Cauliflower – now here’s a vegetable that can go either way if you ask me. Till date, I like my cauliflower with a little crunch. I think cauliflower has a little bit of a bad rep, because some folks just don’t know how to cook it well. I’ve had cauliflower in many forms – steamed, steamed and tossed in butter, filled in some parathas, as pakodas / fritters or curried like an aloo gobhi (a recipe I will share with you soon), and I like most of them. But serve me some overcooked, mushy cauliflower florets and I will struggle to get through a portion of it.
This is another ingenious way of cooking cauliflower, if you ask me. They call it a healthier alternative to fries, and I will agree. Can you imagine a healthier alternative to fries? It was hard for me to, and I always thought this would be a lot of hype and would not deliver. But, I was wrong, and I’m glad I was wrong. Because these little beauties turned out gorgeous. They are so more-ish, its hard to stop eating them. Like you see in the picture below, I served these up with some skewered chicken (recipe to follow in the next post). It was super quick to put together and it was absolutely delicious. It needs very little prep work, so once you pop it in the oven, you can get on with other tasks you may have to complete.
It turns out, that these poppers can be served with some ketchup, but we loved them just the way they were and didn’t even bother with the ketchup.
If you haven’t tried these yet, I really think you should. I know that these baked poppers will make an appearance at my dinner table every now and then 🙂
Baked Cauliflower Poppers
1 head of cauliflower
2-3 tbsp. olive oil
Salt, to taste
Freshly crushed black pepper corns, to taste
Preheat the oven to 190º – 200ºC.
Wash and dry the cauliflower and cut it up into florets. Try and maintain the same size to ensure even cooking.
In a large bowl, toss the cauliflower florets, olive oil, salt and pepper. Make sure the florets are evenly coated with the oil and seasoning.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil and spread the cauliflower over it evenly.
Bake for about 20-30 minutes, stirring and turning the florets over every now and then, to make sure they don’t burn. I stirred them around every 8 minutes or so. Keep an eye on them and turn them as needed. You don’t want them to burn.
Once they’re nicely roasted, serve them up hot and enjoy.
This would be so much healthier than a bag of potato chips to snack on too.
I have a soft spot for dips – I don’t know if I like them all (I’ve tried a few that weren’t my cup of tea – but I think its just because of how it was made and if it were made well, I’d probably have liked them too), but there are a few that I really, really like. This hummus is one such dip. I don’t know what it is about dips, but I love having something to dip breadsticks, crackers, chips, vegetable sticks etc. in. This month I chose to do a post on Hummus – a chickpea dip, since we’re at the C & D stage of the Eating The Alphabet series, hosted by Brenda of Meal Planning Magic. Chickpeas have a host of health benefits. They are high in fibre, help regulating blood fat and lowering blood sugar levels. You can read more about the health benefits of these little gems here, here and here.
I’d usually serve this hummus with pita bread, but the day I made the hummus, it completely slipped my mind to pick some up. I did the next best thing and made do with what was available in my kitchen, sliced bread which was lightly toasted and cut up. And it tasted great. I spiked the hummus a little by garnishing it with some red chilly powder, but if you don’t care for spicy food, you can simply leave it off. The recipe mentioned below is more of a guide than a recipe, I would suggest that you keep tasting as you go along and adjust the seasoning as required. Also, I hear that Tahini is an essential ingredient for a good hummus dip, I didn’t have any so I simply added some sesame seeds to the mix before blending. In the event I try using Tahini, I will update this post with my observations.
Hummus
1 cup chickpeas, boiled and drained (You can use the canned variety if you’d like. You can find the method to boil your own chickpeas here. If you are boiling it yourself, reserve some of the liquid.)
1- 1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic, minced finely
1/4 tsp cumin powder
Red chilly powder, to garnish
A spring of fresh coriander, to garnish
Salt, to taste
In a blender, blitz the chickpeas, sesame seeds, garlic, and cumin powder using a little of the reserved liquid to aid the process. Don’t use too much as you don’t want it too runny.
Add the lemon juice and blitz again, scrapping down the sides of the bowl as needed. With the blender running, gradually add in the olive oil and blend till everything is smooth and creamy.
Taste the dip and adjust the seasoning as required. At this stage, if you need to add salt, please do so.
Transfer to a serving bowl and garnish to your liking.
If you’d like to join in on the fun, just comment and let me know and I’ll get back to you with the details.
