Category — Miscellaneous

This week had me thinking quite a bit about what to cook… Finally my tummy made the choice

Akki Roti (Rice Roti)

Ingredients:

3 cups rice flour
1 cup cooked rice (optional)
1 big onion
2 medium size chillies
Fist full of coriander leaves
½ tsp Jeera (cumin) powder
Salt to taste
Ghee
Textured cloth napkin or handtowel

Preparation:

Finely chop onion, chilles and coriander.

Mix  the rice flour and rice in a bowl. Add chopped onions, chilles and coriander. Add jeera powder and salt to taste.

Knead the mixture into dough. Add water slowly as not much water will be required. The dough should be soft but not sticky.

Adding rice is a trick I learnt from Mom. Cooked rice (especially when a bit old) acts as a gluing agent and gives the roti its own texture too.

Wet the textured cloth napkin or handtowel so that it is moist but not dripping. Place a ball of the dough on this and pat flat to required thickness with your fingers. Keep dipping your hands in water to make sure the dough doesn’t stick to your fingers.

Heat a girdle (tava) and add a few drops of ghee before gently but firmly flipping the roti (with cloth) onto the tava. Now slowly lift away the cloth and cover the girdle to cook the roti on a slow flame. Flip roti, add some ghee and cook until both sides are golden.

Older generations pat the roti out right on the pan. I find the cloth method easier and it lets me thin out the roti quite a bit too.

The roti’s take a while to cook so you may want to use two pans. Be careful to not over-fry as then they become very crisp.

Serve hot with pudi, chutney, pickle or curry. Serves two hungry people

Chenthil’s been away this week in Alleppey leading a Photography On The Move workshop and of course that meant a lot of quick simple food (simple = roti, curd & pickle) for me. Since he’s returning tomorrow I thought I’d try something special for him. Try it and tell what you think of it… or just ask him (@ChenthilMohan)

Spicy Meaty Cheesy Cutlets

Ingredients –

5 potatoes
3 onions
2 green chillies
4 garlic cloves
1 inch ginger piece
1 tsp jeera powder (cumin)
½ tsp red chilly powder
½ tsp ginger garlic paste (optional)
1 cup powdered poha (beaten rice)
Salt to taste
½ cup boiled mince meat
Cheese slices
Wheat flour

Preparation –

Boil potatoes with a little salt. Peel and mash after cooling.

Grind onions, garlic, green chillies and ginger to fine paste.

Mix mashed potatoes and onion paste in a bowl with jeera power, red chilly powder, ginger garlic paste and mince meat. Once mixed well add the powdered poha to thicken the mixture. Add salt to taste.

Make four pieces out of each cheese slice and make big lemon size balls of the potato mixture.

Flatten each ball; add the cheese slice and fold sides in until cheese is covered uniformly. Flip the cutlet in flour and keep aside. Repeat for all balls.

Shallow fry the cutlets in oil until golden brown.

Serve hot with mint sauce or tomato sauce.

Update: - Potatoes don’t always work well for holding in molten cheese. Using eggs or maida as a wrap will keep the cutlet well together. Beat eggs and flip the cutlets in it before frying or make a thin maida batter and dip cutlets in this before frying.

I hate cooking! Well, not really… I hate cooking regular food. My favourite dish in the world is Dal and Chaval (rice) but I hate cooking it and its varieties every day. I haven’t cooked in a while and have started to miss the kitchen now, so I decided to give the hubby a break and cook once a week (magnanimous isn’t it )

The challenge is to enjoy cooking in the true sense – feel the textures, savour the aromas and get all excited to see the outcome. To hold me down to my resolution, I’m posting it up here. As we go along I will share my experience and recipes too!

