Idli Upma: Quick fix from left over idlis

Ever so often our estimates about the guests appetite go wrong. And sometimes you can churn out a whole new dish from the left overs.

Take for example 'idlis' (I detest calling them steamed fermented rice dumplings, so if you don't under stand idli...too bad then!) Re-steamed idlis aren't the best thing to eat. Instead if you have left over idlis at home, put them in the fridge and they easily last upto 3 days. When in a fix about what to have for break-fast, heed my quick-fix from left over idli advice, and make idli upma!

Ingredients-
1. Steamd idlis, cut into small pieces or crumbled into smaller particles.
2. Cooking oil
3. Kadi patta
4. Rai
5. Haldi
6. Salt and chilli powder to taste

How-To-
1. Heat oil in a pan.
2. Put the rai and let it blacken a bit.
3. Add the kadi patta, salt, chilli powder and haldi.
4. Add the cut/crumbled idlis to the tadka
5. Stir vigorously so that all idlis get coated in a nice yelow of the haldi.
6. Cover the pan with a lid and let it cook for 2-3 minutes.
7. Serve with tomato ketchup or coconut/dhaniya chutney.
Enjoy....it's probably the quickest breakfast! ;) Suits the modern girl like me :P (epitome of laziness!)

Palak Paneer - a perfect sunday lunch!

Sundays are for relaxing and catching up with friends and family. Lately I've been socialising a bit too much and the odd-sunday at home is a refreshing change and more than welcome.

Sunday is synonymous with lazying around, eating a delicious home-cooked meal and catching a movie. I did just that!

After much debating, my cousin and I settled on Palak paneer and chapatis for our cook-it-yourself-sunday-lunch. As a cook in compulsion, chapatis weren't such a complex task (save for the snail's pace execution) but palak paneer was something I had been savouring for years, never paying attention to how it is prepared.

Nevertheless, I borrowed my aunty's recipe, fused it with mom's recipe and added the ingredients that were available at home! Read the recipe here-

INGREDIENTS:
(Serves two)

• One bundle palak
• Two green chillies
• 2 tablepoon cooking oil
• 10-15 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 250 grams paneer, cut into cubes
• Jeera for the tadka
• 1 finely chopped onion (optional)
• Salt to taste
• 2 teaspoon fresh cream (optional)

HOW TO:

1. Clean the palak by breaking off the hard stem and wash it twice or thrice to remove all the dirt.
2. Steam the palak for 4 minutes in a microwave cooker. Alternatively, you could boil water in a steel vessel, dip the cleaned palak in it till it gets cooked.
3. Once steamed, run cold water over the palak. This will held retain the nice green colour in the final preparation and not make it look blackish.
4. Grind the palak and green chillies with a little water to make a smooth paste.
5. Heat the oil. Add jeera and chopped garlic to the heating oil. Let it sizzle and cook until the garlic turns brownish.
6. Add onion and cook it until it turns golden brown.
7. Add the palak paste and give it oil boil.
8. Add water to bring the palak gravy to a nice consistency (remember the gravy will thicken slightly once it cooks)
9. Add salt as per taste and chilli powder if needed.
10. Add paneer cubes and give it one stir without breaking the paneer cubes.
11. Let it simmer on slow fire for 2-3 minutes.
12. Add fresh cream for a creamy look to the gravy.
13. Serve hot with chappatis or rice.
    
    

Once the palak paneer was almost ready, my cousin set the table while I made a small surprise salad!



I mixed boiled macaroni and steamed american corn with one spoon of Fun & Foods Pasta & Pizza Spread and good old Amul cheese spread. I finished up the one minute salad by adding salt and freshly ground pepper for taste.




The food turned out to be pretty good. The salad was a quick-fix and a rather taste one. The black grapes for dessert (my cousin's surprise) was a perfect end to a sumptuous home-cooked lunch on a lazy sunday afternoon, while the 'Hip-hop' movie 'You Got Served' kept us glued way past lunchtime.

Cook in Compulsion, and Lovin' it!

THEN

Looking at me no one would ever say that this girl isn't a foodie for I'm a BIG FOODIE and proud to be so. But funnily, my foodiness was restricted to relishing good food. I never really took interest in preparing food, or the effort to learn the art of cooking. I know it is a paradox, perhaps even hard to believe, but that is how things were.

NOW

My look still the same. But I've begun appreciating mom's more for the three meals that they churn up for us, without being lazy. I've begun appreciating the art of cooking, chopping vegetables, playing with spices and cooking up full meals for my tiffin! having lived on the bad hostel food for nearly 1.5 years, the desire to made my own 'dabba' at 5:30 am, before leaving for class was just too strong. I wanted to eat good food, and not the dabbas I had been eating just for the sake for eating without ever looking forward to it.

In one line, 'I'm a cook and compulsion and strangely I'm loving it'!

Till date I've taken wide-varities of food in my tiffin - idlis, uttapams, pizza, pasta (very popular with my collegues), dal fry and roti, parathas, pulao, roti/sabzi, salads, thalipeth, pav bhaji etc :) I've even tried making new stuff - tacos, khajur pak etc.

I feel proud of myself. I always kept cribbing because mom tried forcing me to learn cooking. But I'm the kind who'll not do anything until I feel like I should do it. In this case, it worked in my favour. For now is the time when I can take tiffinf and I'm taking tiffin. I'm learning each day about the nuances of cooking and it has opened up a whole new world ready to be smelled, tasted and explored.

