Bengali Thali

I was standing there, watching the waves dance. Hubby and kiddo were playing hide and seek with the waves. Teasing the water to come and touch their feet.

At the horizon, the anchored ships had switched the lights on, they were now twinkling like little stars far far away.

I decided to let the waves kiss my feet. I wanted to feel the salty, chilling water wash away all my worries. I looked down to watch them come and bury my feet in the sand.

Only I couldn’t. My paunch was coming in between.

Not one to take a hint easily, I stretched a bit further to see the waves bury my feet. I could still not see my feet, only my paunch was visible.

OK, I get the message. Time for some serious measures to watch my weight. No more fatty food.

While I ponder over the point, you guys enjoy this great thali, dishes prepared from the state of Bengal. Just like dieting sounds alien to me, Bengali cuisine is also foreign for me. So thanks a ton, Vaishali, for your insight into Bengali food and for helping me design the menu. Without your help, I would have been totally lost!

Like Kerala Sadya, Bengali food too has some rules when it comes to the food. I read about Bengali Cuisine here, written by Sandeepa of Bong Mom’s Cookbook.

Rice is the main cereal there, just like in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The first course has bitter gourd or neem leaves (something bitter) in it, this is supposed to have cleansing properties.

It is followed by rice and dal, with a fried bhaja or any other seasonal vegetable as a side dish. Fish and meat courses follow, but for vegetarian meals, paneer is a common substitute.

Then comes the chutney round. I tried getting pineapples, but I was out of luck that day. Went in for a raw mango chutney, and boy! it tasted so good.

The last round is yogurt and then some sweet. I made misti doi. I cooked the milk in the pressure cooker and I don’t know what I did wrong, the texture didn’t come out right. The taste was yum, but the texture didn’t come close to even my usual thick yogurt. Just bad luck, I guess.

The menu:

• Vegetarian Dishes/ Curries
  • Ucche Bhaja : Bittergourd cooked and fried in oil
  • Begun Bhaja : Deep fried eggplant
  • Aloo Poshto : Potato in Poppy seeds (I was not able to grind the seeds properly!)
  • Cholar Dal : Dal made with chana dal, made on festivals and special occasions.
  • Chanar Dalna : Paneer and green peas curry
• Rice
• Sides
  • Raw Mango Chutney (I couldn’t get pineapple that day!)
  • Aam pora Shorbot : Drink made from roasted raw mango
  • Misti Doi : Sweetened yogurt
• Sweet
  • Rasgolla : Paneer balls, cooked in sugar syrup

Ingredients for Eggplant fry:

• Eggplant , big variety              : 1
• Turmeric powder                     :  1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Oil for deep frying

Method:

1. Wash and pat the brinjal dry. Cut into 1/2″ thick round slices.
2. Apply salt and turmeric powder.
3. Heat oil in a pan. Deep fry brinjal until crisp and brown on both sides.
4. Drain on a paper towel and serve hot.
5. I have cut mine too thin. It should be a little more thick.

Except for the rasgolla and the dal, I am making everything for the first time. I hope I have done it right. This is a first time Bengali thali for me and I really loved the food. Who thought eggplants would be so tasty when fried with salt and a pinch of turmeric?!

Linked to:

• Blogging Marathon #15, under Thali theme
• Indian Thali Mela

Potato and Green Gram Dal

Weekend. Hearty lunch outside. Happy state of mind. Long drive, hubby’s favorite. That’s when I hinted a wish for shopping. Hubby looked worried and scared, kiddo clutched his tummy and pretended stomach ache.

They offered to drop me and my friend at the Mall, if we can spare them the agony of shopping. I gladly accepted the offer, happy to escape their repeated “Are you done now? Can we go home?” question.

And so, hubby dropped us and drove back home. Without taking the house keys and his mobile from me.

I received the SOS call he made from our neighbor’s place. I assured him that I am rushing back home, I just had one more shop to visit. Three hours and five bags full of purchase later, we reached home. Thank god for the friends and relatives living near by to feed and engage my family!

So now whenever my hubby drops me somewhere, kiddo anxiously checks with his dad,”Do you have the keys and mobile with you?” while I look outside, with a defensive look which says ‘Guys won’t understand the relation between women and shopping’.

This is a recipe from one of my neighbors. The flavor in this curry comes from the green chillies, ginger and garlic. No curry powders and no masalas. Its simple and really flavorsome. You can try substituting the green gram with sprouts and potatoes with sweet potatoes.

