Cabbage Curry with Peas

মটরশুঁটি দিয়ে বাঁধাকপির তরকারি

Heat up oil. I prefer mustard oil. Add the potato cubes into it. After the pieces turn golden, add the seasoning: bay leaves, cumin seeds, sliced fresh green chilli, crushed garlic, curshed ginger. This time I didn't have bay leaves and ginger. Add the shredded cabbage immediately. Sir and let it cook.

Above is how the cabbage should be cut. This is the tedious task. I cut it by hand. The rest of the cooking process is simple. Now add turmeric paste and cumin-coriander paste. Stir and mix. Add salt. Cabbage will start releasing water. Add grated tomato and garlic. (I didn't add the garlic in the seasoning but here. )

Mix and add the peas, cover and cook on a low flame. You need to check in between and ensure it has enough water in it and doesn't burn; stir if required. Do this until thoroughly cooked.

Pierogi: My First Attempt

This year I cooked a lot but didn't write much about my adventures in the kitchen. Now on the last day of the year I am trying to put them on my blog. It goes without saying that I'm doing it hastily. So, I am not giving a detailed description of how to prepare them; I believe, everyone already knows. Here are they ready to be cooked:

Yes, I wanted them colourful. I used mashed potatoe and carrot as the filling because I eat plant-based.

Below you can see them after boiling:

And the coloured ones which you can call pierogi-inspired dumplings, if you want to.

And here are the fried ones:

Broad Beans Sautéed and A Very Simple Dinner

Broad bean is সীম /sheem/ in Bengali. It's a very versatile ingredient. You can prepare it with poppy seed paste, make stuffed broad beans or add them in fish curry. Here I am making a very simple side dish to go with rice and dal. I sliced them very thinly and after having heated mustard oil till its smoking point added nigella seeds and fresh green chilli lowering the flame. Then I added the beans and stired and sautéed them. After a few minutes I added my homemade turmeric paste and again stirred to mix it well. And then we cover it. We don't add water and the beans don't release a lot of water. Therefore we keep an eye and stir every now and then. You can see the beans soften, their colour changes and the quantity reduces. Add salt. Usually we add a pinch if sugar but I have stopped adding sugar to my dishes and nowadays add less salt than earlier. Cook it until thoroughly done. It won't take much time at this point. The lentil soup in the picture is musur dal and I used garlic, onion and dried red chili for the seasoning. In addition, you can see, fried pumpkin slices on the plate.

লাউয়ের তরকারি -- Bottle Gourd Curry

This is a bottle gourd.To make a curry, I cut it into very tiny pieces, then after heating some mustard oil in high flame, add the seasoning of sliced fresh green chilli and nigella seeds into it and then add the vegetables and lower the flame. I stir well and ket the vegetable cook for a few minutes on low flame. I add some freshly made turmeric paste and salt and mix very well. Water starts coming out from the vegetable. I add the peas and cover and let it cook. after about six/seven minutes I check. I stir well and add shredded fresh coriander leaves and cover and ket it cook again until it's thoroughly done. The actual cooking time depends on the quality of the gourd. Thus dish has many richer variants. We often add snall shrimps or বড়ি, small , sun-dried lentil cones to it. But this one is the simplest. But curting the vegetable is a lot of work.

Pasta/Ravioli: My First Attempt

This year I did a lot of things for the first time in my kitchen. This was my first attempt to make pasta/ravioli of different shapes and sizes.

The dough us dark coloured because I mixed some raagi powder (finger millet powder) with the flour.

For the filling of ravioli, I made a thick paste of sattu, shredded onion and tomato and fresh green chilli so that everything is totally plant-based.

The final dish was spicy with a lot of tomato puree.

I did the whole process during the night in my small bedroom secretly. We don't really have a baking culture of that of naking continental food and my experimentscare neither vencouraged nor appreciated. How one's personal freedom can be so restricted may be unintelligible by many, especially for those with no experience of how phenomenal parental interference can be in certain cultures. But I hope, I will soon be able to leave soon once again.

Marble Cake: My First Attempt

This Christmas I prepared my first marble cake. I made it very early in the morning when Mom was still asleep. I wanted to start the morning with freshly baked hot cake and also to surprise her.

.

Mini Kothimnir Vadi -- Small Coriander Cubes

Kothimbir means coriander leaves in Marathi.

Coriander leaves and Coriander Powder

Besan added to Coriander Powder to mix -- I made a thick paste of shredded coriander leaves, besan (gram flour), salt, a little green chili, coriander powder and steamed this.

Steamed Besan-coriander Mixture Then I cut this solid (but not really hard) cake-like mixture into small cubes and sautéed them. I usually add more coriander but I didn't have them more today!You can also do without frying and eat the steamed ones (below).

Mixed Veg Rice: Plant-based Whole Food

Nowadays my priority is improving my proficiency really fast in one of my target languages (TL). In addition to my professional need that was always there, since very recent I have a new personal need, too, a need to make myself understood in that TL to a native speaker who has been doing a lot to spread the teaching-learning of that TL in our region. So, I don't have much time for anything else. But cooking is my stress buster. And since a few months I have been doing successful experiments in changing my diet aiming to lose weight without becoming weak. Therefore, preparing my own healthy but delicious meals is a necessity also. Earlier also I've posted one pot recipes of rice. Here's the dish I prepared yesterday morning for breakfast:

Below are the ingredients.

