Sumptuous In-Between-Meals Salad with Vinaigrette Dressing

My sister and I were discussing the pattern of  blood sugar levels and how to maintain them through the day. She suggested that we have small portions of food spread over five or six meals a day, balancing the carbs, proteins and fibre ratio well. She told me about someone who would count and eat 12 boiled chickpeas and after another two hours something light and similar. That intrigued me and inspired to follow the small portions per meal and a mid morning snack.
The pattern works fine, but I am lazy to soak and boil or sprout legumes everyday. So I had to look for alternatives with vegetables. The idea of a colourful salad could be interesting and I read up a few that I may want to try.
I have in my stock lot of different toasted nuts that I add to the salads for the extra crunch. I read up something with sautéed pears and plums with nuts and rocket leaves with a very simple vinaigrette. That was in my mind to try and when I bought some pears that were crunchy, I wanted to try it. I did not saute' the pears, used them as they were. I had some green grapes and sour apples to go into the salad with cherry tomatoes and nuts. The dressing and a hint of sweetness with some sugar candy made a perfect mid morning snack.

Sumptuous In-Between-Meals Salad with Vinaigrette Dressing

Ingredients:
Serves two people
All measures are variable as per individual taste

1 Crunchy pear
2 small green apples (partly sweet and sour)
10 -12 cherry tomatoes cut in halves
15 numbers green grapes halved
a fistful of mixed toasted nuts
1 teaspoon sugar candy(optional)

Vinaigrette Dressing:
2 tablespoons Olive oil
2 teaspoons Balsamic vinegar
3 pods of garlic minced and crushed to infuse

Method:
Make the dressing by mixing the oil and vinegar. Chop the garlic to a mince and drop it into the liquid. Crush with a spoon to infuse the garlic in the vinaigrette.
Cut the pears and apple in thin slices. I retained the peel as they held the crunch in the salad.
Place them in a salad serving bowl/ dish.
Add the tomatoes and grapes.
Toss the nuts in and the sugar candy.
Pour the vinaigrette and give a toss.
The salad is ready to serve/ eat.

The sweet, sour and pungency from the vinaigrette make this one a very welcome  and colourful mid morning snack.
The No Croutons Required event is jointly hosted by Lisa and Jacqueline. This April 2015 edition is hosted by Jacqueline. I am sending my salad to the event.

Chettinad Style Urulai Vadhakkal

 It is not as often as my husband would like it, that I cook potatoes. On most of my visits to the market, I find only a whole bag of wilting potatoes and the vendors are not willing to break the bag. I try not to buy them. They have to be consumed early to avoid rotting. And a big bag of potatoes are way too much for just the two of us.
Lately this has changed, there is improvement, in quality. The other day, a particular lady who sells me fruits had a crate of small size, clean looking, potatoes. Soon as we spotted it, my husband instructed the driver to buy from her a kilo and she dropped into my shopping bag just a little more. These were good size for the dum aloo recipe and I had a lot more. Some of those potatoes were a wee bit larger than the baby potatoes, which I used in this curry. I halved them and used in this recipe.

I am not sure if it is truly Chettinad style. I found the recipe in a cookbook which has titled the recipe thus. I have not adhered to the recipe from the book totally; lot of tweaks and shortcuts were done and added a few for my touch too. Nonetheless,  this is a spicy stir fried version of the potatoes that use a lot of aromatic spices that render a hint of extra heat to the potatoes. I kept making changes, as I was cooking and this recipe in the post is the result of all my whim and fancy.

Chettinad Style Urulai Vadhakkal - Stir Fried Potatoes in a Spicy Mix

 

Ingredients:

Serves 4 people

About 20 baby potatoes (or you may use small size potatoes cut in two, which is what I did)

2 large red onions sliced fine

1 or 2 tomatoes (depending on their size)

1 tablespoon oil for brushing on potatoes

1 tablespoon gingelly oil for cooking

3 pods of garlic minced(optional)

11/2” piece ginger minced

1 teaspoon red chilli powder

¼ teaspoon turmeric powder

10 black peppercorns crushed coarsely

Salt to taste

Spices (to be dry roasted and crushed in a mortor coarsely)

1” piece cinnamon

2 cardamoms

4 -5 cloves

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 red chilli

1 small piece of bay leaf

Some kalpasi (edible stone fungus)(Optional)

Tempering:

1 teaspoon oil

2 teaspoons mustard seeds

2 dry red chillis

2 sprigs of curry leaves

A little of the sliced onions (from the above sliced lot) can be reserved

Method:

If you have baby potatoes use them as whole. Otherwise, cut medium size potatoes  in big chunks.

