“Vada Pav”- Spiced Potato Balls (Aloo Bonda, Batata Vada) in a bun - A Mumbai style hamburger.

Most of us love potatoes. And why not, after all there are tonnes of dishes we can make using potatoes. One my favorites is Vada Pav. Born and brought up in Mumbai, I have developed a craving for the road side dish Vada Pav which is a favorite food for many Mumbaiites. It is nothing but Aloo Bonda sandwiched between a bun, topped with spicy green chutney, tamarind chutney and dried garlic chutney.  

After moving to United States I had to kill my craving for this road side favorite Vada Pav. I knew how to make it, but the thought of going through the elaborate procedure for only two pieces of potato balls was discouraging. Until one day my friend suggested that I could make a large quantity at once and freeze the potato balls and use as required.

So here is the recipe for Vada Pav and guess what, you can enjoy them instantly whenever you like. But before that we need to get the major work done - make the potato balls.

 

Tangy Carrot Pickle made in 10 minutes.

Pickles are great accompaniments to regular food. But making pickle in traditional ways may take a lot of time, and sometimes days. Here is a simple and quick way of making carrot pickle.

Shelf Life: upto 3-4 Days in refrigerator.

Serves: 1 Cup

1. Pick 3 medium sized Fresh  carrots which have no blemish.
2. This step is very important for the shelf life of the pickle. Prepare the carrots by washing them thoroughly. Wipe them with a clean paper towel leaving no water at all.
3. Cut the carrots into thin stripes about 2 inches long.
4. In a bowl, add 1 cup of cut carrots.
5. Add 2 tsp. split mustard seeds. If this is not readily available,  lightly crush  regular mustard seeds and use that.
6. Add 1/1 tsp turmeric powder, 3/4 to 1 tsp chilli powder, 1/2 tsp onion seeds (Kalonji, Nigella seeds), 1 1/2 tsp crushed fenugreek seeds ,1/4 tsp asafoetida and 1 tsp salt. 
7. Mix well.
8. Heat 1 1/2 tablespoon of mustard oil in a small pan and then pour it over the carrot mixture.
9. Mix well.
10. Eat fresh or store in the refrigerator.

Carrot pickle goes very well with parathas, baturas, virtually anything.

Hope you like it.

 

Home-made Healthy Tomato Soup

I learnt this method of making tomato soup from my mother in law. It is extremely easy to make and brings out the natural flavors of juicy tomatoes. For best results use tomatoes on the vine.

 Serves: 2 Cereal Bowls

1. Boil  4-5 medium sized tomatoes untill the skin appears to start tearing. Remove from fire.
2. Peel the skin and extract the tomato soup using a sieve. (Avoid blenders).
3. In a small pan heat some butter.
4. Add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. cumin seeds.
5. After few seconds pour the seasoned butter  over the tomato soup. Mix well.
6. Add about 1/4 tsp. sugar and  a few drops of ginger juice.
7. Bring to boil.
8. Serve hot with croutons, salt, pepper and lemon juice on the side.

Enjoy!

 

Totally Vegetarian Cooking Show.

Hey folks! I finally found what I have been looking for - a cookery show dedicated only to vegetarian food.

Check out this show called Delicious TV featuring Toni Fiore. It is totally about Vegetarian food and it airs on PBS stations but not in all cities. You will have to check with your local PBS station guide. Here is a link to the delicious TV website.

http://www.delicioustv.com/

The season 2 will air soon, but they have links to the earlier season episodes.

The recipes look delicious! Will post my comments once I try them out. Feel free to post your comments.

 

Mouthwatering Vegetarian Recipes from EatingWell

I found some great vegetarian recipes on this website http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/search.php?collections=VEG.

Try them out!

 

A quick wholesome ‘Meal in a bowl’ - Dhan Shak - A Parsee Dish made with Rice, Lentil and Vegetable, all in one.

Dhan = grains ( rice and lentils in this case) and Shak = Vegetables.

Dhanshak is a wholesome Parsee dish packed with lots of nutrients coming from the dals and vegetables. Cooking Dhanshak doesn’t require much effort to cook. The only extra time it might take is in collecting the ingredients. So, lets dive into the making of this power packed all- in-one ‘Meal in a Bowl’.

