Spiced Pumpkin Bread

 My mother prepares these amazing sweet pumpkin thalipith (paratha). It is labour of love. This thalipith should be cooked over low flame, so for 8-10 thalipiths it can easily take over 1hr.
So today I was just thinking about this delicious thalipeeth and it strike me that I can easily bake some kind of pumpkin bread with this receipe. So I immediately started working on the receipe, and happy to say its a winner. You can try this simple receipe on some winter morning, the cinnamon in the bread will fill your whole house.

Ingredients:

3.5 cups grated pumpkin
2 cups* atta
2 cups grated jaggery
1/4 cup oil
1 heaped tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp salt
1.5 tsp baking soda
Handfull of sultanas

Receipe:

Mix grated pumpkin and jaggery and keep it for 10-15 min. This will help the water ooze out. Add sultanas, salt, oil and cinnamon powder. In the wet mixture add dry ingredient (atta + baking soda). You need to adjust atta quantity such that the final mix is not too wet. Transfer mix in baking tin. Bake for 35-40 min at 180 C in pre-heated oven. Cool over rack and serve immediately.

P.s. If you feel the mixture is too dry then add little bit of milk.

Carrot- Beetroot cake

Ingredients:

1 cup atta/maida

¾ cup curd
¼ cup oil
¾ - 1 cup powdered sugar (you can use granulated sugar also, depending on sweetness from carrots/beets adjust quantity)
About 1 cup grated carrot + beetroot
¼ cup raisins / finely chopped dates

1 tsp kesar-elaichi syrup/vanilla essence

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

Recipe:

Beat together curd and oil to make smooth paste. Add powdered sugar, kesar-elaichi syrup next.Next add dates, grated carrots+ beetroots. In the end add atta mixed with baking soda and powder.Once the batter is ready, shift it to greased pan and cook @ 180C for 20-25 min.

Note: Next time I am planning to use 1.5 cups of atta as I felt the cake was bit extra moist.

Savoury Pancakes

It may look like another kind of dosa, but it is actually savoury pancake. My husband does not like the sweet American pancakes, so at home we do an Indian savoury version of the pancakes. Its very healthy and he hogs them down when he is back from a long run.

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 small carrot, grated
3-4 french beans finely chopped
1/2 small onion finely chopped
4-5 spinach leaves finely chopped
milk + water  mixture to prepare the batter
Mix flours (maida+atta+roasted oats grounded+ragi)
Salt to taste
Red chili powder to taste
Black pepper powder to taste

Recipes:
Break both eggs and whisk them for couple of min. Add the vegetables and spices.
Mix the flours, add milk+water mixture as per requirements. Prepare batter with dosa  like consistency. Prepare thin dosa like pancakes. Serve hot with tomato and chili sauce.

Green Egg Curry

Sometimes it so boring to follow a certain receipe. I was so bored of perparing and eating same onion-tomato gravey that I thought of inventing some new gravy type. So I just powdered all the spices I like with some herbs and voila I got a new kind of gravey. Though I am giving receipe here, you can replace the spcies with whatever you like.   

Ingredients:

4 Hard boiled eggs

2 tsp oil

salt to taste

For gravey

2 medium size onion fried

10-15 strands of corriander leaves

1/4 cup tomato puree

1-2 tsp grated coconut

1 tsp ginger-garlic paste (optional)

Spice powder: 1/2 tsp Ajwain + 1/4 star anise + 1/2-1 tsp cumin seeds + 1/2 tsp saunf + 1 small elaichi + pinch of shahjeera + 1/2" of cinnamon grind everything together

Receipe:

It is very simple. Just grind together every element mentioned under "For gravey".

In a kadhai, heat oil. Add the gravey paste and fry till its cooked. Next add water and eggs and boil till gravey thickens.

Serve hot with roti.

Sabudana/Sago Khichadi

Sabudana khichadi is synonymous with marathi food. This khichadi is mainly eaten when people are fasting. It is very easy to prepare but definitely requires planning.

