Moong Kosumbari (Yugadi /Rama Navami Pachadi)

This is a very simple dish that is made on Yugadi as well as Rama Navami. It has a nice tang from green mangoes which is probably the reason I enjoy this the most. (Please note that this is not the Ugadi Pachadi that is made in Andhra Pradesh.)

I made this in bulk last week to take to a slightly belated Yugadi celebration at the New Delhi Konkani Sabha on Sunday. I made this for 70 people. I expected to bring back a lot of it. I even joked to S that we could take a box each to work the next day. As it turned out, we did have lots left when people began leaving. Just when I started to close my boxes, a lady walked up to me and said, "If you don't mind, I'd like to take some of this home." I was thrilled. I emptied all the contents of one box into her container. She eyed the next box. I quickly emptied that as well. She said, "I came back quickly because I definitely wasn't going back without the pachadi." I said, "Thanks, I'm honoured." She looked at me and her expression was one of complete surprise. I probably didn't look like one of those people who could (and would) have anything to do cooking. But hey, I was thrilled.

Such encounters always take me back to this topic. But it could just be me. People who know me also know how lazy I can be. Considering I commute from Gurgaon to NOIDA and back everyday, they probably expect that I would not lift a finger. In a way, I'd like for people to think that of me. (The lower the expectations, the happier they'll be with anything I do.)

Coming to my "nearly award winning" recipe:

2-3 tbsp Cucumber, grated or finely chopped

1/2 cup Moong Dal, washed and soaked for an hour
2 tbsp scraped Coconut
1 tsp Green Chilli-Ginger paste

1 small Raw Mango, grated (or juice of 1 Lime)
Salt to Taste
Coriander leaves for garnish

For the tempering:
1 tsp Oil
1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
7-8 Curry Leaves

Grind the coconut along with the chilli-ginger paste and make a rough chutney like paste.

Place the soaked moong dal in a large bowl. Add the ground paste, cucumber, raw mango, salt and mix well. In a small kadhai or frying ladle, heat the oil, add the mustard seeds and asafoetida, and when the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves. Add this to the cucumber mixture.

Your pachadi is ready. Go ahead and make this on Rama Navami and get ready to get appreciation by the truck load. This is the last of the three part series on Rama Navami. I think I have finally gotten around to at least cooking and posting about things festive.

Cornmeal Sprouts Salad

As part of our weekly supplies, I always brought back a packet of sprouts. I’d end up putting them in a salad or make stuff like this Ambat. When I was telling Amma about this over the phone, she was very surprised. She felt there was no reason for me to buy sprouts when I could make them without much effort at home.


The first time I made sprouts at home, my maid thought she was doing me this great favour. She put them in a box and slipped the box into the refrigerator! They had just started germinating and she probably decided enough was enough. The next time around, I made sure I kept them out of her sight. One lives, one learns!


1 cup Green Gram sprouts
1 large Cucumber, cut into discs and quartered
1 large Carrot, cut into sticks
5-6 Spring Onions, chopped
½ cup Cornmeal


For the dressing:


1 tbsp Lime Juice
Salt and Pepper to taste


Place the cornmeal in a microwave safe bowl. Add 1 cup water and microwave on high for 4-5 minutes. Allow to stand for 10 minutes. Crumble.


Place the sprouts, cucumber, carrot and spring onions in a salad bowl. Add the cornmeal.


Mix the salt and pepper with the lime juice. Pour over the salad and toss. This is a light meal by itself that serves two. I’m sending this to JFI Sprouts as well as to the MLLA #6 hosted by Sug.

Apple-Cucumber Salad

I feel like a preschooler these days. I pack so many meals in different boxes every day. All in an attempt to eat healthy. While growing up, I went from lunch at 12.30 to dinner at 8, with just a glass of milk after school, at about 3.30. I was never hungry. I wasn't interested in food. College was a slightly different story. Our "lunch break" was from 10.30 to 11 and I'd go from 10.30 to 8 with just a glass of milk. I even went to work after college, and somehow never got hungry in between. These days, my story is very different. I am perennially hungry. And it doesn't help much that my colleagues seem to have food packets open all day long.

So, to help myself from indulging, I pack my breakfast and take it to work. That means that I have a fruit milk shake and coffee before I leave. I pack the "solid" part of my breakfast and eat it at work. That way I can say no to the chips or the cookies or the namkeen that are offered to me.

Regardless of what I eat for lunch, or how much I eat, I seem to be very hungry again by 5 in the evening. And again, it doesn't help much that my colleagues order Aloo Tikki or pav bhaji or papdi chaat from a famous chaat chain nearby. So, while we've switched to soup for dinner, I try and pack a "snack" for the 5 p.m. pangs.

This salad is one of those snacks. I'd been to a friend's place for dinner when S was traveling. I insisted that I'd have only soup and she made some chickpea tagine and this salad. She had already cut the cucumber, cabbage and apple. The dressing is really what made this salad divine. And what I loved about it was that we made it up as we went. As soon as S was back, I made this. I chopped the vegetables differently and so this doesn't look as pretty as the one my friend made, but the taste was identical.

