Our humble idli with a twist!!

For those (read as those in kids and husbands category mainly but applicable to all ;)) who find Idli not a glorified food to be taken to school or office, here is a version of the dish with a twist. All you need is 5 ingredients.

Recipe

Ingredients

Idli – cut into small pieces or you can use the mini idli versions too – 3

Onion – medium sized – 1 – diced.

Tomato ketchup – 5 tablespoons

Garlic powder – 2 tablespoons (you get a lot of garlic powder varieties in the supermarkets. I have used the one by Snapin.)

Oil – 1 teaspoon

Salt – if needed (I didn’t use it)

Preparation

• In a hot pan, add oil.

• Add the diced onions and sauté well.

• Once sautéed, add the garlic powder. Mix well.

• Add tomato ketchup and add idli pieces. Mix all the ingredients well. 

Tip: You can add a pinch of salt or pepper powder based on your/family’s spice needs. But the dish has been well received by my kids without this, so I don’t add salt or pepper.

Garnishing Tip: Throw in few pudina or coriander leaves and enjoy seeing the family gorge on the dish!

On a biriyani spree J

The mutton biriyani was such a hit that I was motivated to try the same with prawns. There was a time I wouldn't go for a biriyani dish, but once I started liking the various flavors associated with it, been known to consume a whole pack ;) I feel there is something about biriyanis that make you go back for it time and again. And I also had a yummy memory to chase. There used to be a restaurant, Coastal Junction in Bangalore – they served delicious prawns biriyani. It is one of the initial restaurants I had visited with my husband during our courtship period and we had liked that prawns biryani. And that memory lasted for obvious reasons.

So I wanted to try out prawns biriyani this time. A lot of ingredients used in the mutton biriyani recipe is used here too.

Here goes:

Recipe – this one serves 4 adults.

Ingredients

Basmati Rice – 2 cups
Prawns – 1 kg
Onion – 2 (medium sized, sliced), 1.5 – pureed (medium sized)
Green Chilli – 2
Garlic – 8-9 (pound it in a mortar n pestle)                                                                     
Ginger – a piece the size of 1/3rd of your index finger (pound it in a mortar n pestle)         
Tomato – 2
Red chilli powder – 1 tsp
Coriander powder – 1 tsp
Pepper powder – 1 tsp
Peppercorns – about a tsp.
Nutmeg powder – a pinch
Star Anise – 1 star
Clove – 10
Cinnamon – 6 pieces (each half of your thumb)
Fennel seeds – 1 tsp
Cardamom – 6
Coriander leaves – few sprigs
Mint leaves – few sprigs
Lemon juice – of 1 lemon
Curd – 1 tbsp
Oil – about 4-5 tsp
Water – 3.5 cups

Preparation

Wash the rice and soak it in water – water should be twice the amount of rice.

Clean and de-vein the prawns.

Tip: Keep the head of the prawns for making the stock later.

Add salt, turmeric, red chilli powder, pepper powder, nutmeg powder, curd to the cleaned prawns and marinate well.

Roasting the spice powder

In a thick bottom and deep pan, dry roast the star anise, 3 cinnamon pieces, 6 cloves, 4 cardamom and all of the fennel seeds. Grind it into a fine powder in a mixer, keep it aside.

Unlike the mutton biryani, there is no separate gravy that you can make for the prawns biryani. Prawns cooks really fast, as you know.

Preparing the stock

Add the prawns heads to 3.5 cups of boiling water. Add garlic, peppercorns, salt. You can pressure cook to get all the nutrition and taste blended well into the stock. If not, cook for about 15 min.

Biryani

Heat oil. Add the rest of the cinnamon, cloves and cardamom. Once it is well sizzled, add the sliced onion and some salt. Saute for a min and add the pureed onion.

Once the onion turns golden, add the pound garlic and ginger. As soon as the raw smell vanishes, add the green chilli. Saute well.

Add the roasted spice powder at this point, mix and sauté for a minute. Add the tomatoes and mix well till it becomes a little mushy and starts releasing oil.

Add prawns, the soaked rice and stock to this masala. Mix well. 

Tip: If you need a side gravy, you can use some of the water from this mix and bring it to a boil. 

Cook for 2 whistles.

Add the coriander leaves and mint leaves.

Garnishing note: A trial that lit up some great memories J

It’s a comeback…..with mutton biryani ;)

I realize I haven’t typed in anything for a while. A dear friend reminded me that it has been more than a year and that is not a while.

