The dum aloo success story

I have been so excited about my kashmiri dum aloo inspired dish, I knew i had to blog about it! So i drew inspiration from vah re vah video and peppered in my own style and here is how it looked and tasted awesome.

Before you venture, i must admit it is not a very healthy dish for the potatoes floating in there. But anything had in sufficient quantities is healthy even potatoes! :)

Ingredients

Onion finely chopped- 1

Potatoes ( small ) - 8 to 10

Chilly powder - 2 tsp heaps (or to your spice level)

Garam masala - 1/4th tsp ( i am not a huge fan of garam masala, hence lesso of it )

Coriander powder - 1/2 tsp

Amchur powder- 1/8th tsp ( can be substituted with tamarind )

Ginger garlic paste - 1 tsp

Kasoori methi - 1 tsp
Elaichi ( cardamom ) - 2 green and 1 black

Curd - 1/2 cup thick beaten

Procedure 

• Boil the potatoes until half cooked ( i let it in the pressure cooker for 1 whistle )
• In the meanwhile fry the onion + ginger garlic paste + crushed elaichis and kasoori methi in a spoon of oil.
• Heat water in a bowl such that it is near boiling and add the masala powders to it. Let sit.
• Peel the potatoes and fork-poke them so that they have sufficient holes to let the masala seep through.
• Now add the potatoes to the fried onions and fry until they are light brown and are coated with onions and methi.
• Now pour the masala mix. Add salt. Add enough hot water such that the potatoes are almost submerged. Let it simmer until the gravy thickens and the raw masala smell leaves.
• Once the gravy is sufficiently thick ( takes about 20 min to get there ), lower the flame and simmer without the lid.
• Now pour the beaten curd to the mixture. Make sure the gravy is not pipping hot when you add the curd, or the curd with break.
• Simmer for another 2 to 3 min in low flame. Sprinkle finely chopped coriander leaves.

Enjoy with rice or parathas

Final Variations -

•  I added a dollop of kulfi icecream before taking the dish off the stove. It gave a smooth malai touch to the dish
• Cooking for a party, make a cahew paste and pour into the gravy. top it with cream.

Well its not a healthy dish... But then.. what the hell? You have to treat yourself once in a while! :)

Happy weather makes me hungry!

Seems like the mile meter is stalled... I am hoping it is everyone not finding time to update the spreadsheet and not the more un-encouraging reason! :(

Although in my case, I have been transcending to couch potato status for the past week and gave it a kick start by jogging outside in 50s weather yesterday. With the early onset of spring, I seem to be delving in many guilty pleasures, in hope of burning them all by running in the sun, eventually! :)

Last night it was a basket of fries and today a huge IHOP brunch! And if thats not enough, topping dinners with home baked banana bread and icecream :D

We can keep the bake-a-thon going; considering we have many new ideas popping. I bought the muffin tray recently and hoping to try that next! I was thinking we can come up with another new event for this month. Anyone got any ideas? Post it!

Until next time....

Bagara Baingan,Bakes,BlockOfLard

When it comes to cooking, I am more of a follower. I prefer the recipes scribbled on the diary, with words of wisdom doled out by my mother in law and mother, to experiments. I also love the colorful cookery books, exact proportions and a few culinary websites I frequent; so like I term it, I am a bookish-cook. Going by the norm, I found the perfect bagara baingan recipe suiting our taste buds and N and I slurped it clean with home-made parathas yesterday for lunch. You can find the recipe here. I vouch it is foolproof! =)

A few other websites I love and frequent are -

Priya's Akshayapatram

Solai chidambaram for chettinad cooking (especially chicken varieties)

Mahanandi for the andhra veggie fix

Most evidently, my second favorite cuisine (first being kerala, of course!) is the andhra bone, hyderabadi to be specific!

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So, I make my entry to the bake-a-thon by following sush's simple recipe of vanilla flavor cake. For my first ever bake it turned out pretty yum and believe it or not, there is just one-eighth of the loaf (as seen in the picture) left. Saiz and sandhya were also party to the cake-eating.

The whole nuts peeping out is N's doing! He plopped them into the batter before I could break them! So as we let the soft cake melt in the mouth, we were rudely awakened by a huge almond to crunch into, from time to time.

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Before you wonder if this section is about a 'block of lard', let me clarify that it is about me feeling like one!

I am a deep-fry-hater. Other than the waist-watch perspective, it is the oil clinging to the carpets rendering the house into a greasy rancor that is a put off. Hence, I stick to the frying bit only on special occasions like N's birthday when I cannot veto the idea. This year, it seems I have become more lenient and ventured for the second time deep frying bajjis and paruppu vadais last evening. Company for the evening coffee made up for the incentive. Knowing fried items are a delicacy; N often makes the best of the deep-fry-occasions to fry anything he can lay hands on, until the oil turns a savage red and retching slick.

