Suralichi Wadi (Khandavi)

In Maharashtra it is known as Suralichi wadi, In Gujrat it is known as Khandavi. It is one of my favourite snacking items. Just like any other Indian recipe, this one needs special efforts. After you are done making these delicious rolls, the clean up is a big task. But these yummy snack will make all the efforts worth. That's my promise!! Give it a try....:)

I wasn't very comfortable trying this recipe on my own, because it does require some skills. And now that my mom is here, I tried this one for the potluck we had last Friday in my community. As expected it was a big hit.

You will need:-

1 cup besan/gram flour

1 tbsp Maida/all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

a pinch of turmeric

Small green chilly crushed

1 clove of garlic crushed

3/4 cup buttermilk (sour)

2 cups water

For tadka-:

2-3 tbsp oil

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp Cumin seeds

1 tsp Asafoetida

prepare this tadka and keep it ready beforehand.

For garnishing-:

Shredded coconut

Finely chopped Coriander/ cilantro

This is how you do it:-

1. Mix besan, maida, salt, turmeric crushed chilly and garlic.
2. Mix water, sour buttermilk and all the mixture in the step 1. Mix everything well so that no lumps are formed.
3. After everything gets mixed up well, place the mixture in a saute pan on the heat. Keep the heat low.
4. Keep mixing everything continuously while it is on the heat. Continuous mixing is the key here.
5. Keep mixing until it starts to come together as shown in the picture.
6. Cover it with the lid with very low heat for about a minute. Mix again and repeat 2-3 times.
7. Now its time to spread the dough. Keep the baking pans/steel plates ready. Spray them with non-stick cooking spray.
8. Keeping the pan on the stove top, take a little part of dough and spread it on to the baking pan with your hands. Try to spread it evenly, and in thin layers.
9. Similarly spread the rest of the dough on to the baking pans and steel plates while the dough is hot. Once the dough gets cold, you won't be able to spread the dough. It's critical to spread when it's hot.
10. Once you coat every plate with the dough it's time to make vertical lines on the spreaded dough, so that you can roll the wadi's.
11. Sprinkle the cilantro and the shredded coconut on to the plates before you start rolling the wadi's.
12. Slowly start to roll the wadi's from one end. Cut it in middle if necessary to keep all wadi's of one size.
13. Arrange them all nicely and top them off with extra cilantro and coconut. Finish it off with tadka that you made and kept ready beforehand.

Khajur Barfi (Date Rolls)

Nowadays, I get hungry all the time. I have to admit that I need something to munch on almost 24 hours a day. Just because, I am allowed to eat anything I want, I should not allow myself to indulge in unhealthy food. That's why I am always on a lookout for a healthy snack that I can prepare beforehand and then just save it for later.

Khajur Barfi is one of them. I am not a huge fan of khajur, so adding khajur to my daily diet wasn't really an easy task for me until I hit this recipe. This is really fun to make, with very less efforts and a big satisfaction of doing something good to yourself.

Khajur, as you all know, known as dates and has tons of nutritional value to it. Take a look at this and let me know if you can read the whole chart in one sitting. voooooooooffffff!!! I gave up!!

Benefits of this great fruit.

Photo Courtesy: http://theloft-sasha.blogspot.com/

In this recipe, I am not going to add any sugar, or milk or any fat. Dates themselves are very sweet in taste and that's what makes this recipe even healthier.

There are really only 3 ingredients in this barfi-:

• Khajur-(Dates)- pitted chopped roughly-2 cups

• Desi Ghee-(clarified butter)- about 3 tbsp

• cashews and almonds- chopped/sliced

Procedure is very simple.

• Heat the ghee in the pan, and add the chopped pitted dates to it.

• over low to medium flame, keep stirring constantly.
• Keep stirring until the dates are soften.
• Take a baking sheet, or a flat tray or a cutting board on which you can spread the dates.
• Spread the dates mixture and press it down.
• Sprinkle the chopped/ sliced almonds and cashews when the date mixture is hot.
• Press them down, so that they can stick to the dates. You can use a spatula or just any glass bowl to press them down.

