha and burger. Then layer on them the cucumber, then the red bell pepper, then oranges and jalepeno. Last and topmost make a "bed" of the lettuce leaves. Close the box and refrigerate until lunch. Open and mix the contents with your fork, or invert over a plate if you have that luxury. Since there is almost no salt (other than the sauce which lies in the bottom layer), and the softest veggies (lettuce and orange) are in the top layer, none of the veggies wilt if reasonably refrigerated.

All of the ingredients are really flexible in this salad. Feel free to replace the carbs with other appropriate ones like roti, pita bread, cooked pizza base, anything that is not too soft and spongy. Otherwise it will get soggy by lunchtime. Also feel free to substitute with other proteins or vegetables.

This was made using one bowl. So this may qualify as a one-pot dish and goes to One Hot Stove where Nupur is collecting one-pot dish recipes for her event, Blog Bites.

Another note: The above pic was taken at home when tried first at dinner, not at lunch. The leftovers were assembled and taken to lunch next morning and could not see the light of a flash out there on account of "If I take pictures of my tiffin people will look at me funny."

Thanks for reading everyone! Have a good end-of-October this week!

The technology of cooking

2010-10-20T02:06:00.000-04:00

Ok, an interesting TED talk for when you have time.. about cooking as a technology! This gentleman brings up some interesting ideas. He projects that cooking is a technology that was invented to make the energy conversion (by our body) more efficient. Talks about how cooking influenced the evolution of our body, brain and gut.

Ref: http://www.ted.com/talks/heribert_watzke_the_brain_in_your_gut.html

Yes, cooking is a technology older than most "technology" commonly brought to mind. And it has helped us consume many foods that earlier were probably either hard to eat, like certain raw vegetables or seeds, or even completely inedible like raw meats. Since we are the only species that cook food before eating, Mr. W calls us "coctivores" rather than omnivores. :)

Ok, summary over.

This talk made me realize that we, cook-ers, perhaps rarely think this way about our own cooking.. as a technology! But indeed (if we now think about it) that is exactly how cooking works. People learn to cook. Are taught or develop certain techniques. Then we try newer things. Mix and match and generate newer recipes. And this has been on-going for many many years!

First there are cars, then come faster cars, safer cars, more fancy cars. And then there is the abrupt and prolific jump to airplanes. What are the jumps or prolific advances in cooking that you really appreciate?

Techniques like grilling, frying, baking.. baking cakes versus cookies, making kulfi versus ice-cream versus gelato and now frozen yogurt (mostly heat-cold applications) are a big benefit to us.

Also techniques of handling certain foods, for instance, how to cook colocassia leaves and rhubarb, handling the oxalate crystals, how to make pickles, preserves, jams, how to ferment batter, idli-dosa-dhokla.. dried goods like papad, wadis, etc.. fried goods.. making cheese, paneer, even simple yogurt..

There are also certain combinations in meals which probably allowed us to eat certain foods - for instance a lot of traditional Indian Thalis combine cool drinks like lassi, matthaa, buttermilk, solkadi or yogurt raithas and kadhis with our hot and spicy curries. And there are of course umpteen spices that probably work in certain combinations for good digestive health - ginger, heeng, cumin and whatnot. One often finds them in dals and other foods that are high in protein and harder to digest.

And then there are some seemingly mundane things that I, personally, think are cool inventions (nothing to do with evolution.. but oh well..) like tortilla and lettuce wraps - getting rid of the bread, granola bars - compact-ification of breakfast, cutlets or burgers - a method to combine any food into a convenient portion, all the egg-substitutes are cool discoveries, all the chaats we love are inventions of ingredient-combination, oh there are scores of such discoveries and inventions.. :)

Can you tell me about any other common cooking inventions/techniques that strike you as cool and handy?

I think even just adding pakoda to kadhi is a big deal! ;)

Three cheers for cook-ers everywhere! :)

Tandoori Fish

2010-10-15T01:36:00.000-04:00

Tandoori anything is always a big treat! And at the end of a busy day there is nothing like this fish!

Fig. 1. Tandoori Fish

Sometimes I feel like all of the day is spent battling with paperwork. Fill this form, organize this that and something else, check on payments, make copies for your record, copies for someone else's record... Uff! Lately at least a lot of things can be done online. But even the online paperwork is not all that simple.

I was very excited to find that some forms I needed to fill could be filled online. I went, yay!! And then realized, never rejoice too soon. The one form was broken up into a series of 15 webpages! And you had to go fill-nextpage, fill-nextpage, through all 15. And then there was no option to save in the middle! What's more, by the curse of some crazy Rishi, the site would time-out in 15 minutes regardless of whether you are actively online filling the form or idling away from the screen with some chai-pani!!

When I was only on page 5.. the site starts giving me a warning.. "Your session will expire in 5 minutes." And I go Holy Rangoli!! 5 minutes for the remaining 10 pages!! I had no chance.. I totally couldn't make it. The session expired around page 8. And I had to start all over again!! Boy, was I mad!!

And when I am mad, I get even!! I had to do it again! And the second time around, I was prepared! If they were gonna play this new kind of speed game, I would play it too.. but Indiana Jones ishtyle! I got up, and found myself a hat, rubbed my trusty typing-finger on the collar.. (don't laugh.. I'm sure some of you out there type with only one finger too!) I set my stopwatch to buzz every 60 seconds, and.. GO!

This time I zippetty-zipped through the form and hit submit with perfect timing... and also saved my hat from being left behind! Haa! Speed demon!!

Needless to say, I soon heard back from the form-people. My submission was "invalid" it seems. They claim I have submitted the incorrect form!

Jealous.. that's what I think they are!

After all that excitement who wouldn't be rrravenous for dinner? Fortunately the fish was already marinated. All I had to do was bake! Such is the beauty of the refrigerator.. Anybody up for a refrigerator story? Maybe next time.. ;)

Ingredients:
Thick yogurt - 3 or 4 tablespoons
Tandoori Masala - 2 teaspoons(Any Everest or MDH or such boxed masala works fine.)
Cumin seed powder - 1 teaspoon
Coriander seed powder - 1 teaspoon
Red chili powder - to taste
Salt - to taste
Fish - Tilapia, about 3 fillets. Can use any other fish.
Green or red bell peppers, onions, cooked peeled potatoes - any quantity, chop large and mix with some salt or extra marinade.
Lime/lemon juice - 1 teaspoon or so to squeeze on the hot cooked fish.

Procedure:
1) Wash and poke slits into the fish and cut it up into medium sized pieces.
2) Mix together the marinade of thick yogurt, tandoori masala, cumin seed powder, coriander seed powder, red chili powder and salt. Add fish to the marinade. Leave overnight in the refrigerator.
3) I like a few veggies like bell peppers, onions and cooked, peeled potatoes chopped into large pieces and dunked in some of the marinade or just salt and pepper. Then I line them at the bottom of a baking pan and lay the fish on top.
4) And bake this for about 25-30 minutes at 350 degree F. Squeeze some lemon or lime juice on the fish just before serving.

Tip: Sometimes I lightly sprinkle some rice flour on the fish just before baking. Gives it a thin crust. Totally optional.

Serve with some pulav and coriander chutney on the side. Can also be made in a similar manner with chicken, meat or paneer.

Cheers and thanks for stopping by!

Blue Jay on a run

2010-10-08T00:38:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone..

I have been back to running fairly consistently past few days now. And every morning I remind myself of days like these.. See there are very definite benefits of running outdoors. You get to see cute stuff! :) Here is a little blue birdie I saw recently while out on a run.

Fig.1. Blue Jay - kind of small, maybe a baby Blue Jay?

It was nestling at the bottom of a tree trunk. All fluffy and cozy. Head under its wing. Like it did not want to wake up. Like it did not care that it was daylight outside. Like it did not even know that it was a week day for goodness sake!

Birds these days, I tell you..

Now if birds were on Twitter, we could leave them tweets about the day's to-do, whats-in, whats-not, which worm is happening and which isn't.. Then they wouldn't dream about staying in bed like this and missing out on all the buzz!

When will birds learn to tweet..

PS: On a more serious note.. why would a little bird be sleeping on the ground? Shouldn't it be in a nest somewhere up there? I couldn't see a nest up in the tree.. but then that doesn't mean there wasn't one. Oh well.. another mundane, but unsolved mystery!

Doi Fulkopi - Cauliflower Curry

2010-10-04T02:14:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone.. I had been eying this curry for a while. Why did it take me so long to get down to it..?

Fig. 1 Doi Fulkopi - Cauliflower Curry

I love Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew and all those mystery novels. When I am really irritated and in a bad mood.. a juicy Agatha Christie is all I need! Tell an Agatha Christie fan that there was no murder! Tell a Nancy Drew fan that there is no secret behind the staircase.

But mundane real life mysteries are not about murder and vanishing staircases. They are more commonly about things like... Why did Suhasini not pick up my phone? Who does she think she is? Conversely who is it that picks up my Wall Street Journal? A big one.. where is our checked bag? And somewhat intriguingly.. why is my toothbrush still wet in the morning?

One mystery was in my kitchen...

I had seen this recipe at Bong Mom's Cook Book many many months ago and yet it took me this long to finally make it! Lahsuni Aloo Gobi is the only other dish I make with cauliflower as the main ingredient (will post in future). And it's not as if I have made that very much either. So.. the big mystery is..

Where is the cauliflower in my house going?

It is never entering the house! Mystery solved.

And the wet toothbrush?

.. aah.. that is because I am staying up too late and getting up too early!! :D Ain't gettin' time to dry.

Ingredients:
Cauliflower florets - about 2 cups. I used about 2/3 of a frozen bag.
Yogurt - 1 cup
Ginger-garlic paste - 2 teaspoon
Red Chili powder - to taste
Garam Masala - 1 teaspoon (I used Tandoori masala this time)
Bay leaf - 1 medium
Cinnamon stick - 2 small pieces
Cardamoms - 4 pods
Cloves - 4
Fresh garlic - 1 large clove, peeled and crushed
Fresh ginger - 1 inch piece, finely chopped
Onion - 1 medium finely chopped
Peas + carrots (chopped) - about 1 cup
Turmeric powder (haldi) - 1/2 teaspoon

Procedure:
1) If your cauliflower is fresh, chop it into florets, wash by soaking in water with haldi and some salt while you chop it up. Then rinse. If it is frozen, either thaw it out or defrost in the microwave.
2) Mix yogurt, ginger-garlic paste, red chili powder, garam masala, salt. Add cauliflower and marinate for a few minutes.
3) Season in a pan with some hot oil - bay leaf, cinnamon stick, cardamoms, cloves, fresh garlic and ginger.
4) Add onion, some salt and saute well.
5) Now let this cool and then run it through your mixer for a tiny bit so the masala is a nice coarse paste and put it back into the pan.
6) At this point incorrigible me added peas and carrots from a frozen mix bag. Why.. I know not.. But it turned out to be a decent addition.
7) When the carrots and peas are well cooked, pull out cauliflower florets using a fork from the marinade and toss them into the pan. Do not add the marinade quite yet.
8) Also add some turmeric powder, mix. Let this cook for a bit.
9) When the cauliflower is well cooked, reduce heat, add yogurt marinade and some garam masala. Mix well and simmer.

My curry turned out to be semi-moist, not with too much liquidy gravy. And I liked it this way. I served this with plain hot rice. Should be good with roti too. It is very flavourful and completely different from my Aloo Gobi. So we will definitely make this again!! Thanks for the recipe, Sandeepa!

Cheers everyone and thanks for reading!

Godhuma Dosa

2010-09-25T21:00:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone.. no soaking, no grinding, no fermenting,absolutely no prep what-so-ever for this dosa!

Figs. 1, 2, and 3: Godhuma Dosa in various poses.

I found this on Indira's old blog Mahanandi. It is also available other places as Wheat Dosa or Godhumai Dosa.

Method: Mix wheat flour (chapati aata) + water in about 1:2 or 1:3 proportion. Add salt to taste. You really shouldn't stick to these proportions for water though. Because I ended up messing around with the batter consistency till I achieved the correct texture in my dosa. The batter should be really thin. When you pour it on the frying pan, the paper-thin dosa should immediately form this mesh-like pattern. (You don't have to spread it, pouring should be enough.) If the batter is too thick it will not form this mesh. I have put up three pictures so that you can see the mesh. Try one or two dosas.. at most your third one will definitely be right!

One cup wheat makes about 5-6 really thin dosas. And Indira instructs to not leave the batter sitting for too long, becomes a gooey mess apparently. Noted! :)

Cheers and happy cooking everyone!

Chocolate Banana Bread and Banana Bites

2010-09-19T03:05:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone... a double recipe today! Chocolate Banana Bread and Banana Bites.

Fig. 1 Chocolate Banana Bread

Fig. 2. Banana Bites

I love eating lots of bananas. Bananas contain potassium. When I started running, my legs would be sore all the time. At some point I decided to look up what I could do to reduce the soreness. A little reading showed me that potassium intake is good to keep soreness at bay. And eating bananas is a good way to get potassium in my daily diet (I don't particularly fancy eating potatoes every day). So a banana a day keeps my soreness away!

But my banana consumption, weather conditions and grocery frequency are three data points that do not always lie on one line. I hear people freeze bananas or keep them in the refrigerator. Please let me know if you do that and it works ok for you to make something later.

Anyway.. as is obvious.. almost every alternate weekend, sometimes even on week days, I am left with 1 or 2 bananas that are threatening to self-destruct. And even if desserts are not the best way to get one's potassium, they are a good way to not-waste over-ripe bananas.

Chocolate Banana Bread:
This recipe is from the blog Delish, which I found via One Hot Stove. Both their breads looked so yummy I knew I couldn't keep away from it for too long! Here I have almost followed the whole recipe from Delish, except for changing her pecans to walnuts and reducing the sugar a little which is what Nupur has suggested and I liked. I have made this bread in the past also. It is really good as a grab-and-go snack.It is fine un-refrigerated for 2 days or so. Then I usually pop it in the fridge.

Ingredients:
Walnuts (or pecans in the original recipe) - 1/2 cup, roughly chopped
All purpose flour - 1 and 3/4 cup
Cocoa powder - 3 tablespoons
Baking powder - 1 and 1/2 teaspoon
Salt - a pinch
Eggs - 2 large, well mixed
Bananas - 3 large, ripe, chopped or pureed
Sugar - 1/4 cup
Vanilla essence - 1 teaspoon
Butter - 1/4 cup, melted or soft
Chocolate chips - 1/2 cup

Procedure:
1) Toast the chopped walnuts in the oven for 5-8 minutes.
2) Mix the dry ingredients - flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder.
3) Mix the wet stuff - eggs, bananas, sugar, vanilla essence, butter.
4) Now slowly add the dry mixture in the wet mixture bowl. (Actually Ash at Delish adds the wet into the dry. Not sure what is ideal. I always gradually fold in my dry into the wet. Hopefully it's all the same.)
5) Add walnuts and chocolate chips. Mix lightly.
6) Pour into greased pan. Originally they used a loaf pan, but I just use my good old flat round pan. Bake for about 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees F. Since my pan is wider than a loaf-pan it did not take a whole hour as suggested in the original recipe. Test with a toothpick to see if it is done.

Banana Bites:
This is a highly experimental one.. a big adaptation from a recipe I found at two blogs. 1) Indira's old Mahanandi/Nandyala blog. For some reason I am unable to access her new blog from my computer. But her old one is a wealth of recipes. And I often browse through just for ideas. Her recipe was originally for deep-fried banana biscuits. I did not want to deep fry. So I combined it with some ideas for baking from 2) Sunita Bhuyan's recipe for banana chocolate-chip cookies. Sunita's blog is another beauty! Just a browse through and you will never leave her space (..so please go there after you read this post!) ;)

I have combined both their recipes and baked my so-called Banana Bites. They are not crunchy like cookies. But they are not as spongy as cake either. More like slightly dense muffin-tops, with the taste of sheera. I could add one egg in future to make it even softer maybe. I just didn't want to add vanilla and ruin the nice cardamom fragrance there. But I wasn't sure it would be strong enough to mask the smell of egg. So I stuck with eggless for now.

Ingredients:
Ripe bananas - 2
Sugar - 5 teaspoons
Salt - a pinch
Oil - 2 teaspoons
Baking powder - 1/2 teaspoon
Cardamom powder - freshly ground from about 5 pods
All purpose flour (maida) ~ 1.5 cups, more if you feel the need for it.

Procedure:
1) Mash the bananas roughly. Add sugar. Mix well. With the addition of sugar the bananas just melt into a puree.
2) Add oil, salt, cardamom powder, baking powder and mix well.
3) Now add the flour spoon by spoon slowly, folding it in gradually. Add only as much as is needed to get a doughy mixture. I didn't stir too much.
4) Cover the mixture bowl with some tightly sealed plastic and keep it in the refrigerator for half an hour or 1 hour.
5) Grease a baking sheet or spread some parchment paper on a baking sheet. Drop spoonfuls of the above mixture onto the sheet. Lightly flatten with your finger tips.
6) Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees F for about 20-25 minutes. Test done-status with a toothpick.

This used up 2 ripe bananas real quick and made about 12 pieces. That's not too much to consume quickly as breakfast or snack with chai. I kept these in the fridge, quickly microwaved for 30 sec or so before eating the next day. We finished these in about 2 days.

This long-long-long post goes to Blog Bites at One Hot Stove, where Nupur is testing if we are Iron Chefs and can make two things with one ingredient! But if I had to Geeta pey haath rakhkar kasam khaao-fy then I will have to admit that I did not bake both of these dishes on a single day! ;) Single post? Yes!

Check out her round-up on 26th September!

Cheers and happy baking!

Chicken cutlets

2010-09-12T02:24:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone.. Chicken cutlets today.. Why is this post labeled - fitness? Because runners like motivation, even if it is motivation to cook.

Fig.1. Chicken Cutlets

Do you sometimes lose the motivation to do some particular thing?

I have gone through this before.. in different areas at different times. Loss of motivation to work.. to run.. to cook.. to clean.. basically anything that requires effort could be a target here. Usually I can figure out exactly what is the reason.

But that doesn't change the fact that I don't feel like doing it right now! And most reasons simply cannot be fixed.

Usually, however, there is no option in these things. You have to work. You have to cook. You have to run. You have to do whatever it is that is the task at hand. And do it well too! But sometimes.. it is possible to just push it to later..

"Later" is Lady Slackalot's favorite word! It really is a polite way of saying "No." ;) If I avoid cooking long enough, we will have to get take-out. :D And yes.. sometimes it's ok. But if I actually have the time and energy, and still avoid it.. avoid it too many times, then it's time for the cheer-leader to come out and motivate! We are our own cheer-leaders. And if we have to do something, we really might as well enjoy doing it!

How do you motivate yourself?

What do I do when I don't feel like working? I go and sit amongst a lot of people who are busy at work! Like a public library. I try to hang out with people who like their work. People who are successful at their work. I try to mix it up a little, try something new in the task. I create deadlines for myself. And worst comes to worst, if I find I do not meet my own deadlines, I make them public! I tell my family and friends and sometimes announce it on the blog too.. that I will do so-and-so thing.. run or walk so many miles this month.. etc.

I do this for work, for running, for cooking, chores, errands,.. a lottttt of things! And usually it works. (Again, there is not much option. Something better work!)

Last few days I found myself not cooking. :( I did the usual. I spoke with my friends and family swapping recipes and dinner ideas. I browsed and read through your blogs (hanging out with people who enjoy the task and are successful at it!) Told myself that I will make so-and-so dish on Sunday.. (setting deadlines). Finally I told my Mom that I have not been cooking!! (Making things public, and how!) That combined with Bong Mom making chicken meatballs (new for me) finally worked!!

I went and got ground chicken (fresh ingredients, the ultimate deadline) and made chicken cutlets!!!!!!!! Yay!! Not only that, I also took pictures! Waah-waah, shabbash beti!! :D

And to seal the deal, (further making things public)... mujhey mere blog ki kasam, I will post at least 3 more food recipes this month. Total public commitment! Ab bachkey kahan jayegi! We meet Lady Slackalot head-on and tell her to get out!

Continuing the drama just a little longer.. (where else but on my blog will we find so much detailed procedure for how to deal with "getting-bored"-ness..)

My thanks to all you bloggers and blogger friends! Reading your blogs is far more fun than cooking or writing my own! But it sure helps me do both! :) Also thanks to my readers.. It's hard for me to believe how many of you read my posts.. even the fitness ones!! Just seeing you check in and find my lonely turtle sitting there with stale old rasgullas gave me a good kick in my... Well, thanks you all! I will do my best!

Ingredients:
Ground chicken - 1 pound
Onion - 1 small, finely chopped
Ginger - 1 inch piece, finely chopped
Garlic - 3 large pods, finely chopped
{Cloves - 2 + Cinnamon stick - 1/2 inch} Grind to powder (coarse powder with mortar-pestle is good enough).
Mint + coriander leaves - a few sprigs each, finely chopped
Green chili - 1 finely chopped
Jeera (cumin seed) powder - 1/2 teaspoon
Dhania (Coriander seed) powder - 1 teaspoon
Garam Masala - 1/2 teaspoon or could even skip
Kasoori Methi - 1/2 tsp crushed between your palms <-- Sandeepa has added this, I skipped it this time
Egg - 1 well beaten
Oil - 1 table spoon
Salt to taste
Bread crumbs - 2 slices of bread, toasted and ground into crumbs.
Rava (semolina) - about 1/3 or 1/2 cup

Procedure:
1) Saute onion till cooked. Let this cool.
2) Beat egg well, add ground chicken and salt. Mix well. Add and mix the onions from step 1, ginger, garlic, jeera powder, dhania powder, cloves+cinnamon powders, chopped mint, coriander, green chilies, kasoori methi, oil. Keep aside for 15 minutes or so.
3) Then add bread crumbs and mix well. Ideally I guess that should be enough and one should be able to lump small portions of this mixture into cutlets and fry/bake. But at this point somehow my cutlets were still fairly sticky (happens to me for other such cutlet recipes too, maybe I should add more bread crumbs).
4) So I ended up rolling the cutlets in some rava. That made them not stick to my frying pan/baking pan. See what works for you.
5) These can be fried on the frying pan with minimal oil. Sandeepa has also suggested baking them in the oven.

