Fig Mascarpone

This is one of the easiest deserts to put together, if you have some figs, some mascarpone cheese, fresh rosemary and some maple syrup handy – Let me rephrase – equip yourself with these ingredients to make this incredibly delicious dessert – It takes all of 10 minutes start to finish and I must thank 5 minute live videopedia http://www.5min.com/Video/Fig-Mascarpone-Recipe---Under-One-Minute-60117976for my resource where the chappie on the video claims it cam be done in under a minute – true if you have this recipe – The baking time I used was 10 minutes but I would recommend 5-7 minutes tops @ 350 if you don’t want you Mascarpone to melt and flow like a river (which mine sort of did). But it still tasted completely delicious

Here is the recipe

Ingredeints

4-5 sprigs of Rosemary

3tbsp Mascarpone cheese

8-10 ripe figs

2tbsp Maple syrup

1 square sheet of aluminum foil

Prepararion

Set oven at 350 degrees

Wash figs and from the conical top, make 2 cuts like an X and pinch the bottom of the fruit so it opens up like a flower

Lay the aluminum sheet flat

Arrange the sprigs of rosemary in the middle

Place the semi-diced figs over the bed of rosemary

Scoop 3tbsp of mascarpone cheese into a bowl

Add the maple syrup and gently mix so as to not liquefy the cheese

Now place a good-sized blob over each of the fig cuts

Bake for about 5 minutes

See If the cheese has melted half way into the fig

Leave for a minute or two longer and remove from oven

Place in a serving dish and serve hot or cold

Guest Hosting COOKING WITH SEEDS -QUINOA or Millet For Friends in india

Today, it is my pleasure to announce that I am guest hosting another seed event, initiated by star blogger Priya Suresh of Priyas Easy n Tasty Recipes. This event is simply called Cooking with Seeds and I have chosen Quinoa. Please see the rules of entry and use the linky tool given to submit your recipes :)
Quinoa has commonly been mistaken for a grain, but it is indeed a seed and now a popular one with various health benefits. I was blown away by how nutritional it is and this is also the reason I decided to go with this seed - we should all try and make that switch from rice to quinoa for many of our preparations. It tastes SO good and comes in 2 colors RED and YELLOW! Read more about this Wonderful grain here 

Rules of Entry
Vegetarian recipes only please :) (this include no eggs either-ty :)
Entries can be linked via Linky tool given below
Linky will be open from today until Sept 30
Please add event logo to the entered recipe on your website
Link back to this announcement and to Priya's blog
Multiple entries welcome
Archived entries are allowed to if you repost them on your blog :)
Non bloggers can email me their entries with the names and a photo
A running round-up is posting via the link tool on this page
Look forward to your participation on both seed events going on on my blog

Dear friends,  I had previously announced the event Cooking with Whole Foods -Subsegment With seeds and the seed of choice was Fenugreek - This event is a brainchild of Kiran of Sumadhura please click here to view that event.This event is ongoing until October. So please send in your entries to this event as well. Thanks and Love <3

Pesarattu Dosais/ Green Grams crepes

This week in Blog Hop Wednesday, I was teamed up with Vidya of Curry Leaves. What struck me the most about Vidya’s blog is the fantastic photography of her food -  While I enjoyed browsing her healthy and vegetarian foods, I was almost instantly drawn towards this dosai because I have made them in the past and it has not gone over well with my son – You know how the one person who does NOT like something sometimes determines what is made in the house and what’s not? Well it has always been the case in my home until recently when I decided not to pander to the taste of the one person who does not like it but the taste of the 4 other who do J

Tough luck Sonny!  - but his tastes have been changing (for the better) because he now loves upma which he used to love for the first 5 yrs of his life then started detesting – I am happy to say we are the love upma stage again- yay – And I am hoping that he will love this dosai he once denounced.

