Pasta in Lentil sauce

Pasta in Lentil sauce

I have the routine of making red pepper sauce on Thursdays and spinach sauce on Fridays for the kids. Apart from the fact that I was running out of red pepper today, I thought I should make something more different today. I was going to make lentil with spinach for us so decided I will make a lentil based sauce for pasta for kids. I must say that the Indian dish, dal dokhli, was an inspiration to come up with this dish. I quite liked how it came out and was satisfied that good quality protein is going down tiny tummies.

1/3 cup moong dal or red lentils, well cooked

1 onions, chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

Dried oregano and basil as required to flavour

Dash of turmeric powder

3 cloves garlic, chopped

Salt to taste

Cooking oil

Pasta to serve about 2-3 people

Heat a skillet and add oil. Once oil is hot add the garlic cloves and onions and sauté for couple of minutes

 

Add the tomatoes and turmeric powder and cook until it turns mushy, adding bit of salt would quicken this.

Along with the cooked lentils, grind the onion tomato mixture into fine paste and put back in skillet. Add the dried herbs and required salt and bring to boil.

Cook the pasta as per pack instructions and add to the lentil mixture, mix and it is ready to serve

Onion Chutney (Onion Dip)

Onion Chutney (Onion Dip)

When I first came to UK, I was a stay at home wife for three weeks. During that time, I would have toasted bread dipped in hummus for snack and I still remember the comfort it gave me. I then stopped having hummus for some reason and resumed just recently. While trying to figure out how to make my own hummus, I realised it could have a lot of oil hiding in it. Ofcourse, you get the low fat ones but that is not for me. I was recently looking for a variety of chutney recipes as I was getting bored of the three chutneys I usually make. Vah chef had onion chutney on his site and it looked very inviting. This is pretty much his recipe but I have not even used half as many red chillies as he has. This would be a mild chutney but feel free to add more red chillies. This goes very well with idli, dosa upma etc. and also with bread. You can use this as a dip in places where you may use hummus. You can also use this as a spread in your sandwich (you could skip the tempering for this). As it pretty much is just sautéed onions, I think it will even count towards your one of five a day! Now for the recipe...

4 onions, I used white, chopped

1 small tomato

1 small lime size ball of tamarind

3-5 dry red chillies (this would yield a mild chutney, increase if you want a hot one)

2 heaped tablespoon roasted Bengal gram or you can use cashew nuts too

Salt to taste

Cooking oil

For tempering:

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

Few curry leaves

½ teaspoon urd dal

Heat a kadai and add some oil. Once hot, add the chillies

Once they become crisp, add the onions and couple of minutes later add the tomatoes

Cook until onions are done, not browned though. Then add the tamarind flakes and cook for couple of minutes

Add required salt and allow to cool. Once cooled, add the roasted Bengal gram (daria) and grind to paste. 

You shouldn’t have to add water, but use your discretion.

To temper, heat some oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds, soon after it splutters, add urd dal and curry leaves and wait till the dal browns. Add this to the chutney, serve!

Wheat and Barley Roti

Wheat and Barley Roti

I often wonder if I am over indulging in wheat, considering I eat wheat flakes for breakfast and then rotis for dinner, lunch is strictly rice though. Somehow, maybe because of my south Indian origin, it is not easy without rice for atleast one meal. Anyway, point is make conscious effort to diversify ingredients. One of those that I try to include is barley and as I am not a soup or broth person, I need to find other ways of including this grain. Barley is said to provide our gut with fibres that encourage good bacteria to thrive and thus crowd out bad bacteria. The fibre also helps keep blood sugar on check, especially for diabetics. Drinking barley water every day is said to help detox the urinary system. My grandmother would also say that barley water helps lower fever as well. It is also good for lactating mothers as it helps improve milk production. With so much goodness, how would you add this to your diet? Well, for me rotis is a viable option. I must admit that I have tried barley roti in the past but miserably failed as the flour was not the best, atleast in hindsight. It looked too fibrous and coarse. Years later, I tried to grind my own barley flour in the mixie and tried the roti and it came out well. You cannot say it has barley in it unless I tell you. Here is the recipe…

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

½ cup barley flour

Salt to taste

Oil/ghee/butter

Mix the flours together and add required salt. Add hot water (you may need about a cup) and mix to make a soft dough. Knead as much as you can and add little oil. Rest the dough for atleast an hour and divide into smaller balls

