July 2017

Vegetarian Thai Noodles: Gluten free and Vegan

July 29, 2017

This time when I had visited my sister, who stays in America, I got an opportunity to experiment with some new ingredients, veggies etc and I bought a couple of new items back home as well. This gluten free, Brown rice & millet ramen noodle is one of them.

When we were shopping, my eyes went to this noodle pack. I love to work with new ingredients and wanted to pick it up. After trying a couple of recipes, my daughter told me, how it should be. She asked me to prepare this as a little wet, soup kind. She said, regular kind of preparations tastes bland and it needs some flavoured soup to enhance the taste of this kind of sticky noodles and she was right. Ramen is a Japanese dish, consisting of a clear broth containing thin white noodles and sometimes vegetables, meat etc.

Finally, I came up with this, and got a green signal from my super-efficient critic!!! She said, hmmm yummy, go ahead and post: D

Ingredients:

Noodles – 3 cakes

Shallots – 10

Baby corn -4

Carrot-1

Broccoli- couple of small florets

Ginger garlic paste – ½ tsp

Tomato sauce – 1tbl sp

Thai sweet chilli sauce – 1tbl sp

Sriracha sauce -1 tbl sp

Soy sauce -1 tbl sp

Cooked broth – 1 small cup

Salt

Sesame oil – 2 tbl sp

Basil leaves – 5 to 6

Roasted peanut halves – 1 table spoon

Method:

-Boil water with one spoon of salt and oil. Put noodle, cook until al dente (it should cook and texture should be firm)

-Drain the water, rinse the noodle in cold tap water.

-Collect one small cup of drained water and keep aside for next use.

– Chop vegetables according to your taste.

– wash basil and roast peanuts, remove skin and make halves and keep aside.

– Mix all the sauces in one small bowl and keep it ready

-Take one wide kadai, add sesame oil. When it is hot, add chopped shallots and fry for a while.

-Next, drop in all the veggies and fry for a while.

-Add ginger garlic paste, fry until veggies are fried.

-Add all the sauce mixture and fry vigorously to avoid this to burn.

-Add reserved cooked and drained water of noodles. Check for the salt. If needed add and adjust.

-When it starts boiling, add noodles and mix.

-Garnish with torn basil leaves and sprinkle roasted peanuts and serve.

Note:

-You can use any noodles instead of gluten free noodle.

Patholi / Sweet rice dumpling, steamed in turmeric leaves:

July 27, 2017

Patholi is an offering which we make on the day of “Nagara Panchami”, or the snake festival in our house hold. Monsoon is the season in which we get lot of greens in abundance. Maybe that is the reason this dish is made in turmeric leaves.

Patholi is coconut and jaggery filled steamed kadubu or steamed rice cake, usually folded and steam cooked in turmeric leaves. Turmeric leaf gives beautiful aroma and good taste and this pleasantly aromatic dish is favoured by everyone in our family.

pic main 2

Ingredients:

Dosa rice /white rice – 2 cups

Grated coconut – 1 ½ cup

Grated Jaggery – ½ cup (to taste).

Ghee/ Clarified butter – 4 tsp.

Salt to taste

Turmeric leaves – 8 to 10

Method:

– Wash rice and soak it for 2 to 3 hours.

– Wash turmeric leaves and keep it aside.

collage 1

– Grind this soaked rice in to smooth paste by adding ½ cup of coconut, water and salt and little jaggery.

– Now keep thick bottomed kadai, pour this ground batter and add some water to make thin consistency. Now add 2 tsp of ghee and start heating this mixture by continuous stirring. When it becomes little thick and forms a mass, switch off the gas and keep it aside to cool to handle it further.

patholi 1

– In the meantime, make sweet coconut-jaggery mixture. In thick bottomed vessel add jaggery and ½ cup of water and heat. If you find some impurities in jaggery syrup, sieve this liquid and heat further and add fresh grated coconut and cook until it is sticky and forms mass. Add remaining ghee to this and mix. Now stuffing is ready.

– Method to make Patholi:

– Take little water in a bowl to dip your hand in between, while applying rice batter over turmeric leaf.