Come to think of it he is correct. Apart from the usual excuse of lack of time, I really don’t have a flamboyant reason L

Last Sunday when a quick plan was made to make mutton biryani, I didn’t think the recipe would end up here as a result. It turned out really well and I wanted to share it here:

Recipe

Ingredients

Basmati Rice – 2 cups
Mutton – 1 kg
Onion – 2 (medium sized, sliced), 1.5 – pureed (medium sized)
Green Chilli – 2
Garlic – 8-9 (pound it in a mortar n pestle)                                                                     
Ginger – a piece the size of 1/3^rd of your index finger (pound it in a mortar n pestle)         
Tomato – 2
Red chilli powder – 1 tsp
Coriander powder – 1 tsp
Pepper powder – 1 tsp
Nutmeg powder – a pinch
Star Anise – 1 star
Clove – 10
Cinnamon – 6 pieces (each half of your thumb)
Fennel seeds – 1 tsp
Cardamom – 6
Coriander leaves – few sprigs
Mint leaves – few sprigs
Lemon juice – of 1 lemon
Curd – 3 tbsp
Oil – about 4-5 tsp
Water – 4 cups

Preparation

Marinating the mutton and soaking the rice

Add salt, turmeric, red chilli powder, coriander powder, pepper powder, nutmeg powder, curd to the cleaned mutton and mix well.

Clean the rice and soak it in water about 2 times the measure of the rice.

Roasting the spice powder

In a thick bottom and deep pan, dry roast the star anise, 3 cinnamon pieces, 6 cloves, 4 cardamom and all of the fennel seeds. Grind it into a fine powder in a mixer, keep it aside.

Tip: I used my 5l pressure cooker as I wanted to use just 1 vessel for the entire cooking and save me from some washing ;)

For the mutton gravy

In the same cooker, heat oil. Add the rest of the cinnamon, cloves and cardamom. Once it is well sizzled, add the sliced onion and some salt. Saute for a min and add the pureed onion.

Tip: For the puree, you could shallots too. I didn’t have any shallots then at home as the biryani wasn’t a planned dish.

Once the onion turns golden, add the pound garlic and ginger. As soon as the raw smell vanishes, add the green chilli. Saute well.

Add the roasted spice powder at this point, mix and sauté for a minute. Add the tomatoes and mix well till it becomes a little mushy and starts releasing oil.

Add mutton to this masala. Let it roast for about 2 min. Add lemon juice and water and pressure cook it for about 3 whistles.

Tip: If it is not tender meat, might need more than 3 whistles. Good idea to check at this point before proceeding with more pressure cooking.

Tip: If the water is more, remove some at this point and use that as a side gravy to the biryani.

Add the rice and mix well. Cook for 2 whistles.

Add the coriander leaves and mint leaves.

As you see, I didn’t even think of a photo until it was served. So this is the best I have ;)

Garnishing note: In the hope of many more blogs, to my in-house cheerleaders and fans whose comments after the lunch prompted me to post this J

Chakka, jaca, jackfruit……

Jackfruit is one of those fruits whose seeds also can be used in a variety of dishes. My mom makes a yummy roast (semi-gravy), replicating chicken gravy with it. So when I bought a few jackfruit pieces for my son, I decided to use the seeds in a fry. Why not the whole fruit, you ask? - well, if I was in my hometown, it would come in no form other than a full jack fruit. Here, though there are shops which sell the whole fruit, cleaning and disposing off the rest after the fruit arils and seeds are taken is a trouble.

Did you know that jackfruit gets its name from Portugese word jaca, which was derived from its Malayalam name of the fruit, chakka? One more reason to be proud of my mother tongue J

So I checked the recipe with my mom and made my own version (yeah, as usual ;)). Since my family preferred it to be a dry dish, I made it as per the recipe below:

Recipe

Ingredients

Jackfruit seeds – 10 to 15 Nos.
Potato – 1no. medium sized (optional)

Onion – 2 nos. (1 roughly chopped, 1 thinly diced)
Green chilli – 1 no. (chopped)
Ginger Garlic paste – 1 teaspoon
Tomato – 1no. (finely chopped)
Cumin  seeds – 1 tsp
Chilli powder – 1 tsp
Coriander powder – 2 tsp
Pepper powder – ½  tsp
Turmeric – ¼ tsp
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Coriander leaves – few sprigs, finely chopped
Salt to taste
Asafetida – a pinch
Oil – 2 tbsp

Preparation

• Pressure cook the jackfruit seeds with a bit of salt, turmeric and asafetida. If you are adding potato, add after 1 whistle or cook it separately. 
• Tip: Upto how many whistles should the cooking happen really depends on the texture of the seeds. If they are really dry, you would need upto 3 whistles). 
• While the seeds are cooking, grind together the roughly chopped onion, chilli and coriander powder into a paste.
• Heat oil in a pan. 
• Add cumin seeds and ginger garlic paste. 
• Once the raw smell from the paste goes off, add the cut onions and the chopped green chilli. 
• Add salt (careful with the quantity as we already added some salt while cooking the jackfruit seeds).
• When the onions become translucent, add the tomato. Let it cook till it starts releasing oil. 
• Add pepper powder.
• Add the ground paste and mix well. This needs to cook for some time till all the raw pungent smell of the onions go off from the paste. If you prefer to, you can add more oil.  
• To this, add the cooked potato and jackfruit seeds. Mix well with the masalas. Let the mix get to a beautiful roasted form.
• Tip: You can add a little water at this stage if you need this dish in a gravy form – best if you can use the leftover water from cooking the seeds.
• Add chopped coriander leaves and curry leaves.

