Happy Holidays!

Just a quick note to say M & I are going off on our holiday! Will be back in my Cozy Little Kitchen soon...until then, Happy Holidays! Hope your days ahead are filled with joy, cheer, love and laughter.

And Thus the Recipe was Born...

Here's one of those recipes that I came up with. A lonely bag of baby carrots in my fridge was the only fresh veggies at hand, so had to build a substantial menu with it :) I also had half a bag of frozen peas and voila! Carrot 'n' Peas Rice was made for lunch! A quick whip of onion and tomato raita, and we were in business.

• 1 cup basmati rice (washed and drained)
• 1.5 cups grated carrot
• 1/4 cup frozen green peas
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 1/4 tspn saunf (fennel) and jeera (whole cumin)
• 1 tbspn ghee or oil
• masala powders, 1/2 tspn each - turmeric, red chilli powder, anardana powder (pomegranate powder) and a pinch of garam masala.
• 2 cups water
• salt to taste

Method

• Heat ghee in a pot and tip in saunf and jeera. Saute for a few seconds.
  
• Put in sliced onion and saute till done.
• Add ginger garlic paste and stir for a few minutes.
• Now throw in the grated carrot, peas and rice and stir gently until the rice is well coated with everything and turns kind of an opaque white.
• Pour in 2 cups of water and stir well.
• Add all the masala powders and salt.
• Give it a good final stir and cook on medium heat until most of the water is absorbed.
• Then reduce to a simmer and cook covered until all the water is absorbed.
• Serve hot with raita.

A handy tip - use a medium grate rather than a fine one. Chunky shreds of carrot, in our experience, suit this recipe better.

Paneer Paratha

Paneer is Indian cottage cheese. I love it's texture and the fact that it is so versatile makes it a popular ingredient in most Indian pantries (well, refrigerator!). It can easily be made at home, although I've never tried it once! I've seen videos of it being made on YouTube and have always wanted to try, but somehow the simpler option of getting a pack from the supermarket always wins the vote. There are tons of recipes with paneer, both savoury and sweet. I thought I'd post this recipe for paneer parathas as we had them for lunch yesterday. A friend of ours had made it for us once long ago and I tried it at home the very next day. It turns out really well and tastes very good. It's a great option when you don't want to make the usual rice 'n' dal or roti 'n' gravy, 'cos all you need to serve it is yogurt and pickle.

Now, the paneer is the star of the recipe. You've got to have the real deal - a block of good firm paneer. Yes, you could substitute it with cottage cheese, but no, you cannot use the cottage cheese spread thingy. This we learnt the hard way at our friends' place the other day. We thought we were smart and could get away with using the cottage cheese spread and I just have three simple words - IT DIDN'T WORK! But I did learn one thing though, we are glad to have such sweet friends who did not fuss and complain about the disastrous looking 'thing' that resulted but tolerantly ate it all. And thank God for small mercies, we were all fine the next morning!

Okay, so I was saying - firm paneer or cottage cheese, if you don't have it, make something else for lunch. Simple :)
Parathas are stuffed unleavened Indian breads.

Here's the recipe -

For the dough -

• 2 cups wholemeal flour
• enough water to knead into a soft dough
• salt to taste

For the filling -

• 1/2 a block of fresh paneer
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
  
• 1 tspn ginger-garlic paste
• 1/4 cup chopped coriander
• about a 1/4 tspn of - turmeric powder, cumin powder (jeera powder), amchur powder, red chilli powder (use more if you prefer it hot)
• salt to taste

Method -

• Make a soft pliable dough with the wholemeal flour. Cover and let rest for about 15 mins.
  
• In a large bowl, crumble the block of paneer, add all other ingredients and give it a good mix.
• Roll out the stuffed parathas as seen in the video.
• Slap it on to a hot skillet and cook on both sides with a generous smear of ghee.
• Serve hot with yogurt and pickle.

If you like this and are adventurous for more, try altering the recipe and make the filling with potatoes or cauliflower instead.

Thankful you were born!

It was M's birthday yesterday, yay! But poor him, he was working all day :( He had been really busy the whole weekend and so there wasn't anything special planned for his special day. I thought I'd make something sweet to say 'thank you' to God for making him especially for me :) So I made kesaribhath/suji ka halwa/shira. It's really simple, gets done in a jiffy and tastes great. Here's the recipe -

1 cup semolina (rava/sooji)
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups milk
2 tbspns ghee
1 small banana, chopped
a pinch of cardamom powder
a handful of raw cashews and sultanas

• Heat about 1/2 a tbspn of ghee in a non-stick wok/pan. Roast cashews and sultanas until the cashews turn a light brown. Remove and keep aside.
• With the ghee in the wok, tip in the semolina and roast until light brown and toasty.
• Meanwhile heat the milk on HIGH in a microwave for about a minute. You could even heat it on the stove top.
• Once the semolina is roasted, turn down the heat to low and pour in the hot milk. Please be very cautious as you do so - apparently the roasted semolina and hot milk are long lost friends who get really excited when they see each other! Jokes apart, the hot steam from the hot milk and the hot wok (wow! that's a lot of 'hot')...so please be careful, don't burn yourself!
• Keep stirring to avoid lumps. The idea is to cook the semolina in the milk and it happens quite quickly, in about 2 minutes.
  
