Homemade tomato ketchup

Ingredients

• 6 medium tomatoes, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 small carrot
• 1 small tomato, blanched and peeled
• 1 garlic clove
• A few basil leaves
• ½ teaspoon ajwain
• salt, to taste
• pepper, to taste
• ½ teaspoon red chilly powder

Method

1. Place all ingredients into a blender and secure the lid.
2. Start the blender on a slow speed and slowly increase the speed
3. Blend for sometime until the mixture is ground finely.
4. Pour the mixture into saucepan and simmer for 35 to 40 minutes until the mixture reaches a thick consistency.
5. Allow the mixture to cool down and store in an air tight container.

Enjoy the ketchup as a dip with your snacks or use it as a pasta sauce 🙂

Whole wheat apple cookies

I was looking for a way to make use of my juicy red apples and came across a recipe for Toffee Apple Cookies on tasty. The cookies used all purpose flour and eggs but I wanted to make mine using wheat flour and without eggs so started my experiment and tada the result was yummy apple cookies with the goodness of apples, whole wheat 😊

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup oil
• 3/4 cup brown sugar ( 180 g )
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter ( 100 g) at room temperature
• 2 cups whole wheat flour ( 250 g)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 Apple medium size finely chopped
• Chocolate chips dark, peanut butter or any flavor

Method

• Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius
• Beat the sugar, butter, milk and oil either in a large bowl or in your stand mixer at medium speed until it is light and fluffy
• Add spoonfuls of the flour, cinnamon powder, baking soda and fold into the butter sugar mixture
• Add the apple pieces and blend it in the dough
• The dough should be firm, but softer than your regular chapathi dough, it’s okay if it has a little moisture as these cookies are chewy
• Using a cookie scoop drop the cookie dough onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
• Add the chocolate chips in the center of the cookies place one or two chocolate chips in the center
• Bake for around 15-20 minutes until golden brown
• Cool the cookies and then store in an air tight container

Cherry tomato jam in insta pot or mealthy pot

This is my first recipe in the series of insta pot or mealthy pot recipes. Ever since I got my mealthy pot, I have been really busy experimenting with it and hardly got time to keep up with my blog 😀 Now you will see more recipes in this category.

Ingredients

• Cherry tomatoes 20-25
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• A few cloves
• A small piece of cinnamon
• Juice from half a lemon
• 20-25 almonds blanched and peeled

Method

• Wash the cherry tomatoes well and keep aside
• Add cherry tomatoes, 2 cups sugar, 1/2 cup water, cloves, cinnamon and the blanched and peeled almonds to your instapot or mealthy
• Pressure cook on high for 4 minutes
• Once it’s done switch off the pot and let it release pressure naturally
• Open the pot and for a minute enjoy the aroma of your tomato jam
• Switch on sauté mode on high for 5 minutes and keep stirring in between
• Cancel the high sauté mode and switch on low sauté mode for the next 10-15 minutes until the liquid is reduced by half. Stir in the lemon juice toward the end
• Once the jam cools down it will thicken naturally so don’t worry if the jam is a little liquidy after 15 minutes of sauté, just make sure you keep stirring at regular intervals and the liquid reduces by half

Enjoy the jam as a dip with scones, bread or anything you like 🙂 Do share your feedback !

Neiappam V 4.0

This is my fourth variation of neiappam. This seems to be the best of all versions according to my family 😀

Ingredients

• Rice flour – 1/2 cup
• Jaggery – 1 cup
• Water – 1/8 cup
• Black sesame seeds, 1 tsp
• Cut pieces of coconut, 1/8 cup
• 2 small bananas or one medium banana
• A pinch of soda
• Ghee to fry the appam

Method

• Dissolve the jaggery in 1/8 cup and strain the jaggery and keep aside
• Grind the bananas to a fine paste and mix with the jaggery
• Add the rice flour a little by little and keep mixing well until you get consistency like idly batter. Add more water if required at this stage
• Add a pinch of soda and let the appam batter stay for 45 minutes to an hour
• Heat a paniyaram pan with ghee
• Pour spoonfuls of appam batter in each hole
• When you see a color change at the top of the appam it’s ready to turn
• The appam should cook well on both sides and turn reddish brown
• Optimally you can coat the appam with sugar once it’s done
• Let the appam cool down and then store in air tight container

Masala biscuit

Baking cookies is my stress buster and I have been always baking sweet and sugary cookies. For a change I wanted to bake some savory and salty cookies, my Mother in law had also been suggesting the same for a while. Another big experiment I did was trying to bake these biscuits on a dosa tava and it turned out to be a big hit, and it gets done in less than 10 minutes. So are you ready to try out masala cookies ?

My recipe is inspired by Chef Chandri Bhat’s recipe for masala biscuit.

