dinner soups : black carrot soup with walnuts and feta , making the most of the season

I absolutely believe in the theory of demand and supply. Although the market has now started manipulating the demand by creating a fake demand for marketing some cheap and faux foods, the faux foods are made desirable using the medium of advertising, sponsored research and peer reviewing.

In such a situation we as consumers have a bigger responsibility in ensuring the food and ingredients we get are real if not organically grown. We must start asking for foods and ingredients that we want and not fall for what is available, the market responds.

My experience is that when I started asking my neighborhood subziwalas to bring chane ka saag (chickpea shoots) they slowly started bringing and now I see many of them bring it more frequently. Likewise happened for many other greens, heirloom varieties of lime, cucumbers and many more native vegetables. Similar has happened to black carrots too and I am so glad to see them in abundance this year more than ever. That needs to be celebrated and I have been cooking with black carrots a lot this season.

And black carrots are cheaper than the last few years this time, almost half the price I must add. Good news.

And when I want to use a lot of one particular vegetable I normally soup it up. Imagine you consume about 300 gm black carrots in one meal. So much antioxidants and flavonoids in one meal and I do take care to supplement it with enough proteins and fats so the meal is balanced, nutrient absorption is taken care of.

ingredients 
(2 large, meal servings or 6 soup servings for a multi course meal)

500-600 gm black carrots cleaned and diced in irregular pieces
150 gm red shallots or baby onions quartered (use less or skip if you don't like their sweetness)
6-8 pods of garlic chopped roughly
few springs of marjoram or any herb you like (celery works or ad coriander greens)
2 tsp mustard or olive oil, I have been using more mustard oil lately
1 tbsp tahini or roasted sesame paste
2-3 tbsp thick cultured yogurt (whisked)
about 10 walnuts halves
some feta cheese, more the merrier
salt to taste
pepper to taste

procedure
 
Heat the oil in a pressure cooker pan or a deep pan and tip in the garlic, onion and diced black carrots. Add salt and pepper and toss and stir till it all looks glazed and slightly browned at the edges.

Add marjoram or whatever herbs you are using, toss a little and add about 100 ml water. Fix the lid and cook till the first whistle blows. Take off the heat and let the cooker cool. I normally do this in the morning when I cook my breakfast and lunch and leave the pressure cooker undisturbed till required for the dinner.

If coking in a stock pot you need a little more water, cook covered till softened.

Now blend the contents when the soup needs to be served. Transfer the contents of the cooker to a blender along with tahini, yogurt and a little water if required. Blend till smooth.

Transfer to the pot and simmer, adjust seasoning and serve topped with broken walnuts and chunks of feta cheese.

This has been a satisfying delicious soup this season. We normally didn't need any breads with it but you can serve some garlic bread with it and make the meal even more interesting.

We keep some broken walnuts and feta chunks on the side for this soup and keep adding as we go. It does add a lot of texture and flavor to this thick and creamy soup.

Do try soon and let me know if you like. The soup can be made with beet root too but I think the flavours may need some fine tuning as black carrots and beets have very different flavour profile. If you use half red carrots and half beets it might be a better idea.

I crave for my soup dinners when I am traveling trust me. Just back from a long trip to Hyderabad where I was attending the National Permaculture Convergence and even presented 2 sessions about 'health, nutrition and it's correlation with soil' and another on 'native and wild foods'. More on that later, enjoy black carrot soup with walnuts and feta till then.

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a warm salad with caramelised sweet potatoes and carrots | a stir fry salad with flavours of lime, ginger and chilly heat

It has been sometime when I had mentioned the 'Farm to Table' meal that we had at Aiyor Bai (close to Hyderabad) and how we dug out baby carrots and sweet potatoes to make a caramelised salad with them. Simple fresh produce was the inspiration for this salad that day and I am amazed at how many people have loved it already. While my friend Bhavana keeps hunting for sweet potatoes in Hyderabad markets, Madhu (the chief farmer at Aiyor Bai) experimented with it too. I myself made this caramelised sweet potato and carrots salad several times after that and took it to potluck lunches twice during the last month and everyone just loved it.