Ingredients:

1 cup sabudana
1/3 cup roasted groundnuts (powdered)
2-3 green chillies
1 large potato boiled (cut in cubes)
1 tsp cumin seeds
3-4 tbsp ghee
salt, sugar to taste

Recipe:

• If you wish to have sabudana khichadi for breakfast, make sure you wash and drain sabudana on previous night. Never soak sabudana in water. Drain water completely.Next morning you'll have nice soft pearls of sabudana.
• To start with khichadi preparation, heat ghee/oil in kadhai. 
• When the oil heats, add cumin seeds and green chili (chopped).
• Next add cubed potatoes and fry for 2-3 min on low heat.
• In meantime, mix groundnut powder, salt and sugar with soaked sabudana.
• Add this mixture in kadhai. If you feel sabudana is dry, add splash of water.
• Cover the kadhai and cook khichadi for 5 min on low heat.
• Serve hot with some grated coconut and chopped coriander leaves garnish.

Note: In my mind sabudana khichadi means food for fasting. So I can never make sabudana khichadi in oil or I can't think about adding karipatta, onions or any such non-fasting food in this khichadi. But you can prepare sabudana khichadi like upma/poha by adding spices and vegetables.

Pink Dosa with Green Chutney

Few years back Loksatta used to publish series of articles on food. I had kept some paper cuttings of same.Now after all these years,these cuttings are helping me in planning for some delicious meals. I found an interesting breakfast receipe which is a bit different than usual dosa receipes. This is a "Pink Dosa" prepared with masoor dal. All you need is 1 cup masoor daal, 1/2 cup urad daal, less than 1/4 cup rice. Soak all ingredients together for 6-8 hours. Grind to smooth paste and let it ferment for 5-6 hrs. When you are preparing dosa add some flavourings like finely chopped onions, green chillies, corriander leaves, jeera/cumin seeds and ofcourse salt. With this batter prepare dosa like any normal dosa.

I served the dosa with green pudina chutney. This chutney was prepared by Sudha. Sudha is my son's caretaker and luckily she is good at cooking as well as in other household work.

For pudina chutney, you need 1 bunch of pudina leaves and 1/2 bunch of corriander leaves cleaned and pat dried.In a pan add 1tbsp oil. Fry pudina leaves, 1 medium size onion, 3-4 green chillies in the oil. In mixie pot add 4-5tbsp grated coconut, fried pudina leaves, onion, green chillies, 1tbsp tamarind pulp, salt to taste, 1tsp jeera/cumin seeds with little bit of water and grind till you have smooth chutney paste. You can serve this chutney with any dosa/dhirade/peetha or even apply on bread slices.

Kadhi without curd

When I heard this for first time, I did not believe it. But when I saw the demo and prepared it myself, it was refreshing and tasty. I saw the recipe about 2 weeks back on Saam marathi channel on a program called Sugaran. It was some summer special program I think. And nothing defines summer better than mangoes; be it raw or ripe. So don't just bookmark this recipe but try it immediately.

• Pressure cook 2 tangy raw mangoes. You can keep the skin while cooking the mangoes.
• Once cooled, remove the skin, and take out all the pulp.
• Grind in mixie once. Then add 2-3 tbsp of besan, 1/2 tsp red chilli powder, salt and jaggery as per taste. Mix it well.
• Now in a pan/kadhai, heat 1tbsp oil..For tempering add 1/2 tsp cumin seeds, 1/2 tsp mustard seeds, 10-12 karipattas, 2-3 green chillies (vertically slated).
• Add the mango pulp to the tadka. Add required amount of water and simmer the kadhi for 5 min.
• Serve it hot or cold.

