Rasagulla Sabzi

Rasagullas! The word brings back memories of St. Mark's Road and KC Das. I can't say that I've always loved this Bengali creation. My absolute favourite is the Rasamalai and I'd think the Sandesh comes a close second.

But at one time, rasagullas weren't as easily available. I had seen this recipe for Rasagulla Sabzi in one of Tarla Dalal's earlier books. I was probably 13 or so and I told Amma I wanted to make this. For a change, she must have thought I was crazy. We got to eat good rasagullas about once a year (in a good year!) and imagine making a side dish with those instead of relishing them as they were.

Sometime back, we found some rasagulla tins on a BOGOF sale. So we reurned home with two tins. If you've noticed, we're not big on Indian sweets. This was the perfect situation to be in. I remembered this recipe and set out to make it, from memory. It turned out to be too spicy for my liking. I will tone it down the next time I make it. But make it again I will.

6 Rasagullas

1/4 cup Tomato Puree

1/4 cup Milk

2 tsp Oil

Salt to taste

For the masala (grind to a paste)

1 Onion

4 Red Chillies

1" piece Ginger

1" stick Cinnamon

2 pods Cardamoms

2 Cloves

1 tsp Cumin Seeds

1 tsp Coriander Seeds

3 cloves Garlic

2 Green Chillies

1/4 tsp Turmeric Powder

Squeeze the rasagullas to remove the sugar syrup. Soak them in plain water and keep aside.

Heat the oil in a kadhai. Add the ground masala and fry for 5-7 minutes. Add the tomato puree, milk, salt and a little water (about 1/4 cup). Bring to a boil over a low flame and cook for 10 minutes.

Squeeze the water from the rasagullas and add these to the gravy. Serve with rotis or parathas.

Methi Thepla

Amma came across this recipe some 10-12 years ago on a Sanjeev Kapoor show. I was at the hostel then and when I went home one weekend, she made these along with a creamy mushroom curry. While, I don't get to eat that mushroom curry much these days, the thepla is a standard feature. And I love it best with this sweet and spicy Gujarati Gorkeri pickle. I haven't bothered to get the exact recipe from Amma or from Sanjeev Kapoor's book. (I'm fairly certain it is in there!), I only know the ingredients.

1 cup Wheat Flour
1/2 cup Besan
1 Ripe Banana, mashed
1 tsp Green Chilli paste
1/2 tsp Ginger paste
1/2 tsp Garlic Paste
1 tsp Cumin-Coriander Powder
1/4 tsp Turmeric powder
1/2 tsp Chilli Powder
1 cup Fenugreek Leaves, chopped
1/2 cup Curd
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
Salt to taste
1 tbsp Oil + oil for frying

Mix all the ingredients, except the oil for frying, together and knead into a dough, adding a litle water if necessary. Allow this to sit for about 15 minutes. Divide the dough into small balls and roll each into a chapati. Heat a tawa and toast evenly on both sides using a little oil. I'd recommend about a half a minute a side on a moderately hot tawa.

The banana offsets the bitterness of the fenugreek and he resulting thepla is not sweet not bitter. This is great for brekfast, lunch, dinner or any of those in between times!

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.

Gawarfali ki Sabzi

This summer I resolved to try out the summer vegetables that show up in every market I visit. While I always ate all vegetables and cleaned my plate without as much as a whimper, there are vegetables that I dislike. Tinda is one of them. But I bought it, made it, and guess what, ate it too. Likewise, I bought cluster beans and yard long beans, snake gourd and bottle gourd, and everything else that summer threw at me. What worried me was the fact that if I didn’t make certain vegetables, I could no longer retain my title of “not-at-all-picky eater”. Moreover, if and when I have children, I figured my likes and dislikes should not govern their meals. If I forget about a certain vegetable over time, by the time I have children, I might have erased memories of some vegetables from my brain completely. Now that I have a blog, I can cook these vegetables, enjoy them in different ways and save them here for eternity.


Cluster beans (known as Gawarfali in Hindi, Mitkesaang in Konkani, Kotthavarangai in Tamil, Mattikaya in Telugu) happen to be the variety of beans that takes the longest to cook. Appa’s grandmother used to call it, “Avasarathukku edhiri” (loosely translated as the enemy of emergency/urgency). I have learnt that the best way to cook these is in my pressure cooker. Amma cooks them in advance and freezes them so that she can use them at a moment’s notice.


I came across this recipe in Tarla Dalal’s Rajasthani Cookbook and modified it immediately and set to work. (My system is not ready yet for the heat of Rajasthani food and given some health problems I had recently, I am sure it never will be.) It helped that I’d cleaned, strung and chopped the beans earlier. This can be really time consuming otherwise.


