Sweet Corn Soup

(Image from google)

Sweet corn soup...hmm - cant imagine a dinner date without it. sometimes, it is more than an appetizer and fills your stomach! so, I tried this at home and scored another dish in my menu :). This is how I made it..

Ingredients

Corn 

Carrots

Beans

Cornflour

Vinegar

Soy sauce

Ginger garlic paste

Black pepper

Procedure

Boil/microwave corn, carrot pieces and beans for 5 minutes. You can add broccoli and lettuce if you have! Mix cornflour in a small cup and put it aside. Now take 2 cups of water (serves 2 people) and heat in a wok on medium flame, add all the boiled veggies, and 2 spoons of vinegar, 1 spoon soy sauce and pinch of ginger-garlic paste and stir it. Let the mixture boil for 5-7 minutes. Once the bubbles start appearing, add 4 spoons of the corn flour mixture and stir again for 2-3 minutes.  You can add pinch of salt and little black-pepper. That's it. The appetizer is ready to relish! 

Yummy yummy delicious :)

Repaired Roti

(Image from Google)

Left over, but not rotten, food is always a head ache. you can neither eat it nor throw it away. But there are ways to repair it and eat in different forms! This is a dish which I used to make during my work days when I had to rush to office sans breakfast. usually we have rotis from the dinner that are left over. Try this dish with those left over rotis and let me know how it tastes. 

Ingredients

onion- half

tomato- one

stuff for tadka

green chillis

Procedure

Chop onion and tomato into small pieces. Take a wok, heat it and put tadka and fry onions and add tomatoes. Let it heat for 1 minute. Now cut rotis into small pieces with finger. try to make them into as small as you can. Add the roti pieces to the tomato mix and stir it for sometime. add some salt and turmeric and stir it throughly and let it heat for 2 minutes. 

So, this dish, with cut rotis, is ready and it tastes yummy unlike the usual roti-subji stuff. This is easy to make and you will be guilt free!

By S

Chinese Fried Noodles

(Image from Google)

Chinese is one of my favourite cuisines. I never miss a chance to have chinese noodles or fried rice. Any veg mixed chinese dish tempts me! So, last week we tried chinese fried noodles at home and damn! Tt turned out to be yummy yummy. Here is the recipe

Ingredients
Hakka Noodles/or any form of noodles

Oinion-1

Scallions-2

Ginger garlic paste

Tomato

Cabbage 2-3 leaves

Soy sauce

Cook it

Boil or heat water and put hakka noodles in the hot water for 5 minutes. In the mean time, heat a wok, add 2-3 tbs oil. Add onions, scallion pieces, tomato and cabbage and mix well for 2-3 minutes. Now add ginger garlic paste (pinch) and salt and little turmeric. Add soy sauce 3-4 spoons. You can use the soy packets that you got from 'take away' food, its much easier lol. Saute everything for a minute. Now take out the noodles from the bowl and drain the water by squeezing them. Add noodles to the wok and mix and fry everything for 2-3 minutes. There you go! Chinese fried noodles are ready in less than a minute! Don't you think this one is much better than the one that we order from outside??

Try it out...

Methi Rice

Its valentine's day and my hubby has too much work and there are no groceries at home! what a gift! huh. So I was left with minimal things and had to manage with the stuff. I was too ambitious to cook something really good and surprise my hubby. But annoyingly the leftover leaves of methi, and some "ready to perish" tomatoes and potatoes are laughing at my state! But I was not going to give up. Thanks to basmati rice that stocked up since long. I pulled out the bag and thought of making methi rice. Here goes the recipe..


ingredients
Rice- plain or basmati
Methi leaves
Tomato-1
Onion-1
Spices for tadka


procedure 
Put tadka and fry onions. Add tomato and mix and mash it so that it becomes like paste. Now add methi leaves and mix the stuff till the leaves start to disappear. Now add rice and mix the whole stuff. You can add some pepper powder, or any masala powder for taste -along with salt and turmeric. Let it fry for 2-3 minutes. Now put the whole stuff in a cooker (pressure or electric). Add water accordingly and let it boil. 

