All posts by Ashwita

Ashwita is a Reiki master and past life therapist. She loves traveling, photography, writing, painting and cooking! She made her first cookies at 12 and fell in love with baking, a love that is still strong. Desserts are her specialty, although she can cook dishes from around a dozen cuisines.
All Posts, Mains

Dal Makhani

Leave a comment

Serves 4-6
Time taken: 40 min (Overnight Soaking Required)

Dal makhani is a very popular Punjabi dish, and is traditionally left cooking on burning coal overnight. The longer it is cooked, the better it tastes! If you have access to charcoal, you can light up a small piece, pour a few drops of ghee on it to increase the smoke and place the piece in a little bowl inside the pot of dal makhani, sealing it with a lid. This will impart a lovely smokey flavour to the dish.

Ingredients

1 cup udad dal with skin
2 tsp bengal gram dal (chana dal)
3 tsp rajma (kidney beans)
2 big tomatoes, pureed
1/3 cup cream
½ tsp turmeric powder
½ tsp chilly powder
2 tsp coriander powder
½ tsp garam masala powder
Salt
2-3 tbsp salted butter
Crushed garlic (6 flakes)
Ghee

Instructions

  • Soak udad dal, bengal gram dal and rajma overnight and then pressure-cook for 20-30 min with water.
  • Open the pressure cooker and place it on the heat.
  • Add tomato puree, masala powders and salt to the cooked dal.
  • Let it simmer for sometime, and then add lightly beaten cream.
  • Season with crushed garlic, remove from heat, add butter and serve.
All Posts, Desserts

Mung Dal Halwa

Leave a comment

I first ate this at a Marwari wedding, and I was bowled over. A big fan of rich, decadent desserts, I had to eventually learn how to make this as I couldn’t find it anywhere nearby. The traditional recipe involves soaking the dal and then grinding it using minimal water. This is a very painful process and I hesitated everytime. Until I figured a way out. Now, I grind the powder to the desired consistency and then soak it. The advantages are many – the grinding is more uniform, you don’t have to spend an hour removing all the sticky particles from the blender, and most importantly, it cuts down hugely on the soaking time.

If you eat this at a traditional halwai, it will almost be swimming in ghee, so if you’re underweight, you can pretty much use as much as you like. Always, always serve small portions because it is very heavy.

Serves 6-8
Time taken: 1 hour

Ingredients

1 cup mung dal (yellow)
½ cup milk
1 cup sugar
A generous pinch Saffron
1 cup ghee
½ cup dry fruits (cashew nuts, raisins, almonds, pistachio)

Method

  • Grind the mung dal into a coarse powder. Soak it in water and let it sit for about half an hour.
  • Soak saffron in hot milk.
  • Blanch almonds in boiling water for 5 min. Cool, peel and slice them. Set aside.
  • Heat ghee in a thick-bottomed pan and add the dry fruits. Once golden brown, add the mung dal paste.
  • Cook over a low flame with constant stirring, until the dal turns brown.
  • Add sugar and saffron milk
  • Stir well till they are thoroughly incorporated and the halwa is of dropping consistency.
  • Serve hot. For an extra dose of richness, cover the top with a layer of silver foil just before serving.
All Posts, Soups

German Carrot Soup

Leave a comment

The first time I heard ‘carrot soup’, I thought the very idea was weird. But then it was suggested by a trusted German friend, so I gingerly went along with her idea. The result was marvelous, and I have been a fan ever since. This is a heavy soup, so paired up with a few bread sticks or toasted slices of bread, it can easily be a filling dinner.

