Shortcut to Spinach Kadhi

This recipe actually came into existence only because of some leftover savory Boondi (an Indian snack made from chickpea flour). It was more like an on the spot, let’s try this if it works kind of a culinary experiment which resulted successfully into an appetizing dish, hence on this blog.

Ingredients

Boondi – 1 cup

Sour Yogurt – 5 tsp

Chopped or thawed spinach – 2 cups

Green chilies – 2 medium

Ginger paste – ½ tsp

Oil – 1 tsp

Cumin seeds – ½ tsp

Water – 2 cups

Heat oil in a skillet and add cumin seeds. As the seeds change color and start to crackle, add water, green chilies, ginger paste, salt and bring to boil. Then add spinach and cook covered for 5 minutes. Turn the heat off and let the contents cool down.

In the meanwhile, mix boondi and yogurt in a microwave safe bowl. Mix well and cook for 3 minutes or a little more. The boondi will soak up all the yogurt and turn soggy.

Combine the spinach liquid and the boondi and yogurt mixture and puree it. Re-heat and serve hot.

This bowl may look like a spinach soup or a spinach gravy but do not let it fool you, it is what it is – Spinach kadhi in 2 short steps !

Serving suggestions

·         With Rice/pulav

Tips

·     Heat 1 tsp ghee (clarified butter) in a small skillet. Add one dry red chili, couple of curry leaves, one clove, pinch of asafetida and cook for a minute. Add this sizzling mixture to the Spinach Kadhi and immediately cover to capture the flavors.

·         This is an excellent recipe to make use of leftover boondi raita.

  Interesting fact

·         Boondi comes from the Rajasthan region of India. 

E-book by Indusladies available FREE NOW !

Some good news to share just when Diwali is round the corner !


The e-book of "100 Yummy Diwali recipes" out for this Diwali and available @ http://www.indusladies.com/100diwalisweet. Can't wait to try them out ! I hope the readers on this blog make use of it as well and please please feel free to share it with your family and friends. 


My contribution to the book is Recipe No. 82..don't forget to check it out.

100 Yummy Diwali Sweets Recipe - E Book from Indus Ladies!

100 Yummy Diwali Sweet Recipes - Ebook from Indus Ladies!
For the upcoming Diwali on October 26th, 2011, we at Indusladies are compiling an E-Book called “100 Yummy Diwali Sweet Recipes”. We are collecting sweet/dessert recipes from various bloggers to be featured in this E-Book. 

This E-book will be made available as a free download to our community's 1.3 Lakh+ members. In addition, we will also be making this E-Book available to our 9000+Facebook fans and Twitter followers. It's LOTS and LOTS of exposure to those food blogs entering the E-Book!! We believe this would be a nice way to get the word out about a wonderful blog to the entire membership of IndusLadies!!

Those bloggers interested in submitting a recipe for this E-Book...all you need to do is as follows:1. Send a link from your blog for a sweet / dessert recipe. It should also include the picture of the sweet/dessert. Your recipe, food picture, recipe URL as well as the entire blog URL will get featured in the E-Book.

2. In return, we need you to do two things:- Now make a blog post in your blog announcing the E-Book compilation by IndusLadies and the recipe you are sending for this E-Book. That way inviting your co-bloggers interested to send in their contribution by Oct 10th,2011.

- Between Oct 11 and Oct 26, make a blog post featuring the E-Book and announcing it is available for FREE download in IndusLadies. We will be providing you sooner with the picture of the E-Book’s cover page that you will use to include in this blog post.


Come on...hurry! What are you waiting for?? 

My entry is "Basbousa"

Send a sweet/dessert recipe link from your blog to partners@indusladies.com by Oct 8th, 2011.

Kulfi

I have to thank my dear friend Sirisha Prathi for sharing this wonderfully easy recipe for home-made kulfi. Such an exotic dessert and made from such few and simple ingredients.

The kulfi needs almost zero preparation time and can be made in advance. So once again thank you Sirisha for not only sharing the recipe of kulfi but making tons of it for me when I was pregnant and perpetually hungry !

Ingredients

Condensed milk – 1 can (14 oz)

Evaporated milk – 1 can

Whipped cream – 2 cups

Cardamom powder – half a spoon

Saffron strands – 4 to 5

Ricotta cheese – ½ cup (optional)

Warm milk – 3 spoons

Heat a small skillet and cook the Ricotta cheese on low flame constantly stirring till all the liquid evaporates and what remains is a dry powder of the cheese. Allow it to cool. Add saffron strands to the warm milk and let them sit for a while. Mix the remaining ingredients and powdered ricotta cheese in a Blender. Add cardamom powder and the milk with saffron strands, stir well. Pour into molds or plastic cups. Cover well and freeze for 8 hours. Serve chilled.

