Zucchini Hummus Parathas

 

 

 

Life stages. Usually, unless you're at a certain stage yourself, or have been past that stage, it is difficult to understand what it is all about. It is nearly impossible to empathize. At least for me, it has been. For the longest time, I couldn't understand why parents fussed over what their children could eat. I saw one set of parents agonizing over their children's lunch and dinner and I saw another set that relied almost totally on prepackaged food.

 

 

Now that I have one of my own to worry about, I realize that I am not the agonizing type. I don't fuss over A's food. He usually eats what we eat. Yes, at times, he may go hungry because he is throwing a tantrum and refuses to eat. Since he is just a year and half, I do offer him one other comfort food option at most meals. If he refuses that as well, I let him be. I know that in these food battles, I am never going to win. My aunt said to me, "My children's paediatrician said that no child with access to food will ever starve." So, when A is hungry, he will eat. My obligation is, then, to ensure that the right kind of food is accessible. And I know that this is me. Every parent is different as is every child.  

 

A has been very fiercely independent for a long time. I see a lot of me in him. I am pretty much the "I-can-manage-all-by-myself-thank-you-very-much" kind of person. When it comes to food, he prefers being able to feed himself. But he is also picky at the moment about textures. He will not touch wet or sticky things. (Or if he does, he will quickly wipe his hands on my clothes!) He is not very comfortable with a spoon and more food falls on his stomach than in. At times, we give him a roasted papad (protein) to eat by himself while he is being fed his meal of rice, dal and vegetable. At times, I make baby sized cutlets for him. He likes to eat oven baked fries (potato, sweet potato, carrot) and I give him a plate as a snack or before his main meal.

 

 

And parathas work very well. I make 'all in one' parathas for him which I cut into bits. He then eats them all by himself. I make the dough, roll out the parathas and freeze them with baking paper in between them. On days when I am feeling particularly lazy, I just pull out two of these, toast them on a tava with a little ghee/oil and cut them up. And then I feel good that he got his carbohydrate, protein, fat and vegetable fix from that one meal.

 

 

1/2 cup Chickpeas (soaked and cooked)

1 cup Atta (Whole Wheat Flour)

1/2 cup Green and Yellow Zucchini (diced)

1 tbsp Tahini

1 tbsp Sesame Oil/Gingelly Oil

1 tsp Paprika

1/s tsp Turmeric

1/2 tsp Cumin Powder

1 clove Garlic

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Sugar

 

Grind the chickpeas with the garlic, tahini and zucchini. Place this mixture in a bowl. Add the other ingredients. Mix well. Keep adding a little water as necessary and knead into a soft, pliable dough. Cover and allow to rest for a few minutes.

 

Divide the dough into small balls and roll them out with the help of a little flour. Toast on a hot tava until brown spots appear and the paratha is cooked.

 

Serve as they are or with some yogurt on the side.

 

Of late, many friends have been requesting child friendly food on the blog. So, I hope you like this.

 

If you are making these for adults, increase the amount of spices or serve with a side dish. I have started adding sesame paste to many of our meals as sesame is a good natural source of zinc. You could substitute the chickpeas, tahini, garlic, paprika and oil with 2/3 cup of ready made hummus.

Tried & Tasted: Chickpea Salad

I have been having so many problems with blogger of late that I don't even know where to start. This seems to be the cooking season and I see new recipes, new resolutions and absolutely finger licking yummy food everywhere I look. I had lost my inspiration to cook in between and found comfort in the dal-roti-rice-sabzi routine. My new cab route leaves me with 3-4 hours of time to spare, depending on how much I sleep. In these 3 hours, I have to get ready for work, cook, eat, catch up with S, etc. So, even on those days that I do manage to cook something different, I almost never get around to taking a picture of it, let alone blog about it.

In the midst of this all, I volunteered to host an event. When I agreed to, I had expected November to be a "light" month. It has turned out to be my busiest yet. And it doesn't help that much that winter is here early. It only means that I need to spend extra time applying moisturizer (or end up scratching myself all the time).

Plus, blogger doesn't allow me to leave a comment. That means I am unable to thank someone for inspiration to cook or even tell them how much I liked a certain recipe or even say hello. All in all, nothing seems to be going my way.

