Recipe no 5: .sense- pride

 Ever felt that sometimes being a vegetarian leaves you with very few choices in food.

Not that its true but sometimes I feel like that. 

To be honest an average restaurant offers only paneer option in veg tandoori item and max it would extent to aloo... even in the kebab options there isn't a lot.

I would find it so frustrating  when my friends would eat non vegetarian food that smells so good that my mouth would salivate.

The awesome smoked smell ... even without tasting I could taste the food just by look and smell...it was just so damn good.

One incident really forced me to think about it and that changed everything.

Some of my friends and me were at the mall...doing nothing just hanging around, shopping and playing some video games.

This was than a new mall and I had not been to their food court. 

When i went up there one food stall fascinated me and that was the Kakori house. The smell of food coming from the stall was very enticing. 

They were serving Lucknowi delicacy 

My friends went crazy..they ordered all kind of kebabs galauti chicken and what not.

What caught my eye was the Galauti kebab...Its kebab made of mutton and really soft.

Its so soft that it literally melts in your mouth.

I asked the guy serving there if they had the same in veg. He laughed and said "veg mein banta nahi hai."

I was really disappointed and didn't really want to eat anything post that.

I wanted to eat but only that.

I am a bit finicky about food that way...if I set my mind to something I will only want that.

Not that it was possible since I didn't eat mutton.

So I kept wondering if ever there could be vegetarian equivalent for meat.. 

I searched the internet and found that there too the kebab options were more non veg than veg.

Until I came across one site where it was mentioned how to make veg galauti kebab.

I was so happy that finally something .....some break

But when I read the recipe it has the soya option and I hate soya anything.

What to do now?

So what I did was I followed the recipe but replaced soya with aloo and paneer.
And voila... I had the most awesome Veg Galauti kebab

The pride I felt that day was almost like when a nawab would win a battle :-)

So here goes the recipe:

Ingredients:

Potato- 7 to 9

Paneer(cottage cheese)- half a kg

Corn- 400 gms

Corn flour- 100 gms

Cashew- 100 gms

Kitchen King masala- 3 table spoon

Garam Masala- 2 table spoon

Coriander- finely chopped

Green Chili - 3 to 4

Ginger- small piece

Red Chili powder

Turmeric powder

Dhaniya powder

Salt to taste

Oil - to shallow fry

Method

Boil and mash the potato in a fine paste

Boil and mash the corn

grate the paneer

Mix all the 3 .

Grind the green chili and ginger together in a mixture

add it to your mash

add the coriander

add the masalas ( all of them)

Grind the cashew in a fine powder form add it to the mash

Add salt to taste.

after adding everything add about 2 spoons of corn flour in the mash.

Mix the mash well.

Make small ball out and than gently press them a bit flat.

Roll the kebabs in the corns flour coating it completely and than put them on the pan to shallow fry. Turn the kebabs on the other side to cook.

Once make garnish it with some coriander, chat masala and lime.

Hope you enjoy eating this as it took a lot of hard work to figure it out.

Happy reading- Happy cooking - Happy eating

Recipe no 4: sense-hallelujah..... This one all moms will relate and probably some dads.

For this story the one word that comes to mind is "KACHUMBER".

In Gujarati language a salad or rather one kind of salad is called Kachumber. It consist of finely chopped onions, tomato, cucumber, and beet seasoned with salt and lime.

So this story started when my daughters Natasha and Khushi were 8 and 3 respectively. 

I had just shifted to stay with my mom and also just started full time work.

This made me stay out of home a lot and my mother in charge of my kids.

My mom loved them and would feed them only healthy meals of course as she was very very particular.

Which meant that salad had to been eaten.

Now that wasn't all there should be a curd element too in the meal.

She was of course right and poor woman tried her best to make her grandchildren eat these 2 things but would they? of course not. for some reason they just wouldn't eat these things.

They would make her run around the house (poor woman) and still if she succeeded in making them put it in their mouth...they would spit it all out.. (uff)

One day my mother sat me down and told me the problem... 

Hyper that I am... I started to panic thinking 
"oh my god!!! now what will happen ? my kids will not get proper nourishment if they don't eat salad and curd... oh my god!!" 

I was a mess for the day. 

My poor mother cursed the time she told me cause now besides the 2 kids food issue she had to deal with my hysteria.

Anyways a few days went by and I was invited to a friends place for a house party and the food was amazing ,

What was unique about one dish in particular was that it was a curd dish which they were calling a dip and people were dipping raw carrots, cucumber in it and eating. 

