Pesarattu

Yummy. Pesarattu has always been one of my favourite breakfast foods. Though deemed unhealthy and fattening by many, if made on a non stick pan with less oil/ghee this spicy pan cake is filling and healthy too.

Anyone from andhra knows that pesarattu -upma is the ultimate combination. Add a little kobbari pachadi and allam chutney.. I bet your mouth's watering?

Ingredients:

For attu:

Whole Green gram (pesalu) 3/4th cup
Rice 1/4th cup
salt a pinch
Onion 1 medium (sliced)
ginger grated
green chillies 5-6 thinly sliced
ghee/oil 1 tbsp


Soak the green gram and rice in water overnight. Grind them into a fine paste in the morning. Add the salt. The batter is ready.

Heat a non stick pan and spread the batter on the pan . Since the batter is thicker than dosa batter try not to make the attu very thick. Add a few drops of ghee/oil to the pan.

In a bowl, mix the remaining ingredients. Sprinkle these on the attu. Once the attu is cooked, (you can see little holes on it and it comes clean off the pan) fold it in half and take it out.

Serve hot.

Tomato-Onion rice

I think I mentioned earlier that I am unbelievably lazy. Waking up in the morning to cook rice and curry and some other accompaniment is a little too much for me. So I started experimenting with rice. And here's my recipe for Tomato-Onion rice. Simple, quick and tasty.

This dish tastes equally good if made with leftover rice too.

Ingredients:
Cooked rice : 2 cups
Onion 1 large, thinly sliced
Tomato 1, medium, diced
Curry leaves few
Salt to taste,
Turmeric a pinch,
2-3 green chillies horizontally slit
dhania(corriander) powder to taste.
Oil 1 tbsp

Heat a pan and add the oil to it. Add the curry leaves and green chillies and allow to splutter. Now add the sliced onions. Stir till transparent. Add the diced tomatoes, stir till the tomatoes change color. Now add the turmeric, salt and dhania powder. Stir for 2 minutes or until the mixture seems well cooked. Add the rice to the pan and mix well.Do not stir in too hard or the rice will break. And Voila, that's how fast it is. Hardly takes 15 minutes to cook including the rice.

Paneer masala

Tonight I was not in a mood to eat veggies and I try not to eat meat at night.. Fortunately there was some paneer in the fridge. Wanted some thick gravy to eat so decided to blend some onions and make a gravy.

Helsinki has an Indian market and we do get a lot of Indian spices and condiments. But one thing I really missed is paneer. I enquired at a few shops and found that they do not import it as it's shelf life is low. I tried with a few variants of cottage cheese but the cheese would either melt in the pan or was extremely expensive. I even ended up cooking masala cheese once, which I used as a spread for bread :).

To cut the long story short, the paneer had to be made at home.

For the paneer we need:

• High fat milk 1 litre
• Lemon juice 1 table spoon

The process :

Heat the milk in a non stick pan. When the milk comes to a boil add the lemon juice to it. Milk starts to curdle. Take the milk off the heat and set aside for a while. Notice that the milk has curdled /split. Now strain the milk in a clean cloth.

Hang the strained remnants in the cloth until all the water has drained off. Once the paneer has dough like consistency, make a lump of it and place something heavy on it so that the excess water is drained off. The paneer can now be removed from the cloth and flattened and stored(refrigerated) in an airtight container. This can be used anytime. 1 litre of milk makes around 175-200 gms of paneer

To make Paneer Masala we need

For the Masala:

• Onions (large, diced) 2 Nos
• Tomato (large, diced) 1 No
• Green chillis 2 Nos
• Ginger 1/2 inch
• Sunflower/canola oil 1 tspn

Heat the oil in a pan, add the diced onions and fry until they become transparent, add the tomatoes , sliced green chillies and sliced ginger. Make sure the tomatoes are not too cooked.

Blend the contents to make a puree and keep aside

For the curry :

• Paneer cubes 150 gms
• Cumin seeds (jeera) 1 tspn
• Dried red chilli 1 no
• Ginger garlic paste 1 tspn
• Turmeric a pinch
• Corriander powder 1 tspn
• Chilli powder to taste
• Salt to taste
• Sunflower/canola oil 2 tbsp

In a non stick pan, add some oil and fry the paneer cubes until golden brown.Keep aside. I usually brown the paneer on side so that it is crisply to eat, but most people would like it if it is golden brown.

Add very little oil to the pan and add cumin seed and red chilli wait until they splatter and add the ginger garlic paste, and paneer cubes. Stir for a few seconds, add the puree and a little water. Stir in the salt , chilli powder, corriander powder and turmeric. Cover the pan and leave thecurry to simmer for a while. Keep stirring in between. Take off the heat after 4-6 minutes. Paneer masala is ready to eat.

Tastes great with Nan/roti/rice.

Welcome

It's been almost five months that I started living away from home.. Well I have alwasy been a lazy kid and never really bothered with cooking unless I had a whim. But now, cooking has become a daily necessity.

And I've been learning, to cook new dishes, revamp old ones. And I thought it would help people like me everywhere to learn how to cook. So here goes ....