I am an analyst by day, star gazer by night, food blogger, fitness , travel and saree enthusiast in between. I am a die hard foodie and started documenting my learning based on feedback from friends and family. Hope you enjoy my blog and leave comments and feedback.
This is another versatile chutney that is a great accompaniment to Dosa, Idlis or even Bread Sandwiches. There is a slight twist on the regular tomato chutney as this has its own fresh ground spices that render a unique taste. It`s a tasty spread and I have used it in my Colourful Stuffed Dosa Rolls. I`ve also added a spoon of flax powder for added fiber.
INGREDIENTS:
2 Ripe Tomatoes.
1-2 carrots
A small sprig of corriander leaves.
A spoon of sambar powder.
Roast in Oil and Powder:
2 spoons of urad dhal.
2 spoons of bengal gram.
2 red chillies.
4-5 curry leaves.
PREPARATION:
Chop the tomato and carrot in to slices and set aside.
Allow the powdered spices in the mixer to cool.
In a kadai, add a spoon of oil and when hot, add mustard and curry leaves and immediately the slices tomato and carrot pieces.
Add required quantity of salt, turmeric, hing, a spoon of flax powder, and a spoon of sambar powder and allow to cook till mushy. Allow to cool.
Grind the tomato carrot mush, along with the spices and a bunch of cilantro leaves to a chutney consistency. There would be no need to add water, as the tomato already releases water when cooked.
For added flavour, grind with a spoon of coconut milk. Another option is to use Onions.
Colourful Stuffed Dosa Rolls served with Tomato Carrot Chutney.
Dosas are always a pleasure to have at anytime. My daughter and husband, would nt mind dosa everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It`s also possible to variate the dosa with so many different sides like Tangy Tomato Gravy, Tomato Carrot Chutney, Coconut Chutney etc..Many times, I would like to supplement dosa along with some thing a little more healthier. Dosa for lunch becomes a problem as it gets very dry and brittle, and is hardly filling. Stuffed Dosas are a great lunch idea, as they are lined with a healthy chutney and layered with a stuffing that is hearty and filling, making them into bite size pieces.It`s filling, healthy, non-messy and non-fussy!!! Try it and you will love it!
INGREDIENTS:
Dosa Batter
Tomato Carrot Chutney.
Potatoes,Carrot,Onions & Peas filling.
PREPARATION:
Make soft dosas on the tava and set them aside in a casserole so they remain warm. It`s essential that the dosas for this preparation are SOFT and not brittle.
Place a dosa on your work surface. Line it with the prepared Tomato Carrot Chutney. This forms as a layer for the filling to stick, and also to keep the dosa moisturised.
Dosa lined with chutney and vegetable filling.
Spoon out enough filling to cover the top of the dosa. Do not spread near the corners of the dosa as this may spill out when you roll them.
Place a second dosa on the filling. If the dosa is warm, it will immediately stick to the filling.
Carefully roll this and slice it diagonally in to little cartwheels.
Serve with a side of Chutney or a little cup of curd.
This a great picnic snack as well as a travel snack!
Stuffed Dosa Rolls.
NOTES:
The filling could be anything that you have. Depending on the kind of filling, you could make the sauce.
If you have leftovers of a dry subzi, from the morning, you could line the dosa with pudina chutney or sweet tamarind chutney and serve with a cup of curd garnished with chat masala and cilantro.
One of the most staple preparations at home, when I was a little, was the Molagootal. It`s the kerala preparation of the “kootu”….only its not a side.It`s our substitute for sambar or kuzhambu. The molagootal is a slightly bland broth and so we have spicy tangy options to go with it. One such side is the Inji Pulikachal. Simply translated it means “ginger simmered in tamarind”. One of the highlights of Pulikachal is the rush of tastes when you lick even a drop of it…There`s the heat from the chillies, the spice from the ginger, the slight sweet lingering in your mouth from the jaggery and the tanginess from the tamarind. What can one say of the result ??? Heavenly!!!
There is really not a specific measurement – It depends on one`s own requirement of spice, heat and tanginess. These are my indicative measurements. Again, there are differences in the tamarind, chillies etc, so you would need to adjust the proportions accordingly.
INGREDIENTS:
1 1/2 cups of Tamarind Juice.
3 Tbsp of Chopped Ginger.
3 Tbsp finely chopped green chillis.
2 spoons of jaggery.
1 spoon of rice flour dissolved in 4 spoons of water.
Salt to taste.
Hing.
Seasoning:
Bengal Gram Dhal, Mustard & Curry Leaves.
Pulikachal.
