Spicy Coconut Rice (Masala Kobbari Annam)

Blogging Marathon# 62: Week 3/ Day 1

Theme: Cook with Coconut

Dish: Coconut Masala Rice
We are starting a new week of blogging marathon today and my theme for the week is 'Cook with Coconut'. Coconut is a very interesting ingredient in that it comes in so many different forms, oil, milk, fresh grated, desiccated, flour and sugar. So this week I have 3 recipes using various forms of coconut.

First up is a delicious rice made with fresh grated coconut. Recipe is from Suma's blog. I made it a few days after she posted the recipe. It is a spicy version of regular coconut rice with some added masalas as well.

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Iyengar Bakery Khara Bread (Spicy Indian flavored Bread)

Blogging Marathon# 53: Week 4/ Day 1

Theme: Bookmarked Recipes -- Veena's Veg Nation

Dish: Iyengar Bakery Khara Bread

We are starting the final week of Blogging Marathon for this month today and I'm paired with Veena and for the next 3 days I'm going to post 3 dishes from Veena's blog. Veena blogs at Veena's Veg Nation and she has an awesome collection of recipes both traditional Indian and International. She is an amazing baker, I have quite a few of her breads and other baked goodies bookmarked, hopefully I'll get to bake them some time soon.

For the first day, I made this Iyengar Bakery style spicy Khara Bread. This bread has delicious Indian flavors with cumin seeds, onions, mint and cilantro. Make it as spicy as you want with green chilies. I kept it mild because my kids are too big on spicy food.

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Methi Chana Pulao (Fenugreek leaves and Chickpea Pilaf)

Blogging Marathon# 50: Week 2/ Day 2

Theme: Methi Dishes

Dish: Methi Chana Pulao

Apart from curries, lentil dishes and rotis, methi is great to use in rice dishes too. I have made spicy pulao with methi and paneer before, but today's pulao is quite mild with just a few whole spices. This recipe is my adaptation of my cousin's methi pudina rice. She usually serves the rice with a spicy curry, but I added some chickpeas to the rice to make it wholesome.

This is a one-pot dish and can be whipped up in no time (if you have the methi leaves all prepped and ready to go, that is). I usually store my cleaned methi leaves in an airtight container in the fridge once I get back from the store and then use them as needed during the week.

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Pudina Vegetable Pulao (Mint flavored Vegetable Pilaf) -- (Revisiting Old Recipe)

Blogging Marathon# 45: Week 4/ Day 3
Theme: Revisiting Old Recipes
Dish: Pudina Vegetable Pulao

One problem with blogging regularly is that I am constantly trying out new recipes to post here on the blog and don't usually find time to go back and cook old recipes. Whenever Valli has 'Revisiting recipes' theme for blogging marathon, I make sure to sign up for it so I get a chance to remake the dish and redo the photos.

This Pudina Vegetable Pulao is from my early blogging days way back from 2006 -- more than 8 years back. This was the fanciest rice dish I knew in those days and made it regularly until my pulao & biryani repertoire started growing and this simple one pot meal became a rarity in my house.

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Quinoa Tabbouleh

Blogging Marathon# 41: Week 2/ Day 2
Theme: Picnic Hamper Dishes
Dish: Quinoa Tabbouleh

Salads are really perfect to take along for picnics, especially the ones made with grains or pasta. They can be made ahead of time and the resting gives the grains a chance to absorb all the flavors. And the biggest advantage of all is they can be served at room temperature without any problem.

Today's dish for 'Picnic Hamper' is another healthy and delicious salad (check out yesterday's Bread Salad). Tabbouleh is traditionally made with bulgur, but I made it with quinoa instead. It is very flavorful with the addition of fresh herbs, mint and parsley, and veggies, cucumber and tomato.

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Green Chutney for Chaats (Cilantro-Mint Chutney)

Green Chutney is the quintessential ingredient for all the chaats. It is very simple to make with few ingredients but balance is the name of the game when making this dish. A little too much of any ingredient will change the taste. So adjust the ingredients as per your personal preference.

