College room cookoff playbook

 Guide playbook

Food Menu

Aloo matar - https://youtube.com/shorts/RHtv44J36b8?si=csAkBPYQqDksUpkX

With rice or naan or bread

Pasta in rice cooker - https://youtube.com/shorts/xOF4Hdq9yV8?si=dWZTH9BjuwvPZ_ox

White pasta on Instapot

https://youtube.com/shorts/ZZy5HSkRhZc?si=3yjPeMSj5Uqt_60i

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DM_XJYYBrUM/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Sambar rice

Vegetable egg fried rice

Curd rice pickle papad

Puliyogyre rice

Bisi bele bath rice

Salad - Chopped cucumber, tomato, onion , With a dash of Lemon & Salt

Boiled eggs

 

Breakfast

Cereal milk

Bread Toast

Egg – Omlette, Sunny side, Boiled, Poached

 Sandwich maker Sandwiches

 

Recipes (add salt in all)

 

Tadka

Heat 1-2 spoon oil

When hot, add jeera and/or mustard seeds and wait for them to pop.

Then add wet stuff to cool the oil – like curry pata leaves, minced garlic, sliced green chillies,  onion, tomatoes (in this order)

 

Aloo mutter recipe

Microwave 2 potatoes. Then peel & chop potato as cubes.

Make tadka on pan.

Add washed Frozen peas & Chopped potato

 

Aloo Bhaja

Peel & chop 2 potatoes in long fries format.

Make tadka (without tomatoes). Add Potatoes. Stir from time to time. When potato is cooked, sprinkle salt.

 

Dal Fry

Boil Toor dal in Instapot with turmeric & salt & hing.

After dal is cooked, give it a stir to melt/mash all dal together.

On stove & pan, add Oil & tadka with jeera seeds, curry pata, garlic, cut red chilly.

Add onion, tomatoes & cover cook till it melts.

Add mashed dal & give a boil.

 

Vegetable Egg Fried Rice

Bag of frozen mixed veggies.
Wash rice in rice cooker. Add peas, salt, jeera, ghee/butter. 
Add water & cook rice.
Eat with Egg

Curd rice pickle papad

Make rice in rice cooker. When done & steaming, add salt, curd & water and mix together.

Give small tadka of oil, mustard seeds, urad (1sp), curry pata.

Add chopped apple, grapes or pomegranate.

 

Puliyogyre rice

Make rice in rice cooker. When done & steaming, mix MTR Puliypgyre paste & salt.

 

Bisi bele bath rice

Make dal & rice & peas & salt in Instapot. When done & steaming, add MTR Bisibelebath paste and mix.

 

MTR Sambar recipe

Boil Toor dal in Instapot with turmeric & salt & hing.

After cooked, give it a stir to melt all dal together.

On stove & pan, Oil & tadka with mustard seeds, curry pata, garlic, cut red chilly.

Add onion

Then add cut veggies (brinjal, drumstick, bhi NRI, beans, carrots, small potatoes, peas, Lima beans)

Then chopped tomatoes.

Let it melt, then add salt & Sambar powders.

When all mixed up, transfer pan contents to Instapot with dal. Cook it all for another round of Beans 15 minute mode.

 Sandwich maker Sandwich Fillings

Sliced tomatoes, boiled potato, cucumber. Chutney & butter on bread on the inside.
Butter bread & boiled egg slices with sprinkled salt & pepper.

Soupification Adventures

For somebody who hates soups and forever refused to do the soup route, to reduce daily calorie intake, I did accidentally invent 2 soups that work. I don't claim to be the original inventor coz I have seen something similar in one of those fast time-lapse recipe vids on FB. But I actually made it for myself, that's the big deal. Earlier, I did try out Salads after refusing cold-foods and documented the Salad Matrix.

Key ingredient for these home soups is boiled potato to make them creamy coz I love mashed potatoes.
And second is a tadka of onion caramelized in ghee. Everything tastes better after tadka. Garnish, you can call it.

