Crispy Fried Cauliflower

Crispy fried cauliflower is an amazingly crispy and tasty snack that can be served as a side dish or even as a snack. I make this usually as a side dish when I prepare dal or some other vegetable curries. Enjoy.

Ingredients:

200g cauliflower, cut into small florets

1/2 tsp pepper powder

1 medium egg

3 tbs cornflour

1 tsp plain flour

Bread crumbs as required

salt as reqd

1 1/2 litre water

oil to deep fry

Preparation:1. Wash the cauliflower and keep them aside.

2. Add salt to water in a large pot and bring it to boil. Add cauliflower into it. Boil for 3-4 minutes. It doesnt have to get cooked.

3. Drain them and wipe off any excess water.

4. Make a paste by whisking together an egg, both the flour, pepper powder and a pinch of salt.

5. Dip the half cooked cauliflower into this and then roll it in breadcrumbs. Keep them aside.

6. Heat a deep pan/kadai to medium and add oil. when the oil becomes hot enough add the breadcrumbs coated florets to this little by little and deep fry until golden brown.

7. Another yummy side dish to go with any mail meal or can be eaten just as a snack.

Fried yams (Chena Porichathu)

Chena porichathu/ Fried Yam is one of our favourite side dish and makes a good vegetarian replacement for the fried fish or and any other fried non-vegetarian dish. The only hard part is the cleaning. The skin has to be completely cleaned and should be done with a gloves if possible. Because raw yam is a skin irritant and can really be itchy. So don’t handle the raw yam without gloves unless you love scratching!!

Ingredients:
400g Yam (chena) (cleaned weight)
1 tbs Kashmiri Chilli Powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
¼ cup(4 tbs) water
¼ cup oil (4 tbs)
Salt- as required

Preparation:
1. Peel the yams and wash it. Slice it into 1/2 cm thickness. (you can fry it without further slicing also). And then slice it again keeping the same thickness into long juliennes. You can also cut them into cubes, if you prefer.
2. Heat a large frying pan, add oil and all the other ingredients and mix well.
3. COVER and cook on medium high heat stirring occasionally to avoid charring for about 25-30 minutes or when they start browning. Serve as a side dish for plain rice. As easy as that and Simple too, and taste.........You should know!!.

Date Muhalabiyeh/ muhalabiya

Muhalabiya is one of the most common Arabic desserts even though the name might sound a bit unfamiliar. This was one of the desserts that used to be served in our university food court during lunch. But I never bought them and never tasted them from the university simply because it was served in a small tray without any garnishing on them and for me, it looked so plain and bland and never appealed to my eye. One more thing, whenever I feel hungry first thing that will come to my mind will be something that is sweet based. So, during my university days I went to one of the supermarkets nearby and headed off to the bakery section. Saw a piece of chocolate cake well garnished and looked very appealing. Bought it and took a bite just to realise how bad that cake tasted. I couldn’t have it at all. That would be the only chocolate cake I ever discarded in my life after having a single bit. So you can imagine how bad it would have tasted. The cake was too dry and almost tasted like a stale bread. Just imagine what impact the garnishing gives a dish. It doesn’t mean that the dish would taste bad if the garnishing isn’t that great. Learnt a lesson from that experience. The other day I had serious craving for some dessert and there was nothing at home that would please my palette. Then I started flipping over my bundle of recipe books looking for an easy dessert that can be made in minutes Then I came across this Muhalabiyeh/muhalabiya in my little nestle cookery book and went for it. And It tasted really yum and it was so easy that you can prepare for your guests if you are making so many dishes. Atleast dessert part would be less painful.
Funny part was that the recipe also calls for rose water which is an ingredients I have never used in any of my dishes. My rose water bottle has been sitting in the cupboard for few years actually and sometimes use it on my face just for a fresh feeling. God knows…read somewhere about rose water being used on face for some reason I don’t even remember. I have had a few Arabic sweets before with overpowering aroma of the rose water that sometimes just put me off. But if u add a little just in right proportion, it really boost up the flavour of the dish with a subtle taste of the rose essence. Please don’t Omit the rose water while making this dish because the sweet will be flavourless and bland.　

Ingredients:
I can 397g sweetened condensed milk+1 litre water
½ cup rice flour
2 tbs corn flour
¾ tbs rose water
1 cup chopped dates seeded
Pistachios for garnishing

Preparation:1. Empty the condensed milk can in water and stir well.
2. Stir in the rice flour and corn flour to this condensed milk and water.
3. Mix thoroughly using a wire whisk to avoid any lumps.
4. Place on low heat while continuously stirring until mixture thickens. This will take around 25 minutes on low flame. It will have a thick custard like consistency.
5. Add rose water, stir and remove from heat.
6. And chopped dates and mix.
7. Pour in serving bowls and leave to cool.
8. Garnish with dates and serve cold.

