We both love stuffed parathe. But it has been a long time I made any. Though I made parathe once in a while, I took the shortcut . I had one huge radish in the fridge which needed some immediate attention. A paratha with this was on my mind ever since I read this comment . So I made these yesterday for breakfast. These brought back fond memories of our college days....
Few weeks ago, we had been to a week long trip to South Dakota. We had rented a house there and we cooked most of the meals at home. Since 3 families went together, the food became a little more elaborate than what I usually make on any trips. I took a pack of freshly made peanut chutney powder , my plan was to eat it with rice. My friends mom, who also came with us, prepared this easy but delicious raita with chutney pitto....
‘ Kadgi ‘ means raw jack fruit. ‘ Chakko ‘ or ‘ sushal ‘ is a kind of side dish with coconut. This dish is one of the most popular dishes among Konkanis. I had tasted it when I was a kid, but had completely forgotten about it. This dish is also called as “Kadgi sukke” (Sukke meaning a dry dish). Gowri sent me this recipe many days ago. For few days I could not find raw jack fruit here....
After a long time, we bought red beet. I prepared the usual side dish.He said, “Wah!!! its nice. Beet is good for health”. I was beaming with pride as I always do when he likes and appreciates the food. Then he continued, “Why dont you prepare beet soup, it tastes too good”. I was surprised, I never heard of beat soup, so i said “I have never heard of beet soup, I can’t even imagine how it would taste”....
Cooking for weekdays is becoming a juggling act for me. I try to keep things simple, but I still want my family to eat something fresh. My two year old is in his “terrible-twos” phase. So vegetables usually go untouched. I am finding new ways to include it back in their diet. Last week I tried this kadhi. It was simple, delicious and easy to make – 3 things which I look for in whatever I cook....
I have posted a lot of Konkani dishes, but one thing that I have not covered is “sundried items”. During summer, like any other Indian families, we too make a lot of different papads , wadis/odis and other items that can be stored for the entire year. My aayi also used to make these when we were kids. I have very fond memories of the summer holidays when we made all these....
Hope you all had a great vacation. I could not post anything here for last few months, but hopefully I can post something once in a while. Rasam is very common in South Indian meals. Usually it is very watery and does not have any vegetables like sambar which is thick and has vegetables. Rasams can be made with tomatoes, lemons, peppercorns etc. The powder can be made in advance and saved or made at the time of preparing rasam....
It was some 1 year ago, I was chatting with my friend Aruna and as usual we started discussing about food. She asked me if I have tasted the popular Gujarati dish Undhiyu . Though I had heard about this dish and tasted it before, I had not cooked it myself. So Aruna sent me the recipe. But just one week before our discussion, I had bought frozen Undhiyu mix – which comes with all the frozen vegetables and muthiya ....
Aayi makes two kinds of chutneys. One is hinga chutney and the other is alle chutney (Ofcourse she makes other chutneys also, but these two look similar). I never used to bother about which should go with what dish. But recently I am becoming specific about traditional food. So I was getting confused about these two chutneys. Yesterday while talking to Aayi, she gave me a simple answer, “make ginger chutney with anything prepared with urad daal, like dosa, idli etc and make hinga chutney with any other food like bhakri, buns etc”....
Karathe Sasam ‘Sasam’ are the Konkani dishes having uncooked coconut masala (like ambe-ananas sasam , beetroot sasam ). Karathe (Bittergourd/karela) or bhende(bhindi) sasam is used as a gravy, it has crispy fried bittergourd/okra in coconut masala. (Karathe sasam is more famous compared to bhende sasam). My dad always loved this dish, but since I hated Karela, I used to ask mom to give this sasam without karela in it. But recently when I prepared this dish (with Karela) I simply loved it....
We call Bottle gourd as ‘Gardudde ‘ in Konkani (there are other names also). ‘ Dudde ‘ is pumpkin, I wonder if it is related to pumpkin in someway?? I loved these burfis from my childhood. I would go on eating a half-dozen of them at a time. I think the color of these largely depend on the sugar. Though there are many bottle gourd dishes in Konkani cuisine, my personal favorite is always this burfi ....
Chibbad(Konkani) or Karbooja(Hindi) is a kind of sweet melon. There are so many different kinds of melons available here , I was very much confused which one to use for this dish (and also for the milkshake ). Finally I zeroed on cantaloupe which had the same taste as the one we got in India. Chibbad is one of the most loved fruits for Konkanis. The best ones are those whose skin comes off by itself and the flesh becomes like rava....
Finally I have started cooking with bone-in chicken. I am yet to find already cut bone-in Organic chicken here in grocery stores. So I always cooked with boneless chicken. I know it is very easy to cut a whole chicken, I have seen so many videos, but I still cannot get myself to do it. Few months back, one of my friends sent me a chicken curry with bone-in chicken....
We love parathas, I also find making kids lunchboxes (with some kind of protein) a big challenge every day. Today I had soaked chickpeas, so I decided to make these chickpeas parathas for their lunchbox. These were delicious and full of nutrients. I never use canned chickpeas. So I soak them fresh and make any dishes. If I forget to soak them beforehand, I soak them for an hour or two in hot water or put them in instantpot on yogurt mode for couple of hours....
Fenugreek(methi) leaves were one of the greens that I hated growing up. Whenever aayi prepared something with them, which was very rare because they were not very easily available in our small village, I would run away or find a reason not to eat it. Now I can say it has become one of my favorite greens. This is the same with most of the vegetables that I hated as a child....
This is a great breakfast or evening snack item. Very delicious one. When I was a kid, we used to grow cucumber in our backyard. So there was a huge list of items prepared with this. There was one more kind of squash (called Magge in Konkani, Mangalore Southe kayi in Kannada) which can also be used for all these recipes. In North Kanara, people grow turmeric in the backyard....
Wish you all a very happy Deepavali/Diwali. Gulab Jamun must be one of the most loved sweets in India. These days it is very easy to make them at home using ready made Gulab Jamun mixes, but few years ago, that was not the case. I used to make them from milk. It was a long process as making of khova or khoya takes a lot of time, but the hard work brings very good results....
I was planning to make naan for a long time now. It remained just a plan for a long time for some reason or other. Finally V gave enough push to actually try my hands on it. He usually does not like this very popular bread. But one of his colleagues is a great fan of garlic naan and V wants to invite him home sometime. I didn’t want to experiment on him, so I had to learn making these at home....
Like Malyalees, Konkanis love shevayi/idiyappam/sevai/shyavige . I was a huge fan of them while growing up. At my home, aayi makes the boiled rice version of these noodles for breakfast. I like that version since it is very easy to make and more healthy. But I wanted to post this, more popular method also here, for a long time now. These are bit easier to press because of the coconut....
Ingredients: Rice flour 1 cup Onion finely chopped 1 Sooji rava(optional) 2 table spns Chilli powder 1 tea spn Jeera 1/2 tea spn Coriander leaves finely chopped 3-4 strands Salt Method: Mix all ingerdients with water to the consistency of dosa batter. Make thin dosas. Serve hot with chutney powder. Serves : 3 Preparation time : 10min This is called Punjabi batata . I donno for what reason it is called so....
