Strawberry Oats Cake

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!

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

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

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!

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

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

Stir fried veggies

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.