Simple Recipes: Aaloo Palak

Aaloo Palak:

Preparation time: 30 mins

Serves: 4 adults

Best with: Rotis/Plain rice

Ingredients:

4 potatos, chopped in medium sized cubes

3 Tomatos, finely chopped

2 Onions, finely chopped

1 bunch of Palak – finely chopped

Ginger garlic paste – 1 tsp

Salt to taste

Turmeric powder

Chilli powder

Garam masala – 1 tsp

Oil

Method:

Heat oil in a pan. Add the finely chopped onions and sauté for some time until slightly brown. Add the ginger garlic paste and continue sautéing. Add the finely chopped tomatoes, palak, and saute for some more time, until it’s cooked – about 10 mins in medium flame.

Allow the above mixture to cool and then beat them all in a mixie to a thick gravy like consistency.

In parallel, steam cook the potatoes in a pressure cooker.

Add the boiled potato cubes to the palak mixture. For seasoning, you can place grated cheese on top

Cheers :)

Sakkarai Pongal in the traditional way

Hello everyone,
While we know there are various ways to make the Sakkarai Pongal, the usual Sankranthi month, we try to make it in the traditional way.
For the traditional way, we usually take a "pongal paanai" (which is a brass vessel in the shape of a pot). We can tie this around with a piece of banana, a flower, betel leaf, and sugar cane piece and then decorate the pot on all sides with kumkum (vermilion) and sandanam (sandal powder).
You may visualize the pongal paanai as below

Once done, follow the below steps for the recipe

Preparation time: 30 mins

Serving Size: Serves a family of 4

1 measure rice

1/5 measure paitam paruppu (broken green gram)

Around 3 measure of milk and 3 measures of water

Method:

Boil the milk and water together, and allow it to slightly overflow (well this is what is called pongal-o-pongal), if you don't want to dirty the place, you can reduce the gas flame as soon as the milk comes close to overflowing

Next, put the rice and dal into the above, and keep stirring. Allow the rice to become soft and be cooked. 

Parallely, in another vessel, take 1/4 measure of jaggery and 1/4 measure of water. Dissolve the jaggery in water so that no lump remains. Heat this while stirring continuously, so that it becomes a thick syrup

Now, add the jaggery syrup to the vessel with pongal. Stir well.

Add ghee.

Fry cashew nuts, raisins and badam in ghee and add to the above mixture. 

In 1.25 measure of milk, add elaichi, saffron, and slight edible menthol, then add this to the above mixture.

Top up with ghee

Enjoy the hot sakkarai pongal :)

Thanks

Make at home: Vanilla Cake

Vanilla Cake:

Preparation time: 30 mins
Serving size: A medium tray of cake

Ingredients:
Maida - 2 cups
Sugar - 1 cup
Butter - volume equal to 1 cup. Get white butter, if that is not available, salted butter will also do no harm.
Eggs - 3
Baking powder - 1 teaspoon
Vanilla flavour - 1 teaspoon

Method:

1. Mix eggs, sugar and butter in mixie to a frothy mixture (till the sugar crystals dissolve).
2. Mix maida and baking powder. If maida is not pure, sieve it before adding the baking powder.
3. Add this to mixture in step 1, slowly stirring so that no lump is formed. Add vanilla flavour (or any flavor, nuts, tutty fruitty etc). If mixture becomes too thick, add a bit of milk. If too liquidy, add maida so that the consistency is maintained as semi solid.
4. In a tray, to be kept in OTG (Oven toaster and grill), grease with a tspn of ghee or butter.
5. Add the mixture in 3 here and keep in OTG for 10 mins. Keep monitoring and ur cake is ready.

I tried this out and the cake came out amazingly nice.

Thanks :)