(Mis) Adventures of 3 cookers ;)

Tomato soup

2011-05-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

On a rainy day, when the stomach starts growling, what better comfort food than a bowl of warm and spicy soup? And what is the easiest and the most familiar soup in the world? Of course, it is the tomato soup. For ages, we have been eating rasam with rice during winter. Every time someone at home is down with fever, amma makes rasam with pepper and garlic which guarantees instant relief! The soup is just another way of making the rasam and drinking it.
To make tomato soup for two, you would need:

Ripe tomatoes- 4 large
Onion- 1
Garlic- a few pods
Salt and pepper to taste
Oregano for seasoning
Butter

In a pan, melt a tablespoon of butter (The health conscious may replace it with olive oil). Roughly chop the onions and add it into the pan. Add the peeled garlic pods to it. Fry until it turns golden brown.
Cool the mixture and blend it along with tomatoes into a smooth paste. We did not strain it cause that would mean losing the pulp.
Now add the mixture into the frying pan. Add a cup of water, salt and pepper and bring to a boil.
Boil it until the raw smell of tomato goes away. Add a little diluted cornflour if the consistency is runny. Boil again.
Turn off the heat. Garnish with oregano and read croutons and serve hot.

Strawberry Oats Cake

2011-03-05T02:02:00.000-08:00

A lazy weekday. A holiday on account of Shivaratri. Nothing much to do. We decided that it was time to put our oven to use. Fresh from a repair, it was crying to be used for some baking.

Did not have to look far for a recipe. Mahanandi had featured a Strawberry-Oats cake a while ago. Off we went to the neighboring supermarket. Stocked up on the ingredients. Cut the quantity of the ingredients from the original recipe to half. Replaced peanut oil with refined oil and set out to mix out first cake batter.

And well, like all first times, we were clumsy, unsure at times and messy. But we took the plunge, put the cake in at 180 degrees and prayed to God that it should turn out good. The cake plate got wiped clean. You can guess how it turned out! :) Thanks Indira for the recipe!

Carrot+Corn side dish!

2011-02-19T23:51:00.000-08:00

All of us have been busy lately and did not have time to experiment in cooking! This weekend

when they both went out for a trip leaving me alone at home, I felt like trying something new!

When I looked in fridge, I found only carrot and corn.

What else can you do with carrot and corn other than the regular grate carrot & fry it with corn side?

Hmmm, I thought for a while and then decided to add some milk too and try! :-)

Ingredients (Serves only 1 person!! ):

1 Medium sized carrot cut into long pieces

1 Cup sweet corn

1/2 cup finely chopped onion

1 Cup milk

Pinch of turmeric

Pinch of garam masala

Pinch of red chili powder

Salt for taste

1 spoon cumin seeds

2 spoons of oil/ghee

1/2 spook sugar

Boil the carrots in little water until they are half coked. Add milk to this and cook the carrot fuly.

Heat the ghee in a pan, add cumin seeds, onion and fry for a minute. Add corn and fry till it is cooked. Add turmeric, garam masala, chili powder, sugar & salt and keep for another minute. You don't need sugar if the carrots are sweet. Add the carrots and milk and you are done! :-)

Tastes really good with Phulkas :-)

Gobi Masala

2010-11-29T07:30:00.000-08:00

Everytime we got gobi home, we would end up making aloo gobi. There was another familiar way of making gobi but it always so happened that we did not have the necessary ingredients for it. This time, after finding the gobi of the optimum size, we made sure that we picked up all the other raw materials for the gobi masala recipe.

