Tomato Pasta - Indian Style

A very simple, perfectly tasty and Indianized pasta recipe. I have heard lot of complaints and dislikes for pasta (me & hubby being one of them) and the main reason has been the bland taste which we find not appealing to our taste-buds. So I decided to try making pasta the Indian style with good amount of taste and spice added to it. It is very simple and really yummy..!! Tomato pasta is just one of the simple styles I tried. I hope you enjoy it.

Preparation Time: 5 mins
Cooking time: 15 mins
Servings: 2

Recipe:
Tomatoes: 3 (roma variety)
Green chili - 2
Onion - 1/4
Red chili powder - 1ts (optional, dont add if u want it bland)
cumin seeds, coriander, salt to taste

Boil pasta in hot water until is soft and well cooked. Drain the water and keep it aside. Add a few drops of oil  and mix it so that pasta doesn't stick to each other.

Heat 1ts of oil in deep-bottomed pan. Add cumin seeds to warm oil and let it splutter, then add green chili and onion and saute until onion turns translucent. Now add cut tomatoes, a pinch of turmeric and red chili powder and saute. Wait until the tomatoes are well cooked and the raw chili powder smell is removed. remove from heat.

Now Add pasta to the tomato mixture and add salt and mix well, until the tomato is evenly spread. Cut few leaves of coriander in to small bits and add to the top to add aroma.

Your Indian Style Tomato Pasta is ready..!! :D

PS: If u want u can add few drops of lemon juice, one bay leaf to add taste.

Mint Fried rice

This recipe is actually my husband's. He loves to cook and makes really yummy food. In this recipe we add Mint leaves, coriander leaves, lots of vegetable. This gives it a very nice and spicy taste.

Recipe:
Mint - 1 cup
Coriander - 1 cup
Green chilies - 6-8
Onion - 1/2
Mixed Vegetables - 1cup
Rice - 1cup
Ginger-garlic paste - 1ts
Bay leaf - 1
cumin seeds, butter, oil, Salt to taste

Preparation time: 30 mins
Servings: 4
Course: Main meal

Add 1ts of butter to deep bottomed pan and let it melt. Once the butter is melted and warm enough, add cumin seeds. As the cumin seeds start to splutter, add 3 vertically sliced green chilies, ginger-garlic paste and bay leaf and saute for 1min or until a nice aroma rises, then add onion and saute until the onion turns translucent. Now add rice and vegetables to it and fry for 3 mins. Make sure that rice does not turn brown. Remove the pan from heat and keep it aside.

Now, to a pan, add 1ts of warm oil, add 2 thinly sliced green chilies and cleaned mint and coriander leaves. Saute them for 2 mins or until the water in the leaves starts leaving. Blend it into a smooth paste.

Add the mint-coriander paste to the rice mixture. Cook them in rice cooker until the rice is done. Add salt to taste.

Your Mint fried rice is ready. You can serve it with some thick curd!!

Methi-Coriander Paratha

Methi (Fenugreek) is very rich in B12 and Vit D while, Coriander is rich in iron. Hence any snack made out of Methi and Coriander is very healthy food to have as it adds to daily nutrition supplement. It is very simple to make Methi-Coriander Paratha. They are generally had as lunch along with some sweets or as dinner along with a glass of milk or chaas (buttermilk).

Preparation time:30 mins
Servings: 3

Recipe:
Wheat flour - 2 cups
Fenugreek (Methi) leaves - 1 cup
Coriander leaves - 1 cup
Big Onion - 1/2
Green Chili - 4 (thai)
Ginger-Garlic Paste - 1 teaspoon
Garam Masala - 1/2 teaspoon
Aam chur - 1/2 teaspoon
Some cumin (Jeera) seeds, asafoetida, salt to taste

Take a bundle of fenugreek and coriander, cut out the roots and clean the leaves. Cut the leaves to small pieces.

Now add some oil to a deep bottomed pan. And add some cumin seeds and let it splutter. Add green chili, ginger - garlic paste and garam masala to it and let it cook until a nice aroma rises takes about 10secs). Now add onion to the mixture and saute until the onion turns translucent. Add the cut fenugreek and coriander leaves and saute for 1min.

Take 2 cups of wheat flour and add a pinch of asafoetida, aam chur, one spoon of oil and salt (to taste),Now add the above mixture to wheat flour and mix very well. Just sprinkle water to the flour as and when required and knead the flour until you a nice smooth dough like shown in the picture.

Now make small balls of dough and then flatten them to the size of a pancake (Tip: touch up with little amount of wheat flour to make the flattening easier).

Heat a flat bottomed pancake pan (girdle) and add a drop or two of oil to it and wait until the pan heats up. Now bake the flattened dough, by turning sides every 10 secs until the paratha is cooked.

Your yummy methi-coriander paratha is ready to be served along with some butter and raitha!! :D

Paruppu Vadai

Paruppu Vadai, is the most favourite vada type in India. This is usually made with a combo of pulses like Pigeon peas (toor dal), Black gram (urad dal) and Split chick peas (Channa dal). They are high in protein content and hence are very good snack.


Recipe:
Spilt Chick Peas - 1 cup
Black Gram - 1/2 cup
Pigeon Peas - 1/2 cup
Red Chili -  6
Some Curry leaves, asafoetida, Cumin seeds, Salt


Making requires 15-30 mins
Preparation requires soaking for 60 mins
Servings 4 plates of 3


Soak split chick peas, black gram and pigeon peas for one hour. And then coarsely grind them together in blender or grinder . Tip: Do not add too much water. 


