Baingan Bharta- Eggplant roast with vegetables

Serves four. Preparation time: 1 hour

Ingredients:
1 tbsp oil
2 medium sized round Eggplants (also called Aubergine, Brinjal)
3 green chillies
1/2 tsp Mustard seeds (Rai, Aavalu)
1/2 tsp Cumin seeds (Jheera, Jilakara)
1/2 tsp Turmeric powder
Salt to taste
Red chilli powder to taste
1 big onion chopped fine
2 big tomatoes chopped fine
Handful of chopped cilantro
(Optional)
5 mint leaves
1/2 cup green peas

Method:
Roast the whole eggplants until they are done. They are best roasted on coals in a kumpati (traditional portable stove that uses coal), but you can roast over the gas stove too. Keep turning them every few minutes for even roasting, until the outer skin burns black. Some cooks brush oil over the eggplant, but mine got roasted well without oil too. Set aside to cool and remove the skin.

In a pan, heat the oil. Add mustard seeds, let them splutter and add Jheera seeds. Add the onions, green chillies, mint leaves, green peas, turmeric powder, salt and let it cook until the onion browns. Salt draws moisture out of the onions & the green peas get cooked in that moisture. Add the red chilli powder & tomatoes, let it cook until the tomatoes soften into a sauce.

Add the roasted eggplants & mix well, the eggplants get mashed easily into the onoin-tomato-green peas. Switch off the heat. Garnish with cilantro.

This goes well with rice or chapati.

Another easy & healthy way to consume roasted eggplants: Blend some green chillies, salt and a bunch of cilantro, mix in the roasted eggplants & add some tamarind paste. This is the Telugu way of consuming roasted eggplant as a 'banda pacchadi' (literally, a chutney made with stones, meaning that all raw ingredients are crushed using a mortal-pestle without any cooking involved).
Old habits die hard, my mom always prefers her banda pacchadi over this Baingan bharta, but I think both of them taste yummy in their own ways!

Trivia:
I am currently going through a pudina love phase, so experimenting a lot with pudina. This dish tasted lovely with some mint leaves added in, but they are not usually added. Omit them if it doesn't appeal to you. Also, fresh green peas are my eternal favourite so I am always sneaking some into everything, these too can be omitted.
My mother says these roasted eggplants are looking like chicken thanks to the magnified shots, so although she admired the pics, she wasn't very pleased with the meaty look LOL.

Udikina Panasa ginjalu- Boiled Jackfruit seeds

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
1 cup Jackfruit Seeds
15 cups water

Method:
Place the jackfruit seeds and water on medium-high heat and let it reach a rapid boil. Slowly, the water reduces & turns dark brown from taking the colour from the skin of the jackfruit seeds. Also, one can smell a distinct smell, let me call it the  'boiling jackfruit seed' smell. To be honest, it smells kind of yucky if you are not used to it.  

It takes around 30 minutes for the seeds to soften. Prick with a fork to test, if the fork goes through, they are done. Drain the little water that remains. Remove the outer tough waxy peel from the seeds and consume the seed within.

Jackfruit seeds can be found in the unripe green jackfruit and also in the sweet ripe yellow jackfruit. They are a rich source of protein, starch, B vitamins and are also consumed along with the green jackfruit in a soupy curry/koora. Their texture is similar to chestnuts. 

Trivia: 
Each jackfruit aril has a single seed inside, ripe arils are very sweet and consumed as fruit. The seeds are a healthy food that needn't be discarded after consuming the fruit. 
Ripe jackfruit arils are sweet as honey & absolutely irresistible, delicious! They are rich in minerals, Bcomplex, anti-oxidants. However, they too have a kind-of-rotten aroma if you are not familiar with it :D 

Shredded coconut with honey

Ingredients:
Shredded coconut
Raw honey, Jaggery or Sugar

Method:
Combine the coconut & honey (or jaggery) in a bowl.
Enjoy!!

Trivia:
The other day, I was super famished, suffering a severe migraine and ended up eating biscuits, without realizing that there was fresh scraped coconut in the fridge!
This is a nutritious quick pick-me-up snack if you are really really hungry like I was, or want something yummy to munch on. A pack of frozen shredded coconut in the freezer always comes handy at such times, it can thaw quickly.
You might wonder why I posted this silly snack on our blog. Well, I was really looking for something quick & nutritious and it always helps to be reminded ;-)

Sabudaana Khichdi- Sauteed Sago pearls

(Above: Prepared in the Gujrati style)

Serves 3 as a light meal. Preparation time: 10 minutes.

