Vegetable Pulao

Ingredients:
½ kg Basmati Rice
50 gm carrots, cut
50 gm, French beans, cut
50 gm, Cauliflower, cut
50 gm peas
6 tbsp. ghee
4 cloves
4 cardamoms
4 pieces cinnamon
4 onions, sliced
½" piece ginger, crushed
4-6 flakes garlic, crushed
½ tbsp. chili powder
¼ tsp. turmeric powder
2 tbsp. coriander leaves, chopped
6 green chilies
Salt to taste
4 glasses water



Method:

In a cooker heat the ghee, and then add the cloves, cardamoms, cinnamon, sliced onions and fry for some time. Add crushed ginger and garlic. Add the rice and fry for some time. Then add all the vegetables, chili powder, turmeric powder, coriander leaves, green chilies, salt and water.

Close the cooker and cook for 5 minutes under pressure. Remove from fire and serve hot.

Goli Bajey

Ingredients:
2 cups maida
½ cup curd
A pinch edible soda
2 green chillies chopped
Small piece finely chopped ginger
Salt to taste
Oil for frying

Method:
Mix maida and curds to form a thick batter, which can be dropped to oil with hand. Add salt, green chilli and ginger. Heat oil in a pan, and drop little balls of batter into it. Fry on low fire. Serve it with chutney.

Mangalore Buns

Ingredients:
¼ kg flour
2 plantians (soft variety)
2 tbsp curds
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
¼ tsp sodium bicarbonate
1 tbsp ghee
Oil for deep frying

Method:
Take ½ cup water in vessel and add salt, sugar, sodium bicarbonate (cooking soda), ghee, plantians and curds to it. Mix well. Add flour and knead well. Keep it aside for 8 hours or overnight. Make small balls and roll thick. Deep fry.

Note: The buns will remain fresh for 4-5 days.

Egg Coated Rice

Ingredients:
1 cup cooked basmati rice
1 egg
1 tbsp. ghee
Turmeric powder (a pinch)
Chillie powder (a pinch)
Salt to taste

Method:

Mix raw egg in a bowl with turmeric, chilli powder & salt. Beat it well, till foam is formed. In a pan put ghee & fry cooked rice for 3-4 minutes till it is slightly dry. Add the egg mixture slowly and mix it up with rice so that rice is well coated. Keep tossing it for 4 –5 minutes . Serve with
tomato sauce or green chutney.

Egg Curry

Ingredients:

12 Eggs
3 potatoes


Masala to Grind:

4 medium onions
2 flakes garlic
1” ginger
4 red long chilies
3 red short chilies
¼ tbsp turmeric
½ tbsp cumin
¼ tbsp mustard
Small ball of tamarind
3 cloves
2 pieces cinnamon
8 -10-pepper corns
¾ tbsp khuskus
1 big tomato
Salt to taste
1 tsp. Vinegar
1 tbsp. sugar

For Seasoning:
1-2 tbsp. oil
1 onion (sliced)
1 small tomato (chopped)

Method:

Boil the eggs and potatoes separately. Remove the shell and cut the eggs into halves. Cut the potatoes into cubes. Grind all the above masala ingredients into a fine paste.

Heat oil in a pan and fry sliced onion till brown. Then add the masala and fry for 3 to 5 minutes. Add chopped tomato and fry with the masala. Add little masala water. When it starts to boil add salt, vinegar and sugar. Later put the eggs and potatoes. Allow it to boil.

Ripe Mango Curry

Ingredients:
Small ripe mangoes 6 in number
Small piece jaggery
Salt to taste

To Grind:
Mustard 1/4 tsp.
Coriander corns 2 tsp
Jeera 1/2 tsp
Pepper corns 6
Garlic 3-4 flakes
Onion 1 medium sized
Turmeric 1/4 tsp.
Kashmiri chillies 6-7
Short red chillies 2
Grated coconut 2sp
A small ball of tamarind

Seasoning:
1 tbsp. oil
1/2 tsp. mustard
Few curry leaves

Method:
Wash & clean the mangoes thoroughly. Soak the mangoes in one cup of warm water for 15 minutes and squeeze them to remove the pulp. Discard the skin and reserve the pulp water. Grind the masala ingredients with little water to a fine paste. In a vessel mix the ground masala and pulp water to medium thick consistency. Add water if required.