The recipe quickly stir fried at the farm was simpler as we did not have more ingredients but the freshness of the vegetables made up for it. Later when I made this salad at home I added a bit of ginger and crushed lime leaves for more aromatic flavours in the salad.

Since I don't have access to such fresh baby carrots here in Delhi, I used a mix of red winter carrots and the orange summer carrots (that are available sometimes in this season too) to bring out a complex sweetness and good colours as well and was not disappointed with the improved recipe.

The only precaution one needs to take while making this salad is to use thinner baby sweet potatoes as they slice well into bite size pieces and the cooking time is similar to the carrots. Although we are not cooking the sweet potatoes and carrots in this salad, the are just half cooked to retain the bite and allow caramelisation. 

I used a huge sweet potato once when I was making the same salad again to take to a family get together and was disappointed with the way the large (mature) sweet potato responded to caramelisation and had a very firm bite when done. Avoid too big and mature sweet potatoes for this salad.

ingredients
(for 2-3 servings)

2 small sweet potatoes (about 250 gm)
3-4 carrots, preferably baby carrots or mixed variety but use whatever available (about 250 gm)
brown sugar or grated jaggery or unrefined brown sugar 1 tbsp or a bit more
butter 1 tbsp
broken red chillies 2 or roasted chilly flakes 1 tsp or as per taste
salt 1/4 tsp
lime juice 2 tbsp
ginger juice 1 tbsp
lime leaves (or use lime zest) 5-6 broken and crushed
roasted sesame seeds 2 tbsp ( I used mixed seeds for the friends potluck and it was good too)


procedure

Scrub and rinse the sweet potatoes, do not peel them but remove any dark spots from the surface.

Scrub and rinse the carrots as well, I prefer peeling them if they have too many crevices on the surface. Sweet potatoes are smoother so no such concern with them.

Now take a thick base pan and melt the butter. Add the broken dry red chillies and brown sugar or jaggery and let it melt a little. No need to caramelise this sugar as the slow *caramelisation happens when the sweet potatoes and carrots are added. The brown sugar is added just to enrich the taste and to balance the lime and ginger juices and the chilly heat.

Now add the sweet potatoes and sliced carrots at once before the sugar starts bubbling. Toss with salt and stir fry for 2-3 minutes. It takes longer if you are cooking more bulk of this salad, I really have cooked huge amounts of this salad by now :-)

Add the ginger juice and lime juice, the torn lime leaves (or a pinch or two of lime zest if using, roasted red chilly flakes too if using)) and toss the salad a bit more. Cook for total 5-7 minutes for this amount if you have sliced the vegetables thin. The slices should be half done and all the juices that release after adding salt should dry up.

Empty into salad bowl, sprinkle toasted sesame seeds or mixed seeds and serve warm.

You can skip ginger juice if you wish but please do not replace any other ingredient in this salad. You might like to make it just with carrots or just with sweet potatoes too, that is great but the caramelisation, the lime sourness and chilly heat combine really well with the inherent sweetness of these vegetables enhanced by the use of brown sugar. Sesame seeds add texture and more nuttiness, look great too. Some praline could be a good replacement for this but the base flavours of this salad are not meant to be disturbed.

I actually went ahead and created a pancake with sweet potatoes having the same flavour mix. I would definitely share the pancake recipe here, enjoy this salad till then.

*And since a friend asked about what caramelisation means in this salad when I posted a picture of it on my fb page, I think explaining it here makes sense. In this salad or any other starchy vegetable or fruit (with natural sugar), slow cooking with a little cooking fat results in the caramelisation (browning) of naturally occurring sugars in the vegetable and leads to a sweeter richer tasting end product. 