Serves 2
Time taken: 25 min

Ingredients

3 carrots, sliced
1 medium potato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp dried rosemary leaves
1 cup vegetable or chicken stock (I often use water mixed with half a cube of maggi chicken stock)
1 tbsp finely chopped chives or spring onions
2 tbsp cream
Salt, pepper

Method

  • Heat the oil and add onions and garlic.
  • When slightly caramelised, add the carrots and potatoes.
  • Bring the stock to a boil separately, and pour it in, when the vegetables are half done. Add the rosemary.
  • Boil until vegetables are done, cool and blend until smooth.
  • Pour the soup back into the pan, bring to a boil and season with salt and pepper. Add more water to bring it to the desired consistency.
  • Serve hot, garnished with cream and chives
All Posts, Desserts

Eggless Mango Cake

Leave a comment

This is a slightly textured, crumbly cake, and was suggested by someone on facebook and I found it interesting enough to give it a shot. Goes very well when paired with vanilla custard!

Ingredients

2 cups fine semolina (chiroti rava or sooji)
2 cups mango pulp
½ cup oil
1½ cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cardamom (elaichi)
½ cup chopped nuts for garnish (optional)

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
  • Combine semolina with sugar, cardamom and baking powder.
  • Add oil, mix, and then add mango pulp.
  • Let sit for 20 minutes.
  • Pour into a greased loaf pan and top with nuts.
  • Bake for 30-35 minutes, checking regularly after 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. (Can also be microwaved for 10 min)
  • Let cool on a wire rack, slice and serve.
All Posts, Breakfast

Jackfruit Dosa

Leave a comment

Jackfruit dosas for me are associated with childhood memories. Mom would serve it with a drizzle of honey and maybe a dollop of butter. So yum!

I found merely dosa and honey to be a bit minimalistic, so this time I combined it with chutney and dal instead. It worked out fine for me, but if you like it sweet, add a dash of sugar or jaggery to the batter, and top it up with honey and butter for a delish breakfast.

Makes 6-7 dosas
Time taken: 20 min

Ingredients

2 cups raw rice
½ cup grated coconut
6-7 pods of jackfruit, deseeded
2 tbsp jaggery (optional)
½ tsp salt
Water
Ghee/ oil for cooking

Instructions

  • Soak the rice for at least 3-4 hours. If you want to make this dosa instantly, you could use rice flour instead, to cut down on soaking time.
  • Grind the rice along with coconut, jackfruit and salt. If you want to make it sweet, you could add jaggery at this stage.
  • Mix enough water to make a smooth batter, and spread over a hot pan to make dosas. Flip over when brown underneath, cook for a couole of minutes and take off the heat.
  • Serve immediately with dal and chutney or with honey and butter.
All Posts, Desserts

Jackfruit Payasam / Chakka Pradhaman

Leave a comment

I absolutely love jaggery and coconut milk payasams. There’s something magical about them, and this one is no exception. In fact, the jackfruit only makes it better. And if you have chakka varati sitting in your fridge, this is something you can whip up in about 5 minutes!

Serves 4
Time taken: 5 min

Ingredients

½ cup chakka varati
1½ cups coconut milk (or 1 cup second & ½ cup first milk)
2 tbsp ghee
2 tbsp chopped nuts & raisins

Instructions

  • Heat ghee in a pan and add the chopped nuts.
  • When golden brown, add the chakka varati and coconut milk, mix thoroughly.
  • Simmer for 2-3 min and remove from heat.
  • Serve warm.

Variation

I like the taste of chana dal in the payasam and feel it really adds value. I usually pressure-cook chana dal for 10 min with 2.5 times water and add it along with the chakka varati in the second step of the recipe. The rest of the process remains the same. Cooked sago is another wonderful addition.

All Posts, Desserts, Easy Recipes

Chakka Varattiyathu / Jackfruit Jam

Leave a comment

In Bangalore, one is lucky – one can buy just a few pieces of ripe, juicy jackfruit from roadside fruit-stalls. This is not a luxury people have in many other places, where one has to settle for buying a whole jackfruit usually to the tune of 10-15kg. One ends up with like a 100 or so pods of jackfruit and to the uninitiated, this can seem like a nightmare. It did seem like one to me when due a twist in life I ended up with a 10 kilo jackfruit, and I was feeling fed up even before starting to eat it, just by thinking of all the days I’d have to spend eating jackfruit in various forms.

