Blueberry Cupcake -Wheat

Ingredients
1. 2 cups Wheat (atta)
2. 1/2 tbsp baking powder
3. 1/4 teapsoon soda
4. 1/2 cup Sugar ( might want to add a little more. Mine were not tasting very sweet)
5. 12 tbsp Ghee
6. 1/2 cup Milk
7. A handful of blueberries and a pinch of salt.
8. Almonds (optional)

Steps
1. Heat oven at 350 degree.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients except for blueberries
3. Add ghee and mix again and then add milk
4. Grease the cupcake pan with ghee and add the mix to it.
5. I added almonds on the top and then baked it for 20 minutes or until the tooth-pick comes out clean.

This is also my entry to Announcing Whole Grain (Eggless) Baking Event: Whole Wheat

Easy-breezy Pav Bhaji

My horoscope for today read “Do something on a regular basis, write a journal, work out etc etc” so I remembered my long forgotten blog.

I am feeling lazy to cook plus we have a dinner invite today, a colleague of mine had a baby girl and today is her naming ceremony and I am looking forward to it. As usual AD will not join us he does not join me for any W parties and we have had numerous arguments that I go to all the C parties. Anyway I love them so no point arguing as it is one of facts that we have to live with the fact that we work for competitors.

I decided to cook easy-breezy yummy Pav bhaji and yippee it turned out well, AD loved it and isn’t always when he finds no faults with my cooking :) . SD has not been keeping well he has not been eating at all and loosing a lot of weight. All his blood test results have been normal but still his appetite has not been good. Doc has prescribed some medicines for 7 days to see if he starts to eat else we will have to travel to Little Rock to see a stomach pediatrician.

Easy-breezy Pav Bhaji



Ingredients

1. Medium Potatoes- 2
2. Carrots – 2
3. Peas - a handful
4. Corn – a handful
5. Tomatoes – 2
6. Cauliflower – a few florets
7. Cabbage
8. Onion – 1
9. Green chilly – 5
10. Capsicum – 2
11. Oil – 2 tablespoons
12. Ghee – 2 tablespoons
13. Butter for the pav
14. Salt
15. Turmeric a pinch
16. Coriander powder – 2 teaspoons
17. Cumin powder – 3 teaspoons
18. Red chilly powder – 2 teaspoon
19. Amchur – 2 teaspoon
20. Cumin seeds 1 teaspoon
21. Sauf – 1 teaspoon
22. Pav bhaji masala – 2 teaspoon

Steps

1. Roughly chop all the veggies
2. Add all the masala’s and oil except for pav bhaji masala, cumin seeds, sauf and Amchur.
3. Pressure cook them with one and half cup water for about 3-4 whistles.
4. Once done using the hand grinder mash all the veggies
5. Heat ghee in a pan add cumin seeds, sauf, pav bhaji masala, amchur and salt if required
6. Add this to the mashed veggies and on low flame heat it while you cook pav
7. For pav apply butter and on a griddle heat them for sometime
8. Serve with finely chopped onion, lemon and coriander leaves.

Atta Mathri for Holi

Here is my first entry for "Jihva for Ingredients". This month it happens to be Wheat.

JFI - Wheat

I tried out baked Atta Mathri for Holi this time. For sweet dish I opted for my regular Kalakand.

Kalakand
I followed Sandeepa's Kalakand recipe to the ‘T’ and it has never failed me. Every time I prepare it, I thank Sandeepa for letting know such an amazing yet simple technique to prepare this yummy sweet dish. With my busy schedule, I always have it as a fallback dessert recipe for a special occasion.

kalakand-for-deepavali

Atta Mathri


Ingredients

1 cup Atta (Wheat Flour)
¼ cup Kasturi Methi leaves (dried Fenugreek leaves)
1 tsp Ajwain (Carom seeds)
1 tsp Jeera (Cumin seeds)
1 tsp Red Chilly powder
½ spoon Amchur (dry Mango powder)
¼ tsp Sugar
¼ cup of melted Ghee (Clarified Butter)
Water as required
Salt to taste

Steps

1. Heat the oven at 350 degree.
2. Mix all the ingredients and knead the dough. The dough should to be left little harder than what one would keep for making regular rotis/ chappatis.
3. Divide up the dough into small balls
4. Using the rolling pin flatten the balls into small tortilla like discs
5. Using a knife/fork, prick few holes and cuts. This will prevent the dough from puffing.
6. Bake them for 15 min or till golden brown.
7. Serve with hot mango or chilly pickle. You can even store this in an air tight container for a week.

Ragging should be fun not this

I finally decided to get back to blogging and write a recipe but then decided to catch up on the holi pictures, fun facts and the news going around before I sit.

I know no one would go to hinduonline to do that but then I grew up in Chennai and reading "The Hindu" used to be a ritual every morning. Though “Times of India” and rediff have all the masala and gossips but still reading the hindu makes me feel closer to Chennai.

Sadly the front page carried this news and my heart goes out to the family. My prayers are with them.

“My son complained of ragging but I never imagined it would come to such a pass”

Love this Campaign

Well, I loved reading this post so here is the link.
http://popology.blogspot.com/2009/02/pink-chaddi-campaign.html

Love the pink chaddi campaign :).
Well on my front, loads of recipes and thoughts are waiting to be written. First there was this wonderful and refreshing India trip which I have to write about but work is hectic and eating away all my time. Hopefully after a month I should have some personal time which I can devote to some serious blogging.

Diwali is not the same anymore

This month has been full of festivals and work. With absolutely no time for SD and constant calls today though it is working weekend I managed to take some rest and a couple of blogs.

