Happy Holi

Wishing you all a very Happy & Colorful Holi.

Happy Holi

Holi special menu: Puran Poli & Mixed Dal Vada.

Enjoy!

ashu 🙂

Colourful Rice: My Healthy Recipe

Looking at a plain white sheet of paper might not be interesting to the sight, but just add some colour to this blank sheet of paper using dark green, red, yellow, orange, and pink crayons and then take a look at the same white sheet. The coloured sheet would look interesting and more appealing to the eye. This was just for making you picturize the dish that I am going to be posting today.

A bowl of plain rice might not be a very interesting option to eat for any meal. But by just adding vegetables of vibrant colours to the rice not only adds colour, flavour, and texture but makes it so engaging to the sight. For me the food that is served at the table has to be inviting to the people and should provide contentment.

Let’s get making the plain boiled rice an interesting, appealing, and an eye-catching option so that when you eat it, you would like to try making it more often.

INGREDIENTS:

Boiled rice – 2 Medium bowl (approximately 100 g raw rice that is boiled)

Bell Peppers- ½ of each- Green, Red, Orange, and Yellow.

Onion- ½ (Medium-sized)

Broccoli-3-4 Florets

Boneless Chicken pieces-6-7 (or as required)

Olive oil- 1 Tbsp (any oil that you use for cooking as required)

Seasoning– Salt, pepper, Chilli flakes, and dry Oregano herb.

Garnish– 1 Boiled egg

Preparation of Vegetables & Chicken: Cut the chicken into cubes. Bell peppers should be chopped and onion should be diced. Chop the broccoli florets.

Note: The chicken and egg are the protein part of the dish. Vegetarians can replace the chicken with Soy chunks or Paneer (cottage cheese), or Tofu.

Method:

Heat a Wok or skillet or Kadai and add the cooking oil to it.  Add the chicken cubes and sauté, season with salt and pepper.

As the chicken gets cooked, put all the cut vegetables into the wok and sauté just enough so the raw taste goes. The vegetables should be crunchy to bite. Season with salt and pepper.

Put the boiled rice and mix well with the vegetables, season with salt, pepper, chilli flakes and oregano. Mix well and serve hot.

Our colourful rice is ready to be served at the dinning table for all to enjoy. I made it this afternoon for lunch and ate with dal fry. It can be enjoyed as it is or any dal preparation would go well with it.  Dal Fry recipe I will post on a later date.

Keep visiting for some interesting versions of the different dishes that I cook in my Kitchen.

Enjoy!

ashu 🙂

Coconut Barfi

Sometimes we plan something and it does not happen, well this is what happened with this post. This post was due last week and it so happened that it got unnecessarily delayed, but better late than never.

Once on my grocery shopping spree I randomly put a tin of Nestle’s sweetened condensed milk into my shopping cart, thinking I will use it to make something sweet. The tin was placed on the first rack of the fridge and was completely forgotten. Last week one of my kids suddenly asked me to make coconut barfi, listening to this remark was definitely music to my ear, never has this kind of demand come up and that too for the barfi, it’s something they never wanted to eat and hence I stopped making it altogether. So when this demand came, I had to make it soon before some other demand cropped up. I got the grated coconut and finally the condensed milk tin saw the daylight, was removed from the fridge to use in the recipe.

I have to share, I have never used condensed milk ever to make coconut barfi/laddu. I always followed method using milk, sugar and it was a lengthy one. I am pleased with the way this recipe turned out, hassle free, and so fast. So this is yet another one of the Zhatpat dishes, a homemade Indian dessert. Go ahead and try making this sweet, delicious, and effortless recipe.

COCONUT BARFI:

INGREDIENTS:

Fresh Coconut-1 1/2 (grated)

Ghee-2 tbsp

Sweetened condensed milk-1 tin (I used 3/4th tin)

Green Cardamom (ground)-1 tsp

For Garnish– Nuts of choice-Pistachios/Almonds/Cashew nuts.

METHOD:

1. Heat a thick bottom pot/kadai on medium heat and then add ghee. Once the ghee melts then add the grated coconut and cook for 10 minutes or so, using spatula to continuously stir, till the raw taste of the coconut is gone. This prevents the coconut from getting burnt and gives an even color.
2. Add the sweetened condensed milk to the coconut and mix it well. Adjust adding the milk according to your preferred sweetness.
3. Cook it on medium/slow flame till the coconut and milk mixture is sticky enough to form barfi.
4. Add the ground cardamom powder and coarsely crushed or chopped nuts of choice and mix well.
5. Grease a square brownie tin or a round plate and spread the coconut mixture evenly on it and let it cool and get set.
6. Cut the set mixture into small even-sized squares/barfi shape and serve.