As per her idea, I also froze a whole bunch of them in a flat single layer on a plate in the freezer (covered with press-and-seal wrap). Once they are frozen it is easy to pry them off the plate and store them all in ziplock bags in the freezer.

Cheers and happy cooking!

Turtle watching

2010-09-01T00:01:00.043-04:00

The other day when I visited a friend, we went to a small nature preserve. A very short hike away, we reached a pond/some-sort-of-murky-water-body.. and there we spotted this darling turtle..

Fig. 1. Turtle

I increased the brightness a little so we could see the turtle in the pic.. and yet he is hard to spot. He must have been about 4-5 inches large and quite a bit away from us.

I tried to read up about Turtles, but couldn't figure out what this guy's name might be. He was really tiny, and this pic doesn't give very many details. So I am just going to call him Mr. Acrobat!

I couldn't click this, but underneath Mr. Acrobat, inside the water was another turtle poking his head out periodically. :)

Wish we could carry around cool zoom cameras all the time. Wish cool cameras were less expensive. Wish my cell phone camera could take better pictures. (No, this was not my cell phone camera, but even my best camera is an ordinary point and shoot.) Wish Turtles stood still! Wish I'd at least had the presence of mind to take a video of Mr Camera-Shy Turtle bobbing in and out of the frame...

What do you wish either you or your camera could do?

Rasgulla fiction

2010-08-27T01:49:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone.. Another food fiction today. This story was written for the event "Of Chalks and Chopsticks" started by Aqua, hosted by Jaya, the Desi Soccer Mom this month.

I have made Rasgullas before and posted the recipe in the past. So am referring to my earlier post for the recipe. When I made Rasgullas the first time, we were about 7 people and only 15 Rasgullas. 2 gullas per head were just not enough! These are so light and fluffy, one could easily wolf down quite a few at a time. And that memory is what generated the little piece of fiction that follows.

The story of Vividh-bhaarthy Paarthasaarthy..

Vividh-bhaarthy Paarthasaarthy came from a long line of musically inclined Paarthasaarthies. Vividh-bhaarthy's family was filled with singers and musicians. Her twin-brother was a child-prodigy, the first haarmoniumist to play at the super-bowl opening ceremony!

Vividh-bhaarthy, however, was the odd one out. She had no musical talent, nothing to boast about. All her life, she had tried and she had tried-er.. but the gift of music was just not inside her.

Finally Vividh-bhaarthy had had enough, she said, "Bas kya!" and set out to the mountains to do ghor tapasya (penance). After many days and many nights of Viv standing on one foot, a Rishi (sage) appeared before her (clean-shaven, kind-of-cute.)

"Eat Rasgullas and you shall, sing sweet like Shreya Ghoshal!" he said and magically, a bowl of 15 Rasgullas appeared before Vividh-bhaarthy.

He continued ominously, "But if you over-eat, then beware, a horror of horrors you shall have to bear!"

Vividh-bhaarthy could hardly wait for him to finish all his yakking. Her excitement bubbling over and patience running out, she plopped a whole rasgulla straight into her mouth. The sweet cool syrup rushed down her throat, heavenly nectar with the spongy gulla afloat!

And wonder of wonders.. words could not suffice, Vividh-bhaarthy was transformed into the Nightingale of Paradise! She sang Raag Basant and Spring arrived at their feet. Birds twittered, bees hummed, and deer danced to her beat.

The sweet rasgullas excited temptation that Temptation, herself, couldn't resist. Vividh gulped another gulla and went to the next Raag on her list. She sang Malhaar, and it rained a monsoon. She ate one more and sang Raag Des. The whole country, nay, the whole WORLD, was united in a patriotic blaze. Another rasgulla, another song.. now Raag Multani was in tune, and every woman's pimpled acne cleared up before you could say, "So soon!?"

There was no stopping Vividh-bhaarthy any more. She was gobbling rasgullas and singing songs galore. The world was her stage, she was the best in the nation. Music directors scrambled to sign-on the new singing sensation! The power, the buzz, the sugar and the rush!

Finally, to catch her breath, she paused for a bit.. reached for another gulla, but they were gone.. "Oh-$H!T!!!" She had polished off the lot solo, all in one morning! One look at the silent Rishi and she remembered his warning.

What horror lay in her fate?

Well.. every system needs a break.

Yes, Vividh-bhaarthy was immediately plagued by a terrible terrible.. tummy-ache!!!!

Vividh-bhaarthy had learnt her lesson as she squirmed and writhed in pain. Oh-boyo-boyo-boy.. no.. she would never do this again! She turned to the Rishi and tried her best to apologize and explain, "Oh-boyo-boyo-boy, Rish... I'll never do this again!"

The Rishi, though a drama-king, was really a benevolent fella. He winked a wink, looked-left, looked-right.. and sneaked Vividh a Hajmola! He said, "The next time, Viv, you want to sing, the recipe for Rasgullas is at this link. But Vividh-bhaarthy, do not forget.. one, two or three, but then.. that's it!"

Disclaimer: My Rasgullas are delicious!! But I must confess, they won't make you sing. This was all just BS.

Cheers and thanks for reading everyone!

Chana Pulav

2010-08-24T00:01:00.002-04:00

Hey everybody.. this is chana-pulao from the house of Indosungod!

Fig. 1. Chana Pulav

There was this big potluck I had to go to.. yes, Nupur's potluck at One Hot Stove. Couldn't possibly miss it now, could I? And I'd had my eye on this pulav for a while now. So this was the perfect opportunity to make it!

One of the very first few times I officially cooked on my own was actually for a potluck! :) It was a potluck at a friend's friend's friend's place! I was staying with some friends. So when they were invited, so was I! Now, how could I show up empty-handed? So what if I had no kitchen of my own! I got some chicken and one large onion and made ginger chicken with some leftover takeout-soy-sauce packets in my friend's kitchen. :)

Potlucks are a lot of fun. Diwali potluck, Christmas potluck, Happy-Budday potluck, Sunday potluck, No-reason potluck, there is always scope for a potluck. We have a potluck... we call 4 friends. They end up calling 2-3 friends of their own just cos they were planning to meet them anyway. It's a potluck. If you bring food, then you are totally invited! :) Keep it casual, keep it easy, play a game or two, put on some Incredibles to occupy the kids..

If I host, then I have to play it slightly safe. Something like this chana pulav, a dal, one vegetarian side-dish and raita is what I make. That covers all my basic food groups (just in case all the guests end up bringing only soda or only desserts.. No, sugar is not a food group.) ;) And yes, I never make dessert for potlucks that I host. I keep some icecream or a can of gulab jamuns as backup. Almost always altleast one of the guests brings a dessert. ;)

Now, on to Indo's chana pulav.. I modified her recipe to use a can of chick-peas, a microwave and some minor-shortcuts.

Ingredients:
Oil - 1 teaspoon
Bay leaves - 2 small
Cloves - 3
Cinnamon stick - 1 small
Curry leaves - 5 or 6
Fennel seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
Onions - 2 medium sliced
Ginger-garlic paste - 2 teaspoons
Green chillies - 1 small, finely chopped
Tomatoes - 2 finely chopped
Mint leaves - a few sprigs, washed and chopped
Coriander leaves - a few sprigs, washed and chopped
--- I used about 3 frozen cubes of coriander-mint chutney. Yes it also had coconut, but that's ok, I told myself ;)
Cooked Chana/Garbanzo beans/Chickpeas - 1 Can or say 1 &1/2 cups
Rice ~ 3/4 cup
Water - 3 or 4 times that of the rice ~ 3 cups (water proportion varies from microwave to microwave)
Red chili powder - to taste
Salt - to taste

Procedure:
1) Heat the bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon stick, curry leaves and fennel seeds with some oil in your pyrex bowl. (Indo powders a lot of these into a masala, I just added some of the spices whole - like the bay leaf, curry leaves and powdered the rest roughly with a small mortar-pestle.) In the microwave, I always heat the masalas till I can smell their fragrance when I open the door. Roughly 1-2 minutes.
2) Add onions, heat till they are soft and cooked.
3) Add ginger-garlic paste, chopped green chillies. Heat till they are all cooked.
4) Add chopped tomatoes and coriander-mint chutney. Heat till they are cooked.
5) Add cooked chickpeas (or canned ones, as in my case). Add salt and red chili powder. Mix well and cook. I like to add salt at this point so that the chana absorbs more salt than the rice (to be added next).
6) Add washed, drained rice. Mix well and heat for 2 minutes.
7) Add water. Heat for 10 minutes or more, till the water has been absorbed and the rice seems to be well cooked. Add more water and heat more if necessary.

The Chana Pulao was fabulous and will certainly be doubled in portion and made for my next big potluck! :)

Thanks for the recipe, Indo!!

Cheers everyone and have a good week!

Jeera (Cumin) Powder

2010-08-17T01:49:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone.. a simple basic spice powder.

Fig.1. Jeera (Cumin) Powder

Just spread out some jeera (cumin) seeds on a flat plate. Heat in the microwave for a few minutes, stopping, re-spreading and mixing the jeera every now and again. In 5 minutes or less, your jeera will become very fragrant. Let it cool down. Then grind it to powder in your favorite mixer/grinder. Store in an airtight jar.

This can be done for any of your generic spice powders, ex: coriander (dhania) powder, etc etc.

If you think this is easy.. you are right. It is easy. :)

But is it too easy to be put on the blog? Doesn't matter.. I put just about anything on my blog! Pip-pip-cheerio! :)

Update: I just realized that there is an on-going event which is perfect for this kind of a post about basic kitchen skills! So this post goes to the Back to Basics event started by Jaya and hosted by Aqua this month. While we are on basics, check out last month's round-up.

Fried Fish

2010-08-11T00:05:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone.. very simple and basic fried fish today..

Fig.1 Fried Fish

A really quick and easy dish that never fails to turn an otherwise simple meal into something quite special.

If I find good, fresh looking fish, I often end up buying it regardless of what my cooking-time-crunch situation is. Because the following marinade hardly takes 7 minutes: Wash the fish, poke slits in it and chop into somewhat medium sized pieces. Add salt, red chili powder, turmeric, ginger-garlic paste, amti powder or any garam masala. Mix well so that fish is well coated in the spices. Let the fish marinate in the refrigerator overnight. Then next morning, portion it into small batches and freeze them in a ziplock bag.

When it is time for dinner on one of your more frenzied days, make something super-fast, say, just dal-rice or re-heated leftovers. And defrost one batch of marinated fish. Roll each slice of fish in some semolina (rava), and shallow fry on a pan with a tiny bit of oil. The side of fried fish is guaranteed to be the highlight of your otherwise ordinary quick-fix dinner. If you are even more crunched for time, this fried fish also goes really well like a "fish patty" inside an ordinary sandwich with green chutney and tomatoes or leafy greens.

Update: Being my favorite way of eating fish, this post goes to Aparna's event "My Favorite Recipe!"

Have a good week, everyone!

Carrot Soup

2010-08-04T15:28:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone.. Carrot Ginger Soup today from Suma's Veggie Platter..

Fig. 1. Carrot Ginger Soup

I always have carrots in the refrigerator. So am always looking for ways to use them up. I have made a carrot soup in the past with garlic seasoning. This version is similar. But the switch to ginger makes it taste quite different, so it was a good variation for us. For more carrot recipes, I would also check out Suma's Carrot Round-Up.

Ingredients:
Onions - 1 medium, finely chopped (1/2 for soup, 1/2 for garnish)
Baby Carrots - about 20
Ginger - about 1/2 inch by 1 inch piece, roughly chopped
Stock or whey or milk or water - about 2 cups, as per your preference for consistency. I used Water + 1/2 Maggie/Knorr Cube.
Oil - 1 teaspoon
Red chilly powder - 1 teaspoon
Pepper - pinch
Salt - to taste

Procedure:
1) Cook 1/2 of the chopped onion, all the baby carrots and ginger in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat for about 4-5 minutes, stopping, stirring and checking every now and then to make sure the carrots don't dry out (sprinkle some water if that happens). Stop when everything is soft, tender and well-cooked.
2) Let the above mixture cool down. Then blend it into a puree. Add as much stock or water or milk as necessary to make puree. Note: Suma has used milk. I used water and a maggie cube as "stock".
3) Now add the rest of your stock/milk/water or whatever to the puree and mix to get desired consistency of soup. Add salt, pepper and red chilly powder as per desired taste. Heat well till fully cooked. If using milk, do not bring it to a full boil.
4) Meanwhile in a small bowl take remaining 1/2 onion, finely chopped. Drizzle with some more oil and heat for 2 minutes or so till the onions are soft and slightly browned. Then add this to the soup as garnish.

For garlic version, substitute the ginger with garlic. And at the end, instead of onion seasoning, add lots of browned, sauteed, chopped garlic as seasoning. Tastes yum!

Serve: I like to serve such soups either as a Rasam-like drink on the side for an Indian meal. Or with some bruschetta-like bread. Toast in the oven (at 350F) bread drizzled with some olive oil and then topped with a mixture of {chopped tomatoes + chopped onions + salt + pepper + some olive oil} for 10 or 15 minutes, till the bread is browned and crusty.

Cheers and enjoy!

Coriander Chutney and Food Fiction

2010-07-27T17:56:00.005-04:00

Coriander chutney was the first thing I ground when I got my Mixer!

Fig. 1. Coriander Chutney

Many long years had I spent without a mixer and without great chutney. Finally the day came when I got myself a mixer and I lost no time getting together some coriander, (some mint is optional), green chillies, garlic, jeera, coconut, lime juice, salt and ground myself some green heaven! It went on idlis, dosas, sandwiches, you name it and it was slathered with this chutney! In a matter of days I became desperately dependent on my mixer. Now I simply cannot do without it any more! If anything happens to my mixer I will have to get down on my knees and beg for its well-being, "Bhagwaan, mainey aaj tak tumsey bohot kuch maanga hai... Ek aur cheez mujhey de de Bhagwaan!"

You can see that there is lots of nonsense overflowing with my chutney today. Sometimes it just cannot be contained. And if you give me events like "Of Chalks and Chopsticks", hosted this month by Sra of "When my Soup Came Alive", then I grab them with both hands and let the nonsense begin. (Disclaimer: The following story is free-flowing fiction with no commercial affiliations.)

The Princess and the Chutney

According to the legend..

..it was Princess Sumeetrangini who first discovered coriander. The distressed damsel was lost in the woods, when she chanced upon this divinely scented jadibooti. She was so enamored by the delicate 'erb, that when she returned, the bravest and the best were commissioned to procure coriander and satisfy her craving for its chutney. But the perils of the journey were so great that few remained to tell their tale.

Prince Vikramaditya was the Crown-Prince of the illustrious kingdom of Adityapore. When he heard about Sumeetrangini's unparalleled beauty and the legend of her desire for coriander chutney, he decided to undertake the perilous journey to obtain the mystic 'erb for the craving beauty.

The brave Prince scaled mountains, swam rivers, pierced forests, fought terrors and finally obtained a bunch of coriander!! Armed with the rare bouquet he arrived at the Palace to meet the enchanting Princess...

Sumeetrangini's Father, the mighty King, called upon his daughter's chambers and said, "Darling, I have good news! A daring Prince has brought you your prized 'erb. He wishes to have your hand in marriage."

Princess Sumeetrangini, however, was not amused. "Nahiiiiiiiiiiin............!!!" she cried out.

"Father.. it's very sweet of him to have got me coriander.. Don't get me wrong, I love coriander. But...

I cannot marry just about anyone who gets me an 'erb! Firstly, I am sick of fairy tales where Heros get the Princess because they fight a stupid troll or gift a silly stone. I, for one, am not a material girl!

Secondly, I love coriander, but that is exactly why I scaled mountains, I swam rivers, I pierced forests, I fought terrors and obtained coriander seeds!! Now we have acres and acres of land growing coriander for our kingdom! This Prince is hopelessly out of touch with current events!!

Father, I cannot marry Prince Vikramaditya!"

"Whatev!" growled the mighty King, "He's in the Palace living room now. Deal with him. But remember, Princess... Be nice!"

The Princess had not expected this outcome. All that drama for nothing, she thought. Suddenly she even felt bad for the poor Prince. All the effort he took to get coriander, and now she had to break his little heart. But she had to stand by her principles. She had an idea.. perhaps she could get out of this match as well as not break the Prince's heart..

Princess Sumeetrangini quickly changed into her Royal Running Ghaagra and took off the back door for a quick 2 miler. She eased into it with a slow jog, then she picked up speed and gave it all her best. Confident that the Prince could see her tearing across the Palace gardens at the speed of light, sweating rivulets, clothes drenched in gross perspiration, hair wet and lanky, nose running faster than her feet, wiping the sweat off her tomato-red face, the Princess arrived at the Palace door.

From the corner of her eye, Sumeetrangini could see the Prince gawking as she entered the Palace living room. She could leave no stone unturned! She wiped her sweaty face with one hand and runny-nose with the other. Then she looked up at the Prince in feigned surprise, "Oh, Hi... I'm Princess Sumeetrangini, and you are..." she stretched out her icky-sticky hand to the Prince...

The Prince was looking at Sumeetrangini with open mouthed wonder as he..

... rushed forward and took her sticky hand, shook vigorously, gushing, "You just clocked a 4 minute mile there!! I run too, but not as fast as you!" The Princess couldn't help a fit of uncontrollable coughing... that was the only way to force breath into her numb lungs.

"I'm Vikramaditya. It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Princess! I had heard so much about you!" he continued. "Somehow it never came up that you run, though. And are you fast or what! And, hey, you are using old fashioned mojari for running!! And that ghaagra!! Jeepers! Princess, you could be so much better using some of the new running mojari we have recently invented.. and also, what I call, Shorts. Oh, perhaps you don't know.. I am an Inventor. As in, I am a Prince and all that ya-ya-ya, but in my spare time I collaborate with the worksmen in our kingdom and together we try to create new things."

"New things?"

"Yeah, it could be anything. For instance, we invented running mojari to improve running posture. And the shorts are .. umm, maybe we could go into those details sometime later... When I heard about your love for chutney, we set about inventing something to make chutney. Here.. "

The Prince reached into his shagun gift-bag, pulled out his bouquet of green coriander and along with it, a shiny metal container with four sharp blades. He placed it on the royal coffee table. "We call it a mixer. We put the coriander inside.. " he proceeded to demonstrate, "and crank this shaft that gears into the blades. They rotate at a much higher speed and the coriander quickly grinds into a chutney! How about that! Isn't that easier than making chutney on the heavy, old fashioned grinding stone you probably use?"

Sumeetrangini stood quite dazed. She couldn't believe what she had just seen! Chutney in 2 minutes! She was reeling at the possibilities of using this device! "It's manual, so you still have to hand crank the shaft," the Prince went on apologetically, "You see we have yet to invent electricity."

"Electricity?" gasped the Princess.

"Well.. to tell you the truth, Princess, I am not quite sure what electricity is.. see, it hasn't been invented yet. But, the sound of the word just feels like it may be useful to invent whatever it means.. Ee-leck-tri-city!" The Prince was almost in seventh heaven with that thought.

Together the Prince and Princess stood there, gazing at the shiny metal, dreaming about a day when there might be a mixer that runs on electricity and churns out an infinite supply of coriander chutney.

Vikramaditya clasped Sumeetrangini's sticky hands, gazed deep into her eyes and said, "Sumeet.. my love.. you are everything I had dreamed of, and more! Will you take me and my mixer and grind by my side for as long as we live?"

Sumeet fluttered her long lashes at the Prince and smiled coyly. She turned to the Readers of another silly tale, the Possessors of infinite patience and generosity, shrugged and apologized, "We are living in a material world.. I guess, I am a material girl!"

Thanks for reading, everyone! Cheers and 'ave a great day!

Lettuce Wrap with Sprouts Salad

2010-07-23T17:38:00.005-04:00

Hey everyone.. light summer lunch today. I had never had lettuce wraps before. Tried them at a restaurant once and was totally bowled over by the incredible idea! First breads were replaced by tortillas, now tortillas have been replaced by lettuce! What next, one may ask..

Fig.1. Lettuce Wrap with Sprouts Salad

Ok, I admit I will shortly be replacing iceberg lettuce with savoy cabbage when you read on. ;) I felt it was a mite stronger than lettuce, also a bit larger. So I could wrap it quite reasonably and it held the stuffing better. But I am still calling it Lettuce Wraps. :)

The versions I have tasted at restaurants have mostly been soy sauce based with non-veg stuffing. Sometime later I noticed this Sprouts Salad version at Manjula's Kitchen. I loved the combination she has suggested here - oranges and tomatoes with lightly cooked green moong sprouts. I couldn't get the idea of that cool, juicy, sweet and salty combination out of my head. Just had to try it!

I followed most of her recipe, modified the dressing sauce a tiny bit.
Ingredients:
For Salad:
Whole green moong - 3/4 cup (Soak this in plenty of water overnight. Then drain it and let it sit in a dark, covered vessel for a few hours or so till it sprouts. May need to wet and drain every so often if the moong dries out. Warm weather will help. Cold weather may take longer.)
Tomatoes - 2 large, chopped into large pieces
Oranges - 2 large, peeled and chopped into large pieces
Cucumber - 1 medium chopped into large pieces (I skipped these this time round, but will remember to get this next time)
Green chillies - 1 finely chopped
Cilantro - a few sprigs, finely chopped

For dressing:
Soy sauce - 2 tablespoons or more
Ginger - 1 medium piece, finely grated, or more if you like ginger
Black pepper - tiny sprinkle
Salt - to taste

For wrap:
About 6 whole leaves of iceberg lettuce (I used savoy cabbage this time)

Procedure:
1) Add just enough water to the sprouts to cover them (I did this in a microwave-safe bowl). Heat in the microwave for about 4-5 minutes till the sprouts are lightly cooked and somewhat soft. Drain leftover water (use it in soup or something else). Add salt to the sprouts, mix well and let them cool in the refrigerator.
2) When it's time to serve, take the salted chilled sprouts with tomatoes, oranges, cucumber, green chilles, chopped cilantro together in a bowl. Mix all the ingredients for the dressing in a separate small bowl and add it to the salad. Lightly toss.
3) Now scoop some of the salad on to a lettuce/cabbage leaf, roll up the leaf into a wrap and dig in!

