Karvachauth-Ladies special day

In my first post regarding my festive mood, I talked about few of my strange cravings and the strangest was the urge to buy some traditional outfits. So to satisfy this craving I tried searching latest movies that are loaded with heavy traditional fashion show but unfortunately movie makers are making movies with a different trend  these days so ended up watching few dance songs on you tube. During my New Jersey trip I also did some window shopping with a hope of finding something good and suitable to my taste but that was useless. Later in the evening at my friend’s house, I tried searching for the Saas-Bahu serials to have look of the latest fashion trend but to my dismay these days they have changed the trend of serials as well. Most of the serials aired on Indian channels these days are trying to depict the Rajasthani culture and traditions but distorting the fact to quite an extent.  Being a Rajasthani, I am not happy with the way they try to reflect my culture in their serials. Ok let’s not sit in the criticizing mood and continue to our festive mood.

                                                 After seeing the title of this post, I don’t think I will have to explain the reason for my strong urge of shopping. Yes, it’s for Karvachauth. In northern India, Karvachauth is the festival when ladies or I should say their husbands and in-laws adore them with lots of shopping, mehendi and no work for the whole day. In fact J mehendi itself is an excuse to take full rest on Karvachauth.To add some festiveness to my blog, I went to an extent of going to my friend Ritu’s house with camera to get some pictures of her vast bangles collection that you can see in above pic.

Festivals are never complete without the sweets and I always go for the short cuts when it comes to sweets. So for Karvacauth I decided to make my favorite karvacauth special Fenni, instead I should say simply decorate it because I didn’t have to do much in making Fenni. Fenni base are available in stores and you have to only soak them in chashni. In fact I should say thanks to my fried Shruti, who gave me idea of soaking Fenni in chashni when she saw me this crazy for this sweet few days back.

Dahi-vade is something that is made in all the festivals in my family as almost every  family member is fond of dahi-vade.                         

                                                        

Kuttu ke Pakore

So today is the last and the eight day of Navratri fasts and here comes my eight Falahar recipe. While starting Falahar recipes although I decided but never hoped to finish eight recipes for eight fasting days. Although I was little bit tired yesterday with lot of parties, my son’s holidays and half days. I was not much in mood of continuing further with the falahar recipes but after seeing the overwhelming response from you all encouraged me to pen down another recipe for the last day of Navratri. It also gave my husband a good opportunity to have some warm fried snacks for rainy eve. So let’s say bye to this navratri with kuttu ke pakore.

Ingredients: 1 Cup kuttu flour, ½ cup water, 3-4 long and thick peppers, 2 boiled and mashed potato, 1-2 potato sliced in circle and vertical strip, sendha namak per taste , crushed pepper per taste, ginger powder or ginger juice ½ tsp, oil for frying.

Method: Slit the long peppers vertically. Mix the desired amount of sendha salt and black pepper to boiled and mashed potato. Fill the peepers with potato filling and keep aside. Mix the kuttu  flour, desired amount of sendha salt and pepper, ginger powder or juice together to make a smooth and thick paste. Coat the filled peppers and potato slices with the kuttu batter and deep fry on medium flame. Serve the kuttu pakore with green chutney.

You can also serve the kuttu pakore as chat platter mix with sweet yoghurt and some fruits.

Aloo ka Halwa

Yesterday I was invited to a friend’s house for Navratri Pooja. First I started preparing a fruit basket for Prasad but then came the idea of preparing some vrat food that can also make entry in my Falahar special series. I tried remembering the other dishes that my mom use to make and a two minute flash back play of childhood days was enough to bring this dish back to my memory. Below mentioned ratio is for 2-3 people.

Ingredients: 7-8 Boiled potato, ½ cup milk, sugar 1/3 cup or per taste, ghee 3 tbsp, 6-7 crushed cardamom, 7-8 saffron flakes,  ½ cup chopped mix of almonds, cashews, 8-10 raisins.

Method: Grate or mash the boiled potato and keep aside. Soak the saffron flakes in milk and keep aside. In a pan heat ghee and add the grated potato. On medium flame roast the potato for 10 minutes or till the time potato starts leaving ghee and changes a color and aroma. Make sure to stir potato continuously while roasting to ensure even roasting of potato. When the potatoes are well cooked with ghee, add sugar dry fruits, cardamom and milk with saffron flakes and mix properly. Let the halwa cook for another 5 minutes and make sure to stir it. Garnish the halwa with dry fruits.

