Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!

“You ARE what you eat!” an 8 year-old voice solemnly proclaimed from the back of my car. I swung around to look at my son’s friend, seated next to my son, and nearly hit a curb. Then I turned back to the road and pretended not to hear so the boys could continue with the precocious chatter. Peter went on to say advise my son that if he liked to eat potatoes, he’s going to look like a potato!!

Well, nearly everyone in my family likes to eat potatoes and I am determined that we shalln’t look like one.

If you made the aloo parathas I have described in one of my previous posts, and if you are like me, you would either have extra whole wheat dough left-over or you would have extra spiced potatoes left-over. Now, when you have extra dough left-over, there is no problem at all, just follow the same recipe as aloo parathas and make plain parathas without the stuffing.

But what do you do with left-over potato? I remembered the 8 year-old’s advice when I came up with this recipe. Here you go – enjoy these crisp, nutrient rich aloo tikkis without the added fat and huge amount of calories that normally go with the tikkis. Instead of the traditional shallow fried tikkis (cutlets) these are baked with very little oil. Yeah, potatoes without added fat!

Here’s what you need:
2 cups  spiced potato mixture
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated carrots
2 tbsp Olive oil

Here’s how you make the tikkis (cutlets):

Pre heat oven to 350 F.  Mix all the ingredients thoroughly.

Make flat cutlets with the potato mixture. Roll each cutlet in more breadcrumbs.

Brush with Olive oil. Place on a greased tray and bake for about 15 minutes. Take the tray out and flip the cutlets over and bake for another 10 minutes.

Serve with Tamarind date chutney or ketchup.

The Cup Spilleth Over…

Pongal is one of the most anticipated festivals in South India, next only to the ubiquitous Diwali (festival of lamps). Pongal is the harvest festival and the word “Pongal” literally means to boil over, spill over, the cup spilleth over… Abundance.

Now that the world seems to be upside down and we are all focused on the economy, it seems to be a fantastic time to talk about abundance, so we can put the economic crisis behind us. Like the author of The Secret tells us, we get what we focus on, so let’s all focus on PONGAL!

Pongal is also the name of the dish that is made on Pongal day. Traditionally, it is made sweetened with jaggery (molasses) and eaten as a dessert. But, there is a breakfast version of this dish that I am now going to share. The sweet version of pongal is called “Chakkarai pongal” or sweet pongal – duh! The breakfast version, is called “Venn pongal” or white pongal and it is usually made with white rice.

Ever since my foray into the unrefined carbohydrate world, I have looked to see where I could substitute brown rice for white and this experiment of changing “Venn pongal” to Brown rice Venn pongal has been a great success with my family!

Try it – it is simple to make, easy on the stomach, has the right mix of unrefined carbs and protein (from the lentils) and the touch of ginger turns this simple dish into a delicious, aromatic, epicurean delight.

Here’s what you will need:

2/3 cup brown rice
1/3 cup yellow split moong lentils (the ones with the peel removed)
1 1/2 – 2 cups water
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 pinch asofoetida powder (optional)
1 tsp salt
2 dry red chili (broken into smaller pieces)
3 tsp chopped ginger
4 tsp or less cashews (chopped)
1 1/2 tsp Olive oil

To make:

Heat a pan and dry roast the yellow moong lentils until they become aromatic – for about 3-4 minutes. Stir constantly to ensure the lentils do not burn. Remove from fire. Now add the brown rice and dry roast – another 3-4 minutes. Remove from fire.

Mix in the rice and lentils. Add the water (I have provided 2 different ratios for water- add 1 1/2 cups if you like the rice dry and the grains firm, or add 2 cups water if you like the pongal mushy). Cook until all the water is absorbed. Set aside.

In a pan, heat oil. Add the chopped cashews and fry until golden brown. Remove from fire and set aside. Now add the cumin seeds into the same warm oil and stir fry until golden brown. Add the red chili and fry a minute more. Now add the asofoetida powder and immediately add the chopped ginger. Saute for another minute. Now add the cooked rice lentil mixture and salt and mix thoroughly.

Remove and garnish with fried cashews.
Serve hot with Red pepper gotsu or Peanut chutney.
Serves 2.

Fiiiiiirrrrrrre!

Back in the 80′s and 90′s, when I used to live in the great city of Chennai, in India, we did everything Americans are now trying to do in the name of going Green. The vegetables we bought were  locally grown, organic (because farmers found pesticides expensive at that time), and we patronized small farmers. I am not going to pretend that we did this consciously out of some concern for the planet. No, we patronized the small farmers because that’s what was available to us. One benefit from doing this, which, I only realized after moving to the US and shopping in large grocery stores, was that the vegetables were succulent, fresh, very very tasty and enticing.

