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.

Sindoori Cutlet

Ingredients: Makes 12-14 cutlets

1 cup rice flour

1 carrot shredded

2 cups water

½ cup curd

1 ½ tablespoon corn flour

Few strands saffron

Salt to taste

Red chilli powder to taste

Pinch each of garam masala, coriander powder and aamchoor.

1 tablespoon kasuri methi

4 slices of garlic finely chopped

Oil, to deep fry the cutlets.

Recipe:

In a sauce pan, add 1 cup water and bring it to a boil and then lower the heat to minimum. Add rice flour, stir it continuously. Flour will absorb the water instantly, but still keep stirring it. When water has been completely mixed with the flour, mix half cup of water and curd together and add to the flour. Stir again till this thin curd is absorbed by the flour nicely. After a couple of minutes, the flour will start to come together and will bind into dough. When that happens, turn the flame off and take the dough out into a bowl.

In the same pan add remaining half cup of water and heat it. Add saffron and let it simmer for a minute. Then add this to the dough. With the help of a whisk mix the dough nicely.

Now add all the remaining ingredients together and mix nicely.

With the help of spoons make small cutlets and fry them till golden brown.

Serve them hot with cold mint chutney.

Note:

Dry the shredded carrot onto a kitchen towel before adding to the dough.

Preferably use a non-stick pan to prepare the dough.

Be innovative and use these cutlets as koftas in the gravy of your choice.

Spiced Caramel Pineapple

Trust me it tastes so good that I was not able to stop myself from eating it, not that I have any grudges about it especially since making it turned out to be more arduous than I thought. I was rattled already enough with the thought of cooking this without a barbeque or a griller, and then came along the task to cut the pineapple into slices. It seems facile on television, but it’s tough like gymming on the first day, you manage to do it but regret it afterwards when the muscle pain kicks in. I also somehow managed to cut the slices out of it and was left with a couple of scratches from pineapple thorns. But all the pain was worth the taste.

Ingredients:

1 pineapple sliced

2 inch cinnamon stick

½ teaspoon black pepper powder

4 tablespoon sugar

4 tablespoon roughly crushed jaggery

2 tablespoon butter.

3/4 cup water

Recipe:

Add butter, sugar, jaggery and water in a sauce pan, and leave it to simmer on low flame till sugar and jaggery dissolves.

Now add cinnamon stick and turn the heat on. After the syrup has boiled once, turn the heat off, and leave it to cool down for a couple of minutes after which add pepper powder and mix nicely.

Now soak pineapple slices in this syrup for at least ten minutes.

Then in a frying pan on low flame, fry these slices. Don’t add oil or butter in the pan. Just take the slices out of the syrup and lay them down one by one in the pan. The juice from the pineapple and syrup will scatter around the pan. Don’t worry; this scattered juice is what will help the pineapple get nicely caramelised.

After 2 minutes of frying on one side flip the slices and gently dab the syrup again on the slices with the help of a kitchen brush, and again fry for 2 minutes on the other side. Also during this step, keep collecting the juice scattered into the pan and pouring it back on the slices. Repeat all of this once again, and then take them off the pan.

Technically, this kind of recipe is cooked on a barbeque, but since I don’t have one, I roasted them for few seconds on nude flame on both sides, once the frying was done. This helped them get that charred flavour which naturally comes in a barbeque.

Serve them hot along with the leftover syrup.

Dahi Ke Kebab

Ingredients: Makes 5-6 small kebabs

1 cup hung curd

Handful of fresh coriander leaves

4 tablespoon corn flour

1 medium onion finely chopped

1 green chilli chopped

¼ inch ginger finely chopped

Salt to taste

Black pepper powder to taste

Oil to shallow fry the kebabs

Recipe:

In a bowl, whisk hung curd lightly.

Add corn flour and whisk again till nicely mixed.

Add all remaining ingredients together and mix well.

In a pan add oil, and form small kebabs of the mixture with the help of a spoon. This mixture is very wet in texture and will stick if hands are used directly. Shallow fry all of the kebabs on lowest flame possible on all sides till nicely brown.

Serve with any dip you like. 

Veg Fritters

Ingredients: Makes 7-8 Patties

1 small potato, boiled and chopped into fine pieces

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 cup peas, boiled

Bunch of coriander leaves roughly chopped

7 tablespoon gram flour / besan

2 ½ tablespoon corn flour

Salt to taste

Red chilli powder to taste

1/8 teaspoon Black pepper powder

Pinch of asafoetida

¼ teaspoon soda bicarb

Water to make the batter, around 8 tablespoon.

Oil to shallow fry each patty.

Recipe:

In a bowl add flour, cornflour, soda, spices and water. Whisk everything nicely so that no lump remains. Leave it aside for 5 minutes after which whisk again rigorously. The more you whisk the softer patties will be. Point to note here is that consistency should not be very thin or thick. It should be somewhat like a cake batter. 

Add all the veggies, coriander into the batter mix gently with a spatula. And leave it aside for around fifteen minutes for veggies to get marinated. The outcome now will be a thick batter with veggies.

What makes this recipe different from pakoras is that more batter and lesser veggies are used in making pakoras, where as in this batter is less and veggies are more making it more delicious.

After the marination, in a pan add little oil. Remember these needs to be shallow fried as all the veggies are already cooked. Scoop one large spoon batter into the pan, fry it for around 3 minutes on each side till they turn brown. Take them out and serve them with hot with cold hung curd dip seasoned as per your taste buds. J

Note:

Alternatively you can use refined flour to make these too.

Also add as many different veggies as you can think of. This is a perfect way to make your kids eat veggies in a hidden way.