Chickpeas and spinach is a great combination and a healthy, protein rich dish. Chickpeas immersed with spicy spinach gravy. This dish can be served with roti, naan or any other bread.

Recipe will serve 2 to 4.

Ingredients:

• 1 15oz can of chickpea (chole, garbanzo)
• 3 cups finely chopped spinach (palak)
• 2 medium tomatoes
• 1/2″piece ginger (adrak)
• 1 green chili
• 3 tablespoon oil
• 1/4 teaspoon asafetida (hing)
• 1 teaspoon cumin seed (jeera)
• 1 tablespoon coriander powder (dhania)
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric (haldi)
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper adjust to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon salt adjust to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon garam masala

Method:

1. Drain the liquid out of the chickpeas and rince the chick peas well.
2. Blend the tomatoes, green chilies, and ginger to make a puree.
3. Heat the oil in a saucepan. Test the heat by adding one cumin seed to the oil; if seed cracks right away oil is ready.
4. Add the asafetida and cumin seeds.
5. After the cumin seeds crack, add the tomato puree, coriander powder, turmeric, red chili powder and cook for about 4 minutes on medium heat.
6. Tomato mixture will start leaving the oil and will reduce to about half in quantity.
7. Add spinach, and salt and one half cup of water and let it cook covered for 4 to 5 minutes on medium heat covered.
8. Add the chickpeas and mash them lightly with a spatula so they soften Note: add more water as needed to keep the gravy consistency to your liking, and let it cook on low heat for 7 to 8 minutes.
9. Add the garam masala and let it cook for another minute.

Black-eyed pea salad is very colorful and delicious. Ginger dressing gives a nice tangy flavor. This is great for quick and light lunch.

Recipe serves 4.

Ingredients:

• 1 15 oz can of black-eyed peas (lobhia)
• 1 medium russet boiled potatoes, peeled and chopped into small cubes
• 1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
• 2 medium seeded and finely chopped tomatoes
• 1 green chili seeded and chopped (hari mirch)
• About 1 teaspoon thinly sliced fresh ginger (adrack)
• 2 tablespoon finely chopped mint (podina)
• 2 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro (hara dhania)
• 1 tablespoon oil

Salad Dressing:

• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon ginger juice
• 3/4 teaspoon salt adjust to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon roasted ground cumin seed

Method:

1. Drain the liquid out of the can of black-eyed pea, wash and drain the pea.
2. Heat the oil on medium high; add black-eyed pea, and potatoes stir-fry for about 2 minutes.
3. Turn off the heat and let it cool to room temperature.
4. Mix black-eyed pea with the chopped vegetables and herbs. Note: vegetables should be chopped about double the size of black-eyed pea.
5. Mix all the salad dressing ingredients together.
6. Mix the salad and dressing and let the salad sit for about 10 minutes before serving. The salad is nicely marinated.

Pav Bhaji is a favorite fast food dish in India. Pav is buns and bhaji is the mixed spicy vegetables. This is a very popular dish with roadside vendors.
Recipe will serve 4.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 cups chopped cauliflower
• 1/2 cup chopped green beans
• 1/2 cup peas
• 1/2 cup chopped carrots
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 2 green chilies chopped
• 2 tablespoon finely sliced ginger
• 3 medium chopped tomatoes
• 1/2 teaspoon red chili
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 tablespoon fennel seed powder (saunf)
• 2 teaspoon salt (adjust to taste)
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice (adjust to taste)
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro (hara dhania)
• 6  bread buns

For Garnish:

• 1 medium chopped tomatoes
• Few pieces of thinly sliced lemon

Method:

1. Boil all the vegetables potatoes, cauliflower, beans, peas, and beans in about 1 ½ cup of water. Don’t add too much water, just enough to cook.
2. After the vegetables are soft and tender, drain the excess water and mash them coarsely with a fork or potato masher.
3. Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat.
4. Add tomatoes, green chilies, cilantro, and ginger and sauté for 2-3 minutes until pasty.
5. Next add the red chili powder, fennel seed and turmeric, mix it well.
6. Add mashed vegetables.
7. Using a spatula, simultaneously mash and stir all the vegetables for 5 minutes.
8. Add salt and two tablespoons of ghee, stir-fry for another minute.
9. Add about ¼ cup of water or as needed, and let it cook for a minute.
10. Turn off the heat.
11. Add garam masala, and lemon juice, mix it well
12. Toast the halves bun over a skillet using butter over medium heat until buns are golden brown from both sides.
13. Serve toasted buns with bhaji (mixed vegetables), garnish with chopped tomatoes and sliced lemon.

