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Low Fat Samosas in a jiffy!

Madhuram — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:07:35 +0000

Can you believe if I tell that you can make tasty samosas in just 15 minutes? Thanks to the mini fillo shells, these bite size samosas are low fat and also very easy to prepare. I have used these shells to make instant baklavas, but the idea of samosa did not occur to me until I saw Red Chillies’ low fat pani puri recipe. Thank you very much RC for another interesting recipe.

Low Fat Samosas

Ingredients

Mini Fillo Shells as needed

Any Potato curry as needed

Procedure

1 Preheat the oven for 15 minutes at 350F.

2 Place the fillo shells in a cookie sheet and bake it for 7-8 minutes.

3 Take the shells out of the oven and let it cool for at least 2 minutes. Then spoon in the prepared potato filling in the shells and serve it. Crispy samosas are ready to be eaten.

My Notes

1 The potato filling can be prepared ahead of time. If you have not cooked it already, prepare it while the oven is preheated. It takes only 15 minutes to prepare the stuffing if you cook the potatoes in the microwave oven.

Potato Filling Recipe

Ingredients

Potatoes, medium size 3

Onion, medium size, finely chopped 1

Green peas (fresh or frozen) handful

Oil 2 teaspoons

Cumin seed 1/2 teaspoon

Coriander powder 1 teaspoon

Turmeric powder a pinch

Red chili powder as needed

Salt as needed

Lemon juice little

Cilantro/Coriander leaves to garnish

Procedure

1 Peel the skin, cut each potato into 4 pieces and cook it.

2 Heat oil in a frying pan and add the cumin seeds. Once it splutters add the onions and fry it until its soft.

3 Also add the green peas, salt, turmeric powder, chili powder and coriander powder and fry it for another 5 minutes.

4 Now add the cooked potatoes and mix it well, coarsely mashing the potatoes. Cook it for 2-3 minutes and switch off the stove. Add the lemon juice (if using) and coriander leaves and mix it well. The potato filling is ready.

SunshineMom’s Recipes for the rest of us – Starters event. The event originally started by Ramki of One Page Cookbooks.

Brown Rice Bisi Bele Bath

Madhuram — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:29:41 +0000

Last week I tried Pongal with brown rice and it came out very well, which made me think why not bisi bele bath with brown rice? Earlier I was very hesitant about using brown rice, wondering if we would like the taste or not. To my surprise both of us like it very much. I think this is one of the few things we both agree upon! Brown rice when cooked has a rubbery (is it even a word?) texture. Or simply it is not as soft as its white counterpart. You feel very full after eating a cup of rice, as against wanting more after eating white rice. I made zucchini raitha to go with the bisi bele bath. That’s easy to prepare too. You can find other facts about brown rice here.

Bisi Bele Bath

Ingredients for the Masala Powder

Channa Daal 1 tablespoon

Urad Daal 1/2 tablespoon

Coriander seeds (dhaniya) 1 tablespoon

Fenugreek seeds 1/2 teaspoon

Black Peppercorn 1/2 teaspoon

Cloves 2 to 3

Cinnamon stick 1 inch piece

Red Chillies as required (I used 2 small)

Grated coconut 1 tablespoon

Ghee/sesame oil 1 teaspoon

Ingredients for the Rice

Brown Rice 3/4 cup

Toor Daal 1/2 cup

Turmeric powder 1/4 teaspoon

Vegetables
(I used carrots, beans, potatoes and green peas, 1 cup each) 3 to 4 cups

Onion, sliced 1 medium (or pearl onions preferably)

Tamarind paste 1 tablespoon

Mustard seeds 1 teaspoon

Hing a pinch

Salt as required

Sesamme oil 1/2 tablespoon

Ghee 1/2 to 1 tablespoon (optional)

Procedure

1 Wash the brown rice and toor daal and soak it together (also add turmeric powder) in warm water for at least 30 minutes (the longer the better). Soaking the brown rice in warm water activates more enzymes, which makes it possible to obtain a more complete amino acid profile. For 1 cup of rice and daal use 2 and 1/2 cups of water, so I used 3 and 1/4 cups of water. I did the soaking straightaway in a pressure cooker. After soaking, leave it for 5 whistles and transfer the cooker from the stove if cooking on an electric range, because the heat from the coil will continue the cooking process and you will end up scraping burnt rice from the bottom of the pressure cooker.

2 Meanwhile prepare the masala powder, while the rice is cooking. In a small frying pan add ghee, once it heats, fry (until golden brown) one by one the ingredients mentioned in the list. Once it cools, powder it in a blender/spice grinder.

3 In a medium size pan add the 1/2 tablespoon of oil, once it heats add the mustard seeds, curry leaves (if using) and hing. Then fry the sliced onions. Add a pinch of salt, so that the onion cooks faster. Then add the vegetables and required amount of salt and let it cook for 5 minutes. Once it is half cooked add the tamarind paste and 1 and 1/2 cups of water and close the pan with the lid. Let it cook until the raw smell of tamarind leaves. Then add the masala powder and let it simmer for another 2 minutes.