While browning of meat involves a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars at high temperature (called Maillard reaction), browning and caramelisation of vegetables is just a case of Pyrolysis (breaking down of sugars at high temperature) resulting in a nuttier and sweeter taste.

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a nutrient packed salad with beets, carrots and pomegranate seeds and stories from Mysore

It has been quite long since I wrote here hence I am trying to compensate the lack of nourishment with a deep red antioxidant rich beets-carrots-pomegranate seeds salad that I craved for. I was away for 2 weeks, visiting Mysore during the famous festival of dassara that they celebrate at the palace of Wadiyar Kings. That is where I had tasted this beets and carrots salad and was pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of this pigment rich salad.

Arvind had some official work and I found an opportunity to work at the ISKON Mysore kitchen during this break. I had been asked to provide them some healthy recipes for prasadam (offering to the Lord Krishna) and was trying to work with them online for some time but I wanted to see the local produce and the local palate of the people better so I can accommodate those flavours in the recipes.. Arvind's official trip gave me an opportunity to visit and work with them hands on, it turned out to be a wonderful experience. I trained the Chefs and volunteers to bake a few whole grain breads, whole grain cookies and muffins as well as a few salads, curries, chaat style salads, snacks and a few desserts including this apple kalakand that was so popular last Diwali.

I visited vegetable markets with the ISKON volunteers first to see the local and seasonal produce they would use in the kitchen and was smitten by the simplicity of the markets and the feisty women selling almost everything on the roadsides and in the shops. I love talking to them, clicking pictures and exploring the way they cook and use the fresh produce.

But later I explored all the markets of Mysore although I could not buy much thanks to the restricted luggage allowance by the airlines. I wanted to buy at least half a dozen cast iron skillets from Devaraja market but bought only one, and carried it in my cabin luggage. The things I do to have my way. I had bought 2 cast iron skillets from Gangtok too and carried them the similarly by the way.

I shall be sharing more on what all we did in Mysore. Great food, many days of birding, roaming around the markets and clicking pictures endlessly was all I did during the 2 weeks. Training the ISKON volunteers was a blessing though I could not click any pictures of the kitchen as I was working with them hands on and the camera was forgotten conveniently. Although I clicked a few pictures from my phone and shared on instagram, follow me there (@sangeetaamkhanna) if you want to see.

This beets and carrot salad I tasted at the ISKON kitchen one day and loved it so much I wanted to make it as soon as I came back home. That one was simpler flavours with just salt and lime juice in it but I added a little zing with chaat masala and balsamic vinegar to add depth of flavours. Loved the result so much that I used all the beets in the fridge to make the salad 3 times over. I added finely chopped ginger once and red onions the other time but the combination of simply the beets, carrots and pomegranate seeds had made such a simple and honest salad that I came back to the original quickly.

ingredients

(2 large servings)
beetroot peeled, cleaned and chopped finely 3/4 cup
carrots peeled cleaned and chopped similarly 1 cup
pomegranate seeds 1/2 cup
chaat masala 1 tsp (optional)
black salt 1 tsp (or use table salt)
pepper powder 1/2 tsp
balsamic vinegar 1 tbsp (or use malt vinegar or sugarcane vinegar)
lime juice or orange juice 2-3 tbsp (I used orange juice as that was handy)
little sugar if required (I did not use, you would need if you use lime juice)
any salad dressing oil 2 tsp ( I did not use*)

procedure

Mix everything together and toss well. Let it rest for 10 minutes before serving. The salad stays well for about 4 hours at room temperature so I could pack this salad to Arvind's lunch box as well.

*I did not add any oil in the dressing as I had this salad with a meal that already had some ghee and oil. If the salad is consumed as a meal it needs oil in it to enable the vital vitamins to be absorbed.

I had this salad with the best comfort food to come back home to. Khichdi is that comfort food for me, I can have it every single day. We had great food in Mysore, explored many places in the city and loved the Mysore masala dosa, idli and the best coconut chutney, variety of palya and loads of Coorgi food as well. But home cooked food has it's own charm and one always wants to come home and have a warm meal in the comfort of home. We were back after 2 weeks and it felt like ages. Khichdi was the order of the day.

