I do not know how it was invented, but this was a regular with mom and it goes well with rice. I remember eating this often, back home and I whipped it up for K one night for dinner. I never saw /heard anyone else from my extended family making it. he liked it and its a regular at our home too! Mom would call it “pappu kura” and serve it with some potato /raw banana chips /rice vadiyalu or majjiga mirapakayalu(dried green chillies in yogurt). I think the best combo was with dried chillies in yogurt.

This is all you need…

4 bunches of spring onions
1/2 cup of moong dal
1/2 cup of tomatoes
3 green chillies
Juice of half of a lemon
For the popu:
——————–
1 teaspoon of Urad dal
1 teaspoon of mustard seeds
1 red chili
1/4 teaspoon of asafoetida
A few curry leaves

Wash the moong dal and leave it in water for 15 min. Wash spring onions and chop the greens and bulbs too. Do not discard either of them. Meanwhile, heat a vessel with a teaspoon of oil and add the urad dal, mustard seeds, red chili, asafoetida, curry leaves, green chillies and saute for sometime. Then add the washed dal and saute for 2 minutes until the oil covers the grains. Then, add the spring onions and let cook, covered without adding any water. After keeping covered 5-10 minutes, add the tomatoes, salt and keep covered until done. the dal should remain intact and the spring onions soft. Remove from heat and add the juice of half of a lemon.Serve hot with hot rice and chips/fritters of your choice.

When Lata of LA Gourmet Chef asked a question about Brown rice in dining hall, I decided to post this recipe as we often make it, taken and adapted from a cookbook. We moved to brown rice from the normal sona masuri white rice 4 months ago as one of the steps to a healthy regime from an almost sedate lifestyle.

This recipe tastes best when made with Long grain basmati rice. I didn’t have any in my pantry , so, I used the long grain brown rice. The normal serving size as mentioned in various supermarkets is 1/4 cup of uncooked rice which carries 170 calories.

Lata this is for you…

Wash 1 and 1/2 cups of Brown Rice and keep aside for about 20 min in water. Meanwhile take

1 Medium sized onion

1 tablespoon of garlic paste

1 tablespoon of ginger paste

1 and 1/2 cups of coconut milk ( do not exceed this quantity)

3 green chillies , chopped finely( adjust according to your taste)

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

vegetables of your choice

Salt to taste.

In a thick bottomed pan , heat oil and add cumin seeds to splutter, then add the chopped onions, green chillies and saute for a 2-3 minutes. Add ginger , garlic paste and saute for some more time. The onions should turn brown and crisp. To this you can add your favourite vegetables. I added a few pepper strips ,tomatoes and spinach .Add the coconut milk and let it simmer until done and keep aside. Meanwhile Start cooking the rice by adding a teaspoon of oil , salt to taste and pouring 3 cups of water in a vessel . keep checking once in a while. The cooking process for rice mostly completes in 50-60 minutes . To this rice add the coconut milk curry . This is basically a creamy concoction like a risotto . Sometimes , I add just 1 and a 1/2 cups of water and 1 and 1/2 cups of coconut milk and cook the rice in this mixture and add the veggies later.This works well too. Its best to add the vegetables later.

Note : if you want to cook the rice in the coconut milk then, do not cook in a pressure cooker or a rice cooker, it becomes a little gooey and the grains don’t cook well. Its best to cook in a thick bottomed vessel.

We get very few fresh Indian vegetables here. We have a one stop store where all Asians buy their stuff and is considered to be the best compared to the other all Indian grocery stores where I live. I found a huge bag of picked , fresh methi leaves for a dollar and couldn’t resist buying them.

K , on the other hand was not very happy because it would be a methi week for us! To please him, I made his staple diet, the roti , with methi in it. I normally do the kneading and he does the rolling and I cook them on the tawa . He’s got this strange thing about roti measurements and sometimes it drives me crazy. He would explain to me the diameter , the thickness of the roti and stuff like that when I didn’t get them right and one fine day ,he finally decided that he would roll them , always!!!

It turned out to be a superb meal and for once ,I wasn’t criticized for my rotis.