Variations:

1. You can use almost any vegetables to make the bhaji, but keep the potato base. You can also try vegetables such as cabbage, bell pepper, and eggplant.
2. If you don’t eat potatoes, use green bananas for the base.
3. For vegan replace the butter with oil.

Koftas are fried dumplings in a variety of spicy gravies. The dumplings can be made using a variety of vegetables and some popular ones are cabbage, laucki (bottle  guard), zucchini, or a potato-paneer mix. This particular recipe uses cabbage.

Recipe serves will 4.

Ingredients:
For Koftas (dumpling):

• 2 cup shredded cabbage (patha gobhi)
• 3/4 cup gram flour or as needed
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seed (jeera)
• 2 teaspoon chopped cilantro (hara dhania)
• 1 teaspoon shredded ginger
• 1 chopped green chili
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Oil to fry

Gravy:

• 3 medium tomatoes
• 1/2 inch ginger (adrak)
• 1 green chili
• 2 tablespoon yogurt
• 2 tablespoon oil
• Pinch asafetida (hing)
• 1 teaspoon cumin seed (jeera)
• 1 tablespoon gram flour (basen)
• 1 tablespoon coriander powder (dhania)
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric (haldi)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (adjust to taste)
• 1/2 paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper
• 2 tablespoon finally chopped cilantro (hara dhania)
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Method:
Koftas (dumpling):

1. Mix together all the kofta (dumpling) ingredients. Adjust gram flour (besen) as needed to make a texture of very soft dough. Note: make this mix just before you are ready to fry the kofta otherwise it will become watery.
2. Heat the oil in a frying pan on medium-high heat.
3. The frying pan should have at least 1½ inch of oil. To check if the oil is ready, just put one small piece of the mix in the oil, it should sizzle and come up right away.
4. Slowly drop about 1 tablespoon of the dumpling mixture into the frying pan one at a time.
5. Fry the koftas (dumpling mix) in small batches, avoid overcrowding the frying pan.
6. Turn the koftas occasionally. Fry the koftas until they turn golden-brown all around.

Gravy:

1. Blend the tomatoes, green chilies and ginger to make a puree. If you prefer a milder version, take the seeds out of the green chili before blending.
2. Heat the oil in a saucepan on medium-high. Test the heat by adding one cumin seed to the oil; if it cracks right away oil is ready.
3. Add the asafetida, cumin seeds and gram flour (basen). Stir-fry for a minutes.
4. Add the tomato puree, coriander powder, turmeric, paprika, and cook on medium heat until the tomato mixture starts leaving the oil and reduces to about half in quantity.
5. Next add yogurt and cook for another minute.
6. Add about 1½ cups of water and the salt. As it comes to boil reduce the heat to medium-low and let the gravy cook for few minutes.
   Note: adjust the thickness of the gravy to your taste by adjusting the water.
7. Add the prepared koftas and let it simmer for another 7 to 8 minutes.
8. Turn of the heat and add the cilantro and cover the pot.

Variations:
Using the same recipe you can make these koftas replacing cabbage with laucki (bottle guard) or zucchini.

Tips:
Koftas can be refrigerated for 5 days or freeze for a month.

Hello everyone, I hope you enjoyed my latest recipe: Eggless Pineapple Cake. As I have said before I am not very big on baking, but one good thing about doing this website is that I am learning more as I try to show you new recipes. Alex (my husband) is a big help because he will not video the recipe until he is  happy with it. So now you know, you all are trying the food he approves.

Before I started on the cake, I used Google to find a few recipes that  looked good, but I knew I would have to modify them. First I followed this recipe from allrecipes.com which I liked the most but I thought it was too dry so I decided to add pineapple. I pureed the pineapple and added it to my next cake. My son was visiting so he tried the cake and said it was too bland and tasteless. In my third attempt, I added crushed pineapple and pineapple juice as you see and cardamom powder. It was better then before but still too dry. I decided to spread a few spoons of pineapple juice over the cake but by that time the cake was cold. It worked but wasn’t good enough. I felt I should have put the juice while cake was still warm so that’s what I did on my fourth attempt and yes — THIS cake got the Alex approval. Now he was ready to video.

You must be wondering what I did with all this cake. First one I trashed. I sliced the second and third cake into small cubes. Then I softened some vanilla ice cream and mixed the cake and ice cream together. It tasted great and I took that for a potluck lunch. Everybody enjoyed it.

Yesterday, Alex did the video for cabbage Kofta which is now on the website. This one is my granddaughter and grandson’s favorite for now, although their favorites keep changing.

This is an easy and delicious eggless pineapple cake recipe and this can be served any time of the day, and for any occasion.