Brocolli Potato soup

Main motivation for this was I was fed up of throwing Broco stalks and I had 4 of them sitting in the fridge coz I promised I would grate & bake them into tarter tots but got cold feet everytime.

So off went the stalks to boil with chopped potatoes. When soft, scooped them onto the blender and soup was ready after a few swirls. Oh I did add tadka of garlic and red chillies in the blender. Salt ofcourse.

But who can eat this goo ? So came a mandatory tadka of caramelized onion in ghee. Add some cornflakes coz I had seen someone do that to Mashed potatoes hotdish.

My second version involved adding boiled Broccolli florets, celery and grated carrots to the base of blended boiled stalks & potatoes. Plus caramelized onion again. Much better.

Beets, Carrot Potato Soup

After the first soup I got bolder. I frequently make Beets poriyol and had accumulated enough guilt within me, from discarding the beets water after boiling them everytime. So this time, I added huge chucks of carrots, whole tomato and whole potato in the cooker with chopped beets, set to boil.
After they were cooked, I separated the large pieces of carrots, potatoes and tomato to the blender. And filter out the beets and put the beets water in blender. Salt & pepper ofcourse. There is something about beets & black pepper combination. Maybe a history in Rasam.
Tadka of caramelized onion in ghee again.

Since these don't have half&half or flour base, are these really soup ? Or are they Veggie Smoothies, just hot ? Hmm, I wonder now. I guess the soup formula is the same. Add spinach or mustard leaves. Or anything else from the Produce section.

Next I experimented with few other traditional recipes. Ones with flour and/or half&half.

Copycast version of Olive Gardens Chicken Gnoochi Soup

Shopping was tedious coz some of the ingredients were not frequently used ones. This bunch of source materials (Gnoochi, chicken and broth) helped make a batches of nearly 10 servings.

 Looks and taste wise it was very similar to Olive Garden version, so all izz well.

Recipe here on a vid by Cooking Panda.

Ciao

Salad Streak

I tried a Salad Streak for 3 weeks. This Salad streak was in no way a meal replacement. I can already imagine the headaches from giving up Rice. This was to help me portion-control my comfort food. I am not modest and will say that I mostly cook such delicious vegetarian fare, that I need help with portion-control. With a big box of chopped veggies in my tummy, it's hard to go for the second or third serving of main course.

Here is the detailed Salad matrix - a grocery list for this exercise:

Veggies	Fruits	Toppings	Cooked veggie additions
Cucumber	Strawberry	Feta Cheese	Boiled Sliced Eggs
Carrots - grated for easier chewing	Navel Orange Mandarian	Groundnuts	Brinjal bhaja/Eggplant chips
Red peppers (and then other colors)	Cantalope	Sunflower Seeds	Sweet Potato Baked Fries
Avacado	Apple - chopped	Pecan	Grilled Chicken with Hot Sauce (from cafeteria salad bar)
Canned Pickled Artichoke hearts		Walnut	Butternut Squash
Canned Sliced Beets			Cabbage sabji
			Beetroot - chopped, boiled & tadka
			Beans Poriyol - chopped, steamed & tadka

I blindly shopped almost all one day to get started and used them for the week. Then shopped the rest as needed.

Lately Lettuce had been making me feel yucky. I find the whole cut, wash & dry routine cumbersome and also a show-stoper for rest of the salad. So I decided to make it a Leaf-less Salad.

Also skipped ready-made dressings - cause some of the bottles last forever, keep piling in my fridge, and make me feel guilty for a long time. So no new shopping. I started with a Lemon-salt-Pepper dressing.

As a result of this streak, there was no weight-loss whatsoever. I guess I am beyond that, given my age and body-composition. What it did do however, is to acclimate my tummy to a much lighter fare. And helped me condition my shopping and planning towards the salad component of a plate. And it helped me get over the ugg-feeling I had developed towards salad thanks to Lettuce.

Salad Matrix

Filling Salad for Dinner

This is matrix I use to build my lunch salad or even dinner sometimes. Just grab one or more items from each row and load it in a box or bowl. I have one copy hanging on the fridge and the other works as my grocery shopping list.

