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Gobi Manchurian

2008-09-02T13:38:00.001-07:00

Gobi manchurian is one the indo chinese creations. They can be served as an appetizer (dry) or as an entree (with gravy). It is a dish which appears to be complex but is pretty simple to make but takes a little time.

Ingredients:

One medium sized Cauliflower - Cut into florets
Onions - 2 (finely chopped)
Garlic - 4 cloves
Green chillies - 3
Small sprig of ginger
Chilli sauce - 2 tbsp
Tomato sauce - 3 or 4 tbsp
Salt as per taste
Corn flour - 1 cup
Maida (all purpose flour) - 1 cup
Spring onions
Coriander leaves
Soya sauce - 1 tbsp
Water
Oil for frying

Preparation:

Mix the corn flour, maida, some salt and chilli powder with some water to prepare a paste which is neither too thick nor too thin.
Heat some oil and add the onions and fry them till they are golden brown. Add the garlic, ginger, chillies and salt.
Now add the tomato sauce, chilli sauce and soy sauce and saute for 3 - 4 minutes and remove from heat and keep aside. If you want some gravy add water to this and let it simmer for 2 minutes.
Heat oil in a frying pan. Dip the florets in the flour paste prepared earlier and fry them in the oil till they are golden brown.
Once all the florets are fried add them to the prepared gravy.
Garnish with spring onions and coriander leaves.

This post is especially for my friend Tamizh who kept tempting me to try making the manchurian. Thanks to her I ventured out into this.

Gajar Halwa

2008-08-21T06:04:00.000-07:00

Any special occasion calls for a sweet and what better sweet than gajar halwa (carrot halwa)?? It's wholesome since we get to mix the goodness of carrots and milk. Plus one can never go wrong with carrots. It is best when prepared with the Delhi carrots (the red ones) but we can manage with the regular ones too.

Ingredients:

Grated Carrot - 4 cups
Milk - 1 - 1 1/2 cups
Sugar - 1 cup (or more per taste)
Ghee - 2 tbsp
Cashew, almonds, raisins - 1/2 cup
Cardamom powder - 2 tsp

Preparation:

Heat some ghee in a pan.
Add the grated carrot and milk to it and boil it in medium flame. Stir it occasionally to prevent sticking.
Allow it to cook till the milk evaporates.
Heat some ghee and fry the dry fruits in it till they are golden brown.
Add sugar, cardamom powder and the dry fruits to the carrot and milf mixture once the carrot appears to be cooked well.
Cook for another 2 - 3 minutes and remove from flame.
Tastes best when served hot. It can also be served cold.

Mooli Paratha

2008-08-18T13:41:00.001-07:00

Mooli (raddish) paratha is one of the easiest items to make and is good for health too. The essence of the paratha lies in how much water you add. Raddish by itself gives out a lot of water so care must be taken while preparing the dough, else it will become too watery.

Ingredients:

Wheat flour - 3 cups
Mooli (raddish) - 2 medium sized
Salt
Chilli powder - 1 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Yoghurt - 1 tbsp
Water

Preparation:

Grate the raddish. Add a tsp of salt and leave it aside for some time. This helps the raddish drain all the water.
Add the flour, yoghurt, chilli powder and turmeric powder to the grated raddish and mix them to form the dough. Add some water if necessary.
Divide the dough into small balls and flatten them out using some flour to avoid any stickiness.
Heat a pan and cook the parathas on them till they are light brown on both sides. Smear a little butter while cooking the parathas.
Serve hot.

Rava Ladoo

2008-08-13T06:22:00.001-07:00

Rava ladoo is one sweet which does not allow you to stop with just one. It is also one of the easiest sweets to make. So whenever your sweet tongue starts craving just whip up these ladoos.

Ingredients:

Rava - 4 cups
Sugar - 4 cups (or how much sweetness you prefer)
Broken Cashew - 1/2 - 1 cup
Ghee - 2 cups
Powdered Cardamom - 3 tbsp

Preparation:

Heat a pan and dry roast the rava till it turns light brown. Remove from flame and once it cools a little take some quantities of the rava in a mixie and powder it finely.
Powder the sugar till it is fine.
Mix the powdered sugar and rava.
Heat the ghee in a pan and fry the cashews and cardamom in it. Add everything to the mixed rava and sugar.
While the ghee is still hot carefully mix and roll the the mixture into small balls.
Eat a few while it is still lukewarm for that extra flavor.

