Sweet Cardamom Rice

Whenever we cook rice, we tend to cook it more than required and then worry what to do with the leftover rice. Well, here is something sweet we all have heard about, sweet rice, but cooked with some more ingredients.


It takes care of the leftover rice and also serves as a quick dessert.


Pre-Preparation
Plain Boiled White Rice, crush the rice with hand to avoid lumps.


Ingredients
Plain Boiled White Rice - 1 Bowl
Cardamom Powder (Elaichi) - Crushed cardamom is also OK to have - 1/2 TSP
Raisins - (Kishmish / Saungi) - 15-20
Sugar - 3 TSP
Fennel Powder (Saunf) - 1/4 TSP
Pure Ghee - 2 TSP


Procedure
Heat the Ghee in a non stick frying pan for half a min. Add raisins, little cardamom powder and little fennel powder with it (Save some fennel and cardamom powder for the end). Let it crackle for 20-30 secs and add rice to it. Make sure you crush the rice with hand to avoid lumps. Keep stirring the mixture constantly. We do it so that ghee gets nicely spread over the rice. You would feel the aroma of Desi Ghee around you. While stirring, add sugar and stir the mixture on medium flame for 1-2 minutes.


Serving
Transfer the mixture in a plate / bowl and sprinkle fennel powder and then cardamom powder over it. Serve hot and have it hot.

Baingan Pathankoti

Brinjal or Eggplant (Baingan) comes in various shapes and sizes. Its most popular dishes are Baingan Bharta and Baghare Baingan (the stuffed preparation). We recenly tried out a new preparation of the Eggplant. It's quite simple and quick to cook and tastes yummy! We call it 'Baingan Pathankoti'. ;-) Pathankot is our home town!


Here's the recipe:


Ingredients:


* Eggplant (Baingan) - 1 big
* Red Onions - 2 medium
* Tomatoes - 3-4 medium
* Finely Chopped Green Chillies - 2-3
* Finely Chopped Garlic - 1 TSP
* Finely Chopped Ginger - 1/2 TSP
* Cumin seeds (Jeera) - 1/2 TSP
* Coriander (Dhaniya) powder - 1/2 TSP
* Turmeric (Haldi) - 1/2 TSP
* Mango powder (Amchoor) - 1/2 TSP
* Red Chilly powder - a pinch
* Asafoetida (Heeng) - for flavor
* Salt - to taste
* Chopped Coriander Leaves
* Vegetable oil - enough for deep-frying


Preparation:
Chop the eggplant into 1-inch pieces and put them in water until we do the other preparations. The reason to keep them in water is to avoid the eggplant pieces turning black.


Heat oil in a pan and deep fry the 1" sized eggplant pieces.
Make sure that the oil is not very hot and take the eggplant pieces out after frying them for half a min. The whole idea of deep-frying the eggplant is to make it soft before the final preparation.

Blend onion and tomatoes to make a thick mixture. Should use a blender.

Heat 1-2 TSP oil in a pan, put cumin seeds, and wait till they start crackling. Add chopped ginger, garlic, and green chilies, and sauté them for half a min. Add the onion-tomato paste and let it cook on a low flame for a min. Add coriander powder, turmeric powder, red chilly powder, and asafoetida. Mix well. You can smell the air filled with the fragrance of North Indian spices. While you enjoy the aroma, the mixture would need a minute to be ready.

Add the deep-fried eggplant pieces and mix them well with the paste. Now we had already fried the eggplant pieces, so the pieces will be very soft and mix very nicely with the spices mixture. Make sure that the gravy is neither very thick nor very watery.
Add salt and cover the mixture and let it cook for about 5 mins. Do not forget to stir the mixture after every minute to prevent the mixture from sticking to the base of the pan. 

Check the eggplant pieces, if they need some more time, it is ok to give it another minute to cook.

Add mango powder in the end and mix well. And finally Garnish the eggplants with chopped coriander leaves and serve hot with Plain Paranthas.

Stuffed Bitter Gourd - Karela

There was a time Divu used to hate Karela (Bitter Gourd). After tasting Mom's Stuffed Karela, she started loving them. ;-) And when she decided to prepare it herself, she came up with a combination of Mom's and her Grandmom's recipe. Here's how we made Stuffed Karela:
Ingredients:
• Fresh Bitter Gourds (Karela) - 4 to 5
• Finely chopped Red Onion - 1 medium
• Finely Chopped Garlic - 1 TSP
• Finely Chopped Ginger - 1/2 TSP
• Cumin seeds (Jeera) - 1/2 TSP
• Cumiin Seeds Powder - 1 TSP
• Aniseed/ Fennel seed (Saunf) - 1/2 TSP
• Mango powder (Amchoor) - 1/2 TSP
• Turmeric Powder (Haldi) - 1/2 TSP
• Red Chilly powder - 1/2 TSP
• Coriander powder (Dhaniya) - 1/2 TSP
• Salt - to taste
• Asafoetida (Heeng) - for flavor
• Mustard oil - 3-4 TSP

Pre-preparation
Scrape the skin off the Karelas with a knife and keep it aside (make sure you do not peel off the skin). We are going to use the scrapped skin for stuffing, so be careful here.

Mix the scraped skin with salt and keep it for an hour. Rub some salt on the Karelas too and leave it for an hour. The purpose of salt is to reduce the bitterness of the Karela. Skip this step if you like your Karelas to taste bitter.

Preparing the stuffing
Heat 1 TBSP of oil in a pan and saute the chopped onion, garlic, and ginger. Wash the skin of Karelas that we mixed with salt earlier, preferable use a sieve for washing. Rinse the excess water and mix it with the rest of the mixture. Add cumin seeds powder, mango powder, red chilly powder, coriander powder and salt in the mixture. Mix it well on low flame. Keep this mixture aside and let it cool for sometime. We will use it for stuffing.

Preparing Karelas
Wash the Karelas to and on each piece make one longitudinal slit. It will open up the karela from inside, now carefully remove the seeds from it. Stuff the mixture inside the Karelas and make sure that it doesn't come out. You can use a regular sewing thread around the pieces incase karela does not hold the mixture.

Cooking
Heat 2-3 TSP of oil in a non-stick pan. Put some cumin seeds and let them crackle. Put a pinch of Asafoetida and one by one, carefully place Karelas in the pan. Cover the pan and Cook the Karelas on low flame for at least 25-20 mins. In between, keep turning the Karelas to ensure that they get cooked from all sides. The Karelas need to be cooked enough to make their skin soft.

Precautions
Don't overcook Karelas. It will harden and blacken the skin.
Careful with the slit, don’t cut the karela into 2 pieces.
Don’t forget to take off the thread before eating the Karelas.