Dudhichi goad bhaji (Sweet bottle gourd fudge)

Ingredients (4 servings):

1. Peeled and chopped/grated bottle gourd: 3 cups

2. Ghee: 2 tbspn

3. Sugar or jaggery: 5 tbspn (add more if required)

4. Cloves: 3-4

5. Salt: pinch

6. Mawa (condensed milk): 200 gm

7. Crushed cardamom from 3-4 pods or 1/2 tspn

8. Nutmeg: pinch

Method:

1. Heat the ghee in a wok

2. Add cloves and switch off heat.

3. Add bottle gourd, switch on heat, cover with a heavy lid and cook until tender, about 10 minutes.

4. Add the condensed milk, sugar/jaggery, cardomom and nutmeg and mix well. Rest for 10 minutes after switching off heat. Serve warm or chilled as you prefer.

This can be eaten by itself or along with phulka. 

One pan chocolate cake

Ingredients: (Serves 4)
1. Maida or refined wheat flour 1 cup
2. Salt pinch
3. Baking soda 1/2 tspn
4. Cocoa powder unsweetened 3 tbspn
5. Powdered sugar 1 cup
6. Oil/melted ghee/butter 3 tbspn
7. Vanilla extract 1/2 tspn
8. Vinegar 1 tspn
9. Warm water 1 cup
10. Walnuts 5-6 optional

Preheat oven to 170 deg C. Mix all dry ingredients (1-5) together in the baking pan (small, 8X8 in). Next, pour in all the wet ingredients (6-9) and mix. Sprinkle the walnuts on top. Bake for 30 minutes.

Cool and slice. Enjoy this cake! I was amazed that something so delicious could be achieved with so little effort. :)

Narali Bhaat..recipe for coconut day (Narali Pournima)

We very often forget to celebrate coconut day nowadays due to the domination by the "Rakhi Pournima". I wonder if sisters still do need protection offered by their brothers? Yes, they probably do, sigh, as I saw from a recently published article that India is the fourth dangerous country for women in the whole world..(Afghanistan topped the list, followed by Pakistan and one more country I forgot..and next comes India!) I guess "Raksha Bandhan", however soppy it may be, is still very much required for Indian women. Anyways, coconut day or नारळी पौर्णिमा is much more fun, with sea-worship done by throwing coconuts into the sea and of course delicious नारळी भात! Here's a fool-proof (read me-proof) and easy recipe by my aayee, the result is a heavenly blend of rice and the respected coconut and jaggery..yumm!! You can have it for dessert or even as a snack.

Ingredients: Serves 4

1. Rice: 1 cup (200 ml cup). Use a fine and white variety here, forget about brown rice for this recipe. I use something called Jeera Samba rice that is available locally here in Bangalore. I think "Ambe Mohar" would be perfect for this, for those who are lucky enough to be able to get आंबे मोहर!

2. Ghee: 1 tbsn. Use home-made ghee if possible. Check out: http://tigressinapickle.blogspot.com/2011/07/ghee.html

3.Jaggery: 3/4th cup organic brown jaggery. Stick to organic here, who knows what chemical cocktail they use on jaggery and sugar!
4. Clove: 2
5. Cinanmon (Dalchini): 1 stick 1/2 inch long
6. Coconut milk: (thick, 1st pressing) 200 ml. I use Dabur's, available in 200 ml tetrapacks.
7. Water: 250 ml.

Procedure:
1. Wash and strain the rice.
2. Heat the ghee in a saucepan. Fry the cloves and the cinnamon in the ghee until aromatic.
3. Add rice and fry lightly until all grains are coated with the ghee.(I switch off the heat and do this because I am afraid of the hot ghee splashing, but that's me!).
4. Pour the coconut milk and water into the saucepan and cook the rice completely. You can add more water if required, don't worry about breaking the rice grains.
5. Once the rice is completely cooked, add the jaggery and mix it well. Switch off the heat.
6. You may garnish with nuts and raisins, but it is delicious even without those!

Mugachi khichdi (kedgeree)

Can't get any easier than this. You can even make this when you are down with a cold and the warm comfort it gives beats chicken soup any day! My aayee (mother) told me about this simple and quick recipe. People usually season/temper food, but this is made without giving phodni (seasoning), so no splashing of hot oil and no oily fumes!

Ingredients:
1. Rice(organic brown) 1 cup
2. Mug daal (green gram lentils) 1/2 cup
3. Water 2.5 cups
4. Salt: to taste
5. Whole black peppercorns 3-4 (optional)
6. Cinnamon 1 small stick (optional)
7. Cloves : 1-2 (optional)
8. Onion: 1 medium roughly chopped
9. Halad (turmeric powder):  1/2 tspn
10. Filtered groundnut oil/any filtered oil or ghee: 1tspn

Procedure:

Wash and drain the rice and lentils. Place all ingredients in a pressure cooker and cook for 10 minutes. Do not open the lid (let out the steam) for another 10 minutes, the khichdi is still cooking even if the heat is switched off. Open the cooker, grab a plate/bowl and nourish yourself!