– Now take lemon sized rice batter ball, apply as thin as possible by using your hand by dipping your hand in bowl of water in between.

collage 2

– After applying ,spread coconut –jaggery mixture to half of every leaf in which batter is spread (please refer pictures)

– Now fold this in to half and keep this in a idly steamer and cook for 20 to 30 minutes or until done.

patholi 3

– Serve with ghee.

Marakesavu Pathrode:

July 25, 2017

Pathrode, name itself will make any Mangalorean drool. That too if it is marakesavu leaf, fun is even more. Marakesavu is non-itchy, seasonal colocasia leaves. It is one more classic monsoon special from Mangalore. Pathrode is usually served with coconut oil either plain or pan fried by slicing.

Marakesavu is commonly known as hitchhiker elephant ear and botanical name of this leaf is Remusatia vivipara. Leaf is large, oval, leathery textured, glossy on both the sides. Foliage disappears in winter and emerges after the first rain during monsoon. Grows widely on big tree trunks or in-between the stones, mainly emerges from the moss bed. The name itself suggests about its habitat. Here, “Mara” is Tree and “Kesavu” is colocasia.

We will see the Procedure-

Ingredients:

Dosa rice – 3 cups

Fresh Coconut – 1 ½ cup

Dried red chillies – 12 (Roasted)

Hing – ¼ teaspoon

Salt

Jaggery – 1 table spoon

Tamarind – 1 table spoon (if normal colocasia use little more)

Marakesavu – 3 bundles

Coconut oil – for serving

Method:

– Wash the leaves, remove stem and trim.

– Wash and soak rice for 3 hours.

– Fry red chillies by putting very little oil.

– Grind soaked rice, coconut, tamarind, jaggery, salt, roasted red chillies into smooth paste by adding sufficient water.

– Batter consistency should be like Dosa batter.

– Now, we are ready to make Pathrode.

– Take biggest leaf from the lot, place upper glossy part downwards and apply ground batter on back side of the leaf. (pc:step 1)

– After applying on the first leaf, keep second one (slightly smaller than the first one)

– Proceed with the application. After applying on second leaf, keep the third leaf then fourth one and proceed.(pc: step 2&3)

– Now lift sideways, and fold. Make it like a mat. Apply some batter on these folds as well.

– Roll from the tip and proceed until the end and apply some batter on outer shell and keep this in a water filled idly steamer.

– Cook this for 45 minutes to one hour, depending on the quantity of the content inside the vessel, in a low fire.

– Serve fresh with coconut oil by slicing these cooked rolls or apply coconut oil and fry these in an iron tawa on both the sides and enjoy as it is for breakfast or with lunch or dinner.

NOTE:

-Tamarind is a key ingredient while making Pathrode.

– If it is Mara Kesavu, it is non-itchy and quantity of the tamarind doesn’t matter.

– If you are using normal colocasia leaves, tamarind plays a very crucial part, in removing the itchiness of the leaves. Use little more quantity than normal.

– You can prepare this same recipe by using big spinach leaves as well.

Tadka dal- Seasoned lentil :

July 22, 2017

Tadka dal is a simple, nutritious side dish from northern India. Tadka dhal is a blend of a couple of lentils, cooked and seasoned with ghee as well as butter. It is a very good side dish and goes very well either with roti, plain rice, jeera rice or Kashmiri Pulav.

Ingredients:

Toor dal/ Pigeon peas – ½ cup

Masoor dal/Red lentil – ½ cup

Ghee – 1 tbl sp

Cumin – 1tsp

Turmeric – ½ tsp

Onion – 1 small

Garlic – 4 to 5 cloves

Ginger – ½ inch

Tomato – 1 big

Coriander powder – 1 tsp

Cumin powder – 1 tsp

Red chilli powder – 1 tsp

Salt

To Garnish – Chopped coriander, sliced garlic – 3 cloves, butter – ½ tbl sp

Method:

-Wash both the dals, cook with sufficient water.

– Take chopped onion, garlic and ginger in a small mixer jar and make rough paste and keep aside.

– grind tomato as well and keep aside.

-Now take one kadai, put ghee. When it is hot add Cumin then ground onion mixture, turmeric and fry until it is light brown.

