Katahal ka Pulao - Jackfruit Pulao

Katahal pulao is a dish that is my Mum's speciality in our extended family. My grandparents used to ask her to prepare it on every vacation of ours when we used to visit them.This alongwith many other foods cooked by her are a part of our family folklore now. Interwoven into each dish is a story ,a memory that warms our hearts even today.

Ingredients:
2 cups Rice
250 gms Katahal or Jackfruit cut into pieces
4 to 5 Peppercorns or sabut kali mirch
2 Black Cardamoms or Badi Elaichi
1 Green Cardamom or Chhoti Elaichi
2 small sticks of Cinnamon or Dalchini
1 tsp Cumin seeds or Jeera
2 strands Javitri or Mace
1 Bay Leaf or Tejpatta
Salt to taste
1 tbsp Oil for frying
1 1/2 cups water

How to :
Fry the katahal pieces in a little oil and keep aside.
Take a pressure cooker put some oil into it and saute the remaining ingredients except rice till a minute or two.Now add rice and stir till the rice and the spices have are well blended. Add water and cook till a whistle on sim (low flame).

Serve either with a curry or some chutney.

Gatte ki Subzi

This is a traditional North Indian dish of Gram flour / Besan with varying regional interpretations across North. The one that I have for you here is a recipe that I found in my Tarla Dalal cookbook.

The spices play a crucial role in enhancing the taste of the dish that is typically North Indian.

For the gattas you will need:
1 cup Besan (Gram flour)
1 tsp Lal mirch powder (Red chilli powder)
1 tsp saunf (Fennel seeds)
1 tsp Ajwain (Carom seeds)
1 tbsp Dahi (Curd)
2 tbsp oil
salt to taste

For the Gravy :
2 cups Curds nicely blended
2 cups water
1 tbsp Besan (Bengal gram flour)
1 tsp cumin seeds (jeera)
A few curry leaves
1/2 tsp mustard seeds /rai
1/2 tsp fennel seeds / saunf
1/2 tsp asafoetida /hing
1 bay leaf / tejpatta)
1 clove / laung
1 small stick of Dalchini cinnamon
1 elaichi (cardamom)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder (haldi)
2 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp coriander powder (dhania)
2 tbsp oil
salt to taste

Mix the ingredients for the Gattas and knead into a dough.
Take small portions of the dough and make long cylindrical shapes .Cook them in boiling water.
Take out the gattas and cool before cutting them into 1/2 inch long pieces.

Now for the gravy. Blend together Curd, Besan,Curry leaves and some water .
Heat oil in a pan . Add to it cumin seeds,mustard seeds,fennel seeds,asafoetida,bay leaf,clove,cinnamon,cardamom. When the seeds begin to crackle add turmeric powder, chilli powder,coriander powder and salt. Saute for some time. After which add the curd mixture and enough water to form a nice gravy .Bring to boil and remove from burner. Serve with rotis or rice.

Almond Rose Bread

Almond rose bread baking in the soft glow of the oven is filling my home with a heavenly aroma even as it exchanges a knowing look with the butter sitting on the kitchen slab. The warm summer evening looks on at these two. Pleased, for making it a tad more beautiful. A mischief in translation or a poetry in conversation.

May is that time of the year when we usher in a few birthdays as well as some anniversaries. So, it was but natural that I had to miss out on updating the blog to spend whatever free time there was with the family and in preparation for the little celebrations that happen to mark these lovely occasions. In between I carried on with my baking and cooking and therefore have quite a lot to share. This post I dedicate to the beautiful almond rose bread that I was inspired to try out after reading a few recipes over the internet.

When I first read the recipe for this my mind could not stop imagining the wonderful aroma that would waft out of the oven given the almonds and rose involved.That these would make for great photography given their colours and texture was another motivator to get on with baking it as soon as I had decided on what recipe to follow.

I am not a stickler for measures and more often than not it's more about instinct than a perfect ounce of butter or sugar a trait I seemed to have picked from my mother. She almost never minds the quantities of ingredients in her food to a cup or a spoon but still manages to turn out the most delicious food. I am not as brave as her but am learning! So here goes the recipe:

2 cups plain flour
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
1/2 cup dried rose petals
1 cup ground almonds
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp rose essence or 2 tsp rose water

Blend together sugar , milk, butter and eggs. Add in the flour, ground almonds, zest of lemon ,rose petals and the essence or rose water whichever your have.
Grease a baking tin and pour the mixture into it.Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C till a tester inserted into the bread comes out clean.
Cool the bread a bit before slicing. Serve with butter, cream or whatever you fancy! A great accompaniment to tea or coffee.

Terrace Gardening / Garlic

It's quite easy to grow garlic in your backyard / terrace garden in a pot or in the soil. You can use the garlic cloves from the garlic pod you buy for cooking, for this purpose. Make sure you choose the big and healthy cloves.