Roll each ball into chapattis and cook both sides on hot tava. Bubbles will begin to appear on bottom side, flip. Again bubbles will begin to appear, let them get bigger, keep pressing down. Then flip again aand press down, roti will puff up. Smear some ghee/butter on top

Serve warm

Tomato Thokku (Tomato pickle)

Tomato Thokku

Pickles have had and continue to have an important part in my meal. There are almost no readymade pickles that I like and there are almost no home made pickle I dislike. I am usually not a curd rice person but if there is a nice pickle, I will go for it. Tomato thokku is one such pickle that makes me drool even as I post the recipe. It was often made by my mom and grandmother. It is quite versatile as one can have it with idli, dosa, bread, chapatti and ofcourse rice. It comes quite handy when you are short of time as you could just mix some pickle with rice to have a yummy tomato rice with some raita. You can adjust the oil and chilly powder according to your preference. Here is the recipe...

20 tomatoes, medium size

About ½ cup gingelly oil

2 teaspoons mustard seeds

½ teaspoon powdered roasted fenugreek seeds

2-3 teaspoons chilly powder

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon tamarind paste

Turmeric powder

Asafoetida

Heat some oil and add the mustard seeds. When they are about to crackle, add the asafoetida and fenugreek powder and turmeric powder.

Add ground tomatoes. If you have the time and energy, put the tomatoes in hot water for couple of minutes and peel its skin and then grind. If not, just remove the stalk end and grind. Be careful as there will be a lot of splashing and you may want to stay a step away when pouring the tomatoes

Boil until it just starts to reduce stirring occasionally and add the tamarind paste

Allow it to reduce well and add some oil and salt. Also add the chilly powder

Now stir often and make sure it all comes together and when it begins to leave the pan on the sides, it is done. You need to add some oil every now and then

Cool and store in clean and dry air tight container. 

Tips:

Try to store pickles in glass containers. Clean them well and dry them thoroughly

When stored with a bit of oil on top of them, they last a but longer.

Try not to use metal spoons and stick to plastic or wood.

Peerkangai Thokku (Ridgegourd Curry/Turiya/Turai curry)

Peerkangai Thokku (Ridgegourd Curry/Turiya/Turai curry)

After our relocation more inland, it has been easier to get rid of Indian vegetables. Although we eat many of the ‘english’ vegetables, I do seek comfort in cooking and eating the veggies I grew up eating. One such was ridgegourd. Ridgegourd is rich in fibre and also said to have cooling properties. It is supposedly rich in vitamin C, making it good for our immune system and also rich in other minerals like manganese, magnesium, zinc. I was looking for ridgegourd recipes and came across a number of different versions of the ‘thogayal’ made with the peel of this goody. My grandmom makes it too and I will post that recipe sometime. Long story short, I did not see recipes that suggested the use of the inside of the vegetable (apart from the stuffed ridgegourd I had posted earlier). However, the good this about this recipe is that it uses the skin and the flesh and that means you do not have to spend time peeling the vegetable, but you can also get to consume the goodness from the skin. My husband does not usually like something like a thokku, so I made it slightly runny to make it seem like sambar and told him it was in between sambar and vegetable on the side and so pleased it went down well. This recipe is a keeper! Here it is for you to try...

1 ridgegourd, sliced thinly with skin

5-6 pearl onions, chopped

2 large tomatoes, chunkily chopped

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon urd dal

1 teaspoon sambar powder

Asafoetida

Turmeric powder

3 green chillies, slit

Few curry leaves

4 cloves garlic, finely sliced

½ teaspoon tamarind extract

Salt to taste

Cooking oil, preferably gingelly oil

Heat some oil and add mustard seeds, urd dal, asafoetida and turmeric powder

Once the seeds splutter, add the onions, green chillies, garlic and curry leaves and cook for couple of minutes

Add the tomatoes and cook for another couple of minutes

Add the ridgegourd slices and required salt, some water and cook covered until ridgegourd is cooked. You may need to add water every now and then and stir every now and then

Add the tamarind paste and cook for couple of minutes

Add the sambar powder, required water and cook until raw smell goes away

Depending on how thick or runny you like it to be, add more water or wait to reduce further

