Okra with Kokum

I learnt this from a friend. I tried it for the first time at home and everyone liked it and this was so easy. You don't have to cut it thin or you can even use the frozen cut okra. That saves a lot of time and this doesn't reduce much in quantity either, when it is cooked.

Ingredients :
Okra - 500gms (cut into 1 inch pieces)
Onion - 1 medium
Kokum - 4 pieces (cut into smaller pieces)
Redchilli powder - 1 tsp (adjust as per your taste)
Salt - to taste
Mustard seeds, curry leaves and hing for seasoning

Method :

Soak the kokum in couple of spoons of warm water for few minutes. In a pan, heat a spoon of oil and when it is hot, add mustard seeds and let it splutter. Add curry leaves and hing and saute for few seconds. Add cut onions and kokum and saute till the onions are translucent. Add the okra, red chillipoweder, salt and cover and cook for few minutes, until the okra is well cooked. Remove the lid and cook for some more time till you get a dry curry.



Goes well with both Rice and Roti.

Kokum has sour taste like tamarind and is considered to be better than tamarind as it has some medicinal properties and is used in maharashtrian and konkani cuisine.

Mango oatmeal aval upma / Mango oatmeal poha

Ingredients :

Poha / Aval (thick that doesn't need soaking) - 1 cup
Oatmeal - 1/2 cup (optional)
Raw mango - 1 (chopped into small pieces. Reduce the qty if it is very sour)
Green chillies - 4
Roasted peanuts - handful
Salt to taste
Mustard seeds, urad daal and channa daal for seasoning
Hing - a pinch
turmeric powder - 1/4 spoon
Curry leaves and Cilantro (Optional)

Method :

Wash the aval / poha in water and keep it aside. Heat little oil in the pan and pop mustard seeds. Add hing, turmeric powder, urad daal, channa daal, green chillies, peanuts and curry leaves and fry till the daals are golden brown.  Add the chopped mango pieces and saute till they are cooked. Add water if required. Add the wet poha and the dry oatmeal. Add salt and sprinkle some water. Sprinkling water helps in cooking the oatmeal and prevents it from becoming mushy. Garnish with cilantro.

Note : I had given an alternate email id for the feedburner and i had not checked it in a while. I just saw that there are recipe requests and wishes from some of my readers in that email id. Thanks for all the wishes and i will try to get to the recipe requests as well. Sorry for not responding earlier.

Vegan Banana Nut Muffin

 I haven't tried a whole lot of baking from the scratch. One day my little one was bothering my first son when he was doing his homework and my husband was on the phone, so to distract him i told him let's make muffins together as he loves muffins. So, he was my little helper and my first son got some peace and quiet :) We both(?!) made this muffin together. To start with i dont buy eggs and since i dont bake, i didnt have a whole lot of ingredients with me either, so i decided to make banana muffins since we always have bananas at home. I digged in my recipe collection and found a small paper with all the ingredients i normally have, but the note didn't have any measurements. Great! I could've checked in the net, but i was just feeling lazy and decided to go with trial and error and it turned out really well. Now i know how our moms fix things with what they have :-)



 

Ingredients :

Ripe Bananas - 2
Sugar - 1/2 cup
All purpose flour - 1 cup (heaped)
Canola oil / Vegetable oil - 1/4 cup
Almonds (chopped or sliced) - as desired and it is optional
Baking soda - 1 spoon








Method :


Mash the bananas well with a fork. Add the sugar to this mashed banana and mix well. Now add the flour and baking soda and mix well. Add the almonds finally and mix. You can use walnuts also or you can avoid nuts. The muffin batter will be quite thick. I used canola oil since i didnt have vegetable oil and all the recipes i have seen have always mentioned vegetable oil, but this tasted good also. Now grease the muffin tin with oil or line it with cupcake liner and drop the batter in it. Dont fill it completely as it will raise. I filled only half and you can see how big the muffin is.

Heat the oven to 360F and bake the muffins for approximately 20 minutes. Insert a skewer to check if it is cooked inside. The above measurements yielded 8 delicious muffins.

I liked this recipe since it uses very few ingredients that we usually have at home and there is no butter :-) I had my doubts but it was super moist, soft and fluffy. I noted down the measurements immediately as this one's a keeper :-)

Next time, i am gonna try the same recipe with whole wheat pastry flour or 1/2 all purpose and 1/2 whole wheat flour.