Chana Pulav

Hey everybody.. this is chana-pulao from the house of Indosungod!

  Fig. 1. Chana Pulav

There was this big potluck I had to go to.. yes, Nupur's potluck at One Hot Stove. Couldn't possibly miss it now, could I? And I'd had my eye on this pulav for a while now. So this was the perfect opportunity to make it!

One of the very first few times I officially cooked on my own was actually for a potluck! :) It was a potluck at a friend's friend's friend's place! I was staying with some friends. So when they were invited, so was I! Now, how could I show up empty-handed? So what if I had no kitchen of my own! I got some chicken and one large onion and made ginger chicken with some leftover takeout-soy-sauce packets in my friend's kitchen. :)

Potlucks are a lot of fun. Diwali potluck, Christmas potluck, Happy-Budday potluck, Sunday potluck, No-reason potluck, there is always scope for a potluck. We have a potluck... we call 4 friends. They end up calling 2-3 friends of their own just cos they were planning to meet them anyway. It's a potluck. If you bring food, then you are totally invited! :) Keep it casual, keep it easy, play a game or two, put on some Incredibles to occupy the kids..

If I host, then I have to play it slightly safe. Something like this chana pulav, a dal, one vegetarian side-dish and raita is what I make. That covers all my basic food groups (just in case all the guests end up bringing only soda or only desserts.. No, sugar is not a food group.) ;) And yes, I never make dessert for potlucks that I host. I keep some icecream or a can of gulab jamuns as backup. Almost always altleast one of the guests brings a dessert. ;)

Now, on to Indo's chana pulav.. I modified her recipe to use a can of chick-peas, a microwave and some minor-shortcuts.

Baked Beans on Toast

What do we do when there is no time for food?

Fig. 1. Baked beans on Toast

We open a can of Heinz or any other baked beans (without brown sugar) in a medium bowl, add tomato ketchup, red chili powder (to taste), and heat up the mixture in a microwave. Top a couple of toasted slices of bread with cheese slices, the baked beans mixture and (if time permits) some chopped onions and green chillies! Quickest possible meal in the tightest possible schedule.. reasonably healthy, very satisfying, and oh so spicy-crunchy-tasty!

Happy weekending!

Roasted Garlic Hummus

Hey everyone.. snack-time. I don't know why it took so long, but it was only recently that we got a taste of hummus at a party somewhere. And I'm glad for this discovery..

 

Fig. 1. Roasted Garlic Hummus

Hummus is one of the the most diverse chutneys or dips out there. It's tasty, it's filling, it goes with any bread, chips or salad-veggies like a dip. It doubles up as a great sandwich spread. And the best part is that it is reasonably healthy. Has a lot of protein from the chick-peas. And the olive oil makes it healthy and flavorful. So the last few weeks we have been buying a tub of hummus every time we do groceries. Hummus with pita is a far better alternative to chips for a snack.

I figured if we are going to consume it so frequently I should look into the recipe. It turns out that hummus needs only a few primary ingredients. Everything else is just variations on the base. Cooked chick-peas, olive oil, sesame seeds (or tahini), salt and lemon juice or vinegar. Grind them all up and you have hummus. The variations could be adding all sorts of spices to this.

The hummus I have made here today has turned out so delicious that I will definitely be making this very frequently at home adding variations every time. Honestly, if you have the ingredients and a mixer then hummus is so easy to make, a caveman could.. uhmm.. let's just say it's easy.

Chawli Vegetable Pulav

Hey everyone.. today it was time for another one-pot meal. Was not really in the mood to make anything elaborate. So I made a quick Pulav with Chawli (also known as Lobia or Black-eyed Peas) and some mixed vegetables. 

Fig.1 Chawli Vegetable Pulav

I often prowl on blogs and pick up ideas from there. But either by choice or because I don't have certain ingredients I often end up making many substitutions and variations. By the time I am done zippety-zapping in the kitchen it becomes very difficult to trace the ancestry of my dish and credit the bloggers of the original recipe without risking offending them! But really, if the dish tastes good the credit does go to them. See, I would never think about certain combinations if they weren't mentioned on those blogs first!

Such was the case today when I set out to make pulav. I always check out Aayi's Recipes for pulav ideas. Shilpa and Varada Aunty have put up tons of rice dishes there. Just one click on the rice label gives me an assortment of pulavs, biryanis and khichdis with pictures! And the lazy bum that I am, I don't even have to bother to think. I can just look at their ideas and incorporate them in some manner or other into my own cooking.

Shilpa's Methi-Avarekalu Rice recipe is the inspiration for what I have cooked here. I wanted something fairly filling, so I chose this dish. Loosely speaking, my dish is similar to Shilpa's recipe, but many of the ingredients and spices have changed. The fundamental concept here is from her blog. Adding beans to pulav!! Whood'av thunk! ;)

Fortunately despite all my changes this pulav tastes simply amazing!! Amazing enough that this is the second time I have made it and it is now time to record it on the blog. It would be truly worth your while to check out Shilpa's recipe too, my recipe is a fairly toned down version of hers.

Chawli/Lobia/Black-eyed pea cutlets and sandwich

Hi everyone! Second post...

Fig 1.  Lobia/ Black eyed pea cutlets

Presently my criterion for "recipe to blog about" is really just "if I make it, I post it." So I am going to go with whatever I cook on a daily basis for now rather than wait around to cook fancy stuff. Daily food is of great value.. I mean, if I have to make it daily, it must be valuable! :)

I often don't have time to cook. But I am not very fond of eating out a lot. And I like to keep Maggie or take-out as reserve for really really hard days. So I often freeze and reserve some small quantities of home-made food for such moderately time-crunched-weeks. One of my plan-ahead foods is cutlets/burger patties.

