My weekday dinners and breakfasts :)

There have been months of me slicing sweet potatoes old fashioned way. It became frustrating, time consuming and worthless effort. Then one day finally I ordered a mueller mandolin slicer. Okay, my history with knives is troublesome, no matter how blunt knife is, I find a way to cut myself. With this super sharp blade slicer and youtube, one day it happened. My finger almost sliced off, blood came pouring out, it didn't even hurt a bit. It was the expression we see in movies, someone gets stabbed and they don't even know it till they see blood.

Yeah, so now there is no way indian cooking was accessible with my hurt finger. Menu changed to salads, easy fixes every day. Breakfast wasn't really affected but dinner drastically evolved.

A few breakfast options we have are:

Oats with 1% milk, brown sugar and loads of nuts like walnuts, cashews, raisins, dates, pistachios, almonds blah blah. There is an awesome superfood trail mix on amazon. Its great with goji berries, brazil nuts etc etc.

Yogurt with granola or cereal with our favorite fruits like mango, musk melon, banana, apple, grapes, berries whatever I find in refrigerator.

Tofu scramble with bread. So many veggies can be added to tofu scramble. It usually goes with dry fruit shake made with soaked almonds, cashews, figs, dates, raisins, pista all the fav ones.

Blueberry coconut cranberry whole wheat pancakes from wholefoods mix. Eat with loads of fruits, lychee, whipped cream, maple syrup.

There are tons of other options to explore in breakfast. I am content enjoying these right now.


A few dinner options in our home are :

Spring greens, roasted nuts, mandarin orange, cranberries with maple syrup, orange juice, balsamic vinegar, himalayan salt, pepper. Simple easy and so so so delicious. For fiber, I have breads with little olive oil, garlic, pepper, , salt, feta cheese on broiler mode for 3 minutes till it browns. Its pretty perfect.

Pasta salad with spinach, brocolli, carrot, corn, capsicum, zucchini, pinenuts with vinegar, tobasco sauce, honey,sea salt , pepper, ranch dressing, mustard dressing, tahini sauce in dressing. Again with same bread. I should start getting french loaf to make it more regal. Sometimes I add onion, cucumber in vinegar sugar salt mixture, after an hour it gives pickled effect. I also made pickled beets to go with every salad. Only way beets go in my body. Throw in some kidney beans, chickpeas for protein.

Couscous pine nut with stir fried vegetables like spinach, carrot, onion, capsicum, mushrooms, cauliflower, spring onions. I went to this korean store and got so many kinds of fun vegetables like thin tiny mushrooms, sprouted beans. Add any vegetable you like with some salt, soy sauce, vinegar, tobasco. There are tons of recipes on this.

Tomato soup with beetroot, carrot, onion, sweet potato, parsley, ginger, garlic.

Dan dan noodle soup. I loved this one.
http://www.recipetineats.com/dan-dan-noodle-soup-vegetarian/

And of course vegetarian sandwich with diced onion, tomatoes, cheese, green chutney, sauce. Masala papad. These go with alcohol for us.

Ohh vegetarian options are unlimited. Try finding korean, chinese recipes. They are spicy, hearty, healthy which is what we all need.

Thanks,
NAMASTE

More indian recipes to try :) Tried and tested

Our weekdays are filled with salads, veggies, pasta. Almost everything that is good for your body, soul and taste pallets get a bit of loving too. Well, not too much love though because that to me comes only from authentic indian food. Authentic indian food is not the food served in restaurants, its not the one moms stir up in 15 minutes. Its shahi khandani hmm royal yes royal.

So I am going to share 3 of my recent recipes that were a huge hit. Technically 2, my husband made the third one. Yeah, his cooking intuition is way better than mine. If you could just exchange those energies too, he would be the clumsy one for a day;).

First one is every north indian's home story, mom's spinach paneer. Lets make it in a different style this time. Give it the love it deserves.

http://www.spiceupthecurry.com/palak-paneer/

I followed this recipe with a few modifications. I used 3 big tomatoes, blended them before adding and waited till they cooked before adding onion paste. That adds depth to gravy. Also, in the end instead of cream I just added full fat milk and a little sugar.

Second one is bottlegourd kofta. Its sounds boring but trust me its to die for.

http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/lauki-kofta-lauki-kofta-curry/

Again a few changes from my side. For koftas, I added grated carrot, peas, kasuri methi, raisin, corriander alongwith bottlegourd and rest of recipe.  It became a little moist so bread crumbs helped and added to crustiness of the koftas. No chillies for me.

Then for gravy, instead of sugar I added honey. Upped tomatoes to 4. In the end to make gravy more rich, I added cut cashews with raisins almonds. And yes, full fat milk instead of cream. I wanted to add pomegranate seeds on top but nah that would have made it too fancy. Next time for sure.