Ingredients:
2 rice cooker cups Sabudaana, called Saggubiyyam in Telugu (Sago pearls)
Salt to taste
2 tbsp ghee
1 tbsp green chillies chopped fine

Additional ingredients: 

Marathi style:
2 rice cooker cups roasted peanut powder (roast peanuts & then powder them)
Red chilli powder to taste 

Gujrati style:
1 small onion chopped fine
1 tsp Jheera seeds

Method: 
Soak Sabudaana pearls overnight, the pearl should collapse into a soft crumbly paste when pressed. Soaking time depends on the quality/size of the pearls: 6 hours, or even 3 hours is okay for some beads.

Dry roast the peanuts (you can add a drop of oil), let cool and powder into coarse granules. 
The sago pearls swell & increase in volume, we need nearly an equal volume of peanut powder.

Marathi style: 
Heat ghee in a cauldron. Add green chillies. 
As they fry, drain the Sabudaana pearls in a colander. 

Mix in the peanut powder and red chilli powder, the peanut powder coats the Sabudaana pearls. Also add salt.

When the green chillies brown, add in the peanut coated Sabudaana pearls. Stir well & cover. Cook until the Sabudaana pearls turn translucent. Cook longer if you want the pearls fried. (5 to 10 minutes)

Gujrati style: 
Heat ghee/oil in a cauldron. Add jheera, when it splutters, add the green chillies, onion & salt. 

When they brown, add the drained Sabudaana pearls. Stir, cover & cook until the pearls turn translucent. 

Trivia:
I learnt the Marathi recipe from my mother-in-law, having spent years in northern Andhra Pradesh (should I call it northern Telangana now?) on the border with Maharashtra, my mother-in-law is familiar with Marathi cuisine and has incorporated several of their dishes into her cooking over the years. She cooked it when she was visiting Summu in Jersey City, Summu's papa had a great time eating his mother's yumyum food while I assisted & clicked pics! 
I have seen the Gujrati style made by some Gujrati aunties I know, they used oil instead of Ghee though.
Both styles have their own unique flavours, I make according to my mood. 
Sabudaana is just starch, the addition of peanut powder makes it a better balanced meal by adding protein. I also like adding more vegetables (green peas, potato, bell peppers). Do try to cook this in Ghee, Ghee lends an amazing flavour to this dish and I am a ghee addict :-)
I never knew Sabudaana could turn out so delicious, I absolutely loathed it as a child, as I only knew watery gummy Sabudaana gruel, a yucky preparation eaten with yogurt when one got the runs LOL!!
Then I discovered this yumyum Khichdi, which reminds one of the flavour of saggubiyyam vadiyalu!
This is a quick, delicious snack which can be had for breakfast or a light dinner. 

Vegetable Raita

Ingredients:

All vegetables fine chopped:
1 small onion
1 small tomato
1 green chilli
1/4 teaspoon Kashmiri Chilli powder (it is mild & adds an appetizing colour)
1 teaspoon dried pudina leaves (can use chopped fresh pudina leaves too)
Some chopped cilantro
1 big bowl of yogurt beaten smooth
Salt to taste

Method:
Combine all ingredients (not salt) and let it stay. Mix in salt just before serving. (Salt draws water out of the vegetables & makes the raita runny, unappealing to the eye, so add salt just before serving). You can also add any other salad vegetables that you like: cucumber, some grated carrot, fine chopped bell pepper, romaine lettuce, feel free to experiment ;-)

This preparation goes well with pulaos and vegetable rices. I made this as an accompaniment for Bagara Rice. 

