Sweet-Potato chips

Easy to make.
Take a sweet-potato. Slice it thinly. Deep fry in oil on low flame till cooked and crispy. Place on paper to remove excess oil. Sprinkle with chilli powder, salt and dry raw mango powder (amchoor).

Sweet Potato is a tuber with a sweet taste. Known as  रताळे in Marathi.

baby potatoes in yoghurt gravy

Potatoes are my Achilles heel,  especially if they have come in contact with hot oil. This dish made from the ubiquitous spud manages to combine divine taste with very little oil. 

For it, I looked up a few recipes that popped up on googling, and then did my own thing. 
 

Recipe: 
 
Ingredients
Parboiled baby potatoes (alternatively use fully boiled potatoes, if that is what you prefer)
 
For marinade: 
curd/yogurt
ginger-garlic-green chilli paste 
salt 
dash of garam masala 
one teaspoon Kasuri methi 
 
For tadka: a broken red chilli, Hing(Asafoetida), Cumin seeds, mustard seeds, turmeric powder and oil.
 
Method
Stab the parboiled potatoes with fork to make holes. 
Mix together all the marinade ingredients and soak the potatoes in the mix for half an hour.
In a kadai/wok, make the tadka. 
Add the coated potatoes. (Keep any extra marinade aside.)
Cook covered, on slow heat till potatoes are cooked from inside. 
Add the remaining marinade and cook for a minute or two.
Serve warm with rotis or rice.


Note: If you're interested in tadka and how to make it, read more here.

Crispy sweet sour Alu wadi

This alu wadi is a typical snack made in Marathi homes. (Alu: Colacasia or edible Arum leaves; Patra in Gujarati). It is fried, crispy and much more tasty than the ones you find in food stores or restaurants these days.

Given below are the steps to make this delicious snack.

What you need is some alu leaves that are meant for making wadi. These you can get from the market. Wash and pat them dry.

The bowl to the left in the first picture. contains Besan ie chana daal flour, salt, turmeric powder and chilli powder. Half a teaspoon of turmeric is enough for three tablespoons of besan. The remaining ingredients are according to taste.

The second bowl contains Tamarind Sweet chutney. Jaggery is used in substantial quantity rather than sugar for the sweetness.  The Besan is mixed with this liquid chutney to form a stiff batter which will stick on as shown in the picture.

 

The above leaf bundle is pressure cooked. One whistle is usually enough. It can also be steamed. 

 The above wedges are deep fried.

 

Enjoy! 

Metkut – a rice accompaniment

Rice, a staple food in most Indian homes, is easy to cook and nutritious in the bargain. In its plain vanilla form, it is usually eaten mixed with daal, curries, gravies, curds or buttermilk. But there are times when you are in a hurry to have a hot cooked snack and either don’t have any time for elaborate preparations or don’t have the raw materials at home. In which case Metkut Bhaat can be a life saver.

In Marathi households the clever but harried home-maker often keeps a stock of Metkut at hand. Made of daals and rice, this subtly flavored sunlight yellow powder can be stored, and lasts for months. Mixed with it, rice tastes yummy, and is one of my favorite comfort foods, especially on cold winter mornings. Kids love it too, and tuck into it with gusto!  

(Pronunciation: Metkut- 1^st ‘t’ soft as in Taiwan; 2^nd t as in tea; Bhaat- ‘a’ as in ravioli; ‘t’ soft as in Taiwan)

Let us see how it is made.

Ingredients:

1 cup chana dal

½ cup urad dal

½ cup rice

1 tsp saunth (dried ginger powder)

1 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp mustard seeds

¼ tsp asafoetida

Method

Roast chana dal on a low flame. When it begins to redden, add urad dal. When that takes on a beige color, add rice. Continue the gentle roasting till the mix is crisp to taste and can be crunched easily between your teeth. Just before turning off the flame, add haldi and stir the mixture a few times. Let the mix cool.

Put the roasted mix and the remaining spices in a grinder. Grind till fine-sooji or rice-flour texture is obtained. While grinding, ensure that the mix does not form lumps due to any steam generated. Pour the resulting powder into a large plate or newspaper and let cool. Store in an airtight container. Stays good for 6 months to a year. However it is better to consume it in a few months as the spices may lose their flavor after that.

How to eat Metkut bhaat

• Take a bowl of hot well cooked rice which is sticky and where a little liquid still remains. Add a few spoonfuls of metkut to it.
• Add a dollop of ghee and salt to taste.
• Mix the rice and metkut well with your fingers, the way you would with dal or curds.
• Attack!

 You can add a dash of lime pickles to the above if so inclined.

 Note:

-Some people add fenugreek seeds, fennel powder or other spices to it too. On the whole less spices is better in this case.  

-You do get this stuff in stores in Maharashtra, but it just does not have the same taste as the one made at home as per the above recipe. 

Summer crunchy koshimbir

This delicious looking gazpacho soup reminds me of a koshimbir (kind of salad cum dip) that we make in India. Endowed with a beautiful crunchy texture, it is raw, and like the gazpacho, best relished in summer.