-Now add ground tomato and fry this until raw smell vanishes and add Coriander, Cumin and Red chilli powders.

– Add cooked dal, salt and sufficient water. Boil.

-Garnish with chopped coriander leaves.

-Fry chopped garlic in little butter and add this into dal.

Enjoy this Dal with Kashmiri Pulav, plain rice or roti.

Kashmiri Pulav:

July 21, 2017

The Kashmiri Pulav what we see in restaurants have so many fresh fruits and dry fruits and are sweetish in taste as well. But in 2011, when we went to Kashmir, the care taker of our boat house made this wonderful Pulav which he served with tadka dal. That Pulav neither had fresh fruits nor so many dry fruits and it was not that sweet. It had raw yellow fresh dates, coconut chunks, cashew and raisins. My family liked this very much and wanted to note down the recipe to try it out. When I asked for the same.

Our care taker Mahdha kaka was very happy to share his recipe and I want to dedicate this blogpost of mine to this humble man.

here we go for detailed account –

Ingredients:

Basmati rice – 3 cups

Ghee – 150 Gms

Onion – 2 (sliced)

Ginger garlic paste – 1 tbl sp

Shahi jeera- 1 tsp

Bay leaf – 1

Salt

Saffron – 7 -8 strings

Hot milk – ¼ cup

Yellow dates, Raisins, cashew and dry coconut bits – as you wish.

Method:

– At first wash rice, soak for 10 min and drain the water and keep aside.

– Soak saffron in hot milk and keep aside. Slice dates, coconut etc.

– Now take one thick bottomed pan, put little ghee, fry cashew, raisin, coconut slices and dates one by one and keep aside.

– Now fry half of the onion in to dark brown and keep aside.

– Pour remaining ghee, put Shahi jeera, bay leaf then remaining sliced onion and fry for a while.

– When it becomes brown add ginger garlic paste and fry until raw smell vanishes.

– Add drained rice, fry for a while.

– Now add 6 cups of water, salt and cook this rice by closing the lid and keeping it in a simmer.

– When rice is almost done, add soaked saffron with milk, fried onion, dates, raisins and cashew.

– Mix everything and keep it in a fire for little more time until all the water evaporates or until rice is done.

– Enjoy this Kashmiri Pulav with Tadka dal.

Millet Choco chip cookie:

July 18, 2017

Millets are a very good alternative to normal All-purpose flour or whole wheat flour in gluten free baking. You can’t even recognize the core ingredient. It is gluten free as well as high in nutrition too.

When I was trying out some recipes for 2017 Millet calendar, I dished out a couple of recipes, which has turned out super tasty, and at the same time, healthy too.

At first, I tried Chocolate based cookie and it tasted good and here is the recipe-.

Ingredients:

Mixed millet flour -1 cup

Ragi flour – ¾ cup

Cocoa powder – 2 tbl sp.

Salt – ¼ tsp

Baking powder – ¾ tsp

Baking soda – ¾ tsp

Egg -1

Sugar – ¾ cup

Butter – 100 gms

Curd – 2 tbl sp

Vanilla essence – 1 tsp

Choco-chip – 2 tbl sp

Powdered sugar – to roll the dough.

Method:

-Put all the dry ingredients- flours, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and soda, Choco chip in one bowl, mix nicely and keep aside.

– Take another bowl and put butter and sugar, beat until sugar dissolves and butter becomes smooth.

-Add in egg and beat, add vanilla essence, curd and beat until batter is smooth.

– Now add dry ingredient flour mixture and make cookie dough by mixing like Chapati dough.

– Take one round spoon and make uniformly sized ball, dip in a sugar powder and arrange in a lined baking tray.

– Bake this in a pre- heated oven at 170º C for 12 to 14 minutes or until base becomes light brown.

-When it is done, remove and cool. Store this in an air tight container.

Note: This measurement yields around 28 cookies of this size.