You would need:
One medium sized cauliflower- cut into florets.
One Onion- finely chopped
One tomato- finely chopped
Turmeric
Jaggery and salt to taste
Coriander, for garnising
Ghee

For paste:

Cinnamon- one stick
Moggu- One
A fistful of cashewnuts
Jeera, pepper, poppy seeds- one teaspoon each
Red chillies- three to four
Tamarind paste- half teaspoon
Coconut- grated- three tablespoons

Boil cauliflower in salt and turmeric. Close and keep it aside.
Soak the poppy seeds for ten minutes in water.
Grind the paste ingredients into a fine paste.
In a pan, add ghee.
Fry the onions till they turn pink. Now add tomatoes and fry until it becomes mushy.
Add the ground paste and fry until the raw smell in it goes.
Now add some water to obtain gravy consistency.
Add in the cauliflower and add salt to taste.
Jaggery can be added if you like the gravy a little sweet.
Now let all the ingredients come together well by frying it for a few minutes.
Garnish with coriander and serve hot with chapathis/ phulkas

Carrot Halwa: For our sweet tooth

2010-11-24T08:07:00.000-08:00

So yes, we do prepare sweets also once in a while ;). And what easier sweet than the good old gajar ka halwa? There was ice cream in the freezer that was waiting to be eaten. And almost one kilo of carrots in the vegetable box. And two perpetually hungry people with really sweet tooth (can i say teeth? cause one tooth does not do justice to our liking of sweets :) )
Anyway, to make carrot halwa for two people,

Two large carrots, grated well
Milk , about 200 ml
ghee, 3 tablespoons
Sugar, 6 tablespoons
cashewnuts, a handful

In a cooker, add the grated carrot along with the milk and cook it until two-three whistles. After the pressure is released, stir the carrot on low flame until the milk gets condensed. Now add to it sugar and ghee and keep stirring it until the halwa gets a glazed look.
Roast the cashewnuts in ghee and garnish the halwa with it. Bisi bisi halwa with Ice cream. Sinful pleasure!

Pasta Exotica!

2010-11-11T08:15:00.000-08:00

For starters, there may not be anything exotic about this pasta for people familiar with Italian food. Just that, we visited the local grocer and found that he had a batch of broccoli, red and yellow bell peppers and parsley and celery, all of which come under exotic vegetables category for us cause its not everyday that we buy and cook them.

So when we spotted the vegetables, we picked them all up and the only recipe that came to mind to put all of them to use was, well, our almost staple food- pasta!

Ingredients:

Red and yellow bell peppers- chopped into inch sized pieces
Broccoli - 1 medium sized, split into florets
Garlic- A few pods, finely chopped
Parsley- One small bunch, finely chopped
Pasta of your choice- cooked Al Dente
Milk- one cup
Cheese- two heaped tablespoons
Olive oil- two spoonfuls
Salt and pepper to taste.

Method:

In some olive oil, toss in the chopped garlic and fry for a minute. Add the chopped peppers and fry until they are tender. In parallel, boil the broccoli in water until it is cooked and add it to he peppers. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Now, in a pan, add the cooked pasta, milk, some salt and a spoonful of sugar and bring it to a boil. Stir in the cheese. Now add the cooked vegetables into the pasta and toss it well. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve it hot!

Lunch

2010-10-03T02:42:00.001-07:00

Rice, Snake guard(Padavala kaayi) TambLi, Snake guard Palya, Aloo papad and Tender mango pickle for lunch today:)

Stir fried veggies

2010-09-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

So it has been a while since the last post. Not due to inactivity in the kitchen, but simply because of our laziness. Since we broke from the humdrum and tried something new today, we realised that it should go up in the blog!

After stocking and overloading the fridge with veggies from our shopping trip yesterday, we were spoilt for choice for dinner. So decided to stir up a dish with all possible veggies. It looks really colorful, is healthy and is really easy to make once you do all the chopping ;). So here is the recipe:

What you'd need:

2 carrots, a bunch of beans, 4-6 babycorns, one capsicum - all chopped lengthwise.

One onion, finely sliced

A couple of pods of garlic, crushed

Some salt, pepper and oregano for seasoning

How to go about it:

First, wash and chop all the vegetables. Your job is almost done by now.

All you need to do is blanch the carrots and the babycorn for a couple of minutes along with some salt. Then run it under cold water.

