Aloo Gobi
This seemingly easy dish is quite deceptive. Until recently I used to always end up with mashed potatoes with cauliflower mixed in. Not anymore. Here is the recipe:
Ingredients
- Potatoes 3 medium
- Cauliflower florets 3 cups
- Onion (sliced) 1
- Cilantro 1/4 cup
- Basil and/or parsley 1 tsp (Optional)
- Lemon Juice 1 tbsp
- Salt 1/2 tsp or to taste
- Pepper 1 tsp
- Chilli powder/Cayenne pepper 1/2 tsp
- Turmeric 1/2 tsp
- Oil 2 tbsp
- Water 1/2 cup
Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking pan with foil.
2. Wash and peel potatoes, cut them into pieces that are approximately 1 inch in each dimension. Place them in a bowl of water.
3. In a mixing bowl stir in the salt, pepper,chili powder turmeric, herbs and 1 tbsp oil.
4. Mix the potatoes, sliced onions and cauliflower florets into to above mixture and spread on the foil. Sprinkle 1/2 cup water on the mixture.
5. Cover the roasting pan with silver foil and bake it for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes uncover it and bake it for a further 20 minutes.
6. In a pan heat 1 tbsp oil. Add 1/2 tsp mustard seeds. Once mustard start popping add 1.5 tsp of cumin seeds. Stir in the baked mixture and let the flavors mingle for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. At this point it should be done.
The idli with idli rava
Ingredients
- Urad dal 1/2 cup
- Idli rava 1.5 cups
- Water 3 cups
Procedure
1. Soak Urad dal for 5 hours.
2. Grind the urad dal with 3 tbsps of water. (Can be done in a blender or mixie)
3. Soak the idli rava for 20 minutes in 3 cups of water.
4. Squeeze out the water from the soaked idli rava.
5. Mix the idli rava and the ground urad and let it ferment overnight.
6. Steam and cool
Grease idli plates with oil. Spoon out 1 tbsp batter into each recess. I use a hawkins pressure cooker without the weight. Boil 1.5 cups of water in the cooker. Place the stand in the cooker and steam for 15 minutes. Remove the idli stand and sprinkle some water. Let it cool for 5 minutes before extracting.
Ragi Roti with Bell Pepper Curry
For Roti
Ingredients
- Ragi flour 1 and 1/4 cups
- All purpose flour 1 cup
- Oil (olive or vegetable) 2 tbsps
- Salt 1tsp
- Water, (lukewarm) 1 cup
Procedure
1. Mix the ingredients to make a dough
2. Roll out into 7 inch diameter rotis/tortillas.
3. Cook on griddle/tava.
For Bell Pepper Curry
Ingredients
- Green Bell Pepper, diced 3
- Besan 3 tbsps
- Onion, finely chopped 1/2 cup
- Oil 1 tbsp
- Black mustard seeds 1/4 tsp
- Cumin seeds 1/2 tsp
- Turmeric 1/2 tsp
- Chilli powder 1/8 tsp
- Salt to taste
- Water 1 tbsp
Procedure:
1. Preheat a pan, dry roast the besan on medium. Stir continously. Take it off the heat once it starts browning. It takes around 7 minutes on my electric burner.
2. In a seperate pan, heat the oil.
3. Add the mustard seeds, once they start spluttering add the cumin seeds. Once the cumin seeds start browning add the onion.
4. Add the chilli powder, turmeric.
5. Once the onion turns transclusent, add the green bell peppers.
6. Once the bell peppers are cooked add the salt and roasted besan. Stir continuously.
7. Sprinkle the water and reduce heat to medium low. Let it cook for 5 minutes.
Spinach roti
Ingredients
- Wheat flour 2 cups
- Oil (olive or vegetable) 2 tbsps
- Salt 1tsp
- Water, (lukewarm) 1 cup
- Spinach 2 cups
Procedure
If using food processor to make the dough (I use the metal S-blade.):
1. Put the flour, oil, salt in the food processor and pulse the contents so they are blended.
2. Add the chopped spinach and pulse the contents to blend. Mixture will have a coarse texture and a green shade due to the spinach.
3. Add the lukewarm water and switch on the food processor. Mixture should form dough.
4. Roll out into 7 inch diameter rotis/tortillas.
5. Cook on griddle/tava.
Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
This book is a must have for vegans and lacto-vegetarians with a sweet tooth. The book is filled with beautiful pictures and recipes with easy to follow steps. Quite a few egg substitutes have been outlined. I primarily use ground flax-seeds and the technique described in the book is very useful.
To use ground flaxseed as an egg substitute do the following:
- Mix 1tbsp flax-seed powder with 3 tablespoons of water.
- Blend in food processor for 2 mins. It will become viscous.
- This is equivalent to 1 egg.
I have tried chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon walnut coffee cake (picture appended), zucchini bread and naan from this book so far. Naan was more like bread than naan so it is not the best recipe out there. I would recommend Neelam Batra or Manjula’s recipe for Naan.
Other than that, this book is a keeper.
Julie and Julia– Julie Powell’s Rantorama
This book is based on Julie Powell’s blog. The blog presented goings on with Julie’s life in general, and her experiences with cooking, using recipes from Julia Childs’ cookbook (titled: Mastering the Art of French Cooking), and culminated as the Cinderella story of a blogger who catapulted from relative obscurity into fame and money (that goes with commissioning of a book and a movie).
