Wheat dumplings in Daal

This is favorite dish of mine and sis's, popularly known as 'Varan fala'. Very simple to make and yummy yummy to taste. And now roomies also love it... Its

Ingredients: 1 cup Toor daal, tamarind (2-3 inch pieces), jaggary, 3 cup wheat flour, sambar powder, salt, 1 teaspoon turmeric powder, red chilli powder, 2 big spoons of oil

Recipe: Pressure cook toor daal. Soak tamarind in bowl of water. Make wheat flour dough as you make for roties.

After the daal is cooked and cooker is cooled, put turmeric powder, salt in it. And mix it properly. Heat oil in a big pan, put mustard in it. Once it starts to crackle add pinch of asafotida. Squeeze the tamrind and add the tamarind water to the heated oil. Add red chilly powder, sambar powder (actually you should put Kala masala; the popular ingredient in my cooking and not available here). Put the softened daal and a glass of water. You can add more if you like it. Bring this dall to boil. If you like you can add tomatoes, onions to the daal while pressure cooking it.
While the daal is boiling, make a little thick roti of the dough. Cut it small squares of it using knife. If you want to be creative, you can actually make different shapes out of the dough like starts, small balls, spirals as we used to do it in childhood :-). They taste gooooood. Once daal comes to boil, add jaggary. The right amount of jaggary is; its size should as big as the remainants of tamarind after you squeeze it. Add the wheat dumplings in the daal. Put gas on sim and let dough cook. It will take around 10-15 minutes to cook.
This is a main course and you don't need to make roti or rice with it. Serve with tons of ghee. Try it, you can't have it just once !!!

Paratha

I like to call myself paratha expert. Call it experimentation or sheer laziness of cooking roti and sabji separately, I like to mix vegetables in flour and make different types of parathas. And here I want to clear of the myth that parathas are very difficult to make.
Ok the stuffed ones are difficult to learn but once you get the trick, there is no looking back. We can make two types of parathas: stuffed or mixed (as I like to call it)
Till the time I come up with good written explanation for how to make stuffed paratha, lets make the simple parathas. Also the quantity of ingredients given is not strict. You can change as you instinct permits :-)

Lets make the mixed type paratha

Ingredients: Any of the vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage, cucumber, raddish, potato, spinach, methi… or any leafy vergetable for that matter. I have never tried mixing two or more vegetables but you can try that also. That should make interesting taste.
Salt, 1 teaspoon turmeric powder, 2 teaspoon red chilly powder or paste of green chillies and ginger, coriander leaves, lime juice, 1 teaspoon cumin seeds, 1 tea spoon ajwain, 2 cups wheat flour, 1 tea spoon garam masala and optional gram flour

Reciepe: If you are taking a green vegetable, Chop it finely. If you are using vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage, grate it or chop finely in mixi/food processes. Make sure there are no big lumps of the vegetable left behind. Add salt, turmeric powder, red chilly powder to this. Grind cumin seeds and ajwain and the powder. If you like taste of garam masala, add a teaspoon of masala. If you like fresh taste, put 2 spoons of green chilly+ginger paste instead of red chilly powder and garam masala. (It really tastes good, try sometime ;-)). If coriander is available, finely chop it and add two spoonfuls. Ad dash of lemon juice if you like it. Mix this mixture properly.
If you have taken vegetable like cucumber, onion, raddish or potato, which get watery, keep the mixture aside for 10 minuts. After 10 minutes, squeeze it hard and separate the water in a bowl/cup. We will use it to knead the flour.
Now add wheat flour to this mixture. You can 3-4 big spoonfuls of gram flour if you like. This gives very nice taste which I like a lot. Do not add too much of flour. It should be enough to mix out vegetable mixture. So if you have one cup of vegetables, One and half to two cups of flour should be enough. Add water to it as required, such that you get soft enough dough to make roties.
And make parathas. Put good amount of oil on them while roasting. Serve with yogurt, pickle or ketchup.

This is so simple no.

PS: Try aloo paraths(kacche allo ke parathe) this way. They taste yum !

Panhe

Since it is the summer season, I thought of starting this with a drink that will cool off all the heat and is very easy to make and off course very very favorite of mine. This is commonly made in Marathi household during summer days. I am not sure if its made in other places too.

Ingredient: Raw mangoes, sugar, salt, cardamom powder
Recipe: Pressure cook the mangoes till they become soft. 2-3 whistles should be enough. Once cooled, remove the cover and separate the soft part. You can use this as it is or put in mixi and make it uniform. This can be preserved in refrigerator for a week or so.

Whenever you want to make Panhe, mix this with chilled water in 1:4 portion and sugar to taste. You can add jaggary instead of sugar if you like it. It is cooler than sugar and gives different taste. If you like chatpata taste, you can add pinch of black salt or table salt too. Or you can add pinch of cardamom powder.

The "affair" begines ...

For the first 23-24 years of my life I thought that I am born ‘kitchen hater’. As a kid I used to find thousand reasons to not help mom in kitchen. All I could manage to learn was how to make tea. I couldn’t even cook plain rice. The story of ‘how I used aata in place of besan (gram flour) in a dish and made a sticky mess’ is still famous in my family. After that fiasco dad never allowed to go near the gas-stove. Sis having natural talent in cooking would cook different dishes for me and I would dole out orders to her. My mom and all the other ladies in house used to have sleepless night thinking about ‘Kya hoga is ladaki ka shaadi ke baad ?’ They had chalked out plan of going into hiding for few years after marriage so that the husband’s side won’t find them to curse about me not being able to cook :-D.

My life seemed to go the ‘Happily ever after’ way, just when I was thrown to a land far far away called Bangalore where they served nothing but rice and rice. For a girl, not eating rice for weeks altogether this was hard to digest. There was no way to get out of it unless I start cooking myself. First few moths were very difficult; to learn to get the right amount of pressure for daal, how to turn the roti so it becomes round and not shapes of different countries, and what ingredient goes with what and in what sequence. There was so much learning you see and my learning curve was pretty fast, with help of my roomies and of course numerous calls to mom. As I started cooking, I discovered that I actually love it, not only that, I enjoy inviting people over and making different dishes for them. I should tell you that moiself along with roomies have hosted quite few successful parties like the bridal shower we had for a friend, Ganpati pooja when I tried putran-poli for first time. With time, calls to mom have reduced and variety in the food in increased. Now I aspire to open a restaurant of my own some day.

Till then I thought of putting some simple recipes together for new learners like me and some experiments that I try out, and some dishes that I love to make again and again. Any contributions or suggestions are more than welcome :-).


PS: I might tend to use lot of Marathi/Hindi names for the ingredient names I don’t know.