But one of the fallouts of doing so was that I had never at that time, seen some vegetables that are usually available in other parts of the world. For instance, I had not seen an avocado, a red, organge or yellow pepper (green peppers were available), a tomatillo, and all those multitude of greens and pumpkins that are available in the US.

So, when I moved to the US and saw a red pepper for the first time, and looked at the price (which was three times the price of a green pepper), I wondered what it was about a red pepper that made it so pricey. And then, it dawned on me when I tasted slivers of it smothered in a guacamole dip at a friend’s place.

Fresh red peppers taste crunchy, juicy, and delectable. Along with taste, red peppers are packed with nutrients – Vitamin C, A, carotenoids and anti-oxidants. And so, started my quest for adapting Indian recipes to use red pepper.

I made a brown rice venn pongal the other day – (I know, I know, it is an oxymoron because the word “venn” in tamil means white! But you’ll see tomorrow what I mean by Brown rice venn pongal.) The brown rice pongal is a totally satisfying, filling, guilt-free rice dish. The flavors are subtle but definitely bland. So I rooted through my fridge to look for something to make an accompaniment to go with the bland brown rice pongal and hit upon the Red Pepper Gotsu.

Here it is, for your pleasure, with my compliments. As usual, I have cut down on the oil and this too, is made with just 1 tsp oil.

Try it and let me know how you like it. But be warned, this dish can be fiery – it is meant to be eaten with a bland main dish. You can, of course, tone it down to suit your taste, but I will provide the recipe as I made it.

Here’s what you need:
Red peppers – 2 (chopped)
Red onion – 1 large (sliced thin)
Orange Habanero peppers – 2  (cut fine) – (cut this out if you would like to tone this down in spice)
Ginger – 1″ piece (grated fine)
Salt -  tsp
Red chili powder – 1 tsp (reduce this if you want to tone this down)
Black mustard seeds – 1 tsp
Turmeric powder – 1/4 tsp
Tamarind paste – 1/2 tsp
Olive oil – 1 tsp
Water – 1/2 cup

Heat olive oil in a pan. When the oil is hot, place the mustard seeds. Wait until the seeds crackle and add the habanero peppers and grated ginger. Stir fry for a minute until the habaneros are fried crisp. Now add the slivered onions. Fry for a minute. Add the red peppers and stir fry for another minute.  Dissolve the tamarind paste in water and add it to the pan. Add salt, red chili powder and cook on high for 3-4 minutes.

Remove from fire and serve with brown rice pongal.

Check back tomorrow for the sumptuous  Brown rice pongal recipe!

Absolutely nutty :)

When I was a tween, one of my favorite pastimes was to spend hot summer afternoons, perching precariously in the crook of the guava tree in the backyard, reading Enid Blyton books.

I was fascinated by one of Enid Blyton’s characters, Kiki, the talking parrot, who would always squawk, “Shut the door and wipe your feet!”. And when I read the sentence where she tells a guy called Bill, “Bill, pay the bill!”, my 10 year old wildly runaway imagination would picture the scene of a grown-up being told to pay the bill by a parrot.  I would laugh so uproariously at the thought that I invariably fell out of the guava tree at that juncture. But that’s not all I liked about Kiki. What I admired the most was that her loyalty could not be bought even when she was offered her favorite food – a handful of nuts.

Nuts were not just Kiki’s favorite food, they also are mine! So, when a cousin came to visit from Canada and showed me this Peanut chutney recipe, I was thrilled. It tastes just fantastic and the very best thing about this recipe is that it has absolutely no oil – zero, zilch! The only fat in this chutney comes from the nuts themselves, which, as we all know is healthy fat.

Here’s the what you will need:
1 cup raw peanuts
3 dry red chili
1 tsp salt

Heat a non-stick pan and toast the red chili until they start puffing up. Now add the peanuts and toast for about 5 minutes until peanuts are roasted well. Remove from fire and cool. Place the nuts and red chili in a blender along with half cup water and salt and blend until smooth. Add more water, depending on the consistency you would like.

Serve with Pesarattu (recipe provided on December 7, under the name “Green Revolution”)

More tomorrow – Check back for Red pepper Gotsu recipe – hot off the stove!

Green revolution

Since I had ruined my good eating habits by succumbing to the sinful Bread Roll yesterday, I was anxious to get back on track with a healthy brunch for my family. The first that springs to mind is a fabulously filling, sumptuous, wonderfully holier-than-thou dish – the great Pesarattu!