Greens	Lettuce And more …..
Fresh Veggies	Pepper - sweet multi colored Carrot Cucumber Celery Radish Sweet Pea
Boiled veggies	Boiled Potatoes (chopped  cubes or slices) Eggs (Hard boiled or Poached) Broccoli (steamed)
Frozen / Canned  Veggies	Edamame Corn Peas Beets Artichoke
Carbs	Pasta Quinoa Couscous
Fruits	Cranberry Dates Apricot Watermelon Apple Orange / Mandarin / Cuties Cantaloupe Grapes Mango Dehydrated fruits (like shaved apples, dried pinapple, peaches, prunes...)

Carry these items in separate box, so they don’t get soggy. Mix them at the time of eating.

Crunch	Croutons Breads Tortilla chips
Nuts	Groundnut Cashew Almonds Pecan
Cheese	Feta Parmesan
Dressing	Olive oil Lemon juice Vinegar Lite Mayo Hummus Soya sauce Yogurt/Curd/ Ranch
Cooked Sabji	Channa Chole Brown channa Rajma Green Beans Black eyed Peas Squash Aloo bhaja (spiced strong with green chilly) A whole bunch of Indian cuisine Sabji’s & Poriyal go really well with a green salad, making you feel full.

Salad in box for office lunch

For more ideas with great pictures, check these links:

• 18 Mason Jar Salads That Make Perfect Healthy Lunches
• 27 Summer Salads For When You Just Can’t Eat Another Burger
• 14 Summery Salads That Prove Eating Healthy Can Be Delicious
• 23 Incredible Salads You’ll Actually Want To Eat
• 27 Insanely Delicious Salads You Need For Thanksgiving
• 37 Colorful And Healthy Winter Salads
• 21 Warm Winter Salads That Will Make You Love The Cold
• 23 Delicious Salads To Get You Through Winter
• 27 Insanely Delicious Salads You Need For Thanksgiving
• 16 Warm Salads To Make This Winter
• 19 Delicious Salads For Fall
• 18 Fall Salads You Need In Your Life Right Now
• 12 Salads Even Your Lazy Ass Can Make In 2017

Salad lunch at Picnic

Prithis Idli

Batter story:

1. Morning: Soak Sona masoori rice and urad in separate bowls. Ratio 3:1
2. That night, grind the batter in wet grinder or a sturdy blender. First grind urad to paste. Then rice separately.
3. Add soaked poha in each blend.
4. Transfer to a large spacious steel bowl. It should have enough room for the batter, as it will fluff up after fermenting.
5. Add 2 spoon salt on top. (I dont put salt in the blender, and only here separately. I found major difference in the fermentation, so.)
6. Now use a ladle and mix the batter thoroughly for 10-15 minutes. It important to fold air into the batter, as it helps in the fermentation.
7. Cover the vessel, but leave a small opening, and leave it overnight at a warm undisturbed spot in the kitchen.
8. In summer, I leave the batter in oven, without light on. Light usually made the batter bitter for me. Room temperature is uneven so oven is the safe place.
9. In winter, I leave it on kitchen counter. Central heating in the house takes care of maintaining the optimum temperature.

Steaming:

1. I use an Idli steamer with thate/katori/wati/small bowls for Idli. This is different from the stand used in pressure cooker.
2. Grease the mould with coconut oil - I don't use ghee/sunflower/canola/vegetable/or-anything-else oil. I stick to coconut oil as its more neutral in smell and taste. Doesn't interfere with the Idli taste.
3. Give the batter a final mix, to make it even.
4. Pour the batter in each mold to 3/4th level. It needs room when it fluff's up after steaming.
5. Line it up in the steamer and steam it covered for 20 minutes.
6. When done, remove cover immediately. Else the steam will condense as water droplets on idli and make it soggy on the top.
7. Keep a deep plate ready with a layer of water. Transfer each bowl into this plate, for each idli to cool.
8. After 5-10 minutes, scoop it out with a flat spoon (or flat end of spoon), without damaging any idli.
9. That's it, serve and enjoy !

