Cheap thrills

There are times when you want to grab something quick to eat, just to slow down the monster in your stomach, buying some time to cook up a bigger meal and there are also those times when you are down right broke. This quick sweet and warm treat will fill your stomach just enough.

Ingredients

Bun - 2nos
Sugar - 2tbsp
Butter - 2tbsp

Add the butter to the sugar and mix it well. Apply the now soft and melted butter on both sides of a bun. Heat a non stick tawa on a low flame. Keep the bun on the tawa, and as the butter melts, rotate the bun. Use a wooden spoon to press down and to rotate; you really don't want the melted sugar on your fingers. Flip and repeat for the other side. Remember to press down and rotate to get the butter all over the bun. Increase the flame to get things done faster, but keep in mind that this will cause the sugar to get burned; take it off the tawa before this happens. Thats it.

The only hard part of this exercise is cleaning the tawa later ^_^ enjoy ~_^

Yoohoo!

A few days back I had posted about sending in our first recipe/post for the Foodaholics Recipe Contest. And guess what, we won!!!
That means Foodaholics awesome chocolate fudge for us and free publicity of our blog. :D
Great way to get a Monday started.

P.S. : Here are a couple of  links where our winning recipe was featured; Foodaholics blog and as a facebook note.

Ala Pasta

Okay even I dunno why I have named the dish as 'ala', prolly some dish name I read which tasted similar to what I made for meself for breakfast ^_^

So quickly moving on to the ingredients :
1 onion, medium sized, coarsely chopped
1 capsicum, medium sized, coarsely chopped
8-10 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tomato, medium sized, finely chopped
1/2 cup pasta (I used the regular macaroni)
4 teaspoons refined oil
2 teaspoons oregano powder
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon cheese (mine is the dear-ol' garlic flavored cheese spread)
Salt, to taste
Black pepper powder, to taste
Water, enough to boil the pasta

Boil the water in a pan. Add the pasta and let it cook for about 10 min. Once done quickly drain the water and add some ice cold water. Do this a couple of times and you will have properly cooked, non-sticky pasta :)
Add around 3 teaspoons of oil in a pan. Fry the onions for a minute. Add the capsicum pieces as well and fry for around 5 more minutes on medium flame. Sprinkle some salt and remove them while they are slightly charred but still crunchy enough.
For the sauce, add the remaining teaspoon of oil and fry the garlic paste. When it starts emitting the garlicky aroma add the tomato pieces and fry till properly done. Then add some salt, milk and the cheese. Cook for about 2 minutes on low flame. If you would like your sauce to be a little thick you can substitute cream in place of milk or add 1 teaspoon of butter fried cornflour to the milk. I liked my sauce runny so I left it as it is. Now add the pasta to the sauce, heat for another 2 min, add the veggies and turn of the flame. Mix well, transfer to a dish and sprinkle oregano on top. And you are ready with your home-made delicious pasta!

P.S. I took a couple of pics this time but thanks to the lappy camera they turned out to be real crappy. I know half the appeal of a good dish comes from the mouth watering pics and my posts totally fail in that area. But let me assure you that the dish deserves a must try!

Bump!

This is just a random bumping-the-blog kinda post. Didn't have anything interesting to share at the moment (not that I have stopped cooking). 'Tis good to see Yadu-chan posting a lot of recipes after moving to Bangalore :) Yay, atleast one of us isn't slacking off! Also, I entered our first recipe in a contest by Foodaholics. More yay!
Thats pretty much it! Will be back with something post-able very soon (hopefully!)

The default tomato curry

Everyone knows that there is this default red tomato curry that you get and everyone pretty much knows how to make it, but no one really talks about it!! So I thought, why not? I even made it just now for a quick lunch. After not eating much for breakfast, I decided to whip something up really fast for my late lunch just now. I had two left over chapatis so I decided to make the default tomato curry. I had some wheat bread around so I thought, even if I was hungry after having those chapatis, I can still eat some bread with it.

What you need.

2nos - tomato cut into small pieces
1nos - Onion cut long
5tspn - cooking oil
2tspn - red chilly powder
1/2tspn - Coriander Powder
1/2tspn - cumin seeds
1tspn - mustard seeds
1/2tspn - soy sauce
1tspn - vinegar
2tspn - tomato ketchup
5tspn - Maida flour 
salt to taste

How to make it?

Heat the oil, when its done add the cumin seeds and then the mustard seeds, after the seeds are ready, add the onions and heat them till they are light brown. Add the tomato and mix it well. Add red chilly powder, salt, Coriander powder, soy sauce, vinegar and mix them in well. Add tomato ketchup and mix it well. Now it will be a very thick. Add the Maida mixed in a cup of warm water to the curry and mix. Heat it well and you are done.

You can add and remove a lot of things in this basic tomato curry to make it really awesome too. Have fun cooking :)

Magical breakfast

A slow Saturday moved on to a pleasant Sunday morning, we really didn't have many vegetables nor did we have any idea of what to make for breakfast; Pooja found some eggplants and some potatoes and there was some tofu which needed to be cooked; there were eggs and wheat bread as well. Eggplants in the morning? Eggplants at any time of the day was a huge no for both me and Anu. But with a sly smile and this assorted array of things, Poogirl jumped into make something magical.