2 cups Cluster Beans, chopped, pressure cooked and drained
1 cup Curds
1 tbsp Gram Flour (Besan)
1 tsp Chilli Powder
½ tsp Coriander Powder
1 tsp Oil
¼ tsp Mustard Seeds
¼ tsp Asafoetida
½ tsp Fennel Seeds
Salt to taste


Beat the curds with the gram flour, chilli powder, coriander powder and salt. (A friend recently told me to use the blender to get the perfect texture while beating curds rather than use a whisk.)


Heat the oil in a kadhai. Add the mustard and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the fennel seeds. As soon as the fennel crackles, add the curd mixture and bring to a boil over low heat, while stirring continuously. Add the cooked cluster beans and cook for another 5 minutes.

We had this with rotis for lunch and I know I will make it again next summer. For this summer, I have several other recipes to try out with this vegetable.

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.

Kadhi and (No Fry) Pakoda for a Milestone

Remember my post on Palak Kadhi? This post is directly connected to that. Let me rephrase that. This post is a direct outcome of the comments that my namesakes, Arundathi and Arundati made on that post. One of them was happy that there was no deep frying and the other thought that fried koftas would have been nice. I couldn’t help remember this picture that was sent with some forward I received. But it got me thinking. For a week or so I thought about how I could have pakodas in my kadhi and yet avoid the pain of deep frying. Since S was traveling again, I had plenty of milk and curd in the house and decided to make kadhi yet again. I decided to make mixed vegetable pakodas to put in my kadhi.


So far, so good. But I didn’t want to heat oil to fry the pakodas. I did the next best thing. I brought out my appey kayli and made my “pakodas” in that. It tasted really nice and once the pakodas soak up the kadhi, you can’t tell that they weren’t fried. It is amazing what blogging does to you. One post and its comments led to my experiment and this way I can have my cake (err pakoda) and eat it too.

Pakodas (Dumplings):
2/3 cup Gram Flour
1 tsp Chilli Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 Onion, finely chopped
½ cup Mixed Vegetables, chopped and steamed
1 tsp Green Chilli Paste
2 tbsp Coriander Leaves, chopped
Salt to Taste
A few drops of oil


Kadhi:
1 1/4 cups Curd/Yogurt
3 tbsp Gram Flour
2/3 cup Water
1 tsp Ginger Paste
1 tsp Garlic Paste
1 1/2 tsp Chilli Powder
1/2 tsp Turmeric Powder
1 tsp Coriander Powder
1 tsp Cumin Powder

Tempering:
1 tbsp Oil
1 tsp Cumin Seeds
4 Red Chillies

To make the dumplings, mix the gram flour with the chilli powder, salt, baking soda, onions, mixed vegetables, green chilli paste, and coriander leaves. Add enough water to form a thick batter. Heat the appey patra and lightly oil the moulds. Drop a spoonful of the batter into each mould. Fry until golden brown, turning once and using a few drops of oil if necessary.

To make the kadhi, whisk the curds with the gram flour and water. Add all the spices and salt and mix well. Bring this mixture to a boil over low heat, stirring constantly.

For the tempering, heat the oil in a frying ladle and add the cumin seeds. When they crackle, add the red chillies and take off the flame.

To proceed:

Add the pakodas to the kadhi. Add the seasoning and serve hot with rice.

This experiment couldn’t have come at a better time. This is my 300th post and, in my opinion, it is extremely reflective of the essence of blogging and all its associated joys. Thank you all.

Vegetable Makhanwala

This is a near pefect party dish. Not too spicy, not too bland. Perfect with rotis or pulao. And since it is made with mixed vegetables, there’s something in it for everyone. I even add pieces of paneer if I’m serving this at a party. (Yes, there are people who count paneer as a “vegetable”!) This way, I don't have to bother about catering to different people's likes and dislikes.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp Oil (Or ½ tbsp butter and ½ tbsp Oil)
1 Onion, ground to a fine paste
1 cup Mixed Vegetables, cooked
¼ cup Tomato Puree
¾ cup Slim Milk
½ tsp Turmeric Powder
1 tsp Chilli Powder
1 tsp Kasuri Methi
1 tsp Sugar

Salt to taste Heat the oil. Add the onion paste and fry for a few minutes. Add the turmeric and chilli powder and fry for another minute. Add the mixed vegetables and fry for 4-5 minutes. Add the tomato puree and salt. Mix well and cook until the mixture bubbles. Add the milk and bring to a boil while stirring. Add the kasuri methi and sugar. Cook for 5 minutes. Garnish this with coriander leaves if you wish and enjoy with rotis or rice.

This is my favourite way to serve and eat mixed vegetables. I also find this dish to be one of the best ways to clean up the fridge. You can put just about anything you find (except brinjals and lady's finger) and the dish would still taste like a million dollars.