Surprise salad

Doing my mother proud

Because all meals need some veggie content.
Because my mother told me so.
Because I believe her.
Because she is just so right.
And because I love colorful salad.

Here's what I used:
For the salad
1 big tomato
1 medium sized capsicum
1 medium cucumber
2 medium carrots
A handful of olives
A handful of fresh corn

For the dressing
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
Lots of olive oil
1 tsp mustard
A splash of Balsamic vinegar
A pinch of salt
Lots of freshly ground pepper
Assorted herbs, as your heart fancies
A dash of sugar
Juice of half a lime

Channa masala

Or what to do when you soak too much channa and dont know what to do with it

In my haste to make my hummus experiment a success, I ended up with a little too much channa that had soaked overnight and tripled in quantity. Making jummus of all of it would have given me enough to feed my neighbourhood. So I decided to make channa masala.

The way I usually make it is exactly like I make home-style rajma, where I grind and cook my masala, add in the rajma and pressure cook the whole thing.

But the channa was pre-soeaked and pre-cooked just the way you need it for the hummus. So what I did was this:
1) Used the exact same ingredients for my masala, as in the rajma recipe
2) Roasted it nicely, till it was almost completely cooked and blended in with the onions and tomatoes
3) Threw in the cooked channa and some water (lesser than I would have added if i were pressure cooking it)
4) Added a tablespoon full of kasuri methi, just to see how it turns out
5) Let it simmer away for 15-20 minutes
6) Topped it up with freshly chopped coriander and a squeeze of lime

Channa overload, one might say. But when I can make tomorrow's lunch, today, I can't complain!

Hummus

Real hummus, makeshift non-pita bread

Its time for a comeback. And a comeback of this sort, battling laziness and the lack of time, doesn't just happen. It needs inspiration. And I found inspiration here. And here. And also in a recipe Anand shared with me yesterday, straight from his Israeli friend's home.

So if you're looking for inspiration to get back into the kitchen, this could very well be it. Easy to do, gorgeous to look at, simply yummilicious to taste, and you can do it all be done in no time at all!

Here's what you need:
1 cup kabuli channa (white) soaked overnight
1.5 tablespoons Tahini (easily available in stores, thought Praerna tells me you can do without it too!)
Olive oil
Lime
Salt
Pepper
Jeera powder
Chilli powder
Chopped coriander, to garnish

Here's what you need to do:
Pressure cook the channa for about 20 minutes, in sufficient water and a dash of salt. When it cools, put the channa with just a little bit of the boiling water in a blender.

Add in one and a half tablespoons of Tahini.

Next, slice a nice ripe lime in half and add in the juice of one half. Save the other half for later.

Then, in goes the olive oil, salt, pepper and the jeera powder.

And we're done.

Pour yourself a nice tall mug of beer right about now. Here's where you start chilling, because lunch is going to be ready in no time at all.

Pulse till nicely pasty, and pour into a serving dish/bowl.

Drizzle with the juice of the other half of the lime and some more olive oil. Sprinkle with chilli powder and freshly chopped coriander. And we're done!

Erm, almost done, save the makeshift non-pita bread. Which in our case was actually store-bought pizza base, which i cut into wedges, slathered with butter and toasted on the tawa till golden brown.

Together, even the makeshift pita bread totally hit the spot.

But I'm determined to make my own pita bread the next time. And Anand has promised to show me how, illustrations and all.

To go with it, I whipped up a quick salad, because one must have some veggie quotient too!

Spicy noodles: home style

A quick flavourful fix, by no means "really" chinese

Last weekend, the husband and I ate every single meal at home. Weekends are usually when we step out, try out new restaurants/drinking places, and enjoy the Goan outdoors, and get time alone after the hectic round-the-clock-work-week. But last weekend we didnt want to step out into the crowd. So quick meals at home was the only way to go. I had a packet of hakka noodles lying at home and we decided to put it to use.

