Spicy Eggplant-Yennegayi

Like I have told before, eggplants are my favorite and I like to cook them very often. This dish is basically called Yennegayi in North Karnataka and eggplant is cooked in oil with all the spices.

We have to use round eggplants and slit them in the middle into four pieces. But you shouldn’t cut them completely. The paste that we grind need not be fine paste. Two important things to make this dish tasty are oil and chilies. Since the eggplants are cooked in oil and spicy paste filling, it will be tender and spicy. I love this dish with rice and yogurt. 

This dish can be made in various styles. My mom uses fried gram dhal instead of peanuts and some of you might cut the eggplants long and cook in water with less oil to make it like gravy. Another method would be, you can deep-fry the eggplants and then do the filling.

Well my version is more like Andhra style, as I learnt this dish from a friend of mine who is from Hyderabad, India.

Ingredients:

8-10 round small Eggplants

5-6 green/ red chilies

2 teaspoons of chopped garlic

1 cup finely chopped onion

1/2 onion

1 cup of peanuts

4 cloves

1/2" cinnamon stick

1/2 teaspoon poppy seeds

1/2 teaspoon mustard

2 cups of grated dry coconut

1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

1/4 teaspoon of tamarind paste

1 teaspoon crushed jaggery

2 teaspoon Dhania powder

1/2 teaspoon chilly powder

10 curry leaves

1 cup of cilantro

2 teaspoons salt

1 cup vegetable oil

-Roast peanuts and keep it aside.

-Roast clove, cinnamon, chilies, poppy seeds, garlic, 1/2 onion, salt and coconut with 1/2 teaspoon oil.

-Grind all the roasted ingredients along with tamarind, jaggery, dhania powder, chilli powder and turmeric powder in a blender and make it paste by adding little water.

-Take the eggplants, which are cut into slits and fill the paste into it.

-Heat a pan with a cup of oil, add mustard and curry leaves. Once they splutter add onions and fry them until golden brown.

-Place the eggplant filled with paste into the pan one by one.

-Keep turning the eggplant to cook on either side and until turns brown.

-Add the remaining paste and little water depending on the consistency of the gravy and close the lid. (Water can be avoided if you want it to be cooked only in oil)

-Cook it with low flame until the oil gets separated from eggplant.

-Garnish with cilantro.

Serve it hot with roti’s, chapathi or rice.

Toor dal Kadabu

Ganesha Festival is very popular festival in India. We worship Lord Ganesha and offer him variety of food. I tried to make Ganesha’s favorite kadabu. Well in the name of GOD we get to eat all the dishes I make on this day. I always watched mom making this kadabu and I used to love this sweet and used to wait for this festival. It is made only during this festival.

This time I am missing home and mom so much. I couldn’t resist myself in trying making this kadabu for the first time. I took good amount of effort, time and patience to do this sweet. Trust me it was all worth, kadabu came out just like my mom used to make. Although her love and touch was missing… :(. She taught me how to make this over the phone and I followed it step by step.

I am very eager to share the recipe with you all and hoping you find this interesting and try it in your kitchen!!

Ingredients:

1 cup toor dal

2 cups of jaggery

1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder

1 teaspoon cardamom

Oil to deep fry

1 cup Maida or All purpose flour

Pinch of salt

1/2 cup water

-       First mix maida or all-purpose flour with pinch of salt, 1 teaspoon oil and water. Make soft dough like chapatti dough and keep it aside.

-       Cook toor dal in big kadai with 3 cups of water and turmeric powder. Once dal is getting cooked remove the stock to a container, which can be used to make rasam/soup

-       Add jaggery and mix well. Jaggery will melt with dal.

-       Add cardamom and stir well.

-       Turn off the heat and once it cools down, grind it in blender and make it fine paste.

-       Don’t add additional water. The paste should be harder so that it will easy to do the filling.

-       Once the paste is ready, keep it aside in a bowl.

-       Make small circular shapes from the dough (similar like puri)

-       Place the jaggery paste in the middle and close it either side by pressing the sides.

-       Make 5 at a time and keep it aside.

-       Heat the oil in deep frying pan and deep-fry one by one.

Serve it hot with ghee.

Road that leads to.....

I want to travel long way between the mountains and with lovely sunshine behind…I don’t know what exactly I want to write today. To start with, I chose the title as “Road that leads to….” May be to fulfill your dreams!!!

We all would have had dreams while we were growing, like what we are going to be in life. The road can be the one that we all would have taken at one point of time to be where we are right now. And for some of us, the road still we want to travel.