Serve with one or all of these:

• Green chutney: Puree cilantro, coconut, groundnut, slice each of onion, ginger & 1 garlic clove, green chilies, small ball of soaked tamarind, salt & water.
• Channa daal chutney: Wash, soak & dry channa dal. Light toast on a hot pan with groundnut, and puree all with ginger, garlic, green chilies, salt and water.
• Sambar
• Kori da rasa - or the Udupi style chicken curry. Best dinner combo ever !

Useful Links:
This blog page has more detailed explanation and awesome pic of the Idli Steamer. http://tablespooning.com/2012/02/idli-sambar-with-jeera-chutney/

Tilapia Fish fry

   

Ingredients:
Tilapia fish fillets
Red chilli powder
Salt
Vinegar
Rava
Oil

Marinate:

1. Defrost the fillets in hot water in a bowl. The frozen fish will be impossible to remove from its individual packet. Just cut an opening and put each fillet packet in the bowl. After half hour, it will be easy to remove.
2. Clean and dry the fillets.
3. In another bowl, add the fish fillets, splash vinegar, toss chili powder and salt. Mix them well, so they are coated completely.
4. Vinegar is important ingredient in fish recipe. Its absence will make a big difference.
5. Leave it for 30 minutes (if more then in fridge)

Fry Method:

1. Heat pan on stove. Pour a layer of oil.
2. Ready rava on a plate.
3. Coat both sides of each fillet with rava and drop in the pan.
4. Cover the pan.
5. Tilapia cooks fast, so turn it around after 2-3 minutes and same time to finish.

Bake method:
Pre-heat oven at 375F.
Next on a sheet of foil, layout the fish fillets and heat for 10-15 mins. Turn around anytime.

Serve: 
Remove and serve with slices of lime. Lime juice on fish fry is extremely important for this dish to be a hit !

Chicken Biryani

I followed the method as in this video. Its a very good one. I use it when making large quantity for parties. 



My tailored version is here:

Ingredients for Rice: 

• Basmati Rice
• Jeera
• Khada Garam Masala: Pepper, Cloves, Elaichi,
• Red Onion - julienne cut
• Kaju, Kismis
• Ghee 
• Salt 
• Water 

Method for Rice: 

1. Wash basmati rice, drain all water and keep aside.
2. Heat frying pan and add a generous dose of Ghee
3. Drop Jeera, khada garam masala, kaju, kismis.
4. Add Red onion julienne, and allow to caramelize.
5. Fold in rice, mix well till all rice is coated with all ghee.
6. Allow it to heat on pan for 10-15 min. Keep stirring so bottom rice is not burnt.
7. Then transfer to cooker, for it to cook separately. Electric rice cooker, or pressure cooker are fine. 
8. Just enough water, so rice doesn't end up soggy. Definitely not soggy. We want the rice to be fluffy, non-sticky.

Method for Saffron-Rice: 

1. Add few drops of red/orange food color in a bowl of water.
2. Take a small portion of rice in separate bowl. 
3. Mix the food-colored water in this rice
4. This is a stand-in for the saffron water step in traditional recipes.

Ingredients for Chicken Biryani gravy mix: 

• Ghee &/ oil
• Jeera
• Khada Garam Masala: Pepper, Cloves, Elaichi,
• Red Onion - julienne cut
• Chicken - cleaned, washed, marinated for 2-3 hours in curd, red chili powder, turmeric, salt.
• Shan Bombay Biryani Mix
• Powders - turmeric, red chilli, garam masala (little)
• Curd/plain yogurt/greek yogurt
• Ginger & Garlic paste
• Salt 
• Water
• Cliantro - chopped

Method for Chicken Biryani gravy mix:

1. Meanwhile, use the hot pan to start cooking the chicken gravy mix.
2. Splash oil and/or ghee on the pan.
3. Add rest of the ingredients in sequence, one after the other.
4. Keep covered and cook till chicken is done.
5. Add chopped Cilantro, 5 minutes before switching off.
6. Watch out for the amount of powders and salt, because it was used in marination as well.
7. Gravy should be thick but not dry. It should not be watery like for any gravy dish.

