Pumpkin with Black eyed Peas

This is a very simple coconut based curry. I had never thought of blogging this recipe which is quite similar to kerala style Olan. May be this is Olan but a modified version. I learnt this recipe from my hubby who in turn got this from his buddy bachelor roommate who was a keralite. This curry was a big hit whenever I had prepared for any get togethers, so thought it would be good to pen it down here.This is more like a comfort curry when I am tired of sambhars I prepare this curry with basically any melons/potato/cucumber with different variety of beans.

All you need:
yellow Pumpkin firm – 1 cup cubed
Black eyed peas – 1 cup
grated coconut – 1 cup
green chillies – 2
cumin/jeera seeds – 2 tsp
tumeric powder – 1/2 tsp

Tempering
Coconut oil – for tempering
curry leaves – 1 sprig
mustard seeds – 1 tsp
red chillies (optional)
asafoetida – 1/8 tsp(optional)

Method:

• Soak Black Eyed peas for half an hour in water
• Pressure cook beans until soft not mushy takes around 6 whistles in 12ltr cooker, cooks faster if soaked previous day
• Boil the pumpkin pieces until half boiled in microwave.
• Grind coconut + cumin + green chillies + turmeric to a fine paste
• Add the cooked peas, coconut paste to the half boiled pumpkin and bring to boil along with salt
• Taste check for salt and turn off fire.
• Prepare the tadka, heat oil add asafoteida + mustard seeds. once the mustard splutter add curry leaves and pour it over the curry.
• Serve hot with rice or if you prefer even with chapatis/rotis

 

Check out the Olan recipes at Jai & Bee’s JugalBandi

Badam Katli/Almond Burfi

You all know what the all the dry fruits are stored in my refrigerator. Now I am out of space so which is one gonna to be out of it. I chose to empty half my pack of almonds so I get some space. This is the most loved sweet by my kids either with Badam or Cashew. But take care prepare this only if you have enough time yes stirring now and then takes atleast minimum of 45 mins to an hour. There are different ways like mixing flour will yield a faster burfi but the taste is not the same. Follow the same procedure for Cashew burfi substitute cashews for Badam.

All you need

Badam 1 cup
Sugar – 1.5 cups or more
milk – 1/4 cup
cardamom powder (optional)

Method:

• Soak Badam in hot water and peel the skin.
• Grind Badam with a little milk to a smooth paste use minimumof liquid to blend.
• Take a big aluminium foil spread it on your kitchen top, brush some ghee or butter evenly keep aside
• Now take a kadai better to use a non stick kadai, add the badam paste and sugar and stir on medium heat.
• You can add a tsp of ghee if desired to avoid sticking to the pan
• Keep stirring now and then until everything forms a soft lump and leaves the edges of the kadai.
• Mix cardamom powder(optional)
• Immediately pour the soft lump on the aluminium foil and roll with the rolling pin( greased with oil/butter) to the desired burfi thickness
• Pat silver foil papers on the burfi if you like to.
• Leave for 2 mins cut into desired shapes until it solidifies a little.

note: The mixture must be heated only in low to medium heat else the burfi will turn brown. Use as little ghee as possible to retain the badam flavour.

Pickles for Preserve it MBP

Pickles is my contribution for this months Coffee’s MBP.Here I go with three pickles.

The first one is RP’s Goosberry pickle bottled last week…..

next comes Indira’s Amala pickle which was decided last minute since i had few more amalas left. I bottled yesterday hoping for a better view today.

and last but not the least Manisha’s Ever famous Lemon pickle without oil which has been in my pantry for few months now. I have added carrots, green chillies, ginger and bittergourd after 2 days of resting and which turns out the best mixed vegetable pickle for us.

RP, Indira and Manisha thanks a lot for the fabulous recipes which will be cherished by my whole family..

