A quick vegetable soup

Friend needed a recipe for a vegetable soup,so here goes. This is a delicious soup with chunky veggie pieces that you can eat. Healthy and works well as a full meal for dinner.

How to: 

Chop cabbage, cauliflower, green beans, carrots, in whatever shape and size you prefer. 

Add water and boil till veggies are cooked but not mushy. 

Add some mashed boiled potato to thicken soup. 

Add cooked sweet corn and peas if you have them. 

Add some crushed garlic and black pepper, salt and sugar to taste. 

Your soup is ready to eat.

Note: You can add a little milk to the soup or grated cheese on top to make it richer. I also love it with a squeeze of fresh lemon!

Tangy Amla Pickle

Amla or the Indian gooseberry is a seasonal fruit and arrives in winter by the cartloads. Packed with vitamin C and other good nutrients, this juicy fruit has an immediate sour taste with the sweet and bitter notes released on chewing it. It can be turned into jam, pickles, sherbet, supari, or just eaten raw, with a little salt and chilli powder. Amla supari is especially useful to chew on in case of an uneasy tummy.  

The amla pickle combines the tangy taste of amla with the hot spiciness of chillies and the very different heat of mustard. Quick and easy to make, it is a must on your dining table, to balance the heavy sweets-packed Diwali dinner!

Here's the Amla pickle recipe. 

Ingredients:

4-6 amla fruits

1-2 green chillies

A few drops of lemon juice

1 tsp mustard seeds ground/ powdered

Salt to taste

For the dressing:

1 tbsp oil

¼ tsp Haldi (turmeric)

Pinch of Hing (asafoetida)

½ tsp mustard seeds whole

Pressure cook the amla. Let cool. Then remove stone and dice the flesh. Cut green chilli into pieces. Boil for a minute in very little water.

Mix the amla, chilli, mustard seed powder and salt. Add the lemon juice if you want an extra sour tang. Add the water in which the chilli pieces were boiled. Stir everything.

Heat oil, add mustard seeds. When they splutter add hing, haldi and remove from flame. Let the dressing cool. Pour the dressing over the pickle. Mix well. The pickle is ready to eat. Tastes better if kept for a day before eating so as to let the flavors mix well.

Note: You can change the proportions of the ingredients in the recipe to suit your taste. Ideally store in glass or ceramic containers. This pickle remains good in the refrigerator for weeks. If you're in a hurry, or do not wish to grind mustard, or for a slightly different taste, you can also use the readymade mustard chilli pickle masala.

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.

Marathi cuisine, and green tomato koshimbir

 

Marathi vegetarian cuisine is essentially non oily, quick to make and uses freshly available ingredients. Of course there are variations based on which part of Maharashtra you are from. The konkan coast is rich fertile land. The main crop is rice. Coconuts are available in plenty. So are fruits like mango, jackfruit and banana. Kokam or 'amsul' are used in sour preparations. On the other hand the khandesh or Marathwada region uses more of millets, jowar and bajri for making 'bhakri', a type of unleavened roasted bread. Groundnut is used whole or powdered. Red chillies, garlic, onion are used in greater quantities. The dishes from konkan coast tend to use more of green chillies.

 

You can find this difference in how a simple item like daal is made. Basically it is tur daal cooked and spiced to which water is added to form a medium thick broth. People from the Deccan plateau call it 'varan'. It is thicker, contains more spices, and red chillies or chilly powder, usually tamarind to add a sour touch. The 'amti' prepared by people originally from konkan coast, would be thinner, with chopped green chillies, a dash of fresh coconut and amsul.

 

 

Let's look at a simple green tomato koshimbir.

You need firm green tomatoes for this.

 

 

Ingredients: 

3 green tomatoes chopped fine

1 cupful of crushed groundnuts (peanuts)

2 green chillies chopped

Ingredients for Tadka

One teaspoon sugar.

Salt to taste.

 

 

Method:

In a bowl mix the chopped tomatoes, groundnuts, sugar and salt.

Prepare the tadka (given in a previous post). Pour on the mixture and mix again.

 

Excellent when eaten with roti or chapati.

 

Note:

Someone had asked me to include how many people my dishes can serve. It's like this. If you serve small portions like chutney, this koshimbir may be enough for 7 – 8 people. Me, I can finish it all by myself!

Indian Fruit Fusion

Here's my favorite fruit recipe for winter. Can be served as dessert or eaten with chapati, roti or puri. The beauty of this recipe is there is no specific proportion in which the fruits are to be taken. Curds should be sufficient to cover the fruits.  

 

Method

 

Take any of the following fruits-

Apples, bananas, chikoo, guava - diced

oranges, sweet limes – peel off the thin skin off the individual slices and then halve each slice.

Pomegranate peeled

Green seedless grapes – you can halve these

Raisins, sultanas – soaked in water for 15 minutes

Almonds, cashewnuts, walnut – chopped

 

In a bowl add thick curds. Add sugar to taste. Whip this mixture with a spoon. Add the chopped fruit. Stir to mix.

Refrigerate till cold.

Serve.  

delicious dahi

 

Gosh! I have just downed the third glass in a straight row – of this heavenly drink called water. At this rate I shall soon burst like the waterfilled balloon of Rang Panchami. The Indian summer is to blame for this… But.

But.

 

Wait.

Summer also means juicy watermelons, luscious jackfruit, tangy pineapples, mangoes, khus flavored water – and bowls of dahi for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

 

 

Dahi (pronounced as dahee, with a soft 'd') is another name for curds or yogurt .

 

 

One can make thick, fat-rich dahi from buffalo's milk.

To this curd, add spoonfuls of sugar, a few grains of ground cardamom and saffron. Mix well and put in the refrigerator. You have an instant cooling dessert ready!

Top it with small pieces of fruit, like orange, apple and grapes to add flavour and richness.

 

 

The diet conscious can safely consume bowls of delicious yogurt made from cow's milk. A great summer cooler is this spiced buttermilk.

Churn the dahi along with some cold water. The liquid thus obtained is known as buttermilk. To serve, add a pinch of asafoetida, roasted cumin powder and salt to taste.

 

You could try versions with crushed mint leaves, sprinkled with fresh or dried ginger, or crushed ajwain (carom seeds).  

 

 

Note: Rang Panchami is an Indian festival. People play about with colored water and have fun splashing it on others. 

 

 

© Alaka   

ginger remedies - raw and fresh

Speaking of ginger –

Slice a small piece of fresh ginger. Dunk it in common salt and chew on it. Helps work up a good appetite if consumed an hour or two before lunch.

When feeling tired or feverish, the following recipe does a good job of bringing taste back.

Grate raw ginger. Squeeze in a goodish amount of fresh lemon juice. Add a spoonful of sugar. A dash of salt. (Rock salt if possible). Mix the lot with a spoon and let it stand for a while.

Small spoonfuls savored every hour or so, are refreshing. You can skip the sugar in case of diabetes.

Refrigerate if made in large quantities. Use within a day or two.

© Alaka