In a skillet, heat 2-3 spoons of olive oil ( its the good kind of oil, nothing wrong in being generous with it :))

Add the crushed garlic and onion and saute it for a minute or two. Add in the capsicum to this. Toss and stir for a minute.

The beans can be added directly in case it is tender. Else, that also goes into the boiling water along with the other vegetables.

Now add in the boiled vegetables. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir well until all the vegetables are coated with the spices. Top it with a dash of oregano.

Can be eaten directly or along with some rice. We seasoned the rice with saffron and pepper and called it "saffron rice". So dinner for the day- saffron rice with the stir fried vegetables.

Quick dinner: Veggie rolls

2010-06-09T22:47:00.000-07:00

On a day when we had the basic vegetables- potato, carrot and capsicum and were out of options and patience to make dinner, we decided to try making rolls. Chapathis are anyway prepared for dinner everyday. So it was just a matter of fixing something for the filling.

Method:

Dice the carrots and potatoes into cubes and pressure cook them until they are just about done and not very soft. Chop the capsicum well. Heat oil in a pan. Throw in some mustard and jeera. Wait until you hear the chata-pata sound. Add a bunch of chopped methi leaves if available. Add the capsicum to this and fry well. Once it is fried, add in the cooked vegetables. Season with salt and coarsely ground pepper-jeera.

You can apply some chutney on the chapathi- mint/ tamarind. Or tomato ketchup bhi chalega. Place this filling in it. Roll up the chapathi. Chitke le ready! MakLu gu ishta aagatte. Try maaDi. Namigu heLi, heng aaithu anta :P

Picture rice

2010-05-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

If you are wondering what the title is, well, it is the direct translation of chitranna. Basically lemon/mango rice. One of the easiest things to make when you are short of veggies and time. And it is filling and wholesome. If you are the rice eating types, then this is surely something that you would know how to dish up. Nevertheless, since we prepared it, we are posting it. :P
Raw materials-
Finely chopped onion - 1
Grated raw mango - 1/2
Peanuts - a handful
Green chillies - 2, slit into halves
Curry leaves
turmeric powder
Mustard seeds -one tsp
grated coconut and coriander for garnishing
Salt, cooked rice.

Method:
Heat 2 tsps of oil in a kadai. Add to it mustard seeds. When they splutter, add the chillies, curry leaves and fry for a minute. Add the peanuts and fry until they turn slightly brownish. Now add the onion and a pinch of turmeric and wait until it becomes golden brown. Add the grated mango to the kadai and cook for two minutes. Adjust the salt. Mix in the cooked rice to it and add more salt if necessary. Top it with grated coconut and coriander.Takes about ten minutes if you have cooked rice ready. The chitranna is ready to be eaten.

Dinner: Paneer paratha

2010-05-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

For the past two days, the milk is for some reason getting curdled at home. Whether it is the problem with the refrigeration at the store or what i don't know. Normally we would have thrown the milk away. But Jyo suggested that rather than crying over the spilled milk, we can make paneer with it;). And we strained the milk for a long time and then froze it. So today, it was time for paneer dish. I remembered the yummy parathas from Mast Kalandar and we decided to give it a try.
It was not just paneer that went into it, we added a good deal of carrot and corn too. In a tablespoon of oil, fry one grated carrot and add to it half a tea spoon of ginger-garlic paste. Once the raw smell of the paste disappears, add to it the corn. We chopped the corn finely given that it was going into the filling. To this, add half a spoon of cumin and coriander powder and fry well. Add the crumbled paneer in the end. Add salt and chilli powder to taste. Top it off with some garam masala and kasuri methi. The end product should resemble paneer bhurji.

The biggest challenge when making paratha is to roll them out and making sure the filling spreads evenly. And it worked for us only when the amount of filling is less. So today, for a change, we rolled two really thin chapathis, spread the filling on one of them and closed it with another chapathi. Sealed the edges with some water and rolled it again to spread the filling uniformly. Had to struggle with the first one, but from then on, it turned out to be easy.
Once done, roast it on a tava, just as a normal chapathi and make sure it is nicely baked on both sides. Apply a generous amount of ghee on either side (It tastes so good that for a day, you can forget about your diet). Serve it hot with some curd and mango pickle. We made a curry out of the remaining corn and carrot and had that also on the side! And trust me, Mast Kalandar is good, but the satisfaction of making one's own paratha and eating it too, is great!