This can be served as dessert/mithai after a meal or along with snacks. I found making this to be extremely easy and less time consuming. As the tinned condensed milk was sweetened, so  add quantity as per sweetness preferred. I did not use the whole tin, 2-3 spoonful milk was still left at the bottom of the tin. The Barfi was prepared within 30 minutes, and almost half of it was consumed within minutes of making it, a fast disappearing item if one is fond of sweets!

Enjoy!

ashu 🙂

Kheema Parathas

This is also one of the recipe that is extremely quick and easy to make, a not much effort needed types of recipe that could easily become your family favourite, hence maybe worth trying it out. Whenever I am cooking mince meat dishes or for that matter any recipe, I find it so amazing that the same meat or vegetable can taste so different by simply changing a few ingredients, or cooking it differently, and one can churn out so many dishes out of that one main ingredient. I like cooking food using fresh herbs, and try to keep the ingredients added list as small and simple, wishing to make the final result a tastier and more appealing one.

In this recipe, the meat is simply boiled and water is completely drained out of the cooked mince to which ginger, garlic, chillies, cumin, and spices are added and a filling is made, this is then filled inside a wholewheat flour dough ball, rolled, and baked crisp on a hot griddle.

I usually ask the butcher, at the supermarket, for removing all the visible fat layer present from the meat and then to make the mince, just to cut down on the fat. By adding these readily available at home ingredients, the recipe turns out to be one that is simply irresistible. The pictures below would help in understanding the cooking instructions better.

Ingredients:

For the minced lamb filling:   Minced meat 300 g

Onion 1 medium-sized, chopped finely

Garlic- 6-8 cloves

Ginger-small piece

Green chillies 2-3 (according to ones preference)

Cumin- 1tsp

Garam masala- 1tsp

Red chilli powder- 2tsp (as per ones taste)

Turmeric and salt.

Green onion leaves for garnish.

For the outer coating – Wholewheat flour dough.

Wholewheat flour – 2 cups

Water- as needed to make a medium soft dough.

Oil- 2 tbsp.

Method:

Coarsely grind the ginger, garlic, and green chillies together.

Heat oil in a pan and add cumin seeds and finely chopped onion and fry till onions are pinkish and then add the ground ginger garlic mix and fry.

Add turmeric, red chilly powder, salt, fry for 1-2 min and then add the boiled, water drained out, mince meat (kheema) and mix. Sauté, and make the filling completely dry.  Add the garam masala powder. Remove this filling from the pan onto a plate and cool. Use the spring onion greens for garnish.

Prepare the wheat flour dough.

Roll a small round puri of the dough ball, add the filling, and again roll to make a paratha. Bake this, on medium flame, on a griddle/pan, then smear it with oil, pressing on both sides and making the paratha crisp.

Now as you have reached the last snap, I am sure the snaps are mouth watering and you would love to try out the recipe to taste these irresistible Kheema parathas. These can be served with yogurt and mint chutney.

Note: We can sprinkle some chat masala too on the parathas as soon as we remove them from the tava.

Enjoy cooking.

ashu 🙂

Boiled Egg Curry, Very Spicy

As the name suggests, it is a very spicy dish using fresh green and dried red chillies and ground spices. It is a very simple, tasty and easy to cook dish that goes very well with hot steamed white rice.

Ingredients:

4 Boiled eggs

1 Medium or 2 Small Onions

1 long or 2-3 Small green chillies

1 ½  tbsp Desiccated coconut

4 Garlic flakes

1 Small ginger piece

1 Kashmiri red chilli

1 tsp Turmeric powder

2 tsp Red chilli powder

1 tbsp Garam masala (ground powder of cumin/coriander seeds /black pepper/cinnamon/green and black cardamom/clove/bay leaf/red chilli)

30-50 ml Cooking oil (Depends on personal cooking habit)

Salt- to taste

Method:

Start with heating the pan and dry roasting the desiccated coconut, onions, and Kashmir chilli till the contents are almost brownish. Grind these dry roasted ingredients with ginger, garlic, green chilli to get a fine paste, we can add little water to get a fine smooth paste.

Heat Kadai/pan, add oil and saute the masala paste on medium to slow heat, add the dry powders (shown in the picture) and stir this till the oil leaves the sides of the masala in the pan. Add the boiled, shelled eggs to the pan with adding sufficient water to get medium thick gravy. Boil it for 3-4 min, simmer for a while, and then remove from heat. Sprinkle some fresh coriander leaves. This spicy egg curry can be served with hot, steamed white rice.

ashu 🙂