basic cabbage

Shred in food processor.
Fry with jeera & haldi.
Cook on high.
Add salt & peas close to the end.
Take off gas while still crunchy.

Mocha Pudding !!!

Today Arpi made Mocha Pudding from the Fresh Ways with Desserts book. It was super-delicious. In brief :
- Take 4tbsp choc and cook in microwave on medium (50%) for 2-3 mins (soft, not melted)
- Whisk in 2.5 cups lowfat milk, 1/4 cup of double espresso coffee, 1/4 cup water.
- Add 1/4 cup cornstarch, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/8 tsp salt, & whisk again.
- Microwave on high for 4 mins. Whisk.
- Microwave for further 4-6 mins, whisking every minute.
- Pour into 6 cups and refrigerate for 1 hr.
- could pour some half and half over it before eating but didn't have any
It was mega-yumm !!

aloo jhinge posto

Panchphoran
Onion & Potato together
Fry for a while
Haldi, jhinge, salt, tejpatta, whole green chili, ground posto (khus-khus).
Water iff required.
Cover and cook.

Colorado Fall Colors Trip - September 2008

Just a quick summary of what all happened in our Colorado trip, so that we don't forget.

Wed, Sep 24

• We drove to Park'n'Travel and then made it to the airport in time. No lines at security check.
  
• The flight was uneventful. Both of us read books.
  
• Picked up car from Hertz, which is much nicer than some of the cheaper car rentals.
• We headed out to Aspen.
• There was a wait on the freeway due to "rock scaling". Stopped at a cute small town & took some random pictures.
• Took the route to Aspen through Independence Pass instead of the regular I-70 way.
• The road to I.P. was pretty and uncrowded with views of fall colors in the distance.
• I.P. was nice & cool. There's a walk to a vista point, but there's nothing to see from there :)
• The road from I.P. to Aspen had a lot of fall colors, but no place to stop and take pictures.
• Finally we drove through Aspen and reached our hotel around 4:30. This hotel was much nicer than the places we end up staying usually on trips. I guess Snowmass Village is also much nicer than those towns as well :D
• After a break, headed out to Aspen to eat. After talking to the receptionist, we took the public transport to Aspen. It took half an hour with a bus change, but it was pretty fun to ride in a bus. After reaching Rubey Park, we roamed around Aspen and saw some art galleries. Aspen was really empty, I guess since this was a transition time between summer and winter. Finally, after roaming around a lot, we ate at La Cantina. It was nice, but pretty expensive. We ordered a combination plate mole chicken, enchilada and something and shared. We headed out to Rubey Park, precisely timed to catch the 8:45 bus back to SV, but it turned out that the buses were hourly at that point instead of every half hour. So, we roamed around some more and found this really nice t-shirt shop, which had a whole load of cool t-shirts. (e.g. "Your village called, their idiot is missing" :) ) After surveying the shop in great detail (we had a lot of time to kill), I even bought one Aspen t-shirt.
  
• Headed back to SV and reached the hotel and crashed.

Thu, Sep 25

Green Moong Dal

Today we are having green moong dal for dinner.

First we soak the moong dal for a while, up to 12 hours, as much time as we have - today it was 12 hrs. Then we cooked it in the pressure cooker (with salt and haldi) till it was pretty soft - 20 mins - and left it in there to soften some more.

For the tadka, heat oil, add jeera. Then fry onions. After a while, add ginger and a whole green chili (with slits). Then add some tomatoes and fry them as well. Eventually add the dal, and let the whole thing cook together for a while. Add salt and sugar to taste.

Cholar Dal

Cook chana dal nicely in cooker.
Fry onion nicely with panchphoran.
Add shredded coconut, green chili, ginger, cloves.
Add dal to this.

Aloo Rasa

Aloo with tomatoes :

Fry Jeera, add tomatoes, haldi, mirchi powder.
Add boiled potatoes.
Add salt, dhaniya powder,& water.
Cover and cook for a while.

Exciting Pasta

We never really know what to do with pasta, so it was great to find a nice pasta recipe in the book Flexitarian Table by Peter Berley. Here's our adaptation of his recipe :
I took a can of sliced beet and sliced the slices into long strips.
Also took plenty of fresh spinach and cut it into strips.
Boiled penne pasta.
Cut a good bit (4 cloves) of garlic into slices.
While it was boiling, in another pot, added olive oil and fried the garlic and some thyme for 2 mins.
When that was done, added the beet and the spinach and fried that all for a few minutes till the spinach had wilted. When that was done, I added the (already drained) pasta, and then added a large amount of goat cheese that I had already cut and crumbled.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

Aloo Capsicum

More in the theme of regular recipes - Aloo Shimla
Cut the aloo and the capsicum - not too large. Take plenty of oil, and put panchphoran when oil is hot. Let it splutter nicely. The fry the aloo for a while, covering after it is dry. When the aloo is somewhat fried, add the capsicum, frozen peas, salt and haldi. (Optional - add some tomato and ginger as well) Let it cook for some more time, and then leave it covered. Enjoy.

Masoor Dal

I'm going to blog a bunch of basic recipes, just to have a comprehensive record. So, masoor dal.