Ingredients 

• Whole wheat flour – 2 cups
• Butter – 1/2 cup (115 g)
• Powdered sugar – 1 tbsp
• Salt – 2 tsp
• Baking powder – 1/2 tsp
• Buttermilk – 4 tbsp
• Green chillies, 1 -2 or 2-3 depending on the spice level you wish, we used 1 as we wanted minimum spice
• 1-2 sprigs of curry leaves
• Ginger, 2 cm
• A few coriander leaves
• A few mint leaves (if you like mint flavour, else skip it)

Method

• Sift the flour with baking powder and keep aside
• Grind the green chillies, ginger, curry leaves, coriander leaves and mint and make a coarse paste
• Melt the butter for a minute in the microwave and keep aside
• Mix the butter with sugar and salt until it blends well
• Add the flour and baking powder mixture and mix well
• Add the buttermilk, chilly-ginger-curry leaves-coriander-mint paste and knead well until it forms a smooth dough. The dough should not be very stiff, if it’s very stiff add a little more buttermilk
• Preheat a greased dosa tava for at least 10 minutes
• Turn the stove to a low flame when you are ready to place the cookies on it
•  Shape the dough into a flat round shape using your hand and place it on the tava
• Cook both sides until nicely brown
• 
• Once all the biscuits are done, switch off the tava and place all the biscuits on the tava. This will make them very crispy
• Allow the biscuits to cool and them store them in an air tight container

 

Whole wheat samosas

The crispy and delicious snack samosa has been on my to-try list for a while now. It’s a special Indian snack that’s a hit with hot chai. Try out this whole wheat samosa stuffed with potatoes and green peas. This samosa is made with mild spice, so adjust the spice accordingly if you want a spicier version.

Ingredients

• For the covering
  • 1 1/2 cup flour
  • 6 tbsp oil
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp ajwain
• Oil for deep frying
• For the filling
  • 5 small size potatoes or 4 medium size potatoes (should be rough 2 cups of chopped and boiled potatoes)
  • 1/2 cup green peas, boiled
  • 3 tbsp oil
  • 1-2 green chillies, chopped
  • Salt, to taste
  • 1 tsp red chilli powder
  • 1 tsp tamarind paste
  • 1/4 tsp garam masala
  • 1/2 anardana (dry pomegranate seeds) powdered

Method

• Knead together the ingredients for the covering and make a tight dough. Add water as needed to make a firm dough. Leave the dough covered with a wet muslin cloth for 10-15 minutes. Remember the consistency of the dough should be firm and smooth
• Boil the potatoes, peel and cut into cubes
• Boil the green peas
• To make the filling, heat oil in a pan, add the green chillies. After a minute, add the potatoes and green peas. Add salt and mix well. Add the remaining spices – red chilli powder, tamarind paste, garam masala and anardana powder and mix well. Remove from heat and let it cool
• How to make the samosas
  • Divide the dough into 8-9 equal portions. Roll out each portion into a ball and roll each ball into a small roti. Cut each roti into half. Pick up one half and bring the edges together to form a cone shape. Add 2 tsp of filling into the center of the dough and seal the edges with a little ghee. This step is very important, it’s important to seal the edges tightly and using ghee does the trick here 
• Heat oil in a deep frying pan. Deep fry the samosa in oil on medium fire until it is crisp and golden in color

Serve hot samosas with sweet chutney or mint chutney and enjoy it with your hot Chai 🙂

Eggless Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

Try these delicious chocolate chip cookies made with the goodness of ghee, almonds, milk and jaggery. This recipe is inspired by Tasty’s recipe of Browned butter chocolate chip cookie : https://tasty.co/compilation/vegan-browned-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies-and-vanilla-cashew-milk

Ingredients

• 3 oz almonds, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup melted ghee
• 3/4 cup jaggery
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups self rising flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips or chocolate chunks

Method

• Toast the almonds on medium flame for 5-7 minutes and keep aside
• Sift the flour, mix the salt and keep aside
• Combine the ghee, jaggery and sugar and microwave for 30 seconds until the sugar dissolves. Mix in the vanilla extract once you take the mixture out of the microwave
• Sift the flour mixture with the wet ingredients and fold in using a spatula.  At this stage, make a dough using a cut and fold movement to add the flour and blend it with the rest of the batter. Make sure you do not over mix at this stage
• Fold in the chocolate chips until evenly distributed
• The batter should not be very runny, otherwise you will end up burning the cookies. If you feel the batter is too runny, add a few tbsp of flour to balance
• Pre-heat an oven to 160 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit for around 10 minutes
• Line 2 cookies sheets with parchment paper
• Scoop out around 1 Tbsp cookie dough onto your baking sheet and place them 2 inch apart. The cookie dough should be roughly the size of a ping pong ball
• Bake for 18-20 minutes until the cookies look puffy, dry to touch and browned from top and around edges
• Allow the cookies to cool on a cooling rack for 10-15 minutes

Store in an air tight cookie tin and enjoy these delicious cookies !

