ahmi

Its been a long time since i made a recipe post. Life goes on as usual, but not my mind. I had and i still have severe mood swings, which made me stay away from online for a while. i always feel breaking the ice is one crucial point to go ahead with challenges. Today, this moment i decided to break the ice with my blog!! here i dusted down this carrot soup post from draft and presenting here.
Hope to Cook and Blog More in this Summer Holidays! Wish me Lots of Strength and Hope Your Wishes Pushes me furthur!!!


Summer is here. Chennai is super hot now.  I made this carrot soup in winter, but posting it now in hot summer. When i saw these carrots with its leaves on, i couldn't resist to pick one bunch. two years back, when we were in Ooty, we traveled to avalanche. on route there were so many carrot fields, we stopped in between and got fresh carrots right from the fields. we even spotted two carrot cleaning machines which cleaned the mud and cleaned the carrots thoroughly.
In Chennai, we can rarely find these root vegetables with its leaves. when i spotted, i got a bunch a tried this soup recipe from BBC Good Food book.

Ingredients:

Carrots - 3 or 4 (small sized ones or few baby carrots)
Onion - 1
Thai Red chilly - 1/2 ( remove the seeds)
Potato - 1
Garlic - 2 cloves
Ginger - 1' inch
Vegetable stock - 200 ml
Spices - cinnamon, star anise and lemon grass
Butter - 1 tsp
Madras curry powder / sambhar powder - 1/2 tsp
Coconut cream - 2 tsp's

Method:

Heat a pan, add butter, spices, ginger, garlic, red chilly and saute the onions, carrots and potato.
Add the vegetable stock to the pan also add madras curry powder 1/2 tsp. cover the pan and cook the vegetables in medium flame for about 12 minutes. then remove the whole spices cinnamon, star anise. Let the vegetables get cooled down. Then grind them smoothly. Again heat the soup. Add salt to taste and serve the soup warm with coconut cream on top.


Notes:

I used Maggie veg stock cube to prepare vegetable stock.

Half of a Thai Red Chilly will add lots of spice to the soup. make sure to remove the seeds of the chilly.

Serve either with coconut milk  or fresh cream.

Mushroom soup is easy to prepare and it is far better in taste than ready to make soups available in the market. Soup when served along with bread make it as a good meal. we prefer this simple meal in winter. I always make it a point to cook the mushroom the same day i buy. this way we can avoid the color change in mushrooms.

When we were in bangalore i have ordered gobi 65 at hotels as they serve it hot, which will be great for the chilling weather. Last year i found out a superb recipe for this chilli gobi at marias menu. soon i tried and liked the fry very much. Though i did not add any sauces, eating just plain was very good. it was super crisp and tasted so good. only drawback is the recipe calls for egg white.




These small forks are gifted by Raji when we met for the first time. She is such a sweet person and i can never forget our first meet. Raji hope you remember our first meet! Thank you for these lovely forks!

Ingredients:

Cauliflower - 1
Kahmiri chilly powder - 2 tsp
Egg - 1 (just egg white)
Ginger garlic paste - 1 tsp
Maida - 1/4 cup
Corn flour - 1/4 cup
Oil to fry - 1 cup

Method:



Cut the stem off from the cauliflower and split into separate small florets. Wash them well. In a vessel add 2 cups of water and let it boil. add these cauliflower florets and a bit of salt. cook for at
 least 5 minutes in medium flame. drain the cauliflower and set aside.


Mix the kashmiri red chilly powder with 2 tsp's of water into a thick paste.



To make the flour batter -
In a separate bowl, add the maida flour and corn flour, sieve them well. add ginger garlic paste. kashmiri chilly powder paste and egg white to the flours. Mix them all till they are well combined.



Add little bit of water about 2 tbsp's to make the mix little thin.



Heat a pan to fry, add oil and heat it. once the oil gets medium hot, dip the cauliflower florets in the flour batter and drop into the oil slowly. fry them they turn into golden color. drain in a kitchen towel.



Serve in hot, when cooled down it do not taste good as it loses it crispiness!

Notes:

You can add a tsp of vinegar while preparing the flour batter.
 or you can serve with chat masala sprinkled over the chilli gobi.

