Aloo Paratha

Parathas can be made plain or stuffed with many different fillings. This recipe uses the most popular filling - Potatoes. Aloo Parathas are perfect for a weekend breakfast.

Ingredients:

For Dough:
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup water (Use more as needed)
• Pinch of salt

For Filling
• 2 medium potatoes
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds (Jeera)
• 1 chopped green chili
• chopped coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon garam masala (optional)

And
• 1/4 cup whole-wheat flour for rolling
• Oil to cook

Method:

Dough
• Mix flour, salt and water together to make soft dough.
• Let the dough rest for at least ten minutes.

Filling
• Boil 2 medium potatoes in water. After the water comes to a boil, reduce the heat to medium. Let the potatoes cook until they are tender.
• After the potatoes are cold enough to handle, peel and mash the potatoes.
• Mix green chilies, coriander, cumin seeds and salt to the mashed potatoes.

Making Paratha

• Divide the dough and potato mixture into 6 equal parts. The potato balls should be about 1 1/2 times larger than the dough balls.

• Roll the dough into 3 inch diameter circles. Place the potato balls in the center. Seal by pulling the edges of the rolled dough together.

• Heat the Tava on medium high.

• To make it easier to roll the balls, first roll them in dry whole-wheat flour.

• Lightly press the ball on the sealed side and keep it on the topside when rolling. Roll the ball light handed in to 6-inch circles. Whenever the dough sticks to the rolling pin or rolling surface, lightly sprinkle dry whole-wheat flour on both sides of the semi-rolled paratha.

• Place the paratha over the tava. After a few seconds you will see the paratha change color and puff in different places.

• Then flip the paratha over. You should see some golden-brown spots on the topside. After a few seconds, spread 1 teaspoon of oil on the paratha. Again, flip the paratha and lightly press the puffed areas with a spatula.

• Flip again and press with the spatula making sure the paratha is golden-brown on both sides.

• Cool the parathas on a wire rack so they don’t get soggy.

Parathas can be served with tomato chutney,butter, plain yogurt or any gravy subji.


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Pudeena Rice

Ingredients:

• Cashew nuts 10 to 20,
  
• 1 to 2 spoon garlic & ginger paste,
  
• 2 glass of rice,
  
• One bunch of pudeena,
  
• 2 or 3 green chilly
  
• Sugar & salt
  

Preparation method:

1. Fry cashew nuts in oil
2. Add garlic & ginger paste
3. Pour in chopped green chillies and then pudeena
4. Fry everything and add salt and sugar according to your taste.
5. Add this mixture to the rice.

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Vegetable Pulav

Ingredients:

• Vegetables- beans, carrot, capsicum, cabbage, onion, cauli flower
  
• Cashew nuts 10 to 20
  
• Garlic & ginger paste
  
• Rice
  
• Lemon, Pepper
  
• Sugar & salt
  
• Garam masala
  

Preparation method:
Fry the chopped beans, carrot, capsicum, cabbage, onion, cauliflower.
Add suitable amount of sugar and salt.
Fry cashew nut in oil.
Add garlic and ginger paste,garam masala, little bit lemon, pepper.
Add the fried vegetable mix and fry again for some time.
Add rice according to the quantity of spice.

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Brinjal Rice

Ingredients:Oil
Brinjals
Asofoetida4 to 5 cloves
2 spoon coriander
7 and 8 dry chilly
2 glass rice
½ tea spoon turmeric
Tamarind little quantity
Curry leaves
1 spoon mustered
Salt and sugar
1 spoon mathi
Preparation method:Initially, fry the asafetida, mathi, cloves, coriander, dry chilly, turmeric in little bit oil . If you want garlic you can add it also. Then grind it with some tarmorind. In the next step, pour some oil and put one spoon of mustered and curry leaves, then fry brinjal with that. After some time, pour prepared spicy with that and again fry it for some time. After that, add sugar and salt according to your taste. At the last, you can add 2 glass of rice with that.

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Jeera Rice

Ingredients:

• Onion 4 to 5
  
• Pepper ¼ table spoon
  
• Coriander ½ table spoon
  
• jeera ½ table spoon
  
• Ghee 4 tea spoon
  
• Oil 1 table spoon
  
• 2 glass rice
  
• Salt and sugar
  

Preparation method-
First of all, make powder of pepper, jeera (½ table spoon) and coriander and mix them. Pour oil into a dish and fry one spoon of jeera. Then fry chopped onion add the mixture of pepper-jeera-coriander. Fry some more time, then add little ghee, sugar and salt to your taste. Add this masala to cooked rice and mix well. Serve with raitha or tomato ketchup.

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Evening snack: Cucumber-Roast Papad

Cucumber-Roast Papad combination makes a good starter or a light evening snack.

