Soy Bean Salad with Cabbage and Carrot Slaw

Among various things that I learned from my mom as I was growing up, perhaps the strongest was her emphasis on the benefits of home and healthy cooking. Not only did she ensure that our family got a good healthy home cooked meal but also a balanced diet. This recipe for soy bean salad is inspired by my mom's cooking. Although as kids, my sister and I turned our faces away while our mom tried to make us eat this healthy salad, over the years I have learned to appreciate this recipe simply for the amount of nutrition that it provides. As usual, I have made my little changes to the original recipe and have added a slaw with it!

Ingredients:

For the beans:
2 cups of Soy Beans soaked overnight and cooked thereafter
4 tbs Basil Pesto Sauce (I usually have this made in advance so that way it can be used when needed).

For the Slaw:
1/2 cup shredded cabbage
1/2 cup shredded carrot
1 tbs light mayo
A pinch of sugar, salt and pepper
Method:
For the beans:
1. Pressure cook the soy beans soaked overnight. Let them cool for about 30 minutes.
2. Mix the basil pesto sauce and the cooked beans and saute them in a pan.
3. Saute the mixture until the beans start to turn dry and the outer skin shrinks.
For the Slaw:
1. Mix all the ingredients for the slaw.
2. Cover and cool in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before serving.

Serving:

Serve the warm soy beans with the slaw as a light dinner. Let me mention that they are quite filling as a light meal. Alternatively, you could also serve a spoonful as a side with your dinner entree.

Watermelon Burger Patties (?)

Whenever we are at the grocery store during the summer, Pratik insists on buying watermelons. I am sort of reluctant because I find this gigantic fruit really messy to cut. To top that, Pratik doesn't want to do the cutting 'cos even he dislikes getting watermelon juice all over the the kitchen counters towards the end of the job! So I generally end up buying the sliced watermelons. That way our job of cutting the watermelon gets easier. Another thing I dislike about the watermelon is that the rind has to be thrown away. So I wasn't very excited when Jai and Bee announced "watermelon" as the AFAM fruit of the month. I actually even thought of not sending in any entry for the event.

Now, my husband isn't much of a talker, but when I decided not to participate, we switched roles and I had to listen to his rant about how I was only being lazy about having to cut the watermelon (Mind you, he still wouldn't cut it for me and yeah, I know I could have got the cubed ones for three times the price). In return for Pratik using the "lazy" word on me, I came up with this recipe and that ultimately gave me my peace of mind :) You should have seen the expression on Pratik's face when he had the first bite of this watermelon rind burger! Of course, I was the one who was talking after that.

Ingredients:
1 cup shredded watermelon rind
1 tsp red chilli power
1 tsp chopped rosemary (You can substitute this for any herb that you like)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Handful of breadcrumbs
Goat cheese for topping
Salt

Recipe:
1. Remove most of the juice from the shredded watermelon rind by squeezing it with your hands. Save the juice for later use if necessary.
2. Mix the rind, chilli power, rosemary, cinnamon and salt. Mix the bread crumbs slowly to make a dough like mixture. Add bread crumbs as necessary depending on the consistency of the mixture.
3. Make 4 small or two large burger patties by pressing between your palms.
4. Coat the outer sides with bread crumbs.
5. Heat some oil in a pan and cook the patties until they look golden brown and crispy on the outside.
6. Top the patties with some goat cheese and rosemary leaves.

Serving:
Serve the patties with some ketchup or sweet and sour sauce and some garlic bread on the side.

Spinach, Chick Peas, Mushrooms and Carrots Soup

It was that time when my fridge was full of left over food and surprisingly, the clean up gave birth to this new soup. I initially did not plan on making it into a full blown recipe. However, the combination of vegetables and spices just knocked our taste buds out. I can positively say that you should try it not only when you have to clean out left overs from your refrigerator, but even otherwise.

Ingredients:
2 cups of chick peas (One 15.5 oz can)
1 large tomato, chopped
1/2 medium sized onion, chopped
1/2 cup spinach, chopped
1/2 cup of carrots, diced
1 1/2 cups of sliced mushrooms (I used baby bellas)
2 cups of vegetable stock
1 cup of hot water
1 tsp red chilli flakes
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tbs olive oil
Salt to taste

Method:
1. Heat some oil in a pot. Add the chopped onions and tomatoes and fry them until they are soft.
2. Add the spinach and carrots and fry for another 2 minutes.
3. Add the sliced mushrooms and continue stirring. Break the mushrooms with the spoon used for stirring, if you desire the have smaller pieces in the soup.
4. Now add the red chilli flakes, salt and pepper and stir until this combination smells spicy.
5. Add the vegetable stock and water and simmer on a low flame from now on.
6. Add the chick peas and continue to simmer until the soup thickens up a bit. You can add corn starch if you desire a thicker soup. But the vegetables in this soup are quite sufficient to keep a thick consistency.