Watermelon Mousse

Watermelons are one of the favorite fruits, here it is available all through the year. We are fortunate in Singapore we get to find all the different varieties of fruits from all over the world. We love all the different kind of melons available and we rarely blend it into juice or any desserts. I am still wondering how to select sweet melons which we are still naive at. Most of the times we buy melons its ends up semi sweet or at times tasteless then find its way to the blender to blend it for a juice. Luckily for Bee who is hosting the AFAM Watermelon this time when my h bought the melon was super sweet. Honestly i had half mind to use it blend it to any recipe. I just used one quarter of the melon the remaining we relished the fresh fruits, but was extremely satisfied with the end result. This is my contribution to this month’s AFAM for watermelon hosted by Bee which is initiated by Maheswari

All you need
Water melon puree – 1 cup
lemon juice – 1 tbsp
sugar – 1/2 cup
heavy cream – 4 tbsp
Agar Agar – 2 tsp ( gelatine can be substituted)

Method:

• Puree water melon removing the seeds
• Add the agar agar and boil the puree
• Turn off fire, add lemon juice and sugar allow it to dissolve
• Refrigerate it stirring now and then until it is thick to stick to the back of a spoon
• whip the cream and fold in to the watermelon
• pour into moulds and refrigerate for half an hour or until done

ಶೆಂಗಾ ಚಟ್ನಿ ಪುಡಿ/Peanut Chutney powder and Me Me

My blogger buddy Archana tagged me for this Me Me  about 7 random facts. 

1. I am crazy about collecting mysore silk saris basically light weight silk saris ha ha even though i rarely touch drape it around once a year or two i do keep buying them and i can never resist the different shades of colors. Last year I stopped myself  from visiting the shops at little India, then seeing a crowd range at Haniffa i couldn’t stop myself and again ended by buying 2 saris one is yet waiting to be adored.
2. I am crazy of bags I buy and change bags every 4 to 6 months. Whenever there are stalls put up near by our neighbourhood we call it passar mallam here unlike the melas/jattare in India. We get to eat (not really for me) and buy all the nice nice stuff from clothes to kids toys to kicthen usage which i love to gaze at. Apart from the eating stuff, only wished there were some chat stalls too. Even though i hardly buy any stuff i would love to stroll around the stalls.
3. I love to gaze at the plant store/ horti garden  store and buy atleast 4 every time i visit and half of them do not survive the weather here. yet do not stop buying them making my hubby really check his pocket now and then. looks like the green thumb is not taking my side yet. Travelling up and down to office i keep looking out at the private houses where they would have grown beautifull plants and trees which I love to own one day when I return  to India .
4. Hazy reactions. I really do not know at times how to react to people I give very blank face, while the other person is expecting a rection from me gets an unexpected gesture, I really hate myself during such stupid reactions. I should call it a dumbo which I repent later but what is the point? I still can’t figure out why I behave hazely at some situations.
5. My first mysterious sambhar was a hilarious experience. I hardly know the name of any of the spices I stayed away from the kitchen most of the time. The first time my hubby asked me to prepare sambhar from scratch how is that was a big question mark.  he: i am gonna invite our cousin too, prepare our style of sambhar rather than using the sambhar powder
   me: hege?? how do i
   he: add some urad dhall, some coriander, little chilli, hing, a bit of jeera fry and grind with coconut thats itand prepare  as usual
   me: oh got it i added how much urad you guess– i think a small 1/2 of a cup ha ha
   he : are you done
   me: yes voagarne hakthini. i just need to to tadka
   me & he: at Lunch oh sambhar does taste good, finish
   me: its me who prepared
   Evening at living room watching tv all of a sudden hubby heard something bubbling sound what is it check the kitchen oh the sambhar has started fermentation ha ha ha rolling laughter after how much of urad dhall did you add? oh well i just added half a cup thats it………………. we laughed and laughed then that was the first time, even today this is one of the exp my hubby loves to tell others my first exp of sambhar.But I can’t figure out how it started fermentaion? The wild yeast should have died during the grinding and heating process right. Anyways it left me a very hilarious experience.
6. I hate clearing bills and filling them at the right place. Lucky my better half clears it and gives only the most important ones which i still have to file. But what i do? I keep it in a most open treasure my h calls it as the open secret draw where i keep dumping until almost to the brim. oh the day come for me to file them, i spread them all over my room and start filling. this is real crazy isn’t it? why is it i am like that i am damn lazy for filling one document to search for the right file and file it at the  right moment that is when he hands over me the docs i am either frying up some culnary in the kitchen or trying to color my hair or simply because i am lazy so what am i supposed to do take the docs neatly pull open the draw align it and continue……….
7. I do not love or fancy pets but i can admire them from far, I am damn worried half the time whats going to happen to my kids even when they touch or play with any of them leave alone bringing any home even though my daughter loves it. 2 years ago my h’s friend bought a hamester on the pretext of my daughters pleasure,  yeek i just hated the look of it finally was very happy leave it out as could not handle it. Now we just say your brother is too young no pets until he grows up and you can handle pets.