• Wait until it cools down to handle, and then cut and make them in to rolls or any shape you like.
• You can store these lovely bite size rolls for about 15-20 days.

Asparagus Pesto Pasta with Sundried Tomatoes

This one was surely my pantry clean-off. I had a bunch of pencil asparagus in my refrigerator that I wanted to use in something other than making asparagus soup. I decided to go with pesto. Great thing I love about the pesto is, you really just toss a few basic ingredients in to the food processor and just grind them while adding olive oil in to it. It's simple and gives a lot of flavour and richness to your pasta.

The basic ingredients for making any pesto are:-

• Any herbs/ greens like basil, parsley,spinach, coriander/ cilantro
• Any kind of nuts like almonds, pistachios, walnuts, pine nuts
• Olive oil, cant make pesto without olive oil
• Garlic cloves- for the beautiful aroma
• Cheese- most of the times I use Parmesan just because pesto holds it better than any other cheese.
• Salt and pepper

I said it was my pantry clean off, so I used-:

• Asparagus - which was sitting in my refrigerator. A bunch of that.
• Walnuts- a handful of that.
• Sun dried tomatoes- I always have them on my hand, just because I like them. 4-5 numbers.
• Olive oil
• Garlic cloves- I can't imagine pasta without garlic...:) 2-3 big cloves
• Parmesan cheese- A half of a handful in pesto and rest of the half to top the pasta when it gets ready.
• Lumachine pasta - which is a salad pasta. I toss it in soups/ salads usually. This was the only one left in my pantry.

• Salt and pepper

I reserved a cup of a starchy water while I was cooking the pasta and added that to the pesto just to make the pesto a little bit thinner. This makes the pasta to get coated evenly when you mix it with pesto. You can certainly use vegetable stock/ chicken stock or just old plain water. Stock just gives it a little more taste.

Asparagus has tons of benefits to your health. Here are few links:-

Nutritional facts about asparagus

Everything about asparagus

Here is how I made my asparagus pesto:-

• I cut the asparagus in an inch or 2 inch pieces and added them in the boiling water for about3-4 minutes.
• Just when they were tender enough to grind, I would say half cooked, I turned off the heat drained them and kept aside.
• I toasted the walnuts in a pan for about 2/3 minutes, just so that they develop the flavour
• Then I added asparagus, walnuts, garlic cloves, Parmesan cheese( shredded/grated), salt and pepper.
• Just to give it a little citrus kick I added juice of half of a lemon and lemon zest.
• Grind them together while streaming in olive oil.

In a large pot with enough water, cook the lumachine pasta to Al-Dente. Reserve the starchy liquid to mix with pasta later and drain of the remaining.

Mix the starchy liquid with the pesto and toss it over the pasta, mix well so that pasta is coated well with the pesto.

I reserved my sun dried tomatoes to go in last, because I like them in a bite size pieces and not get mashed in the pesto. So chop them and add to the pasta with the remaining handful of Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy with a nice piece of rustic bread or just on it's own.

Eggplant Crispies

An eggplant is something I don't include in my diet on a regular basis. When I was growing up my mom used to make these eggplant crispies and I used to love it. That was her trick to include an eggplant in our diet.

Some facts about an eggplant:

Picture Courtesy: www.vegparadise.com

• In India, eggplant is called brinjal.
• Eggplant does not have much of vitamins but it does have nutritional value to it. Eggplant is low in calories and sodium and does provide lots of minerals.
• Eggplant also contains phytochemical monoterpene that helps in preventing growth of cancer cell.
• The skin of an eggplant is high in dietary fibre which is ideal for weight loss.

Check these out if you want to be friends with eggplant..:)

• Nutritional facts
• From History of an eggplant to recipes

Coming back to eggplant crispies-:

It's a very simple dish, and you will be surprised how tasty it would turn out. They would have a nice crunch on outside with a bite to the the eggplant inside.

