simplefoodsforcomplicatedpeople

Cooking random dishes has become a destressing activity for me, to my utter disbelief! I cook because I need to eat, I have never loved cooking as such. Past couple of months, mother in law has been unwell, and in a lot of pain, in and out of hospitals; and that's when I found myself in the kitchen making pickles, or chutneys, or dishes that are not part of the usual meals in the house.  Today I got a big bunch of fresh mint leaves, cleaned them, washed and they are left for drying! I wonder what made me do that. Nobody is a fan of mint at home but I was like, "Oh, mint season will get over soon, so let me dry some and store in the fridge!" Same with fresh green garlic. I got that too and made a chutney of mint, coriander, garlic. I have made at least 5 pickles in last two months, three with lime and two with fresh turmeric and amla. Again, the same feeling of using up the winter vegetables and also the Sun! This was dinner tonight. Paneer parathas, leftover from lunch. ...

  Plain moong dal-rice khichdi with some paneer It's a bit of challenge to plan meals day after day after day for the person who cooks in normal times, more so when there is a patient - either admitted to a hospital or recovering at home. I went through this past few days and thought of sharing what I cooked for the patient, who was a 75+ person with no teeth and bed ridden. There are also some suggestions. And, these dishes can be cooked otherwise too, they are almost like one dish meals. I guess these are the dishes that are typically cooked in Maharashtrian households, or to be more precise in Marathi speaking households in Mumbai. I would love to read what's cooked in other regions.  The first dish that my Aai would cook when I had a fever as a child was Kanheri - a type of rice porridge or kanji. She would grind rice in the mixer and then cook it in more water than usual. Add some jeera powder, salt, ghee, metkut. It was so soothing that I still remember the taste and the...

रुग्णालयात दाखल असणाऱ्या, विशेषकरून वयस्कर व्यक्तींना, देता येतील असे काही पदार्थ नोंदवते आहे. सध्या या अनुभवातून जाते आहे. म्हणून लिहावंसं वाटलं.   रुग्णालयात असताना अनेकदा औषधांमुळे मळमळतं किंवा झोपून राहिल्यामुळे भूक लागत नाही. एका वेळी नेहमीइतकं खाल्लं जात नाही. तसंच वयस्कर व्यक्तींना दात नसले किंवा कवळी आहे पण लावायचा कंटाळा असेल तर काही पदार्थ चावता येत नाहीत. उदा. कांदेपोहे. पोहे जरा गार झाले की सहसा कोरडे पडतात. अशा लोकांना उपमा, सांजा, इडली, मऊ डोसा, मऊ भात, भाताची पेज, कण्हेरी असे पदार्थ असले तर खायला सोपे पडतात. तसंच उपमा, सांजा करताना त्यात भाज्या घालता येतात. मऊ भात किंवा कण्हेरी करताना त्यात तांदळाबरोबरच मुगाची डाळ घालावी, प्रथिनं मिळतात त्यातून. मी डाळतांदूळ धुऊन थोडे वाळवून लोखंडाच्या कढईत भाजून घेते. गार झाल्यावर मिक्सरला लावते. कण्हेरी करताना दोन मोठे चमचे ही पूड, वाटीभर पाणी, मीठ, हळद, चवीपुरतं तिखट आणि गाजर/भोपळा/दुधी/बीट किसून किंवा एखादी पालेभाजी घालून कुकरला दोन शिट्या काढते. खायला देताना पातळ हवं असेल तर पाणी घालता येतं. सूप, किंवा स्टाॅक किंवा वरणाच...

Howmuchever I wash the white butter, some of the particles do get stuck to the pan in which I melt it to make Ghee. I just don't feel like throwing it away. So I make laddus adding lots of other stuff to it. Today, I had about 3/4 cup of beri. I roasted about one cup of Nachni/ragi flour with half a tbsp of ghee, and added it to the pan which I had used to make ghee. I made powder of about 15 cashewnuts and 15 almonds, and about 7-8 walnuts. I took about 10 seedless dates, mashed with hands and lightly stirred them in half a tbsp of ghee. Added all this to the pan. Also added one tbsp of dry ginger powder and 2 tbsp of jaggery powder. Mixed everything and gave it a whirl in the mixie jar. I usually keep it in powder form, but today the mixture had more ghee than usual so I was able to roll the laddus. I wanted to add gond/dink to this but I remembered it only when I was rolling the laddus. Too late. Some wheat flour also can be added. Or any seeds like chia, sunflower, pumpki...

