Sprouted Moong Dosa

I had some sprouted moong sitting in my fridge, so I thought of making moong dosa with my own recipe. It is really close to pessarattu, the only difference is I used little rice flour here. Though I did not use ingredients by measurements, I am giving rough measurements here.  

Ingredients

Sprouted moong 1 cup
Green chilies 2-3
Ginger grated 1-2 tsp
Rice flour 1-2 tbsp
Salt as per taste
Water as required

Recipe

1. Mix together sprouted moong, chilies, grated ginger and grind them in a mixer by adding little water.
2. Take this mixture in a bowl.
3. Now add rice flour to this mixture and add little extra water to make it pouring consistency. Do not make batter runny.
4. Add salt to the mixture as per taste.
5. On a flat tava or dosa tava sprinkle some oil and pour spoonful of batter. Spread it evenly and let it cook.
6. serve hot with chutney or sauce.

Tips

When dosa is cooking, spread little butter(makkhan) on top of it. That will give you a divine taste.  
 

Eggless Blueberry Muffins

I never knew the difference between the cupcakes and muffins. As I started exploring them I came to know that they are different from each other in many ways. Cupcakes are like miniature of cakes and muffins are more of a bread type. They are crumbly, less sweet than cupcakes. In western countries muffins are often eaten for breakfast while cupcakes eaten as desserts. So I tried to make some muffins, the most common and famous blueberry muffins without eggs. I followed recipe from here.

Ingredients

All purpose flour 2 cups
Baking soda 1 and 1/2 tsp
Baking powder 1/2 tsp
Salt 1/2 tsp
Sugar 1 cup
Milk 1 cup
Oil 1/3 cup
White vinegar 1 tbsp
Fresh blueberries 1 cup

Recipe

1. Preheat Oven at 375F(190C). Grease your muffin tray.
2. In a medium bowl combine together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, mix it well and keep aside.
3. In another bowl add Sugar, milk, oil and white vinegar. Mix well.
4. Now add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir them until they get mixed very well.
5. Now add blueberries and fold them in the mixture gently.
6. Fill the muffin tray 2/3.
7.  Bake in the preheated oven for about 20-22 minutes or until knife inserted comes out clean.
8. Let them cool for 5 minutes, then remove from pan and cool on wire rack.

Gajar and Beet root Halwa

Gajar halwa is one of India's favorite desserts. I just made it with a twist. Here is my take on this famous and delicious dessert. My mother makes gajar halwa with mava(khava) to get the rich flavor. So here I added heavy whipping cream to get that rich creamy taste.

Ingredients

Carrots 1 cup grated
Beet 1/2 cup grated
Ghee 1-2 tbsp
Sugar 1/2 cup (increase it if you like sweeter side)
Heavy whipping cream 1/2 cup
Milk 1/4 cup
Cardamom powder 1 tsp
Dry Fruits 1-2 tbsp finely chopped
Raisins 1-2 tbsp

Recipe

1. In a pan heat ghee and add grated carrots and beet. Cook them for about 4-5 minutes.
2. Now add heavy whipping cream and milk. While it starts simmering keep on stirring. Cook on medium flame until cream and milk start to reduce slowly.
3. When milk has reduced little bit add sugar and cardamom powder and let it simmer for some more time. Keep on stirring while halwa is cooking.
4. At the end add dry fruits and raisins.
5. Serve halwa hot if you like or let it cool down and then serve.

Tip

You can serve this halwa by adding some milk. I like to have my halwa that way.
 
 

Mushroom do Pyaza

I use mushrooms on pizza but I had never found a good recipe for mushrooms until now. One day I found a recipe which satisfied my taste-buds with mushrooms in it. Mushroom do pyaza, you would say there are so many recipes available for this dish. I tried so many recipes for it but none of them ever worked for me. This recipe was spot on. I am always grateful to the person behind this recipe, as I don't remember the name of that person as well the blog, so sorry for that. I have made some changes according to my convenience and taste.    

Ingredients
1 cup mushrooms
1 cup sliced colored bell pepper (use whichever color available )
1 onion diced
1 small onion finely chopped
2 tomatoes roughly chopped
1 inch ginger finely chopped
2 big cloves of garlic finely chopped
(use 1 tsp of ginger garlic paste instead)
oil
cumin seeds
chilly powder as per taste
salt as per taste
1 tsp lemon juice
finely chopped fresh coriander



Recipe
1.Heat oil in a pan, add cumin seeds and when it starts to splutter add chopped ginger–garlic and onion.
2.Fry till the onions are translucent.
3.Then add turmeric powder and red chili powder. Mix all the ingredients well.
4.Add tomatoes and cook for 2 minute, till tomatoes are little pulpy. Add little salt at this stage.
5.Add the diced onions and capsicum and fry for 2-3 minute, till capsicum is little soft. Sprinkle little water and cook on medium flame.
6.Now add the mushroom pieces along with salt. Cover it with a lid and cook till done. Cook on low flame.
7.When mushrooms are cooked, add finely chopped coriander and lemon juice and serve hot.

Tip
Careful at the time of adding salt as we add salt two times. Or to avoid confusion add salt at the end with mushrooms only. 