Here is what you will need:

Eggplant slices about 1/4inch of thickness- 7-8 slices

Canola oil- 2-3 tablespoon for shallow frying

Dry Ingredients:-

1/2 cup Chick pea flour

1/4 cup Rice flour

Cumin powder- about 1 teaspoon

Turmeric Powder- 1 pinch

Amchur powder - 1 pinch

Chilly powder to taste

salt to taste

• Before you start on the mixing all the dry ingredients, place the eggplant slices in to salted water for about 5-7 minutes.

• Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

• Heat the griddle on a stove top on a medium flame.
• Give a little shake to the the eggplant slices to get rid of excess water and then give them a bath in the mixture.

• Coat them from both the sides with the mixture and shake off any of the excess.
• Spray some oil on the hot griddle, and place the eggplant on the griddle keeping the heat medium/ medium to high. The eggplant should cook slowly, giving a little brown color on both sides.

• Flip on to other side in about 2 minutes.

• Add more oil if you want them to be more crispy.
• Remove from the griddle and serve.

These eggplant crispies are so good that you can serve them by themselves!

Have Fun!!!

Homemade veggie pizza!!!

I decided to celebrate my first blogoversary with a homemade veggie pizza. I wanted to keep it simple and I am glad it turned out to be that way.

I was little worried about it. Initially I was thinking of buying a fresh pizza dough from my favourite pizzeria. In the mean time,I searched few recipes online, browsed through some videos and finally decided to make a homemade dough, just to make the whole experience more adventurous......:P

Pizza as we all know a great party food, kids love it too. Ultimate finger food to munch on. So let's not spend more time in discussions, let's just hop on to the recipe along with some step-by-step pictures.

Here is the list of ingredients I used:

1. 1 cup of whole wheat flour
2. 1 cup of all purpose flour
3. 1 package of Active dry yeast (I used FLEISCHMANN'S)
4. 1 teaspoon salt
5. 1/2 teaspoon sugar
6. 1 cup of very warm water
7. 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil ( I used extra virgin olive oil)

Here is how you make the dough:

• Take 1/4 of warm water in a bowl and add the yeast in to it. Stir the yeast well until dissolved.

Heads up: The temperature of the water is the key here. Too much hot water will kill the yeast and less than warm temperature will not yield any effect. The perfect temperature is 120° F to 130° F.

• Add the remaining 3/4 cup of water in the same bowl with the salt, olive oil and wheat as well as all purpose flour. Mix well. Use your hands to mix and knead the dough.

• Add some more flour if you want to make a soft dough.

• After making a soft dough keep it in the bowl and cover it with a wet towel.

• Keep it covered in a warn place. I kept the bowl over the stove top, that's the place where I usually keep my yogurt to set. Keep it for 60 minutes.
• Check after 60 minutes, the dough should have doubled in size.

• Punch the dough down , knead it for 3-4 minutes more, coat the dough with some Olive oil and keep it covered again for 30 minutes.

• Your dough should be ready in an hour and a half.

Easy right? Not very tough.

Now it's time to prepare the toppings for the pizza. You can really go crazy with the toppings. I love my pizza with all kinds of veggies in the world. One more reason I like homemade pizza is because I can through any veggies I like and I have on hand. When you go out to eat pizza or order a takeout, there are very limited choice of veggies available.

I made this with the following veggies:

• Broccoli
• Tomatoes
• Onions
• Asparagus
• Green bell pepper
• Red bell pepper
• Lots of zucchini.....I love it on pizza.

Last but not the least....CHEESE........mozerella. Parmesan will work fine too. I find mozzarella better because it melts well on the pizza.

Time to put everything together:

Set the oven to 475° F.

• On a pizza pan sprinkle some cornmeal/ flour . Place the dough on the pan and using your hands just spread the dough over the pan.

