Mahanandi

When it’s this easy to make flavorful, delicious pizza at home, I can only imagine restaurants suffer. Why? This homemade crisp pizza tastes as good or better as any thin crust pizza I have ever had in a restaurant.

I started with few leftover chapatis of yesterday. I added the tomato chutney layer and topped with red beans and cheese. Baked in an oven for few minutes, the outcome was a scrumptious looking, saliva inducing meal. An impressively, easy way to satiate the pizza cravings without doing the back-breaking pizza labor.

Recipe:

1. Pressure cook: One cup red beans(soaked in water overnight beforehand) to tender or use the canned red beans.

2. Prepare chutney: In a skillet, add oil and cook coarsely chopped one onion, two tomatoes, three cloves of garlic and four chillies to brown. Cool, then add salt and blend to coarse puree.

3. Take fresh or leftover chapatis, about 4 to 6. Cut each chapati to 4 wedge-shaped pieces of equal size.

4. Slice to thin strips or grate cheese. I used Monterey Jack cheese in this recipe – About half cup.

Before Meal Time:

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

In an iron skillet or in an ovenproof dish:
First, place the chapati pieces, then on top, add and spread tomato chutney to a thin layer. Sprinkle some red beans, cheese and cilantro. Continue until the last chapati, ending with a layer of the chutney, beans and cheese on top. Place the skillet in the oven and bake at 400°F for about 10-15 minutes, until the cheese melts and chapatis start to brown. Remove, slice and serve.

The whole combination of baked chapatis, spicy tomato chutney, red beans and cheese came out very well and tasted real good.

It’s been a while since I bought cherry peppers. I believe it was in Houston about 4 years ago. Last weekend I found them again at a price I like to pay, here in Ohio at a nearby grocery shop called Rulli Brothers. This local Italian grocery shop is old, located in a 60 to 70 year old building. I gathered from reading the local newspaper Vindicator that because of some family financial problems, the brothers closed this shop for several years and recently reopened it for business. I think this also contributed to the whole dilapidated look and feel of the shop.

At first being new to this area, not knowing the history, we were hesitant to try this shop. After a while we came to know that they sell mainly local produce and meat. After seeing how busy the parking lot always was, one fine day, we braved, liked what we saw, now regularly shop at this local grocery. Every week, I would find something interesting to buy at an affordable rate and last weekend I eyed cherry peppers and other varieties of peppers priced at 50 cents per pound. Needless to say I came home as a happy person with lots of peppers.

First I wanted to stuff them with potato filling and dip them in besan batter and deep-fry them in oil like egg pakora. But these past few days it has been very hot here with temperatures touching almost 90° F. The idea of oily food didn’t appeal to me. So I prepared stuffed, roasted cherry peppers.

Recipe:

Ingredients for stuffing
1 cup of roasted chana dal
Half cup of cut dry coconut pieces
Small marble sized tamarind
4 red chillies
1 tsp of cumin seeds
1/4 tsp of salt

Powder them all together in a Sumeet mixie jar or in a food processor. This is your filling.

Preparation:

Wash the cherry peppers and dry them with a towel. Cut the top off and remove the seeds from inside of each pepper. Fill the well in each pepper to the top with the roasted chanadal-coconut powder prepared earlier.

In an iron skillet, take about one tablespoon of oil, when it is hot, gently place the stuffed peppers. Leave space around them so that they will cook evenly. Reduce the heat to medium low and cover the skillet with a lid and leave them like that undisturbed for about 30 to 40 minutes. By the end of cooking, the bottoms will be brown, and the sides and top are cooked in their own moisture.

Even though they are feared as hot ones, they are surprisingly mild and sweet cooked in this way and also because of the filling. No upset stomachs with this recipe, I can guarantee you that.

Stuffed cherry peppers with spinach dal and rice.

Simply prepared and deliciously seasoned baby beets and carrots is one of my favorite light meals/snack.

What you need:
5 to 6 small sized beetroots
10 to 15 baby carrots
A saucepan fitted with steamer basket to cook them
1 tsp of ghee, salt and pepper to season

Put enough water in a saucepan so that it doesn’t touch the steamer basket when placed. Bring water to boil. Place washed and whole beetroots and carrots in a single layer in the steamer. Place this steamer in pan and cover it tightly with a lid so that steam won’t escape. Steam them until tender for about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the steamer from the pot and let stand until cool enough to handle, then peel the beetroots and cut them into quarters.

