Guava Chutney / Amrood ki Chutney

    Pic courtesy: Pixabay

Guavas remind me of childhood. There was a guava tree right outside my house. The sight of fruits hanging from the tree was quite a familiar one. The battle was to save the fruit from countless parrots and other birds. Sometimes the birds won and sometimes us! If we won, we enjoyed the spoils by sinking our teeth in the firm, sweet and tangy flesh. If we didn't win often, we could always buy guavas from many vendors. 

This chutney is one of those unusual recipes which make you sit up and exclaim 'Never knew it could be used this way!' My Mom used to make this chutney when guavas got overripe and nobody was ready to sink teeth in the gooey flesh. 

Recently my husband got small guavas from Walmart, which weren't sweet. The guavas looked like this. For their size, they had quite big, stony seeds. 

  Pic courtesy: Pixabay

We grudgingly ate a couple but the rest were lying around. Then I remembered this chutney and instantly called up Mom to get the recipe. Here it goes...

   

Ingredients:

Guava - 4-5 medium ones. Ripe.

Salt - common and black

Cumin seeds - 1 teaspoon

Green chillies - 1-2

OR

Red chilly powder - half a teaspoon

Lemon juice - half a lemon

Ginger - 2 inches

Jaggery or sugar - 1 tablespoon or according to taste.

Adjust lemon juice, chillies, and sugar....well let's say, almost all ingredients ;) according to your taste.

Way to go:

1. Wash and cut guavas. Put everything in a blender. Add very little water.

2. Blend till it becomes nice, chutney-ish consistency.

3. Sieve the mix through a soup sieve to separate the seeds out. Those seeds are tough. Even my Blendtec couldn't grind them.

We paired the chutney with aloo parathas. You can eat it with pakoras, sandwiches, carrot or cucumber sticks. It can also be used as a salad dressing. The options are as vivid as your imagination:) I  licked the chutney one spoon at a time and emptied the whole bowl. It was heavenly! I wonder if I can make a refreshing drink out of it. Will figure it out and will let you know the results. Till then, enjoy the chutney!

Coriander-Mint-Raw Mango Chutney

I love chutneys! A well-made chutney can lift a dish to another dimension. Mix it with rice and curry, eat it with a savory, add it to a chaat or relish with a paratha. Sometimes, when the sabzi is listless, a good chutney can effortlessly carry the meal to its finale. I am fascinated with chutney recipes and  if I ever write cookbooks, a book on chutneys will be the first in line. 

Yesterday I had invited family-friends for dinner and made bread rolls for starters. As it is mango season, a keri-dhaniya-pudina chutney was a natural choice to accompany the starter.

If you ask me, the holy trinity of a good chutney is green chillies-black salt-lemon. It gives that zing to chutney, which make your taste buds sing. While coriander, mint, coconut or any other veggie gives body to a chutney, it's this trinity which brings out the flavors. 

    Raw Mango, Pic Courtesy: Pixabay

    Mint Leaves, Pic Courtesy: Pixabay

  Coriander Leaves, Pic Courtesy: Pixabay

Ingredients:

Coriander leaves (with stalks) - 1 medium bunch

Mint leaves (without stalks) - A handful

Raw mango - 1 big

Green chillies - 4-5 small ones

Black salt - according to taste 

Common salt - according to taste

Cumin seeds - 1/2 tsp

Lemon juice - If the chutney isn't sour enough

Water - Just a little 

Way to go:

1. Wash all leaves thoroughly in running water.

2. Soak leaves and green chillies in vinegar for a few minutes. Wash again.

3. Peel and roughly chop raw mango. Add all ingredients and toss in a blender. I use my Blendtec.

4. Grind to a paste. After the chutney is blended once, taste it and adjust the ingredients. Once you're in chutney land, just play with ingredients and have fun! 

Notes:

1. Remember to remove stems from mint leaves as otherwise they impart a slight bitterness to the chutney.

2. This chutney can be made in bulk and frozen for later use.

Paneer Butter Masala

How food evokes memories! Each dish I cook has been learnt from someone and I always think of that person while cooking it. 