There is a reason khichdi is called super food. It is the most nutritionally balanced food if some vegetables are added to it, the turmeric and asafoetida used in khichdi make it anti-inflammatory and healing too. I made a quick baingan ka raita with it and had a lavish meal with fresh buttermilk to wash down all this.

Let me know if you would like to know the recipe of baingan ka raita. I love it for all the minerals it adds to the meal in the most yummy way. Loads of insoluble fiber to cleanse the gut as well. In fact this whole menu is healing and cleansing type so you can have it whenever you want to wash your sins in the best enjoyable ways. This is a mung, short grain rice and bottle gourd khichdi.

Beet-carrot-pomegranate salad made a new pairing with the khichdi that had loads of bottle gourd in it too. I include loads of vegetables in my meal everyday and was craving for these as it is not always possible to eat lot of vegetables when traveling. I had to compensate for all the lack of nourishment and cleanse my travel eating sins too.

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poriyal style warm salads : 2 healthy poriyal recipes for everyday meals

Poriyal is a stir fry of finely chopped vegetables tempered with curry leaves, some mustard, red chilly and lentils etc.. topped with a generous amount of freshly grated coconut. The vegetables used for poriyal may vary from cabbage to beans to beets, carrots, okra or even some squashes like Chayote squash or Zucchini. The vegetables are cooked lightly for poriyal, keeping the textures alive but he flavours from the tempering are rich and Earthy and that makes a poriyal the perfect warm salad for me.

Poriyal is a dry stir fry of Tamil origin but it is cooked in Karnataka as well, known as Palya in that part of the country. I used to know this stir fry as Foogath or Foogad as my mom had learnt it from one of her friends and this name had stuck with us. The name could be a matter of origin of the stir fry, may be with a few changes in the tempering or the final taste but the stir fry remained a favourite with me owing to it's simplicity and quick recipe. The vegetables need to be finely and uniformly chopped for poriyals but I love my knife and the chopping board and often chop my vegetables again even after my maid had kept them cleaned and chopped her way. Like I put my cleaver to good use and chopped the cabbage fine after my maid had kept it diced and ziplocked for the day.

I like the poriyals served as salads more than a side dish as a subzi. I often make poriyal into a fancy appetiser serving like these tart shells filled with a broccoli poriyal. Adding mung sprouts to my poriyal is another change that I love doing. Those who swear by authenticity may squirm at this, but I don't shy away from experimenting and trust my own taste buds rather than an authentic recipe.

Recipe of cabbage d mung sprouts poriyal...

ingredients
(serves 2)
finely chopped cabbage 1.5 cup
mung sprouts 1 cup
grated fresh coconut 1/4 cup (loosely packed)
lime juice 2 tsp
salt to taste
pepper powder to taste

tempering ingredients..

sesame oil (or any oil you wish) 2 tsp
hing (asafotida) 1 pinch
curry leaves 10 springs
mustard seeds 1 tsp
urad daal (split) 1 tsp
chopped chillies 1 tsp
minced ginger 2 tsp

procedure..

Heat oil and tip in hing and mustard seeds first and then the other ingredients together. Let them all sizzle for a few seconds and then add the chopped cabbage. Toss and stir fry for about 2 minutes, add salt and pepper. Mix well and add the coconut, sprouts and mix again to coat everything together.

Take off the stove, add lime juice and serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

Another most frequently made poriyal in my kitchen is this green beans and carrot poriyal with mung sprouts. I sometimes get lazy and use dehydrated coconut shreds rather than grating it fresh. The trick is to re hydrate the shredded coconut in hot water before using and add it a minute before you take the poriyal off the stove. Making poriyal with more than one vegetable can be a bit tricky if both vegetables have different cooking time. I microwave the beans for a couple of minutes before adding it to the tempering. That saves time and keeps the texture and colour of the beans nice and fresh.

