Organic Vs Non-organic and Spinach masiyal

A while back, there was  a seminar at work during a lunch break. It was about healthy choices for busy people and it was very infomative. We had switched to organic produce long back, but i just had an overall idea of how organic is better than non-organic and this seminar was a real eye opener for me. She mentioned about the top 10 foods that we should never buy non-organice and apple was in that and i think she mentioned that a non-organic apple is  97% contaminated with the pesitcide, which was a big shock for me. We have grabbed the non-organic apples quite a number of times if we could not go to whole foods or if we are really in a hurry to just grab and go. All the other supermarkets like Publix, Krogers and Walmart carry organic produce too, but it is limited. Please check this link that lists out the top 10 foods that you must buy organic and also the ones that are okay if you dont have a choice and end up buying non-organic.

http://greenopolis.com/goblog/joe-laur/10-foods-you-must-buy-organic-and-10-you-don-t-have-shopping-list

I have some more useful information to share, but don't want to overload with all information in one post and will share them as i go.

Now let me share the Keerai masiyal the way my mom and mil make. It is nutritous and is easy to make.  It has lentils for protein, the goodness of spinach. I just make this and have this with rice on hectic days.

Ingredients :

Baby spinach ( I use 1 box of  earthbound farms organic baby spinach)
Toor daal - 3/4C (uncooked)
Grated coconut -  2 spoons
Jeera / cumin seeds - 1 spoon
Redchillies - 4
Salt to taste

Mustard seeds, hing and a spoon of urad daal for seasoning.

Method :

Cut baby spinach and steam it in microwave for around  5 minutes. Pressure cook the daal and keep it aside.
Grind coconut, jeera and redchillies with little water. Add this and the steamed spinach in  a pan. Add some water and let it cook till the raw smell goes away. Add the cooked daal and salt and cook it for another 5, 10 minutes till it thickens. Season with mustard seeds, hing and urad daal.

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.

Back after a long break with a recipe : Black eyed peas gravy

Hi everyone! Sorry for disappearing for a long time. Things got very hectic and i could not find time to update the blog or check other blogs. Inspite of this, it was nice to stay in touch with most of you all through mails and FB :-) It is going to be hectic for atleast one more month as we are moving to another house and you know how it goes with a move. I didnt want all of you to think i have abandoned this blog and thought of doing a quick post. My friend G taught me this recipe and we all love it. It goes well with both Rotis and Rice.

Black-eyed peas gravy :

=================

Ingredients :

Black eyed peas - 1 pack (frozen) (I think it is approximately 1 lb)

tomatos - 2

Onion - 2

red chillies - 5

dhaniya / coriander seeds - 1 spoon

grated coconut - 3 spoons

Salt to taste

Cilantro - to garnish

Method :

Grind dhaniya, redchillies and coconut with little water and keep aside.

Pressure cook the black eyed peas.

Cut onion and saute in little oil and when it is translucent, add chopped tomatoes and saute till the tomatos are well cooked. Now add the cooked black eyed peas and the paste. Add salt and little water and cook till the raw smell disappears. Garnish with cilantro.

I shared this recipe with my mom and she tried it and loved it :)

Aalu Channa / Potato with chickpeas

As many of you know, i'm a working mom with 2 little kids. My husband travels quite often. So, once in a while, i hear comments that i manage weekdays by preparing Maggi. Cooking maggi all 5 days!! Very nice idea, eh? Trust me, i don't get annoyed. I am past that stage now. I can easily laugh it off and move on. The reason i am writing about it is because i heard this comment recently too :) I was tempted to say, 'Thank you for atleast thinking that i feed my children' :D With some prep work done over the weekend, weekdays can be easily managed. I always prepare idli batter over the weekend. It's a lifesaver. If i have time, i also make stuffed parathas and freeze them too. Another thing i do is to soak and pressure cook channa in large qty and freeze it. I use it over the weekdays for salads, sundal, cutlet or even sambar. It makes life easier. I was so tired one day and made this real quick since i had the cooked channa ready. Everyone loved it.