And amidst all this, I am still my lazy self. So when I find myself hosting an event which celebrates another blogger and her blog, I spend hours going through her entire blog, for the entire month, only to settle on the simplest recipe I can find because:

• I'm making lunch for just myself
• I have everything on hand
• I like what I see
• I am running out of time for my own event

So, this afternoon I chose to make Sunshine Mom's Tongue Tickling Chickpea Salad with Italian Dressing. The only changes I made to the recipe was to omit the almonds and replace dried fenugreek with paprika. I'm typing this post with a bowl of this salad by my side. Try it and I'm sure you'll find yourself serving this salad quite often. This is my entry to the Tried and Tasted event that I am hosting at The Singing Chef. What are you cooking?

P.S: There seems to be yet another problem here. My pictures don't seem to be displaying here.

Chana Salad

When we’re hosting a party, I am either extremely laidback (which means some Haldiram’s kind of items will flow from their packets, some McCain’s stuff will migrate from the freezer to the oven, and we’ll make do with what we have) or go extremely overboard (make cutlets, cut vegetable sticks and make a curd dip to go along with it, bake some savoury biscuits, crackers, muffins, mini pizzas etc, etc). It is very rarely that you would find me walking the middle path. On one of those very rare occasions, I made this salad and served it along with some readymade snacks. It was gone in almost no time.


1 cup Chickpeas, soaked and cooked
1 Tomato, chopped
1 Onion, chopped
1 Carrot, chopped
1/2 cup Coriander Leaves

2 pods Garlic

1" piece Ginger

2 Green Chillies
Juice of 1 Lime

Salt to taste


Prepare the chutney by grinding the coriander leaves with the garlic, ginger, green chillies and salt together. Add the lime juice and mix well.


Place the chickpeas, tomato, onion and carrot in a salad bowl. Add the chutney like a dressing and toss well.


Tasty, healthy and great with drinks. There’s precious little you could ask for over and above all this. No, really!

Chhole Tikki

Instead of a big lunch or dinner, our meals are small and spread out during the entire day. Very often, I run out of ideas for snacks. A fruit box, sundal, or a salad sometimes doesn't make the cut. And I have very little time to actually cook something for our snack box. I had some leftover chhole in the fridge. I decided to use it to make these tikkis. Incidentally, I also found a couple of cooked potatoes in the fridge. I put everything together and then allowed these patties to cook on a skillet while I got the rest of our lunch going. If you don't have chhole, I'm sure cooked chickpeas will work just as well, with a teaspoon of chhole masala.

1 cup Chhole

2 Potatoes, cooked and peeled

1 slice Bread

1 tsp Chilli Powder

1/2 tsp Coriander Powder

Salt to taste

Oil for frying

Blend the chhole in a mixer. Transfer the mixture to a vessel. Add the potatoes and the slice of bread. Add the chilli powder, coriander powder and the salt. Mash everything together and form 5-6 balls. Flatten each ball.

Heat a skillet and spread a little oil over it. Place the flattened balls on the skillet and cook them on both sides. Serve with ketchup or chutney. This is a perfect afternoon snack and helps keep hunger pangs away for a long time.

Methi Chana

This wasn't really a dish that I had planned on making. I'd soaked some black chickpeas in the hope of making sundal for our snack one day. When I opened the fridge for something that morning, I found a bag of cleaned methi leaves. It seemed like my experimenter's hat came and plonked itself on my head just then. I had this crazy idea that I eventually tried out that morning. The fact that I am blogging about it here simply means that we enjoyed our lunch that afternoon.

1 cup Black Chickpeas, soaked overnight and cooked

1 cup Fenugreek Leaves, chopped

1 Onion, chopped finely

1 tsp Green Chilli paste

1 tsp Ginger Paste

1/2 tsp Chilli Powder

1 tsp Cumin-Coriander Powder

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Cumin Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

Salt to taste

Heat the oil in a kadhai. Add the cumin seeds and the asafoetida. When the cumin crackles, add the onion and fry for a minute. Add the green chilli and ginger pastes and fry for another minute. Add the cumin-coriander powder, chilli powder and salt. Add the fenugreek leaves and fry for 3-4 minutes. Add the cooked chickpeas and mix well. Cover and cook for 4-5 minutes.

