Kathrikai Vatha Kuzhambu

Kathrikai Vatha Kuzhambu

While browsing thru my blog, I was surprised to find that one of the most popular Kuzhambu varieties at home, which is quintessential to an Iyer household has not been given it’s due in my blog!

I am talking about the Vathakuzhambu, especially the Brinjal Vathakuzhambu. So here it is!

Ingredients: (Serves 3)

1. Brinjal – country variety 4 or 5
2. Onion – 2
3. Small onions – 5
4. Tomatoes – 2
5. Garlic – 4 pods (optional)
6. Curry leaves
7. Sesame oil for seasoning
8. Mustard – 1 tsp
9. Fenugreek – 1 tsp
10. Asafetida – 1 pinch

11. Turmeric powder – 1 tsp
12. Sambar powder – 1 heaped tsp
13. Jaggery – 1 tsp
14. Tamarind paste / tamarind

Method :
1. Finely cut onions, small onions, tomatoes
2. Slice brinjals and make sure there are no insects
3. If you are using garlic, peel the pods
4. In a pan heat sesame oil
5. Once the oil warms up, add mustard, fenugreek and asafetida
6. Then in goes the curry leaves
7. Add the onions, small onions, garlic and enough salt for these to cook
8. Then add the brinjals and the tomatoes
9. Let these cook well. Then add turmeric powder, sambar powder
10. After the powders are coated, make sure that the mix is not too dry. If not, add 1 tsp of sesame oil
11. Now add 1 tsp of tamarind paste or juice from 1 gooseberry sized tamarind pulp
12. Keep cooking till you see the mix to turn shiny. Taste check and add more salt if needed
13. Atlast add 1 tsp of jaggery

Note 1: Some people prefer not to use onion, garlic and small onions in the Kathrikai Kuzhambu. They can skip them altogether and increase the number of brinjals used.

Note 2: if you reduce the veggies content, you may end with a watery Vatha Kuzhambu. In such case, you may mix rice flour or corn flour in a spoon of water and add it to the boiling Kuzhambu to make the consistency thicker.

Delicious Kathrikai Vatha Kuzhambu is ready and pairs very well with hot steaming rice and appalam or paruppu usili.

Here is the recipe for paruppu usili using asparagus..

https://saranyas.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/asparagus-paruppu-usili/

Ratatouille

Hello! How are you all doing? What a strange situation for the world to be in!
This is a tricky time for us to maintain the calm and positive environment at home. It’s time to relax and reflect to find peace and inner happiness. Let’s just hope that we all come out strong from this. Stay safe!

Recently, we spent some family time watching the movie ‘Ratatouille’ and my LO wanted us to prepare the dish Ratatouille. Being raised in an Indian household, I had never heard about this dish until I saw the famous movie, ‘Ratatouille’.

‘Ratatouille niçoise’ or just ‘Ratatouille’, is a French dish originating from Nice, France. A dish made with a medley of vegetables.

According to Wikipedia,
The word ratatouille derives from the Occitan ratatolha^[2] and is related to the French ratouiller and tatouiller, expressive forms of the verb touiller, meaning “to stir up”.^[3][4] From the late 18th century, in French, it merely indicated a coarse stew. The modern ratatouille – tomatoes as a foundation for sautéed garlic, onion, zucchini, aubergine (eggplant), bell pepper, marjoram, fennel and basil, or bay leaf and thyme, or a mix of green herbs like herbes de Provence – does not appear in print until c. 1930.^[5After looking up various versions of the recipe, I zeroed in on few key ingredients- onion, tomato, garlic, celery, carrot, capsicum, brinjal (eggplant), zucchini, herbs and bayleaf.

Due to the unavailability of few ingredients, I omitted the celery. Replaced zucchini with a long cucumber, the big eggplant with 3 small brinjals. The protein conscious me also threw in some almonds. The final result was a wow!I will definitely try the original Ratatouille one day but this version is surely a keeper!