Third one is dal baati. Everyone loves it. Its healthy, its heavy, its easy to make.

http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/dal-bati/

We replaced ghee with full fat yogurt and it didn't change the taste. In fact batis came out softer.


Feast on.

Thanks....

Salads soups to start with :)

Being a hardcore indian, the only kind of salad came with carrot, cucumber, beetroot cut in a plate. Other vegetables came in form of curries. When my chinese friend started inviting me for lunches, initially it was difficult for me to even like her food. It was bland, it was mostly veggies. Then came the appreciation of taste for raw vegetables. There are a few recipes that can give you a good start in salads section.

Some of my favorites are:

First one which is the most recent one is sweet potato salad. I love this recipe. Its got everything. Its super easy.

http://minimalistbaker.com/roasted-sweet-potato-chickpea-salad/

Second one is the one my friend made for me. Sesame cold noodles salad. There are lots of recipes of this one. Google it. It asks for tahini sauce which you can easily make at home. Add peanuts and green onion.

Next salad is pasta salad. Just boil pasta with brocolli corn. In olive oil, add zucchini and capsicum. Stir them a bit, add boiled pasta brocolli corn for like 2 minutes and remove. Top it with lettuce, romaine one, walnuts, pinenuts, cheese. For dresssing, use olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard sauce, tabasco, sea salt, ranch dressing, brown sugar or honey. And its amazing.

Fourth one is my kind of sweet salad. Kale cranberry salad. To start with, get one of those kits from safeway or wholefoods then experiment with your dressing. After a while, you will buy your own ingredients and make it. Leave it with dresssing for some time so kale becomes a little softer. You can add pickled beets to any salad.

There are lots of soups out there. I find manchow soup really healthy and easy. It takes 10 minutes to make it.

Try noodle bowls too like ramen noodles. If you eat eggs, whisk eggs add to oil till they get an almost bhurji consistency then add water, carrot, zucchini. After 5 minutes, add diced tomatoes, corriander, spinach, salt pepper, boil sphagetti separately. Mix them up and serve with peanuts, green onion.

There is this sweet potato salad where you mash sweet potatoes and add onion, tomatoes, corriander, lemon, ranch dressing with some tomato sauce , honey and salt. It tastes awesome too.


Of course, we indians have our own versions of healthy soups in sambhar, rasam, dal, thoran, pineapple pulissery. So don't leave indian cuisine.

I just tried this sella rice, its worth buying too. It makes amazing rice bowls. Its best for pineapple fried rice and some kind of rice my husband makes with hoisin sauce and peanut butter.

If you are vegan ,try tofu scramble with zucchini spinach capsicum cilantro with indian spices. Its yummy.

When we travelled from seattle to portland in train, they had these oats which were so simple. Just make oats, heat up milk, serve with brown sugar and dry fruits. Warm food on cold days.

All of these recipes are on google. Do try them. They bring a change to life.

Easy indian recipes for lazy cooks part 2

Getting straight to the point, lets start with my recent easy recipes. As usual, I am not going to post recipes, I will be posting links to the ones we frequently eat.

1) Tindora fry : My online vegetable order messed up and packed tindora/ivy gourd in my bag. I am so glad he did. Here goes the recipe

http://our-cherished-world.blogspot.com/2011/01/dondakaya-tindora-fry.html

This is a bitter gourd recipe which is really good.

http://sumscuisine.blogspot.com/2012/02/bitterless-bitter-gourd-curry-hagalakai.html

It takes a lot of time to cook, around 60 minutes so be patient or you can pressure cook ivy gourd first. Its simple and easy, sambhar masala and curry leaves make it authentic.

2) Walnut halwa : This is the easiest quickest form of indian sweet you can make. It uses less sugar, takes more fibrous walnuts. If you want, you can add almonds cashews too in mixer. Add saffron to milk. 

http://www.archanaskitchen.com/walnut-halwa-akhrot-sheera

3) Saffron milk : Just the milk in previous recipe with saffron tastes amazingly royal. Have it when its warm. You can make extra milk, use some of it for halwa and then just drink.

4) Mushroom peas curry : It takes like 15 minutes to get ready.

http://indianhealthyrecipes.com/matar-mushroom-recipe-mushroom-curry/

Just add kasuri methi to tomatoes too. It adds a distinctive flavor.
Try this marathi spinach recipe too.

http://www.exptsinthekitchen.com/2013/05/palaka-chi-patal-bhaji-spinach-gravy.html

This is the brinjal curry that is really good. It takes time but its kind of easy to follow.
http://www.tarladalal.com/Bharwan-Baingan-Punjabi-Bharwan-Baingan-Recipe-38493r

