Smelth Fish Curry ... The Odiya Way !!

An odiya can do anything (absolutely anything) for a good meal. May it be a simple daal-rice-subjee or a special Sunday non-veg meal. Mostly during the weekdays, an odiya household tries out some simple (a.k.a easy to make) yet flavorful recipes. The Odiya moms and aunts are specially trained and professionally skilled in making such recipes. One of them which is very close to my heart and also to my stomach is the "Chuna Macha Besara Tarkaari" (Smelth Fish with Mustard Paste). Sounds very common and simple right? I mean, mustard paste to an Odiya kitchen is like Onion-tomatoes to any kitchen. But... hold on right there... my heart called out, it'd be so nice if I could add some veggies to it and make it more healthy and not give my family a chance to complain that when I see fish I forget the whole world.. well its true, but this time I decided otherwise. Here's what I did.... First the list of things I used and then the process...

• 1 lb Smelt fish (about 15-20 I think)...be-headed and cleaned..marinated in little salt and turmeric.
• One medium plump red tomato cut into long and thin slices
• 2-3 table spoons mustard paste (Mustard seeds + cumin seeds + garlic pods + green chillies)
• Some veggies like --- Potatoes, Cauliflower, egg-plants, Lady's finger, Yellow pumpkin etc. I cut them all in equal sizes so that they can all cook together and properly.
• Salt to taste and mustard oil of course

• First heat 2 table spoons of mustard oil in a flat bottom pan (which can be used both for frying and making curry)
• When oil is hot and smoky, add the fish on to it. Let the fish fry till brown on both sides. Smelt fish is very delicate, so be careful that they don't break in between. Fry fish in two batches if you feel more comfortable.
• Keep the fish aside and add two more table spoons of mustard oil into the same pan.
• When hot, add the veggies... everything together.
• Add salt and turmeric and cover and cook for about 5-7 mins on medium flame. 
• After 7 mins, the veggies will be 50% done. Now its time to add a wee bit of water + mustard paste. Stir well and cover up again. Let it be for another 4-5 mins on medium flame. Do not let the veggies burn (thats why the water helps).
• Now its turn of 1/2 cup water + tomato slices. Add and mix well and cover again. After adding tomatoes, some people add little salt which helps in softening of the tomatoes.
• Let the whole thing simmer. When the tomatoes are soft and kind of start to melt away (approximately after 4-5 mins on medium flame).. its time to add more water and dried mango (ambula). About 3 cups water and two small dried mango pieces.
• Now let the simmering continue for about 7-8 mins. 
• Next goes  the fried fish...mix well without breaking the fish pieces of course.. and then simmer on open. No need to cover now. The water will evaporate a bit and the gravy will be absorbed by the fish well. 
• Garnish with freshly chopped green coriander leaves and this is a must serve with white fluffy basmati rice. 

I hope you find it in your heart to try this recipe because it has fish (which is healthy) and veggies (which are healthy too).. and is close to my heart (and stomach)... Enjoy !!

Kadwa hai par acha hai....saccha hai...apna hai !!

After a long time, I got a break from work for a couple of months. In these months, I truly realized how bitter-sweet a marriage can be. Earlier when we both used to work, we took each other for granted, rarely talked during the day, took care of our stuff ourselves... the feeling of being in a relationship never crossed my heart so strongly. But during my break, I realized, its actually a very special relationship which has love in fights, smiles in tears and happiness in sad times.

This recipe is actually dedicated to my dearest husband who hates bitter-gourd but when I made it at home after ages, he actually said, he does not mind eating it. His face was worth watching but his love and sincerity in eating the bitter-gourd dry subjee made me feel that this simplistic recipe belongs in this blog. Thus the name also... bitter-gourd although is bitter but is specially good for health when consumed in a timely manner. Isliye... kadwaa hai par acha hai...bilkul ek long lasting marriage ki tarah !!

This is an inspired recipe from all types of thoran that I have seen in everyone's kitchen. Made with bitter-gourd. Here goes the ingredients list and then the process. Trust me this is the simplest of bitter-gourd recipes.

• 3 large bitter-gourds or 4-5 small ones (scrapped and cut into thin discs)
• 1/2 a red onion cut in long thin slices
• 1/2 inch pice of ginger grated
• 3-4 green chillies chopped small
• 1/2 tea spoon turmeric powder
• 1/2 cup grated coconut. Try to get the long grated ones, they bring a better taste. The finely grated ones are okay but not as flavorful
• Salt to taste
• Mustard seeds for phoran
• Oil for cooking (Olive oil is preferred)

• Marinate the bitter-gourds with all other ingredients except the mustard seeds and oil for 15-20 mins.
• Heat oil in a frying pan (which has a cover)
• Add mustard seeds when hot and let them splutter.
• Then add the whole marinated gourds into the pan, give a quick stir and cover and cook.
• Take the cover off and stir in every 2 -3 mins.
• When you know that the gourds are 90% cooked, take the cover off and increase the heat. This is to ensure that the veggies get a brown coat of roast on them. This way the gourds taste good.