I had to taste it. It tasted amazing ..the curd had the funky taste which stayed with me.
I thought to myself what an amazing way to combine the two.

My mind drifted to my kids again but than I realized that there was no way that they would pick up a raw carrot stick and dip it into curd and have it.

But the concept stayed with me.

I went home mulled over it...what if I were to mix the 2 but that it would look like a ratia, which I am sure that they wouldn't touch.

As I was mulling I heard my mom in the kitchen....I went there and saw her making preparation for making srikhand in the morning.

She had taken the curd out of the vessel, put in in a cotton muslin cloth hung it over the kitchen sink for the water to drain out so that the curd would be firm and the srikhand would be creamy instead of watery. 

As I saw this an idea struck my head... what if I could combine this hung curd with the salad, dress it up with a few thing and make a dip?

I was excited and next day morning I did just that.

I took the hung curd mixed it with the salad gave it a few magical touches served it with potato wafers during snack time and voila .....everything was eaten.

And I felt that sense of HALLELUJAH- I made it happen....Yipee

That's how my first ever dip came into being.

After that day my kids never ran away from eating salad or curd for that matter

So now the recipe for all the mothers who suffer the same anxiety as me.

Ingredients:

Dahi- about 1 kg

Onions- 3 finely chopped

Tomato- 2 finely chopped

Cucumber- 2 finely chopped

Beet- 2 ( if you want to add) finely chopped

Peanuts - handful

Oregano

Grated cheese

Salt & pepper to taste

One can also add green chilies if this is being made for adults and you wanted some spicy.
Method

Hang the curd over night to drain the water out.

Next morning remove the curd from the cloth put it in bowl

Add onion cucumber tomato bee and peanuts. Mix well

Add cheese mix well

Season it with the herb, add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with wafers or crackers

That should do the trick with your kids and trust me you will never have force them to eat salad again.

That's all for today

Happy reading- Happy cooking- Happy eating.

Recipe no 3: sense- depression.... times when you are low and can't seem to get yourself to perk up? I have just the thing for you ...this will turn your depression into sheer joy

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Depression...such a strong and overwhelming feeling it actually pulls you down to the darkest place. 

No I am not trying to make you depressed by talking about depression but I am trying to try and find a way out of it .

My daughter asked me yesterday out of the blue..."mom did you suffer from post natal depression?" I lied to her and told her no. Not because I didn't want to tell her but because I didn't want her to think that I wasn't happy having her.

Of course I was depressed, I was overwhelmed, I was lost and I thought of myself as a horrible human being for feeling all of that just when I had given birth to the most precious thing. 

Nothing was good, everything had a dull feel to it.. food had no taste , I was craving to eat something that I could taste , that would excite my palate.

I was wanting something to happen that was out of the ordinary than my routine with my baby. 

My poor husband- Vipul tried his best to entertain me , get me out of the mood but to be honest it wasn't helping.

I needed to feel like I had something to do more than just  to care for my baby, it was irrational but one can't really rationalize with feelings.

I guess I needed a diversion.So I went out shopping but just came back with a cook book.

In that there was some mention of a dish -baked potato...I found that extremely boring...But the strange thing was that I kept staring at the photograph of that dish, there was something about it .

It looked so yummy. 

After long an idea excited me.. I got up and cooked myself "Baked Potato"- my style.

Everyone loved it and for a change I was talking about something other than baby talk with all.

This changed my entire mood... I enjoyed eating it. I could taste every bit of the bite. Felt the cheese melt in my mouth...

That's when I realized that how we feel is completely in our hands.

We could just sit around mopping and feeling sorry for ourselves or we could channelize those feeling and actually derive something out of them.

We chose what we want and who we want to be....

For me food was the calling...

I am not saying that food is the cure for depression..no not at all

All I am saying that we need to understand what will make us happy.

So here is the recipe of something that pulled me out of the sadness...

"Baked Potatoes"

Ingredients:

Potato- 6 to 7 ( finely sliced)

Fresh cream

Cheese ( grated) 

black pepper

Salt to taste

Method:

Per heat the oven at 120

Peel and slice the potatoes into fine thin slices (oval shape)

Take a baking vessel ( round or square) coat it will some butter

Put the slices of potato as base

Add cream to it

Then add cheese on top of it 

Add salt and pepper as per taste

Keep repeating the process till you have like 5 to 6 layers of  the potatoes.