December is the month when juicy lemons are available cheap, so it's mandatory to make pickle. So are green chilies. Chili pickle This recipe is from a book called 'Hamkhas Paaksiddhi' by Jayashree Deshpande which was gifted to me by my Aai when my daughter was born. I often refer to this book. I took 250 gram green chilies, the normal ones, not the very hot ones. Washed, dried them and then chopped into small pieces. Heat a small tadka pan, take 2 tbs of oil, add one tbsp methi seeds, remove, then switch off the flame. Add 2 tbsp asafoetida powder to the oil and stir well. Heat half a cup of water and let it cool. Also heat half a cup of oil and let it cool. Add 1/4 cup mustard dal or split mustard, 1 tbsp turmeric powder and 1/4 cup of lemon juice in the mixer jar and make a paste. Keep adding the cooled water gradually and keep running the mixer. Stop when you get the heady smell of the mustard and the mixture has turned frothy and light. Add this to the lemon pie...

डिसेंबरात लिंबं चांगली येतात बाजारात, पातळ सालीची आणि स्वस्त. त्यामुळे लोणचं करायलाच हवं. मिरच्याही चांगल्या असतात, मग त्याचंही लोणचं करावं. खाराच्या मिरच्या खाराच्या मिरच्या हमखास पाकसिद्धी पुस्तकात आहेत तशा. त्या भन्नाट चविष्ट होतात, अनेक वर्षांचा अनुभव आहे. पाव किलाे मिरच्या चिरून घ्यायच्या. छोट्या कढल्यात एक चमचा तेलावर एक चमचा मेथीदाणे आणि नंतर २ चमचे हिंग पूड भाजून घ्यायची. एक वाटी लिंबाचा रस घ्यायचा. पाव वाटी मोहरीची डाळ, हळद, आणि थोडा लिंबाचा रस असं मिक्सरला एकदा फिरवून घ्यायचं. मग त्यात उकळून गार केलेलं पाणी थोडं थोडं करत घालत फेसून घ्यायचं मिक्सरमध्येच. हलकी झाली की हे मिश्रण मिरच्यांच्या फोडींवर घालायचं. त्यात उरलेला लिंबाचा रस, अर्धी वाटी मीठ, मेथीहिंग, घालून कालवायचं. मग अर्धी वाटी तेल गरम करून गार झाल्यावर ओतायचं. नीट कालवायचं. आठेक दिवस तरी रोज कालवावं लागतं. यात लिंबू, मीठ नंतर वाढवता येतं. इतकंच काय खार जास्त झाला तर मिरच्यांचे तुकडेही वाढवता येतात. मी सहसा छोटी बाटली रोज वापराला बाहेर ठेवते, बाकी फ्रिजात. वापरायला काढताना पुन्हा हवं असल्यास तेल घालता येतं. आमच्याकडे ...

  A simple dish that is filling, tasty and is ready in no time. We call it MuTke मुटके, similar to muthiyo. It literally means shaped using the fist - Mutthi. I have used dudhi/lauki in this. You can use coriander, methi leaves, cabbage, sweet corn, carrot anything. I grated a 5 inch long piece of lauki. Added salt, dhania-jeera powder, a pinch of sugar, amchur, green chilies, 2 tablespoons curd. Mixed it all well. Lauki releases a lot of water so you need to quickly add the flours. I have used 2 tablespoons of besan and some jowar and ragi flours. I guess you can use any flours. Make a soft dough. And make small mutke. You can make balls, or small patties too. Steam them like Dhokla. In a large pan, make a tadka of oil, mustard, asafoetida and sesame seeds. Once the seeds splutter, add the mutke whole, or you can chop in small pieces. I added turmeric to the tadka as i had forgotten to do so to the dough. Stir well. You can deep fry the mutke as well. Or eat without any frying at ...

Khichdi is a favourite dish in most of India, especially for dinner. Every family has a different recipe. It is easy to cook, can be cooked with the fewest of ingredients; or can be enhanced with vegetables or different spices - depends on your mood, availability of ingredients, and the time. I usually cook it directly in the small pressure cooker that I have, but sometimes I also make it in a kadhai, with water and some weight on the lid. Today I cooked it in a container in the pressure cooker and then added tadka to it. Take half a cup of rice and half a of cup moong dal - either only yellow, only green or a mix of both. I took only the yellow one tonight. I have taken a pan which I put directly on the stove later. Add 3 cups of water, salt and turmeric. Cover and cook in a pressure cooked. Once the cooker is cool enough to open, take out the pan. Check the consistency. If you want it softer, add some water and cook for 2 minutes till everything is mixed well. Make a tadka of oil, ga...