Garnishing Note: Served with hot rice or appam or roti, this is a warm dish that will fill your heart. 

Bread in the making…..

Necessity is not just the mother of invention; it is also the trigger for your actions in daily life. A necessity made me do an action today that I would have put off (read as have been putting off) due to lack of time – well, you know that’s what I call it ;)

I baked wheat bread at home J and the trigger – the controversies about the ingredients in the store bought bread.

Like most households these days, we have bread for breakfast atleast two or three days in a week –with omelet, with veggies, with cheese, with ketchup, with spread. My kids have it too. Suddenly all these discussions come up about some potential cancer causing ingredients in the bread. They also say that the major bakers have stopped including this in their products. But how do I know? I am an ordinary person who checks the date of expiry and some key ingredients in the products – I don’t check out each single chemical used in them and this news is enough for me to panic. So I did.

I decided to give wheat bread a try - with my better half helping with motivation and with the microwave settings, I was all set J I would like to post the recipe I used here because this attempt at baking makes me worry-free about my family’s health and it is a double bonanza that it made me really happy and proud of myself as a person J Knowing there are a lot of people who are probably in the same boat as I am, I hope this recipe helps you also try baking at home. Wish you a happy baking time J

Recipe

Ingredients

Whole wheat flour – 3 cups

Dry active yeast – ½ tbsp

Sugar – 1 tbsp

Salt – 1 tsp (vary according to preference)

Water – 1.5 cups almost

Oil – 2 tbsp

Milk – 3 tbsp almost

Preparation

• Mix the dry active yeast and sugar in about 1.5 cups of warm water.
• Once the yeast is active (about ten min or so), mix it with the flour. Add and mix salt, oil, milk (2 tbsp) and water (water quantity is based on the dough texture – knead till you feel the dough is sticky, but airy enough).
• Brush the dough with the rest of the milk and leave it for about 1.5 hours.
• Once you see the dough has risen well, punch a few holes to let it deflate.
• After this, ideally you should be placing the dough in a greased (can be with butter or oil) loaf pan and leave it for an hour more. Since I didn’t have a loaf pan, I used my cake moulds. If you aren’t really worried about the shape of your bread (as seen in the pics), you can use the cake moulds you have at home. Close the mould with a lid.
• Tip: Just remember to not use up the entire space of the mould – the idea is to give the dough enough space to rise.

      

Before rising

After rising

• Preheat the oven at 220 degrees.
• Place the moulds in the oven (I kept both the moulds together) and let it bake for about 25 min, check the bread (you can use a fork to prick the dough and check if it is cooked). If not cooked, keep it for another 5 min. 
• Once the bread has cooled down, it is ready to serve.

                                             

                   

This is my first attempt at baking bread at home, so made this as a plain wheat bread. Plan to include nuts, garlic, oregano next time round. Keep you posted J

Garnishing Note: That’s for you – bread in the making – or should I say bread in the baking!! 

Amma, I want jam, jam, jam…..

My 3 ½ year old son has suddenly taken a liking to jam and decided that jam will be his favorite side dish. He is resorting to it for every meal and snack for the last couple of days. For some reason, that is giving me a headache. There is all this artificial preservatives, colors in it, not to mention the sweet tooth he has now. Well, I can’t force him away from sweet dishes but I had to do something about the artificial items being consumed (atleast where possible). Two days back, he wanted jam with rice and yes, that was my cue to act – so I decided to prepare it at home.

I know it is a worry that most moms share and hope this simple quick recipe will help reduce it at least in small measures.

I prepared the jam with apple that I had at home then. You can use fruits of your choice like berries, pineapple alone or make a mixed fruit jam. Ensure the measures of all ingredients are increased in proportion with the fruit used. Since I wanted to try it out first, I used only one apple.