• Those who love thin crust, make two parts of the dough and take one to spread across. Thick crust lovers can use all the dough.
• After spreading the dough, apply the pizza sauce all over the base. I used ready made pizza sauce, you can also make it at home. There are plenty of recipes available online for that.

• Next comes the veggies. Spread over all of them on the pizza.

• Top the veggies with mozzarella cheese.

• Brush the edges of the base with extra virgin olive oil. This will give nice crunchy browned edges after the pizza is done.

• Slide the pizza in the preheated oven for about 35 minutes. Make sure that your base is cooked completely.

Pizza will be ready in about 35-to 40 minutes depending on the oven. You will know when the cheese starts to bubble and pizza will have a nice brown color just like this...

Something that I would do different next time-: When I checked my pizza after 35 minutes, I felt that my base wasn't cooked well, so I had to keep it for another 10 minutes or so. It turned out well, but I think it will be better if I prebake the crust next time, just for 5 minutes or so, that will make the pizza bake evenly.

What do you think? I would love to hear your experiences...:)

ohh and don't forget to grab a slice....

Enjoy!!

An entry to No croutons required.

Hello everyone, here is a small request to all of you out there. If you like my Spinach Soup recipe, then please vote for my recipe at Tinned Tomatoes. The winner will receive a plaque to display on their blog.

I would love to win my first plaque, so if you like my recipe and it's presentation and if you feel it's worth winning the plaque, then please visit Tinned Tomatoes and vote for my recipe. The last day to vote is coming Sunday.

I would appreciate your effort.

Thank you.

After completion of one year of blogging here comes my first entry to the next year's. Well this was posted last year, but the theme of the event is matching to my post, so I am sending the entry to one of my favourites " NO CROUTONS REQUIRED"!!!

This is a monthly food blogging event. This time it is hosted my Lisa's Kitchen. They are looking for a soup or a salad that feature leaves.

I decided to send my spinach soup recipe.

So here you go:

I wanted to serve something in a cute little white bowl that I recently bought. The first thing came to my mind was a colorful spinach soup which is full of nutritional value as well as rich flavor. Every time I make this soup I use different recipe, the reason is I don't remember the recipe I used last time. It's funny, because I make this soup all the time, at least once a month or so...:)

So this time I am documenting it down so that I won't forget it. Although I kind of like the newness of this recipe every time. So I guess I might document it today in my blog, but I don't think I would be using it next time......lols!!!

Whatever, here is how I made my favorite soup-:

1. Heat some unsalted butter in the pan, add chopped onions fry for a minute
2. Add 1 chopped potato to it.
3. Add half a cup of vegetable stock and and half a cup of 2% reduced fat milk( I used 2 % , you can certainly use whatever you have on hand.) Bring it to a boil. Allow to cook for about 10 minutes on a lowered heat.
4. Add cut spinach leaves, keeping aside few leaves to add later when you blend the mixture.
5. Add 2 cups of stock to it. Bring it to boil. Allow to simmer for 10 more minutes with a lid on it.
6. Allow the mixture to cool down, before you blend that in a mixture.
7. When you blend the mixture, make sure you add remaining spinach leaves. This will give your soup nice green color.
8. Return the mixture to the pan heated with little more butter. Heat the mixture, add some salt, sometimes I add crushed cumin seeds that gives nice fresh taste to the soup. But you can skip that. Do not allow the soup to boil. Serve in a nice plate garnished with spinach leaves and some Parmesan shaves or any grated cheese you like.

This is a perfect soup for cold winter weather. Spinach has tons of nutrients, it's a very good source of iron as well. So make a bowl for you and savour the warmth in the cold winter or on a gloomy rainy day.

Enjoy......:)

Blogoversary...yayyyy..:)

Hurrayyyyyy!!!! Today is the day to celebrate my first blogoversary....:) I wrote my first post on this blog on June 18Th 2008. I was always a total foodie, and with this blog I got my own place to share my experiments with all kinds of food.

In this year I have written 42 posts. I have participated in 8 blog events altogether.

