Hi friends, I’m back. Actually I came back from India in the last week of August itself, but did not feel like blogging all these days. The trip was mostly good except when my son fell very sick when swine flu was at peak there. Thankfully it was regular flu and he is fine now. I thought of meeting all the food bloggers in Chennai but couldn’t organize it with an hectic schedule. Hope to make it at least the next time.

On a different note, ladies, do you think that your husband is not appreciative of your efforts you put in the home front? Doesn’t he help you around the house? Then pack your bags immediately and fly to India (or anywhere) and stay there at least for a month and see (enjoy) the respect you get when you come back! Even the simplest thing you do will be noticed by your better half. I’m loving it!

I didn’t bake much in the past 2 weeks but for the vegan chocolate cake for my mother-in-law’s birthday (she came with us) and Shilpa’s eggless date cake. The date cake has been in my to-bake list for quite sometime now. Somehow I didn’t get a chance to bake it until recently. We got a big pack of (Lion brand) seedless dates from India and I wanted to use it up. My son also has started going to school full time and I have to pack lunch for him. He usually eats some fruit or some healthy sweet after his lunch and dinner. So I decided to bake this cake.

This date cake has got raving reviews and I have also tasted it myself when my friend Lakshmi baked it for me as muffins. I followed the original recipe mostly but made some changes:

1 I wanted to try a vegan version because I was having some unsweetened soy milk at home. Sometimes soy milk (some brands) can leave an after taste. So I also added 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract which was not mentioned in the original recipe. You can also try flavoring it with cardamom powder.

2 We had kept the dates in the refrigerator and it was very hard. So I soaked it in 3/4th cup warm soy milk. I left it soaked for nearly 15-16 hours. Maybe that much soaking is not required but I didn’t find time to bake it earlier. I blended it in my food processor with the required amount of sugar and while doing so felt that some more liquid might be necessary. So added another 1/4 cup of soy milk (this is not mentioned in the original recipe).

3 1/2 cup of oil is mentioned in the original recipe. Shilpa also mentions that she has tried baking the cake without oil and it turned out good as well, dense though. So I used 1/4 cup vegetable oil and 1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce. Measured the oil in liquid measuring mug and the applesauce in dry measuring cup.

The quantity of sugar mentioned is 3/4 cup but I scooped out 2 tablespoons of sugar after measuring.

4 Another change I made was adding 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts instead of just a tablespoon.

5 After incorporating the flour to the wet ingredients I felt that some more liquid can be added so I used 1 tablespoon water.

6 I did not want to frost the cake so I was thinking of something to make the cake look good and the idea of using blanched almonds clicked. So I decided to bake it in an 8-inch square pan and use 16 almonds (4 rows and 4 columns) to decorate the cake, so that I can cut the cake into 16 pieces and each piece will be adorned by one almond. The idea worked and the cake looked very good and was easy to pack as well.

7 My cake was done around the 32nd minute itself. The smell lets you know and you can also see the cake pulling from the sides of the pan. Move the pan to a wire cooling rack. Left it like that for an hour. Tried removing it from the pan later but couldn’t. So I stored it in the fridge overnight and it came out without any difficulty in the
morning.

The cake tasted very good. I’m sure that I’m going to bake this date cake quite often. It’s a hit with everybody in my family and my mother-in-law has already asked me to bake this for her when she leaves to India.

Thank you very much Shilpa for posting such an awesome recipe. Special thanks to your aunt for coming up with this fantastic recipe.

I would also like to thank Vaishali for suggesting my blog for the Tried and Tasted Event (which highlights one food blog every month and other food bloggers cook from that blog) started by Zlamushka. Thanks to Zlamushka for accepting the suggestion and also to Poornima for hosting it this month.

I don’t remember exactly how I got this idea of including mashed chickpeas in the idli batter. I guess I was inspired by Red Chillies’ soy bean dosa or my chickpeas poori. I decided to grind one can of chickpeas (15.5oz) into a smooth paste and mix it with the regular idli batter. A can of chickpeas has approximately 23-25 grams protein and fiber each. That’s a lot of nutrition. I do agree that to get the entire benefit one has to consume about 40 idlis which is not possible. But I believe that healthy additions like this even in small quantities if done on a daily basis would help us in achieving overall well being. Another bonus if you have kids who don’t eat their legumes this is a nice trick. My son couldn’t tell any difference and he ate more than usual.

