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.

'Moistest' chocolate cake that I have ever baked! :)

I have been wanting to bake a chocolate cake that is both moist and chocolatey. My previous attempts at chocolate cake have been anything but satisfactory and I have forever been on a mission to find The recipe for the most perfect chocolate cake.

All my efforts seem to have been rewarded well when I came across Angela Nilsen's chocolate cake recipe on bbc good food http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3092/ultimate-chocolate-cake .

I varied the quantity of chocolate a bit and used light chocolate alongwith the dark as I had quite a few slabs of the same which I didnt want to see going waste .The result was super and my day was more than made when Mom gave an approving look... :)

There was some freshly grated coconut and I kind of like its taste with chocolate so sprinkled some on the cake as an afterthought.

It echoes, the laughters shared, the tales told. A place in memory, yet not a day old.

Our hearts have their reasons,regardless of the day or the seasons.

Frangipani

My morning's promise, my summer flower. Whose music delights, my lyrical shower! Call it frangipani, call it champa, would intoxicate as much wherever they are! Some write their stories with words while others with their fragrance.

Karail

To make Karail which is another traditional north Indian dish you need Moong dal (split green gram)and spices. It has a lot of nutritional value and makes for a simple and tasty meal as a main dish.

Ingredients required for the same are:
Moong dal (split green gram)250 gms
A pinch of asafoetida
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp coriander powder
2 tsp garam masala powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
half a tsp red chilli powder
2 tbsp oil
salt to taste

Method:
Soak the Moong dal (split green gram) in water for two to three hours. Drain and grind to a paste.
Add asafoetida and salt to taste. Keep aside 2 tbsp of the Moong dal (split green gram) paste.
With the remaining Moong dal (split green gram) paste make small pakodis (round patties or balls).
In a kadhai (pan / skillet) heat oil and deep fry these pakodis (round patties or balls)till golden. In the oil that remains in the skillet add cumin seeds and put the 2 tbsp Moong dal (split green gram) that we kept aside in the beginning and cook till slightly brown. Now add the coriander powder, chilli powder, turmeric powder , garam masala and salt to taste. Cook some more. Add water to form gravy. Keep in mind that the gravy should not be too thick. Slowly add the pakodis (round patties or balls) of Moong dal (split green gram)into the gravy.
Serve hot with rice or rotis.

Nimona ( Green Gram / Peas dish)

So the dish that I wanna discuss today is a traditional North Indian dish that uses no garlic or onion in cooking and is simple to make and very homely to taste besides of course having a lot of nutritional value.All you need for it is hara chana or matar(green chickpeas /peas) potatoes and spices.

Ingredients:
Hara chana or matar(green chickpeas /peas)250 gms.
4 boiled potatoes cubed
2 tbsp oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
a pinch of asafoetida
2 tsp garam masala
half tsp chilli powder
salt to taste

Process:
Grind the hara chana or matar(green chickpeas /peas)in a mixer to a paste.
Take oil in a pan, add asafoetida,cumin seeds and the hara chana or matar(green chickpeas /peas) paste.
Cook till just slightly brown.
Add the potatoes and cook some more.
Thereafter add coriander powder,turmeric powder ,red chilli powder and garam masala. Cook till the spices are well blended with the hara chana or matar(green chickpeas /peas) and potatoes.
Add salt and enough water to cook the mixture to the consistency of a thick gravy.
Serve either with rice or rotis.

It's evening; that time of the day when we make peace with the cares of the world to engage in an enchanting almost silent symphony orchestrated by the stars and the moon! Not to forget the twinkling fireflies!
my poetic instincts articulated after that handsome hunk in the sky ,looked me in the eye, with his bewitching smile, and asked me for a dance!

Summer is here and so are it's pretty blooms!

Kebabs

Kebabs are an integral part of the Awadhi cusine of Lucknow the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in India.(it's where I come from). Though primarily a non vegetarian delicacy, kebabs have over the years been transformed into veggie delights as well. One such form that I have been enjoying since my childhood days is the 'Masoor dal' (red lentil)kebabs. They are rich in protein and easy to prepare. Let me take you through the recipe. Hope you enjoy it as much I do. Happy eating! :)


Ingredients:

Masoor dal ( red lentil) 250 gms.
4 garlic cloves
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp garam masala powder
1 onion chopped
Salt to taste

For garnish:
Lemon rings
chopped onions
coriander leaves


Method:
Boil the dal alongwith all the other ingredients on low flame (sim) till 3 to 4 whistles. Take it out in a bowl and allow it to cool. Grease your palms with a little oil and mash to a soft pulp.Now, form round patties and fry them either on a tawa or a non stick frying pan in very little oil.

