Spinach Raita

I had this for lunch at a friend's and though I'm not a big yogurt fan, I loved this one. And it's so super simple!

Enjoy.

Sonu's Spinach Raita

Clean and chop spinach leaves.

Put 1-2 cups of salted water to boil. When boiling, drop spinach in it for 3-4 minutes.

Drain well. Keep aside.

Beat yogurt lightly with a fork. Add salt and crushed jeera. Add the boiled palak, chill for ½ hour and serve with roti or rice.

Mustard chutney

A friend would send this sauce and some delightful kachoris over once in a while. Though I loved the kachoris, the sauce is what I craved. I finally got the recipe and here it is!

Warning: the chutney/ sauce has a raw mustard taste that is pretty spicy but so delicious

Pooja's Mustard Chutney

100 g yogurt (strain out water for 10 mts)

4 green chillies

½ tsp mustard sauce

1 T mustard oil

Salt

Steam green chillies (add chillies to boiling water, cover with lid and leave for 2 mins).

 Remove from pan and de-seed.

Mix chillies with a little yogurt and blend tog in a mixer. 

Then add the mustard oil, mustard sauce and rest of the yogurt. Adjust salt according to taste and enjoy.

Honey Chocolate cupcakes

My 6 year old came up with this recipe all on her own. She's the opposite of me - I need a recipe to make food, bake bread, desserts - atleast for the first time. She does not want the recipe. She refuses to use it and went ahead and made this with some basic knowledge of baking.

It was delicious. Do try it and let me know what you think! (this is the recipe in her words)

K's Honey Chocolate Cupcakes

(makes 3 cupcakes)

1 tbsp Butter
1 tbsp Sugar
1 Egg
1 tbsp Honey
1 pinch Baking Soda
1 pinch Baking Powder
2 tbsp Chocolate, melted
4-5 Chocolate Chips
1 tbsp All-Purpose Flour

Preheat oven to 200 deg C.

Mix the butter and sugar together. Add the egg and mix well. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix everything together. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and eat warm (with vanilla ice cream).

Wild Rice Salad

I love the flavor of wild rice. It's nutty and soft and delicious. In India we use rice mostly as an accompaniment to curries and vegetables. But for a rice that's as flavorsome as wild rice, it needs to shine on its own.

Here's a simple recipe for a wild rice salad, the inspiration taken from many recipes around the blogosphere.

Wild Rice Salad 

2 cups wild rice, cooked
3/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
1 cup peas, cooked
3/4 cup dried cranberries

Dressing: 
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp orange juice
1 tsp English mustard (English mustard has more zing than regular mustard. If you don't have English, just use regular mustard)
1 tsp Green onion, chopped

Cook the rice. While the rice is still warm after cooking, add the dried cranberries so they plump up. Keep aside. Mix all the dressing ingredients in a bowl. Mix the salad ingredients in another bowl. Combine the salad and dressing ingredients just before serving.


Obviously this recipe is very forgiving. Go ahead and substitute the nuts or use raisins or other dried fruit instead of cranberries. Skip the peas altogether if you don't like them. Go ahead and give it a shot. I made this for a light summer lunch and it was very well appreciated. Enjoy!

Truffle Cheese Straws

When I read a post about Gorgonzola Cheese Straws on one of the best blogs out there, Love and Olive Oil, it was 7pm. I had just made a vegetable and macaroni bake for the kids for dinner. I was waiting for them to finish a bath, and decided to catch up on my blog reading.

This post caught my eye on Feedly (have you tried Feedly, BTW? Its quite the best!). When I read it and realized I had everything on hand - and my oven was already pre-heated. I literally jumped up off the chair, iPad in hand, and headed to the kitchen. Got the ingredients together in about five minutes. Put the ingredients together in another five minutes. Rolled out dough, cut and in the oven - 3 minutes. Baked for 20 minutes.

The cheese straws were ready in 35 minutes (from the time I came across the recipe!), and we ate it with our dinner. Now that's what I call a perfectly quick recipe! And we loved it so much that I'm writing about it at ... um... 8.40 pm. Now that's called enthusiasm.