Plantain stem and Moringa Rasam:

July 16, 2017

Where to start about the benefits of these two super foods? From my childhood, we used to relish banana stem and its flower in various dishes. Every part of banana plant is useful, be it its leaves, flower, stem, its outer fibre or fruit. No wastage of any part. Usually after the harvest of Banana fruit bunch, we should remove that plant and should allow its baby plant to grow and fruit. Usually after the harvest, banana plant is chopped off, outer fibre is peeled off and it is dried under the sun and used as a thread in tying Jasmine flowers. Inner core or pith is divided into 3 parts. Top most part, which is very slender and less fibrous will be used in raw salads. Middle portion is little more fibrous and used in cooking and making Dosa’s. Bottom part, which is more fibrous, mature and hard to chew will be used in juices, soups or Rasam’s.

Plantain stem is one of the best, natural high fibre vegetable. It also maintains fluid balance in our body and acts as a coolant, especially in Summer season.

Moringa or Drumstick leaves are considered as a “Power food” for its nutritionally rich nature.

Here I have combined these two ingredients and made Rasam and trust me it is very tasty and can be used as an appetizer shot as well.

Ingredients:

Plantain stem – 6- 8 inches long

Drumstick leaves – 1 cup

Tomatoes – 2

Tamarind – ½ tsp

Garlic – 8 cloves

Cumin – 1 tsp

Green chillies – 2 to 3

Salt

Jaggery – 1tsp

Coriander leaves – 1 table sp.

Seasoning:

Coconut oil – 2 tsp

Mustard – 1 tsp

Cumin – ½ tsp

Hing – one pinch

Red chilli-1

Curry leaves – 1 spring

Method:

– Slice plantain stem into discs, remove thread like fibre while slicing.

– Chop the roundels into thin slices.

– Wash drumstick leaves, here you can use as it is, with its sticks intact. No need to remove intact stalks of these tiny leaves.

– Cook plantain stem pieces, drumstick leaves, chopped tomatoes, green chilli, tamarind in a pressure cooker for one whistle. Cool this mixture, grind and sieve. Discard the fibrous part.

– Dry grind garlic and cumin. Add this to collected solution, add salt, jaggery and boil for a while.

– Garnish with coriander leaves and do the seasoning.

– Heat coconut oil, add mustard, when it starts to splutter, add broken red chilli, cumin and curry leaves.

– Serve this as an appetizer shot before food or as a Rasam with hot rice.

Creamy Mushroom Curry:

July 14, 2017

This curry is very dear to my heart; I had dished out this recipe almost eighteen years back. At that time, I was not very familiar with cooking mushrooms. I wanted to try mushrooms at the same time; I had no clue how. I decided to keep the curry leaves’ flavour and creamy texture dominant, mainly because of my hubby’s fondness towards these two aspects.

This lightly spiced curry is very easy, and it has no frills attached. It is super simple with mind-blowing flavours of southern Indian spices. It takes less than 30 minutes to make. It is healthy, low fat, mild, and a perfect side dish for any roti, pulka or even bread.

For a vegan and tastiest version, you can use coconut milk and replace milk with coconut milk and if it is thick, avoid adding cornflour.

Ingredients:

Mushroom – 200 grams

Onion – 1 (big)

Green chillies – 1 or 2

Curry leaves – 2 springs

Coconut oil – 1 tablespoon

Cumin – ½ teaspoon

Turmeric – ½ teaspoon

Salt

Pepper powder – ½ teaspoon

Garam masala – ¼ teaspoon

Milk – 1 cup

Corn starch – 1 ½ teaspoon

Method:

-Wash, wipe and slice the mushrooms.Chop onion and green chillies as well.

-Mix cornflour to milk and keep it aside. (If you are using coconut milk, avoid this step)

-Heat oil in a skillet, add cumin, curry leaves.

-Then add chopped onions and green chillies, turmeric and fry for a while.

-When onion becomes transparent, add in sliced mushrooms and fry for two to three minutes.

-When it starts wilting, sprinkle little salt and mix.

-Pour milk and cornflour mixture or Coconut milk and cook until it reaches a creamy texture.

-Lastly, garnish with a little pepper powder and garam masala.

-Enjoy with any flatbread.