To make this summery salad you need: 

Tomatoes

Onions

Cucumber (Indian variety with light peel which is to be removed)

Cauliflower

Coriander

Fresh green chillies

All above chopped finely.

Roasted cumin powder – a pinch

Salt – to taste

Sugar – to taste

Mix the entire lot with a spoon.

Keep it for 15 minutes for the juices to flow and mix. Best eaten with chapatti or white rice.

As ‘amancooks’ rightly says you do not have to liquidize everything you eat. To me, that is for invalids and those with no teeth.

FAQ: How many of each of the veggies to use?

That depends on the size of each vegetable, which of them you like most. I go for 2 tomatoes, 1 onion, 1 cucumber, 1/4^th of a cauliflower. Coriander and chillies again depend on how much of each you like or can tolerate, how pungent the chillies are, and so on. Cooking is a very subjective thing and a lot of proportions are based on individual tastes. The good part is this is a dish where you can play around with the proportions.

cabbage salad

Kobi is Marathi for cabbage, called as patta gobi in Hindi.

 

Kobi chi koshimbir is a typical maharashtrian recipe.

Ingredients and method:

Grate cabbage or chop into thin shreds.
Add some soaked moong dal to this.
Squeeze some lemon juice.
Add salt and sugar to taste.
Add chopped coriander.
Make the normal tadka to which you add chopped green chillies.

Pour this tadka over all the above and mix well.

You can vary the proportion of the moong dal to cabbage as per your taste. I prefer a sprinkling of dal only. 

Grated carrot can be added to above. 
Tastes good with chapati or eaten as a side dish.

Note: For tadka preparation, pl. check my earlier post on the same.

koshimbir - the marathi version of salad

In Maharashtrian cooking, we have a range of what is known as koshimbir - these can be loosely termed as salads. Made from fresh vegetables and fruits, they usually have a splash of tadka (described in a previous post). Items like ground paste of seeds or nuts or dessicated coconut are used to add consistency and bring the items together.    

 

The koshimbir is a side dish and can be eaten as accompaniment to chapati, roti or rice. Here's a quick one

Guava koshimbir

Chop ripe green guavas into small pieces.
Add them to well whipped curds.
Add salt and sugar to taste.

Your salad is ready! The adventurous ones could add pepper or chilli powder to taste.  

spicy dry daal

Monsoon in the west coast of India typically means a lack of decent variety in vegetables. A vegetarian ends up alternating between potatoes, onions and tomatoes with a gourd or two thrown in. This is when we resort to the variety of pulses, lentils, and daal. A favorite of mine, is this quick dish made from ‘gram’ or ‘harbhara’ daal (split chick pea).

For this you need – a cupful of daal soaked in warm water for 1.5 hours; small bunch of chopped coriander; chopped green chillies.

Prepare tadka as given in an earlier post. Reduce the heat. Add chopped green chillies and stir a bit. Add the daal and cover with a lid to steam. After one steaming, add salt to taste, mix well. Cover for another steam. Then add coriander and stir occasionally till the daal is cooked. Serve hot with roti, chapati or rice.


© Alaka

2 recipes for raw mango chutney

Before the summer and kairis vanish, here are a few recipes for raw mango chutney.

Recipe 1.

Ingredients:

Raw mangoes – peeled and diced into small cubes to fit 2 cups.
Jaggery (gur) - 4 cups; crumbled/ sliced thin depending on hardness

For the tempering (tadka):
Oil – 2-3 teaspoons
Whole Mustard seeds – ½ teaspoon
Fenugreek (methi) seeds - 1 teaspoon
Asafoetida (hing)- ¼ teaspoon
Turmeric powder (haldi) – ½ teaspoon
Chilli powder and Salt to taste.

Method:
Place a wok (kadai) or a thick bottomed pan on flame. Put in the oil. Add the fenugreek seeds. Once these show a mild splutter, throw in mustard seeds. As the mustard pops, add asafoetida and turmeric powder. Add the raw mango cubes and jaggery and stir well. Mix in the chilli powder and salt. Let the mixture simmer on medium flame till the jaggery has ‘melted’. Switch off the heat.
Let it stand till the chutney is cool. Transfer into a glass or ceramic bowl. Makes a delicious accompaniment to rotis and rice preparations.

Note:
- The proportions for raw mango to jaggery is usually 1:2. However these may be adjusted depending on the sourness of the kairi and the sweetness of jaggery.

- The kairi can be grated instead of dicing it. Some prefer to use pre-cooked kairi mash though the taste is subtly different and the texture is lost.

- This chutney can last a whole week if refrigerated.



Recipe 2.

If you are in the mood for raw chutney –
Grate ½ kairi and 2 onions. Mix both in a bowl with a fistful of toasted crushed groundnuts (peanuts). Add salt, jaggery and chilli powder to taste.

This chutney tastes yummy with bhakri, a flatbread made from jowar/ bajri (millets).

Note: Crushed groundnuts are added to give body and texture to the chutney. You can adjust the quantity according to taste.

© Alaka