Cabbage Upkari

Serves 2
Preparation Time (10 min)
Cooking Time - 15 mins approx

Ingredients
 

1/2 Cabbage (medium sized - chopped)
Grated coconut - 1 tbsp
Green Chillies - 2 - slit lengthwise
Salt - as per taste

For Tempering

Oil - 1 tbsp 

Mustard Seeds - 1 tsp
Urad Dal - 1 tsp

Method 

Wash the chopped cabbage thoroughly.


Heat a wide pan on medium flame. Add the oil. When the oil is a bit hot, add the mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds start spluttering, add the urad dal into it. When the urad dal starts turning brown, add the green chillies into it. Fry for 1 min. (You can also add chopped onions and fry for another 3 mins - but I prefer it without the onions)

Add the chopped cabbage into it. Add salt and mix well. Cover with a lid and let it cook for 10 mins. Lift the lid and stir. Cook until the cabbage is tender-cooked (it turns almost translucent - that could be one indication). Add grated coconut to the dish and mix well. Remove from flame. Cabbage curry is ready to serve. Enjoy !!


P.S: There is no coconut added in this picture.

Cabbage Curry - Ready to Serve :)

Cooking once again !! :P

Grr... Have any of you hated Firefox sometimes ?? I just wrote this post twice already and both the times, it did not save my post :( Now I have to write it for the 3rd time, fortunately, its working in Chrome... So, lemme collect all my feelings again and.... here it is now....

For the past few days now, I have been cooking quite a bit... Why dint I cook all these days, you say ?? Well, lets see.....mmmm.....errrr.....ahem..... baah, what would you do with a few trivial details ?? The main thing is that I am back to cooking and thats what matters to me....and its a wonderful feeling....

Cooking gives me a sense of accomplishment, the feeling of creating something new everyday, the feeling of getting things right (when the dish turns out "yummmmy"). Somehow, after an hour of cooking, I feel relaxed and elated at the same time, all worries forgotten..... Believe me, it works, you should try it someday.

Anyways, down to the point, I cooked these dishes in the past couple of days and want to post the recipes maybe 1 each day, so that I have something to write about everyday. So, here they are....(linked ones point to recipes)

• Cabbage Upkari
• Vegetable Sambar
• Paneer in poppyseed-tomato gravy
• Cabbage-Onion Pakodas
• Baingan Bharta

Remember I once said, if you try something new everyday, you can probably go for a year without repeating the same dish, and I plan to start that event sometime soon... Any suggestions for names are welcome....

So long

- So.

Peas Pulao

Serves 2
Preparation Time (10 min)
Cooking Time - 20 mins approx

Ingredients

Fresh / Frozen green peas - 2 cups
Rice (preferably basmati) - 2 cups
Water - 3 cups (1.5 times of rice)
Salt - to taste

For Tempering

Ghee / Oil - 2 tbsp
2 clove buds (lavang)
1/4 inch stick of cinnamon
1 bay leaf
1 medium onion - finely chopped (optional)


Method

Wash the rice thoroughly and keep it aside.

Wash the peas and keep them aside.

You can use 2 methods to cook peas pulao. I prefer method 1 mainly because it mixes the flavor of spices with the rice well and its less time consuming. Method 2 is easier / simpler to follow and you cannot go wrong with it. So its up-to personal preferences which method to use.

Method 1

Take a wide bottomed pan cooker and add the ghee / oil (Ghee gives more flavor). Start on a medium flame. When the ghee is hot, add the spices into the ghee and roast for 5 secs. If you are adding onions, add them at this point. Cook onions thoroughly until they turn transparent. If you brown the onions, then the pulao will get a brownish color. So if you want the pulao to stay whitish, then don't overcook the onions.

Add peas and fry them for 10 secs. Add salt. Add the washed basmati rice and mix well until the rice is coated well with the ghee and spices. When rice starts giving out the nice smell of basmati, then its time to add the water. Mix the water and rice well. Taste the water. It has to be a bit more saltier than your general taste, because the extra salt gets absorbed by the peas and rice.

Cover the pressure cooker and cook until you get 2 whistles. Switch off and leave on the stove until it cools down. Open the cooker lid slowly and mix the dish well. Peas pulao is ready to serve.