This recipe makes 4 servings.

 

A quick tip on using the oven more effectively.

I saw this great tip the other day on a food network show called ‘Good Eats’. The episode was about making some chicken dish, but what caught my attention was the way Alton (the host of the show) used the oven. 

Most ovens are built to halt heating for some time once it reaches the set temperature and then restart heating. This process would sometimes take a  very long time if we plan to bake or broil something very dense or thick or simply want to grill kebabs. What Alton did was, he temporarily disabled the automatic temperature control process by keeping the oven door slightly open to fool the oven and keep the heating on constantly. The entire chicken was done in very little time than it would take otherwise.

 Isn’t it a great way to make the oven work more efficiently and be more effective in lesser time?

Here is the link to the recipe that Alton was making in this episode and in the fifth paragraph are his instructions for the oven. http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_141,00.html

 

Tandoori Paneer Pizza

A very simple recipe to make delicioiusly spicy Tandoori Paneer Pizza. You can make this on your choice of base. If you are looking for the Indian style 8 inch pizza base, I know that in many cities, Hot Breads makes good pizza base. Here is a link to their website. http://www.hotbreads.com/Location.asp

I have always used the pizza base from Hot Breads, cause that is my favorite. Following is the recipe for the pizza sauce and the Tandoori Paneer topping.

1. Firsly we need to marinade the Paneer. To make the Paneer refer to the following post. http://cookeasy.wordpress.com/2006/11/05/make-paneer-at-home/. It can also be found using the basic recipes link on the right.
2. Cut small cubes of Paneer almost 1 cm size. Marinade according to the marinaiton recipe posted earlier. Here is the link to the post. http://cookeasy.wordpress.com/2006/11/05/paneer-tikka-marination/. It can also be found using the basic recipes link on the right. Do not bake it yet.
3. Leave the marinated Paneer aside for atleast 1-2 hours. 
4. Make the pizza sauce as follows:- 

 

Paneer Tikka Marination

Ingredients: 2 cups paneer, cut in cubes 1/2 cup thick yogurt 2 tsp red chilli powder 1/2 tsp turmeric powder 1 tsp ginger paste 1/2 tsp garlic paste 1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves 1/2 tsp garam masala 1 tsp tandoori masala Juice of 1 lime salt to taste cilantro, finely chopped

Method: Combine all  ingredients from yogurt onwards and mix well. Then add paneer cubes, and mix well till all the peices are covered with the marination sauce. Leave it for 4-5 hours, preferably overnight. keep it in the fridge to avoid contamination. Use as desired or To make paneer tikkas, preheat the oven or the grill. In the meantime, arrange the marinated vegetables and paneer on a skewer. Cook over charcoal or in the oven until some brown spot appear. Do not overcook.

Notes:

• To make Paneer- refer to the following post from the basic recipes section. http://cookeasy.wordpress.com/2006/11/05/make-paneer-at-home/
• To make 1/2 cup thick yogurt- put a little more 1/2 cut yogurt on the sieve and leave it in the fridge for about 1/2 an hour.
• The other indian spices are readiliy available in Indian Grocery stores.

 

Make Paneer at home.

To make 2 cups of Paneer:

1. Boil 1 litlre milk,
2. Mix 2 tbsp of white vinegar with 500 ml of water.
3. When milk reaches boiling point add the vinegar mixture to the milk. Lower the flame. Milk should start separating.
4. When the leftover water over becomes translucent drain the water and cover the milk mixture in a muslin cloth and leave it aside with some weight on it for about half an hour. Cut as desired.
5. Paneer is also readiliy available in Indian grocery stores.

 

Cooking full meals regularly and easily even with a busy schedule.

I am a student and also working on a part time project and in between my school, work and married life I used to find it hard to find time to cook enough everyday. After sometime even the restaurant food didn’t taste good especially for vegetarians who already have very little choice. I am also not very find of the canned food that we get in stores. So to make life simpler I adopted some of these practices, suggested by one of my cousins,  and since then my family is eating healthy home cooked food. I would love to share these tips with you all so that we can have more families eating healthy home made food.