Ingredients:

• 1-1/4 cup all purpose flour (maida)
• 1/2 can (7oz) sweetened condense milk
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cardamom powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1  20 oz can crushed pineapple, drained. Save the juice.

Method

1. Preheat the oven at 325 degrees (F).
2. Grease 8×8 inches cake pan
3. Drain pineapple using strainer let the juice dripped through without squeezing. Note: we will use juice and pineapple both.
4. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cardamom and salt in a bowl.
5. In center part of the flour mix, add ½ cup pineapple juice, ½ cup pineapple chunks, butter, and condense milk.
6. Gently fold every thing together.
7. Pour the mixture in greased cake pan.
8. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until cake starts leaving the pan from sides and an insert knife in the center of the cake come out clean.
9. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool off for few minutes only.
10. Run a knife around the edges to loosen the cake and place a flat plate over the cake pan and turn it over to transfer the cake on to the plate.
11. Prick the cake several places with a fork.
12. Brush the top of the cake generously with the leftover pineapple juice while still hot.
13. Let cake cool before slicing the cake.

It has been awhile since my last post because I have been busy with family and with cooking classes.

I feel very energetic and very satisfied doing these cooking classes. I have wanted to share my cooking experience for years, and now I am able to do that through classes and videos.

It is a good feeling.When visitors to the site make a comment that I remind them of their mom, to me that’s the best compliment someone can give me. Many years back my close friend told me I should stop being a mother figure to people, but the other day she called me after reading one of the comments on the blog and said with a smile now it is the right time to be a Mom.

I don’t do much baking but many of you have requested an egg less cake so I have been trying different recipes. After trying a few and making a few changes, I think I have come to a recipe my husband and I agree on. So let me give it one more try and then I should be doing posting it on the site in next three to four days.

I love to do all the recipes you ask about. But many of the dishes I have never heard of and some I only know by name. Slowly I will try to learn more recipes.

Don’t forget when we cook we try to use the ingredients we have on hand. For example if I wanted to make matar (green peas) paneer but at the last minute I find I don’t have green peas so I use instead a bag of mixed vegetables, or I don’t have tomatoes so I decide to do a yogurt gravy. Experiment and share and do come up with a fancy name for the dish.

Muthias are steamed spiced dumplings, made with gram flour (besan), cabbage and spices. I have selected to make them with cabbage, but you can make muthias using zucchini (Italian squash) or Bottle gourd also known as doodhi or louki. Muthia makes a great appetizer or snack.
Recipe serves 4.

Ingredients:
Muthia:

• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon citric acid
• 4 cups very fine shredded cabbage
• 1 cup gram flour (basen)
• 2 tablespoons whole-wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons chopped fenugreek leaves (can be substitute with 2 tablespoons of dry fenugreek leaves or kastoori mathi) fenugreek can also be replaced with chopped cilantro (hara dhania)
• 2 chopped green chili (adjust to taste)
• 1 teaspoon cumin seed (jeera)
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon salt (adjust to taste)
• 2 tablespoons oil

For Seasoning and Garnish:

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds (til)
• 4 whole red chili
• 2 tablespoon chopped cilantro (hara dhania)

Method:

1. Combine gram flour, whole-wheat flour, fenugreek, cumin seed, turmeric, green chili, sugar, citric acid, oil, and salt in a bowl.
2. Add the cabbage to the flour mixture and mix well. Mixture should be like a very soft dough.
3. Divide the mixture with greased fingers into about 14 pieces and drop them on steamer slowly and steam them covered for 18 to 20 minutes. Check them if muthias are ready put a knife through and it should come out clean.
4. Let the muthias cool off and then slice them in two pieces.
5. For seasoning heat the oil in frying pan on medium high. Add mustard seeds after they crack add sesame seeds and red chili and stir-fry for few seconds.
6. Add muthias and stir-fry them for three  to four minutes until they are light brown.Garnish them with chopped cilantro.
7. Serve them hot or at room temperature.

Notes:

1. Make the mixture just before you are ready to stem them. Otherwise mixture leaves the water and will become very soft. If you have more then one batch hold the salt and add the salt for one batch at a time.
2. Muthias can be refrigerated for 3 to 4 days.
3. Muthias can be frozen before seasoning. When ready to serve, thaw the frozen muthias and season them.

Variation:
Cabbage can be substituted with zucchini or bottled gourd also known as doodhi, loki or ghia. Because theses vegetables have more water content, after shredding lightly squeeze them between your palms to get the excess water out before making the mixture.

1. Serving suggestions:
   Muthias are great with cilantro chutney.
   Muthias can be served just after steaming, but before seasoning, with cilantro chutney.