Flower Arrangement

Boiled Egg Roast

This is the simplest recipe to make. You can serve this as a snack or as a side dish. Roasting them in ghee will give a nice aroma which will further enhanced by adding the curry leaves.

Ingredients:

Eggs - 6
Curry leaves - 2 strings
Turmeric - 1/4 tsp
Salt
Fresh Pepper crushed - 1/2 tsp
Ghee - 1 tbsp

Method:

Hard boil the eggs

Cut them into 2 halves. To avoid the mess, use a thread instead of knife to cut them.
Heat a broad pan with ghee. When it is warm enough, add curry leaves and fry them until they turn slightly crunchy. Now slowly place the eggs on the flat side first.
When they get roasted, sprinkle turmeric, salt and freshly crushed pepper.
Flip them on to the other side and allow them to get roasted on the other side.

Ensure to shake the pan now and then to distribute the heat and let the eggs to roast on all sides.

Aaloo Paratha

Though the procedure looks bit hard and scary, it is not that hard. You don’t need any expertise and I made it well in my first attempt itself. No hard and fast rules to prepare this. You can make the stuffing with spices or without. There are no strict ratios of plain flour and whole wheat flour. You can add them as per your convenience.

Aaoloo paratha with hot Red chilli chutney & cool Yoghurt

Ingredients:

Whole wheat flour – 1 ½ cup

Plain flour – ½ cup

Potato – ½ kg

Cumin powder - ½ tsp

Coriander powder – ½ tsp

Chilli powder

Chat masala – ¼ tsp

Carom seeds / Ajwain – ¼ tsp

Chopped coriander – 1 tbsp

Butter to fry the parathas

Method:

Mix the wheat flour and the plain flour together. Add some salt and around 1 cup + 1 or 2 tbsp of water and make absolutely soft dough. At the end add 1 tbsp of oil and knead the dough again.

Cover the dough and keep it aside.

In the meantime, boil the potatoes. Remove the skin and grate them.

I prefer to grate them instead of mashing them as you will end up with lumps which might tear the parathas.

Mix all the spices into the grated potato and make them into 10 balls.

Making parathas:

You can either, roll the dough and place the potato ball in the centre and cover it from all the sides, or roll two small discs, place the potato mixture on top of one roti and spread it flat as shown below.

  

Now cover this with another roti and gently press the corners, so that no leakage happens.

Now roll it into flat disc

If you are following the first method, then divide the dough into 10 balls and if you are following the second method, then divide the dough into 20 balls.

Heat the pan. When it is hot enough, place the paratha on it. After few seconds, turn it to other side and apply little bit of butter.

Turn it back to the first side again and apply some more butter.

Allow it to get cooked for few more seconds and serve it.

Aaoloo paratha served with spicy red chilli chutney and plain yoghurt

Note:

Remember to cook these parathas on medium flame as they have to get cooked inside as well.

Best way to control the amount of butter we apply is, cut the butter into a cube. Stick to the fork and quickly rub it on the paratha.  

Orange Carrot juice

The best veggie blend. Blending carrots and oranges with dash of ginger is the perfect make over. Carrots are amazing. They are one of the richest sources of Vitamin A.  Combing the carotenoids with Vitamin 'C' is an amazing thing. Adding ginger to this, will give us the extra punch.

Ingredients:

Carrots - 3
Oranges - 2
Fresh Ginger - a 2 inch chunk

Method:

Scrub the carrots and then top and tail them.
Peel the oranges and ginger
Now put them all through the juicer.
If you don't have juicer, blend them in a food processor or mixer grinder, sieve and remove the unwanted pulp.

Note:

If you don't like the bitter taste of orange skins (which is indeed a good stuff for health), extract the juice separately and then mix it with the Orange and ginger juice.

Matri

Matri is a deep fried Punjabi snack recipe. We can have them as it is or we can prepare chat with them. 
A nice evening snack which goes very well with chai.

Ingredients:

Plain flour – 1 cup
Butter – 1 ½ tbsp
Ajwain / Carom Seeds – 1 tsp
Salt
Oil to deep fry


Method:
Sieve the flour and add all the ingredients except oil.
Mix them thoroughly to form crumbles.
Now add water little by little and make a stiff dough.
Cover and keep for 15 minutes.


Pinch small amount of dough and roll in to 1" wide rounds.
Keep a little thicker than puris. prick with a fork.
Spread them all on a plate or on a wet towel.

Heat a pan with oil to deep fry the matri.
When the oil is hot enough, add few matri in a batch and fry till lightly golden, flip side and repeat.
Drain and cool to allow to become crisp.

You can store them in an airtight container to retain the freshness.

Ginger chutney with Red chili / Allam Pandu mirarapakaaya pachadi

An innovative chutney recipe with ginger blended with spicy ripened red chilli, salt, lemon and seasoned with few spices. Just to retain the vibrant colour, I have used lemon and skipped the tamarind. As this can be treated as an instant pickle, we do not use much oil.

This is a very spicy chutney goes very well with any kind of stuffed paratas or just with plain rice and a dollop of ghee.