•  Make use of the freezer. I pressure cook almost all kinds of dals including Tur Dal, Channa Dal, rajma, chola, moong dal, cool them completely and stored them in small airtight containers (Ziplock containers) and freeze them. The trick here is to store in small packaging based on how much you will need for one time cooking. Once frozen it is hard to scoop out hence small quantities. Also I have put date labels on the boxes just to be aware of when it was cooked. I usually stock enough for a month and then refill whenever I find that extra half hour. By storing Dal in such a manner, when I come back from school I simply have to thaw one container and season it as desired which takes barely few minutes. And there I have a nutritious protein rich dish added to my meal…

 

Indian Style Samosas

 
Image source www.answers.com/topic/samosa

This is one of my favorite snacks, a little heavy on calories but heavier on great taste. They are great party snacks, tea time snacks, travel snacks and they can be stored for a few days. They can be served in various styles and each of them becomes a new dish.

• Serve with Green Chutney and Tamarind Chutney.
• Top the Samosas with finely chopped onion, cilantro, the 2 chutneys, beaten curd, salt, red chilli powder and some chaat masala to make Samosa Chaat in a bowl.
• Sandwich a Samosa between two slices of bread with the 2 chutneys spread in it and this makes it a Samosa Sandwich.

So lets get started with the making of these tasty convertible Samosas. Recipe for Indian Stlye Samosa

 

Helpful tools to convert between measurements.

One of my major problems in the ktichen used to be measuring food items required. The recipe might use weights as a unit for measurign the quanity of ingredient or some other unit like teaspoon, measuring cup etc. And there are situations when we do not have these measuring devices at home. The best solution I found is to use conversion calculators which can easily convert grams into cups, cups into spoons and so on.

• For the most part I use google to calculate for example to convert from 1 cup to teaspoon I will type “1 cup =?tsp” in the search field.
• In some cases I use this other tool I found on the following website. http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/conversions.htm. There are various kinds of cooking conversion calculators and they are really handy.

 

Confused about cooking terms in other language?

I found these links which provide a comprehensive list of ingradients, utensils etc in Hindi with their corresponding English Term.

English to Hindi :

• http://www.bawarchi.com/glossary.html
•  http://www.top-indian-recipes.com/Indian-food-glossary.htm

 Hindi to English :

• http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/glossary.php
• http://www.cuisinecuisine.com/Glossary.htm

 I hope they will be helful in translating a recipe from one language to another.

 

Kitchen Essentials for cooking Indian Food.

Gathering all the ingredients at the last moment can be frustrating. Here I will try to list the most commonly used ingredients in Indian food recipes. For those of you who plan to cook Indian food frequently, this is a great start-up list of stuff to have in your kitchen.

 

Coming out of my hybernation.

It has been almost two weeks since I last posted and I am very glad to be back today. I had a lot of stuff going on plus I had the misconception that no one is really viewing my posts. But today when I checked my blog stats they show encouraging numbers. In the past two months I have had 393 views (not a huge number but yet enough to get me back on the track). So today I have finally decided to post regularly (well at-least 2-3 times a week).

I have also changed my main focus from vegetarian food to Indian vegetarian food, since I am more into Indian food. I will try to post lots of mouth watering recipes, introduce various herbs and spices, collect other resources related to Indian/vegetarian food. And for the Dallas people, I will post my personal reviews of the Indian restaurants and food stores out here.

I hope you will enjoy reading my blog as much as I am going to have fun sharing my recipes.

 

Another addition to Vegetarian food links

Check out this website which is packed with a lot of recipes for vegetarians. Great Site!
http://www.vegcooking.com/

 

Green Chutney

 

Ingredients: 1 bunch cilantro 1/4 yellow onion, cut in big peices 10-15 mint leaves (optional) 2 tbsp roasted chana dal (dalia) 1 tsp sesame seeds 6-8 green chillies 1 tsp ginger paste 1 clove garlic salt to taste 1 tsp cumin seeds 1/4 tsp sugar  Juice of 1 lime Yogurt (optional) Note: Dalia, cumin seeds are readiliy available in Indian Grocery stores.