My expectation
As an avid foodie, I expected witty and humorous (or even frustrating) episodes that chronicle Julie’s experiences whilst applying Julia Child’s recipes.
My disappointment
The book turned out to be an unending rant about anything and everything — a rambling vitriol that spans parents, husband, job, republicans, and friends. The writing is only interspersed with episodes of cooking. In other words, the book is 10% cooking and 90% bile. I suspect that the 10% cooking part (based on Julia Childs) is the bait, and the 90% bile (to increase page count to a respectable number) is the corresponding switch. Perhaps the blog happened during a rough patch in Julie’s life and can be excused. The editors intent on conning the public should not be so easily forgiven. A whiny blog apparently doth not translate into a worthwhile (or even entertaining) book. Perhaps the publisher’s objective was simply to orchestrate a drive-through riding upon Julia Childs’ fame.
Aside: As a lacto-vegetarian, I was not the least bit entertained by various lobster killing narratives. The book leaves the reader with a hangover and restlessness.
This book is not for you if you
1. are a culinary nerd looking for experiences with Julia Child’s recipes
2. are seeking information (or entertainment for that matter)
3. are vegan/vegetarian
4. are in the habit of breathing
Best to leave this book alone.
Neer Dosa
Ingredients
- Raw rice 1 cup
- Coconut (fresh, frozen or dessicated) 1/2 cup
- Water 3 and 1/2 cups
- Salt
Method
- Soak the rice for 2 hours in 5 cups of water.
- If using dessicated coconut, put the dessicated coconut in 1 cup of warm water and let it stand for 2 minutes.
- Grind the rice and coconut into a thin batter using a total of 3.5 cups of water.
- Heat the pan on medium-high for 5 minutes.
- Pour the batter one ladle at a time. No need to spread the batter. The mixture will start forming holes as soon as it hits the pan. I ladle as much batter as will spread the entire pan.
- After 1 minute, pur drops of oil at various spots on the dosa. Flip it over after 4 mins and cook for 1 more minute on medium high. It took around 5 minutes per dosa on medium high.
Raw rice puttu
I have finally arrived at this recipe after multiple trial and errors.
Ingredients
- Raw rice 1 cup
- Coconut (freshly grated or desicated) 1/2 cup
- Salt 1/2 tsp
- Water 3 cups
Special implements
Puttu kodam
Procedure
Making the rice powder
1. Wash rice 3 times and let it soak in 4 cups of water for 1 hour.
2. Strain the water and spread the rice on a towel that will abosorb the water on the surface of the grains. I spread it on half of the towel and cover the rice layer with the other half of the towel. Let it sit for 15 minutes.
3. Grind the rice as fine as you can. The finer it is, the better the texture of the puttu.
4. Heat a pan on medium, once the pan is warm add the powdered rice. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir the rice powder continuously for 5 minutes . At the end of this step you should be able to draw a line with the powder. The powder will still have a moist texture. Empty the powder into a mixing bowl.
Making the rice mixture
1. Add the salt.
2. If using the fresh coconut add it as is.
**If using desicated coconut, warm 1 cup of water in microwave for 30 seconds. Add the desicated coconut and let it sit for 2 minutes. Strain out the coconut and add to flour.
3. Mix the rice powder + coconut and salt. Usually the coconut should have enough moisture. The consistency of of the mixture should be crumbly and without big lumps.
Steaming
Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in the puttu cooker, put half the rice mixture into the cylinder. Steam on medium high for 5 minutes.
Daily dishwashing in less than 10 minutes
For those of us that have to unload and load dishwashers on a daily basis, wanted to discuss how to minimize the time taken to do so. It takes me a maximum of 10 minutes on a daily basis to unload/load the dishwasher. Here are my tips:
Use implements that make organizing of utensils easier:
- Mug/cup stand (for example, Amazon.com: Pomerantz Oak Mug Tree: Home & Garden)
- Utensil jar for spatulas etc.. (for example Amazon.com: BIA Cordon Bleu 64-Ounce Utensil Crock, White: Home & Garden)
- Organizer for spoons, kinves and forks (for example,Amazon.com: BAMBOO cutlery SILVERWARE sectioned utensil TRAY kitchen drawer organizer: Home & Garden)
- Shelving unit for plates (for example, Amazon.com: 2 Shelf Cabinet Organizer (White) (8 1/2″H x 17 1/4″L x 8 1/2″W): Home & Garden)
- Pot lid organizer ( for example, http://www.amazon.com/Grayline-Cabinet-Dorr-Lid-Rack/dp/B002HRJPC8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1256523890&sr=1-2)
When loading the dishwasher, arrange utensils in the dishwasher so that similar ones are closer to each other. For example, keep the cups closer to each other, saucers close each other.
When unloading, pick out similar objects that that go in the same region in the kitchen so in each unload step you are tackling multiples of similar objects.
I had posted this earlier on a forum and figured that I should also add it to my blog.
How to clean the kitchen counter in less than 5 minutes
Basic assumption here is that you have the bare minimum on the kitchen counter (less than 10 items on all the countertop sections in the kitchen):
1. Remove post-cooking debris
Use half a paper towel or cloth to clean the countertop of any food, peels that are the byproducts of a cooking session or a day of use.
2. Scrub
Put a couple of drops of dishwashing soap on a scrubber and dampen it. Scrub the countertop.
3. Wipe
Use the papertowel/s to wipe the countertop clean.