This was great as a dry side dish for rotis. I'm certain it would be great for those post lunch hunger pangs as well. A sundal like snack with greens. It doesn't get better than this, does it?

Kidney Bean Green Chickpea Patties

Snack time. If I'm not prepared for it, I dread it. I dread not having something substantial in my lunch bag. I dread having to reach out for "just about anything" to kill those hunger pangs. It's not fair that the cafeteria downstairs serves samosas, bread pakodas and bread pizza just when the last bit of lunch bids my stomach farewell.

This makes for a great snack. With a salad on the side, it would make a great lunch too. But for now, let me relish it at snack time.

1/2 cup Kidney Beans, soaked overnight and cooked

1/2 cup Green Chickpeas, cooked

1 Potato, cooked and mashed

2 slices Bread

1 tsp Chilli Powder

1/4 tsp Turmeric Powder

1 tsp Ginger Paste (optional)

1/2 tsp Garam Masala

1/2 tsp Paneer Tikka Masala (optional)

Salt to taste

Oil for frying

Place the kidney beans, chickpeas, potato and bread in a bowl and mash until you get a homogenous mixture. Add the ginger paste, turmeric powder, chilli powder, garam masala, paneer tikka masala and salt. Shape the mixture into patties. (I got about 6-8 patties from this mixture.)

Heat a skillet and smear a little oil over it. Place the patties on the skillet. Cook on both sides until golden brown. Your perfect snack for those post lunch pangs.

Chana Saar Upkari (and an update on Sulekha)

A cold winter day.

A hot raging fever.

A nastier cold.

A painful throat.

A runny nose.

This must be a familiar scene for a lot of people. I know that it was for me. Almost every year, when the weather changes, I seem to catch cold from someone or the other. My otherwise strong immunity takes a beating at about the same time each year. This recipe is perfect for those times.

1 cup Brown Chickpeas

4 Red Chillies

1 tbsp Tamarind Paste

1 tsp Coriander Seeds

Salt to taste

For the seasoning:

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

7-8 Curry Leaves

Pressure cook the chickpeas with 4-5 cups of water. Drain the liquid into a vessel. Keep the chickpeas for the upkari.


Grind together about 2 tbsp of cooked chickpeas with the coriander seeds, tamarind paste, and red chillies. Add this paste to the liquid in the vessel. Add the salt and bring to a boil. In a frying ladle, heat the oil and add the mustard seeds and the asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves. Add this to the saar.


Upkari

Cooked Chickpeas (from recipe above)

1 tsp Oil

4 Red Chillies

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

4-5 Curry Leaves

1 tbsp Jaggery

1 tbsp Coconut, scraped

Salt to taste

In a kadhai, heat the oil. Add the mustard, red chillies and the curry leaves. When the mustard splutters, add the cooked chickpeas, salt and jaggery. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes. Uncover and add the scraped coconut.

We had this as our Sunday lunch with some dali-saar, patrodo and rice. I'm sending this over to this month's edition of JFI: Chickpeas and to Srivalli's MLLA.

Update on the Sulekha issue:

I wrote to Sulekha.com asking them to remove my content and ban the person who goes by the Sulekha username of AndhraMirchi. I got this response from them:

Dear Arundhati

Based on your mail, we have sent a mail to the blogger who posted the blog to remove the blogs. We were waiting for the blogger for an action till tomorrow and then we thought of removing the same. This is just to let you know that the reported content has been removed from our site.Also we would like to know if you could post your recipe blog in our site then it would be great. Please feel free to contact us at member.relations@sulekha.net and we are happy to help you.

Regards

Deepesh

It doesn't look like the content has been removed. I spoke to someone in Member Relations and she told me that Sulekha contacted AndhraMirchi and the person responded by saying that the posts were made by a friend. When asked to remove the content, the person said that he would do this after checking if the content is really lifted from somewhere else.