Ingredients :
Potatos - 4
Cooked Channa - 1 cup
Tomatos - 2
Onions - 1
Red chilli powder - 1/2 spoon
Shaan channa masala mix
(or masala of your choice) - 1 spoon
Salt to taste




Method :

Chop onions and tomatos and saute in little oil till the onions are translucent.

Let it cool and grind it.

Boil or pressure cook potatos and cut them into cubes.

Heat little oil and add this paste, red chilli powder and masala and let it cook for 5 minutes.

Add the cooked potatos and channa.

Add salt and mix well. Cook for few minutes.

Season with mustard seeds and cumin seeds. Garnish with cilantro.
Goes well with Rotis.

Beetroot Curry and Rasam

Hello all, I am back after a short break and hope to be regular in updating my blog and visiting yours too :-)

When i was little, i was so fascinated by beetroot :-) I never cared about how it tasted. I just loved it because it turned my food pink :) This trick does not work with my boys, obviously. I told my first kiddo that i have made a magic vegetable that will turn all his food into pink. I thought the word 'magic' would do the trick. Nope. He said, 'Pink is for girls, so you can have it all' :-) Then, i pulled the 'it will help you grow big and strong' card and it worked. He said he liked it but not loved it. As long as he takes, i dont care whether he loves or likes :-) My toddler did not like to eat it with rice, but liked it with pasta! Whatever works! :)

Here's the recipe for this simple, yummy curry.

Beetroot Curry :
Beets - 4
Green chillies - 4 or 5 finely chopped
Salt to taste
Curry leaves
Minced cilantro - 2,3 spoons
Mustard seeds, urad daal and hing for seasoning



Method :
Wash, peel and boil the beets for 10 -15 minutes till they become tender.
Chop them into small cubes. The tender beets are easy to chop.
In a pan, heat 1 spoon oil. Pop mustard seeds, add urad daal and hing and fry till the daal is golden brown. Add the chopped, steamed beets and salt and mix well. Cook for few minutes. Garnish with cilantro. You can also add 2,3 spoons of grated coconut.

Beetroot Rasam :
I saw the idea of using the water that was used to steam beets in sambar in some blog. Can't remember where. I decided to make rasam with it. It was pink and had a slight sweet taste to it. Sweet, tangy and spicy. I loved the burst of flavours and ofcourse the colour :-)

I just made it like regular tomato rasam with home made rasam powder. I used the beets water instead of plain water. Here's a pic of the rasam :

Incase you are wondering what the pumpkin is doing in the first pic - i had this crazy idea for Click : Spring/autumn to combine something that would represent both seasons and took this pic, but i sent another pic for that event.

Kovakkai (Tindora) with Black Channa

Priya, Priya Sriram, Prathiba, Aruna, Sanghi, Shama, Vishali and Madhu gave me this award and i LOVE their blogs too.
I want to pass this award to all the blogger friends. I love all your blogs. Pls. accept this award.




Now to the recipe :)

I love tindora and it was one of my three favorite vegetables, when i was a kid..Did i say three? :-) I was one of the pickiest eaters when i was a kid :-O A mom's nightmare. My mom used to try various things to make me eat veggies and she was so happy to see me taking almost all the vegetables after i moved to U.S.

I just love the way my mom makes Tindora and my friend Jo introduced me this version few years back and i love this too. The earthy flavor of Black channa makes the roasted kovakkai taste yum!! I could decide which of the two to send to the WYF event and i usually prefer sending healthy recipes to events, so i picked this as it is protein rich.

