Batata Poha

I am married to a mama's boy....:) And mama's boy has a long list of favorite dishes solely prepared by mommy dearest. Batata poha or beaten rice with potatoes is one of them. For the 12 years that we have been married, I never attempted to learn or prepare these select recipes simply for the fact that they should be enjoyed during our visits back home or when mum in law visited us. Well, things have changed now. With us living so far away, trips to and fro have reduced. Plus when you have a husband pining for his favorite food, you have got to give in some time..:D

Batata Poha makes for a very nutritious breakfast. Rich in iron and paired along with potatoes and groundnuts gives you a power packed breakfast to begin your day.

BATATA POHA (serves 4)
Source: Modern Cookery by Thangam E Philip


Ingredients:

• Beaten Rice                 225 gms
• Potatoes                       225 gms
• Onions                         200 gms
• Groundnuts                    50 gms( added by me)
• Cumin                            1 tsp
• Mustard seeds                1 tsp
• Coriander leaves            to garnish
• Turmeric                        1 tsp
• Curry leaves                   2 sprigs
• Oil                                  4 tbsps
• Salt                                 to taste
• A dash of lemon juice.

Method:

1. Peel and dice potatoes. Chop onions and coriander leaves finely.
2. Heat oil. Add mustard and cumin seeds. When they splutter drop in the curry leaves. Fry onions till brown.
3. Add potatoes, groundnuts and turmeric powder. Cook on a slow fire till potatoes are cooked. Be careful not to burn them.
4. Put rice in a colander. Hold under a running tap or pour water for about half a minute. Let it drain.
5. Add the rice to the potatoes and salt to taste.. Cook for another 5 minutes. Add a dash of lemon juice to taste. Serve garnished with chopped coriander leaves.

Summer Berry Crepes

Yaaaaay!!! Spring is here, it's here to stay. With this, it has also brought a whole lot of berries in the supermarkets. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, black berries.....name them, they are all there!! All lined up in neat packs, colorful and sinful eagerly waiting to be picked up by people like me. Much as I miss fruits from my home country, I am taking advantage of the fact that I get to enjoy fruits which are considered exotic back home. Apart from costing a bomb, berries in India lack the taste(they are sour or under ripe) and end up rotting away too soon.
Last year we hoarded on them as it is. I ended up trying only 2 recipes which called for berries. This year, I want to try out much more before the season ends, which will be towards Autumn. So, presenting to you Summer Berry Crepes.
  What is a crepe?  It is a French pancake generally made from wheat flour or maida too. The word CREPE refers to both the individual pancake and the filled creation. While we do get ready made fillings in plenty both in the bottled and canned form, there is nothing like preparing your own. Here goes the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda.
• 1 large egg
• 1 and quarter cups milk
• a few drops of vanilla extract
• oil for greasing
• powdered sugar for dusting

For the fruit:

• 1 tablespoon low fat spread
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup orange juice
• 2 cups mixed berries( I used blue and straw berries)
• 2 tablespoons Grand Marnier or other orange-flavoored liqueur

Method:

1. Sift the flour into a large bowl. Break in the egg and gradually whisk in the milk to form a smooth batter. Stir in the vanilla. Set the batter aside in a cool place for half an hour.
2. Apply a light coat of oil in a non stick frying pan. Whisk the batter, then pour a little of it into the hot pan, swirling to cover the bottom evenly. Cook until the mixture comes away from the sides and the crepe is golden underneath.
3. Flip over the crepe with a large spatula and cook the other side briefly until golden. Use up the batter to fry the remaining crepes, meanwhile keeping the ready ones warm in an oven or a hot box.
4. For the filling, melt the spread in a thick bottomed vessel. Stir in the sugar and cook gently. Add the orange juice and cook until syrupy. Then add the berries and warm through. Turn off and add the liqueur. 
5. Fold the pancakes into quarters and arrange two on each plate. Spoon on the berry mixture and dust with powdered sugar. Serve the remaining fruit separately (Trust me, there is going to be huge demand for the remaining fruit...:D)

The above recipe makes 8 pancakes. How I wish, I had a cosy little garden along with some garden chairs to relax and sink into this exotic preparation. But for now, we are content with our tiny dining space, digging into the crepes as warm sunshine fills our homes. Boy, do I love spring!!!!!

Goli Baje.

I had seen this coming. Sonny declared with exasperation that he was done with the baking and eating cakes. He wanted something theek(spicy in konkani). That's the only konkani word he knows..:D And by theek, he meant all the Indian snacks that his brain could think of. Chakuli, sonte, kaara kaddi.....the list goes on. Not that I would prepare all of this back home. These are goodies which are freely available at any store. Also, a variety of snacks are available in many hotels, so there was indeed no need to break your head over preparation. 

Sonny's desire got me thinking. It is true that now being well versed with baking, I think I must have gone overboard. But to me, it is simple to bake a cake, healthier, and easier to pack it as a snack(in the muffin form). So, when Michelle's blog popped up with the goli baje post and the drooly pictures, I thought I would surprise my family for a change.