Chilla from Kuttu Flour

In one of my previous posts about Vrat food, I made kuttu ka parantha. To make puri and parantha from kuttu flour is bit tough as this flour don’t bind easily. My mother use to make lot of falahar food for my grandmother and instead of puri and  parantha, she use to make this chilla very often as it’s easy to make and can be made in a little oil with a good non-stick pan. You can make the chilla from kuttu flour, just the way you make besan chilla or the pan cakes.

Ingredients: Kuttu Flour 1 cup, water ½ cup, 1-2 chopped green chilli, chopped coriander leaves, 1 tbsp chopped tomato, sendha namak per taste, crushed black pepper,  ½ tbsp oil.

Method: Mix the chopped chilli, coriander, tomato and water in kuttu flour to make a thick consistency batter. On the hot pan pour this batter and spread it evenly. Cook the chilla from both sides on medium heat. This chilla can be served with various chutneys.

Makhane ki Kheer

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I am not a big fan of fasting and fasting food myself. But to help some of my fasting friends and all my blogs visitors, I finally decided to introduce Falahar or Vrat ka khana till the end of Navratri. So today I am here with “Makhane ki Kheer”. I am quite sure that some people might have not even heard about Makhana as it’s not generally used in much of the recipes. Makhana is a white color, fluffy and light weight dry fruit.

Ingredients: Makhane 1 cup, Milk 4 cup, Chopped dry fruits ½ cup, Sugar per taste, 4-5 crushed cardamom, Few Saffron flakes.

Method: Soak the Saffron flakes in 1 tbsp water. Dry roast the Makhane on medium flame for 6-7 minutes and keep aside. In a heavy bottom pan, boil the milk till the time it reduces to half. Now mix the Makhane, dry fruits, sugar, cardamom and saffron water. Tastes best when served chilled.

         

Makhane can also be dry roasted and used as mid day snacks with other dry fruits.

              

Samak-Vrat ke Chawal

Today is the first day of Navratri so first of all Happy Navratri and wish you all the happiness with the beginning of Festive season. In this post, I am adding another Falahar recipe named as Vrat ke Chawal made from small white rice like grains known as Samak. Samak grain is shown in the above pic if someone is unaware of it. Below mentioned ratio is for 2 people.

Ingredients: Samak  1 cup, water 2 cups, 1 tomato diced, 3-4 chopped green chilli, 2 potato boiled and cubed, 1 tbsp oil, sendha salt per taste, black pepper per taste, cumin powder 1tsp ,curry leaves 4-5.

Method: Wash the samak grains and keep aside. In a pan heat oil and splutter the curry leaves and green chilli. Add cumin powder and tomato. When the tomato are little tender, add the samak and water. Also add desired amount of black pepper and sendha salt. When the water starts boiling, lower the flame and let it simmer on low flame for 5-8 minutes. In the last when little water is left, add the boiled potato and let it simmer till all the water is dried up. Serve the samak rice with plain curd, raita, green chutney or tomato chutney.

Navratri Special- Falahar

Here comes Navratri, the first visitor on the door steps of my festive mood. Navratri is celebrated in lots of states of India and is celebrated with little different trend in every part of India. Like in some parts of India, Navratri is a festival of dance and music where as in some parts people simply observe fasting during these nine days. Although these days dance and music have associated itself with most of the festivals and so the Navratri is also more famous because of the”Garbha dance” or  “Dandia Nights” held during these nine days. Today in this post I will be talking about Navratri’s special Falahar (dishes made from fruits and few vegetables that comes into the fruit category like potato, arbi, tomato, petha (green pumpkin), arbi etc. Generally during the fasts people avoid onion, garlic and instead of wheat flour  Singhare ka atta, kuttu ka atta, rajgiri ka atta, are used.  Although I am not a big follower of fasts but have always liked the dishes made during the Navratri and other fasts.  These days I am trying to remember all those dishes from my childhood that I have seen my mother cooking during Navratri and other fasts.

In above thali, I have prepared kuttu ki roti and vrat ke Aloo served with lauki ka raita. Below are the methods for preparing the above dishes.

