Broccoli rice

Broccoli is considered as one of the most nutritive and delicious vegetables. It is highly recommended for vitamin C, and it is also believed that broccoli helps in preventing cancer. Why not we add this in kids diet. I have added this vegetable to the rice along with moong daal, which forms a healthy meal to the growing children. Serves 1 toddler Ingredients: Broccoli - 2 small florets Skinned moong daal - 1 tbsp Rice - 1 tbsp Broccoli, skinned moong daal and rice You can increase the proportions as per your child's capacity Method: Wash and roughly chop the broccoli into big chunks Mix and wash the rice and moong daal. Add 1/2 cup to 3/4th cup of water and cook till they are soft. Remove from the fire, add pinch of salt and mash the mixture. You can also add little bit of ghee to this. Feed the baby when it is still luke warm. ఎవరికోచ్.... ఈ ... గోరు...ముద్దా...

Paakam pappu / Peanut sweet

My all time favourite snack. In fact, I love any sweet that is made up of jaggery. The roasted peanuts are soaked in the jaggery syrup and form them into balls. The combination of peanuts and jaggery in any form is excellent.

Ingredients:

Roasted and skinned peanuts - 3 cups

Jaggery Powdered - 3 cups

Grated coconut - 1/4 cup

Water - 3/4th cup

Makes about 40-50 balls

Method:

Before making the recipe, one must have a small plate with cold water to test jaggery syrup readiness.

In a big, thick-bottomed vessel or even in a non-stick pan, add water and jaggery.

Keep in low flame until the jaggery melts completely. Then, increase the flame to medium-high. Jaggery water begins to concentrate. When it starts foaming as shown below, it reached the consistency we want for this recipe. This whole process takes about 15 to 20 minutes.

To test, add few drops of jaggery syrup to the cold water. When pushed with fingers, if the syrup can be rolled to a round and keeps share without melting in spite of tilting the plate to different directions, it is done and the syrup is ready.

Actually, by the time I washed my hands and clicked my camera, the soft ball has been melted a bit.

Constantly stirring, add the peanuts. In 1 minute, the peanuts starts to soak in to the syrup and comes together in to dry mass. Turn off the heat.

If you want to make them into squares, grease a tray and pour the mixture. If you want to make them balls, allow the mixture to cool down a bit.

Take a spoonful of mixture into hands and press gently into round shape and quickly roll them in grated coconut. Keep a bowl of cold water on the side. Dip your hands in-between laddu making to keep hands unsticky and cool.

Tip:
If you didn't get the desired consistency and unable to make balls, spread the mixture in a tray and keep it in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours and then cut into squares.

Daffodils

I have brought this Daffodils plant from the store. Was bit lazy to change it to a bigger pot. I simply placed it in a bigger ceramic pot and filled it with the coloured dried flowers.

A vibrant look.......

Can't resist to post this as well......taken under low light... still came out very well.

Runner beans stir fry

These runner beans are big and tough looking pods. For the stir fry, you need to choose the tender ones with few seeds inside. I just tempered them and steam cooked. Finished the recipe with the touch of spicy powder.

Runner beans thaalimpu

Ingredients:


Runner beans - 250 gms
Onion – Large – 1 chopped into small pieces
Mustard – ½ tsp
Cumin – ½ tsp
Curry leaves
Dry chilli – 2
Chana daal / Bengal gram – 1 tsp
Oil – 2 tbsp
Salt


For the spicy powder -
Roasted chickpea - 2 tbsp
Dry coconut chopped or grated - 2 tsp
Garlic - 1 clove
Chili powder - 1 tsp
Salt little bit, as we will be cooking the runner beans using salt.


Grind all the ingredients in a blender into coarse powder

Fresh and tender runner beans

Method:

Wash and peel the runner beans and cut them into small pieces.

Steam cook the runner beans until they are just done, either in microwave or on stove top by adding just enough water and salt.

Heat a pan with oil and add the seasoning items like Mustard+cumin, chana daal, dry chili and curry leaves one after the other.

When the chana daal changes to golden colour, then add chopped onion.

When the onion turns tender, add the steamed runner beans, mix every thing and cover it with the lid for 2-3 minutes to allow runner beans to absorb all the seasoning flavours.

Remove the lid, toss the runner beans. Allow the extra moisture to get evaporated completely.

Finally sprinkle the spicy powder and remove from the fire.