Method 2

Cook the washed rice with water in a pressure cooker. Remove the rice and mix with a spoon to release the steam and keep aside. Place a wide bottomed pan on medium flame and add the ghee into it. Add the spices and other ingredients as in method 1. However, cook the peas for a longer time, until they are cooked, but are still slightly crunchy. Don't overcook the peas. Add the salt and mix well.

Once the peas are cooked, mix the cooked rice into it. Reduce the flame to low. Mix the cooked rice with the mixture slowly. Take care not to break the rice. Cover and cook for 2 mins on low flame and then turn off. Peas pulao is ready to serve.

P.S : You can also add cashews to the tempering if you are fond of nuts. I served it here with Masala Boiled Eggs on the side.

Peas Pulao and Masala boiled eggs

Tostones

Serves 2
Preparation Time (1 min) 
Cooking Time - 15 mins

Ingredients

Raw green plantain - 1
Coriander leaves - few sprigs (finely chopped)
Salt - to taste 
Chat Masala and / or Amchur powder - 1 tsp each (optional - use if you want to Indianize it)
Oil - for deep fry

Method 

Heat up some oil in a frying pan (the wider the better) on a medium flame, so that by the time the preparation is over, the oil is hot enough to start cooking. This way you wont waste much time. (Remember not to start on a high flame)

Wash the plantain thoroughly and peel it (not with a peeler - peel it like you would peel a banana - tips below*).
Cut the plantain into 3/4 inch thick slices. Keep aside until oil is hot.

Once the oil is hot, add the slices one by one into the oil - they should come up in the oil immediately. Turn them over in less than 30 secs. They should not fry much, just until they change color. Remove them onto a paper towel. Reduce the oil to a low flame.

No No its not yet done... Just a few mins more :)

The slices of plantain have a lot of oil absorbed now. Take a glass or a kitchen utensil with a round flat bottom surface. This will be used to flatten out the plantain slices to remove extra oil from them. Take each slice of plantain and using the glass / utensil, flatten out the slice with some pressure (not too much) so that the slice is now just more than 1/4 of an inch thick. Pat the slice dry using a paper towel to remove all the excess oil and keep aside. Do the same with all the other slices.

Meanwhile increase the oil flame again to medium and once it is hot, add the flattened slices of plantain into the pan. Fry them until they are golden brown in color on either sides. This time, the slices don't absorb too much oil. Drain them on a paper towel if you are very health conscious.

Arrange the slices on a serving plate and sprinkle some salt and coriander leaves over them for garnish. Tostones are ready to serve :) ENJOY YOUR MEAL !!

P. S:
I think the picture is from when I made tostones out of two plantains. So don't compare the quantity :)

Prepared Tostones - ready to be served :)

 

Close-up View !!

Tips

Its a little difficult to peel the raw plantains, hence some tips.

Cut the plantain into two. Slit the peel lengthwise in 4 directions (dont cut the plantain lengthwise - take care to only slit the peel). The peel then comes out easily when you try to peel it like a normal banana :) Don't try to peel a plantain without slitting. You might hurt your fingers / nails. The peel is generally too hard.

You can even peel it using a peeler, but you would have to peel out several layers until you reach the actual fruit, which I think is time consuming as well as results in the wastage of some part of the fruit too. I would recommend the previous method.

All work and No Cooking makes......

Well, well, well... what do we have here ? A dull girl ? Maybe !!

I know, I haven't updated my blog in a long time now. So here's something to go by.... I will post one recipe everyday until my store of recipes is over. Haven't been cooking much lately, so there are no pics / new recipes... just old ones. So here goes... check out my next post for a new recipe :D

Graduated !!

YAY !!

Finally I graduated..... I was sooooo DONE !! :) But look at the irony... I have all the time in the world to cook and post recipes n stuff like that, but I have become super lazy :( BUT soon, I will get out of this phase, I am sure of that.

So wait for the yummy recipes :)

- So

77 days later !!