Paruppu Usili

2008-07-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

Paruppu usili is one of my favourite dishes. It allows us to experiment with various vegetables and we can have it alone with rice or serve it along with sambar, more kuzhambu, vetha kuzhambu or rasam. We can use beans, cabbage, capsicum or vaazhapoo to make this.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup toor dal
2 tsps channa dal
3 green chillies
4 red chillies
2 cups of vegetable (beans/cluster beans/capsicum/cabbage/capsicum/vaazhapoo)
2 tbsp oil
Mustard seeds
Salt to taste
Mustard seeds

Preparation:

Wash & soak the dals for about 1 hour.
Drain the water completely and grind the dal with 1-2 green chilli and red chilli and some salt. Don't add any water while grinding the dal.
Take the ground paste and either steam it for some time or fry it in some oil till golden brown. Crumble the paste into small pieces.
Steam the vegetable.
Heat some oil in a kadai. Add mustard seeds. Once they sputter add some jeera and asafoetida.
If you had steamed the dal then add the crumbled usili and saute till golden brown. Then add the vegetable. Add the necessary amount of salt. Saute for another 3 - 4 minutes.
If the usili had been fried instead of steamed then add the usili and add the vegetable also. Add the necessary amount of salt. Saute for 3 - 4 minutes.
Serve hot.

Ragda Patties

2008-05-16T12:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we completed 6 months of marriage and what better way to celebrate it than to make something delicious? After a long thought I decided to make Ragda Patties. This is a very famous snack item which is a meal by itself. It is not very difficult to make and is very tasty and enjoyable.

Ingredients:

For Patties:

Potatoes - 4 or 5 medium sized
Bread - 2 or 3 slices
Green chillies - 2
Garlic - 1 clove
Ginger - small sprig
Chilli powder - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste
Oil for shallow frying

For Ragda:

Vatana or chick peas - 1 cup
Potato (boiled) - 1 small
Onion - 1
Ginger - small sprig
Green chillies - 2
Garlic - 2 cloves
Chilli powder - 1 tsp
Jaggery - 2 tsp
Garam masala - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste

Preparation:

Ragda:

Soak the dal for 4 hours.
Drain the dal and steam it in cooker till well cooked.
Heat some oil in a pan and add mustard seeds. Once it sputters add jeera and onions and saute till golden brown.
Then add all the other ingredients and finally the channa/vatana. Mash a few channa to make a thick gravy. Add sufficient quantity of water. Allow it to simmer for some time.

Patties:

Boil the potatoes well.
Soak the bread slices in water and squeeze out the extra water.
Add the bread, grated chillies, garlic, ginger, chilli powder and salt to the boiled potatoes and knead it into dough.
Roll the dough into smaller portions and flatten them.
Shallow fry the patties till they are golden brown and crisp.

To serve: Place the patties. Top it with the ragda and add tamarind chutney, cilantro chutney, onions and cilantro.

Aviyal

2008-04-30T09:27:00.001-07:00

I had previously posted the recipe for making adai. I had also mentioned that aviyal is a very good side dish for adai. It is also one of the easiest dishes to prepare and it goes well with rice as well.

Aviyal is essentially a mixture of various steamed vegetables along with a little coconut. The vegetables can be chosen as per their availability. Generally the following vegetables can be used - Potato, french beans, carrots, peas, drumstick, pumpkin, avaraikka, raw plantain, snake gourd and chow chow. The more the variety of vegetables, the better the taste.

Ingredients:

Mixed vegetables from the list specified above - 5 - 6 cups
Curd (lightly sour) - 1/2 cup
Grated coconut - 1 1/2 cups
Green chillies - 4
Curry leaves
Oil
Salt

Preparation:

Cut all the vegetables to small cubes and steam them with some salt. Care should be taken to not overcook the vegetables.
Grind the chillies and coconut with some curd.
Heat some oil in a pan and add mustard seeds. Once they sputter add the steamed vegetables, coconut mixture and the curd. Heat for about 4 - 5 minutes.
Turn off the flame and add curry leaves.
Serve with hot rice or adai.

Thengai Aracha Kuzhambu

2008-04-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Thenga aracha kuzhambu essentially means a sambar which has coconut in it. This is very similar to regular sambar but we add some extra spices along with coconut to make this.

Ingredients:

Tamarind - Small lemon sized
Onion / pearl onions / okra
Sambar powder - 1 tsp
Salt
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
To powder -

Split urad dal - 4 tsp
Rice - 2 tsp
Channa dal - 1 tsp
Vendayam - 1/4 tsp
Dried red chillies - 6
Coconut - 1 cup

Preparation:

Heat some oil and add mustard seeds to it.
Once the mustard seeds have sputtered add the onions to it and fry till golden brown. Add the sambar powder to the onions. (If using okra fry it lightly as well.)
Add the tamarind water to the mixture and also add required amount of salt. Bring it to boil.
Roast all the dals, red chillies and add coconut in the end. Allow it to cool for some time then grind them to a fine powder.
Once the mixture has boiled well add the powdered dal to it. Allow it to boil for a minute or two and remove from flame.
Serve with hot rice and some curry.

