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!

Usually I add little sugar to the cooked beet water and give it to my son as juice. This time my mother gave the idea of preparing Rasam (Chaaru) using it. Back in India, my grandmother and mother used to prepare Goddu Chaaru, which does not require toor daal, rasam powder. It’s prepared when you want rasam immediately, or when you are not cooking daal that day. As simple as it may look, it’s very tasty though. I had some toor daal water so I used it in the rasam, but it’s not at all necessary for this rasam.

Ingredients
Beets cooked water
Tamarind – 2 teaspoons or sour tomatoes (I used 2 tablespoons of crushed tomatoes)
Salt
Turmeric powder – 1/2 teaspoon
Ghee – 1/2 tablespoon
Red Chillies – 1 (or as per your taste)
Mustard Seeds
Cumin – 1 teaspoon
Garlic cloves – 2

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

As most of you know, throughout last week I was worried about my mom’s safe journey to US and now that she has arrived I’m a little busy, so I have not been able to visit all your blogs or reply individually to all your lovely comemnts.  So please excuse me, I’ll catch up with you guys very soon! 

This week I tried RedChillies’ pasta and beans soup.  The soup is very simple to make but has a lot of flavors going in from the peppers, celery, garlic and oregano.  I didn’t have mini peppers, so used a combination of regular size red pepper, yellow pepper and green pepper.  I also used extra 3 cups of vegetable broth. (Look “My Notes”)  Thank you for the recipe RedChillies.

My Notes:
I always prepare my pasta and beans soup directly in a pressure cooker.  I don’t cook the pasta separately.  I add all the ingredients for the soup, including the pasta and extra water or vegetable broth as required and leave it for 1 whistle and turn off the stove.  The pasta is cooked to perfection and also has the flavor of all the vegetables, tomatoes and herbs because it is cooked with it instead of plain salted water.

Since I made the soup in a pressure cooker directly, I’m sending this to Archana’s One Dish Meal Event.  The cooking time is approximately 30-45 minutes inculding prep time and the measurement yields 4-5 servings easily.

JZ at Tasty Treats has passed me the Rocking Girl Blogger Award. 

Thank you very much JZ.  I would like to pass this award to
RedChillies
Roma

For the past couple of days I’ve been busy preparing for my mother’s arrival here on Wednesday.  It’s so exciting!  This is her first time to US, so a lot of planning going on.  Even though she has visited us when we were residing in Canada back in 2005, she is tensed now (me too!).  Actually I’m not worried about her traveling alone, it’s that the past one year has not been good for her.  So praying that nothing should get messed up.

As the day is nearing, I’m feeling so restless and don’t feel like blogging or cooking anything.  But this afternoon I saw that Hetal of Isha’s Kitchen has passed me the Inspiration Award and it really inspired me to try a new recipe.  Thank you very much Hetal. 

Finally I made this soup from the Vegetarian Book, my husband got for me from Barnes and Nobles.  It’s the bargain priced book.  For $10 it’s a steal I would say, with so many wonderful pictures and amazing recipes.  I think this one is a very popular book among food bloggers.  I see a lot of recipes around from this book.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe like using canned beans instead of dry beans, crushed tomatoes instead of fresh ones and vegetable stock instead of water.  Let’s get into the White Bean Soup recipe.

Ingredients:
Canned Cannellini Beans, Drained & Rinsed - 3 cups
Bay leaf – 1
Olive oil – 5 tablespoons
Onion, medium, finely chopped – 1
Carrot, finely chopped – 1
Celery rib, finely chopped – 1
Tomatoes, medium, peeled and finely chopped – 3.  Alternatively you can use ½ cup of crushed tomatoes.
Garlic, finely chopped -  2 cloves
Fresh thyme leaves – 1 teaspoon or Dried thyme – ½ teaspoon
Vegetable stock/water – 3 to 4 cups
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Procedure:
1.  Heat the oil in a saucepan.  Add bay leaf, onion and cook.

2.  Add the carrot and celery and cook until they are soft.

3.  Add crused tomatoes, garlic, and thyme to the sauce pan.  Cook it for another 5 minutes.

4.  Meanwhile puree 1 cup of the beans either in a food processor or a blender adding little water.

5.  Now add this puree, remaining 2 cups of beans and the vegetable stock to the sauce pan.

6.  Simmer for another 10 minutes.

7.  That’s it.  Serve with your favorite bread.

I’m sending this to Sangeeth’s Eat Healthy – Protein Rich Event.

My Notes:
1.  Dried beans was used in the original recipe.  In that case take 1.5 cups of dried cannellini or other white beans.  Clean the beans, rinse thoroughly in cold water and soak it in a large bowl overnight.  Check here for detailed instructions on How to cook dried beans?

Zlamushka of Burnt Mouth (Tried and Tasted) has come up with this brilliant idea of visiting one blog every month and cooking from that blog.  This month it’s Nupur’s, One Hot Stove.  Since I have started “Your Recipe Rocks” event, where we have to cook a non rice wholesome food, from another blog, I chose to make this Spicy Cauliflower Soup.  Also cauliflower is my husband’s favorite vegetable and I have not tried a soup out of it.

I did not have red pepper flakes, so I subsituted it with half a red chili, dry roasted it with the cumin, coriander seeds and powdered it.  Other than that I did not make any changes to the original recipe.  The soup was very tasty.  Originally this soup is from a book, “The Art of Simple Food” by Alice Waters.  Nupur thank you very much for introducing us to such a wonderful recipe.  We all loved it absolutely and I’m gonna keep making it regularly.

I found this recipe in the “Good Housekeeping” magazine.  This recipe was featured under Heart Smart Dinners and Healthy in a Hurry category.  With 16gms protein, 13gms fiber, 0mg cholesterol and just 1gm saturated fat per serving, it’s definitely heart healthy.  Added bonus, very tasty and easy to prepare too.

I reduced the quantity of ingredients.  Even then it was a lot of soup for the 2 of us.  I have another serving left for tomorrow.  Check the original recipe for actual quantities and detailed nutritional information.

Ingredients:
Olive oil – 1 tablespoon
Carrots, medium, chopped – 3
Onion, small, chopped – 1
Ground Cumin – 1 teaspoon
Canned diced tomatoes (14.5 oz) – 1 can (I didn’t have this, so used crushed tomatoes)
Vegetable broth (14.5 oz) – 1 can
Dried red lentils (masoor daal) – 3/4th of a cup
Baby Spinach (5 oz bag) – 1 (I used frozen spinach)
Salt – as per taste
Ground black pepper – as per taste
Grated ginger (this was not mentioned in the original recipe, but I chose to use it because red lentils especially has the reputation to cause gas)

Procedure:
1.  In a saucepan heat oil and add carrots, onion and cook until lightly browned and tender.  Stir in cumin; cook 1 minute.

2.  Add tomatoes, broth, lentils, 2 cups of water salt, ground black pepper cover and cook until lentils are tender.  Stir in spinach.

My Notes:
1.  I soaked the lentils before starting to chop the vegetables.  I did this because I thought that this will reduce the cooking time and it did.  Later only I came to know that soaking the lentils and throwing away the water and then using the lentils aids in easy digestion.  Just be sure to throw away the soaking water.  Enjoy!