Happy Holi

Wishing you all a very Happy & Colorful Holi.

Happy Holi

Holi special menu: Puran Poli & Mixed Dal Vada.

Enjoy!

ashu 🙂

Oats and Bottle Gourd Fritters, my healthy breakfast recipe.

We all are aware of starting the day with a good breakfast. To make it a healthy breakfast we need to make a dish that is balanced, having all the nutrient components. The dish in this post is one such that provides us with the carbohydrates, proteins, fats, Vitamins & minerals, and also has dietary fibre. Dietary fibre is essential to the daily diet as it adds bulk, providing the necessary roughage needed for our normal bowel movement and emptying.

The recipe is simple, uses cooking oats and grated bottle gourd as the main ingredients.

INGREDIENTS:

Bottle Gourd- 1/2 small (1 bowl grated)

Oats- 1/2 Bowl (8-10 tsp)

Carom seeds- 1/2 tsp

Sesame seeds- 1 tsp

Green chilli- 1Small, finely chopped

Green coriander & garlic paste- 1tsp (can also use chopped coriander and crushed garlic clove)

Olive oil- 1 ml (used just to grease the pan)

Salt- To taste.

METHOD:

Wash the bottle gourd and grate it. Add carom seeds and sesame seeds, finely chopped green chilli and 1 tsp of the green herb paste.

Add the oats and salt and mix all the ingredients together. The juice of the grated bottle gourd is sufficient to mix the oats and make a dough-like mixture.

Divide this mixture into 4 portions. Heat a frying pan on medium flame of the gas stove and add 1/2 tsp Olive oil or whichever cooking oil you use.

Flatten out each portion of the mixture into the pan and cook, turning over and using the left over oil. Cook till it is golden in colour and crispy.

Once done, remove the fritters on the serving dish that is kept ready. They can be served with yogurt and mint dip/chutney. These should be eaten hot to enjoy the delicious taste and crispiness.

This is one of the many healthy dishes that I cook for breakfast. It is essential to use less quantity of fat in our diet. Any change in our diet pattern does not happen overnight. But if one wishes, then it is never too late to start eating healthy food, cooking it with all the necessary ingredients and taking care that it is appealing to the sight and tasty for the taste buds.  A little effort of eating healthy on a daily basis is beneficial in the long run.

Happy cooking this dish. Looking forward to your interaction in the form of comments.

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 🙂

Sweet Potato Puri

Blogging is a very interesting experience. After each of my posts, there are new ideas taking shape about the next blog post, new recipe to write and share with you all. Most of the dishes that get cooked at home always include family favorites and new cuisines that I would like to try out. In the process, dishes eaten by me in my childhood or the one’s that my mom made back in those days, take a back seat. The idea behind this post is to make something that was eaten a long time ago, in my growing up days, and something that I have not made enough times for the kids to like it as much as I did. I can count on my finger tips the scant number of times that I have made this puri, hence I made them so that the recipe gets documented.

SWEET POTATO PURI: The taste is yum and I love it. The starchy sweet potato is a good source of carbohydrate and fiber.  It is also a good source of Vitamin A and Vitamin C.

The puris are deep fried. I also tried to bake some puris, my effort to decrease the calorie count of the dish, but I did not like the taste, and also found them to be a bit hard to chew. Hence I ruled out the baking option for now, it needs more experimentation and changes in the recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

Sweet potato- 2 no. (Boiled and mashed)

Sugar- 1-1½ Katori or bowl (powdered. Use sugar as per sweetness preferred)

Flour- 1½ Katori or Bowl- Refined flour or whole wheat flour.

Cardamom powder- 1Tsp

Oil- For frying.

METHOD:

Boil and mash the sweet potatoes. Take the mashed potatoes in a round bowl, add the powdered sugar and flour to it, and make dough out of it. The dough consistency should not be too soft as we have to make puri.  Add the freshly ground cardamom powder. Knead the dough so that all the ingredients get mixed evenly.

Divide the dough into 4-5 portions and roll them out flat, then using a cookie cutter cut out evenly shaped puris.

Prick these small circular shaped puris with a fork. This is done to prevent them from rising up in oil. Heat oil in a kadai and deep fry the puris to golden brown color on medium flame, then drain them on kitchen tissue roll and cool.

This is how they should look in appearance. These are bit soft to eat, but have a unique taste. If you like sweet potatoes or are willing to try out something different, then go ahead and give yourself the experience of tasting them. Looking forward to hearing your comments and feedback on this post.

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 🙂