Many moons back, when I and my husband were still newly weds and living in the UK, a friend got married and moved there with his lovely wife, Sarika. 

Now I can't stop gushing about Sarika as she is a lady of many talents. She has a great sense of humor, is an amazing raconteur and is immensely creative. Our friendship has blossomed over the years, and I can't thank her husband enough for marrying her and bringing her into my life:)

When Sarika invited us for dinner for the first time, she cooked paneer butter masala and I was massively impressed. Though I had been married for a couple of years then, I was still a novice in cooking and she could cook exotic dishes as a new bride! It was time to learn :)

So this is how paneer butter masala made its way into my recipe booklet and has been a faithful friend since then. Whenever I cook this, I make a quick trip to those lovely days of yore.

Ingredients: 

Cottage cheese - 300 gms of cottage cheese

For the gravy:

Onions - 2 (peeled and halved)

Tomatoes - 4

Cardamom - 2

Cinnamon - 1 stick

Cloves - 2

Bayleaf - 2

Ghee (clarified butter) - 1 tsp

Cashew nuts: 8-10

Sugar - 1 tbsp - adjust according to taste

Salt - 1 pinch

Butter - 1 tablespoon

Kasoori methi - 1 tsp

Way to go:

1. In a cooker, put whole tomatoes, onions, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, bayleaves and a teaspoon of ghee. Boil for 10 minutes or 1 whistle.

2. Sieve water and save it. Let the vegetables cool down. Peel tomatoes. Then grind mix  to make a fine paste.

3. Soak cashews in the saved water.

4. In a pan, add butter. When it warms up, add the ground paste and let it simmer on medium or low flame. Add salt. Keep stirring.

5. The mix will thicken in 15-20 minutes. Add cashew paste to it. Mix.

6. After a while, add milk and let it simmer a little more. You can also add the sieved water if the gravy looks too thick.

7. When the paste looks done, add paneer cubes and sugar. Let it simmer for 2 minutes. Add kasoori methi just before switching off the flame.

8. Enjoy the dish with hot parathas, tandoori roti or naan.

Notes:

1. Some cooks add food color to get a restaurant like look. I don't like to add any artificial color to my dishes. 

2. This dish can be cooked without onions and still taste great.

3. Paneer cubes can either be sautéed or kept raw. I generally add them raw to save time.

4. It's a very kid-friendly dish as most kids love paneer. It's also low on spices.

5. I like to make my own cottage cheese. You can easily make it or buy it to reduce cooking time.

6. If you keep the gravy frozen, you can quickly make a curry by just adding paneer cubes. 

Ridge Gourd Peels Chutney

Our parents' generation made a much more efficient use of resources than our generation. My Mom and Aunts cooked delicious meals from everyday produce and ingredients. They could make a mean curry using things that we now discard without a second thought.  

Pumpkin skin, raw mango pits, white flesh of watermelon were reinvented into curries. Watermelon, musk melon, and pumpkin seeds were dried in sun and we kids spent a few happy hours in summer-break peeling and eating those seeds.

As I have green leanings, I worry endlessly about the waste I create. One of the best ways to get rid of kitchen waste (or any other waste, for that matter) is to reduce it in the first place. 

If we didn't create as much food waste, we wouldn't just help fight the food crisis, we would also help mitigate global warming. Food waste, when dumped in landfills, rots and creates methane, which is 72 times more potent in trapping heat in our atmosphere, than carbon dioxide. 

In honor of World Environment Day, I decided to do a series of posts, which use ingredients that would have been otherwise dumped. Here's the first one with ridge gourd peels. 