5) Radish leaf bread / Mooli ke patte ka paratha : This one is high on fibre and its yummy. Its kind of tricky to make but if you know how to knead a dough, you will be fine.
There are few tips on how to make a good dough. If you are kneading for chapati, add milk or hot water. It will be softer. If you are kneading for paratha like this recipe, try adding yogurt too. For every dough, rub with oil in the end. Fresher dough makes good chapati parathas. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMHcc19eYiU

Indian cooking decoded :) PART 1:CURRY DECODED

Indian cooking is easy, trust me it is. Baking is tough, you have to find ingredients, measure them right, preheat on right temperature, too much technical issues that always fail for impatient people like me. Indian is fairly easy to follow. I was a lousy cook, started off with bitter spicy vegetables, chapatis with holes. Well when I think of it, those days still come when in my head I am cooking tasting a 5 star hotel buffet and it comes out like a leftover meal all of which was left :P

Still there are a few ways to go about it which might help people. In this post, lets make 4 courses of indian meal. Obviously time will be more if we have to indian store and find ingredients. For every section there will be options you can add to dish to make it more tasty.

Lets start the clock.

1) INDIAN CURRY : 

There are two phases of curry making.

WHAT TO COOK
First one is getting vegetables ready to cook. Now some vegetables need boiling, some lentils need to be soaked overnight, some of them can be made in cooker, some of them taste better if you fry them after making masala which is second phase of curry making. Here is the chart to do what with which vegetable/lentil/beans.

2) GETTING MASALA READY
 Now you can start off with two types of masala making-

a) MASALA1 : This one is mainly used for dry gravies where you want less water and more spices surrounding veggies. 

1. 
   
2. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat; add the onion. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is golden brown, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and chiles and cook for another minute. Add the tomato, turmeric and salt. Cook until the tomato is soft, 5 minutes or so.

This here is classic example of masala1 type curries

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014830-baingan-bharta

Sometimes you don't add tomatoes to make it more dry and spicy.

http://www.cookingandme.com/2014/07/aloo-gobi-recipe-dry-aloo-gobi-recipe.html

So you can add any vegetable to be cooked after masala1 preparation and after about 10 minutes you are done. Just see that you don't overcook vegetables. 

Examples what you can add after masala1- Cooked lentils, French beans cooked, Potato cabbage, potato cauliflower peas etc etc whatever you got in refrigerator.


b) MASALA2 : In this masala, we are looking to make gravy based recipe. 
Grind onion, tomato, ginger, garlic, and chile pepper together in a food processor into a paste.Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Fry bay leaves in hot oil until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Pour the paste into the skillet and cook until the oil begins to separate from the mixture and is golden brown in color, 2 to 3 minutes. Season the mixture with chili powder, coriander, powder, gram masala, turmeric, and salt; cook and stir until very hot, 2 to 3 minutes. 


Classic example of this masala 

http://www.khanakhazana.com/recipes/view.aspx?id=2291
(Step 10 before step7)

Always add spices after onion tomato mixture begins to cook a bit. If you add it before, spices will burn. 

That is it, yeah you just learned all indian curry cooking you need to learn. Rest comes from mistakes you make while preparing dishes :P



Now all the beans vegetables lentils in charts are cooked either of these ways. A few tips in end:

1) If you want your curry to be a little sour without tomato, add mango powder or anardana powder or tamarind paste. 

2) For a bit of flair, add cilantro in the end for extra flavor.

3) You can mix and match vegetables with lentils and cook together. Opposquash or bottlegourd tastes better with chana dal in it.

4) Salt tomato sour ingredients inhibit veggie cooking. For some vegetables like bottlegourd, potato add sour ingredients and salt after its cooked. If you already cooked them, its cool. 

5) For gravy based recipes, you can add mashed potato or portion of mashed boiled chickpea for chickpea masala recipe, kidneybean paste for kidneybean masala. 

6) While making lentils, add spinach or kasuri methi after tomatoes. Cook for 5 minutes and add lentil. It tastes better.

7) My favorite masala1 options- cooked french bean, raw or boiled opposquash, raw or boiled chinese okra, raw potato cauliflower peas, Cooked raw jackfruit, Roasted eggplant, Tofu capsicum, boiled black eyed bean

8) For cooking hard vegetables like potato, bottlegourd add these after onions. When they look cooked, then add tomatoes spices. 

9) My Masala2 options- boiled chickpea, boiled kidneybeans, boiled opposquash with lentil.


Simple aint it, just prepare masala, add cooked or raw veggies or beans or lentils, and then when it is done add cilantro. 

                                                                                                                                                  

Quick Easy Indian Recipes For Lazy Non-Cooks

I hate cooking, whatever I try is a disaster most of the times. So when I google, its always the easy recipes that take less time and efforts. But you have an indian boyfriend or husband, its kind of obligatory to cook sometimes the most talked about recipes. Okay, so for a long time I kept on trying recipes by taking people's advice which didn't workout well, first of all most of these folks are old or show offs who work with approximations and secondly its very frustrating to listen, remember the whole procedure and tricks. 