I made a couple of changes to the original recipe, but mainly substituted Truffle Cheese (i.e. Cheese with Truffles) for the Gorgonzola.

Truffle Cheese Straws

(Original recipe, Gorgonzola Cheese Straws here)

1/2 cup Truffle Cheese, grated
1 cup All-Purpose Flour
5 tablespoons Butter
1/4 tsp Salt (I used a little less salt, since the cheese is super salty)
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Crushed Red Pepper (yes, we like our cheese straws spicy)
2 tbsp Milk
1/2 tsp Baking Powder

Mix all the ingredients together. (I was supposed to mix the milk in the end, but forgot and just put all of them together. I don't think it affected the straws). The dough will be crumbly but smooth enough to roll into a ball.

Roll the dough out into a rectangle, about 1/4" thick. Cut the dough into 1/2" strips. Carefully transfer the strips onto a parchment-lined baking tray. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden and slightly puffy. 

Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in jars. Okay, if there is anything left over. We ate it off the wire racks. As I said, gone completely! Sorry for the bad photograph. Also, I know they don't look perfect but it was because I was not being too precise while cutting the strips. Some of them broke off while transferring from the baking tray to the wire rack. Next time I'll make them thicker. But that's the only thing I will change, because they were Perfect!!

Thanks, Love and Olive Oil, for a fabulous recipe. My family thanks you too.

Pesto

Pesto has got to be one of the most versatile spreads in the world. And so easy to personalize. Pesto is just a combination of greens/ herbs, nuts and cheese with a wonderful addition of olive oil.

Here is a wonderfully easy recipe for pesto. Feel free to use any combination of greens/ herbs and nuts. Some good ideas are spinach, basil or even sun-dried tomatoes. And any nuts at all. I like to go with a sharper cheese, and hard cheeses seem to give it a nice texture, but feel free to use a creamy cheese (like goat's).

Pesto

2 cups Herbs/ Greens (I used cilantro)

1/2 cup Cheese (I used Parmesan)

1/2 cup Olive Oil (I used extra virgin)

1/3 cup Nuts (I used walnuts)

3 medium garlic cloves, minced

Salt + Pepper, to taste

Pulse the cilantro and nuts in a mixer. Add garlic and pulse. Pour the oil into the mixer in a constant stream while continuing to pulse. Mix in the cheese and pulse until thoroughly combined. Add salt and pepper at the end.

Use the pesto as is. Mix it with some hot, cooked pasta. Spread it on toast. Use it as a base for pizza. Or eat it by the spoon! Some recipes that use pesto from this blog:

Pesto & Garlic Bread, Gnocchi, Pizza, Mushroom Soup and Pesto Toast and Bites of Toast.

Spinach Rice

I recently went to a modern Andhra restaurant, Maya, in Chennai. Andhra Pradesh is a small state in southern India, whose cuisine is typically very spicy and loaded with masala, tamarind and ground spices.

This restaurant surprised me though. The food was mild, full of subtle flavors and delicious. The one dish that really stood out to me was the lovely spinach rice. I asked my waiter if he could give me the recipe and he, very graciously, told me the ingredients. So I made an attempt at it, and thankfully, it turned out exactly how I'd hoped. (I've added peas to this rice, in order to get in more veggies, but the original recipe didn't have it, so feel free to leave it out).

Spinach Rice (with Peas)

2 cups White or Brown Rice, cooked and cooled

4 cups Spinach, cleaned and washed

1 tbsp Mustard Seeds

1 tbsp Urad Dal/ Bengal Gram

1 large Onion, peeled and chopped fine

2-3 Green Chillies, slit (optional)

1/2 cup Green Peas, cooked (optional)

2 tsp Sesame Oil

Salt, to taste

Heat the oil in a small pan. Add the mustard seeds and urad dal and stir until mustard seeds begin to pop. Add the onions and green chillies and cook until the onions are transparent. Now add the spinach. Continue stirring/ cooking until wilted.

Mix in the cooked rice, peas and salt and fold until fully combined with the spinach mixture.

Delicious! Even my I-won't-eat-anything-green daughter ate it without a complaint!