Note that tempering for the different poriyal variations will be the same. Just the way the vegetables are cooked, the way they are added one after the other would change.

Recipe of beans-carrot-mung sprouts poriyal..

ingredients
(2 servings)

finely chopped beans 1 cup
finely chopped carrots 1/2 cup
mung sprouts 3/4 cup
shredded fresh coconut 1/4 cup
salt and pepper to taste
lime juice to taste

Tempering ingredients will be similar to cabbage poriyal.

procedure...

Steam the green beans till half done. I prefer microwaving it in a covered bowl for 2 minutes.

Prepare the tempering while the beans are steaming. Add the carrots as soon as the tempering sizzles and stir fry for a minute. Add the hot steamed beans and cook for another minute of two, tossing it all the while.

Add the coconut and sprouts, mix well and take off the heat. Mix lime juice and serve as desired.

How do you like these poriyal salads? Try making them with gourds and you would see how tasty the gourds become. Okra tastes great with such a tempering but needs a bit more cooking time. I sometimes add a bit of rasam powder to my poriyal salads to make them more zingy.

Make changes as per your taste but use fresh seasonal vegetables for poriyal salads. These will be full meals when you want a light yet satisfying meal for yourself. Ar just add a couple of table spoons of cooked plain rice or couscous to poriyal salads and see how it turns into an absolutely hearty meal.

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probiotic foods: pickled salad with tart apples, summer carrots and red cabbage

Pickled salads are nothing but salads marinated with some spiced vinegar for a while. Any crisp fruits and vegetables can be pickled with a spiced vinegar and stored for a couple of days till the salad remains crisp or can be kept longer if the salad is intended to get softer. Cucumber or cabbage pickled salad would taste great even if the vegetables become softer after a prolonged pickling.

In this pickled salad I used small apples from the hills that were slightly tart. Small pears and hard sweet and tart peaches also taste great in this salad so please go ahead and pickle some salad and see if you like it. Always use naturally fermented vinegar for the probiotic benefit. I will keep updating this post with more pictures as I have already made a few versions of it, more pictures are there in my home computer and I am writing this post from Te Aroha where this salad has been included in the menu too, using tart apples from their own orchard.

ingredients

apples 1 kg (sliced or chopped into batons)
purple cabbage chopped in small shreds 200 gm
carrots chopped in batons or slices 200 gm
star anise 6
cloves 10
dry red chillies 3-4
black pepper corns 20
salt 2 tbsp
sugar 1 tbsp
water 1 L
natural vinegar, apple cider or sugarcane vinegar (I used coconut vinegar) 1 cup

preparation

Boil the water with the spices, sugar and salt for 5 minutes. Cool and add vinegar to it.

Sterilise a few jars and fill the copped apples, carrots and shredded red cabbage in them.

Pour the spiced vinegar in the jars and let the salad rest for at least 2 ours before serving.

The leftover liquid from the salad can be used to pickle baby onions once or can be had in shot glasses as a probiotic supplement.

You can cook the spices in just 100 ml of water and reduce the water further before cooling it down and adding vinegar to it. This will make just enough 'dressing' for the salad to soak in well and there wont be much leftover liquid once the pickled salad is consumed. This method works well if you want this salad made regularly at home.

Use this fermented/pickled salad along with chicken or boiled eggs or sausages or cheese etc to make salads or just serve this tart pickled salad on the side with burgers, sandwiches etc. A tbsp of this pickled apple and red cabbage will be really good in your daily smoothie as well.

