Using Watermelon Whites

With each grocery trip being like returning from a war-zone, there's a new found respect for food! A good fallout of the pandemic is that people are rethinking their food habits and ways to maximize the output from fruits and vegetables. 

As you grow conscious about what you toss in the bin, you start wondering about how it could have been avoided in the first place.

Eating a watermelon means dealing with a ton of rinds. While I haven't ventured to experiment with the outer rind yet, the whites below the rind have been looking at me with imploring eyes. I don't have the heart to toss them in the bin, even if it's the compost bin!

My Mom makes a curry with the white parts but I'm not a big fan of this curry. So I was on a lookout for other uses. 

The green of the rind goes to the compost bin. Pic courtesy: Pixabay

Watermelon Whites

I figured out that if the whites could be blended in a gravy or paste, that would be good. I decided to add them to a lentil pancake batter. 

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients : 

Moong daal (small yellow lentil) - 1 cup

Watermelon whites - 2 cups

Tomato - 1 medium

Onion - 1/2 

Coriander - A fistful along with stalks

Ginger - 1 inch

Garlic (optional) - 3-4 cloves

Green chillies (optional) - 1-2

Lemon juice - Half a lemon

Spices - Red chilly powder, cumin seeds, salt, amchoor (raw mango powder) or lemon juice.

Watermelon whites added to lentils to make a savory pancake (dosa)

Way To Go:

1. Wash the lentils well and soak for at least 2-3 hours. You can soak them overnight too. Blend all the ingredients together. You can add more watermelon whites or water to make a consistency like pancake batter. Taste the batter and adjust spices.
2. When the griddle is hot, season it with some oil. Pour the mix on hot griddle. Keep it on medium-high flame. Flip the pancake when well done from one side. Let it sauté lightly on the other side. 
3. When done, enjoy it hot with ketchup or a dip of your choice. 

The watermelon whites made the batter very light and fluffy. I loved the fact that the volume of the batter went up without a change in taste. 

Here are some other ideas to use watermelon whites.

Add whites to a:

1. Smoothie

2. Soup

3. Dip or Chutney

4. Lasagna

5. Pasta sauce, Pasta veggies

6. Daal or Sambar

7. Paav Bhaji

8. Dough

9. Curry

Tips:
1. You can refrigerate or freeze the whites, because chances are that you won't be able to use them all at once. 

If you use the whites in some other way, do let me know. 

Till then, cheerio!

Sweet Potato Snack

When looking for long lasting vegetables during this pandemic, I added sweet potatoes to my list. While potatoes are our all time favorites, sweet potatoes also provide a nice change.

Sweet potatoes come in a huge variety. In India, we generally get the white fleshed ones. In the US, I buy the orange fleshed ones. 

Sweet potatoes are quite rich in Vitamin A. I use them roasted and also for halwa (a dessert).The recipe I'll tell you about can be served as a snack. Paired with a soup, it can double up as light dinner. This is also a vrat (fast)-friendly snack. 

Sweet Potatoes. Picture Credit : Pixabay 

Serves 3 

Ingredients:

Sweet Potatoes - 3-4

Ginger - 1 tablespoon crushed

Green Chillies - 3-4

Oil of your choice- 1 tablespoon

Cumin Seeds, Salt, Black Pepper, Lemon juice, Coriander leaves.

Way To Go:

1. Wash and peel sweet potatoes. Cube them.

2. In a kadahi (wok), take oil or ghee.

3. When the oil is hot, add cumin seeds. When the seeds splutter, add green chillies and ginger paste. Sauté for 30 seconds and add cubed sweet potatoes.

4. Add salt and mix well. Cover and cook on a low-medium flame. Keep turning.

5. After the sweet potatoes are done, add black pepper, lemon juice and chopped coriander leaves. Mix well. I let the coriander leaves cook a little as I'm avoiding raw stuff during this time.

Look at the beautiful color!

Tips:

1. Add chaat masala or top with a green chutney. I like coriander-gooseberry chutney or coriander-mint-raw mango chutney. 