Note: If you are using organic brown rice, it has to soak separately for 20 minutes before you begin cooking. Do not drain the water off after soaking, it has a lot of nutrients. So wash and drain before soaking in the 2.5 cups water.

Modak Ladoo!

Morya re bappa morya re!

Can't do without these favourites of Ganpati bappa! Modak Ladoo! This is my mother's recipe and it never fails to yield delicious modaks oozing with the taste of jaggery and coconut (chav)!

Ingredients:  Makes about 30 modaks
1. Rice flour 1/2 kg (I use flour made from organic red rice(patni), I am lucky to find it in the stores by the brand-name "Navadarshanam". The modaks look a lovely pink!)
2. Grated coconuts: 2 whole coconuts
3. Powdered jaggery: 1 cup (This too, I get from "Navadarshanam", powdered, organic)
4. Cardomom powder 2 tspn
5. Ghee 2 tspn or more if you like
6. Water: 2 cups
7. Salt: pinch


Procedure:
1. Mix the grated coconut, jaggery and cardomom powder and cook the mixture in a thick bottomed saucepan for about 7 minutes until it becomes dry. Note: the jaggery will first melt. On cooking a little, it will become dryer. Do not heat upto high temperatures or the jaggery will caramelize and become hard on cooling.
2. Leave the coconut-jaggery mixture out on a plate to cool. This mixture is called the "chav" and will be referred to it as such here onwards.
3. Boil the water, salt and ghee. Mix the rice flour in the boiling water. Switch off heat, cover and let stand for 15 minutes. Note: Letting the mixture stand covered is very important as the starch will be released during this steaming and will make softer modaks. Uncover and cool the mixture.
4. Knead the rice flour and water mixture until a smooth dough is formed, some more cool water can be added to the dough at this stage if required.
5. Knead for 5 minutes until the dough becomes a little elastic.
6. Make about 30 balls of the dough.
7. Apply ghee/oil on your hands. Take each ball of dough and with your fingers, spread it and make it into a cup while maintaining uniform thickness.
8. Spoon some chav into the cup of dough and close the cup from the top by stretching the dough and making a kind of a point at the top. Your modak is ready to be steamed.
9. Repeat until all the modaks are made. Note: If there's extra dough and the chav is all used up, don't worry, the extra dough can be flattened and steamed without the chav, it tastes amazing when eaten with "vaalacha birde". The dough can be refrigerated for later use too. If there's extra chav, no problem, refrigerate it and stuff a paratha with it for a sweet paratha! Or scoop it up for dessert.
10. Place the modaks in a steamer and steam for 10 minutes.
11. Relish hot from the steamer. You can even refrigerate the modaks and steam them for 3 minutes before you want to eat them.


Rice flour is traditionally used by CKPs for making modaks and I personally love the traditional version. However, I tried making them with wheat flour as my husband does not like the taste of rice flour. Well, it's soooo.. much easier to make modaks with wheat flour! Mix the wheat flour with milk instead of water to make a dough. The rest of the procedure is the same. I tried baking some and steaming the rest of these wheat flour modaks and they came out well both ways!

Ambatvaran how could I miss this one

Ambatvaran is basically daal(lentil soup), but I will not insult it by calling it that. It is an ultimate comfort food for me, served on top of steaming hot rice..yumm!

Ingredients: (two servings)
1. Tur daal (split lentils) 1/2 cup
2. Turmeric powder 1/2 tspn
3. Laal tikhat (Red chilli powder) 1 tspn
4. Methi seeds (Fenugreek seeds) 5-6 nos.
5. Hing (Asafoetida powder): pinch
6. Water 1 cup
7. Jeera (cumin seeds) 1/2 tspn
8. Lasun (garlic) 3 cloves, peeled/not and tapped with something heavy until slightly crushed but not completely (thechun). I love the flavour of it with the peel on.
9. Salt to taste, I use natural sea-salt, 1/2 tspn
10. Filtered groundnut oil or ghee: 1 tspn (can be substituted by any filtered oil, do not use refined oil, it's bad for you.)
11. Jaggery to taste I use 1/2 tspn organic jaggery powder
12. Dried Kokum: 2 halves (can be substituted by 1/2 tspn tamarind paste)
13. Grated coconut: 1 tspn for garnish
14. Kothimbir (coriander leaves) for garnish

Procedure:
1.Boil ingredients 1-5 in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes. Do not open the lid for another 10 minutes.
2. Open the lid of the pressure cooker and check if the lentils have cooked. Smash the lentils by stirring vigorously with a spoon. Note: If the lentils have not completely cooked, they will not be smashed on stirring. Then you need to boil it some more.
3. Heat oil in a kadhai (wok). Add the crushed garlic cloves and brown them. Then add the jeera, cover with a lid and switch off the heat. (I switch it off because I am afraid of the daal splashing or the jeera burning, but if you are an expert, then go ahead without switching off the heat)
4. Pour/spoon the contents of the pressure cooker into the wok. Add more water as required and bring to a boil.
5. Add the jaggery and the kokum and simmer for a minute.
6. Garnish with grated coconut and kothimbir.
7. Pour over steaming hot brown rice, mix well and gorge on it!

Have a good day!