I used a few additional ingredients that I thought would make this even more delicious like coconut

Ingredients

Whole and halves green gram (green mung) 2 cups

Green and red chilies per taste

1 inch thick piece of ginger

Curry leaves

¼ cup of coconut

Preparation

Soak over night and grind

Saute batter with mustard seeds & asafetida, using 1 tsp of sesame oil

In a nonstick pan spread thin 1 ladle of batter

Roast on the one side and flip over after a minute or two remove from flame and serve with chutney of your choice

We had it with coconut Chutney

Recipe below

Ingredients

1 cup of grated coconut

3-4 green chilies

¼ inch piece of ginger

½ cup of roasted grams

Preparation

Grind all the above ingredients

Salt

Sauté with mustard seeds, urad dal, curry leaves and  a pinch asafetida in 1 tsp of ghee

Yen-jai

Blog Hop Wednesday is a brain child of Radhika of Tickling Palates 
Sending this to Shilpa's Life is Green Event 

The 7 Question Tags

Thank you Krithi of Krithi's Kitchen and Sobha Shyam of Good Food for tagging me in this 7 question link about my blog.  No bias here, but it was really tough to pick certain categories, esp the one that I most proud of since I actually put my heart and creativity in trying many new recipes. Most of you know that I like to think outside the box and love the fuse wonderful ingredients in ways that also make for a cross cultural fusion cuisine.
Nevertheless, I have picked a few (more than 1 in certain categories, please don't mind)

1)The Most Beautiful Post
For this I was torn - there are several that could fit this category, but I ended up picking
The Fresh Fruit Tart and my Strawberry Curd Pancake

Category 2: The most "popular" post

If I judge the popularity of my posts based on the number of comments it received, then I would have to pick The Rose Malai and my Baklava Posts

Category #3 - None I hope

Category # 4 Most helpful Post

I picked these

Mayan heirloom Squash

How to layer a Lazagna

Zucchini blossom Bhajis 

Stuffed & Baked Patty Pans

Category #5 Suprisingly Successful Posts

I chose my Strawberry Payasam &  Spicy peanut balls posts

Category #6 The Post that did not get the attention it deserved - I think many of my earlier posts can fit this category quite well :) I realize now what I did not know then -that to get more comments on one's page, one must make the effort to go and comment on others blogs :)

But here are the posts I would say deserved more attention were two extremely healthy recipes!

The Great Q-uinoa Stir Fry & The whole Wheat Pizza

Category # 7 The One I am most proud of ...
This one’s a doozy since I like to think outside the box and try to be as creative with my recipes as possible

Banukah

Kaju Almond Vadais/Falafels

Some of these collages are purely because I have recently learnt to make them and could not resist

Here are some fellow bloggers I'd like to tag for showcasing their recipes

Archana 

Aysha Banu

Az

Suja 

Deepa Deb

Reshmi Mahesh

Sadhana

Harini

Raks Kitchen

Suchi

Gayatrhi

Kitchen Queen

Premalatha

Deesha

Shanavi

Nashira

Jabeen

Akheela

Ayeesha Riaz

Sanjee Vijay

Deepthi Divjay

Jabeen

Smitha

Paaka Shaale

Soujanya

Mughda

Khushi

R&R

Love to cook

Geetha Achal
Shailaja

Julie
Junia

Yummy Chunklet

Priya
Mary
Vijitha Shyam

Adios Amigas

Beets Dosai, Awards and Tag

I have blogged dosais with beets - when i actually used the beets to grind the batter for the Idlis - this time I did it differently - the color was a lot more intense and it tasted even better!! This is a spinoff dish from the beetroot cutlets that I blogged last - I saved the juice water from steaming the beets and added it to my dosai batter and the result are the pink deliciouses! This picture was for my black and white Wednesday trial attempts :) For regular dosa recipe, look here.

This was a trial run for the B&W wednesday event :)

This was the actual picture!

I also had some cutlets leftover from the previous day and decided to make this an all beet meal -trust me when I say it was gone in seconds!

I am honored to say that I have been awarded by by Kaveri of Palakkad Chamayal and Sumee of Sumee's Culinary Bites

And I accept these with the greatest honor and appreciation. Thanks ladies, you rock! 