Chilli Garlic Fried Rice

I have had this recipe in my archives for very long time and just recently tried it out. The recipe is very simple, and delicious. You just need very few vegetables, or you cam make with out any vegetables at all since garlic and chillies are used for main flavour. Since I love garlicky flavour, I love this rice. Here goes the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups basmati rice
Water
Salt
6 large cloves of garlic
2-3 dried red chilli (seed them if you like it less spicy)
1 tbs Soya sauce
¼ cup frozen green peas (optional)
¼ piece capsicum diced (Optional)
½ medium onion chopped (½ cup)
3 tbs vegetable oil
1tsp sesame oil
A knob of butter

Preparation:
1. Wash rice and cook it in plenty of salted water by keeping the lid OPEN ,until the rice is just soft. Drain and run cold water over the rice to cool the rice completely. Keep the rice in a colander to drain off the excess water.
2. Grind/grate garlic in a grinder and keep it aside.
3. Heat a large saucepan, add the vegetable oil and sesame oil. Add the chopped onions and the garlic chilli paste to this and sauté until onion becomes translucent.
4. Add soya sauce and sauté for few seconds.
5. Add peas and capsicum (if using) and sauté just until the capsicum goes soft.
6. Add rice and mix well and adjust salt. When it is heated through completely add a knob of butter and close the lid. Serve hot with any chinese curry.

Salad with Caeser Dressing

After a quite long break, I’m back with this wonderful Salad. But I may go on a break again I guess. Don’t know when. Guess what happened? Few days back our compueter fell down and broke crashing the hard disk completely along with all my recipes, pictures and all other stuffs. Thankfully just couple of days before the crash, we saved some of our old pictures, So at least that is saved. But it is so sad that I lost all my recipes. The only ones left are the ones in my little blog :(. I wont be able to blog regularly until the laptop get fixed;this is my husband's friend's notebook that my husband brought from him to do some paper works.
Well, this is an easy to prepare salad and delicious too. I’m not a great fan of salads but this is one of mine and my family’s favourites. I sometimes have it for my dinner. Here I have used the vegetables that I had in my fridge. You can also use a chicken breast boiled in salted water and then cut into chunks. It’s all up to you.
Ingredients:
½ cup tomato diced (1 medium size)
1cupful cucumber diced
1 carrot diced (1 large one)
Few lettuce leaves torn roughly
2 slice bread (50 gm) (for making croutons)
Olive oil-just a few dashes(to sprinkle on bread)
For the Caeser Dressing:
4 tbs Good quality Mayonnaise (1/4 cup)
1 tbs Olive oil
1 tsp Lemon juice
1 clove of Garlic, finely chopped
½ tsp Dijon Mustard paste
1/8 tsp pepper powder(that is half of a quarter tsp)
Salt to taste

Preparation:
1. In a small bowl, Mix all the ingredients of the dressing using the spoon until well combined.
2. For making croutons, remove the crust from the bread and rub or sprinkle some olive oil on the slices. Toast them in the toaster until golden and crisp. Cut them into cubes of 1 ½ cm. Adding oil really makes them crisp.
3.Just before serving, add the dressing to the vegetables and add the bread cubes and mix well. Season with salt and pepper.

Tips and notes:
For making the croutons, instead of toasting the bread in toaster, you can cut them into cubes and bake them in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius until golden and crispy. You can also fry them by cutting into cubes and then frying in few dashes of olive oil in frying pan until golden. But I always go for the toaster method..Cos that’s the easiest. But you have to be careful. Since the bread is drizzled with oil, it can really get hot.

Chilli Paneer

Paneer is a cheese normally made by adding citric acid or lemon juice to milk to curdle. The curdled mixture is then put in a muslin cloth to get rid of the moisture present in it. It is then compressed by adding a weight on top to give a block shape. Or we can get it processed from supermarket, already made in blocks. Paneer on its own is tasteless and doesn’t have any flavour. But when it is it prepared in specific ways, it is so tasty that you will have an unending craving for it.
My husband loves Paneer; I came to about it from him for the first time! Whenever we go out and spot paneer, he picks one and asks me to make something out it. I have prepared quite few dishes before with paneer, but we were not at all happy with the result. It used to be disappointing at times and I always think I would never prepare a dish that has paneer in it again. But I still keep trying because that’s the way to learn I suppose. Well, I had this block of paneer sitting in the fridge for some weeks and have been approaching its expiry date. So I thought I had to make something out of it that I have never tried before….I started searching for the recipes and finally came up with the Chilli Paneer that I spotted on http://www.pachakam.com/ and thought of giving it a go without much hope. For my surprise, it came out excellent. Here is the recipe that I followed:

Ingredients:
125 gm Paneer
3 tbs Corn flour
1½ tbs Plain flour
2 Green chillies (cut into thin & long strips)
4 large Garlic pods
1 onion, sliced thin
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Vinegar
¼ tsp Sugar
¼ tsp Black pepper
2 tsp Soya sauce
2½ tsp ketchup
1 tbsp Chilly sauce
4 tbs water
Oil for deep frying

Preparation:
1. Make a thin paste of plain flour, corn flour and 1/2 tsp of salt.
2. Cut paneer into small square pieces. Dip them in the paste and fry till they become golden in colour. Don’t brown it, it will become hard and lose the texture.
3. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a pan and fry green chillies, garlic and onion until the onion and garlic turns soft, but not brown.
4. In a separate small bowl mix salt, sugar, black pepper, chilly sauce, tomato sauce, soya sauce, vinegar and 4 tbsp water. Add it to the pan and cook for half a minute.
5. Add Paneer pieces and mix well. Serve hot as a starter,or side dish.