Kuttu ki Puri or parantha: One has to be very careful while making dough with kuttu ka atta as it don’t get tie-up easily like other flours. Best idea is to mash boiled potato with kuttu ka atta as potato helps to bind the flour. Also there is no need of using water for making the dough as the moisture from the boiled potato is quite sufficient for wetting the flour. Now with the prepared dough make puri, parantha or roti whatever you like. I generally go for parantha’s as the kuttu itself is little bit heavy and deep frying adds lot of grease to it.

Aloo with tamatar ka jhol: In a pan heat oil and add some chopped green chilli. When the chilies looks fried add the tomato paste. Add roasted cumin powder,sendha namak and black pepper powder per your taste. Add the boiled and mashed potato and little water for gravy.Cook the aloo tomato gravy on low for another 3-4 minutes and mix well. Garnish with coriander leaves.

Lauki ka raita: Grate the lauki and steam them for 5-6 minutes with little water. When the boiled lauki is cooled add whipped curd to it and serve with a sprinkle of roasted cumin powder.

Festive Food

In my previous post I was talking about my strange cravings so my another craving that I have realized yet is not a strange but a common one, to eat few of my favorite sweets like Fenni and Patisa but as these are not so famous sweets so I didn’t had any hope of finding them in US .With all these cravings going inside me, luckily a long planned and a long delayed trip to New Jersey helped to satisfy little bit of these cravings with little window shopping in Indian Outfit shops  and some shopping from the famous “Sukhadia Sweets”. And Yes I was also able to find my favorite sweet Fenni  but as the Indian Sweets becomes quite expensive when they sit on the shelf of some famous sweets shop in US so I was not able to get my huge supply of Fenni.  I will be talking more about festive food and sweets, as and when I try my hands on other preparation for Diwali. Although I am not a big fan of sweets so experimenting on sweets is not my cup of tea but I do make the sweets for my sweet little devil and hubby dear with the help of all that Ready and Instant Mixes. So to celebrate my festive mood I started with Jalebi, one of my son’s favorite sweets although the shapes were not perfect but the taste was quite satisfying.

I hope above pic will add more to the festive mood by reminding the sweets shop in India with big kadhai and various sweets being prepared in front of sweet shops.

Festive mood

With all the festivals round the corner, I am already feeling high in my festive mood. I know some people may find it bit strange with one full month still left for Diwali but in my family, my native place festive season starts with the beginning of October. I think October and November are full of festivals in most parts of India. Also it’s almost two years now that I have been to India and this may be the reason for my “extreme super high festive mood”. I think I have explained enough about my festive mood and how I am feeling with the few adjectives all placed together.

                                                          From last few days I was having some strange cravings like to surf the Indian websites for heavy traditional outfits and to do some online shopping, watch some good movie loaded with traditional fashion show like “Hum Sath-Sath hain”. When this movie was released, people criticized it a lot and named it a fashion show of heavy jewelries and traditional outfits. And let me admit it frankly  even I was part of that group but to my surprise few days back I myself was craving to watch such movie.  It was while changing the linens of my living room last week that I realized about my festive mood. I had a sudden urge of putting some traditional touches to my living room. So did I realized that October has already started and so do the festive season. I will be talking more about my strange and funny cravings in next few posts but to start with, I am simply putting a picture of one corner of my current apartment  that’s reminding me of the Indian homes decorated during this festive season with a warm welcome message.

Bharwan Baingan

I have always seen my mother using coarse onions paste and various dry masala powders for making the filling for stuffed vegetables. But with onion one has to fry the masala before stuffing it in vegetables. This time I was not in a mood of long pre-cooking preparation and it’s also irritating some times to soil the mixer-grinder just for a spoonful of onion paste so I decided to make my stuffed Baingan without any hard work. I used frozen pre-grated coconut, pre-roasted and pre-grinded peanuts along with all the dry masala. J The reason I am using “pre” as prefix for most of the words is that I generally keep things like peanuts roasted and grated in advance to quickly use them for chutneys and gravies.

Poha

In my opinion Poha  is number one  super quick snack to make within ten minutes.  Again, Poha is one another thing that almost everyone makes with a different number of ingredients. Some people like to add lot of vegetables to the Poha and some like it simple with mere dry masala powders.  Generally when I am in a hurry, I make my Poha with chopped onions. But you can always add potato, capsicum, tomato, beans, cabbage and  n number of vegetables to Poha J.