Roast Lijjat Papad on open fire. Cut cucumbers into long pieces (thin round slices loose water fast) and sprinkle little pepper/salt.

Plain club soda goes well with this snack.

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Simple Spicy Sandwich

This is a result of an experiment when I realised I did not have tomatoes or cucumbers for my sandwish.

I used an ordinary bread from Kamat Bakery (opposite KC Park). I'm particular about this bread since it's not sweet, the taste is little on the salty side. Buttered the slices with Amul Butter and sprinkled chilly powder. There you are- it's done. Tastes good but this cannot not be a regular item on your table.... raw chilly powder is not good on the stomach.

I tried with pepper also. It tastes better than chilly powder.

You can try with chat masala or Haldiram's moong dal in it, might be interesting.

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Lemon Rice

Lemon Rice or 'Chitranna' is a common in Southern parts of Karnataka and many parts of South India. It's an item, what you can call a poor man's dish. The ingredients and steps are almost the same as in Avalakki... the only difference is soaked cooked rice replaces soaked Avalakki.

Prepare vaggarni as explained in Avalakki post and mix it to the rice. However, the rice needs to be cooked well in advance so that it's cool and the grains are separate.

You can add peanuts into the vaggarni or add thin mango or carrot shreds as a topping to give chitranna a different flavor.

Chitranna can be had for break-fast, lunch or dinner or even evening snack. It's light on the tummy. Try it out once.

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Vegetable - Curd Salad

Easy and quick to make salad. The pictures tell you what you need + curds. Add ground pepper to the curds (this is done before chopping the vegetables to let the pepper flavor soak into the curds). Chop the vegetables and toss them in a bowl and add the peppered curd to it. That's it! It's ready to eat.

Add salt as you want it.

Later on I got an idea... how to mix curd and vegetables easily. Here's the idea- spread a layer of chopped vegetables in a bowl and spread a layer of curds over that and repeat the step till you exhaust vegetables and curds.

Simple isn't it?

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Sheera and Kesaribath - what's the difference?

Sheera and Kesaribath are two sweets made from the same basic ingredient 'Rava' but are different in looks and taste. Going by the names, Kesaribath is the word used in South Karnataka and Sheera in North Karnataka.

Sheera is simple compared to Kesaribath, the other ingredients are water, sugar, clarified butter (or refined oil), cardamon, raisins and cashews. Kesaribath has two additional things- milk and Kesari (saffron). This is how the name has derived. Pineapple pieces are also added to give Kesaribath a flavor.

Sheera is pale while Kesaribath is bright and defnitely Kesaribath tastes better than Sheera.

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Uppit, the power food

Uppit is another favorite food item in South India. It is known with different names- upma, uppit, khara-bath, etc. In Bangalore, SLV canteens serve a sweet & spicy combination of kesari-bath and khara-bath which is called as 'chow chow bath'. We'll come back to uppit now.

The basic ingredients are-

• Rava (1 cup)
  
• Oil
  
• Jeera
  
• Mustard
  
• Salt
  
• Onion
  
• Green chilly
  
• Curry leaves
  
• Turmeric
  
• Lemon
  
• Water (4 cups)
  

You can also add a vegetable in small quantities to give it a different flavor- potato or carrot or beans. In my case, tomato is a must.

The initial preparation steps are just like how you make Avalakki (see the very first post of the blog)  until the vaggarni is ready. In this case, the potatoes go in after the onions. Once the vaggarni is ready, add water to it and bring the mixture to boil.

Now comes the tough part, add rava slowly into the boiling liquid and at the same time keep stirring. Once all the rava is poured in, reduce the flame to half and keep stirring till liquid turns into a thick paste. Reduce the flame to seam and of course... stir. Once you feel it's thick enough, stop stirring and turn off the flame. 

Allow it to cool for about 15-20 mins and then it's ready...

Normally my uppit turns out good but this time it was not so good... oil was less and potatoes had not cooked fully. May be I should have let the water boil for few minutes. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it.

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Spicy Egg Curry

Egg curry is a curry which works every time, its easy and simple to preapare. Try today at home, you can preapare curry without egg. If you are a pure vegeterian, you can substitute eggs with boiled potatoes.

Ingredients for Egg Curry..