Add a pinch of Asafoetida (hing) to this, along with red chili (made in to pieces), curry leaves and cumin powder. Add salt to taste. Mix it well


Heat oil in deep bottomed pan in stove at medium heat. Add a small bit of the batter to test the heat. If the piece gets fried and turns golden brown then oil is ready. Make small flattened balls and add them to oil and fry them. Tip: Make sure to fry long enough such that the dough in the middle also gets cooked.


Serve them hot with coconut chutney.

Sundal recipe

Sundal is one of the most common and easy to make snack in South India. There is a festival, called Dusshera or Navratri, a ten day festival, during which a variety of sundals are made one of each day.

Sundals, are very tasty snacks, made out of beans, which are rich in protein. The picture shows sundal made out of Chick peas.

Recipe:
Chick Peas - 1 cup
Dried Red Chilies - 4-5
Curry leaves
Coconut - one handful
Asafoetida, Mustard, Cumin seeds, Salt

Making time 10 mins
Preparation requires overnight soaking
Servings:5

The Chickpeas are soaked overnight and then pressure cooked, so that they loose the hardness and cooked properly to eat. Add 2ts of oil to the pan, add mustard, cumin seeds and let them splutter, then add red chili, curry leaves,pinch of asafoetida and chickpeas. Mix it for 2 mins and then add the coconut scrap and mix again. Add salt to taste and remove from heat. Your sundal is ready to serve

Tip: Do not pressure cook for too long. Otherwise the chickpeas will get smashed in to a paste and wont taste good.

Garlic Rasam

Making Rasam without tamarind juice is an art. With only tomato to provide the tangy taste, the rasam takes an entirely different route through the taste buds.

Here is how the recipe goes:
1)Mid-sized tomatoes - 2
2)Red Chili powder - 4 teaspoons  or green chilies - 4 (thai)
3)Coriander Powder - 1 teaspoon
4)Cumin Powder - 1 Teaspoon
5)Ginger - 5 cm long
6)Garlic - 4
7)Cooking Oil - 2 teaspoons
Mustard,cumin seeds, turmeric powder and salt to taste

Add cooking oil to the vessel, add mustard and cumin seeds (jeera) and wait until they start to sputter, add cut tomatoes to this along with green chili/red chili powder, add turmeric powder, cumin powder, coriander powder and mix. Keep mixing until the tomatoes gets cooked. Now add the ginger & 2 garlic cut to pieces and keep mixing until a nice aroma starts to rise. Then, Add water until the consistency is very runny. Smash the 2 garlic cloves with mortar and pestle and add it to the liquid. Add salt to taste. Cover the vessel and let it come to boil and then switch off the stove.

Add curry leaves and coriander leaves to further enhance the aroma and taste.

Idli & dosa - Batter recipe

Being a Tamil girl, making Idli and Dosa are the basic foundation of cooking, as they are the standard and much loved snack of my hometown. As a kid, I have made the idli and dosa from dough a number of times, but have never tried the batter myself. Nor did I bother to find out the recipe for it. So when I finally tried for the first time, I had to call up my mom, bring out cooking books and Google loads of sites, to get the recipe. And with great enthusiasm, I started on the batter making process. soak all the ingredients, wait for 6-7 hours, grind them in blender, and then keep resultant batter near stove overnight for it to ferment.

Well the first attempt ended in disaster. Though the batter looked good when it came out of the blender, it never managed to get fermented. Ask anyone who has had a Idli, they can tell you that idli from a non-fermented batter is the worst thing that can happen to a person. So the attempt1 was chucked out. So was attempt2, attempt3 and attempt 4. Though I tried various combinations like changing the consistency, the ingredient quantity, keeping it inside oven; nothing worked. I got only the standard non-fermented batter. It drove me mad.

Finally, I decided to change somethings. 

One: I decided to use grinder (u know, the big heavy ones) instead of blender. 

Two: I decided to add lot of water when grinding the batter(forget what others say!)

Three: Soak the ingredients overnight

Four: I am not going to keep it in fridge until it gets fermented, let it take however long it wants :P

And viola, I had the most amazing batter ever. So fully fermented that, it had risen up, overflowed and covered up my entire stove. It was messy, but that didn't stop me from being happy, as I had finally gotten the batter right..!!!

Well here is the recipe:

1 cup of Black gram (urad dal, ulutham paruppu)

3 cups of raw rice (I used sona masoori)

Some fenugreek seeds (methi, vendayam)

Salt to taste

Tips:

1) Grind the urad dal first. Add lots of water (For the given quantity I added about 81/2oz of water) And grind it until is smooth. Might take around 30-40 mins.

2) Remove urad dal paste and then add rice and fenugreek and follow the same procedure as urad dal.

3)  Mix it together well. Do the mixing with your hands and do it for approx. 10-15 mins. This is so the batter gets very well aerated, helps in fermentation.

4) Keep it in the warmest spot of your kitchen overnight or longer time (mostly overnight should be enough if it is warm enough)

5) Once the batter has risen/fermented, punch down the batter to remove the air bubbles. Punch down until it comes back to the original quantity. There will still be lot of bubbles visible on the surface. Leave them be!! 

With the perfect batter at hand, I am already to make my Idlis and dosas. Will post the pics of them soon !! :D