PREPARATION:
In a kadai, add 4 spoons of gingely oil and when hot, add bengal gram, chopped ginger and chopped green chillis.
Allow it to fry in the oil well and then add the mustard and curry leaves.
Now add the tamarind juice, hing, salt and the required turmeric.
Mix well, add the jaggery and allow the gravy to simmer on medium flame for about 30 minutes or so.
At the end, add the rice flour dissolved in water to thicken the pulikachal in a “pachadi” consistency.
As an option, you could allow it to simmer for more time, until all the water evaporates and it gets in to a paste form. This will keep for many days in the refreigerator.
Serve with Molagootal, Khichdi, Venn Pongal or with tasty curd rice.
Every evening I have to think of healthy easy quick fix snacks for my husband and daughter…I am not a snack peson, but I have to cater to two completely different palates. There is always the resolve to add as much green leaves and vegetables to our daily food intake. Sometimes I have to give in to certain kinds of snacks like “Bhujia, Chips, etc which are not healthy. So I try to make it up by adding healthy food which my daughter does not prefer to go with the not-so healthy snack, wherever possible. Like this Easy Bhujia Chat. I have added thinly diced raw carrots, raw tomatoes and a spoon of flax powder. I also add a 1/2 cup of pomogranate seeds whenver I have them.
INGREDIENTS:
2 cups of Bhujia.
1 carrot diced small.
1/4 onion chopped to small pieces.
1/2 tomato chopped in to small pieces.
1/2 cup of pomogranate seeds.
2 spoons of flax powder.
A dash of squeezed lemon.
Chopped Cilantro.
Sweet Tamarind Chutney for garnish.
PREPARATION:
In a bowl add the bhujjia, chopped onions, chopped tomatoes, diced carrots and pomogranate seedsand give it a quick mix.
The water from the tomatoes helps in binding the ingredients together.
Add 2 spoons of flax powder and do not worry about it altering the taste. It acts as a catalyst and boosts the fibre in your food, but never changes or alters the taste.
Serve on to cups, add a dash of squeezed lemon and garnish with chopped cilantro and sweet tamarind chutney.
Your kids can help assemble this and its also an easy pre-party snack.
This would be my one more entry to FIC Orange brainchild of Harini of Sunshinemoms and hosted by Aparna of MyDiverseKitchens.
Mushrooms are my all time favourite and I add them to anything I make- Pulavs, side dishes, subzis, pastas, salads etc. Yesterday was an official not-too-much-time-in-the-kitchen-day. So I grabbed some vegetables and my leftover mushrooms and created this rice dish. There is a small difference in the way this dish is made, which makes its taste also different. There are no harsh masalas and heavy garnishing. Its an easy tasting pulav and has no onions or potatoes, so its easy o the waistline. It`s also a quick fix entree so here it goes.
INGREDIENTS:
2 cups of Daawat Basmati Rice cooked and cooled.
1/2 cup of Peas.
1/2 cup of diced carrots.
1/2 cup of cauliflower florets.
1/3 cup of diced mushrooms.
1/4 cup of chopped mint leaves.
1 tsp garam masala.
1 tsp of chilli powder.
Pinch of turmeric.
1/2 tsp of cinnamon powder.
2 spoons of powdered old fashioned oats.
Seasoning: Bay Leaf, Cloves (2), Somph and curry leaves.
PREPARATION:
Take a wide mouthed kadai and pour about 2 spoons of oil. Add the cloves, somph, bay leaf, cinnamon powder and curry leaves in that order and allow them to fry in the oil for a couple of seconds.
Next, add the vegetables – carrots, cauliflowers, peas,turmeric and the required salt for the vegetables.
You could pre-cook the cauliflower and the diced carrots in the microwave so it lessens the time in front of the stove.
Stir in the chopped mushrooms and then sprinkle the chopped pudina, and red chilli powder over the vegetables and mix it in well.
After a few minutes, add the cooked rice to the vegetables. Add the garam masala and salt for the rice and mix it well. Take care that the mushrooms do not break, so stir it carefully.
Weekends are always a time to sit back and laze, read your favourite books, watch your favourite tv shows, listen to the music you`ve always wanted to, eat simple delicious home cooked food and enjoy a lazy siesta…I never prefer to spend a lot of time in the kitchen over the weekends as this would essentially take time away from my family. Weekends are, therefore Khichdi times…I would prepare easy khichdi and some subzi on the side to go with it. As one item is essentially easy and the process of cooking is done inside my pressure cooker, the subzi gets done along with the khichdi.
