Recipe 14 - Pulav & Raita

Oh, it's been so long since I made pulav! It felt so nice still being able to take a decent shot at it, and also experiment with brown rice. I also got to learn some new things about making raita, thanks to Jaya.

Thanks to Dyuti for the idea & the tips.

Ingredients (serves about 6 people):
6 carrots (medium sized)
4 bell peppers (1 red, 1 orange, 2 green)
1/2 onion
3 tiny potatoes
Shajeera (or kala jeera)
Cloves
Elaichi (cardamom)
Bay leaves
Pulav masala or Biryani masala
3.5 cup brown basmati rice

1. Leave the rice in water to soak (soaking time is ~15min)
2. Peel the carrots
3. Cut the vegetables (carrots, bell peppers, some onion if you like) into thin slices about 2" long - you can add somewhat biggish pieces of potato for flavor
4. It would take about 15min by now and it would be time to drain the water from the rice.
5. In a skillet, heat oil on medium flame and once the oil is hot, add cloves, kala jeera, bay leaves and cardamom
6. Add onions and other veggies and lightly fry them
7. Add pulav masala, stir and add the rice to fry the rice gently
8. Add water (about 8 cups) and cook in the rice cooker
(You can actually use your electric rice cooker instead of a skillet.)

Preparation time: 30min, Cooking time: 30min

For Raita --
1. Dice 1/2 onion & 3 tomatoes (remove the tomato seeds)
2. Wash the chopped onion in water to get rid of some pungency
3. Add onions & tomatoes to 2 cups of yogurt and add salt to taste
4. Add tadka/popu/talimpu (basically heat little bit of oil and add mustard seeds and hing or asafoetida)

Recipe 13 - Banana Bread

Thanks to Mohana for the idea (well, the idea was seeded way back in 2007) & the recipe. I finally got around to making it, thanks to my collar bone fracture! :)

Ingredients (serves about 4 people):
4 very ripe bananas mashed
1 egg - beaten
1/3 cup ghee (or oil/butter/buttermilk)
1.5 cups flour
0.5 c sugar or 0.25 c honey
0.5 cup walnuts

1. Beat one whole egg

2. Chop 1/2 cup of walnuts (you can do it with the hands) and add it to the beaten egg

3. Add 1/3 cup honey & 1/4 cup honey (a little more if you like it really sweet) to the above mix

4. Pre-heat oven to 350F

5. Add 4 ripe bananas mashed (the ghee will aid the mixing)

6. Add 1.5 cup slowly in parts while mixing it at the same time to ensure all the flour gets mixed thoroughly

7. Grease a pan with oil (the batter/dough will not rise, so you can estimate the pan size depending on the amount of batter)

8. Pour batter in the pan and bake it for 1hr

Preparation time - 1hr, Baking time - 1hr

The suspense and the smell while the bread was baking was exciting. Good experience!!

recipe 12 - beetroot paneer

This incidentally turned out to be the first time I cooked beet-root.

1. Boil (or heat, whatever you call, make sure it is semi-cooked) beetroot in microwave

2. Heat mustard seeds in oil, add chilli and sautee paneer cubes

3. After the paneer cubes are brownish, add tomato and beetroot

4. Add masala (I just used nuvvula podi or til powder) to enhance the taste

5. Add salt to taste

Recipe 11 - cabbage appetizer

This is so simple, and I so like it that it easily tops my list of favorite things to cook.

This is a starter, so, keep that in mind when you cut the cabbage.

1. Slice the cabbage into long thin slices. (The middle portion is probably best suited for curries and the exterior leaves are best for this dish.)

2. Heat mustard seeds in oil until they begin to splutter.

3. Once the mustard starts to splutter, add cabbage and sautee it lightly for 5-10min.

4. Add salt to taste, and sprinkle lime on top.

Done!

Notes - make sure you don't close the lid on the pan, else, the cabbage might get soggy. Tastes best when the cabbage is slightly crispy.

My favorite - chamagadda vepudu (arbi fry)

I think it's real simple..

1. Pressure cook arbi
2. Peel off the skin
3. Fry in oil at low-medium heat
4. Add salt & chili to taste

One thing I've realized while making this is that it takes time for dishes to turn out well - we can't rush into them. So, allocating time margin is better...

Recipe 9 - pulusu

1. Roast mustard until it splutters
2. Roast cumin seeds
3. Add vegetables and fry them a little until semi-cooked
4. Add water to the vegetables and cook on low-medium heat until the water is boiling - the veggies should be cooked by then (you can notice the veggies becoming semi-transparent)
5. When the water is boiling, add a little bit of 'besan+water' for consistency
6. Add jaggery/sugar and salt to taste.

Serve hot! Yum..

double-ka-meetha

One of Hyderabad specialities..

Tips:
1. Make sure you have enough oil, else you have to run to the grocery store in the middle like I did.
2. Make sure you have enough tissue to dab the bread with (to remove oil from).

Ingredients:
50 slices of bread
3 cups sugar
5-6 cups water
48 fl. oz. oil (about 1.5l oil)
1.5l milk
Ghee for roasting almonds, raisins, cashew

I obviously over-estimated the required amount. I made the above quantity for ~15 people, but I over-estimated it by about 3 times. Double-ka-meetha is rich in oil (or ghee if you fry the bread in ghee). So, it is roughly about 1 slice per head. Max- 2 slices per head should be good enough, I think.

