Taco throwdown for the office

I don't know what I got myself into when I said I'll compete with veggie tacos. I guess I thought us vegetarians needed something to eat, and needed to represent. All my dishes are meat, gluten, casein and soy free since I want Maya to eat them as well. Here's what I made:

Black Beans:

Ingredients:

Black beans (fresh or canned). f fresh soak overnight and cook - (three cans worth)
Cumin Powder 1.5 tbsp
Red Chilli powder - 1 tbsp
Ginger & garlic paste - 1 tbsp
Peanut oil 2 tbsps
Salt to taste.

Method:

Warm the peanut oil in medium flame.
Add the ginger garlic paste and cumin powder and toast.
Add the black beans, salt and chilli powder, and stir.
Cook in medium heat for about 5 minutes.

Mexican (ish) Rice: 

Ingredients

Long grain basmati rice - 3 cups
Jalapeno peppers
Tomato paste (4 - 5 heaped tbsps)
Ghee (clarified butter) 3 tbsps
Bay leaves 1-2
Cinnamon sticks 1-2
Cardamom powder 1 tsp
Organic vegetable broth (low sodium) - 1 can

Method:

Heat the ghee in a wide pan on medium.
Add the bay leaves, cinnamon sticks and cardamom powder and chopped jalapenos.
Add the rice and stir fry for about 5 minutes.
Add the tomato paste and coat the rice with it.
After another minute, add the vegetable broth.
Add water if necessary (the ratio of rice to liquid should be 1:2). Fish out the bay leaves and cinnamon sticks. Cook in medium, covered for about 20 mins.
Keep stirring to ensure rice doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.
Garnish with chopped cilantro.

Roasted vegetables with Indian spices

Ingredients

Vegetables - Onions, Peppers (red and green). 

Mushrooms
Garlic powder

Kitchen King masala, I used this brand.

Chat masala (optional) - Both of the above are available in any Indian grocery store.

Salt to taste

Light olive oil

Method

Slice all the vegetables, removing seeds from the peppers. 

In a bowl, toss the vegetables with a table spoon of oil, salt and two spoons of the spices mentioned above. If you are using chat masala note that it already has salt added so don't add any additional. 

Grease a baking dish with oil/spray. Spread the vegetables and cook at 425F for 20-22 minutes.

Broil for 1 minute. Serve warm

Guacamole

Ingredients: (This is just a diary free guacamole topping. )

Avacado 5 to 6
Lime juice 5 tbsps
Chopped cilantro
Chilli powder 1 tbsp

Method:

Scoop out the guacamole and mash with a spoon.
Add chill powder, salt and lime juice.
Mix well and garnish with chopped cilantro.

Lemongrass pulav

This recipe is adapted from http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/archives/2007/05/07/ my changes are to remove allergens like soy and I changed the vegetables used.

Ingredients

• Lemongrass (chopped) - 3/4 tbsps
• Ginger (finely chopped) - 3 tbsps
• Curry leaves - 6 pieces, chopped
• Vegetables- Green beans, corn and green peas
• Red chillies 2
• Pepper powder
• Brown basmati rice

Method

• Heat oil in a skillet, add the vegetables and spices in the order above
• Cook in medium heat till the vegetables are tender.
• Add cooked brown rice
• Sprinkle salt, pepper and a few drops of lemon juice.

We had this with zucchini and red bell pepper raita. Wholesome and yummy.

Tomato & Garlic Thokku

This is my mom's recipe. Can you believe that something with four ingredients would taste so good? Try it out and you'll agree.

Ingredients

• Tomatoes - 5 medium size
• Garlic - 1 bulb ( 8-9 cloves) finely chopped
• Red chilli powder - 2 table spoons
• Fenugreek powder 1 teaspoon (if you don't have this, use sambar powder instead)

Method

• Blanch the tomatoes by cooking in boiling water for 5 minutes
• After this cools, peel skin and chop the tomatoes into small pieces, preserving any juice that flows out.
• In a skillet heat some oil and temper with mustard seed and some asafoetida.
• Add the chopped garlic and stir fry until it gets golden brown.
• Add the chopped boiled tomatoes, salt, red chilli powder and fenugreek powder.
• Cook on medium heat until oil starts leaving the edge of the pan.