Chawli/Lobia/ Black eyed pea cutlets:
I wanted to make cutlets that I can freeze. Non-vegetarian cutlets can be frozen quite easily. But vegetable cutlets often contain potatoes. Potatoes are good for binding the vegetables in the cutlet together. But I have not yet had a good experience with freezing cooked potatoes. After defrosting it, cooked potato feels crumbly/brittle/powdery as far as I have seen. :( So I have been wary of making potato based cutlets that are meant to be frozen.

However one binding thing that has worked well for me in frozen cutlets is bread crumbs. Bread crumbs absorb the moisture from veggies and become sort of pasty consistency that helps bind together the cutlet. So this recipe contains bread crumbs. No potatoes. I hear egg or corn flour paste work as well (for future reference, could try this recipe from Tasty Palettes/Mixed Sprouts Burger). For now there is no egg or corn flour paste in this recipe.

Here is some info about Lobia on wikipedia. Fairly healthy vegetarian way to get protein in our diet.


Oh, an addendum: I just read about the Mirch Masala: Announcement : My Legume Love Affair (MLLA) Edition 21 This appears to be the brainchild of The Well-Seasoned Cook. (Such nice names you all have!!) Since I just posted this recipe and looks like they are collecting legume based recipes I will send this post to their event!! How cool! My first event entry! :)

Ingredients: My quantities here are somewhat approximate. Please use your judgment while putting these together. Maybe I will update these in future if I find people actually using these measures! 
Cooked, roughly mashed black eyed peas (lobia) ~ 1&1/2 cups after cooking
Cooked and roughly chopped spinach ~ 1/2 cup
Finely chopped cilantro ~ 4-5 stalks
Finely chopped green chillies ~ 1 or 2
Cumin seed (Jeera) powder ~ 1/2 teaspoon
Cilantro seed (dhania) powder ~ 1 teaspoon
Garam masala ~ 1/2 teaspoon for fragrance (optional).
Salt, pepper - to taste
Bread slices ~ 2-3 for bread crumbs (or can use store bought bread crumbs)
Semolina (Rava) ~ say about 1/4 cup to roll patty before frying.

Procedure:
1) Cook the black eyed peas (lobia) in a pressure cooker or in a vessel. I use pressure cooker when crunched for time. But avoid it if I have time. (Pain to wash large cooker!!) It will take time if you use an open pan. Can soak dry lobia in warm water for an hour or so and then cook on low.
2) Mash the cooked lobia roughly by hand (after it cools down) or with a potato masher.
3) Toast 2-3 slices of bread. Multigrain bread works good too. Run through a dry chopper to get bread crumbs. I hear untoasted bread works well for this too.
4) Meanwhile cook the spinach (say in a microwave for about 2-3 minutes) and then roughly chop the cooked spinach. Instead of spinach you can use whatever veggies are at hand. For firm, solid veggies like zucchini or carrots chop them somewhat finely after cooking.
5) Mix in a bowl - chopped cooked vegetables (spinach in this case), finely chopped cilantro and green chillies, mashed lobia, salt, pepper, garam masala, cumin seed (jeera) powder, cilantro seed (dhania) powder. Mix these well with your hand. Let the spices and salt get well homogenized with the lobia and veggies.
6) Then add bread crumbs and lightly kneed-in with hand. Add a little water to the mixture if you feel it is too dry. After bread crumbs have been added you should be able to press together and shape handfuls of the mixture into small patties. If the mixture is too dry and crumbly you may need to add more water. If that still doesn't help hold the mixture together maybe add more bread crumbs and water.
7) Shape into flat round patties. I got about 8 medium patties.
8) Now, you can shallow-fry the patties as they are. I like to dip them in some semolina (rava) to give the patty some crispness.

Tip:
1) I shallow-fried about 4 of these cutlets immediately. I froze the remaining 4 patties (after rolling in rava, but still unfried) in a ziplock bag. Stayed just fine in the freezer. To defrost, I take say 2 cutlets out the previous night and keep them in the fridge section. In the morning they are defrosted enough to be shallow-fried.

2) I would not have believed it till I did it myself, but you don't need much oil if you use a good non-stick pan. I think mine is called "hard-anodized" and I love it. I used about 1-2 drops of oil per side for each cutlet. If I had that "brush thing" I think it would have been enough to lightly "brush" a bit of oil on each side of the cutlet.

Sandwich:
I like to use these cutlets in a sandwich, say for lunch. Here is a simple sandwich lunch I made today.. bread, butter, green chutney, tomato slices, salt + red chilly flakes, 2 cutlets per sandwich. All packed in cling wrap. Do serve ketchup on the side - these cutlets are a bit on the dry side otherwise.

Fig. 2. Cutlet sandwich

I like to combine this with other accompaniments for a lunch-box. I usually go for yogurt and fruits. Here I have also added tomato ketchup in a make-shift foil "sachet". This way I feel there is enough to eat if you are really hungry. If not, you can just save yogurt or fruit for later.

Fig. 3. Today's lunch combo - (top, clockwise) Yogurt, fruit, cutlet sandwich and a sachet of ketchup

If you like them, orange juice/coke, crackers, chips, bottled cold-coffee, bottled flavored milk, etc. make decent add-ons too. Depends on how health conscious you feel that morning. ;) If you don't pack junk you can't eat junk? Doesn't always work that way.. the vending machine is thy enemy! 

Ok, folks! Thanks for reading and please visit again! I hope to post every so often... once a week average is the goal. I know, my blog could do with a nicer name.. but imagination does not spark at the moment. Ok, I'll get going now. Happy cooking!