Weekend Cooking

Since our cook/ housekeeper is away, I'm having to cook on a more regular basis, though my parents have been stars, supplying food unasked for weeks on end. Sunday morning we had an idli beakfast, idlis and coconut chutney by mom while I dished up my froend Monika's mother in law's peanut chutney recipe. I'm one of those people who finds peanuts totally addictive, especially in savoury form, so I have pretty much cleaned out what was left of the chutney, pairing is variously with butter-toasted pao at dinner last night, with crackers for a snack and then cold out of the fridge with hot idlis again this morning.Would highly recommend you make it a pantry staple!

Here's the recipe link: Kickass peanut chutney

For those too lazy to follow yet another link, here it is:

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup roasted peanuts ( I used packaged, pre-roasted and salted peanuts out of laziness)
2. 3-4 dry roasted dried red chillies
3. 2-3 cloves garlic
4. 1 small onion, chopped
5. 1 lime sized ball of tamarind, soaked in 1/2 cup warm water
6. 1/2 cup water

2 sprigs curry leaves
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp hing
1 tbsp oil ( peanut oil for choice)

In a little oil, cook the garlic till its dark brown but not burnt. Remove from the oil and fry the onion in the same oil till soft.
Grind together the first six ingredients to the required consistency - you decide if you like chutney runnier or thicker. Add salt to taste.
Heat the remaining oil in a tadka kadhai. Add the mustard seeds. When they pop, add the cumin, hing and lastly, washed curry leaves. Take off the heat and pour over the chutney. Bliss out!

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Then, for a late Sunday lunch as I just lost track of time, we had rajma by mom, with baked stuffed capsicum. The Capsicum could be a great meal by themselves, especially for anyone trying to go low-carb. I made the capsicum stuffings two ways. One was with a cabbage and potato stuffing from Monika's food blog. Another kind was a basic paneer bhurji, which actually worked out very well.

I love yellow and red capsicum but am not a big fan of the green ones, so this style of cooking actually made them delicious and the kids ate them up without a murmur. definitely going to repeat this...

Ingredients:
10 medium sized capsicums, cut into half each

Stuffing 1
1/2 small cabbage, cut into fine ribbons and soaked in water
2 potatoes, boiled and mashed
1 onion, julienned
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 inch ginger, crushed
2-3 green chillies, chopped fine
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
salt to taste
1/2 tbsp oil

Heat the oil. Add the garlic and ginger and cook over medium heat for 1-2 minutes. Add the spice powders and onion. Cook till the onion is translucent. Add the drained cabbage - the water clinging to the leaves will be enough to cook it, and stir to mix. Once the cabbage is cooked through, add the mashed potatoes and salt and mix well.

Stuffing 2
200 gms paneer, grated or crumbled
3 small tomatoes, chopped fine
1 medium onion, chopped fine
2-3 green chillies, chopped fine
Handful coriander leaves, cut into fine shreds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tbsp oil
Salt to taste
1/2 tsp turmeric if you like

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the cumin seeds and toast for a minute. Add the chillies and onion and cook till translucent. Add the tomatoes and cook until soft. Add the paneer and salt and cook for a couple more minutes. Turn off the heat, add the coriander leaves. If adding turmeric, add into the hot oil before putting in the cumin seeds.

For the Capsicum:
Prepare the capsicum by slicing each capsicum into half and clearing out the seeds. Pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees C. Rub the oven roasting pan with a thin slick of oil ( about half tbsp).
Fill half the capsicum halves with Stuffing 1 and the other half with Stuffing 2. Bake for 25 minutes and let rest for 5.

Enjoy with rice and a bean dish, and dahi, with rotis or just by themselves with a salad on the side!

Potato Salad

I love potatoes in almost any form ( except raw :)). One of my favourite dishes from childhood has been one for potato raita - a soft, creamy, gentle tasting one that serves as a poignant contrast to the often more robust taste of Indian food. It uses one of my favourite vegetables, tastes great and yet light, and goes well with anything, from rotis to bread - it makes a great sandwich filling - to saaru anna or a plain dal and rice. And as I discovered when I started cooking, it's easy and fast to make.