In the meanwhile, I found these additional links:

1.http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/capsicum-phodiyo.htm

and http://andhramirchi.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/09/capsicum-phodiyo/comments.htm

The photo on this page is lifted directly from my blog post:

http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/capsicum-phodiyo-capsicum-fritters.html

and the content is lifted directly from

http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/cauliflower-phodiyo-fried-cauliflower.html

2. http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/narlya-kheeri.htm

Photo and content is lifted from:

http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/patoli-nevryo-and-narlya-kheeri-coconut.html

3. Bread Upkari: http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/bread-upkari.htm

Word for word content lifted from: http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/07/bread-upkari.html

4. http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/cauliflower-phodiyo.htm

Copied From:

http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/cauliflower-phodiyo-fried-cauliflower.html

5. http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/chakli.htm

Copied From: http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/goodies-for-ganpati-on-ganesh-chaturthi.html

I was told that everything will be done in 2 hours. What is the result? Nothing much except that in a few posts, the extremely creative AndhraMirchi has made some cosmetic changes. Changed cumin to jeera, changed 2 cups to 5 cups etc, etc. The cheapness of some people.

More recent update: I got a call from the same lady at Sulekha Member Relations. They were able to confirm that this person did indeed make these cosmetic changes during the course of today. They have removed the user from Sulekha.com and along with the user they have removed all copied content. I don't think that is entirely true. I can still see some of the posts. Maybe it will take some time.

Cauliflower Phodiyo is word for word a copy from my post: http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/cauliflower-phodiyo-fried-cauliflower.html. The blogger is a different person called Saraamulu. I don't even know how to keep track of things like this.

Mixed Bean Soup

I've talked about how I'm on my way to soon becoming Ms. Bean! One of the things that I made recently was this: Bean Cutlets. I had some mixed beans leftover from this exercise and decided to try out this soup. It tasted more like a not-so-spicy Indian bean dish than a soup. But we had it with some toast and it felt like a full meal for S and like a soup for me!

1 1/2 cups Mixed Beans, soaked and cooked

1 tbsp Oil

1 Onion, sliced

1/2 cup Potato, diced

1 Carrot, chopped

1 tsp Green Chilli Paste

1 tsp Garlic Paste

1/2 tsp Coriander Powder

1 tsp Chilli Powder

3 cups Water

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a pan. add the onion, potato and carrot and saute for 2-3 minutes. Add the chilli and garlic pastes and cook for another minute. Add the coriander powder, chilli powder and the water. Bring this mixture to a boil and cook for 20 minutes. Stir in the mixed beans and season with salt and pepper.

My beans were mashed earlier and I think this soup is likely to taste much better with the cooked beans left whole.

Black Chickpeas Sundal

I am trying to include more beans and lentils in our diet in an attempt to eat healthy. I’d always left sundal for the festivals, but have recently started making it for breakfast or lunch. I also figured it made a great pre-gym snack in the evening. I soak these the previous night and cook them in the morning. When we get home in the evening, all I have to do is make the sundal.


1 cup Black Chick Peas, soaked overnight
1 tsp Oil7-8 Curry Leaves
1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/4 tsp Urad Dal
1/4 tsp Chana Dal
1 tsp Green Chilli Paste
1/4 tsp Ginger Paste
1 Red Chilli
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
1 tbsp Coconut, scraped
Salt to taste

Pressure cook the soaked chickpeas with salt for 4-5 whistles. Drain when done.

In a kadhai, heat oil. Add the urad and chana dals, mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves, ginger and chilli pastes, and the red chilli. Fry for a minute. Add the cooked chickpeas, and a little salt. Cover and cook 4-5 minutes. Garnish with the scraped coconut and enjoy.

A bowl of this about half an hour before hitting the gym is a great answer to post office hunger pangs and keeps me from feeling "low" during a workout.

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!

Bean Cutlets

Dried beans and lentils. I have used them in sundal and some konkani food. I've eaten it in some kinds of koottus. I have also made chhole and rajma. But beyond these, I almost always got stuck with these. I bought myself a huge frying pan last month and so I can finally shallow fry. I inaugurated the pan with these mixed bean cutlets. I used a mixture of pigeon peas, yellow peas, chickpeas, field beans, black eyed beans, and soya beans.