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pan grilled chicken with mushroom brown sauce | recipe of mushroom based brown sauce

Grilled chicken meals are one of the easiest to rustle up and wholesome tasty as well. Although I always end up saying chicken is like potatoes and I can't eat chicken everyday just like potatoes, but if chicken is cooked differently everyday I might just give in to such easy meals. The most easy option would still be eggs for me :-)

The whole dinner platter in this case is more convenient because I had some boiled potatoes in the fridge. You see I wont complaint about these potatoes as I lugged them back from Dhanachuli. I am working at Te Aroha to pep up their entire menu and love those potatoes growing in the step fields around the property. This time I just bought a large bagful and lugged back home. Now I can have potatoes everyday. At least a couple of wedges do slip in here and there and I am loving it.

Pan grilling feels convenient sometimes when smaller amount of food is to be cooked and I can slide in the vegetables in the free space while the chicken or fish is grilling in the cast iron pan or skillet. In summertime it also heats up the kitchen lesser than the oven.

To grill the whole chicken legs I slash the flesh and rub salt and pepper into the pieces. Sometimes I add lime juice to this rub but this time I did not do it as there would be some tartness into the mushroom sauce as well. The chicken legs are rested for about an hour and then placed into a hot griddle along with 1 tbsp butter. The chicken cooks on low flame, the griddle covered so the juices of the chicken help cook the flesh. Chicken is grilled both sides till golden brown and crisp.

I slide in the potato wedges and julienne vegetables in the same pan during the last 10 minutes of cooking. The star of this recipe is mushroom sauce that peps up the meal by a few notches.

To make the mushroom brown sauce I have replaced white flour with powdered oatmeal. Taste wise I feel it made very little difference.

Recipe of the mushroom brown sauce
(makes enough sauce for 5-6 servings and more)

ingredients
chopped shallots or red onions 1 cup
chopped carrots (English carrots) 1/2 cup
chopped button mushrooms 3/4 cup
Olive oil 1/4 cup
salt 1 tsp or a little more
black pepper powder 1.5 tsp
dried thyme 1 tsp
oatmeal powder 1 tbsp
Worcestershire sauce 1 tbsp

procedure

Heat the oil and tip in the chopped onions and fry till they turn pink.
Add the chopped carrots and salt and fry the vegetables till both turn brownish.
Now add the chopped mushrooms and stir fry till the mushrooms wilt and the whole vegetable mix reduces in volume, becoming brown and caramelized.
Take off the stove and add the thyme and black pepper while the mixture is still hot.
Transfer the cooked vegetables to a blender jar, decanting some of the cooking oil into the pan. Add Worcestershire sauce to the blender too.
Let the mixture cool down while you tip in the oatmeal into the remaining oil and cook while stirring it. Add half a cup of chicken stock and cook the roasted oatmeal for 2 minutes. Transfer the cooked oatmeal sauce to the blender and let the contents cool down before blending it all into a smooth sauce.
Reheat, dilute with more stock if required and serve as desired.

Poured over plain grilled chicken or chicken steak this brown sauce tastes really good. Sometimes I add bits of bacon while frying the onion to add more depth into the brown sauce.

This kind of a meal is a satisfying nourishing tasty way to health. I used broccoli or cauliflowers too many a times in this mix of vegetables but whatever is in the fridge works well most of the times. Wilted spinach in winters is my fave accompaniment to such a meal.

To make this mushroom brown sauce vegetarian, do not add any bacon or chicken stock. Use plain water or milk to dilute the sauce. The vegetarian mushroom based brown sauce can be used over paneer steaks and tofu steaks and tastes great.

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picture recipe | raw mango and carrot coleslaw

Here is a short recipe of raw mango and carrot coleslaw. Salads in summers is the only food that can be consumed in abundance and we thrive on them. For this raw mango and carrots coleslaw I use the half ripe but firm mangoes or any raw mangoes that are not too tart.

This salad makes use of orange carrots in season, the red onions so good for preventing heat stroke and raw mangoes that are considered great for preventing health strokes too. Chopped green chillies and mint also help the purpose of this salad to provide a cooling accompaniment to meals.

Yes the picture recipes are back again. This picture was shot last year but I have been making this salad at least once a week. Hope you all like it too.

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