I use soy milk and tofu quite regularly, but soy beans not so much. I have tried using it but was put off by the smell. The only dish we liked was the roasted soy beans until we ate these dosas. I have wanted to incorporate it while grinding for dosa but was not sure of the measurement. Luckily I saw this recipe for soy beans dosa in Red Chillies’ blog. I soaked the rice, beans and urad daal immediately and couldn’t wait to taste them the next day.

I was in a huge surprise because the dosa was unbelievably soft and tasted great. I also prepared the potato side dish for the dosa which was delicious too. I was able to taste the soy beans very very lightly, but when you have it with a spicy side dish you can’t notice anything. This dosa batter is so versatile. I made idlis too and it was very soft and spongy. I also tried appams with the batter. These soy beans appams had a crispy exterior and soft interior.

Also you can spread the batter so thin, it’s like a tissue paper. You would have heard of Rumali (handkerchief) roti but this one is rumali dosa. So instead of preparing round dosas, I made it square to make it more appealing for my son. He loved it very much. Because each dosa uses very less batter you can really make a LOT of dosas. Also this can be a very good recipe to start dosas for small children because it’s that soft.

Thank you very much for this awesome recipe RC.

I cook greens at least twice a week. Earlier it was only spinach and methi. Only recently I started using beet greens, swiss chard, turnip greens etc. Even though methi is bitter we all like it in our family. Our favorites are the methi theplas, sambar in the beet greens sambar method and another dry curry using channa daal and methi leaves.

Recently I saw a recipe for aloo methi subzi in Sailu’s blog. That day I was going to cook methi anyway, so I decided to try Sailu’s recipe itself. It was very simple to make and tasted awesome too. Very different from the methi recipes I make. I pretty much followed her recipe but for some minor changes.

I used around 2 cups of methi. The methi which we get here in US is not as tender as the ones which is available in India, it’s very big like curry leaves. Sometimes it can be very bitter. So my mother in law gave me this tip of frying the cleaned, rinsed and drained leaves in little ghee to reduce the bitterness. But Sailu’s idea of sprinkling salt and sugar on the methi leaves and squeezing out the liquids also works like a charm. I also fried the methi along with the tomatoes. Since the methi is not
tender, it will not be cooked properly if added in the end. The methi masala tasted very good with chapathis. This serves 2 adults.

The very same day I also saw another recipe for a methi chole in her blog. I bookmarked it immediately and tried it last week. This is yet another easy to prepare side dish for bhaturas and rotis. Another speciality of this dish is, it does not use onions or garlic, and yet it tastes great. If you use canned chick peas like me, this dish can be prepared in no time. In this recipe also I used more methi than specified (3 to 4 cups loosely packed). I used one 15.5oz can chick peas, which is approximately 1 and 1/2 cups of cooked beans. I also used oil instead of ghee for frying the spices. This measurement serves 2 adults.

It’s long time since I posted for the “Your Recipe Rocks” series. It’s not that I have not been trying out recipes from all your fabulous blogs. Don’t laugh, but the real reason is I’m not able to get good pictures of the dishes. Fall has started and we really don’t have enough sunlight in our place to take good photos. It may sound like a lame excuse, but believe me or not that’s the truth. Even the stew which I’m posting today, I had to reserve a small quantity of the stew, to take a decent picture the next day.

This chickpea stew can be prepared in no time, if you have all the vegetables in hand. The recipe mentions to soak 15 red chillies for 2 hours to prepare the harissa paste and I totally forgot about it. Moreover the measurement will also yield a lot of paste. Instead I just soaked 3 chillies, while the vegetables were cooking for the stew. The taste was phenomenal. We had it with whole wheat bread toasts and couldn’t get enough of it. My husband was so close to emptying the pot, but as I have mentioned above I had to reserve a small portion to get a picture. Vaishali Your Recipe Rocks!

When I saw Broken Wheat Idlis in Anjali’s blog, I had to try it immediately because we all like cracked wheat very much.

These dosas are very easy to prepare. Just soak 1/2 cup of urad daal and grind it. At the end add 2 cups of cracked wheat also and grind it to combine well with the urad daal batter. The first time I made it, I also soaked the cracked wheat, just like soaking idli rava while preparing regular idlis. But it
became so sticky and stringy and I had tough time mixing it with the urad daal batter. But finally it all came together. At first I greased just one idli plate and poured the batter in the 4 moulds and steamed it a little longer than the rice idlis. Even though it was flat, the taste was very good. I think I should have prepared a nice thick batter.

