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 used resources more efficiently than our generation does. My Mom and Aunts could make a mean curry or a side, 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. For any coconut based stuff, coconut should be added towards the very end to retain its delicate flavor.

5. Let the mix cool down and grind.

Tips:

1. Taste the ridge gourd and discard 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. 

Carrot Parathas or Gajar ke Parathe

One day when I wanted to eat parathas but didn't have potatoes, my cook Monti, conjured these carrot parathas. I was quite skeptical but they turned out to be quite yummy. Well, they couldn't dethrone aloo parathas for me but they are quite delicious, like theplas!

Ingredients:

Carrots: 5-7 medium
Wheat flour - 2 cups
Gram flour - 1/2 or 1 cup
Dahi (optional)- 1-2 tablebspoons
Oil or ghee - 1 tablespoon
Fennel seeds - 1-2 teaspoons
Salt - according to taste (more than you add to regular chapati dough)
Chilly powder - 1 teaspoon
Turmeric powder - 1 teaspoon
Coriander powder - 1 teaspoon
Garam masala - 1 teaspoon
Green chillies - 1-2, finely chopped
Coriander leaves- 2 tablespoons, finely chopped

Way to Go:

1. Roughly chop carrots and boil in a little water. Use this water for kneading dough later on.

 2. When cool, mash carrots and knead along with all other ingredients. 

  

3. Roll into parathas.

4. On a griddle, roast on both sides with oil or ghee.

5. Serve and eat hot with a raita, pickle, green chutney or a  sour-sweet tomato sabzi.

Ridge Gourd and Moong Sprouts Dry Sabzi

This recipe is courtesy my friend Smita from Udupi. When I ate this lovely curry at her place, I was mesmerized at the way ridge gourd could taste. Let me accept it - I'm not a big fan of this gourd. I hesitate to buy it and if bought, it languishes in the refrigerator for a while before it sees a pan.

As I am from the north of India, south Indian flavors are very different and enchanting for me. I hardly use coconut in my day to day cooking. 

Another friend from Udupi told me that she uses seven coconuts a week. I use seven coconuts a year!

Thanks to this recipe, I do reach for ridge gourd much more often now. 

Ingredients:

Ridge gourd (turai) : 2 medium
Moong beans : half cup, sprouted 

For dry spice powder:

Coriander seeds: 1tbsp 

Cumin seeds : 1 tsp 

Mustard seeds: 1/2 tsp 

Garam masala : 3/4 inch cinnamon

Cardamom : 1

Cloves : 3

Red chillies : 1-2 

First dry roast chillies, then add rest of the stuff and dry roast all ingredients.

For paste:

Onion: 1/2 onion

Garlic : 3-4 cloves

Grated coconut: 1-1.5 cup  

Grind it with as little water as possible. Add to the above ground masala. 

Seasoning:

Oil: 1 tbsp

Mustard seeds : 1 tsp

Curry leaves : 10-12 (I chop them so that they aren't visible and hence can't be fished out! Curry leaves are extremely beneficial for health.)

Urad daal: 1 tsp

Onion : 1 medium, chopped 

Tomato: 1 big, chopped

Way to go:

1. For dry spice powder, first dry roast red chillies, then add rest of the stuff. Grind them together.

2. For paste, grind all ingredients together with as little water as possible. Then add to the above powdered dry spice powder.

3. In a pan, add oil for seasoning. 

4. When oil is hot enough, add mustard seeds, curry leaves and urad daal. 

5. Then add chopped onions. When they turn translucent, add tomatoes. 

6. When tomatoes turn mushy, add moong. 

7. Around the time moong beans are half cooked, add chopped ridge gourd. 

8. Add spice mix and turmeric. 

9. Cover and cook for a few minutes. When ridge gourd  turns soft, this lovely curry is ready to be devoured.