Bhakshanam

Palak  - Spinach

The information i had in my mind about Dhaba was completely different from what wikepedia could explain.  In Bangalore, when you are on  a casual one day trip to near by places you can find so called Dhabas on the way, although we never ventured into it.  So far i have just visited once when we from NIIT batch took a two day crash trip to Coorg.  I hardly remember the place, as it was night.  All remember was eating roti and Palak Paneer.

Myself is all open to taste different kinds of curries, but my family mostly comfortable with south indian stuffs.  So there is a wide range of punjabi food i have never got a chance to taste.

Coming to Palak recipe, I have a habit of rechecking known recipe from different resources when i cook something different from our regular routine food. The reason being i am not cooking that particular dish very often.  But the Palak dish, i managed to do it on my own without any help from any of regular references.  I never googled,  checked cookbooks or asked friends. And i am making this dish in my own way since so many years.  So its a dish i feel,  i have ‘invented’ and is close to my heart. BTW, it tastes good.  Everyone likes this in my family.

The Palak remains the same, Paneer can be replaced with potatoes, peas or cauliflower florets.

(4 servings)

Ingredients,

Spinach(Palak)  -  4 bunches (approximately 300 gms cleaned leaves)

Onions - 2 large, cut into bite size pieces

Tomatoes - 2 medium, blanched and pureed

Ginger - 1″ or 2″

Garlic - 1 small bulb( 15 small pods)

Chilli powder - 1/2 tsp

Green Chillies -4  long ones

OR

Chilli powder - 1Tsp

Green chillies -  2 long ones, slit

Everest Kitchen King masala - 1 tsp

Garam Masala powder  - 1 tsp

Oil - 2 tbsp

Garnishing,

Butter - 1 tbsp

Lemon - cut squarely

Onion - cut your way(rings or chopped)

Green chilli - 1 or 2 slit

Potatoes - 2 medium sized, cut into bite size

Salt

Keep - ready,

Boil enough water in a big vessel along with little salt.  When water starts boiling cut the flame and add cleaned and washed Palak into the boiled water and close with lid.  Keep aside for 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, grind onion, ginger and garlic into fine paste, keep aside.  Blanch the tomatoes to make thick puree.  Take out the Palak and immediately wash it with cold water to keep the green colour in it.

Start - cook,

Preferably use nonstick pan.  Heat the oil in the pan,  Add up Onion ginger garlic mixture.  Fry at medium flame till the mixture turns dry and lightly brown.  Add tomato puree to this.  Increse the flame and fry the ingredient till oil spearates.  Add Everest Kitchen King masla and chilli powder and little bit of turmeric.  Fry nicely.  Add  nicely ground spinach to it. Stir continuously so that Palak paste blends with the other ingredient.  Add 1/2 cup water.  Partially close the lid.  Keep the dish on sim for 10 minutes.  Add Garam masala powder and slit green chillies and mix well.

Shallow - fry,

Heat 2 tsp of ghee in a frying pan.  Add potatoes and keep sauteing till the potatoes are golder brown and cooked..  Add  potatoes into Palak gravy.

Garnishing,

Garnish with butter, green chilli and onions,

Take a bite with

Roti, naan, kucha, chapathis, poori or puttu.

Bringing home the new member of family who is so small, fragile and highly delicate is quite adventurous and confusing to the first time parents.  But six long months of fostering will boost a great deal of confidence in you as well as the child and one day you stand up in the corner gazing at the little one crawling and the whole scenario is changed.  After six months all babies are ready to feel and try the world.

With my little one all set to chew between his gums, his grandmother who is equally excited, decided start weaning with her best home food.  The one which her mother and and grand mother always trusted, which provided the best nutrition on which 6 month old can thrive on.  Millet cereal, which is one of the best home made food fed to babies after six months along with introduction of rice, vegetables, fruits and Milk.

In recent years, this heavenly food was replaced with easy making baby cereal that can be bought from store which became popular among urban moms and nuclear families, where making Millet cereal was a tedious process. Packed baby food also gave good number of options with regard to taste and texture.

Now that, mom and her advices are there for me at every step, while I am bringing up my second little one, its like a greatest treasure one can have. Of course, my first one happily grew up with tin foods and relishing wide range of cereal foods available in the market when she was six months old. I never tried any home made food as i was always under the misconception that only a grandmother can do this job.