When i goto the grocery store i don't really pay much attention to how much the vegetables weigh when i buy them. I just know that it will be sufficient or more than sufficient when i buy..that is why i usually give the measurements in cups :)

Ingredients :

Kovakkai / Tindora / Ivygourd - 4 cups (chopped)
Cooked Kala channa (Black chickpeas) - 1 cup
Red chilli powder - 1 spoon or as required
Salt to taste
Dhaniya (Coriander seeds) powder- 1.5 spoons
Cilantro - for garnishing
Mustard seeds, hing, curry leaves, urad daal for seasoning






Method :

Soak the kala channa overnight and pressure cook it in salted water.
Drain and keep aside. Steam the chopped tindora till they are well cooked.
Otherwise it will take a long time and lot more oil to cook it.
After steaming the tindora, heat some oil in a non-stick pan and pop mustard seeds.
Add urad daal, hing and curry leaves and fry till urad daal is golden brown.
Add the cooked tindora and cooked kala channa. Add salt, chilli powder and dhaniya powder and
mix well. Cook till the raw smell is gone and till the tindora gets slightly roasted. I cut tindora into thin slices so it gets roasted fast. Add minced cilantro and grated coconut (optional). I didn't add coconut, but it tastes even better with coconut.



Sending this to EC's WYF Sidedish.

Click here for the recipe of my mom's yummiest Tindora Curry.

Cauliflower Pepper Curry

This is adapted from Mallika badrinath's recipe. I have made few changes to it. Main change was to remove the ghee from the list of ingredients :) The original recipes also uses small onions (pearl onions) and i didn't have them and i used regular onions and it still tasted good. This is nice variation to the regular cauliflower curry that we make and i made it mainly to send something different for JFI Cauliflower. This is very spicy, so pls. adjust the pepper and redchillies according to your taste.


Ingredients :
Cauliflower - 1 big
Onions - 1.5
Salt to taste.


To grind :
Pepper - 1/2 spoon
Red chillies - 3
Jeera/Cumin Seeds - 1 spoon
Onion - 1/2


Seasoning :
Mustard seeds, urad daal, hing and curry leaves



Method :
Steam cut cauliflower in microwave for 5, 6 minutes.
In the meanwhile, cut 1/2 onion and saute in little oil along with pepper and red chillies.
Let it cool. Add 1 spoon cumin seeds to the onion, pepper and redchillies and grind them with little water. Do not fry the cumin seeds along with the above said ingredients. It will smell like medicine when you cook!

Heat little oil and pop mustard seeds. Add hing, curry leaves and urad daal and saute till the daal is golden brown. Add the remaining chopped onion and saute till they are translucent. Add the steamed cauliflower, ground paste and salt to taste and cook till the raw smell goes.


It is sort of a dry curry (not too dry), so it tastes better with Rice than with Rotis.
I am sending this to JFI Cauliflower hosted by Mythreyee. JFI was originally started by Indira (Mahanandi)

I am also sending this to Divya's Think Spice Think Pepper

Broccoli Paruppusili

As i mentioned earlier, Broccoli is not a favorite in our house. After reading a ton about the benefits of broccoli and feeling guilty enough about not consuming it, i am including it in our diet regularly and experimenting quite a bit to make it more acceptable than it is today. I made paruppusili out of it and nobody made any faces :) They even admitted that they liked it, although i'm the only one that took second helping :D

As a first step, i steamed the chopped broccoli in the microwave till it was soft but not mushy and stayed away from the li'l stinker for 15-20 mins. Then, i just followed my quick fix, low fat paruppusili method (method 1) to a T, taking the lazy route :) I bet it will be tastier if i follow my mom's authentic paruppusili method. Yeah, with all the oil and all the time spent on it, it better be better :D

Since this uses chickpea flour, i wanted to send to MLLA and JFI Chickpea, but i am one day late. I just couldn't post it yday. Sometimes, weekends are more hectic than weekdays! :P

Beetroot keerai with daal

I am back from India. One month went so fast that I still can't believe that i'm back already. It'll take few more days for me to get back to normal, so let me post a recipe that's been in my draft for too long.

