March 2018

Mug Pasta or One Bowl Pasta:

March 24, 2018

When my daughter had a holiday in between her exams, she has demanded for this treat for an afternoon lunch. She was alone on that day and I prepared it only for her and she was happy with the result. Today, I made it once again for my twins and I wanted to share the recipe with all my readers.

If you have seen my earlier posts of pastas I normally add any flavours to the white sauce. One of my daughters doesn’t like the bland taste, and here I thought of using tomato to give a little tangy taste.

I have used cooked elbow macaroni pasta. You are free to use any kind of pastas.

My daughter wanted Broccoli, capsicum and onion as veggie filling.

Then comes, grated cheese. I have used mozzarella cheese.

Here I am going to give for 2 big cups (meal for 2 kids)

Ingredients:

Macaroon – 1 cup

Broccoli – ½ cup

Capsicum – 1

Onion – 1

Olive oil or butter – 2 tsp

Tomato – 2

Whole wheat flour – 2 tea spoons

Milk – ½ cup

Seasonings – of your choice

Garlic salt – as needed

Mozzarella cheese – as needed

Method:

-At first, cook tomato in a sauce pan by adding half a cup of water. Remove and cool.

-In the same saucepan, blanch broccoli in boiling water and drain. It will help to remove any pesticide traces.

-In the same sauce pan, add required amount of water, little oil, salt and boil. Add pasta and cook into al Dante. Drain and keep aside.

-Chop onion, capsicum.

-Take one tawa, add 1 tea spoon of butter, toss all the three veggies (onion, broccoli and capsicum) by adding garlic salt, pizza seasoning, red chilli flakes or any other seasoning of your choice.

-Now tossed vegetable is ready and kept aside.

-Now we will make a pasta sauce.

-Fry whole wheat flour with butter or olive oil.

-Take one blender, mix fried whole wheat, milk and cooked tomato with water in which it has cooked.

-Churn and make a paste.

-Cook this paste in a sauce pan by adding garlic salt, any seasoning. I have added crushed rosemary, jalapeno pepper and garlic salt seasoning.

-When it starts boiling and becomes shiny and thick, switch off the gas.

-Now comes the assembling part.

-Take 2 Big ceramic mugs, if it is not available, use any baking dish.

-At first, pour couple of spoons of the prepared pasta sauce. Add grated cheese according to your wish.

-Add half of cooked pasta as a layer. Then half of veggie mix. Over to this, pour half the quantity of pasta sauce.

-Once again repeat the action. Empty all the remaining pasta, then veggies, pasta sauce.

-It will reach till the rim. Take one thick kitchen towel and place the mug and tap a little.

-All the sauce will settle, sprinkle grated cheese on top.

-Bake these ready mugs in a pre-heated oven at 180C for 10 to 15 minutes or until cheese melts or becomes light brown.

-Serve with Love 😊

Eggless Coconut Flour Choco chip cookies:

March 21, 2018

In my last post I have discussed regarding homemade coconut flour. Previously I did try one recipe from coconut residue (without drying and making flour), but this is my first trial or recipe after making the flour, and I am really exited and happy.

One thing we must keep in our minds while using coconut flour is, don’t under estimate its absorption power by seeing its light and airy texture. It absorbs moisture like a sponge. What I learnt from this experience is, it needs almost equal amount of moisture content as flour volume.

Here I have taken flax gel as an egg replacer, mainly because of its gel like texture. Coconut flour doesn’t have any holding capacity, so thought of using flax gel.

In this experiment I have taken half cup of coconut flour and it did absorb the liquid, swell and gave me 9 cookies . More than everything, this was interesting!! Chocolate Chip Coconut Flour Cookie. This was a little experiment, and the results were not bad at all! I got the big thumbs up from my twins 😀

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Let us see the procedure-

Ingredients:

Coconut flour – ½ cup

Flax gel – ½ cup

Ghee or Oil – 1 table spoon

Choco chip – ¼ cup

Organic Natural brown sugar – ½ cup (you can use normal sugar as well)

Sea salt – ½ tea spoon

Vanilla – 1 tea spoon

Method:

– How to make flax gel: Take 2 tsp of flax seed, make powder. Put this powder in thick bottomed small pan, add one cup of water and boil until it is thick, slimy and reduced to almost half.

-Pre heat oven at 170 °C. Line the baking tray with the butter paper.

-Take one glass bowl, put flour, sugar, salt crystals, ghee, flax gel, vanilla and mix. Dough will be little wet. Mix in Choco chip and mix once more.

Ribbet collage 1

-Scoop out the mix by using ice cream scooper and arrange in a lined baking tray.

-Bake this in a pre-heated oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Ribbet collage 2

-Don’t touch while removing, it will be very soft. Remove the tray and cool as it is.

-After cooling, it will harden a bit. After it cools down completely, store it in an air tight container.

– These cookies are slightly crunchier at outer circle, soft and chewy at the centre.

– It becomes a little more harder and firm the next day .