To my surprise, the procedure of making baby food at home is not all that tedious.  Whether help is there or not in bringing up your little ones, always try variations in food and stick to something what they are comfortable whether it is homemade or out from the shop.  It is a biggest boon for a mother to be with her baby all the time and make best use of it.

Ingreidients (For 8-10 months olds)

Finger Millet powder -  2 tbsp

Water - 1/2 cup

Ghee  -  a dollop

sugar/jaggery - 1/2 tsp

Vegetable Puree- 2 Beans and 1/2 carrot -  boiled and pureed

Salt  - a pinch

Pepper  - a pinch

Method:

Make vegetable puree after boiling vegetable.  Heat water in a small aluminum vessel.  Add the puree to the boiling water. Add up ghee, salt, jaggery and pepper.  Bring it to boil. Mix Finger Millet powder with little water, pour it to boiling water simultaneously stirring.  Lower the flame. Keep stirring till porridge settles to required consistency.

Cool the porridge while stirring and keeping the vessel in cold water.  Feed the baby when it is warm. You can also keep it warm by keeping the serving bowl in warm water.

The older Finger Millet recipe helps young adults to fulfill the nutritional requirement especially urbanized adults who survive on all those food which does not have any nutritional value.  Finger Millet is a pack of carbohydrate and good amount of protein.  Its much more healthier than rice in terms of fat and protein.  Because it is worth to be used in our daily diet, the babies also can get benefited from these grains by making Millet Cereal.

You will need:

Millet - 250gms  (preferably reddish brown)

Procedure:

Step 1:  Soak Millet  in water for 24 hours.

Step 2 :  Drain the water, take out excess water with a cloth and tie the  millet in a cotton muslin cloth. Keep aside in a warm and closed place.  Allow it to sprout for a day.

Step 3 : Take out excess moisture by drying the sprouted seeds in shade and covering the millet with a thin muslin cloth for a day.

Step 4 :  Lightly fry the seeds in a dry wok just for about a minute or two.

Step 5:  Coarsely powder the seeds.

Step 6:  Sieve the powder through a dry muslin cloth so that it gives fine white powder without husk.

Step 7:  Store the fine powder in air tight container.

Step 8:  Use it when required.

Note:  If Millet does not sprout, still the same procedure can be used to make the powder.  Sprouting makes the food more nutritious.

This powder can be used to make porridges for the elder ones and batter it to make Dosas.

The other day I saw a flyer pinned up  on our apartment notice board.  A helpful handy option for working, non-working but lazy, non-working but busy moms.  A place where they can take order for lunch boxes of school children.  And menu was what exactly “new kids”  loves to gobble everyday.  Sandwiches, burgers and finger chips.  The charge was quite reasonable and affordable.

Long ago, my mom who is not so busy or lazy, had invented a better and healthy menu for quick lunch boxes.  Though it was not very popular but worked well once in a week. It was curd rice and the best liked pickle. The “new kids”, are very selective and fussy with their taste, are not ready to even give a  try to this food.  The reason being “burger kids” just have too many options to list out for their lunch boxes.  We parents, also do not want to see the unfinished boxes.

Okay, still there goes some taste buds that nibbles anything for the pickle.  The list goes on with pickle as main dish for them, and sides go with chapathi, curd rice, dosas, rotis, only rice and ghee.  As for me, pickle and curd rice, the taste rediscovered, when we made mango pickle.  That might trigger the taste buds of our “Burger kids”.

And here is how we cut heaps of raw mangoes at home and pickled to perfection.

You need:

Raw Mangoes - 1 Kilo, squarely chopped

Pickle powder - 100 gm (Easter pickle powder)

Oil - 4tbsp

Mustard - 1 tsp

Green chilies - 1/2 cup, chopped

Ginger - 2″  finely chopped

Curry leaves - a handful

Fenugreek - 1 Tbsp, roasted and powdered

Asafoetida - 1/4 tsp, powder

Salt to taste

How to pickle:

• Cut the raw mangoes into small pieces along with the skin. Mix with salt and keep it aside for half hour.
• Toss raw mangoes with the pickle powder to a semi liquid consistency. Do not add water.
• Heat the oil, crackle the mustard seeds, add up green chillies, ginger and curry leaves. Lightly saute it.
• Roast fenugreek till brown and finely powder and add to the above ingredients. Sprinkle Asafoetida.
• Mix all the above ingredients along with mangoes and stir well for 30 seconds.
• Allow it to settle.
• Once settled and cooled, fill it in a glass jar or Bharani.
• Heat up little oil and pour it over the stored  pickle so that it should not get exposed to the air.
• Close it air tight. You can use a cling film along with tight lid.
• Ready to use it after 3-4 days.