  A simple dinner. But it needed some prep time. Raw banana fries, tomato saar, rice. For the fries, peel the raw bananas, cut in half. Then make 3 or 4 slices length wise. I took 4 bananas for 3 of us. Sprinkle salt, red chili powder, turmeric, and asafoetida on the chips and coat with hands. Set aside for at least half an hour. Shallow fry in oil. For the tomato saar, cut two tomatoes in half, add some water and cook in the pressure cooker. I cooked these when I put the rice in the cooker. Once a little cool, blend with a hand blender or you can use the mixer wet jar. Pour in a sauce pan, add a cup and a half of buttermilk. Add a slit green chili, one or two crushed garlic cloves, salt, and sugar if you like. Bring to a boil, but see to it that it doesn't overboil, else it splits. You can add one tablespoon of rice flour for thickness, this also prevents it from splitting. Give a tadka of ghee and jeera. Add coriander leaves. Raw bananas are rich in vitamins and fibre. We eat the...

I love pancakes. The Indian version of it. Called dhirdi in Marathi, chila in Hindi. It is similar to a dosa or uttappam, but not made with fermented batter. Actually for me, it is one of the quickest meals I can cook without much preparation. The main ingredients for these dhirdi are rice flour+besan+rawa. You can decide the proportion, you can drop any of these and add some other flours - nachni/ragi, jowar, corn, wheat, even oats. Make a thick batter with water, add about two tablespoons of curd or half a cup of buttermilk. This should be Idli batter consistency. Now, let your creativity take over, or whatever is leftover in the fridge! I had half a cup of spinach sabji leftover from lunch. I put that in the mixer jar, added lots of fresh coriander leaves and some stems, ginger, garlic, green chilies. Made a paste and added to the batter. I tasted it for salt, as the sabji had some salt. Added salt and some turmeric for colour. Let it rest for an hour. (You can make the pancakes imm...

Another simple Sunday lunch. Carrot-tomato koshimbir, AmTi or Daal, Yam/Suran sabji. Poli-cum-  bhakri. Grate one carrot, chop one tomato. Add some crushed groundnut if you have, or fresh coconut. It's okay if you don't have any. Add salt, add sugar if you like. Mix well. Give a tadka of oil-turmeric-mustard-asafoetida. Add a green chili to it. Squeeze some lemon juice. Add fresh coriander if you have. Mix well.  For half a kg Yam - Cut yam in squares. Soak in water with one or two pieces of kokum or tamarind to get rid of the sourness. Chop one tomato and one onion. In a pressure pan or pressure cooker, make a tadka of oil, mustard, turmeric, asafoetida. Add the tomato and onion and saute till they are almost cooked. Add the yam pieces, salt and garam masala. Add a tablespoon of water and cook for one whistle. Check if yam is cooked, most often it gets cooked in this much time. Add coriander if you like. For the poli-bhakri 1/3 wheat flour, 2/3 nachni/ragi and jowar flours. K...

ताकातला पालक aka spinach in buttermilk. I love this type of spinach, goes well with both roti and rice. Whenever I cooked it in BC times, I carried rice also in the tiffin. Clean and chop spinach leaves. Cook in the pressure cooker for one whistle. I usually add peanuts and chana dal in this, it tastes good and adds proteins too. If you want to add, soak a handful for 2-3 hours. Cook in the pressure cooker but in a separate container. Once cool, add a spoonful of besan to the cooked spinach and mash well. Then add buttermilk. Add the peanuts. Salt, sugar if buttermilk is sour. Some goda masala or garam masala. This is not supposed to be a spicy dish so use garam masala in moderation. Boil it only till the besan is cooked. Give a tadka of mustard, asafoetida and chili powder. Stir and serve. You can top it with a tadka of crunchy garlic and a dry red chili. In the small plate is the syrup from the mango murabba I made, have added lemon juice to it. We call it Sudharas, one of my favou...

  Pumpkin kheer/payasam/payesh गुळशेल gulashel in Marathi. Only four ingredients. My absolute favourite. Grate 250 gram pumpkin, which has a nice saffron colour, not the yellow variety. Saute it in a thick bottom pan with a tablespoon of ghee. Add about half a cup jaggery when pumpkin is half cooked. Stir this mixture till jaggery is fully dissolved and pumpkin is fully cooked.  In another vessel, boil half a litre of milk. Thicken it a bit if you have the patience. Add this milk to the mixture and let boil for a couple of minutes.  Milk sometimes curdles because of the sour elements in jaggery. No problem even if it curdles, tastes as good.  You can add dry fruits to it but it tastes great as it is. And it gets a lovely color naturally. T You can make carrot or lauki kheer similarly. You can change proportions according to your preference, to make it thick, to make it less sweet, etc.