Bring this curry to a boil adding salt. Now add mangoes along with jaggery and cook them covered till soft. Heat oil, splutter mustard and add curry leaves and fry till brown. Pour this over the curry. Keep covered and serve hot along with rice.

Multi Vitamin Pan Cake (Neer dosai)

Neer dosai has always been my favourite dishes. I have enjoyed preparing as well as eating neer dosai. Since the dosai is thin you tend to consume a lot of them in one go. The last time that I have had this dish in a Restaurant is at the Udupi Krishan Bhavan in koramangala when I had been to India for my vacation.

Here is a newer version of the neer dosai. A neer dosai filled with taste and vitamins called the Multi Vitamin neer dosa.

Ingredients:

Idli rice 2 Cups
Crushed wheat 2 tbsp
Methi seeds 1 tsp.
Moong dal 2 tsp.
Ragi powder 2 tbsp
Egg 1
Salt as per taste
Oil or Ghee

Method:

Soak rice with methi, dal, and wheat for about 2 hours. Grind all the soaked ingredients along with egg and ragi powder into a fine paste adding little water. Add enough water to the batter to have thin consistency. Add salt as per taste.

Heat, grease a non stick pan with oil or ghee and fry crispy dosas. Serve hot with green chutney & tomato ketchup.

Note: Crushed wheat can be substituted with wheat flour.

Kori Rotti

Kori Rotti..means roti with chicken. I'm not sure if my veggie friends would like to see me post a lot of non veg dishes. But I cannot resist posting this dish.

A Trade mark of Bunt community. The kori rotti is papad like, crackling dry bread made from rice flakes. One dips the uneven bits of this rotti into the curry whereupon the bread goes limp. The fun is to tuck in while some of the crispness can be still felt in your mouth.

Ingredients:

Chicken - 1kg, cleaned and cut
Coconuts -2
1 for milk
1 small coconut grated
Red Chillies - 15 -20
Coriande seeds - 2 level tbsps
Jeera seeds - 1 level tbsps
peppercorns - 6
Ghee for frying
onion- chopped
Turmeric powder - 1 tsp
Garlic - 10 flakes
onion chopped - 1
Butter - 1 tbsp
Salt to taste
Juice of 1 lemon

Seasoning :

Ghee -2 tsp.
Inion -1 chopped
Garam masala (elaichi, dalchini, lavang) 1 tsp

Method:

Grate 1 coconuts and grind finely with 2 cups hot water. Squeeze out thick coconut milk and keep aside. Add 3 cups of hot water to the residue and take out thin milk. Roast grated coconut till light brown. Fry ingredients from 4 to 8 in a little ghee. Fry the chopped onion till light brown in ghee. Grind all these together with turmeric powder and garlic flakes with a little of the thin coconut milk till very fine.

Remove the masala, wash the mixer with a little water and add it to the masala along with the thin coconut milk, cleaned and cut chicken. 1 chopped onion, 1 tbsp. Butter, salt to taste and boil in a cooker for 5 minutes under pressure.

Remove and add thick coconut milk, lemon juice and bring to a boil, then simmer for a few minutes. Keep 2 tsp. Ghee in a flat vessel on the fire. Add chopped onion and fry till brown. Add garam masala powder (lavang, elaichi, and dalchini) and pour the curry over the seasoning, cover and remove from fire. Serve with Roti, Idli, Neer Dosa, apam or Dosa Rice.

Usually served with Roti – a crisp rice flakes preparation which could be bought in any Mangalore store, in any big city of India or abroad. Roti is a traditional dish of the Bunts served at every wedding and party. It should be soaked in curry and eaten.

Mangalorean Chicken curry

Ingredients
Chicken 1 kg (cut into medium pieces)
Cloves - 4
Sticks of cinnamon - 3
Ghee - 3 tsp
Onion - 1 (thinly sliced)
Tomatoes - 3
Potatoes - 2Salt to taste

Masala for grinding
Onions - 4
Red Chilies - 6
Coriander seeds - 2 tsp
Jeera -2 tsp
Turmeric powder -1 tsp
Coriander Leaves (chopped)-3 tsp
Cloves of garlic -3
Ginger - 1 inch
Pepper corns - 6
Small lemon sized tamarind

Method

Boil the Chicken and potatoes, with cloves, Cinnamon and salt and keep it aside.

