Pumpkin Kadamb

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!

Chana Pulav

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.

Methi Pulao

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. 

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.