Sometime back I purchased readymade brown rice which cooks just in 5 minutes in the microwave. I made Chinese fried rice and it tasted very good. It had a nice chewy texture and was also very filling. So I wanted to try the regular brown rice and got it from the grocery store last week. While at the store I compared both brown rice and white rice and found that both have same calories, carbohydrates, fat and protein. This really made me wonder what’s the difference then. I bought it anyway thinking that I’ll do the research later.

I found some interesting facts about brown rice. Below is the synopsis:

Now let me proceed to the Dosai recipe. The original recipe is from a Tamil magazine. I’ve changed it a little bit. These dosas/adai can be prepared immediately after grinding the batter. Fermentation is not necessary.

This is my entry to the following food blog events:
1. Aparna’s WBB – Grains in my breakfast. WBB created by Nandita.
2. Suganya’s JFI – Whole Grains. JFI created by Indira.
3. Siri’s Herb Mania – Coriander. Herb Mania created by Dee.
4. Sunshine Mom’s FIC – Green.

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.

Last Tuesday I prepared Priya’s Rava (semolina) Idly for dinner.  It’s so much easier than the traditional idli recipe which requires soaking of idli rice and urad daal, grinding them and then fermenting the batter.  No doubt that the traditional idlies are soft and tasty, but rava idly is a quick fix breakfast/dinner.  Even though I was born and raised in southern India, I have not tasted these earlier.  We all loved the taste.  It’s definitely going to be a regular in our house.  Thanks for the recipe Priya.  Your recipe rocks.

My Notes:
For the side dish I prepared coconut chutney.  Always in my chutney I also add half a carrot, grated and lot of coriander (cilantro) reducing the quantity of coconut.  As I have mentioned earlier in my Beet Greens Daal recipe, carrot is a very good substitute for coconut.  Instead of grinding grated coconut, cumin, chillies for the masala for any kootu (daal) recipe, you can simply replace it with carrots.

This recipe comes from Sunita, who is yet another inspiration for me. I think she is an “Ace of Pastries”. The coriander rosti is both simple and delicious. You can find her recipe here.

When I first came across this recipe I thought she had skipped some of the ingredients, so ignored it and went further. I went back once again and checked the comments section to see if I could gather some information. Then only I was assured that the recipe really required only 3 ingredients. Baking can’t get any simple!

Potato Rosti:

Baking it for the first time, I tried it with 1 large potato. Peel the potato, cut into 4 parts and microwave for 4 minutes. Cool it and grate it. I divided the grated potatoes into 2 parts. For the first batch I simply followed her recipe, mixed half of the grated potatoes, coriander, salt and pepper. Baked it for 40 min at 400F. It was very crispy and tasty. It’s a very healthy snack without oil. I think that depending upon your taste you can also reduce the baking time to 35 min, so you may not feel that the bottom is burnt. I got 8 rostis for this quantity. It was good by itself, we also had some ketchup with it.

Zucchini Rosti:

I always like to give a twist to a recipe by adding some other ingredient(s). I think it’s fun to experiment. Moreover with a toddler around, I have to do a lot of sneaking vegetables. I don’t know why I chose zucchini, but as soon as I thought about making some modification, zucchini just flashed in my mind. 

I used the other half of the grated potato, 1 medium zucchini (grated), coriander, salt and pepper to taste. Dropped spoonful of the mixture on a greased baking sheet and baked it for 40 min at 400F. These rostis were very green in color and the top was not fully cooked as in the previous case. So I set the oven to broil mode for another 2 minutes. I got another 10 rostis. The taste was very good but this one was not as crispy as the potato rostis. Either I should have reduced the quantity of zucchini or should have baked it for some more time. Anyway I was very happy because my son just loved it.