Take ghee in a pan and fry the thinly sliced onion till golden brown, then add tomatoes to it and fry it for a while. Then add the masala and fry thoroughly for about 15 minutes.

Add the cooked chicken along with stock, add some water as required and bring it to boil. Garnish with coriander leaves.

Salt, Pepper and the Spices of Life

Now that I have mentioned what my blog would contain, it's time to start off my first post. I wanted to post someting about the name that I chose for my blog. Not like the regular names, I chose something unique. After a lot of thinking, I chose to name my new blog as "Salt, Pepper and the Spices of Life". I don't want to restrain my posts to be related only to food. Instead, I thought it's a good idea to have anything and everythiing that would help you spice up your life.

Imagine that you're sitting at a table, having a meal with some friends. Bowls of soup are served to everyone at the table. Before tasting the soup, the person next to you reaches for the salt and pepper, and for the next 20 seconds vigorously shakes into the soup more salt and pepper than you would use in a month.

You have a pained look on your face. These thoughts immediately go through your mind: "Why would you put salt and pepper in soup, or on any dish, BEFORE you taste it? How do you know how much to add?" You might also think, "How can someone put so much salt and pepper in their food?"

Of course, the roles could be reversed. You might be the one who loves to put a lot of salt and pepper on your food and the person next to you eats the soup without adding salt or pepper. In that case, you think, "How can she eat this bland soup without putting any seasoning in it?"
When it comes to salt, pepper, onions, garlic, curry or just about any type of seasoning, we tend to see things only one way - OUR way. It's hard for us to understand how someone could enjoy food when it is not seasoned as we think is appropriate. We cringe when we see someone "overdoing" or "under-doing" the spices.

How we season our food is a matter of preference and personal taste. There is no right or wrong way to use seasonings. Furthermore, the way in which another applies salt and pepper does not affect us in any way. They're not putting the salt and pepper in YOUR soup. They are putting the spices in their own soup.

Our world is so diverse, and yet it is difficult for us to accept each other's preferences. Often, when we see people doing things we wouldn't do, our mind says:

Why aren't they thinking as I think?
Why aren't they acting as I would act?

Your mind would often have you believe that your way is superior. Your beliefs and habits are shaped by your genetics and your environment. Each person has different genetics and has grown up in an environment that is different than yours.

Why expect everyone to come to the same conclusion?

Our spiritual growth comes when we learn to accept that others have different preferences, and we honor those preferences. There is no universal religion that everyone will agree to practice. There is no universal political viewpoint that all will accept. There is no one way of raising children that all cultures will agree upon. Marriage customs will vary from culture to culture.

Getting people to agree on these issues is like trying to get everyone to use the same amount of salt and pepper on their food. It's not going to happen.

The diversity in this world is beautiful and we can open our hearts to it. Within our own country and in our relations with people in other countries, we need to continually remind ourselves that it's perfectly acceptable for people to have preferences. If the other person is not harming us,

why can't we just smile and get on with life?

The next time you're tempted to judge or criticize the way other people think or act, realize that in most cases, they're just using a different amount of salt or pepper than you would use. Allow them to have their preferences, and there is no need to even consider what YOU would do.

About this blog

Not many of you would have had the experience of cooking in your childhood. But I still remember the day I started my cooking. It was when I started assisting my mom in her cooking in my early teens. I used to observe her as she instructed me to take the right measures for preparing the masala for the curries.

Starting from preparing simple stuffs like the morning coffee / tea to a not so simple dish as preparing idli's and dosa's my passion to cook grew in leap and bounds as days passed. I always used to find cooking more interesting and sometimes it was amusing too. It was fun to see the dosa take it's shape after the battar was poured and spread onto the pan (tawa). It was also fun to see the chappati taking the shape of a continents like Africa or Ausralia. Those were the days when I was still learning the art of cooking.

This blog will contain posts not just of the recepies but anything and everything to do with things that would spice up your life and hence the name "Salt, Pepper and the Spices of Life".

Many of the indian recepies in this blog would be that of my mom with a slight tweak or two. Since I am a non-veggie, you would see a mix of dishes (both veg as well as non veg) being posted in this blog. The only thing that you would miss out would be the pictures.