Serve with Daal-rice or roti or whatever it is that you like. In this recipe the bitter-gourd juice stays intact. Many recipes call for boiling the gourds first and discarding the water. I am not in for of such recipes. All the healthy nutrients go away when you throw the water out. Try the recipe and see how it works out for you. Enjoy !!

Monday Dalma .. The Odiya Way To Start A Week !!

Usually Sundays are so full of non-veg food that Monday morning always makes me think that we should be eating more veggies than non-veg stuff. But thats only Mondays. So the below recipe for the Monday Dalma from an Odiya home kitchen is the best cure for that Monday thought. Sometimes when I make it, it goes for both lunch and dinner so I am happy that the whole Monday has gone in good food. Here goes the ingredients and then the process (which is really simple trust me.. all you need is a pressure cooker).

• 1 cup Moong daal (skin-on is better and healthier) dry roasted. Many people use other daals too like regular arhar ki daal or chana daal also. You can combine 2 or 3 daals too. 
• 2-3 small egg-plants cut into halves
• 1 small potato cubed (medium size cubes.. not very small)
• 1 small pumpkin medium size cubed (if you get the pumpkin at the indian store, use 1/3rd of it which is 1/3rd of a Lb.. I think)
• 5-6 green beans cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1 small radish medium cubed
• 1 carrot cut into 1 inch pieces
• 2 small roma tomatoes chopped
• 1 medium onion (optional .. if its Monday we usually skip it.. long story.. we try to eat satwik on Mondays)
• 5-6 garlic chopped (Also optional..same reason as the onions)
• 3-4 green chillies slit at length
• An inch or two of fresh ginger.
• 2 tea spoons of home made cumin-chili powder (Dry roast 2-3 red chillies and 2 tbl spoons of cumin seeds until they are brown and super roasted --> Put them in a blender --> gggggrrrrrr ---> Home-made cumin-chili powder is ready)
• 1 tea spoon ghee (during cooking) + 1 tea spoon ghee (after cooking)
• 1 tea spoon jeera seeds for tempering
• Salt and oil of course

Process:

• Heat ghee in a pressure cooker and add jeera seeds when ghee is hot. Let it splutter.
• If using onions and garlic, this is the time to add them to the ghee. If not, then skip this step.
• Add the green chillies next and then the tomatoes.
• Grate ginger on top of the tomatoes and fry for a while.
• Now its the turn if the veggies. Everything must go except for the egg-plants. Reason? They are to be added later in the game because they tend to get mushy very very soon.
• After the veggies are fried for like 4-5 minutes, in goes the daal(s) + salt + turmeric.
• Little more frying here and then goes the egg-plants.
• At the end, we add a cup of water, check the water level, it should not be more than an inch than the veggies level, taste the salt and then cover and pressure cook.
• Phiissshhhhhh.....Phiissshhhhhh.....Phiissshhhhhh.....3 whistles are good enough for the dalma to be cooked nicely.
• Let the pressure come down, then open the lid and add the rest of the ghee and the home made cumin-red chilly powder. 
• Server hot with white rice or roti/plain paratha as you wish. We also love it with puri. This basically goes with everything

Spicy Hakka Noodles with whole wheat spaghetti

Recently, an indo-chinese restaurant opened near our place and like moths to fire, we all flocked the place to try the food out. Food was undoubtedly good but it was all like good old India, oily and very very spicy. 

So I thought, if I could collect all ingredients at home and make my own info style Chinese Hakka noodles which will have my level of spices and my choice of veggies in it. How wonderful... I thought to myself. 

One fine day, I was all set to make my very own veg. Hakka noodles and alas.. there was no regular noodles in the pantry. My heart sank to the deepest of the deep because I was actually looking forward to having some nice home made indo-chinese noodles on that cold rainy evening. What I had was whole wheat spaghetti though so I thought, I can make noodles sometime later but I could settle for normal pasta that day. So I started... and in the process I decided to make the exact same recipe for the Indo-chinese noodles with the whole wheat spaghetti. I still love myself for the idea because it came out to be yummy and it was healthy too. Here goes how I did it. Amounts are very personal so be careful with what and how much you use. Little or more can alter the taste of the dish and I am sure you will love it.