1/2 cup Cabbage, shredded
1/2 cup Cucumber, diced
1/2 cup Apple, diced
For the Dressing:
1 tbsp Honey
2 tbsp Olive Oil
2 tsp Lime Juice
1 tsp Chilli Flakes
Salt to taste

Place the cabbage, apple and cucumber in a bowl. Mix all the ingredients for the dressing together. Pour over the vegetables.

Voila! The salad is ready. I know that I will make this very often. It is simple to make and the flavours, sweet, spicy and sour, come together very well. And it is the perfect excuse to say no to that bag of chips.

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!

Cucumber Kosumbari

Simple recipes are keepers. Much as I can bring myself to cook elaborate meals every once in a while (read once in a blue moon), I prefer keeping things simple. A few days ago, I decided to make a simple Iyengar meal of Ash Gourd Sambar, rice and Seppankizhangu Karumadhu. I wanted to make Vellarikkai Pachadi, but decided to make this instead. Simple and devoid of fuss.


Ingredients:
2 medium Cucumbers, grated or cubed

1/4 cup Moong Dal, washed

2 tbsp scraped Coconut

1 tsp Green Chilli-Ginger paste

Salt to Taste

Coriander leaves for garnish

For the tempering:

1 tsp Oil or Ghee

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

7-8 Curry Leaves

Place the washed moong dal in a large bowl. Add the chilli-ginger paste, cucumber, salt, and scraped coconut and mix well. In a small kadhai, heat the oil or ghee, add the mustard seeds and asafoetida, and when the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves. Add this to the cucumber mixture.

While you read this, I’m away in the Himalayas again, but blogger will keep you updated even when I’m climbing a rock or kayaking in the waters. So, don’t forget to send in your entries for this month’s MBP. The theme is Soups and Salads.

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.

Green Salad

We switched to having salads for lunch in the new year. But we didn't stick to it for more than a week. The reason being the variety of vegetables in the market. I love cauliflower and spinach. I absolutely love methi. Once this season passes, I'll be left to deal with piles of gourds and lady's finger and brinjal. We're eating healthy, but it's not all just salad. Here's one that I'd made a few days ago.

I got fresh green chana in the market and decided to make this salad. I followed a process similar to the Middle Eastern Salad.

1 cup Green Chana (Harbhara/Chhollia)

2 Carrots, sliced
1 bunch Spring Onions, chopped
1 Cucumber, cut in quarters
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Pepper
3 tbsp Lime Juice

1 tsp Yellow Mustard

1 tsp Maple Syrup
1 Red Capsicum, sliced

1 stalk Celery, chopped

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

I'm going to look forward to having more salads in summer when spending time in the kitchen won't exactly be something to get excited about.

Kala Chana Chaat

Healthy street food! Feels like an oxymoron of sorts, doesn't it? But we discovered this during our trip to Mussoorie. Stuck in a jam for about an hour, trying to get out of the hill station, we found solace in this nice chaat dished out by a roadside chaatwallah. I recreated it at home with whatever I could find and the result was pretty good. This must seem like an ordinary salad, but since I enjoyed it so much, I thought I should share the recipe with you.

1 cup Black Chana, soaked overnight and cooked

1 Carrot, grated

8 Cherry Tomatoes, halved

1 Cucumber, chopped

1 Onion, chopped

1 tsp Tamarind Paste

1 tsp Date Syrup

1 tsp Cumin Powder

1 tsp Chilli-Ginger Paste

1/2 tsp Lime Juice

Salt to taste

Chopped Coriander for garnish

Mix all the ingredients together and toss around a bit. Your salad is ready.

I know this doesn't even qualify for a post, but I am posting it here nonetheless. I hope you enjoy this as a meal or as part of a meal.

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.

Vellarikkai Pachadi (Cucumber in Curd)

All of us are always trying to make our meals more interesting. S thinks I am now doing all this because of my food blogging addiction. But by his own admission, I'd not repeated a dish in the first 3 months of our marriage. Not one repetition for any meal. And we didn't even have a gas connection in those days. I had a 45 year old electric stove with no heat regulator that has been passed down from Amma to me. I cooked on that for 3 months. We got our gas connection either in late December or in January of this year. (Yup! We've only been married 9 months.)

So, all I'm really doing differently now is cooking on a 4 burner stove and religiously taking pictures of whatever I make. Here's a dish that doesn't require much cooking. It serves as a great accompaniment to sambar rice, bisi bele huli anna, vangi bhat,etc.

1 Cucumber, peeled and cubed

1 cup Curd

1/2 tsp Chilli paste

1/2 tsp Ginger Paste

For the tempering:

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

7-8 Curry Leaves

Salt to taste

Whip the curd and add a little water. Add the ginger and chilli pastes and salt and mix well. Add the cucumber pieces.

In a small kadhai, heat the oil. Add the mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves. Pour this over the cucumber curd mixture. Chill for an hour before serving. Garnish with coriander leaves if you wish.