Methi with moong dal diamonds

Recently I was so bored of eating same dishes, I was dying to try something new. So I was going though my cooking bibles "Ruchira Part1 & 2" and "Perfect Receipes". From these books, I suddenly had inspiration to cook something with methi and daal. So here is my dish called Methi with moong dal diamonds

For Moong daal diamonds

- Soak 1 small cup moong dal for 2-3 hrs.

- Roughly ground about 1tsp of saunf, ajwain, coriander seeds. You can dry roast this masala if you like. You can easily replace this masala with any other spices per your liking

- In same mixer pot, add soaked daal and roughly ground same with masala.

- Add salt (to taste), red chili powder, turmeric powder, sesame seeds, kasuri methi pinch of baking soda/eno to this mixture.Make sure that the batter remains thick.

- Steam cook this mixture for 10 minutes. I spread the batter on small thali and put it in pressure cooker (without whistle).Drizzle oil on the thali before pouring batter.

- After batter is cooked, cut into small diamond shapes and keep aside

For the Saag

- Wash and dry 1 bunch of methi leaves.Roughly chop the cleaned leaves.

- In a pan heat 4-5 TBSP of oil for tadka. Add chopped garlic (4-5 cloves), red/green chillies (2-3), jeera, mustard seeds,hing, turmeric in the heated oil.

- Add the moong dal diamonds in the tadka and fry till its golden.

- Add the chopped methi leaves next with pinch of salt. Mix saag well and cook for 2 min. You can add grated coconuts (2-3 TBSP) if you like.

- Cover the pan and cook saag for 2 more min and then take it off from heat.

- Saag is ready to be served.
 
Note: When I prepared this dish for second time, I did few variations and it also tasted good. Instead of using just moong daal, I used combination of Moong dal, masoor dal and chana dal. I added ginger paste to the batter and about tbsp of oil and baked it for 20-25 min in oven at 180 degree C. And in tadka I used Paanch phoran instead of jeera and mustard seeds.
 

Sweet Idli

India is such a vast country both geographically and gastronomically. Sometimes you will be surprised to see some dishes which are eaten across two ends of the country with same love. Recently I had same experience while eating breakfast of Idlis. We are now so used to eating Idli-Sambhar and chutney, that we might not think about any other combination. In Orissa, people used to eat sweet Idlis for breakfast without any need for chutney or sambhar. These idlis are prepared in similar fashion like normal idlis.

All you need is to idli batter (2 cup rice + 1 cup urad dal soaked for 6-8 hrs and grounded to paste). Make sure the batter is fermentated for 6-8 hrs (or overnight). Add salt to taste. For the sweet filling, mix grated coconut and jaggery in equal proportion (adjust amount of jaggery depending on your sweet tooth). Now pour the idli batter in the idli moulds. You can add the filling on the batter or you can have layers like batter then filling and then again batter. Steam the idlies for 10-15 min.

You can eat these idlis as it is for breakfast.

Or if you want to serve some special sweet then, you can prepare sweet idlis in coin form and serve with chilled rabadi.

Grapes Muramba/ Grapes in Sugar syrup

My MIL has a sweet tooth. For dinner she alwyas likes to have something sweet to eat with roti. So over this weekend to impress her ;) I prepared this muramba or fruit cooked in sugar syrup. At my mother's place, we always used to have such preparations with different fruits like raw mango, ripe mango, banana, apple, basically any fruit. This was my first attempt at preparation and it turned out pretty good. Other than grapes, sugar and obviously water; all other ingredients are optional. I wanted to enhance grape flavour so I decided on using raisings and black currents which are dried form of grapes.

The receipe is very simple and you don't need lot of ingredients.