• 1/4 packet whole wheat spaghetti boiled al dente. Add salt + little oil while boiling. Wash under cold water in a colander after boiling. This keeps the noodles separated and nice.
• Cut vegetables in longitudinal slices. I used green beans, broccoli, carrots, green pepper and red onion.
• Chop 3-4 pods of garlic. We have really large pods, so adjust for your taste. Indo-chinese usually calls for a lot of garlic.
• Heat oil in a wide wok and when oil is very hot add the garlic carefully and keep stirring to prevent it from burning.
• Then add onions + all veggies together. Fry uncovered. It will take some time for the veggies to cook up. Do not cover else they will get mushy. Keep the heat on high and keep stirring frequently. Using a non-stick pan really helps in this case.
• Now add all the rest of ingredients. Here goes the list.
• soya sauce
• chill-garlic paste
• tomato ketchup
• chilly oil
• chinese salt (aka Ajinomoto)
• Regular salt
• vinegar
• After the sauces have come together, add the noodles and mix well. Keep on the low heat till you serve.

Soyabean Keema Kofta Curry - For the healthy veggie lover !!

In my last post, I realized that I am not writing difficulty enough recipes so that the blog will look nice... Well.. the problem is I AM LAZY.. so I keep looking for quicker options.. But, sometimes, I do cook nice things for the family... which consists of my husband only right now.. :)

Here goes the recipe for a soybean keema kofta curry which I made and we loved to eat with roti. I am sure you'll like it too.

• Soak Soyabean (I use the Nutrela brand from the Indian store) nuggets in water and microwave on high for 6 -8 mins. Ensure that the water does not spill off, else the whole microwave cleaning will take a lot of time.
• Squeeze excess water (not need to make it super dry) and put the nuggets in the blender to chop them off into soyabean keema.
• You can also get Nutrela's Soyabean keema as well. Ensure that you wash them super properly else even a little bit of sand kind stuff will hamper you tongue.
• Now its keema cooking time... heat oil and when its hot splutter 1 tea spoon jeera.
• Add chopped onions and fry until browned.
• No tomatoes for keema. When onions are brown, add 1.5 tea spoons garam masala + 2 tea spoon red chilli powder + 1 tea spoon each jeera powder & coriander powder + 1/2 tea spoon aamchur powder. If you don't have amchur, a little bit of lemon juice is fine too. Its only for a sour taste.
• Once masala is fried, add the soyabean keema and fry and fry and fry until water is gone and soyabean starts to look like mutton keema :)
• Add salt and pepper powder only after the keema has been fried up. Salt will release water and thus will keep the keema mixture moist for the kofta.
• Remove the mixture from stove and allow to cool.
• Now, boil two medium potatoes and mash them up real smooth and nice.
• Add 4 table spoons corn starch powder to the same and a little more red chilli powder just for the sake of my spice-loving friends.
• Once keema is cooled down, mix keema + potatoes+corn starch+red chilli powder and make small round balls.
• Now, you can either deep fry them or shallow fry them in a non-stick pan. Either way they taste very good.

For the gravy you need two different masala pastes.

1. With tomatoes + onions

• Slice onions and fry them in hot oil till they are brown. Cool and put in the blender
• Dice 2 medium tomatoes and add to the blender
• Whole garam masala (the regular cinnamon stick + cardamoms + cloves + bay leaf + mace)
• 2 tea spoon ginger-garlic paste
• Blend them all together and keep aside.

2. With poppy seeds + cashew nuts

• Soak 1 table spoon poppy seeds in warm milk for 15-20 mins in the blender
• Add 10-12 whole cashews to that
• 2 spoons water and blend.

Start the gravy cooking...similar process like we always do..

• Heat oil and when steamy hot, add chopped onions + green chillies.
• Fry till onion is brown
• Then add the masala pastes + kasoori methi + coriander powder + whole milk or whipping cream + red chili powder + salt and fry till you see oil seeping from the sides.
• After the masala is nice orange color, add a little water and bring it to a boil.
• Add the koftas and let it sit on the shut down stove for a while.

Kundru Bhaja ... Again a "pakhala" saathi !!

Come summer and its always "pakhala bhata" for lunch. What can we do? We Odiyas are crazy about pakhala, the poor man's staple food. Hee Hee Hee.. thats such a big joke now, because big restaurants like Grand Hotel in Puri (Puri Jagannath) also serve Pakhala with delicacies that we dream of...

Here is one more bhaja (or hash as we say it in English) which goes very well with Pakhala bhata. Add some dahi into the rice+water mix and enjoy with this quick and easy bhaja.

PS: Now that I think of, all my recipes are either quick or easy or both. How lazy am I ??

