Vegetable Fried Rice

Everyone must be relaxing after the Christmas now. Another three days and a new year begins. Wishing you all a Happy New Year in advance. Now coming to today's post, I had to blog hop to Kavi of Edible Entertainment. She has a cute little space. Mostly step by step pictures which makes the reader easy to remember and follow. I chose this Veg Schezwan Rice. Though I didn't had all the ingredients that she had specified I went ahead. It turned out really good. Thanks Kavi for this wonderful recipe. Below is all the veggies I used, be creative change it up.

Serves: 4 | Prep Time: 15 min | Cooking Time: 10 min.
Ingredients:

• Cold Rice - 2 cups
• Olive Oil - 1 tsp.
• Garlic - 6 pods - sliced lengthwise
• Bell pepper - 1/2 - Seeded & lengthwise
• Carrots - 1 cup - cut in matchstick size
• Cabbage - 1 cup - cut lengthwise
• Peas - 1 cup - Steamed ahead of time
• Baby Spinach - 1 cup
• Chinese Chili Sauce - 1/2 tsp.
• Chinese Garlic Chili Sauce - 1 tsp.
• Worcheire Sauce - 1 tsp.
• Salt to taste

Method of Preparation:

~ Prepare rice ahead of time, best fried rice comes out of the cold rice. I used cold rice from previous day.
~ Heat oil in a wok. Add garlic and saute.
~ Keep the heat on high. Add pepper and carrots and saute for few minutes.
~ Add all the remaining veggies and saute for few more minutes. All the veggies should retain their crunch, so don't overcook.
~ Add all three sauces, very little salt to taste. Mix in with veggies.
~ Reduce the heat and add the cold rice to veggies. Mix well and take it off from heat.

Tip: Add some ketchup for kids to reduce the heat.

Check out my previous blog hop entries…

This is off to Radhika’s blog hop event.

Radish Sauté/ Moolangi Palya

Moolangi or Radish used to be the vegetable that can smell while cooking. But tastes great and good for health. It’s known to reduce jaundice, piles, urinary disorders problem. If you want to know more read this article here. I love it in spicy sambar and this simple sauté.

 

Prep Time: 10 min. | Cooking Time: 20 min.

 

 

 

Ingredients:

• Moolangi/ Mooli/ Daikon/ White Radish – 1 big one and two (About 2 cups)
• Onion – 1 small
• Garlic – 4 pods (minced)
• Chili powder – 1 tsp.
• Turmeric powder – 1 pinch
• Coriander powder – ½ tsp.
• Jaggery – 1 tsp.
• Coconut – 1 tbsp. (grated)
• Mustard Seeds – ½ tsp.
• Urad Daal/ Black split gram – 1 tsp.
• Curry Leaves/ Kadipatta – 1 spring
• Oil – 1 tsp.
• Salt to taste 

 

Method of Preparation:

 

~ Wash and clean the radish. Peel the skin off and cut them into smaller chunks.

~ Heat oil in a pan and add mustard seeds.

~ Once they splutter, add Urad daal. After frying for few seconds add Curry leaves.

~ Now add onion and garlic, fry till onion is translucent.

~ Add turmeric, chili and coriander powder, fry for few minutes and add the radish.

~ Add a tbsp. of water, mix everything thoroughly and close the lid to cook for about 5 to 7 minutes. Check in between to make sure it’s not burned down. :o)

~ Once radish is almost done, add salt to taste, jaggery and grated coconut. Mix well and switch off the heat.

~ Serve it with roti’s or as a side with rice and daal.

 

NOTE:

Instead of jaggery you can substitute with ½ tsp. of sugar.

Wheat Butter Pecan Cookies

So officially I completed over 50 posts! Can’t believe it though. I initially started this blog as my diary to note down. I thought later probably it will be useful for my kids or I can point it to my friends who would always ask me for recipes. I didn’t realize that my culinary skills would interest people out there and I would make numerous friends in this blogosphere. Many of other bloggers have become part of my life I feel. So thank you for being there and being so supportive.

Today is also special since it’s my wedding anniversary. So I thought of posting something sweet for my hubby. He’s the one who wipes the plate clean when it’s sweet. Any dish with little hint of sweet is always an instant hit with him. So here I present to you my eggless wheat butter pecan cookies.

I can't really remember recipe source but I think it must have been something I had read in a magazine. It has evolved many ways now to come to perfection. Whenever I have prepared the cookies, they have vanished as though I never did them. My DS usually lurks around to check when I am pulling out the cookies to place on the rack. Then he attacks them and gives me sweet smile before dashing out, so I don’t stop him. I make variations to add different kinds of nuts in them, coz this is my best chance to get any kind of nuts in my kids. So you can leave out the nuts part, or use what you like.

Ingredients: 

• Wheat Flour – 1 Cup (You can substitute with All-purpose flour/ Maida)
• Pecan – ½ cup (I finely ground pecans to hide it with flour.J)
• Sugar – ½ Cup (Adjust according to your taste. Lesser the better for us.
• Vanilla Essence – 1 tsp. (Optional – I sometime use Vanilla/ Almond)
• Melted Butter – ½ cup
• Salt – ¼ tsp.

Method of Preparation:

~ Preheat the oven to 350 F [About 180 C]  

~ Sift the Flour, Pecan powder, Sugar and salt together in a mixing bowl.

~ Add melted butter and essence to this mix and make soft dough.

~ If it’s not coming together completely, add a tsp. of milk.

~ Make big balls out of the dough, roll it out using rolling pin and cut them to desired shapes.

~ Tip – If you don’t have cookie cutters, get creative; use small round/ square lids, cut templates and use knife to cut around. Or just use hand to make small balls and flatten them gently.

~ Line the baking sheet with foil, spray some butter (I use Olive Oil spray) and place the cookies.