Knead 2 cups of wheat flour with 1 cup of methi/fenugreek in it and also add a teaspoon of ajwain and salt to taste. Keep aside for about 45 minutes. After letting it settle for 45 minutes , Make small balls of the dough and roll it on a base with a rolling pin , its necessary that you drizzle a few drops of oil while rolling . Once done , heat it on the tawa and the rotis are ready!! Serve it with a hot curry, potato or mixed veg and a cup of yogurt.

Sundays have always been hectic for us from the time we moved into a new apartment. This was one of those first weekends we decided, not to entertain, but just laze around , do some reading that has been pending for long and spend time with each other, So the cooking also took a backseat as we decided to have a simple brunch.

My hyderabadi roots make me partial towards pulaos and biryanis and the craving has been considerably high since the time I moved here . I always go check new places here , hoping to eat anything closer to a hyderabadi biryani or pilau, never had luck until now! I decided to make a simple pilau to satisfy my craving and added an onion raitha as a side dish to go with it.

Wash one cup basmati rice and keep aside for at least 20 minutes. Finely chop a medium sized onion and thaw and defrost half cup of peas. Heat oil in a vessel and add a teaspoon of cumin seeds , a bayleaf, 2 cloves, 2 cardamoms,a 1/2 inch cinnamon stick and saute for 2 min. Add onions and then after they turn transparent add the peas and saute for 2 minutes and drain the rice and add to the vessel..Saute and wait until the oil coats the rice nicely and then add 2 cups of water for the same and keep covered for 10-15 minutes until the rice is cooked. You will find small holes on the rice as sign of rice being cooked.Then take a few sprigs of cilantro and mint, finely chop and add to the rice for flavour and then remove from heat. Serve with any curry or raitha.

My first lunch at K’s place after our wedding was urad dal kachauri with lauki ki subzi. K was born and brought up in the Northern part of India and hence the north Indian tinge to our marriage. I, being a south Indian was a rice freak and was flabbergasted to hear my mother in law say that lunch would be kachauri, lauki ki subzi and a cup of yoghurt. I assumed them to be similar to store bought ones and was so sure of not liking them that I made plans to go outside for a snack in the evening. K made the subzi and my dear M-I-L made the kachauris. They were so wonderful and filling that I could just eat two and my stomach was full. It was an amazing meal and we still make it whenever K gets nostalgic and misses the family. Its really simple and easy to make.

The dough for the Kauchauris should be made exactly similar to how the Puri dough is made. By that I mean, the consistency of the dough should be thicker/harder.

For the stuffing:
———————

1/2 cup Urad dal soaked overnight
2 Tbsp grated ginger
2 Tsp saunff
1/2 tsp Garam Masala
1 Tbsp oil
Asefoetida
Salt

Make the Urad dal into a coarse paste. Heat oil in a wok and then add the grated ginger and saunff to it. Fry for 2 minutes. Add the asefoetida and garam masala powder and salt to it.Fry again on low heat for another couple of minutes. Now add the Urad dal paste to this and keep stirring. The paste should be fried on medium heat till it starts to leave oil. Take this paste and let it cool

Frying the Kachauris:
—————————

Take oil in wok for deep frying. The oil should be two inches from the bottom. Heat it for Deep frying.Now take a ball of the wheat dough and make a small puri out of it. Take a small ball of the urad dal paste and keep in this small puri. Cover the urad dal ball from all side with the puri. make a ball of this puri with the stuffing inside and then roll it out as a puri again.

Deep fry this stuffed puri in the heated oil, till the puri turns golden brown.

Now Comes the Lauki/kaddu ki subzi’s turn. This is the simplest dish I ever made. All you need is…

2 cups of cubed bottle gourd or any squash

2 cups of Alu cubed

1 medium sized onion finely chopped

1 cup of dice tomatoes

A teaspoon of cumin seeds

2-3 green chillies finely chopped.

A teaspoon of red chilli powder

A pinch of turmeric

Salt to taste

Oil for frying.

In a Pressure cooker, heat oil and add cumin seeds. After they splutter, add the onions and fry them till they are pink and transparent, Then add the alu and let cook for 2-3 minutes and add the rest of the ingredients and salt too, Do not add any water and the bottle gourd will cook in its own water.Pressure cooker for 1 whistle and remove from stove top. Serve hot with kachauris and it tastes pretty good with chapatis/phulkas