What saved me was this – also called chakka varati, jackfruit halva, jam or whatever you might want to call it. Such a flexible item, this can be used in a variety of dishes and extends the life of the jackfruit so that you’re not pressured to finish everything up within a couple of days. This is pretty amazing to eat even as it is, even more so when it is freshly cooked.

Ingredients

5 cups ripe jackfruit pods, deseeded
1 cup grated jaggery
4 tbsp ghee

Instructions

  • Grind the jackfruit into a coarse paste.
  • Heat ghee in a pan and when hot, add the ground jackfruit.
  • When the jackfruit is almost cooked, add the jaggery. Traditionally, the jaggery is heated with a tablespoon of water until it melts, and then strained and poured into the paste so that any impurities in the jaggery and filtered out. This can also be done.
  • Cook until a jam-like consistency is reached and it leaves the sides of the pan easily.
  • When refrigerated, It will keep easily for a month.

Note: You might want to vary the quantity of the jaggery depending on the sweetness of the jackfruit.

 

All Posts, Desserts

Banana in Coconut & Rice

Leave a comment

One of my fondest memories in Vietnam is walking down a road, hungry and looking for a restaurant that served decent veg food (I do eat a bit of non veg, but then we entered a restaurant, saw glass cases with snakes, frogs and other creatures and just ran out, traumatized… this on a hungry stomach!) and then finding a cart full of something interesting-looking. We gingerly approached the seller, afraid of what we might suddenly find, only to stare in disbelief – this was vegetarian!

We tried a few things but one of them won our hearts – banana steamed in a coating of rice and coconut, subsequently grilled on charcoal. We were delighted to find that when we ordered it, the seller placed it in a bowl and topped it up with with sago pudding!

It was one of the most divine things we’d tasted, probably enhanced by the fact that we were starving. I still love making this, especially when I have to finish over-ripe bananas.

Time taken: 30 min
Serves 4

Ingredients

4 small bananas (or 2 big ones cut in half)
1 ½ cups cooked rice
½ cup rice flour
½ cup grated coconut
2 tsp sugar
3 tbsp sesame seeds
Banana leaves/ Pandan leaves or Turmeric leaves (optional)
Sesame oil for shallow/ deep frying

For the Sago Pudding:

½ cup sago (tapioca pearls), soaked in water overnight
250 ml coconut milk
⅓ cup sugar (brown or palm sugar can also be used)
a pinch of salt

Instructions

Grind the cooked rice in a bender until it is a bit pasty. You can add a little water if it is too sticky.

Mix in the coconut and enough rice flour to bring it to a consistency of a coarse dough.

Coat each banana with this rice dough, roll in sesame seeds, cover with a leaf if you have any, and place it in a steamer.

After 10 minutes, turn the bananas over and let cook for another 5 minutes or so or until they look done.

They can be served as it, or grilled, or shallow or deep fried in sesame oil before serving.

Sago Pudding

Boil the sago with coconut milk, sugar and salt, stirring continuously for a few minutes and then cooking covered until transparent, about 10 minutes. If you haven’t soaked the sago, it may take 15 min to cook.

To Serve

Slice the banana into 4-5 pieces, pour the sago pudding on top and serve warm

Note: The dish in the top-most picture is a quicker version. It isn’t roasted or fried, and is served with a very quick coconut sauce made by boiling coconut milk with a little sugar and a pinch of salt.

All Posts, Desserts

Baked Blueberry & White Chocolate Cheesecake

Leave a comment

For some reason, I was never interested in a baked cheesecake. Until I ate one. When we have potlucks at my place, I always make something that would otherwise be too expensive, asking the bachelors to bring the items. And that’s how this cheesecake came about.