Thagathe Soppina Vada/Cassia Tora Fritters:

July 11, 2017

Thagathe soppu is nothing but Cassia Tora or Senna Tora in English. It mainly grows as a weed in open grounds or road side in Rainy season. It is a very useful plant and mostly ignored by all. Leaves of this plant are not only used as a medicine; its seeds are also used widely in Ayurveda.

In our coastal belt, we do prepare lots of delicacies from its young leaves and this vade or fritters is one among them. These fritters are served as a snack or as a starter for lunch/dinner. This monsoon delicacy is also called dangar in Konkani.

Ingredients:

Dosa rice – ¾ cup

Toor dal – 2 tablespoons

Dried red chillies – 5 – 8 ( Byadagi)

Salt

Hing – generous pinch

Tamarind – ½ tsp

Coconut – ½ cup

Chopped greens – 1 to 2 cups ( as needed)

Chopped onion – 1

Method:

– Wash and Soak rice and dal for 3 hours.

-Roast red chillies, chop onions , Clean the leaves, remove stalks, wash thoroughly ,chop the leaves and keep it ready.

– At first grind coconut, hing, salt, red chillies in to paste.

– To this, add soaked rice and dal mix, grind this into a small rava consistency by adding very little water.

– Remove from the mixer grinder, add chopped leaves , onion and mix thoroughly.

-Heat oil in a small kadai. When it is hot, take bite size of batter and pat a little in your palm and deep fry.
-Serve this as a side dish with Dal – Rice or Rasam and rice.

Note: If you don’t have access to Cassia Tora leaves, instead you can use chopped Moringa or Methi or fenugreek leaves as well.

Instant Paddu:

July 8, 2017

This Recipe happened by fluke and I felt it was a very good option for kid’s tiffin boxes and basically my daughters loved it and they were asking me to include this as a regular item. So, I was thinking of sharing it with you all, lovely readers.

Last week when I made some biryani for kids and hubby’s tiffin box, no one was interested to carry a raita with them and I was left with one big bowl of onion and tomato raita. I wanted to utilise that sweetish raita in some way and thought of preparing rawa Paddu.

I took an inspiration from rawa idly mix and proceeded like that. Instead of adding only Rawa, I included millet idly rawa too and believe me, it was so tasty and the kids were saying “it was oozing with flavour and no side dish or chutney was needed” for this.

Now we will see, how I proceeded –

Ingredients:

Normal Rawa – 1 cup

Millet rawa- 1 cup

Ghee – 1 table spoon

Mustard – 1 tsp

Urad dal- 1 tsp

Cumin- ½ tsp

Hing- ¼ tsp

Curry leaves – 1 or 2 springs(chopped)

Eno fruit salt – 1 Tsp

Curd – 2 cups

Chopped onion -1

Chopped tomato – 1

Chopped coriander – little

Salt

Sugar

Method:

-Make seasoning by taking ghee in one pan, when it is hot, add mustard. After mustard splutters, add urad dal, cumin, hing, chopped curry leaves and fry for a minute.

-Add plain rawa and millet rawa fry until it becomes grainy in texture.

-Remove from the flame and cool the mixture into room temperature.

– Before preparing batter, take the curds, chopped onions, tomato, coriander leaves, salt and sugar mix nicely by adding Eno fruit salt.

– Now add seasoned, cooled rawa mix and give a stir. Mixture should be little watery kind at this point. Keep aside for 5 to 10 minutes so that batter will become thick now due to soaking of all the moisture by rawa.

-If batter is too thick you can add little more curds and adjust the consistency. It should be like idly batter and consistency should be little thick.

-Keep Appam or Paddu tawa, when it is hot keep it in a simmer, pour ½ tsp of ghee to every hole and pour the required amount of ready batter.

-Close the lid, cook for a while. Then flip and cook other side as well and then serve either as it is or with any chutney.

Note:

-Here I have used little millet idly rawa, you can use any millet rawa as well.

-If you don’t have access to millet rawa, you can use only rawa too.

– Here I have used Uppittu rawa/plain semolina/Bombay rawa.

-I did seasoning part on previous night and kept it aside for cooling. So that, morning it will be easy to mix and proceed to make Paddu.

-You can make this rawa mix and store it for a future use.