Free Kitchen tips for New Cooks

These are a few tips that I have been compiling for some time, and have come from my own trial and error and a few of my friends' too. I thought I would share these tips with others and may come in handy for those who are starting out as cooks.. Experienced cooks, please ignore this....

Let me know whether you agree or not ..:)

• The taste of any dal preparation (lentils) is enhanced with a few drops of lemon juice. Please note that a few drops mean just that, and not spoonfuls....

• Once rice is boiled, switch off, cover with a lid and leave it for 10 minutes...most rice like basmati, raw rice etc cook with that . In case it needs more cooking, a few more minutes should do. If you leave the rice boiling for a long time, more than likely it would overcook.

• Cook pasta and rice with atleast 1/2 tsp of salt to stop it sticking...

• Soaking dried pulses overnight will reduce cooking time more than half.

• Wash brinjal, lady's finger etc before cutting so they won't turn mushy when cooked.

• When frying fish, always add a bit of lemon juice to the marinade for better taste and smell.

• Try not to empty the mixer before switching it off. (Someone I know of, did this !!!)

• When making spicy curry, add a pinch of sugar to enhance the taste.

• Brown onions while cooking meat ....instead of just turning it soft and yellow...to get the dish taste it's best.

• Add at least 1 green chilli to dishes to increase the flavour.

• When preparing mutton, add 1/2 tsp of jeera (cumin) powder for better taste.

Will post more of these depending on your opinions...

An eventful weekend..

Caught a flight to Mumbai on Saturday.

A wedding, meeting up with my sister and brother-in-law who drove down from Pune, a couple of drives around Mumbai, meeting up with some dear college mates and their better halves and kids, shopping, the reception...

And a flight back on Sunday

It was short, yet we all enjoyed the trip a lot. Of course, with gifts like a Barbie and a smart new dress, our daughter could have stretched it out a week or a month...she also tried to bring her new friends home,(children of our friends) by promising to eat rice...!!!for her, that is the ultimate sacrifice!!!

It is amazing, the rapport we never lost with our friends, and that we had with their partners... seems like we were all linked in another life... it was a wrench to say goodbye to them and my sister and Nikhil, but we came back recharged and happy that we had this weekend with them.

Mushroom, sausages and mashed potatoes

This felt more like an assembly job than actual cooking and it was very very tasty.

Onion - 1 (sliced thin)

Mushrooms - 200 gms (quartered)

Sausages - 400 gms (sliced across into bite sized pieces)

Green capsicum - 1 medium (sliced thin)

Chilli powder - 1/2 tsp

Oyster sauce - 1/2 tsp

oregano -dried - 1/4 tsp

Potato mash flakes - 1 cup

Eggs - 2

Grated cheese - 1/2 cup

Salt to taste

Crushed pepper

Saute the onions, then mushrooms, sausages and the green pepper .Add the oyster sauce and the chilli powder. Salt to taste.

Now lightly sprinkle the potato flakes with a bit of water, keep aside. dont let them become very soggy,just to make them lightly moist.

Beat the eggs, add a pinch of salt, the grated cheese, oregano and crushed pepper.

In a greased baking dish, add the sautéed onion, mushrooms, sausages etc first. Now add the mashed potato flakes on top. The eggs and cheese go on top.

Bake at 180 C for 15 minutes till the egg is cooked and cheese is melted..or you may extend the time five more minutes to get the crust a bit brown.

Serve with pita, lebanese or crusty bread.

Speech pains....

It has been a comment from many, who met my little girl that she was very very quiet... she did not speak much till she was about 2 years old and that is very rare in the girls of our family....

Most of the time I wasn't bothered, because she would talk at home and with people she was comfortable with. And unlike children of her age brought up in Kerala, she had to deal with three languages at once - malayalam at home, english at playschool and hindi everywhere else. But sometimes, it would get difficult to fend off questions like ..."she is too quiet...have you taken a doctor's opinion...she is not like so and so..blah blah..."

Well if the same people heard her now, they would know she is perfectly fine... she started speaking out one fine day, just like she does at home... her teachers now tell me it is difficult to make her sit quietly. She speaks in malayalam to both of us and to all out Malayalee friends, to the maid and dhobi she speaks in hindi and she speaks to some of her friends and a few of ours' in English.. all perfect well-formed sentences, and purely the specific language. No mixing or inserting other words to make things easier...

So if there are moms out there who worry about their 'otherwise' normal kids speaking a little late, please do not worry.(I was never worried because my daughter was very expressive at home.But I was exasperated with a few well-meaning advices)

Kids are each unique and very special and everyone has their own way of dealing with things... they will speak when they are ready, and not a minute sooner..!

Ramayan play ...and our very own Kaikeyi

This happened a few weeks back... our daughter's teacher told us that they had been rehearsing the Ramayan at the playschool and that Ichu had Kaikeyi's role.

She had initially been given some role where she did not have to say any lines.. but since she had suddenly started talking, she was given two whole lines...!!!

"I am Queen Kaikeyi...." and ...

"Maharaj, Ram ko jangal bhej deejiye, aur Bharath ko raja bana deejiye..."

Some how, bagging the pivotal role of Kaikeyi (who is instrumental in sending Ram to the forest and gets the ball rolling - enter Ravana to abduct Sita, meeting Hanuman, the war, Rama killing Ravana...) did not seem to entice my daughter enough..... She was more interested in being Ravan because he had a big sword and got to say, "I am Ravan, King of Lanka.... "

When I later shared this fact with a few of the other mothers, I found out that there were a few more tots who wanted to be Ravan..even 'Ram', whose mom told me that he had been practicing his lines thus...

"I am Ravan and these are my brothers... Bharath, Lakshman and Shatrughna..."