Adai

2008-04-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

Adai is a type of dosai which is made with lot of lentils. It's texture is coarser than dosai's. It is a very nutritious dish since it has a mixture of various dals. Care must be taken to not use too much oil.

Ingredients:

Rice - 1 cup
Urad dal (whole or split) - 1/3 cup
Toor dal - 1/3 cup
Channa dal - 1/3 cup
Green chillies - 3
Red chillies - 4
Ginger (optional) - Small amount
Salt
Onions finely chopped - 2 - 3 cups

Method:

Clean and soak the rice and dals for about 2 hours.
Drain the soaked dal and rice and grind them. Add the chillies and ginger to the mixture while grinding.
Grind them to form a coarse mixture.
Add the salt and onion to the batter.
Heat the dosa pan. Pour a ladle of the batter and spread it out to form a thick layer. Pour some oil on the side. When the colour of the adai changes slightly turn it around. Cook well on both sides.
Serve hot with chutney, jaggery or aviyal.

Paruppu Urundai Kuzhambu

2008-04-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

We were wondering what to make on Saturday. We wanted to eat something special rather than the ordinary sambar and rasam. Something spicy. So we zeroed in on "Paruppu Urundai Kuzhambu". Here is the recipe for the delicious kuzhambu.

Ingredients:

For the urundai -

Toor dal - 1 cup
Channa dal - 1/2 cup
Onion - 1/2 cup
Garlic - 1 or 2 cloves
Green chillies - 2
Ginger - small amount
Dry Red chilli - 1 (Optional)
Salt

For the sambar -

Tamarind - Size of a lemon
Onion - 1/2 cup
Pearl onion - 1/2 cup
Tomatoes (finely mashed) - 1/2 - 1 cup
Sambar powder - 2 tsp
Salt

Preparation:

The Lentil Dumplings-

Soak both the dals in water for about an hour.
Grind all the ingredients together to a coarse paste with very little water. In case the mixture is watery add a little rice flour to it.
Roll the paste into small balls. Don't make them too hard.

The Sambar -

Heat oil in a pan and add mustard seeds to it. Once the seeds sputter add cumin seeds and onions to it.
When the onions turn golden brown add the tomato and mash it finely. Once this is done add the sambar powder, salt, asfoetida and pour the tamarind extract.
Allow the mixture to boil.
Once the mixture has boiled well start adding the lentil dumplings. Add 2 - 3 dumplings at a time and allow the mixture to start boiling before you add the others.
Allow the dumplings to get cooked well in low flame. Do not stir too much as the dumplings may break due to repetitive stirring.
Once the dumplings are soft and well cooked switch the flame off and garnish with coriander leaves.
Serve with hot rice.

Aloo Gobi

2008-04-11T16:34:00.001-07:00

I have been neglecting this blog for too long. So decided to get the cooking started with one of the easiest recipes.

Aloo Gobi

Ingredients:

Boiled Potatoes - 3
Cauliflower - Half of a medium sized cauliflower
Tomatoes - 2
Onion - Chopped 1 cup
Green chillies - 2
Ginger - small amount finely chopped
Garlic - 2 cloves finely chopped
Coriander leaves - Finely chopped
Chilly powder
Garam masala
Salt
Oil - 3 tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1tsp
Jeera - 1 tsp

Method:

1. Heat a kadai and add oil. When oil is hot add mustard seeds and wait till they sputter. Then add the jeera.
2. Then add onion and saute till they turn golden brown. Add ginger, chillies and garlic to this.
3. Once the onion has turned golden brown add the tomatoes and mash nicely.
4. After the tomatoes are mashed and oil separates add water to it. If you want the gravy to be very watery add more water. Otherwise add limited amount of water.
5. When the water starts to boil add the potatoes and cauliflower.
6. Add the chilly powder and salt to this. Cover and allow to steam for some time.
7. After some time add the garam masala and allow the mixture to simmer for about 5 minutes.
8. Garnish with finely chopped coriander leaves. Serve with roti, naan or hot rice.

Welcome

2008-03-15T07:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my culinary blog. I can hear people say so what's going to be new here? There are already thousands of blogs around which list recipes. Even I thought about it before starting this. My answer is I just recently joined the marriage bandwagon and started experimenting with my culinary skills to such a large extent. This results in some searches for the perfect recipes for some dishes.

I wanted to share the results of my search with everyone. Hence the birth of this blog. I hope all of you get to taste some wonderful food :)

Hop on and enjoy the ride...