Here we get beetroot with the leaves as a bunch and i always used to throw the leaves away, but i saw Madhu's recipe of sambar using beet greens and tried this instead. It was quite yummy.

Ingredients :
Beet greens - (approx) 3 cups chopped
moong daal - 1/2 cup
Red chillies - 3
Urad daal - 1 spoon
Channa daal -1 spoon
Mustard seeds and hing for seasoning
Salt to taste.

Method :
Pressure cook moong daal and keep aside. (It tastes good with toor daal) also.
Steam the chopped beet greens in microwave for couple of minutes.
In a non stick pan, take little oil and pop mustard seeds. Add hing, urad daal, channa daal and red chillies and saute till the daals are golden brown. Add the daal and greens and add salt to taste andcook for some more time and mash them well.

Potato and Eggplant Curry (Aloo Baingan)

This is a dry curry, but tastes very good with both Rice and Roti.

Ingredients :

Potatos - 4 (medium)

Eggplant - 4 (the small ones from indian store)

Sambar powder - 2 spoons

Salt to taste

Mustard seeds, hing, urad daal and curry leaves for seasoning

Cilantro for garnishing

Method :

Pressure cook the potatos and cut them into cubes.

Cut the eggplants and steam them in microwave for 5 minutes or till they are soft (not mushy).

In a non stick pan, heat some oil and pop mustard seeds. Add urad daal, curry leaves and hing and fry till the daal is golden brown. Add the potatos and eggplant. Add sambar powder and salt and cook till the raw smell goes. Garnish with cilantro.

I wrap this in Roti or bread, for my son's lunch and he loves it.

Pumpkin Erissery for AFAM Pumpkin

Last week when i posted thattai, i thought to myself that i should post more festive recipes since Diwali is coming. The week turned out to be crazily hectic. Just having a peaceful dinner was a challenge!! I didn't want to go over a week without posting anything..and i had this recipe in the draft for too long...

I had this argument with a colleague couple of years ago that pumpkin was a vegetable. He didn't give up till the end. I just thought he was too argumentative. When Madhuram announced AFAM Pumpkin, i was puzzled that she picked pumpkin as a fruit and i thought that her posts are so informative so she can't be wrong. Then i did a search on pumpkin and found that it is a fruit and can be classified as a vegetable too :-) Here's an interesting link for it : http://vegetablegardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/fruit_or_vegetable_. This only reminds me that i sucked in botony when i was in school ;-)

Pumpkin is something that i've used only in Sambar. I don't like it prepared any other way. I think the first pumpkin pie that i had, had this adverse effect on me. I hated the taste of pumpkin in it so much. I also had pumpkin curry in a restaurent which was quite bad too. All these things put together, i decided that pumpkin is fit to be used only in Sambar until i tried this pumpkin erissery. I was really surprised that the whole family (including my toddler) liked it. When Madhuram announced AFAM-Pumpkin, i wanted to try something new and gave it a shot and was pleased with the result. The only problem i had was i overcooked the pumpkins and they got all mashed. Taste is what matters, right? ;-)

Here is the recipe :

Ingredients :

Pumpkin - 3 cups

Black eyed beans - 1.5 cups

Coconut - 2 spoons

Red chillies - 4

Cumin seeds - 1 spoon

Mustard seeds, urad daal, hing and curry leaves for seasoning

Cilantro for garnishing

Method :

Grind the redchillies, coconut and cuminseeds with little water and keep aside.

Pressure cook the black eyed beans and keep aside.

Steam the chopped pumpkins till they are a bit soft.Combine them with the ground paste and cook it for another 5, 6 minutes or till the raw smell goes. Season with mustard seeds, urad daal, hing and curry leaves. Garnish with cilantro.

Tastes good with Rice and Rotis.

