Cashew Vegetables

 This dish is inspired by the cashew chicken at Chinese Room that I wrote about earlier this year.

I had some leftover kale and mushrooms in the fridge, and concocted this dish by putting it together with bok choy and carrots in an addictive Shaoxing sauce. Shaoxing is a Chinese cooking wine that adds great flavor to Chinese sauces. I got it from Chinatown in San Francisco but you can get it online too or at Asian grocery stores. The sauce this time turned out to be mindblowing. I just hope I can recreate the magic of this sauce because I was not measuring anything when I was making it. I tried my best below to recall how much of everything I used.

Serves 2 

You will need
kale leaves                          2
carrots                                 2
mushrooms                         7-8 button or cremini mushrooms
bok choy                             1 large
garlic                                   2-3 cloves, minced
dried red chillies                  3, roughly broken
cashews                              10-12

For the sauce:
fish sauce                            1 teaspoon
rice vinegar                         1 tablespoon
honey                                  1 tablespoon
brown sugar                         2 teaspoons
shaoxing wine                     3 tablespoons
salt                                       1 teaspoon
water                                   1 cup
corn flour                             1 1/2 tablespoon

Method

1. Wash and cut all the vegetables.
2. Mix all the ingredients for the sauce in a bowl and set aside.
3. Heat oil in a large pan, cook the carrots on medium heat for about 3 mins.
4. Add all the other vegetables, including the garlic, red chillies and cashews. Sauté everything together until vegetables are tender, about 5 mins.
5. Give a good stir to the sauce, because the cornflour tends to settle down at the bottom, then add it to the pan. 
6. Adjust the seasoning to your taste. For some more spice, add a sprinkling of black pepper.
7. Turn the heat off as the sauce thickens, most likely within a couple of mins.

Serve hot with rice.

Hummus Tartine

Hummus is a wonderful thing. I had never had hummus until I came to the US. It soon became one of my favorite things to order in a middle-eastern restaurant. For home use, I never really took to supermarket hummus... there was something always off about it. I prefer the homemade version a lot more.

It's very easy to make.

Makes 4-5 tartines

chickpeas AKA garbanzo beans             1 15oz can
garlic                                                        2-3 cloves
extra virgin olive oil                                  1/4th cup
sesame seeds                                         1/4th cup
lemon juice                                              2 tbsp

salt, pepper, red pepper flakes to taste


Method

1. Dry-roast the sesame seeds until light brown. Put aside.
2. Chop the garlic and fry it for a couple of minutes. This is to avoid the taste of raw garlic, especially if you plan to store the hummus for a few days.
3. Blend the sesame seeds and the olive oil until the seeds are crushed and blended with the oil.
4. Blend the chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes with the above sesame paste.

Serve at room temperature.

Baked Eggplant Chips (Vaangyache Kaap)

Serves 3-4 as an appetizer

regular large eggplant              1

salt                                        1/2 tbsp
powdered black pepper            1 tsp
red chilly powder                     1/4 tsp
amchur (raw mango powder)    1/4 tsp  (You can find this in an Indian grocery store. It adds tartness.)

Method -

1. Cut eggplant into very thin round slices of roughly 3mm width. A mandoline slicer comes in handy for this. For slices that are too big, cut in half.

2. Put all the spices and the salt in a bowl and mix well.

3. Take a large baking tray, cover it with aluminium foil and grease it with oil or spray generously with oil spray.

4. Take half of the eggplant slices on the baking tray. Drizzle oil or oil spray over them. Toss them well with half of the spice mix, making sure you rub both sides of every slice with the spice mix.

5. Then arrange them in a single layer on the tray and once again drizzle with oil or oil spray.

6. Repeat steps 3, 4, 5 for the rest of the eggplant slices.

7. Bake at 350 deg for 15 mins and then broil at 350 deg for 5 mins. Watch them frequently as they can get burnt easily. You may have to adjust the oven times according to the thickness of the slices.

The slices may look burnt when done but taste great and crispy! The thicker slices will most probably remain soft. I combined them with some crispy slices and put them in a sandwich - tasted pretty good.

We had the eggplant chips with a very simple and quick dip. For the dip, take a half cup of low fat ricotta cheese and add 2 tbsp of mayonnaise to it. Mix well to make the ricotta a bit more creamy and less grainy. 

Other creamy dips would also go very well with the chips, such as a greek yogurt-garlic dip.

Black Bean 'n Corn Salad

I'm always amazed when something very tasty is also equally healthy. It's like a dream come true for me. And this, my friends, is one of those things.

Black beans are one of the healthiest things you can eat. I was trying to find a good recipe with black beans that is easy enough and tasty enough that I can include it in my weeknight meal rotation. I stumbled upon this and fell in love immediately. Apart from being tasty and healthy it looks like a carnival in a bowl!

Purple onion is perfect for this salad as it adds to the color, although any onion will do. I use purple onion only when it is to be eaten raw. Cooking it makes it a weird grey-green color.