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Cabbage-Pudina Pulao (Cabbage Mint Pilaf)

Can't believe there's only 10 days left for Christmas. But the weather here has been sending quite a few signals that it is almost winter and holiday season is just around the corner. We had 2 snow storms this week and the temperatures are below freezing. Can't wait for winter to end even before it started :-)
After that brief weather report, here's what's cooking in my house. I made this quick and easy (almost) 1 pot dish for one of our meals last week. Recipe is from a Telugu cooking show. I already have 2 cabbage rice recipes on the blog, but this one has whole garam masala spices and ground masala that gives a nice flavor to the dish.

In the original recipe, rice was cooked with the veggies in the pot making it a 1-pot dish, but I cooked the rice separately and added it to the veggies at the end. All in all it is a tasty variation to regular pulaos and can be prepared in short amount of time.

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Falafel (Eggless, Lower fat recipe)

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 1/ Day 2
Theme: Combo Dishes - Tikkis/ Burgers
Dish: Falafel with Pita

Officially it is Fall season in our neck of woods, but it feels like summer for the past couple of days. Not that I'm complaining, but I had planned to make baked falafel for day 2 of BM# 33 and had to change plans and shallow fry them because I didn't want to turn on the oven. Baked or fried these falafel are crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. We had these for lunchl served with store bought pita bread, creamy tahini sauce and crispy lettuce and cucumber salads. 

I already have a recipe for falafel that has egg in it and I've been looking for a recipe that doesn't have any egg and does not use as much oil. So when I saw this recipe @ Cookie and Kate, I knew I had to try this recipe. It is super simple to put together. Interestingly the recipe uses soaked chickpeas that do not need to be cooked, that saves time and is much more convenient.

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Qabooli Biryani (Hyderabadi Chana dal Biryani)

Blogging Marathon# 32: Letter Q
Theme: A-Z Dishes from Andhra Pradesh
Dish: Q for Qabooli Biryani (Hyderabadi Chana dal Biryani)

Letter Q stands for Qubani (apricots). Qubani ka Meetha is a very famous Hyderabadi dessert that is made with dried apricots that are soaked and then cooked with sugar and drizzled with cream. I wanted to make it, but couldn't find good quality apricots. So I made Qabooli instead.

Qabooli is biryani made with spicy chana dal (split pea lentil) and layered with basmati rice. I used black chana/ chickpeas instead and it turned out quite tasty. This is a filling and delicious dish that is great to make when you have company.

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Vegetarian Eggplant Meatballs

Blogging Marathon# 31: Week 2/ Day 3
Theme: Meatless Dishes
Dish: Vegetarian Eggplant 'Meatballs'

'Meatless' Meatballs are one of my son's favorite dishes. I keep some store bought ones in the freezer for quick meal options. I posted a recipe using soy crumbles earlier. Today's recipe uses eggplant and I was surprised how moist and 'meaty' these meatballs taste (by 'meaty' I mean they have lot of body or bulk, don't know how else to express that :-)) 

Meatballs are great with some tomato sauce in pasta or on a salad or just to munch on as appetizer. I flavored these meatballs with mint and parsley to give them a Mediterranean flavor. I served them with homemade tzatziki and it was a very delicious combination.

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Mango Coconut Pulao (Pilaf)

After trying Mango curry, I was ready to expand my raw mango recipe repertoire. So when I saw this recipe for Mango-Coconut Pulao on a telugu cooking show, I promptly noted it down.

With Summer being in full swing in our neck of woods, fresh green mangoes are widely available in the Indian groceries. I always make sure that I get a few, so I can use them to make pappu (dal) or this aam ka panna or this masala curry. But this mango coconut pulao is simple to make and is perfect one-pot meal for weeknights.

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Watermelon Salsa

This watermelon salsa recipe does not technically require an entire blog post. But the clicks were so colorful and pretty, that I thought I needed to do another post just for them. Like any other no-cook salsa, all this recipe requires is mixing of the ingredients. So the more fresher and sweeter the melon, the more tasty this salsa is going to be. 

 Recipe is from a book that we got from my kid's Pediatrician's office. Even though my 5 year old wasn't very impressed with the salsa, I really enjoyed it's refreshing taste. I served it with Grilled veggie Quesadillas.