Chocolate Carrot Walnut Loaf

Enjoy this delicious chocolate carrot walnut loaf – an easy bread to whip up and a perfect snack for the lunch box too ! This recipe is adapted from Tarla Dalal’s recipe for chocolate carrot loaf – https://www.tarladalal.com/Chocolate-Carrot-Loaf-1927r

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup grated carrot
• 3/4 cup all purpose flour (maida)
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup or 110 g butter
• 1/2 cup condensed milk
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• A pinch of salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup chopped raisins

Method

• Melt the butter and keep it aside
• Sift the flour with baking powder and baking soda and keep aside
• Combine the dry ingredients – flour/soda mixture, sugar, cocoa powder
• Add the melted butter, condensed milk and grated carrot into the flour mixture and mix well until well combined
• Fold in the walnuts and raisins
• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius
• Grease a bread tin with butter at the bottom and sides. Lightly dust the tin with flour ( you can use a flour sifter for this purpose ), turning the tin so that a light film of flour coats the entire inside of the tin. Turn the tin upside down, tap gently to remove excess flour
• Greasing and dusting with flour is an important step, as it prevents the batter from sticking to the tin
• Give tin a light tap on table to spread air evenly in the batter and put immediately in preheated oven
• Bake the bread for 40-50 minutes until the bread passes the following test :

• Test by lightly touching the centre of bread when minimum cooking time is up. If no imprint is left, the bread is done
• Pierce a fine skewer in the centre of the bread , if it comes out clean, it is done
• Loosen the edges using a knife and invert the bread on a cooling rack
• Cool the bread on a cooling rack for a sufficient amount of time before slicing

Slice the bread and enjoy along with your morning tea or coffee or pack it in your kids snack box !

Nei Appam Version 3

Nei Appam, made with rice and jaggery. This is the third version of appam recipes from my blog – the first two versions of Nei Appam used banana, this version only uses rice and jaggery, a treasured recipe shared by my Mother in law

There are two ways to prepare this recipe – one the traditional way from scratch where you soak raw rice overnight and make it. The second quick way is making it using rice flour. Both recipe version are given here

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup raw rice or 1 cup rice flour
• 1 cup jaggery powder
• 1/4 cup whole urad dal
• Cardamom powder – a pinch
• Ghee for frying the appam and for mixing too
• Water as required to mix the batter

Method

• If not using rice flour, then follow this method for rice powder preparation
• Rice powder preparation
  • Take 1/2 cup of raw rice. Soak it in water for 1/2 an hour. Take out the rice and dry it out in a towel for 10 to 15 minutes till the wetness in the rice is dried out. Then powder the rice in a mixie  to maximum fineness. Sieve  it with the smallest level sieve available. Rice powder is ready now.
• Jaggery syrup preparation:-
  • Take 1 cup of jaggery. Dissolve it in water. Keep it on a stove and heat it. Keep stirring. It has to reach a bubbling consistency. That means lot of bubbles  will come out in the syrup. If you pour a little syrup in cold water you will be able to make a small ball like round out of it which is soft and firm. Switch off the  stove immediately
• Urad flour preparation
  • Adding urad flour gives a softness to the batter. Soak urad dal overnight or for at least 3-4 hours and grind to a fine paste using as little water as possible
• Mixing
  • Now pour the syrup little by little into the rice powder and mix it well. If correct quantity of rice and syrup is taken the rice powder will consume all the syrup and will be like prepared chappathi dough. Mix in the urad paste with this mixgture as well. The above operations should be done in the evening and the mix must be kept overnight for getting conditioned. ( not in the fridge)
• Final operation
  • Next day take out the dough and add sufficient water and mix so that chappathi batter condition becomes  like dosa batter.  The batter should be able to flow out like dosa batter. Add a teaspoon of ghee in the batter and cardamom powder to improve the taste. Now it is ready for frying
• Frying
  • Keep the paniyaram pan on the stove add ghee or oil . When the ghee or oil is sufficiently hot start making the appams
  • Add a tablespoon of batter into each slot. Cover it and cook for a minute till it is golden and crisp
  • Carefully using a spoon or a appam stick, flip the appams. I use a stick and a spoon to turn the appam. Fry the other side till it turns golden in colour as well and crisp
  • Coat the appam in sugar when it is still hot. This simply enhances the taste

Enjoy your appams and share your feedback

Dry Fruit Barfi

Wishing you all a very Happy Diwali ! Having guests at home and looking for ideas to make a sweet dish – try out this dry fruit barfi, rich in taste and just right for the coming winter season too !

Dry fruit barfi is a popular sweet in Delhi and is very yummy and hard to resist !

Ingredients

• 400 g dry fruits ( You can use any combination I used a combination of bad am and cashew )
• Elaichi or Cardamon – 5 pods
• Sugar – 400 g
• Milk powder – 200 g
• Ghee – 150 g

Method

• Lightly roast the dry fruits and grind the dry fruits together with cardamom to make a fine powder. Keep aside
• Take a thick bottomed vessel and add water to the sugar just enough to submerge it. Melt the sugar until it reaches one string consistency. Take 2 drops of syrup between your index finger and thumb. Open the index finger and you will see a string of syrup coming up
• Add spoonfuls of the ground dry fruit mixture and ghee at intermittent intervals and keep stirring until the mixture starts leaving the sides of the vessel
• At this stage, simmer the flame and add the milk powder and mix well. Switch off the flame and continue stirring until the entire mixture does not stick to the vessel
• Pour the mixture onto a plate greased with ghee, let it cool and then cut into desired shapes

Enjoy and Happy Diwali again