Looks like a caption in a movie :) not really.... just counted the number of days since my last post. My God !! Have I been busy or lazy ?? Actually, lots of things happening in my life which makes it quite difficult to sit down and post a few things here, let alone having no time to cook :(

I have a list of recipe titles on me. I plan to finish writing the recipes and post them asap, especially for my dear friend Aashu, whom I promised some recipes. Sorry to make you wait Aashu... will definitely do it in the coming month. I am hoping to graduate soon. So, I will have loads of time after that for blogging and ofcourse for cooking :)

- So

I am BACKKKKKKKKKK !!!!!!

Hey All !!

I am back to blogging now.... I might as well, because I had to postpone my graduation by another semester. So y deprive myself of something that I love to do.... no no not blogging... I am talking about showing off my cooking skills :)

Just wanted to post some recent pics of my cooking here. Recently captioned the photos :) !!!

Mexican-Indian Medley (Onion Pakodas and Guacamole - I did not make the veggie crispy chips)

Breakfast Strata (egg-based)

Prepping for White pasta sauce

White pasta sauce cooking

Mixing cooked pasta and the creamy pasta sauce

Creamy white pasta

Pasta and garlic bread

Garlic butter used for the garlic bread (above and below)

Garlic bread (fresh out of the oven)

Not-from-scratch pasta (used canned pasta sauce)

From-scratch Lasagna (sauces were from scratch)

Cooked lasagna

Lasagna topped with extra sauce

Masala Omlet !!

Omlet with toast !!

Prepping pizza base (readymade dough)

Added toppings to pizza base

Topped with cheeses

Pizza fresh out of the oven

Vegetable sevai upma

Corn and Onion Fritters (pakodas)

Prepping breaded eggplant

Baked (healthy) breaded eggplant

Masala and plain dosas with garlic chutney and sambar

Indianized hashbrowns

Seriously do not remember the name of this sweet anymore :P

Sabudana khichdi :)

Aloo wada with spicy garlic sauce

Maddur Vada

I hope to get free enough to post the recipes soon !!

Until then...

Ciao... So

Busy Days

Sorry haven't been blogging in a while now.... I have been pretttttty busy with my thesis and research and coding and what not.... Ah !!! The woes of graduate life.

Thankfully my professor decided that I can graduate this semester. So I have been overly busy writing my thesis and completing the project, tweaking the performance.... etc., etc.,

Also the job search is not going that great. So, there it is.

However, I haven't stopped cooking. So I have a bunch of photos to put up.

Hopefully I should be back to frequent blogging soon.

'til then.....

- So

Bread / Garlic Bread Pizza

On request from my close friend, here is the recipe for garlic bread pizza or simply bread pizza....

Ingredients

Serves 2 ( 3 slices each)
Preparation Time (5 -10 mins -- depends on your vegetable cutting speed :) ) 
Cooking Time - 20 mins 

Bread / Garlic bread - 6 slices
Onions - 1 small
Tomatoes - 1 large
Capsicum - 1 medium
Red Pepper - 1 medium


Coriander leaves - few twigs (optional) (finely chopped)
Pepper powder - 1 tsp
Salt - as per taste
Chat Masala and / or Amchur powder - 1 tsp each (optional)


Mozzarella Cheese (shredded) - as per taste
(Remember that different kinds of cheese have different melting times - Mozzarella I think melts the fastest)
Butter - to apply on the bread (not needed if using garlic bread)
Aluminium Foil / Cookie Sheet (for arranging bread slices in the oven)

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 350 / 400 F. When the oven is getting heated, cut all vegetables into thin long slices. 

Prepping for garlic bread pizza

Arrange 6 buttered slices of bread onto a cookie sheet / aluminium foil. Top them with all the sliced vegetables. Sprinkle with coriander leaves and the other powdered ingredients. Sprinkle generously with cheese (for a cheese lover), else as per your taste.


Oven will be pre-heated by this time. Pop the cookie sheet / foil into the oven. Set the timer to 20 mins if the oven setting was 350 or 15 mins if it was set to 400. 

Into the oven it goes !!

Keep an eye on the bread. If the cheese starts to melt, then it signifies that the pizza is almost done. So once more than 3/4 th of the cheese has melted, then you can go ahead and switch off the oven (doesnt matter what the timer shows). Leave the bread in the oven for another 2 mins, for it to fully cook inside out.


Bread / Garlic bread pizza is now ready !!! ENJOY with tomato ketchup!!!

Yumm !!! Baked bread pizza pieces....