Light summer meals

This summer has been kind to us so far. After a few days of 40 degree C + weather, storm clouds and aandhis have blown through the city, leaving it much cooler and more bearable. I wish it could be like this all year round. in fact, the weather has not only been conducive to morning and evening walks, but we've managed to go AC free for several nights, with a cool breeze and the fan enough to give us a good night's sleep. Always a pleasure, since I feel I wake up better rested without the AC.

But between my Hashimoto's crazy readings and the general feeling of warmth around, I felt the need to drum up a light dinner yesterday, something that would be fresh and healthy yet filling. And for me in particular, grain free if possible.

Reading through a few food blogs, the idea of bean salad - which fb memories had thrown up - hit my fancy. I decided to add cauliflower rice - which I had previously dismissed as a bit pretentious - to the mix. For the fam, on the side I had an emergency side of dahi chawal in case anyone felt the food was insubstantial. The meal turned out to be delicious and surprisingly filling, so much so that A who'd been the first to turn his nose up and say 'That's all we're having', sated himself with 2 helpings and the dahi chawal remained pristine!

Salad - really it's a matter of whatever your ingenuity suggests and what you have in the fridge

Ingredients:
1/2 cup rajma ( red kidney beans), uncooked
1/2 each of red and yellow capsicum, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
1 onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 teaspoon roast cumin powder
Juice of 1-2 limes ( depends how juicy they are. We're getting dried up ones here)
1/2 cup cooked corn
1 handful coriander leaves, chopped fine
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Rock salt to taste ( we're trying to switch to this as it's supposed to be healthier)

Soak the beans overnight and then pressure cook for 1-2 whistles until done. Or use the quick soak method I learned from Madhur Jaffrey - Soak for 1 hour, cook for 1 whistle in the pressure cooker. Leave to cool for an hour and pressure cook for 1-2 whistles again.

Leave the beans to cool - they should be at room temperature when you put together the salad, so it's best to get them done and out of the way much before your planned meal.
The rest is super simple - just mix all the ingredients together, including the beans and serve with a smile. I can think of endless changes to ring on this - adding radish, spring onions, peas, lettuce or baby spinach...replacing the cumin with chaat masala...one thing I am going to try soon is adding feta cheese to it.

Cauliflower Rice

Ingredients:
1 cauliflower, grated fine
1 tsp oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
Salt to taste
Sprinkle of water

In a cast iron wok, put the oil on to heat. Toss in the cumin seeds and toast lightly. Add the cauliflower and sprinkle lightly with water. Cook, covered with a tightly fitting lid, for a 3-4 minutes and then check if its soft - should be al dente, not mushy. Uncover and cook for a minute and take off the heat. Add salt, if using, and mix gently.

We topped the bean salad with this and added chana masala from Haldirams - a spicy version of roast chana - for extra crunch. Super!

Couscous

I have liked whatever I have tasted of middle-eastern food so far, from the ubiquitous Lebanese which used to come in handy whenever I didn't feel like cooking back when we lived in France, to Moroccan Tagines to Turkish Imam Bayildis and all the bean dishes which we gorged on last summer in Istanbul. So I recently bought a couple of cookbooks - one on Middle-eastern food and one on African recipes - which I was really keen on trying out. It's been a pretty hectic time for us for many reasons, and we've been eating out a lot, including really heavy Indian food, so I thought Middle-eastern food would have just the right touch of flavour and lightness with the added benefits of both familiarity and exoticity.

Couscous sounded like the right thing to serve, along with a simple warm bean salad. I had encountered couscous years ago at a French friend's home. She had gone to great trouble to make a bowl of vegetarian couscous for me as I was the only vegetarian at the party. Unfortunately her recipe had dates, raisins and was overwhelmingly sweet which is something I don't care for in a main course. My recipe book had all kinds of meat-based couscous recipes and the only vegetarian one needed roasting vegetables for 2 hours, which I just wasn't feeling up to. So I figured I'd invent a recipe for myself and went along. Both the salad and the couscous were delicious and loved by even my son who is a picky eater, and the meal was exactly what I was looking for - light, nutritious and infused with a sense of harmony and well-being. What a way to start a week!

This post is going over to Skinny Gourmet for Weekend Herb Blogging.

Warm Bean Salad

Ingredients:

1 pound Green beans, peeled and cooked ( I boiled them in salted water until done)

100 gms Feta Cheese, cubed

1 red onion, cubed

2 tbsp olive oil

10-15 black or green olives

Juice of 1 lime

Heat the olive oil. Add the onion and tomato and saute for a minute, then add the green beans and the Feta cheese. Stir to mix for a couple of minutes and turn off the heat. Add the olives and the lime juice, mix and serve. Feel free to top a handful of walnuts or pinenuts.

Couscous

Gravy Ingredients:

1/2 green, yellow and red bell pepper cut into strips

1 onion, julienned

1 zucchini, cubed

2-3 cloves garlic

2 tbsp olive oil

300 ml water

1 tsp cumin

1-2 tsp paprika

Salt to taste

2 tomatoes, cubed

Heat the olive oil. Add the cumin seeds and wait for them to turn toasty. Add the garlic and onions and saute until the onion turns translucent. Add the tomatoes and cook until they turn soft. Add the zucchini and the 300 ml water, salt and paprika. Cook on a low heat, covered, for five minutes, then take the cover off and let simmer until the zucchini starts turning translucent. Add the bell peppers and keep simmering until all the vegetables are cooked.

Meanwhile, put a tbsp of olive oil into a saucepan and heat. Turn the heat off and add 250 gms of couscous and stir to mix. Add 1/4 cup of warm water and mix with a fork or your fingers until the couscous grains start plumping up. Leave aside until the gravy is done. Then add a few shavings of butter into the warm couscous and work with your fingers until the butter is melted and the couscous grains plump and shiny.

Assemble by serving a mound of couscous on each plate, making a shallow crater in the middle and pouring the gravy into the crater. Serve hot.