Onion:

1. Pre-heat oven in 375F
2. Chop onions in long form.
3. Mix it up with oil & spread on a pan
4. Heat in oven for 20 minutes or until caramelized or charred as desired.

Assembly:

1. Next step is layering. Best to assemble in a foil pan.
2. Begin base layer white rice, onion, colored rice, next chicken & gravy. Repeat till all used. 
3. Garnish with browned crispy onion, hard boiled eggs, sliced lime and more cilantro.
4. Cover with foil again.
5. If this is made in advance, the whole package can be heated in oven ahead of mealtime.

Garnish:
Brown onion
Cilantro
Sliced lime
Hard boiled egg.

My Mom's Kitchen Shelf

My Mom's Kitchen Shelf. And my entry to the CLICK May 2008 event.

This month's theme is "Beans 'n Lentils". I have always been a fan of Lentils or Daals. And only now do I realize, that they are a manna. Very nutritious and tasty and quick to cook, especially for Baby food.

Let me share my recipe for Baby food. This has variety and considering that it has to be made day after day, for 3-4 meals a day, very convenient, as it does not require much thought. Rice, Daal & Veggies mentioned below can be used in different permutation-combination.

Ingredients:

Rice: White, brown

Lentil/Daal: Moong, Toor/Arhar, Masoor

Veggie: Carrot, Potato, Cabbage, Spinach/Palak, Cauliflower, Sweet potato

Salt & Turmeric

Broken wheat: Optional

1) Wash equal portion of Rice, Daal & Wheat in pressure cooker.
2) Add double quantity water.
3) Add a pinch of salt & turmeric powder.
4) Add chopped veggies
5) Pressure cook to very soft.
6) Puree a meal portion.
7) Store the remaining in Fridge. Puree fresh when required.

It's a form of kichdi. But once pureed, it gets a look of Pudding or fruit-less Custard. This pureed food is the best till Baby is toothless.

World's Best Crab Curry

By my Mom, of course. The curry is coconut based, grinded fine with chilly, turmeric, tamarind, cummin, coriander, pepper etc etc. Standard Costal recipe. But Ah the delicious, soft, almost salty meat to be sucked out of the bulky long shell. Or to be scooped out. Or gently coaked out cm by cm by teeth.

There are some bad side-effects as well. Any pointed edge might hurt the tongue; gotto be careful there. And then those heat burnings in the mouth, after few hours. But the worst is - so less output for so much mehnat (hardwork). Nevertheless, I am waiting our next session.

After 12 years of vegetarianism, when I decided to cross-over, it was only to seafood. I tried chicken. My Mom's chicken curry is another delicious aromatic dish everyone swears by. But I didn't get much from the taste. Nah. It's only Fishdom for me.

Crab also reminds me of the Scallops I had in 'Vicky's Palace' in Montreal. Both in color & taste. Yumm. I don't think we get them here. Sigh. So I will stick Crabs for now.

Update: Here is the Recipe, my Mom finally managed to explain to me. Here is whatever little I understood. I hope it turns out just like hers. All the best.

Ingredients:
1 kg Crabs
Half coconut
10 whole dry Red chillies
3 tsp whole Coriander seeds (Dhaniya)
1 tsp Cummin (Jeera)
1/4 Mustard seeds (Rai/Sarson)
1 pinch Fenugreek seed (Methi)
1/4 tsp Turmeric powder (Haldi)
1 lemon-sized ball of Tamarind
4 cloves of Garlic

Method:
Heat a little oil on a Tava, and roast the above stuff (except Crabs) lightly. Maybe 5 minutes.
Then grind it all to fine paste. Not very liquidy.
Slice 1/2 Onion and sprinkle on this paste.
salt to taste.
Boil this paste in a deep bowl. Maybe 15 minutes.
Add Crabs one by one.
Continue to boil till crab color changes to red. Maybe 10 minutes

Now it's ready to serve 6 people ! Enjoy !