I’ve had a bad sensitive tooth this whole week and haven’t eaten much. I just kept getting tired of chewing in only one side of the mouth. I really did get tired! So this week’s recipe is…

Sweet & Spicy Carrot Soup with Bread Sticks

Ingredients –

5 Peeled Carrots
1 Tomato
10 Almonds
1 dry red chilly (or chilly flakes would do)
3 cloves Garlic
½ tsp. Ginger Garlic paste
1 tbsp. Butter
1 pinch Jeera
1 Maggie Magic soup cube
Pepper (corns and powder)
1 cup Milk
1 pinch Rock salt
Salt to taste
1 Bread loaf

Preparation –

Boil carrots and tomato in three cups of water with ginger garlic paste and a little salt. (two whistles should do it)

After the veggies cool, remove skin of tomato and blend the carrots & tomato to a puree. (save stock)

Grind almonds to a fine powder, add the chilly and grind again. Finally add garlic and grind again, it should form a paste. Do not add water while grinding.

Heat the butter (adding a few drops of oil before you add the butter will prevent it from burning), put in a pinch of jeera and a few pepper corns. Add the almond paste to the butter and sort well.

When you get the aroma of roasted almonds with a twinge of chilly, add the carrot-tomato puree.

Mix it well and sort for a bit. Add the remaining stock and the soup cube. Let the mixture cook for 5 minutes. The colour will lighten a bit.

Add pepper powder to taste with a pinch of rock salt. Add 1 cup milk and salt to taste. Let the soup simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve hot and garnish with celery or coriander.

For bread sticks – cut strips from bread slices. (I find it easier and cleaner to cut the slices before roasting.) Roast the slices in an open pan on slow flame. This takes a while but gives a great crispy texture.

A few years ago I read a book and it set me thinking about how culture and society has dealt with menstruation. (Yes, you heard me right )


The book was ‘The Red Tent’ by Anita Diamant. It was a first-person story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and sister of Joseph of the Old Testament. Dinah was a talented midwife and proto-feminist. The story revolves round the red tent, which refers to the tent in which women of Jacob’s tribe must take refuge while menstruating or giving birth, according to the ancient law.

The Red Tent seems like punishment and expulsion from home, doesn’t it? But it isn’t, the women in the tent rested, talked, found mutual support and encouragement from their mothers, sisters and aunts. This was their “space”; their “me time”.

Now a culture closer home… The Indian Hindu culture. Growing up I saw and heard of women being ostracised when they were menstruating. There weren’t allowed in the prayer room or kitchen; they ate out of plates kept separately from them. They almost became untouchables. But, this wasn’t the initial intention; the intention was for women to rest and not do any hard labour.

A culture even closer – Islam. Muslim women are not allowed to pray or read the Koran during menstruation. They are considered impure and even unclean during this period.

If you look back at any culture, it’s clear that society then understood that women are at their weakest during menstruation; that they are losing blood; some are in pain and almost all are in discomfort. How can any of this be unclean or impure? To me a woman is at her purest when she’s menstruating, it is one of the surest signs of her having a productive womb.

Why am I saying all this, no idea. Actually it was just an idea I felt like sharing and ranting about. So what do you think of some of our cultures? What’s your experience?

Photo Credit: TwitterviewTuesday!

My little Cuckoo isn’t little anymore; she’s about 10 months old and well on her way into becoming a doggie teenager. As teenagers they aren’t very different from us, she’s getting stubborn, shows attitude… you know the drill.

Lately, due to the summer heat I’ve taken to sleeping with the dogs in the hall. If you’ve ever slept with dogs around, you’d know how lovely it is to feel them around you. However my Cuckoo has a strange quirk, she’s hates weight being put on her. This quirk causes growls quite often at night as I turn about with her at my feet.

I’ve been trying different tricks to get her comfortable with people hugging her or smothering her. One thing I’ve been doing is smothering her 10 times a day and then giving her a treat. This method has shown marked improvement.

Last night however, as I was putting my bedding down on the floor, Cuckoo as always sauntered across the room and plonked herself at the foot of the mat. This triggered an idea in my head as I realised that maybe she wants to be close to me but not on the floor. So, off I went to get her mat and place it next to mine. We both had a good night’s rest with no growls at all.

Why am I telling you this? My learning from yesterday was sometimes the most obvious things to do can be the solution or what seems most unlikely to work may be a great solution.

What do you think? Do you act on the impromptu ideas you get? Do you think a lot before you act on anything? Do you prefer the “well-tested” solution to the “freak idea”?

Photo credit: Chenthil