Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Simple mushroom fry with garlic and curry leaves

I love mushrooms!! My friend Bhavana thought of me when she made this delightfully simple and tasty recipe and shared it with me. ;) and I'm so so glad she did. It has very few ingredients, is very fast to make and the result is YUMMY! I tried it and fell in love with the flavors! My only regret? I should have made more! :D
We ate it with a simple curd rice. Serve as a dry side to go with dal rice and make a simple meal worth remembering!
Served with curd rice


What you need :
Simple ingredients!
Baby Bella mushrooms - quartered about 1 cup
Garlic - 3 to 4 cloves sliced
Curry leaves- about 15 of them thinly sliced
Mustard seeds 1 tsp
Fennel seeds(saunf) 1/4 tsp
Oil 1/2 tsp

Haldi/turmeric powder: a pinch
Salt
Red chilly powder to taste
Fresh lime/lemon juice 1/2 tsp


Method:
Heat oil in a pan. Add the garlic, mustard and fennel seeds. Wait for mustard to splutter.
Then add the curry leaves and fry for 30 seconds.
Add mushrooms. Saute the mushroom for a minute.
Add the haldi, salt and red chilly powder. Mix well.
Cook for about 5 mins or more till mushrooms are done. The water released by mushrooms is absorbed by the spices and it gives a nice coating.
Take off heat and add the lime juice.

Ready to gobble up!!! :)

Monday, April 28, 2014

Root-y Roti. (Beetroot-sweet potato-carrot paratha)

Colorful, flavorful root vegetables come together to yield this delightful and health-ful roti/paratha. It is recommended to have 5 servings of veggies per day(Wow!). How many do we actually do? How well do we mix our veggies to get most if not all the nutrients we need?
This is not really a "recipe" or some great preparation. Just an idea to sneak those veggies into your diet in an easy and tasty way.
I have used beetroot, carrots, sweet potato and flavored it with ginger to make a puree. You can use this puree in many different ways :
  1. Mix it in your roti dough to make colorful rotis and include them in your regular meal. The rotis will be soft and flavored and go well with any side.
  2. Make paratha dough with it - use spices and extra seasoning and they can be eaten with just curd/pickle.
  3. Add some puree in your rice- a colorful fun rice to go with your usual dal/sambar side :)
  4. Make a pulav with rice/qunioa/other mix grains for a healthy one pot meal.
  5. Sneak some puree into your curry/gravy dish to add that extra dose of health
..the possibilities are endless! If you try this, or have any new ideas of using it, please write a comment and I'd love to try it as well. :)

The recipe here is for paratha and I'm going to freeze some puree as "health cubes" and see how that goes ;)

Mixed root vegetables ready to be boiled

Basic root puree:

1 large beetroot
2 carrots
1 sweet potato
1 inch piece of ginger -more if u like a strong ginger flavor.
Salt- optional

Method :
1.  Scrub and peel the beet and sweet potato. Chop it into big chunks. We're going to boil it, so don't waste your energy in chopping these hard veggies :P
2. Chop carrots.
3. Boil all the veggies and ginger with minimal amount of water till they are cooked thru. You want the puree to be as thick and concentrated as possible.
4. After it cools down, make a puree and get thinking on what you'd like to do with it! :)
Rooty puree


Paratha:

Beetroot sweet potato and carrot paratha
What you need:

Basic root puree 1 cup
Wheat flour 2 cups
Salt
Crushed garlic 
Finely chopped cilantro
Red chilly powder- per taste
Dhaniya jeera powder
Garam masala - optional
Chaat masala -optional
Kasoori methi (dried methi leaves)
Plain yogurt/curd
Oil

Method:
Mix the whole wheat flour with all the dry ingredients. Mix in the puree and some curd. Try to mix the dough with the moisture from curd and veggie puree only and avoid adding water. This will make the parathas really soft.
Roll out parathas as you'd like -folded, laccha, plain and roast them with a little ghee/oil if desired.
Serve hot! :)