Bagara Rice

Serves: 5. Preparation time: 1 hour for everything

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of oil

Spices:
1/2 teaspoon of Shahjeera (Persian Cumin)
1 teaspoon Jheera (Cumin)
3 Cloves
4 inch stick of Cinnamon
1 Black cardamom
2 Green Cardamoms
1 Star Anise
3 Bay leaves
2 stems of Curry leaves
5 Cashew nuts
3 whole dry red chillies
1/2 teaspoon Garam masala
1 pinch ground nutmeg
A few strands of Saffron soaked in warm water
1 Tomato (pureed)

Salt to taste (keep in mind, we need salt for seasoning the vegetables as well as the rice)

3.5 cups of white Basmati rice (soak it)

Vegetables:
1 big onion cut into thin long slivers
1 Clove Garlic pounded/minced
1/2 inch Ginger grated
1 medium onion cut into thin long slivers (used for garnishing)
4 Green chillies (mild ones) chopped
2 small potatoes diced
1 Carrot diced
Half a head of a small cauliflower broken into florets
Half a head of a small broccoli broken into florets
1 cup of fresh Green peas
1 small capsicum
1 small bunch of Pudina leaves chopped
1 small bunch of Cilantro chopped

Method:
Heat the oil in a pan. Add Shahjeera, Jheera. When they splutter, add cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, Star Anise, bay leaves, curry leaves, cashewnuts, dry red chillies and cook until cashew turns light brown.
Add the vegetables: Start with Onion, let it brown a bit, add in the ginger+garlic, add the Garam masala & ground nutmeg, let it cook for a few seconds and add the other vegetables too, including the cilantro & mint. (Set aside a handfulof mint for garnishing.)
Add salt and continue cooking, we want the vegetables to be half done.
Meanwhile, set water to boil on another stove/electric kettle (this water should be enough to cook the basmati rice, delete half a cup of water as the vegetables have moisture too that the rice will absorb. Add the pureed tomato into this water so it get cooked).

When the vegetables are half done, add the boiling tomato water into them, add the soaked rice, the saffron water, mix it and let it cook until done.
Squeeze some lemon (to taste) & lightly sprinkle cardamom powder over it. Garnish with fried onion & pudina spread all over the surface of the rice. Onion gets that lovely crunchy golden fried hue if fried in an iron pan (or aluminium, I didn't see such good results with non-stick teflon pans).  Serve with raita.



Comments:
I used quality spices from Zanzibar, the cardamom, cloves, cinnamon are very aromatic, I was amazed to see the HUGE dried flower bud on top of each clove. This recipe might need more cardamoms/cloves depending on the quality of the spice. The vegetables can be adjusted, I love green peas so I added a whole cup, add any other vegetable you like! One can even add garlic in this dish. I love how the flavour of these whole spices permeates through the rice.

 

Trivia:
I think I enjoy writing recipes mostly because of the chance I get to write up the trivia section :-D
Food is incomplete for me without documenting or discussing the story behind it, so please bear with me!
The Bagara rice recipe is courtesy my good friend Bhavani Goud. I fell in love with it when I ate it at her place, her rice comes out layered, mine turned out more like a pulao. This is a Telangana recipe. I made minor modifications to her recipe (adding capsicum & so many green peas was my idea), I encourage you to do the same, after all, it is all about what feels yummy to us!
The dominant flavour in this dish comes from pudina. Kaavya always teases me that I add chopped cilantro into everything that I cook. Well Kaavya, pudina is my current craze, so I have been adding fresh chopped pudina and cilantro into everything I cook these days :)In fact, I made Totakura Kadalu pulusu this afternoon with pudina added into the tempering :D (Don't laugh guys, it tasted divine!)

Update:
I made Bagara rice once again, this time I used soaked brown rice and I added baby corn, french beans & soaked chickpeas, it was just as delicious & heavenly!

2019:
I still love making this, I have now standardised it in OPOS which has made it an easy-peasy breeze to cook. 

The making of Butter, Ghee, Paneer and Whey Water

Neyyi in Telugu: 
The other day, while I was making neyyi (called Ghee in Hindi and in international circles), I realized that our dear blog doesn't have a recipe on the making of ghee!! 
It is surprising that we missed posting this recipe this long. This blog boasts 'maa vanTinTilo vanDay vanTalu, mee kosam! Food that we cook in our kitchen, for you!'. Well, food cooked in our kitchens is totally incomplete without the addition of neyyi! The first food fed to toddlers is mudda pappu-annam with neyyi. 
I looooovvvvved neyyi as a kid and love it even today.
Meanwhile, I came across some ladies online, who had absolutely no clue on how butter, cheese, yogurt, Ghee, etc are processed at home! 
I have always seen butter, yogurt, paneer etc being made at home, so I was quite shocked to see a bunch of ladies on the Internet who had no idea on how to go about cooking these at home, they were complaining on how expensive it is to buy ghee from a retailer online.
One generation stops processing a food at home and purchases it from the store to save on time. The second generation continues buying the said food from the store, but does recollect how mom always made it at home in their childhood. The third generation grows up watching the said food only being bought in stores.. And slowly, people forget that it could have been made at home, they forget the process & the culture we carry through our food preparation practices. It feels impossible to process that food fresh at home without preservatives, we end up having no idea where it is sourced from and what goes into manufacturing it.
This meme comes to mind:

Many a times, when mom recollects her childhood, she tells me how her nainamma made something at home from scratch, or some now-forgotten festival that nainamma marked.. She describes some procedure or manual equipment in great detail and finally wonders if these methods are any longer practised back in the village, if those tools & professions exist, wondering if that indigenous knowledge & culture is lost... Mom has seen some now-forgotten festivals, rituals in her childhood. Where fireworks were handmade using coconut fibre, sponsored by the village chief, to entertain the entire village. Where every process & product was sustainable and friendly to the environment & people.
So in the spirit of preserving our culture, let's recollect how to make ghee & much more at home!! 

Ingredients & Equipment:

Milk Cream: The quantity doesn't matter. Smaller batches are easier to work with, choose the amount you feel comfortable processing.

Ice Cubes

Lemon juice/Vinegar/Apple Cider Vinegar (a teaspoon of any acid will do)

Two cooking vessels (one to hold butter, one to hold buttermilk)

Two cups/containers (one for paneer, one for fried milk solids/Gasi in Telugu)

Muslin cloth or stainless steel sieve 

Wooden spoon for stirring/pressing

Leak-proof bottle (a polythene sheet placed between the bottle & its top works well at leak-proofing any bottle)

Hand-blender or Food Processor (if available, not a necessity but a great comfort)

The Collection of Cream:
Firstly, we need pure raw whole milk. Milk that has not been treated in any way. Pasteurized, homogenized, low-fat milk doesn't work. Just get the milk from Mrs.Cow. Or Mrs.Buffalo. 
I don't have any experience with working on goat/camel milk, I think goat milk is very low fat so not sure if we can skim enough cream off it to make butter, ghee??!! I never heard of goat/camel ghee, though I have heard of goat cheese :)
If you are sure of your milk's source, you can consume it raw but I have always boiled mine in Nairobi. 
When the milk vessel is placed to cool in the fridge, a thick layer of cream floats to the top. Skim it off and store in the freezer. Continue doing this everyday until you have a container of cream in the freezer, took me a week's time.

Method: 

I The churning of butter: Takes around half an hour if done completely by hand. 
Place thawed cream in a leak-proof bottle and shake it. It will initially turn very thick (heavy whipped cream) and feels like nothing is shaking/moving inside, a stone solid mass. (This whipped cream by the way, is used to decorate cakes after adding sugar to sweeten it, tastes great unsweetened with fruit salad.)
I used a hand blender to speed up this step, the blender helped the cream to reach a very heavy whipped cream consistency in a minute. When the cream was too heavy to move the blender through, I took the blender out & continued shaking the bottle by hand. (Traditionally, people have also used a churner/Kavvam (Telugu) for this, where you churn the cream by hand using a churner until the butter & buttermilk separate. Although I have not tried it, I am sure a Food Processor would make this entire process very easy.)

Continue shaking the bottle, milky water (buttermilk) starts coming out of the mass & it loosens, so we can hear it tumble around in the bottle. As you continue shaking, beads of butter start forming while more buttermilk starts separating, so we can hear the liquid swish as we shake the bottle. If the weather is warm, add two ice cubes at this stage, so that the butter cools & hardens, otherwise it is difficult to separate soft warm butter from the buttermilk later. Be careful about when you add the ice, if added too soon, it merely melts & adds volume to the cream being shaken. Continue shaking. When you see buttermilk (it looks just like milk) with pearl-sized butter beads floating on the top, stop agitating the bottle. 

If you continue shaking beyond this stage, the beads of butter continue coming together & grow larger. Don't waste your energy, we don't need large beads ;-) 
Place a clean muslin cloth over an empty vessel & upturn the bottle of butter beads+buttermilk into it. The buttermilk runs through the muslin cloth & falls into the empty vessel underneath. 

Gather the edges of the cloth & squeeze it tight to extract more buttermilk. We are left with a ball of butter tied into the cloth. The tighter you squeeze, the better. So we now have Butter & Buttermilk. 