Let’s go to the recipe.Ingredients: (Serves 3)

Onion – 1
Roma Tomatoes – 6
Garlic – few pods
Carrot – 1 medium sized
Almonds – 5 to 6
Cucumber – 1(the fat variety)
Brinjal – 3 to 4
Cooking oil – few drops to saute
Salt/ Himalayan salt- per taste
Pepper – per taste
Bay leaf – 1

Method:

1. Finely chop the onion, garlic, 3 tomatoes and the medium sized carrot

2. Heat up a kadai or a sauce pan

3. Add few drops of cooking oil. Once the oil is warm, add the onion,garlic and bay leaf. Add a dash of salt so that they cook faster. Make sure that the flame is at medium

4. Once the onions seem transparent, add the finely chopped tomatoes and the carrot

5. Stir for few minutes till the tomatoes seem to become mushy. Switch off flame and discard the bayleaf

6. Add in the almonds and grind everything into a nice smooth paste

7. My family prefers food to be mildly spiced. If you want to notch up the heat, go ahead and add some red chilli powder before grinding

8. Next pre-heat your oven to 270F for 10 mins

9. Now take a bread pan or a round cake pan and grease it with some butter or oil. Pour the ground base into the pan

10. Slice the cucumber, remaining tomatoes, brinjals to this slices. Please ensure that the veggies are almost of the same thickness

11. Arrange the veggies in a pattern inside the pan

12. Drizzle some oil and sprinkle some salt and pepper

13. Let it bake for 15 mins or till the veggies seem soft

14. Carefully remove the pan, serve and enjoy!

Presto Pressure Cooker

*Please note that this is not a paid review but only my experience with this lovely product.

Hello! Never have I ever imagined myself taking some time off to write about a pressure cooker! But I have already spoken in lengths to friends and family alike about what a huge life saver this pressure cooker is. Then I am bound to write about it in my cooking blog as well!

What’s the frenzy you may ask. In a world where expensive instapots to rotimakers are talked and reviewed about, here I am writing about our tried and tested humble old pressure cooker.

In my South Indian, Tamil upbringing, you are deemed ‘know to cook’ if you know to handle the pressure cooker. Back in those days, moms would have a huge aluminum pressure cooker with inlay vessels, which will let them cook rice, dal, veggies all at once.

Fast forward few years, when I got married and was responsible for my own meals, I decided to ditch the big bulky pressure cooker because of a few reasons

– noisy n intimidating

– over cooking of rice/dal or both

– not a fan of aluminum

Instead I chose a fancy electric rice cooker and opted to have a small pressure pan just to cook our daily lentils.

In the next few years I experimented with several others tools of the trade including instapot to OPOS. They have all come handy at various stages – I agree. But my life changed for the best when I bought the presto pressure cooker. It was initially bought as a temporary option.

First thing that stood out was that, it doesn’t give out a loud whistle. For that matter no whistling sound at all. The whistle just shakes to let you know that it’s done.

When my kid was much younger we had that phase when he was terrified of the pressure cooker sound and we had a traumatic morning schedule. With the presto in place, this was totally fixed.

Second, rice and dal take 5 mins to cook. Yes , it’s that fast. It does precision cooking. Everytime, rice and dal are cooked so perfectly. This is such a time saver esp for a mom. Last thing you want is opening a cooker to see half cooked dal with a hungry child in hand.

Third, cleanup. Cleanup is a breeze as I have to just pop the cooker inside the dishwasher. The inlay vessels have to be cleaned but that’s the same with all cooking vessels.

Fourth is spewing. There is absolutely no spewing like the pressure pans or the other pressure cookers I have used. No spewing means easy cleanup.

Ever since I started loving this cooker, I have not used my pressure pans or electric cookers. This is one tool to get my usual done sooner and faster.

If you are interested in checking out the amazing presto cooker, here is a link. I used ekovana’s inlay vessels. I am not very fond of them. Once u find something better, I will update the inlay vessels section.

Presto 01362 6-Quart Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker

Gulab Pitha/ Gulap Pitha

Long time, blog readers! Anyways nice time of the year to get back isn’t it? Deepavali or Diwali is just tomorrow and it’s almost a sin if u don’t dish out a sweet or two! So, here is something that I tried out this Diwali. it’s something that I bookmarked from Pinterest almost an year ago and had been mustering courage to try it out. Yes, it seemed very difficult and intricate but trust me, it’s not that tough and if you have little bit of patience you can easily amaze your friends and family with this amazing sweet!
The sweet is an authentic Bangladeshi sweet. I have never tasted it before but went thru almost all the recipes that are available in the blogosphere and almost all of them follow the same measurements.
‘Gulab Pitha’/ ‘Gulap Pitha’ is sweet made of all purpose flour/ maida and is shaped like a rose flower filled with sugar syrup. Needless to say it was so indulgent. Let’s get to the recipe now.