Ingredients:

4 Boiled, peeled potatoes (I count 1 potato per head)

1 cup homemade plain yogurt

2-3 green chillies (to taste), cut into 1 cm segments

1 tsp oil

1 tsp urad dal

1 tsp mustard seeds ( black)

Handful curry leaves

Handful minced coriander leaves for garnish

Salt to taste

Break the potatoes into irregular pieces by hand, but don't mash them. In a small wok, heat the oil. Pop in the mustard seeds and let them start spluttering. Add the green chillies and the urad dal. Wait till the urad dal starts browning a little and add the curry leaves. Take off the heat and pour over the potatoes. Add the yogurt and salt and mix. Top with the coriander leaves and cool in the refrigerator for half hour or more before serving.

To make this into a yummy sandwich spread, use Greek yogurt or hung yogurt instead of plain yogurt: hang a cup and a half of yogurt in a thin muslin cloth with a weight on top until all the liquid drains out. Eat within 4-5 hours or else it'll start tasting sour.

To experiment with this, you can add a small quantity of minced garlic, or to perk it up some chopped spring onions. A tiny amount of mustard can be added to give it a little kick, too.

This is my entry for this weekend's Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Chriese of Almond Corner.

Home Made Burgers

Like all kids these days, my son loves burgers at McDonalds. In fact, the first logo he ever recognized was the McD one. We were taking him to his paediatrician for a checkup and as we drove past Basant Lok market, a large M in the characteristic font appeared atop one of the buildings. His head swiveled around in interest and he lisped in his 2 year old baby voice, “Mamma, I’m yoving it!” Ever since, one of the joys of his life has been the rare outing to a McDonalds outlet for a McAloo tikki burger, fries and fruit juice. There had come a time when the toy that came with the Happy Meal attracted him more than the meal itself, but since then he’s down to appreciating the food. In fact, that was one of the few meals we could count on him wolfing down without any trouble or need to resort to threats/ bribes.

He’s lately been invited out to quite a few playdates at friend’s homes and we’ve been unable to reciprocate until lately, what with the house renovation, my travel and of course, the baby. So when we finally called some of his friends over, lunch for them had to be a production number. He wanted to impress them by ordering a meal in from McDs, but I figured by the time the meal got here it’d taste like cardboard so I offered him home made McAloo Tikkis instead.

I have to admit, they’re among my favourite things to eat at McDs. Delicious, unlike soy burgers, I totally indulged in them during pregnancy. In fact, I'm surprised that McDonalds has not adopted these as part of their worldwide menu, because there are just so many vegetarians out there, never to mention Indian tourists, who would love a tasty vegetarian option.

I had a challenge on my hands, because the home made version had to taste authentically McDs. I must say, I never envisaged the day that I’d be trying to emulate a mass-produced fast food item in my kitchen, but here I was, flipping burgers like a pro!

The boys loved these and the frozen fries we had freshly fried (that sounds like something out of Dr Seuss’s Oh Say Can You Say, Doesn’t it?) and had a gala time at the playdate. They turned out so well A was asking for seconds, so I’m planning to make them a monthly treat.

Ingredients (for 4 burgers):
Potatoes – 1 per person if the size of a cricket ball, 1.5 if smaller
Onions – 2, finely chopped
Shelled Peas – half cup
Salt to taste
I cup breadcrumbs
4 hamburger buns, cut in half
8 lettuce leaves, washed and dried
7-8 slices of tomato
7-8 slices of onion
Fun Foods Sandwich spread (basically Thousand Island dressing)
Salted butter
Cheese slices if you want
2-3 tbsp vegetable oil
Boil the potatoes in salt water, peel them and mash them until pasty. Boil the peas. Add the peas, the chopped onions and salt to the potatoes and shape into circles that just fit into your palm.Roll them in the breadcrumbs. Flatten them into 1 inch thick disks.
In a frying pan, add the oil. When hot, shallow fry the potato burgers until lightly browned on all sides. Spoon up the oil onto the sides of the burgers while frying so the sides get nice and crisp too.
In another frying pan, add a knob of butter and lightly toast the cut sides of the burger buns until browned and crisp.
Assemble the burgers by applying a layer of the Fun foods spread on the cut side of the bottom half of the burger bun. Top with a lettuce leaf, add tomato slices until the bun is covered, then add the potato burger. Top the potato burger with another lettuce leaf and the onion slices. Slather the cut side of the top half of the burger bun with more Fun Foods spread and cover your burger. Add cheese slices wherever you want. Serve hot, with ketchup on the side.