Ingredients:

• Potatoes                                      :               3 – 4, medium
• Whole Green Gram                 :                1/2 cup
• Onion                                            :               1 medium, sliced
• Tomato                                        :                1 medium (optional)
• Green Chillies                            :                3 – 4, per taste
• Ginger                                           :                1 – 2 ” piece, chopped fine
• Garlic                                            :                 5-6 pods, chopped fine
• Salt
• Oil

Method:

1. Cook or pressure cook the potatoes and whole green gram using separators for 2 or 3 whistles.
2. Slice the onions and roughly cut the tomatoes. Finely chop the chillies, ginger and garlic.
3. Heat two teaspoons of oil and when its hot, add the onions, green chillies, ginger and garlic.
4. When the onions becomes pink, add the tomatoes, if using. Saute for 3-4 minutes till the tomatoes get cooked.
5. Add the cooked green gram and a cup of water. Cut the cooked potatoes into cubes and add.
6. Add salt, cook for 5-10 minutes, mashing the potato pieces a bit with the ladle in case the gravy is not thick.
7. Serve with chapatis. Perfect!
8. You can use sprouted green grams and sweet potatoes too in this curry.

Linked to:

• Hot and Spicy Treats

Hot, Sweet and Sour!

As usual, I was standing in the bus stop, to pick up kiddo after school. The school bus came, dropped him and dropped a bomb shell along with that : Kiddo’s mid-term vacation starts from Saturday, not from Tuesday as informed earlier.

Technically if you look at it, its just Monday that they have declared a holiday. But there was so much of hope in that one day, that I cannot express in words! I stood there rooted for a whole minute before I could move.

Any way, now that I know, the next step is to lure my next door neighbor Mittu (6 year old girl) to play with my son. I do everything short of putting candies in a line from her place to mine, to get her to play with my son. I have volunteered with full enthusiasm to baby sit her for the holidays.

So as I am preparing myself for nonstop noise, house full of clutter, ‘(S)he did it first!’ complaints, crying & fighting episodes and damage to the house (yet to fix the curtain rod from last time), I am sharing a recipe here that has a bit of everything going through my mind – sweet, spicy, salty and a bit tangy, but something that you won’t mind doing again and again.

Ingredients: 

• Baby Potatoes                :    12 – 15, cut into wedges
• Sesame Oil                       :     2-3 tbsp
• Onions                               :    1, sliced thin
• Garlic                                 :    1 -2 pods, crushed and chopped
• Tomatoes                         :    2, chopped
• Capsicum                         :     1/2 of a big one, chopped
• Chilli Powder                 :      1 tsp
• Soya sauce                      :      1 – 2 tsp
• Sugar                                 :      1 tsp

Method:

1. Cut the potatoes into wedges and shallow fry in sesame oil. Drain and set aside in a paper napkin.
2. In the remaining oil in the pan, add the onion, garlic and capsicum. Cook till onions are done.
3. Add the tomatoes and chilli powder. Cook till the tomatoes are done.
4. Add the Soya sauce, salt and sugar. Cook for 2 minutes more and take off the heat.
5. Add salt to the potato wedges and mix thoroughly. Serve with the hot and sweet sauce over it.
6. Perfect with rice varieties, rotis or noodles.

Note:

I found this recipe here, who found it in my namesake’s site :)

I spooned the sauce over plain rice and served with potatoes on the side for my son. He loved it that way.

And yes, its really heavenly!

Linked to:

• Hearth and Soul Hop
• Anyone Can Cook

Memories and Moru Curries

Food that evokes memories is the best kind. Like this Moru Kaachiyathu. The minute I saw this, my mind went into flashback mode.

Before my marriage when I was staying with my friends, we had a cook to make dinner for us. The first day of her cooking, we found a tail in the gravy that she had made. Not one tail, but many!! Suspicious, worried and curious, my friend picked up the tail slowly and along with the tail came a whole brinjal!

Apparently it was one of our cook’s specialties : Ennai Kathirikkai. For this, you slit a whole brinjal all the way through and cook it in the gravy. We didn’t know that.

My friend tried tasting it, didn’t find it to her taste. She went inside the kitchen and made this moru kaachiyathu. Our cook did a  decent job for us, but still many a times, my friend’s moru curry would appear in the dining table.

The taste, the simplicity and the warmth of it still hasn’t left me.

So when I saw this in Ramya’s blog, my bookmarked blog for Blog Hop Wednesdays, I couldn’t help making it. I made her small potato spicy curry also to serve along this Kaachiya moru. Head out to Ramya’s blog for some awesome Kerala (as well as non Kerala) cuisine.