A couple of days ago, I found a little treasure. Atleast to me it feels like one. I’ve always loved collecting recipe books or recipes from all over the place in the hope of trying them out someday. About 5-6 years ago, before I’d ever even thought about blogging, I’d printed out a bunch of recipes and filed them, and with time, the file kept growing, but I never really got around to trying too many of the recipes. (The only downside to it was I never really thought about documenting the source of these recipes, so unfortunately can’t credit the source. I will try to hunt them down but haven’t had much luck yet.) Then with the many tasks that occupied my day, not to mention an extremely stressful job, taking care of my home, moving from one house to another, and so on, this precious file of mine somehow fell off my radar and ended up in the deep dark recesses of my book shelf. This my friends, is what I found the other day. I was quite excited and quickly perused through it looking for vegetarian options and to my delight, I found quite a few.
The first one that I tried was the Rajma Masala or Kidney Beans Curry. I’ve tried a couple of recipes for curried Kidney Beans in the past, but this one is my husbands favorite and considering the fact that he doesn’t like kidney beans, that says a lot. I loved the simplicity of the recipe. This one is a keeper.
Rajma Masala
1 cups red kidney beans
2-3 onions, roughly chopped
3/4″ ginger
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 tsp garam masala powder
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tomatoes, finely chopped
Salt, to taste
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp red chilly powder
2 green chillies, slit
2 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves, chopped
Soak the rajma in water overnight or alteast for 4-6 hours.
Drain, rinse and cook the rajma in fresh water till it is tender. I pressure cook it for 10-12 minutes on slow fire after the first whistle. Drain the beans and reserve the liquid.
Grind the onions, ginger, garlic and garam masala powder to a paste.
Heat the oil in a pan and add the cumin seeds and let them sputter without burning them. Add the onion paste. Saute it till the paste has cooked off and the oil separates.
Add the chopped tomatoes and continue to saute till the tomatoes are soft and have incorporated with the onion paste and the oil starts to separate.
Add the turmeric powder, chilly powder, coriander powder and stir well till mixed.
Add the green chillies and the beans and stir gently to avoid mashing the beans, making sure the spices coat it well.
Let it cook on high heat for a couple of minutes.
Add the reserved liquid that the beans were boiled in till you have reached the consistency you like. You may not need to use all the liquid or if your reserved liquid is not sufficient, you can add water.
Bring to a boil and simmer for about 10-15 minutes.
Lastly take it off the heat and add the chopped coriander leaves.
Serve hot.
Note: Sometimes this is served with a dollop of butter on top.
I love peas pulao! There, I said it. This mildly flavored rice dish adorned with little green peas is something that I can eat by itself with a fresh garden salad on the side. Having said that, this rice is usually whipped up in Catholic homes all over Mumbai and Goa for a special meal, be it a festive occasion or a birthday or any other gathering. It pairs amazingly well with a variety of meat curries, like pork sorpotel, chicken cafreal and many, many more, and I can tell you it is a real treat. I look forward to sharing my family recipes for these meat curries with you soon.
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For now, we’ll get back to the peas pulao. The preparation is really simple and the few spices used add a fragrant warmth to the rice rather than a spicy heat. Don’t let the simplicity of this dish undermine its flavors. Try it out and see for yourself.
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A lot of folks seem to have trouble with the rice ending up very soft and mushy. This happens for a number of reasons like wrong amount of cooking water, too much stirring while the rice is cooking etc. I’ve made this rice hundreds of  times and have never encountered such a problem. So I think if you stick to the measures, you should be good to go.
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Peas Pulao
2 bay leaves 1-2″ cinnamon sticks 2 pods green cardamom 4-5 cloves 6 black peppercorns 1/2 large or 1 small onion, chopped 1 tbsp oil 1 cup long grained rice 2 cups water 1/4- 1/2 tsp turmeric powder A handful of green peas Salt, to taste
If you’re using frozen peas, keep them out to thaw for a while.
Wash the rice and leave it to soak in some water for about 15-20 minutes while you prep the rest of the ingredients.
Heat the oil mildly in a vessel and add the bay leaves, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and peppercorns and let them warm up and infuse the oil with their aromas and flavors, taking care not to burn the spices.
Add the chopped onion and saute till the onions and soft and translucent and start taking on a little colour.
Add the turmeric powder and stir well.
Drain the water that the rice was soaking in and tip the rice into the vessel.
Stir gently making sure you don’t break the grains down while stirring.
Once the rice is well coated with the spices in the pan, add the water, salt to taste and the green peas.
Cover and let it cook on a low flame, till all the water has been absorbed.
Fluff up the rice using a fork and not a spoon so that you don’t mash the grains.
Serve hot with your favourite curry.
Please remember that if you’d like to change the quantity of rice used, the rice to water ratio should always be 1:2. That is 1 measure of rice to 2 measures of water to cook it in.
EDITED: The recipe is the same great recipe. I’ve just taken better pictures and add a video version of the recipe too.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Its nice to take a moment to be thankful for everything in our lives. I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends!
