We Provice Recipes

I started preparing kichdi recently after seeing the recipe from a couple of food blogs. I found this dish totally comforting. The rice and dhal combination along with the spices makes a filling meal too. There were some recipes in which vegetables were also added. I made my own twist to this by adding some onions and methi leaves. Methi leaves or fenugreek leaves are very helpful in controlling the blood sugars. A teaspoon of dry fenugreek seeds soaked in water, when taken on an empty stomach in the morning is very helpful for reducing cholesterol, blood sugars, and reducing weight. I try to include these greens at least once a week in our diet either in dhals or potato dishes. I don’t know whether this is a traditional dish but this tasted really good. I paired it with a simple bell peppers curry.

INGREDIENTS:

1. Brown rice, 1 cup.

2. Whole moong dhal, ½ cup.

3. Onion, medium-size, 1.

4. Methi leaves, 1 big bunch.

5. Cumin seeds, 1 teaspoon.

6. Cinnamon, 1 small stick.

7. Bay leaf, 1.

8. Cardamom, 2 cloves.

9. Cloves, 2.

10. Salt as per taste.

PREPARATION:

Wash the rice and dhal together and soak it for 1 hour. Wash the greens and chop it into small pieces. Dice the onion finely. Heat a pan or a pressure cooker pan with a tablespoon of oil. Add the spices and fry everything for one minute until good aroma comes from the spices. Add the onions now and sauté for a few minutes until they turn tender. Drain the water from the rice and dhal and add it to the pan. Add 3 cups of water, salt, and the chopped greens, mix everything and cook everything until rice and dhal are cooked (it can be transferred to a microwave rice cooker or electric rice cooker at this stage). I used a pressure cooker for up to 3 whistles and cooked the rice. A teaspoon of ghee can be added once cooked and serve hot with any spicy side dish.

Split peas vadais are similar like the regular peas and channa dhal vadais. I had some split peas in the pantry after making some split peas soup, so thought of using them in vadais instead of regular peas. These fritters came out pretty well. We had this as a side dish with rice and vathakuzumbu. These fritters can also be had as an evening snack with some ketchup. I have grinded the vadai batter into a smooth paste since I like the vadais to be crispy on the outside and soft inside. For crispier vadais, the peas can be ground into a coarse paste. For this consistency, run the blender for just one or two pulses.

INGREDIENTS:
Split peas, 1 cup, soaked for 2-3 hours.
Fennel seeds, 1 teaspoon.
Rice powder, 1 tablespoon.
Garlic, 2 cloves.
Ginger small pieces.
Green chilies, 3.
Salt, as per taste.
Red onion, medium-sized, 1.
Curry leaves, a handful.
Cilantro, a handful.

PREPARATION:
Wash the soaked split peas and grind them along with the fennel seeds, chilies, garlic, and ginger without water. Chop the onion, curry leaves, and cilantro into small pieces. Add the chopped onion, curry leaves, cilantro, rice powder, and salt to the ground split peas and mix everything well. Heat a kadai with 1 cup of oil. When the oil is hot, take a small amount of the ground mixture and flatten it with the palm of the hand and drop into the hot oil. When the vadais rise up and turns golden-brown, remove the vadais from the oil and drain the excess oil with a paper towel. Serve the hot vadas with ketchup.

 Or link sausage and cheddar cheese.
And for the less adventurous eaters of you, one of my favorite kolache shops (and the one my mom used to visit when I was only a wee child), Morning Kolaches, also makes fluffy, gooey cinnamon rolls:
But this isnt amateur hour, so I left the cinnamon rolls to my Dad and went on ahead and ate three kolaches this morning. Ive never felt more lethargic in my life.

Oh, and, for the record, Im not staying Paleo through the holidays. This isnt North Korea* you guys...I can do what I want!!!

*On a serious note, how awesome is it to NOT live in North Korea??

