Fuchsia Raita

A good way to incorporate more vegetables and have atleast one cup of yogurt a day, is to have them as raita. It’s a refreshing addition to a meal and is quite filling on its own as well. K is very fond of beetroot where I have abhorred it….it was cooked to death in the most obnoxious manner at my hostel mess, hence the distaste for it. Soon I realized however that it could be made in a simple stir fry that I quite grew to like, apart from being eaten as a salad….

Beetroots are rich in folates and help in lowering blood pressure. They are low in carbohydrates and calories. Makes it a good vegetable to get onto the plate. Plus the deep colour of beetroot will thrill you with its colour…. As kids we’d constantly rub it into our fingers to watch the colours seep in…..What I did today was a stunner in the looks department….. the deep fuchsia was brilliant…. The preparation though very simple, the colour was fabulous… the longer it stayed in the yogurt the deeper the colour got…. The mild sweetness of the beets, with the nutty crunch of the golden toasted black gram, was a nice contrast.

Dill Deewani!! Beans and Potato Pulav with Dill

 

Those of you who read my other blog know that the last 6 weeks have been pretty stressful for K and me…..amidst the bedlam there’s little time to think of something nice and indulgent…..and something that can make an appearance on this blog is currently just the stuff my wild fantasies are made up of….. yet we have to feed ourselves and i try and finish using the kitchen before the army of carpenters arrives…..its pretty crazy to do anything when they’re banging, drilling, hammering and sawing away……but i am overjoyed that all of this will soon be over….and K will finally get his much dreamt of Library….its almost too much excitement to take…

Commenting on my post “potatoes and carrot with leeks and dill”,   Vaishali suggested stirring dill leaves into rice, I put it down in my memory bank to try sometime……this afternoon, both of us were busy being omnipresent…..the last minute finishing means that we’re being called atleast once every 5 minutes …. i think i am getting a great workout in the bargain…. it also means that i got hardly anytime to even think of food…..when the army of workers took a break for lunch is when i realised we were ravenous too….my fix for all such emergencies, which still call for something substantial and filling, is a one pot dish….

pulav, khichri or sambhar rice is usually the answer to my frayed nerves and hungry stomach….i knew i had some cut green beans in the fridge and i decided that beans pulav it would be, when i opened the fridge i spotted a bunch of Dill, looking lost and quickly losing its colour….. it was then i remembered Vaishali’s suggestion….and Oh boy!! it really did make me do a merry dance as i waited for the pressure in the cooker to reduce before i could open it…..the aroma was unbelieveable….paired with a simple raita, this lunch was savoured and gone in less time than it took to make it!!

when the guys came back from their lunch break 30 minutes later, there was no trace of anything remotely resembling lunch having been cooked and eaten….except of course the tantalising aroma that the pulav long gone had left wafting in the air…..

Weekend overdosing…………………..Jeera Rice with Palak Paneer

K and I have overdosed….on food and movies this weekend….it has been blissful no doubt, but I’d like to put an end to this gluttony…..I attempted some north indian fare for lunch on Saturday…jeera rice, raitha, palak paneer and dal tadka…..having skipped breakfast, ravenous hunger made sure I didn’t have time for pictures….so I am going to post the recipes here minus any pictures….. we then went bookshelf shopping before K’s book collection toppled over from the current one they overflowing from, watched Shootout at Lokhandwala…..its one of the better made gangster movies, racy and never a dull moment, but blood and gore isn’t my cup of tea…..we tried out a small Rajasthani place for dinner and had a traditional thali that was replete with rotis doused in ‘desi ghee’, curries of brinjal and onions, potatoes, and a mixed vegetable fare, dal, dahi, achar, papad and rice….. if food is supposed to bring you comfort which I am sure it does…then this was it…..back home I tried to walk off some of the guilt….then we decided to watch an old Tamil Classic…”veerapandiya kattabomman” starring the melodramatic Sivaji Ganesan, some sports and half of Jerry Maguire later we realized it was almost 4 a.m and we were hungry….coffee and some quick microwave cooked pasta with store bought pasta sauce later, we finally hit the sack at 4.30 a.m……if ‘unhealthy’ needed personification, then it couldn’t get better than this