Hara Bhara Paneer

Depending on what time of the day we go shopping for vegetables, we come back with varying amounts of fresh coriander. If we’re the last customers of the day, I think “Uncle”, as S and I call him, would give us as much coriander as the other vegetables we’ve just bought from him. While it looks pretty and I’m super excited with my freebie, I have no clue how to use up these greens. Most folks at work tell me to make chutney out of this. But there’s a limit to how much chutney we can consume. I once made it and spiced up this colour coordinated salad. The next time I made the chutney, I put on my experimenter’s hat and ended up with this dish.

1 cup Paneer Cubes
1 cup Coriander Leaves
2 pods Garlic
1" piece Ginger
2 Green Chillies
Salt to taste
1 tsp Oil + Oil for shallow frying
1 tsp Cumin Seeds
¼ tsp Asafoetida

Prepare the chutney by grinding the coriander leaves with the garlic, ginger, green chillies and salt together.

Heat a skillet. Toast/shallow fry the paneer cubes on this using a few drops of oil. Keep aside.

Heat the teaspoon of oil and add the cumin seeds and the asafoetida. When the cumin crackles, add the chutney and fry for 3-4 minutes. Add the paneer cubes and mix well. Cover and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Serve as a side with rotis or between slices of bread as a toasted sandwich. It tastes great whichever way you eat it.

How Green was my Salad?

Warning: This picture definitely doesn't do justice to this fantastic salad.

OK, so you've all heard me talk about how my pictures are all so bad that they never do justice. But these pictures have been languishing in my drafts and I have to post them now. But when I make this again, I promise to take a better picture and upload that instead of this one!

At the start of this year, we were only eating salads for lunch. I still have loads of salad recipes sitting in my drafts and I hope that from August onwards, I'll have new recipes to talk about. This salad caught the attention of several people who'd tasted it. It was one of my first colour coordinated salads. It started off accidentally, but when I found that 5 ingredients that I'd picked up to make the salad were green, I decided to hunt for more green stuff to put in.

1 Cucumber, sliced and quartered

1 Green Capsicum, sliced

1/2 cup Green Chickpeas

1/2 cup Sprouted Moong

2-3 leaves Iceberg Lettuce

1/3 cup Broccoli florets, steamed

1 bunch Spring Onions, chopped

1 tbsp Lime Juice (optional)

For the dressing (chutney)

1 cup Coriander Leaves

1/2 cup Mint Leaves

2 pods Garlic

1" piece Ginger

1 Green Chilli

Salt to taste

Grind together all the ingredients for the chutney. Toss the chutney with the salad. Add some lime juice if you like. Dig in! It is as simple as that!

Mysore Masala Dosa

This is one post that I've been meaning to make for months together. I just realized that Srivalli's Dosa Mela will come to an end very soon and I'd promised her a simple post. I have been extremely busy and have been neglecting this blog as well as all of yours. I think things will be a little better from the next month onwards.

I am sharing Amma's Mysore Masala Dosa with all of you. It is fairly simple to make once you have all the ingredients. Though it isn't as simple to stop eating even when you're full. Sometimes, I skip the masala and have a Mysore version of my regular dosa.

Ingredients:

For the Dosa Batter:

1/2 cup Urad
1 cup Rice (Boiled or Raw)
1 tsp Fenugreek Seeds

Salt to taste

Oil for frying

For the Mysore Red Chutney

6-8 Garlic Pods

4 Red Chillies

1 tbsp Tamarind Paste

Salt to taste

For the Potato Masala:

4-6 Potatoes, boiled
1 Onion, finely chopped
1 Tomato, finely chopped
1 tbsp Oil
1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
1/4 tsp Turmeric Powder
1 tsp Chilli paste
1/2 tsp Ginger paste
7-8 Curry Leaves
Salt to taste

For the Green Coconut Chutney:

1/3 cup scraped Coconut

3 Green Chillies

1/2 cup Coriander Leaves

1/4 cup Roasted Gram Dal (Pottu Kadalai)

1/2 tsp Ginger Paste

1 tbsp Tamarind Paste

Salt to taste

Wash the urad and rice. Add the fenugreek seeds and soak in plenty of water overnight. (At least 4-5 hours). Wash well and grind using a little water. Add salt and water to dilute it as required. (Don't add too much water as the dosas will not turn out well.)

For the potato masala:

Heat oil in a pressure pan. Add the mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves. Add the onions, chilli and ginger pastes, turmeric powder and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the tomato and salt and fry for another minute. Add the boiled potato pieces and a little water and cook for 1-2 whistles.