Recipe

Ingredients

Fruit – apple 1 no.
Sugar – ¼ cup
Cinnamon powder – a pinch
Lemon juice extract - of ½ a lemon

Preparation

• Peel the skin and cut the apple into small pieces. 
• Heat a pan and add the apple pieces. 
• Add ½ cup of water. Tip: Based on your fruit choice, you need to be cautious on the water to be added. Some fruits will release a lot of water that you wouldn’t need to add ½ cup water again. 
• Let it cook in almost high flame for about 10 min or till the apple starts to be mushy. Check once in a while to see the consistency.
• Once it is soft, use a masher and mash the fruit pieces well. Cook for a few minutes to reduce the water in case there is still some left. Please keep in mind that you are making this jam at home, so unless you add pectin or such other ingredient, the consistency you should be looking for is a thick mixture (feels kind of a grainy texture in your tongue) and not of the ones you get to buy from shops. 
• At this stage, add sugar and mix well. 
• Let this mix cook till sugar melts and apple becomes succulent with the syrup. 
• Add a pinch of cinnamon powder and mix well (I mean a very small pinch as that is enough for that lovely aroma and flavor). 
• Switch off the stove and let the mixture cool down. 
• Once it is cool, add the lemon juice extract, mix well. Jam is ready.
• Tip: Use glass bottles washed in hot water and dried, for storage.

 I prepared it at night and needless to say, it was empty by the time breakfast was over the next day.

Garnishing note: Make jam at home and jam your days with fun and happiness ;) -  by a calmed mom J

Such a comfort food this is!!

After 5 years we finally took a two week long vacation. Spending time with our parents was the purpose and that we did! Kids enjoyed, we ate well, travelled with family, and time flew. Two weeks passed by so quickly and we came back home only to realize I am home sick and wanted to be back with my parents. On the weekend we reached back, my husband brought some fresh mutton and my post this time is about mutton roast that I prepared. 

Well, it has been two weeks since then but I am writing about it only now. I am a mother of two kids now. Newest member is my daughter who is 6 months old. I am not about to say I am busy because of that. It is a hectic schedule but I do have my time every day. Just that I never got to the laptop to start typing something. You always need a trigger to start writing, even if it is a recipe you prepared. Today my trigger is a diverted mind. An oxymoron that could be, considering you need to focus on what you are doing. May be the distraction I need is not from writing but from the standard schedule. 

Whatever be the reason, I am happy that I finally got to do this. For a long time, I never used to eat mutton except for the curry that my mom prepared. So the dish itself brings back a lot of memories and reminds me of childhood and my parents’ place. 

Recipe

Ingredients

• Mutton – 1/2 kg (cut into cube sized pieces) 
• Onion – 3 medium sized nos. (finely chopped)
• Onion – 1 big no. (sliced)
• Tomato – 1 no. (finely chopped)
• Ginger – a small piece (finely chopped)
• Garlic – 1 pod (finely chopped)
• Peppercorns – 6 – 8 nos.
• Red Chilli – 2 nos.
• Green Chilli – 1 no. (finely chopped)
• Shallots – 6 nos.
• Fennel seeds – 1 tsp.
• Cumin powder – ½ tbsp
• Coriander powder – 2 tbsp
• Pepper powder – 1 tbsp
• Turmeric powder – ¼ tbsp
• Lemon – 1 no.
• Coriander leaves – a few sprigs (I love this herb and am usually generous with the usage of coriander leaves in my cooking)
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
• Oil – 2 tbsp
• Salt to taste

Preparation

• Marinade the washed mutton pieces with salt, turmeric, pepper powder, lemon juice extract and keep aside for an hour. 
• Tip: Best is if the meat is marinated and kept overnight.
• Heat oil (1 tbsp) in a pan. 
• Add ginger and garlic (half). 
• Once the color starts turning brown, add red chilli, pepper corns, fennel seeds and fry for a minute. 
• Add the chopped onions and shallots and fry till translucent. Tip: Known to all is the fact that adding a pinch of salt while sautéing onions quickens the process. 
• Add cumin powder and roast till the raw smell vanishes.
• Add tomato and sauté till oil starts separating from it. 
• Switch off the stove and let it cool. 
• Grind this to a fine paste and keep aside.  

• In the same pan, add the remaining oil. 
• Once hot, add sliced onions and sauté well. 
• Add the remaining garlic and fry it. 
• Add green chilli and curry leaves and sauté for a minute
• Add coriander powder and mix well. Let it cook well for about 2-3 minutes. 
• Once the coriander powder is roasted well, add the mutton pieces and stir.
• Tip: I always prefer small cube sized mutton pieces as they absorb the marinade well. 
• At this stage, add the masala paste prepared earlier and mix well with mutton.
• Add salt.
• Keep stirring for some time and then let the mutton cook in this (do not add water now). 
• After about 5 minutes, add ¼ cup water and cook.
• Tip: When adding water, add hot water and in small measures. You can always add more when needed. 
• Once the mutton is cooked to your perfection (at this stage, water added also should have reduced), add finely chopped coriander leaves. You can also add a little lemon juice extract for that extra tangy taste if you prefer. 

Garnishing note: Served with hot rice, this is such a comfort food and one that converts old memories into refreshing energizers J