Iv also discovered that this food blog thing is a good thing for us to do together because it combines 2 of the things each of us loves to indulge in: cooking/food experimentation and photography. So it makes for interesting together time :)

What I used:
1 packet hakka noodles
1 medium onion sliced thin
1 small bell pepper sliced thin
1 medium carrot julienned
A handful of french beans chopped long and thin
A generous amount of finely chopped garlic
Some freshly chopped ginger
Chilli garlic sauce
Dark soya sauce
Tomato ketchup
White vinegar

How I made it:
Chop up an assortment of veggies you would like to use in the noodles.

In a wok/kadhai, heat some oil (I used olive :P). When its hot enough throw in the chopped ginger and garlic and saute till brownish. Then quickly add in the onions, before the ginger burns. Saute for a minute until the onions get lightly golden-brown. Then, add in the soya sauce and chilli garlic sauce, some ketchup and a few drops of vinegar,and continue to stir around.

After a couple minutes more of sauteing, add in all the vegatables and mix well. Cook on an open flame till the vegatbles are semi-cooked, but still crunchy.

Then, add salt and pepper to taste. Its good to taste it before you add in the salt and pepper, because the soya tends to make it a little salty to begin with. Then, add a pinch of ajinomoto.

Meanwhile, in a pot of boiling water, add a packet of egg noodles, and cook till soft. Drain and run through col water.

Add the noodles to the vegetables and mix. At this point, continue to cook it for a while, if you feel the need to blend the two components really well.

Done!

Slow cooked tomato basil pasta

Quick-fix meal for when youre too lazy to really cook.

I know slow cooking and quick fix dont really go together, but even though this is a slow cooked dish, it makes for a quick fix meal because the recipe is just a series of acts in assembling the dish, rather than really cooking it. The cooking sort of just happens on its own.

This recipe was shared with me last week by Anand: friend, culinary partner in crime, inspiration and my biggest source of entertainment and company through my days in Goa. Anand visited us last week, a trip that was mostly prompted by the promise of much cooking. We didnt get to do all of what we had planned, but we did get up to some pretty fun kitchen shenanigans. This pasta was just one of the things ;)

It was also just what I needed today, when the flu has left me too tired to really cook and too sick to order in. I needed home cooked food. Even if it was slow cooked pasta. With just tomato and basil.

And a ton of cream and cheese to make it all worthwhile. But Im trying not to focus on that part.

Here's what I used:
1 large onion, chopped
7-8 pods of garlic, finely chopped
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 pack tomato puree
1 knob of butter
Olive oil
Some grated cheese (parmesan if youre feeling fancy, but cheddar will do if you want to make do with what you have in your fridge..like I did)
Basil (fresh would work wonder, but in the absence of fresh basil dry works just as well)
Fresh cream
Salt, pepper and sugar to taste
Pasta (I used fusilli, because its easy to eat)

Here's how I made it:
Heat up some butter and olive oil. Throw in the chopped garlic and onions and saute till nice and golden.

Next, add in the chopped tomato and stir around, and quickly add in the tomato puree.

Anand showed me how to get every last bit out of the carton, and it only made me realize just how much puree Iv possibly wasted in the last few months :O

Add in the salt, pepper and sugar as per taste. Sugar cuts the overtly tangy tomato-ness, leaving you with just the right smooth creamy silken tomato pulp you need.

Then, cover the pan and let the puree simmer for a good long while. At least 20-30 minutes, opening it only to give it a turn every now and then. This is where you can take a long break and come back only to throw in the last few ingredients in the assembly line.

It isnt called "slow cooked" for nothing. You'll notice that every time you take a peek at the puree when you take the lid off to stir it, the puree would have gotten thicker and darker.

Let it bubble away for as long as possible. In the meanwhile, get a pot of water on. Add some salt and bring it to a boil. Add in the pasta and let it cook. This usually takes anything from 7-10 minutes if youre using fusilli for 2.

After your pasta has cooked for about 10 minutes and your sauce has simmered away for about 30 minutes, turn the heat off on both.

Turn to your sauce, add in the grated cheese, basil and cream. And mix!

Drain the pasta, retaining some hot water. Just in case you want to loosen the sauce a little bit. The slow cooking tends to dry out the tomato puree quite a bit and the best way to bring it back to a looser consistency is to add hot water from cooking the pasta! Something else Anand taught me.

Mix together. And we're done.