Prepare the red and green chutneys by grinding the ingredients of each to a fine paste.

Heat a tawa and smear a little oil on it. Simmer the flame and pour a ladleful of the batter in the centre of the tawa. Quickly spread the batter while forming concentric circles (spiral actually!).

Add a little oil on the sides and centre. Usually not more than 1 small spoonful per dosa. When crisp, carefully turn the dosa over and allow the other side to cook a little (this is not done in restaurants, but I prefer to turn my dosas and toast them on both sides).

Turn the dosa back and spread some red chutney over it. Place a little bit of the potato masala on one half and fold the other half over. Serve with chutney, sambar, or molaga podi or a combination of all these.

I am sure you will enjoy this dish and with that happy thought I'll send this to Srivalli. I did make a special vegetable dosa for this event, but I am unable to find the cable that connects this camera to my laptop. S is in Las Vegas with my usual camera. For this very reason, I am sending a really old recipe to her dosa mela.

Despite the fact that I've not been visiting people's blogs and have been ignoring even my own, three dear friends from the blogosphere presented me with this award. I can't believe it and am truly overwhelmed. Thank you Arundati, Sig and A-Kay. I am touched. And I'm passing this on to each of you who patiently reads through my posts and leaves comments even at times when I am too busy to check and respond. I'll be back in action soon.

Wish you all a very Happy New Year!

Ragi Doddak with Onion Tomato Chutney

Leisurely breakfasts are always pushed to the weekend. In our house, a weekend breakfast usually turns out to be brunch. We're so full (and tired) after eating (and making) something elaborate that we don't feel like lunch. On good days, we have a snack at 4 or 5 in the afternoon. On others, the breakfast is expected to take us all the way to dinner without as much as a little whimper. Last Saturday was one such. One such bad day, I mean. Breakfast ended at 1 p.m. We had tea and cookies at about 4.30. After which we drove 200 km, with another couple, to Karnal to have dinner at a Punjabi haveli style Dhaba called Haveli. Now, I am certain. I had this lingering doubt, but not any more. We must be "foodies", mustn't we?

Konkani breakfast numbers include a Doddak. I had posted the cream of wheat version earlier. The other version, made of wheat flour, also ranks highly on my list of breakfast favourites. On Saturday, I modified the wheat flour version to make use of some ragi flour that I'd asked a dear friend to bring along from Chennai. I also wanted to try out a chutney that I've eaten at many restaurants. I used my imagination to create the chutney to go with the dosa. And I'm so happy to know that this recipe's a keeper.
Ragi Doddak:

1/2 cup Finger Millet (Ragi) Flour

1/2 cup Wheat Flour

2 tbsp Cream of Wheat (Rava/Sooji)
2 tbsp Coconut, scraped

1 tsp Green Chilli Paste
1/4 cup Coriander, chopped
Salt to taste
Oil for frying

For the tempering:

1 tsp Oil
1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/4 tsp Cumin Seeds
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
7-8 Curry Leaves

Prepare the tempering in a small kadhai and transfer the contents to a mixing bowl. Add the remaining ingredients except the oil and mix well using a little water. (The batter should not be too watery. It should be a little thicker than dosa batter.)

Spread the dough onto a hot griddle and pour a few drops of oil on all sides. Make a slit in the centre using the spatula and pour a few drops into this slit. (This helps the oil reach the centre and aids in crispening that portion.)

Turn over and allow the other side to crispen as well.

Onion Tomato Chutney

1 Onion, diced

3 Tomatoes, blanched

1 tbsp Coconut, scraped

3 Green Chillies

1" piece Ginger

Salt to taste

For the tempering:

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Cumin Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

7-8 Curry Leaves

Grind all the ingredients for the chutney together.

Heat the oil for the tempering in a kadhai. Add the mustard and cumin seeds. When the mustard splutters, add the asafoetida along with the curry leaves. Pour the ground mixture into the oil and cook for a couple of minutes.

I tried both these dishes for the first time on Saturday and I must say I was very pleased with the way they turned out. Finger millet or Ragi is considered very healthy. More details can be found here. Substituting the coconut chutney with an Onion Tomato chutney was another healthy move. And this is off to Suganya who is hosting this month's WBB, my dear friend Nandita’s initiative.

Jeera Kotambarya Chitni (Cumin Coriander Chutney)

This is the chutney that I made to go with my Appeys. My strongest memories of eating Appeys with this chutney take me back to Bangalore. My aunt, at whose place I spent many vacations, used to dish out one type of dosa after another. (So many that even the ardent dosa lover in me would hope for a different item at the breakfast table!) So appeys would be that very very welcome change.

