Cabbage Fitters

Ever since I have seen cabbage fitters here I have been making them. 

So what is different today? Well today I have not added soda at all.  

This is an old tip that my hubby’s grandmother, Mai, passed on to me, I added cooked daal instead of soda. The fitters or bhaaji came out crisper and did not absorb oil.

           

Ingredients:

1 cup cabbage

Salt to taste

1 tsp Chilli powder (adjust as per taste)

 ½ tsp haldi powder

½ tsp Coriander powder

½ tsp jeera powder

Besan or chick pea flour

A lemon sized ball of daal

Oil for frying

Method:

1.       Mix the cabbage, salt, chilli powder, turmeric powder, and coriander and jeera powder and let it rest for about ½ an hour. (I let it rest for about 3 hours).

2.       When you want to fry them add the daal, besan a tblspn of hot oil. Mix well.

3.       Adjust the seasoning and then drop the batter in small balls from a tsp in the hot oil carefully.

4.       Fry on low flame both sides till done, drain on absorbent paper.

5.        Serve hot with tomato sauce or as my daughters had with mustard.

Egg-less Crème Brulee

Egg less Creme Brulee

Over the years I have collected many cookbooks and have used a few, very few. So my resolve was to try at least a few of the recipes that I have read about. So with Valentine down the corner I decided to make something sweet.


The moment I say I am making something sweet my family starts distracting me. The idea is to get me out of the mood and they generally succeed. This time however they did not know what I was up to so I made this easy recipe from Tarla Dalal’s “Cooking and More” that my Dad had gifted me. And they loved it.


Crème Brulee that I had read about you need to steam the custard and eggs here you need not. As I do not have ramekins I did not set them in individual. This had me serving the caramel in the form of a biscuit.


Ingredients:
3 cups milk
1 tblspn vanilla custard powder (as I did not have custard powder I used corn flour and 1 drop of yellow food colouring)
1/3 cup sugar
½ tsp vanilla essence
5 grms agar agar cut into small pieces
¼ cup nuts (I used some almonds and cashew nuts)
½ cup sugar


Method:


1. Soak the agar agar in ¾ cup of cold water for a minimum of 5 minutes. Cook on low flame till it dissolves and keep aside.
2. Mix the corn flour with ½ cup cold milk and keep aside.
3. Heat the remaining milk on low flame with 3 tblspn sugar, when it starts boiling add the corn flour mixture and continue cooking till you get a smooth sauce.
4. Add the agar agar to the custard and boil again for 2 minutes. Strain the mixture and d cool slightly.
5. Add the nuts and mix well. You can at this stage add to individual serving bowls and refrigerate till firm. I used one bowl only to refrigerate.
6. Just before serving heat the ½ cup sugar with 1/3 cup water stir till sugar dissolves. Then let it heat on low flame till the colour of the syrup is light brown and is caramelized.
7. Pour over the set custard serve immediately.


I am sending this to http://www.brendascanadiankitchen.com/p/cookbook-sundays_01.html
 

Mixed Daal Idli

Mixed Daal Idli

 After I saw the event Twist the Traditional Idli event I was eager  to  send something here but as the countdown approached 15^th Feb, the last day for submitting my entry I seem to lapse in a lethargy.

I thought of entering Butter Idli as my entry, but one quick reading of the rules put paid to my entry, no old posts.  I had given up hopes of entering any idli at all when,  while cleaning my kitchen rack( I do that occasionally, very occasionally )  I found some chana daal which  if not attended to would have ended up in the bin.

A long forgotten recipe came to rescue and wonder of wonders I found the scrap of paper on which I had scribbled the ingredients. Please be warned, my recipes on scraps of paper have a lot of gaps that need to be filled in, so there is a lot of twist that I have given, I just had the ingredients, feel    free and modify the quantities. 

Only next time I am adding more onion and coriander and chillies too.

Ingredients:

2 cups urid daal

1 cup chana daal

1 cup moong daal

½ cup toor daal

1 cup rice

 Onion, chopped fine

Coriander

Method:

1.       Soak the urid daal about 3 hours before soaking the rest of the daals and rice. Soak the urid daal separate.

2.       Grind fine all the soaked items and let the batter ferment.

3.       The batter ferments in 6 hours and is yellowish.

4.       Add chopped onions coriander and steam for 20 minutes.

5.       Serve hot with chutney.

I am sending this idli to Satya's Twist the Traditional Idli. 

EKat's Kitchen

http://bellavita-bellasblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/fresh-clean-and-pure-friday-seasonal.html

Cauliflower and potato vegetable

I had watched the great cook Madhur Jaferry make this on BBC long time ago. I loved the way she demonstrated this simple recipe and from then on Cauliflower and Potato is one vegetable that is always welcome on our table. 

The only change that I have made is reduced the oil used and added a tomato.

Ingredients:

About ½ a kg cauliflower cut into florets

3 potatoes boiled

1 tsp jeera/cumin seeds/jeerigi

3-4 greed chillies slit (Adjust as per taste)

½ tsp garam masala

½ tsp haldi/turmeric

½ tsp chilli powder (Adjust as per taste)

Sugar

Salt

Today I used 1 tomato

Coriander

Oil

Method:

1.       Peel the boiled potatoes and cube them. Wash and drain the cauliflower.

2.       Heat oil in a kadhai and add jeera.

3.       When the jeera blackens add   cauliflower.

4.       Mix well and cook under cover till the cauliflower becomes a bit reddish and looks toasted.

5.       Now add the rest of ingredients. Mix well.

6.       Cover and cook for 5 minutes.

7.       Remove from the flame and stand covered for about 10 minutes.

8.       Serve hot.