Thiruvadirai Kali & Kootu

Thiruvadirai falls in the month of Marghazhi and is auspicious for Lord Shiva. Thiruvadirai kali and kootu (thaalagam) are traditional dishes prepared on this day. My mom's recipe below.

Ingredients:
Vegetables - potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beans, mochakottai, pumpkin, seppankizhangu, parangikkai (yellow squash)
Tamarind, red chilli powder, asafoetida powder, curry leaves.
To fry: Channa dal, coriander seeds, dried red chillies.

Add salt and turmeric and steam the vegetables in a pressure cooker. Fry the frying ingredients and powder. After spluttering the mustard seeds in oil, add a small quantity of tamarind water, red chilli powder to taste. Add the steamed vegetables to this and stir for sometime. Finally, add powder from previous step and asafoetida powder. Sprinkle curry leaves and mix.


Ingredients:
Broken raw rice, jaggery, ghee, elaichi powder

Heat the broken raw rice, add milk and water and cook the rice. Add jaggery (1.5 to 1 ratio with rice) to boiling water and stir until it melts and thickens. Remove rice from cooker and add it to the jaggery and stir. Add elaichi powder and ghee if needed. Serve with ghee.

Shrikand.

k's mom taught me this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup full fat yoghurt (I have also tried this dish with low fat yoghurt, that works too)
1/2 cup sugar
cardamom powder - 1 spoon
kesari (kumkuma poo), pista and almonds crushed

Recipe:

Add the yoghurt to a thin muslin cloth, tie a sturdy thread around it and hang it such that the water from the yoghurt can drip down into a vessel. I usually tie it on a knob from my kitchen shelf. This process takes about 1/2-1 hour.

Take the yummy fatty yoghurt on the top of the cloth, add sugar to it and mix it until it looks smooth and creamy (without lumps).

Add cardamom powder, mix well and top off with the other spices. Refrigerate before serving.

Vendakkai/Okra/Ladies-finger

Made from scratch, desi ishtyle!

Not so bitter anymore :)

Yet another tasty subji with karela (bitter-gourd) from Safron Trail. k took one whole serving - woohoo!

Groovy Gourd 'n Gravy!

Bookmarking the best recipe I have attempted successfully for dudhi (bottle-gourd) or podalangai (snake gourd)!

Nutrition and related information...

I recently started reading about nutrition and such and discovered quite a few shocking facts, some of which I summarized here.

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The information below is basically to help (or try to help) you decide if you really need to buy organic food:

1. Organic milk - a 1 gallon milk carton costs approximately double that of regular milk.

Is it worth the switch? Yes.

Why? You can look at the Horizon Organic website for starters...

Feel good factor - At least these cows get to see the light of the day and feed on grass as they are supposed to.

2. Organic vegetables - costs vary, organic peppers for example cost almost three times more than conventionally grown pepper.

Is it worth the switch? For some vegetables and most fruits, yes.

EWG has a list of vegetables/fruits that they have found to contain the highest pesticide content, the lower you go in the list, the safer it is to buy conventional vegetables/fruits.

3. If you are an ovo-vegetarian, what about organic eggs? Well, I don't really know the cost difference because I don't buy eggs.

Is it worth the switch? Absolutely, yes.

And this is why.

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And being a South-Indian, rice forms a major part of my diet, so recently convinced myself to switch to brown rice (so also for bread), I add turmeric and mix it with rice and water before cooking - the yellow color of the rice makes it look much more appetizing than the brown :)

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Some info about genetically modified food.

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Stainless-steel rocks! Think twice before you buy non-stick (Teflon) cookware and think even more before using it, if it has cracks etc.

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That's my nutrition update for today :)

Edited: Interestingly, Horizon organic itself seems to be in trouble for not maintaining standards. Time to search for another organic dairy provider, I guess...Organic Valley maybe?

Organized!

This is how organized I would like to be every weekend, but it happens only once in a while!