Cranberry Sol Kadhi

When we were in Pune I never needed to make sol kadhi at home. We could get it easily in restaurants. Even if I ever needed to make it at home i had kokum aagal (concentrated kokum/amasul juice) handy for the recipe. I used to do kokum sar as well with that aagal, which is my favorite. Here i did not find kokum agal or kokum juice in any Indian grocery store. We get kokum here, so we can make traditional sol kadhi by soaking them and extracting juice from it. Though it was not the kind of food we miss here, but still it has it’s own place in our choice of food. Long story short, we brought cranberry juice on our last trip of grocery shopping and we found it tastes somewhat like kokum aagal. So my hubby suggested me (he is the one behind my recipes) to give it a try making solkadhi with this juice. I made it and it was totally a hit. It tastes just like a solkadhi. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients

1 Cup coconut milk
1 Cup concentrated cranberry juice (increase quantity according to taste)
2-3 Cloves garlic crushed and finely chopped
1 Green chilly finely chopped
Salt to taste
Fresh coriander

Recipe

1. Mix coconut milk and cranberry juice, keep it aside.

2. In small bowl crush together already chopped garlic and chilly and add it to the above mixture. Or make a paste of garlic and chilly and add to the mixture.

3. Add salt as per taste and chopped coriander to it. Serve chilled topped with little fresh coriander leaves.

Egg-less Vanilla Cupcakes

I am a fan of baking but I did not get the chance to bake frequently before this. I love cakes and now enjoying baking them.

I was trying to bake cupcakes for quite a while. But anyhow they did not come out well. But finally I got the perfect recipe to relish those beauties. The last batch I made was way too perfect for me. They were light, they were spongy and they were moist. The cupcakes were perfect as they had to be. This was the first time, I was so happy with my baking experience. I followed the recipe from ‘Glorious treats’. Here the recipe says use cake flour, i did not have the cake flour so used the substitute of making my own cake flour. I have just replaced eggs with yogurt/curd (for each egg ¼ cup yogurt), as I always do egg-less baking.
One might think what is the purpose of using buttermilk and yogurt at the same time. I had not planned it such way, I just followed the above recipe and used yogurt as a replacement for eggs. The original recipe has buttermilk in it. But I would definitely want to try it by excluding one of these ingredients in my future experiments. For now this recipe works perfectly for me.

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups cake flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup of plain yogurt/curd
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
(or 1/2 cup milk plus 1/2 teaspoon white vinegar or lemon juice- add acid to the milk then set aside for 5 minutes before using)

Recipe

1.Preheat oven to 350°F. In the bowl add plain yogurt and beat until it becomes smooth. Add sugar and continue to beat until sugar dissolves. Add vanilla and oil, beat.
2. Sieve in cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. (here I used cake flour substitute, recipe in the tips below). Stir the mixture slowly by adding the milk in small portions.
3. The batter will be thin, like pouring consistency. Pour batter into a muffin pan prepared with paper liners. Fill liners about 2/3 full.
4. Bake cupcakes in preheated oven for 12-14 minutes. Mine came out in 14 minutes.
5. Cool in pan for 1-2 minutes, then remove cupcakes from the pan and finish cooling on a wire rack.

Tips

If you don’t find cake flour at grocery store then do not worry. You can make it at home and use it as a substitute for cake flour.

Recipe

For 1 cup of cake flour, take 1 cup of all purpose flour or maida. Remove 2 tbsp of flour from it and add 2 tbsp of cornstarch to it. Your cake flour is ready.

Gobi Manchurian

I love gobi manchurian. My mother used to make it since I was in 11th-12th grade. So of course this is my mother's recipe. This is one of the recipes that I learnt in my teenage days. So I am little nostalgic about it. When first time I was making gobi manchurian without help of my mom, after marriage of course, i was curious about how others make it. So I googled for the recipe and to my surprise I did not find any recipe for gobi manchurian that can be made with cabbage. Yes I make gobi manchurian with patta gobi/cabbage/kobi. That time the recipes for gobi manchurian I found were with phul gobi/cauliflower. This was way back in 2009. I did try those recipes as well but after that I never searched for cabbage gobi manchurian.

This recipe is totally different from what we get at food stalls or hotels. This is simple and easy to make recipe. There is no need to make gravy for this recipe. Still it tastes good. This recipe has been developed as time passes. Some changes made by mother some by me. But the original procedure of the recipe is still the same. So here is my family recipe for gobi manchurian.

Ingredients

Cabbage 1 1/2 cup finely shredded
Carrot 1/2 cup finely shredded
Whole wheat flour 1 cup
Cornstarch 1 tbsp
Ginger 1 inch shredded or paste
Chilies 1-2 finely chopped
Soy sauce 1 tbsp
Sugar 1/2 tsp
salt as per taste
Oil for deep frying
Finely chopped cabbage for serving

For sauce
Tomato ketchup
tomato and chilly sauce

Recipe

1. In a large bowl combine together cabbage, carrot, ginger, chilies, soy sauce, sugar, salt (be careful about adding salt as soy sauce has some). Mix them together.
2. Now add cornstarch and flour and make a dough. Add little more flour if you feel dough is still wet but don’t make it dry. Keep this dough aside for half an hour.
3. Heat the oil in a deep pan. Roughly make small size balls of the dough and fry them until they become golden brown.
4. Heat a separate pan and to it add 1 tbsp hot oil from earlier pan, 1-2 tbsp of tomato ketchup, 1 tbsp chilly tomato sauce. (For this step you can add your choice of 2-3 types of sauce).5. Warm it up little while stirring and now add the fried balls. Mix the balls in sauce till every ball covers with sauce. Serve this gobi manchurian hot with sprinkle of finely chopped cabbage.