Rasaswad

This recipe has sacrilege written all over it. But if making Undhiyu has become a once a year affair, like it had for me, this is a good way to get the fix much more often. It is much faster, and way less elaborate, but still hits the spot. The other good thing about the recipe is that most components are optional, so you can keep simplifying it down to the ingredients you actually have on hand, and it'll still be a useful recipe. Of course, all of these ingredients do sing when put together. For the muthiya (optional, but awesome): Mix together 1 cup of chopped fresh or frozen methi, 1 cup of coarse wheat flour (or use 3/4 cup roti atta + 1/4 cup sooji), 1/4 cup besan, 1/4 tsp turmeric powder, 1/4 tsp red chilli powder, 1 tsp coriander-cumin powder, big pinch of hing, 1 tsp sugar, salt to taste, 1 tbsp oil, 2 tbsp yoghurt (optional), and enough water to make a soft dough. Set aside while you prep the other vegetables. Then, roll into a thin long rope, and cut into small pieces ...

This is actually a side dish, but it's special enough to be the star of a meal. Usually made with just one vegetable; potential candidates: Beets, Cucumbers, Tomatoes. If using beets, boil them (I use pressure cooker or IP) until a knife can be inserted easily, then peel and dice into a medium sized pieces. For cucumbers, you can choose to peel or not, but for this raita, you need to dice them (as opposed to grating, like in many other raita recipes). If using tomatoes, simply dice them. The highlight here is peanuts. Ideally, you want to start with raw peanuts, and roast them on a low-medium flame on a tawa or frying pan, making sure it doesn't start burning before getting nicely roasted from inside. When they're roasted, the pink skin on the peanut should easily come off when pressed between two fingers. At this point, put the peanuts in a kitchen towel and rub vigorously. Transfer to a plate, and then winnow out the skin. Or, you can buy raw peeled peanuts from the In...

L. loves cakes with nuts, but there's only so many varieties of hazelnut and almond cakes one can do. I've done pistachios once, and we figured this year was going to be about cashews. There are surprisingly few recipes like this one on the web, and I did combine ideas from multiple recipes. Here goes: For the cake layers, I doubled the batch size from this recipe, and made some adjustments: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/caramel-cashew-cupcake-2282157 I reduced the sugar, doubled the cashews, substituted cake flour and buttermilk, and skipped the orange zest. I started with 1 cup of milk, added the juice of half a lime, and set it aside for 10 mins or so. In a 350 over, roasted 1 cup of cashew pieces till golden brown. Once cool, roughly chopped them. To the milk, add 1 cup of oil, four eggs and 1 tsp vanilla to the mix. In a bowl, add 2 1/4 cups of AP flour + 1/4 cup of corn starch, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda, 21/2 tsp baking powder. Mix eve...

Here's another Sindhi recipe that's super easy, but super satisfying. It's for those days when you don't have the energy to cook, but need something nutritious and delicious. You can serve this with plain white rice, or traditional Sindhi Khichni, which has some green mung daal added to the rice. Wash ~1 cup yellow moong daal and add to a pressure cooker with ~2 cups of water. Add salt, turmeric, a drop of oil (literally), and 1 or two tomatoes roughly chopped in big pieces. Close the pressure cooker and cook for around 4 whistles. In the mean time, peel around 3-4 large garlic cloves, and either mince or crush using a garlic press. (This is usually the time I get the rice going, and maybe fix up some salad for the side). Once the pressure is released, use either a hand blender, or more traditionally, a wooden hand blender (called as Mandheera in Sindhi, Ravai or valonu in Gujarati) to blend the daal to slightly less than super smooth consistency. I remember the firs...

Here's a wonderful Sindhi recipe I learnt from my mom-in-law. The prep is slightly tedious (I do offer the daughter-in-law version, full of short cuts), but the result is really nice. Carrots and Methi is a fairly popular combination in many parts of India, especially in the winter months, when you get nice carrots, and each community has a different way of preparing it. This recipe employs a very interesting technique that's fairly unique to Sindhi cooking, and it uses slowly browned whole garlic cloves as the base.  It's also a technique that can be applied to other vegetables, e.g. cauliflower for stunning results (see the note below). In case you're not familiar with Methi or Fenugreek, it's a fairly common green vegetable used in Indian cooking. You can grab either a fresh bunch or a pack of frozen greens (much like frozen spinach) from an Indian store. If you buy a fresh bunch, make sure you clean it well. Ideally, you need to pick out all the leaves from t...

The basic idea in this recipe is to combine vegetables with some form of grains, both to make the veggies less boring, and to balance out the nutritional value. It sounds a bit tricky, but it actually has a lot of room for adaptation in terms of the spices as per one's taste, the use of ingredients based on availability, and even the relative proportion of vegetable and dumplings. With more dumplings, it could also be a complete one-pot meal. I do like to keep it mildly spiced to really allow the taste of the green beans to come through. Ajwain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajwain ), or carom seeds are the predominant flavor here, but if you can't find it, you could use cumin, and maybe add a bit of fennel. You could also just eliminate it, and use other spices of your choice and follow the main concept of the dish. Ajwain is pretty strong, so use carefully. Here's a version by the queen of Gujarati cooking: https://www.tarladalal.com/Fansi-Dhokli-(-Gujarati-Recipe)-5...

Here's one that my mom made all the time, both as an everyday vegetable, and when we had company. It's fairly quick, mild yet flavorful, and borrows ideas from Gujarati and South Indian cooking. Chop a medium sized cauliflower so it's much finer than florets, but much coarser than cauliflower rice. You can use the tender parts of the stem, but make sure you dice them small. Peel and dice 1 medium potato. You could also add carrots to this, but I prefer to leave it out. Heat about 1 tbsp oil or ghee on a medium flame. Add ~1/2tsp black mustard seeds. Once they reduce the crackle, add ~1 tsp broken white urad daal, 8-10 broken cashew pieces, a big pinch of hing, and then add the cauliflower and potatoes. Saute for a few seconds, and add ~1/4 cup water. Add ~1 tbsp combined ginger + green chilli paste (adjust according to how spicy you like and the chilli spice level, but don't be shy either), ~1 tbsp of sugar (optional), and salt to taste.  Now add about a cup of whole...