Bread Uthappam

Bread uthappam

I love the smell of freshly baked bread but am not a fan of bread itself. I do like a few types of bread but not the everyday loaf. However, for some reason I had been meaning to make bread dosa. I always keep a loaf of bread at home and more often than not, end up throwing it by the end of the week. My thinking was that if recipe worked then it would be a good way to avoid wastage. I fancied something hot so I added green chillies but you could skip it. It is not very dissimilar to rava dosa in terms of ingredients but it tastes different and importantly 2 of these are enough to fill you up. Ideal breakfast or dinner. I usually keep tomato thokku/chutney in the fridge so had it with the uthappam but any tangy chutney would suit I guess.

Recipe adapted from Manjula's kitchen

Yield: 3 uthappam

3 slices wholemeal bread
3 tablespoons semolina
2 tablespoons maida/all purpose flour
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
chopped coriander leaves
2 green chillies finely chopped
1/4 cup yogurt
Cooking oil
Salt to taste

Grind the bread to fine powder, mix all ingredients together and add little water to form a batter like dosa batter

 Heat a pan and pour ladleful of batter to make thick dosa. Drizzle oil around

Cook both sides like normal dosa and serve with a nice chutney

You could put all ingredients in a food processor and blend but I was lazy to take the bigger mixie jars out so ground the bread in small jar which is always on the mixie in my kitchen.

Biscuit Pudding

Biscuit Pudding

While doing winter de-cluttering and organising, I found a few packs of biscuits. Although biscuits do not tend to get wasted, I wanted to try some dish with them. I chose biscuit pudding and when looking up recipes, I learned that it is rather popular in SriLanka. I have adapted Tarla Dalal’s recipe here...

Note: 

1. some people who do not like coffee may prefer to have he biscuits dipped in milk rather than coffee

2. replace dark chocolate with milk chocolate if you prefer

12 Rich tea biscuits or Marie biscuits

1 tablespoon instant coffee powder

5 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoon custard powder

1 ½ cups milk plus 3 tablespoon milk

100g dark chocolate, melted

Grated nuts for garnish

Dissolve coffee powder in hot water. You need enough water to quickly dip the biscuits in it. Dip the biscuits very briefly then break them into pieces and put in individual serving bowls

Dissolve the custard powder in 3 tablespoon milk

Heat the rest of the milk until it is just about to boil. Now add the dissolved custard powder and make sure you stir well. Cook on low flame until it coats the back of the spoon.

Now add the sugar and melted chocolate and stir well. It will thicken but still be of pouring consistency.

Pour this on the biscuit and garnish with chopped nuts

Snakegourd Pachadi

Snakegourd Pachadi

Snakegourd is a ‘naatu kai’ i.e. vegetable indigenous to India. Mom used to cook it often as my dad liked it. She would sauté it and season it and mix it with rice and ghee for him. My husband, on the other extreme just does not like this vegetable. My mother-in-law says when she was pregnant with my husband, she always got sick when she went anywhere near snakegourds and looks like that has just continued. I ould not get away with making snakegourd curry so had to disguise it. To be fair, it is not a vegetable with a distinct or strong flavour, atleast for me. I came across this recipe at vahrehvah.com and gave it a try. I made it as a side dish to pulihogare as I do not like a meal without vegetables and this was a good combination. The good news is that it went down well my my better half as well. Here is the recipe...

2 cups chopped snakegourd

1 teapsoon mustard seeds

1 teapsoon urd dal

Few curry leaves

3 dry red chillies

Asafoetida

Turmeric powder

Salt to taste

1 cup yogurt, whisked

Cooking oil

Heat some oil and add the snakegourd. Add little salt, turmeric powder and asafoetida and cook. Covering will quicken the process.

Add the whisked curd and bring to gentle boil. Add remaining salt that is required

Heat little oil for the tempering. Add the mustard seeds, once it splutters, add urd dal, curry leaves and dry red chillies. Once dal turns golden, add it to the snakegourd yogurt mixture and it is ready to serve.