In a pan, melt one tsp of ghee on medium heat. To it add the quartered beetroots and carrots. Sprinkle some salt and pepper and toss them once to combine. Remove from heat, squeeze some limejuice and serve immediately.

Few roma tomatoes, each cut into five round slices, tossed in salt and pepper, then baked on a foil covered tray in the oven at 350°F for about 45 minutes.

My first time making these and I am surprised at how easy it was to prepare them, and how good they tasted. Because I chopped them thin, I didn’t had to cook them for 3 to 4 hours in the oven.

Green Bell Peppers with Spicy Chickpea Powder:

My favorite way to cook green bell peppers is this very easy, 15 minutes from start to finish capsicum curry. The special ingredient which makes it the absolute favorite of people who tried this curry is the spicy roasted chickpea powder. Mildly sweet and spicy chickpea powder and hot bell peppers compliment each other, and the prepared curry is a tasty delight.

Recipe:

3 bell peppers, sliced thinly lengthwise, then halved crosswise
3 tablespoons of pappula podi (spicy chickpea powder)
¼ teaspoon turmeric
¼ teaspoon salt or to taste
For popu or tadka:
1 tablespoon of peanut oil
¼ teaspoon each – curry leaves, chopped garlic, cumin and mustard seeds

Preparation:

Place a wide skillet on stove top. Add and heat peanut oil. When oil is hot, add the curry leaves, garlic toast to pale gold. Then add the cumin and mustard seeds. When seeds start to pop, add the bell peppers.

On high heat, cook for few minutes, until the excessive moisture evaporates from them. Then reduce the heat, cover the pan partially, and cook for another five minutes.

When bell peppers are tender to touch, add the seasoning. Sprinkle the spicy chickpea powder, turmeric and salt. Mix and cook for about five more minutes. Turn off the heat. Serve the curry hot, over steamed rice and dal, or with chapatis.

Capsicum curry with rice, spinach dal and yogurt – our meal today.

Turnips (shalgam) are little bit smelly, but when cooked they almost taste like potatoes. While searching through the Internet about turnips, I learned that they are available in India, mainly in cold, North Indian regions. I didn’t know that before, I thought they are available only here. I came across a new Kashmiri recipe called Masala Shalgam, and I tried it today for lunch. I also made rotis with recently milled, fresh sorghum flour (Jonna Pindi) that I brought from India.

Very much enjoyed the combination.

Recipe:

4 small to medium sized turnips, washed, pared thinly and cubed.
4 ripe juicy tomatoes, cut or pureed.
1 onion, finely chopped lengthwise

First, saute the cubed turnips, till they leave the smell and brown a little, for about ten to fifteen minutes on low heat. Meanwhile prepare the masala.

Masala:
Make a paste of ginger, garlic, cilantro, dried red chillies, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, fenugreek, coconut and salt. Measurements of these ingredients are up to you.

In a pan on medium heat, take 1 tsp of oil, when it is hot, add the onions, saute them to soft, and then add the tomatoes, the prepared masala and browned turnips. Add pinch of turmeric and salt. Mix them once and cook them all covered for about 10 to 15 minutes. Serve the curry hot with chapati or roti.

Masala Turnips with Sorghum Roti ~ Meal Today

Paruppu Usili or Lentil Curry, even though it’s an old classic from South India, I never made this at home before. Shammi’s post tempted me to try it. I liked the ingredients and nutritional aspects of this curry and also the quick way it can be made.

I followed Shammi’s recipe mostly.

-Soaked two fistfuls each of toor dal and chana dal overnight.

-Grinded the dals with half tsp of salt and six dry red chillies and pinch of hing into coarse matter, without adding any water.
-Fresh green beans are the vegetable I chose to make Parappu Usli.
-I chopped beans, one medium sized onion and one garlic clove finely.

Did the popu (frying mustard seeds, cumin and curry leaves in 1 tsp of oil), then added onions and garlic, saut̩ed them for few minutes. Then added the coarsely grounded dal paste and green beans. Cooked them covered on low medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pinch of turmeric and salt to my taste, with these final touches and few more minutes on stove Рmy new favorite curry was ready for chapatis.

Thanks Shammi for showing this classic recipe.