If you don’t want to spend lots of money buying cream cheese, hang a kilo of thick yogurt overnight in a muslin cloth and let it drain (place it in the refrigerator to prevent it from souring). You could substitute the frozen blueberries with blueberry preserves or jam – although it would change the appearance and the taste, I’m sure it would still be very yummy.

Ingredients

200 g digestive biscuits
80 g butter, softened
400 g cream cheese, softened
1 cup caster or icing sugar
150 ml cream
1 tsp lemon zest
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
1 ½ cups frozen blueberries (or preserves)
½ cup white chocolate (chips or grated)
Fresh blueberries & whipped cream, to decorate (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 170°C (150°C fan). Spray side and base of 22cm springform pan with oil. Line base with baking paper.

In a food processor, process biscuits until they resemble fine bread crumbs. Add butter and pulse until it all comes together. Press into base of pan. Refrigerate.

Whip together the cream cheese, sugar, cream, zest, juice and vanilla. Process until smooth and creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after adding each.

Setting aside a tablespoon to sprinkle on top, melt the chocolate chips, (place them in a little bowl over a pan of boiling water and stir till melted). Mix a little cream cheese batter into the melted chocolate, mix until smooth and pour this into the batter. Mix well.

Pour into pan, scatter blueberries and chocolate chips over, and stir gently to distribute evenly.

Bake for 1 hour; the cheesecake should still be slightly wobbly in the center. Cool completely in oven. Refrigerate overnight.

Serve with whipped cream and fresh blueberries.

All Posts

Ragi Cookies

1 Comment

Ragi cookies served with hot chocolate

I used to be the sort of person that avoided maida (refined flour) at all costs. Well, almost – for the restriction only applied to when I was cooking at home. If I had an option for whole wheat outside, I would take it but I wasn’t too finicky.

They say one mellows down with age. It happened with me, anyway. Now I don’t care so much. I figured that since I was eating refined stuff outside anyway, at least I could stop being so harsh with myself. at home. That attitude made my breads a lot softer. I’ve used maida and ragi huri hittu – baby food made with ragi – in a 50:50 ratio. You could use just ragi huri hittu and see how it turns out – please do leave a comment on how that went!

Ingredients

½ cup all purpose flour
½ cup ragi huri hittu, (OR 1 cup ragi huri hittu and no plain flour)
¼ cup besan (gram flour)
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp fine rava (cream of wheat or sooji)
2 to 3 pinches of nutmeg powder or grated nutmeg
½ tsp cardamom powder
½ cup ghee (semi solid) or butter at room temperature, 80 grams
½ cup sugar or  ⅔ cup brown sugar
½ tbsp curd or yogurt
1 to 2 tbsp milk
A few almonds

 Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 180° C and line a baking tray with foil.
  • Sift the the dry ingredients together – the flours, baking powder and baking soda. keep aside.
  • Cream the ghee and sugar with a whisk or electric mixer until smooth, light and creamy.
  • Mix in curd.
  • Add the sifted dry ingredients. rava, and cardamom and nutmeg powders.
  • Gently mix everything. do not knead. just mix and gather to a smooth dough. if the mixture is too crumbly and you cannot bring it together, add 1 to 3 tbsp of milk. mix lightly until the desired consistency is achieved.
  • Make goose-berry sized balls from the dough, roll them evenly in your palms. slightly flatten them. and press almonds on the top lightly.
  • You can also make some crisscross designs on them with a fork or toothpick.
  • Place the cookies in a baking tray, leaving some space between them so that they can expand while baking.
  • Bake for 20-25 mins till light golden and cool on wire racks.
  • If any remain, store them in an air tight container.

Variation: Banana Ragi Cookies

I had an over ripe banana sitting on the counter while I was baking these and thought hey! Why not mix that in! I simply mashed the banana and added it to the dough. The cookies turned out a little softer and chewier, and I like them like that. If you want them crispy, you may want to cut down on the ghee by a couple of tablespoons.