How to make Coconut Milk and Flour at Home:

March 19, 2018

If you are a person, who extracts coconut milk for kheer/ payasam like me, it is best suited for you.

Coconut flour is rich in fibre, low in calorie as well as carbohydrate, gluten free and very popular in flour less or grain free baking.

From past two years I am experimenting with various home made healthy flours and last week when I extracted milk from couple of fresh coconuts, I wanted to try this and proceeded.

Method:

First, we will see the Procedure for Coconut Milk Extraction:

Ingredients:

Fresh coconut– 1 or 2

Water – 3 cups

Strainer – to extract the milk.

Procedure:

-Grate the coconut and collect the gratings. (If you are using some frozen fresh gratings, you can thaw and proceed).

-Next is a coconut milk extraction:

-Take fresh gratings, put one cup of water and grind into smooth paste and extract milk through sieve. This milk is a thick milk.

-Now once again take roughage of the coconut, put one more cup of water and grind, sieve the paste and it is our second extraction of milk.

-Repeat the process and take out a third extraction as well and Collect the roughage and it is the Raw material what we need to make coconut flour.

Now we will see how to make coconut Flour:

Now you will know, what is coconut flour?

It is nothing but dried form of this roughage that we have, after the extraction of coconut milk.

Take a dry towel, spread this roughage and air dry in a shaded place for a couple of days. That is it.

Your coconut flour is ready to use. When it has dried, it will be very dry and airy. It will appear like small beads.

Temple Style Vegetable Sambar:

March 17, 2018

Usually people ask me regarding recipe of sambar, which is served in Coastal Mangalore temples. In our coastal temples, prasadam is served in the form of afternoon lunch. It is a simple lunch, served on a plantain leaf. which usually includes palya, rice, Rasam, sambar, payasam and buttermilk. Speciality of this lunch is, taste of the Rasam or sambar will linger in your mouth even after some time.

Commonly used vegetable for this kind of sambar is Ash gourd, sweet pumpkin or Coloured cucumber. You can take any one of these above-mentioned veggies and make. Here freshly roasted and ground masala has been used and onion or garlic is a taboo ingredient in prasadam lunch.

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Here I have used home grown Sweet pumpkin –

Ingredients:

Sweet pumpkin – ½ kg (you can use coloured cucumber or Ash gourd as well)

Salt

Jaggery – 1 to 2 tea spoons (adjust according to your taste)

Red chilli powder – ½ tea spoon

Coriander seeds – 1 table spoon

Cumin – 1 tea spoon

Methi – ¼ tea spoon

Hing – pea nut size (hard hing) or ½ tea spoon of powdered hing.

Urad dal – 1 tea spoon

Chana dal – 1 tea spoon

Red chillies – 3 to 4

Coconut – ½ cup

Curry leaves – 1 spring

Toor dal – ¼ cup

Turmeric – ½ tea spoon

Tamarind – ½ – 1 tea spoon

Seasoning:

Coconut oil – 1 table spoon

Mustard – 1 tea spoon

Red chilli – 1

Curry leaves – 1 spring

Method:

-Cook toor dal after washing and keep aside. (don’t use more dal)

-Remove central seed part. Chop veggies, as bigger chunks.

Ribbet collage 1

– Cook chopped veggie by adding sufficient water, salt, jaggery, red chilli powder.

-In the meantime, roast masala for grinding.

Ribbet collage 2

-Take one thick kadai, add 1 tea spoon of coconut oil, fry methi seeds until light brown.

-Add in coriander, cumin, Hing, Red chillies, urad and Chana dal and proceed frying until dal becomes light brown and red chillies puffs and roasts.

-Add in coconut, curry leaves and turmeric, proceed frying for 2 to 3 minutes or until you feel the aroma of coconut.

-Cool this mixture and grind into not so smooth paste by adding tamarind and sufficient water.

– Now mash cooked dal add dal and freshly ground masala to cooked veggie and boil.

-Check for salt, jaggery and adjust. When it boils add seasoning.

-Heat coconut oil, mustard, red chilli, when mustard splutters, and curry leaves and pour over the prepared(boiled) sambar.

-Serve with hot rice.

Neeru mavinakai Gojju/ Brined mango curd curry:

March 13, 2018

“Neeru Mavinakai” is what we call brined mango, which is basically a firm fully grown, matured but un-ripened mango which is preserved in salt water. We usually relish this in the rainy season or in the off season by preparing some of our traditional dishes. I have shared how to preserve mangoes in my earlier post. Today I am going to share one of our favourite simple curd curry, which we used to relish even in our childhood days. It is a simple curd curry, seasoned with curd chillies (known as majige menasu), curry leaves and garnished with chopped onions to give the extra zing.

Ingredients:

Preserved raw mangoes – 2

Curd – 1 cup

Coconut milk – 2 table spoons

Green chilli – 1 (chopped)

Onion – 1 (chopped)

For Seasoning;

Coconut oil – 1 table spoon

Mustard – 1 tea spoon

Curd chillies – 1 to 2 (chopped)

Urad dal – 1 tea spoon

Hing – ¼ tea spoon

Curry leaves – 1 spring

Method:

-Remove required number of mangoes from the brine water.