• When the mixture kind of begins to turn dry, add the sugar.
• As you mix everything, you'll notice that the mixture begins to turn liquid-ey again. Now work quickly and throw in all the other stuff - chopped banana, cashews and sultanas, cardamom powder and the remaining ghee.
• Stir it for a couple of minutes until it all amalgamates well and turn off the heat.
• Serve hot!

It's best you stash it in the fridge if you've made lots and reheat it just before serving.
I'd earlier posted a recipe for kesaribhath, but I'd made it with chopped pineapple and it's a slightly different recipe in that I used water instead of milk.

So, no fancy cake or cocktail party snacks for M's special day this year, just a humble and yummy sweet dish, which he thoroughly enjoyed. And that's exactly what I wanted, after all :)

Oh What a Lovely Sunday Morning!

One Sunday morning, we woke up, stretched and yawned in our bed. There was a soft pitter patter outside and the air was nippy. Sundays are an excuse to relax and treat ourselves to a nice breakfast. The other days are mundane with the usual toast or cereal. M had a craving for pies, the ones from Romeo's Pies downstairs in our handy little Forum Plaza. So off we went, wrapping our coats closer, still yawning, and came back home with two piping hot pies. Made some hot frothy coffee, courtesy: the little 'mixer thingy', a gift from my dear MIL. It's like a tiny whisk that runs on batteries and is great for cappuccino.

Mmmm, oven fresh pies, hot coffee, the light drizzle outside and Sunday! You know what I mean :)

Never judge a pumpkin by its looks!

M probably would say this to someone after he ate the pumpkin kootu I made the other day! He doesn't care much for the poor old plain veggie - the pumpkin. I don't really blame him, see he doesn't cook much and so he cannot do what I mostly do - work out a mental recipe while I look at veggies at the market. To him, it will always be the boring, plain looking, least appetising thing. To me, it's what in season now, fresh, in it's prime of life and cheap! So I was adamant to buy it and make something nice. I made this very very simple kootu (veggies cooked in a lentil and spice gravy) and it changed the way we look at pumpkins!

• 2 cups diced (peeled) pumpkin - any variety. I used kent pumpkin - it's skin is green and has streaks of creamy yellow (see picture, source: www.moraitis.com.au)
• 1 cup cooked toor dal

For tempering -

• 1 tbspn oil
• 1/4 tspn mustard seeds
• a pinch of hing
  
• a few curry leaves
• 2 red (dry) chillies
• 1/4 tspn turmeric powder
  
• 1 small onion, sliced

To grind into a paste -

• 1/4 cup grated coconut (can use desiccated coconut as well)
  
• a small piece of ginger
• 3-4 green chillies
• 1/2 tspn jeera (cumin seeds)
  
• a handful of fresh green coriander/cilantro
  

1. Microwave (or cook) the pumpkin till soft.
   
2. Meanwhile, grind the ingredients mentioned above into a paste.
3. Heat oil in a pot and add all the ingredients for tempering in the order mentioned above.
4. Once the onion is cooked, add cooked pumpkin, cooked toor dal and the ground masala paste.
5. Add salt to taste and water to adjust consistency. Kootu is generally a fairly thick gravy, so do not add too much water.
6. Serve hot with rice and papad.

I'm so thrilled with this recipe, for two reasons - I can now incorporate pumpkin in our menu and M sheepishly accepted that it tasted good :)

The Festival of Lights!

The flame danced gently, washing the room with a soft glow. It whispered stories of faith and strength. It was as if it coaxed us to look deep inside ourselves and seek the pure light within...

Sigh! That's the magic of Deepavali. The humble light reminds us of much greater things in life than petty issues like wealth, material possessions and the like.

Yet, the heart refuses to forget the sweets and there's nothing 'light' about those! A sinfully generous dose of sugar and an extravagant use of ghee takes us to 'sweet heaven' almost instantaneously! I made Doodh Pedas (milk based sweet cakes) and 7 cups (no points for guessing the recipe).

Both were pretty easy to make, except I had to stir the 7 cups for quite a bit and I had NOT expected that :) Anyways, they turned out quite well, thank God for that! In fact, mum always says if something is made with a warm heart and good thoughts, it can't go wrong. Plus I had my confidante Ganesha's watchful eyes over me as I stirred and stirred over the hot stove. Exactly like I'd asked him to, he must've sprinkled in some magic sugar of his own :)

I found the recipe for the Pedas on www.showmethecurry.com and it was as easy and delicious as it looked there. Thanks to Hetal & Anuja!


And 'thanks mum' for the 7 cups recipe - 1 cup milk, 1 cup besan (chickpea flour), 1 cup coconut, 1 cup ghee and 3 cups sugar - voila! Although, I used only 2 cups sugar and just a little less than a full cup of ghee. Simply combine everything in a heavy bottomed pan and keep stirring. Work those arms until the whole mixture starts to leave the sides of the pan. Pour into a greased square cake tin and cut into desired shapes. Mine looked like little bricks, rough and rustic, although I would have preferred a smoother finish. Well, who cares anyways...it still promises to take us to sweet heaven, in every single bite!