Anyways, here are the ingredients (shortest list on earth)

• Kundru (1/2 Lb) cut into longitudinal slices.
• 1 tea spoon Panch shoran
• 1 tea spoon turmeric
• 1 tea spoon red chill powder
• Salt to taste
• 1 table spoon Mustard paste {mustard seeds + garlic + green chilies}
• Oil (as needed)

How you do it?

• Heat oil and add turmeric.
• When oil is hot, add the panch phoran and let it splutter.
• Then add the kundru slices + salt and cook with the cover on. Fry regularly so that the veggies do not stick to the pan.
• After the veggies are a little tender, add the mustard paste + red chilly powder and cover again.
• Fry for 10 -15 mins or until the veggies are done.
• Garnish with chopped green coriander leaves and serve with pakhala. 

If you are not a pakhala eater (which probably means you are not Odiya) this dish can be eaten with Roti/Paratha or Dal+Rice. Latter being the better choice. 

Dahi Baigana ... Refreshingly Homey !!

Whenever there is a potluck, the most lazy person picks the yoghurt accompaniment called Raita. :)

At least thats what my friends think. So I decided to make a better yoghurt dish and prove that bringing Raita to a potluck does not mean you are lazy. Just means, there are more things that can be done with Yoghurt and Egg Plant. LOL.

Dahi Baigana, is a favorite Odiya dish. Its always made at weddings and summer lunches where there is fried rice and mutton curry. Yoghurt is very cooling, so having this dish with rich food is good for the food-intaker (thats you..silly !!).

Here is what we use...

• Egg-Plant (the longer ones taste the best.. according to me) cut into long pieces
• 1 small red onion sliced thin
• Few curry leaves
• 1 cup plain yoghurt
• 1 tea spoon sugar
• 3-4 green chillies slit through length
• salt to taste
• Oil for frying the egg-plants

Here's how we make it...

• Deep fry the egg-plant and keep them aside. While frying, ensure that it does not get burnt. Fry on low flame.
• If you are worried about deep fried stuff.. lay the fried egg-plants on tissue paper.
• Now, add yoghurt, a little water, sugar, salt and mix well.
• In a small pan, heat some oil (may be 1 or 2 tea spoons).
• When oil is hot, splutter mustard seeds and curry leaves and then add the onions.
• Fry the onions till they are pink and translucent. Take care that they do not turn brown. They should still look crunchy.
• Now add the onions into the yoghurt mixture and mix well.
• Finally add the egg-plants to the yoghurt mixture and mix everything well.
• Note that we do not cook the yoghurt. Just mix and serve. :)

Enjoy !!

Simple Ramblings.. Quickie Egg Curry

I am not sure about others, but there are days when my heart (and tummy) craves for spicy eggs and white rice. I am yet not sure why would that be, because egg is not may favorite. So all I do is boil some eggs and make Egg Curry. This is probably a life saver when guests some in to our house and we do not have decent vegetables or fish in the fridge to serve lunch or dinner. Egg curry serves the purpose to the best of extent. Every Odiya loves eggs and egg curry on a warm winter night is till date the favorite of students I think.

What you need:

• 5 Medium eggs (hard boiled)
• 1 medium onion
• 3-4 green chillies chopped.
• 2 small tomatoes (or 1 medium tomato)
• 1 tea spoon jeera seeds
• 1 tbl. spoon ginger garlic paste
• 1/2 tea spoon garam masala
• 1/2 tea spoon red chili powder
• 1/2 tea spoon turmeric powder
• Salt to taste
• Fresh green coriander to garnish
• Oil for cooking

Start cooking...

Start with hard boiling the eggs, peel them off and make small cuts with knife.

Now, heat a wee bit of oil in a hot pan and add a pinch of turmeric in it. This helps give a beautiful color to the eggs and also saves the oil from spluttering. Its a well known tip.. I guess !!

Add the eggs and fry them on high until they get coated with a nice yellow-orange color. Take them off and keep aside.

To the same pan, add some more oil and heat again. Now add the jeera seeds and watch them splutter. Once they are brown, add the onions and green chillies. Fry them until the onions are brownish.. you know the drill. Now, add the ginger garlic paste and fry with small amounts of water (very small amounts). It helps to cook the masala faster and well done. Once the raw garlic smell goes away, add the tomatoes and salt + turmeric + red chili powder + garam masala powder. Fry until the masala leaves oil. Do not burn. This masala tends to burn away. 

Once the masala is done, add hot water to it (microwave some drinking water and add that) and let it boil. Once the grave boils, add the eggs and cover. 

The gravy should be thick with eggs coated with masala all over.. YUMMY !!