It has also given new a whole new confidence. I can be on my own and not just survive on bread. I too can make a full meal of Dal, chaval, sabzi, roti, salad, maybe even soup. Though, right now I'm keeping the dishes simple, but soon I can probabily match upto mom.

This new 'cooking' fad in my life has also made my mom happy on two levels, viz. she is proud of me for finally learning to cook, but the strongest one possibly is the fact that I have another quality for an eligible bride! The former makes me proud. The latter.....well, I'd rather not comment on it! ;)

Tacos - a mexican treat

Tacos is a traditional mexican treat made of maize/wheat flour filled with vegetable, meat stuffing and served with salad or salsa. I do not quite remember when I heard about tacos. Perhaps it was while I ate tortillas with cheese dip at Creme Centre, Bandra that I googled up for tortillas and in the process stumbled upon another mexican treat, TACOS!

I like to experiment with food, but somehow I never found tacos on the menu card of most restraunts I had been to. Even if I did, the people dinign with me weren't quite experimental. About a month back a senior of mine in office told me about her delicious dinner of home-made tacos. I immediately took down the recipe for the taco shells and the rajma stuffing (kidney beans in tomato).

Realizing that taco shells were no easy task, I kept delaying 'when to try making tacos', until I found ready-to-stuff taco shells at a nearby departmental store. Delighted, I indulged in some mexican culinary treat for sunday's dinner.

(A packet of 10 small-size hard taco shells, ready to be stuffed : Rs. 30/- only)

(The stuffing: rajma(kidney beans) in tomato gravy, grated cheese with pepper and cabbage shreds)

(Tacos, ready to be savoured: Layer one- cabbage; Layer two- rajma in tomato gravy; Layer three- Cheese and pepper)

(Stuffed Taco, up, close and personal)

(Recap!)

I wondered if vegetarian taco turned out to be this delicious, how'd the non-vegetarian be? That's next on my what-cooking/dish-to-try-out list!
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Incase you do not get ready-made taco shells, you can make your own! For recipe of HARD TACO SHELLs & RAJMA STUFFING, go here---> http://www.tarladalal.com/recipe.asp?id=1257
Though, I used a different recipe for the rajma stuffing, after all what suits your taste buds is what you should cook, why always follow cookbooks blindly?!

Strawberry Milkshake!!

If Life gives you strawberries....make milkshake! :D

About two weeks back, at my bhabhi's place in kandivali, I had the most heavenly strawberry milkshake.

Inspired by her magical milkshake, I made my own!

These strawberries look tempting!

They go into the blender with cold milk and some sugar

Tada.....it's done and nicely chilled!

Barbeque Night

It was a night filled with smokin' hot BBQ chicken, paneer and fish...some soft drinks and vodka with lime, gulab jamuns and fabulous conversation! :D

(Paneer ready to be BBQ-ed!)

(Vodka.....!)

(Empty plates.....as we wait for the fish!)

(Fish O' Fire....)

(Kaku...waiting to dig in...)

( Fish....again...)

( Busy eating...)

( And drinking)

( He loves his food....yummmm....)

( He loves his drink.....hmmmmm)

( A happy lot)

A Sweet Sunday - Gajar Ka Halwa & Khajoor Pak

The sunday that passed was a lazy sunday. I know, i know, a lot of my sundays are lazy, but thats how it is meant to be, right?!

This sunday was a sweet sunday. My cousin Akshay was coming home, so we decided to make one of his favourite sweet, Gajar ka Halwa.

I also love gajar ka halwa. I remember being while mom used to let it cook on slow fire. However, this time around, the wait was slightly lesser as aunty made the halwa with khoya and not in pure milk unlike my mom does. Here's how we made the halwa-

1. Peal, wash and grate the carrots
2. In a pan, take ghee, let it heat and put the grated carrot in the hot ghee. Let it cook and soften.
3. Keep stirring ocassionally so that gajar is cooked well and the ghee gets coated evenly.

4. Grate the khoya and add it to the cooked gajar. Mix well so that lumps are not formed.

5. Cover with a plate and let it cook, stirring ocassionally.
6. Add sugar as per taste, cook some more till the sugar is dissolved.

7. Add powdered ealichi and dry fruits to garnish.
8. Serve hot or chilled!



Say CARROTS! :D

While aunty made the halwa, I tried out a recipe which an office colleague told me. Its basically a jhat-pat (quick) sweet and its called Khajoor Pak.

Here's how "I" made it-

1. Break the seedless dates into smaller pieces
2. Heat ghee in a pan and cook the dates for a minute or two.
3. Add ealichi, and dry fruits while stirring.

4. Glaze a dish with ghee.
5. T/r the date mixture to the dish.
6. Using ur hand or the back of a bowl, set the mixture evenly in the pan before it hardens.
7. Freeze for 15 minutes/till its hardened.
8. Cut into cutesand relish it!


One blunder! - One small blunder I made was adding sugar to the date and dry fruits mixture because i felt like it wasn't sticking together. Due to the heat, the sugar caramelised instead of melting and gave a gariny taste to the Khajoor pak when we bit into it. So do not put sugar! :P



Want a Date? :P



And the sparkle below(see image) was a result of random sunday cretivity! I draped my palstic pearly necklace on the bright pink water bottle and the contrasting result gladdened me! :)



(Credits: All pictures courstey my new Nokia 3600 slide mobile!)