Somehow the moral of the Epic seems to fly right above the tiny ones... they were impressed by the weapons Ravan got to use and the loud yells he got to make while fighting...

All the kids were asked to dress from home as befitting their roles... there wasn't much time to prepare or buy anything..so had to make-do with what was at home.

The silver colour 'saree', I had already made, so the next was her crown and a veil to cover her hair.

I sacrificed my white dupatta. 1/3rd of it's length, with a little silver glitter complemented the saree. I had white chart paper..so silver paint and some glitter and bindis was all that was needed for the crown.

A pearl necklace, a black metal chain and a double string of colourful beads and bindis completed the picture. She was quite happy with her outfit .

The second picture is of my daughter and her friend, who was given the role of Shatrughna (Kaikey's step-son),and yet another aspiring Ravan..!! I made his crown and wrist band. The crown suffered a bit at his hands, if you look closely, you maybe able to see the tape job on it ..(actually, quite a bit of it!!)

It was a fun day for us mothers too... I hope there are many more such events to come .....

Stuffed Karelas (bittergourd)

The first time I ever tasted stuffed karelas was when we visited my mom's second brother and family in Hyderabad. Our aunt made this dish for dinner one day and we all enjoyed it a lot.. at that time however, I wasn't too fond of this bitter vegetable. So though I really liked what my aunt made, I would never had bothered to make it...

All that changed when I was pregnant... guess what I craved most at that time...??? yep... bitter gourd... I had severe 'morning sickness' that lasted the whole day, for the first 4 months... at the least provocation I had to run for the loo.. anything from the smell of rice to the sound of daily TV serials ..!!! but I would drool at the smell of bitter gourd cooking and I sometimes would just saute it with a little onions and tomato and have it semi-cooked... my husband never could understand that.. he told me normal people would puke at smelling half-cooked bitter gourd and there I was, in my delicate condition, shoveling it down like it was the tastiest thing in the world..!!!

Four years later, I still love bitter gourd, and if it is fried to cinders, even my husband likes it with curd and rice. When I bought the tiny karelas, I had decided to try stuffing them..but when i checked for recipes, many of them were very complicated, so I just read them and then decided to go ahead and give it my own twist as I normally do to most of my cooking.

Bitter gourd/ karelas /paavakka - 6 small ones

Wash them well, scrape all the spines slowly with a knife and keep it aside to include in the stuffing.

Slit one side of the karelas. Scrape off the seeds inside.


For the stuffing

Oil - 2 tsp
Onion - 1 diced fine
Tomato - 1 diced fine
Aloo mash flakes - 1 and 1/2 tbsp (or mash a very small boiled potato)
Salt to taste
Red chilli powder - 1 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp
Jeera/ cumin powder - 1/2 tsp
Coriander/ dhania leaves - finely chopped about 1 tbsp

Heat oil in a pan, saute onions, then add the tomatoes and saute till the oil comes out. Add the scraped bitter gourd spines, chilli, turmeric and jeera powders, saute and cook for 5 minutes.Add the mashed potatoes, the dhania leaves and the salt to taste.

Now stuff the bitter gourds and shallow fry in a non-stick pan till brown on all sides.

We had it with rice, curd and omelettes. They will be great with chappatis too.I will definitely make them as soon as possible, since I got a thumbs up from my husband too... !!!

My First Cooked Food - Gothambu (cracked wheat) Payasam

I have made Gothambu payasam many many times and it is my favourite item to complete a Vishu or Onam sadya.

Other than that this payasam also has the distinction of being the first ever thing that I tried my hand at cooking ..!!! It was when I was in my 6th standard. I was at my mom's place for my Onam vacation and I had a friend in the neighboring house called Razia.

After being shooed away from the kitchen for the umpteenth time,( I had a great fascination for the wood stove) I decided enough was enough... we had to try cooking just like the grown ups...!!

The first thing was deciding what to make.. we finally settled on payasam since it needed no cutting or preparing and the ingredients were easy to procure...

Next was where? ... there was a sort of shed, which provided cover from prying eyes... and we decided the cooking had to be done during the grandparents ' siesta time.

So we made a stove with three bricks, got a pot which had a hole near the neck area and the rest of the ingredients were

Gothambu nurukku (cracked wheat) - 1 glass (approx..)

Water - lots of it

Milk - about 2 glasses

Jaggery - 2 big lumps

We successfully lit the stove.. it was very easy to do so since I had watched my Mattemma or Ammamma do the same many times, kept the water on the stove and waited for it to boil... but since the stove was very tiny and could not hold much fuel, it took forever to even heat.. so we added the wheat and the jaggery and restlessly waited... after waiting for what seemed like hours, the jaggery was all liquid and bubbling away.. we tasted it and found it very sweet ..so I added the milk and then we both decided a little more water was called for....

The end result was a very watery, lumpy (sticky cracked wheat, since we did not know to roast it) and smoky..since we did add a lot of dried leaves for the fire to burn quickly...

And we stirred the payasam with a stick since we did not think of taking a spoon from either of the kitchens..!!! Finally, we took our offering to our grandparents ...we were so thrilled about our first cooking effort, that we decided to chance the scoldings.

I remember my grandfather exclaiming in wonder that it was the best payasam he had ever tasted,(he was a sweetheart) and my grandma grumbling about fire and naughty kids... after that afternoon, my grandma did not sleep unless I was also lying down beside her ........!!!

I had posted the recipe of Gothambu payasam earlier... but when Shama invited me to the 'My First Cooked Food Event', I could not resist reliving that eventful day... :)

It was many years before I tried making the payasam again... but by then I knew a bit about cooking ..atleast enough to realise that you didn't just dump everything into the pot and occasionally stir it ....!!

So this is the better and grown-up version of the Gothambu Payasam.