Ingredients: Kachiya Moru

• Yogurt                               :           2 cups
• Water                                 :           1 cup
• Salt                                      :           to taste

Tempering

• Small Onions                   :          4-5 sliced
• Green Chillies                 :          1-2, sliced fine
• Ginger                                :          1/2″ piece, chopped fine
• Garlic                                 :          1 clove, chopped fine
• Red Chilli                          :          1
• Mustard Seeds               :           1 tsp
• Fenugreek seeds           :           1 tsp
• Curry leaves                   :           a few
• Turmeric Powder         :           1/2 tsp
• Oil                                        :          1-2 tsp

Method:

1. Whisk the yogurt, salt and water thoroughly. Keep aside.
2. Heat oil in a pan, add the red chillies and mustard seeds. When they splutter, add the fenugreek seeds and curry leaves.
3. Wait for a minute for the fenugreek seeds to brown and then add the onions, chillies, ginger, and garlic. Cook till the onion changes color. Add the turmeric powder and cook for one more minutes.
4. Turn the heat to low and add the yogurt mixture, stirring continuously. When the yogurt gets warm, turn off the heat and remove the vessel from the stove. Else the yogurt might curdle.
5. Serve with rice and spicy potato curry.

Spinach Chickpea Soup

It was raining outside and very nice and cool inside the house. The sweet smell of rain,  a mood to cook something different, to see my loved ones enjoying their food, the satisfaction coming from that… all that inspired me to cook this wonderful soup.

Or you can say that a bunch of spinach leaves about to wilt, chickpeas frozen to death, potatoes dying for attention and immense laziness to cook up a whole dinner led me to whip this up.

Whatever be the reason to cook, this garlic flavored soup tasted wonderful. With potatoes and chickpeas in it, you can have them as the main meal itself (there by saving yourself the trouble of cooking anything more).

Warm toasted bread, a bowl of hot soup, great company, candle light dinner and rain outside. Cannot ask for more in life! (hmmm…may be for the power to come back soon!)

Ingredients:

• Onion                              :   1, chopped
• Garlic                              :   4 cloves, chopped
• Spinach                          :   1 bunch, cleaned and chopped
• Chana/Chick pea        :   400 gms, cooked
• Potatoes                         :   3 big, cooked and chopped
• Fennel Powder             :   1 tsp
• Coriander Powder      :   1 tsp
• Milk                                  :    2/3 cup (or Cream)
• Corn Flour                     :   1 tbsp
• Stock                                :   4 cups
• Tahini paste                  :   1 tbsp
• Olive oil                          :   1 tbsp
• Salt and Pepper

Method:

1. Heat oil in a pan, add the onions and garlic. When the onion turns brown, add the cumin or fennel powder and coriander powder. Cook for 2 minutes and add the spinach.
2. When the spinach is slightly done, add 3 cups of water or vegetable stock. I used Maggi stock cubes for this.
3. Add the cooked potatoes and chickpea now. Let everything come to a boil.
4. In a separate bowl, add the cornflour, tahini paste(if using), milk, salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly so that there aren’t any dry lumps of corn flour.
5. Add this to the soup and let it all come to a boil. Cook for another 5 minutes, check and adjust seasonings according to your taste. Take off the heat and serve hot.

Note:

I have adapted this from Linda Fraser’s book : The Vegetarian Kitchen.

Linked to:

• Hearth and Soul Hop
• Dish It Out, for this month’s theme of Potatoes and Leafy Greens
• My Legume Love Affair, started by Susan
• Herbs and Flowers, for this month’s theme : Garlic

Potato, Po-tah-to

My memory is really bad. Really, really bad! If I am trying a recipe from the internet, I come and check the recipe at least 20 times while making it.

Reminds me of how I used to make Rasam, when I was in college. It was the same recipe and I would make it 5 times a week. One would assume that after making the same thing again and again, I would have gotten a hang of it. But no, I used to ask my grandma the recipe at every single stage. ‘The water is boiling, what should I do next?’ , ‘How many spoons of rasam powder?’. Same questions every single day. After sometime, grandma started answering me before I could even ask the question!

This is a recipe from my old neighbor and it was so simple that I didn’t bother noting it down. Big mistake. Every single time, I would try a different version of this and get disappointed, since it didn’t taste the way its supposed to be. By sheer coincidence, we were in the same locality once again, but in a different country for a little while. I got the proper recipe then and wrote it down this time (whatever I remembered!).