I have garlic growing in a tray on my terrace. To plant,prepare the place where you want to grow garlic. Take some lose soil mix it with a little manure making sure that the manure you use is not very strong.You could ask at your local plant nursery as to the suitability of the manure for use at the time of sowing. Sow the garlic cloves two inches deep in the soil. Sprinkle some water on the sowed soil and keep the tray in a place that does not receive direct sunlight. When the shoots begin to appear you can keep them in sunlight. Mind the garden pests like squirrels, crows, pigeons that might destroy the tender shoots before you know it.

I am a beginner at gardening though have been a keen observer of the process since childhood by having some really amazing gardening people around me with their beautiful flowers and vegetable patches for inspiration.

Well,every day there is something new to learn. There are disappointments and there are joys. Disappointments when the seeds die in the soil and all the hard work and patience remains unrewarded. Joys when you get to see the seeds maturing into young healthy plants which at times are laden with flowers while at others with fruity showers!

The Monkees - I'm a Believer [official music video]

I have been a Neil Diamond fan since school days. We didn't have as easy access to music then as we do now.

During one summer vacation at my grandparents' place I happened to  visit a music shop which was a stone's throw away from our place and it was here that I was introduced to Neil Diamond as well as Don Williams. I bought several cassettes of these two and made it a point to listen to at least a few of their songs every morning before leaving for school.The love affair that started  with their music back then continues to this day.

This particular song was comsposed and sung by Neil Diamond.Today morning they had the Monkees version playing on the radio which sounds good too .It made me all nostalgic and delighted. So thought why not put it out here!

Lemon drizzle cake!

Last when I accompanied Mum to the local vegetable market I found some really enticing lemons, both in colour and content. They looked very juicy. So I bought double the quantity we usually buy hoping to use them liberally in some drink / dish or the other.

Later at home while browsing the net, I came across this lemon drizzle cake recipe by Jamie Oliver and one by Tana Ramsay.Immediately my mind went to those lemons that I had bought that evening and I thought ok, so here we have an idea on how to use a lemon or two from the purchased lot. I browsed a few more recipes and ultimately decided to sort of combine the above two recipes.

It turned out heavenly , lemony, and deliciously moist.You could vary the number of lemons used depending upon how lemony you would like your lemon cake to be as well as on the size of lemons you have.


Here's the how to:

Zest of 2 lemons ( I had those smaller ones so had to use two)
1 and a half cups caster sugar
1 and a half cups flour
1 and a half cups butter
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp lemon essence
Half cup almonds ground in a mixer / food processor
3 eggs


Beat the butter and caster sugar. Add the eggs one at a time. Beat till the mixture is nice and fluffy.Add the flour.Beat some more. Add the essence and baking powder.Beat again. Add the ground almonds to the mixture and beat one last time for a minute.Fold in the lemon zest.Pour the mixture into a lightly greased baking tin.

In an oven preheated to 180C bake the cake batter for an hour or till a tester comes out clean when inserted into the cake.

For the drizzle:
Half cup caster sugar
Juice of 2 lemons

Blend the caster sugar and lemon juice. Keep aside

Take out the cake from the oven . Prick the cake with a fork to make small holes. Pour the lemon drizzle over the cake. Let cool for sometime before serving.

Terrace Gardening / Spinach

I have managed to create a small and an amateurish terrace garden over a period of some months with painstaking effort and tons of patience given the extreme climate of the place we live in. But after a nice flowering winter I can say I am more than ready to face whatever the summer has to offer both in terms of hard labour or it's fruits.For it is indeed a joy to see the seeds blossoming into young shoots and the young tender shoots becoming stronger before they are ready to bear the fruits! Oh, only a gardener would know such a joy, truly! :)

Now,coming to what I had in mind to discuss in this post.Spinach! It's something that finds favour in our family on most days so I thought why not grow them in my own backyard to pluck for a taste of freshness whenever I fancy.

But then I realised, darn its summer and not the best time to grow spinach. Well something had to be done. Okay, maybe not something as drastic as praying for a change of season for summer has it's own charm, never mind the scorching heat.So with a quiet determination I set out to lay a pot with soil and manure , cut open the seed packet that I had earlier bought and got down to the business of laying the seeds. Not too deep and not too shallow. Two inches deep into the soil the seeds went.

Now, to wait till the greens appeared.This is tricky. You may be hoping that in a few weeks the leaves would appear but unknown to you the seeds may already have been preyed on by the pigeons, squirrels and other unwelcome visitors. So be watchful, maybe put up a scarecrow surround the seed pot with thorny bushes or throw a net guard over the pot.

The picture here shows spinach after a month of sowing.