Served with warm roti

Gongura / Sorrel chutney with peanuts

There are lots of chutney in Indian cuisine, few are served with tiffins like idly, dosa, upma and few are best served with rice. One among them is this sorrel chutney with a hint of tamarind, red chili and peanuts.

Gongura comes in two varieties, green stemmed leaf and red stemmed. The red stemmed variety is more sour than the green stemmed variety. Gongura is popular in the state of Andhra Pradesh. It is a summer crop and the hotter the place, the more sour the leaf gets. Andhra Pradesh produces the best quality.

Fresh green stemmed sorrel leaves

Ingredients:

Gongura / Sorrel leaves– 3 cups

Tamarind - 1/4 of lemon size

Roasted peanuts – ¼ cup

Dry red chilies – 6-8

Onion - chopped into big chunks

Salt

Heat a kadai with one tbsp oil. Roast the red chili and onion for a minute or so. Remove from the pan and keep them aside.

To the same pan, add washed sorrel leaves and tamarind, Stir and close the lid. Stir occasionally and cook until it is soft. If required sprinkle little water. Allow it to cool.

Grind the roasted Red chilies and peanuts along with salt coarsely in a blender. Now add the boiled gongura / sorrel and tamarind mixture and the onions and pulse it again. If required add little bit water. Please note that this chutney should not be watery.

Gongura chutney with peanuts

A nice companion for hot rice with a dallop of ghee.

 

Allam chakkilalu / Ginger swirls

Few experts, they do make this with hands with out using any mould. As I am a beginer, I have used the regular muruku mould to prepare these ginger swirls. The fried ginger flavour is irresistable.

Ingredients:

Rice flour  - 2 cups

Roasted Urad flour - 1/2 cup

sesame seeds - roasted - 2 tbsp

Grated ginger - 2 tbsp

Salt – As per taste

Chilli powder – 1 tbsp

Method:

Heat a kadai/ deep pan with oil to deep fry.

Whilst oil is getting hot, sieve the flours along with salt and chilli. Mix every thing with hand and add sesame seeds and grated ginger.

Mix every thing well and add about 2 ladles full of hot oil (roughly about 1/4 cup). Do not put your hands straight into the hot oil, instead, cover the hot oil with the flour and slowly try to mix every thing to form crumbs. Slowly add water little by little until you get the smooth dough consistency.

Take the muruku mould and fill it with the dough and apply pressure to squeeze the dough. Experts, they squeeze the dough directly into the oil, where as the beginners like me will squeeze the muruku on a butter or plastic paper and then lift it into hand one at a time and slowly slip them into the oil.

Fry them under medium heat till golden colour.

Time to grab one....

Note: If you feel, the dough is bit dry or hard, take part of the dough, sprinkle some water and then knead it again. Repeat the same for the rest of the dough.

Dilpasand

When I was a child I was fond of this sweet. It is really a big treat for us, especially for my sister. We used to buy this from Bangalore bakery. The display itself tempts every one. Those days we are not much aware of the baked recipes except cake, so this is the only place for us to enjoy the baked varieties like Veg puff, egg puff, cookies. Dilpasand is the famous recipe prepared at Bangalore bakery. Here I am using puff pastry instead of preparing the dough right from the scratch.

Dilpasand

Ingredients:

1 Sheet of puff pastry thawed

½ cup of scraped dry coconut.

¼  cup of sugar

½ cup of tutti fruity

½ tsp green cardamom powder
¼ cup of water

Sugar, grated dry coconut, tutti fruty, puff pastry

Method:

1. For the stuffing, add sugar and cardamom powder to water and bring it to boil by stirring occasionally.

2. Add coconut and bring to a boil and then fry till the sugar gets blended well with the coconut and then add colourful tutti fruity,  mix well and remove from heat.

3. Now divide the puff pastry into 2 and roll each into medium thick round sheets by using dry flour. It will be easy to seal, if you roll one sheet into slightly bigger than the other. Now take the bigger sheet and spread the tutti fruity mixture evenly over it.

4. Cover it with another sheet. Stick the edges properly with out any splits and leaks.

5. Bake it in the pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes or until done.

6. Cut them into pieces.

Flaky outside and chewy inside - Me ra dil ka pasand...

Note: Try to avoid substituting the dry coconut with desiccated coconut as there won’t be enough moisture and doesn’t taste the same.