Mushroom and Capsicum in Yogurt Gravy

There are days when I crave for just plain rice and a simple spicy side dish to go with it. That is when I resort to my all-time-favourite Mushroom Pepper Fry. It is a wonderful recipe that creates a perfect balance between spice and flavour that I cannot get enough of it. I simply love that dish.

Having said that, too much spices is not always good for your tummy. So, I fight my urges to prepare that dish every time I buy mushrooms. Yeah, I somehow tend to blindly get into the mode of making the Pepper Fry each time I have stock of Mushrooms :) 

So, here is this other recipe which is higher on the health quotient and milder in flavour yet delicious, which I prepare on days when I crave mushrooms but not too much spice. With the intermittent crunch of capsicums and the tang of the yogurt gravy, this dish proves to be a good companion for simple plain rice. You can also serve it up with Chapati or pulkas.

I love LOVE learning new simple mushroom dishes, if you do have some up your sleeves, do let me know in the comments section below. I would love to try it out in my kitchen and post them here :)

Mushroom, Brocolli and Bell Peppers in Garlic Sauce | Indo-Chinese Gravy

This recipe post has been in my drafts for over a year! I have no clue why this hasn't seen the day light yet! So, without further delay, I am posting this right now! 

I love Chinese cuisine. The Indo-Chinese version appeals to me even more. When I saw this on Shweta's blog, I wanted to try it! I wanted a more gravy kind of a side-dish and hence made a thicker gravy.

It was simple to make and I absolutely loved the flavour. 

 I love it when my veggies are crunchy and just done. Over-cooked broccolis or capsicums are a big turn off for me. So if you are like me, ensure you keep them just right as the flavours of such crunchy veggies go really well in this dish. Serve it with fried rice, or simple team it with plain rice. Either way, its yum! 

Enjoy! :)

Pudina Alu | Minty Potatoes

In my frenzy of Mexican cooking that took over my kitchen last week and then the excitement about my new OTG, and some baking... I completely forgot to post the recipe for Pudina Alus, that I had promised in my Sweet Corn and Methi Pulav post! Apologies and here I am with the promised recipe...

Like I said in my other post... I had some guests coming over who were on a no-onion, no-garlic diet and hence I wanted a spread which does not use these ingredients, but is yet scrumptious and bursting with flavours. So I had planned to team a flavourful minty potatoes with my Sweet Corn and Methi Pulav.

The combination went really well and the guests were happy. Apart from pairing this side dish with pulav, it also went really well with pooris that I had also made that day. The lovely colour that the greens impat to the potatoes is delightful and the flavours... is yum!

Vaingana Sagle | Stuffed Brinjal in Coconut Gravy | Konkani Dish

'Brinjal' translates to Vaingan in Konkani. and Sagle means 'whole'. So as you have guessed, Vaingana Sagle means Whole Brinjals! This is a very popular dish in Konkani cuisine and is served as a side for rice and dal. The brinjals used in this dish are usually the tiny purple variety which easily cook as a whole. These baby brinjals are stuffed and cooked in a gravy which is a blend of coconut, spices, roasted dal or peanuts. The curry paste is customized in every household to suit their preferences.

I have grown up savouring on my mum's preparation and now recently I got to taste my sister-in-law's variant. Both have different sets of ingredients for making their curry pastes and also the method of cooking the brinjals. My mum deep-fried the brinjals prior to stuffing and cooking them while my sis-in-law stuffed them while raw and steamed them. My mum used peanuts as a main ingredient to make her curry paste, while my sis-in-law used urid dal! 

These variations give a new dimension to the dishes and both taste wonderfully different from the other, each yummy in its own way!

So, this is my take on this dish with main influence from my sis-in-law's method of preparation. I customised the curry paste to suit my liking. Don't these cute little purple binjals look pretty in the beautifully coloured gravy? Oh well... they tasted YUM! :)

Thai Green Curry (Veg) | Simple Thai Cooking

Thai Green Curry has been my favorite Thai dish for quite some time now. I think the first time I tasted it was in a Thai restaurant in Pune and fell in love with it, the very first time I had it. The essence of coconut milk along with the flavors of vegetables like Mushroom, Baby corn and Green Peas created such an amazing combination! The dish looked so simple, yet it tasted exotic!

I wanted to try this out at home and purchased Tarla Dalal's Thai Cooking book. The recipe was easy, but it called for Lemon Grass. I searched quite a bit for this ingredients, but failed to find it. After much searching and postponing to experiment this dish, I decided to go for it, minus the Lemon Grass. This is considered one of the most important element in Thai Cooking, but what to do if I cant find it... well, create the Thai dish, my way... hence I decided to do without the lemon grass and simply called my dish Pai's Thai Green Curry!! :) 

So, a couple of times I made it this way, though it lacked the complete flavour of the authentic Thai Green Curry I had eaten at the Thai restaurant, my preparation made me happy and I was satisfied with this version of the famous Thai delicacy :)

But it was only last week, when I finally managed to get myself some lemon grass!! Yay, so I made myself a batch of the Thai Green Curry Paste and then this yummilicous Thai Green Curry. Yes, the flavour of lemon grass comes through and gives it an extra punch. However, if you find it hard to find lemon grass, I would suggest you go ahead and make it anyway, as the taste is nearly 95% there even without this ingredient.

Pepper Mushroom | Mushroom Pepper Fry

Today I am sharing with you a super simple and absolutely yummy dish that puts the spotlight on: Mushrooms!!

So, how many of us really know about the goodness these little fellows carry with them? Mushrooms are high in proteins, low in cholesterol, help strengthen our immune system, high in vitamins and mineral... oh the list goes on... to read a whole lot of amazing facts about this nature's superfood, check out this link here: Mushrooms: Health & Nutrition.

I am a huge fan of mushrooms. However, I haven't been too experimental and have only stuck to the good-old Button Mushrooms till now. Oh, there are tonnes of varieties out there! I am happy with my always reliable button-mushrooms that I haven't felt the need to try out any other variant as yet. There is a lot you can make with just these that you will never tire of them. Button mushrooms are the most common variety and very easy to handle. Yeah, the cleaning part can get cumbersome as these guys need to be washed, washed and washed again till you can be sure you have gotten your mushrooms clean and ready to cook. They are grown at the soil level and hence need to be thoroughly cleaned prior to cooking. But once, that is done, you are good to go and the cooking takes but just a few minutes.... Mushrooms cook real fast!

So, this recipe here is a super simple and absolutely delicious preparation of button mushrooms seasoned with a whole lot of spices. It gets done in no more than 15 minutes and trust me on this, you will get back to making this again and again and again! In 2 weeks, I have made it thrice already :) Tastes super yum with just plain rice, but you could team it up with anything you fancy. First, just try it out and then get experimental with your pairing :)

Baingan Bharta | Fire Roasted Eggplant

The way the humble eggplant transforms into this bowl full of yumminess, when it is slow roasted directly over flame, then mashed and blended with spices and cooked to perfection, has always fascinated me. Such a simple technique, yet the output is but classic! 

For all you fellow Baingan Bharta lovers, I am sure you agree on its smoky deliciousness. And for those of you who do not know about this dish or haven't tasted it yet, but adore eggplants... well, you are definitely missing out on something and please do yourselves a favour and treat yourselves to this at the earliest! :)

I guess it is process of cooking the eggplant directly to fire that infuses this wonderful smokiness to this dish. Just like barbeques and kebabs, you know. And by roasting it, it gets so convenient to skin the eggplant and pulp the well cooked flesh that lies inside. The whole process is surprisingly easy. 

In fact, this dish is also recommended to all of you who are not too fond of eggplants. The final dish turns out so yum that the usual flavor of eggplant when diced or sliced and cooked into a curry or any other dish does not show up when you transform it into a bharta. Oh yes, the flavor is a whole lot different and yummy. The first time I served this, the hubby who is not too fond of this veggie, enjoyed them with some hot rotis :) In fact he had no clue that the dish was made of eggplants until I gleefully gave away the star ingredient.. only after he had relished his meal!! Teee heeee! :D

Pumpkin Masoor Dal | Yellow Pumpkin with Red Lentils

 

Happy Halloween guys :)

It is just coincidental that I am posting a pumpkin dish on Halloween's day :) Hope all of you who are celebrating this day, are having loads of fun!!

 

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Lentils or Dal has always been a family favourite. A simple preparation with a good mix of spices and a mild tempering, a dal makes for a perfect serve along with rotis as well as rice. And when it is rice that is teamed with dal, it has got to be Jeera rice for us. Plain rice is good, but Jeera rice helps enhance the flavour of dal. Have you tried this pairing yet?

 

Whenever I am in the lentils section of a grocery supermarket, the variety of colours and shapes of the various types of lentils captures my attention. I can just go on a rampage and pick a packet of each variant! Oh well, I am very very fond of trying out new varieties of lentils.

 

I love how each variant of dal has its own unique flavour and texture when cooked. My current favourite is the red lentils or Masoor dal. Though its beautiful pink colour vanishes once it is cooked, its flavour, oh my... is simply yummilicious! And to make it even more appealing, these lentils cook real fast.

 

In most of my dals, I try to sneak in some veggies to enhance the nutritive value of the dish. Dal Palak features very often at home and now, this Pumpkin Dal is a new family favourite. The hubby simply LOVES it :) The soft pieces of pumpkin beautifully compliments the flavour of the masoor dal. And we like our dals on the thicker side, so the pumpkin pieces enhances this texture.

 

Pan-fried Sweet Potato | Kananga Phodi | Konkani Dish

Once you fall off your routine, its hard to get back on track. Isn't it? 

Well, at least for me it is! And when I do go off track, I have to bring all the forces of the earth together to motivate myself to get back to my routine and continue doing what I used to before the break....
phew!

But to give this thought a twist, if you follow a routine day in and day out, life gets monotonous doesn't it?! Well again, for me it does! And blogging for me is definitely not a part of routine I would like to strictly follow... it is a hobby and not something I should feel tied down about. Come on... hobbies are fun I thought!   

So yeah, I was just busy juggling with various other aspects of my life that this little bloggy of mine had to sit and wait patiently for me to get back here and feed him with something to post out to the wold! So here I am! :)

Cooking has been going on as usual... No, I wasn't on a vacation on that front! :P. Its the plating, clicking, writing and posting that seemed like daunting tasks the last few weeks. The brownie point here is, I have used up the time to mentally keep track of some very interesting yums that I would like to feature here and so you shall be given a treat of all those yummies soon!! (....errr.... I hope! unless your highness decides to go on another hiatus! :D 

To kick start my non-blogging slumber, I am sharing this super easy dish made of sweet potatoes. Is it a starter or a serve along... I cannot decide! Its great both ways. It is a typical Konkani dish called Kananga Phodi. I hope you all like it! :)

Potato and Green Peas Stew | Simple Vegetable Stew | Ready in 30 mins!

 

The instant I slurped my first spoonful of stew... slurrrrp... slurrrrp....SLURPPP...

 

It was love. Oh, I just knew.

 

From then on there is no looking back. I love it with rice. I love it with Appam or Idiyappam. I love it with chapatis/rotis. Oh I just LOVE it!

 

There something divinely inviting about this coconut milk based vegetarian side dish... (Oh, there are non-vegetarian options as well, its just that I prefer this veggie one)... it makes you want more and more of it.

 

And there are those several instances, when the main dish along which it is served has been swept clean, and I just continue slurping away the stew all by itself. Yummilicous!

 

 

I must confess, I have not really made stew at home too often. In fact, I have made it just once long back and it was such an ellaborate process. I followed the recipe from a book.

 

What??!! Made just once and I say I am insanely in love with it? Makes you wonder why right? Well, made me wonder too... and that is how this recipe was born!!

 

Stew has been a favourite order of mine, at some of the restaurants that we frequented over the last few years. I enjoyed eating it out there that never did the thought occur to me to try making my own!!

 

But am glad the thought did finally decide to come by and gladder still that I being me looked for the easiest possible way to create the stew. And ever since the first attempt, I have made it over and again.

 

So here it is - my simple vegetable stew. This gets done in less than 30 minutes and yes.... we LOVED it better than the one at the restaurant... Yay!

 

Sigh, the restaurant loses one loyal stew-customer!

 

I kept mine simple, with minimal veggies as I wanted to give centre stage to the heavenly flavour of the coconut milk. You can add in anything else you fancy and make it as colourful as you like. As for my family... we are delighted with just potatoes and green peas :) 

 

Potato & Sweet Corn Salad

 

Here is a confession: I am not much of a salad person! I understand the health benefits of fresh salad vegetables and how some vegetables are best eaten raw and fresh. But somehow the platter of sliced tomatoes, cucumber and carrots served along with meals at home sometimes, at get-together and restaurants is something I meekly skip… merely out of boredom! Okay… at the most, I would probably just pick minimal servings just to keep those guilt pangs at bay!! 

I do like eating healthy. Oh yes, this is something I have consciously embraced in the last few years. Hence, I am always on the lookout for some simple healthy salads that not only are health-packed but are also good on the taste and are more importantly... a treat to the eyes! Bah okay okay… I do like my food to look pretty! Well, don’t you?!! :D

 



 

So yeah… this pretty salad was one such find. My colleague introduced me to it. And a well-made salad doesn’t fail to catch my attention. I loved the look of it and the simplicity that went into this. Well, I guess a potato based salad cannot go wrong, can it? I was surprised to hear not a drop of oil went into it and takes less than 5mins to put it together!! 

The other day, I had some guests over and I served this salad with Pasta and Pull-apart Garlic Bread. I was really pleased the way my salad complimented my mains and was pleased a measure more when my guests repeatedly reached out for it and helped themselves. To top it all asked for the recipe of the ‘interesting and unique salad’!! Happy happy! Yay! :)

 



Batata Song | Potato in Tangy Onion-Tamarind Gravy | Konkani Dish

It amazes me how even though the Konkani community is not as large as some of the bigger communities in India  its cuisine is no less diverse than the rest. In fact the flavours and preparations varies within the community itself! Konkanis are from Kerala have a distinct style of cooking while their counterparts from Mangalore and Goa have an equally different yet distinct style of preparations. Local ingredients find their way into Konkani food prepared in different parts of the country.

My family is from Cochin while my husband's is from Mangalore. This makes way for a very interesting line up of Konkani cuisine each different and new to both of us as the food is influenced from the two different coastal regions. Recently I learnt of this particular dish called Batata Song, the name itself caught my attention and the fact that it has been my husband's childhood favourite made my interest rise a little more for this dish. An interesting combination of coconut oil, jaggery and chilli powder goes into this to give potatoes a unique flavour. Coconut oil is commonly used in several Konkani preparations lending its distinct flavour to the dish it is added into.

I had a quick foodie chat with my ma-in-law and figured this dish is a song to make, literally! :D Simple ingredients, simple preparations and simply yummy flavours! Oh, I just loved this dish to bits :) 

The joy of re-creating husband's childhood favourite and being certified that it tasted very close to (if not equally good or better!! :P) his mum's preparation... is a yoo-hoo moment! :D Sure all you wifeys would agree with me here!! :) 

Batata song can be served as a side with chapathis or with rice and dal. Both tasting equally divine. 

Jeera Gobi | Cumin flavoured Cauliflower

Cauliflower is one vegetable that can easily blend into any kind of cuisine from a typical South Indian dish like a Masala Dosa to a North Indian favourite like a Gobi Paratha. This crunchy vegetables tastes best when cooked perfectly, not too soft with a bit of crunch left in it. I love my gobi like that! Cauliflower cooks fast making it a desirable veggie to work with :)

So, today I present to you a simple Cauliflower side, which paired perfectly with my Methi Pooris. The preparation is hassle-free and with the addition of a little gram flour/besan, the humble cauliflower side is elevated to an all new level! Yes, the addition of gram flour does a lot to a dish! Adds in an exquisite flavour and a wonderful texture. Try this out when you want to prepare something quick, easy yet tasty with cauliflower :)

Palak Paneer | Cottage Cheese in Spinach gravy | Ready in 20 mins!

We all know about the goodness of greens and fresh vegetables. But nevertheless, even to this day many of us run away from green veggies when given a choice of something yummier and tastier! :P Well, let me tell you... healthy food can also be tasty food!! :) Spinach when rightly paired with other delicious ingredients results in becoming one of the most flavourful dishes you can find out there.

And when you pair Spinach with one of the all time favourite ingredient, how can you really go wrong? Cottage cheese or Paneer and Spinach, otherwise called Palak Paneer has been loved by many a paneer lover, not for no reason! This delicious combination transforms the bland tasting spinach into a perfectly spiced gravy with succulent paneer pieces happily dipped in it! Oh my....

There are several ways in which you can dish this out, but as always, I prefer the simplest, healthiest yet one which does not compromise on the yum-factor :) So here is my version of Palak Paneer, which uses fresh paneer and not deep-fried, and uses poppy seeds for a yummy thick gravy.. so who needs fattening cream?!! bye bye fresh cream... now, isn't that great?! :)

Here are some of my previous experiments with Spinach which have been delightfully accepted by people who are otherwise not-to-fond of spinach as such :)

• Spinach and Corn Bread Roll
• Spinach and Pumpkin Pasta
• Spinach and Potato Parathas
• Spinach, Spring Onions and Fenugreek Leaves Paratha
• Spinach and Corn Sandwich

Chilli Paneer | a quick-fix recipe

I had this slab of paneer in my fridge which I wanted to finish off. Not in a mood to go for any elaborate recipe, I was contemplating on going for my 20 mins Paneer Butter Masala. But I had not any tomatoes and just one onion in my pantry! My weekly shopping was pending and I was left with just a limited stock to dish out my lunch!

So with one onion, a few capsicum and some green chillies and of course a slab of paneer, here is what I managed to dish out :) 

This simple Chilli Paneer, goes really well with Jeera Rice or a simple Fried Rice. I had some left over from my meal that day and surprisingly, the left over, when re-heated and eaten tasted even better the next day :D Just remember to have serve this dish hot, as the paneer tends to get hard when cooled.

Paneer Butter Masala | Ready in 20 mins!

Paneer is by far the most popular amongst vegetarians. Its rich succulent flavour enhances the taste of any dish it is added into. Paneer Butter Masala has been my all time favourite and I remember those days when Sunday family-dinner-out meant, PBM (as we used to call it!) with Rotis, all else later! :)

This version of PBM, is a quick and easy one, it took me just 20 minutes to put it together from start to end. The taste is not one bit compromised. I was back from work, and craved for this very dish... dished it out in the quickest and easiest possible way... and was really satisfied with the final output! 

I teamed it up with some real soft Whole Wheat Naans, the combination was yummy and I am definitely repeating both these in future :)