Alternatively you can do the entire step in a pressure cooker easily. That’s how I do it. I have a small pressure cooker. So as usual I do the tempering, fry the onions. Then I simply add the vegetables, salt, tamarind and water and close the cooker’s lid and leave it for only 1 whistle. If you are using an electric range be sure to transfer the cooker from the stove after turning off the stove, because the heat from the coil continues the cooking process and you would end up having mushy vegetables. After opening the lid, add the masala powder and let it simmer for 2 minutes.

4 Then add the cooked rice and daal mixture to the vegetables gravy and mix it well. If you like you can add the 1/2 tablespoon of ghee or sesame oil now. If the rice looks a bit watery, don’t worry, it will thicken up. You can keep it on low heat for sometime and it will thicken up. On the other hand if it’s very thick add some warm water to loosen it. It’s very forgiving, so don’t worry.

Zucchini Thayir Pachadi

Ingredients

Zucchini, small, grated with skin 1

Salt 1 teaspoon

Yogurt 1 to 2 cups

Canola oil 1 teaspoon

Mustard seeds 1/2 teaspoon

Green chillies, sliced into half as required (I used 1)

Hing a pinch

Procedure

1 Wash the zucchini and grate it with the skin and place it in a bowl. Add the required amount of salt.

2 In a small frying pan heat the oil, add the mustard seeds. Once it splutters add the sliced green chillies, hing and fry it.

3 Add this to the zucchini and mix it well.

4 Mix the yogurt to the zucchini when ready to serve.

My Notes 1 If you don’t have the time to prepare the bisi bele bath masala powder you can buy it. I’ve tried MTR brand and it’s good too.

2 You could also buy the frozen Avial vegetables available in Indian grocery stores and save time chopping vegetables.

3 I have pressure cookers in all size so I used one for cooking the vegetables and one for cooking rice/daal. You can also cook both in any vessel on stove top, but as far as I’ve read brown rice takes more time to cook like that.

4 We don’t eat spicy food, so I used only 2 red chillies for the masala powder. The heat was very mild. If you prefer it more spicy use about 4-5 chillies.

Clicked CLICK for CLICK!

Madhuram — Sat, 31 May 2008 01:45:14 +0000

(Click the image for a bigger view)

I’m happy to inform everybody that this is my first entry for the prestigious CLICK photo contest. I didn’t have the idea of taking part in the contest until this evening. Like many other bloggers, I have this pre-conceived notion that it’s for great photographers. So I didn’t even bother to think about participating in it.

At this juncture I would like to mention one other thing. Actually I don’t take any pictures for my blog. I arrange the food and my husband being a photography enthusiast, takes the pictures. I was taking it earlier when we had the simple Sony Cybershot digital camera. But recently my husband bought the Canon EOS 40D camera and I have not yet learned to operate it, so for the time being “JK” is the official food photographer.

He ALWAYS has the habit of rushing through things in the last minute, and that’s how he got the idea of participating in the event this morning. I was telling him that we can do it in June, but he was determined to make it this month itself. He has this idea that, only when we near a deadline, we can become more creative. I hate to admit that, but he was right.

We got all these crazy ideas and he started taking pictures of various beans and lentils around 4 PM. He was telling something about using different cookie cutters and to fill them up with different types of beans. So I thought of making flowers with round and heart shape cutters. But that did not come out properly. Then suddenly an idea flashed in my mind, why not use alphabet cookie cutters to spell out CLICK and fill it with different beans. So I tried it out and it did look good, but it was plain. I felt that soemthing was missing and moreover there was a little white color smudge mark on top of “K”. So I had to do it once again in another clean place. Then I got the idea of having a border around the word and started working on it. In the meantime the sun started to set and on the other side my toddler was trying to pull the poster board on which I was working. Finally I was able to complete it and my husband took some pictures. I think it has come out decent.

Here is another click on the same theme:

I really loved this experience of working with my husband or rather arguing with him. So eagerly looking forward to take part in the contest every month.

Thank you very much Jai and Bee.

Roasted Soy Beans or Soy Nuts

Madhuram — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:43:43 +0000

I bought a packet of soy beans and was searching for recipes in the internet and came across this recipe. It’s simply soaking the beans overnight and roasting in the oven for 25-30 minutes. As soon as I saw this recipe, I wanted to try the same procedure with some other beans also. I had green mung beans in hand. So I soaked 1/2 cup of each beans separately with lots of water and a teaspoon of salt. Next day morning I washed the beans, drained the water and added some more salt and pepper powder and kept it for another 2 hours. I first tried the soy beans, did exactly what was mentioned in the recipe. I had to roast it for 25-30 minutes to get the desired crunch. As mentioned in the recipe, be careful at the end because it tends to get burnt during the last few minutes.

My Notes:
Roasting green mung beans was easier when compared to soy beans. The roasting time was very less; around 10-15 min is enough. Personally I liked roasted mung beans. But one word of caution, this has to be consumed on the same day itself, the next day it becomes very hard to bite. The soy beans was good even after 2 days.

Variations:
1. You can add any seasonings you want, cayenne pepper, garlic salt, etc.
2. I think this method will work for chick peas (garbanzo beans), green peas also. In that case you can have a healthy mixture of beans for snacking, which is rich in fiber and proteins.