Ingredients

• 20-30 grapes
• 1 small bowl of sugar
• 10-15 sultanas/raisins and black currents (optional)
• 4-5 almonds (optional)
• 1tsp elaichi/cardomom powder
• water
• 1-2 tbsp lemon juice (optional)

Receipe

• Thoroughly wash grapes ,pat dry and then keep aside.
• In a heavy bottom pan add sugar and enough water to just cover the sugar. Keep the pan on low flame and let it simmer. Keep stirring in between.
• Once sugar syrup starts bubbling check the thickness of syrup at regular intervals. It should not be very watery. It should be almost thick as honey.
• While sugar syrup is getting ready, thinly slice almonds and clean raisins and black currents.
• When the syrup thickens add all the remaining ingredients, mix them well and cook for another couple of minutes. Then remove the pan from burner and let the mixture cool.
• Check after 10 min. or so to see if sugar crystals are getting formed. If yes, then add some water and reboil the mixture for another 3-4 min and then cool the mixture.
• For some this receipe might taste too sweet, so counter attacking it with sourness of lemon juice is good idea.

Nadia chakuli/ Coconut dosa

Before marriage I used to think dosa is mainly south indian breakfast. But different versions of dosas are available across  India, like Maharashtrian Dhirade or Oriya style peetha/chakuli. This dosa is prepared with coconut and rice. So don't keep batter for too long. The ingredients are very simple. Soak 2 cup rice for 5-6 hours. Separately soak 1/4 cup urad daal for same time. Grind rice and urad dal separately into smooth paste. Mix both tastes together. then add 1-1.5 cups of grated coconut and grind for couple of minutes. Keep it in fridge for later use or you can use it immediately. We generally have this dosa with potato fry. But sambhar or any chutney will also work as side dish.

Dal puri

This is one of my husband's favourite breakfast receipes. I tasted it first time after marriage. And when I prepared it for my mother and sister they loved it. The receipe itself is not that complicated. And you can always prepare the stuffing before hand. 

Ingredients for stuffing

1 cup chana daal

1 tsp turmeric powder

4 tbsp Dhane

4 tbsp Saunf

2-3 green chillies finely chopped 

1/2 tsp hing

1/2 tsp grated ginger

2 tbsp oil

salt to taste

• Start with boiling daal till it is very tender. When I boil daal, I use double water. I add turmeric and salt to daal when its boiling.
• Once daal is cooked properly, remove excess water if any.
• Grind daal with green chillies, ginger into smooth paste.
• In kadhai dry roast dhane and saunf. Grind into smooth powder.
• Next add oil in the kadhai. When oil heats up, add the daal mixture and fry for 5 min.
• Next add dhane-saunf powder and mix with daal mixture.
• Dry the mixture properly so that it is ready for stuffing.

When the stuffing is cooled, you can start with puri preparation.

These puris can be served with simple tomato ketchup. Some times my MIL prepares potato rassa/gravey as side dish. Will blog receipe for this sometime later. Till that time enjoy puris with tomato ketchup.

P.s. If you don't like deep fried puris, you can make parathas with this daal stuffing.

Date- Tamarind chutney

Eating bhelpuri is my weakpoint. And I don't get chance to indulge in eating bhelpuri in Bangalore because its not so good here. That is when I miss Mumbai so much. When my mother had come down to Bangalore once, she had kept stock of dat-tamarind sweet and sour chutney and mint-corriander-chilli hot chutney. So everyday we could eat homemade bhel.
This chutney is simple to make, its delicious and healthy too. All you need to do is take 2 parts of dates (without seeds, chopped), 1 part tamarind pulp (thick), some jaggery if you want sweetner chutney. Grind these ingredients with roasted jeera+ red chilli powder and salt per taste and you have a tasty chutney ready to use. This chutney easily stays for 2 weeks in fridge. 

Ghuguni/ White chana in gravey

If you go on Bhubaneshwar- Puri highway, you have to try the small eatery places which serves typical Oriya food. One such dish we tried there was Ghuguni with puri for breakfast. Ghuguni is a delightful curry which yiu can eat with puri, paratha, idli, dosa; basically everything.

