Plateau of Flowers

No...we did not go to Scotland this weekend for our holiday, but only biked down 155 km from Pune to Kaas. This small till-recently a nondescript place near Satara has become famous for its fields of wild flowers of every hue imaginable, which bloom for only a few weeks after monsoons!

You have to go there to experience the beauty of nature at its best - vast patches of white, pink, violet, magenta, green and yellow flowers and grasses shimmering between hardy granite rocks and bubbling streams - and home to hundreds of buzzing bees and butterflies. I am no botanist, and cannot identify the flowers found there, but I sure am a nature lover enough to respect and enjoy nature:)

It was a very nice trip - short and sweet, and the weather was perfect to picnic outside under the mellow sun. Some newspaper reports had mentioned about the irresponsible behaviour of the tourists visiting there - but I was genuinely surprised to see no littering around the plateau, and also hardly anyone was damaging/plucking the flowers. We also went to the Kaas lake and spent a good hour just staring at the placid lake, hoping for its own Nessie to appear:)

Posting a few pictures of hubby and me posing with the flowers:) Will look forward to reading your comments on this soon.

Pasta Salad

This pasta salad makes for a very healthy and snappy meal to fix up, for those lazy weekend brunches:) Plus, it doesn't hurt at all that it tastes great too!

We like using penne rigate for our salad - since it has this definite bite to it when its cooled just right or 'al dente'. Also the ridges help in holding the salad dressing. We like changing the recipe to whats available in our fridge that day, and what we both are in the mood for - cheese type, dressing, veggies, and herbs.

This particular salad was prepared last weekend, using finely chopped onions and cucumber, bite-sized pieces of green capsicum and ripe red tomatoes (use the small tomatilloes if you can find them in the supermarket), and steamed corn. Mix all these with the al-dente pasta (ensure that every ingredient is cold), add chopped cheddar (or crumble in some feta cheese), season it with salt, pepper and dried/fresh herbs, and dress it with your dressing-of-the-day. For this particular salad, we used a blue cheese-mint viniagrette straight out of a bottle:)

If your in the mood to prepare your dressing - simply mix extra-virgin olive oil with freshly squeezed lime juice, and add salt, pepper and mixed herbs. Shake well to prepre an emulsion, and drizzle over the salad. Quick, healthy and very tasty - you have to try this to belive my claims:)

Fish cutlet from Udaipur

This yummy recipe has come all the way from Udaipur, from my MIL's kitchen:) My pa-inlaw is very fond of fish, so this was made especially for him. I will be posting the exact recipe after a detailed discussion with MIL, but I know that she first pre-cooked the fish (frest-water rohu), then mashed it and removed all the bones. This she seasoned with freid onions, green chillies, and spices and salt. Shaped into flattened balls and then grilled on a hot pan with minimal oil, you get these yummy cutlets, for a very tasty and healthy snack/appetiser.

The picture below is of a fried fish dish - also prepared by my ma-in law. I guess these dishes are definitely on the menu when we reach Udaipur next month:)

Paneer Kofta

I am quite fond fo kofte..an Indian preparation of food where small balls of the desired material is deep fried and then eaten along with a rich-creamy gravy. These kofte that you see in the pictures are made out of paneer, or cottage cheese. Generally many cooks prefer to stuff the paneer balls with finely chopped dry fruits like cashews, raisins and almonds - I personally feel that depends on how rich do you want your dish to be. So for me, the stuffing is generally optional.

The kofte are quite simple to prepare, the gravy requires a bit more of preparation:).

Paneer Kofta - Grate 250 g of soft fresh paneer (cottage cheese) along with 1 medium sized boiled potato. Season with salt and pepper/red chilli powder. Shape into elongated balls - use cream if required, and deep fry to get crisp golden kofte balls. If you want - stuff with either grated cheddar cheese, or even chopped dry fruits.

Gravy - Soak 10 odd cashews in water. Meanwhile fry some chopped onions, garlic and ginger in oil and keep aside to cool. Finely grind onion-garlic-ginger to a fine paste, and also the cashew. Next, keep oil in a kadhai, and pop some cumin seeds, cinnamon sticks and green cardamom pods. Add the onion and cashew paste and fry for a little while. Season with salt, red chilli powder or white pepper powder, and garam masala powder. Add water to get a thick rich gravy. Add the paneer balls/kofte and simmer gently. Garnish with fresh gren coriander and serve while hot. I like to have my kofta with buttery naans

Fish Masala Fry

I am a fish lover. But not my hubby:( So it is quite an occasion when I eat fish - either outside in some restautant, or at home. Yesterday - Hubbs insisted that I buy some fish, and make it for myself:) So off I went to a new fish store, to buy some. Though I am personally fond of fresh water fish, they were out of stock, so I instead got a full 'Rawas' or some type of salmon.

Rawas is quite a popular fish here in India - especially with hotel chefs and in South Indian homes. I know that Hubbs likes crispy fried fish more than any other preparation - so I made these masala rawas fry yesterday. They turned out divine! Hubby liked it a lot..and took second helping:) The pictures have not turned out too well..they were taken in a hurry just before we started on them:) Do try this recipe - I am sure any fish will go well with this recipe.

