I woke up this morning to a light drizzle followed by heavy rain. I immediately made up my mind to make a pot of soup for dinner along with freshly baked bread. To most people rain is not a good weather condition, but for my daughter and me we celebrate it. She loves to drink hot chocolate while I love my chai. Sometimes, I love to bake or make warm food that nourished our soul. Inspired by a soup recipe in the local news paper, I decided to add some of the spices mentioned there to prepare my soup. Plenty of veggies, garbanzo beans and warming spices, I think I have found a soup that I would make often for supper to lunch.

Gadgets:

Cutting Board

Knife

Stock Pot / Pan

Ingredients:

Leeks / Onions - 1 cup sliced

Carrots - 1 cut into small cubes

Celery - 4 stocks chopped

Potato - 3 Skin pealed and cut into chunks

Beans - 12 cut into 1 inch pieces

Bell Pepper - 1 cut into chunks

Butternut Squash - 2 cup pureed ( or soup)

Dried Dill - 1 tsp

Tomato - 1 big 

Coriander Powder - 1/2 tsp

All Spice Powder - a pinch

Garlic Powder - 1 tsp ( or more as per taste)

Pepper - as per taste

Salt

Garbanzo Beans - 1 can

Olive Oil - 2 tbsp

Water - 2 cups

Preparation:

1. Heat the pan with the olive oil. Add leeks and cook until they are soft. 

2. Add celery, carrots and give it a toss and cook it for 5 minutes. 

3. Add butternut squash puree and cook for 5 minutes along with water.

4. Add the rest of the veggies (other than the tomatoes) along with salt, pepper, turmeric, coriander, garlic  and all spice powder. Cover and cook for 5 minutes or until the veggies are done.

5. Add the tomatoes and garbanzo beans give it a stir and allow for it to cook for few minutes. 

6. Taste the soup to check for salt. Serve it hot with some toasted bread.

Happy Diwali!

Its that time of the year, when I usually get super motivated to prepare sweets, but this year, not so much. I stuck to my usual sweets that I have blogged. For a while I have been thinking of preparing mixed nuts based burfi. The nuts used in my recipe are pine nut, walnut, cashew nut, almond and pistachios. I have been reading about how walnuts can taste bitter in a burfi and the safe way to fix was to soak the nuts. Soaking the nuts not only helped using walnuts, but also helped in removing the brown skin from the pistachios. My intention was to prepare a mixed nut burfi, but it required a lot of sugar. So I converted them into a fudge. It was loq on sugar but the nutty flavors came through.

Gadgets:

Heavy Wok
Spatula
Molds
Measuring Cups
Bowls
Blender

Ingredients:

Nuts ( Cashew, pine, almonds, pistachios and walnuts) - 1/2 cup each

Sugar - 1 1/2 cups

Saffron - a generous pinch

Milk - 1/4 cup

Hot Water - Enough to soak the nuts

Preparation:

1. Add the pine nuts, cashews and walnuts in a bowl. Add pistachios and almonds in individual bowls. Pour hot water into these 3 bowls and allow for them to soak for an hour or more. 

2. Remove the almond and pistachio skin.

3. Drain all the water, add the nuts into a blender and blend then into a lightly coarse mixture by adding some milk.

4. Heat the heavy bottom pan on medium, with 2 tbsp of ghee, add the nut paste and mix it well for 2 minutes. Add the sugar and mix well. Allow it to cook and sprinkle in the saffron.

5. Cook until the nut mixture comes together. Remove from heat and allow to cool. 

6. Make into the desired shapes and serve them, but I love it pipping hot.

I had a lot of fun making shapes with my wooden spoon that I had in my kitchen. It was as if I had a chance to play with play dough. The only difference here is, it is edible.

If you have similar type of molds, it would be a great idea to sprinkle some corn starch into the mold to remove the fudge like textures easily.

Make a ball of the nut fudge that would cover the mold.

Flatten it to cover the mold.

Tap the wooden spoon on your board. The mold nut fudge pops out. Dab  a little of the corn flour on the base to keep it dry.