I am sending this to AFAM : Pumpkin

Tindora / Kovakkai Curry and an Award

This is my all time favorite curry. Rasam rice with kovakkai curry is just out of the world. My mom cooks it so well. She actually cuts them into thin slices and it tastes better as it gets roasted well. I cook the same way with fresh Tindora. I don't have an indian grocery store nearby and we goto nashville just once in 3 or 4 weeks and i use the fresh vegetables the first week and then stock up the frozen vegetables for later. The picture shown is of frozen cut tindora. This tastes good too, but takes much longer to cook as they are thick.



Ingredients :
Tindora - 500g
Sambar powder - 2 spoons (Substitute with 1 spoon red chilli powder and 1/2 spoon dhaniya powder if you don't have sambar powder)
Salt to taste
Mustard seeds, curry leaves, urad daal and hing for seasoning.
Cilantro for garnishing.
Method :
Steam cook the tindora slices in microwave or in cooker to reduce the cooking time. Cook till they are soft but not mushy.

Heat about 4 or 5 spoons of oil in a non stick pan and pop mustard seeds. Add curry leaves, hing and urad daal and fry till the daal is golden brown. Add the tindora slices. Add sambar powder and salt and keep sauteing till they are cooked. Cook it longer to get it roasted. They taste better.
Tastes good with Rice, rasam rice in particular.

And now to the award :

Priya passed me the Butterfly award. What a pleasant surprise! Thankyou Priya!

The rules of the award are:

Put the logo on your blog.

Add a link to the person who awarded you.

Nominate 10 other blogs

Add links to those blogs on yours, and leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

I have put the logo on my blog and have also added the link to Priya who gave me this award.

I would like to pass it on to.

Sangeeth,

EC,

Plantainleaf

Ramya65

bhawana

uma

medhaa

ramyavijaykumar

anudivya

Lubna

Baingan ka bartha

This is my favorite recipe and i think nobody can really goof this one up. I have tried this in several restaurents and have never regretted ordering this :-) I never tried preparing it at home thinking it must be really difficult to prepare. My mom has never prepared it at home too. So, that also made me think that this must be a very difficult recipe. Few years back, my friend Anu had gone to India for vacation and we invited her husband to have dinner with us. He brought Baingan ka bartha with him since he had already prepared it the previous evening.
I was so surprised that a guy had prepared it :-) It was too good too and I promptly took the recipe from him. It was really simple.


Ingredients :





Big eggplants - 2
Onion (medium) - 2
Tomatos - 3
Red chilli powder - 1 spoon
Garam masala - 1/2 spoon
Ginger - 1 inch (grated)
Salt to taste
Mustard seeds, curry leaves, urad daal and hing for seasoning.
Cilantro for garnishing.

Method :

Broil the eggplants in the oven for 25 - 30 minutes. Remove the charred skin and mash the contents. In a pan, heat some oil, pop mustard seeds. Add curry leaves, urad daal and hing and fry till the daal is golden brown. Add the ginger and fry for another minute. Add the chopped onion and saute till it is translucent. Add the chopped tomatoes, red chilli powder and garam masala and cook till the tomatos are cooked and soft. Add the mashed eggplant and salt and cook for few more minutes. Garnish with cilantro.

Goes well with Rotis / Parathas.

Vadacurry with Garden veggie patties

Morningstar veggie patties are a good source of protein. Each patty has about 11g protein. My husband and my kids like it, but i don't like it :-( My friend used to suggest that i take it or the bean patty during my pregnancy, but no...i couldn't even tolerate it. I wanted to make it likeable or atleast make it tolerable and i tried this and it was too good. I have never ever tasted vada curry in my life and i asked my husband if it was close to it and he said yes. So, i am blogging about it now without any hesitation :-)


This is a healthy version of vadacurry because i did not fry the patties. I only steamed it as per the instructions in the package.
Ingredients :
Garden veggie patties - 6
Onion - 1 medium
Tomatos - 1 big
Green chillies - 3
Mustard seeds, hing, curry leaves and urad daal for seasoning
Salt to taste
Garam masala - 1 spoon (optional)
Ginger garlic paste - 1/2 or 1 spoon
Cilantro for garnishing.