~ Bake these in oven for 15 to 20 minutes until cookies turn golden brown. [Depends upon your oven type, temperature and thickness of the cookies]

~ Take out the cookies out of oven and put it on the rack after 2 minutes to cool.

~ Enjoy before they vanish. :o)  

 

Tuna Kabobs

I am in India! Yes! I am sure my four weeks of vacation will zoom past me before I know it. My blog will be put on a slow gear for some time during this period. But nevertheless I wouldn’t have missed my blog hopping for anything. So I have planned ahead for these and here is my bloghopping for the day from Neha’s From My Heart.

Going through her blog, I thought I would try the baking something. Since I have never given bread a try, I zeroed on her banana bread recipe. But since my DH is a big fan of banana walnut bread, I modified it and fell flat on face. I did try a different banana walnut recipe and will be posting that soon. Coming back to blog hop I later tried her Tuna Kabob.  Oh they were just so good. It was very easy to prepare and we couldn’t stop snacking on it. So had to quickly take picture. I had never tried tuna in a kabob style so it was really refreshing.

I mostly stuck to her recipe making very few changes. Since I had made double the quantity of what is mentioned below, we had some leftovers for dinner. I simply heated them up and rolled it inside chapati and voila, kiddie wraps were ready.

Prep Time: 10 min. Cooking Time: About 7 to 10 min for a panful.

Ingredients:

White Tuna in water (no salt) - 1 Can

Onion – small ( about half a cup finely chopped)

Egg - 1

Potato – 1

Chaat Masala – ½ tsp.

Bread Crumbs – ½ cup

Green Chili – 2 (finely chopped)

Cilantro/ Coriander Leaves – handful.

Ginger – Lime size (grated)

Garlic – 3 pods (grated)

Oil to shallow fry

Salt to taste

Method of preparation:

~ In a microwave safe bowl cook potatoes. Grate and place in a mixing bowl.

~ Discard the water in tuna and add to the potatoes.

~ Add all other ingredients except oil and mix well. I used hands to give it a nice mix.

~ Make small patties out of the mixture and shallow fry on both sides.

~ Serve it hot with some green mint chutney and ketchup.

Note: Keep check on salt since tuna tends to be saltier.

Check out my previous blog hop entries…

This is off to Radhika’s blog hop event.

Green Tomato Chutney

I am posting many chutney’s and dips, coz we all love these little relishes at home. Also, the last few tomatoes in my veggie garden weren’t gonna get chance of ripening coz cold front. So that means we picked them when they were green. One of the numerous dishes I did with them was ofcourse this chutney.

Yields – 2 cups| Prep Time: 5 min.| Cooking Time: 15 min.

Ingredients:

Green tomatoes – 10 (about 1 ½ cups when chopped)

Green Chilies – 2

Cumin seeds – 1 tsp.

Flax Seeds – 1 tsp. (optional)

Mustard Seeds – ½ tsp.

Sesame Seeds – ½ tsp.
Coconut - 1 tbsp.
Salt to taste

Oil – 1 tsp.

My DD picking up Green tomatoes & Chilies for me!

Method of Preparation:

~ Clean and chop tomatoes. Place it in a microwavable bowl with 1 tbsp. of water and microwave high for 10 min (with two intervals)

~ In a pan, heat oil, add mustard seeds.

~ Once they splutter, add cumin seeds, sesame seeds and flax seeds.

~ Fry for few seconds, and add green chilies.

~ Now add the microwaved tomatoes and continue to cook for few minutes.

~ Switch off the heat and let it cool.

~ Grind the cooled mix with coconut & salt to a smooth paste.

~ Enjoy with some rice and sambar. It can be served with Dosa or Chapati too.

Note:

- You can skip microwaving and cook tomatoes later on cooktop.

Spicy Gingery Strawberry Raspberry chutney

Did the name interest you? Well, I wanted to just keep it without ginger, but with all words ending with a “Y” I added gingery. :o) Strawberries and raspberries are almost going out of season. We always get those big boxes from Sam’s and the last few remaining start to soften and then kids don’t want to eat. I try not to waste them and do jam or sauce out of them. Below is one of spicy chutney that I do with these berries. I didn't really get or taste this recipe anywhere. I was just playing around with making sauce out of the fruits. This spicy variation made the cut and I was happy to have noted down so I could recreate it every time. Make variations with your favorite fruit and try it. This can be used to top toast, just as a side relish with rice, with roti or even with dosa.

Yields: 2 cups| Prep Time: 10 min. | Cooking Time: 20 min. ~ 25 min.

Ingredients:

• Strawberry - 1 1/2 cup
• Rasberry - 1/2 cup
• Water - 1/2 cup
• Ginger - 1 lemon size - paste 
• Pitted Dates - 1/2 cup *
• Sliced almonds - 1 tbsp. (optional)
• Salt to taste (<1 tsp.)
• Sugar - 1 tbsp. (Increase if you like it sweet)
• Red chili powder - 1/2 tsp.
• Lemon juice - 2 tsp. (Skip it if the fruits are sour)

   

 Method of Preparation:

~ Wash and clean the berries. Pit the strawberry. Chop both of them coarsely.

~ Place berries, ginger and water in a pot and cook on low heat.

~ Once the berries are half way done (about 10 min.), add all the remaining ingredients and continue to cook.

~ The sauce with thicken and all the fruits should be nicely cooked. Switch off the heat and leave it to cook.

~ Put them in clean air tight glass jars and store it in fridge. Start using after 1 or 2 days. It will stay for a month or so.

Notes:

* - I usually have the softer variety of dates, so I add them half way through. If they are harder, add it earlier so they cook and soften.

- Tastes best when it sits for a day or two.
Enjoy! :o)