Pappulu, Putnala pappulu or Dalia are prepared from chickpeas. Not the regular, white chickpeas but from a special variety of chickpeas specific to India and commonly sold under the name “Kala Chana or Black Chickpeas”.

The preparation of pappulu (dalia) is a fascinating process. First, the black chickpeas get soaked in water for several hours, and then after draining, chickpeas are roasted in big caldrons under controlled low fire for several hours. Until the chickpeas turn to crisp. Once the roasting process is completed, the hulls of chickpeas will be removed and each chickpea will be split into two equal pieces. This whole soaking-roasting process intensifies the chickpea flavor, and also changes them to light yellow, mildly sweet pappulu or Dalia. This process is done in special places called Bhattis. Almost every town in Andhra Pradesh would have a bhatti. People go there to buy the freshly prepared pappulu and also the puffed rice There were couple of bhattis near our home in Nandyala and we were used to buy them fresh and hot from those places.

Among all the lentil types available in an Indian store, pappulu are the only one which you can just open the packet and pop them into mouth. As kids and even now, we love to eat them as they are or mixed with murmura. They are a snack item for us, like popcorn. If you are from South India, I assume you already know the pappula taste. For those of you who don’t, you must try them at least once. They are usually sold in Indian grocery shops under the label “Dalia” in lentil section. They are really great tasting, guilt free snack.

Pappula Podi is a famous Andhra preparation. In some parts of Andhra this is also called gunpowder. We add it to season the curries and also to prepare chutneys and to spread on dosas, idly, pongali and upma. Pappula Podi not only spices but also adds a mild sweetness to the preparation. This following recipe is from my mother’s and my most valued one. If you are used to besan (gram flour) preparations, try this one instead. You will be delighted, I promise.

Pappula Podi:

1 cup – Pappulu
6 to 8 – dried red chillies, Indian variety
2 tablespoons – grated coconut or dried coconut pieces
1 tablespoon – cumin
½ teaspoon – salt or to taste
4 garlic cloves (this is optional, even without garlic this powder tastes great.)

Take pappulu, chillies, coconut, cumin, garlic and salt in a clean and dry mixer jar or food processor. Grind to fine powder. This is a dry preparation and do not add water. Store the powder in a clean, dry, airtight container. This will stay fresh as long as it remains dry.

The following are the most common ways I enjoy the Pappula Podi:

1. Add a tablespoon of Podi to fistful of cooked rice. Add a teaspoon of ghee. Mix and make small rounds. Eat.

2. Add a tablespoon of Podi to cooked rice and dal (tomato or spinach etc). Add a teaspoon of ghee. Mix and eat.

3. Prepare dosas and spread the pappula Podi on the dosa for Masala Dosa. Yum!

4. Dunk and coat the Idly, Upma and pongal morsels in Pappula Podi, and eat. My new favorite is Pappula Podi and oatmeal upma combination.

5. I also add pappula Podi to vegetable curries. Cabbage, bell pepper, green beans and Indian variety broad beans (Chikkudu kaya), the sauté style curries with these vegetables taste great spiced with pappula Podi. I usually sprinkle one tablespoon of this powder before turning off the heat.)

6. Add roasted onion, garlic and few branches of fresh cilantro to Pappula Podi, along with about half glass of water. Grind to smooth to make an instant chutney.

Pappula Podi

I don’t cook mushrooms that often. They are Vijay’s (my husband’s) division. He likes all types of mushrooms and often cooks them himself. He usually grills or dry sautés mushrooms but when he is in a mood to spend an extra 5 minutes in the kitchen, he whips up a sesame sauce to go along with his grilled mushrooms. He got this recipe from a Korean website. This sesame sauce is like an Indian version of one of the curry sauces but without the onions and other extras. I like the sauce so when he makes this, it’s a win-win for both us as I don’t eat mushrooms. Preparing this sauce is such an easy and quick task and he makes this himself most of the times without me setting foot in the kitchen.

Recipe:

Portabella mushrooms РQuickly rinse or wipe of portabellas with a paper towel. Remove the roots and make &#43(plus shape) cuts on them. After lightly covering them with sesame oil, stir-fry or grill them until they are golden and sprinkle with some salt and remove. When saut̩ing in a pan, leave space around the mushrooms, so that they brown evenly.

Sauce – Toast half cup of sesame seeds and 4 to 6 red chilli peppers. Make a fine paste of them by adding a small piece of ginger, salt and molasses or sugar, half teaspoon each or to your taste.