Yummy methi rice is ready!


my hubby cleaned the whole bowl and asked for some more! ahem ahem i prepared very little and promised that i will cook again :). you can have the dish with raita or just by itself! either ways, its yummy....

Chicken Jalfrezi

This Friday like every other Friday was making my expectations very high.....How would I enjoy the weekend and how I was determined that this weekend will be different from other weeknds in the sense, that I will do something very constructive, enjoyable and will not just laze around......So for me its the Friday dinner which sets the note of the weekend.....But but but....a hard day at my school left me with no energy for preparing special dishes in the evening......Yet to satisfy my expectations I had to churn out something delightful for the Friday drinks and dinner....So here it was Chicken Jalfrezi....sounds good....hmmm...restaurant like ...right???

 Ingredients:

500 gms of chicken breast (skin removed), well washed and cut into bite sized pieces

2-3 medium sized onion, cut into long pieces, not very thin

1 medium sized tomato, finely chopped

2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1/2 inch ginger, thinly sliced

Spices and other stuff :

Garam Masala (2 tsp)

Jeera (Cumin) powder (1 tsp)

Corriander powder (1.5 tsp)

Salt according to taste

Pinch of sugar

Red chilly powder according to taste

Turmeric (1/2 tsp)

Chicken stock powder (optional)

Cook It- 

Marination ...Now marinating is not very important for this dish, however since I find the chicken breast very fibrous, I marinate the chicken here with oil, 1 tsp of ginger garlic paste, chilly  powder and salt. Marinate it for about half an hour or so.

To start with we add oil in the pan, as the oil heats, I throw in the onion and the garlic, a pinch of salt, to sweat the onions fast, after the onions become translucent add a pinch of sugar to caramelize the onions. Now we add in 3/4 th of the chopped ginger, and the bell peppers. We let the bell peppers ooze some of the water out. At this stage, we add the powdered spices except the Garam Masala. Mix it well. Once the oil starts oozing out of the onion and peppers, add the marinated chicken . Now since this chicken is boneless it is gonna get cooked fast. So we toss the chicken well with the spices. After this we add in the sliced tomato.(You may add tomato puree also, depending on your convenience. But tomato ketchup is something which you may avoid adding, given the smell of vinegar.) Now we let the tomatoes cook. The chicken becomes tender with the juices from the tomatoes .You may add half a cup of water for slight gravy. We may mix the chicken stock powder in warm water (optional) and then add it instead of plain water. Cover the pan with a lid, put the stove on medium flame.  Once we see the chicken oozing out the oil, we check with a fork whether the chicken is cooked. Lastly spread the garam masala. Cover the lid and let the chicken stand and the fragrance of garam masala should sink in the chicken. Turn off the stove. Garnish your chicken with corriander, the rest of the ginger and a wedge of lemon.

Serve your Chicken Jalfrezi with Chapattis or Naan. Also goes well with Fried Rice. 

A perfectly colourful Friday night fast dinner! Bon Appetit! 

Stir Fried Mushroom Fried Rice

My husband has been out of station for two weeks now and cooking for me has now become just a matter of survival! No ostentatious preparations, no grandiose about it.....And trust me the biggest challenge for me now a days is to keep recycling and reusing...huh....All dried wilted vegetables are a very tiresome sight! However, this Stir Fried Mushroom Fried Rice was a saviour of sorts in reviving my interest in cooking....and reviving the belief of ending up with something palatable with reused food :).....

Ingredients

The first and very readily available left over is cooked rice from the previous night...or may I say it may be a longer period :) About a cup and a half 

Frozen mutter....oh you can use these beautiful sweet  green pearls as much as you wish....but I believe in being moderately rich...so around half a cup

Mushrooms! How can they be forgotten...no the thing with these are....! they may be of any variety..but the most readily available and often looked down upon and neglected ones are the dear old Button Mushrooms, however any exotic variety is welcome, provided their stems and flesh are easy to cook. A cup of them sliced length wise, however randomly chopped is also OK. One thing to remember is to dip the mushrooms in water and clean them just a minute or two before you put them to cook. 