Red chilli powder tends to be very spicy, so watch out. Add half the amounts mentioned above for a low to medium spicy dish that can be eaten with rice/chapatti. The spicier version of this dish is to be eaten like a pickle.

Check out my picture, mm I want to eat some now :)

Carrot Quinoa delight

Almost anyone who is on a special diet has heard of quinoa by now. Our journey with it was rather limited till about a year ago. I used to use it like I would use rava(cream of wheat). Never really experimented with it as a substitute for rice. Once we made that leap, we realized what we were missing! Good friends of ours eat their Rasam and Sambar with quinoa. This recipe came about one evening when I was pondering on what to cook within 20 minutes with quinoa. This is also my first recipe with pictures, yay!

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups of white Quinoa, cooked according to package directions
• Grated Carrots - 4
• Slivered almonds - 1/4 cup
• Jalapenos/Green Chillies - 2/3 pieces
• Crushed ginger - 1 tea spoon
• Grapeseed/Peanut oil - 2 tbsps
• Lemon juice - 3 tbsps
• Cilantro for garnishing.

Method:

• Heat the oil in a skillet and add the green chillies and crushed ginger to it.
• Add the carrots & sprinkle some water.
• Cook covered on medium heat till the carrots are tender.
• Add the slivered almonds and toss with salt to taste. Here's what it looks like when the carrots are cooked.

• Add the lemon juice and mix in the cooked quinoa in small parts.
• Garnish with chopped cilantro and enjoy.

Long hiatus, mixed lentils pongal

I haven't been posting for the last year and a half due to various complicated reasons I don't want to get into. Hopefully 2012 is the year of food blogging for me. I will be posting GFCF recipes as that's what we are all eating these days.

Today was Pongal, the south Indian spring/harvest festival. I got really homesick, mostly because the hubby was away playing racquetball, and I talked to my parents (my sister & BIL were visiting them). I so wanted to be there with them. Nostalgic memories of past Pongal days flashed through my head. My sister and I never cared so much about the actual significance of Pongal but we sure did enjoy the food. :) I decided to make venpongal, only to realize that we were out of Moong dal. I did have this mixed lentil soup mix from whole foods. It has red(masoor), whole green(toor), black(urad), yellow(moong) and white lentils. Voila, here comes mixed lentil pongal -

Ingredients:

Mixed lentils as described above - 1 cup

Rice 3/4 cup

Whole peppercorns - 2 tbsps

Cumin Seeds

Cashew cut into small pieces ~ 1/2 cup

Ghee - Clarified butter. (See my note at the end about this).

Curry leaves - 4-5

Method:

• Mix the lentils and rice and let them soak for half an hour. Pressure cook, waiting for at-least 5 whistles to ensure soft texture.
• Mash half the peppercorns into a coarse powder. I just used a sheet of paper and a heavy porcelain cup to do this since I don't have a mortar and pestle. (Note to self - buy one :)
• Heat the ghee and add the peppercorns, cumin seeds and cashews, fry until the cashews are light brown. Ghee can burn really quickly so watch out.
• Add the curry leaves after turning your stove off. The heat from the ghee is sufficient to roast the curry leaves.
• Add the cooked lentils and rice mix, salt to taste.

We ate this with this tomato gojju on the side. I omitted the onions from that recipe since we were out of those as well.

* I should warn readers that this pongal looks strange, its mostly a grayish-green color because of the black lentils and whole toor dal, but tastes yummy! Hopefully, I'll get better with adding pictures to my recipes this year.

** Ghee is made from butter but does not contain casein. The process of making ghee, turns it into 98% fat. See http://www.gfcfdiet.com/bakingcanning.htm for more info.