So I ended up preparing the Broken Wheat Dosas she has mentioned, using the same batter and my vote is definitely for the dosas. I used the reddish/brownish color cracked wheat and the dosas had an amazing golden color. The speciality of this batter is, you can make nice crispy dosas as well as soft sponge like dosas. The cracked wheat we get here is not fine like regular rava (sooji), so I had to run it in the blender for a couple of minutes, to get a fine texture.

The second time I prepared the batter without soaking the cracked wheat, incorporated it to the urad daal batter directly and ran the wet grinder for a couple of minutes. This time also we loved the dosas. This is way healthy than our regular rice dosas and good for diabetics also.

Anjali, Your Recipe Rocks and this recipe is definitely a keeper.

For long time now, I have wanted to prepare vegetarian burgers, or rather it was my husband’s long pending request and I finally made it yesterday from Jai and Bee’s blog. Their Spicy Kidney Bean Burgers is a fantastic recipe. I was able to prepare it for dinner in no time.

I used canned and drained kidney beans (2 cans, 15.5 oz each). It was also the “No Salt Added” store brand canned beans, this allowed me to control the sodium content in the burgers.

I don’t have a food processor, so at first I just drained one can and rinsed it well and mixed all the other ingredients listed in the recipe and blended it using my Indian mixer. And let me tell you, it was little tricky to get the right consistency. Initially it did not grind at all and once I added a little water it became very mushy. I was glad that I reserved the other can. Now I opened the 2nd can, drained and rinsed it and mashed the beans nicely with a potato masher and mixed the ground mixture to this. Even then I was not able to make balls out of it. So instead of adding flour to the mixture as they had mentioned, I added a handful of quick cooking oats and I got the desirable consistency to shape them into burgers.

I also used curry powder and Maggi’s tomato chili ketchup to give it a desi taste. The original recipe mentions to use either ajwain (omam) or cumin, but I strongly suggest to go with ajwain, because I felt that it gave a very good flavor and aroma to the burgers. I also did not have nutritional yeast, so used roasted chick pea flour (besan) instead. Also don’t forget to add the 1/4 cup of chopped almonds, because this gives a nice crunch to the burgers, which you don’t want to miss.

I used a stove top non stick griddle to cook the burgers. Sprayed the grill with non stick canola oil spray and placed the burgers on it. It took around 8 -10 minutes for one side. Let it cook completely on one side, don’t be in hurry and bother to turn them immediately, because it will lose it’s shape. After 8 minutes or so, slowly flip it over the other side and let it cook for another 7-8 minutes. For 2 cans of beans I got 8 medium size burgers.

For the buns, I used Arnold’s Select 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Thins. It is a mere 100 calories, with 6gm fiber and 5gm protein and it doesn’t taste like mulch also

We had our burgers on a bed of iceberg lettuce, grilled zucchini with a side of potato/sweet potato fries. (Ya I know, was trying to reproduce their original menu!)

Jai and Bee we loved them absolutely. Thank you very much for such an easy and healthy recipe. Your Recipe Rocks!

This is also my entry to Zlamushka’s Tried and Tasted event.

J and B’s Baked Plantain Chips has become yet another favorite in our house.  This is the 2nd time I’m making it.  Before knowing this recipe I used to find plantains everywhere but I never used to buy it because I did not not know what to do with it.  Then one day I found this recipe and believe me or not I couldn’t find plantains anywhere.  I did not take pictures the first time I made it, because my husband was snacking it away and actually we did not have anything left to be taken with rice.  This time I managed to take a picture before we could gobble them up. 

When Jayasree posted Cornmeal Kozhukattais, I had to try it out because I always like the idea of using American ingredients in our Indian cooking. (Example: Zucchini Daal, Grits Pongal, Grits Adai).  I had bought cornmeal to prepare bread, but somehow did not even get close to finding an eggless cornmeal bread recipe. 

I tried the recipe with 1 cup of yellow cornmeal, which is available in the baking aisle in the US.  I got 12 dumplings for this measurement.  Next time I’ll be sure to use another cup of cornmeal, because it was so tasty.  Thank you very much for the recipe Jayasree, your recipe rocks!

Dear JZ of Tasty Treats had passed me the Friendship Award a couple of days back.   Somehow I lost track of it.  I’m very sorry JZ.  Thank you for passing me the award.  I extend my frienship to all my food blogging buddies.

Last week I tried Cham’s Wheat Idlis and it came out very well.  Thank you very much for such an easy and healthy recipe Cham.  Your recipe rocks!  Needless to say this is going to be a regular in our house hereafter.