Bisibela bath with Broken Wheat

Friday, January 23, 2009

This is a healthy and tasty dish and tastes as good as the one which we make with rice and also good for health to consume wheat more than rice especially for diabetic people. I made this last night and liked it very much and brought the same for today’s lunch too. Easy alternative for chapattis at nights. It is always a healthy idea not to eat rice at nights so we can make dishes with broken wheat or pasta as alternatives instead of spending lot of time for making rotis/chapathis.

Ingredients

1 cup broken wheat
1/2 cup Red gram dal (Tur dal)
Vegetables - Beans, Peas and Carrot - chopped
Tamarind- a small lemon size
1 teaspoon Mustard seeds
1 teaspoon Urud Dal (Black gram dal)
Curry leaves (optional)
1/2 teaspoon Turmeric powder
pinch of asafoetida
Salt to taste
1 tbsp Oil

1 1/2 Tablespoon Bisibela bath mix powder

Or make Bisibela bath mix (paste) with the below ingredients

1 teaspoon Bengalgram dal
1 teaspoon Urud Dal (Blackgram dal)
1/2 teaspoon Coriander seeds
2 whole Red chillis
small piece of Cinnamon
2 Cloves
2 Cardamom
3 teaspoons grated Coconut

Method

1) Clean Dal and pressure cook with broken wheat in 3 to 4 cups of water. It is a good practice to soak Dal for 15 mins to 30mins in water before cooking so that Dal cooks soon and soft.

2) Extract the juice from tamarind and keep aside. Heat tamarind with water in microwave for a min and extract juice immediately instead of waiting for tamarind to soak in water

3) Heat Oil, splutter mustard seeds, add urud dal and once it turns brown add curry leaves, turmeric powder and asafetida and fry for few secs

4) Add chopped veggies fry for couple of mins and then add Bisibela bath mix (readymade or homemade paste) and 1 cup of water and cook until vegetables are cooked. Now add tamarind juice, cooked wheat/Dal, salt. Mix and cook in medium-low heat for another 5 mins.

Garnish with coriander leaves and ghee and serve hot.

Chickpeas Soup

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Chickpeas soup is another tasty and healthy soup i made last night

Ingredients

1/2 cup chickpeas(soaked overnight and pressure cooked)
1 green chilli
small piece of ginger (1 teaspoon grated)
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
salt and pepper to taste

Method

1) Heat oil and throw in cumin powder and rest of the ingredients, fry for a min.

2) Cool and grind to a paste with some water. Strain the liquid to the same pan with a strainer and add more water if required and bring to boil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

server hot with croutons of your choice

Notes

Make sure the green chilli is very small and do not add more than one. We can add pepper to adjust the taste but if chilli is more we cannot do anything except throwing the soup. Even without chilli it will taste good. So think about your spice level and decide whether to add chilli or not

Chick Peas Masala

Friday, January 16, 2009

Nutrition benefits here

This goes good with bhaturas. Chole (white / black peas) give good flavor when soaked in tea water. Heat water and dip 2 tea bags for sometime and then use this water to soak the beans over night or upto 8 hrs

Ingredients

1 cup Chick peas (Garbanzo beans, Kala chana)
2 tea bags
1 tablespoon Oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 medium onion finely chopped
3 to 4 cloves of crushed garlic
2 medium tomatoes
2 to 3 green chillies
1 " piece ginger
1 tablespoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon dry mango powder
Salt to taste

Method

1) Boil 5 cups of water and put tea bags in for about 10 mins.

2) Wash Chick peas and soak in the above tea water for 7 to 8 hrs or overnight. The quantity will increase 2 to 3 times. Pressure cook the chickpeas and keep aside

3) Blend tomatoes, green chillies and ginger into paste and keep aside.

4) Heat oil in a pan, add cumin seeds and once they crack add onions and stir-fry until they are transparent. Add the garlic and fry for couple of mins

5) Now add the tomato paste and cook unti oil seperates from the paste and add salt, garam masala, dry mango powder and chick peas and let it cook for 10mins on medium or low heat. Mix inbetween and mash the peas lighly while mixing.

