Some 2-3 months back, Aruna had sent me recipes of many dishes. This was one of them. She said, “You must be knowing we prepare different types of saru-upkari . Basically it is just pressure cooking the pulses and adding a seasoning/ phanna of mustard, red/green chilies and garlic. On the fasting days, curry leaves are used instead of garlic. This is a little different type than the authentic saru-upkari , which my mom makes and we all like it. One can have this like soup. Once in a while, my mom cooks this and simple upkaris. No daal or no randayi . Whenever everyone gets bored of daal , this dish is prepared. She makes this out of all pulses”.
I was hearing the name Saru-upkari for the first time. In Konkani, Saru means, something like rasam , it is a watery dish used both as a drink and gravy. Upkari means a dry stir fried dish with coconut. After exchanging 2-3 mails with Aruna, I understood that, Saru-upkari is a combination of both these. In other words, it is a watery upkari with pulses. Thanks Aruna, for introducing me to this dish.
Read Manjula’s version of saru-upkari .
Ingredients: 1 cup yellow dried peas( vatane ) 1 tomato 2 garlic cloves crushed (or 4-5 Indian small garlic cloves) 1/2 tea spn mustard seeds 2 green chilies A pinch turmeric 1 tea spn oil 1 tbl spn grated coconut(optional) Salt
I used green dried peas instead of yellow ones. Any pulses can be used. Tastes good with Kulith (Horsegram), chowli (Black eyed beans), black chana , moong , tingaavro (navy beans) and maybe many others.
Method: Soak the yellow peas overnight and pressure cook with turmeric and green chills until soft and mushy. Allow to cool. Keep oil for seasoning, add mustard. When they start popping, add crushed garlic and fry till garlic is slightly brown. Add the tomatoes and cook for 2 min. Now add the boiled peas and mix well. Add required water and bring to boil. Serve hot with rice.
Serves : 2-3 Preparation time : 30mins
Note : It should not be too watery. A semi thick gravy goes well with plain rice.
Many of you requested me to post Christmas special food here, but I am a person who has neither celebrated it at my home nor did I meet anyone who has celebrated it. Christmas to me was always confined to the beautiful arrangements made in every corner of my native town. When I went to do my bachelors, all my cooking was confined to easy-to-do mix and match food, so no special christmas food there. Then while working in Bangalore, I used to be so tired after coming home from work that, I never celebrated any festivals – not even the festivals I was used to. It is after coming to US, through all other food blogs and through the celebrations going around, I have started to take interest in western festival food. But unfortunately, with so many things going on in my life at this moment, I cannot spend any time to read and understand about it. I am sure I will do it by next year’s Christmas.
One of you asked me for the recipe of plum cake. I got few recipes online or in library, but could not try them yet and I don’t post anything here unless I try it myself. When I was searching for it sometime back, I got this plum-streusel cake recipe . I changed it so that I could make this cake with whatever ingredients I had at home. This cake is not very sweet and the streusel gives it a crunchy topping.
Ingredients: Struesel: ¾ cup sugar (I used pure cane sugar) 3 tbl spn all purpose flour or maida 2 tea spn cinnamon powder ¼ tea spn salt 2 tbl spn softened butter ½ cup chopped walnuts
Cake: 8 halved and pitted pulms ¼ cup sugar(for coating plums) 1 tea spn baking powder 1 cup all purpose flour or maida ¾ cup sugar 3 tbl spn softened butter 1 egg ½ cup milk
Method: Mix all the ingredients of streusel to get a consistency shown below.
Mix ¼ cup sugar with plums till they are well coated with sugar.
Blend sugar and butter. When it is well mixed, add egg and blend again. Now add milk and mix well. Mix sifted all purpose flour or maida, baking powder slowly by mixing continuously. Grease a oven proof baking pan. (I used medium loaf pan for this). Spread half of the cake batter in the pan.
Spread half the streusel on it.
Spread 8 plum halves on top.
Spread remaining cake batter on top.
Spread remaining streusel and then plums.
Bake in the middle rack of the preheated oven(300F) for 30-40mins or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Wrap remaining cake with a silver foil before refrigerating them.
Makes 8 big pieces Preparation time : 1hr.
Lesson learnt: The plum halves are bit hard to cut after baking. So chop them finely or make slices lengthwise and use.