Verdict: Cool, spicy and just perfect for summer! Definitely a keeper! Thanks, Manjula!

For lunch the next day: I tore up the leaves into pieces and packed them in a small snack bag. I separately packed the sprouts-salad+dressing in an airtight box. Then at lunchtime I added the leaves to the salad box and lightly mixed. That way the salad was not soggy.

Thanks for reading everyone!

This post goes to
1) Let's Sprout an event at Priya's Easy and Tasty blog where Priya is collecting recipes using sprouts.
2) My Legume Love Affair hosted by Siri of Siri's Corner, originally started by Susan, the Well Seasoned Cook.
3) Blog Bites # 5 where Nupur of One Hot Stove is collecting recipes for Sandwiches and Wraps.

Thanks to the gracious hosts for hosting these events and putting in your time and effort doing round-ups! Cheers!

Methi Pulao

2010-07-21T17:21:00.002-04:00

Hi everyone! Methi pulao is my Mom's most amazing rice dish. Many of our get-togethers back home have been flavoured by this rice and some spicy non-veg gravy based curry. And that is the most ideal recommended accompaniment for this dish.

Fig. 1. Methi Pulao

When I read about Priya's Think Spice - Fenugreek event (started by Sunita Bhuyan) I knew I could participate in it. I had a whole packet of frozen Methi sitting in my freezer that I needed to use. And no matter how little time one has, one has to eat! Question is always whether there is time to post the dish! :)

This pulao is very convenient to fill the lunch box. Lunchbox items comprise a large chunk of my cooking. The primary criterion for choosing dishes for dinner is "Can this go into the lunchbox tomorrow?" With this event around the corner, Methi Pulao just had to be made! Leftovers were packed into the lunchbox with a curry.

Note: I make almost all of my rice dishes in a microwave. Same goes for this recipe. Don't mind, but I don't explicitly write "Heat for 2 minutes, check, stir and heat again" anywhere. The time varies from MW to MW and you could just make this on stove-top too. Either way the recipe is the same.

Ingredients
Cloves - 4
Cinnamon sticks - 1 small stick
Bay leaves - 1 leaf
Cardamoms - 3
Onion - 2 medium, chopped
Green chilies - 1 finely chopped
Ginger-Garlic paste - 2 teaspoons
Methi (fenugreek) leaves - about 2 cups packed
Rice - 1/2 cup, washed
Tomato - 1 medium, chopped
Red chili powder - 1 teaspoon or to taste
Salt - to taste
Water - 2 cups (in microwave)
Coriander leaves for garnish - a few sprigs, finely chopped

Procedure (General)
1) Season cloves, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, cardamoms in a bit of oil.
2) Add chopped onion and fry well.
3) Add chopped green chillies, ginger-garlic paste and methi and fry.
4) Add washed rice and saute.
5) Add chopped tomatoes, red chili powder and salt
6) Add water and heat for 10 minutes or till the rice is fully cooked.

Update 1: Explicit microwave procedure:
1) In microwave safe pyrex type bowl, take cloves, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, cardamoms. Add a bit of oil on top so that it coats all the spices. Heat for 1-2 minutes till you can smell a fragrance from the spices when you open MW door. Stir in between if needed.
2) Add chopped onion, mix well, onions should be fairly coated with oil. Heat for 2-4 minutes, stopping, checking, stirring every minute or two. Should get slightly dry/oily (not watery at all). I called this stage in the MW when the water has evaporated "fried".
3) Add chopped green chillies, ginger-garlic paste and methi. Can add salt at this stage too. Veggies will absorb salt better this way. Stir well. Heat for 2-4 minutes, stopping, checking, stirring every minute or two.
4) Add washed, drained rice. Stir well. May need to add one more teaspoon of oil if it seems too less. Rice grains should be coated with some oil after stirring. Heat for 1-2 minutes, stopping, checking, stirring every minute. The rice should get slightly dry/oily/"fried".
5) Add chopped tomatoes, red chili powder and salt. Heat some more so that tomatoes get mushy, stopping, checking, stirring every minute or two.
6) Now, add water and heat for 10 minutes or till the rice is fully cooked. Can open and stir with a fork at say 8 minutes or so. Also test salt at this stage. Add more heating time if you see water still remains in the rice. When you wobble the dish, rice should not "flow". Add more water if it gets dry and still has not fluffed up.

For general MW judgment: In the microwave, I add water : rice ratio of 3 & 1/2 or 4 : 1. Outside on the stove I would add about 3:1 water:rice ratio. Usually for about 1/2 cup of dry rice grains it takes me anywhere from 8 to 12 minutes to cook. And even though it may seem like you are adding oil every so often, the total oil consumed for this whole thing for me is never more than 1 or 1 &1/2 tablespoons max. I just distribute it little by little between steps 1, 2 and 4 usually. More at the beginning will also be just fine.

Hope this helps.

Update 2: Since I have updated the post with explicit details about the microwave procedure I am sending this dish to the Microwave Easy Cooking event hosted by PJ at Seduce your Tastebuds, originally started by Srivalli. Almost all dishes can be made in the microwave almost the same way as on stove top. Heat, power and time vary depending on the size and oldness of your microwave. So I don't know how useful my detailed microwave instructions must be. In any case, if you are looking for more detailed recipes for MW cooking, do check out these event pages and Srivalli's blog. They have a lot of recipes which explicitly talk about cooking in the microwave.

Cheers and thanks for reading, everyone!

Mango Milkshake

2010-07-15T07:00:00.131-04:00

Almost end of season, but finally we found Mangoes!

Fig.1. Mango Milkshake!!

Mango Milkshake = Mango pieces or pulp + milk + sugar if needed, blended all together. The Mint is just for prettiness. ;)

Do you routinely garnish your dishes? choose fancy plates and tableware just so your food looks pretty? Do you make sure you use pretty table-cloth and mats to offset your dinner plates? Did you do this before? I guess with blog-hopping I have suddenly become aware of a lot of pretty things that I never knew existed.

But I also feel the food in my own blog-photos should really look like it looks on my real-life table. Not just a set-up for a picture. Otherwise the next time I casually make that very recipe I will feel a little let down without all the pretty show, no?

Umm.. that means we will have to get entire sets of fancyware!! At the very least I could collect dishes and plates of random orders and somehow make space for them all in my tiny little storage area. Now these ideas are only hovering in my mind so far, and yet I can see them quickly getting out of hand! ;)

I guess for now I will suffice with a bit of mint garnish on my Mango Milkshake!

Aloo Paratha

2010-07-12T22:37:00.000-04:00

"Garam garam para(n)they!" Reminds me of Hindi movies!! :D

Fig. 1. Aloo Paratha

Aloo parathas are my favorite kind of parathas. And usually they turn out pretty decent. I feel that the trick to making really soft-soft aloo parathas is: 1) roll out the rotis a fair amount so it will be easier to wrap up the stuffing and 2) DO NOT stint on the potato stuffing! If you fill in plennn..ty of potato and wrap it up in the rolled out roti, there is no way the parathas can fail to wow anyone.

The only problem with supremely soft aloo parathas is, they just have to be served hot!! Once they cool down or are refrigerated they become somewhat average parathas. So I tend to make these parathas only in casual settings, with few eaters, and when I know I have time just before dinner and I can serve them still hot almost right off the pan.

That's how I served them this time, fresh and piping hot!!

The ingredients and procedure here are somewhat rough approximations, I always make some excess stuffing masala and whatever stuffing gets leftover, I shape it into cutlets, coat with some rava, shallow fry and serve as a snack with some tea.

Ingredients:
Potatoes - Boiled, peeled, ~7, depends on how large or small they are. Do make plenty of masala, you really don't want to fall short of it.
Red chili powder - 1 teaspoon or more
Lime juice - 2 teaspoons
Green chillies - 2 finely chopped
Salt - to taste
Chapati/Wheat flour - 3/4 cup(makes about 6 parathas)
Oil - 1/2 teaspoon (for flour)
Water - as needed to make dough

Procedure:
1) Mash the boiled, peeled potatoes together as smoothly as possible. Try to get rid of all possible lumps. Whatever lumps are left will have to "managed" while you roll the stuffed paratha later.
2) Add red chili powder, salt, lime juice, and chopped green chillies to the mashed potatoes and mix well by hand. Knead well so that you know the mixture is smooth and well homogenized.
3) Make chapati/roti dough by mixing flour, oil and a small quantity of water. The dough should not be too hard, but not sticky either. Let it rest for about 15-30 minutes.
4) Divide the dough into 6 or so balls (for the quantity flour mentioned here).

Fig. 2. Roll out a dough ball, place stuffing in the center and then wrap it up

5) Take one dough ball, roll it out flat as much as possible. Place a round, flattened ball of the potato mixture at the center of the rolled out roti as shown in Fig. 2 above. Wrap it up with the roti. Now lightly roll out the stuffed paratha. Use a tiny bit of dry flour for rolling as needed. Heat/fry on a hot pan with minimum necessary oil or butter or ghee.

Serve with yogurt and pickle or some other accompaniment. A dollop of butter on the paratha is also yum. Ideally the parathas should not need much else.

Thanks for reading, everyone! Cheerio!

K's Bhindi Masala (Spicy Okra)

2010-07-07T10:05:00.000-04:00

This is my cousin, K's, recipe. How do bachelor guys cook when they live on their own? With some perseverance.. quite decent! :)

Fig. 1. K's Bhindi Masala

When you have neither time nor cooking skills and about 5 spices in your kitchen you really learn to appreciate straightforward recipes, the flavour of vegetables and the value of keeping salt on the table! ;)

This recipe is something my cousin got from his roommate's friend who got it from Sanjeev Kapoor's book. With second-third-hand filtering going on here.. one expects only minimal remnants of the original recipe. However, this dish tastes surprisingly decent! And considering how quickly it got made, this certainly qualifies as a "will-repeat" recipe in my book!

Ingredients:
Onions - 2 medium, finely chopped
Tamarind paste - 1/4 teaspoon diluted with 1 tablespoon of warm water
Bhindi (okra) - 1 bag of frozen chopped or say 2 handfuls fresh bhindi
Green chillies - 1 finely chopped
Red chilly powder - 1 teaspoon
Haldi (turmeric powder) - 1/2 teaspoon
Salt - to taste

Procedure:
1) Saute onions.
2) Add haldi, red chilly powder, chopped green chillies, tamarind paste and salt.
3) Now add bhindi. Fry well, uncovered till the bhindi is tender and well cooked.

I served this with simple dal and rice. Thanks for the recipe, K!!

Sorry for the short and to-the-point posts this month.. bit busy. My rate of posting and blog hopping/commenting is also going to go down this month and the next. Don't mind, I will be checking out your posts, just somewhat quick skims.

Thanks for reading and have a great day, everyone!

Pizza Sauce

2010-07-01T12:02:00.000-04:00

Old fashioned home-made desi pizza sauce.. the kind Mummy made when you were a kid, with a pizza base from Monginis? Yup! That's exactly what this one is..

Fig. 1. Pizza!!!!!

This is MM's recipe.. and when we make this it always evokes good old home food nostalgia.. Every one of my friends used to have their own version of homemade pizza and pizza sauce... some even just used plain old ketchup on Wibs bread. As far as we are concerned, this is the best pizza sauce out there, no matter if it is not authentic italian. Used to have this as kids on the teeny tiny Monginis pizza base. Now such tiny pizzas are called "personal size".. oo-la-la! :D Spicy, chatpata, garlicky sauce and crunchy veggies with Amul Cheese.. mmmmwah-mwah.. nothing like Amul cheese on this planet!!

Ingredients for sauce: (makes plenty, store extra in freezer for time-crunch days)
Tomatoes - 5 large beefsteak tomatoes (bit too watery) or 10-12 small roma tomatoes (less watery)
Onions - 3 medium, sliced
Garlic - 1 large full garlic (maybe 10 cloves or so.. more if you want more!)
Red chili powder - 2 teaspoons
Sugar - 3-4 teaspoons
Salt - to taste

Procedure:
1) Cook tomatoes in a microwave.
2) Saute sliced onions + garlic, or cook them too in a microwave.
3) Let all of the above cool and then grind them to paste.
4) Put them all in a large pot, add red chili powder, sugar and salt to taste. Mix and cook till the water reduces and the sauce comes to the right thickness and consistency.

Pizza:
I didn't have the small Monginis pizza base. But you do get that kind of a base in general grocery stores, may be other brands. This time, the pizza base I used was called "Mama Mary's - Thin and Crispy". Doesn't have to be this brand.. I am just recording the name for my reference. Use a good base, any base. Brush it will a tiny bit of olive oil, then layer with plenty of pizza sauce and chopped vegetables. We like sliced bell peppers, onions, mushrooms.. anything! Then add lots of cheese. Bake in the oven as per instructions on your pizza base.

Thanks for reading and have a great day, everyone!

Baked Beans on Toast

2010-06-27T16:12:00.001-04:00

What do we do when there is no time for food?

Fig. 1. Baked beans on Toast

We open a can of Heinz or any other baked beans (without brown sugar) in a medium bowl, add tomato ketchup, red chili powder (to taste), and heat up the mixture in a microwave. Top a couple of toasted slices of bread with cheese slices, the baked beans mixture and (if time permits) some chopped onions and green chillies! Quickest possible meal in the tightest possible schedule.. reasonably healthy, very satisfying, and oh so spicy-crunchy-tasty!

Happy weekending!

Punjabi Kadhi Pakoda

2010-06-24T15:19:00.002-04:00

Hi everyone.. Kadhi Pakoda today. Sanjeev Kapoor's Kadhi and Raaga (The Singing Chef)'s baked pakoda. Can't go wrong, eh? Right on! :)

Fig. 1. Punjabi Kadhi Pakoda

Sanjeev Kapoor's Punjabi Kadhi goes back to "olden" days. Family and friends used to love this Kadhi so it became the norm to make this North Indian version. But we sometimes exhaust a dish by repeating it way too often. Thus was the fate of this recipe. And by now, no one in the house really thinks Kadhi is a great dish. Reeks of monotony.

What's worse is that right from the beginning, the "anti-oil" and "anti-deep-fry" in me has always skipped pakodas in the kadhi. So really what I make is only kadhi, never kadhi pakoda. We do occasionally make pakodas at home, but they are never destined for kadhis. So Kadhi-Didi, sadly, is relegated to the rome-shome status on my menu and I almost never make Kadhi if I can possibly help it now. :(

Past few days I noticed kadhi-pakoda show up on quite a few Blogs, Sayali's and Priya's for instance. Those posts and their pics brought to my mind that it's been a while since we had some kadhi. I also noticed the fact that no one posts only kadhi! Am I the only one making kadhi solo? Maybe making the pakoda would be a good way to freshen up our kadhi-palate!!

I have plenty of besan sitting around that would be happy to receive some attention, so kadhi is a good candidate. This week I also had some spare cabbage sitting in my crisper. So I figured it is time to think about making pakodas. That would consume besan as well as the cabbage. And now I have the world of blogs at my disposal. Why worry about frying!! I set about searching for good "baked pakoda" recipes. And of course Raaga's blog quickly provided me a promising start!! So my plan to make kadhi-pakoda got a resounding "lock kar diya jaye!"

Extreme Make-Over Kadhi Edition begins!

Punjabi Kadhi: This is from Sanjeev Kapoor's book.
Ingredients:
Yogurt - 1 cup
Besan (gram flour) - 1/4 cup
Haldi (turmeric) - 1/2 teaspoon
Methi (fenugreek) seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
Jeera (cumin seeds) - 1/2 teaspoon
Peppercorns - 4-6 (I used pepper powder about 1/2 teaspoon)
Red chili flakes - 1 teaspoon
Onion - 1 medium, finely chopped
Ginger paste - 1 teaspoon
Water - 3 cups
Oil - 1 teaspoon

Procedure:
1) Blend together (wire whisk works nicely for this to ensure no lumps) besan, yogurt, haldi, salt. Add water.
2) Heat oil in a deep pan, add methi seeds, jeera, red chili flakes, pepper.
3) Then add onion, ginger paste, saute well.
4) Add yogurt mixture and boil on low heat.

Baked Pakodas: From Raaga's blog.
Ingredients:
Besan (gram flour) - 1/2 cup
Rice flour - 1/2 cup
Haldi (turmeric) powder - 1/4 teaspoon
Ginger-Garlic pastes - 1 tablespoon
Red chili powder - 1 teaspoon
Cabbage - grated or finely chopped 1 cup (Raaga used onions and cashews etc chopped.)
Coriander + mint leaves - 1/4 cup (I used about 4 tablespoons of coriander + mint paste, say about 2 ice-cubes worth frozen.)
Oil - 1/2 tablespoon
Salt - to taste

Procedure:
1) Mix all the ingredients. Add just a few drops of water, as required to make a thick dough.
2) Grease baking sheet. Place flattened balls of the dough as "pakoda" on the sheet.
3) Bake at 400F for 15 minutes on one side and then flip and 15 minutes more on the other side.

Put them together: When the kadhi comes to a boil, add the pakodas. If super-conscious about food spoiling later, best to boil kadhi again with the pakodas.

Verdict:
There is truly negligible oil in these pakodas. And they are very crisp. And we loved that tiny bit of coriander-mint!! They are simply delicious even just on their own! Needless to say I made several extra pakodas and we ate most of them with tomato-ketchup. The rest went into kadhi-pakoda, which was consumed for dinner as well as taken to work to be shared with work-mates (compliments about the superb quality of my cooking are now floating through Gluttonville!) ;)

This post goes to Nupur's Blog Bites # 4 event since I cleaned some more of my fridge and pantry with this dish, getting rid of that cabbage and a good bit of lurky besan. What's more, I used a long lurking recipe!

My Kadhi-Pakoda has been rejuvenated!! We shall certainly be looking forward to more kadhi again!

Thanks, Sanjeev Kapoor! Thanks, Raaga! Thanks, Internet! Peace on Earth and all that..!

Cheers and thanks for stopping by, everyone!

Pav Bhaji

2010-06-17T16:20:00.001-04:00

My favorite!!

Fig. 1. Pav Bhaji

A real crowd pleaser too! Easy to make and scale up for larger numbers of people, and the best part is... it also clears up my refrigerator and pantry. I have rarely "planned" to make pav bhaji. Pav bhaji means unexpected guests! When someone suddenly calls up on a weekend and says "Hey, want to meet up for a buffet lunch?" and we groan.. not buffet.. and offer to make pav bhaji at our place. ;)

I always have onions and potatoes handy, as well as carrots in the refrigerator. Pav bhaji is the gift-of-life to all the spare, leftover vegetables in the refrigerator. Any vegetables that are left over in small amounts - a handful of green-beans, a fistful of peas, small amounts of cauliflower, that solitary capsicum.. all roll into a big pot, mash-mash-mash and we make pav bhaji.

We usually make do with ordinary bread, but occasionally we will pop over to the store to grab real "pav" or at least "water rolls" if they are available. I find water rolls work reasonably as a substitute for pav. Since I have started blog-hopping I have discovered a host of people who make their own pavs - for instance Fantasy Cooking, Jugalbandi, Spice-Club, One Hot Stove and Enjoy Indian Food . So those would be something for me to keep in mind if I get into baking with yeast in future (the woman with a half-clean pantry does not buy yeast till she is confident she will have the time and opportunity to use it in at least 3 different dishes).

The recipe I use usually for Pav Bhaji is...... the-one-on-the-box!! This is what I routinely make and is embedded in my spinal reflexes. Decent recipe. And honestly I had never paid too much attention to which pav bhaji masala I use. It happens to be Everest quite by fluke. Which brings me to note that another pav bhaji recipe to keep in mind is Nupur's Sukh Sagar Pav Bhaji. She expressly recommends Everest, skips onions (which is unusual), and her recipe is quite well spoken-for in the Indian-food blogging world. So I certainly will try that too in future.

The recipe I post today is from the Everest Pav Bhaji Masala Box:
Ingredients:
Onions - 3 finely chopped (keep one aside for sprinkling on the bhaji just while serving).
Tomatoes - 1 large or 2 small, finely chopped
Garlic - about 3 large pods, peeled and finely chopped (or use ginger-garlic paste)
Red chili powder - 1 tablespoon or to taste
Pav Bhaji Masala - 1 tablespoon or more as desired (happen to have used Everest brand here)
-- In case anyone needs, there is a recipe for Pav Bhaji Masala here. I have never tried making it at home.
Salt - to taste
Vegetables to be cooked and chopped:
Potatoes - 3 medium
Green beans + carrots + peas + cauliflower + capsicum - about 3 cups in all. Add or subtract any neutral-ish vegetable here.

Procedure:
1) Saute finely chopped onions and garlic in oil.
2) Add chopped tomatoes, salt, pav bhaji masala, chilli powder. Cook well.
3) Add chopped, pre-cooked vegetables, more salt (for the vegetables), mix and mash well.
4) When well mashed, add water and blend well with the mixture. Should be coarsely mashed, and "cake-batter" type consistency. Boil till whole mixture gets well cooked.

Do sprinkle chopped onions, coriander and dry garlic chutney on the bhaji when serving. Today I have skipped the garlic chutney here. And I have added a bit too much chopped onion on top. I love onions. There is no pav bhaji without raw onions for me!!

Serve with butter-toasted bread/pav. Could toast the bread with some dry garlic chutney (I should post a recipe for this in future). When toasting many many breads for a big crowd, I just butter the pavs, arrange them on a cookie sheet, and pop them in the oven at 350F for 5-10 minutes, then flip them and 5-10 minutes more.