By adding this ridge gourd peels chutney to your repertoire of recipes, you're not only doing a great favor to your taste buds, but you're also fighting global warming. How cool is that! (pun intended)

  Ridge Gourd or Turai, Pic courtesy: Pixabay

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients:

Ridge gourd peels - From 1 ridge gourd, chopped 

Onion - 1/2 medium, roughly chopped

Tomato - 1

Garlic - 2 cloves

Ginger - a little

Green chilies - 4-5

Grated coconut (fresh or frozen) - 4-5 tablespoons

Oil Gingelly or any) - 2 teaspoons  

Asafoetida - a pinch

Mustard seeds - 1 teaspoon

Urad daal - 1 teaspoon

Peanuts - 10

Curry leaves - 1 sprig

Coriander leaves - 8-10 sprigs

Way to go:

1. Wash ridge gourd thoroughly. If a vegetable isn't organic, I usually soak it in vinegar-laced water and then scrub it under running water. If you are using homegrown gourd or are assured of its organic origins, you can skip soaking it in this water.

2. Peel the ridge gourd. Discard peels from the very end which are close to the stalk, as they can be chewy. You can make a delicious ridge gourd-sprouted moong sabzi with the flesh while keeping the peels for this chutney.  

3. Heat oil. Add and sauté ingredients in the following order: asafoetida, mustard seeds, urad daal, peanuts, curry leaves, onion, chopped skin of ridge gourd, salt, tomato, green chillies, garlic, ginger and cilantro, grated coconut.

4. After adding grated coconut, switch off the flame. The thing to be remembered for any coconut based stuff is that coconut should be added towards the very end.

5. Let the mix cool down and grind.

Tips:

1. Taste the ridge gourd and discard it if it's bitter. 

2. You can also add a couple of slices of ridge gourd to the peels or make the chutney using the whole ridge gourd. Basically, you can play around with the parts and proportions of ridge gourd in any which way.

3. You can add a bit of tamarind to increase the tangy flavor of chutney.

This chutney is so yummy that my daughter has gone gaga over it twice. Once, when she was only 3, a Telugu friend gave a small box of this chutney and my little munchkin gobbled it all! Now, when she is 7.5, she had it at a friend's place with wheat dosa. She loved it so much, I had to call up my friend and ask her the recipe for this magical chutney (thank you Vijitha and Swarnameena for this!) This chutney turned out to be an old acquaintance, whom I now want to turn into a dear friend. 

Do share how it turns out for you. Also, let me know of any interesting ways in which your family cooks vegetable parts, which would have been otherwise discarded.

Happy cooking for a greener world!

Broccoli Soup

Broccoli is not a frequently used vegetable at my home and I'm looking at ways to incorporate it into my cooking. I've discovered that a soup is a good way to use it. Paired with a salad or a side dish, a soup is a perfect evening meal too. 

The power-packed florets! Pic credit : Pixabay

This time around, I made shallow fried French fries to go along with the soup. This was to incentivize my daughter (and husband) to have the soup :) They were visibly happy to hear that fries were on the menu. I'm waiting for the day when a soup in itself is a good enough reason for them to dance with joy!

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

Broccoli - 2 medium heads
Onion - Half
Potato - 1 small
Carrots- 2 medium
Garlic - 5-6 cloves
Salt - to taste
Black pepper - to taste
Olive oil - Half tablespoon
Lemon juice - 1/2 teaspoon or according to taste (optional)
Water - (How can I forget this elixir of life!) Enough to cover the ingredients and a little more.

Way to go:

1. Wash all vegetables well. Chop roughly.
2. Heat oil in pressure cooker / saucepan.
3. When it turns warm, add garlic. After a minute, add onions. Add salt. Adding salt at this point helps in browning the onions faster.
4. When onions turn golden brown, add chopped carrots and broccoli. Sauté for 2 minutes.
5. Add water according to the soup consistency that you like. You can add more water later too.
6. When pressure cooker whistles once, turn it off. If you are using a saucepan, bring everything to a boil till vegetables turn soft.
7. Let it cool down. Blend. I use Blendtec and it does its job so well that I don't need to strain.
If you like, you can strain but try to use the leftover pulp for parathas. (You can replace carrots and make the dough with this pulp instead).
8. Adjust water for consistency. 