Pressure cook/ boil just until you will be able to remove the peel.
Sprinkle some of the salt, turmeric powder and the red chilli powder on them and toss them in the one tablespoon cooking oil.

Spread them on a baking tray lined with aluminium foil and bake at 200 degrees C for 40 minutes.
While the potatoes are baking, dry roast the spices and make a coarse spice mix.

Remove the potatoes from the oven and keep them ready until the curry mix is cooked.

Heat the gingelly oil in a heavy bottomed pan. 

Saute’ the onion slices kept aside for tempering until they are crisp. Drain and remove from pan and keep aside.

In the same hot oil, saute the rest of the onion slices, ginger and garlic until the onions are transparent. Add the spice mix and toss to remove any lingering raw taste.

Chop the tomatoes and add to the above with required salt.

Cook until the tomatoes are pulped and the whole mix has thickened.

Add the potatoes, adjust the salt, if required and toss them in the pan until the spicy tomato onion mix coats the potatoes well.

Add the pepper corns powder and toss. Remove from heat.
Transfer to a serving dish.

Heat the oil for tempering in a pan, add the mustard seeds, broken red chillis and curry leaves. Allow the mustard seeds to crackle and the chillis and curry leaves are crisp.

Temper the cooked potato curry with this and add the crisp onion slices to garnish.

Serve with a meal as side dish.

Sencholam Dosai

With a new found love for millets and while the enthusiasm lasted, I purchased a variety of millets, during my last visit home. I have been using them regularly and the possibilities seem endless. Those were days my mother and her maid were willing to experiment anything in her kitchen; my father's clients would bring for us some harvest from their farming lands and millets were cultivated widely around our area.
My mother often made these dosais and kuzhi paniyaarams and sometimes roasted, powdered and mixed in ghee porimaavu. When I was trying to cut down rice and switch partly to millets, I asked her for a few recipes. This dosai is one, she told me, that she made quite often; with the same batter, with a little more fermentation, it was possible to make kuzhipaniyaaram  with cholam. It works in my favour to grind one batter and make two dishes. Now with refrigeration, I hold the second dish off, for a day or two longer. It is so easy to grind the batter, whenever you are grinding for idli or dosa with rice and urad dhal, replace half the quantity of the par boiled rice with great millet/ shorgum which is sencholam in Tamil language.

I was picking up millets at my regular grocer's back home, in Namakkal, I asked for the ven cholam which is white and husk removed. The shop assistant, an elderly man who knows me for long, chided me and said while looking for healthy options, I should go totally, all the way. He packed me a kilo of the red variety of shorgum. The crepes and the kuzhipaniyaarams have a beautiful light red colour and that is quite appealing.

Sola Dosai - Jowar Dosa - Crepes with Great Millet/ Shorgum

Ingredients:
Makes 15 crepes
1 1./2 cup parboiled, idli rice
1 1/2 cup shorgum/ great millet/ sivappu cholam
3/4 cup urad dhal
2 teaspoons fenugreek seeds
Salt to taste
Oil for drizzling over the crepes

Method:
Wash and rinse thoroughly the rice and soak in water for about three hours.
At the same time, pick, wash in few changes of water the cholam. Soak separately in water for three hours.
Soak the fenugreek seeds separately.
Half an hour before grinding, wash and soak the urad dhal.
I use my wet grinder to grind the batter. You may use a heavy duty mixer grinder to grind also.
First, drop the fenugreek seeds in and grind them for a little while until they are very frothy.
Drain and add the urad dhal. Grind to a fluffy batter adding little water in increments. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.
Now grind the rice and cholam together adding sufficient water to a smooth batter.
Transfer to the mixing bowl and add the salt.
Mix well and allow the batter to ferment to about eight hours. Overnight fermentation is recommended.
Before preparing the dosai, give the fermented batter a thorough stir turning it well.
Heat an iron griddle or a non stick dosa tawa.
Pour the a ladle full of batter and spread it in a circle which is about 20 centimetres in diameter and 2 millimetres thick.
Drizzle a spoon of oil around the sides. Cook over a medium flame until the underside is done.
Flip to the other side, add oil if  necessary and cook this side also well. Remove from the griddle and place on the serving plates.