Notes

1) You can avoid onions and garlic and use 1 tablespoon of besan (Bengal gram flour)

2) Add 1/2 cup of milk at the end and cook in low heat for 5 mins.

Bitter Guard Pitlai

Monday, January 12, 2009

Here is another way of making bitter guard. The ingredients are almost similar to sambar but with the fresh ground spices instead of using readymade sambar powder. since we add Dal also in this it is perfectly healthy dish along with loads of medicinal benefits of Bitter guard.

Ingredients

2 cups of bitter guard chopped into thin round pieces
1 cup Toor Dal
3 whole dried red chillies
1 Tablespoon coriander seeds
1 Tablespoon urud dal
1 Tablespoon Chana dhal (Bengal Gram)
1 teaspoon black pepper corns (reduce if you want less spice)
2 Tablespoons grated coconut
2 Tablespoons thick tamarind paste or tamarind extracted from a big lemon sized tamarind pulp
1 teaspoon oil
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
pinch of asafoetida
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
salt to taste

Method

1) Pressure cook Toor Dal until it is cooked and keep aside.

2) Dry roast redchillies, lentils (urud dal and chana dal). coriander seeds and black pepper until Dal turns light brown

3) Blend the above dry roasted ingredients with the tamarind paste and coconut into paste by adding 1/4 cup water and keep aside

4) Heat oil in a pan, splutter mustard seeds add asafoetida and then add the chopped Bitter guard, turmeric powder. Stir fry for about 5 mins and now add the ground paste along with 2 cups of water and cook until bitter guard is cooked

5) Add the cooked Dal and adjust salt.

This goes well with Hot Rice.

Bitter Gourd Pulusu(Gravy with ground spices)

Friday, January 9, 2009

Here is another way i made Bitter Guard last night. I was reading in the net about the uses of bitter guard and decided I should start eating once in a week. I usually make dry curry or stuffed curry with bitter guard but yesterday i want some what gravy to eat with Sangati and made this. I felt the bitterness was very much tolerable. I did not add jaggery which would have reduced the bitterness further. Usually I cook food which takes less time and easy to make. I think just cutting vegetables is the main time taking process here. Here is the recipe

Go through this for Bitter Gourd or Bitter Melon Medicinal uses

Ingredients

2 cups of bitter Melon sliced
1 cup onions sliced
2 cups of tomatoes sliced
1/4th cup Tamarind paste
1 " piece ginger
3 to 4 cloves of garlic
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
salt to taste

spices

3 to 4 whole red chillies
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
4 to 5 cloves
1 " cinnamon stick
pinch of asafoetida
Method

1) Cook sliced bitter guard with 1/2 tsp turmeric powder in 2 cups of water until they are somewhat cooked and soft but need not cook completely. I just cooked in microwave for 8 mins

2) Heat 1tsp oil in a pan, splutter cumin seeds and add all the remaining spices and fry for 30 seconds and then add onions and fry for 4 to5 mins until they turn light brown. Add tomatoes, ginger and garlic and cook for 3 to 4 mins and cool it and grind to a smooth paste

3) Now mix the ground paste and cooked bitterguard, tamarind paste and salt and cook until the bitter guard is completly cooked.

this goes well with Hot rice or sangati.

We (me and my sister) really enjoyed this with sangati and even my husband had nicely with white rice and he suggested me to make "Bitter guard pitlai" which I am going to try in next 2 days and post the recipe :-)

Notes:

Add jaggery to reduce the bitterness further

Bitter gourd fry (kakarakaya vepudu)

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Ingredients:

2 cups Bitter gourd (cut into round thin pieces)
1/2 teaspoon Mustad seeds
2 teaspoons Red chilli powder
Pinch of Turmeric powder
1 teaspoon Oil
Salt to taste
Method:

Mix salt to Bitter gourd and keep aside for 30 to 40 mins and sqeeze out the water from the bitter gourd pieces. You will have to sqeeze very tight so that the bitterness will go away.

Heat oil in a pan and splutter mustard seeds and add turmeric powder and bitter guard pieces and stir fry until they are cooked. Add chilli powder at the end. Since we added the salt before sqeezing it may not be required again but add if required.

Notes:
1) you can also grind any nuts like roasted peanuts and add the powder to get a crispy taste