Serving:
Serve the soup with some cheese on the top and a portion of french baguette on the side.

This soup is full of nutrients and has very little fat. It is an ideal meal on any given day. The perfect recipe to get proteins and fiber for your body in one shot.

Eggplant Crunch Rolls

For the first time since I started blogging, I decide to take part in a blog event: JFI, which is Indira's brainchild and being hosted by Sangeeta for July. It is a great idea that intends to celebrate a particular ingredient and the different recipes that come out of it. So, first, a big thank you to both.

Sangeeta chose "Eggplant" as the ingredient for the month of July. "Interesting" was the first word I said after reading the announcement post. For years, I have been eating eggplant cooked the traditional Indian way, where it is really the spices that are mixed in, dominate the final flavor of the product. One reason for that is that it doesn't have any pronounced taste of its own, say like peppers or carrots. So, I never either liked or hated this vegetable. For me, it were the spices that mattered.

Another reason why coming up with a good eggplant recipe seemed a bit challenging was that once cooked, this vegetable turns extremely mushy. One thing I wanted to try was to make the final product crunchy and also retain the non-dominant taste of the eggplant itself. After all, the Jivha is for Eggplant and not for the spices that go with it :) And yeah, this blog is about adventures in cooking. So I was going to have some fun!

Wanna take a guess as to what added the crispness, but didn't damage the taste of the eggplant??.........You got it! Water chestnuts!! Despite cooking, water chestnuts hold onto their crunchiness and tend to be very neutral in taste. Not only that, but water chestnuts are extremely healthy as they contain fiber and vitamins, but very little sodium or fat. So hey, I experimented with my ideas and played with the ingredients. I had to stick to the punch line for my blog!

I hope you enjoy this recipe for Egg Plant Crunch Rolls.

Ingredients:

1 large egg plant (makes approximately 10 rolls)
1 3/4 cups water chestnuts, finely diced (2 cans of 50 oz dry weight each)
1 tbs soy sauce
1/2 tsp Sriracha (hot chilli sauce)
1 tbs fine paste of ginger, garlic and green chillies
1 tbs chopped fresh fenugreek leaves (methi leaves)
1/4 cup white onion
1 tbs oil

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a skillet. Add the ginger, garlic and green chilli paste, fenugreek leaves and onions and fry for about 5 minutes.
2. Add the diced water chestnuts. Keep stirring.
3. Add the soy sauce and hot chilli sauce. Stir well and let it cook for a 5 minutes stirring occasionally.
4. Make thin slices of the eggplant lengthwise.
5. Grill the egg plant slices on both the sides until they start turning brown.
6. Stuff the mixture of water chestnuts in the center of the grilled egg plant slice and roll them up. Insert a tooth pick in the center to keep the roll together.

Serving:

Serve the egg plant rolls hot. Sprinkle some chopped fenugreek leaves on the top. Sprinkle some red chilli powder on top to make it extra spicy.

Enjoy the CRUNCH of an eggplant!!

Sauteed Mushrooms and Tomato Soup

I have been extremely busy at work lately. After a hard day in the office, what I crave for is a good home-made meal. But long work hours can really dampen my cooking spirits. The solution then, at least for me, is to come up with something quick but nutritive enough to liven me up for the evening. Soups and salads work well under this category. Here's a soup recipe that I tried recently. Let me know if it refreshes you up!

Ingredients:

3 cups sliced baby bella mushrooms
1 diced tomato (medium)
2 tbs chopped white onion
1 medium garlic clove
1 tbs corn flour for medium thickness of soup; 1 1/2 tbs for a thicker consistency
3 cups of vegetable stock
3/4 cup water
3/4 tbs dry parsley
1 tsp olive or vegetable oil
Salt and Pepper

Some suggestions:

1. You can use chicken or beef stock to fit your taste.
2. You can use any herb of choice. I prefer limiting the use to one herb of choice, that way the soup will have a distinct taste and flavor. Too many flavors get lost in themselves.