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Dal Biryani

It's been a while that I sent an entry to Susan @ Well Seasoned Cook's famous My Legume Love Affair (MLLA) event. This month's edition is being hosted by lovely Nupur @ One Hot Stove. I love legumes and they are integral part of my cooking. My 5 year old LOVES dal chawal and I'm very glad that I can sneak in any veggie in to a dal and he'll eat it without complaining. So much for little victories :-)

This Dal Biryani recipe is adapted from one of the Telugu cooking shows that I recently watched. I really loved the idea of using dal in biryani, it makes it a complete dish with the required carbs, protein and fat. It is filling and delicious to boot.

The original recipe was for 'Panchratan Dal Biryani' with 5 different legumes. But I remember a nutrition expert on one of the other cooking shows saying that 'adding more good things to a dish is not necessarily good for health'. She mentioned that using a lot of different beans/ nuts/ oils/ seeds (anything for that matter) slows down the body from absorbing the good nutrients from each of the ingredient. I don't know if that is true or not, but I used only 3 legumes -- Chickpeas, Adzuki beans and Moong beans. But the recipe is versatile and any sturdy legume that doesn't become mushy when cooked can be used.

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Brown Rice Green Pulao (Brown Rice & Mint Pilaf)

I love the nuttiness of Brown Rice and cook with it quite often. I usually make plain brown rice and make side dishes, like Thai Panaeng Curry or Tempeh Rendang. Basically I like to pair brown rice with spicy Asian dishes and rarely with Indian curries. So when I saw this recipe for flavored brown rice recipe on one of the Indian cooking shows that I'm obsessed with, I know I had to make it. The original recipe used cilantro, but I used mint instead. A combination of mint and cilantro would be yummy too.

This is a very flavorful and healthy one-pot dish. Soak brown rice for at least 5-6 hours or even overnight for better taste and texture. Right now my mint plants are growing wild and I'm looking for variety of dishes to use as much of it as possible. This is the first in the series of mint/ pudina recipes that I've been trying in the quest for using up my excess herb.

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Soy Nilgiri Kurma and Dal Rotis

Blogging Marathon# 29: Week 1/ Day 1
Theme: Cooking with Colors
Dish: Soy Nilgiri Kurma --- Green

Today we are starting the 29th edition of Blogging marathon and my theme for this week is "Cooking with Colors". We can all agree that we eat with our eyes first and the more colorful a dish is, the more healthier and appealing it is. So for the next three days, I'm going to post dishes that have one featured color ingredient.

For the first day, I'm cooking with the color 'Green'. I saw this dish being made on a Telugu Cooking show (abhiruchi) and it looked very appealing, so I jotted down the recipe. As I was looking through my notebook for ideas of dishes to make for BM, I saw this recipe and thought this will highlight the color green really well. 

This dish tastes very earthy and is quite delicious. It is a little time consuming to make, but ones all the components are ready, the curry takes no time to finish.

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Israeli Couscous with Pesto & Carrots

Blogging Marathon# 28: Week 4/ Day 3
Theme: BM Pairs - Chef Mireille's Gourmet Global
Dish: Israeli Couscous with Pesto & Carrots

For the final day of this month's BM, I'm paired with Chef Mireille who blogs at Gourmet Global. Her blog's name says it all. She has tons of gourmet dishes from all over the globe. I was lucky to meet her in person and she is as lively and bubbly in person as she is on her blog.

I've bookmarked a ton of recipes to try from her blog, but today I made this very simple one-pot dish, Pesto Israeli Couscous with Carrots. Mireille used Roasted garlic spinach pesto in her dish, but I made broccoli-mint pesto. Other than that I followed her recipe to the 'T'. 