I have also been tagged by Sobha Shyam of Good Food to answer 7 questions about my blog - I will post this as my next post since this requires some homework and I am a procrastinator when it comes to homework :P

Beets & Quinoa Flakes Cutlets

I was dreaming about the beautiful seaside café in the town I was born  - Pondicherry and the most exciting India Coffee House located right by the Gandhi Statue… a terrace where we sat inhaling the salty moisture of the Bay of Bengal while we waited with great anticipation for the cutlets… They were beets and potatoes served with raw onions on the side … We could not get enough of those! And this as usually rounded of with THE best cold coffee I have had! We came home completely sated. But no ICH here and I am my chotu or Lakshmi or who ever usually works in our homes in India L

A simple, healthy low caloric cutlet (burger) – Really?!! Yes that is what I am presenting you with two ingredients that have been touted as the best foods in their categories of seed/grain and vegetable- I am talking about Quinoa Flakes and Beets.

Here are facts about Beets
Here are some facts from Quinoa

The recipe is really cinchy!  It is wrought from a mom who wants to keep it really simple and yet have the WOW effect! Needless to say it was a hit! The quinoa flakes act as the binder much like bread crumbs do.

Ingredients
5 medium sized beets

1 ½ cups of Quinoa Flakes

1 cup of peas and carrots

1-2 green chilies

2 sage leaves

5 sprigs of Rosemary

1-inch stalk of thyme (about 10 tiny leaves)

Salt

1tsp curry powder

Preparation

Peel and cook beets in open stove in a pasta boiler or mw (do not pressure cook or they will get soggy)

Add the peas and carrots (I used frozen thawed)

Add salt

Add the quinoa flakes and mix in well

I tried making these in two methods

Method 1

A flat pan (like a dosa pan) I added 1tsp of oil and made little flattened balls and cooked them for about 5 minutes and flipped them over for another two minutes and then remove from heat

Method 2

I used my now ubiquitous  up-pum pan to make these. Perfect sized, half the oil  and wonderful soft, patties, crisp on the outside – voila!

Check out the pictures!

And I served them up with raw onions with cut up chilies and lemon juice squeezed on top.  Eat with me folks J

Potato-onion Roast With Garlic Rasam

For any south Indian, this is a menu that can be a default menu any day and it is a meal to come salivating back home to after even a week of travel to a country/ city where Indian food is hard to find! The “comfort” food in my home is rasam with spinach – but the potato-onion roast makes it a very festive meal J

My blogger pal, Priya of Bon Appetit had asked me to post pictures on FB, but I thought this is always a happy meal for all of us and decided to blog it

Here is the recipe

Boil, peel & dice potatoes (I always use the pink variety)

1 large pink onion chopped into thin slivers

Curry powder

Turmeric

Asafetida

Curry leaves

Oil

Salt

Cumin

Mustard seeds

Preparation

Use required amount of oil splutter cumin, mustard and asafetida.

Add the onions and roast for a bit

Add the boiled and diced potatoes

Add the curry powder (make as spicy or bland as you desire), salt and the turmeric powder and toss the potatoes around until all of them are coated evenly.

Add a little more oil and allow it to roast.

Add washed curry leaves and mix once more before removing from stove.

It should be golden brown

with yogurt rice and rasam on the side! bliss!!!

Rasam

1 can of diced tomatoes or 3 fresh tomatoes

3 cups of water

2 cloves of garlic finely minced

Turmeric

Cilantro

Rasam powder

Salt

Tadka with 1 tsp ghee – mustards, curry leaves, cumin and asafetida

Dal water – ½ cup

Preparation

Cook the tomatoes in some water. Cool and grind if desired

Add the rasam powder to the puree along with the dal water and allow it all to boil with some salt

In some ghee lightly brown the garlic 

Splutter the mustard seeds and cumin

Remove the boiled rasam from the stove and add the sauté

Add some freshly minced cilantro as garnish and serve hot with potato roast

A quickie meal, most satisfying, mes amies, as Poirot might say J