Today we had it for breakfast with paratha. So immediately I planned on sharing the receipe

• Boil one cup of white chana/peas with 1 tsp turmeric powder and salt to taste. If you like potato, then you can boil 1 big size potato with chana. You need to cook for atleast 3-4 whistles if using pressure cooker.
• Heat 2-3 tbsp of mustard oil. You can use any regular cooking oil if you don't have mustard oil.
• Add 1tsp sugar in the oil. Let it caramalize a bit.
• Next add 1/2 medium size chopped onion and fry till they turn golden brown.
• Add 1 tsp of red chilli powder, 1 tsp of ginger garlic paste and cook for couple of minutes.
• Chop up 1/2 medium size tomoto and add to the masala and cook for 2 more minutes.
• Next add the cooked chana and potato (cut in cubes).
• Add water and cook for 10 min on sim.
• When serving, add some chana curry in a bowl. Add some raw chopped onion, chopped green chillies, date-tamarind chutney and some sev.

Back to Basics: Peanut butter

During my onsite stint in USA I tasted PBJ sandwiches for the first time and loved them. I am in love with peanuts in any form since childhood. My maternal grandfather used to harvest peanuts, so during our summer vacations we used to have heaps of peanuts to eat while we played. So when I tasted peanut butter it was love at first bite. After coming back to India, I saw peanut butter jars from same US brands I was happy till I saw the price tag. Thats when I decided to prepare peanut butter at home. With help of youtube I successfully prepared the butter.  All you need to do is nicely roast the peanuts. Remove the skin and then grind in mixie till you get a very smooth powder. If you like butter slightly sweet, add couple of tsp of powdered sugar or honey.Add salt to taste. To get a smooth paste of peanut butter, add oil (preferably peanut oil or any other vegetable oil) and grind till you get smooth peanut butter. If you like it chunky add some roughly grounded peanuts. You make make any variations of peanut butter like red chilli flavour, chocolate flavour etc.

Veg Biryani in 30-35 min

Last saturday, one of our friend announced that she is coming for lunch giving us really short notice of 1-1.5hrs. So we were frantically looking in pantry to decide what feast we can prepare on such short notice. Then I thought about preparing vegetable biryani/pulav. I have done it couple of times and it was really tasty. The receipe I followed was from book named "Perfect Receipes" by Pratibha Kothawale.  That time I had prepared dish at my own sweet leisure time. So I was not sure if we can have lunch on time. But still I gave it a try and the result was good. So now I can say with confidence that you can have veg biryani, raita and papad meal in 30-35 min. Only thing you need is planning and executing following receipe sequence in order on time.
Following ingredients can serve 2-3 people.

• Wash 2 cups of Basmati rice and keep aside.
• Cut 2 large onions in thin slices vertically.Fry it in oil till it turns golden brown.
• Fry 10-12 cashews next and keep aside.
• In a pot start boiling some water. Cut 2 medium size tomatoes in quarters. Remove seeds and add to boiling water. Let tomatoes simmer for 5 min.
• In meantime slice 2 small carrots vertically, 10-15 french beans, 5-7 medium size cauliflower florets. One by one boil the vegetables one by one  for 5 min. each.
• While boiling vegetables, start preparing masala. 0.5tsp jeera, 2 cardomom pods, 5-6 cloves, 1" cinnamon, 0.25tsp shahajeere, 1 small bayleaf, 2-3 black peppercorns grind together. Next add 2-3 green chillies, handful of corriander leaves and mint leaves, half of the fried onions, boiled tomatoes (remove skin), 1tsp turmeric powder and grind into smooth paste.
• Start heating 4 cups of water in separate pan.
• In pan heat 2tbsp oil in pan. Add whole garam masala (1" cinnamon, 1 bay leaf, 4 cloves,1/4 tsp shahjeera, 1 star anise) and fry for few seconds.
• Add 1 tsp ginger garlic paste and masala paste and fry till masala is cooked properly.
• Once masala is cooked add cooked vegetables, salt and rice. Mix everthing together.
• Add hot water in rice. Simmer on high flame.
• Once water dries out, spread fried onions, cashews on top. Close the lid, cook rice more for 3-5 min on low flame.
• Open the lid just before eating.
• Now by the time rice is cooking, you can prepare raita and fry some papads. Check the timer in the end to confirm if meal is ready within time :)

Note: I know that I did not layered rice and vegetable gravey to prepare biryani. I took shortcut of creating unlayerd biryani because finally we always mix the layers and it.