Serve hot with tomato and onion chutney and coriander chutney, milagai podi or plain coconut chutney. Choice is yours.
This makes a filling breakfast, a light night dinner choice and if made in small cute sizes can be packed in your kids' lunch boxes too.

Kummelweck Rolls -We Knead to Bake 26

This month, the assignment for the We Knead to Bake - Bread Baking Group, is a simple savoury bread.The challenge Aparna put us was to show what we make out of the rolls because making them  was a simple task by itself.
The sprinkling of sea salt and caraway seeds makes this bread roll special and different. 'Kummel means caraway seeds and 'weck'  means roll in the native language of the origin of this bread, which points to Germany. These are hard rolls, much like the crusty Kaiser roll, but sprinkled with caraway seeds and coarse sea salt. They are used to make a special sandwich called 'Beef on Weck' in Buffalo in New York. Thinly sliced and cooked rare roast beef and horseradish are sandwiched and typically served with fries and dill pickle.
 The recipe given below makes 8 burger size rolls while I made half the recipe and made 4 of them.  For the added challenge, I made a potato patties with paneer burji filling and served as a sandwich with layered mint chutney, patty, sliced cucumber and tomatoes.

Kummelweck (Kimmelweck) Rolls

(Adapted from http://www.jewishfood-list.com/recipes/bread/rollskimelweck01.html)

Ingredients:
Makes 8 burger size rolls, can be halved to make 4

2 1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup warm milk
2 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 egg white (optional) (I simply added little more water)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
3 to 3 1/2 cups bread flour (or all purpose flour + 1 tablespoon Vital Wheat Gluten)
Egg wash (optional) (anything that will help the caraway seeds and salt to stick/ I brushed with little cream)
Coarse sea salt for sprinkling
Caraway seeds for sprinkling
Little more oil to grease the bowl, baking tray and for brushing over rolls
Water for spraying

Method:
Add to yeast the warm milk and warm water. Let it stand for five to ten minutes to become frothy.
In a larger bowl, or the bowl of a mixer, place the above yeast mixture, oil and honey and mix well. If you are using the egg white add it along.
Mix them well and add 2 1/2 cups of flour initially and mix in a dough.
(I added a little extra water to replace the egg white).
Add the flour to the dough and knead until a tacky dough that is not sticky has been achieved.
Roll the dough in a ball and place it in a oil-coated bowl. turn the dough in the oil to allow the oil to coat the surface of the dough. Cover and keep aside for an hour or more for the dough to double in volume.
Deflate the dough by punching it down, roll again in a ball and allow another rise for 30 minutes.
Divide the dough in 8 portions, roll each in a ball and flatten slightly.
Place the rolled and flattened roll on a greased or parchment lined baking tray.
Lightly brush or spray with some oil. Cover the shaped dough again loosely and give it another 30 minutes to rise.
Brush the rolls with the egg wash/ cream/ or anything that will help the salt and caraway seeds not to fall off the rolls while baking.
Make a + like slit on the top using a sharp blade or scissors.
Sprinkle caraway seeds and coarse sea salt on the top surface of the rolls. Mist them with little water.
Pre heat the oven to 220 degrees C (425 degrees F).

 

Bake the rolls for five minutes, open the door and mist again with a spray of water. Take care not to keep the oven door open for long.
Bake them for another twenty minutes or so, until the rolls are brown on top and done.
Cool on wire rack. 

I halved the recipe and had to reduce the baking time to 16 minutes after the initial 5 minutes, in all 21 minutes.
Serve them as sandwiches or burgers.

I served my rolls as burgers. I made patties with potatoes and placed some paneer burji inside the potato, covering all over with potato mash.

Shallow fried the patties and used them in the burger.
I cut the kummelweck roll in half, spread a layer of mint chutney on the bottom and placed the patty over it. I placed sliced cucumbers and tomatoes on top of the patty closed it with the top of the roll.
I served this with a simple cucumber salad.

The same dough can be used to make Vienna Loaf and Salt and pepper sticks.

To make Vienna Loaf:
Follow the recipe with the below mentioned changes:
After the second rise of the dough, divide in half.
Shape each half in an oval shape with tapering ends.
After the final rise,apply the egg wash/ cream brushing and slash the top with 1/2" deep slit lenghtwise.
Leave the sprinkling of salt and caraway seeds.Bake the loaf at 200 degrees C for 5 minutes + 30 minutes as for the kummeweck rolls.