On 5th was AD’s b’day I managed to bake the cherry chocolate cake that Akay posted. I just altered a couple of ingredients which I would post in the blog shortly. SD and AD loved it so much. Thanks A-kay

Then there was karva chauth on 17th. The only festival when ma would dress up. She would look her best unlike most the days where she would never bother to even change her earnings she would be dressed in the best of sari, jewelry and make-up. She loved this festival. As for me I loved this festival just for mom and hated it for a long time and still I don’t know why I am doing it. My ma did not ask me to, my in-laws do not celebrate it but somehow on my own I unknowingly started it. This year I managed to survive the hustle-bustle at work and fast without water and food also found two more Punjabi ladies to do the pooja at 4.00. SD found it so amusing that mama is waiting for the moon and kept telling me that he will find it for me and he kept asking me are we going ‘tata’ then why are you all dressed up.

Then there is diwali coming up on 28th and SD’s b’day. SD was born on Choti diwali (a day before diwali) so my mom celebrates his b’day on that day too. As such he is a Halloween baby and his b’day is fast approaching. Project freeze date is also 31st Oct so anyone in IT can imagine the state I am in.

Diwali in our house used to be a huge affair. Now it isn’t the case but mom still insist on doing the shakun and cleaning and she did try the best she could on my first diwali after marriage and SD’s birth but I and she know what we were thinking and the fake smiles.

Diwali celebrations back home used to start almost one month in advance with cleaning, painting the house and distributing sweets to family and friends and everyone coming home to give sweets too. Everywhere we would go we would be offered nuts and sweets and a mandate to eat. In our house mom would take out all the sliver plates, the silver nut boxes, mom would be very strict with us not empty the nuts and dirty the place ( :) ) initially mom and dad used to go to every house to distribute sweets and once me and my bro were big enough we would be given the list and boxes of sweets to go around and only the very important people (elders) mom and dad would go. These days people are becoming health conscious instead of sweets people are distributing nuts, gifts, sugar free sweets.

On the day of diwali since we have been in Chennai for long we would wake up early since by 4 am people will start bursting crackers in the colony and we (me and my bro) would not be allowed, we would quietly watch and though not in our custom mom would still insist on we all taking a good oil-bath and then we would be all excited to go to dad’s office for the pooja where he would normally close the old account book and start a new one and then burst some crackers, distribute sweets to everyone in office and back home after a good lunch we would sleep and wait for the evening.

Evening we all would adore our new clothes mom start the pooja light the diya and me and my brother would decorate the balcony with the diya’s and wait for mom to finish the pooja and after the pooja most of the north Indians would gather up wish everyone a happy diwali with all the sweets, gujia would be a must and then we would start bursting the crackers, dad was a big fan of crackers and so we would always have enough and I remember it would go on till 12pm or 1pm easily and the last used to always be the 10,000 wala ladi… that would go flying everywhere and not stop for a long time…

Now diwali isn’t how it used to be, just a week before diwali and few days after karva chauth we lost the person who meant the world to us. Now diwali is the most difficult of the festival for me to survive. I need to be happy follow most of the formalities and not show mom how I am feeling and not let her feel sad , it brings in happy memories and tears at the same time for all. God does like to play funny games after a few years almost on the same day he put SD in our life’s and now we still don’t know if we should rejoice or remember but I know deep down diwali is not the same anymore for any of us.

Palak Paneer

Being a punju how can I not cook/like palak panner but as a kiddo I used to hate this since I did not like spinach but then now being a mom myself I try and find different ways to make my son eat his greens and well I end up making egg in spinach gravy, potatoes in spinach gravy and since SD loves shrimp, I even cook shrimps in spinach gravy.


Ingredients

1. 1 pack of baby Spinach (Sam's).
2. 1 onion
3. 2 tomatoes
4. Ginger about 1 teaspoon
5. 1 tablespoon oil
6. Pinch of hing
7. Salt as per taste
8. 1 teaspoon garam masala
9. Red chilly
10. ½ teaspoon Coriander powder
11. ½ teaspoon Amchur powder
12. Sugar a pinch
13. Paneer.
14. 1 cup chopped mustard leaves
15. 1 teaspoon Jeera

Optional

1. Besan
2. Heavy whipped cream.


For Paneer

1. 1/2 gallon Milk
2. ¼ cup Lemon juice.

Steps to make paneer

1. Boil the milk Keep stirring it to avoid burn. Let it cool. Once it is warm re-heat and keep adding the lemon juice till it curdles.
2. Wrap the curd in a cheese cloth or a clean white cloth. Squeeze well. Tie a knot and place something heavy on the paneer still wrapped in cloth. This will help squeeze out extra water and also give a shape to the paneer.
3. Let it stay for 30 min to an hour. Once done cut the paneer in your desire shape.
4. I prefer not to fry the paneer but AD likes it fried so for this recipe I fried the paneer.

Steps to cook the gravy

1. Boil the Spinach and mustard leaves. Drain excess water and make a paste of the greens.
2. Make a paste of Onion, ginger, tomatoes
3. Heat the oil.
4. Add hing, Jeera and the paste of onion, ginger, tomatoes
5. Once the puree leaves the oil. Add all the dry masalas expect for garam masala and sugar.
6. Add the spinach and let it boil
7. At this time if you think that the gravy is too watery then dry roast besan and add it to the gravy. (If you are using only spinach this might be the case but with mustard leaves generally the gravy is thicker).
8. Add paneer (or below substitutes) and let it simmer in the gravy, add a pinch of sugar and garam masala and leave for about 5 min.
9. If you like you could add heavy whip cream to it at this point of time. I did not.
10. Enjoy it with Nan’s or rotis.

You can also substitute Paneer with

1. Fried Potatoes to enjoy aloo saag.
2. Fry shrimps and add them to the spinach gravy. Marinate the shrimps with salt and turmeric before frying.
3. Boil eggs, cut them in halves and add them to the same gravy.