Ingredients

1.Maida – 1 Cup

2. Whole milk – 1 Cup

3. Salt – a pinch

4. Sugar – 1 Cup

5. Water – 2 Cups

6. Rose Essence – 3 drops

Step by Step instructions

1. Boil 1 cup of milk with a pinch of salt

2. When the milk starts to boil, add maida little by little and stir. The milk and maida will form a crumbly dough. Don’t worry about any lumps being formed

3. Switch off the flame and mix the milk-maida dough

4. Let it cool down to room temperature or till your fungers can handle the heat.

5. Spread some ghee or oil on your fingers and spend next 10 mins in kneading the dough

6. It will be a soft dough. now separate the dough into balls. 1 cup of maida will yield around 12 big balls

7. Take the chapathi rolling plank and dust it with flour. Take a maida ball, roll it into a thin roti. Now we have to cut circles with a diameter of 6cm. For this you may use a cookie cutter. I just used the small porcelain cup that I had but I suggest using something with a sharp edge

8. Take three circles

9. Sprinkle some flour on them

10. Stack them together

11. Now with a knife make four slits so that the circle is divided into sectors but you have to leave some 2cm in the center

12. Place the circles on the counter. Now fold one petal (one sector) so that it forms the inner most petal for the rose

13. Next fold the petal right opposite to the one you folded. You have to fold it around the petal you just folded

14. After folding the top and bottom petals, fold left and right petals around the petals already folded

15. Continue folding all the petals in the same fashion

16. Now that a rose flower is completed, place it on a plate

17. Boil water and sugar in a pan till the sugar melts. Add rose water and let it simmer in low flame

18. Heat oil in a kadai. When the oil is hot, carefully add the rose flower to the oil and fry it till golden brown in low flame

19. Take the flower out of oil and let the oil drain in a tissue paper

20. Now the flower has to be dipped in the simmering sugar syrup. Spoon the syrup into the flower, make sure it’s well coated and take it out

21 place the flower on a serving plate and serve it hot or cold!

Here is a video showing how to make the flowers

Please note:

1. 1 cup maida gives 11 to 12 flowers

2. Fry the flower in low flame and keep turning the flower so that the inside of the flower is also well cooked

Zucchini, Carrot Noodles

Back to my space after a long long time! Thanks to all those wonderful readers who still check back for updates. So many things had been going on in personal life that i could think about thd blog.
Today i am back with a light, healthy and almost no cook dinner recipe. I recently purchased an awesome handy kitchen toy. Its called SpiraLife Vegetable Spiralizer. It carves out noodles from zucchini, carrot, potato and almost all root vegetables. I prepared zucchini noodles, carrot noodles, potato noodles. Tossed some soy sauce and tomato sauce and dinner was ready in few minutes. what an awesome way to consume vegetables! Also, the cleanup was a breeze and it fitted well along with my spoons.

You may prepare a simple pesto sauce by combining basil, pine nuts and olive oil with a dash of pepper.

Don’t my ‘noodles’ look great?

The product is available in amazon.com

SpiraLife Vegetable Spiralizer and Recipe eBook – Durable Composite Design – 2 Blade Sizes

Idly upma

Idly upma
Idly is the safest food for babies and its great for travel. Idly is a staple at my home, only after dosas and my son’s fav semiya upma.

Some evenings we end up with left over idlies from breakfast . Since we have this habit of consuming only fresh food, we don’t enjoy the left over idlies. That is when the idly upma comes to the rescue. It gives an awesome makeover to regular idlies.

Ingredients:
1.Left over idlies – 8
2. Onion -1
3. Green capsicum -1/2
4. Mustard seeds -1/4 tsp
5. Urud dal – 1 tsp
6. Asaefiatida – 1 pinch
7. Milagai podi – 1 tbspn
8. Salt to taste

Preparation:
1. Sprinkle some water on the idlies and crumble idlies to smaller fragments
2. Heat oil in a pan. Add mustard seeds. Once it splutters, add urud dal and fry till the dal is golden brown. Add asafoetida
3. Add onion and salt. Once onion turns golden add finely chopped capsicum
4. Add crumbled idlies and mix well
5. Finally mix in the idly milagai podi and mix well with a spring of curry leaf

Notes:
* The idly might be dry to crumble. Sprinkle some water on the idlies to make them soft. Then you can crumble them very easily.
* You can experiment with other veggies but I have always felt the onion capsicum combination the best

‘Cream Centre’ Style Broccoli n Cheese Bites

‘Cream Centre’ Style Broccoli n Cheese Bites 

Are you from India? Have you been to a popular restaurant called ‘Cream Centre’? If not, you have really been missing out on some delectable food. If you have, you probably know what I am talking about.