Dry Kale Sabzi

When it comes to superfoods, kale is right up there in the greens pantheon. I have to admit, I don't buy kale too often. Even when I buy it, it lies around in the fridge for 7-10 days and then I cook it just in time to retrieve it from the waste graveyard. 

This time around too, the leaves had started turning a tad yellow. I knew I had to act fast or soon it would be a lost battle. Then I cooked it with the recipe I use for mooli (radish) leaves. It worked wonders!

Look at the luscious green! Pic Courtesy: Pixabay. 

Ingredients: 

Kale leaves

Oil - I like to use mustard

Spices like asafoetida (heeng), mustard seeds, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, coriander powder and salt.
Sifted gram flour (besan) - According to taste. I generally use around 2-3 tablespoons.

Way To Go:

1. Wash the leaves well. Chop both the leaves and stalks. 

2. Pressure cook using very little water. If using IP, pressure cook for 3-4 minutes. Natural release.

3. In oil, add heeng, mustard seeds and chopped kale leaves. 

4. Add spices - turmeric powder, red chilli powder, coriander powder and salt. 

5. When slightly done, add a tablespoon or two of besan (gram flour). Keep sautéing. 

6. In the end, add amchoor powder. You can replace amchoor with lemon juice or amla powder.

The sabzi turned out to be so yummy that even my skeptic husband couldn't help appreciating it. I ate a bowlful as my dinner. 

But the best part? I wouldn't hesitate buying another bunch of kale again! 

Asparagus-Carrot Soup

Do you ever feel that though there is a humungous variety of food in this world, we all fall in a rut and ever so often, can't figure out what to cook? 

Many of us go for our weekly grocery and pick out the same veggies week after week! So for a change, I wanted to do my grocery shopping with a fresh pair of eyes. I saw a bunch of asparagus, which I don't cook often, and in it went in my basket.

My friend Pooja shared this recipe with me. Since then, I use asparagus for a hearty soup. 

Asparagus that we see in the veggie section is the young shoot of the plant. Asparagus is packed with nutrition. It is low in calories and high in fibre. It's also rich in vitamins A, C and K and folates. Though available the whole year round, they're abundant in spring.

How to pick good shoots?

Pick the shoots which are firm, compact and yet tender. They shouldn't be limp. 

The tips should be closed. The spears can be thick or thin. Here, the deciding factor should be the freshness and your requirement. 

For a soup, thick stems should be fine as they give you more goodness per bunch, especially if they are priced per bunch. 

Green Goodness! Pic Credit: Pixabay

How to prep the shoots? 

I wondered how much of the stem to use. If the bottom part looks woody, snap that off. The rest can be used. Research showed that the stem can be lightly peeled too.

Now for the soup.... 

Ingredients:

Asparagus - 250 gms
Carrot -1medium

Onion - 1 medium

Garlic cloves - 4-5

Masoor lentils (washed, soaked for a few minutes)-2 tablespoons

Salt, pepper, lime juice, any other spices that you like!

Way to go:

• Dice asparagus and carrot.
• In a little butter/ oil/ ghee, sauté chopped garlic. After a minute, add onions.
• When the onions are golden brown, add asparagus, water, and salt. 
• If doing in IP, pressure cook for 2 minutes. If in a pressure cooker, cook for 1-2 whistles. 
• I use Blendtec for blending and there's no need to strain. If there's a stray fibre that isn't blended, I just take it our while drinking the soup.
• Add salt, black pepper, and lemon juice.

Asparagus-Carrot Soup Served With Sweet Potato- Beetroot Chips

Tip:

• I also added jiravan - a kind of Indori chaat masala. You can add regular chaat masala. I like to play with spices to make things more interesting for my daughter. The first time around, she didn't like the soup. Hence, I added some spices this time. She said that she wouldn't mind drinking it again. It was a victory of sorts :)
• You can make this soup with just asparagus. It tastes delicious that way too but I liked it with a carrot. 

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.