Linguini with tomato sauce

This is a mish-mash of various pasta recipes I've been reading on food blogs and seeing on food network (I highly recommend it for wholesome, family entertainment :)

Ingredients:
Linguine pasta (I added as much as I could hold in my hand :p)
finely chopped tomatoes - 2
finely chopped onion - 1
red chili flakes - 1/2 a palmful
mustard - 1 teaspoon
garlic - 3/4 cloves
1/2 a cup shitake mushrooms (I used frozen)
1/2 cup any store-bought marinara/pasta sauce (I used a combination of salsa and a few teaspoons of peanut sauce)
olive oil - 3/4 teaspoons
cheese - 4-5 teaspoons shredded parmesan, a spoonful of cream cheese
lemon juice - 2 teaspoons
salt - as needed
handful of sunflower seeds and dried cranberries

Recipe:
Boil water (enough to cover the pasta), add salt to the boiling water and add the linguini to it (takes 8-10 minutes to cook). Heat oil in a pan and add mustard seeds, garlic, onion and saute for a few minutes, add the sunflower seeds, red chili flakes, tomatoes, frozen mushroom, the pasta sauce, 1/4 cup of water and let it simmer for 5-10 minutes. Add salt, cranberries and lemon juice. Drain the pasta and add the sauce to it. Toss well and sprinkle the cheeses on it.

Panagam

Copying this recipe here so I can consult it for the next SriRamaNavami :)

Ingredients
6 tablespoon gur, jaggery, or brown sugar.
2 pinches cardamom (elaiche) powder
1 small piece dried ginger
1 teaspoon lime or lemon juice
pinch of salt
2 cups water

Powder the gur and the dried ginger well. Take water and add the above powders and the cardamom powder. Add salt, and the lime or lemon juice. Stir well and serve.

Source: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/165/story_16514_1.html

Ridge gourd (peerkangai)

This is the first time I ventured cooking with a vegetable that always scared me. After reading several food blogs featuring ridge-gourd, I decided it was time I stood up to it!



So, I tried Priya's recipe to make a peerkangai chutney and also managed to whip up a peerkangai subji with tomato gravy (I used coconut milk for a creamy gravy) - probably the first time I cooked two different dishes using the skin and pulp of the same vegetable!


I was very apprehensive of the chutney but it was even better than the subji! Am scared of ridge gourd no more!

Icecream medley!

Satish and I take credit for this entirely original icecream medley!

Ingredients:
Breyer's Coffee icecream (or any other icecream, as you can see, I am not very particular with the ingredients :p)
a couple of spoonfuls of Graeters butter-scotch topping
2 Chessmen cookies
1/2 a cup full of strawberries chopped into small pieces
couple of tablespoons of honey

The method in the madness:

Crush the chessmen cookies into powder. To one big scoop of icecream, add the powdered biscuits, then the butterscotch topping, add strawberries and a drizzle of honey. Ta da!

Sindhi dal.

Since k has the sniffles :) and specifically asked for dal bhath, I googled for a dal recipe that's familiar hence comforting but not too familiar and I found this interesting Sindhi-dal recipe. I upped the ginger a bit and skipped the tamarind and we had a nice dinner to drive away the sniffles :)

Beetroot, kale.

Today's menu - beetroot curry and kale dal (substituted spinach with kale - thought I would try out some seasonal vegetable before the season runs out!)

Source: Mahanandi

Puliinji and cabbage curry.

Cabbage curry - Never realized cabbage could taste so good (read healthy) with just five minutes of cooking.
Puliinji - I would put it in the vatha-kuzhambu category. Very tasty!

Couscous and banana/walnut pie!

Couscous upma and banana walnut pie (thanks to Nandyala), for dinner today!

A colorful feast!

Cooked up a storm today. Including left overs we had: squash in chili sauce, palak paneer, beetroot, pavakai and wild rice. All recipes from Mahanandi.

Salad with a tasty dressing!

Source: Romaine Lettuce Salad

I went overboard with the garlic (added two cloves instead of one) and had a pretty strong after taste that lasted even after chewing gum :p Other than that, worked out pretty good!