Cream Centre has an awesome American corn n cheese balls in their starter menu. They are crispy on the outside. Once you take a bite, you are treated to cheesy melted goodness. The only other place to have this on their menu was the Newyorkers restaurant in Chennai. I was very sad when they closed down. Last year when I went to Chennai, I was happy to discover Cream Centre. Recently a friend of mine mentioned that Newyorkers is operational again at Khader Nawaz Khan road in Chennai. Between Cream Centre and Newyorkers, I don’t really know whose Corn n Cheese balls I love the most. Let’s just say that I love cheese balls.

I have been trying to come up with a similar recipe for a while. I finally perfected the recipe after umpteen trials. As it is Children’s day, I decided to make these yummy bites with broccoli n cheese which is a kids favorite. It turned out to be a very simple and easy recipe and gets done pretty quickly. Though it is quick, there is no compromise on taste. It is a great evening snack for kids n adults alike.. Especially with the weather getting colder day by day, these are awesome bites of melted goodness that can be served at tea.

Instead of deep frying I used my Aebleskiver Pan so that the oil consumption was very less.

Ingredients:

1. Mozzarella Cheese – 3 tbspn

2. All purpose flour (maida) – 1 tsp

3. Broccoli flowers – 1/4 cup

4. Salt – very less

5. Red Chilli powder – 1/2 tsp

6. oil to deep fry

7. Coriander leaves – 1 spring (finely chopped)

Preparation:

1. Boil broccoli flowers in water along with a pinch of salt. I microwaved 1/4 cup brocolli along with water and salt for 3 minutes. You can use the pressure cooker and just boil the broccoli in water

2. In a mixing bowl, mix together mozzarella cheese, maida, red chilli powder, boiled and mashed broccoli flowers, finely chopped coriander leaves into a fine dough. If needed add very little water

3. Check for saltiness and add salt if needed

4. Heat the Aebleskiver pan. Add a tsp of oil in each of the moulds

5.  Pinch the dough and prepare small balls

6. Once the oil is hot, place the balls carefully inside the moulds. After 2 minutes, with a spoon carefully turn the cheese balls

7. Once the cheese balls are evenly browned on all sides, transfer them to a bowl lined with a paper towel

8. Yummy Broccoli n Cheese bites are done. You can enjoy them as such or with tomato sauce

Note:

* Deep fry the cheese balls right before serving. Otherwise the cheese will not be melted on the inside.

* The dough should be tight so add no water or very less water to make the dough. The water in the boiled, strained, broccoli was enough to form a dough

* You can try the same recipe with mashed corns instead of broccoli. In fact, Cream Center serves corn n cheese balls.

* The key is to add a lot of cheese and keep the flour to the minimal quantity. When you prepare larger batches, adjust quantities accordingly

 

Veggies and Cashew Basil Pesto Lasagna Pasta

Veggies and Cashew  Basil Pesto Lasagna Pasta

When I searched my pantry for an ingredient last week,  I was surprised by the random items I had to wade through. In between the packets of toor dal and urud dal were hidding a half used box of Lasagna, a box of spiral pasta, a sushi making kit, Ethiopian Beri Beri spice, a whole big box of buckwheat, flax seed flour, amaranth, quinoa and much more.  I decided to start a pantry cleaning exercise.

First comes the half used box of Lasagna pasta. According to wiki, “Lasagne (/ləˈzænjə/ or /ləˈzɑːnjə/ or /ləˈsɑːnjə/, Italian pronunciation: [laˈzaɲɲe], singular lasagna) are a wide, flat pasta shape, and possibly one of the oldest types of pasta. The word also refers to a dish made with several layers of lasagne sheets alternated with sauces and various other ingredients.”

My son loves Pasta. Everyday when I ask him what he would like to have for dinner, bang comes the answer – ‘Paaasshta’! That’s not just for dinner he would have pasta any time of the day. You might think it must be an easy job for me to just dish out a multigrain pasta load it with cheese and veggies and sit back and relax with a book as my son devours the absolute healthy meal.Sadly, Its not as easy as you would expect. He hates cheese. Pesto is the only acceptable sauce. So far he hasn’t been very picky about veggies so I am saved on that front. With these filters, I often try to prepare pasta with a mix of veggies, a rich pesto with basil cashews butter and I also sneak in cheese. This probably explains the low cheese in the photos below. So here is how i prepared this Lasagna pasta that my son loved..