Diwali is just round the corner and Ive been busy spring (Its ALWAYS summer in Bombay) cleaning. Theres tons to be done. I have come to believe in the fact that one work leads to many. For eg. if I start cleaning my wardrobe, I find a dozen things in it that have no business to be in there and then I have to hunt for a place for each. I have also vowed not to buy one single thing - artefacts, clothes, kitchen gadgets - unless I pass it through my 10 point checklist to decide if it is absolutely necessary(which I will formulate and share with you in case you want to see it). Yeah, not even if that earthern bowl is going to look good on the blog. Not as long as I move into a bigger house with a bigger kitchen and an EVEN BIGGER store-room :)

Meanwhile, I have been doing the basic cooking, trying some new stuff and have made two Diwali recipes so far - Spicy Khajas from bawarchi.com and 2 types of Nankhatais learnt from various bloggers. I shall tell you about them in my next entry.

I must say thanks to my blog-o-buddies who were wondering about my absence from the blogging scene. Feels good to be remembered and missed a bit :)

Let me fill you up on what Ive been upto the past two weeks ...

See this card. See something familiar? Well, if you read Meetas blog, youd know that shed been to Peloponnese recently. I was so happy to see a card from my dear blog pal. I just saw the front of the card and I knew it was her. Obviously this was the first time Id heard about this place on her blog and to get a bit of her holiday in my mailbox was a great surprise. Well, thats Meeta for you. She sure knows how to make friends happy.

Last Sunday, I also received a call from Vaishali (Happy Burp) whos reached Pune, safe and sound. Ive been so terribly busy whole of last week for the same reasons I stayed away from the blog that I am yet to call her again and ask if shes settled down. But Ill do that as soon as Im done with this post.

Here, let me share with you some of the stuff that Ive cooked from fellow bloggers recipes....

Anita from Mad Tea Party does all things so exotic that itll drive you mad - if you dont make them, that is. She made these steamed bottle gourd koftas that can be frozen and dunked into a gravy when required. I tried them and quite liked them. No pics of those though.



But I did take pics of her Lemon Marmalade that I made last night when mom was around. Ive never been after citrus fruit seeds the way I was yesterday. I told my mom a dozen times not to miss a single seed as she was peeling the sweet limes for our dinner time fruit. Nah - Pip collecting is not my newfound hobby nor am I a little crazy. The marmalade required to boil citrus pips for quite a while to make up for the absence of pectin. The liquid in which the pips had boiled for over 30 minutes hadnt turned significantly thick (especially as compared to Anitas description) - so I added a pinch of gelatin dissolved in water. Now the marmalade bottles can safely sit upside down without the fear of any leakage...haha. This was my first jamming experience and I quite liked it.

The marm is quite bitter as of now. I dont know if thats how it is supposed to be. Id like to hope that the bitterness will go away in a few weeks, as like it does in a lime pickle.

And that one is Nics Lime loaf. Baking Sheet has become my only needed baking resource in the last few months. I subtituted the half the plain flour with wheat flour and some wheat bran. The loaf was kinda rough and dense, but we quite like it that way. DH absolutely loved the lemony aroma and taste.

Wait, its not over yet. Two weeks ago, our friends were over from Bangalore. Their dear boy was off egg for a while and hence Saffron Huts Eggless Banana Muffins were the perfect treat. They all loved it and I packed the rest of it for them to take back home.

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Just reminding you about Weekend Breakfast Blogging - the theme for this month is Twist in the Plate. Did you jazz up an ordinary breakfast for Diwali? Did you try your favourite bloggers recipe with your own twist? Did you turn a sweet one into a savoury one? Come on, tell me about it. You have time till 29th of this month to send me your entries. WBB turns monthly and theme-based this month onwards. Read more about it here.

Download Printable Recipe (You will go to mediafire.com)

Rick loves Sloppy Joes. I think most people do. I will eat them on occasion, but was traumatized when I was a kid. I still remember the kind of Sloppy Joes that the lunch lady served me in grade school... and I had no idea what went in it! Yuck. But this recipe is safe, and its good. Its also super easy and quick to make. A great recipe for those Wednesday nights when you come home and have no idea what to the feed the kids.

I just had a thought. You know what would be cool? Instead of a Hungry Man line of food products, there should be Wild Man TV dinners! With venison, duck and geese! OoOoOh... only in a perfect world.

Servings: 6








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