Method :

Steam the patties as per the instructions and crumble it with hands.

In a pan, heat little oil, pop mustard seeds.

Add hing, urad daal and curry leaves and fry till the daal is golden brown.

Add green chillies and fry for a minute.

Add ginger garlic paste and saute for a minute.

Add onions and saute till it's translucent.

Add chopped tomatos and cook till it is soft.

Add the crumbled patties and salt and cook for another 10 minutes.

Garnish with cilantro.

Tastes good with Idli/Dosa.

Beans Peanut Curry

Ingredients :

French Beans - 500 gms (I used frozen cut beans)
1/2 cup - peanuts
Channa daal - 1 spoon
urad daal - 1 spoon
Green chillies - 3
Mustards seeds, hing and curry leaves for seasoning
Salt to taste

Method :

Add salt to water and boil the peanuts till they are soft but not mushy.

Drain the water and keep the peanuts aside.

Steam the beans in microwave for 5, 6 minutes.

In a pan, take little oil and pop mustard seeds.

Add hing, curry leaves, urad daal and channa daal and fry till the daals are golden brown.

Add green chillies and fry for a minute.

Add the beans, peanuts and salt and saute till the beans are done.

Garnish with chopped cilantro.

The added protein of the peanuts makes it very healthy.

Potato and Cluster Bean (Guvar) Curry

My husband and i both hate guvar, so we never buy it at the indian grocery store. When my parents were here she bought it once to make paruppusili. It was okay but still didn't change my opinion about guvar. Then i remembered that our cook in Jamshedpur used to make this curry which was quite good inspite of the most hated guvar. I made slight variation to it and we all liked it. Now we buy it regularly :-)

Here's the recipe:

Medium sized potatos - 4

Guvar/Clusterbean/ Kothavarangai - ~100 gms

Red chilli powder - 1 spoon

Salt to taste

Mustard seeds, urad daal, hing, curry leaves for seasoning

Cilantro for garnishing

Lemon juice - 1.5 spoons

Cook the cubed potatos and cut guvar in microwave for 7 minutes.

In a non-stick pan, heat some oil and pop the mustard seeds.

Add urad daal, curry leaves and hing and fry till the daal turns golden brown.

Add potatos and guvar. Add chilli powder and salt and cook for another 5 minutes.

Add the cilantro and when it cools off little bit add the lemon juice and mix well.

Goes well with any rice variety. I like this with Rotis too as i dont really mind a dry curry with my rotis :-) You can try the same recipe with French beans also. ( Thank you Aparna for reminding me of this. )

Brussel Sprouts Poricha Kootu

I had brussel sprouts sitting in my freezer for days now and today i was craving for my paati's poricha kootu in the afternoon. I didn't remember the recipe and it was past midnight in India. Calling my paati was out of question at that time, so i did a search for Poricha kootu and found lots of different recipes and i had no clue which one was similar to my paati's. Most kootu recipes called for Moong daal and i thought my paati used channa daal. I wasn't too sure so i mixed both moong daal and channa daal and the result was great:-) Again there were too many types of kootu podis...so i decided to create my own kootu podi based on the taste i could recall. The end result of the experiment was quite tasty. I will call my paati and take her recipe too.

Here is my version :

Ingredients :

Brussel Sprouts - 1 pack frozen
Channa daal - 1/2 cup
Moong daal - 1/2 cup
Hing, mustard seeds, urad daal, curry leaves for seasoning
Salt to taste
Cilantro for garnishing

For kootu powder :
1 spoon channa daal
1 spoon urad daal
2 redchillies
1 spoon cumin seeds / jeera
1/2 spoon black pepper
2 spoons grated coconut

Method :
In little oil, fry channa daal, urad daal, redchillies and black pepper till the daals are golden brown. Add little water and grind this along with coconut and cumin seeds.