Finally cover the top layer with cheese and put it to bake at 180 for 20 mins

Remove it after 20 mins and serve hot

Happy Reading Happy cooking happy eating

Recipe no 2- sense- anger...strange as it may sound but its an interesting story.

The story goes like this ...on a normal day like any other family.... my cook had made a typical Gujarati lunch which consisted of toor dal and bhindi saabzi... 

Now as usual my kids Natasha and Khushi with my husband Vipul made a huge hue and cry as all of them hate bhindi. 

There was a lot of anger there for not being able to eat properly and than began the fight where I had to convince or rather force them to eat. This was healthy food. Green was good for them I said. But none of that made any sense to them as all they could see on the plate was limp bhindi, Honestly it didn't look appetizing to me as well. 

But being the mother I had to force them to eat.

As you all can guess how that ended. 
They all sulked and ate but that day I realized that I had to make the green vegetables fun and tasty to eat. I knew that I had to make eating the normal food for them fun and not something that they would hate.

Anger while eating will only lead to a stomach ache or acidity. I didn't want my family to feel like that towards any food.

So I decided to change this hate into love.

To do this I racked my brains for the right taste and recipe.

I took bhindi for this challenge and decided that I will change the perception for this vegetable.

I tried a lot of permutation and combinations using my family as the lab rats for tasting. 

Finally I did come up with a killer one.

My family loved it and than I decided that I will test this recipe on a more social platform.

It was ganapati festival and I had a lot of guests come over for ganapati Darshan at home.

There was dinner as prasad and guess what I had cooked?!!!!!

Absolutely right ....one of the vegetable dish was bhindi.

I could see a lot of people not willing to try it, but I forced them and the results were amazing..

They kept going back for a 2nd and 3rd helping.

The response I got was as follows:

"My husband would refuse to eat bhindi... you changed that today"

" I love it... this is amazing"

" I would have never thought that bhindi could taste so good"

There were so many positive feedback .

So what did I do that was so different or revolutionary that people who hated bhindi started to love it... nothing really just gave it a little make over from normal ghar ka cooked (limp) bhindi.. to a restaurant quality " Bhindi Fry Masala"

So her goes the recipe:

Ingredients:

Bhindi- 1/2 kg ( this will feed about 4 to 5 people)

Onions- 3 (finely chopped)

Garlic and adarak paste - 1 table spoon

Mustard seeds- 1 table spoon

Green chili- 3 to 4

Coriander leaves-finely chopped

Oil to fry

Ghee- 2 table spoon

Red chili powder- 1 table spoon

Haldi - a pinch

Dhaniya powder - ! table spoon

Kitchen king masala- 2 table spoon

Hing- a pinch

Salt to taste

Method:

1. chop the bhindi into small pieces.

2. heat the oil

3. fry the bhindi crispy 

4. put the casserole on heat

5. add ghee and mustard seeds in.

6. once the mustard seeds pop add the hing, Green chili and the garlic adarak paste.

7. cook for about 15 secs and than add the onions. Cook the onions till they are pink.

8. Add all your masalas ( red chili powder, haldi, dhaniya powder & kitchen king). Cook the 
masala till the ghee separate ( do this on low flame so that it doesn't burn)

9. Add the fried bhindi and stir

10. Add salt to taste

11. Garnish it with coriander leaves.

Hope you enjoyed this as much as I have.

Please do subscribe, like, follow and give me your comments.

Goodbye- happy reading- happy cooking- happy eating.

Recipe No 1- Sense -comfort...This is a tribute to the 2 most important women in my life my mother Bina Gandhi and my mother in law Kanak Kothari

So today its going to be about comfort food and the memory attached with it.

For all of you it could be anything... for some probably wafers, for some it would be a sandwich or even popcorn for that matter..For me it was and will always be my mom's cooking and particularly her Dal..

I am a Gujarati and for us food is the most important thing...be it any situation, any occasion or anytime. All we can talk about is food and from where and when our next meal is coming.

We will finish a meal and the moment we get up from the table our next topic of discussion would be what to have for our next meal. What can I say... We love food and it brings us a lot of joy. 

We are the most comfortable eating Gujarati food and at least one meal has to be Toor dal & rice with chaas (buttermilk)

For me comfort food and its feeling would come when I used to eat my mother's toor dal. 

My mother Bina Gandhi used to be a brilliant cook and I really miss her food. ( she passed away 2 years back)

I still remember walking into the kitchen and smelling the aroma to the dal cooking. It used to do wonders to my appetite. My mother used to cook food with a lot of love and the food would reflect her mood.