Method: Grind together all the ingredients except for salt and yogurt. Grind to a thick fine paste.Add a few tea spoons of water if necessary. Add salt as per taste and mix well. Can be stored for a week in the refrigerator. Optionally you can add yogurt to small portions on the day of consumption. Tips: Green chutney without the yogurt can be used as a sauce for sandwiches, accompaniment to various snacks and regular food, or with parathas. With Yogurt, this green chutney accompanies well with paneer tikkas, various other barbequed snacks, and roasted papad.

 

Paneer Tikka Masala (Marinated Cottage Cheese Cubes in Tikka Masala)

Ingredients: For the Tikkas: 2 cups paneer, cut in 2 inch cubes 1 capsicum, cut in square pieces 1 onion, cut in squares 1 tomato, deseed and cut in squares  1/2 cup thick yogurt 2 tsp red chilli powder 1/2 tsp turmeric powder 1 tsp ginger paste 1/2 tsp garlic paste 1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves 1/2 tsp garam masala 1 tsp tandoori masala Juice of 1 lime salt to taste cilantro, finely chopped For the Gravy: 4-5 tomatoes pureed or 2-3 cups tomato puree 1 onion finely chopped 1 tsp garlic paste 2 tsp tandoori masala 2 tsp red chilli powder 1 tsp sugar salt to tase 2 tbsp butter 1/2 cup cream chopped cilantro for garnishing

Method: For the Tikkas: Combine all  ingredients for the tikkas from yogurt onwards and mix well. Then add the vegetables pieces and paneer, and mix well till all the peices are covered with the marination sauce. Leave it for 4-5 hours, preferably overnight. keep it in the fridge to avoid contamination. When ready, preheat the oven or the grill. In the meantime, arrange the marinated vegetables and paneer on a skewer. Cook over charcoal or in the oven until some brown spot appear. Do not overcook. For the Gravy: Heat butter in a pan. Add the onions and garlic and saute for 3-4 minutes. Add the tomato puree and cook until oil separates(around 4-5 minutes on a medium-slow flame.) Add the tandoori masala, salt, sugar, red chilli powder, cream. Mix well. Remove from fire and blend to make a smooth gravy. Serving: Before serving boil the gravy and then gently fold in the grilled paneer and vegetable pieces and let it cook for 1-2 minutes. Garnish with cilantro and serve hot with rice, Naan, or parathas.

Other Ideas: 

• In this recipe Paneer can be replaced with any vegetable or chicken. The cookinf time for chicken will be longer.
• Paneer Tikka can be served without the gravy as barbeque snacks. Sprinkle some chaat masala on it and serve with green chutney. (the recipe for green chutney is in the next post. )

Notes:

• To make Paneer- refer to the following post from the basic recipes section. http://cookeasy.wordpress.com/2006/11/05/make-paneer-at-home/
• To make 1/2 cup thick yogurt- put a little more 1/2 cut yogurt on the sieve and leave it in the fridge for about 1/2 an hour.
• The other indian spices are readiliy available in Indian Grocery stores.

 

Can we replace Spinach in our regular diet?

 

Spinach is a very essential vegetable especially in a vegetarian diet. It is the easiest way to provide for a lot of essential nutrients without simultaneously adding much to the calorie count. But now with the E.Coli outbreak and its association with bagged spinach has put me into a search for a substitute for Spinach.So far I haven’t found any single food item that can replace spinach.

To get an idea about the loss to my diet I examined the nutrients’ chart for Spinach.

Looking at this chart below and comparing it with various other food items, I could only conclude that if I have to compensate for the loss of spinach in my diet I will have to workout a meal with a combinaiton of various food items. 

While my search is on…( and I will soon post some great meal ideas to fill in for the absence of Spinach), I would like to share with you a website which gives a good overview of healthy food items and their detailed nutritional benefits. It is called “the world’s healthiest food” and the link to the website is http://www.whfoods.org/.

Image Source:http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=43