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.