After years of toiling hard and getting sad annoyed dinner endings at least two times a week, i have established system that works. If you have an indian boyfriend or husband or anyone and you hate to cook, you might like these recipes. These are all tested by me , and they work. I am not going to write the whole recipe, just follow the links.

We went to pirates restaurant where we ordered methi malai paneer. I was extremely skeptical how it would come out. But it was very tasty and so after 2 years, I thought I should make it. Here is the version I tried, I followed the recipe till the toddler word. And didn't add garam masala. 



www.google.co.in/imgres?q=methi+malai+paneer+recipe&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&tbo=d&rlz=1C1DVCF_enIN359IN359&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=y4znqoeJLFyG8M:&imgrefurl=http://chefinmaking.com/methi-malai-paneer&docid=e1ZlvRDTK90k5M&imgurl=http://chefinmaking.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Methi-Malai-Paneer.jpg&w=2304&h=1296&ei=cGLqUKjsO47jkgXY-4CQDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=1025&vpy=136&dur=784&hovh=168&hovw=300&tx=131&ty=72&sig=110134502228252096241&page=1&tbnh=131&tbnw=225&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0,i:106


Second Recipe that i just made this week is Bhindi Sambhariya....




http://www.sailusfood.com/2011/08/18/bhindi-sambhariya-gujarati-style-stuffed-okra/

Third recipe is Dum aloo,which is made with baby potatoes and curd. 



http://www.rakskitchen.net/2011/05/aloo-dumdum-aloo.html

Fourth recipe that me and my husband tried and worked even in cooker is of a cake, nigella cake. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXeVh1CvVw4

Another cake that we tried is typical plum cake with spices. My husband mixed nigella's cooking on stove with this recipe. He made syrup, then in a pan added rum, nuts after boiling added eggs, switched off gas and then wrapped into it flour with baking powder. We then put it inside pressure cooker for 35 minutes. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRHYPZZBEE4


Third cake Was apple cinnamon cake. 

http://www.joyofbaking.com/AppleCake.html

Fourth cake was choclate orange cake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mkAhuVD-m4

These all cakes were made by my husband. I ate them and assisted in cutting nuts or washing dishes. :) :) 

Okay moving to indian recipes, Cabbage kofta is another one. Its easy to make. Believe me when I say it, I don't like investing more than an hour to any meal. 



http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/2009/04/23/cabbage-kofta/

Moving forward, we come to a form of bread known as palak paratha. It is the easiest of all parathas and tastiest. I don't cook palak like in the recipe. I just mix chopped spinach with all the spices I like and knead it with flour into a dough.You can make methi paratha by substituting methi in place of palak. 



http://www.rakskitchen.net/2011/07/easy-palak-paratha-recipe.html

For Aloo/Potato paratha, Cauliflower Paratha...follow manjulaskitchen recipes.



http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/2008/06/21/gobhi-paratha/

http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/2007/01/14/aloo-parathas/


Now there is this tasty version of khichdi I came across. Instead of rice pulses you can use broken wheat and moong which is even more healthy but less tasty. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvvWb9sbR04&feature=fvwrel

Its time for me to make palak paneer for my mum-in-law who is coming to stay with me. So at the end i am going to add palak paneer recipe.

http://www.tarladalal.com/Palak-Paneer-(-Subzi-)-30899r

And some things I learned.

Firstly you can use Everest tea masala for spices mix in curries, cake. Its got cinnamon etc spices which are very good. Just buy it.

Secondly, there is kasturi methi you should have for instant methi paratha or methi flavor in curries. 

Thirdly, the best thing to make as a side extra dish is boondi raita. I have already said this article is for who hate cooking and want it to finish asap. Raita is one of those dishes which take less time and people like them. 

Fourthly for desserts the simplest indian recipe is simaiya. It takes 20 minutes and is very healthy. I never added condensed milk, just boil 4 cups milk till its 3/4th from original, then add 1/2 cup vermicelli, 4 spoons sugar, keep tasting and stirring to meet your sweetness apetite, after about 10 minutes your dessert is ready. Add cashews, raising, almonds and serve cold. 

Also you can have custard for which the recipe is fixed. 


http://madcookingfusions.com/semiya-recipe-vermicelli-dessert/


These are all the easiest recipes you can have. My favorite recipe blogs are by manjula and joyofbaking. Next post will be on soups,salads and authentic indian desserts which of course will be quick and easy. 

Here is link to next post on 4 course indian dinner made easy. 

http://myfilmilist.blogspot.com/2015/12/indian-cooking-decoded-part-1curry.htmlhttp://myfilmilist.blogspot.com/2015/12/indian-cooking-decoded-part-1curry.html



https://myfilmilist.blogspot.com/2016/11/easy-indian-recipes-for-lazy-cooks-part.html