….

Preparation:

Heat a teaspoon of peanut oil in a pan. Add sesame sauce to the pan and also half cup of water. Simmer on medium-low heat for about five minutes, or until the sauce thickens.

Plate a grilled portabella on a serving plate. Pour a tablespoon of sesame sauce over it. Enjoy the portabella with sesame sauce.

Our meal – Rice with Portabellas in Sesame Sauce and Chappidi Pappu (Plain Lentil soup).

Few beetroots peeled and sliced into bite sized pieces, tossed and cooked in one teaspoon of peanut oil, then seasoned with salt and red pepper flakes. Served with chapatis, our meal is a simple fare today.

For this month’s EoMEoTE, I got this idea of combining paratha + frittata from the charming couple Mrs. D and Chopper Dave’s post Quittata. I mostly followed their recipe, but instead of puff pastry, I used homemade Paratha and also added the ingredients I liked (eggs of course and vegetables)- that’s how I came up with “Paratta“.

I wanted to make this with 6 eggs, as I felt very guilty to use one dozen eggs just for the two of us. My frugal mentality won’t allow me to even think about such excesses. But 6 were not enough, so finally I brought the number up to 8.

The ingredients I’ve added:

One paratha made to skillet size. (How to make Paratha? Follow the Gif)
8 eggs
One small onion, 2 green chillies- finely chopped
Half cup chickpeas, soaked in water beforehand for about one hour
Sun dried tomatoes, sliced – quarter cup
Few sprigs of cilantro, finely chopped – quarter cup or to taste
One medium sized tomato, sliced in thin round pieces for decoration
Salt to taste or ½ teaspoon

I’ve also added some leftover spinach curry to this mix. I did remove egg yolks because we both can’t stand the smell of yolks. I wanted to add eggplant too, I’ve even cut and prepared but unsure how they’d taste with eggs, at the last minute I’ve dropped adding eggplant slices to the egg mixture. Instead grilled the eggplant slices for a separate meal later in the day.

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350* F

In a big bowl, break only 6 eggs. To these eggs add onions, green chillies, chickpeas, cilantro, spinach and salt. Whisk them together to blend well.

Heat an iron skillet on medium flame and fry the paratha lightly on both sides.

Now, pour the egg mixture on to the paratha and arrange the round tomato slices on top.

Break the remaining two eggs in the same bowl, whisk them well and pour this mixture on top of tomato slices.

Place the iron skillet in oven and bake at 350*F for about 20 to 30 minutes or until the center is set and sides are puffy golden.

When you are sure that paratta is well cooked, remove the skillet from oven. Let it cool for about 5 minutes then loosen the edges with a spatula or knife and slide it onto a serving plate. Cut Paratta into wedges and serve them warm or at room temperature.

This is one new dish that I am going to make frequently as we both were really satisfied with the final result.

My regular readers, you may be curious about my delayed posting today – your guess is right, I wanted to escape the primetime ratings drama by King George the Second. Really, who believes him anymore? (except of course the madcow infected ones.)

Plain eggs halves look beautiful and tasty in this colorful curry – mainly prepared with tomatoes… lot of tomatoes.

Recipe:

6 Eggs, boiled, peeled and each cut into two halves
6 to 8 big ripe juicy tomatoes, cut into small pieces
One small piece of coconut, powdered
1 tablespoon of fresh dhania-jeera(coriander-cumin) powder
4 cloves of garlic – finely minced
Salt and red chilli powder to taste or 1 tsp each

Preparation:

First do the popu (frying few mustard seeds, cumin seeds and curry leaves in 1 tsp of oil) in a pan. To it, add all the above ingredients except eggs. Cook it covered on high heat until the tomatoes are softened. Then reduce the heat and let it simmer for about 5 to 10 minutes to thicken the gravy. Don’t add water. The gravy must be all tomatoes and coconut. Just before you turn off the heat, add the boiled eggs and mix it once.

When prepared with fresh ripe tomatoes, with or without the eggs, this will turn into one rich and satisfying curry. The taste of cooked and thickened tomato juice with lightly added Indian masala just explodes in your mouth when eaten with plain rice or with rotis.

Our lunch today is big on taste, small on size, a quick and comforting sort of meal:

Tomato Rasam,
Sandwich with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, spinach, walnuts and red chilli garlic powder.
Yogurt with shredded carrot

Tomato Rasam Recipe:

Take few very ripe tomatoes, few leaves of cilantro and small piece of tamarind in a vessel.