For the salt and pepper sticks:
Follow the above recipe with the following changes:
Give the dough just the first rise. No need for a second.
Divide the dough in 13 equal portions and draw out each portion in a 12" long rope of even thickness.
Place them about an inch to inch and a half apart on your baking sheet.
Allow the rise now.
Apply the egg wash or brushing and do not make slits.
Coarsely grind black pepper and have the coarse sea salt ready.
Sprinkle them on top pf the rolled out sticks.Do not use the water mist.
Bake at 220 degrees for just 15 to 20 minutes.

Now head over to this post where Aparna and other members have put up links to their respective posts and enjoy the variety of  burgers, sandwiches and other ideas with the rolls.

Vaazhaipoo Parupparaichcha Kari

There was yet another banana tree in the backyard that has shown promise of bearing about 20 fruits. the blossom had shed a few layers and I decided to bring it down. The fruits will take a long time to ripen and become edible. This is not a variety that we can have raw bananas for cooking. The blossom and stump, however, are. I had plans to make the regular stir fry with just coconut and cooked thuvar dhal. Somehow the plans did not work and the blossom had already been kept a day long. That meant a few layers were to be shed off. The cut vegetable then was quite little for a sumptuous meal. So I decided to make this with the lentils and have a sufficient quantity.
Paruppu araichcha kari can be made like the paruppu usli by steaming the coarsely ground batter and cooking it with the vegetable. I chose to grind the lentils and cook them on heat with oil until they were dry to take on the vegetable and blend with it. This process needs a bit of arm wrestling exercise to stir and cook the lentil batter, removing the raw taste in the process and removing most of the moisture. While you may cook a variety of vegetables with the lentils in this manner, I like this one, where the insipid taste of the banana blossom is masked and the spices and lentils stand out. You may choose to make the lentil batter with just thuvar dhal or a mix of thuvar and channa dhals. I like to add the channa dhal and some coconut with one teaspoon of urad dhal to soften the lentil mix just a bit.

Vaazhai Poo Paruparaichcha Kari - Banana Blossom and Lentils Stir Fry

Ingredients:
Serves 4

One medium banana blossom
1/3rd of a cup thuvar dhal
2 tablespoons channa dhal
1 teaspoon urad dhal
1/8 cup grated coconut
5-6 dry red chillis
1 small piece of ginger
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon asafoetida
1/4 cup gingelly oil (or any cooking oil)

Salt to taste

For tempering:

2 teaspoons mustard seeds
2 teaspoons urad dhal

3 fresh green chillis cut in small pieces
2 sprigs curry leaves

Method:
Clean and prepare the banana blossom as found in my earlier post for blossom fritters.
Cook the cut blossom in sufficient water adding turmeric powder, when softened add salt and cook further. Remove excess water by squeezing the cooked vegetable by hand.
Soak the dhals after rinsing them. Grind to a coarse batter along with coconut, red chillis, ginger and just enough salt.
Add the turmeric powder.
Heat the oil in a heavy and rounded bottom pan.
Add the mustard seeds and let them crackle. Add the urad dhal, curry leaves and the green chillis and toss until the dhal is golden and chillis are done.
Drop the batter in. On low heat cook the dhal batter, stirring constantly until most of the moisture has evaporated and the dhal has a light brown tinge. Keep stirring to avoid lumps. Press down and break lumps if they form.
Add the drained banana blossom and cook further stirring well so that there are no big lumps. Add more oil in small quantities only if absolutely necessary.

The final dish should be slightly dry with little moisture.
Serve with steamed rice and kuzhambu/ rasam as a side dish.

Patties with Paneer Burji Filling

I had no set plans when I made an extra serving of the paneer burji. I would have made a pulav or something just so I can dish out some 'one-pot-meal' idea. So it just waited a day long in my refrigerator to be consumed. My husband's working hours are so long that there is a long interval between his regular meals, breakfast - lunch - dinner. This gets him hungry for some snack when he returns from work. just tea and some biscuits are not his choice. He looks for something home cooked as snack with his steaming hot cup of masala chai.
Having reached what is labelled typical middle age, we are monitoring every component of health to avoid complications and issues in the coming years. Keeping that in mind, I prepare something light and most times what I decide is healthy, whether or not it goes well with him. It is alright to indulge once in a while is it not? So I decided to make patties. The plan was to make ragada patties and I had soaked the peas and made other preparations too. Then I was reminded of the burji and the idea of a filling into the mashed potatoes struck. These patties were very welcome, who does not like potatoes?