Serve with rotis or rice

Palak and Til Rice (spinach and sesame rice)

Palak and Til Rice

Green is such a beautiful colour that in its absence any dish looks incomplete. It is one colour that I just have to include everyday in my cooking. As I have quoted on many other posts, it is important to have a variety of colours everyday and that is because each of them carry heir own benefits an dwe need them all to be healthy. When I say colour, clearly, I am not referring to the synthetic colours. This dish is a treat to the yes with its wonderful colour and tastes wonderful. The sesame seeds add a beautiful flavour and texture to the rice. It is a combination of two recipes, Tarla Dalal’s and khanapakhana site. This is a keeper as it was liked by everyone at home.

To blanch the spinach, just put it in boiling water for couple of minutes

2 bunches palak, blanched and pureed

1 onion, finely chopped

1 tablespoon finely chopped ginger

1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic

2 tablespoon sesame seeds

1-2 green chillies, chopped

Few curry leaves

Salt to taste

1 ½ cups rice, cooked so grains are fluffy

Cooking oil

Heat some oil and add the onions, garlic, chillies and ginger. Cook until onion begins to change colour

Add curry leaves and pureed spinach and cook until any raw smell goes, add salt

Add the rice and mix

In a separate pan, add the sesame seeds and toast until it begins to brown

Serve the rice with sesame seeds sprinkled on top

Pepper Dal

Pepper Dal

Dal is not one of my favourite side dish for roti mainly because I find it a bit bland and boring. However, my husband likes a simple tadka dal with rotis. Depending on how much time I have in the morning, I may exclude lentil in our lunch and on such days I add it to our dinner menu. One such day, it was on the menu but I was also considering an extra dish to spice things up. How easily i forgot I had a baby at home! Long story short, I had no time and had to rush. Then, bingo, I thought it aubergines in mung dal worked quite well, why will capsicum/pepper in tuvar dal not work. So that’s how I created this dish and I must say that this is the best dal dish that I have ever had. We were literally scraping the dish as we could not get enough of it! How much flavour a cooking process like charring can add is really surprising. Now to the recipe...

½ cup tuvar dal, pressure cooked

1 large green pepper

1 large red pepper

1 onion, finely chopped

½ tomato, cubed

1 teapsoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander powder

½ teaspoon dhansak masala or garam masala

Handful of coriander leaves

Salt to taste

Turmeric powder

4 cloves garlic, chopped

Char the peppers in direct flame, cool and peel them. Chop roughly and keep aside (sorry, no pic of that)

Heat some oil, add cumin seeds and once brown add onions and garlic. Fry until it just starts to brown

Add the peppers and tomatoes and fry until tomato is just cooked

Add coriander powder, turmeric powder and dhansak masala powder, salt

Add cooked dal and some water and simmer for about five minutes. Make sure there is enough water and bear in mind that it will become thicker as it cools down

Add chopped coriander leaves and serve with fresh rotis/chapatti or rice

Onion Rice

Onion Rice

Rice, rice, rice! No doubt, it is my comfort grain. I try to make a number of rice dishes and most of the times variety rice comes in handy. This rice, in my opinion puts a rather taken for granted vegetable to teh centre stage. Onion, I think, has been added to ever so many dishes that sometimes it does not get enough attention, we don’t get to appreciate the flavours this vegetable alone has to offer. There are so many variety of them, distinctly or at times subtly different from its cousins, you could almost use the recipe but just change the onion variety to create a difference. Not to forget, onion is one of five a day vegetables so it brings a wealth of benefits to you. It is a really easy and quick dish that would be good as packed lunch as well. I made this with charred aubergine raita and it was a hearty meal. Here you go...

1 large onion, sliced

2 red chillies

2 green chillies, chopped

1 teaspoon urd dal

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

few curry leaves

some roasted ground nuts (optional)

turmeric powder

salt to taste

Asafoetida

Gingelly oil if not any other oil

1 cup rice, cooked so grains are separate

Heat some oil and add the mustard seeds and urd dal. Wait for the seeds to crackle

Add dry red chillies, gree chillies, turmeric powder, curry leaves and asafoetida

Add the onions and cook until it is done but not overcooked

Add required salt and rice and mix well

Garnish with roasted groundnuts and serve warm