Vegetarian sausage stir fry (Masala Quorn Sausage)

Vegetarian sausage stir fry (Masala Quorn Sausage)

I grew p as a vegetarian and have never tasted non vegetarian food so there is nothing I miss really. However, I guess it is not the case in this part of the world and there is a desire to replicate the non-vegetarian content and make meat substitutes. A variety of such ingredients is made by Quorn. They apparently use a form of fungi to make the meat substitutes. I found no reason to use them in my regular cooking but my kids are used to having them a school or day care as they try to make vegetarian and non veg dishes look similar. My son started asking me for sausages (vegetarian, ofcourse) at home and that is why I buy them now and then. This dish is incredibly simple to make and can be had as a quick snack. You can also use this to stuff inside wraps. The sausage itself, being processed food, has salt in it so I tend not to add any more. I usually add very little salt in my cooking anyway so if you need a bit more, feel free to add.

1 pack quorn sausage

½ teaspoon ginger garlic paste

Turmeric powder

½ teaspoon coriander powder

½ teaspoon cumin powder

Dash of chat masala

1 spring onion, chopped

Cooking oil

Heat some oil preferably in a non stick pan and cook the sausages as per pack instructions. Once done, let it cool and then slice into bite size pieces

Heat bit of oil and add the spring onions, ginger garlic paste, turmeric powder and sauté for couple of minutes until raw smell goes off.

Add the sliced sausages, the masala powder and sauté for couple of minutes and it is ready to serve.

Saag Paneer

Saag Paneer

I guess everyone has days when they just want to throw things together so a scrummy meal turns up at the end. I have hose days often because I cannot begin to tell you how tight I am on time. I try to make three side dishes for rotis on Sunday so I only have to make the rotis in the evenings after work. I try to keep things simple and avoid additional processes like grinding etc. While a traditional palak paneer would require blending to smooth puree and so on, I was not up for it although we all love it. I decided to sauté everything and it did come together quite well. Here is how I made it...

2-3 bunches of palak/saag

125g paneer, cubed

1 onion, diced

1 tomato, cut into quarter

½ teaspoon black onion seeds

½ teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon garam masala

Turmeric powder

2-3 green chillies, slit

1 teaspoon coriander-chilly powder (use just coriander powder if you do not want any heat)

Salt to taste

Cooiking oil

Heat oil and add the black onion and cumin seeds. Once cumin begins to darken, add onions, add the turmeric powder and green chillies and sauté for a minute

Once the onions turn translucent, add the spinach and tomato. We are adding tomato with spinach as we do not want it to get mushy unlike regular curry

Once spinach is cooked, add the spice powders, required salt and cook until raw smell goes.

Add the paneer and cook for 3-4 minutes and serve!

Paneer Pulav

Paneer Pulav

Time and again I keep proving to myself that unless one puts their heart and soul into cooking, the dishes do not come even reasonably good. That does not mean you have to sweat yourself in the kitchen but just that if either your mind or your body is not there fully, then I find myself binning more food than we ate. Last couple of weeks have been very hard as my husband was down with quite a bad chest infection and I had limited help and it was all too overwhelming. Last week and now seems to be my turn to be ill. When you have two young children and live away from family, resting while ill is luxury really. In order to keep myself going I tried to make/bake new dishes but it just did not work. I kept saying to myself it is okay, I will eventually bounce back. Anyway, that's enough rant for tonight, here is a very simple but tasty rice recipe...

1 onion, finely chopped

1 green pepper, finely chopped

1 yellow pepper, finely chopped

1 large carrot, finely chopped

About 100g of paneer, cut into small pieces

½ teaspoon cumin seeds

1 cup rice soaked and cooked so grains are fluffy

Salt to taste

Cooking oil and little butter/ghee

Whole spices – about 4 cloves, 1 piece cinnamon, 2-3 bay leaves, 2 star anise, 3-4 cardamom pods

Finely chopped coriander leaves for garnishing

Heat some oil and add the whole spices and allow them to puff up

Add the cumin seeds and once it turns golden brown, add the onions and fry until it turns soft

Add the vegetables and cook until done

Add salt, paneer and rice. You could fry the paneer to make them more chewy but I usually avoid that extra fat and effort

Garnish with fresh coriander leaves and serve with a spicy side dish or just raita

Peanutbutter chocolate fudge

Peanutbutter chocolate fudge

As I had mentioned before, we are not peanut butter people at all. However, I thought it is a good form for my son to try his hands on peanuts. I try not to give him whole nuts until the recommended age of about four so peanut butter is good enough now. I have not tried spreading it on bread but I do know he likes the chocolate spread and may not like this much. Anyway, I thought I will make something new without the need to really cook or bake and also allow him to participate. Here is a quick and easy treat...