Note :

Do not cook the mangoes. But mix it with hands.

Refrigerate the pickle if you are not using it for months since there is no preservative is added.

Preparing curd rice:  There is a method to make curd rice taste like curd rice.  Add up simple tadka with mustard seeds, curry leaves, urad dal, ginger and green chilies to the cooked rice.  Mix the rice with a table spoon of curd, salt and fill up as much milk as you want. Keep the rice closed.  You can use the curd rice after 4 -5 hours.

Tava - round griddle

Kadai - round bottommed deep vessel - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karahi

Long back  Ashwini, LG(if LG is checking the blogs, we miss you!!)  and Nabeela tagged me for a meme, and one of my all time favourite as I mentioned in the meme was Masala akki rotti.  This is one of the signature dish of karanataka. When we were young, moms made this dish an extra elaborate affair, considering the  present version, as this dish is even sold as hot stuffs  in selected restaurants in Bengaluru.  One such eat out is Ganesh darshan in Jayanagar 3rd block, (Can check rest of the eat out joints here in Vikram Chadga’s blog)makes this dish which is liked by all categories of people.  They make it neat and tidy too.  It used be Sunday breakfast dish as the preparation used to take time, and till the rottis reached our plate, stories would unfold on the table while savoring the dish.  One such was, my father when he was a school kid, would pack akki rotti smeared with butter and chutney powder and hide it in his trouser pocket to munch during  class hours.  And one of the day, cat smelled the rat and his teacher caught him eating and grabbed it from my father, but could not resist himself taking a bite!!

Of course,  my mother is a wonderful cook, always made these hot rottis and one of the hit tiffin food among us.  Any recipe why is it liked so much if it is made out of mom’s hand?  its simple. It is loads of love and lots of experience.

Take a look at the recipe

Raw Rice powder   -    1/4kg (fine powder)

Onion   -   3 small (finely chopped)

Cumin - 1/2 tsp

Green chilies  2-3 chopped

Coriander leaves -  one handful

Coconut - 2tbsp(grated)

Hot Water -  as much

To make:

Add hot water to the raw rice powder and keep aside with out mixing.  Chop oninons and grate all the vegetables.  Add onions, chillies,  cumin, coconut, coriander and salt to the rice powder and water.  Mix thoroughly with hand.  The consistency should be little soften than chapathi dough.  It sticks to hands.  Before patting on the tava or kadai make sure you make your hands wet with water or smeared some oil so that you avoid sticking back to your hands. Divide the dough into 4- 5 balls(in this recipe).

There are two ways of preparation one using Tava and another using Kadai.

For Tava:

This is the best and tasty preparation as we use plantain leaf.  Take half of the plantain leaf.  Smear it with oil.  Oil or wet your hands. Take a ball of rotti dough and pat it evenly and softly starting from the centre and patting out wards achieving required thickness.  Once done, slowly place the plantain leaf with rotti side on the Tava and dislodge the leaf with a flat spoon. Rotti should remain on Tava.  Fry both sides till golden brown. Even a thick plastic sheet can be used replacing plantain leaf, but have to be careful not to burn the same on the Tava.

For Kadai:

This is very old way of preparing and so is the name “tappaley rotti”(kadai rotti).  Pour a tsp of oil in a round bottommed vessel preferably alluminium. Oil or wet your hands. Take a ball of rotti dough place it on the oil in the centre of kadai.  Start patting from the centre, so that that the centre remain little thicker and proceed outwards little thinner.

This is to apply heat evenly from the centre to the sides and not to burn.  Make sure to put a small groove in the middle at the centre and pour some oil in it, so that the rotti does not get burnt. Keep it closed for few minutes.  Make sure to check in between.  Wait for the smoke to come and you can reverse the rotti to fry on the other side too.

Variations :

1. Couple of tbsp of cooked rice can be added to acheive extra softness. It should be nicly mashed and added at the time of mixing the dough.

2. Vegetables -(capsicum carrot cabbage) - 1 cup grated can be added along with the dough to make it more tastier and healthier.

3. Rice powder can be made at home by washing the raw rice and drying it in shade.  Mill it to fine powder.