Method:

1. In a pan, saute the mushrooms, tomato, onion and garlic over some oil. Saute until the smell of the mushrooms stands out.
2. Add the parsley, pepper and salt. Saute for another minute.
3. Remove the mixture from the heat and set it aside to cool.
4. In a pot, heat the vegetable stock. Keep stirring occasionally.
5. Take half of the prepared mushroom mixture and puree it in a blender using water.
6. Once the vegetable stock starts boiling, add the corn starch paste, stirring continuously.
7. Add the mushroom puree and the remaining mixture. Continue stirring for another 5 minutes.
8. Add salt as per taste.

Serving:

Serve hot with some cream and top with chopped cilantro or parsley. Serve with a side of french baguette or whole grain bread.

Roasted Stuffed Red Bell Pepper with Saffron Cream Sauce

While roaming the streets of Paris, we treated our taste buds with all the good food from the cafes and pastry shops along our way. Having both lunch and dinner in fancy restaurants would get pretty expensive, but crepes made on little stands on the side of the street filled our tummy well within budget. So during the day, when we used to be on the run, we mostly ate those savory crepes and sandwiches. For dinner though, we made it a point to eat at some nice restaurants in the city. While we enjoyed all the food that we ate, the menu and the food at one such restaurant is worth mentioning. The dinner menu was diligently designed by the chef and included a mouth watering salad and entree for everybody, no matter what one's preference: vegetarian, seafood or meat. Pratik ordered the following at this restaurant, but I just happened to like it so much, that I ended up eating most of it. Try it out and let me know whether I was being mean :-)

Ingredients:

For the stuffing-
5 red bell peppers
1 cup basmati rice
2 cups water
1 tsp olive oil
3 tbs chopped fresh basil
1 pkg (~ 400 g) extra firm tofu
1 tbs Gochujang (Korean) sauce (Alternately, you can use chopped green or red chillies. The intention is to make the stuffing spicy to complement the slightly sweet saffron sauce)
Salt to taste
Few cilantro leaves for topping the stuffed pepper
Cooking oil spray

For the sauce-
2 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbs sugar
2 tsp saffron strands
1 tsp clarified butter

Method:

For the stuffing-
1. Pressure cook 1 cup of basmati rice with 2 cups of water.
2. Cut the tofu into thin slabs and fry them on some oil until both the sides are crisp.
3. Mince the fried tofu coarsely.
4. In a skillet, heat 1 tsp of oil and add 3 tbs of chopped basil. Fry for about a minute and then add the minced tofu. Fry for another 2 minutes and add the Gochujang sauce. Mix all these ingredients well and add the mixture to the cooked rice. Add salt as per taste. Cover and let this sit for half hour to allow the flavors to combine.
5. Remove the stem of the red peppers and clean the inside.
6. Stuff the peppers with this mixture. Line them on a baking tray and spray some cooking oil on them.
7. Broil them, turning the peppers around until all the sides are evenly browned.

For the sauce:
1. In a sauce pan, heat the clarified butter. Add the milk and heavy cream and simmer.
2. Add the saffron and sugar when the milk is hot.
3. Continue stirring until reduced to half.

Serving:
1. In a plate serve one stuffed red pepper and pour about 1/2 cup saffron sauce on the top. Top with some leaves of cilantro.

Have fun!

Fruit & Nut Cake

Pratik and I were in France recently and though I would love to write a separate post about the details of our trip, for now, here's a quick one line summary: Marseille is beautiful, Cassis is paradise, we didnt even know places like Aigues-Mortes and Les Baux existed, the Eiffel Tower is all worth the hype and the Arc de Triomphe was our favorite tourist attraction. The reason I mentioned our trip was that if you happen to visit Paris (or for that matter any other city in France) you cannot miss the many cafes and boulangeries (bakeries) that line every street of this fascinating city. That's the first thing that I noticed when I got there (obviously!). I wish I could experiment every single cake I ate during my stay in France, but here is a recipe which I can say turned out to be quite close to the taste of one that I had during my cake-and-pastry-filled vacation.

Ingredients:
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup hot water
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup dried tropical mix
1/2 cup coarsely chopped unsalted cashews
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Method:
1. Butter a 9x5 inch loaf pan.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 325 deg F.
3. In a sauce pan (over medium heat), mix the sugar, water, butter, spices, cranberries, tropical mix. Boil for 5 minutes and set aside to cool until luke warm. Add the cashews.
4. Stir the flour (seived twice), baking soda and vanilla extract into this mixture.
5. Pour the batter into the buttered pan and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean (About 30-45 minutes, depending on your oven).
6. Remove the from the oven and let it cool on a wire rack.
7. Cover and store the cake for few days if possible before serving.
8. Say hello to Paris from the comfort of your home!