Sweet Potato Chips

Another easy Navratri recipe with sweet potatoes (Shakarkandi) !! Comes handy when entertaining guests/friends over those nine days of fasting.

Preparation Time - 10 mins

Ingredients -

• 1 Sweet potato 
• freshly crushed pepper or pepper powder
• rock salt as per taste
• oil for deep frying (rice bran/sunflower/olive)

Preparation - Peel the sweet potato and make thin slices (thinner the better). 

Cooking - Heat oil in wok. Add the sweet potato slices a few at a time. Fry on both sides till crisp.

Remove from wok and place on a paper towel to absorb excess oil Sprinkle the rock salt and pepper on the hot chips and toss to coat them. Serve immediately or store in an air-tight container once cooled.

Note - One can also use table salt instead of rock salt.

Kacche kele ki subzi (Navratri special)

This is one of my the favorite Navratri recipes. Got it from Tarla Dalal's cookbook and have loved it ever since. Frugal and tasty without much effort. And green banana being one of its kind is a low calorie source of carbohydrates and is rich in dietary fiber. They make one feel full as well as help the body burn fats.

Read on for the recipe -

Preparation Time - 10-15 mins

Ingredients -

• 2 green bananas
• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1-2 green chili
• a sprig curry leaves
• 2 pinch asafoetida
• 4 tbsp curd
• 2 pinch turmeric
• 1 tsp oil
• 1/2 tsp ghee
• salt to taste

Preparation - Peel and cube the bananas. Put them into salted cold water immediately.

Beat the curd with a little water to break any lumps.

Cooking - Boil water in a saucepan and add a little salt and turmeric to it. Add the banana pieces and cook till done but not mushy. Strain the water and keep aside.

Heat the oil and ghee in a wok. Add the broken green chili and cumin seeds followed by the asafoetida and curry leaves.

Add the banana pieces and fry for 2 mins.

Add the beaten curd along with salt and mix everything. Cook till the curd dries and forms a layer around the banana pieces. Remove from flame.

Serve with white rice or rotis.

Book Review: The Lives Of Others (By Neel Mukherjee)

This post has been moved to my other blog. Read HERE.

Pulihora/Tamarind Rice (Navratri Special)

Pulihora is one of the offerings (Neivaidyams) made to the goddess in South Indian during Navratri. A simple recipe without any fussy ingredients, it is quick to make and quite tasty. While one does get some packaged Pulihora mixes in the supermarkets, it can be easily made at home without one.

Read for the easy recipe -

Preparation Time - 15 mins.

Ingredients - 

1/3 cup raw rice

4-5 cashews

a fistful of peanuts

2-3 tbsp gram/chana dal

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

2 red chilis

a sprig of curry leaves

1 tbsp tamarind paste (adjust as per taste)

1 tsp jaggery (powdered)

salt to taste

3 tsp oil

Cooking - Cook the rice in a pressure cooker or an open pan till it is soft. Keep aside.

Heat the oil in a wok. Add the mustard seeds followed by the chana dal and peanuts. Allow to brown a little. At last, add the cashews and curry leaves. Fry for 15 seconds.

Add the tamarind paste with a little water, jaggery and salt. Cook for 3-4 mins.

Add the rice and mix thouroughly.

Serve hot.

Watch out this space for more Navratri recipes (both from North & South India) ......

Shakarkandi Chaat (Navratri Special)

Shakarkandi Chaat is a famous Delhi street food that it very common during the winters. While I have never seen it in any of the cities that I have lived in, I came to know about it from a neighbor of mine. We happened to be discussing pregnancy cravings and she mentioned that she had lost all her appetite during those nine months. "Lucky you", all the ladies chipped in. A very natural reaction (and laced with some envy too) for all those who had experienced such cravings and were still in the process of losing all those pounds gained as a result of gorging on sweets and other high calorie stuff. Coming back to my neighbour, as she continued to share her stories about how people around her would try and get her to eat, one particular recipe caught my attention. The description of a yummy sweet potato and fruit chaat prepared by her grandmother-in-law almost reduced my mouth into a pool of saliva. This was something I had to try at least once.

I made a small change in her recipe by omitting the fruit. And it turned out to be just yummylicious. Read on for this simple 'phalahari' chaat which is very apt for the Navratri -

Preparation Time - 10 mins

Ingredients -

2 cups boiled/baked, peeled & cubed sweet potato
1/4 tsp roasted cumin powder
1/4 tsp chili powder
1 tsp lemon juice
rock salt as desired

Preparation - Take all the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Toss well.

Serve immediately.


Note - One can also add sliced bananas, pomegranate, nylon sev, amchur/chaat masala, coriander leaves, green chilis, etc to spice it up further.

Capsicum- Mushroom Korma

An easy vegetarian korma !! Or a toned down version of the luxurious gravy dish that most people remember savoring at a restaurant !! My modified version is one that can be had on a everyday basis and it goes equally good with both rice and rotis.