When I started out making this dish, I thought, good this will clear up left-overs in my refrigerator.. and then I will use Nupur's recipe and send this to Blog bites. But while actually cooking, I was physically on Earth, mentally on Pluto and I forgot all about actually following Nupur's recipe!! As per my default setting, I made the same box-recipe in my head. And it was only when I started writing the post did it strike me that I had forgotten all about using a recipe from a blog!! Duh!

Oh well.. even standard Pav Bhaji deserves a post! A good post!! My guests were thrilled with their "Bombay junk-food experience", and my freezer and crisper are both somewhat clean after this session! As a bonus, the pic is not half bad either. ;)

I will make Nupur's Sukh Sagar Pav Bhaji another day...

Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Snail run

2010-06-15T18:32:00.000-04:00

I run like a snail. "It's ok, just carry on!" I say to myself. And as an affirmation (doesn't happen often, so it's a nice fluke) I actually saw a snail 3 times this week! On the exact same spot! Oh ok, roughly the same spot.. this guy gets about 2 inches ahead each day. Not sure where he is headed.. I guess to the right?

Sometimes the going is really tough. And it's all very easy to say "Ya, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.." Easier said than done. I am the one who is running!! But just when I start to wallow in self-pity along comes Snail-esh! I saw him on Friday, then again on Sunday and now again today. He's one tough guy!! He has moved less than a foot in the last 5 days. But does he stop? Does he give up and turn back? Nope! You can actually see from the trail of those "wet" (what are those for God's sake?) spots behind him... and none in front, that he stays focused straight ahead!! Slow and steady he trudges on. He doesn't stop, doesn't give up. And what if I had run over the poor guy?!!! He is tiny enough that I could have crushed him in the dark!! I guess Snailesh Dada has more than just determination on his side.. He believes no one will crush him whether inadvertently or.. um.. advertently. I guess there is something to his positivity.

I just have to give it to Snailesh! Stay focused, determined and positive! We will get there!

Cheerio and thanks for reading!

Zucchini Pachhadi / Chutney

2010-06-11T15:16:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone.. Zucchini Pachhadi today.. a surprisingly delicious dish! Great find for me!

Fig. 1. Zucchini Pachhadi

I like Zucchini as a vegetable. It is like french beans or green peas for me. It has a fairly neutral taste. Goes well with anything. So I use it as a filler vegetable to add body to my mixed veggie dishes. I don't think most of the family like the name Zucchini. So it is very important to disguise it. But they all happily eat it, no questions asked, when mixed with miscellaneous vegetables.

My grocery store, for some strange reason, prefers to stock items in batches. You have to buy a whole bag of several zucchinis at a time. No single pieces. But, I just need one or two pieces. Not more than that. Sorry, no such option. So I have to get a whole bunch at a time. I do easily use up about two in some or the other mixed vegetable dish, dosa, etc. But there are only so many of those to be made in one week.. so then I have to rack my brains as to how to consume the remaining zucchini!! Unfortunately zucchini goes bad fairly rapidly.. I would give it a week at most. By the end of 7 days the Zucchini in the refrigerator is already screaming for attention.

I had noticed Priya's Zucchini Pachhadi a few days ago and kept in mind for the next time I have excess zucchini. Rare (and risky) for me to try a zucchini-only dish. But that is the best way to consume a whole bunch of it at once! Can darling Zucchs pull off flying-solo?!! Priya confidently stated in her writeup that even her husband liked this one. I figured that was good enough for me. Let's give it a shot! :)

And voila...!! This pacchadi is truly worth its salt! The garlic and seasoning give it a very fragrant and flavourful taste. Totally worth the trial! Thanks for this recipe, Priya! My family consumed this pacchadi quite happily. And given my grocer's incorrigible habits, I will certainly be making this pachhadi again! :)

On to the recipe.. this is almost exactly the same as Priya's recipe. However I like to have it all in one place, so I re-write these recipes! ;)

Ingredients:
Zucchini ~ about 3 medium sized, chopped.
Turmeric - 1/4 teaspoon
Tamarind concentrate ~1/4 teaspoon paste
Curry leaves - 7-8 leaves
Chana Dal - 1 tablespoon
Udad Dad - 1 tablespoon
Mustard seeds - 1 teaspoon
Cumin seeds - 1 teaspoon
Red chili flakes - 1 teaspoon
Garlic cloves - 4 large ones, peeled and roughly chopped large
Oil- 1 teaspoon
Salt to taste

Procedure:
1)Heat oil for tempering. Add all the ingredients (except zucchini, salt, tamarind and turmeric) and roast.
2) Add unpeeled, chopped zucchini with salt, tamarind concentrate and turmeric and cook.
3) Cool and grind into a coarse paste. Add salt and water to taste.

Zucchini reduces quite a bit after cooking and grinding. So this made a fairly small amount of pachhadi.. about 3/4 of a bowl. Was just enough as a really good accompaniment with rice and some other leftover bhaji.

Since this recipe helped me consume leftover zucchini making space in my crisper this post goes to Blog Bite # 4, What's Lurking in your Kitchen? where Nupur of One Hot Stove wants to check out how we clear up our refrigerators and pantries.

Cheers and happy cooking everyone!

Basic Chocolate-Chip Cookies

2010-06-07T23:33:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone.. I wanted to send a few friends some foodie sort of gift. So I made a small batch of chocolate-chip cookies.

Fig.1. Basic Chocolate-Chip Cookies

What do you make when you have to parcel a food-gift to family or friends in other cities? At such times one has to rely on courier and postal delivery services which may take anything from 2-15 days to be delivered. This means the item has to be non-perishable. It has to be really dry so it doesn't harbor fungus, mold or germs while sitting in hot weather in the back of a truck or store-rooms. It has to be tough/firm so it doesn't break inside the package. Are there other concerns I am missing here..? Oh, how about it should taste decent.. :D

Cookies are my standard backup for such times. They can be made reasonably dry, so they stand the trial of time. So far the chocolate-chips have never actually melted. And the cookies have almost never broken or crumbled if packaged even modestly well..

This recipe is from the Betty Crocker website. If you follow instructions strictly, I would say you should check out the original recipe. I had found this recipe long back and have been making it whenever in need of basic cookies. I make variations in terms of different types of chips, nuts, etc flavoring the cookies. Here I will detail my version, which is roughly half of the recipe listed on the website. I have also included the changes I make having read some suggestions in their comments sections to make them softer.

Ingredients:
Butter - 3/4 cup, softened. I have used low-fat spreads and substitutes and they are not too bad at all.
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Brown sugar - 3/4 cup (increased this and decreased sugar, makes cookies a bit softer)
Egg - 1 large
All purpose flour - 2 cups (approximately)
Vanilla essence - 1/2 tablespoon
Baking powder - 1 teaspoon (they use baking soda.. I use baking powder, it works out fine for me though strictly speaking they are not the same thing).
Salt - 1/2 teaspoon
Chocolate-chips and/or other assorted additions like chopped walnuts, hazelnuts, broken pieces of pretzels, raisins, bitter chocolate-chips, toffee bits, etc etc the list is endless ~ 2 cups total.

Procedure:
A. If you want to make all plain chocolate chip cookies:
1) Mix softened butter (not melted), sugar, brown sugar, vanilla essence, egg, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
2) Add the flour slowly, mixing well.
3) Add chocolate-chips to this dough. Stir well. The cookie dough is now ready.

B. I like to make plain chocolate-chip cookies from half of this batch and chocolate chocolate-chip cookies from the other half of the batch.
I like to use chocolate-chips - 1 cup and
Other assorted additions like chopped walnuts, hazelnuts, broken pieces of pretzels, raisins, bitter chocolate-chips, toffee bits, etc ~ 1 cup
Unsweetened cocoa powder - 3 or 4 table spoons.
1) Mix softened butter (not melted), sugar, brown sugar, vanilla essence, egg, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
2) Divide the mixture above into two bowls.
3) To one half add one cup of flour and then chocolate chips to get plain chocolate-chip cookie dough.
4) To the other half add about 3-4 table spoons of unsweetened cocoa powder. Add flour (~1 cup minus 3 or 4 tablespoons) to this mixture. Mix well. Add the chocolate chips and/or all other assorted chips and nuts to get chocolate chocolate-chip cookies.

Now the above mixture can be shaped into rough rounds on a cookie sheet lined with greased-foil or parchment paper and baked at 350 deg F for 12-15 minutes (recommended). I usually test at 10 or 11 minutes. Press the center and see if you can still see a finger print. Over baking makes the cookies hard.

That's that! I love to make these cookies and freeze the cookie dough as backup dessert. Lasts for months!

I am sending this post to the weekly Bake-off event at Versatile Kitchen.

Thanks for reading! Cheers and happy baking everyone!

Achari Murg (Tangy, spicy, chicken curry)

2010-06-05T09:46:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone! I wrote this post some days ago.. then I don’t know which keyboard buttons I hit accidentally, the entire text got deleted and before I could undo that, in less than a second… blogger auto-saved the post that way!! Oh my.. was I frustrated!! A whole post accidentally deleted!!! I searched.. but I could find no way to recover the text! It took me a while to get it all written again. Fortunately this recipe is worth re-writing many times.. just had to find the time. :)

Fig. 1. Achari Chicken

We had tasted a delicious non-vegetarian pickle with a very distinctive North-East Indian flavor a while back. Since then I have been on the look-out for such a pickle. I recently spotted this Achaari Murg recipe at Soma’s blog, Ecurry. This is not a chicken pickle really, it is a chicken curry. But the spices used lend a very clear north-east touch to the recipe. So I thought it would be a good idea to try out this dish and then maybe adapt the recipe in future to make chicken pickle.

I have cut down Soma’s recipe to 1/3rd of the quantity. I did not have mustard oil. So I substituted the mustard oil with normal vegetable oil and some extra powdered mustard. I don’t know if that is a good enough substitution, but the dish turned out really terrific. So I am ok with this version. ;)

Ingredients:
Chicken pieces – 1 pound
Yogurt – 2 or 3 tablespoons
Turmeric (Haldi) powder – ¾ teaspoon
Mustard oil 2 table spoons + vegetable oil 4 tablespoons. (I used 4 table spoons of canola oil + 2 teaspoons of ground mustard powder
Onions – 2, peeled, finely chopped
Garlic – 3 large cloves
Ginger – 1 medium piece finely chopped, or 1 tablespoon of paste
Tomatoes – 2 medium, finely chopped
Red chili powder – 1 teaspoon
Salt – to taste

Dry Spices: Dry roast and grind into a powder.
Red Chili flakes – 1 tablespoon
Mustard seeds – 3/4 teaspoon
Fenugreek (Methi) seeds – ½ teaspoon
Cumin seeds (jeera) – 1/3 teaspoon
Fennel seeds (saunf) – 1 teaspoon
Nigella sativa (Kalonji) – ¾ teaspoon
Cinnamon – 1 small 1 inch stick
Cloves – 2

Procedure
1) Marinate chicken pieces with yogurt, salt and haldi.
2) Dry roast and grind the spices mentioned in the “dry spices” section to make masala powder. (Can make in slightly larger quantity and store for future use.)
3) Heat mustard oil + vegetable oil (or vegetable oil + add mustard powder, whatever you may have chosen to use).
4) Add onions, ginger, garlic. Saute well.
5) Add tomatoes and some more haldi, red chili powder and salt. Saute well.
6) Add dry spice powder, mix well and heat.
7) Add chicken pieces and cook. Add water as necessary to make a bit of gravy. Cook well.

Verdict: Oh my goodness!!!! This was so good! All of us loved it and will certainly be making this curry for many years to come. And since we adored this curry just the way the recipe says, I feel there is no need to mess around trying to adapt this to chicken pickle. So that quest shall go on independently. This curry shall remain perfect just this way! :)

Thanks so much, Soma!

Thanks for reading everyone. Cheers and have a good weekend!

Roasted Garlic Hummus

2010-05-27T17:00:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone.. snack-time. I don't know why it took so long, but it was only recently that we got a taste of hummus at a party somewhere. And I'm glad for this discovery..

Fig. 1. Roasted Garlic Hummus

Hummus is one of the the most diverse chutneys or dips out there. It's tasty, it's filling, it goes with any bread, chips or salad-veggies like a dip. It doubles up as a great sandwich spread. And the best part is that it is reasonably healthy. Has a lot of protein from the chick-peas. And the olive oil makes it healthy and flavorful. So the last few weeks we have been buying a tub of hummus every time we do groceries. Hummus with pita is a far better alternative to chips for a snack.

I figured if we are going to consume it so frequently I should look into the recipe. It turns out that hummus needs only a few primary ingredients. Everything else is just variations on the base. Cooked chick-peas, olive oil, sesame seeds (or tahini), salt and lemon juice or vinegar. Grind them all up and you have hummus. The variations could be adding all sorts of spices to this.

The hummus I have made here today has turned out so delicious that I will definitely be making this very frequently at home adding variations every time. Honestly, if you have the ingredients and a mixer then hummus is so easy to make, a caveman could.. uhmm.. let's just say it's easy.

I roughly followed the recipe on One Hot Stove. It's nice and simple and uses roasted garlic, red chillies and cumin seeds for flavor. I don't have tahini. And I am averse to buying items which are unlikely to be used in multiple dishes. So I just ground some sesame seeds to make a paste following this suggestion on the About website. That worked really great for me. Also, I don't have olive oil presently. But I do have an "olive oil vinaigrette" that served as a good substitute for olive oil + lemon juice.

Ingredients:
Chick peas - 1 can of cooked chick peas (about 1 & 1/2 cup) washed, drained.
Sesame seeds ~ 3 tablespoons
Cumin seeds - 1 teaspoon
Red chilly flakes - 1 teaspoon
Garlic ~ 3 humongous cloves of the big bulk garlic, peeled and sliced long
Olive oil ~ 4 table spoons (can vary as per taste)
Lemon/lime juice ~ 1 table spoon
(I used about 4 table spoons of olive oil vinaigrette instead of olive oil + lemon juice. Note that the vinaigrette is tangy. So keep that in mind if playing with the consistency while using vinaigrette instead of olive oil.)

Procedure
1) Roast the sesame seeds separately. Then roast red chillies, cumin seeds and garlic cloves. (If you are a food-blogger or simply like your dish to look pretty.. remove a tiny bit of roasted garlic and chilly flakes for garnish.)
2) Grind sesame seeds into a paste. Then add the red chillies, cumin seeds, garlic cloves, chick peas, olive oil, lemon juice and salt to the above paste. Grind all into a reasonably smooth paste. Add a tiny bit of water if necessary to get the desired consistency.

That's it! You are done and the hummus is ready! Pour into a serving (or storage) dish and garnish!

Incidentally just a few minutes ago I noticed a post at 365 days of Eating where Cooking Foodie has made Hummus with a variation of adding oven roasted red bell pepper. Can try that too next time.

If you are using canned chickpeas like me, there is nothing faster than running the ingredients through a mixer. So this post also goes to "Twenty -20 Cooking," where Niloufer is collecting dishes that can be prepared in 20 minutes.

Cheers and thanks for reading!

Eggplant Bhareet

2010-05-24T09:54:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone! Today I am posting about an Eggplant Bhareet I made last week. It is fundamentally Eggplant in Yogurt Sauce. It also goes by the names of Baingan ka Raita, Dahi Baingan, etc.

Fig. 1. Eggplant Bhareet

There are several variations of this dish. I have made the ultra lazy version here today. The other versions are also quite quick and simple.

Main Recipe:
1) Eggplant (1 large) is roasted on an open flame or pan. Or a few slits are poked through the eggplant and it is heated in the microwave for about 8-10 minutes till it is soft and thoroughly cooked (this is what I did). Let it cool. Skin it, take out all the pulp into a medium bowl. Mash this pulp. Add salt to it and keep aside.
2) Yogurt (~1 cup), is beaten and made smooth. Add some salt to this and mix with the eggplant pulp above. *Some people skip the curds and add lemon juice or tamarind paste instead. But I like the curds, so I always add those.
3) Now season this with one of the following:

Seasoning variation #1 (Ultra lazy version shown in picture above. No grinding, no chopping. And still tastes pretty good.)
Heat oil in a small pan. Season in this oil: mustard seeds (~1/2 teaspoon), heeng (pinch), finely chopped green chillies (~2) and curry leaves (kadi patta ~ 5 leaves). Add this to the eggplant-yogurt mixture. Mix well and serve.

Seasoning variation #2 (Mom's method. Superb!)
Grind together green chillies (~2), grated coconut (1/3 cup), salt. Add this ground mixture and 1 small finely chopped onion to the above eggplant-yogurt mixture and blend well.

Seasoning variation #3 (Mom's method. Also really good! No grinding.)
Mix together green chillies (~2), ginger finely chopped (small piece), grated coconut (1/3 cup), a few sprigs of coriander leaves, salt. Add these to the above eggplant-yogurt mixture and blend well.

Will post pics of #2 and #3 in future. Cheers and thanks for reading!

Get Going!

2010-05-21T18:26:00.003-04:00

Fitness post time.. This post is for all of us who want to start activity.. think about it, talk about it.. and really want to... but never actually start.

I have done this myself. A lot! ;) And I have seen others do it too. For me this procrastination usually results from the fact that I am uncertain, perhaps undecided.. about whether I really really should do it. And if I do it, how do I do it? Here I have noticed that I often tend to mix whether I want to do something with whether I can do it.

Do you want to start getting active? Decide. Don't think about whether you can. (That is the next question, not this one.) Do you want to? Sit down and think about it. And then decide once and for all. However, that's easier said than done. I would sit down and think about it sometimes.. but I would still be undecided. The fact that there was no pressure, no health reason, no really important reason to start was primarily why I just wouldn't do anything about it. And there is no one who will be able to change this. You will take the decision only at your own time. And that's ok. Recognize that time when it comes and remember this post then.

If you have decided, and your decision is, "Yes, I want to get active and be fit," then you have taken your first step toward fitness! The decision has been taken. And your decisions are firm decisions! You will stick by them! But watch yourself now... because now is when the question "Can I be active?" comes in. This will bring with it a host of issues that you will soon use as excuses to get out of your resolve. Don't let this happen! You have decided to start on the road to being fit! And so you will start! Come what may. You will find solutions to the problems. And you will get going!

Uncertainty: You have no idea how to go about this "get active" business. You don't know anyone who runs or goes to the gym. You have never seen the inside of a gym other than in movies. Yoga.. you have no idea how to do it. So your intention is real and firm, but the path is unclear.

You cannot accomplish any project when you are un-informed. Where do you start? What do you do? Run? Swim? Walk? Get informed! Read up about fitness activities. There are many many things you can do. Pick an activity that suits you. Read up about your own health and health goals. Once your health is clear, you will be able to discard certain activities. Maybe you are pregnant and running is not for you. Other things may influence your choice of activity. Perhaps you have no access to swimming pools. Could yoga be preferable? Look around you, search on the net. There are classes, forums and groups of people in every city involved in some form of activity. There are fitness DVDs, online videos on youtube and other sites that will instruct you on yoga, aerobics and other such forms of at-home exercise. You will not find solutions unless you look for them. Do away with your uncertainty, get informed.

Time: This is another important reason why most people cannot manage to get started. You want to start, but really have no time. Well, fitness does not have to be time consuming. If you want to do it, just spend 15 minutes every day. Do a short 10-15 minute workout. Look on the net.. there are lots of DVDs and programs that promote 10 minute workouts. 10 minutes each day is better than nothing.

Another way to do this is to make extra time in your day. This is harder, but definitely more satisfying in terms of a workout. Get up earlier than you normally do. Just half an hour early. Those 30 extra minutes you get, are enough for a quick 1 or 2 mile run or walk around the block. This is what I have to do. I now wake up at 5.30am instead of 6.30am. Gives me a whole extra hour to get my run. And I don't do this every day. I give myself extra sleep every alternate day. I really need that sleep. But I steal that extra one hour on alternate days to get my runs in. I find that most women prefer this. Once the kids and the household is up there is no time for yourself. After a workout at the very beginning of your day you are ready to tackle anything that today brings you!

Only you can figure out your schedule. If this is important to you, then you will make time for it. Either go for short workout sessions that fit somewhere in your busy day or go for an early morning regimen, whatever works for you.

Cost: "So much money on gym membership! Gym clothes and shoes! I don't think this is permanent anyway. Just a passing thought today. In two days my motivation will be gone. Not worth it." These were my thoughts. So, initially I used my old sneakers to walk. Even started running in them. The gym access was in a friend's apartment complex for free. So I lucked out there. But when I stopped getting access to the gym I just started running outdoors. (Fortunately by then the weather did permit me to run outdoors!) Over 20-25 days I realized that I was enjoying running. It was NOT a passing thing! It improved my day significantly! So then I did shell out some cash to buy good shoes which are essential to prevent common running injuries. In fact, I feel that I will now often run just so as to justify the expense of the shoes! :D

So, I would say that you have to start first. Then over time you will be able to figure out whether running or walking or yoga is suitable for you, whether you enjoy it. That is when you can choose to spend the bare minimum you need for that activity. So be creative, you will find a solution to money matters.

Fear: "What if something hurts! What if I injure myself! I am fine now. I don't want to start some stupid fitness mania and break my leg or sprain my back acting like I'm a PT Usha!" This may sound melodramatic, but is actually a very valid concern. You want to research all possible aches and pains that may be normal for a beginner in whatever activity you choose. Otherwise any casual soreness or muscle pain will be an easy excuse for you to quit. It is the biggest relief when other runners tell you, "Sore shins for a beginner are normal. You are either running too fast or running on very hard ground. Try running on grass. Ice sore shins, they will stop hurting as they get used to the running." Read up, meet other people who are involved in your activity. Try to learn more about the sport you pick up. That is the only way to ward off this fear.

