Korivi Karam (Red Peppers Pickle)

Ingredients:

• Red chillies – 2 lb(very ripened and hot to taste only will be good for this pickle)
• Tamarind – 1 tbsp (Indian tamarind one is preferably)
• Salt to taste
• Hing – 1 tsp

Method:

• Wash and clean the red chillies, let them dry on dry cloth and make sure that no little piece of wetness need to be there on the chillies.
• Wipe the red chillies and put them in the grinder and grind the chillies coarsely with little salt and tamarind.
• Remove from the blender, Heat oil in a pan for 3- 4 min. and put hing.
• Remove from the heat, allow it cool and add it to the pickle.
• Add little bit of oil to the pickle and mix it well. Store it in a air tight jar.

Brinjal-Potato Curry

Ingredients:

• Egg plants/Brinjal/Vankaya - 4 medium size / 2 long
• Potatoes – 2 (small) 
• Onion – 1 small size (finely chopped)
• Frozen Green peas – a handful
• Green chillies – 2 or 3 (according to your spice level)
• Ginger - 1 – inch small piece
• Grated Coconut - 2 tsp
• Salt to taste
• Oil-1 tbsp
• Kothimeer /fresh coriander /fresh coriander - handful

 Seasoning /Tadka:

• Cumin seeds/Jeera- 1tsp
• Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
• Curry leaves – handful
• Haldi/Turmeric powder – a pinch

 Method:

• Wash the brinjal and potatoes before cooking and
• Cut the brinjal and potatoes into small pieces and put it in water in a bowl.
• Grind coarsely green chillies, ginger, grated coconut with salt in a pestle mortar / or in a mixer.
• Take a pan and add oil to it and bring to heat, once the oil is hot add cumin seeds, mustard seeds curry leaves and haldi and let them pop up.
• Add chopped onion to it and let them fry till slight pink colour or till they become transparent. 
• Now add the Potatoes, Brinjal pieces and frozen green peas to it and mix it up well with a spatula, cover them with a lid and cook well. 
• Once the vegetable becomes soft and well cooked add the green chilly, ginger paste to it, mix it well.
• Sprinkle few drops of water, so that it may not get stickup to the vessel/pan.
• Bring the heat to simmer and let it cook covered with a lid for 5 to 7 min. (or) until all the water is evaroparated and the curry becomes thicker.
• Garnish it with coriander leaves and little grated coconut.
• Serve it hot with Roti or Plain Rice. 

Peanut Masala Snack

This very quick snack is easy to prepare and ready to be served at any time of the day.

Ingredients:

• Peanuts (soaked in water whole night) - 1 cup
• Small Onion – 1 (finely chopped)
• Red chilli powder -1/2 tsp
• Salt-to taste
• Lemon juice- 2 tsp
• Carrot – 1 medium size (grated into thin flakes)
• Kothimeer /fresh coriander- 1 small bunch (for garnishing) 

Method:

• Boil the peanuts by adding little salt.
• Cool the peanuts and take it in a bowl.
• Add finely chopped onions, salt, grated carrot and mix well with the boiled peanuts and leave it aside for 2 min.
• Finally sprinkle few drops of lemon juice on the mixture of peanuts and garnish it with fresh coriander leaves.
• Peanut masala is ready to be served.

Shrikand

One day all our friends have arranged for a potluck in my home. So one of my friends by name “Nikita” brought this sweet Shrikand, that day I decided to try this sweet. Finally I made it last week end. Before the preparation of this I never felt that it is so easy to have shrikand at home. So without further delay here goes the recipe:

Ingredients:

• Thick yogurt /Curd - 1 box / ½ kg (I used Cost Co –Mountain High yogurt box)
• Sugar – 2 cups (finely powdered) 
• Cardamom powder – 1 tsp
• Few strands saffron – original recipe calls for this (but I don’t have this at my home so I didn’t use them)
• Almond -10 (coarsely crushed) (you can use pistachios also)

Method:

• Tie curd /yogurt in a clean muslin cloth overnight. (6-7 hours) and hang it so that it leaves the excess water completely out side.
• Remove from the cloth and gently press the yogurt to remove any other excess water left out. 
• Put into a bowl and add sugar .Mix it.
• Keep aside for 25-30 minutes to allow sugar to dissolve.
• Rub saffron into 1 tbsp. milk till well broken and dissolved. Keep aside.
• Beat well till sugar has fully dissolved into curd.
• Mix in cardamom powder and dissolved saffron and half almonds.
• Pour the mixture into a glass serving bowl, top with remaining almonds crush.
• Chill for 1-2 hours before serving.

Note: please use a white muslin cloth as I don’t have any I used a red dupatta but it leaved a bit of red colour to my yogurt. Taste doesn’t change.


