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.

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!

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.

Puffed Puries

Just made these puries (poories, poorees) a while ago. These puries taste delicious eaten by themselves, or with gravied vegetables or meat. In India these are usually prepared on festive occasions to be eaten with sweet dishes such as shrikhand (sweetened whipped cream cheese) or aamras (fresh squeezed mango juice).

Recipe:
Take two cupfuls of whole wheat flour.
Add a pinch of salt to the dough for a subtle salty taste.
Knead with water and 2 tsps hot oil to form a stiff firm dough.
Pluck small balls (size of Indian lemon or cherry tomato) off the dough.
Roll into rounds on a lightly floured board.
Then gently ease each puri into hot oil and deep fry.
Remove on to a kitchen paper to drain excess oil.

Note: DO NOT use olive or mustard oil or any other oil with a strong flavor to fry the puries. Use refined oil, or any tasteless oil.

Tip: Serve hot puries with pat of butter and marmelade or fruit preserve. Make for filling breakfast or brunch food.

Sing. Puri ['pu' as in put + 'ri' as in reed]

Crisp fluffy Dosa

Most foreign visitors to India are fascinated by the spectrum of ingredients, flavours and textures in Indian cuisine. Recently one such friend visited India for the first time and was quite taken up with the Dosa.

In appearance it's a bit like the pancake – batter spread in a round and cooked. But there the resemblance ends. The Dosa is made of fermented rice and urad daal, whereas the pancake found in the West is usually wheat flour based.

The Dosa originated in South India. Like many other regional items, it has been assimilated in mainstream Indian gastronomic culture. It is usually eaten with an accompaniment of either a daal-based or coconut-based chutney, or vegetable to form a complete meal.

The North Indians could add paneer to the veg. Non-vegetarians might eat it with chicken curry. Kids love dosa spread with cheese on top. I have even heard of a restaurant selling Chinese Dosa!

Here's a recipe for Dosa with potato vegetable, my style.

(makes 8 – 10 medium sized dosas)

Dosa

Ingredients:

2 cups rice (called as 'ukdaa tandul' in stores in Maharashtra)

3/4 cup urad daal

Salt to taste

Oil for spreading for each dosa

For serving - pats of unsalted butter.

Method:

Separately soak rice and urad dal in water, overnight. In the morning, grind together to a fine paste using up all the water for soaking. Leave in room temperature for 8-10 hours approx. The mixture should have fermented and taste sour by then. Add the remaining water till you get batter of spreading consistency. Add a little salt to taste (just a hint).

Heat a nonstick pan with a teaspoon of oil in the centre.

Spread a large spoonful of the batter on pan in so it gives you a pancake like round. Spread the mixture around to aim for a thinner and crisper Dosa. Cover with a lid for a minute or so, for the Dosa to steam. Now remove the lid and flip the Dosa on its other side with a spatula. Do not cover with lid this time. Cook for a minute or so. One side should be brown and the other a kind of white sprinkled with brown. (Some people prefer to cook it only on one side.)

Remove on to a plate. Serve hot with potato onion vegetable (given below) or a pungent chutney. I love it plain, with unsalted butter melting on top.

Ideally the end product should be soft, fluffy and crisp at the same time :)

Potato onion vegetable

Ingredients:

3 large potatoes, diced into small cubes

1 medium onion, sliced lengthwise

2 green chillies diced small.

For tadka:

1 tablespoon oil

1/2 teaspoon mustard seed

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

¼ teaspoon asafoetida

Method

First make the tadka. To it add onion. Fry for about 5 minutes on medium heat or until onions turn transparent. Add potatoes. Add salt to taste and ½ a tsp of sugar. Stir and cook for another 5 minutes.

This vegetable can be served with Dosa, Indian bread or steamed rice.  

Note: In US or other countries you probably get instant dry idli, dosa mix in Indian stores. Follow the instructions to prepare the batter and make the dosas. However, these will not come close in quality to the dosa with home made batter.

Tomato pasta

Think global act local!

What an apt catchphrase, for cuisine picked up from other countries and customized according to locally available ingredients and tastes. Pasta is one of these. I wonder if Italians ever add cumin seeds to their pasta. Indians do.  

Ok, here's one pasta dish I enjoy making and eating, especially on cold winter evenings.

What would you need?   

200 grams dried pasta

2 teaspoons oil (any refined oil will do if olive oil is not available)

7 - 8 medium sized ripe red tomatoes 

2 – 3 dried red chillies broken into large pieces

1 – 2 medium flakes garlic crushed

Grated cheese to sprinkle 

Toasted bread bite-sized pieces (optional)

Salt to taste.

Method:

Chop the tomatoes into small pieces.

Heat oil in a kadai (wok). Add the garlic and chillies.

Once the garlic begins to brown, add the chopped tomato.

Add salt to taste. Simmer for about 5 minutes.

Boil the pasta till cooked al dente. Dump the pasta into a sieve to drain off the water.You can save some of this water to add to the tomato sauce if you prefer a soupy pasta. 

Add to the tomato prepared above. Serve hot, sprinkled with cheese, toasted bread croutons, and torn basil leaves.

Note:

- You can add a teaspoon of sugar to the tomato sauce, to soften the harshness of garlic and sour tomato.

- If you have to cook pasta in advance, rinse the cooked pasta in a sieve under cold water tap. Add a tsp of oil and toss so the pasta pieces do not stick to each other.

- You could add boiled corn, cauliflower florets, peas, carrot juliennes, broccoli, french beans to the above tomato sauce.

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

3 varieties of Indian unleavened bread

My first memory of cooking - i.e. real cooking - is of helping my mom with the chapatis. 

 

 

To make these, whole-wheat dough is kneaded with water to a stiffish but pliable consistency. A touch of oil added in the final knead imparts a smoothness to the dough. Small chunks are pulled off it and rolled between the palms to make small balls. These balls are rolled on a board, usually wooden, with a rolling pin. The result aimed for, is a flat, thin 'bread' of a perfectly circular shape.  

 

 

A simple roll out will give you what is known as a phulka. This can be first lightly toasted on a metal griddle and later roasted on direct flame.  

 

 

In the chapati version, the dough ball is rolled out slightly, then some oil or ghee and a little flour applied to it. This is folded twice to give a triangular shape which is again rolled out into a large flat round. This is only roasted on the griddle.  

 

 

The puri (or Pooree for pronounciation) is the richer cousin of the quotidienne chapati. By richer, I mean it drinks in a lot more of fat. The dough is kneaded in a similar fashion as for chapati or roti.  Smaller balls are made than for chapatti. These are then rolled out into small rounds and deep fried in oil or ghee.

 

The sight and fragrance of a stack of golden, perfectly puffed Puries is truly appetizing.  Eat  them with Indian desserts like Shrikhand or Basundi and you attain Foodie Nirvana!

 

 

The puffing of the puri or the roti depends on how well the dough is kneaded, the proportion of water used in it, the amount of oil applied in the rolling process.

 

 

Phew! Hats off to the Indian housewife who is successful in consistently delivering   freshly-baked phulkas, chapattis, rotis, seven days a week.

 

 

Note:

Each piece is to be roasted individually on the griddle / flame.

 

Sprinkle flour on the board to avoid the dough sticking to the board or the rolling pin.

 

All the above are made from dough that is freshly kneaded. No fermenting agents like yeast   are used.

 

 

© Alaka