And accept that some amount of achy soreness will be there at the beginning. And with knowledge and experience you will recognize the difference between soreness and injury. Start very very slow. Over a few weeks your body will get accustomed to the stresses of exercise and let you push yourself more. That is when you ramp up a little more. Push just a tiny bit every week. Pain and injury are not enjoyable. Caution is always good. But fear will not hold you back!

All the other stuff: "Oh other people in the gym are much fitter than me! People will look at me when I run. I run like a duck! I am not going alone.. I have no company. Swim suits look cheap. I look bad in gym clothes. I don't want to sweat. There is a guy at the gym who makes me uncomfortable. There are these girls who are always laughing when I am there (i.e. laughing at me). My friends will think I am acting too smart. My bai will tell people in the building that I do aerobics and all!"

I have given 95% of the above excuses myself. So I am quite confident some of you have also thought these things! It's ok.. admit to yourself.. no need to tell anyone. But at least some of the above things are a matter of our own self-consciousness. Swim-suits, people's opinions... don't think about these things. Maybe they are laughing at you, maybe they aren't. You will never know. But paying heed to such things will certainly ensure that you will lose your goal!! You cannot let that happen. And you won't let stupid problems get in the way. You will aim for your goal and head straight towards it. Everything in your way can go to.... !!!

Some of these things however will be true problems. Safety, for instance. Please be safe. If you are running outside, run in safe neighborhoods or parks or places where you will see other people going for walks, runs and rides. Even when going to a gym, go at times when there are a lot of people. Otherwise find another gym. You want to focus on your workout, not worry about who might bother you. So it really should be safe. If gyms and the outdoors are not safe for you, there are plenty of at-home routines you can do.

And yes, people may be slightly resentful. Some people may not like that you are fit and they are not. I simply don't tell too many people about my running. I find that works best for me. Even casual talk can be misinterpreted as boasting. Don't talk too much about it. Just do it. And even then if people don't like it, then it's ok. You can't take care of everything. Take care of yourself, your family and your life. That is enough. Let the neighbors be jealous, let your bai bitch about your aerobics. Let it be. You are getting strong!! So they can bring it on! You can take it!

Now I must admit that I am not as strong and resolute as all of the above might imply. :D And you don't need to be either. Pretend to be resolute. It's ok. Really! Pretend to yourself. You have an iron will! Say that to yourself! Cheer yourself! Push yourself! Just start! Get going! You can do it... and so can I! :)

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Info links: I am posting a few links in this post. Just some general suggestions for someplace to start:

1) Here is a link to a short video I found on youtube. Just a quick 3 minute walk-at-home jig that I have done occasionally when I am really tired of sitting a lott but I don't have time to actually go out for a run. Hope it rejuvenates you and sparks your ignition! (It has loud music, please don't click on this at work!!)

Credits: This video is from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1BzEW0ibcg and the user claims to be a legit affiliation to this lady (Leslie Sansone). I cannot vouch for anyone. Let's hope that's true.

2) The following are good search words to look up videos online: Leslie Sansone (above) obviously brings up a lot of vidoes. Yoga Today on youtube is a channel which seems to have a lot of yoga videos. I have occasionally done easy stretching from there. There are also other searches you can do for "walk at home" or "step aerobics" or really anything that strikes your fancy. Dabble in these online videos a little. Can never say how much is legal and how much isn't. So figure out what you like and then buy a legitimate CD or DVD for whatever suits your preference. (Say no to piracy!)

3) There is a lot of activity on the net regarding walking. I never knew how seriously people walk! Active has a lot of info about many such things as walking, cycling, hiking, swimming, etc. Check out links to any of those from the home page. Also search generally on the net. Lots of info out there.

4) Running: This is stuff I have done, so I know all of this is perfectly legitimate! :) Runner's World is an online site that has a lot of reading for Running. This place will give you a lot of info about beginning running. About also has a lot of general info about running. Really I cannot stress enough how important it is to read about it before you jump into it. Here is a video about good running posture and posture and tips for running on a treadmill.

They have a beginner's program on Runner's World. I started out by doing a Couch to 5K program (c25k) which is on another site called Cool Running. This other c25k page also has a lot of links that are helpful if you are doing c25k. These "programs" are really just articles some experienced coaches have written suggesting common training schedules for beginners to start running.. For example: Week 1: Run for 60 seconds, walk for 2 minutes, repeat for 15 minutes.. Week 2: Run for 2 minutes, walk for 2 minutes, etc etc. They are free to read. Almost all of these sites also have runner's forums. If you have questions, other experienced runners will respond on those forums. I mean it, they will help you! Just ask.

I also used Robert Ullrey's podcasts for c25k which were very helpful in keeping up the running. These podcasts also happen to be free (which was nice). Robert Ullrey is some guy who started running using the C25K program at the age of 43 to celebrate his birthday and made up music CDs for himself to know when 60 seconds or 2 minutes were up. Helps keep track of and pass time when you are running. Very nice of him to put them up online for us newbie runners to use! Sometimes, completely unknown people do such random nice-things and that helps so many other random, unknown people! :)

On that note this post ends. Hope that info was helpful to you. I will see you all around! Cheers! :)

Brown Pittye Unde (Laddoos)

2010-05-18T08:15:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone.. it's finally time for some sugar!!! :)

Fig.1 Brown Pittye Unde

This is a dish I made up by chance.. ok, I admit it, by mistake actually. I was making Finger Millet Cookies from Aayi's Recipes. And instead of using a real cup measure, ignorantly, I used those Corelle style Mugs! Obviously all my measurements for ragi flour and sugar were in Mugs and the butter was in terms of butter-sticks (which translates to real cup measures). So that attempt was botched in terms of cookies. My "dough" ended up dry and crumbly. And I wasn't able to make cookies out of it.

But I was able to press the dough into laddoos!! Thus were discovered these laddoos. And the best part is that they taste really great!! Even hard-core people in my family who say, "Ragi? Ugh!" have been known to love these laddoos. Mind you, I have never told them this is Ragi. That explains the arcane name "Brown Pittye Unde" i.e. Laddoos made with brown powder/flour. Sneaky, sneaky!! ;) After my cunning attempts to mask the Ragi-ness of these.. don't you go about calling them anything else! Otherwise sooner or later it may get around to my folks!

Ingredients:
Ragi flour - 2 and 2/3 cup
Sugar - 1 and 1/3 cup
Melted butter - 1/2 cup (can add a tad bit more if it is difficult to bind the laddoos, this is the minimum quantity that I have fine-tuned for myself over time)
Cardomom - 6 or 7 pods, skinned and ground into a fine powder

Procedure:
1) Roast ragi flour on a wide pan for about 10-15 minutes on fairly low heat. This step is very important and Shilpa mentions that if the ragi is not roasted well the taste is "muddy". And I agree. When you roast this, continue till you get the most heavenly sweet and earthy smell from your ragi. Trust me, after the roasting the ragi becomes so fragrant that no one will know this used to be ragi!
2) Add sugar and powdered cardamom to the ragi. Mix well. I turn off the heat at this point. But the pan is still hot.
3) Add the melted butter and mix well. Let this cool just till you can handle the mixture.
4) Press fistfulls into laddoos. Arrange them on a foil lined cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes at 300 degree F.

Shilpa uses baking powder and her ragi/butter quantities are also different. Then she bakes her cookies. Since I have followed most of her procedure, I continue to bake my laddoos, just to be sure that the butter is cooked through and the shelf-life of the laddoos is decent. Since there is no baking powder in my laddoos, they do not expand. Maybe the baking step could be skipped if you are not ultra-finicky about shelf-life. In the past (with the baking) I have got about 3 weeks un-refrigerated shelf-life for sure.. by this time they have been consumed usually. These quantities made me about 20 laddoos.

This post goes to Nupur's Blog-Bites: Adaptation event at One Hot Stove.

Cheers and happy cooking, everyone!

Chawli Vegetable Pulav

2010-05-14T22:36:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone.. today it was time for another one-pot meal. Was not really in the mood to make anything elaborate. So I made a quick Pulav with Chawli (also known as Lobia or Black-eyed Peas) and some mixed vegetables.

Fig.1 Chawli Vegetable Pulav

I often prowl on blogs and pick up ideas from there. But either by choice or because I don't have certain ingredients I often end up making many substitutions and variations. By the time I am done zippety-zapping in the kitchen it becomes very difficult to trace the ancestry of my dish and credit the bloggers of the original recipe without risking offending them! But really, if the dish tastes good the credit does go to them. See, I would never think about certain combinations if they weren't mentioned on those blogs first!

Such was the case today when I set out to make pulav. I always check out Aayi's Recipes for pulav ideas. Shilpa and Varada Aunty have put up tons of rice dishes there. Just one click on the rice label gives me an assortment of pulavs, biryanis and khichdis with pictures! And the lazy bum that I am, I don't even have to bother to think. I can just look at their ideas and incorporate them in some manner or other into my own cooking.

Shilpa's Methi-Avarekalu Rice recipe is the inspiration for what I have cooked here. I wanted something fairly filling, so I chose this dish. Loosely speaking, my dish is similar to Shilpa's recipe, but many of the ingredients and spices have changed. The fundamental concept here is from her blog. Adding beans to pulav!! Whood'av thunk! ;)

Fortunately despite all my changes this pulav tastes simply amazing!! Amazing enough that this is the second time I have made it and it is now time to record it on the blog. It would be truly worth your while to check out Shilpa's recipe too, my recipe is a fairly toned down version of hers.

Ingredients:

Rice - 1/2 cup

Black eyed peas - 1/2 cup

Frozen veggies - Tindora + peas ~ 3/4 cup

Cloves - 3

Cardamom - 3 pods

Cinnamon sticks - 2 small sticks

Jeera (cumin seeds) - 1/2 teaspoon

Bay leaves - 1 small

Red chilly powder - 1 teaspoon

Red chilly flakes - 1/2 teaspoon

Garam Masala - 1/2 teaspoon (optional, just for fragrance. Can use Amti powder, Sambar powder or some such South Indian masala.)

Tamarind paste - a small blob.

Oil - 1 teaspoon

Water - 2 cups to cook pulav, about 2 cups to cook chawli

Salt - to taste

(Note: Shilpa has used several other spices in addition to the ones above, onions, tomatoes, avarekal/val, methi. But I have skipped all the fresh items since I didn't have much groceries and some spices I did not have. I also did not have val, so I used chawli. Large white bean.. kinda-sorta-similar, I thought. I did not have methi so I used whatever spare frozen veggies I had in my freezer. I put a tiny bit of garam masala and convinced myself that the garam masala is good enough substitution for all the spices I skipped! ;) And God knows what inclined me to add tamarind. Felix Felicis told me it was the thing to do! Trust me, the result tastes terrific!! Best pulav I have made in the last few weeks!)

Procedure:

I used a microwave for the entire process, but I am not giving timing notations here.

1) Separately cook black eyed peas.

2) In a fresh pot heat oil and season jeera, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, cloves, cardamoms, red chilly flakes.

3) Add frozen veggies. Heat till they are cooked.

4) Add salt, red chilly powder, garam masala, washed rice, tamarind paste and mix well. Heat.

5) Add cooked black-eyed peas. Mix well. Add 2 cups water. Heat till rice is cooked.

Taste it.. ! It's so good!! :) The beans in the pulav make it very filling. Perfect lunchbox item. No need for dahi or pickle either! Love it!! Will make it so many times again in future! Baap re.. do I sound excited or what! Haha! :D Nothing else here to eat right now and I just hogged on this!! It's the pulav talking.

This post goes to Nupur's One Hot Stove Blog-bites event, where she wants to see what variations we make to other blogger's recipes. Hope this works for your event, Nupur. Cheers!

I am also sending this post to My Legume Love Affair # 23 hosted by The Well-Seasoned Cook.

PS: I apologize for the slightly blurred pic, it's not your eyes! It's my awful, no-knobs, cell phone camera.

Apple Jam - Happy Mother's Day

2010-05-09T13:00:00.006-04:00

Hey everyone.. This is a jam I made for my Mom's birthday actually. Still have some.. so here it comes today!

Fig. 1 Apple Jam Jam Jammy!

My Mom makes the world's most wonderful Jam! But.. she completely wings it! So far I have not been able to extract a precise recipe from her that gives me jam that tastes exactly like hers. I think she largely eyeballs the process till it gives her the texture and taste that is so hers!! Oh well! The disadvantages of learning cooking on the phone. If I could see her make it, perhaps it might turn out perfect. The bane of my life is that no one has yet invented a "Beam me up, Scotty" style mass-transporter. Where is all the research money going? Who is working on this transporter stuff? Oh, if wishes were horses..

Today, I am trying my hand at food-fiction. So please bear with me. What follows is the product of a mind deranged by Jam and Star Trek!

Space Jam

Starry-eyed Sarita was about to leave small-town, Homeville, for glitzy Bollywood! Math and Science had never interested her. Sarita was all for the Arts! She had always been the lead in school plays, the best in her dance class and the funniest family-entertainer on dull Sunday afternoons. There was no doubt she had a glorious career in cinema and theater ahead.

Finally the time had come for her to explore the world and find her place in it! The shine and shimmer of Bollywood had pervaded all of Homeville just as it had the rest of the world. And its sheen had not escaped young Sarita! She dreamed of being paired with SRK and Hritik Roshan, no less! Siya was going to be her screen-name and "Siya... naam toh suna hoga!" was going to be the new in dialog for the Johars and Chopras of Bollywood. Sarita was on her way to stardom and nothing would stand in her way!

Except... Jam!! Sarita was terribly foodie. And her Mom's cooking was something she couldn't do without! And it wasn't just her dal and rice.. Mom's cookies, her cakes, her chicken, her fish, her smoothies, her shakes, her mutton, her quiche....and most of all.. Mom's jams!!! Uff! No Mam, Sarita could not ham a single word on silver screen without her Mom's jam! Brought up in the world of PBnJ, Sarita had to have her dose of jam every single day! But shiny Bollywood was oceans away! Air travel was going to be so expensive and time consuming... there would be no way to get Mom's jam every day! And then there was the question of her Mom's cookies, her cakes, her chicken, her fish, her smoothies, her shakes, her mutton, her quiche....

Sarita's was a heavy heart. To give up her dream of Bollywood!!! Or to leave behind the Mom who generates the most glorious food on this planet! Sarita knew what had to be done. Someone had to do it. Someone simply had to do it!! And since no one else was doing it.. she would just have to roll up her own sleeves and do it herself!

She had to invent a mass-transporter!

Anything is possible when you are a woman with an iron resolve (and writing nonsense masquerading as food-fiction). So my dear readers, this was how the acclaimed Nobel Laureate, Madam ~~Curie~~ Purie, aka Sarita Purie started on her path to inventing the first mass-transporter on Earth. Her Mom's Apple Jam was the first test object to be transported from her refrigerator to the dining table. Only when she had herself executed the scientifically established "taste-test" and confirmed that the molecular arrangement of the re-materialized jam was perfection itself, did she release the mass-transporter for mass transport.

Her invention has now revolutionized travel all over the world. And yes, Sarita's dream has also come true! She still lives in Homeville, but works in Bollywood! She now routinely stars as Siya in Bollywood movies with SRK and Hritik Roshan (both actors together in the same movie, Sarita playing a double-role!)

Of course, Sarita has to produce her movies herself. After all, who will invest in a geeky jam-eater!

Ingredients:
Apples - 3 large, I used red delicious, chopped roughly into slices. Do not peel.
Lime Juice ~ 1 tablespoon
Sugar ~ 1 cup
Ginger - 1 large piece, when chopped into tiny pieces probably makes about 3 tablespoons. Really as per taste. I like a lot of ginger.
Water - eyeball approximately

Procedure:
1) Core the apples. Save the core, keep it whole. Chop apples, with the peel (gives the red colour).
2) Chop ginger into tiny pieces. Ginger is added if the jam is for grown-ups. Kids may not like the gingery taste. Not sure. Can skip ginger if you want.
3) Put lime/lemon juice, ginger and apples pieces, with the large core pieces in a saucepan. Add just enough water to barely cover them. (Sorry about the hand-wavy measurement for water here, but this is what the recipe says.)
4) Heat till apples and ginger are completely cooked and soft. Core pieces will also start to wilt a little. Don't let them completely disintegrate.
5) Now remove the core pieces and discard them.
6) Grind the cooked apple and ginger. I like slightly chunky jam, not the smooth paste version. So I ground them roughly. You can make a smooth paste if you don't like lumpy jam.
7) Now this ground pulp is further heated in the saucepan. This time add sugar. Mix well. Heat the pulp (which at this point is really watery). Stir every so often. As the pulp thickens, it sticks to the bottom. It also splatters a lottt. Heat till a lot of the water is gone and the pulp gets to the consistency of jam and will not drop off your spoon very easily. That is when the jam is done.
8) Store in sterilized, perfectly dry, airtight bottles. I saved it in a simple dry glass bottle, but kept it in the refrigerator.

This particular recipe is definitely painstaking. The measurements here (primarily water) are slightly flaky. And more importantly, it took me 1&1/2 hour to get the whole thing done!! Most of the time was spent in waiting around for all that water to evaporate.... and the boiling pulp splattered all over the place. I guess Mom used to manage doing this every now and then somehow.. Although not exactly like Mom's, the taste was really great! So was the texture. And it has lasted pretty long in the refrigerator. But there has to be a faster way. I think next time I might try to cook the apples and ginger in a microwave with very little water and then proceed with sugar, etc on stovetop. I promise to fine-tune this and get another version of this recipe down in future. Jam isn't consumed very fast in our household (I am no Sarita Purie). So I didn't get another chance to make this again. But this lot is almost gone now. Will update the recipe when I make another batch!

Thanks Mom for this recipe and all the others. And for all the time and effort you have put into feeding us and creating delicious memories of our childhood! :)

Thanks to my readers who read all that non-sense up there! This post goes to Sandeepa of Bong Mom's Cookbook who is hosting a food-fiction event, started by Aquadaze of Served with Love. Sandeepa may be expecting sentimental stuff for Mother's Day.. but then, who says stories about Mass-Transporters are not mushy? When it is really invented you will all remember my words and get all mushy when you use it to get to your Moms. So this is my sweet and mushy, soggy-with-sentiment entry to all Momly events. :)

This post is also going to Jyothi of Panch Pakwan who is hosting a Mother's Day event. Not sure if it's ok I haven't made this today. It is a fresh post though, I swear! Let me know if this works (or doesn't work) for you Jyothi..

This post also goes to Shabitha of My Home Kitchen who is also holding a Mom's recipes event. Not sure if I can share this post with three events.. Ok with you too I hope Shabitha.

Cheers and Happy Mother's Day, everyone!

Carrot and Peas Pulav - for the Newbie Cook

2010-05-06T18:59:00.001-04:00

This Pulav is probably good for newbie cooks, people who don't want to chop, don't have time to cook and students who own only a microwave in the one-room-plus-bath they share with four other people. I am none of the above! Oh, ok.. I am the one doesn't want to chop!

Fig. 1. Carrot and Peas Pulav

When you are really really new to cooking, it's quite common to think you are just a horrible cook. And this is affirmed by the output of your exertions and confirmed by the verbiage of your consumers. But please, be very clear in your own mind that you are a Newbie cook! Not a Bad one! There is a major difference. A newbie gets better. That is certain! There is no way for you to go but up! A good cook is one who cooks! Period. Don't throw in the towel right away! Cooking is a life skill. All you have to do is feed yourself. Don't you give up so easy!

Now I am no expert cook. So I cannot give great instructions to total cooking newbies. But in this one post today I will try my best to elaborate a bit in each step so that I can refer my hard-core, never-cooked-before friends here in case of emergency. Let me also list a few good websites for newbies to check out:

1) StartCooking is a site which seems to have lots of pictorial and video based tutorials for really really really basic things like how to cook long grain white rice, cook pasta, cook a potato in a microwave, how to boil eggs, fry eggs etc, etc as well as nicer dishes.
2) Manjula's Kitchen is a video-based blog. Manjula has a lot of videos where she does everything right from chopping and peeling vegetables, showing you the entire cooking process all the way to serving suggestions. Her comments section has tons of answers to commonly asked questions. I have used this site.
3) Show me the Curry is another video-based blog which shows a lot of easy ways to make basic as well as fairly complicated dishes. I have used this site too.
4) Vah re Vah is another site with cooking videos. But I have never actually made anything from there yet. Friends say it's decent. The cook seemed funny. Feel free to check it out.

Search on youtube and google for videos. Especially when you are really really new, I think it helps to see what they mean by "fry till golden brown" etc. Lots of blogs have newbie sections! So check out specifically those labels on any general food blog. But it varies from person to person as to what they consider "easy". ;) Pari of Foodelicious has recently started a blog for newbies in cooking, called Kitchen Basics. I will update more links on this post as and how I come across good basic cooking websites.

On to my pulav.. I make this pulav, or some variant of it, fairly regularly. This recipe requires some "is this rice cooked?" judgment, fairly basic ingredients and about 15 minutes of time.

Ingredients:
Vegetable oil - 1 teaspoon
Jeera (cumin seeds) - 1 teaspoon
Cinnamon sticks - 1 stick of about 1 inch length, 1/4 inch width
Lavang (cloves) - 3 cloves
Elaichi (cardamom) - 2 pods
Peas (1/2 cup) frozen + Carrots (1/2 cup) frozen, pre-chopped thin or small cubes
-- or -- use a general mixed cut frozen veggies bag (1 cup)
Haldi (Turmeric) powder - 1/4 teaspoon
Red Chilly powder - 1/2 teaspoon. (This is fairly small quantity, you can increase it if you are confident about the hot-levels of your chilly powder and palate.)
Salt - 1 teaspoon (Salt is usually to taste, can add after cooking if not sure.)
Basmati Rice - 1/2 cup
Water - 1&1/2 cup or a tad bit more later if needed.