Ingredients:

Ripened Red chili - 10

Lemon - 1

Ginger - 2 two inches pieces

Salt

Seasoning:

Garlic - 1 large clove

Mustard - 1/2 tsp

Fenugreek seeds - 1/2 tsp

Curry leaves - 1 string

Oil - 2 tbsp

Method:

Rinse the red chilli and pat them dry with out any traces of water.

Peel and chop the ginger into small chunks

Now pound or grind the red chilli, ginger along with salt.

Remove it into a bowl. Squeeze the lemon juice and mix every thing.

Heat a small pan with oil.

When it is warm enough, add mustard, fenugreek seeds, curry leaves and garlic.

Fry them until garlic changes into golden brown colour.

Add the seasoning to the chutney.

Allow it to cool down completely and store it in an air tight bottle.

As this is an instant pickle, the life time is comparatively less. Still remains fresh up to 10 days when refrigerated.

Tomato Rice

Tomato rice is a very delicious and is immensely simple, takes a jiffy to cook with common ingredients. Also an excellent item for lunch boxes. 

Tomato Rice

Ingredients:

Rice – 2 cups

Tomato – 4 large Chopped into small pieces

Onion – 1 large Chopped into small pieces

Chili powder – ½ tsp

Garam Masala – ½ tsp

Hing / Asafoetida – ¼ tsp

Garlic cloves – 3-4 small cloves grated finely

Cumin seeds – ½ tsp

Chana daal – 1 tsp

Urad daal – 1 tsp

Cashew nuts – 10 – 15

Green chilli – 2-3 chopped

Curry leaves – 2 strings

Chopped coriander – 2 tbsp

Salt

Oil – 4 tbsp

Method:

Wash and soak rice by adding 3 cups of water for 30 minutes.

Boil the rice by adding ½ tsp of salt and 1 tsp of ghee.

Simultaneously, heat a broad pan with 3 tbsp of oil. Add cumin seeds, chana daal, urad daal and cashew nuts one after the other and fry for a minute or until they changed to golden brown.

Add curry leaves, chopped green chilli, hing and grated garlic and fry for a minute.

Now add chopped onion and fry just until they get transparent.

Add chopped tomato and fry for a moment. Add some salt, chilli powder and garam masala and toss everything. Now cover the pan and cook until the tomatoes get mushy.

When the tomatoes are well cooked, then add the boiled rice and mix everything very gently.

Finish the rice with the touch of coriander.

You can eat is as it is or with raita.

Rasberry lollies with Sago

During our childhood days, we used to buy the lollies made with vermicelli / noodles or Sago from the street vendors. Instead of having the plain ice, it is nice to have these bits on top of the lolly.

Ingredients:

Sago – ¼ cup

Rasberries – 250 gms

Sugar – 2 tbsp

Sago Pearls

Method:

Soak the sago seeds for 30 minutes in 1 cup of water. Then, boil them until they turn transparent. Keep them aside and allow them to cool down.

Blend the raspberries into smoothe. Add sugar and blend again.

Rasberry smoothe

Unlike the Strawberry seeds, these rasberry seeds are larger and harder. So, make sure to strain the juice before pouring it into the moulds.

Now, take the moulds and pour the boiled sago of 1 tsp into each mould.

On top of it, pour the raspberry smoothe  and freeze it. Instead of using the normal lolly mould, I have used the ice tray. Put the sticks when they are half frozen.

Yummy yummy...

   

Voliga / Puran Poli / Sweet stuffed roti

This is a special sweet prepared during festivals or special occasions like weddings or house warming ceremonials. This is a little bit time consuming sweet, so if at all I have to prepare this I will make sure I have enough members to eat them. For best taste, use ghee instead of oil.

Ingredients:
Channa daal / Senaga pappu – 1 cup
Jaggery – 1 cup
Grated dry coconut – 2 tbsp
Khas Khas / Gasaalu – 2 tbsp


For dough:
Wheat flour – 1 cup
Fine Sooji – 1 cup
Salt – ¼ tsp
Water – 1 cup (roughly)
Oil – 1/4 cup

Mix the flour with sooji and make into dough by slowly adding water. The dough should be very soft with sticky consistency. At the end add oil and kneed it thoroughly. Cover the dough and keep it aside for 30 minutes.

Wash and soak the channa daal for 30 minutes in 2 ½ cups of water. Boil the channa daal until they are tender. You can check this by pressing the daal in between thumb and index finger. 

Boiled Chana daal

Note: Do not over cook the daal. If it has happened don’t panic, we can still use this in making a wonderful tangy rasam.

Drain the boiled channa daal and preserve the valuable water to make rasam. If necessary spread the cooked daal on a cotton cloth or kitchen towel and make it completely dry. 

Now grate or pound the jaggery and add the powder to channa daal and cook for few minutes until the jaggery melts and all the moisture evaporates.

Allow it to cool and grind it into smooth solid paste (of course without adding any water). Grind the cardamoms into fine powder and mix with the daal dough.

Now pinch some dough and roll it into flat chapathi, place the daal dough in the centre and bring the corners together to cover the daal dough.

Roll the ball into khus khus and coconut mixture.

Now place the dough on a parchment paper or any plastic sheet and dip your fingers in ghee and press it gently like a flat chapathi using your finger tips. If not, you can roll it with rolling pin.

Transfer this into hot pan, drizzle some ghee and fry like chapathi on both the sides.

This will taste even more on the following day.