This recipe uses Harissa, a Middle Eastern chili sauce. Luckily I had a jar of harissa in my pantry, an impulse buy from a Turkish grocery store. The combination of pesto and harissa gave this dish a very unique and interesting taste that I totally loved. I loved it so much that I added them both again to a 3 grain pilaf I made the very next day :-)

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Corn Pulao

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 4/ Day 3
Theme: Miscellaneous - Cooking Rice on Stove top
Dish: Corn Pulao/ Pilaf

I made this one pot Corn Pulao for my lunch today. Rice is cooked along with the veggies. There was a time when I tried to cook rice using the open pot method, it would either end up uncooked or burnt at the bottom. I have gotten better over time and now I make decent rice dishes without using the pressure cooker.
This corn rice has both corn kernels and baby corn. It is lightly spiced, so I served it with some tomato raita. It makes for a filling and delicious weeknight meal. Add some paneer or soy chunks or other protein to make this a complete meal. This is another recipe adapted from the Telugu cooking show I have been talking about a lot in my previous posts.

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Bagara Rice (How to cook Pulao/ Pilaf in Pressure Cooker)

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 4/ Day 1
Theme: Miscellaneous - Tips to cook Pulao/ Pilaf in Pressure Cooker
Dish: Bagara Rice

We are in the last week of our Blogging Marathon# 27 and the theme for this week is 'miscellaneous" and 'arts & crafts'. I've to say that I'm a little crafty. No, I guess I have to say I was crafty more than 10 years ago and now I can't even think of anything fancy for my kindergartner's projects. 

When Valli announced that the theme for the last week is arts & crafts, I started watching a Telugu cooking show that had a segment on food carvings. I made note of quite a few and started trying out my crafting skills. After seeing my creations -- Tomato tulips/ Strawberry flowers & Cucumber Chinese fan, my husband decided to start cooking himself because of the amount of time and energy I was spending on trying to precisely cut the fruit/ veggie to get the right shape. Oh, mind you none of what I made actually looked what they were supposed to look like and it seemed waste of resources to the husband. After hacking away a week's worth of tomatoes for one trial, I had to agree with him and accept my failure.

So for the next few days, I'm going to post some quick and easy rice recipes. Also I'm planning to post  what I learnt in my Wilton Cake Decorating course later on in the week.

Today, I have a very simple and tasty rice dish. It is spiced with whole garam masala (spices), mint and cilantro. I cooked it in the pressure cooker. Recently couple of my blogging buddies have asked me how my pressure cooked pilaf/ pulao's come out so fluffy. There was a time when my pressure cooked pilafs were either mushy, burnt at the bottom or uncooked. So after some experiments, I think finally I've started to make some decent rice dishes in the cooker.

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Rajasthani Gatte ki Biryani

Blogging Marathon: Week 2/ Day 5
Theme: Traditional Dishes
Dish: Rajasthani Gatte ki Biryani

I have been planning to make this dish for over a year. I wanted to make it for BM# 12 when Valli had a theme for Rajasthani dishes. It was when BM was for 7 days and I actually made 4-5 dishes, but had to opt out of the marathon because I started having some serious morning sickness in my initial stages of pregnancy. So finally got to make it for this week's "traditional' dishes.

"Gatte' are boiled besan/ chickpea flour logs that are cut into bite size pieces and cooked with other masalas and layered with rice to make this hearty, protein rich biryani. This is a very filling dish and one bite into 'gatte' will have you hooked with the earthy taste and soft texture.

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Chickpea & Vegetable Salad with Yogurt Tahini Dressing

Blogging Marathon# 26: Week 2/ Day 1
Theme: Soups & Salads
Dish: Protein Based - Chickpea Salad

We are onto our 2nd week of marathon for this month. My theme for this week is "Soups & Salads" and to add interest and make the theme a little more challenging, Valli wants us to make soups & salads that use one star ingredient for each dish. Today's dish has a "Chickpeas" as the star protein rich ingredient.

I picked this theme because with my husband travelling on business for the past couple weeks I've been cooking for just myself. Salads fit right in since making a single serving salad is much easier than cooking something. 

This salad is full of fresh crunchy vegetables and fruits and the dressing is yogurt & tahini (ground sesame paste) based. I love adding sweetness to my salads in the form of fresh or dry fruits. Blueberries, sliced strawberries, chopped apples, pears, grapes are great in salads and so are dried cranberries, raisins and other not too sweet dry fruits.

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