Simplest vegetarian pulao / Rice with turmeric and potaoes

You are low on your stock of  vegetables and you have a guest. You don’t want to serve the regular dal chawal or roti sabzee. I think you will go for this recipe of pulao which can be altered to suit the time and requirement.

Ingredients

1.    2 cups long grain rice

2.    2 medium potatoes

3.    2 – 6 onions ( yes ,you can use any number depending on how many onions you have or how much time you have, I will tell you the recipe with both the proportions)

4.    2 green chillies

5.    ¾  teaspoon  turmeric powder

6.    1 teaspoon cumin seeds

7.    A few cloves

8.    1 tablespoon heapful ginger garlic paste

9.    6- 8 tablespoons refined oil ( can use much less if you are using lesser number of onions or add another two for a really yummy pulao). For this recipe I am using 6 onions and 8 tablespoons oil)
10  salt to taste

Method

1.   Wash and soak the rice.

2.   Take the oil in  a heavy bottomed pot and when the oil gets warm add the cumin seeds and cloves.

3.   Stir for a few seconds and then add the sliced onions. ( As I mentioned earlier you can reduce the quantity to half the oil and half the onions here. I am going to caramelize the onions and reserve half of them to decorate later on.)

4.   If you are in a hurry and you are using just two onions then let them turn pink and follow the rest of the steps , but if you are using the six onions and you have time to prepare, then caramelize the onions at low flame till they reduce to one fourth the volume and turn a pleasant brown in colour.

5.   Keep aside half this amount . We will use it use add glamour  to this simple dish.

6.   Add ginger garlic paste ,turmeric and green chillies chopped fine.

7.   Stir for a minute and add the sliced potatoes.

8.   Drain the rice and stir fry the rice and potatoes for  about two minutes.

9.   Add 4 cups of water and salt to taste, increase the flame to high till the water comes to a boil and then reduce to low and cover and let the pulao cook completely.

10.             If it suits your taste and requirement you could decorate the pulao with the reserved caramelized onions and stir fried cashews.

11.              Serve with plain curd, raita with finely chopped tomatoes , onions and fresh coriander leaves or just simple plain boondi  raita and add a seasoning of jeera and curry leaves tempered in oil. A simple mixed salad of finely chopped tomatoes, apples, cucumber and fresh coriander with a dash of lemon juice goes very well with this pulao.

Summer at Saloh and Aata ka halwa

As a kid I had seen a picture in a calendar covering the most beautiful hillstations of India. I had particularly liked one picture of a makeshift wooden bridge on a stream .We visited a village by the name Saloh in Himachal  last summers and there I found something exactly like the picture I had seen more than two decades back.

 What I found most alluring in the villages of Himachal was that the golden fields of Wheat would come right upto the doorstep .So people would be sipping tea in their verandah and a few steps away were these golden beauties ready to be harvested.

   If a simple camera could capture such beautiful snaps imagine what a hi-tech camera  could do.

Wheat forms the staple diet of the north Indians and now I am going to present before you a simple yet most popular sweet pudding made with whole wheat flour.

There are innumerable ways of making the same sweet and trust me they are one better than the other. This proportion of the ingredients is followed by a dear friend Anita and is so convenient to make  that I decided to put it on the blog. Infact Anita is the one making the halwa in the pictures while I photographed it.

 Ingredients

You could use any measuring cup for this.

1.    ¾ cup ghee / clarified butter

2.    1 cup whole wheat flour

3.      ½ cup water ( infact a tablespoon less would be better)

4.      ¾ cup sugar

5.     Cashews , kishmish  and  almonds for garnishing ( optional)

Method

1.    Warm the ghee is a heavy bottomed pan.

2.    Add the flour in one go and keep stirring on low flame till the wheat starts giving out a pleasant aroma and turns one shade darker.

3.    Turn the gas off and add the water . Keep stirring and turn the gas on ,keep the flame low.

4.   As soon as the mixture starts to stick together and turns into a ball ,that will take about 20 seconds add the sugar and keep stirring for say about 30 seconds more till the sugar gets dissolved.

5.   Add the garnishing while the sweet is in the pan or decorate later to your choice.

I guess it goes without saying to serve it piping hot.

hi friends,
       Thank you for all your encouraging comments about my blog on the face book.
    I guess every one is facing the same problem about adding their comments on the blog. The new template design is good for the look of the blog but I agree that the adding of the comments is a bit tricky.Here is how to go about it.
 step 1.   click on the "Add comment button"
 step 2.   scroll down a bit  and the comment box will open.
step 3.    write your comment ( I am eagerly waiting for them ...lol)
step 4.   select how  to "comment as"....clicking on anonymous is a safe bet.
step 5.   press publish
step 6 .  a funny message asks you to prove that you are not a robot. scroll down again.
step 7.   type the "number" and the alphabet. Now the number is very dimly written so there is an arrow going in a circle which means you can have another set of number and alphabet to type.
step8.  there will be a msg which says that your comment will be published after approval...thats incase there is a spam or an awkward message.
step8. press publish again.
there u are ...it wont take more ten seconds but will give me lots of happiness.

