Soya Granule Rice

A rice dish enjoyed by my family, all my friends and relatives too. A very healthy protein filled complete meal is what it can be called. Needs no accompaniment, moist and flavourful, it is a sure treat on the palatte.

Ingredients

2 cups of long grain rice, washed and drained
1 cup of soya granules soaked in water for a n hour to get best results
2 onions finely chopped
2 tomatoes finely chopped
1 table spoon ginger garlic crushed
4 green chillies crushed
1 tspoon each of cumin and coriander powder
1/2 tspoon of black pepper powder
1 tspoon of chilli powder
Finely chopped coriander
Salt to taste

Method 

in a pressure cooker take some oil, any oil that you prefer except coconut oil since this may change the flavour completely. Add the chopped onions, saute to a golden brown, add the chilli, garlic and ginger, saute well, add the tomatoes and all the spices including the salt and the chopped coriander, cook till the mixture becomes mushy, squeeze the granules and add them in the cooker, mix well and let it cook with the spices, now add the rice and measure the water in which the granules were soaked and add it to the cooker, add more if needed or else cover and cook to two whistles. add water as much as is needed for the rice only. The rice should not become sticky. Serve hot. As mentioned before this does not need an accompaniment. 

                                              Broccoli Peas And Black Eyed Beans Soup

Simple, tasty, creamy soup made of broccoli, sprouted black eyed beans (chavali in Marathi), mint and raw totapuri mango

Ingredients to be pressure cooked to 2 whistles

A. 1 broccoli cleaned and chopped roughly
A handful of sprouted black eyed beans ( these will help give the soup a thick creamy texture)
1/2 cup green peas

 B. Few mint leaves 
1/4 cup raw totapuri mango grated

C. Salt and pepper to taste to be added later

Once the pressure cooked ingredients (A) cool down, take a mixi jar mix the rest of the ingredients (B) given below to make a fine paste, transfer to a vessel in which you would be making the soup, add water to adjust the consistency, ingredients (C), bring to a boil and serve hot.

                                                              Mixed Fruit Smoothie

An experi-mental, nutritious, cooling smoothie which is a delight on the palate especially for summer with the sun scorching down on you!! Why should there be only mixed fruit juices...why not a mixed fruit smoothie?? Summer for me means spring colours, scent of the various flowers, strong smelling champa ( here I show you two varieties),  the smell of raw mango, the jars being replenished with freshly made pickles.......the list goes on. At this point I cannot help but think of Kashmir where so many songs have been shot in the spring season, that  reminds me of an eternal song sung by the great Mohammad Rafi saab, it goes ....Aap aaaaaye bahaar aaaaayyeeeee .... o..o..oooo..oo....picturised on the Jubilee Kumar, Rajendra Kumar and the eternal beauty Sadhana. Being a  B ollywood crazy person I will link anything to films and get happy about it!! Ok....., so now for the recipe

Ingredients

Pieces of half an Alphonso mango
Pieces of 1 peeled chikoo
 Pieces of 1 ripe banana 
5 walnuts
1/2 a litre of skimmed milk

3 tspns of sweet basil seeds/ sabja seeds to be added later

Method

in a blender mix all the ingredients except the basil seeds to a smooth paste adding milk slowly, transfer into a bowl add the seeds and chill the smoothie, in the meanwhile the seeds have enough time to swell up too. Serve chilled on a sultry afternoon as a mid day refresher. 

                                                 

                                                      Hash Brown Potatoes My Style

Hash brown potatoes are a classic item on the American breakfast platter. I loved them when I had them at Moscow and wanted to learn to make them . Now the way I have made them is a little healthier and spicier, giving them the Indian touch. They are not fried but pan seared patties with cheese in them. Hope you enjoy my version of the hash brown patties.

Ingredients

3 parboiled potatoes peeled and grated
3 britannia cheese cubes grated
1 tspn of crushed chilli
1/2 tspn of white pepper powder
Salt to be added very carefully since cheese is enough salty
Some all purpose flour to dab on to the patties
Olive oil or butter to shallow fry or pan sear

Method

Mix with a very gentle hand, the grated potatoes, cheese and the chiili, adding salt carefully as mentioned earlier, make equal sized portions, shape them like hash browns, dab all purpose flour on them and pan sear them to a crisp golden brown shade on both sides by drizzling olive oil on them.

You can savour these with the classic omelette, roasted tomatoes and  a creamy cup of cappucino. 

