Ghee Rice

An extremely tasty, subtly flavoured rice dish, absolutely palatable, from the treasury of my mother's recipes. Was made on special days, served with a special dal for accompaniment, or as it is.

Ingredients

2 cups long grain basmati rice cooked with a little ghee, some white peppercorns and salt and cooled.
2 onions chopped into thin long pieces
6 roughly crushed garlic cloves
1 inch of cinnamon, 3 cloves pounded in the mortar pestle
Salt if required, since we already cooked the rice with salt
1/4 tspn of sugar
2 tspns of lime juice

Method

In a pan take 4 tspns of ghee, add the pounded spices, wait for the aromas to be released, then add the crushed garlic, saute a bit, add the onions, let them turn almost brown, like caramelised, then add the rice, salt if necessary, the lime juice and the sugar, stir to mix well and your delightful rice is ready.

                                                             
                                                           Chilli Coriander Egg Rice

I am a rice lover and a chilli lover to top it, I literally can live on any kind of rice dish. The key ingredient here is the green chilli!! So I relish it all the more. Here goes the recipe of this simple yet tasty delicacy.

1 cup long grain basmati rice, pressure cooked and cooled. The grains should be separate and not sticky.

3 eggs, made into a scramble with salt, pepper and a bit if milk, kept ready.

4 green chillies chopped crossways into thin pieces,  a medium sized  bunch of coriander finely chopped, salt to taste, 10 black pepper corns pounded roughly.

Method

In a pan take some olive oil, saute the chillies, add the rice, salt, pepper powder, mix and then add the egg scramble,  mix well, ad the coriander and mix well again. Serve as it is or with vegetable manchurian. Tasted great with the dry manchurian.

ChanaMasala

This is my Mum's recipe and all of us enjoy it made this way, I can remember my college days at Bengaluru in VHD institute of Home Science we had a canteen day, our batch would cook in the college canteen on Thursdays and my Chana Masala and Carrot Halwa were big hits!!

Ingredients
200 gms of kabuli chana soaked previous night, pressure cooked with salt and little edible soda
3 onions finely chopped
2 tablespoons of tamarind pulp
1 tspn cumin powder
1 tspn coriander powder
1 tspn pepper powder
1 tspn garlic paste
1 tspn ginger paste
1 tspn chilli powder
Salt to taste
Finely chopped coriander for garnishing

Method

Take oil in a bottomed pan put the ginger garlic paste, saute a bit, add onions cook it till brown, add all powders, the salt (add salt with care since we added it while cooking the chana), tamarind paste cook well then add the boiled chana, stir mix well and see if it is too thick then add little water to make it a required consistency. Garnish with freshly chopped coriander, serve with pooris or bhaturas. Enjoy accompanied with freshly chopped onion, tomato and sauteed green chilli.

 Double Beans Curry

A delicious curry which can be had with rice, roti, phulka and paratha. The beans when used fresh give amazing taste. You can  soak and use dry ones too, when they go out of season. 

Ingredients

250 gms of double beans, soaked overnight and pressure cooked to 2 whistles the next day, if they are the dry variety, if fresh then they are ready to use.let mix well, add salt to taste

For making into a paste you will need
1/2 cup coconut freshly scraped
2 onions roughly chopped
2 tomatoes roughly chopped
1 inch ginger roughly chopped
1 tspn of black peppercorns
1 tspn of cumin seeds
Small spoon of turmeric powder
3 -4 sprigs of fresh coriander
3 cloves

Do not add these ingredients while  grinding
Salt to taste
1 tspn of chilli powder
1 tspn of malwani masala

Method
In a cooker take coconut oil, you can use any other refined oil if not coconut, add cumin seeds, let them splutter, add turmeric, add the ground paste and let this cook till it releases oil, now add the other powders, salt to taste, the beans too, if they are precooked then do not throw away the water in which they were soaked, if they are fresh then adjust the quantity of water as per curry consistency. Pressure cook to two whistles and serve after transferring into a serving bowl and garnishing with fresh coriander.

                                                                 
                                                                    Bittergourd Dry

This can be had as an accompaniment in your meal when the main dish is a curry, or it can be savored with curd rice also.

Ingredients

4 tender bitter gourds, choose light coloured ones, a little smaller in size, so the bitterness is less and also then they don't need to be kept in salt water before cooking. Normally I neither scrape them nor do I boil them in salt water.

1/2 cup dry grated coconut, 1/2 cup sesame seeds,  1/2 cup peanuts dry roasted and ground to a coarse powder with 

1 tspn of aamchur
1 tspn of Goda Masala
1 tspn of sugar
1 tspn of chilli powder
Salt to taste
Fresh chopped coriander 

Method

Chop the bitter gourds into roundels, after deseeding them. Boil them in plain water just to soften them a little so we don't need to use too much oil while cooking them.

In a pan take oil, add the chopped parboiled bitter gourds, saute till light golden, add all the masalas and the ground powder, the coriander too, keep cooking till the rawness of all the ingredients disappears and the gourd becomes light brown in the spices. Cook on a slow flame so the spices do not burn. Now transfer to a serving bowl, garnish with coriander if you wish to. I have skipped the garnish since I added the coriander while cooking.

Melon Feta Salad

A very refreshing easy crunchy salad!

In a mixing bowl you need to take
1/2 cup watermelon pieces
1/2 cup cucumber pieces
1/2 cup tomato pieces
1/2 cup musk melon pieces
1 bunch of salad leaves roughly broken
1/4 cup feta cheese broken roughly or crumbled
1/4 cup olives
2 tablespoons of olive io
2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
Salt to taste
Black pepper powder

Mix all ingredients well and serve chilled.

                                                           
                                                                  Stuffed Sweet Poli

                                     Indian flat bread with a stuffing of dry figs and cashews, lovely cashews brought  straight from Goa by my sweet friend Rachana. She always the first one to like my recipes and share my links. A big thanks to her for the appreciation and love. It is people like you who keep us motivated to do better and post new recipes. Thanks once again dear.

Ingredients

 For the dough I used normal whole wheat chapati dough, make it and let it sit for about half an hour.

For the stuffing

6 pieces of the dry figs, easily available at the dry fruit store
1/2 cup cashews
1/2 cup of milk
All the above to be blended ( not too smooth) to a mixture

Method

In a pan take the blended mixture, add sugar, take care of how much sugar to add, since the figs in itself are quite sweet, cook it till it becomes into a semi hard mixture. The texture should be not too wet, not too dry, you should be able to stuff this into the dough ball. Cool and make into small equal sized ball. Now stuff each dough ball with the mixture, very gently roll out into a thin roti and roast with ghee on the pan. Roast as shown in the picture and savour it with the blob of  home made ghee which will melt slowly on the hot roti.

While roasting, the aroma of the dryfruit and the ghee is so inviting, it is heavenly to savour this with the home made ghee!!