I saw this recipe in a TV show long back. when i chanced upon Del monte Creamy style Sweet corn, i bought a tin to try out this soup. It just tasted like the one we have at restaurants. its an easy recipe too. you can just follow the instructions given on the tin and make it. My son loves soup very much. he would taste all sorts of soup, but his all time favorite is my tomato soup. I am preparing mushroom soup this evening, which i will share with you tomorrow.



This recipe has corn starch, so it tastes different than regular sweet corn soup, in which we cook the corns and grind into a puree like the sweet corn soup i made earlier.



Notes:

If you do not find cream style sweet corn, just add the sweet corns alone.

adding vinegar is also optional.

Tirunelveli halwa came out so well and everyone who ate loved it and asked me for the second servings. Feeling Great on trying this halwa! Though everyone liked this halwa more than my jangri, I completely loved my jangri!

When Jayashree posted halwa recipe back in 2008, i kept a note of the recipe as it was so easy that we need not stir and just use our pressure cooker and microwave oven. I started making as per her recipe and when i added the wheat milk to the sugar and water in the cooker, it got thickened instantly, i feared about pressure cooking the mix and went ahead with the traditional painful stirring on stove top! But will try out the microwave version once for sure, as i liked the halwa taste.




When i started clicking pictures, rain started and the weather went gloomy. i could not click pictures as i wanted. so here is my statement - Do not judge this halwa with its appearance, it was so Yummy!! I just took a picture of this halwa with jasmine, as the idea struck, so here it is...


Ingredients:

Cracked Wheat / Samba Godhumai Rava - 1 cup / 250 gms.
Brown Sugar - 3 cups
Ghee - 3/4 cup / 200 ml.
Water - 4 cup
Cashews - 10

[1 cup cracked wheat yielded 1 cup wheat milk.
For 1 cup wheat milk - 3 cups of brown sugar and 4 cups of water is added. ]

Method:



Soak the Cracked Wheat in water for overnight or 10 hours.



Next day grind the soaked cracked wheat along with water in your mixie jar. Now filter the grinded mix to extract the first pressed milk. then add another cup of water and grind to get the second pressed milk. its just like how we do for coconut milk.


Once the wheat milk is extracted, mix the first pressed and second pressed and set aside. do not disturb it for 2 hours.


After 2 hours, the milk would have developed scum and the water would have seperated and will be above the milk layer. discard the water carefully and measure the milk alone. For me it exactly measured 1 cup / 250 ml. Wheat milk was like dosa batter.

In a Pressure cooker pan, add 3 cups of brown sugar and cups of water. just dilute the sugar and switch on the flame.

Make sure the flame is low and start adding the wheat milk on one hand and keep stirring with the other hand, so that no lumps are formed. actually i left to form lumps, as i was clicking pics. then i managed to filter the whole mix and started off again.


Soon after adding the wheat milk, it got thicken, and the stirring process started. You need to stir for every 30 seconds to avoid the halwa sticking to the bottom.



In the mean time, chop the cashews into small pieces, fry in ghee and add it to the halwa.


Keep on stirring and add ghee 1 tbsp at a time. almost 45 mins later, halwa drank all the ghee and got ready, as it started to ooze out the ghee. it also stops sticking to the bottom.


check this video to get an idea, on how the halwa will look at the end.


Once the halwa is ready, serve it warm to your family and then you can grease a tray with the ghee that ooze out from halwa and transfer the halwa to the greased tray. i left the tray overnight and i was able to cut the halwa into slices.



Re-heat the halwa, every time you serve, as the ghee tend to solidify and change the halwa texture and taste,



Notes:

You can use normal sugar, i preferred brown sugar to get the exact tirunelveli halwa color.

Be generous with the amount of ghee you add, finally it oozes out the ghee, so if you prefer, you can remove the ghee and consume.

This halwa keeps well for 2 days at room temperature. you can store this halwa in fridge and it stays good for 2 weeks.

Always Re-heat or microwave the halwa for 30 - 45 seconds before serving.

Use only Samba Wheat Rava to make this halwa.