Lassi time!

2010-04-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

There is a jaatre that happens in Puttur every year. It goes on for ten days in the month of April. You should visit the place to savor a slice of culture, heritage and religion. The added attraction this year was the 70 ft tall Brahma-ratha that was presented to the temple by the very famous Muthappa Rai.
And as it is in all fairs, this one too is a place from where you can get back stuff for your home, especially the kitchen. Jyothi got back a chapathi rolling pin and plate from the fair. But my favorite is the manual blender that she bought during her visit. Perfect for the summer, now lassi is just a few turns of the blender away!
Price: Rs 80. Easy to use, easy to clean :).

P.S. Did you know that in Punjab, Lassi is made in washing machines?!

Palak dosa

2010-04-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

We decided to make dosa out of Palak, when we saw a bunch of Palak leaves and dosa batter in the fridge.
Ingredients:
->Bunch of Palak
->Dosa batter (Rinse 1/2 cup urad and 1 cup rice in water for about 3 hours, and grind them and leave it overnight)
->Finely chopped onion(1)
->Carrot grated(1)
->Green chillies
->Little oil/Ghee
->Salt!

Preparation:
Cook the Palak leaves and green chillies with very less water and let it cool. After it cools down grind it. Take a spoon of oil/ghee in a pan and fry the onions and carrot.
Add the Palak paste, onions and carrot to the dosa batter and mix well. Add salt to taste

Heat tava, put little ghee so that dosa comes out easily. Spread out a big ladle of batter in an ciruclar manner. You can put little more ghee on dosa if you are not conscious of the calories it adds! Remove it from the tava and serve it hot.
We had the dosa with chutney powder which my mom prepared and it was very nice combination :-)

Monsoon chat

2010-04-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

It was raining when we were returning from work today. The slight drizzle, the cool breeze and an upbeat mood- all the makings for a perfect evening were there. Only one thing was missing. Piping hot samosas and jalebis!
If you're thinking that we prepared them to make our evening perfect, well, you're wrong. One, its too much oil. And two, we don't know how to make them :) The presence of the chatwala outside the house, who we consciously avoid, was not helping the situation much. So we decided to take the matter into our hands and make some chat ourselves. Pretty simple and tastes great.
What you need:
A packet of bingo mad angles ( or any such flat chips)
And no. The recipe doesn't end here. ;)
1 Onion finely chopped
1 carrot grated
1 tomato finely chopped
1 potato- salted and mashed
A cup of curd
Tamarind chutney

And how is it made? Gets made in a jiffy if you have the stuff ready.
Mix all the chopped veggies. Add salt and chilli powder to them. Then some chat masala to taste.
Now take each chip and place a bit of the potato mixture. Then a spoonful of the vegetable mix. Top it with some curd and tamarind chutney. Add a dash of chat masala. It is ready to be popped into your mouth! Yum!
We did not have mint at home today. Some mint would have added to the taste for sure! And we haven't called the recipe anything yet.

Pepper mill

2010-04-12T10:51:00.000-07:00

Latest acquisition for the kitchen: A pepper mill. Have always wanted one ever since i watched Sanjeev Kapoor on Khana Khazana use it. This was easily some 7-8 years back. Never found one in Mysore. After moving here, i did spot one in UB City at Good Earth. But it seemed too expensive to fit into the kitchen :)
We finally saw one at Lifestyle in Mantri Mall. It seemed like a steal compared to Good Earth. We now use only freshly ground pepper for all our dishes- right out of the pepper mill.

Cost of the pepper mill: Rs.145
The joy of finding something that one's looked for so long: Priceless!