Recipe: Clean and pat dry the fish pieces. Marinate in giner-garlic -green chillies - fresh coriander-lime juice/vinegar juice paste, along with salt. Ensure that the marinade is thick and completely coats the fish pieces. These spices will give the taste to the fishy. Try to keep it in the marinade for atleast 30 minutes. Next prepare a not-too-thick batter of egg, salt, pepper and corn flour, and keep aside 1/2 cup of semolina. Dip all the fish pieces in the batter, and then coat in semolina, and keep aside for 5-10 minutes. Next deep fry the fishy - it does not take long to cook - give or take 2-3 minutes per side.

Chicken Lollipops

Sharing this indo-chinese recipe with you all. It is a very popular appetiser and take-away here in India, and you will find many a non-veg foodies sharing their 'best chk. loppipop' joints with each other:)

Yesterday for dinner, we decided to make a batch at home, especially since we found a nice fresh packet of prepared lollipops at the super market. Generally, one has to ask the local butcher to prepare the lollipops from the chicken wings, or else, do it yourself. The lollipops came out wonderful..soft, succulent inside, and nice and crispy outside! We will be surely making this more often from now on.

How to make: Marinate the lollipops in ginger-garlic paste, a little soy sauce,salt and ground pepper. Keep it marinated as long as you can - I could only manage half an hour. Prepare the batter, using 1/2 cup cornflour, 2 tbsp maida, salt, few drops of red food colour (optional - I did not use it), 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp red chilli sauce, 1 egg while, and water. Check the seasoning and add more of sauces and salt if required. We want the batter to be thick enough to coat the chicken evenly, and also it to be spicy:)

Now - it is advisable to pre-cook the lollipos a bit to ensure that the chicken is thoroughly cooked. But if are sure to cook them properly while frying, you are most welcome. I popped them in the microwave for 2 mins, then dunked them in the batter, and deep fried in hot oil. I am sure - the pictures speak for themselves:)

Hot cross buns....

..hot cross buns. One of my favourite nursery rhymes ever:)

A few months back, I bought some dried yeast and used it to bake a small batch of sweet buns. The smell when the buns are in the oven is simply heavenly...and had me and hubby swooning over it:) Reminded of my kiddy days when Mom used to bake buns for us (but she used fresh yeast..the results of which are much much better).

These are the buns I baked..they were soft and sweet and slightly chewy when hot..straight from the oven. But they turned hard when cold:( I think the 'proofing' was not properly done. But..worry not! We simply used to heat them up in the microwave for a few seconds to get the same soft chewy buns again;)

Sabudaana wada/pancakes

This is one of my favourite evening snacks ... goes great with a cup of steaming hot coffee, is super easy to make and hopefully is also healthy. I generally deep fry it (yep - not healthy, but quicker and tastier), but you can also grill it on a hot pan with a drizzle of oil.

Its extremely simple to make - just remember to soak some sabu daana (also called as pearl tapioca) in water for 30 minutes. Boil some potatoes and cool. Then press out all the water that you can manually manage from the pearls, and mix it with mashed potatoes. Also mix finely chopped green chillies, roasted split groundnuts, and salt to taste. Shape into wada/pancakes of your chioce thickness, and either deep fry or grill to get yummy sabu daana wadas:) Enjoythese with tomato ketchup and mint chutney - have these while still piping hot.

Crunchy Prawns

Hmm..dont judge me by the lack of blog posts here. I enjoy trying out new dishes in the kitchen, and so does Ashrut. So while nearly everyday, we try to make something special, or add a something special to an ordinary mundane dish like khichdi - I hardly remember to take pics and post them in this blog.

This dish that I am posting here was prepared some time back after our Vengurla-Goa bike trip in Jan 09. Its inspired by the yummy rawa jumbo prawns which we ate in Vengurla.

The prawns were soo good..crunchy and full of flavour!

How to do it:

I marinated the deveined jumbo prawns in marinade of garlic paste, lemon juice, salt, and pepper powder. For about an hour perhaps. Then dipped each in white-egg batter, followed by rawa/suji. Dust off the excess rawa, and deep fry till golden Drain excess oil and serve with chutney and salad - quick and tasty appetiser.

Pizza with pizzaz!!

We like our pizzas. And somehow the delivered out-of-box pizzas were not hitting the spot, when we decided to make our own. (Thanks to Mum..she used to bake pizzas, complete with the homemade base way back when we were kids, when pizza was not even a popular term). Partly because I am slightly lazy, and partly because nowadays pizza bases are commonly available in the super markets today, I just made the toppings, on an already- baked market pizza base.

These are super easy to assemble, especially if you are not making your own tomato salsa/sauce (depends very much on the time in hand). Ashrut likes the mountain-pile pizzas, as you can make out from the pics - here we have used mozzarella/cheddar cheese, green olives with pimento, buttonmushrooms, onion slices, capsicum & tomato squares. Other times, we have also used bits of chicken sausages. Drizzle with EV olive oil, some oregano mix and chilli flakes, and bake it in a pre-heated oven for 10 odd minutes, or till the cheese melts/starts bubbling.
There - you are done. A perfect snack for those lazy weekend evenings:)
Very soon, will be trying to make my own pizza base - will post that too. The market ones are firstly small in size - not okay for a meal, and secondly, and most importantly, are fluffy like a big bun!!