6 tablespoon peanut butter

¼ cup icing sugar

150g chocolate

5 digestive biscuits, crushed finely

2 teaspoon oil

Mix the crushed biscuits, icing sugar and peanut butter together, add just enough oil so the mixture comes together

Spread this on a plate to desired thickness.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler (put chocolate in a bowl and place this on a pot of boiling water making sure the water does not touch the bowl), making sure no water gets into the chocolate itself. Melt completely. You could do this in a microwave oven if you want.

Spread over the peanut butter mixture and set in fridge

Cut using sharp knife, dipping the knife in hot water

Enjoy!

Chocolate Truffle

Chocolate Truffle

What a day it has been! Started off with a severe migraine and I thought one more day of my life goes a waste. But when you are so far away from home and help, regardless of how unwell you are, you just got to get on. So I did. Made a simple lunch and then slowly started feeling better. I had been feeling terrible about not making much progress on the book front as I only have 3-4 recipes firmed up so far and have miles to go. With the holiday season round the corner, I wanted to bring the right mood in my household too. I have heard about truffles but as I am not a huge fan of chocolate I don’t think I have tried them before. I wanted to whip some up, but as you can imagine, the traditional one is not something I can quite make as it comes with loads of guilt. I wanted a sinless dish and not a sinful one. I had some shredded wheat (breakfast cereal) left over as my son stopped eating them suddenly. I did not want to throw them away so put them to good use here. I rolled the truffles in good coco powder. However, the bitterness of the coco was quite strong. For that reason, I am suggesting it be mixed with icing sugar or even powdered sugar and then rolled. Alternately, you could use coco powder which has lesser coco. I had made them bite size so once you put them in your mouth, the bitterness hits but is soon followed by sweetness from dried fruits. This recipe makes about ten truffles. You could use any other dried fruit like prune or apricot too. . Dry fruits are a good way to get your recommended quantities of fruits and these goodies will appeal to the young ones too. I will be working on few more varieties of truffles, but until then, here is an easy peasy one..

1/3 cup dates

1/3 cup raisins

¼ cup ground almonds

2 tablespoon coco powder

1 tablespoon icing sugar

1 shredded wheat biscuit or about 2 digestive biscuit

In a food processor, pulse the dates and raisins. It should not become pureed but just lumpy

Add the ground almond and broken shredded wheat and pulse few more times so they all come together

Roll into bite size balls and roll this on a mixture of icing sugar and coco powder

Dive in!

Multigrain Mango Muffin

Multigrain Mango Muffin

MMM recipe! Sounds tacky isn’t it? Well, I thought it is a good acronym for this really multigrain mango muffin. I had some left over mango pruee following my eggless mango cake trial and wanted to make a good breakfast. I thought cardamom would go well with mango as it is not a very strong flavour and will not fight with mango. I tried to take as many clicks as possible as I made the muffins but towards the end, after resting them, I thought they may not be good enough. I was so wrong and my fear of the effect of the ingredients I used was unjustified. I thought it will be an extremely dry muffin and will have a poor texture. However, it was quite good. It was quite springy, soft and easy to eat. Usually, millets tend to make the baked product a bit dry and difficult to swallow but I think it is the fruit puree that helped this muffin. If you find you child binging on this, just as well, the goodness in it will help their growth. Here is the recipe, lets get the holiday season started. Like most of my recipes, this is not very sweet so if you have a sweet tooth, please increase the sugar but have in mind that the mango pulp is sweet as well.

¼ cup ragi flour

¼ cup oat flour (oats ground)

1 teaspoon cardamom powder

¾ cup all purpose flour

½ cup water

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup mango puree

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoon oil

2 teaspoon baking powder

Mix together the flours, baking powder, sugar, cardamom powder and salt

Add the oil, mango puree and water and mix until just combined

Pour into muffin moulds, about 3/4^th full and bake in a preheated oven at 180degC for 20-25 minutes. A skewer inserted in centre should come out clean.

You may dust with some icing sugar and serve.