I bet two molaga bajjis (green waxy chilly bajjis), few handfuls onion pakodas, couple of paruppu vadais were more than unwelcome to the stomach that hadn't feasted to oil in a long time. Gone are the days when in the name of group-studies, I would wolf down desi french-fries and onion bajjis, which my mother would make for the "hard-working" students.

I was an acidic mess by the time I retired to bed feeling like a completely useless piece of  lard swearing to never deep fry ever again! Until next time….

Hope everyone else had a healthy weekend! =)

Questions – 

How do you balance deep frying and healthy eating? 

What are the options for making deep frying healthy?(now that's an oxymoron! :D )

What kind of hungry are you?

Yesterday I spent  hours "working-from-home" by the window, expecting a snow-white scene to unfold and a blizzard to envelope my brownish yellow grass. But, as the day unwound, I watched the warning on weather.com turn from red to orange to nothing and was left with 8 mm of snow instead of the predicted 8 inches! Like someone said.."they just messed up the metrics"! 

The point of the post wasn't the snow or the lack of it really... but the hunger pangs that seemed to gnaw harder while I was at home! Almost four years back, when I had gained a lousy fifteen pounds in three months (blame it on the overdose of dating one does strictly pre-marriage times, sadly with the same guy..) anyways.. I am still trying to lose the left overs from that era and striving hard to fit into my skinny jeans again!

My first intitiative to lose the pounds was to barely run 1.25 miles, pant like a dog, drink an iota of milk in the name of breakfast, let the stomach rumble until it hurt, eat a meagre lunch, feel proud of it and then 3 pm would strike; the hunger devil (as coined by my cousin villus) would cause me to burn and crash. I would give in to a heavy dinner and feel guilty. The cycle would continue. No surprises - I gained more in the bargain.

Over time, I have finally come into consensus with my body and learnt to manage the food-health-fitness cycle. Although, I am still hit with between-meals hunger accompanied by a pity-emanating-stomach-rumbling noise that can be heard two cubes away! I have tamed the beast to fat free fruit yogurt or a bowl of fresh veggies or a fruit or handful of nuts for the past sixteen months or so.

But yesterday, being home and having a shelf of haldirams displayed for the benefit of the weak-hearted, I was tempted to take more between-meal breaks and pop a spoon of snacks down my throat. When one spoon gave way to one too many, I had decided that WFH wasn't good for the heart (figuratively and literally). I finally tied the growling beast and many crunchy carrots were eaten instead and ran the risk of being called a "cow" by N (technically it should have been rabbit.. but whatever!) .

So here is what I figured about hunger in general yesterday -

1. Hungry every two hours - eat meager meals every two hours.

2. Ravenous during meal times - eat like no tomorrow each of these times

3. Balance hunger - crazy-I-will-die during breakfast, I-will-eat--to-survive at lunch, I-will-eat-because-its-dinner-time during dinner.

4. Snacker - eat whenever i please even if I am not hungry. My heart wants it.

5. Un-foodie - never know when it is meal-time. Who needs food, I say?
6. Skipper - I am too busy to be wasting time eating.. I will skip now and hog later when famished

7. the in-between - Big hungry during meal times. Small hungry between meal times.
8. superman err... super-human hungry (for fear of sounding politically incorrect!) - interleaved, cyclic, biological clock keeping, scrupulous, always fit hunger! phew!

So what kind of hungry are you?? How do you deal with hunger pangs? How do you deal with cravings that have nothing to do with hunger pangs?

Share your thoughts and let it be a help and inspiration for better or worse! =)

Mail/chat/facebook me the miles for the week tomorrow!

The Devil takes over

When you come back home tired from the day's work and by merely thinking how at every step life can push you down and after sweating off all the irritation at the gym, the next thing in any sane person's mind I presume will be FOOD!

I was craving food today after the workout and although I was determined to make soup to contribute to the Soup Month that Divu enlightened me to, I decided to be lazy just for a day and make something that would have less of an aftermath effect (I mean the extensive clean up after cooking). So here comes an easy instant cooking recipe for times and days such as aforementioned!!

Mexican Chicken or whatever you want to call it

1. Chicken breasts - take as many as you want or enough to fill your baking tray
2. Hot/Medium Hot/ Mild Salsa of your choice
3. Mozarella cheese
4. Lime
5. Salt
6. Cloves of garlic

Procedure :

1. Wash the Breasts and place on the baking tray

2. Pour or apply the salsa on top of the chicken - put enough to cover it well

3. My tweaking : Squeeze a lemon on top of the chicken breasts, sprinkle a little salt, chop some garlic cloves (5-6) if you are a Garlic lover

4. Bake at 350F for 20mins

5. Pull it out and grate Mozarella cheese on top

6. Bake for another 15mins

7. Food ready to be served with Rice and Pita chips - If you want you can make the Rice-a-Roni rice that you get at the store since they are flavored.

Warning: Since it involves cheese it might be slightly tilted towards the high calorie side but then its definitely worthwhile when Time and the Lion growling in your tummy are a concern!!