The things I could have done better:

1. I could have taken some photography classes/tutorials to improve the quality of photos in my blog. Although I did some experiments and I guess I improved over the year.
2. There is always a room for background materials or should I say presentation materials like plates, decorating stuff.
3. More and more blog events - There is no end to this. I love blog events and sending entries to them is a a sheer pleasure. I should have participated more.
4. Some photoshop training might have helped me to play with the images more.

The Things I would like to do in next year:

1. I would like to be more regular with my posts coming year.
2. I want to host my own event here on my own blog.
3. I also want to participate in foodbuzz more actively.
4. I want to include healthy recipes.
5. I want my blog to look good.
6. I should be adding more external links to my blog to make it more resourceful.

The whole year has been an amazing journey. I can't find words to express my feelings towards the blogging community. It means so much to me. I really thank from bottom of my heart to all the bloggers, readers, my friends, my parents, and all those known and unknowns out there who supported me throughout the year.

So what's for the celebration???

Celebration can't be without food. Right? I will be starting this year with a post of a homemade veggie pizza!!!

If you are a first time visitor to my blog, please leave your comments, I would like to know who you are and if you are a regular commenter, thank you very much and I hope you keep coming back. You can grab some cake and enjoy!!!!

Photo by flickr user: serahsonline

Crunchy garbanzo beans!!!

Some time back I posted toasty edemame. Since then I wanted to try garbanzo beans the same way.  When I googled for the same, I found a whole lot of results for my search.

I decided to go by my own instead.

This post is an entry to one of my favorite blog events My legume love affair.

This time the event my legume love affair-twelfth helping is hosted by Annarasa. Here is the lovely badge created by Susan for MLLA-12th helping. This is the second time I am participating in the event.

Making this simple yet crunchy snack is very easy. There is hardly any recipe to follow. All you need to take care about is the temperature of the oven and how long you keep the beans inside the oven.

I started with soaking garbanzo beans in water overnight.

The next morning I pressure cooked the beans with 3 whistles. Added a little bit of oil while cooking the beans to prevent the vent from becoming clogged.

Alternatively these beans can be cooked in a pan, with beans and water as 1:3. When the water comes to bubble, lower the heat and simmer partially covered for half an hour.

You can take a look at the detailed precedure here.

After cooking the beans, I drained them over the colander and dried them with the paper towel.

In a bowl I added following spices for seasoning.

• Salt
• Chili powder
• Cumin powder
• Olive oil.

I used everything above as per taste.

In a bowl, toss all the above spices with the garbanzo beans. Mix well and spread them on the baking sheet covered with aluminium foil in a single layer.

You can use any mixture of spices like curry powder, garlic salt, pepper powder, chili flakes, or any dried herbs you like. Adding the salt and olive oil while baking  with freshly squeezed lemon juice and a pinch of chaat masala, will do wonders.

If you have used any other combination of spices for the same recipe, I would love to hear from you. Please leave your creative inputs as comments in this post.

Preheat the oven to 425F. In about 25 minutes, crunchy toasty garbanzo beans will be ready for snacking. Just give them a toss after 15 minutes in oven. If you want them to be really crunchy keep them in for a longer time, and if you wish you like them to be chewy, keep them for 20-25 minutes. You can always taste and decide.

This is a very healthy snack for anytime in a day.  Store them in a air-tight container. Garbanzo beans are the good source of fibre, Iron. For the nutritional information please visit www.whfoods.com

Enjoy these little babies with a wedge of lemon!!

Thanks people for all the concerns!!!

It's been more than a month and a half since I have posted anything on my blog. It was a tough time for me to stay away from this part of the my world. Now I am back and I will promise to myself that I will keep my blog updated again.

During this time, many of you e-mailed me, left comments on the entries asking whether I am doing ok, and why not posting anything for such a long. Thank you very much to all the readers and all the concerns you all had for me.

I really thank all of you from bottom of my heart, your concerns made me come back sooner than I probably would have.

Thanks once again.