Procedure:
1) In a large pyrex bowl, take jeera, cloves, cinnamon sticks and cardamom. If possible, pound the cardamom pods so that the seeds inside are powdered a little. If not possible just break the pods open and add to bowl. Add the peel (outer skin) of the pod too. Note: Cinnamon sticks and Cardamom add significant fragrance. Don't skip these!
2) Pour oil on them all. Mix so that the all the spices are coated with some oil. Heat in microwave for 1&1/2 minute.
3) Add the chopped, frozen pieces of carrots and peas to the bowl. Mix well. Heat for 3 minutes. Check if they are cooked ( feel just a bit soft when pressed with a fork.) Heat till veggies seem to be cooked.
4) When the vegetables are cooked, add salt, turmeric and red chilly powder to them and mix. Heat for another 30 seconds.
5) In a separate bowl, wash basmati rice 3 times with plain water. Drain the water.
6) Add this washed, drained rice to your pyrex bowl. Mix really well. The oil should coat every grain of rice. Now heat for 1 minute. Take the bowl out and mix well again. Heat for another 1 minute.
7) Now add 1&1/2 cup of water to the bowl. Mix well. Heat in microwave for about 6 minutes. Stir once. If it is still moist, heat for 2 minutes and then 2 more and so on.. till the water is mostly gone and the rice looks cooked. If the rice looks really dry, but is still uncooked, then add just enough water to cover the rice and keep heating for 2 minutes and 2 more and so on till the water is absorbed and the rice is cooked.

Usually this whole process takes me about 15 minutes in the morning and goes into the lunch-box with pickle and raita (= chopped tomatoes + yoghurt + salt + chilly powder + amchur or chat masala) on a busy week day!

I am sending this post to Niloufer of Kitchen Samraj who is rounding up recipes that take 20 minutes or less. This quantity took me about 15 minutes, adding 5 more if you are using a smaller or older microwave.. I would still think this shouldn't take more than 20 minutes.

Best wishes! Thanks for reading! Cheers and see you all around!

Two Miles for Moms in May, update 5: Last update

2010-05-03T17:21:00.007-04:00

Hi everyone.. an early Happy Mother's Day to everyone! I will not be able to meet my Mom for Mother's Day. I think the least I can do is send some good wishes her way. At least that is my excuse to start this simple walking commitment this month. :)

Through all of May I will walk 2 miles every week in honor of Mothers everywhere. Through the entire 2 mile walk, I will focus my thoughts on my Mom and mothers in my family, friends and acquaintances and send my good wishes to them all. Good will spreads! I am sure my prayers and good wishes will influence their lives in some positive manner. Simple good wishes are my tribute to all Mothers everywhere!

I decided to do this after seeing Indira of Mahanandi start a work-out vratham. She is doing a work-out, diet and meditation plan for the month of May. And she has offered that others could join her in her vratham. You can check out her plan if you are interested. I felt that her exact plan is a bit intense for me at the present time since I am traveling and have all sorts of dietary menu restrictions already. I also already have my running going. But I wanted to join her at some level. Will also be nice to see what the others in the group do. So I have decided to add this 2 mile walk to my existing weekly running schedule.

Runners need regular cross-training activity. Walking works on different muscle groups than running. 2 miles of walking will be good for my legs. And walking, as I have said before, is something we all can do. The main issue for me is time, but I think I can give about 30-40 minutes once every week to walk 2 miles. The focus on Moms will help me learn a little bit about meditation, perhaps! :)

I will update this post as and how I fit in my 2 mile walks every week throughout the month of May. Anyone who wants to join in, please feel free to comment here. But do also check out Indira's website. Group effort is usually very good motivation to keep up a resolution. I am simply walking and only once a week. You could walk.. walk more than once a week. Or do the diet plan or meditation. You could take up something for Moms, Dads, your family or other people or causes. You could just do it for yourself.. for your own health and happiness. It's your vratham! And don't worry about how little or how much you are doing. I am doing only 2 miles per week! :) It's your intent that counts. At the worst, start out and then stop later. No harm. People at Indira's are doing all sorts of things. And they might all update their progress regularly in the comments. (Not sure how it all works there, first time for me!)

I will update my progress right here on this post and link in on the comments or something at Mahanandi's website as and how I figure out what happens at her end.

Cheers and Happy Mother's Day again!

Week 1: Meditation is Hard

I did get in about 2 miles of walking done. Took me about 35 minutes. And more than the walking, I think the meditation is going to get me!!

All I had to do was walk and focus on my own Mom for goodness sake! One would think that would be so easy! I admit it was quite ok for the first few minutes. I thought about our recent conversations, what's happening with her, what's new.. etc etc. But very soon I saw a wee doggie pulling his owner's leash.. Did you know.. they have these cool flexible leashes that allow the dog to pull on the flex-leash and it goes on extending without dragging the owner along? Wow, this dog was merrily running ahead, but then the flex-portion of the leash ended and he was abruptly jerked back! Yikes! :( That got me thinking about the leash design and the dog's poor throat and his owner, so on and so forth... and I forgot all about Mum.

Finally when I remembered I tried to bring my mind back on the topic of focus. I thought it will be easier if I just pray for her maybe? So the next few minutes were spent in praying for all sorts of joy and happiness and peace in her life. Then I generally prayed for other Moms I knew... women I know who are Moms, new Moms, Grand Moms, Moms-in-law, Step-Moms, to-be Moms, want-to-be-Moms, care-givers, Nannies, foster-Moms. I think I covered everyone! Ok.. I tried to cover everyone. I prayed that they all have love, joy, happiness and peace in their lives.. that all that they wish for may be accomplished... that the families they love be happy. With that I ran out of Momly topics to pray for...

I was done about 1 mile by then though. So I relaxed a bit. And immediately my mind digressed and I thought about all general things around me, roads, flowers, people, my life, my goals, myself... gosh! (Wonder how many hours I spend thinking about myself! Scandalous!) Some more selfish and completely un-Mom related thoughts later I saw a young mother pushing her baby in a stroller.. and was brought back to the topic of focus.

Focus is difficult! How can I proclaim out aloud to the on-line world that I will send out good will when I am not focusing on Moms at all!! That brought me back to thinking about my blog, the blog led to food and finally Mom's food and memories of foodie incidents with her. It's actually quite fun to think about things that have actually happened. Also, incident memories are like stories, they lead you from one incident to another.. Helps to keep our thoughts on track I guess. Well those kept me engaged through most of the second mile without too much distraction. :)

All in all, the prayer and memories worked the most for focusing myself I think. When I get back to general stuff, my mind wanders and I get completely distracted. I think 30+ minutes is probably a bit long for me to concentrate right away. But by the end of May I hope to get better at this. I have more walks to go! In any case some positive thoughts are better than none. ;) It was a good walk! 2 positive miles for Moms are down! :)

I don't know how much good-will my thoughts generated, but atleast I learnt that meditation is difficult! Cheers!

Week 2: It's getting better!

This week I had a lot of time constraints. So it was only today that I finally managed to walk my 2 miles for Moms.I don't know if it's just that after last week's experience my expectations were lower this time.. but today I felt much better about the meditation part.

I had got some advice from Indira saying that concentrating on breathing helps to draw back the mind to our focus. I think that helped today. I do focus on rhythmic breathing while running. But usually walking doesn't force me to do that. Today I consciously kept my mind on the walking-breathing rhythm. With every breath I would remember good thoughts about Mothers. I think it worked out pretty good today. The mind does wander, but every breath reminds one to get back on track. That worked out pretty good for me! So today's two mile walk was a fairly positive experience! :)

Total for May = 2 + 2 = 4 miles for Moms!

PS: For some reason I am getting some kind of error message when I click on Indira's website. So I can no longer get to it and am no longer updating my progress there. Hope Indira reads this. Am not sure how to contact her now. Do let me know if any of you readers have problems when you click on her link here. I can disable them. Not sure if everyone cannot go there or if it's just me. Anyway.. take care and see you around!

Week 3 and 4: Still at it!

Hey everyone..Sorry about the delay in posting last week's update. Just didn't get much time to write up my progress. Being unable to open Indira's site is clearly affecting my motivation to post updates here. Wonder what the bug is! Wonder what everyone else is doing. Anyway.. at least I am early for this week's update! ;)

I did get my 2 mile walk in both last week and today for this week. Much happier with my concentration lately. I found a very nice route that is two miles long and has relatively less activity. So it is very nice and peaceful. Both my walks were on that route. Very pleasant and meditative. Also, if the route is straight and without too many twists and turns I find it easier to get the walking pace in a fast rhythm. That really gets the blood pumping. Walking seems to produce quite a bit of the same endorphins that I get from running. Was very happy at the end of today's 2 miles! :)

Came back, told Mom about it. She is happy that I am happy, but I think she is just humoring me about the focus business! :D

Total for May = 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8 miles for Moms!

Only one more weekend to go.. See you around!

Week 5: Last update

Another 2 miles for Moms in the last week of May! That makes it 10 miles for the month of May! :)

I apologize for the delay in this last update. In addition to the scheduled weekly walk, I did quite a bit of general walking in the last week of May. So I had a pretty good time inserting extra segments of "walk for Moms" in most of those walks.

I must say that this experience has been very good for me. Just spending half an hour once a week trying to channel positivity towards someone important actually gave me positivity through all of my week! There are often people who influence our lives in many ways. These walks helped me appreciate not just my own Mother, but many other women who have made an impact on my life and the lives of many others. My most sincere wishes to mothers and women everywhere.

Total for May = 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 10 miles for Moms!

That was the last update. I will think about doing something on similar lines again. Hopefully will be a little better about updating posts next time. Thanks to Indira and everyone who did the Jihva Vratham for your company and motivation.

Cheers and thanks for reading!

Mustard Fish Curry with Tomatoes

2010-05-01T14:41:00.000-04:00

Through my entire childhood we have been making Bengali type fish curries at my home. So I have always thought of them as our home food. My Mom had got the original recipe for this fish curry from our bengali friend, M Aunty. And M Aunty used to make the best, best, best Bengali food on this planet!! Yum!! We have had some of the most wonderful times with their family! :)

Fig. 1. Mustard Fish Curry (with tomatoes)

Thinking back, the cuisine at my home has, perhaps, been unusually diverse. And if you make dishes from someone else's traditional cuisine often.. verrrry often, they become part of your own home-food and your kids grow up thinking this is "the usual yellow fish curry" with no sense of Bengali, Gujrati, etc. Is that ok? Well, there are many dishes in my Mom's recipe book which I consider "food from our home" and I don't mean to be rude by that. Due credit goes to the origins of these dishes. But I cannot honestly be sure that something we call Bengali or Punjabi or Gujrati is really all that authentic Bengali or Punjabi or Gujrati! Our family's preferences, variations and modifications have changed this fish curry over time. As far as our family is concerned, this and all variations of this recipe are what we call Mustard Fish Curry. Many thanks to M Aunty for sharing this with us!! I hope it still retains a fair essence of what she had originally intended!

When I make this curry, oh, the fragrance of the Panch Phoran seasoning whets my appetite even before I get to the fishy part of the curry!! :) Try it once if you are a non-vegetarian. If you don't have Kalonji, try it without it. But when you do add kalonji you will really notice a difference. I don't use mustard oil. But I imagine that must add tremendous flavor too.

Anyway, if you have all the spices then there is really no major work in this curry. Simplicity of gastronomical proportions! :)

Ingredients:
Fish - about 3 filets of Tilapia is what I have used here.
Rai (Mustard) seeds ~ 2-3 teaspoons
Panch phoran, which is a combination of equal parts of Rai (Mustard seeds), Jeera (Cumin seeds), Badishep (Fennel seeds), Kalonji (Nigella Sativa seeds), Methi (Fenugreek seeds) ~ 1 teaspoon
Green chillies ~ 1, chopped, can increase as per preference
Haldi (turmeric powder) ~ 1/2 teaspoon
Onions - 1 medium, chopped (I added this today, can omit).
Tomatoes - 2 medium, chopped
Oil ~ As needed to fry fish. (I use a non-stick pan and get by on about 2 tablespoons of oil).
Salt - to taste

Procedure:
1) Apply salt and some haldi to the pieces of fish. Marinate for 2 hours or more if possible.
2) Shallow fry fish. Keep aside.
3) Take Rai and grind it into a powder. Add a little water to this powder and grind into paste.
You can also soak Rai seeds in water for a bit, so they become slightly softer and then directly grind them to paste, instead of dry grinding first and regrinding.
4) Season Panch phoran -{Rai, Jeera, Badishep, Kalonji, Methi} in oil.
5) Add chopped onions (I added these this time, optional). Cook.
6) Add chopped green chillies, tomatoes, mustard paste, haldi, salt. Saute till tomatoes are cooked.
7) Add fish and plenty of water. Cook. Stir very lightly or the fish will break.

Mustard Fish Curry is ready! I make it fairly watery if I am serving it with plain rice (like in the above pic). Usually at our place we eat this with rice and Amti made with Toor Dal, (here is my post on Amti made with masoor dal), I will post the Toor Dal version sometime in future. That combo is certainly not traditional, but that's the way we like it at our home. :)

Anyone who has made a similar fish curry, I would love to know which dal or accompaniment you serve with this curry.

If you were looking for more authentic Bengali Food or at least food made by a Bengali, then my best source is Bong Mom's Cookbook. Check it out!

Best wishes and thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Great Egret

2010-04-29T22:41:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone.. time for a nature post! Here is an amazing bird I saw recently while I was traveling. Look at that wisp of a tail! How funny. :)

Fig. 1. Great Egret

It is not usually possible for me to take good pictures of birds.. but I do keep an eye out for them. This one was a lucky shot. The bird was walking fairly close by, carefully, slowly. So I took several pics. This one turned out to be the nicest.

It is likely that this is called a Great Egret. There is more info about Great Egrets on Wikipedia. It is possible that it could also be the Great White Heron, which is the white counterpart of the Great Blue Heron. But wiki describes that the Great White Herons have yellow legs, whereas the Great Egrets have black legs. So I guess this one might be a Great Egret.

Fig. 2 Great Egret

Fig. 3 Great Egret

Keep your eyes open too.. there are lots of beautiful birds and animals around us. :)

Thanks, Mallika (of Veg Bowl!) for tagging me with your Tag award. The rule of this Tag was to post a favorite picture and Tag other people. I guess these are my favorite pictures. :) And I suggest that any blogger who takes pictures of birds and nature around them, please consider yourselves tagged and post something pretty on your blog for us to see!

Shevaiyaan Kheer (Vermicelli pudding)

2010-04-26T15:58:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone.. today's post is this month's dessert.

Fig. 1. Shevaiyaan Kheer

We are abstaining from sugar in our cooking this month. One of our foodies here needs to restrict sugar and carb intake. But obviously, if you tell me "don't make anything with sugar" all I can think about is sugar!! I have even gone out of my way to specifically click and ogle at the items under dessert labels on most food-blogs! And I am just the cook! What about our sweet-foodie here? Especially when the doctor tells you that sugar is the last thing you want to eat now, sugar is immediately the first thing on your mind. Psychology-shmychology!!

Anyway.. here we were. Desserts were taunting us in our dreams at night, pervading our senses in the day and when enough was enough.. we turned to SPLENDA. I cannot say much about artificial sweeteners. There is a plethora of brands and varieties out there. Lots of confusing data about what is good and what isn't. The doctor told our foodie that Splenda is ok, so that's what we are going with now.

I made some Shevaiyaan Kheer. Our foodie had missed kheers for Ugadi.. then came all the other New Years. So kheer it had to be. No Indian festival, wedding or religious community event is complete without a Kheer or Payasam! Also, Shevaiyaan Kheer is the simplest kheer anyone can make, and takes the least amount of time and effort. The shevai themselves soak up a lot of liquid and there is not much need to wait around for the milk to condense.

I looked up my Mom's recipe, but didn't have all the ingredients she had listed. So I will post Mom's specifically sometime in future. I also looked up the recipe at Aayi's Recipes. The one I have made here is my generalized combination of both those recipes to suit the ingredients I had at home.

Ingredients:
Milk (1% reduced fat) ~ 4 cups
Shevai (vermicelli) ~ 1 cup. I think this could be reduced to 3/4 or 1/2 cup in future. Or I could use thin vermicelli like Mom does.
Ghee ~ 2 teaspoons
Cardamom (elaichi) - 2 or 3 finely ground. The peels have fragrance too. So I add the peels too and remove the peels later.
Almonds ~ 15 chopped into slices for garnish.

Sugar ~ 1/2 or 3/4 cup, taste and add as per your preference.
--OR --
Splenda ~ 4 small packets

Procedure:
1) Fry shevai in ghee for a few minutes till they turn light golden in colour.
2) Now add the 4 cups of milk in a deep pot. Stir the milk till it boils. Reduce heat and let it thicken just a little bit.
3) Add fried shevai and ground cardamom to the boiling milk. Stir till shevai are well cooked. The kheer will still be very liquid.
4) Turn off the heat. Add sugar or splenda as per taste and mix. We needed only about 4 packets of splenda. It varies from sweetener to sweetener. Some of them change taste after heating. So that's why I have added this at the end. (Note: If using sugar, Shilpa/Varada Aunty at Aayi's recipes have noted that adding sugar before the vermicelli is cooked will slow down the vermicelli cooking process.)
5) Garnish with chopped pieces of almonds while serving.

My foodie likes this kheer hot. I prefer it to be chilled. Not sure if there is a norm. The above pic is taken after chilling it for a few hours. You can see that the kheer has condensed/thickened quite a bit. Ideally it should be a bit thinner... even after chilling. I think I will use thin vermicelli next time and condense the milk for a shorter time.

Anyway, we offered some as neiveydhya to the Gods in our little dev-ghar at home, and they registered no complaints. ;) So we celebrated and ate the festive kheer with splendid spirits! :)

I am sending this post to a few events -
1) Jihva - Wedding feasts hosted by Priya at Akshaypaatram. This event is the brainchild of Indira of Mahanandi.
2) The Cooking with Seeds - Cardamom event hosted by Priya at Easy N Tasty Recipes.

Cheers and happy cooking everyone!

Why do I run?

2010-04-22T01:33:00.002-04:00

Hi everyone.. I know most of the readers here are looking for food ideas, please don't mind my fitness posts. If you don't want to read about fitness please click on the food label above and just head over to the food-only posts. I love food too! :)

Those of you who are still reading, many thanks! Very sweet of you to humor me! :) There are bound to be some people here who occasionally mull over getting active, being healthy, etc etc,.. stuff I have heard and thought about too. Maybe you will get active and maybe you won't. It's ok. Don't take pressure. You will get active when you want!

And you don't have to run to be active. I am not necessarily advocating running here. If you are considering getting active in some way, do whatever activity you think is fun. Don't pick something boring that you are bound to quit. Dance. Go for a walk. Take your kids for a hike on your local park trail. Jump up high every time you see SRK on the TV. ;) Getting active is all this is about. If these posts give you some food for thought, that is enough.

Also, I feel running has served me in ways that have influenced my all-round life, not just my health. That is why I persist in writing these posts! Even if the topic is running, other factors like motivation are pretty general. And I think someday somebody who may need that little boost (or I, myself) might drop by. Then these posts will be there for them.

So, on to the running post..
Why do I run?
Just to get out - No matter how lame this might sound.. this is the honest, unromantic reason why I started to run. I got sick of being indoors all the time. But there was nowhere I had to go. It was freezing outside. And I was tired of sitting in the house. So I went to the gym. Gyms and large motorized-equipment are a bit scary to me. So I did the tamest thing I could imagine.. walk on the treadmill. But this walking-on-the-spot business very rapidly got boring. And no surprises I quit going to the gym.
                 Back to square one.. getting bored in the house.. cold outside.. Ok now, this time I knew there was no point in quitting the gym. So back to walking again. But this time I started reading up about running and started a run-walk program (Couch to 5K) on the treadmill, joined an online runner's forum that gave me advice on newbie-runner cautions and motivation. In a few days I realized that running is not too bad.. I was enjoying it! :)

To wear sporty clothes - I have never been sporty in my entire life. I was that person who insists on playing only ghar-ghar because everything else makes me sweat. Now, I have a set of runner clothes!! It's actually quite fun to see myself dressed up, looking all runner-like :D

To be gross - Aah we are getting warm here. You just have to trust me on this one.. particularly if you are new to your gym or exercising. No one out there cares what a runner looks like.
              When you are running, you are sweating rivulets. Your face is tomato-red. You are either desperately gasping for breath with your mouth open, tongue hanging out or pressing with one hand the right side of your torso, hoping that stitch in your belly goes away before you fall off the treadmill. All in all, you are so uncoordinated, gross and dirty that people no longer have any expectations from you. It is enough if you don't aim your sweat shots at their feet or blow your nose in their face. (This.. on a food blog!! Raam-Raam!!)
   But yes, runners are allowed to be as gross and awkward as they want. It's one time you can completely lose your inhibitions, no alcohol involved.

To eat what ever I want - In less colloquial terms, health benefits. People often start running for weight-loss. This is a good point. And yes, if I eat too much cake, I do just think "I'll run it off tomorrow".
         But more than weight-loss, physical activity provides a major boost to your overall well-being. When you run, endorphins are produced and when those kick-in, you get a major "happy" high! :) This is actually a significantly important reason for me to persist in running. When I am running, the positive aspects of the most heartbreaking projects just shine through like spotlights! Some of the best ideas I get are while I am on a run!

To make friends - I run alone.. by myself. But, there appears to be some cosmic connection between runners! Whenever I see another person running on the street, I feel a strange kinship with him. Dude, I feel your pain, I feel your joy! Run, Forest, run! The fat lady huffing along the side of the street, I feel like she is my friend! What's more, it's not just me. Runners are really friendly to other runners. When I am running and I see another person running, every time they will nod to me or wave or at least grunt and give some brief sign of acknowledgment! Some really long-time runners too will sometimes give me a thumbs up or say "You're running good!" and you will find me beaming through the rest of my run! :)
         Without trying to join any group, I have somehow become part of a group - a group of people who are bound by a single activity! We don't know each other, we don't particularly remember each person we see running. But when I am running by myself, every runner out there is sending me goodwill.. hoping that I have a good run!