Cream cake

This cake can also be nicknamed as a desi malai cake.I use the cream which comes on top of full cream milk after boiling and chilling in the fridge overnight.You can easily double the quantity for a larger tin and bake for about 10-15 minutes extra.
     I have packed my egg beater and was in a hurry to make this cake as I had to run some errands.I am sure many of you would wince at the shortcuts I took to make it but trust me the cake has turned out soft like a feather.
      So all I want to say is that if you dont have an egg beater or its out of order you can still bake this cake.
I have used the Indian measuring cup of 200 ml . You can use the American measuring cup for this too...just increase the baking powder to 1 teaspoon and use large eggs.

Ingredients

1.              1 cup chilled  cream

2.              1 cup powdered sugar

3.              1 cup heapful flour (1 level  cup + one fourth level cup to be very precise, if the concept of heapful is not clear to you)

4.              ¾ tsp baking powder

5.              ¼ tsp baking soda

6.              2 eggs

Method

1.              Gently beat the cream and sugar just until dissolved.Do not overbeat as sometimes the cream turns in to butter.Thats one reason I have asked you all to take chilled cream.Another option is to just stir the two together and keep in the fridge for a little while so that they get dissolved.Take it out after  half an hour or so , let it come to room tempertaure say in ten minutes and take the following steps.

2.              Throw in the two eggs and beat with a whisk. sift the flour with the baking powder and soda.

3.              Throw in the flour .I literally did that.Ideally one should add one spoon at a time and gently fold in ....but I just threw in the whole lot of the flour and beat gently with the whisk .
4.      Pour the batter into a small tin and place in the centre of a preheated oven at 180 degree celsius.

5.  Bake for 35 minutes or till a toothpick inserted comes out clean...maybe  five minute more.

6.  Let the cake come to room temperature before taking it out of the tin.

Now isn't that really really simple. 

I ,Me , Myself

A good friend of mine who is my blog's most frequent viewer told me to make a home page and write a few lines about myself ,” a kind of an intro she said, Anjali, something which will help the viewers to know something about you and get connected with you.”

    I thanked her for her concern and thought about it. The problem is that I can’t sum up myself in a few words. That sounds like an inflated ego talking but that’s not the case.

    I would want you to discover and make your own judgements about me through my medium of showcasing my talent or intersts.

   That’s another reason that I am putting simple and basic recipes on the blog . You have to try these ones first and hopefully get good results only then I feel would you trust me with the recipes requiring expensive ingredients and a whole lot of time and effort.

    I keep checking on other blogs to see how I can keep improving mine….there is phenomenal amount of creativity and talent out there. Such learned and knowledgeable people that I sometimes get intimidated by all this.Would I be able to carve a niche for myself .If I have your best wishes …I am sure …sooner or later I will.

    

As I mentioned in the previous post that I am moving to Vishakapatnam.  Most of our stuff is packed and I am all set to move the moment we get  a house there . I packed all the books and games of my children not realising that they would  soon have Autumn break and would find it difficult to keep themselves busy. My daughter loves to draw and colour but my son was finding it difficult to keep himself entertained without books so I ordered these books from "flipkart"  which I guess are  a hot favourite amongst kids of this age.
     "Diary of a Wimpy kid". I must add that I found them interesting myself and imagine how starved my son was of a reading material that he read one book a day and finished off or should I say devoured the three in three days.
    He is eagerly awaiting the arrival of three more which I must say are delivered even before the promised date.
   Right now, while I am typing this post they are playing hide and seek. I remember an incident as a six year old when I was playing hide and seek with my cousins in the farm house at my grandparents place , I found such a great hiding place that I wasn't found for a long time and then when I got bored of waiting and decided to make an appearance I realised to my horror that the game was being continued many times over without me and they had very conveniently given up looking for me. I swallowed my wounded pride and wished they had sent a search party rather than playing on as if nothing were missing.
       Hope the kids of this generation keep these kiddish games going on.

        

Hi friends,
     I just wanted to inform you all that I would soon be shifting the headoffice of "Anjali's food kaleidoscope" to another state of India due to which I might not be as regular in posting the recipes. Well I am sure you all understand that for a home maker "The kitchen " is the head office and if thats all packed there is no place to operate from.
      Wish me luck that I can set up my home and the headoffice before Diwali and can come up with lots of delicious recipes for you all.
    Meanwhile stay tuned as I would be digging into my emergency quota of recipes and keep the posts coming but maybe not that often and maybe not with pictures.
  

Aaloo methi ( stir fried potato and fenugreek leaves)

Now this is a demand by a friend of mine who lives alone and asked me to put a recipe of any vegetable and the ingredients should be strictly for one person. Alright then you all could multiply by the number of people you are making it for.

Here goes the recipe….

Ingredients

1.    2 cups fresh fenugreek leaves

2.    One medium potato

3.    One medium onion

4.    One green chilli or to taste

5.    Three tablespoons mustard oil

6.    A little less than half teaspoon turmeric powder and salt to taste.

7.    Two dashes of garam masala

Method

1.    Pour the oil in a heavy bottomed pan and bring to a smoking point and then turn off the gas and let the oil cool off a bit before adding the sliced onions. Don't sweat if your pan gets a little stained after smoking the  oil as a little scrubbing will get rid of it .

2.     Stir fry the onions and the chopped green chillies on medium flame till they turn golden brown.

3.    Add the turmeric powder and the chopped potatoes and cover and cook till almost done.

4.     Meanwhile  wash and drain the leaves and chop them fine.

5.    When the potatoes are almost done add the leaves but do not cover the pan.

6.    Add salt and stir fry  on medium flame till the leaves shrivel and are cooked .

7.    Sprinkle the garam masala and serve with rotis.