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.

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.  

Shankarpalé or Salty Flour Crisps

Shankarpalé or Shankarpali, is a traditional Indian Diwali snack. Usually these are sweet, crisp, small squares made using wheat flour and jaggery. These days however most people prefer something salty or savory to sweet. So here's a recipe for salty shankarpalé

Ingredients:

1 cup maida (or refined wheat flour)

2 tblsp vanaspati (hydrogenated vegetable oil)

1 tsp cumin seed powder

salt to taste

oil to deep fry

cold water for dough

Melt the vanaspati. Add the maida, salt, cumin powder and mix thoroughly. Add water just enough to form medium stiff dough. You should be able to roll the dough easily on the board without needing any extra flour for rolling.  

Make the dough into small balls and roll out on the board till it is very thin. (upto 3 mm thickness). Use a cutter and cut into small bite-sized squares. Deep fry in hot oil till golden brown. Store in an airtight container to keep the crispness.

Sometimes I go in for a cheese version.

Replace the vanaspati with half a cup of grated processed cheese. Do not melt the cheese however. Just add it and mix in the dough. Also add a tsp of ground pepper or chilli powder to add more spice. Tastes fantastic!

Note: Instead of melting the vanaspati, beating it or whipping it gives the dough a lighter texture. The shankarpalé more are inclined to puff when fried. 

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

Sweet Corn salad

Come monsoon and Indian roadsides are sprinkled with small covered carts. The owners are usually to be found fanning the embers in a coal scuttle, from which emanate smoke and a very appetizing aroma – that of freshly roasting corn. A dash of lime and some spices are expertly brushed on, and violá! A tasty concoction which no self respecting foodie in India would want to miss.

The Indian variety of corn is smaller and with whiter grains. This is the one usually roasted by the bhutta walas.
According to this healthfood website, corn is a good source of fibre and many nutrients including thiamin (vitamin B1), pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), folate, dietary fiber, vitamin C, phosphorous and manganese.

These days ‘sweet corn’ is also available fresh. One can eat this just plain boiled with a dash of butter. I prefer to snack on this filling and quick salad.

Recipe: Chop an onion and some coriander leaves finely. Add this to boiled sweet corn. Add a dash of lemon juice, black pepper powder and salt to taste. Your salad is ready.

A date with dessert

A real quickie, this -

 

Take a cupful of dates (the red-brownish variety).

Clean and chop into quarters.

Fry in pure ghee (clarified butter) so the dates are crisp.

Let it cool to room temperature.

 

The dish tastes heavenly as it is. Can be eaten as an energy snack. You can also add these dates to gajjar halwa, kheer, or as topping for vanilla ice cream!     

 

 

 © Alaka

Masala rules!

Pop into any Indian kitchen in the morning and your nostrils will be assailed with aromas that make your mouth water. The appetizing smells are released by the oils in spices used in the cooking. The word 'Masala' refers to a spice. For example whole cloves are a masala.

Many north Indian dishes are flavored using a combination of dry spices that is widely known as garam masala. There are many versions of this, depending upon the availability of ingredients and individual taste.

A simple recipe for garam masala - take cloves, cinnamon, black peppercorns, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, in equal volume. Grind all together in a mixer to a fine powder. Store in an airtight bottle in a cool dry place, away from sunlight. Lasts for more than 3 months without losing flavor.

Some of the more finicky cooks use the masalas in their whole or ‘shabut’ form. This can turn out to be very expensive, as the whole cloves or peppers are usually discarded while eating as they are too piquant / hot to taste. Of course, there are people I know who eat raw green chillies!

Other herbs used to flavor curries and pulaos are whole bay leaves, coriander leaves, ginger, garlic and curry leaves.

© Alaka

Paneer Pakoda

 

A simple and quick snack dish with paneer, which can be had at teatime or as a side dish at meals.

Ingredients:

Fresh Paneer 200 gms; few pods garlic, small ginger piece, 1 – 2 chillies; chilli powder; oil for frying;   ¼ tsp turmeric powder; ¼ tsp ground ajwain;  salt to taste.

Preparation:

Cut Paneer into small cubes. Grind ginger, chillies and a few garlic pods with salt. Apply the paste to the paneer cubes and keep for half an hour.

Mix together besan (chick pea) flour, pinch of  turmeric, chilly powder and a little hot oil. Add water to form batter with consistency that can make it stick to the paneer.  

Heat oil in a kadai or frying pan. 

Dip the marinated paneer cubes into this batter and fry till golden brown. Serve hot with tomato sauce, ketchup or pudina chutney.

Note:

-You can reduce or omit the chillies and chilli powder altogether according to taste preference.

-If in a hurry you can skip the ½ hour of marinating time and continue with the pakodas.

 -Paneer is an Indian variety of fresh cottage cheese, prepared by curdling milk and pressing out the water. Available in food stores and dairies.

The tastefully dressed vegetable

India has a large vegetarian population. Vegetables and pulses therefore form a substantial part of the diet. Somewhere in the glorious past, motivated chefs of maharajas and mothers with finicky kids worked on making these dishes simple to cook, yet tasty and palatable.

Enter the Indian version of dressing – better known as tadka, phodani or baghaar.

 (I call it as 'dressing' for want of a better equivalent word in English.)

The base for this dressing is oil, extracted from various seeds.  

How to use it?

 - the dressing is first made and then the veggies or soaked pulses are dunked in and stir fried.

- the vegetables are cooked to the extent required. The dressing is then poured over them.

  (Salt, and sometimes sugar, chilli powder are added to the vegetables while cooking.)

It is used to flavor cooked vegetables, pulses as well as raw salads and yogurt based dips.  

Let us see how it is prepared. 

Heat a little oil in a small wok or thick bottomed pan. Once the oil is really hot, add ½ tsp whole mustard seeds. These will splutter. That shows they are cooked. Switch off the heat. Add ½ tsp of turmeric ( haldi) and a ¼ tsp of asafoetida (hing). The mixture sizzles and emits an aroma that hints of food delight ahead.

Your basic Indian dressing is ready.

The dressing can be varied with addition and deletion of certain spices depending on which dish is to be flavored.

Garlic slices added to it and lightly fried do wonders for leafy vegetables.

Thinly sliced green / red chillies fried in this dressing lend a subtly different flavor and a crispy texture.  

Other additives can be chilly powder, fenugreek seeds, cumin, crushed pepper, cloves,  cinnamon and the like.  

This dressing can also be prepared with ghee or clarified butter. It takes on a distinctive flavor and taste, and hence is used only in certain kinds of dishes. In Maharashtra, a dressing of ghee and cumin seeds is used to flavor fasting food.

© 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