Baingan ka bharta

2010-04-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

Ever since we had baingan ka bharta at Queen's on Church Street, we have wanted to try the recipe out. Did not do it all these days since we could not find the right baingan for it. At our last visit to the More megastore in Mahadevpura, we found the brinjal that we were looking for. Nice and big, it was perfect for bharta. Bought one, to experiment and see how it turns out.
I have never been much of a fan of brinjal, particularly because of the seeds. Luckily, the brinjal i got was nice and pulpy without too many seeds. The recipe needs you to apply oil all over the vegetable and then put it on the flame directly.
Requires a lot of patience since the flame needs to be low so as to not burn the brinjal. And also that it should be well cooked till the center. One way to ensure this is to make slits all over the surface and then roast it. Once done, you can see the peel coming off. Cool it and then remove the peel and mash it.

In a skillet, heat some ghee. Add cumin seeds, ginger-garlic paste and onions. Fry until golden brown. Add to this some turmeric, dhania and chilli powder. Now add one chopped tomato and cook until it is done. Now add the mashed brinjal to it and some water if the consistency needs to be adjusted. Add salt to taste. Top it off with some garam masala, a dash of lime juice and chopped coriander leaves.

Our dinner for today:
Chapathis with Baingan Bharta and Methi dal

Food!!

2010-03-04T20:01:00.000-08:00

ಯಾಕೆ ತುಂಬ ದಿನದಿಂದ ಏನೂ ಹಾಕ್ತಾ ಇಲ್ಲ ಅಂದ್ಕೊಂಡ್ರಾ?

ಇದೆಲ್ಲಾ ಖಾಲಿ ಆಗಕ್ಕೆ ತುಂಬ ದಿನ ಬೇಕು!
ಅಲ್ಲಿ ತನಕ ಪಾಸ್ತಾ ಮಾಡ್ಕೊಂಡ್ ತಿಂತಾ ಇರಿ!

Lunch

2010-02-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

Steamed basmati rice with corn and pepper along with mixed vegetable (what i'd like to call) jalfrezi- for the lunchbox today.

Paazzzta

2010-01-31T06:59:00.000-08:00

The three of us cook a variety of items at home- South indian dishes comprising of South canara cuisine and tam-bram cuisine. We also cook not so bram dishes with loads of garlic and onions. Then there are the north indian dishes. You get the picture- we have a varied taste. I like my food hot and spicy while they both like it mild and tending towards what i like to call, bland. ;)
But the one dish that unites us all, apart from curd rice, is Pasta. So much that it gets made at least once a week, if not more. And we shop for a new shape of Pasta each time we go out- macaroni, penne, Fusilli and the likes.
I thought i would start this blog with a post about a recipe for some sweet dish, like an auspicious beginning, but what the hell- pasta is like the national dish of the house (No offense to the humble dosa, it still tops our favorite dish list). So here is the recipe. This time, it was the turn of Farfalle- a butterfly shaped pasta.
Since we kind of plonk stuff randomly into the pan, i am not going into the specifics of the quantity of ingredients. First of all, for the pasta sauce, process the vegetables required- capsicum, tomato, onion, spinach and garlic. Chop them finely. In a frying pan, heat some olive oil and saute the garlic and onion. Once it turns golden brown, add the capsicum and fry well. After about 5 mins, add in the tomatoes and spinach. Add salt and pepper powder to taste. Once all the vegetables are done and the mixture reaches a gravy like consistency, add in about half a cup of milk and simmer.
When the pasta sauce is getting done, cook the pasta in parallel. Add enough water to a pot with some salt and oil and add the pasta to it. The amount of time that the pasta has to boil to be cooked al dente is something i have not figured out yet. Though people advise to throw it on the tile to check if it is done, we just keep checking it by eating it ;)

Once the pasta is done- it should be chewy and soft but not mushy- wash it under cold water and add it to the sauce. Adjust the salt and add lots of grated cheese. Since we don't have the time or patience to grate the cheese, we just add flavoured cheese spread. Once it all comes together with a creamy consistency, garnish it with oregano and La pasta è pronto! Serve it hot!