Soak 1.5 cups and boil it well.

In a separate pan, pour oil, and let it get hot.
Add jeera (which should splutter)
Add 1/2 an onion - diced.
Add some ginger - finely chopped.
Add a green chili, (whole with cuts)
Fry for a long time.
Add tomato & saute till halfway soft.
Add the mixture to the boiled dal.
Let it all heat together for a bit.
Add dhaniya patta.
Voila !

Best Bhindi

We found the best recipe ever (only good recipe ;-)) for bhindi in Mangoes and Curry Leaves. So, copying from there (with some rewriting) without any further ado :
Wash and cut 1/2 pound (2 cups) of bhindi into 1/4 inch slices, discarding the stems.
Cut 1/2 cup of finely minced onion, 1tbsp. ginger & 1tbsp garlic minced or mashed.
Heat a wok. When hot, add 3 tbsp sesame oil or vegetable oil. Add 1/2 tsp rai, and cover briefly while they pop. Add 1 tsp jeera, 1/2 tsp dhania powder, 1/2 tsp haldi and stir into the oil. Add the onion, ginger, garlic and cook, stirring frequently until the onion has softened (~5 mins). Add the bhindi, 1/2 tsp garam masala, 1/2 tsp salt and stir-fry for 6-8 mins, until the bhindi is nearly tender. Add 1 minced chili and stir-fry for 2 more mins.

Ammu's Rajma

What I did :
Soak 1.75 cups of Rajma for 11.5 hrs.
Add 2 spoons salt and boil in the cooker for 20 mins (after steaming starts).
Cut 1/2 of a big onion - fine or scraped.
Cut 2 big cloves of garlic (fine ?)
Cut one inch ginger (fine ?)
Chop 2 big tomatoes or use 3-4 spoons of canned tomatoes.


In a pan pour out 2 inches (diameter) of oil.
Add Haldi (optional) and chili powder. (no rye/jeera anything).
Fry half of a whole red chili.
Fry the onion.
Fry the ginger garlic.
Add the tomatoes (Also add some sugar if the tomato is tart).
Add the Rajma.
Near the end, add a few pinches of Ammu's Garam Masala

Peas Paratha

Excitement abounds !!
Arpi mentioned a few days back that she is very keen on peas parathas, and we had a lot of atta left over after her parents' visit, so today I decided to make peas paratha. A bit of searching on the internet revealed a treasure trove of paratha info, the stuff that only grandmas would have a generation back. Armed with all this, I got down to business :)

I started making the dough by mixing the flour with the salt. Then slowly added some oil, mixing constantly, and then also added some curd and a buunch of cilantro leaves that I had cut up. After that, I slowly added the water, mixing constantly. The water is really important I learnt. If you have too little, then there will be flour left on your vessel, but if you have too much, then your dough will be too sticky. So be careful there. I left the dough covered for a hour or so.

For the stuffing, I microwaved the frozen peas, and we mashed them up. Then fried jeera in oil, added and sauteed some besan, and then added the peas and dhaniya powder and fried it all. The original recipe needed enough besan to make the thing into a paste, but I had too little by far, but it was okay anyway. Besan to taste, I guess is the conclusion :)

Then we just made balls of the dough, and stuffed them traditional style, and made the parathas. One more tip. If you paratha sticks to the tava, then the tava is too cold, but if it browns too fast, then the tava is too hot. I think we cooked each side twice, first without oil, then with oil. You can oil the top side before flipping.

It was great fun, and me rolling the parathas, and arpi cooking them worked out really well. I had not realised only how deeply I was interested in parathas. Really enthu to make a bunch more now. :D

Prostate Cancer

Man to Man by Michael Korda

Somehow I have been reading a lot about prostate cancer of late. Funny how things can be off your radar for ever, but suddenly it seems to be everywhere. Seems that prostate cancer is the male equivalent of breast cancer, but possibly targeting a somewhat older age group.

Being aware of some such stats, when I spotted this book, I picked it up right away. It is very engagingly written. The effect of Michael's experience as a book editor and writer is very apparent. It is the story of his being diagnosed with prostate cancer, the whole process of figuring out the treatment options, the actual surgery and the long recovery. The whole thing was just eye-opening, since for me it was also the first account I was reading about any kind of serious medical problem and its treatment.

The main take-away was that cancer needs to be taken really seriously, and that you need to become as aware about your disease as possible. Some of the quotes from the man-to-man discussion section really drove this point home. "You are not a cancer victim, you are a cancer survivor", "You are responsible for your own treatment, though you may employ a team of physicians for that".

Strongly recommended.

Psychotherapy

The patient who cured his therapist by Stanley Seigel

This was a really interesting book. Stanley presents a bunch of cases studies of patients / families he has worked with. The underlying thesis is that what appears to be a psychological problem at times is the patient's solution to a conflict or an issue in the patient's life or history. Which if you think about it, is a tremendously positive way to view a person's mental state, as opposed to starting from the assumption that there is a problem that needs to be fixed, which is kind of authoritarian and demotivating. Stanley's approaches and solutions are also surprisingly creative and insightful.

All the stories are nice, but I found Final Aids, Holocaused and Getting Crazy especially interesting.