1 cup Mixed Beans, soaked overnight and cooked

2 slices Bread

2 Onions, chopped

2 tsp Chilli Paste

1 tsp Ginger Paste

1 tsp Garlic Paste

Salt to Taste

1 tbsp Oil

¼ cup Bread Crumbs

Oil for frying

Heat the tablespoon of oil. Add the onions and fry for about 3-4 minutes. Add the chilli, ginger and garlic pastes and fry again for about 2-3 minutes. Add the mixed beans and the bread. Season with salt and mash the mixture.

Allow the mixture to cool. Place the bread crumbs on a plate. Make small balls of the bean mixture and flatten them. Roll them in the bread crumbs until they are evenly covered. Shallow fry in a hot pan using a little oil as necessary. Turn them over when they turn brown and cook evenly on both sides.

We ate them with some green chutney and also made a couple of bean burgers with the cutlets. This turned out to be one protein packed lunch!

Kadgi-Chana Ghasshi

Chana Ghasshi is a very popular konkani dish. (I'd like to think so!!) The dish uses the small black chickpeas which are soaked overnight and cooked. I have eaten this version made at home countless times. I have also eaten Kadgye Ghasshi made from raw jackfruit somewhere. I decided to combine the two and make this. It was finger-licking good. I made it a little dry and thick to go with rotis and then diluted it a little at night to have it my favourite way. With rice, dali saar and batata talasani (potato matchsticks curry!)

Ingredients:

250g Raw Jackfruit, cut and cooked
1/2 cup Black Chickpeas (Kala Chana/ Konda Kadalai), soaked overnight and cooked
2 tbsp Scraped Coconut
3-4 Red Chillies
1 tsp Black Gram Dal (Urad Dal)
1 1/2 tsp Coriander Seeds
1/4 tsp Fenugreek Seeds
1 tbsp Tamarind Paste (Add more or less to taste)
Salt to taste
1 tsp Oil

For the tempering:

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


Heat the oil in a small kadhai and fry the chillies, black gram dal, coriander seeds and fenugreek seeds. Grind this together with the tamarind paste and coconut. Add a handful of cooked chickpeas to this and grind to a paste.

In a vessel, combine the cooked chickpeas, jackfruit, the paste and salt. Add some water to this and bring to a boil.

In a frying ladle, heat the oil, add the mustard seeds and asafoetida, and when the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves. Add this to the ghasshi and serve hot with rice and dali saar.

Since the JFI this month is about Tamarind and the AFAM this month is about Coconut. I think I'll have a rerun of the RCI Karnataka on my blog this month. All my konkani food recipes shall be out again this June. Off this goes to the two ladies for the "must participate" events.

Chickpeas Sundal

Memories of sundal usually involve Navaratri or the beach. Earlier I never made festival food at any time outside of that festival, but now I make it whenever I wish. With a little planning, this requires almost no effort and is a great dish to make when you’re rushed. Makes for a great breakfast or lunch by itself, though it can also be served as a side dish.


1 cup Chick Peas, soaked overnight

1 tsp Oil
7-8 Curry Leaves

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Urad Dal

1/4 tsp Chana Dal

1 tsp Green Chilli Paste

1/4 tsp Ginger Paste

1 Red Chilli

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

1 tsp Dry Mango Powder (Amchur) or 2 tbsp Chopped Raw Mango

1 tbsp Coconut, scraped

Salt to taste

Pressure cook the soaked chickpeas with salt for 4-5 whistles. Drain when done.

In a kadhai, heat oil. Add the urad and chana dals, mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves, ginger and chilli pastes, and the red chilli. Fry for a minute. Add the cooked chickpeas, dry mango powder or raw mango bits, and a little salt. Cover and cook 4-5 minutes. Garnish with the scraped coconut and enjoy.


Arundati of Escapades, is hosting this month's Weekend Breakfast Blogging # 22, the theme of which is Mango Madness. WBB is the brainchild of Nandita of Saffron Trail and since I make sundal for breakfast, this is off to Arundati this month.