Cut brussel sprouts and pressure cook along with channa daal and moong daal.
In a pan, combine this with the ground paste. Add salt to taste and let it boil for 5 minutes.
Season with mustard seeds, urad daal, curry leaves and hing and garnish with chopped cilantro.

I am sending this to Srivalli's Curry Mela event.

Zucchini Ginger Curry

This is another experiment that didn't turn out to be a disaster :-)

My mom prepares similar curry with Chayote squash and i tried it with Zucchini and it was quite good.


Ingredients :


Zucchini - 3 medium sized
Ginger - 1 inch (finely grated)
Green chillies - 4 (finely chopped)
Salt to taste
Cilantro
Channa daal - 2 spoons
Mustard seeds, hing, cumin seeds, urad daal for seasoning.


Method :

Peel and cut the zucchinis and steam them in microwave for 4 minutes.
In a pan, take little oil and do the seasoning with mustard seeds, hing and jeera.
Add urad daal and channa daal and fry till golden brown. Add ginger and green chillies and fry for two more minutes. Add the zucchini and salt to taste and saute for few minutes. Garnish with cilantro.

Goes well with Rice and Rotis also since it's not too dry.

Avial

This is my all time favorite. It's yogurt based gravy and nothing can go wrong with that, right? :)

I like it more because it is very easy to make, especially if you get all frozen cut vegetables ;-)





Here's the recipe :


Ingredients :


Ash gourd : 1 cup
Suran / Senaikizhangu : 1/2 cup
Carrots : 1/2 cup
Beans : 1/2 cup
Plantain : 1/2 cup
Potato : 1 medium sized
Green chillies : 6 (adjust acc. to your spice level)
Beaten Yogurt : 1 cup
Salt to taste
Coconut - 3 sp
Cumin seeds - 1.5 spMustard seeds, hing, urad daal for seasoning
Cilantro for garnishing

Method :
Steam all the vegetables till they are cooked but not mushy. I cook Potatos and Plantain separately since they take longer time and i dont want the other veggies to get mashed up.

Grind greenchillies, coconut and cumin seeds with little water. Mix all the vegetables in a pan and add this paste and salt and cook till the raw smell goes. When it cools down a bit add beaten yogurt and mix well. Add some more salt if required. Season with mustard seeds, curry leaves, urad daal and hing. Garnish with cilantro.

I am sending this also for the Curry Mela Event. The picture i uploaded does not have Suran and Beans since i didn't have them that day.

Note: This goes well with Adai, Puliyodarai, ...actually with any spicy rice. Some people add cauliflower and/or capsicum, but i feel it doesnt taste good.

Peas Masala

This recipe and picture are contributed by my sil Radhika. She doesn't have a food blog, so i am posting it here and i will be sending this to Srivalli's Curry Mela on her behalf.

Ingredients :
Frozen peas- 2 cups
Red chilly powder- 2 tsp (approx)
Grated coconut - 2 sp
Oil- 2 sp
Saunf - 1 sp
Soy sauce - 1 sp (optional)
Ginger - 1 inch (approx)
Tomato - 3-4
Onion-2
Cardamom -3
Turmeric powder - 1 sp
Cinnamon - 1 stick
Dalia (Pottu kadalai) - 3 sp
Cilantro - 1/2 bunch

Method :

In little oil saute saunf, Cinnamon and Cardamom. Grind this with coconut,cilantro, pottu kadalai, ginger and onion. Meanwhile, cook peas with little salt and keep separately. Heat little oil in a pan and pop mustard seeds. Add cut tomotos and saute till it's cooked. Add turmeric powder, ground paste and cook till the raw smell goes. Add peas along with curry leaves and red chilly powder and simmer for 2-3 mins. Finally add soy sauce if desired. Goes very well with Rotis and naan.

Note : Soak peas for 6 hours if you are using dry peas.