Since my childhood, our staple combo for lunch and dinner at home, usually has been rice and some kind of gravy/dal with one or more sidedishes. However it has gradually changed in the last 5 years or so. It sometimes amazes me. As much as I love my comfort food, I get pretty bored soon. I crave for something different very often. Considering Ishaan and V also have developed same liking, it has gotten easier for me. These days we have dinners where I just make bread/pizza/soup or grilled fish and we all enjoy it.
I have been making this grilled salmon every week, recently. It is very easy to put together. We like salmon when it is marinated well. I have seen chefs on TV apply some kind of marinade to it and immediately grill it, but this never works for us. We like it when salmon has completely soaked the marinade. So after applying all the spices, I leave it in fridge for a minimum of 5-6 hours, sometimes overnight. If I am in a hurry to make this, I cut the fish into bite size pieces, and then only 1-2 hours of marination time works. The really useful cast iron grill pan comes in handy for this one.
Ingredients: 1/2 lb salmon 1 tbl spn lemon juice 1/2 tea spn cumin powder 1/2 tea spn coriander powder 1 tea spn chilli powder Salt
Method: Apply cumin powder, coriander powder, chilli powder, salt and lemon juice to salmon and leave it aside for atleast 5-6hrs (or overnight). Cut it into bite size pieces if you want to cut down the marination time to 1-2hrs. Grill it till done.
Serves : 2 Preparation time : 20mins
Wish you all a very happy Yugadi (Ugadi). I normally do not make anything special for this festival. But I read so many wishes on blogs/Facebook etc, I felt like making something special. As I have mentioned many times, none of us in the family have any sweet tooth. V atleast eats sweets, but Ishaan and I stay away from it. When I started thinking about it, I wanted to make these polis. I have heard about them many times and I have distant memories of tasting them at a friend’s place in Belgaum. Well, I tried them and they came out really great. I shared some with a friend who loved them too. V, who does not like anything with peanuts (except for peanut chutney pitto which is a favorite), enjoyed them a lot. Ingredients for Stuffing: 1 and 1/2 cups peanuts 1 and 1/2 cups brown sugar Or use jaggery 1 heaped tea spn ghee 1/4 cup milk 1/2 tea spn cardamom powder
Ingredients for Cover: 1 cup wheat flour 1/2 cup all purpose flour A little salt Oil
Method: Make a dough with wheat flour, all purpose flour, about 2 tea spns oil, salt and water. (I added about 1 and 1/4 cup water approx). Knead very well for a while, close it and keep it aside for about 1 hr. Roast the peanuts, let them cool to room temperature and then powder them. Try to make a fine powder as much as possible. Mix the powder, ghee, brown sugar(or jaggery) on a medium-low heat. Let the sugar melt down and mix with peanut powder. Add milk, mix well and switch off heat. At this point the mixture will be quite wet. Let it come to room temperature and it comes to a consistency where it can be easily handled. Make small balls of the dough and stuffing – the stuffing ball can be made almost double the size of dough because the dough stretches when rolled. (With above quantity, I made 11 balls each of stuffing and dough). Apply some oil to the dough and spread it on your palm. Keep the stuffing on it and cover with dough. Roll into a small chapati size. You can use wheat flour for dusting if needed (many people use oil to help in rolling, I used flour). Roast them on hot tava. Apply some ghee (optional) while roasting. Serve with a dollop of ghee. (When cooled, they harden a bit, heat them up a bit in microwave and they go back to being very soft).
Makes about 11 Preparation time : 45mins