Here's my version of the recipe... only slightly modified.
Recipe based on this one.

Serves 4 as a side. Though S and I devour the whole thing as a main.

You will need -

1 14-ounce can of black beans
2 cups frozen corn kernels
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 onion, diced
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced (optional)
1/2 cup cilantro leaves, chopped (optional)

For the dressing -
juice of 1 lime or lemon
1 tbsp hot sauce such as tabasco
1/2 tsp or less of the following - red chilly powder, salt and pepper

Method -

1. Drain the can of black beans. I like the sludge at the bottom of the can. It keeps the salad moist.
2. Be sure to modify the spice level to your taste. Mix everything in a large bowl.

That's it. That's the recipe. I recently made this by doubling all the quantities and took it to a potluck. At first people were wary of it because it looked too healthy, but once they tried it they totally loved it.

Delicious Kale Salad

This salad is so good, I could eat it for dessert. And I love desserts dearly. To add to that, kale is a superfood with loads of vitamin K and anti-cancer and cholesterol-lowering properties.

Here's the recipe.

Serves 4

You will need -

a small bunch kale (roughly 5-7 preferably young leaves)
2 avocados, chopped
1 apple, chopped (substitutes: other sweetish fruits such as pears, grapes)
a small handful broken candied walnuts (substitutes: pecans, almonds)
quarter onion chopped length-wise (optional)
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar (you can try substituting other vinegars or lemon juice though I haven't tried it)
1 tbsp olive oil
salt
black pepper
2 tsp sugar

Method -

1. Remove the thick veins of the kale leaves by folding the leaf and cutting the vein off. Then chop up the kale into bite-size pieces. Sprinkle salt over it and crumple the leaves in your hands and release. Repeat this several times. Massaging the kale this way makes it more palatable.
2. Add chopped avocado, chopped apple, walnuts, onion, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, sugar.
3. Add salt and pepper to suit your taste.
4. Toss the salad well. I try to make sure I don't completely turn the avocado into pulp because I like it when I encounter yummy avocado chunks in my salad. For that you may chop the avocados into bigger pieces.

My new love - Greek Yogurt

Have you wondered what all the buzz is about greek yogurt?

I was wondering the same so I tried it a few times and loved its creaminess. But the best part about greek yogurt as I found out eventually is that since it is made by removing water from regular yogurt it is more densely packed with nutrients - which means lots of protein per serving! AND lots of fat. Which is why it is all the more important that you choose non-fat greek yogurt.

In 226g of this creamy goodness there is 23g of protein (daily requirement for women is 40-50g) which is twice that of regular yogurt. There, you have a healthy and great tasting vegetarian protein source.

Now I almost always buy greek yogurt instead of regular.

It is very versatile and can be used in dips and instead of sour cream as a topping. Even as a creamy dessert. Stay tuned for more recipes with greek yogurt!

Hearty Veggie Soup

I like soup for dinner on foggy cold week nights – like this week. And hearty vegetable soups can especially be comforting on busy weeknights.  My mom made all sorts of soups when I was growing up and I have grown to love them.

I liked this soup because it took me only 30 minutes to make it from start to finish, the recipe consisted of cooking veggies by steaming them - a healthier way to eat them, and plus it made an awesome leftover.

Here goes the recipe –

Ingredients:

• 2 carrots cut into cubes
• 2 ripe tomatoes cut into cubes
• 1 onion cut into cubes
• 1 medium sized potato, peeled, cut into cubes
• 1 tsp butter
• Salt, pepper, red chili powder, sugar per taste
• 1/4^th cup 1% fat milk (optional)
• Cilantro, minced

Direction:

Pressure cook all veggies till tender. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can also cook all the veggies in a pan by adding water till they’re just covered. Puree cooked veggies. Heat butter in a stockpot and add pureed veggies. Add milk, salt, pepper, red chili powder, sugar per taste. Mix well. Garnish with cilantro and serve hot.

A and I like our soup with toasted bread with light ghee spread. I added red chilli powder as a garnish for some extra heat.

I am going to try this recipe with ghee instead of butter. Ghee doesn’t burn as fast as butter as it has a higher smoke point than butter.

'Chickpea Chaat' - Quick and healthy garbanzo bean snack

I whipped up this easy and healthy snack on a late weekend afternoon. I tossed cooked chickpeas leftover from dinner with chopped onion, tamarind chutney ('Maggie Tamarina' is great), black salt (you can get that in an Indian grocery store), a sprinkle of sev (crispy broken Indian noodles) and plain low fat yogurt.

Similar to bhel, but with wholesome beans instead of puffed rice.

The black color of the beans is from cooking it with tea bags. I think it looks more appetizing that way, but it doesn't matter as far as taste is concerned. You can use canned garbanzo beans if you don't have cooked ones.

Namakpara - a teatime snack

Tried this namkeen (savory) cookie recipe by Sanjeev Kapoor. Loved the flavor of ajwain and jeera in it. It went well with masala chai. S devoured 4 straight with gusto!