Sometimes, when its cold, and I want to have comfort food, Khichdi it is. My daughter loves it, as she helps me in the preparation. I dollop an extra spoon of ghee on her serving, so she is thrilled. It was this one time when she was three, and we had been to the Saravana Bhavan Gujarati Restaurant in T.Nagar. Chennai. They serve this amazing simple thali, and the main course would be some pulav and this khichdi. He would bring it steaming hot, in one of those heavy silver pots, and serve huge ladlefulls on our plate and top it generously with ghee. The taste is simply heavenly and combined with the fact that its piping hot – It was sweet heaven. Since then, this dish has been a regular in my weekend cooking.
Your kids and family would definitely love this mushy khichdi so, go ahead and try it out this weekend
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup raw rice.
1/2 cup toor dhal.
1/2 cup moong dhal.
Seasoning:
2-3 pods of garlic.
1 inch piece of ginger
5-6 green chillis
Curry Leaves.
2 spoons of jeera
3-4 spoons of ghee.
PREPARATION:
In a pressure cooker, add 1 cup of water and switch on the flame. Measure out the rice and the dhals together in a container. Wash the rice and dhals and add water in the ratio: 1 : 3 1/2. This means for the 2 cups ( 1 cup rice + One cup Dhals) we need to totally add about 7 cups of water. Add adequate salt.
Allow 3-4 whistles in the cooker and switch off.
Take the mortar and pestle and crush the ginger, garlic and chillis together to form a coarse mix. We don`t grind it in the mixer, as this would overpower the taste of the khichdi.
In the meantime, take a seasoning kadai and add 3 spoons of ghee. When the ghee begins to get hot, add jeera, the garlic-ginger-chillies mix, and the curry leaves.
Seasonings in ghee.
Allow a few seconds for the seasonings to get fried in the ghee and then pop it over the cooked khichdi. Mix well. I
If you feel that the consistency is not “mushy” , you could add 1/2 cup of milk.
Serve Hot with a spoon of ghee and a side of Channa and Mango Thokku.
Sending steaming hot bowls of Khichdi and Pickle to Recipes for the rest of Us – Dinner, the brainchild of Ramki of One Page Cookbooks , and hosted by Siri of Siri`s Corner.
This simple home made cookie or biscuit as I call it, is a slight variation from my fragrant Coffee Cookies. Many people do not like the aroma of coffee to be taken to cakes and biscuits….And of course, a coffee cookie cannot be served to the kids at large. I wanted to make some thing that is not too sweet and could be enjoyed n the evening as a snack with a cup of tea or coffee. My daughter S, loved it and so did many of my friends.
It`s one of those things that take 20 minutes flat to get done and rolled out…Oh yes, you heard me right…20 Mins…So the next time you need to whip up a quick snack for the evening for your kids and your hubby…think of my home made biscuits!!! One suggestion is to try any baking recipe in a small quantity say half a cup and then extend it to a larger amount. There could be differences in the dough, the power and wattage of the oven, the depth of the baking dish etc. Once you have benchmarked the proportions that worked for you, then you could start out to try larger quantities.
INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup All purpose flour.
2 tsp of butter.
1/4 cup of Powdered Sugar.
Pinch of Baking Powder.
10 numbers of crescent shaped cashew halves.
1/2 tsp Cardamom Powder
Pinch of saffron soaked in a tsp pf milk.
PREPARATION:
Measure out the baking powder and mix it in to the all purpose flour.
In a mixing bowl, cream the butter (which is preferably at room temperature) and the powdered sugar till it becomes a creamy crumble.
Add the flour, cardamom powder and the soaked saffron to the mixing bowl and make it in to a smooth thick dough. If you feel that the dough is too dry, add milk or water in spoons and try to incorporate the mixture.
Make in to small balls and flatten them and place them on a greased cookie sheet.
Decorate with a half cashew pressed on the face of the biscuit. Mark little patterns on it if you want.
Ready to be baked.
Preheat the oven to 375 F and bake the biscuits for 12-13 minutes or until they turn golden brown.
Dont worry if they feel soft, they will harden as they cool.
NOTES:
I have included the saffron as its aids the body in fighting fatigue and because of its therapeutic properties of strengthening the heart anf the nervous system. If you find the flavour and aroma unacceptable, you could exclude that from the ingredients and just use the cardamom powder.
You could later on also substitute the cardamom with real fruit extract like banana, cherry etc or with orange zest.