Crepes are a dish of pride, not just for the French but also for South Indians. We call it the “dosa” and it is ubiquitously enjoyed all over India. Dosa, with its accompaniments of Sambar (a spicy lentil soup) and chutney (coconut and dal dip) is South India’s most favorite dish. If you ever visit Chennai, India’s southern metropole, you will find all kinds of dosas, all sizes of dosas at prices ranging from a couple of rupees to nearly Rs. 200, served in every imaginable place – the street side carts, the middle class Saravana Bhavan and Woodlands and even in the upper crust Taj Coromandel.

The Pesarattu is the dosas’ cousin from our neighboring state Andhra Pradesh. It is healthier than the dosa – I make it completely with green Moong dal and I cook it in a non-stick pan with very little oil. Here’s how:

1 cup green Moong dal
2 dry red chili
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped green cabbage
1/2 cup chopped onion

Soak the Moong dal overnight – cover it with enough water to ensure that the beans dont swell and rise above the water. In the morning, place the Moong along with some of the water and blend to a fine paste along with the red chili and salt. See picture for the consistency of the dough. Now add the chopped cabbage and chopped onion into the mixture.

Heat a non-stick pan to medium heat. Pour in one ladle ful of the green moong mixture on the hot pan and spread thinly. Add a couple of drops of olive oil around edges of the pesarattu. Cook for a couple of minutes and try to pry it loose at one end. If it comes out easily, then slip a spatula under it and flip it over to cook the other side. If not, wait for another minute then flip it over. Cook both sides and serve hot with any chutney or ketchup. You can store the extra dough in the fridge for upto 3 days.

Taboo fat

When my sisters and I were children, we used to love fried foods. Those were the days before we knew that fat was bad for us. We never felt guilty eating all those delicious fried stuff that Mom regularly made for us.

My mother just loves to cook and she just loves to fry. Ever since she moved to the US to live with me and my sisters, we keep on bugging her to use less oil and not frying anything. And she has been a real trooper about it. She had adapted wonderfully to our cooking styles of using very little oil, frying foods very rarely and still whipping up the most wonderful dishes.

Every once in a while though, she’ll succumb to her yearning for making fried foods by convincing my sons that since they are young, they need to enjoy fried foods before they grow older and have to watch their diets. So, whenever Mom visits, I’ll buy a 5 gallon jug of Canola oil from Costco. It usually lasts about 6 months and is used only for deep frying. Once Mom leaves to visit one of my sisters, the Canola oil will sit in my larder until I hit one of those days myself, when I want to gorge on fried food.

Yesterday was one of those days. It had snowed heavily the day before and the whole landscape was white. The trees dripped white snow, the lake was covered with snow and everything was sparkling in the bright sunlight. The great outdoors was lit up and dazzling. It was also far below freezing temperatures outside but the house was warm and toasty. Add a furry, lazy feline, begging to be stroked all the time, into the day and it made it just the perfect day for deeply satiating, hot, spicy, easy-to-make bread rolls. My son Karthik enthusiastically seconded the idea and I consoled myself that I was still being good by using whole wheat bread instead of white.

Here’s how I made the bread rolls -
For the filling:
2 medium potatoes (boiled and mashed with some lumps)
1 small onion (finely chopped)
1 green chili (finely chopped)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp red chili powder
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp oil

Heat oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds to the hot oil. When they crackle, add the chopped onions and green chili. Fry for a couple of minutes until the onion is brown. Now add the rest of the ingredients including the mashed potato and stir fry until the potato filling is brown and partly crisp.

For the rolls:
4 slices whole wheat bread (you can also use white, rye, multi grain or any other bread you like)

To make the rolls:

Heat enough oil to deep fry. Take water in a bowl and wet a slice of bread on both sides – just enough to be able to shape it. Be careful not to wet it too much because when you fry wet bread, it will soak up the oil. Now fill the center with potato and shape the roll into an oblong. Here is a picture of how a roll would look before it is fried.

Place in hot oil and fry until the roll is golden brown. Remove from oil and drain on a paper towel.  Each slice makes one roll.

Serve hot with tomato ketchup or any sauce.

Universal Truth!

Tis a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in need of a wife! – so wrote Jane Austen in the opening lines of her famous “Pride and Prejudice”.

I agree! I agree! “Tis a truth universally acknowledged, that only people who love to eat, can really cook very well!” To be able to dish up means that you know which flavors tempt, which ones tease, and which ones elicit gluttony, which satisfy and which haunt!

With that in mind, I started breakfast today – I mulled over what was in my larder and decided to make the very basic Upma – a steaming hot, satisfyingly filling, rice semolina concoction, which is one of the very first dishes taught to a young girl who is being groomed to cook in her in-laws joint family kitchen after marriage. All I had seen was a bland, oatmeal kinda dish – yummy, nonetheless, cause my mother is a chef non pariel. She would whip this dish with chopped onions, a bit of chopped ginger and it would taste just fantastic.