The dip - was something she had at a Lebanese restaurant in Delhi a year ago

2 nos         - Eggplant (aka Aubergine aka Brinjal..)
4 - 5nos    - garlic cloves (more for those who want more)
1 nos        - lemon juice
1 Tblspn    - Tahini(or sesame oil)
salt to taste

Crush garlic with salt and make a fine paste. Avoid readymade garlic paste since it contains vinegar. Grill the eggplant or keep it on a flame till the skin is black; don't be afraid when you hear cries from your eggplant. Put the now blackish eggplant in water and remove the peel compeltely. Blend it to a fine paste in a mixer with the lemon juice and the garlic paste that we made earlier. Add the sesame oil and mix a bit more (The sesame oil here is a substitue for Tahini which is basically sesame paste). Thats it, your dip is ready to go; you can garnish it with pepper and parsley leaves as well.

Tofu butter pepper fry

100gms        - tofu
1 Tblspn    - butter
salt and pepper to taste

Slice tofu into large blocks. Sprinkle enough salt and pepper on top. Heat butter on a pan, keep the tofu slices and heat them up till they are slightly brown around the edges.

Scrambled eggs

4nos        - egg
1Tblspn        - butter/cheese
a pinch        - pepper
salt and pepper to taste

Scramble eggs as usual :)

How we ate it :)

We used the dip more like a spread on wheat bread, broke the tofu into small chunks, filled it with eggs and topped it off with another slice of bread; ah and we had tea as well :)

Really fast mashed potatoes

A couple of days ago we moved into our new house here in Bangalore. It took us quite some time and effort to get the place up. After all that effort, none of us were very eager to cook up a breakfast. So I decided to whip up a fast breakfast. It basically consisted of a some garlic cheese brown bread sandwiches, mashed potatoes and masala chai. Let me tell you how to make some really fast mashed potatoes.

Ingredients
6 Potatoes
1 tbl spoon of Powdered pepper
Half a cup of slim/regular milk
3 tbl spoons of Garlic cheese
Salt to taste

Peel, cut and boil the potatoes. After that is done, move them to a bowl with enough room to move a fork around. Leave a small bit of the water in which you boiled the potatoes in the bowl so as to help you mix it well. Use a fork to mash the potatoes into smaller chunks and later use a bigger spoon to mash it more. Add the milk and keep mixing. Add the pepper powder and salt; mix it well. Add the cheese and mix in with everything. Keep mixing and mashing till you get the consistency you want and you are done. Remember to serve it hot and maybe with a side of boiled veggies.

Itadakimasu!!

Matar ghughni

Well i tried this bong recipe with a lil garlicky and peanut twist and it turned out to be awesome. Satisfied my midnight snack fetish which usually was curbed with some cheesy noodles (check out 'Midnite Ramen') but this was different and a welcome change.

Ingredients:
1 cup green peas
1 medium sized potato, diced
7-8 cloves of garlic, chopped
7-8 peanuts
Salt
Black pepper powder
1 tablespoon refined oil
Water to boil, 3/4th of a cup

Semi boil the potato pieces and peas with a little water and salt. Heat the oil in a pan and add the peanuts first. After a minute when the peanuts are just about to turn golden add the chopped garlic. When you start getting the aroma of fried garlic, add the semi-boiled potato pieces and fry for about 3-4 minutes. Then add the peas along with the water, pepper powder, salt if necessary and fry till the water evaporates.
Once done you'll get something like this :)

The original Bengali stuff which mom makes doesn't have garlic and peanuts in it. For a different flavor try using jeera instead of garlic. Also, this tastes better with a lot of peas and with spring garlic so a must try for winters!

Egg Salad

Yes, we had been slacking off. Blame it all on Yadu chan who promised to write loads and loads of new posts on recipes he tried on the trip back home. Didnt write any :-/ And then I grew angry cuz he didn't keep his promise.
But anyway, enough of slacking/sulking. Here's a simple, easy, picture-less recipe for an ideal less-oil breakfast/snack.

Ingredients :
1 egg, boiled (I like my eggs to be a lil soft boiled and not absolutely hard. Suit your taste)
1 capsicum (chopped in square pieces)
Half of a medium sized onion (chopped in square pieces)
1 small chilly (finely chopped)
Half of a small tomato (chopped in square pieces)
2 teaspoons oregano
1 teaspoon black pepper powder
1 teaspoon of oil
1 tablespoon plain curd
Salt to taste

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the capsicum and onion pieces and fry for about a minute or so. The idea is to make them slightly tender but still leave them crunchy. Add salt, tomato pieces, black pepper powder. Mix for another minute. Remove from flame. Mash your egg or cut into small pieces. Take a bowl, add curd, some more salt and mix the egg and veggies. Add the oregano and you are done. *grin*

I had the salad with toasted bread slices (heated till crispy, without oil) and it tasted really nice. Go ahead and try!

Super fast dessert!

Here is a really super fast dessert you can whip up anytime of the day. What you need is..

1 can of fruit cocktail
1 litre of vanilla ice cream
3 cheese cubes (optional)
Chocolate Syrup (optional)

Drop the slab of ice cream into a bowl and let it melt for a minute, drain the water and add just the fruits in with the ice cream. Mix the fruits well with the ice cream. Chop up the cheese cubes into tiny cubes and add them too. The ice cream might have melted a bit too much by now; either way, keep it in the freezer for about two hours. Top it off with some Chocolate syrup and serve. Some of you might not like the cheese or the syrup, but its sure worth a try ^_^

Well, if this was a bit plain, try going wild with mixing more flavours of ice cream, nuts, berries and what not :)

Thanks to @Jofelyn for the wonderful desserts and dinners :D