My friends in the recipe marathon have posted for Day 2:

Lakshmi: Coconut Dosa

Srivalli: Sambhar Powder

Dhivya: Peas Pulao

Swati:Bread Upma

Bhags: Coffee Cake

Arundathi: Pierogies

Divya Vikram: Vegetable Puffs

Siri: Kosambari

Kabuli Kabab

You know how you come up with an idea. Then suddenly you find that that idea sort of takes over your life. And then you either lose sleep over it or you start dreaming about it the minute you fall asleep. I wish I could say this about my ambitions in life. At this point, I am only able to say that about food.

I’d been meaning to make chhole for ages. And the reason that I wanted to make it was not the craving for chhole or any such thing. It was so that I could make kababs from the leftovers. S was content eating the chhole as it was, but I stopped him on day three to make these little beauties. We argued a bit about why I had to turn the chhole into something else when it was perfectly good and was being consumed as is. I finally told him, “This is what I want to do with it. I’ve been dreaming about it. If it works well, you’ll love it.” He couldn’t say much about it. And the best part was that we both loved it.

1 cup Chhole
2-3 slices Bread
½ tsp Chilli Powder
Salt to taste
Oil for frying

Mash the chhole or puree it in a mixer. Add the bread slices and crumble them into this mixture. Add salt and chilli powder to taste. Make small balls and cook them in a lightly greased “Appey Kayli”. (You could also flatten the balls slightly and shallow fry them on a griddle.) Cook on each side for a couple of minutes. Serve with green chutney or tomato ketchup.

Since I used a non stick pan, I had low fat kababs. The oil that went into the chhole was the only oil in these. I will try this with different leftovers (like rajma) and share my success stories with you.

Cornmeal Vegetable Salad

I moved to a hostel about 11 years ago. For someone who ate vegetables everyday until that point even if it was bitter gourd, hostel food was an eye opener. The food that was cooked seemed specific to no region. At least no region I know would claim that they cook beetroots until they turn green. Horrible would be the best word to describe the “vegetable” served at lunch time. No, wait. That might be an understatement. Also, every vegetable dish had loads of coconut, onions, fennel seeds and chana dal. Finding the actual vegetable of the day was like a treasure hunt. I went off vegetables during that period and ate rasam rice and papads for lunch. But I was not used to not eating my dear vegetables. On my way back from French class, I would stop by at the market to buy some salad vegetables. That was difficult too as I couldn’t buy just one of each and I didn’t have a fridge where I could store any thing I didn’t consume the same day. Finally, I found one vendor in the Muthialpet market who’d give an assortment of vegetables for a fixed price everyday. A salad to me somehow always meant chopped cucumber and tomatoes seasoned with salt, sugar and pepper, garnished with some coriander leaves. It was almost as if there could be no deviation from this. But I got tired of that pretty soon and started adding radish, cabbage, carrots, onions and whatever else I could to increase my fibre intake. I would recommend a stay at the Pondicherry Central University girls’ hostel to any of you who want to lose weight. Thanks to my focus on academics, the breaking up of an 8 year old relationship, and the wonderful food, I lost 10 kilos in 6 months flat. I still like to think of it as the food. I doubt acads and relationships had anything to do with it.



Thankfully, my awareness about salads has increased over the years, especially so in the 9 months that I have been blogging. I have found recipes for a variety of salads. I look at ingredients and then work out substitutes if I have to. At times, the end result is lip smacking and at others, the less said the better. Here’s one lovely recipe that I cooked up. It was very tasty and filling. But what I loved about it was the fact that it was perfect eye candy!


½ cup Cornmeal
½ cup Green Chana (Green Garbanzo Beans)
½ cup Chickpeas, soaked and cooked
1 Cucumber, cut into strips
1 Carrot, cut into strips
½ each Red, Yellow and Green Capsicum, cut into strips
1 Tomato, cut into strips
1 tsp Mixed Herbs
1 tsp Chilli Flakes
1 tsp Roasted Garlic flakes
1 tsp Olive Oil
1 tbsp Lime Juice
Salt and Pepper to taste


Place the cornmeal in a microwave safe bowl. Add 1 cup of hot water and cook for 3 minutes on high.