Sorry for the poor picture quality , i took from a mobile that day. 

Sabhudana /Saggubiyam Punukulu

Sometimes we find very difficult to prepare a quick and easy snack, the other day one of my friend “Divya” was discussing about the same thing. She is always so friendly and open minded person during our chat we just came across this simple snack which she shared with me .Thanks Divya for sharing the recipe.  So here it goes this way, I forgot to mention this snack is better we have the Idly Batter (1 cup Urad dal + 2 cups Idly Rava). Without further delay here it goes:

Ingredients:

·  Idly batter – 1 cup

·  Saboodana /Saggubiyyam – 1 cup (Soaked in curd/yogurt for 2hrs)

·  Onion – 1 (chopped finely and should measure up to 1 ½ cup)

·  Green chilies--3 small (chopped finely)

·  Curry leaves –few

·  Salt to taste

·  Jeera – 1 tsp

·  Red chilli powder – 1 tsp

·  Rice flour/Biyyam pindi - ½ cup

·  Oil for deep frying 

Method:

•  Take a bowl / vessel and pour in the idly batter and the soaked saboodana and mix    well without forming any lumps.
•  Now add finely chopped onions, curry leaves,jeera/jeera powder, green chilies to the above mixture and form a medium batter ( by this I mean the batter consistency should not be too liquified (watery) nor too hard ), it should form like a ball and be able to drop into the Oil.
•  Now add the Rice flour to the above mixture slowly and stirring continuously with a spatula without forming any lumps.
•  Make small lemon sized balls from the above mixture and just press little bit out of the balls to form a little oval shape.
• Heat oil in a pan and put the balls in that oil and allow them to deep fry or till golden brown in color turn up side down in the middle with a spatula.
• Remove from oil and put them on a paper to absorb the excess oil.
• Serve them with tomato sauce/ chilli sauce / with any chutney. 

Note : This is can also be prepared as a vada by pressing the batter on a plastic cover and dipping it in oil. 




Variation : 


Instead of sabhudana we can soak  vermicelli  in yogurt and follow the rest of the procedure.

Penne Pasta

Hi Friends, after a short break I am back here with a Italian dish “Pasta” which is very famous word. In my home almost in every week one night menu should be Pasta. Of course, after marriage and after coming to US only I came to know about this.So let us just have a look at how this pasta came into existence and some of the different varieties of pasta we have. 

Source Adapted from: Wikipedia

Pasta is a generic term for foods made from an unleavened dough  of wheat or  buckwheat, flour and water, sometimes with other ingredients such as eggs and vegetable extracts. Pastas include noodles in various lengths, widths and shapes, and varieties that are filled with other ingredients like ravioli and tortellini. The word pasta is also used to refer to dishes in which pasta products are a primary ingredient. It is usually served with sauce. There are hundreds of different shapes of pasta with at least locally recognized names. Examples include spaghetti (thin rods), macaroni (tubes or cylinders), fusilli (swirls), and lasagne (sheets). Two other noodles, gnocchi  and spätzle, are sometimes considered pasta. They are both traditional in parts of Italy. There are different varieties of Pasta, I am writing the recipe for Penne Pasta. Penne (pronounced /ˈpɛni/ [UK], or /ˈpɛneɪ/ [US]) is a type of pasta with cylinder-shaped pieces. Penne is the plural form of the Italianpenna, deriving from Latin penne (meaning "feather" or "quill"). Penne is a popular ingredient in pasta salads. Penne makes excellent and versatile pasta for many applications because of its very practical design. The hollow centre allows it to hold sauce, while the angular ends act as scoops.Even though there are different varieties of preparing the dishes with different pasta shapes. Below is one recipe which I follow: 

Ingredients: 

• Pasta – 1 small packet (basically of any shape, I used Penne Pasta shape) 

• Olive Oil – 1 tbsp

• Carrots – 2  medium sized cut into small pieces of 1” inch length 

• Tofu – 1 small square block cut into small cubes like paneer cubes. 

• Onion -1 medium sized cut into small pieces .

• Pasta Sauce – 1 cup (there are many varieties of this available in market; I used Classico Brand (Tomato & Basil flavour).

• Black pepper  - crushed 1 tsp 

• Black Olives – 8 (I Used TJ’s Black ripened Olives )

Method to cook Pasta: 

·  Take a large vessel and fill with water. The more the better - pasta only sticks when cooked in too little water.

·  Add salt. Salt makes pasta taste better,

·  Bring the water to a rolling boil. This means a boil you can't stop by stirring.

·  Measure the pasta you need. Pasta generally doubles in size when cooked, so 1 cup uncooked = 2 cups cooked.

·  Slowly add the pasta to the boiling water. Ideally, the water shouldn't stop boiling, but if that happens, it's ok.