These taste yummy and are easy to make if you do the cooking part in the microwave.

Ingredients:

• Potatoes                                     :   4-5, medium size
• Onion                                           :   1 big, cut into chunks
• Jeera                                            :   1/2 tsp
• Chili Powder                             :   1 -2 tsp, per taste
• Oil, turmeric powder, salt

Method:

1. Wash  and cut the potatoes into wafer thin slices, like for potato chips. You needn’t peel them.
2. Cut the onion into big chunks and grind into a paste along with chili powder, jeera, salt and turmeric powder.
3. Apply this paste all over the potato pieces till everything is well coated.
4. Add 1 -2 tsp of oil and  microwave without covering, for about 8 minutes, or till the potatoes are 80% cooked.
5. Add 2 tsp of oil in a pan and add the potato mixture and cook further for 5 – 10 minutes, till a wonderful aroma comes out.
6. Check the seasonings and adjust. Take off the heat when potatoes are completely cooked and the masala is brown.

Note:

This can be cooked completely in the microwave, without moving it to the stove top. You will have to add more oil and will have to keep stirring in between. You will need another 6-8 minutes.

This is my entry for Srivalli’s Blogging Marathon, under the category ‘Cooking with 5 ingredients or less’.

Check out here to see what the fellow participants are cooking.

Linked to:

• Blogging Marathon
• MEC : Potluck Party

Aloo Paratha

My son doesn’t pronounce the letter ‘R’ in Paratha. Its ‘Payatha’ for him. Same goes for Karate – its Kayathe. This cute mispronunciation is only for some words. A Car is a Car, Traffic is Traffic and Train is a Train for him. But not Paratha and Karate! I know that its a matter of time before he picks up the right word, but I can listen forever to this cute talk :-).

It seems like yesterday that he was the cute tiny little baby in my arms and now he is already going to full day school!! Where did all the time go?

Now a days, I find it difficult to carry him for more than a few steps as he is getting too heavy for me. But I am so really clinging to this last phase of carrying him! When he comes out of the school bus, I pick him up and carry him for at least a short distance. Nothing like carrying a smiling child to make your day better. Not to forget that he kisses me when I carry him and I get to give him a biiig hug :-).

So here is the recipe for Aloo ‘Payatha’ which was my son’s lunch for the day :-)

Ingredients :

For the dough:

Wheat flour : 1 1/2 cups

Water : as required (about 1/2 to 1 cup, depending on the type of flour)

Filling:

Potatoes : 4-5 medium, cooked and mashed

Onion : 1 medium, chopped fine

Green Chillies : 3 -4, chopped very fine

Ginger Garlic Paste : 1 -2 tsp

Amchur powder : 1 tsp

Coriander powder : 1 tsp

Cumin powder : 1 tsp

Chilli Powder : 1 tsp

Turmeric Powder : 1/2 tsp

Coriander leaves : 1 -2 tbsp, finely chopped

Oil – 1 tsp

Salt : to taste

Method :

1. Add the flour, 1 tsp salt in a big bowl and whisk together. Add water in 1/4 cupfuls and start kneading to get a soft, but not sticky, and pliable dough. Cover and keep aside for at least half an hour.
2. Mash the cooked potatoes thoroughly. There shouldn’t be any lumps as they would tear the dough when rolling.
3. Heat a tsp of oil in a pan, when its hot add the onions and ginger garlic paste. Saute till the onions are cooked and add the masala powders – chilli, turmeric, coriander, cumin and amchur. You needn’t add all of them, add whatever you have and then do a taste test later and adjust accordingly.
4. Switch off the heat, add the mashed potatoes, salt, finely chopped chillies and coriander leaves. Mix thoroughly, check the seasonings and adjust according to your taste.
5. Roll out one ball of dough into a 3” circle lightly dusting with flour if necessary.
6. Place a big spoonful of the filling in the center. Bring up the sides of the circle around the filling and enclose it completely, pinching the dough on top.Flatten it a bit, dust with some flour, and roll into a thick circle of about 1/4 inch thickness. Be careful while doing this, as the filling will split out if you use too much of force while rolling them.
7.  Heat a pan and cook the paratha on one side till brown spots appear. Flip and cook the other side too.You can add a dollop of ghee or butter on top of the paratha, if you want to.
8. Serve with thick yogurt and pickle or cook up a nice gravy, if you are in the mood.

Linked to What’s Cooking Wednesday, Tasty Tuesdays, Hearth and Soul Hop, Made from Scratch Tuesdays.