Deepavali is around the corner and its the time of the year to indulge in sweets and savories. Though most of the goodies are available in stores these days, I still like to make something at home for my family and friends. Everybody is getting so health conscious and prefer baked instead of deep fried goodies. For me, the only reason I like making savory crunches, is to enjoy them with sambar or thair sadham on Deepavali day. It is the perfect thing to have after eating a lot of sweets on that day. This year, I have decided to make cereal based mixture, but it has a lot more of cilantro flavor to it and its baked. A trip to Trader Joe's and Target can get you set to prepare the mixture. 

Gadgets:

Measuring Cups and Spoons

Seasoning Wok

Spatula

Cookie Tray

Ingredients:

Rice Chex Mix - 2 cups

High Fiber Cereal - 2 cups

Corn Flakes - 2 cups

Rice Crispies - 2 cups

Roasted Unsalted Cashew Nuts - 1 cup

Roasted Unsalted Peanuts - 1 cups

Roasted Unsalted Slivered Almonds - 1 cup

Asafoetida - a small piece

Curry Leaves - 2 Strands 

Cilantro - 1/2 bunch dried

Chili Powder - 1/2 tsp ( as per taste )

Turmeric Powder - 1 tsp

Oil - 1 tbsp

Salt very little

Preparation:

1. Set the oven at 220 Degrees F. In a big bowl, add all the cereals, nuts and give it a mix.

2. Heat the seasoning wok with oil, add asafoetida, allow for it to get fried well. Add curry leaves,  cilantro, turmeric and chili powder. Cook until the cilantro get toasted a bit.  Remove from heat and transfer to a blender.

3. Blend the mix. Add this mixture to the cereal mix and keep mixing well. Transfer to a cookie tray and spread evenly.

4. Place in the oven and allow to get toasted for 30 minutes. Add salt if required. Remove, cool and store in an air tight container.

Sometimes mistakes lead to something unexpected. Last Saturday, I was on the way to preparing Tiramisu and totally goofed up with the whipped cream. I did not know what I was thinking, when I added sugar to the cream that my daughter and niece were taking turns whipping. The cream went back to becoming sweet cream and I was disappointed that I did not look to see if cream was whipped enough before I added the sugar. So I closed the lid on the whipped cream bowl and stored it in my fridge. I thought that I could make a milk based sweet, which my daughter and niece would enjoy. After all, they were working hard whipping cream and I messed it up for them. But, all that ended in a good thing. I ended up making palgova in the microwave. Online, I found at showmethecurry.com, something similar in their chocolate burfi recipe. So, I was happy that I was on the right track but, this recipe is a little different. I added yogurt and cream of wheat/rava to the whipped cream in order to create the texture I was looking for. It also made a substantial amount of palgova, which surprised me.

NOTE: There are a lot of recipes with condensed milk, which I have used a lot in the past for making milk based sweets. But, what I found using the whipped cream is that the flavor and color of the palgova is very different. In a way, it allows one to adjust the amount of sugar that can be used in this recipe. The whipped cream version, came close to the little packets of palgova I used to enjoy as a kid. So I am kind of very happy with this one. Please do give this a try and let me know what you all think.

Gadgets:

Microwave safe bowl ( large)
Measuring Cups and Spoons
Spatula
Cling wrap

Ingredients:

Heavy Cream - 1 pint or 2 cups
Sugar - 1 cup
Mava Milk Powder by Deep - 3 cups
Yogurt ( Greek Style) - 2 tsp
Cream Of Wheat /  Rava - 2 tbsp

Preparation:

1. Mix all the ingredients except yogurt in a microwave safe bowl and microwave 2 minutes initially. Mix and microwave for 5 minutes. Add yogurt to the mix  and microwave it for about 5 minutes.(depending on the power of your microwave). The mixture will thicken into a very thick sauce.  If you cook past this stage you will see a lot of grease coming out of the mix. So please stop before that. Remove and allow to cool.

2. Take 1 tbsp of the portion and place it in a cling wrap or you can set them in a tray and cut into squares. Make small parcels to give as gifts.

Note: If I have to do this different, I would add milk powder and whipped cream and cook them well with some yogurt. Then I would add sugar in the end. I think that would keep the color lighter.