My Experiments with Food - II : Day#22/30

Making Lunch when Mom is away.
Decided to make stuffed tomatoes, a la Hostel 11 dinner special. ;-)

Here's how I made it. I really don't follow measurements and hence am not giving them here as well. As my Mom says, "अंदाजे घाल" (put as per what you think is right)

The pre-preparation :

1. Chop off a little disc from the top of all tomatoes, keep them aside.
2. With a spoon, scoop out the seeds and pulp and keep that aside too.

For the stuffing :
1. Mash together boiled potatoes and green peas, finely chopped onions. Add a little ginger garlic paste, salt, chilli powder, haldi, garam masala, jeera + coriander powder as per taste.

For the gravy :
1. Grind together some cashews, dry red chillies, coriander leaves, the tomato pulp scooped out earlier, salt, green chillies (if you want it more spicy), a teeny tiny amount of sugar, jeera, ginger, some black pepper, lavang, a tiny dalchini stick. Add some water, as per liking.

Actual preparation :
1. Stuff the mixture in the tomatoes and cover it with the "lid" we had cut off earlier and keep aside.
1. Heat some oil in a kadhai, add the gravy and stir till it becomes a little reddish brown.
You could add a little water and adjust the spices if you think it's needed...
2. Slowly add the stuffed tomatoes to the gravy, taking care the "lids" don't open and spill over.
3. Cover the kadhai and allow them to cook for some time, no need to "stir occasionally" ;-) :-P
4. Garnish with chopped coriander and a little cream if you wish to...
5. Done!
6. //TODO : Test this on Rohit  ;-)

Stuffed Tomatoes

PS : Apparently, it wasn't bad, Rohit survived :-P
PPS : The leftovers actually ended up tasting much better the next day  ;-)

Comfort Food : Day#10/30

Yayyy! Double-digit day reached :D
Had written thought of this post yesterday midnight when I got up feeling hungry ;-)

A list of different (my Mom calls it 'weird') :P food combos I like. Love making really interesting food combos (well, can't say ppl back home are as much enthu to try it as me ;)), especially when there's a lack of supplies and time and abundant laziness and hunger :P
Simple. Easy. Quick. Feel-good dishes.

Caramel-Banana-Milkshake : 
I recently have become addicted to Caramel Horlicks...
This is a quick midnight snack...just take 1-2 (heaped! like they say in the instructions on the jars ;) ) teaspoonfuls of the powder, add a little warm milk and stir. Add colder milk, and top it off with some bananas (the small, "elaichi" ones taste the best!)
You could actually use anything really, Bournvita, Chocolate/Cocoa powder, add more fruits, may be some dryfruits, or icecream, caramel nuts, whatever you fancy! ;-)

Farsan Roll : 
This is my go-to recipe on Saturday mornings when I lunch alone and can't be bothered to make elaborate vegetable dishes. Just take some farsan, chiwda or even unflavoured cornflakes will do...something crunchy basically...mix it with some chopped tomatoes, onions, add the usual salt, masala, green chillies, imli/pudina chutney if there's some at home, else a liberal dose of tomato ketchup is fine too...a dash of lime if you prefer...spread this over your roti and make a roll.
Done! Eat immediately lest the filling gets soggy.

कुर्डया भाजी (KurDaya Bhaaji) :
This is an authentic dish. Not made up by me. I had it first when HC got it for lunch @office..."KurDaya" is a kind of noodle-like papad (looks very much like long entangled vermicelli, but tastes much better) which is fried and served as an accompaniment. Here, we don't fry it, but instead make the usual oil, mustard, jeera, turmeric, hing, green chilly, chopped onion tempering and add the unfried broken kurdaya to it....add a little bit of water - just enough for it to cook...basically just like vermicelli upma is made...
Good to have on days you forgot to replenish that stock of vegetables. HC calls it "दुष्काळी भाजी" (a 'drought' vegetable) :P

Soupy Oats :
Alright, this is like the laziest dish ever. And the best thing is, it's warm, filling and tasty.  I had gotten this huge jar of unflavoured oats sometime back and I got really bored of having them with same old sugar+milk, or same old masala I had at home. And I had lots of ready-to-eat soup packets gotten on some trip to the supermarket....so...combine them!
All you need is a packet of any instant soup (tomato, manchow, palak, veggie, sweetcorn, etc) and just add some oats while you make the soup.
I live crunchy foods, so sometimes sprinkle Haldiram Bhujia Sev on top as garnish ;-)
Soup का soup, oats का oats (sev का  sev) ! ;-)

