REDCHILLIES is moving ………. Unveiling my new ‘home’

Yay! I finally did it. I am thrilled to announce that my online home has now moved from to http://redchillies.us. I had been contemplating about this move to my own domain for a while now and after some initial hesitation I ultimately took the plunge. Needless to say, I am overjoyed and enjoying the experience of exploring and learning new things.

 

I have moved all my posts from here to my new domain. I will be blogging the recipes from the new website from now on. This blog will still remain for a while at least until I finally decide what to do with it.

 

That said, Dear Friends I wanted to thank you all tremendously for the caring and positive support. Your warm and generous comments have helped me move in this direction and yearn to do even more. I hope you all visit me at my new ‘home’ and continue to support me the way you have done before.

 

Last but not the least; please do not forget to update my address or bookmark my URL and also RSS feeds. Welcome to the new REDCHILIES.

Healthy Breakfast: Pumpkin Idli (Dudhi Idli)

I was introduced to the new concept of Pumpkin Idli only after my wedding. My mother-in-law had prepared it early in the morning for breakfast and I had it with some ghee. Suffice to say that the taste was totally out of this world and I became a big fan of it ever since. It has a sweetish taste because of the pumpkin but when combined with salt, coconut and green chillies, the Idli imparts totally unique flavor. 

Pumpkin is chock full of goodness. Not only is pumpkin loaded with Vitamin A and antioxidant carotenoids, particularly alpha and beta-carotenes, it’s a good source of Vitamins C, K, and E, and lots of minerals, including magnesium, potassium, and iron.

This along wit some fruits, orange juice/ milk/yogurt can serve as a well balanced breakfast and keep us going through out the day. 

This is my entry to Balanced Breakfast WBB#20 hosted by the wonderful and talented Mansi.

Ingredients

• 2 cups grated pumpkin
• 3/4 cup of idli rava (not the upma rav, adjust according to the coarseness you want, less the bettter)
• Handful of coriander leaves
• ½ cup shredded coconut (optional)
• 4-5 green chillies
• salt

Preparation:

• Remove the skin from the pumpkin and grate it.
• Chop up the green chilies and coriander leaves very finely.
• Add the idli rava, green chilies, coriander leaves to grated pumpkin and mix well. Add salt as required. No need to add water at all.
• Note that the mixture in this case will be coarse and separate and not “gooey” or sticky like regular idli batter. The mixture should have more of pumpkin than the idli rava.
•  Keep aside for 30 minutes.

Procedure:

• Grease the idli stand and pour the pumpkin mixture in each groove.
• Steam this in a pressure cooker without whistle for 15 minutes.

Serve hot with ghee. This can be had as snacks as is without chutney or pudis.

Arusuvai: Broken Wheat, Coconut Ladoo and the Surprise Ingredient

The “Arusuvai Friendship Chain” was started by Latha and Lakshmi at The Yum Blog along with Bharathy of Spicy Chilly and Bhags of Crazy Curry. Latha from “Masala Magic” continued the Arusuvai friendship chain in USA. Thanks to you all for this wonderful idea.

 The Arusuvai Friendship Chain is all about sending a surprise food ingredient to friends so that they can prepare something tasty with it, share the recipe and pass on the surprise ingredient to other people. 

Thanks Seema for thinking about me and sending me this “Surprise Ingredient”.  Seema had sent this to me promptly almost a month ago, in fact at the right time to participate in Sunita’s Think Spice… Think Star Anise Event. But I was not able to blog about this as the camera was not at my disposal and I was mainly working off of my draft section (err, that is a valid excuse isn’t it?). Sorry about the delay Seema. But I do have to mention that it was a very special and warm feeling opening the packet and the fine aroma of the surprise ingredient “Star Anise” that filled the room was just heavenly. 

I was excited as I have/had never used Start Anise in my cooking before and so I dutifully googled for some recipes over the internet. I was looking for something that was sweet, easy, did not involve baking and had some Indian touch to it. But unfortunately did not find anything appealing and so came up with this idea of making laddos. 

Please let me know if anybody is interested and I can send over the ingredient to them.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup shredded coconut (fresh/frozen)
• 1/4 cup broken wheat
• ½ cup sweetened condensed milk
• ½ tsp star anise powder (substitute with cardamom powder if not available)

 Method:

• Soak the broken wheat in enough water for about 1-2 hours.
•  Drain the water completely and spread it over some paper or cloth so that the remaining water content is gone.
• In a heavy bottom pan, on a very low flame first add the coconut and stir until it gets toasted and a wonderful aroma of the coconut fills in.
• Be very careful as the coconut gets browned very easily.
• Next add the condensed milk and broken wheat and mix well.
•  Continue to mix for about 10-15 minutes until the mixture almost dries up.
• Add the star anise powder and allow to cool. Take a handful of the mixture each time and shape into laddos.

Tindora/Tendli/Dondakaya Rice

I remember what my mother would say about cooking: “thinking is the hard part, while the actual cooking and cleaning is the easy part”. I did not think of it much then, but now that I shoulder the responsibility of cooking I totally understand what that means. First of all coming up with a menu that satisfies everybody’s taste is challenging, and then factoring in conditions like, “will the menu item 1 go well with menu item 2, will the kid eat it, will it be time consuming etc” Phew! Then it is totally going in circles. 

As a result many evenings I make something that is new and easy, that way it is a change (not always a good one though) from the usual, breaks shackles from the routine cooking and saves me some ‘complicated’ thinking. J 

One such dish is this Tindora (Gherkins) Rice. I had some Tindora in the fridge that was demanding attention but the quantity was not sufficient enough to make a Tindora Fry. So I decided to make rice instead. Long strips of tindora are fried separately and then added to the final rice preparation, that way the Tindora not only maintains its crispness but also enhances the flavor of the rice by imparting its flavor. 

 

Ingredients:  

• 1 cup rice (regular or Basmati)
• Handful of Tindora
• 1 medium onion
• 1 medium tomato
• 2 Tbsp pulav masala ( I used MTR pulav masala)
• Coriander leaves
• jeera
• Curry leaves
• Mustard seeds
• 2 Tbsp oil
• Roasted cashews (optional)

Prep Work:

• Pressure cook the rice with enough water, making sure the grains remain separate.
• Chop the onion and tomatoes into small pieces and the tindora into long strips.
• In a pan, heat some oil, add the tindora and fry until it cooks turns brown in color. Keep aside.

Procedure:

• In the same pan, heat some more oil add the mustard and when they begin to splutter, add curry leaves, jeera, onion and sauté until transparent.
•  Add the diced tomato and stir until cooked. Add the pulav masala and mix well.
• Add the cooked rice, salt and mix thoroughly.
• Add the chopped corrinder leaves, roasted Tindora.
•  Finally garnish with roasted cashews for color and crunch. (optional)

 Server hot! This can be eaten as is or served with yogurt based raita.