I soaked rice and musur (red) dal for half an hour after rinsing them well.

I just put everything together in a pressure cooker poured water, added some salt and cooked untill 5 whistles.

Before serving I stirred and mixed everything very well No oil. Not at all spicy. (You can add some cumin- and coriander powder it that suits your taste.) And very quick. Ideal for a busy professional.

ঝিঙের ভর্ত্তা / Ridge Gourd Bhartta

 It's a very delicious traditional plant-based dish.

Before going into details I apologise for the bad photos. I definitely have no talent for photography, unfortunately. I used one kilogramme ridge gourd and made the dish from scratch, totally manually. The final product looks like the picture below:

I removed only the rough ridges and left most of the skin as you can see below. 

Removing the Ridges

One KG Ridge Gourd

After that I cut then in very tiny pieces and made a paste by hand on the traditional শিল পাটা. It was a lot of work. I could easily use a mixer but since March I am indoors and I hardly move; therefore I preferred the hard work to the smart work. 

Cutting in Tiny Pieces

Making the Paste on শিল পাটা

I also made pastes of black mustard, white mustard and poppy seed. This is optional. I added a small green chilli to the mustard while making the paste.  If you don't use these spices, please use nigella seeds and fresh green chilli for seasoning. I used mustard seeds and fresh green chilli for seasoning. I also added my homemade turmeric powder. 

White and Black Mustard Paste

Heat up a little mustard oil and when the oil reaches its smoking point, it's smell is gone and the colour becomes a little clearer/lighter. Lower the flame. Add the seasoning and add the ridge gourd paste. Add the turmeric paste,  stir quickly and add the ridge gourd paste and stir. Add the mustard- and poppy paste. 

Stir and mix. The mixture already has a lot of juice. It will start boiling. Stir every now and then. It will cook and gradually the water content will reduce. Cook it on low flame covering and stirring from time to time. The colour will change, the raw smell will go away. 

Almost Done! Water Dried Up

Add salt and mix very very well. It's ready. I sprinkled some fresh mustard oil on top after removing it from the flame. But this is very Bengali and skip this if you are not familiar/comfortable with the flavour of fresh mustard oil. You can in fact use sunflower oil to prepare this dish which I, being a Bengali, will never do. Consuming cold-pressed virgin mustard oil is, to me, a part of being Bengali! 😉

The Ridge Gourd Paste

Oat with Apple

 This my overnight oat. As usual, it is dairy-free. 

I grated the apple finely and soaked two tablespoons of rolled oat in it after dinner because it's for the next day. I added a little water but didn't add any sweetener. The mixture is in the fridge. I don't like sweet dishes; therefore I think I am going to like it because it will be mildly sweet. 

Chocolate-Banana-Chia Pudding

 This is also dairy-free as you can make out from the photo. I mashed the banana and mixed with the soaked chia.

My Dairy-free Oatmeal

 Recently I've brought in a remarkable change in my food habit and have lost a little weight in the last two months.  This is for the first time in my life I was about to consume rolled oats (Before this I have had instant oat fot exactly four times). In the internet I checked many recipes but most of them are sweet and with some kind of a milk. But I don't eat anything sweet. 

So, I decided to do something new, purely experimental and it was good.

Here's my no-milk oat meal. Guess the ingredients and tell me!

The Final Product

Soaked for many hours in the fridge

Sattoo-Banana-Chia Pudding

 I soaked one and half tablespoons of chia seeds in water in the fridge for about eight hours. (I usually soak chia overnight. And yes, it goes without saying, always in the fridge.) Then I added slightly overripe banana, mashed, and satoo in it and mixed very well. You can have the consistency you want. I don't have a sweet tooth. But you can add sugar if you want. Very simple.

I garnished it with three almonds.

 

সীম- আলু- বেগুনের তরকারী - Broad beans-potato-eggplant curry

 

The above picture shows the dish ready to serve. It is the rich, flavourful curry of broad beans, potato and eggplant cooked in thick mustard- and poppy seed paste gravy. 

Below are the main ingredients:

The vegetables being sautéed

I used mustard oil but you can use sunflower oil or any other oil you are comfortable with. After oil is heated, lower the flame and add the seasoning, mustard seeds and sliced fresh green chili, and immediately add the vegetables. Stir and sauté so that it doesn't burn, on medium flame. Do this for some time. The vegetables starts turning soft and you can see that from how they look. Add the paste of the spices below. Stir and mix well. Cook like this stirring every now and then. Add a little water (see the last photo below) and cover and cook on a low flame till all the vegetables are thoroughly cooked. If the vegetables are of good quality it should not take more than 15 minutes but I had cook it longer this time because some of the eggplants were not good. You might need to add a little more water if you see water is drying and the vegetables are still not soft. 

The pastes of three different spice grains I manually made:

Turmeric and Cumin Seed Paste  

Poppy Seed Paste

Mustard Seed (white) Paste

After cooking some time adding a little water ..