carrotsandcherries

Small potato pulao is one of the favourites of my brother and me at home. The favourite has many steps in its preparation, but it is definitely worth the work !!!! I wanted to make aloo dum actually but then, I thought it is nicer to prepare a variation of this rice for the afternoon. This is a recipe adapted from 100 Rice delights of Mallika badrinath. I used the baby potatoes that I bought from the Thursday farmers market last week, they turned out to be little sweet in taste. I also used the "Tomates perle" (pearl tomatoes) from the market. We need the following for 3 persons:- Sona masuri / Basmati rice - 1 1/2 cups Baby potatoes - 15 Tomatoes paste and water (I used the cooked chick peas water) - 2 1/2 cups (Has to be  adjusted on the amount of water required by the rice to cook nicely to the separate grain consistency) Chick peas - 1/2 cup (soaked overnight) Echalotes (Shallots) - 3 medium sized, finely sliced Corriander - 6 sprigs Curd - 2 tbsp Garam masala - 1/4 ...

It is so hot nowadays, believe me even gourmet food does not look so appetizing. I think the heat wave in Germany is having an effect on this place too.... Body finds solace in the simplest of foods now. "Curd rice" is THE saviour !!!!! But only carbohydrates wont do good to the body, a good portion of vegetables is a must. So the lunch menu was Curd rice and stuffed capsicum. I will be blogging the recipe for curd rice later..... Now comes the stuffed capsicum. This recipe is an inspiration from a barbaque party that we had some days ago. I tried to make a taste bud satisfying potato stuffing for the capsicums that I had bought the day before. The stuffing I prepared was for 3 medium sized capsicum. Ingredients Potatoes - 2 large (around 740 gms, boiled and mashed) Red Onion - 1 large (chopped) Oil - 1 tsp Salt - 2/3 tsp Masala powder for the stuffing:- Corriander seeds - 3/4 tbsp Cumin - 1/3 tbsp Methi seeds - 5 nos. Red chilli - 1 small Method 1. Heat a pan, now ...

It is friday - time to prepare a special sweet for God :) This time I wanted to keep the sweet simple, subtle and good to eat. The sweet that immediately came in to my mind was Kozhakkattai The traditional version of the sweet is somewhat time taking, but I found a simple way to make it. So here is what we need to make 12 kozhakattais (3.5" long); Rice powder - 1 cup (I prefer to use the Nirapara brand) Water (boiling) - 1 1/3 cup Salt - 2 pinches For the filling: Fresh coconut chopped - 1 cup Cardamom - 3 Sugar - 2/3 cup (I used the brown sugar of cane that we get here - it tastes similar to jaggery) Water - 1/4 cup 1. Boil the water and pour this into a bowl containing the rice flour. Mix this nicely with a spoon. Allow it to cool enough for kneading it into a smooth dough. 2. While the above is cooling, grind the chopped coconut and cardamoms to a rough paste. 3. Heat a pan, pour in the sugar and water in it nicely stir it and then leave it for 3-4 minutes to boil t...

It was relaxing to prepare a simple pizza sauce yesterday. Just chop all the ingredients, fry them a little and the let them simmer on low heat for sometime, so that the sauce is infused will all the lovely flavours. The sauce tops 3 - 20cm dia pizza perfectly. Ingredients: Cherry tomatoes - 16 Basil leaves - 4 (I used the fresh ones that a friend gave to me, since she grows them :). The fresh leaves gives a very nice flavour to the sauce) Echalote (finely chopped) - 1 Red chilli garlic powder - 1/2 tsp Pepper - 2 pinches Bay leaf - 1 Cinnamon - 1 (1" stick) Sugar - 1/3 tsp Salt - 2/3 tsp (can be added according to the taste) Olive oil - 1 tsp Method: 1. Heat a pan with olive oil, when you start smelling the oil drop in the Echalotes and fry them for 3 mins. 2. Add the halved and sliced cherry tomatoes and the chopped Basil leaves and cook it till it becomes pulpy. At this point add bay leaf, cinnamon stick, red chilli garlic powder, sugar, salt and pepper and 1/2 cup of ...

I have followed the basic outline of the steps for the Basic pizza dough from Meeta of Whatsforlunchhoney it worked well for me. I did not measure the temperature like Meeta, but the pizza was pretty decent. I also changed the flour that I used. I used Farine Bise as it is called here in Swiss. There are so many  types of flour here. Well the experiment worked ! I used the following to make the basic pizza dough. It yielded me three 20 cm dia pizzas. (I think I could have managed to make 4 really thin crust pizzas out of it) Farine bise - 2 1/4 cups Yeast (Instant) - 1/2 tsp Sugar - 1/2 tbsp Olive oil - 1 tbsp Water - 300 ml 1. Mix in the flour, yeast, sugar and oil in a big bowl. 2. Mix either using your hands or using a electric mixer. Mix well till no dry flour is seen in the bowl. 3. Now either knead with your hand or change the attachment of the electric mixer to the kneading one and knead the dough for around 5-6 minutes. The dough must stick to the bottom of the ...