Paneer Burji Patties
Makes two large patties or four small patties

Ingredients:
3-4 large potatoes ( I had smaller sized in my veggies basket and used 7 of them)
1/2 cup prepared Paneer Burji
Salt and red chilli powder for the potato cover
1 - 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1/4 cup bread crumbs
Oil for shallow frying

Method:
Steam the potatoes and remove the peel.
Mash them very well.
Add the salt and red chilli powder and mix.
Cook this mashed potato in a heavy bottomed pan, on a low flame until it is almost dry. The moisture will break the patties while shallow frying.
Divide the potato mash into two portions for large patties, if you want to use them in sandwiches or four smaller portions if you want it as a filling in your wrap; four portions will be ideal for a snack too.
Flatten the potato mash portion in your palms, keep a portion of the paneer burji in the centre.
Cover the potato well over the filling. and place on a lightly oiled plastic sheet. Flatten into a 3'' diameter circular disc (or smaller with the four portions).
Make a thick paste with the all purpose flour and water.
Spread the bread crumbs on a shallow dish.
Cover the flattened patty with the paste to coat all over the surface.
Turn the patty in the bread crumbs coating it with a slightly thick layer of bread crumbs.
Heat a heavy pan or iron griddle. When it is hot, pour a teaspoon or two of oil; place the patty on the oil and drizzle more oil.

Cook on a medium flame, until the bottom side has browned and is crisp. Turn the patty over and cook the other side until golden brown. Drizzle more oil so it fries well on all sides. Take care not to turn it repeatedly as it may break the patty.
Serve the patty as a snack with some tomato sauce or coriander chutney.

Paneer Burji

Events happening in faraway Australia and New Zealand have shortened my day to fewer hours, I must admit. Ever since the ICC Cricket World Cup matcheshave started, I am spending most part of the day watching them, sometimes live, most times rerun or highlights. Thus my day has shrunk, so to put it. I try to quickly cook stuff to put on the table, come up with easy and simple dishes for our dinner.
When I was away in India, the organic milk pack my husband had purchased, went stale and the milk had curdled while he boiled it. He kept aside the rest of the packs and I made some paneer with the milk. With low fat / skimmed milk the paneer is not so much of milk solids and tends to be more crumbly. I planned to use the paneer in as many ways as possible. I made paneer burji so I can have it as a side dish or stuff it in my dosas as paneer dosa.
Burji with paneer is scrambled cottage cheese with other vegetables and condiments. This delightfully spicy and delicious dish is often paired as a side dish for parathas, paav and rotis. It can be had as sandwich with bread or rolled as filling in dosas, wraps and few more possible ways to consume this.
Vegetables, onions and spices are generously used to make it spicy and irresistible. There is not much to the recipe as such and you can let your imagination and make this more innovative.

Paneer Burji - Scrambled Cottage Cheese with Vegetables and Spices

Ingredients:
Serves 4 people
2 cups crumbled paneer / cottage cheese
2 large red onions sliced
Few medium coloured bell peppers cut
1 carrot sliced fine
1 cup chopped tomatoes
3-4 green chillis chopped very fine
11/2" ginger minced
5 pods of garlic minced
2 tablespoons Oil
1 table spoon softened butter
Salt to taste
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons red chilli powder
1 teaspoon garam masala powder

Method:
Crumble the paneer and keep ready.
Heat the oil and butter in a shallow pan. Add the cumin seeds and sauté for few seconds then add the chopped green chillis. Toss until the chillis are well coated in the fat.
Add the minced ginger and sliced onions. Cook until the onions are pink and translucent. Then add the garlic. Cook on low fire to remove the raw taste of the garlic.
Put in the tomatoes, chilli powder, salt and the garam masala powder. Cook to pulp the tomatoes.
Meanwhile in another pan heat some oil and cook the coloured peppers. When the soften a bit, still retaining their crunch, add them to the mix above.
Cook until the mixture is almost dry and add the crumbled paneer to it.
Keep tossing on a low fire until they all come together in a scrambled mixture with some moisture retained in it.
Paneer burji is ready to serve.

 

Serve with rotis, phulkas, paav or bread.
 I made an extra batch of this for the two of us. I tried it for a filling in my patties which eventually worked well in my burger too.