This is a very simple chutney and it goes very well with Appeys.



Ingredients:



1 tsp Cumin Seeds

1 tsp Coriander Seeds

1/3 cup scraped Coconut

3-4 Red Chillies

1 tbsp Tamarind Paste

Salt to taste



Grind all the ingredients to a fine paste using a little water.



There you go... Konkani cooking is really simple, isn't it? This chutney from the kitchens of South Canara or Dakshina Kannada goes to Asha as my third entry for the RCI Karnataka event.

Beetroot Chutney

One trip to Seema's Recipe Junction is all it took for me to fall in love with Carrot Chutney. The colour, the presentation, the simplicity of it all. I made it that same evening and posted it almost immediately. Imitation sure is the sincerest form of flattery.

But then, variety is also, most definitely, the spice of life. So, when I found a fantastic recipe such as this, I wanted to replicate it. I wanted to push the limits of my imagination. I wanted to see how far I could go. (Oh cut this philosophical pain, I hear you scream!) As all of you know by now, all I really wanted was to make life easy for me. Lazy, impatient old me.

We bought some beetroots at the supermarket last week. I've always eaten beetroot, but I had no clue how to cook it. I always assumed I could make it just like one makes beans etc, in the form of what konkanis call "upkari". But nothing motivated me to try. Ever. But S looked longingly at the beets and we bought some. (I had to throw a pack away because they rotted in the heat and S kept telling me there is no need to put them in the fridge as they are like potatoes. News flash: they're like carrots!!) That got me thinking. What a carrot can do, a beet can beat!

So, I made the easiest dish that one can possibly make using beetroots. The colour was awesome and the taste, simply superb. I made a simple meal of rice, moong dal sambar and this chutney. We ate it with some thengai podi that Amma had made. With some raw banana chips, avakaya and curd, our meal was complete. A feast! (Considering yours truly usually cooks up one dish meals!)

Ingredients:

1 large beetroot, sliced

3 green chillies

3 pods of garlic

2 tbsp coconut, scrapped

Salt to taste

For the Tempering

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

4-5 Curry Leaves

I cooked the beetroot slices in the microwave for 2-3 minutes with very little water. I ground this with all the ingredients together and then prepared the tempering and mixed the two.

Seema: can I thank you enough?

Coriander Mint Tomato Chutney

If it is bread I must eat in the morning, then I can probably have it with jam or jelly once a week. The rest of the time I need something salty/spicy. Again, as I put up with GERS, I cannot have spicy food in general, and definitely not in the morning. So, I eat toast with leftovers, with "pitti chitni", a very typically konkani gun powder, with pitlay, or chutney.

Just about the time I moved to Bangalore from Hyderabad, a colleague and friend, Priya, invited me to stay over. She and her husband, Arun, treated me to a nice dinner at Little Italy. The next morning Priya set out to make breakfast. She has this cute little kitchen garden and grows herbs and even baby tomatoes. She just went out there and picked up a little of this, a little of that... maybe this would go well too... oops, what about that one there... in they all went ...into the blender and what came out was a tasty spread.

So, this recipe is thanks to her.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Coriander Leaves

1/4 cup Mint Leaves

2 pods of Garlic

1 Tomato

1 green Chilli

1" piece of Ginger

Salt to taste

Grind all the ingredients to a coarse paste in a mixer. Eat it with just about anything. The tomato adds the tang to this chutney where lime juice usually does the trick. I spread it on toast and the bread went down faster than it usually does.

I am sending this to Trupti at The Spice Who Loved Me for WBB # 12 : Spice it Up! as my second entry. Trupti has recently been invited to be a guest writer on the Food Network of Canada's food blog. Congratulations Trupti!

Carrot Chutney

This is my first time. I found a recipe on a blog that I visited after the owner visited my blog for the very first time. I saw the recipe on her page and came home. I decided I just have to try this.

I am talking about Seema's Carrot Chutney on Recipe Junction. I followed the recipe to a T except that I ground the carrots along with the other ingredients instead of grating them first.



I used


2 large carrots
3 green chillies
3 pods of garlic
2 tbsp coconut, scrapped

Salt to taste

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/4 tsp Asafoetida

4-5 Curry Leaves


I ground all the ingredients together and then prepared the tempering and mixed the two.




It came out quite well and we ate with rice. Just now! A very satisfying meal. Thank you Seema.