Thats about Me and only Me. I tag  coffee, Sunita,  Suma,  Ramya, Bharathi, lakshmi and heres a spicy chutney powder with iddilis and dosas. Continue the Me me whoever want to join in. I am certain many of them already have been tagged.

All you need
1. peanuts roasted and skin removed – 2 cups
2. seseme seeds – 1/2 cup
3. garlic cloves – 4-5
4. dry chillies - 3/4 cup ( according to taste)
5. curry leaves – 1/4 cup
6. asafoteida – 1/8 tsp
7. desicated coconut – 1/2 cup
8. sugar, salt and tamarind paste to taste

Method:

• Dry roast all ingrediants seperately from 2 to 5
• Powder peanut to a coarse powder keep aside
• Powder all fried ingredients with salt, jaggery and tamarind to a fine powder
• mix asofoteida , desicatted coconut. Store in airtight containers.

RCI for Punjabi Cuisine

Punjabi cuisine is the most well known cuisine not only in India but around the world too. Punjabi food who doesn’t love them? Well I have never been to punjab but the i love the parathas curries and flavoured rice. Punjabis are great lovers of wheat, they hardly cook plain rice for regular meals. Their  rice is flavored with cumin/or a varied number of spices. To have a quick tour of the cuisine of Punjab visit Richa’s As Dear as Salt who is hosting Lakshmi from VeggieCuisine’s RCI  for Punjabi Cuisine.

Handi Vegetable Biryani

All you need:
for the paste:
quartered – onions 1
ginger – 2 inch
garlic pods – 5

To make Rice:
Basmati Rice – 1.5 cups
whole garam masala
bay leaves – 2
cinamon – 1 large cut into medium pieces
black pepper – 1 tsp
cloves – 6-8

others:
chilli powder – 3 tsp
tumeric powder -1 tsp
garam masala powder- 2 tsp(punjabi everest)
yogurt/2 tbsp
tomatoes – 1
mixed vegetables(carrot/beans/cauliflower/peas)

to fry
cashews – 8
onions sliced thinely – 1
capsicum sliced – 1

Method:

• Make a paste of onion, ginger and garlic.
• Soak rice for half an hour. Cook rice in salted water and whole garam masala until grainy. keep aside let it cool.
• Take oil in a kadai, fry cashews to gloden brown drain keep aside.
• Fry onions until crisp drain and keep aside. Fry capsicums until soft.
• Half boil vege like beans/carrot/potato in  microwave for 2 mins, preserve the stock for gravy.
• Take a wok to make the curry, heat 2 tbsp ghee/oil
• Fry the paste until raw smell dissappears, add the masala powders and tomatoes cook until tomatoes are done
• Add mixed veges, salt Bring to boil add curds. stir well until oil seperates out.
• Take a oven proof casserole grease oil or butter
• Add the cooked1/4 of the cooked rice. Spread half of the curry. Add again 1/4 of rice spread the half of onions, cashews capsicums, coriander leaves. Again repeat with rest of the rice
• Seal the caserole and bake it for 15 mins at 230 c.
• Serve hot rice with any accompanied raita.

Recipe source: Bawarchi.com

Mushroom Mattar Makani (source: Tarla Dalal cook book)

All you need
Mushrooms – 2 cups(i used button mushrooms)
Boiled peas – 1/2 cup

For paste
onions – 1 sliced
tomatoes – 1 cut into chunks
garlic pods – 4
ginger – 2 tsp
cashews – 4 cut into pieces
Boil all the above and grind into paste

Others
jeera/cumin seeds – 1 tsp
kasuri methi – 2 tsp
garam masala – 1 tsp (punjabi Everest)
chilli powder – 2 tsp
Cream – 1 tbsp
coriander leaves for garnish

Method:

• Take oil/ghee in a kadai add cumin seeds when hot.
• Add the masala paste once the cumin seeds are light brown color
• Simmer for few minutes until oil seperates
• Add all the masala powders, salt and cream
• Add mushrooms and peas and bring to boil. Garnish with coriander leaves
• Serve hot with parathas.