·  Stir and stir some more! Pasta will stick together if it isn't stirred during the crucial first moments of cooking.

·   Most pastas cook in 8-12 minutes.

·  You can regulate the heat so the pasta/water mixture doesn't foam up and over the vessel sides.

·  Really the only way to tell if the pasta is correctly cooked is to taste it. It should be firm, yet tender, with a tiny core in the middle.

·  Now drain the pasta and remove the water from it and shake off excess water.

·  Add 1 tsp of Olive Oil to the boiled pasta and closed the lid over the pasta.

·  This normally makes the pasta shapes resist without sticking with each other.

Cooking the Sauce:

·   Take another pan and add ½ tbsp of Olive Oil, make sure that olive oil shouldn’t be too hot at any given point of time.

·  Add Onions and sauté them till the time onions colour turns to slight pink colour and becomes transparent.

·  Now add carrots and tofu, olives and sauté them in the middle till they are cooked.

·  Once cooked now add pasta sauce and stir it well to combine with the cooked vegetables.

·  Simmer the heat and cover it with a lid and let it boil for 3 min.

·  Turn off the heat and add the crushed black pepper.

Serving the Pasta:

·  Take a bowl /Plate add the cooked pasta and on to the top of it add this hot pasta sauce and serve hot.

• Turn off the heat and add the crushed black pepper. 

Serving the Pasta: 

• Take a bowl /Plate add the cooked pasta and on to the top of it add this hot pasta sauce

        and serve hot. 

Semiya Kesari

Last week I went to see one of my friends Divya who stays near to my home, in our discussion we came across the blog that I created and showed her the same. She was so impressed and she thought of sharing few recipes to me. One of such recipes is the Semiya Kesari .It is very simple and quick breakfast or a snack at any time. Thanks to Divya for sharing this recipe. So here goes the recipe:

 Ingredients: 

• Roasted Semiya or Vermicelli - 2 cups
• Ghee/ melted butter  - 1 tbsp
• Cashew nuts-5
• Raisins -5
• Badam/Almonds-5
• Elachi powder - a pinch
• Food colour / Rose water - pinch/ 1 drop 
• Sugar -1 cups

Method: 

• Take a pan and pour some ghee in it and add Cashew nuts, Almonds and Raisins and roast them till they are golden brown in colour and keep it aside. 
• In the same pan roast the vermicelli / add the roasted semiya and roast for 2 min. 
• Add the boiled water into it by stirring the vermicelli continuously without forming any lumps. 
• let it boil for 5 min / till vermicelli becomes soft , now pour the  sugar  into the vermicelli by stirring with the spatula
• Add Elachi powder, cashew nuts, almonds, raisins and food colour/ rose water. 
• Bring to simmer and stir in the middle and let it cook for 2-3 min and turn off the stove.
• Let it cool and take out in a bowl and serve hot.  

 Person who shared the recipe : 

                                                                          Divya 

Pani- poori - "May-2010 " Indian Cooking Challenge - (Step by Step Method)

This post is for the Srivalli’s ICC (Indian Cooking Challenge –May2010). Finally, I made it. I am so happy that my all time favorite Pani- puri coming perfectly and this is the first time I am participating in the ICC Challenge. Thanks to Srivalli’s for choosing this item. So without further delay, here goes the recipe. I used the recipe given by srivalli.

For making Puri :

• Sooji (Semolina ) -1/2 cup
• Maida ( Plain Refined Flour) - 1/2 tbsp.
• Cooking Soda-  1/2 teaspoon
• Salt to taste
• Oil for Frying

Method for making poori

• In a bowl take semolina, plain flour, Cooking Soda, salt, 2 tablespoons of oil and knead well to make a stiff dough, leave it bit stiffer than normal.
• Cover it with a wet muslin cloth and let it rest for 15 mins.
• Then pinch out very small balls and roll them into small circles.  or roll them like chapathi and cutter with a cookie cutter or any circle shape. i used a tin's lid . 
• Put the rolled out circles back under the muslin cloth while you are rolling the rest and before they can be fried.
• Heat oil in a thick bottomed pan, deep fry the puris
• The idea is to puff them and fry them till golden brown.
• Take them out and put them on kitchen paper towel, to get rid of the extra oil.
• Notes: Allow the puris to cool before storing them in an airtight container. Else they will become soggy.I kept them in oven for 15 min at 350degrees after frying so that they remain crispy. 

For Spicy Pani or Spicy Water :

• Chopped Mint Leaves -1 cups
• Chopped Coriander Leaves -1 tbsp.
• Tamarind -1/3 cup
• Green Chillies -2
• Cumin powder - 1 tsp.
• Kala Namak (Black Salt ) - 1 1/2 tsp.( pani taste comes with this ....really so tasty 
• Salt to taste

Method for making spicy water or Pani : 

• Extract pulp from the tamarind
• Add mint leaves, coriander, ginger, chillies and dry roasted cumin seed to the tamarind pulp. Add little water and blend to a smooth paste.
• Add salt and black rock salt to taste.
• Put it in the fridge to cool down.
• Add water as required.