Garnish with lemon rings, chopped onions and coriander leaves.Serve either as a starter , snack or as part of the main course with rotis ( type of Indian bread).

I am sharing another recipe for kebabs. These too are veggie. I am vegetarian so. :) Okay so here goes the way:

Ingredients:

Boiled and mashed peas, potatoes,raw banana,carrots,cauliflower. 1 Cup each of the veggies and 1 banana
Half cup onion and garlic paste.
Chilli as per taste. Since I love chillies I added both the red chilli powder as well as green. The green ones I blended alonwith the onion and garlic.
2 tsp garam masala
3 tsp coriander powder
a little turmeric
a little hing or Asafoetida
a little lemon jiuce
salt to taste
Oil for frying


Mix together all the ingredients. Grease your palms and make small patties out of the vegetable mixture. Fry them either on a tawa or a non stick frying pan in very little oil.

Garnish with lemon rings, chopped onions and coriander leaves.Serve either as a starter , snack or as part of the main course with rotis ( type of Indian bread).

Strawberry yogurt cake..

Lately, I have been trying out new recipes for desserts and so when I came across one for strawberry cake I said to myself why not even though it required using yougurt which I have till date not tried in any of my cakes and wasnt sure if the result would be as lovely to look at and as ta

sty as a good strawberry cake should be or for that matter any cake should be or any food should be! It turned out quite well though..

Recipe
2 cups Flour
1 and a half cups Sugar
half cup yougurt
1 tea spoon baking powder
1 tea spoon soda bicarb
1 cup chopped strawberries
1 tbsp strawberry jam
half cup butter
half cup vegetable oil
1 egg

For the icing
1 cup butter or cream
1 tbsp milk
1 cup icicng sugar
2 tbsp strawberry jam

Beat the egg. Sift the flour, sugar baking powder,soda bicarb, add in the egg,butter or cream ,yogurt, vegetable oil,strawberry jam and chopped strawberries. Pour out into a greased baking dish and bake at 180 C in a preheated oven till the needle / tester comes out clean when inserted into the cake.

A beautiful sunrise!

It's all dark. Suddenly, a reassuring glow peeks out of nowhere to brighten your step in a warm summer hue. Before you know it, your vistas are filled with perky oranges, innocent pinks and inviting yellows. The colours of dawn, the choices of a new beginning.A beautiful sunrise! :) (pic caught on the morn' run)

Banana bread! :)

Okay so I had been eyeing these bananas in my fruit basket for some days but never got around to eating them till one day I saw them quite over ripe which is when I remembered this banana bread recipe I had come across a while back on simplyrecipes.com . So off to the kitchen I went and soon the house was filled with the most delicious aroma of banana bread . It came out all nice and crumbly and I had to have it while still warm.
Here's the recipe for it.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
4 ripe bananas (smashed)
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt


Sift together flour,baking soda, salt. Add to it, sugar, eggs, bananas, vanilla essence and bake in a lightly greased dish in a preheated oven at 180c till a needle / tester comes out clean when inserted into the cake.

Carrot cake! :)

For the longest time I had wanted to make a carrot cake.And last weekend, I finally got around to making it. It came out soft and moist and total yummy! I referred to the recipe on the bbc good food website.But for the topping I have just used thickened milk flavoured with vanilla. So here goes the recipe.

Ingredients
3 cups plain flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 cups castor sugar
4 eggs
250ml oil
2cups carrots grated
1 cup pineapple pieces chopped

for the frosting
50g icing sugar
2 cups milk
a little vanilla

Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon together with the sugar. Add oil and beat in the eggs. Fold in the carrots and pineapples and pour into a lightly greased dish . Bake in a preheated oven at 180c till a needle inserted into the cake comes off clean.It was heaven in a bite! :)