To win every day - When I am running, I usually have a goal, say, "Run 40 minutes" or "Run 3 miles". These goals are usually set by whatever training plan I am following at that point. The plans usually set something for the whole week - Sunday rest, Monday 2 miles, Tuesday rest, Wednesday 2 miles, Thursday walk for 30 mins, Friday rest, Saturday 3 miles. Every day, I have to meet the goals of this plan. On 2-mile-days, running 2 miles is the goal. On rest days, rest is the goal. Long-run days are the time of reckoning! If I have been consistent all week, then I can make it through the 3 miles long-run. If I have slacked off all week even doing 2 of those 3 miles may be too hard.
      But who cares about all these numbers? So I run 2 miles, 3 miles.. what's the big deal! The deal is.. SUCCESS!!!!!! Every time I run just a little bit longer than before.. I have succeeded in my goals! No matter what happens in the rest of my life, running is the one thing that gives me success every single day! Every time I reach a new distance, that success stays with me for the rest of the week! So most certainly I will push hard and get my success today! No one will know I ran 2.9 miles or 3.1 miles or what, but I will know!
         I only have to beat myself yesterday to win today. I set my own targets. I set my own pace. I am in full control! And I love it! :)

Cheers and thanks for reading!!

PS: These mile and time numbers are generic and arbitrary in this post. Don't take them too seriously.

Masoor Amti

2010-04-18T01:31:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone.. another somewhat traditional recipe today. Masoor Amti is a dal or lentil based dish, eaten with rice, commonly made at homes in Karnataka and Maharashtra. This recipe is my Mom's, probably passed down to her by my Grandmother.

Fig.1 Masoor Amti

I find these typical recipes very convenient. It's quite amazing how simple some of the preparations are. Very little time required for prep-work too.

Ingredients:
Masoor dal - 1 cup
Fresh grated coconut - 2 table spoons
Onion - 2 chopped (used in parts)
Tamarind paste - 1 teaspoon
Amti powder - 1 teaspoon
(Amti powder is like garam masala. I presently use a treasured stash from my Grandma's kitchen. You can get it at Mangalore stores or some such Kanara grocery store in India. Sometime in future I will see if I can post a recipe for amti powder. For now I am posting here a link to Amti powder as posted by Nupur on One Hot Stove.)
Red chilly powder - 1 teaspoon
Oil - 2 teaspoons
Salt to taste

Procedure:

1) Soak masoor dal for 1 - 4hrs. Pressure cook. Mash a bit, add salt and keep aside.

2) Fry fresh grated coconut (which itself contains some oil) till light brown.

3) Add 1 or 1&1/2 chopped onion and saute well.

4) Grind the fried mixture with tamarind paste.

5) Take cooked masoor in a deep pot. Add amti powder, chilly powder, salt, ground mixture and water (enough to get dal-like consistency) and cook till the dal reaches a rolling boil.

6) In a separate small frying pan (or a tadka pan) heat 1-2 teaspoons of oil, and fry the remaining chopped onions till they are slightly brown (caramelised).

7) Now add the fried onion and its oil, as seasoning to above cooked dal. Briefly mix, and you are done!

Note: I have added about 1/2 of a bottle gourd (lauki) chopped into cubes to the dal itself while it was cooking in the pressure cooker (in step 1).. just cos it was sitting in my fridge. You could add suitable veggies to your liking.

I just heard about the Delicious Dals event hosted by Suma at Veggie Platter. So I am sending this dal to her event roundup.

Ok, that's all.. see you all soon!

Papaya tree

2010-04-16T20:55:00.000-04:00

Pretty papayas (I think) growing near my friend's house.

And she had never noticed them before!! Do you notice which trees grow near your house? Which birds flit onto your patio?

I often don't know the names for trees, flowers, birds and cannot identify a thing. But let's see, I have decided to post anything pretty I see (that waits long enough for me to click).

If I don't know what it is, you will! :)

Cheers!

Bhenda Upkari (Spiced Okra)

2010-04-13T00:10:00.010-04:00

Hi everyone! Today's post is a somewhat traditional dish - Bhenda Upkari or Spiced Okra (Ladyfingers). This is a simple preparation as long as you have the required ingredients. My favorite dish to make for myself.

Fig. 1. Bhenda Upkari

Lot of people really don't like Bhindi. But I so love it! Actually I didn't know that I liked it. Then I didn't eat it for many years. Family here doesn't like it at all. So I didn't cook what I figured no one else would eat. I thought that I am probably ok without Bhindi and simply never made it. Then after many years I happened to eat Bhindi back home. And I remembered how de-licious it was! Oh, I had missed Bhindi, my darling Bhindi.. for all these years and I didn't even know it!!

(Very filmy I know.. Jaaney Tu Ya Jaaney Naa-sque.. My lost and found love for the vegetable next door!) -- PJ Queen strikes again!

Now I look for excuses to make this for myself, (just for myself if necessary), but once in a while I make it. And what's really sweet, out of consideration for me now my family members are pushing themselves to just barely eat one-serving of Bhindi! :) If they eat even one-serving that is ok with me! Thanks people! :)

These few weeks I am visiting a friend who loves Bhindi in all its forms. So now I intend to make as much Bhindi as possible to last my tastebuds and my blog a lifetime! :D

This dish is a traditional preparation. This is my Mom's recipe. I am not sure, maybe several communities in Karnataka might make it. I cannot be sure about its exact authenticity or roots. Anyway, here goes..

Ingredients:

Bhindi (okra/ladyfingers) - 1 packet frozen chopped

Methi (fenugreek) seeds ~ 1/2 teaspoon

Amti powder ~ 1 teaspoon.

(Amti powder is like garam masala. I presently use a treasured stash from my Grandma's kitchen. You can get it at Mangalore stores or some such Kanara grocery store in India. Sometime in future I will see if I can post a recipe for amti powder. For now I am posting here a link to Amti powder as posted by Nupur on One Hot Stove.)

Red chilly powder ~ 1 teaspoon

Oil ~ 1 tablespoon

Salt to taste

Procedure:

1) Use a non-stick pan. Heat oil, add methi seeds. Let them get lightly browned.

2) Add amti powder, salt and red chilly powder to oil. Mix.

3) Add frozen okra pieces (unthawed). Stir well and make sure the spices coat the okra well while it is still frozen solid. Keep the heat on medium and let the bhindi cook. Stir from time to time. Bhindi will stick to the pan. Do not cover the pan or add water. This will prevent the bhindi from getting too slimy. Cook till the bhindi gets soft, slightly browned and well cooked. My Mom used to manage to get it somewhat crisp. :)

That's all! Simple enough! I will post Masoori Amti next, which goes well with this Bhenda Upkari and Rice. Cheers and enjoy!

Paneer Stuffed Bell Peppers

2010-04-09T17:15:00.004-04:00

Hey everyone..! Today's post is about bright and colourful Paneer Stuffed Bell Peppers! I read about these Stuffed Bell Peppers on Aparna's blog Apy Cooking. Aparna is a fairly new food-blogger, but she's no novice at cooking! She has several impressive recipes on her blog. Quite coincidentally, she and I started our blogs on the same day! So we have common blog-birthdates! :)

Fig. 1. Stuffed Bell Peppers

The interesting thing about this recipe is that Aparna has baked the dish and ever-so-casually combined tofu in the conventional Indian stuffing. :) Now I have never made anything with tofu (barely ever eaten it either). So tofu would be somewhat a leap of faith for me. I did, however, keep her recipe in mind for using with Paneer.

Have been on the lookout for paneer based recipes lately. In the past I have always eaten the typical Besan Stuffed Peppers, usually at parties. Aparna's idea of adding protein to the stuffing lingered in my mind. And when I saw a batch of fresh and vibrant bell peppers in the store, the image of Aparna's dish immediately flashed before my eyes. Here was a chance to make a fancy side-dish!

Most of this recipe is from Aparna's blog, with some modifications to suit my needs:

Ingredients:
3 capsicums or bell peppers
2 medium onions
1/4 cup besan (gram flour or chickpea flour)
2 tomatoes
1 teaspoon garlic paste
1 teaspoon ginger paste
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon jeera (cumin seed) powder
1 teaspoon dhania (coriander seed) powder
1/4 teaspoon haldi (turmeric)
1/2 packet frozen readymade paneer. Can use home-made. Recipe for paneer from my previous post is here. (Aparna used tofu).
1/2 cup of chopped coriander (cilantro) leaves
Oil ~ 2 tablespoons (to saute as well as to grease the baking tray).
Salt to taste
A bit of time: Remember this needs to be baked. So apart from making the stuffing (~15 minutes) please allocate 40-50 minutes for just baking.

Procedure:
I - Make stuffing:
1) Heat oil. Saute chopped onions.
2) Add besan and roast until besan becomes fragrant.
3) Add chopped tomatoes.
4) When sufficiently cooked, add ginger-garlic pastes, jeera and dhania powders, chilli powder, haldi and salt. Mix well and cook for 2 minutes.
5) Now crumble the paneer (just roughly by hand) on top of this mixture. Add salt for paneer. Mix and saute well.
6) Add finely chopped coriander leaves and mix. Now the stuffing is ready.

II - Stuff the Peppers:
1) Line a baking tray with foil. And grease the foil with a tiny bit of oil. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2) Wash and cut each pepper into 2 halves. De-seed the halves. Stuff each half with the above stuffing.
3) Place the stuffed peppers with stuffing side up in the baking tray. And bake for 40-50 minutes, at 350 degrees F (rough estimate, please adjust for your oven) till the peppers are cooked. It took me about 50 minutes, because I kept opening the oven to check and that would make the temperature inside go down! Impatience!

Done!!

Now for my dirty little secret.... One of the foodies I am lately cooking for, is on a low-carb, low-sugar, and many-things-restricted diet. So I skipped the besan! (Golly-jeepers-omygosh-blasphemous!!) Actually that is why we made this at home and didn't get it at a restaurant!! Without the besan there are apparently no carbs in the rest of the ingredients! It seems the paneer is only good protein, no carbs, (which explains the desperate search for paneer recipes on my part) and the veggies have no carbs either. Because of the baking, the paneer turned out just perfectly browned and crisp. So despite having omitted the besan which is usually critical for this dish, we have crusty paneer stuffing!!! :)

So really, many thanks to Aparna, for thinking about adding tofu (in my case, paneer) in this dish and for baking it. Keep your innovative modifications coming! I truly appreciate them! :)

I'll be sure to add besan next time, that is why I have included it in the recipe above. Do not skip it, if that is feasible for you. The crunch from besan remains in the entire stuffing. In my case, the paneer top of the stuffing was crisp enough, but not crisp really deep inside. But that was good enough for us.. for now. :)

Since this is a sort of modification of a restaurant style recipe I am sending this to Blog-Bites #2 which calls for "I never made this at home" recipes from other bloggers. This event is hosted by Nupur of One Hot Stove.

Cheers and 'apy cooking!

Lasooni Dal

2010-04-04T16:54:00.004-04:00

Hi everyone! Browsing through blogs is a fun pass-time for me when I am free. Sailu's Kitchen is a great blog I found.. simply amazing pictures and spicy dishes! :) One such tantalizing dish I found there is Lasooni dal. It reminded me of a spicy garlic dal I had eaten at a Punjabi restaurant some years back. Actually there are plenty of really good Andhra and South-Indian style recipes too at Sailu's website. This dish just happens to be North Indian and is the first one I have tried from there.

Fig. 1 Lasooni Dal

This Lasooni Dal recipe is really very "Hotel" or "Dhaba" type. And still, requires very basic and minimal ingredients. So it's good to serve when casual friends have suddenly dropped-by on a Sunday morning and you don't want to spend too much time in the kitchen, but wouldn't want to serve plain dal-roti either.

I really liked how good the garlic garnish looks in Sailu's picture!! The dish tastes great too. Be sure to garnish the dal! Even for yourself, when you have no guests and are not taking pictures! :) I didn't have chopped fresh coriander, but that would be nice for additional garnish too.

I have made a few changes in the original recipe to match whatever ingredients I had. No spinach or onions for instance. So here goes..

Ingredients:Cooked tur dal ~ 1&1/2 cups
Chopped tinda ~ 3/4 cup
Chopped tomatoes ~ 2 small tomatoes
Cumin seeds (jeera) ~ 1 teaspoon
Garlic pods, peeled and sliced long ~ 5-6 medium sized
Oil ~ 1 tablespoon
Red chilly powder ~ 1 teaspoon
Salt to taste

Procedure:
1) Cook dal in pressure cooker.
2) Saute cumin seeds (jeera) in oil till sizzling.
3) Add long slices of garlic. This needs a tiny bit more oil because the garlic sticks to the pan otherwise. Or use non-stick pan. Saute till golden brown. Remove about 1/2 of the garlic for garnish later.
4) Now to this add chopped tomatoes and saute till fairly done.
5) Add chopped tinda and saute.
6) Now add salt, red chilly powder, turmeric (haldi) and saute a bit more.
7) Now add cooked dal. More salt if needed (according to dal). Add water as needed to achieve desired consistency. Boil till bubbling hot.
8) Garnish with fried slices of garlic. Yum!

Combination:
I kept it simple and served this with rotis, salad, pickle, raita and papad. The Lasooni Dal is so flavourful that it becomes the center of the meal. This combo with salad and stuff worked out really well for me. Perfect light lunch!

This post goes to Nupur's One Hot Stove event, Blog Bites #2. Do visit them and check out what restaurant-style recipes other participants have scouted from blogs!

I just realized that Sailu's Kitchen is also featured in this month's Tried and Tasted event hosted by Lakshmi of Kitchen Chronicles. This event has originated at Zlamoushka's Spicy Kitchen. So I am also sending this post to Lakshmi's round up.

Ok everyone.. happy cooking!!

Turtle crossing and other stuff

2010-04-03T08:00:00.001-04:00

I have to go to the gym today. Hate going to the gym. Running on the treadmill is terribly boring. It's one single speed. At best I can vary the incline, vary the speed a little. And ultimately, fact remains that I am going nowhere!!! :( The TV has to be on some "neutral" channel like the news - to accommodate all varieties of co-gymmers. And news is really not the most motivating channel, is it! :( So I use my favorite ploy, act like I am running outdoors! Think about it, dream about it.. plan for my next run outdoors!

Running outdoors is very different. I guess when I am outside, the sights and sounds and smells of the outdoors keep me fully occupied. Firstly, I keep an eye out for "strangers". Always, safety first! No matter where you are running. But there are also plenty of other beautiful things out. There are birds twittering about, fragrant flowers on the bloom, all kinds of insects buzzing around them (make sure my mouth is closed!), skunks and badgers skulking around the trash and squirrels that actually stare you down! Geese that refuse to move out of the way, threateningly rustling their feathers, lest you expect them to move! Get out of the way, Runners! We ain't moving! :)

I also keep an eye out for doggies who are happy-to-chase-any-moving-body. When the sun gets up, so do dogs. And when they gotta go, they gotta go. So groggy dog-walkers bring out their dogs for their morning walks. And even the business doesn't distract a dog from spotting a running human. So I make sure to keep a respectful pace and distance when I see a huge dog. :)

Once, while out on a running trail, I saw a turtle!!!!!!! How cute! It was on one side of the trail, and looked like it wanted to cross to the other side. But then it saw me and acted all nonchalant and aloof-like, as if this was its casual hang-out, at the side of a trail. I slowed down and sauntered around, doing my best take on a "take-it-easy-kid" attitude, (actually waiting to see it cross the path and check out where it goes). But eventually my impatience got the better of me and I figured I would make my loop and check on this guy on the way back. When I got back, the turtle was still right there!!! Hadn't moved an inch! Slow and steady winning the race certainly is a tall story. :) I made another loop and returned and finally the chap had gone. Can't be sure whether it just got sick of me interrupting its trail-crossing-ventures and returned the way it had come or maybe it did cross over to the other side and carried on with its journey to Middle Earth! I like to think that it did the latter! ;)

There's plenty to see when you are out running! And I love it all. :)

But, today we have to run on the treadmill! (I use "we" when pushing myself to do the unpleasant. Makes me feel like I have plenty of company). So, we shall just deal with the treadmill today, use that time to dream about the outdoors! Run outside tomorrow, right? Yes, tomorrow is another day! ;)

PS: I wish had taken a picture of the turtle then! I'll be sure to do so if this happens again in future! Now I have a blog!!

Palak Paneer / Aloo Palak

2010-04-01T01:02:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone..! Today I am making Palak Paneer (Spinach with Cottage Cheese)... a quick and easy dish.

Fig.1 Palak Paneer

Usually I make Aloo Palak (Spinach with Potatoes). It is supposedly easier to absorb the iron from Spinach if you consume it with something which contains Vitamin C. Since potatoes have plenty of Vitamin C, I try to make Aloo Palak more often than Palak Paneer. It is the same recipe. In any case I like to add some lemon juice at the end. I hope that kicks in a tiny bit of Vit-C too. --OR-- I just force everyone to drink orange juice with the meal! ;)

Today it's the Palak Paneer version. Who doesn't like Paneer! This recipe is originally from Sanjeev Kapoor's book. Here I am making this by memory, since I don't have the book handy. I will update the post later if I find there are any changes in the original recipe.

Ingredients:Palak (Spinach) ~ 1 large packet frozen.
Paneer - cubed,1/2 packet frozen, ready store-bought (Could use home-made paneer, recipe here.)
Jeera (Cumin seeds) - 1 teaspoon
Peeled, chopped garlic or paste ~ about 3 large pods
Chopped green chillies - 1
Oil ~ 2 tablespoons
Lemon juice ~ 1 or 2 teaspoons (as per taste)
Salt to taste

Procedure:
1) Heat oil in a wide pan. Add paneer cubes to oil. Shallow fry paneer pieces for a few minutes till they are lightly golden. Add some salt to the paneer. Now move them out on a paper towel to soak excess oil.
2) Meanwhile, cook the frozen palak in a microwave-safe bowl. Grind the cooked palak to a smooth paste.
3) Saute jeera, chopped garlic and chopped green chillies in the remaining oil in the frying pan. Add ground palak, some salt, some water and cook.
4) Add paneer cubes and cook.
Palak Paneer is ready!

I like to add lemon juice just before serving. If you will not consume the whole dish at once, then separate out as much as you will consume and add lemon juice to only that portion of the dish (since the lemon juice is not being cooked here.)

If I make Aloo Palak, I don't fry the potatoes (skip step 1 above). So I can use far less oil, only enough for step 3. I cook the potatoes separately in a microwave, peel, cube and salt them. And then add those to palak as mentioned above in step 4, instead of paneer.

Combination
Palak Paneer or Aloo Palak goes well with any Roti, Phulka, Paratha or Dal+Rice.

Happy cooking!

Sunshine Award!

2010-04-01T01:00:00.004-04:00

Hey everyone.. Mallika (MD) from the Veg Bowl! was sweet enough to share the "Sunshine Award" with my obscure little blog! :)

Thanks, Mallika, for the award and for visiting here!

My sincere appreciation also to everyone who visits and reads my posts!

And for my part of sharing the award, I would like to share it with all the food-bloggers whose blogs encourage people out there hunting the internet for recipe ideas! :)

Keeping up the habit

2010-03-29T19:30:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone..

I have been moderately decent about running lately. Not very good. Its difficult some days to find the time. But I have been putting in at least half an hour, 2-3 times a week. I think that is good enough for now. When the going is tough, there is no need to be too hard on oneself. I am happy if I just keep up the routine for now. Running easy, not hard; I just aim to finish the time or mileage goal for the day.

Hope you all are doing fine with your goals too. Good luck and see you around!

Vegetable Upma

2010-03-26T17:48:00.001-04:00

Fig.1 Vegetable Upma

Today's post is for the Tried and Tasted event held at Dil Se this month, which features Raaga - The Singing Chef! I had never visited Raaga before (I am fairly new around here). I saw this event and her blog mentioned on other blogs. So I went and checked her out. She has tons of recipes. Lots of vegetables. Good find for future reference. From her posts, you feel Raaga is someone you might easily know, amongst your friends or class-mates or work-mates. If you explore her other blog you will see a lot of cool pics she takes around Delhi, etc. I also liked the fact that quite a few of Raaga's recipes resonate my sentiments for the quick, time-crunched style of food I often have to make.

Do I love to cook? Or am I cooking because I just have to? I think it's a combination of both.. there are times when I love to put together something awesome, don't mind the effort at all.. and other days when I am just so exhausted and tired of having to do everything on this planet!!

One such hectic day, I got home in time for a late lunch. I didn't want to cook. But I was hungry. My brain hurt and so did my body. So I did what everyone does in these situations.. I procrastinated! I surfed the internet.. the friend of all procrastinators.. hoping the food thoughts would just go away.. instead I found myself prowling on Raaga's food-blog. I casually browsed through her posts, looked at pictures of food, read her funny weeknight-stories about how she quickly whipped up something delicious! :) In no time I was in a better mood ... Look at this woman, I thought, she's cooking on weeknights! Yes, it's tough, but she's getting on with it! :) Inspired! Surely.. there must be something quick I can make for myself too! That's when I zeroed in on this quick and easy Vegetable Upma from her blog. At such times, we just let the vibes from Singing Chefs draw us to the kitchen and whip up an Upma. Go crazy and have breakfast at lunchtime! ;)

I loosely followed Raaga's recipe with whatever ingredients I had in my pantry and refrigerator. The Upma looked so good and I was so ravenous that I remembered to take a picture only after I had already scarfed down some! ;)

Here's what went into it:
Ingredients:
Rava (semolina) - 1 cup
Water ~ 2-3 cups
Mixed vegetables (chopped, frozen bag, contained onions, red and green peppers, carrots, peas, corn, lima beans, etc) - 1&1/2 cups
Udad Dal - 1/2 teaspoon
Chana Dal - 1/2 teaspoon
Mustard seeds - 1/4 teaspoon
Heeng (Asafoetida) - pinch
Kadi patta (Curry leaves) ~ 6
Ginger paste - 1 tablespoon (I like lots of ginger)
Red chilly powder -1 teaspoon, or to taste
Oil ~ 1 tablespoon
Salt to taste

Procedure:
1) Dry roast rava (or, put it in a bowl in a microwave and heat for about 3-4 minutes).
2) Heat oil, season the udad and chana dals, mustard, heeng, kadi patta and then ginger (in that order).
3) Add frozen (semi-thawed) chopped vegetables in the pan. Saute till they are cooked. Add salt and red chilly powder. Mix well.
4) Add roasted rava, saute a bit. Now add water. Water measurement may vary depending on how high your heat is. Add reasonable amount so that rava can absorb it. Add salt, cover and cook.