Butter is predominantly milk fat, with some residual milk solids (it's impossible to squeeze all the buttermilk out). Buttermilk is the residual milk with negligible fat content.

Now we continue on to the making of ghee and paneer. 

II The making of Ghee: Also called clarified butter, butter oil (not exactly, but close). 
Place the butter on medium-low heat in a thick bottomed vessel. It melts into a white opaque liquid and starts simmering. Stir it once in a while to check how it is doing. We want it to cook until all the water evaporates, it turns a golden-yellow, you will notice some browned milk solids at the bottom and the ghee gives off a nutty flavour while froth/bubbles boil up. Took me around 10 minutes. Some cooks advise adding a teaspoon of yogurt to the simmering butter as it imparts a distinct aroma/flavour.

Switch off the heat and let it cool. Pour the ghee into a glass container and store in a cool dark place. 

The browned milk solids that stayed at the bottom of the vessel are fried residual milk solids, called 'Gasi' in Telugu.This fried milk protein is a tasty treat consumed with sugar/honey. 

III The making of Paneer: 
Set the buttermilk on heat. When it comes to a boil, squeeze in a lemon, or drop in a teaspoon of vinegar. We want an acid to curdle the buttermilk. 

You will notice the milk curdle instantly where the acid is dropped in. 

Continue boiling it while stirring, more curds form and the fluid turns translucent. 
This fluid is Whey water. 

Sieve the curdled milk in the muslin cloth we used earlier or use a metal mesh sieve. This cheese is Paneer, a milk protein. Wash it under cold running water to get rid of the lemon/vinegar. 

The harder you squeeze the paneer, the more whey water we extract & press the paneer into a solid shape. I leave mine crumbly & use it in paneer bhurji.

IV Whey water: 
Whey water is the last by-product that is left over, it is the fluid left after the following are extracted from cream:
- Milk fat (Butter turned into ghee)
- Milk protein (Paneer)

Whey water is rich in calcium & other trace minerals, water soluble vitamins (especially B). 
It will taste funny since the lemon/vinegar run into it. Don't mind the taste, focus on the nutrition & gulp it down ;) I used apple cider vinegar to curdle the milk, as I thought that might taste better than white vinegar :D 
If you do hate drinking it, please water the plants with it, it's too precious to waste. Or perhaps we might come up with some delicious recipe to make this whey water more palatable!

I find it amazing that one product: Milk: gave us so many by-products! 
I love my homemade butter, ghee, paneer, whey water, kind of makes me feel one with nature, proud to consume food that is fresh processed with love at home. 
Of course, the childhood memories of Tittu doing this.And the thought of Summu consuming fresh homemade ghee, really energizes me!

If you feel lazy about all this (trust me, it's very exciting, the only hard part is the churning of cream, which is very easy if you have a food processor), just set the thawed cream on slow boil & keep stirring until all moisture evaporates. You will be left with ghee (milk fat) and a lot of browned milk solids (Gasi in Telugu) since all the paneer we failed to extract would have also gotten fried into Gasi. This way, there's no butter, buttermilk, paneer, whey water to deal with. But you end up needing to cook & stir the cream for very long until it turns to ghee & lots of yucky Gasi (a huge box of Gasi is a boring pain to eat). It took me much longer to organize this post, than it took me to make three bottles of ghee & all other by-products! 

Sad Trivia: 
In Jersey City, I could never locate a fresh milk farm nearby, was stuck consuming homogenized pasteurized carton milk. Missed making ghee at home. 
In Nairobi, I have fresh milk delivered every morning but I miss my Cuisinart food processor, it's a pain to manually churn the cream with Summu drinking my blood all the time  :) 
Some people melt store-bought butter to make ghee. I don't know how wise it is to consume the annatto (gives commercial packaged butter that yellow colour) that finds its way into such ghee. However, I did melt organic pure butter into ghee at home once, but it didn't taste as yum as homemade ghee. 
Ghee is very good for health, it helps in optimal absorption of nutrients from digested food in our alimentary canal. It has great importance in Vedic culture and Hindu rituals. Many cultures across the world have their own versions of ghee: Ethiopian niter kibbeh, Moroccon Smen to name a few.
This recipe is dedicated to Sumukh, without whose continuous help, I would have posted this ages ago (This sentiment is copied from P.G.Wodehouse, apparently he had a daughter like my son.). The real thanks go to papa for having babysat Summu while I typed this out!