9. Add a dash of olive oil/lemon juice/cream/parsley/bread croutons for garnish if you so like.

For Instant Pot:

1. Put on soup setting for 5 minutes.

Tips: 

1. You can use butter, ghee (clarified butter) or another oil instead of olive oil.

2. You can add celery stalk to the ingredients. 

Enjoy the green goodness!

Pooran Poli

This post is on demand by my friends who loved pooran polis I made on the occasion of Gudi Padwa (Hindu New Year). Pooran poli is a sweet stuffed paratha, which I enjoy eating with pooran, ghee and  kadhi.

My Mom used to make pooran polis on every Gudi Padwa. I'm keeping the tradition alive. So once a year, if not more, I make this traditional roti. My daughter loves it now, so I might be making it more often. Thanks to my friends, I'm writing the recipe down, otherwise I just call up my Mom, my Google:)

Ingredients:

Serves 4

For pooran:

Chana daal - 1 cup

Jaggery or sugar - 1 cup 

Ghee- 1/2 or 1 tablespoon

Powdered cardamom - 1-2 teaspoons

Saffron- A few strands 

For poli:

Flour or atta

A little oil or ghee

Water

Way to Go:

1. Soak chana daal for half an hour.

2. Add 2 - 2.5 cups of water and pressure cook. Press the cooked daal to see if it is well boiled. It should not have a give. If there is extra water after cooking, strain it. This water can be used to make dough or added to kadhi.

3. Warm up the ghee and sauté the strained daal. Add jaggery to it.

4. Sauté for about 10 -15 minutes on low flame till everything mixes well together. Add cardamom.

5. Now the mix is ready. Let it cool for 15-20 minutes before starting to make the polis.

6. Make dough in the usual manner. You can add a little turmeric to the flour if you want a yellowish look for the finished pooran polis.

7. Take a mandarin sized ball of pooran to make approx. 8" inch round pooran poli.

I usually like my parathas well stuffed, so more the filling, the better it is. Just take care that the stuffing doesn't spill out while rolling out the polis.

8. I like to eat them with a helping of pooran on the side, a small bowl of ghee and piping hot kadhi.

Heaven!

Tips:
1. You can adjust the quantity of jaggery or sugar a bit if you have a sweeter tooth. Make one, taste and then proceed.
2. I would recommend using dark brown jaggery instead of sugar. Jaggery is healthy while refined sugar is not. 
3. It's a good lunch box idea for kids. You can pair it up with  a sweet and sour lemon pickle. 

Garam Masala Paste - Marathi Style

A few days back, I had posted a recipe for mix-daal in which a homemade garam masala paste is used. This paste gives this daal a unique flavour. My friend gave us a live demo for preparing this paste, which is her Mom's signature recipe. Thank you Pooja and of course Auntie, for this recipe.

Ingredients:

1. Cloves - 15-20
2. Black pepper -15-20
3. Black cardmom - 2
4. Green cardamom - 10-12
5. Cumin seeds - 2 tbsp
6. Black Cumin (Shah Jeera)  - 2 tbsp
7. Star anise - 5-7
8. Cinnamon - 3-4 small sticks
9. Sesame seeds - 3 tbsp
10. Opium seeds - 3 tbsp
11. Dry coconut powder - 5 tbsp
12. Water to grind

Ain't it pretty!

Way to go:

1. Sauté all ingredients (other than coconut powder) on a low to     medium flame.
2. Add coconut powder just towards the end, when other ingredients have been sautéed.
3. When done, let the mixture cool.
4. Add water and grind the mix to a smooth paste.
5. Freeze the mix and it can easily be used for a couple of months. Make a fresh batch every 2-3 months.

                               All sautéed and ready for grinding

                              The paste is ready!


Uses:

1. Add a tablespoon of this masala towards the end in any bean curry like rajma, black eyed beans, black grams, whole moong, mix daal etc.
2. This can also be used to thicken gravies, in case any gravy turns watery. 

Go ahead and enjoy the goodness of spices.