• 4 hard boiled eggs, peeled and halved lengthwise
  
• 3 small onions, chopped finely
  
• 2 tomatoes, chopped finely
  
• 1 tbsp cream
  
• 1 cup water (as much as required)
  
• 3 garlic flakes, chopped finely
  
• 1/4 tsp ginger paste
  
• 1/4 tsp cummin seeds
  
• 1/2 tsp coriander seeds powder (Haviz powder)
  
• 1/4 tsp garam masala
  
• 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
  
• 1 tsp red chilly powder
  
• 2 cloves
  
• 2 cardamoms
  
• 2 bay leaves (tez patta)
  
• 1/2 cinnamon
  
• 3 tbsp oil
  
• Salt as per taste
  
• For garnish Chopped coriander leaves
  

Preaparing the curry-

1. Heat oil in a pan and put cummin seeds and let it splutter

2. Add bay leaves, cloves, cardamoms and cinnamon

3. Fry onion till golden brown, add ginger paste and garlic and Simmer for a minute

4. Add chopped tomatoes and simmer for 2 minutes, Add red chilly powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder

5. Add tomato puree and let it cook for 5 minutes

6. Add water and salt and let it cook till gravy gets its consistency

7. Add cream and stir for a minute.

8. Add halved eggs and let it cook for 5 minutes

9. Garnish with coriander leaves and server with rice , roti

Fried Rice

My favorite among all rice item is fried rice and I love to prepare this at home... Hope you will also like this..

Ingredients for Fried Rice-

• Basmatic Rice- 2cups
  
• Spring onions- 1bunch
  
• Capsiucum- 1 medium
  
• Beans,carrot and cabbage-11/2 cups
  
• Ajinomoto-1/4 tsp
  
• Soyasauce-2 tbsp
  
• Cumin seeds-1 tsp
  
• Oil-3 tbsp
  
• Pepper Pwd-1 tbsp
  
• Salt to Taste
  
• Water-3 cups
  

Way to prepare.....

1. Clean and soak basmatic rice for 15mints.

2. Heat a kadai (pan) add oil,add rice along with 3cups of water and little salt. keep on simmer flame for 15mints or you can make use of cooker also for rice preaparation.

3. Once it is cooked ,remove and spread it on a plate.So that each grain separates.

4. Heat a kadai,add 2tbsp of oil,to this add cumin seeds.When it splutters,add chopped spring onions and fry well.

5. Then add all vegetables,saute well with high flame, Keep sauteing till the vegetables are crisp and cooked.For Fried Rice all vegetables should be crisp and not over cooked.

Then add Ajinmoto,and soyasauce saute well. Add cooked rice slowly and mixwell,add pepper powder and salt as much required.

Finely sprinkle the spring onion and coriander over the rice,Tasty Fried Rice will be ready

Pumpkin Bhaaji

This one’s a simple recipe, quick and easy to make and completely fat-free. To begin with, peel and chop pumpkin into a little lesser then one inch size pieces. If you can get some pumpkin leaves as well, that would be great [not frequently available, check out your neighbors garden too :) ]. You need to draw out some fibrous strings from the pumpkin leaves and then wash the leaves well. Chop the stems to about one inch size pieces. Chop the leaves to about 1 cm size pieces. Slit about 3 green chillies. Grate a handful of coconut. So that's all with chopping... let's get on to real cooking now.

Take a vessel and mix together, the pumpkin pieces, chopped stems and leaves, green chillies, coconut, salt as per taste, 1/4 tsp of sugar and 1/4 cup or less of water. Cover the vessel and leave it on a low flame for 10 mins. Stir well and leave covered for another 10 mins. Once the pumpkin is cooked, it's ready.

This goes best with rice as an accompaniment.

Avalakki for breakfast

Frankly speaking, I do not relish Avalakki but I like it when it's made with lot of tomato in it. Tomato adds a great flavor to it. Today, Sunday morning, I made avalakki... taking a break from the usual uppit (also called upma).

In Karnataka, especially North Karnataka, avalakki is a favorite snack. It's easy to prepare and needs a few basic things. Of course, there are plenty of types of avalakkis- spicy, lemony, sweet and sweet & sour. I like it simple but with lots of tomatoes in it.

I'll let the pictures tell how it was made with some words in the background.

First I organized the ingredients-

Avalakki.


Chopped onions, chilly, tomato.
Fresh curry leaves.
Split a lemon into two.
Cooking oil.
Jeera, mustard, turmeric powder and salt in table spoons.


And soaked avalakki in water and drained away all the water.

The stove is lit, low flame and the cooking vessel is in place. Poured oil into the vessel, let it warm a bit. First to go into the oil were sesame and mustard followed by curry leaves and chilly. The onions went in after little over a minute. The flame turned to high. Stirring is must. The tomatoes went in after five minutes. Salt and turmeric the were the last to go in. Kept stirring round and round. After 3-4 minutes the flame was turned down. Let it seam for about five minutes and turned if off.



When the 'vaggarni' was cool enough I mixed it into the soaked avalakki- first by hand and them with a spoon. Finally I added the lemon juice and mixed it again. There you go- Avalkki is ready!



The whole process took me about 40 minutes since I had to pause in between to clean my hands and shoot pictures. Normally this can be done in about 20 -30 minutes.

Yes. It tasted good.

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