All this thought of food makes me hungry...time to go grab a coffee :)

My Experiments with Food - I

A few weeks ago, one of my best-est friends treated me and my family to a sumptuous dinner - cooked entirely by her...It all began innocently enough, when her granny asked me, "So, what all do you cook?"
I nearly choked on my "sol-kadhi", and replied "Err...ahem..well, lets see, tea, coffee, Bournvita(that counts as cooking since you need to know the milk-bournvita ratio!), Maggi (Noodles as well as Soup)...err...ahem..."
My friend Anu, as always, came to my rescue and said, "She stays in a hostel, she doesn't have much chance to cook there!" and I took the opportunity to hastily change the subject and ramble about the virtues of "home-made" food over "hostel-mess-ka-khana"....Whew! That was close...

But the conversation (my brother's teasing not withstanding) encouraged me to try my hand at cooking too! :-) Well, to be honest, I have tried cooking the standard Upma-Poha-Sheera, but my culinary skills have taken a backseat for the past 3 years...since hostel-life happened...

My Mom often says "Those who love to eat, also love to cook!" and I couldn't agree more..
A self-confessed foodie and a die-hard food-aholic, I decided to try my hand at making pav-bhaji this weekend...

Well, I must confess, I did not make it from scratch per se, since my mother had already bought the necessary paraphernalia and had also cut up the veggies before I reached home on Saturday evening.Ah! All that I had to do now, was to cut up tomatoes and onions..and since I take pride in my "fine-chopping"-onion skills, it felt like a piece of cake...at least until mother handed over the "Veeli" to me...

"What's this?? Where's the knife??" I asked, bewildered...and got to know that our friendly-neighbour-next-door had borrowed it for the day...Bang went my plans of the "finely-chopped-onions-and-tomatoes"... Now, most of you must have seen a "Veeli", you might be calling it by different names, but here's a pic to show you exactly how it looks...(and how difficult it must be to cut things using it!)
But since I had promised I'll be cooking, I had no option but to try the "Veeli"

"Do what you can, with what you have and where you are" rang in my ears and so I spent the next half an hour huffing, puffing and literally "tearing" the onions across the "Veeli", all the time wondering how my granny still manages to do it so effortlessly!

I was not-so-happy with the gigantic-onion-and-tomato pieces, till..."Aha!! You know what, I am making "Khada Pav-bhaji!!!" I suddenly declared grinning from ear to ear :-D
Well, (thankfully) my brother had never eaten "Khada" pav-bhaji @ a restaurant, and so I was free to call "my-version-of-pav-bhaji" as an authentic "Khada pav-bhaji" ;-)
"You see, it's that version of pav-bhaji which takes less effort+less time (since the veggies are nor finely chopped) + more price(since you can actually see the veggies and the chef can't fool you with adding just lotsa tomatoes+onions)" I declared knowledgeably... ;-)

And so began the actual cooking...Sautee the onions until they turn pinkish, then add the tomatoes, add the masala and keep stirring, mother said.
Well, the onions seemed to take forever to turn pink and so I decided to help them by turning the gas to a higher flame :-)
"Cooking needs patience, like most other things in life...!"
"Food cooked on a low flame is tastier than one cooked hastily on a high flame" mother said, sensing my impatience.

Side by side, I started mashing the other actually finely-chopped(by mother) veggies, cutting up and baking the pav...and got so engrossed in doing it that I totally forgot about the mixture kept on the flame..Heck, it had just started turning brownish! :-|
That's when I realised "Cooking is all about multi-processing and multi-threading!" OS matters!

I added the red-chilli powder and salt in the correct proportions and finally, after much ado, instructions, simmering and garnishing, the "Khada pav-bhaji" seemed ready to eat! :-))

The people who dared to eat it declared it "Pretty good" and "Hmm...hmmm...hmmm" (No points for guessing,this was my brother :P) and it did taste nice if you ignored the huge-onion-tomato pieces popping up in every bite! ;-)

This ends the story of my first try at making a full-fledged meal...

Until next time,
(I will) Keep cooking!

PS: I do intend to try lots more dishes, hence the "Part-I" in the title..
PPS: Speaking of titles, and being Prof.Siva's student, I can't get rid of the itch to "cite" it ~\cite{The title is blatantly chorofied from a column of the same name that appears in DNA Sunday} and the picture of the "veeli" is taken from "www.fivetastes.com"