Doi Fulkopi - Cauliflower Curry

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.

Pizza Sauce

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!!

Pav Bhaji

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.

Chawli Vegetable Pulav

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.

Carrot and Peas Pulav - for the Newbie Cook

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.

Lasooni Dal

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..