Add one cup of water to them and hand squeeze the tomatoes along with other ingredients until nothing hard left to squeeze (work those hand muscles). Add water if needed. Leave the contents undisturbed for few minutes to get the pulp settled at the bottom. Separate or strain the juice from the sediment below. How tasty the rasam depends on how juicy and fresh the tomatoes are. So attempt this rasam only with decent quality ripe or cherry tomatoes.

In a mortar take half teaspoon each of black peppercorns, cumin seeds and coriander seeds and make a fine powder of them with a pestle.

Do the popu (frying mustards seeds, cumin and curry leaves in oil), use just a drop of oil for popu. Even 1 tsp of oil is too much for the rasam, it spoils the rasam taste with oiliness. To the popu, add the tomato-tamarind juice and half to one glass of water. Don’t dilute it too much with water. Add half teaspoon of salt, dhania-jeera-pepper powder and one teaspoon of sugar or powdered jaggery. Mix it once, have a taste and adjust the seasonings. And bring it to a boil. Let it simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes, then turn off the heat.

You can have it as soup or with rice. Tomatoes’ sweet tartness, tamarind’s sourness and jaggery’s sweetness combine and make this into one tasty rasam.

With the start of long and plenty of sunshine days, the mint in my container garden is growing like crazy. Just like the hair on my husband’s head:), except of course the hair knows no season. It needs once in a two week trimming and pruning session, otherwise it can branch off into one irritating but pretty in a wild way, kind of growth.

Not only I had trimmed branches of mint, I also bought a bunch for a quarter (25 cents) at farmers market. Together that’s lots of mint for two people, and the best way to use all of it in one setting is of course the good, old pudina pulao. Natural fragrance of Basmati rice, cloves and other spices we use in making the pulao mask the overpowering mint aroma. So, don’t be afraid to try this dish, if this is your first time or if you are on the fence about mint recipes.

Recipe:

1 bunch of mint- Rinsed and leaves and tender stems plucked
2 cups of Basmati rice, washed and soaked in 4 cups of water
3 green chillies and one onion – sliced thinly, lengthwise
¼ cup of fresh coconut – chopped
1 inch piece ginger and 3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
4 each – cloves, cardamom, small cinnamon pieces, bay leaves & 1 star anise
¼ cup – roasted cashews
1 tablespoon – ghee
1 teaspoon – salt, or to taste

Preparation:

Take mint leaves, coconut, green chillies, ginger and garlic in a mixer. Add a pinch of salt and blend to fine consistency without adding any water.

Put the Rice cooker pot on stovetop on medium flame. (To make it a one-pot meal, usually what I do is – I would saute the masala for pulao in rice cooker pot first, then I would add the soaked basmati rice along with water to the same pot and cook.)

Heat ghee on medium heat in rice cooker pot. When it is hot, add the spices (cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves and star anise), saute them first. Then the onions, saute until onions start to brown. Now, add the pureed mint-green chilli-coconut paste. Fry until the mint paste changes color from bright green to light-green color. Take care not to burn/brown the masala paste.

Into this sauteed masala, empty the Basmati rice and the water it soaked in. Add salt; stir the whole thing, so that all the ingredients would mix together. Now remove the pot from stovetop, put it back in rice cooker and switch on the plug to cook. Once the rice cooks to tender, remove the lid and add cashews. Mix it once. Put the lid back and let it stand for another five minutes. Then turn off the plug.

We had pudina pulao with potato kurma , raita and lime wedge on the side – one good meal.

We had a perfect, mild, early spring like weather this weekend. A trip to the flea/farmers market, a bag full of baby red potatoes and lazy afternoon spending at home called for this mouth watering evening snack.

Baby red potatoes are clean and fresh, so after a light dip in the water and a pat on the back with a towel, they are sliced into four and tossed with olive oil, salt and red chilli flakes. And they are ready for the oven.

Now the magic cooking part – Spread them on a baking sheet and first bake them in the oven at 350 F for about ten minutes. Bring out the sheet and turn the potatoes to other side one by one. Change the oven setting to broil and roast the potatoes again in the oven ten more minutes or until gold colored.

Nothing gets the Pavlovian response going like the smell and sight of these crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside oven-roasted potatoes. Great snack!