Onion Rings with Pineapple Sauce

Ingredients:

For Pineapple sauce:

1 ½ cup pineapple juice

½ inch ginger roughly chopped

3 tablespoon tamarind paste

1 teaspoon sugar

1 ½ tablespoon crushed jaggery

½ teaspoon or to taste black pepper

Salt to taste

½ teaspoon corn flour

For onion rings:

2 onions. Sliced and rings separated.

5 ½ tablespoon maida

1 ½ tablespoon semolina / sooji

1/8 tea spoon of soda bicarb, garam masla, coriander powder and dried mango powder / aamchoor.

Salt and red chilli powder each to taste

1 ½ half table spoon corn flour

¼ cup Drinking soda or as required

Recipe:

For pineapple sauce:

In a pan on medium flame, add pineapple juice and ginger. After it begins to simmer add sugar, jaggery, pepper and salt. Once sugar and jaggery has dissolved add tamarind paste and bring the sauce to a boil. Then strain the sauce through a sieve and pour back into the pan on high flame. Add corn flour and stir continuously. After a boil, shut the flame and strain again. Sauce is ready. Serve when at room temperature.

For onion rings:

Mix well together all the dry ingredients. Add drinking soda just before frying the rings, and mix into runny batter, like the one used for pakoras.

Dip onion rings in the batter and fry them for few seconds till they turn golden in color. Serve hot with the sauce.

Note:

You can add more flavour to the sauce by adding dry spices like cloves or cardamom or star anise or cinnamon. But don’t use in much quantity as they may overpower the pineapple flavour.

Garlic ginger paste can also be added to the batter.

Eggless Chocolate Brownie:

Ingredients:

½ cup maida

4 ½ table spoon cocoa powder

¼ tea spoon soda bicarb

1/8 tea spoon baking powder

6 table spoon powdered sugar

½ cup regular butter

½ cup milk, warm

1 tea spoon vanilla essence

2 table spoon curd / yoghurt

Recipe:

Begin with sifting maida, cocoa powder, soda bicarb and baking powder together, atleast three times. Keep aside.

In a bowl, cream butter and sugar, till light and fluffy. This will be done by whisking them using a hand blender or a whisk.

Add curd and vanilla essence and mix well.

Now to this, add half of flour and half of milk and mix well. Add remaining flour and milk mix well.

Now finally whisk or blend the batter till air bubbles start to form on the top.

Grease a microwave friendly tray, and pour batter in it. Microwave it for 3-4 minutes on high setting. Check after 3 minutes by inserting a toothpick or knife in brownie. If it doesn’t come out clean, microwave for another minute. Check again. Once knife is clean, take the brownie out and leave it to rest in its container for 5 minutes. And then de mould it.

Serve it hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Spicy Red Chutney: Momos accompaniment

Preparation: Soak 6 dry red chillies in water for 5 hours.

Recipe: Blitz together 1 medium onion, 2 medium tomato, 8-10 slices of garlic and 6 red chillies along with its water into a fine paste. In a pan add 1/2 tablespoon oil and cook this paste till raw smell of onion tomato and garlic goes away. May take around ten minutes on low flame. Add salt and red chilli powder to taste. In end add one table spoon vinegar. Chutney is ready. 

Note: There are many ways to prepare this chutney, some people blanch vegetables before blitzing them, others just grind the vegetables together without any cooking. I prefer the above recipe more because i think it tastes better and also due to the addition of oil and vinegar it is preserved and stays edible for a longer period of time.