The art of Bread Making has been something of a dream for me. I always loved the smell of freshly baked break whenever I entered a bakery. There is something comforting in those aromas…Freshly baked bread, sweet fragrance of fruit cake baking in the oven, the stirring aroma of freshly brewed coffee, lemon zest and freshly squeezed lemon juice, the scent of pouring rain on parched soil, the aroma of christmas pine, and the list goes on and on…
I always wanted to “bake my own bread’…If you dont mind my expression. Personalising the flavours in the bread brings forth a lot of options on the creativity…There are a variety of forms of bread – pretzels, dinner rolls, ciabatta, sourdough,croissants, bagels, buns and so on and so forth. There are delicate differences in each of them in taste, form, texture and usage. Today I was browsing through Aparna`s site at MyDiverseKitchen and came across the Paneer Dill Onion Rolls. I rehashed it to exclude the Dill as many times the flavour of dill tends to overpower over the others. I substituted the recipe with Herbs De Provence and my home was almost fragrant like Pizza Hut!!! There was a lot of basics that I need to learn like what was yeast, how it works and how does it help in the process of bread making. The original recipe had no eggs, which suited me just fine.
The most important ingredient for bread making is yeast. The primary function of yeast is to supply carbon dioxide gas which inflates the dough during proof and the early stages of baking. Yeast works by consuming sugar and excreting carbon dioxide and alcohol as byproducts. In bread making, yeast has three major roles. Most of us are familiar with yeast’s leavening ability. But you may not be aware that fermentation helps to strengthen and develop gluten in dough and also contributes to incredible flavors in bread.
Yeast and Honey - Basic Ingredients for Bread Making.
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup all purpose flour.
1 tsp clover honey.
1 cup whole wheat flour.
1 1/2 tsp dry active yeast.
1/2 cup warm milk.
1 onion chopped in to tiny pieces.
1/2 cup grated or crumbled panneer.
1 tsp of parsley and oregano.
1 tsp old fashioned oats or flax seed powder.
1/2 tsp salt.
PREPARATION:
Warm the milk in the microwave for 30-40 seconds and dissolve the yeast and honey in the milk. In about 4-5 minutes, it will begin to froth, and this shows that the yeast is still active.
In a mixing bowl, take the flours, and add onions, herbs, crumbled paneer, oats,salt and mix it in to a smooth elastic dough with the warmed milk.
If required add a little more water and make a smooth dough. Place the dough in an oiled bowl and keep it covered allow to rise till double in oil.
Allowing to rise...
Remove the dough and place on a working surface. Gently deflate the dough and divide in to 6 balls. Roughly shape in to rolls and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and allow to rise for about 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to about 350 F and bake for 30 minutes or until the rolls are brown. Serve with a brushing of melted butter.
In my previous post on the lovely greek pastry Baklava, I had filled with the mixture of nuts. butter and honey and filled it in sheets of phyllo dough, plastered to each other with melted butter. The end result of course was golden colured baklavas, fragrant from the oven with the whole aroma of fresh nuts and honey. I still had the phyllo sheets and I did not want to waste them. They are extremely delicate and I wanted to try out the hybrid of steamed modhaka filling inside the baklava…This effort of mine did just that…took my experiences to a whole new level…Coconut and Jaggery, isnt that a winning combination???
INGREDIENTS:
6 sheets of phyllo dough
1/4 cup of dessicated coconut.
1/4 cup of jaggery
A pinch of cardamom powder.
2 spoons of melted butter.
PREPARATION:
In a kadai, add the coconut and jaggery together and stir well. As the jaggery melts, it forms a homogenous mass. This should approximately take around 5-6 minutes.
Make sure that it doesnt to get too solidified as this would spoil the chewiness of the end product. Cover and set aside.
Melt around 2 tsp of butter. Take the phyllo dough very carefully as they are extremely thin.Use a dry working surface and spread out one sheet of the dough. Slowly brush this sheet with butter and place the second sheet on the face of the first and lightly press it so they stick together.
Repeat with brushing the melted butter on the second phyllo dough and slowly place the third sheet on the second. Care should be taken while working with phyllo dough as they tear very easily. Continue until all the 6 sheets are pressed and stacked firmly on one another.
Alternatively, you could use Pam Butter Spray, to spray on the sheets so that each of the sheet sticks to the one below it.
Baklavas filled with coconut jaggery filling.
Cut the sheets in to 16 equal rectangles. Take one rectangle and place a spoon of the coconut jaggery filling, and close it, like you would do a veggie puff. Make sure to seal the edges also with melted butter or butter spray. Make sure that the filling does not creep out as this would burn easily in the oven and the final taste would not be one that you had bargained for.
Preheat the oven to 350 F and place the filled baklava pastries on to the cookie sheet.
Bake for 13-15 mins depepnding on the power of the oven until they are a lovely golden colour
Serve warm with drizzled honey. This would typically make 16 baklavas!!!
Anubhavati -Tastes from my kitchen 