That's that!! Vegetable Upma is ready and we have triumphed over another day! :)

Bengali Rasgulla

2010-03-20T01:29:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone! Today's post is is my entry to Nupur's One Hot Stove event Blog Bites: Cookers. I don't have a rice cooker or slow cooker. So I am going to tell you about something I make in my basic pressure cooker - Rasgullas.

Fig. 1. Bengali Rasgulla

I never thought of Rasgullas as something to be made at home, least of all by me! They just sounded too exotic. It probably cannot be done, I thought. But once I made them, I was so glad I tried. I had been unnecessarily worrying about nothing!

However, instead of boast-blogging about "I made Rasgullas, it's all in the genes!!!" this Blog Bites event gives me the perfect opportunity to tell you all that the credit to making these goes entirely to Manjula of Manjula's Kitchen/ Bengali Rasgulla. She has videos on her website and youtube. And I used to watch those for time-pass... you know, just to watch something in the background while cooking-cleaning, when you don't have cable. I would never have actually considered making these if Manjula were not so sweet and encouraging in her video. She says at the end of the video, "..so how you can go wrong? You can never go wrong making the rasgullas!" :) By that she doesn't mean that it is an easy thing to make, but that one should buck up and try to do things that appear hard. It's possible that we were just worrying about nothing! And if indeed it turns out to be as tricky as it appeared, then we go about learning damage control with her help! ;) Never say never again!!!

The following is almost entirely her recipe. I have, however, made this a few times by now, so here I include just a few changes to adapt to my pressure cooker (which is smaller than hers and has a whistle). I must say that 4 out of 5 times I have made these they turned out perfect. (Once they turned out all squashy flat since I cooked them for too long, not knowing the correct whistle/cooking time-estimate. The gullas lost their patience in the cooker that time.)

Just fyi, I don't know what is the difference between Rasgulla and Bengali Rasgulla, which is what these are called on Manjula's blog. So if anyone knows, please enlighten me!

Ingredients:
2% milk - 4 cups
Lemon juice - 1/4 cup
Water to dilute lemon juice - 1/4 cup
Sugar - 1&1/2 cup
Water for sugar syrup - 4&1/2 cups

Procedure:
I - Making Paneer balls:
1) Boil 4 cups of milk. Add diluted lemon juice to it when boiling. Separate the paneer from the liquid by draining it using a cheese-cloth in a colander. Important - you need to wash the paneer at this point to ensure that no flavour of lemon remains in it.

2) Now this paneer is tied up tight in a cheesecloth and squeezed dry. Then this bundle is left under a heavy weight for about 1 hour to ensure that the paneer is dried well enough.

3) You will know if the amount of dryness is correct (say check after 1 hour) if you take a small marble-sized piece of the paneer in your hand and knead it with your fingers. After kneading for about 30 seconds, if the piece rolls into a nice smooth ball, then the paneer is ready. If your fingers feel wet then there is still water that needs to be drained. If the paneer is too crumbly, develops cracks in the ball, then you need to add a few drops of water. If you need more info, I have mentioned (in excrooociating detail) the method for making paneer in one of my previous posts.

4) If the paneer consistency is right, then proceed to take the entire lump of paneer on a separate plate or flat surface. Now knead the paneer very well, like dough, smearing the paneer flat over the plate and re-lumping/re-rolling it as you knead.

5) Now roll 16 small balls from this paneer. (Manjula rolls 12. My cooker has a smaller diameter than hers and the balls float on top. I make 16 smaller ones so that they don't stick to each other.)

Fig. 2. Well-kneaded paneer balls show very few cracks

II - Cooking them in the pressure cooker:
1) Now heat sugar water in a pressure cooker (with the coil on somewhat high, to speed up). Make sure the sugar is completely dissolved.

2) Turn the coil heat to medium. Put rolled balls into lightly steaming hot sugar-water in the pressure cooker. Not quite boiling. Add about half a glass more of unheated water at this point (just so its not at boiling point) and close the lid of the cooker. No whistle put on at this time.

Fig. 3. Paneer balls are put with sugar water to cook in the pressure cooker

3) Here I record what happened this time for me. Every time is slightly different. ;) After steam started coming out of the cooker (took about 8-10 mins after putting on the lid), I put on the whistle. The 1st whistle went off after 9-10 mins. I turned off the heat. Left it on the hot coil till it cooled down. Usually I just wait for the steam to cool off on its own. (But for the record, this time I waited for about 15 minutes and then made the steam go out myself. I wouldn't recommend this at all for safety reasons!)

4) Rasgullas should be cooked at this point. Open the lid when cool and place rasgullas with some of the sugar syrup in a bowl to refrigerate for a few hours. Serve chilled.

Fig. 4. Rasgulla paradise awaits!

Verdict: Heaven!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spring is in the air!!!!!!

2010-03-18T18:42:00.002-04:00

...... and how fragrant!!!

If anyone knows which flowers these are, I would love to know ..!

Paneer

2010-03-17T14:34:00.000-04:00

I am making paneer today. I will refer to this post later on when I use paneer in spicy or sweet dishes. One new thing I am trying here is using viva brand towels to drain the paneer. Other than that this is just a normal paneer making recipe, so you can feel free to use cheese-cloth instead of these towels.

Fig. 1 Paneer

I really hate using re-used cheese-cloth to squeeze and drain water from paneer. It's not just the chore of washing it, which is quite alright if I wash one piece of cloth by hand. Its more that, after it is dried and I need to use it again, I worry.. how clean did I wash it? I don't like the questionable hygiene of re-used cloth touching food.

I have been using cheese-cloth all these years, it certainly works out well. And I did not know of any other option. I had heard about some sort of plastic paneer-maker thing, but as far as my friends have tried, it doesn't work out well. Recently I saw several advertisements for viva towels being used to make chakka (drain yogurt water), etc. So I wondered if I could give that a shot just once for paneer. It's disposable, presumably cleaner than cloth I have washed by hand. But will tiny pieces/shreds of towel paper get into my paneer? Will the paper towel tear up?

So today I show results from my experiment of using viva towels instead of cheese-cloth to drain paneer. From the picture above you can see that one way or another I did get paneer at the end. ;)

Clarification:
Here I am making paneer for Rasgullas. So the measures for milk and lemon juice and "sitting under weight time" are according to that recipe.

Ingredients:
2% reduced fat milk - 4 cups
Lemon juice - 1/4 cup
Water - roughly 1/4 cup

Procedure:
1) Mix lemon juice and water to dilute the lemon juice. (This I do especially because it lets me use minimum lemon juice while making in the paneer, which is important if you intend to use the paneer for sweet dishes like rasgulla, sandesh, rasmalai, etc.)
2) Now keep milk to boil.

Fig.2 Milk being heated

3) When milk is bubbling, turn off the heat and add the diluted lemon juice. Add gradually. You might not need the entire 1/4 cup of lemon juice. (I didn't, but I'm afraid I cannot estimate how much I might have used on account of it being diluted.)
4) Stop when paneer floats to the top. Liquid below should be translucent. Now its time to drain out the liquid from this paneer.

Fig.3 Paneer floats to the top

5) I doubled two towels, wet them, squeezed out the water. The viva towels held fairly strong when I did that. Then I put them in a steel colander over a vessel (I like to collect the paneer liquid - is it called whey?)

Fig. 4. Towels waiting to drain paneer

6) Pour the paneer with its liquid into the colander. Paneer sits in the towel in the colander. Liquid gets collected in the vessel underneath.

Fig. 5. Towels drain paneer

7) Now I took the colander with paneer and washed the paneer with plain water once or twice (like washing rice or dal.) This is so the lemon flavour rinses out of the paneer. Need to wash well. Otherwise desserts made with the paneer may smell of lemon. (The lemony-ness is usually ok if paneer is being used in savoury dishes.)
8) Now I bundled up the towel with the paneer. I lightly squeezed out the paneer portion first (leaving top empty part slightly loose, but not quite open so as to not allow paneer to fall out from there). Then I squeezed out the top empty portion of the towels. Repeated squeezing out the paneer liquid a few more times till I felt like I have given it my best. If you are too aggressive with this, the towels may tear. They are not ultra strong.
10) Now I left a heavy weight i.e. pressure cooker (my heaviest item) on top of the squeezed-paneer bundle for about 1 hour (for rasgullas). What did the paneer look like after the allotted 1 hour? Perfect consistency!! (For paneer pic, refer to picture called Fig.1.) No shreds of the towels have found their way into the paneer. And paneer is as dry as it needs to be. Just perfect! If you want to use paneer for some savoury dish, like palak paneer, then you can leave the weight on the paneer for a little longer, say 2 hours in all, to get the paneer to be a little more dry/hard.

Verdict:
Is the viva towels experiment recommended? Umm.. let's see what we have..
Are there shreds of paper in the paneer? No. :)
Do the towels tear? They could tear if one is not very careful. So ensuring the dryness of paneer is a little bit tricky and requires a small amount of judgement.

So yes, I will use the viva towels again.

Something to note for future, I should get towels without coloured drawings on them. Who knows what kind of colour they use.. how fast it may be.. could be going into the paneer from the towels! Was not obvious here.

Feel free to weigh your options. My duty was to tell the world about my experiment. Spread information. Job done!

Happy cooking everyone!!

Aloo methi

2010-03-14T08:04:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone..! Aloo methi with rotis today.

Fig. 1. Aloo methi

I love methi. No fresh methi here. Had some frozen methi chunks in my freezer that I needed to use up. Also wanted to make something that has heeng. My old heeng (ordinary store bought) was nothing compared to the heeng I was recently gifted by some family. Hmmm.. strong fragrance! I disagree with those who think heeng stinks. Ok, it's not great to smell.. but it's the distinct smell of seasoning! Seasoning isn't seasoning till heeng seasons the seasoning. (Goodness.. this is why people will soon be telling me not to blog!!) Anyway, this is my entry for Think Spice - Heeng, at Kharas Mithas which is part of the Think Spice event series started by Sunita Bhuyan.

Here's some info about Heeng on Wikipedia and about Methi on wikipedia. Do you like to read up about food? I do! I would like to read up about anything if given enough time. :)

Actually I'm sure there are more elaborate recipes out there which use heeng. But this is a start. This recipe is my Mom's. Don't know where she got it from. When I just started out cooking on my own, she had gifted me a nice diary where she had written up a pretty decent number of her recipes for me to take along with me. :) So this was one of the first recipes I tried on my own, written in her own hand. And I still always read it from the same book in her writing! :) Comes right every time!

Ingredients:
Potatoes, cooked, peeled and chopped ~ 2 medium
Methi (fenugreek leaves) ~ 3 frozen blocks (must be roughly 1 cup after defrosting)
Onion, finely chopped ~ 1 medium
Oil ~ 1 tablespoon
Rai (mustard seeeds) ~ 1/2 teaspoon
Jeera (cumin seeds) ~ 1/2 teaspoon
Heeng (asafoetida) ~ pinch
Haldi (turmeric) powder ~ 1/2 teaspoon
Green chillies ~ 1 or to taste
Salt to taste

Procedure:
1) Season rai, then jeera, then heeng in oil.
2) Add finely chopped onion. Saute till translucent. Add haldi.
3) Add methi and fry till slightly oily.
4) Add salt and chopped green chillies.
5) Add chopped, cooked potatoes and salt for potatoes.
6) Add very little water as per your preference (if you want slight moistness). Mix and cook.

Combination: I like to serve this with the simplest possible dal and rice or rotis.The flavour of methi gets overpowered by stronger accompaniments.

Running today

2010-03-13T20:58:00.001-05:00

I like to run.

I like to get out of the house and walk. Not stroll, walk.. walk walk.. walk faster.. then I get into a rhythm.. walking swiftly... and at one point, walking is no longer efficient.. then I run.. Its a slow run... very slow run... you can call it a jog.. a very slow jog.. The running world does not approve of the word "jog", its just called a run, no matter what the speed. :)

So I go slow.. as slow as I have to go. Am I gasping for breath? Then I go slower still. I don't care what people think. I don't care who looks at me. I don't care that others are running faster or longer. All I care is.. one foot goes in front of the other and I push on ahead... run run run..

I love to run! The wind rushes past my face.. the road sweeps behind me, as I put my feet forward one after another.. one more step, one more step. Deep breaths, deep breaths.. inhaling for 3 steps (right left right), exhaling through the next 3 steps (left right left), inhaling, exhaling.. I had never been so conscious of breath!! and its such a systematic rhythm!! in-in-in-out-out-out... 1-2-3, 1-2-3... in-in-in, out-out-out... 1-2-3, 1-2-3...and my mind is forced to sing.. "Kuch na... kaho..!! Kuch bhi na... kaho...!! 1-2-3, 1-2-3!! ...... " Shuddh desi runner!! ;)

PS: This post is for my sake.. so I remember tomorrow how fun it was to run yesterday. When the bed is warm and comfortable, its cold outside, even the sun is not quite ready to be up, and my alarm goes off telling me to get up and run, I often forget how running is so great!! Many such run-skipped mornings later, I have entirely forgotten the joy of running, I have forgotten that I can run, that it was the very effort that brought me joy! This post is for those days, to remind me that I really do love running!! And I certainly can run! So just go out there!! Run if I can, walk if I have to, crawl if I must, but I will not give it up!!!

Chawli/Lobia/Black-eyed pea cutlets and sandwich

2010-03-10T09:00:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone! Second post...

Fig 1. Lobia/ Black eyed pea cutlets

Presently my criterion for "recipe to blog about" is really just "if I make it, I post it." So I am going to go with whatever I cook on a daily basis for now rather than wait around to cook fancy stuff. Daily food is of great value.. I mean, if I have to make it daily, it must be valuable! :)

I often don't have time to cook. But I am not very fond of eating out a lot. And I like to keep Maggie or take-out as reserve for really really hard days. So I often freeze and reserve some small quantities of home-made food for such moderately time-crunched-weeks. One of my plan-ahead foods is cutlets/burger patties.

Chawli/Lobia/ Black eyed pea cutlets:
I wanted to make cutlets that I can freeze. Non-vegetarian cutlets can be frozen quite easily. But vegetable cutlets often contain potatoes. Potatoes are good for binding the vegetables in the cutlet together. But I have not yet had a good experience with freezing cooked potatoes. After defrosting it, cooked potato feels crumbly/brittle/powdery as far as I have seen. :( So I have been wary of making potato based cutlets that are meant to be frozen.

However one binding thing that has worked well for me in frozen cutlets is bread crumbs. Bread crumbs absorb the moisture from veggies and become sort of pasty consistency that helps bind together the cutlet. So this recipe contains bread crumbs. No potatoes. I hear egg or corn flour paste work as well (for future reference, could try this recipe from Tasty Palettes/Mixed Sprouts Burger). For now there is no egg or corn flour paste in this recipe.

Here is some info about Lobia on wikipedia. Fairly healthy vegetarian way to get protein in our diet.

Oh, an addendum: I just read about the Mirch Masala: Announcement : My Legume Love Affair (MLLA) Edition 21 This appears to be the brainchild of The Well-Seasoned Cook. (Such nice names you all have!!) Since I just posted this recipe and looks like they are collecting legume based recipes I will send this post to their event!! How cool! My first event entry! :)

Ingredients: My quantities here are somewhat approximate. Please use your judgment while putting these together. Maybe I will update these in future if I find people actually using these measures!
Cooked, roughly mashed black eyed peas (lobia) ~ 1&1/2 cups after cooking
Cooked and roughly chopped spinach ~ 1/2 cup
Finely chopped cilantro ~ 4-5 stalks
Finely chopped green chillies ~ 1 or 2
Cumin seed (Jeera) powder ~ 1/2 teaspoon
Cilantro seed (dhania) powder ~ 1 teaspoon
Garam masala ~ 1/2 teaspoon for fragrance (optional).
Salt, pepper - to taste
Bread slices ~ 2-3 for bread crumbs (or can use store bought bread crumbs)
Semolina (Rava) ~ say about 1/4 cup to roll patty before frying.

Procedure:
1) Cook the black eyed peas (lobia) in a pressure cooker or in a vessel. I use pressure cooker when crunched for time. But avoid it if I have time. (Pain to wash large cooker!!) It will take time if you use an open pan. Can soak dry lobia in warm water for an hour or so and then cook on low.
2) Mash the cooked lobia roughly by hand (after it cools down) or with a potato masher.
3) Toast 2-3 slices of bread. Multigrain bread works good too. Run through a dry chopper to get bread crumbs. I hear untoasted bread works well for this too.
4) Meanwhile cook the spinach (say in a microwave for about 2-3 minutes) and then roughly chop the cooked spinach. Instead of spinach you can use whatever veggies are at hand. For firm, solid veggies like zucchini or carrots chop them somewhat finely after cooking.
5) Mix in a bowl - chopped cooked vegetables (spinach in this case), finely chopped cilantro and green chillies, mashed lobia, salt, pepper, garam masala, cumin seed (jeera) powder, cilantro seed (dhania) powder. Mix these well with your hand. Let the spices and salt get well homogenized with the lobia and veggies.
6) Then add bread crumbs and lightly kneed-in with hand. Add a little water to the mixture if you feel it is too dry. After bread crumbs have been added you should be able to press together and shape handfuls of the mixture into small patties. If the mixture is too dry and crumbly you may need to add more water. If that still doesn't help hold the mixture together maybe add more bread crumbs and water.
7) Shape into flat round patties. I got about 8 medium patties.
8) Now, you can shallow-fry the patties as they are. I like to dip them in some semolina (rava) to give the patty some crispness.

Tip:
1) I shallow-fried about 4 of these cutlets immediately. I froze the remaining 4 patties (after rolling in rava, but still unfried) in a ziplock bag. Stayed just fine in the freezer. To defrost, I take say 2 cutlets out the previous night and keep them in the fridge section. In the morning they are defrosted enough to be shallow-fried.

2) I would not have believed it till I did it myself, but you don't need much oil if you use a good non-stick pan. I think mine is called "hard-anodized" and I love it. I used about 1-2 drops of oil per side for each cutlet. If I had that "brush thing" I think it would have been enough to lightly "brush" a bit of oil on each side of the cutlet.

Sandwich:
I like to use these cutlets in a sandwich, say for lunch. Here is a simple sandwich lunch I made today.. bread, butter, green chutney, tomato slices, salt + red chilly flakes, 2 cutlets per sandwich. All packed in cling wrap. Do serve ketchup on the side - these cutlets are a bit on the dry side otherwise.

Fig. 2. Cutlet sandwich

I like to combine this with other accompaniments for a lunch-box. I usually go for yogurt and fruits. Here I have also added tomato ketchup in a make-shift foil "sachet". This way I feel there is enough to eat if you are really hungry. If not, you can just save yogurt or fruit for later.

Fig. 3. Today's lunch combo - (top, clockwise) Yogurt, fruit, cutlet sandwich and a sachet of ketchup

If you like them, orange juice/coke, crackers, chips, bottled cold-coffee, bottled flavored milk, etc. make decent add-ons too. Depends on how health conscious you feel that morning. ;) If you don't pack junk you can't eat junk? Doesn't always work that way.. the vending machine is thy enemy!

Ok, folks! Thanks for reading and please visit again! I hope to post every so often... once a week average is the goal. I know, my blog could do with a nicer name.. but imagination does not spark at the moment. Ok, I'll get going now. Happy cooking!

Mom's fresh garlic chutney

2010-03-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone, this is my very first post. I am hoping to start off this blog as a place where I write about things that I like and do in my spare time.. probably food, birds, nature, learning and travel. Here's to a good beginning!

I have been reading and using recipes from food blogs for a while now. I am a so-so cook, not particularly spectacular. So this is not an expert's "how to make.." blog. I just want to archive some of this food I am making. Maybe sometime in future I will look at these recipes and pictures and hopefully be inspired to cook more. Some of these recipes are my Mom's or Grandma's, some are from other members of the family or friends, some are from other blogs. I give thanks to them in advance! :)

The recipe I post today, my very first blog recipe, is my Mom's fresh garlic chutney.

Fig 1. Mom's fresh garlic chutney

Ingredients: (quantities here are rough measures, taste and see if you need more or less.)
Fresh grated coconut - about 1 cup
Fried red chillies (I used red chilly powder) - about 1 teaspoon or to taste
Tamarind (I used Tamarind paste) - about 3/4 teaspoon
Garlic (peeled) - about 3-4 medium pods
Salt - to taste
Water - as needed

Procedure:
Grind fresh grated coconut + red chilly powder + peeled garlic pods.Add water as little as needed to grind. Add slightly diluted tamarind paste and salt and mix/grind once more to make sure it's all well homogenized. That's all! Its the yummiest accompaniment to dosa, idli or bhakri. For accompaniment with bhakris, add finely chopped onions to chutney.

Tip:
I make this chutney in bulk on weekends. I pour it in an ice cube tray and seal it with Press-n-Seal plastic wrap so that the freezer doesn't smell of garlic. The frozen cubes of chutney can be kept in a ziplock bag later. Then later in the week or month, when I make dosa or idli and don't have time to make chutney or fall short on sambar or other accompaniments, I take out 2 cubes of chutney per person and defrost just that much. Saves me time.

Fig 2. After freezing chutney into cubes can store in ziplock bag.

By the way, this tip about freezing chutney is something I have heard others do and have also read generally in other blogs. Here is where I heard about making it into ice cubes: Manjula's Kitchen/Hari Chutney. Nice idea.

Well that's that. First post down. Happy cooking!