Today, I’m going to share with you my Apple Pie recipe. It is a very basic one but it’s a real favorite. Just in case you are still scrambling getting things together for your Thanksgiving dinner, I’d suggest trying this out. It comes together really fast and served with some good vanilla ice cream, its a real winner.
Apple Pie
Makes 1 x 8″ pie
For the shortcurst pastry –
250g all purpose flour
125g cold butter cubed
A pinch of salt
A little cold water (about 60ml)
Add a pinch of salt to the flour and mix well.
Rub the cold butter cubes into the flour till it resembles wet sand or coarse bread crumbs.
Adding very little cold water, bring the dough together. Do NOT work the dough too much. If you do you’ll be stuck with a dense pastry, not a light, flaky, buttery one.
Lightly bring the dough together and press into a disc. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for about half an hour, during which you can prepare the filling.
For the filling –
5 large apples (I prefer using apples that are crisp and a little tart or you can also use a combination of apples)
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 teacup water
4 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon powder
A little milk for glazing (you can also use an egg wash if you’d like)
Add the lemon juice to the water and keep aside.
Peel, quarter, core and slice the apples and add it to the lemon juice and water solution.
Add the sugar and cinnamon powder and mix well.
Cook till you’re left with a nice stew. It should be nice and pulpy but not a mash. Be gentle while stirring. Cook till all the water evaporates.
To make the pie –
Divide the dough into two parts.
Roll it out on a lightly floured surface. Place in the in pie dish and trim the edges. Pierce the base randomly with a fork, to ensure that it doesn’t puff up.
Bake at 220ºC for 6 minutes.
Remove from the oven and fill it up with the prepared filling.
Roll out the other part of the dough and place on top of the filling to cover the pie.
Seal the edges by crimping it with a fork.
Using a sharp knife make a few slits on the top to let the steam escape.
Brush with a little milk or beaten egg.
Bake it at 220ºC for 12-15 minutes.
Cool the pie, cut into wedges and serve with some vanilla ice cream.
The last couple of weeks have just passed me by. There are so many goodies that I’ve whipped up during this time, but I just haven’t gotten around to posting any of them yet. To top that I had the craziest weekend. We had the family over for lunch on Saturday, it was so much fun having them over, that’s 11 people and 3 dogs in all. Once they left, I had to focus on a real quick clean up since I had to complete an order of a kilo of handmade liqueur chocolates and a couple of dozen thank you bars for a Monday pickup. By the time Monday arrived, I was ready to sleep it off. Of course, that was not possible. Even though things were so hectic, I enjoyed every minute of it.
Since I had very little time to put meals together in the last few days, I whipped up some of the quick but good stuff. One such treat is the Aloo tikki, or a potato cutlet. Its comes together fairly quick and is really tasty. I served it as a side but I think it would be really tasty in a vegetarian burger as well. This tikki is fairly versatile and you can add a few finely chopped veggies to it if you’d like. You need to add some bread crumbs to make these a little sturdier than they would ordinarily be. It also adds a lovely crunch to the tikkis. This would be a great way to serve the kiddies their veggies, in a burger. I think they’d enjoy it. Try it out and let me know how it goes.
You’ve probably heard me mention the “poori” (pronounced poo-ree) in a couple of posts before, like here and here. Both these posts give you ideas of stir fries and curries that you can serve with pooris. They are fairly simple to make. I love these little fellows so much, that I can eat them plain, without anything else to go with it. I don’t make them too often ‘coz they’re deep fried and trust me when I say you may not be able to stop at just a couple. They taste incredible when they are hot. If there are any leftovers, I refrigerate them and the next day I simply warm them on a griddle and they are good to go.
Learn how to make the Puris here –
Pooris
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp Salt, or to taste
Water (approx 1 cup)
Oil, for deep frying
Mix the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl.
Make a well in the centre and adding water a little at a time, knead to form a nice pliable dough. If you need to use more than a cup of water, please do so.
Heat the oil for deep frying over medium heat. To test the oil, drop a tiny pea sized ball of the dough carefully into the oil. It should sizzle and rise to the top fairly quickly. If this happens, your oil is at the right temperature. If it browns straightaway, your oil is too hot. Take it off the heat for a while and then start frying. If it just sinks to the bottom without any sizzle, your oil is not hot enough.
Make small walnut size portions and roll to form a disc. Do not roll out too thin. (According to my mum, they need to be a little on the thicker side to puff up. I simply follow that and get brilliant results each time.)
Deep fry as you’re rolling them out. Don’t stack the raw discs before frying.