Well for me I am talking about the road that I want travel to fulfill my dreams that I have been dreaming throughout my childhood. I want to work towards building and fulfilling my dream. All that I dreamt was being good at art and become famous!!! How simple was it for me to say this when I was kid. I guess taking that one step to strive towards your dream is easy, where as pursuing it needs lot of dedication. It’s been almost 2 yrs since I perceived myself into art. And I still have to go long way, I haven’t achieved one percent of what I was dreaming. I am going to put all my effort to travel on the road that I have chosen in life.

This is one such effort to get closer to my dream…

While I chose my title I just put it on Google and I found this amazing song the “Road that I must travel…” , which inspired me to write my today’s blog.

Eggplant and Potato Curry

As kid I never liked eggplant. Even though mom used to make some of the spiciest eggplant dishes, I never used to fancy eggplant. As I grew up I started liking eggplant, mostly I can say when I started cooking and experimenting with eggplants; and trust me eggplant is one vegetable that has variety of delicious recipes.

One such recipe taught by my MIL is with eggplant and potatoes. For this particular curry using long green eggplants, which can be found in Indian stores makes it tastier. But the day I made it, I couldn’t find the long eggplants. So managed to make it with round eggplant and it turned out to be pretty decent :)

Eggplants get cooked pretty fast, so make sure you don’t over cook them. This is one of V’s favorite curries. And it goes well with rice flour roti, chapathi or best with Idli’s. I do this often, as it is easy and quick.

Here you go with the recipe:

Ingredients:

4 Long green eggplants cute into cubes

2 potatoes cut into cubes

2 tomatoes cut into cubes

1 onion thinly sliced

2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic

3 red chilies

8 curry leaves

1 cup cilantro

1 cup freshly grated coconut

1/4 teaspoon of tamarind extract

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

3-4 teaspoons of sambar powder

1/4 teaspoon of mustard

2 teaspoons of fried gram

3 teaspoons of oil

-Grind coconut, cilantro, and fried gram and make it fine paste.

-Cook potatoes separately. (don’t over cook)

-Heat a pan with oil, add mustard; once they splutter add red chilies, garlic, and curry leaves and onion. Roast until turn golden brown.

-Add eggplant, cooked potatoes, sambar powder, tamarind and sugar.

-Add the paste to it and little water and mix well.

-When it starts boiling, add tomato and salt at the end.

Serve it with hot roti’s or chapathi’s

Indianized Vegetable Pasta

I love pasta!!! Every time I taste pasta in restaurants, like most of us, I do add more salt n pepper and try to make it taste better because usually pasta here is very bland. But the sauce and the cheese they use add a different flavor to it.

I wanted to make pasta with an extra spice in it. Basically Indianized Pasta!!! My key ingredients to make this pasta Indianized are lots of chillies, garlic, ginger and coriander seeds. Most important tip while cooking pasta is cook pasta separately in boiling water with salt and oil in it. Add more oil and mix it well; otherwise pasta will be sticking to each other and it will be a big mess, which I had experienced, while I was cooking pasta for the first time. ;)

Ingredients:

1 cup thinly sliced carrots

1 cup thinly sliced beans

1 cup thinly sliced tomatoes

1 cup thinly sliced potatoes

1 cup thinly sliced cabbage

1 cup thinly sliced onions

1 cup long sprouts

1 cup thinly sliced bell pepper (Optional)

1 cup peas

3 to 4 green chilies

3 teaspoons of olive oil

2 teaspoons of thinly sliced garlic

2 teaspoons of grated ginger

1/2 teaspoon of crushed coriander seeds

1 cup of Ragu Chunky Pasta Sauce (I used tomato, garlic and onion flavor)

1 teaspoons of salt

1/2 packet of pasta

-Cook pasta separately in boiling water for 10 minutes, add little salt and one spoon of olive oil while it is cooking.

-Drain the water completely, then add more olive oil and mix it well, so that pasta doesn’t stick to each other.

-Cook all the veggies in microwave for 5 minutes and keep it aside (Don’t over cook)

-Heat a pan and add oil. Add garlic, ginger, green chilies and crushed coriander seeds. Add tomatoes and onions. Roast it until you get nice aroma for 2 minutes.

-Now add all the veggies and fry them for 5- 6 minutes.

-Add cooked pasta, Ragu pasta sauce, and salt and mix it well with the veggies.

Serve it hot with potato chips.