1. The bread needs to be dry before frying. If you have the time, and the atmosphere is dry, you can leave the bread outside overnight. If not, slightly bake the bread in oven (for about a minute or two) while not roasting it too much. This will take some time as the oven can take only so many number of bread slices. Once the bread is dry, keep it aside.
2. Prepare the sugar syrup with 1:2 ratio of sugar to water. Mix sugar to water and heat till sugar melts and the syrup is clear. Add some elaichi powder to the syrup while it is hot.
3. The dried bread need to be deep-fried in oil. Bread absorbs lot of oil, so, make sure you have enough oil. Keep the oil in medium flame and dap the bread so that it burns evenly. Place the fried bread on tissue - wider the better so that the oil from each slice drains off easily.
4. Once all the slices have been deep-fried, try your best to get rid of the oil by dabbing the tissue (or any absorbent cloth) on the bread.
5. Take syrup in a wide bowl (split the syrup depending on the number of slices that will fit in the bowl), dip the fried bread in milk (cold is fine) for a few seconds and drop it into the syrup. Let the bread soak in syrup -- and the dessert is done.
6. Fry ghee until it melts. (Make sure it is not too hot lest the cashews and almonds will burn.) Throw in cashews, almonds and raisins and roast them until the cashews and almonds are slightly brown.
7. Garnish the double-ka-meetha prepared with cashews, almonds and raisins.

Time required (for 50 slices)
Drying: 75min
Making sugar syrup: 15min
Frying: 45min
Getting rid of oil: 30min
Dipping in milk: 45min
Garnishing: 30min

Total time of preparation: 4hrs

The dessert did not turn out to be a major success -- I think it was very oily, and not sweet enough. I am losing touch with cooking -- will have to try out the recipe with just baking the bread instead of deep-frying!

Pulihora ** Specialty recipe **

I thought I better put this down before I forget. Of course, there was plenty of rice left in one of the potlucks, and I had to make something out of it. And the dish was pulihora. I have made this so many times, that I feel like I have perfected it (tamarind rice). There are variations to how you can get the sourness from, e.g., lime, mango, etc. I haven't had success with them yet.

Preparation of rice:
Method 1 (there is no cooked rice)
1. Add some turmeric & some oil along with your regular way of cooking rice.
2. Once the rice is cooked, spread it in large trays so the rice is as separate as possible.

Method 2 (there is already cooked rice)
1. To the cooked rice, add some 'turmeric + water' and sprinkle some oil & microwave.
2. Once the rice is cooked, make sure it is separate and not sticky.

Pulihora preparation:
3. Fry oil in a skillet and add mustard and peanuts.
4. Mix tamarind paste in water or make tamarind water from tamarind. Mix it thoroughly. The water should be as little as possible. Just enough to make the tamarind liquidy. (1 cup of tamrind water : 2 cups of uncooked rice)
5. Add green chillies or red chillies to the skillet. Add curry leaves too if you wish. (Better flavor.)
6. Once the peanuts are fried enough, take the skillet aside and add the tamarind water.
7. Add salt to the skillet and mix.
8. Mix the above paste to the prepared rice and mix thoroughly. Done!

Where can you go wrong?
1. Too much water will make the taste diluted.
2. Roasting peanuts for too long might land the dish in trouble.
3. Mixing the tamarind water while still frying might burn the tamarind paste and other ingredients.

Recipe 6 - Mango Lassi!!

Preparation of one glass of mango lassi, from pulp:

Ingredients
6 tbsp yogurt
4 tbsp mango pulp
5 tsp sugar
1 pinch of salt

Mix the above ingredients in a grinder until you are comfortable. :)

Yum.. glug glug!
[no pictures avlbl]

P.S.: This recipe is optimized over iterations.. tried and tested on us by Shraddha. :)

Recipe 5 - Baingan Bharta

So, this I attempted for the potluck on my birthday. And.. I only started making it. I let the guests take over the cooking part. Me bad host. Nevertheless.. this is what we did. (Well some parts I missed like forgetting to add cumin seeds to tadka till the end, but the intention was to do what is outlined below.)

1. Neatly wash and dry the eggplants that you want to make.
2. Poke holes* using a fork or a skewer if you have one.
3. Pre-heat oven to 350C.
4. Wrap the eggplant in aluminum foil and bake it for ~45min. It needs to be well cooked. Not too soft, but soft enough.
5. While the eggplant is getting roasted, cut your onions and tomatoes and keep them aside.
6. Fry onion in the oil till medium brown. Add cumin seeds and add ginger & garlic.
7. Now, add the cut tomatoes and fry them.
8. On the side, remove the baked eggplant & start peeling the skin. **
9. Once the skin is pealed, mash the eggplant using your hands and add it to the gravy and cook for a few more minutes on low heat.
10. Add salt*** to taste.
11. Garnish with coriander if you please. Ready to eat!!

Comments:
* Poke holes to cook better
** Now, this is a lengthy process, so, make sure you time it properly, or put aside the gravy that you were prearing.
** I read somewher that applying oil on the eggplant before baking will make this step 8 easier.
*** When the quantity of the curry is large, I normally mix the salt in some water and add the salt water to the curry for consistency.



Sorry, if the picture doesn't live up to your expectations.. but the bharta tasted yum!! :)

Recipe 4 - beerakaya pachchadi

This is the simplest kind of food that stays for long and is perfect for a single!

1. Cut beerakaya (ridge gourd) into pieces
2. Gently fry the pieces in little oil along with cumin seeds, urad dal, toor dal and some chilli
3. Grind the above with tamarind and salt.

That's it!!!

Store it in the fridge and have it with rice. Yummy. Lasting.

Check it here: