Chindian

 Chinese cabbage!

Chinese cabbage and brocolli fried with garam masala. Eaten with store bought aloo paratha!!

Herbs, Spice & Rice

Rice steamed and then fried with cloves, fennel seeds, red chili, onions, capsicum and garnished with basil and mint leaves.

Aubergine Cream Dream

Brinjal steamed and fried with olive oil, garlic, basilicum and cream. With cucumbers and jeera rice.

Mummy's Touch

Tomato rasam, rice and beans fry with Mummy's touch to it - scraped coconut.

For the fear of reruns

After yesterday's hit, I was just about to make the same dish again. Midway through getting the ingredients ready, I realized that it was for this specific reason that I had started this blog - to stop rerunning every hit dish I made over and over again. It happens too often in the solo-cook's kitchen because you have to buy a whole cabbage, a whole coconut and use the whole thing. When I tried to use the whole thing in one dish it resulted in gigantic failures like this one: link. So I sometimes stick to a winning recipe for those ingredients and then get so bored with making it that I make it badly and then I hate it. So the only way to stop that from happening is to force yourself to make something different every time!
Oh and I realized when I looked up that link above, this blog is one year old! Yay!!

So today's meal: moar kozhambu (with no vegetables in it) and cabbage fry eaten with rice. Don't you think both the dishes have a fluorescent look to them?

The Watched Pot

Red cabbage, spring onions and garlic fried with a ground mixture of coconut, mint leaves, red chilies and tomatoes and a pinch of garam masala. With the 9 ingredients in garam masala, the total goes to 16 in all!! Of course not including salt and water. Why have I noticed all this (and counted the number of ingredients on the garam masala packet)? Contrary to the prevalent popular belief that I am jobless, I am actually very impatient and cannot allow the watched pot to boil. I have to occupy myself with something or the other while the dish cooks entirely. Or I tend to do something silly and spoil the meal. By putting in some out of place ingredient in or not allowing stuff to cook completely. So that's why the watched pot never boils in my kitchen.
This cabbage thingy was one of the tastiest dishes I have ever made or eaten. Doesn't it look great!

Loaded Lunch

 

I have a lot on my plate now.

Lemon rice on top, mixed vegetable fry (cabbage, carrot, bean sprouts, spring onions) on the right, rasam rice on the left.

Softies!

Soft, really soft chapatis! And endive poriyal. Haha! I don't think those two words have ever been used in the same line before. Baked endives with salt first and then fried it with butter and pepper. Tasted bitter but nice. Went well with the chapatis too! Did I mention the chapatis were soft? Really really soft? Haha!

Pumped

Pumpkin poriyal and rice. Just boiled pumpkin and garnished with red chili.

Salt as a preservative

Salty okra - store bought but great chapatis - home made.

Not so Souperb

Cucumber soup! One chopped cucumber, fried lightly with crushed garlic in olive oil. Then pressure cooked. Mixed with some corn flour. Then cooled. Then ground in the blender. Garnished with dried spices.
As tasty as it sounds, it wasn't very. I think I added a little too much corn flour.

Which colour do you choose

Pasta with tomato, red bell pepper, parsley, garlic and cream.

Treats from Leftovers

Wheat flour-corn flour dosa with cabbage-spring onion- tomato (with basil leaves and garlic)  fry. The cabbage fry was supposed to be the main dish, the dosa was an after-thought. A record number of ingredients today. And as always, the reason was simply that all these ingredients were getting old and needed to be used up fast. But by  no means was this a bad meal!

I Ate This

Katrika poriyal (Aubergine fry) and rice, with tomato-onion-cucumber-curds salad.

I wonder why I provide translations. You know katrika poriyal. (Nutty face. You have a question mark face I can see. With you know what.)

The easy way out

Salad: chopped cucumber, chopped mozzarella, pickled olives. Seasoning: oregano, pepper and olive oil. Yes, that was dinner followed by a large glass of milk and some fruit.

Purslane, aubergine, capsicum

Lunch  = keera sambhar and rice. This is supposed to be something called "purslane". It was slightly bitter but bitter good.

Peas rice with one aubergine fry and one capsicum fry.

Pasta Properness

So. I followed a recipe that I read online. Almost to the dot. That is I replaced an ingredient with another and I didn't really pay attention to the time for which stuff was to be heated, boiled, fried etc. And no attention whatsoever to the quantities.
Here is the (modified) recipe: Boil pasta of your choice according to the pack instructions and keep aside. Heat some oil (recipe said to use olive and I did, but I am not sure it is absolutely necessary to stick to this) and add crushed garlic into this till it is cooked. You can check if it is cooked by gently pushing a spoon into it; it must feel soft. To this, add one chopped tomato and keep the heat on medium till it is cooked. Check with the same spoon test. Add the boiled pasta to this with some chopped fresh basil leaves(<-link). Finally, add in some "cooking cream" and turn off the heat. The recipe said to add cheese, which I had run out of. Add salt. I am glad I made the switch, because I think cheese wouldn't give this dish the creamy texture that it had.

I was really delighted with the taste and flavour that was mainly from the garlic and the leaves of course. Basil leaves are of the family of tulsi. The leaves that I have here smell like tulsi but do not have as strong a flavour, much larger in size and have a different shape.

The recipe is so very simple, does not need any skill at all. It does need some special ingredients, but they are not too hard to get. The total preparation + cooking + eating time was a little under 35 minutes! Well it might take you a little longer because I think I gulped the whole bowl down in less than a minute !!

Going Pro!

Woohoo! I have made something that I don't think has been made even by Amma!
Try and take a guess.



Badam katri !!

I made this for a friend who just graduated and will be leaving here soon. It is so simple to make and I enjoyed making it so much. Just sugar, water, badam(almonds) and heat. It is unbelievable! I wish I could have made it into diamonds, the way it is usually made. But I didn't have a large plate into which I could pat the thing. Also, I think my proportions were a bit off.
I am not very sure it tasted like the real thing, because I tasted it while it was hot and while I was a bit hungry, so it may not really count. Well, basically I am just gushing. From days of eating instant noodles and bread endlessly, I don't even know how I got here!
Yay again!!

New look blog!

Stuffed capsicum - stuffing made of beans, tomato and cheese blocks. Eaten with homemade bread croutons.

Enjoy the new background of this blog made by the resident artist of Riot of Colours.

Food Looking

Rice fried with vegetables (carrot, cabbage, spring onions) and a curry made of potato, onion, tomato, chili and mint leaves.
Talk about good looking food! Any time I am tired of cooking for just myself and wondering why it is that I love having so much variety, I just have to look at these pictures and tell myself, it is worth all the trouble to be able to enjoy food and cooking in this way!

Another wild experiment

Chopped onions, ground mixture of coconut, mint leaves, coriander seeds, and tomatoes. Cooked with rice.
Left over stuff time again!

Fast eat

Lentils and capsicum with fresh coriander. Eaten with pita bread.

Stuff

Rice, more kozhambu with cucumber and capsicum-tomato fry.

Vadai vadai!

Lunch:



Peas fried rice, broccoli-tomato-onion curry.

Dinner:


Peas vadai! Soaked peas ground into a coarse paste with a chili and coriander leaves. Mixed with corn flour and chopped onions and shallow fried in oil!
Wowie! It tasted great!

The philosophical solo cook

Pita bread is a kind of Mediterranean bread that is made such that a pocket is created inside it. It is used as a container for falafel and salads, a popular street food all around the world.
Ready made pita bread - to be bought and baked and eaten. Filled with a salad of lightly fried carrots, cabbage, bean sprouts and spring onions - also available cut and ready to fry. The solo cook must try to experiment with new kinds of food even if it is with ready to cook dishes. It keeps the spirit of the whole ceremony of cooking food alive. What ceremony? You would only understand if you have been through the process of making something for over an hour or two only to devour it in a few fleeting minutes. It is the spirit that matters. It doesn't even matter how the food tastes. Yes, that's what I said!
Holding the bread in my hand and squeezing it gently was the only way I could get the filling in the picture. So there it is! Fun to eat!

Home Spicy Home

Memory of taste is a very strong one. You not only remember a particular taste, your memory also associates it to the times when you tasted something for the first time or repeatedly.
This dish tasted a lot like what was a regular at home.
Coconut, mint leaves, coriander leaves, cloves and chilies ground to a paste. Fried with chopped beans, potatoes and capsicum. Cooked with rice and salt. Eaten with lemon in chopped onions.
Not exactly a "chili spicy" thing, it was a great mix of spice.

Sorry for the weird looking picture

Actually, it was an attempt to show you the crisp parts of our rava upma.

Simple, no frills - rava (sooji/fine semolina) with onions, less than a teaspoon of oil and a red chili. Sometimes I don't care to put up pictures of very plain looking food that I have, when I am not experimenting. This plain food is very very important and just because I don't put up pictures, it doesn't mean these meals are not good. Long live simple food!

Mixture of Flours

"Rava dosa" and tomato-onion-groundnut-chili chutney. Rava dosa made of some rapidly aging instant dosa mix, sooji and corn flour.
Wasn't really like rava dosa, but did taste good! And except for one of them, the dosas split up in tiny pieces.

Zucchini Vattal

As promised, I made some zucchini vattal without drying in the (barely existent) sun.
Slice the vegetable into thin slices and fry till slightly brown with a generous sprinkling of pepper. Add some chopped tomato, sprinkle some thyme and then a minute or two later add some grated cheese. Continue to heat this till all the cheese melts. Sprinkle salt after serving.

Question. Why do so many names of people and foods from Italy end with i ?

Soft at last

Finally some soft chapatis, rather than hard and brittle. With tomato curry - made of tomatoes, onions, garlic, chili powder and a little jaggery.

Experimenting with the tried and tested

More Kozhambu / Majjige Huli, literally translates to a stew(?!) made of curds. This is a dish usually made with vegetables like pumpkin or okra. I had to substitute with zucchini.

Short recipe: Soak a spoonful of toor dal till it is slightly soft and grind with a small piece of coconut, green chili and an onion. Meanwhile, cook your vegetable of choice with salt and turmeric. When the vegetable is cooked, pour in this ground mixture and boil. When this is done, set the vessel off the stove and let it cool. Pour in a few spoons of sour curds.

Well, I took the recipe from my sister, but again my measurement of things was off. I put in too much of dal and didn't get the taste I had hoped for.
That's the thing with the tried and tested. Unless you make it perfect, you can never be satisfied. May be that's why I like wild experiments; it is nicer to be surprised than disappointed.

Move over Mom!

Vangi bath.
A ground mixture of fried red chilies, coriander seeds, cloves and a bit of coconut.
Chop brinjal and a small onion and fry in oil, put in the ground mixture and washed rice. Add salt and water and allow to cook.

I am almost certain this recipe is not what the traditional one is like.
Yet..
Move over mom! My vangi bath rocked!

Portions

Brown rice and boiled dal with radish - chopped and fried with chilies and chopped parsley.
Simple, easy, yet delicious. I had initially thought of grinding radish to make a kind of chutney, but it would have been such a waste of this beautiful colour on the plate!

There is a certain kind of art form that allows you to cook with as few vessels as possible. This is a rare and difficult form that requires you to stand upside down and literally go without food for days. To cook this simple meal, I used all the various utensils I have with me.

Perfect Celebration!

Yay! I have a successful invention!

First I ground coriander seeds, red chilies, 1 tomato, a small piece of coconut and a handful of fresh parsley into a fine paste.
Then, I fried sliced spring onions in oil, and then poured in the ground mixture and added one chopped red capsicum into the pan and added salt.
Finally, when the mixture looked and smelt cooked, I took the pan off the stove and cooled it. To this I added some cream and then chopped mozzarella!
The cheese was a bit out of place, but the final product was delicious! How's that for a celebration.

Trials and errors

Attempt at mooli paratha and potato raita. Radish and its greens, chopped and fried with chilies. Then mixed into some wheat flour with a little water and oil, patted into thick flat cakes and cooked in a little oil. Well, the recipe seemed to be right, even though it was based on assumptions and faint memories, the parathas did not turn out soft and fragrant as I thought they would, but were crisp and brittle.
Raita: mashed potatoes, chopped onions and curds.
The effort that goes into making these dishes is not something that I would like to carry out everyday, but it is still a nice deviation from the routine once in a while.

Wish you were here

You would like this.

Spirelli with parsley, capsicum and cheese.

Some colour on my plate

Chapati with curry: capsicum, tomatoes, spring onion, ground coconut and red chilies. Toss all these into a pan with oil followed by a little salt and water and cook!
It is so wild outside with a wind that threatens to huff and puff and blow the house down. I hope I see a little of the sun tomorrow.

Subtlety

Subtle flavours: slightly fried tomatoes and fresh parsley over sliced mozzarella, with pepper and salt.
I intended to eat this with bread, but after I saw the way this looked, I decided to have it just like that and then have bread separately.

Veggie Delight!

It was almost like a huge industry and quite a bit of time to cook this dish but it was worth it!


This was just one of the several batches that I fried. Here is the final product. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Ratatouille!



Ingredients: 1 aubergine, 1 zucchini, 1 red bell pepper, 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 tomatoes, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, salt and pepper.
How to: Slice all vegetables thin. Fry onions and garlic in a pan, put into a pot. Fry all the vegetables in oil, except for tomatoes separately and put it inside the pot. Finally, put the tomatoes, bay leaf, thyme, parsley, salt and pepper into the pot. Cook the whole mixture for around 10 minutes and it is ready to eat. The vegetables give out moisture themselves, so there is no need to add any water.
Every bite sent out a huge rush of flavours and it is now officially one of my favourites. I have always wanted to try this dish, ever since the movie of course.
The only problem with this dish is that it takes so many ingredients. So unless you find a mini zucchini, a mini aubergine and so on, you end up with a huge dish of it, that you have to split over more than one meal if you eat alone. But I'm not complaining!
If you want to try the meal but can't find some of the ingredients like zucchini, go ahead and make it without them anyway with all the ingredients that you can find.

Not bread and cheese again!

Pita bread and a dish made of mozzarella (panneer-like cheese), spring onions, fresh mint leaves and red chilies.

This was a dish I invented as I went, so there is not much of a how-to. Heat a pan with half a teaspoon of oil. Once heated, add the red chilies, chopped mint leaves and spring onions for a minute, ensuring that the onions are fried well but not cooked completely.Add salt. Add the chopped cheese into the pan but don't keep it on for more than 15 seconds, it melts too much.
The bread of course was store bought and just heated up.

Ground delights

Last week:

Rice with cauliflower and carrot, with ground pudina, dhaniya and red chilies. Side dish: curds and chopped tomatoes.

Today:


Jeera rice, with a potato, mint fry. Ask for this dish if you want to sample the best of my cooking. (Bring these ingredients along: potatoes, fresh mint, coriander seeds, red chilies. )

Blender-happy

Coriander chutney:



Urad dal/Ultham paruppu/Uddina bele fried in very little oil with red chillies, fresh coriander leaves and a tomato. Ground coarse. Eaten with dosas made of a ready made dosa mix. Heaven in a bowl.

Here you go

Most interesting of last week:


Some more greens: spinach and lentils cooked with onions and a sprinkle of chili powder, eaten with rice. Delightfully delicious meal.



Quick and easy: Rice fried with red bell pepper and freshly ground black pepper. Eaten with sliced onions and tomatoes.


French bread (baguette) and some kind of a "stew" with potatoes, capsicum and a paste of onions, tomatoes and garlic with the help of our newest addition:



Blender! Hurray!