This is a recipe I came up with on the go. This Saturday, I was presented with a situation where I had a couple of really great side dishes(one of them being fish cutlets and the other I will share with you shortly) for lunch and I needed to whip up a nice rice dish. I didn’t want to use my regular pulao recipe (which I’ve just realized I haven’t shared with you yet, but I will), so I decided to try making a vegetable pulao. Usually I only ever use peas in my rice, but this time I felt a little adventurous and used some corn kernels, peas and chopped up carrot. I ended up with a tricolored medley of vegetables in my rice, hence the name Tricolored Vegetable Pulao. Doesn’t it look pretty. I was very happy with the way it looked and it tasted great. I think I’d be able to eat this by itself. This dish is also ideal to prepare if you have kids in the house that don’t each too much spice, I’m sure they’ll love it. Try it out and you’ll see for yourself why this is a kid friendly recipe.
Tricolored Vegetable Pulao
1 cup rice
2 bay leaves
2″ cinnamon
6 cloves
4 pepper corns
2 pods of cardamom, whole
Salt, to taste
1 tbsp vegetable oil (You can use ghee/clarified butter if you prefer)
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1/4 cup green peas (You can adjust this quantity to suit your liking, I used a little more)
1/4 cup corn kernels (You can adjust this quantity to suit your liking, I used a little more)
1 onion, chopped
Wash the rice and soak it in some water while you prepare the other ingredients for the pulao, about 15 minutes.
Heat some oil in a vessel and add the bay leaves, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and pepper corns. Let it infuse the oil with its flavors.
Once you can smell the aromas from the spices, add the onions and saute till they are soft and translucent.
Add the vegetables and stir fry them for a couple of minutes. Add salt to taste.
Drain the rice and add it to the veggies. Stir gently.
Add 2 cups of water. (I use a 1:2 rice to water ratio while making a pulao.)
Stir gently to mix everything. Cover and cook till all the liquid is absorbed.
Turn off the fire and fluff the rice up using a fork.
This is going to be a quick post, because I was having my doubts about whether or not I should post something so ridiculously simple. But in the end the freshness and the taste of this sandwich triumphed.
Back when I was in college, we had this amazing cafe really close by that served some of the most amazing snacks and it was a fact that if you couldn’t find a person on campus, you’d definitely find them at this cafe. On offer was a range of savory puffs, rolls, cutlets, sweet stuff and sandwiches. This humble tomato cheese sandwich was my favorite. Just recently, out of nowhere I really wanted to have one of these and there was no way that I was going to travel 1 hour to and another hour back just to get a taste of this, considering how easy it was. So I ran to the kitchen and in less than 5 minutes I was happily munching away on one. At that moment nothing could’ve tasted better. This sandwich is so simple, that nothing can go wrong really.
But don’t take my word for it. Try it out yourself and let me know what you think of it. Its a meatless sandwich that I absolutely love.
Tomato Cheese Sandwich
Makes 1 sandwich
2 slices of bread
Butter, to spread
1 tomato, sliced
A slice of cheese
Salt, to taste
Freshly crushed black pepper corns, to taste
Spread butter on one slice and top that slice with slices of tomato. The butter prevents the slice of bread from getting too soggy from the juice of the tomato.
Sprinkle some salt and pepper on the slices of tomato to season it.
If you’d like, you can butter the other slice of bread and place a slice of cheese over it.
Cover the slice of bread that has the tomato slices on, with the one that has the cheese slice on.
Today I’m going to actually add another post to the Bombay Street Food Special Series I’d started a while ago. I’ll bet you thought I was done with that. But I’m not. I will keep adding to that section, because I love street food. Today’s recipe, falls under the chaat category and there is a more fully loaded version with a number of chutneys and stuff that I so want to try making at home, I’ve just never gotten around to it, but this version is a quick and easy treat that you can munch away on in about 5 minutes. It has lovely fresh flavors and it makes for a quick, healthy snack.
It is ideally served with some papdi, which is a small crispy puri. I didn’t have any handy and haven’t yet tried making them, but soon will. I did the next best thing. I served it with some of my homemade tortilla chips. The street food stalls in Mumbai sell portions of this chaat in paper cones and patrons use the crisp, but sturdy papdi as a spoon.
Sukha Bhel
1 cup puffed rice, murmura
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 tomato, chopped
1 green chilly, chopped fine (optional)
1 tsp fresh coriander leaves, chopped
A pinch of Salt
A couple of pinches Chaat masala
A squirt of lime juice
1/4 cup sev
1-2 papdi/tortilla chips crushed
1 papdi/tortilla chip whole
Mix the onion, tomato, chilly, salt, lime and chaat masala lightly, in a bowl.
Add the puffed rice, crushed papdi / tortilla chips and sev and toss well.