                                     
                                       Egg Masala Highway Style

Utterly butterly delicious!! When you think of butter, specially in India, the cute little butter girl appears automatically in front of your eyes. I have her on my fridge door  eyeing my dishes made in Amul butter for almost 25 years now. Those days you would get this fridge magnet with a pack of Amul Butter. No brand according to me has been able to beat this actually delicious salted butter. I love it when it shines on my toast, omlette, dosa, idli, tomato omlette, or a blob of it floating on the sambar or the soups which I relish!! I can give a never ending list. I have again wandered off my main recipe which revolves around Amul butter. This is a very famous dish available on the Gujarat highway. It has a huge amount of Amul butter and it is also made in it. Watched a food show on the television, made it and oooooo...slurp.....loved it. I must here confess that in the show he almost added half a pack of butter before serving it, I could not dare to use so much butter, but.. but.. will surely indulge if and when I travel on this Buttery highway!! So here comes my recipe, a little less indulgent.

Ingredients
100 gms of Amul butter ( I used Amul Lite butter)
6 eggs boiled and peeled cut into medium sized pieces
3 onions chopped fine
2 table spoons of ginger garlic crushed
1 tspoon of chilli powder
2 tomatoes chopped fine 
Salt to taste
1 tspoon of garam masala, I personally like Badshah Masalas
Some fresh coriander chopped fine

Method

In a pan take 2 spoons butter, add the ginger garlic, saute till it turns brown, add the onion, saute till golden, add the tomatoes, cook till musy, add all the masalas, salt and stir well to mix, now add the eggs and mix gently, serve  garnished with coriander and a blob of butter with roti or toasted bread.

                                          Banana Date Laddoos

A power packed laddoo with the goodness of dates and bananas, loaded with cashews, almonds and walnuts. for the crunch I have used edible gum which is called dink in Marathi and gond in Hindi. It is a resin collected from the bark of the axle-wood tree. Available in the market in the form of small transluscent pearls which can be roasted or fried to use in dishes. I have dry roasted them till they popped and became crisp. They are highly nutritious. They generate heat and so used mostly in winters.

Ingredients

Step1
Make a coarse powder of 1/4 cup of walnuts, almonds and cashews and keep aside

Step 2
1 ripe banana mashed
8 seedless dates, ground to a coarse paste
1/2 cup dry roasted  pearls of edible gum ( roast till the pearls pop to become crisp)
2 tspns of clarified butter
In a pan take, saute  all the above ingredients till they become into a semi hard mixture and keep it ready.

Step 3
In a mixing bowl take the Step 1mixture and add
1/4 cup each of walnuts, almonds and cashews made into a fine powder, mix well, make equal sized balls or laddoos, roll them in the step 1 mixture and savour.

                                 Mixed Vegatables In Spinach Gravy

This may sound like a regular palak paneer kind of a dish but no, it is made very differently and a must try as far as tha taste and the freshness goes. So here comes my recipe for the most popular green vegetable, the spinach. Very healthy and nutritious, since it has so many vegetables in it.

Ingredients
Step 1
All the ingredients below to be sauteed in olive oil, cooled and ground into a fine paste
1 bunch of spinach cleaned and roughly chopped
2 onions roughly chopped
4 garlic pods roughly chopped
1 inch ginger
3 green chillies slit
1 tomato roughly chopped

Step 2
All vegetables below need to be sauted in olive oil, sprinkle little aster, add a bit of salt and cook covered till semii soft
2 potatoes
2 raw bananas
1 carrot
The above vegetables peeled and chopped into medium sized squares
1/2 cup french beans cleaned and chopped into medium sized pieces

1 tea spoon of garam masala and grated raw mango to be added later

Method

In the pan once your vegetables are  semi cooked add the spinach gravy, adjust the consistency, add salt as per need, raw grated mango, garam masala, cook till vegetables are completely cooked, garnish with fresh coriander and serve with roti or rice.

                                         Raw Mango Spinach Rice

That I am an ardent rice lover is a fact everybody who knows me will vouch for! My love for rice attracts me to any new recipe and here is one such nutritious, tasty, delicacy from Karnataka that I loved. Typical Brahmin food with no onion, garlic, can be prepared as an offering to God.

Ingredients
2 cups of long grain rice
4 cups of water
1 raw mango grated, I have used  a medium sized Totapuri
1 bunch of spinach cleaned and finely chopped
Few sprigs of fresh coriander cleaned and finely chopped
Few curry leaves chopped
3 green chillies chopped
10/12 cashews
1 small spoon turmeric powder
1 small spoon asafoetida
Salt to taste

In a pressure cooker take some olive oil, add green chillies, asafoetida, turmeric powder, give it a stir, add the cashews, saute a bit, add the coriander and spinach, lat it cook well, ad the raw amngo, stir well, ad the rice, salt and water, stir to mix well, give it two whistles and see that the rice does not become sticky.
serve as it is, it does not require any accompaniment.