And now comes the turn of various options that you may or may not use  : Carrots / Beet root /French  Beans / Spring onions 

Now about the spices...hmm....now here believe me you can experiment with as many culinary fancies as you may have:

Salt according to taste...you cant actually play with it much

Oil / Butter / Ghee....amount may vary drastically as per your health concerns, but should be enough so that the rice does not stick to the pan, and the peas and mushrooms do not get charred....

1 to 2 cloves of Garlic ...I will rather put it as a must! However you may omit if you don't like garlic

Pepper powder according to taste / Mirchi powder

 1 tea spoon (tsp) each :Jeera Powder / Dhaniya Powder  (for an Indian Touch),

 1/2 tsp each Dried Thyme / Oragano (for an Italian touch), 

Just a few drops of Soya sauce and chilli sauce for Chinese touch :)

So here you can play with the options!

 Grated cheese...cheddar (Kind of inevitable for this recipe :)) Still omissible for health concerns

 Corriander / Parsley / Chives for Garnish

You can play around with the ideas...My version had the usual jeera / dhaniya powder, topped with a tsp of garam masala powder

Cook It

Heat oil in pan. Add the crushed / chopped garlic. Add the mushrooms.  Add a pinch of salt at this stage. If you are using other vegetables as mentioned above, they too have to be added along the mushrooms. As the mushrooms start oozing out water, and become slightly brown, add the rice. Nicely toss the rice. Add salt again. Now add the peas. If you add peas directly in the oil, they become dry, so for the peas not to loose colour, add them in the rice. Now one by one add in the spices. Whichever variety you want to make. However, make sure you toss the rice and vegetables well with the spices.So that the raw smell of spices do not stay. Toss properly at least for 5-6 mins.If rice is too dry, as well as to properly cook the vegetables just a splash of 2-3 table spoons (tbsp) of water will do the wonders. Toss till the water dries up. And now finish with drizzling the grated cheese . And garnish with corriander / parsley / chives.

Done! Enjoy it as such! Or with some accompaniment of a curry or something! You will surely feel good to see the inventory in the fridge moving :)!

Poha

(Image from Google)

My sister always used to come home from hostel on weekends and I never had any clue why she was always hungry. whenever shes coming home, I knew it was time to buy groceries and keep the food ready. One dish which she always relished is "Poha". Poha is mostly made in central and north India as breakfast and in south India as a diet for  patients! arrghhhh since it is healthy and nutritious, I preferred to make it most of times and it takes hardly 10 minutes to make it. 

Ingredients

Poha (flattened rice) -one cup 

green mirchi-2

jeera

mustard

onions-1/2 of it is enough

Cook It

Dampen poha for 5-10 minutes. This will soften it. Take a kadai, and pour 2 spoons oil, add pinch of jeera, mustards, mirchi and onion pieces. Heat the whole stuff for 45-50 seconds. Now add dampen poha into the oil and put some salt (one tsp) and turmeric powder (just a  pinch). Mix the whole stuff and keep it on flame for 30 seconds. Thats it..yummy poha is ready! 

Now make it properly and serve it.....it can be served as breakfast or an evening snack. the whole process takes not more than 7-8 minutes. Am sure my sister must be drooling by now! 

Onion Pakoda

Image from Google

Its time for sports again! ahem ahem....a big tv and sports channel are not enough to spice up the day. how about some fizzy drink and some hot pakodas...that too made at home! sounds good...right? yeah i did the same while my hubby was sunk in super bowl. it is very easy to make and i am sure you will be having all the ingredients at home! try this

Ingredients

Basen powder/wheat flour/maida ( you can use any of these..subject to the availability)

OSnions 1/person

Oil-3 cups (you can reuse this oil)

Some jeera

One spoon salt

Little mirchi powder

Cook It
Cut the onions into long pieces..no need to tailor them. Take 2 cups of basen/maida/wheat flour (per person) and mix with water until it becomes paste. Add onions, salt, jeera, pepper. The raw material is ready now. Heat the oil and put small amounts of the paste....let it burn for few seconds until it becomes light brown in colour. Take them out and serve them with ketch-up or any other sauce...or just relish them...

Am sure you will love the game and also your snack...why to waste money on outside unhygienic pakodas when we can make them at home in just 10 minutes.....

yummy yummy...now am in a mood to eat them again....ta ta