Tag Archives: Food

Recipe: Raw Banana Stew aka Vazhakkai Kootu

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This is one of my favourite kootus, the tanginess combined with the slight sweetness that jaggery imparts along with the crispy coconut flavouring is just yum! I love to eat it as it is, no rice or anything else needed to dress it up for me!

It’s quite versatile also, if you make it a bit runny (like a sambar), it can be eaten with rice. Add some papads or chips to go with it and becomes a delicious meal. When made thicker, it becomes the perfect addition to your meal. Eat with with a rasam or a mor kozambu and lick your fingers!

Vazhakkai Kootu

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Ingredients:
3-4 raw bananas (vazhakai)
3-4 tbsp Toor Dal
1 small lime sized tamarind
2-3 tsps Sambar powder
1.5 tsps oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp chana dal
1 tsp broken urad dal
2-3 tbsps coconut
3-4 dried red chillies
1 pinch asafoetida
2 tsps jaggery
Salt to taste

Method:

  • Wash the toor dal and soak it in a some hot water for 10-15 mins. After that pressure cook it and keep aside. Once you can open the cooker, mash the dal well so that it is even.
  • Soak the tamarind in hot to warm water for a while (depending on the size, it should take 20-30 mins). Once it’s soft and cool, mash it with your fingers and extract the juice. You can run it through a seive to make sure you don’t have any fruit in the juice extracted. Alternatively, just buy tamarind paste which is easily available in most Indian stores.
  • In a pan, add the oil and once it is hot, add the mustard seeds. When the seeds begin to crackle, add the chana dal and fry till it starts to change colour. Do not let it get black, as it will then become bitter. Then add the dried red chillies and a pinch of asafoetida and lastly the grated coconut. Keep frying the cocounut until it starts to lose moisture and becomes brown. When the coconut is brown and crisp, remove from the flame and keep aside. We will use this in the end.
  • Peel and chop the raw bananas into small pieces. The pieces should be slightly larger than bite-size. Peel and chop one by one as otherwise the bananas will blacken. While peeling, you can keep a container with water next to you and drop the bananas into it while cutting the next one. This slows the blackening process.
  • When you have chopped all the bananas, cook them in a pan with just enough water to cover them. When the bananas are half cooked, add the tamarind juice to the pan along with sambar powder and salt to taste.
  • Let the tamarind water in the pan come to a rolling boil and let it boil for 5-10 minutes untill the banana is fully cooked. Bananas usually cook very fast so make sure you do not over cook them.
  • Once the bananas are cooked, add in the mashed dal and check for salt. If you want, you can also add the jaggery at the point.
  • When the dal has mixed well with the mixture add the coconut, give it a good stir and switch off the flame.
  • Garnish with a bit of coriander leaves and your delicious vazakkai kootu aka raw banana stew is ready!
  • Serve with rice or rotis for a delicious meal…

Recipes: Mor Keerai aka Greens in Youghurt

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Another very typical tambram recipe is this spinach recipe. You can make this using any greens, and though the look of the dish is not that special (at least mine didn’t look very photogenic), the end result is a very tasty dish, which goes equally well with rice or with any Indian bread.

Mor Keerai

IMG_4683Ingredients:

  • 3-4 heaped cups of chopped and washed greens
  • 1 cup yoghurt which is whisked and smooth
  • 1/3 to ½ cup grated coconut
  • 3-4 red chillies
  • 1-2 tsps cumin seeds
  • 1 tbsp Oil or ghee for seasoning
  • 1 tsp Mustard seeds
  • 3-4 red chillies
  • 1 tsp urad dal
  • A pinch of asafetida

Method:

  • Wash the greens well, making sure that all dirt is washed away.
  • In a pan, put the washed greens with a little water and let it cook.
  • In the meantime, using a bit of the yoghurt, grind the coconut, cumin seeds, green chillies into a smooth paste.
  • Once the greens have cooked, using a potato smasher or stick blender, mash it or blend it coarsely. Then add the coconut paste, yoghurt and salt to taste.
    Let it boil for 5-10 mins and switch off the gas
  • In a smaller pan, heat the ghee or oil and when warm, put the mustard seeds. When the splutter, add the urad dal, red chillies and asafetida powder. Once the urad dal starts to brown, remove from the gas and pour over the cooked spinach.

IMG_4680Delicious Mor Keerai is ready to eat. Serve with rice and rasam as a kootu (make it thicker then) or over rice (make it thinner)

Recipes: Pumpkin, Carrot & Coriander Soup

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IMG_4709Last week I started craving for soup at work. The thought kept me company until I reached home and made this yummy soup. It was sweet with spicy undertones and extremely delicious. It didn’t take very long to make and is perfect for cold and rainy days!