She used to tell me that the way to everyone's heart is through food and that food is instrumental is starting conversations that lead to friendship and finally built a relationship that last for a life time. 

One wonders how food could do so much ? Built a relationship...? Really!!!

But on reflection its true we all make the most important decisions of our lives over coffee, tea, lunch, brunch or dinner and our food decides the outcome.

I never got a chance to learn making the dal from her cause she just made us eat with love and used to say that "once you go to your sasural ( inlaws house) you will have to do all this anyways so right now just enjoy." 

But another person that was instrumental in making me learn to make that perfect Toor dal was... My mother-in-law.- Kanak Kothari

Now she used to say "Pinky( that's my pet name ) if your flavors are as loud as your voice than your cooking will be wonderful"

She taught me the hard way ...basically just threw me under the bus and said now show me what you've got. It worked I made sure that I made the best dal possible.

My mother and her are the reason for me to be this passionate about cooking.

Our toordal is sweet like us :-) and when eaten with rice, ghee, papad, pickle and chaas it is pure heaven.

I am sure that most of you reading this already know how to make this dal but still...

Lets try and recreate that magic today by cooking that very dal

Ingredients :

Toor dal - about one bowl (this comes in 2 variety one that it oily and the other that's dry I recommend the oily one if not than the other will do)

ghee- 2 table spoon

jaggery (gaud)- one big piece (here if you don't have jaggery than we can use sugar)

red chilli powder- 1 tea spoon ( one can use a bit more depending on how spicy you want it)

dhaniya powder- 1 table spoon

Haldi- a pinch

Mustard seeds (ria)- 1 table spoon

meethi seeds- 1 tea spoon

peanuts- about 20 gms

Coriander Leaves 

green chillis - 3 

few curry leaves

tomato - one finely chopped

Kokum - 3 pieces

Hing- a pinch

Salt to taste

Method:

Boil the dal in the pressure cooker for about 20 mins ( 3 whistle). Take a 20 cm casserole add some water to eat put it to boil. Add the dal once its cooked in the pressure cooker. Use the hand mixer to mix the water and dal well till its thick and the balance of the water and dal is right. ( make sure not to add too much water).

Add 1 table spoon of ghee into the dal.

Add all your masala ( chilli powder, haldi and dhaniya powder)

Add the jaggery ( this has to melt completely in the dal so keep stirring the dal)

Add the kokum and tomato

Add the peanut ( the peanut needs to get cooked while the dal is getting made)

Add salt as per taste

Now the tadka

take the vessel that we use for the tadka. 

Add 1 table spoon of ghee and put it on the gas on low flame ( really low flame). 

add mustard seeds. Wait for the seeds to start making the popping sound. 

Add hing .

Add the meethi seeds 

add the curry leaves 

Add the green chilies ( sliced long)

Now pour the tadka into the boiling dal.

Make sure that you boil the dal on slow flame for the next 15 mins. The more you boil this dal the more flavor it will have.

Garnish it with coriander leaves.. 

That's all for today I hope you enjoy your dal.

Goodnight -Happy reading -Happy cooking & happy eating.

Eat love & Pray

Hi I am Nannditaa V Kothari and I am the brains or rather hands behind My Kitchen Your Place.

I have realized one thing in life is that we are all emotional eaters. We eat as per our mood at that moment. Now you will probably refute this idea but I can prove it... 
Its very simple actually.... 

For example when you are feeling really upset with say your boyfriend or girlfriend or you have just broken up..whats the 1st thing that you are going to turn to at a time like this? 

ICE CREAM....From sore throat to a broken heart, this frozen confection has become the unofficial "fixer" of what hurts. 

Reason for this  well.....They increase endorphin in the brain, which in turn makes you feel happy.

You remember when our mother used to make you your favorite dinner ...its wasn't restaurant quality nor was it the best in the world but it made you feel warm...satisfied and most importantly at home...this is called comfort food.. and the feeling that it brings about is comfort.

Like wise when you are in a romantic mood you tend to bend towards chocolate..Its because of its sinful dark looks and its erotic feel in our mouth. Its this very reason that chocolate changes the game and is the most sort after food.

You see food is not just taste ..its also about the feel look and finally the taste.

We eat with our eyes 1st, than with our senses and finally with our mouth.

Through this blog I will try to give you a recipe that will play with each of your senses and I will try to make a play at those feelings through food.

I hope that I can make this journey interesting to all of you out there like it has been for me...

Till recipe no 1...

Goodbye and happy reading happy eating

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