1 onion chopped
3 chillis
1tbs ginger garlic paste
4 small brinjal quartered
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp garam masala
One tiny bunch coriander chopped
2 tsp curd
1/2 lime squeezed

150g rice
210ml water

Oil & salt

Soak rice for 20 mins drain. Do the prep meanwhile

Use cooker

Saute onions and green chillies in oil still onion becomes translucent.
Add gg paste, stir and leave till the raw smell goes off
Add turmeric and masala. Stir.
Add brinjal, curd, coriander, lime juice. Stir. Do not cook brinjal further 

Add rice and stir. Top with water. Adjust Salt

Cover the cooker without the whistle till steam comes out. Place whistle turn off heat and let it cook in the steam inside about 10 mins or till steam goes off.

If you've been following this blog for a while now, you would have noticed some changes, not just in the layout, but also in the content. What started as a dessert blog has more or less changed into a savoury blog with lots of healthy eating options and mostly vegetarian.

Who'd have thunk?!!! Me? Vegetarian? Even I sometimes baulk when I think about being vegetarian. But honestly, I don't know if it's growing up, listening to my body, being ecological or being just time constrained, I prefer eating vegetarian atleast when I'm at home. It's difficult to be vegetarian when I'm eating out in India. Here, in Bombay, I hesitate to walk into a posh restaurant and be happy with the vegetarian fare over the non vegetarian. At home is a different matter, I get to play around with ingredients, flavours, textures and create dishes where meat would actually be superfluous if added.

Though I tend to use seasonal veggies available in my local grocery store, when I do have access to special ingredients, leaves, shoots & such, I'm eager to try them out and see how they taste. I've always loved arugula, but have never been able to manage a regular supply of it. On my recent trip to Hypercity in Malad, I was so happy to see so many salad greens on the shelves. I came back with bags of arugula, micro greens, bocconcini and other varieties of cheeses which I don't always get locally.

I wanted something which focused on the creaminess of the bocconcini, had the bitter bite of the rocket leaves and natural sweetness of winter carrots. Throw in some red onions for a punch and some orange carpels and juice to mellow it down.


It's a recipe made entirely on a whim and that's when I realised I'm really getting the hang of salads. I tried it out for a couple of days, the first two times I had orange carpels which I impatiently pulled out and use, the third time, I just used orange juice in the dressing. And that worked magically. If you do segment the oranges properly, I'm sure it would be lovely. Just that I don't have the patience to do it with the mandarin variety.

Ingredients

2 cups rocket/ arugula leaves
1 winter carrot grated
1/2 red onion sliced
1/2 orange segmented
4 rounds of bocconcini halved.

Dressing.

3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp orange juice
salt & pepper to taste.


Whisk all the dressing ingredients till completely mixed.
Toss all the salad ingredients together.
Drizzle dressing over. Serve with a nice crusty bread.

I picked up a red cabbage last week from the veggie rack at the food store. I didn't know what to do with it, but I thought I'd get it first and think later on. This is part of my initiative to eat more veggies (Uh oh I ordered chicken lollipop again tonight) and try new things.

I googled and found this on BBC Goodfood. It's really good. And the peanuts, they taste so good in this salad. So crunchy and so filling. The original recipe asked for groundnut oil, I used the toasted sesame oil I had at hand. It added a nice nutty flavour to the salad.

Didn't I have you at nachos. Didn't I? And aren't you feeling a bit bad that I don't really have nachos in this pic? Fear not. It's because nachos didn't really strike me at all! Not till dinner time and I just felt an extra crunch missing.

This salad is almost the same as a Pico de Gallo except I added peppers cos I was in the mood for them and I had a both red and yellow peppers at home. It's always been a little exotic, these peppers. We never had them when we were kids. And to me for the longest time, I really didn't think there was any difference. But slowly I can differentiate them in taste, though even now I'm really not that confident of a blind taste test.

I had these really interesting kebabs at one of our company parties. Being in a food company, you get introduced to all sorts of things.This was one of those. They served it with slices of raw mango which was just soo right for the October heat in Bombay. Now that November is not helping us any further in the temperature department, these babies are just right as a cool starter for a party at home.

I have this habit of trying out new things all the time at restaurants. So a couple of years ago when I'd gone with my friends to Pondicherry, we went to this café called Le Vietnam. Why would there be a Vietnamese café in a former French Colony? Well, as my friend informed me Vietnam was also a French Colony at one point.

I'm opening up a new category 'Quick Lunches'. I've been trying to eat a little more healthy these days, while still not compromising on taste. It's very difficult to continue on any regime where I feel I'm giving up on major food groups or have major dietary restrictions. I want to have a balance in my food intake, try and cut down on my eating out tendencies, and yes, move around a bit more.