For Filling

Potato Filling : 

•  Boiled Potato, finely chopped /mashed and mixed with salt and red chilli.

Lentil Filling : 

• Cooked Channa - 1 cup
• Salt to taste
• Chili powder -1/2 tsp
• Tuermic powder 
• Garam masala powder/Chat masala - 1/4 tsp 

Method:

• Cook the channa or peas till tender. Then drain and cook with the masala till aroma comes out.

For Red Tamarind Chutney:

• Tamarind /tamarind paste -1 cup( if it is tamarind paste take 1/2 cup and add little water to it)
• Jaggery -1/2 cup
• Sugar- 2 tbsp.
• Red chilli powder- 1/2 tsp
• Dry Roasted cumin powder- 1 tsp
• Kali Micrch (Black pepper) powder- 1/4 tsp.
• Cloves-2( original recipe calls for this , but i don't have this so i have not added)
• Warm water - 2 cups
• Oil -1 tsp.
• Salt to taste

Method for Red Tamarind Chutney: 

• Extract the pulp from tamarind. 
• In a pan dry roast the cumin seeds and the cloves. Pound them into coarse powder.
• To the tamarind pulp add jaggery, sugar, red chilli powder, black pepper powder, roasted cumin powder, cloves and salt.
• Put the mixture in a pan and heat for 5 minutes on medium heat.
• Remove from heat and let it cool down.
• This will tend to thicken up, so add warm water if it becomes too thick. 
• Once it cools, blend the contents in a blender to a smooth paste.

Assembling the Pani Puri / Gol Gappa

• Poke a small hole in the center of the Gole Gappa/ Puri
• Add a tsp of mashed boiled potato / Channa in the middle of the puri. Add a little of the red tamarind Chutney. Dip it in the spicy water / pour some spicy water in it
• Gulp it down.

Methi Paratha

Ingredients:

·                     Whole –wheat flour – 2 cups

·                     Methi leaves – 1 bunch (washed and dried)

·                     Oil – 2 tbsp

·                     Cumin seeds – 1 tsp

·                     Turmeric powder – ½ tsp

·                     Dhaniya-jeera   powder – 1 tsp

·                     Garam masala – 1tsp

·                     Red chilli pwd – ½ tsp

·                     Salt to taste

Method:

·                     Put all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl, add little warm water slowly little at a time to this mixture and knead to form soft and smooth dough without any lumps, and form it like a ball. Keep aside for 30 min.

·                     Divide the dough into lemon sized balls and roll in between your hands till they are smooth without any cracks.

·                     On a rolling board or on a clean surface lightly flour it with wheat flour, start rolling out the balls and form like a circle

·                     Heat a pan/tawa and fry the parathas one at a time, once u see the tiny bubbles rise on the surface on the paratha flip it on the other side.

·                     Drizzle a bit of oil or butter on the surface of the paratha .paratha is done when it is golden brown colour on both sides.

·                     Serve it hot with chilled yogurt or with any curry of u r choice.

Charu Podi /Rasam Powder

 Here goes the procedure :

Ingredients :

• Dhaniyalu/Coriander Seeds -1/4kg
• Miriyalu/Pepper -150gm
• Jeera-50gm
• kandipappu-1/4kg
• inguva /Hing - 1 tsp 

Dry roast without oil  all the ingredients, let them cool and then grind it coarsely/smoothly .

Nimmakaya Karam

Lemons in Telugu are called as Nimmakaya. We all know different pickles with lemon. But this is       Andhra special. This is an instant pickle which can be prepared with 10 min. Will be very tasty along with hot rice and ghee (or) with garalu/vada.I have first tasted this in my aunt’s house and asked her the recipe, but I lost the recipe and started searching the recipe and finally found at surasa.net and    tried once and it turned it well. So without further delaying, here goes the recipe:

Recipe Adapted from surasa.net

Ingredients: 

·   Juice of Lemons – 5 

·   Salt to taste

·   Channa Dal (senaga pappu)- 1 tbsp

·   Urad dal (Minapa Pappu)- 1 tbsp

·   Red chillies - 5

·   Fenugreek (Menthulu)- 1/2 tbsp

·   Mustard seeds (Avalu)- 1/2 tbsp

·   Asafoetida (Ingunva)

·   Oil – 1/2 tbsp

Method: 

·   Fry all ingredients except lemon juice and salt in oil. 

·   Allow it to cool. Grind to a fine paste or powder.

·   Add lemon juice and salt.