Carrot, Pumpkin and Coriander Soup

IMG_4711Ingredients:

  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 7-8 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
  • 1.5 inch knob of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 3-4 dry red chillies, halved (can substitute fresh red chillies for this)
  • 1 tbsp cumin seeds
  • 1 to 1.5 tbsps coriander seeds
  • 3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
  • ¼ orange pumpkin, peeled and chopped
  • Half to one cup chopped coriander (use half for the soup and reserve the rest for the garnish)
  • Low fat milk as desired (to achieve the soup consistency you like)
  • 2 tbsps thick yoghurt
  • 2 tsps Red chilli powder (less or more as per your spice intensity)
  • 2 tbsps Cumin seed powder
  • Salt to taste
  • 2 tsps oil (I used a Olive Canola blend, you can use your normal cooking oil)

Method:

  • Heat oil in a pan and once it’s warm, add in the cumin seeds and coriander seeds.
  • Once they splutter add the dried red chillies (or fresh if that is what you are using) and stir for 30 seconds.
  • Next, add the garlic, ginger and onions in that order, stirring each one for 30 seconds before adding the next ingredient.
  • Once the onions have become translucent add the carrots and stir for a while.
  •  When the carrots become half cooked, which will take around 5-10 minutes, depending on the carrots,  add in the orange pumpkin and a handful of chopped coriander.
  • Add in a bit of salt to help the vegetables cook faster and stir the vegetables once a while.
  • You can also add in some water (about half a cup) and cover the pan to help cook the vegetables faster.
  • Once the vegetables are cooked and cooled, add in the yoghurt and blend using a stick blender or your mixer to a smooth paste. Use milk to help you blend, and get the consistency you like for your soups.
  • Transfer the soup back to the pan and heat it till it achieves a rolling boil. Check for seasoning and add more salt if needed.
  • Add in the balance yoghurt and switch off the gas.
  • Serve with garnishes of yoghurt and coriander leaves.

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Recipes: Thippili Rasam

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One of the forgotten spices in India, Thippili or Long pepper is no longer used in Indian cooking. This amazing ayurvedic medicinal plant or spice has so many benefits that once I started using it, I actually wondered why people were not incorporating it into their cooking.

According to Wikipedia, this spice has been referred to in ancient texts of Ayurveda. It reached Greece in the sixth or fifth century BCE, though Hippocrates discussed it as a medicament rather than a spice. As peppers are wont to be, these are very useful in curing or suppressing coughs and colds.

My kids call this rasam as “Medicine Rasam” and love it when they are sick. You can also drink it as a soup when you don’t really feel like eating and having this on a rainy day is bliss!

It’s not a very difficult recipe, with the biggest challenge being to get the Thippili. You should be able to get it in any Indian stores. There are different versions of the rasam and here’s how I make it…

Thippili Rasam

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Ingredients:

  • 1 small lemon sized ball of tamarind, soaked in warm water
  • 6-8 sticks of Thippili
  • 1/2 tsp whole black pepper
  • 1 cup Toor dal, cooked till it is mushy
  • 2 tbsps Coriander seeds
  • 2 tsps Cumin seeds
  • 4-6 dried Red Chillies (this depends on the spice intensity of the chillies plus your spice tolerance)
  • a pinch of Asafoetida
  • 1-2 tsps jaggery (you can omit this or use brown or white sugar as a substitute)
  • 1 tsp mustard seeds
  • 8 – 10 curry leaves
  • 1 tbsp ghee
  • 1-2 tomatoes

Method:

  • Soak the tamarind in warm water, then squeeze it out and run the water through a seive to get tamarind water. Discard the paste which is left behind.
  • In a pan, heat 1 tsp of ghee and lightly fry the thippili, coriander seeds, 1 tsp cumin seeds and red chillies. Once cool, blend it into a smooth paste along with the tomatoes.
  • Next mix together the tamarind water, asafoetida, salt and jaggery and start boiling it. Once the raw smell of the tamarind goes away, add the ground paste and continue boiling. After 10 mins, add in the cooked Toor dal and continue to boil for another 10 mins.
  • In a seperate, smaller pan, put the remaining ghee and heat it. Then add the mustard and balance cumin seeds. When the seeds pop, add the curry leaves and a pinch of asafoetida. Stir for a couple of seconds, switch off the gas and pour this seasoning over the rasam.

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Delicious Thippili Rasam is ready. Eat with rice or by itself as a soup!

In My Hands Today

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Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews – Marilyn Hagerty

A legendary 86-year-old food critic brings together a collection of the best down-home, no-nonsense restaurant reviews-from Red Lobster to Le Bernadin-culled from her fifty year career

Writing for her local North Dakota newspaper, the Grand Forks Herald since 1957, Marilyn Hagerty went from obscurity to overnight sensation in 2012 when her earnest, admiring review of a local Olive Garden went viral. Among the denizens of the food world-obsessive gastronomes who celebrate Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, revere all things artisanal, and have made kale salad a staple on upscale urban menus-Hagerty’s review ignited a fiery debate over the state of American culture. Anthony Bourdain defended Hagerty as an authentic voice of the larger American culture-one that is not dictated by the biases of the food snobbery that define the coasts.

In this refreshing, unpretentious collection that includes more than 200 reviews culled from a voluminous archive spanning over fifty years, Hagerty reveals how most Americans experience the pleasure of eating out. Bourdain hails Grand Forks as, “a history of American dining-in the vast spaces between the jaded palates and professional snarkologists of the privileged coasts-as told by one hard working small city journalist. . . . We watch American dining change over time, in baby steps. Traditional regional Scandinavian giving way to big chains, first iterations of sushi, early efforts at hipster chic. Part Fargo, part Lake Woebegone. It’s the antidote to snark. This book kills cynics dead.”