Sanja This is a simple breakfast dish in Maharashtra, with just a few ingredients. All it needs is rawa/suji/semolina, salt, lemon juice, onion, green chili, curry leaves, salt, water, oil. You can add potatoes, sweet corn, green peas if you have to enhance the flavors and nutrition value. I didn't have any today. It might look similar to Upma, but the taste is quite different. In my household, upma has tomatoes, red chili and no turmeric. Sanja is yellow, has green chili, no tomatoes. Roast one cup rawa. (In many Maharashtrian households, roasted rawa, grated dry coconut, roasted groundnuts, groundnut powder is always kept ready to be used.) Boil 2 cups water. Make a tadka of oil, jeera, mustard, asafoetida, turmeric and add onion, chilies, curry leaves. Add groundnuts if you like. Let it cook. Then add rawa, add salt, a little sugar and mix well. Add water, mix well and cover. After 2 minutes, stir once, add a spoonful of ghee on the sides, cover again. Check after 2-3 minu...

  Grated sweet potato, but it's a savoury dish, popular in Maharashtra for fasting days. Grate sweet potato, if they are clean, no need to peel. I used a thicker grater. Make a tadka of ghee and jeera and add the grated sweet potato. Mix well and cover. Check after two minutes. Add groundnut powder, salt, a little sugar. Mix well and cook covered. It cooks quickly so keep a watch. Serve with a dash of lemon, coriander of you have.  Sweet potato can be replaced with potato too.

  Palak parathas in the making, showing their various stages.  Lunch can be parathas and curd, dal rice, a salad/koshimbir. Or this can be your breakfast/brunch. Blanched the palak, once cool made a paste with ginger, garlic, and green chili. Added salt, one measure wheat flour, half measure jowar and half measure ragi flours. You can take only whole wheat or any flour/s of your choice. Kneaded a soft dough, applied oil in the end. Let it rest for 10 minutes. Rolled parathas. Roasted with oil on both sides. Served with curd/pickle.

  Kothimbir Wadi A typical Maharashtrian snack item. I don't know if Kothimbir wadi is made like this anywhere else.  I make this with soaked chana and moong dal, the wadis that you get in shops are made with besan. You can make either way. Soak about 250 grams of chana dal, or take both chana and moong dals overnight or at least for 6 hours. Grind it with ginger, garlic and chilies in the morning. Make a pretty fine paste. Take this paste in a large bowl, add salt, coriander seed powder, jeera powder, amchur, turmeric. Mix well. Then add lots of chopped coriander and mix well. The consistency should be like idli batter. The mixture should look yellow and green, not yellow with some green here and there. You can add a little baking soda, usually I don't. Mix and spread on the greased plates. Steam for 10-12 minutes. Cut and shallow fry, or deep fry. The 3-in-1 stand is very useful for such dishes. It comes with three types of plates. One is this, plain. Second is plates ...

  This was dinner. Moong dal-rice khichdi, chatpat chana aka sundal, and a kind of saar that we call kaLaN / kaDhaN. I had boiled the sprouted chana/chickpeas in pressure cooker with lots of water. Separated the water, added some buttermilk to it. Added crushed garlic, one slit green chili, salt and coriander. Gave a tadka of ghee and jeera. Heated it, didn't boil, so that it won't curdle.  I make this with sprouted moong too. Tasty and healthy.  You can make a salad/raita/koshimbir to go with this too.

  Rice with vegetables, spiced with biryani masala plus kitchen king. Sundal. Homemade curd. Sauted the vegetables in oil in the pressure cooker. I have a small one in which I cook all sorts of rice and vegetables directly. I have used capsicum, carrot, sweet corn. You can add whatever you have or you like. Added washed rice. For one cup raw rice, I take at least one and a half cup of chopped vegetables. Sauted for about 2 minutes. Added 2 cups water. You can add more if you want the rice soft. Added kitchen king and biryani masala. You can add any other masala you have at home. Added salt. Covered and cooked for 2 whistles. Sundal - Soaked chickpeas/chana overnight. Pressure cooked them, like I would for Chhole. Added chili and curry leaves in the tadka of oil, mustard and asafoetida and sauted the chickpeas in it. Added salt and a little bit of amchur. Done.  Always have homemade curd in the fridge.  How to make curd/dahi at home? Will come up with that soon.

  Lauki aka bottlegourd (दुधी भोपळा) peel chutney. Wash and peel the lauki. Cut the peel in small pieces and spread on a plate to dry. Works best in sunlight but in shade also okay. You will need grated dry coconut, some crushed (not powdered) roasted peanuts, lots of curry leaves, sesame seeds, green chilies, salt, a piece of tamarind or kokum. Make tadka of oil, mustard, asafoetida and turmeric. Add green chilies and sesame seeds. Saute. Add coconut, peanuts. Saute. Add peels, curry leaves, tamarind. Salt. A pinch of sugar. Saute till everything is crunchy. Switch off the flame. Sprinkle this on dal chawal and feel the magic. Use iron kadhai for better crunch. I love the crunch of this chutney so o don't make a powder, you can if you like. You can use any other peels also. Or without peels too.