Bagara Baingan

Of late I have been trying to make it a habit to go to the Sunday Farmer's Market at my place. I get fresh vegetables and my daughter enjoys the outing. Yesterday during my visit to the farmers market, I found this great sale of egg plants. I got 5 big, very fresh egg plants for just a dollar. I grabbed them without any second thoughts. But the unfortunate thing is that my husband just loathes Egg plant and if I will have to cook it I would be the only one eating it(My daughter also doesn't seem to like it. But I hope she will like it as she grows up.). Luckily for me some my of husband's colleagues were supposed to come for dinner and I thought I would make this Bagara Baingan curry with the Egg Plants that I got at the Farmer's Market. I quickly goggled and found a few recipes and here's my version.




Ingrediants:
Egg Plants(8 small ones)
I used two of the large ones. I cut them into four large chunks and put three small splits into each of the four chunks.
Ground nuts hand full
Til Seeds(Nuvvulu) - 4 spoons
Jeera Seeds
Ginger
Garlic
Onions
Salt
Chilli Powder
Jeera Seeds
Seesame Seeds
Urad Daal


Roast the grounds nuts, Nuvvulu and the Jeera seeds and keep them aside. Cut the onions and then roast them with the ginger garlic paste. Grind the onions and the roasted ground nuts, nuvvulu and the jeera seeds.

Heat oil in a pan and add jeera seeds, seesame seeds and urad daal and then add the above mixture to it. Let it cook for 5 mins and now add the egg plants chunks that you have cut. Add salt and chilli powder as per your taste. Cook it for about 15 to 20 mins. You tastey bagara baingan is ready. This is best eaten with bagara rice which is kind of a Biryani cooked in the telangana region of Andhra Pradesh. But tastes good with plain rice as well as Roti.

Tomato Carrot Rasam

I am sure most of you would have tasted tomato rasam. But did you try Carrot rasam? My daughter is a big fan of carrots and would eat them in any form. So i thought i would try adding some carrot to the rasam that i was planning on making for the day. But while i was cutting the tomatoes she eat up half of them and i was left with few tomato slices and a bunch of carrots. So i thought why not try them together. I pressure cooked carrot and tomatos and pureed them and made rasam out of it. One of my friend stopped by that evening and she was having a very bad cold. So i offered the rasam to her like a soup and she loved it and made my day..
So here goes the recipe.

Tomato -1
Carrots -3
Pepper
Tamarind
Salt
Ginger
Rasam Powder
Curry Leaves
Urad Daal
Jeera
sesame seeds
Crooiander Leaves.

Pressure Cook the Carrots and Tomato and puree them in a blender with the tamarind. Cut Ginger into small pieces. Heat oil/butter in a bowl. Add the curry leaves, urad daal, jeera and the sesame seeds. To this add the pureed liquid. Add salt and rasam powder. Let it cook till the liquid boils.

Coconut Fish Curry

My daughter just loves fish curry. So thought of making fish curry yesterday. I had a fresh coconut that i brought a while ago and so wanted to use it before it gets spoiled. So i goggled for a recipe of fish curry with coconut in it. I got a few links and made one which is a mixture of all the links. But luckily it turned out to be very tasty and it did not take too much time to cook also. Below is the recipe.

Fish Cut into Pieces
Onions - 1
Coconut - 1
Ginger
Garlic
Tamarind
Chillies
Curry leaves
Fennel seeds
Urad daal
Jeera
Garam Masala
Coriander Leaves(Cilantro)
Salt
Chili powder


Cut the fish into pieces and keep it aside. In a blender mix the Onions. Coconut, Ginger, Garlic, Tamarind and green chillies. Add some water so that it turns into a thick paste. Heat Oil in a pan and add curry leaves, Fennel seeds, Jeera and Urad daal seeds a let them splitter. Then add the paste made above. Add Salt and Chilli powder as per your taste. Add the Fish pieces and let them cook on medium heat for about 25 to 30 minutes. Just before switching off add little bit Garam Masala and coriander leaves. Make sure that you don't mix the curry after the fish is cooked. I made this mistake the first time i cooked fish and it was a disaster.

Vegetable Broth and Soup.

I was reading about how to prepare vegetable broth from one of the blogs. It primarily says to boil all the vegetables and prepare a broth out of it. I prepared the stock as suggested and then with the left over veggies i pureed them and made soup out of it. I put some moong daal in it which i had in my fridge. It made a delicious soup.

Carrot,Capsicum and Pesarapapu Fry

I have a new recepie inspired by pepper carrot palya of Monsoon spice.
I made little changes to the original recepie. I added soaked moong daal(unspilt) to the carrot and capsicum mixture. Here goes the recepie.

Ingredients
-------------
Carrots - 3
Capsicum - 1
Pesarapappu pressure cooked.
Lime
Jeera
Toor Daal
Curry Leaves.
Salt
Chilli Powder.

Heat Oil in a bowl and add jeera, toor daal and curry leaves in it. Add the capsicum let it fry for about 2 mins and then add grated carrots. Let the carrots and capsicum cook for about 3 mins and then add the cooked pesarapappu. Add salt and chili powder as per your taste. This can be eaten with rice and rasam or with chapathi. It hardly takes any time to prepare. So it is good for week days when you don't have much time to cook.

Panner Butter Masala

And finally i did make panner butter masala and it turned out to be very tasty. My husband who is not really a great panner fan, also ate it like its his fav dish. And my daughter just loved it.
So here is how i made the dish.

Ingredients:
Panner - 1 Slab from the Indian Store.
Onion - 1 Large one
Tomatoes - 2
Cashews - handful
Ginger
Garlic
Garam Masala
Salt
Chilli Powder
Butter



Heat the butter in a pan and fry the onions and tomatoes. Soak the cashews for few minutes. Puree the fried onions, tomatoes and the cashews. In the same pan put some oil/butter and fry the ginger garlic paste and mix the tomatoes onion puree in the pan. Add salt, chilli powder and garam masala as per taste and let it cook for 5 mins. Mean while cut the panner into small cubes and put them in the pan. Let it cook for another 10 mins. Your tasty and delicious panner butter masala is ready.

You can sever it with capathis, puris or rice. I had it with chapathi. My husband is a big rice fan so he had it with rice and my daughter had both rice and chapathi and panner.

My First Post

After looking at so many blogs I finally took the initiative to start my own blog. Even though I have started a blog sometime back I haven't been truly loyal to it. After reading so many food blogs I got this new enthusiasm to start a blog of my own and chronicle my experiments mainly with cooking and life in general. This is mainly for my reference so that I remember my recipes and probably pass it on to my family and friends.