In another bowl, place the salad vegetables along with the green chana and the chickpeas. Mix the olive oil and lime juice together and add the herbs, chilli flakes, garlic flakes. Add the cornmeal to the vegetables and pour the lime juice mixture over the vegetables. Season with salt and pepper and toss well.

This salad is so simple to put together that I am fairly certain I’ll make this more often. I’m sending this to

Coffee who is hosting this month’s Jihva for Ingredients.

Lasuni Chhole

There’s this friend of mine. We worked together in Hyderabad and lived about 5 streets away from each other. We spent many evenings together, cooking and eating at home, or checking out the many restaurants that kept mushrooming in the twin cities. But one thing irked me. She’d always try out their chhole-bhature. And then say that they didn’t know how to prepare it. We argued endlessly about why she had to bother ordering the stuff at all, but you know how these arguments go, don’t you?


One day, I decided to make chhole at home and she gave me this recipe over the phone. Being the ardent devotee of garlic that I am, I fell for it. It is simple and every time I make it, I get nice compliments. Now, that’s not easy to resist, is it? This may not be the recipe that she gave me, but it is what I remember and make time and again!

2 cups Chickpeas, soaked and boiled
3 tbsp Garlic, chopped finely
3 tbsp Coriander Leaves, chopped finely
2 Onions, chopped finely
2 Tomatoes, chopped finely
1 tsp Ginger, julienned
1 tsp Coriander Powder
1 tsp Cumin Powder
2 tsp Chilli Powder
½ tsp Pomegranate Seeds, powdered
1 tsp Chana Masala (optional)
1 tbsp Oil
Salt to Taste


Mix the chickpeas with the garlic and coriander leaves and keep aside for an hour or two.

Heat the oil in a pressure pan. Add the onions and fry for a minute. Add the tomatoes along with the ginger and fry for 2-3 minutes. Add the cumin and coriander powders along with the chilli powder. Add the salt and the powdered pomegranate seeds. If you are using the chana masala, add it now. Add the marinated chickpeas and about 1 ½ cups of water and pressure cook for 2 whistles (7 minutes).

When done, add some water depending on the consistency you're looking to achieve and mash a few chickpeas to thicken the gravy.

Serve with pooris, rotis or parathas. This is off to Sra for her A Fruit A Month (AFAM) - Pomegranate event. I used the seeds of this fruit... finally something different.

Middle Eastern Salad

In an effort to make our meals healthier, we decided to switch to salads for lunch. Over the past 6 weeks, we have been having a filling salad for lunch at least three times a week. We eat 5-6 small meals instead of 3 large ones and a salad for lunch seemed to fit in very well with this plan. I must admit that the idea came to me when I was travelling to NOIDA everyday. After breakfast at 7, I'd be hungry by 11 but had to wait until 2.30 to eat lunch because of the cafeteria's restrictions. So, I started packing a light snack, a fruit box and a salad everyday. (I was on this high protein 6 small meals a day diet some 4 years ago, but forgot about it with time.)

Salads to me somehow always meant kosumbaris or plain green salads. I hadn't, until three or 4 years ago, experimented with salads. Amma makes a lovely Waldorf salad that I am yet to attempt. But the best salad I've eaten to date is an Oriental Glass Noodle Salad at the Noodle Bar in Parel. I wish I had been smart enough back then to ask the chef for the recipe.

All this blogging has made me refer to cookbooks more and more. One of the books that I have often talked about is Favorite Vegetarian Dishes. I found this Middle Eastern Salad that I adapted to create this. It is very rare that I find a recipe that calls for several ingredients, all of which I have. So when I do, I go ahead and make it right away.

200g Chickpeas, soaked overnight and cooked

2 Carrots, diced

1 bunch Spring Onions, chopped

1 Cucumber, cut in quarters

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Pepper

3 tbsp Lime Juice

1 Red Capsicum, diced

Mix all the vegetables with the chickpeas in a large salad bowl. Add the salt and pepper along with the lime juice and toss gently. Enjoy it right away or chill it for about 30 minutes.

I love this salad and will be making it often. It is almost criminal for something so simple to taste so good. But as long as it does, I'm not complaining.