Ingredients:

1. Lasagna Pasta (I used almost 8 sheets and it served 3 people)

2. Boiled mixed veggies (I used brocolli, green beans, white carrots)

3. Onion – 1/2 finely chopped

4. Tomato – 1

5. Turmeric powder – 1/4 tsp

6. Red chilli powder – 1/4 tsp

7. Cumin powder – 1/4 tsp

8. Salt to taste

9. Oil/ butter to saute

10. Shredded Mozzarella Cheese – 1 cup

Basil Cashew Pesto 

1. Basil leaves – 1 pack

2. Cashews – 1/4 cup

3. Pepper powder – 1/4 tsp

4. Salt to taste

5. Mozzarella Cheese – 1/8 cup

6. butter 1 tsp

Preparation:

1. Heat water in a wide sauce pan. Add salt and place the Lasagna sheets in a slanting fashion. Once the sheet immersed in water is cooked, the rest of the uncooked pasta will move into water. You can add water upto the middle of the sauepan so that water is enough to boil the pasta and not spill over

2. Boil Carrots, brocolli and beans in water with little salt and keep the veggies aside

3. In a small pan, heat butter. Add finely chopped onions, tomatoes with required salt.

4. When the tomatoes turn mushy add the boiled veggies. Add turmeric powder, chilli powder and cumin powder and mix well

5. Prepare pesto sauce by grinding together all the given ingredients with necessary salt. Keep in mind that we are adding salt to the veggies and pasta also

 

6. Once the pasta is done, pre heat the over to 350 F. Grease cake or bread tray with butter. Place a sheet of cooked pasta lining the inside of the tray. Top with the veggies.  Now cover the veggies with two pasta sheets vertically.

7. Top this layer with the pesto sauce and little bit of cheese

8. Cover this layer with another pasta sheet covering horizontally and top it with a layer of veggies and so on. When you are left with one sheet to go, cover the veggies with the sheets spilling over the pan like you are wrapping them. Now place the final sheet and cover it with cheese

9. Back the pasta for 30 mins. When the cheese is slightly brown, you can take the pasta out and serve

Hope you liked my simple vegetarian pasta. Do let me know your comments

Oats Tutti Fruiti Cookies

Oats Tutti Fruiti Cookies

I prepared these ‘Oats Tutti Fuiti Cookies’ topped with Ferero Rocher for this Halloween. Though we don’t celebrate Halloween, I wanted to prepare something nice for the kids who come trick or treating to our house. I had been frequently baking these cookies which I got from Sharmi’s Passions. This time I prepared with a small twist – I added 1/4 cup of coconut flakes and really liked the subtle taste of coconut in the oats cookie. As it was for kids, I placed a Ferero Rocher truffle on the cookies. You can use any other truffle or even skip the chocolate. Its very nice way to get kids and adults take oats. This cookie recipe is a keeper.

This year we also tried our hand at ‘Pumpkin Carving’. DH came up with an innovative idea of carving Lord Ganesha on a pumpkin. Take a look at the final outcome. Looks great, right?

 

Ok, back to the cookies recipe.. Here you go..

 

Ingredients:

Oats – 3/4 cup
Wheat Flour – 1/4 cup
Coconut flakes – 1/4 cup
Unsalted Butter – 1.5 tbsp
Milk – 2 tbsp
Demera Sugar – 1/4 cup
Tutti Frutti – 1/3 cup
Vanilla Essense – 1/4 tsp

Topping:

Ferrero Rocher or any other truffle for topping (Optional)

Preparation:

1. Grind Demera sugar, if using (Normal white sugar works well too). Mix oats, wheat flour, coconut flakes, sugar, tutti fruiti, vanilla essence

2. Add butter and mix well without lumps

3. Add milk and mix well to form a tight dough

4. Make even sized balls out of the dough

5. Pre heat oven to 350 F. Grease a cookie tray with butter.Flatten the dough balls into cookies. With your thumb make a small indent on the cookies so that the chocolate can be kept after the cookies are done.

 

6. Place the cookies in the greased tray

7. Bake the cookies for 15 minutes.

8. Once the sides start to brown, remove the tray from the oven. Before the cookies cool down, place the chocolate truffle on the cookies

9. Within a few minutes the chocolate will melt slightly, Once the cookie comes to room temperature, enjoy cookies with a cup of coffee or milk.