Serving suggestions

·         With Falooda (rice noodles)

Tips

·         Ricotta cheese in this recipe gives a better texture; its absence does not alter the taste of this dessert, hence optional.

  Interesting fact

·         Traditionally frozen in Earthen pots (matka), this dessert is also known by the name of  “matka” kulfi.

5 Minute Dessert

I had made up my mind to call this “cake in a cup” for that is what it actually is. Unfortunately the pictures of cup and the cake in it did not come out as nice as expected and this is such a wonderful and insanely simple and fast recipe, an average click would not have done justice to it.

To make matters even simpler, this isn’t my own recipe. Was lucky enough to stumble upon it one lazy night (on a wonderful blog called 4^th Sense Cooking), tried it out immediately and I have no excuse for not posting this on my blog all this while.

What I can tell you about this dessert is that it is a cake, it is eggless and it can be cooked in a microwave in less than 5 minutes.

If you are tempted to try it out click here for the original recipe.

Serving suggestions

·         With ice cream.

Cauliflower in Mango Sauce

I usually end of making a dessert out of mango or eating slices just like that. This time around I was bored of the usual stuff and on a whim decided to cook dinner with mango. On paper, cauliflower and mango didn't look like a great combination, but once on the plate it was good, unusual, but good.

Ingredients

Cauliflower florets – 2 cups

Diced Onion – 1 medium

Garlic – 1 clove

Chopped Mango – 1 medium

Cumin powder – ¼ tsp

Red chili sauce – 1 tsp

Water – 2 cups

Salt and pepper

Red chili flakes – as tolerated

Oil – as needed

In a microwave safe bowl combine water, cauliflower florets and salt. Mix and cook in the microwave for 15 minutes. Alternatively, boil the florets for 10 minutes or so on a gas stove. Drain water, set aside the florets and let them cool.

In a skillet, heat 4 tsp of oil. Shallow fry the cauliflower florets in batches. Add pepper and red chili sauce to every batch while being shallow fried.  In the meanwhile, in another pan heat 1 tsp oil and cook the diced onion and garlic for a couple of minutes. 

Add chopped mango, red chili flakes, cumin powder, salt and pepper and 2 cups of water. Choose the mango carefully; it should be neither raw nor too ripe. Cook covered for 20 minutes. Puree in blender once cool.

10 minutes before serving this dish, bring the puree to a boil and add the cauliflower florets. Cook them together covered for 5 minutes. Serve hot.

Serving suggestions

·         With brown or white rice

Tips

·         1 tsp of Soya sauce adds a nice flavor to this dish.

  Interesting fact

·   The mango is the national fruit of India and mango tree is the national tree of the neighboring country of Bangladesh.

Stuffed Eggplant

Some dishes always retain their exotic status no matter how often you cook them or how common they are at very many dinner tables. Stuffed Eggplant is one such dish. Of the million versions of this classic dish, I try a new each time with little or more success. The recipe below uses Goda masala, a traditional Maharashtrian spice mixture. As expected, it added a lot more flavor to the dish.

Ingredients

Baby eggplants – 8

Dry Coconut powder – 6 tsp

Chopped cilantro – ¼ cup

Tamarind paste – 1 tsp

Cumin powder – 1 tsp

Coriander powder – 2 tsp

Red chili powder – 2 tsp

Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp

Goda masala – 1 tsp

Diced garlic – 1 tsp

Grated ginger – 1 tsp

Diced Onion – 1 medium

Asafetida – a pinch

Water – as needed

Oil – 1 tsp

Salt – to taste

Dilute the tamarind paste by adding a little water so that it has syrup like consistency. Add coconut powder, chopped cilantro, cumin, coriander, turmeric and red chili powder, goda masala and salt to form a mixture. Use half of this mixture to fill up the eggplants.

Chop off the top green portion of the baby eggplants. Make 3 slits in each eggplant to carve an opening. Take roughly 1 tsp of the mixture prepared above and stuff the eggplants one by one. Set aside once all are nicely prepped up.

Heat oil in a skillet; add asafetida, diced onion, garlic and ginger. Sauté for 5 minutes or until the onions are done. Add the remaining mixture and cook for 2 minutes. Add 2 cups of water and bring to boil. Place the stuffed eggplants one by one in the skillet and cook covered for 30 minutes or so. Do not stir the eggplants too much in between. Alternative transfer the contents of the skillet to a pressure cooker and blow three whistles.

The use of Goda masala made this dish a little extra spicy, just the way we like it sometimes.

Serving suggestions

·         With Roti/Rice

Tips

·         Dry Mango Powder (Amchur) can be used in place of tamarind.

  Interesting fact

·    Eggplant has more nicotine than any other edible plant but not so much as compared to passive smoking.