It is somewhat similar to ( and inspired by ) the mushroom-capsicum curry that we make with mustard sauce in Odisha. Do check the recipe (HERE)

Read on for the recipe -

Preparation Time - 20-25 mins

Ingredients -

• 200 gm button mushrooms
• 1 cup chopped capsicum
• 1 medium sized boiled potato (boiled, peeled & cubed)
• 1 medium sized tomato 
• 1 small onion
• 1/2 inch ginger
• 4-5 garlic flakes
• 1-2 dry red chilli
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1-2 green cardamom
• 1 inch cinnamon stick
• 8-9 cashews
• 3 tsp oil
• 1/3 tsp turmeric
• salt to taste
• coriander for garnishing

Preparation - Clean the mushrooms and cut each one into 4 pieces along the length.

Chop the tomato into small pieces.

Grind the onion, ginger, garlic, red chili, 2/3 tsp cumin seeds, cardamom and cinnamon into a smooth paste using as little water as possible. Keep aside.

Similarly, soak the cashews for half an hour in warm water before grinding them into a smooth paste.

Cooking - Heat the oil in a wok. Add the cumin seeds and allow them to splutter.

Add the onion and spices paste to the wok. Fry lightly till the raw smell just goes off. Add the tomato and cover for 1 minute to allow the tomatoes to soften.

Add the mushrooms, capsicum and potato to the wok. Stir fry on high heat for 3-4 mins till you can see the mushrooms starting to shrink.

Add 1 cup hot water to the wok along with salt and turmeric. Bring to a boil. Cover with a lid and allow to simmer on low flame.

Once the mushrooms are cooked, add the cashew paste and mix well. Allow the curry to simmer for 3-4 mins. Finally garnish with corinader leaves before removing from the flame.

Serve hot or warm.

Online Grocery Shopping Creating a Buzz (Guest Post for 27Coupons)

With grocery predicted to be a US$ 11 trillion market globally by 2018 (Reference) and India poised to overtake Japan as the third largest market by 2016 (after China and USA), it hardly comes as a surprise that every investor worth his salt (or shares) want a share of this ever mushrooming pie. But even the most hardcore of shopping fans or shopoholics as we put them, would concede that shopping for grocery is only marginally better than the proverbial pain in the ass. And this is where the new age grocers or e-grocers like Bigbasket, Zopnow, Aaramshop, Ezkart, etc step in. Helped by technology like real-time monitoring and predictive data analysis, they promise to take the pain and drudgery out of shopping for groceries through online grocery shopping.

Leading the pack is Bigbasket which has a presence in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai and plans to expand its operations to Pune and Delhi within the next six months. With over 12,000 products across categories like Fruits & Vegetables, Grocery & Staples, Bread Dairy & Eggs, Beverages, Branded Foods, Personal Care, Household, Imported & Gourmet, Meat, Frozen Foods, etc, it offers a customized shopping experience by allowing one to shop from his/her previous order or an online shopping list or even a smart basket which consists of the frequently bought products for the customer. This flexibility of choices certainly helps, when one is hard pressed for time or keeps shopping for the same items/products at regular intervals. Orders below Rs 1000 attract a delivery charge of Rs 20 while above Rs 1000, the delivery is free of cost. You can use theircoupons to use some of their current offers. Also, there is no minimum order value which comes a boon for folks who are hard-pressed for time. Bigbasket offers an option of 4 time slots in a day, starting from 7 am and stretching till 10 pm. Customers can choose a slot as per their convenience. With real-time tracking in place, the customers receive regular notifications about the status of their order via SMS. Customers also have the option to return/decline a particular product if they are not satisfied with it. COD (Cash on Delivery) is also available. No doubt online grocery shopping has picked up in various cities where they are serving.

Bigbasket has a delivery model which is very logistic intensive as they are involved in every step starting from the point the order is placed to the final delivery which happens at the customer’s doorstep. ‘Till the last mile’ is how V.S. Sudhakar, one of the co-founders of Bigbasket puts it. The company has recently raised Rs 200 Cr funding from VC firms Helion and Zodius Fund II with Avendus in the second round of its capital raising. With this move the less than 3 year old company reaches a 1000 Cr plus valuation. The founders plan to use it for expansion to 10 cities by end of year 2015 and acquiring cutting edge technology solutions that will help understand/predict consumer habits and improved online grocery delivery. According to a report in the Economic Times, the company has crossed an annual revenue of Rs 250 crore and are growing at 10 percent month on month. They currently execute over 5000 orders per day and have recently reached the milestone of one million delivered orders. The shrewd use of technology and the vast domain experience of the founders (they had previously launched Fabmall, the pioneer of online shopping in India in 1999. The ensuing dot-com bust made them convert it to a chain of 200 plus offline grocery stores in South India. They were later on sold to the Aditya Birla group and re-branded as ‘More.’) ensures that every order remains profitable.

Ever since I started shopping with Bigbasket (sometime in late 2012), I have seen them introduce innovative features and products on a regular basis. They have recently introduced a recipes section on their website on a pilot basis. The ingredients used in a particular recipe are clearly mentioned and linked to the page which lists out the various varieties and brands available. Quite an useful feature as it saves one valuable time and effort that would otherwise be wasted in searching for it. Add that to the guaranteed on-time delivery and the widest selection of products, I am now a Bigbasket convert.

Note: Image courtesy of Sira Anamwong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net