So, on the decided day, I informed hubby of what I was upto in the kitchen and informed him to come home early. It tastes heavenly to pop in the goli bajes into your mouth when piping hot than when it is stone cold(which is what the food turns to pretty soon in Deutschland). In between frying and constant calls to hubby dearest to get home as soon as possible, the goli baje's turned out to be such a hit that I had content children going to bed without any dinner, cause they had stuffed themselves with so many of these fried balls. Not to forget the glee on hubby's face too when served with these the kudla way!!!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup plain flour(maida)
• 1/4 cup besan flour(chickpea)
• 1/2 cup plain yoghurt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tbsp sugar,
• salt to taste
• 2 tsp finely chopped ginger
• 1 green chilly finely chopped
• 3 tbsp fresh coriander, finely chopped
• enough oil for deep frying

Method:

1. Sift the flour, besan, baking soda, salt and sugar.
2. Add the yoghurt, mixing well.
3. Now slowly whisk in the water, a little at a time, until the batter just heavily slides off a spoon.
4. Stir in the ginger, chilly and coriander leaves.
5. Let the batter sit for 30 minutes to 6 hours( mine sat for 7).
6. Heat enough oil for deep frying in a pan. The oil should be hot enough so that when batter is dropped in, it should quickly rise to the surface.
7. Drop in spoonfuls of batter, not too many at a time. Lower the heat as you do this.
8. Deep fry for seven to eight minutes until they are a light golden brown in color.
9. Use a slotted spoon to remove them gently from the pan and drain them on an absorbent kitchen paper.
10. Repeat until batter is used up.
11. Serve hot with a chutney(I didn't have the ingredients to whip up one) or ketchup along with a cup of hot tea!!!

A great snack to wipe away not only the winter blues also homesickness!!!!

Michelle's Punjabi Chole.

Hello to readers of my blog. Am sorry for the guest appearances I have been giving. Its just that managing two blogs seems quite hard and am giving more attention to the other fellow..Sorry to The Chef. Please do not get angry. I promise to give attention to you too.

  Well, over the New Years, we as a family decided to have more of vegetarian meals. Okay, I made the decision and husband and kids welcomed it with glee. You heard me right. With glee. What? Aren't we Mangy's who love dukra maas and sannas with toddy?? Oh yes we are, but somehow I have children who are more of the Bangy kind, mosaru ana(curd rice) lovers!! They absolutely love veggies. But being the mangy I am, I never mastered the art of cooking exotic vegetarian dishes.

  So when the kilos in me started piling up, thanks to expat life and non availability of a lot of Indian food, we resorted to eating meat everyday. Being the lazy woman I am who hates to exercise, I thought it is now or never. High time to make some changes in our food would be the first step. Which meant, I had to put in more effort to searching recipes and bring about a change in our cuisine. It has been a month, and am happy to report(that I have lost a kilo without exercising..:D) that the change has been good and the family has been relishing the meals. And we do have our share of non vegetarian meals, thrice a week.

 Michelle, a fellow Mangalorean with an awesome food blog, blogged this recipe last week. Chick peas is an all time favorite with the family. I generally prepare it with bafath powder, seasoned with oil, mustard, curry leaves, onions and coconut(this was my own recipe). Her recipe looked tempting enough to try, and here's how it goes...

• 500 gm chick peas, boiled
• 1 large onion, diced fine
• 250gm chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbsp ginger garlic paste
• 2 tbsp oil
• salt to taste

For the masala powder:

• 2 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 inch piece cinnamon
• 3 whole cloves
• 4 green cardamom
• 1 tsp whole black pepper
• 2 dried long red chillies
• 1 big dried bay leaf

Method:

1. Soak the chickpeas overnight. 
2. Boil them in a pressure cooker till soft and keep aside.
3. Put all the spices on a tawa and roast them well, stirring constantly.
4. Powder them fine in a mixer. 
5. In a kadhai, heat oil and cook the onion till color changes. Add the ginger garlic paste and continue to fry for another minute.
6. Add the tomatoes to the mixture and cook well till the onion and tomatoes become a thick paste.
7. Add the ground spice powder, bay leaf and salt to taste. Cook on a slow flame, stirring for about 10-15  minutes, until the masala is fairly dry.
8. Add the chickpeas along with the water and stir together gently. Simmer for 5 minutes. Garnish with spring onions and serve hot with roti or rice.

Michelle, looks like the bafath powder is going to have to take a backseat for a while. The Chole with the blend of spices was perfect to beat the winter blues. 

Garlic Bread.

Garlic Bread, the children's favorite. So also the place which serves it...PIZZA HUT!!!! This would always be on our menu whenever we visited Pizza Hut in India. The major cities in Germany do have these joints, but not our little villages. Whenever we have had the opportunity, we have visited Pizza Hut at Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Garmisch Partenkirchen. Last month I thought that maybe I should try making some myself since the kids are very fond of it. I found a very easy recipe and here it goes.

You need :

• 1 baguette (its a long thin loaf of French bread)
• 2 tbsp garlic paste
• 200 gms butter
• 4 tbsp parsley chopped finely
• salt and pepper to taste

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 175 degrees celsius
• Mix in the butter, garlic paste, parsley, salt and pepper(I skipped it) in a bowl. Mix thoroughly.

•  Place the baguette on a chopping board and cut across diagonally, into 2-3 cm slices, without cutting completely through the bread.

• Create a gap between the slices, add a dollop of the garlic butter and smooth it down.

• Finally, spread any remaining butter over the baguette.

•  Wrap the baguette in an aluminium foil, making sure you seal the ends well.

• Place the baguette in the centre of the oven and cook it for 10 minutes. Turn it over, cook it for a further 10 minutes and then remove.
• Unwrap the baguette, cut through into slices and serve with minced meat or have it along with a hot soup!!

Note: This also works with slices of bread. I have applied the garlic butter onto slices of bread, toasted it in a toaster and served along with some scrambled eggs!! Tastes heavenly...:)