Something fruity something nutty

Banana bread with nuts is really simple to make and yummy to eat. I wanted to bake one for long time but was not able to keep bananas at home till they are overripe. But finally it happened unexpectedly. So decided to make an eggless version so that my mother can also enjoy this. By the time I finally wrote this blog I have tried two different recipes. You can follow the recipes from

http://www.archanaskitchen.com/desserts/cakes/181-eggless-banana-bread
In this recipe I've done 2 changes. I did not use any butter or oil. Also I adjusted quantity of sugar as the bananas were very sweet.

Second recipe is from http://medhaa.blogspot.com/2008/05/eggless-banana-bread.html Again I reduced quantity of sugar and replaced butter with oil. Both times the results were good tastewise. But in first case the cake was bit dense. Still I liked it as it was low on calories. You can also try it sometime.

One note I would like to add for this receipe. To simplify the preparation, I mixed all ingredients using mixie pot. So start with bananas, mash them well. then add sugar, then oil/ghee, next milk and in the end dry ingredients. The result is smooth and airy batter. The result was delicious

Rava/ Suji Eggless Cake

My last post was somewhere in oct'11 and though I was trying out various receipes I did not update on the blog. Most of the times the reason is that I forgot to take photo of the final product immediately after preparation. And most of the times when I remembered there were no left overs :).
So I was noting down all tried and loved receipes in my lil' blue diary. I am planning to now post is one by one and may be update the images later on.

As usual I am restarting blog writing with a "Sweet Receipe"

This is a simple eggless cake prepared with superfine semolina/rava/suji. I had prepared this cake for the first time on my son Aditya's 2nd month b'day. Had learned about this receipe from a cookery show on either "Mee Marathi" or "Saam TV", i don't remeber now.

The receipe is really simple. Only important thing is that the batter should be prepared well in advance so that the semolina is soaked in the milk+ curd for atleast 2-3 hrs. So that the cake is really soft.

Eggless Rava Cake

Preparation time: 10 min to mix all the ingredients + 2-3 hrs for resting batter.

Ingredients:

 

- 1 cup superfine semolina. In Bangalore they call it "Chiroti Rava". You can use Upama rava, just soak for more time.

- 1 cup milk

- 3/4 cup sugar. (Original receipe had 1 cup sugar. You can adjust this as per your taste).

- 1 cup curd

- 1/2 to 1/3 cup oil. (Original receipe had 1 cup ghee/clarified butter. But I prefer oil. I reduced quantity, but the cake turned out pretty moist).

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1 tbsp Keshar-elaichi syrup

- Chopped walnuts/almonds/kismis (optional)

 

1. Mix all ingredients (except soda) together and let the mixture rest for atleast 2-3 hrs.
2. Pre-heat oven for min. 5 min (180 C, I use only bottom rod heating in Bajaj OTG) before baking.

3. Mix soda in the cake batter and encorporate it well.

4. Pour the mixture in prepared (grease the pan) cake mould.

5. Bake at 180C for 30-35 min.

6. The cake is now ready to eat. In case you have leftovers, make sure to fridge it.

 

There is one variation to this receipe I call it "Satyanarayan puja prasad cake".

Basically you need to use Panchamruta (Ghee, Sugar, Milk, Curd, Honey) + Riped banana + Semolina as ingredients. You need to adjust quantities for Sugar,Honey and Banana as per your liking.

 

Next time when you have puja at home, do try this option for prasad.