But I always have to go a step further and make it a healthy meal, so here’s what I decided to put into the dish:
Semolina: 1 cup
Carrot: 1/2 finely grated
Green pepper: 1/2 finely chopped
Onion: 1 finely chopped
Ginger root: small piece finely grated
Potato: 1/2 finely chopped
Chili: 1 red
Water: 2 cups
Oil: 1 tsp
Black mustard seeds: 1/4 tsp

As I started to cook this meal, I got a call from a friend in India. Normally, I cannot multi task while cooking because I need to concentrate, but since this dish (remember, I had mentioned that this is one the first dishes a young girl learns to make?) was something I could make while blindfolded, I continued to talk and cook.

First, I roasted the semolina in the dry, hot pan with no oil.
See picture on the right. Then I removed it from the pan and dropped in the oil. Waited until the oil was hot to drop in the mustard seeds. When the seeds crackled, in came the chopped onions, red chili, grated ginger and chopped potatoes. Few minutes until the potatoes cooked, turned down the heat and added 2 cups of water. Added salt and waited for the water to boil. Once the water boiled, added the roasted semolina in slowly until all the water was absorbed. Now added the chopped green peppers, and closed the dish to let the green pepper partially cook in the steam. 2 more minutes, and this dish is done – add the grated carrot and here it is – a heart-healthy, low-fat, satisfying, breakfast dish – just eat it- you need no accompaniments with this.

The unrefined argument

Ever since I found out that my cholesterol was higher than it should be, I started searching the web for natural ways to reduce it by using various dietary options. And listed as one of the most important, was switching to unrefined carbohydrates. For many years now, I have unthinkingly put a lot of refined carbohydrates into my body – white flour breads, naans, refined rice and pasta. I had to consciously plan to replace the refined carbs with unrefined ones.

I started with searching first for the best whole wheat since we eat a lot of rotis. The atta I found in Indian stores seemed very refined to me, despite the fact that the word “atta” is supposed to mean whole wheat flour. So I started searching in the American grocery stores and I found King Arthur Whole Wheat flour and decided to try it for rotis. It is simply delicious! The richness and texture of this flour makes the best rotis, parathas and even naan. Best of all, a 5 lb of King Arthur whole wheat is cheaper than the atta I get at Indian stores. Win, win!

One down.

Next was to replace the much beloved white basmati rice with brown rice. That took some doing simply because white rice is such a staple. My family found it hard to adjust at first too. So I simply made both white and brown rice for each meal and very slowly eased them in to eating brown rice. Right now, I’ve concocted my own brown rice mixture – Organic short grained brown rice, wild rice and barley pearls in the proportion of 4:1:1. The cooked rice does take on the color of wild rice, kind of purplish but the taste is simply fabulous and it goes very well with sambar, rasam or any curries. It also tastes fantastic when you make the sweet “chakkarai” pongal with it! In fact, the brown rice pongal tastes much better than the pongal made with white basmati. Try it!

I have to check my cholesterol again but regardless of whether these major changes benefitted my cholesterol count, one benefit I received is that I enjoy the tastes and textures much more now!

Indian Restaurant food in US

As an Indian living in the US, I am always in search of good Indian restaurants. But somehow the restaurant food always falls short – short in taste, short in flavor, heavy on your stomach, heavy in fat and smothered with masala. One of my pet peeves is overcooking. When food is overcooked, it loses its flavor and its texture. All thats left is mush.

And I feel that restaurant food is not a good representation of true Indian cuisine.  Thats why I started this blog… to write about the true Indian cuisine, the multitude of flavors, the multitude of textures, the vast range of spices, and the wonderful tastes and smells.

Our lunch menu today was Roti, Jeera Rice, Dal and Baingan Bharta. I am a big fan of reusing left-overs in other recipes. So I reused left-over brown rice and stir fried it with Jeera to make some yummy Jeera rice.

Then I used one of those large eggplants for the Baingan Bharta. Here’s a tip: you can broil it in the oven to cook it quickly and then chargrill it on a hot iron pan for that smoky flavor but take care not to broil it too long so it doesnt get overcooked. Once it was broiled, I cooled and peeled it. Then I simply stir fried some sliced onions, a couple of pods of garlic and a bit of chopped ginger. Added some chopped tomatoes and dropped in the broiled eggplant.  Flavored with turmeric, red chilli powder, salt and garam masala.

Yummmm – nothing like serving hot, spicy Baingan bharta with warm rotis on a cold winter morning.