-Immerse these mangoes in fresh water for some time to reduce its salt content.

-Sometimes brined mangoes will be soft or hard. If it is soft, mash it and use.

-If it is very hard, cook for a couple of whistles in a cooker by adding little water and try to mash or grate.

-What I had was very hard, and I used it by grating.

-After this is done, mix in curd and coconut milk.

-If you don’t have coconut milk, you can use maggi or some other brand of coconut milk powder as well. (addition of coconut milk will reduce the tartness)

-Mix in chopped onion, green chilli.

-Do seasoning, heat coconut oil, put in mustard. When mustard starts to splutter, add in urad dal, Hing, chopped curd chillies and fry until chillies turns out dark brown.

– Add curry leaves to this hot mixture and add the seasoning over Gojju.

-Traditionally we enjoy this Gojju either with Boiled rice ganji (gruel) or with curd rice as an accompaniment.

Eggless tea cake from Ghee Residue:

March 9, 2018

When I prepare ghee at home, I use this super beneficial ghee residue in preparing roti dough /methi Parata or this very mild flavored cake. I have already posted one chocolate cake using pea protein in my earlier post. This time it is my all-time favorite Cinnamon or Cardamom flavored tea cake.

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Ingredients:

Ghee residue – 2-3tbl

Milk – 1 cup

Sugar – ¾ cup

Chiroti rawa/fine semolina – 1 cup

Cinnamon powder- ½ tsp.

Eno fruit salt -1tsp

Salt – ¼ tsp.

Slivered Almond – 2 table spoon (optional)

Method:

-Take vessel in which you prepare ghee. There will be 2-3 table spoon ghee residues.

-To this add milk, sugar and heat it until sugar dissolves. Switch off and cool.

Ribbet collage 1

-In another bowl, dry mix semolina/rawa, cinnamon powder, salt.

-Mix both and keep it aside for five minutes, at this time rawa will absorb all the moisture.

-After 5 minutes, add Eno fruit salt, mix nicely and pour this mixture into a baking tin.

Ribbet collage 2

-If you want to add slivered almond at the top to enhance its taste and nutritional value.

-Place this tin in a preheated oven for 40-45 minutes or till done, at 180 C.

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Note: you can replace rawa with Ragi (finger millet flour) and wheat flour. If you are using only flour, add 1 ½ cup, because it absorbs less moisture than the rawa.

Coloured Cucumber Seeds Rasam:

March 4, 2018

Coloured or Mangalore cucumber has fleshy interior centre part, which has jelly like watery fleshy part with edible seeds. Which are rich minerals and rich in nutrition. Traditionally we call this Rasam as Sauthe kai beeja da saaru. Literal translation of this is, sauthe kai beeja means cucumber seed, saaru is Rasam, which is watery in texture and consumed as an appetizer or with hot rice during summer season to maintain our body temperature.

Before using the core, check the fleshy part for bitterness. If it has bitterness, discard and don’t use in cooking. If you find core part to be flavourful or without bitterness, go ahead and use it in your cooking to enrich your body, like our elders did.

How to make this traditional goodness –

Ingredients:

Fleshy seeded part – of one coloured cucumber

Coriander seeds – 1 table spoon

Cumin seeds – 1 tea spoon

Hing – peanut size

Fenugreek seeds – ¼ tea spoon

Red chillies – 4 t0 5

Turmeric – ½ tea spoon

Coconut – ½ cup (grated)

Tamarind – ½ to 1 tea spoon

Coconut oil – 1 tea spoon

Salt – as needed

Jaggery – ½ tea spoon (optional)

For Seasoning:

Coconut oil – 1 tea spoon

Mustard – 1 tea spoon

Red chilli – 1

Curry leaves – 1 spring

Method:

-Collect seed coated flesh part of one coloured cucumber.

-Cook this in a small cooker for one whistle (cooking will help in extracting the pulp) and cool.

-Grind cooked pulp by adding one cup of water and tamarind and collect the liquid by sieving.

-Grind the roughage one more time, by adding one more cup of water and sieve once more.

-Discard the remaining roughage if any.

-Now prepare masala by heating oil. Add fenugreek at first.

-When it becomes light brown, add coriander, cumin, hing, red chillies and fry until fenugreek becomes dark and coriander becomes light brown.

-Add coconut, turmeric and fry for two minutes or until you get nice aroma.

-Cool this roasted masala and grind into smooth paste by adding sufficient water.

-Add the masala to extracted cucumber seed water.

-Adjust the consistency, add salt, jaggery and boil the Rasam.

-Add seasoning, heat oil, add mustard, red chilli.

-When mustard starts spluttering, add curry leaves and add the seasoning to boiled Rasam and close the lid.

-Serve this as an appetiser or with hot rice with a couple of papads.