Simple Garlic Rasam/Soup

When it comes to brunch/lunch recipe garlic rasam is one of my favourites. People have their own method for preparing Garlic rasam and here comes mine with very basic ingredients readily available at home includes jeera, pepper, tomato and tamarind. I prefer to prepare garlic rasam during winter and it goes well with rice and poriyal/appalam(pappad). My hubby would like to have it just like soup, when it is served hot. Garlic and Pepper are well known for its ability to relief stubborn cold/flu and to improve immunity. So please do try the simple and easy Garlic rasam recipe at your home.

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Preparation time: 15 min
Cooking time: 20 min
Serves: 2
Cuisine: South Indian
Author: Vidhya

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Ingredients

Garlic Rasam

To Grind

Garlic - 5 cloves

Red Chilli - 1

Jeera(Cumin seeds) - 1 table spoon

Whole Black Pepper - 1 1/2 table spoon

To Temper
Ghee - 1 table spoon
Hing - a generous pinch
Turmeric powder - a generous pinch
Tomato - 1 finely chopped
Tamarind - a gooseberry sized
Salt - 1 table spoon or as per your taste
For Seasoning
Ghee - 1 table spoon

Jeera - 1/2 table spoon

Coriander leaves - a handful chopped finely

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Method

• Soak gooseberry sized tamarind in warm water for about 15 min. Extract about 3/4 cup of tamarind water and discard the pulp.
  
• Coarse grind the ingredients mentioned in To Grind section.
  
  
  
• Chop tomato finely and keep it aside ready.
  
• Take a vessel add 1 table spoon of ghee.
  
• When it starts sizzling add the ground coarse powder and let it cook for 2-3 min as we have not fried it earlier.
  
• Now add hing, turmeric powder, salt (I used pink rock salt, you can use any salt of your choice). Mix it well.
  
• After 1 min add tomatoes and stir it well for another 2 min.
  
• Add tamarind extract and allow it to boil under medium flame. Boil until raw smell of tamarind goes off and tamarind extract should reduce a little.
  
  
• Now add 1/2 cup of water and allow it to boil.
  
• when it starts boiling switch off the stove and remove rasam from hot plate. Immediately add chopped coriander leaves.
• In another kadai, pour a table spoon of ghee and temper jeera and add it to the hot rasam.
  
• You can have hot rasam with rice and my preference would be along with Brinjal/Ladies finger poriyal as sides.

      Notes:

1. You can add curry leaves while tempering jeera. 
2. I have not added garlic as whole because while eating it would be kept aside and thrown away later. Otherwise you can grind 2 garlic cloves and add the rest as whole.

Vegetable Cutlet

Vegetable cutlet is simpler yet healthier way to hide vegetables inside a yummy patty. Cutlet would be the best snack one can have with no guilt feeling, because it is not deep fried. The method shown below for making cutlet is to just roast them with little/no oil. The cutlet has to be made with potatoes as base for binding all vegetables, if you have diet restrictions you can replace potatoes with sweet potatoes. Even half of the potatoes can be replaced with cauliflower, which is a perfect alternative and adds more taste when it gets roasted. Another best thing about cutlets are, it has no garlic and no onion. This could be the best evening snacks on monsoon days and for family get-to-gather.  This is a very kids friendly snack, you can reduce the number of chillies when you prepare cutlets for kids. I have included both black pepper and chillies, pepper gives nice taste in every bite of your cutlet. With simple steps and photos I had shown how to prepare vegetable cutlet at home.

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preparation Time: 30 mins

Cook Time: 10 min

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Recipe Type: Evening Snacks
Yields: 15 cutlets
Author: Vidhya

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Veg Cutlet

Ingredients

Potato - 6 baby potatoes (I used) or 2 large potatoes

Carrot - 1 Medium sized

Beans - 10 nos

Cauliflower - 5 florets (Optional)

Peas - a handful

Sweet Corn - a handful

Green chilli - 2 nos

Chat Masala - 1/2 table spoon

Garam Masala - 1/2 table spoon

Black Pepper powdered- 1 table spoon

Bread crumbs - 1 cup

Rice flour - 2 table spoon
Salt - 1 table spoon or as per your taste

Method

• Chop carrot and beans finely. Chop potatoes and cauliflower into pieces.
  
• Add half a glass of water to cook vegetables in the pressure cook. Cook chopped vegetable along with peas and corn until 3 whistles, or for 15 min.  
  
• In the mean time, chop green chilli finely and keep aside
• After 3 whistles switch the stove off and allow the pressure to settle down. Drain the water completely from cooked vegetables. Peel the potato skin, add all the vegetable to a vessel to mash them.
• Add green chilli, chat masala, garam masala, pepper and salt to cooked vegetable.
  
• Mash potatoes nicely as it should bind with rest of the vegetables, make it like dough as shown in the picture. You should be able to make small spherical portionsls out of it. If you still want more firm consistency, you can add 2 -3 spoons of bread crumbs to the vegetable mix.
  
• Now prepare bread crumbs. Take two slices of bread, grind it in a mixer and the crumbs are ready.
  
  
  
• Mix 2 table spoon of rice flour in water. (Don't make it watery)
  
• Make small spherical portions out of mashed vegetables, press it down to form patty. Now dip the patty in the rice flour prepared above.
• Now make another coating of bread crumbs to the patty. Follow the same procedures to make all patties.
  
• Put the bread-crumb coated patties on hot tawa/pan. Let it cook for 5 min and turn it over. Cook the other side for another 5 min. (At this point you can sprinkle little oil/shallow fry the cutlets. I made it with no oil and it was absolutely yummy)  
  
• Now cutlet is ready and serve cutlets hot with tomato sauce.
  

Fruit Sandwich (Tawa)

This is my first blog and I am so much excited to share my cooking with people who looks out for new recipes online.

I would like to start my food blog with a delicious and healthy Fruit sandwich which is very simple to prepare for Breakfast or as an evening snacks under 15 min. I made it just on a tawa/pan (no need for toaster)

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Preparation Time: 10 min
Cooking Time: 5 min per sandwich

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Recipe Type: Breakfast or evening snacks
Yields: 2
Author: Vidhya

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Ingredients

Bread - 4 slices of brown bread. you can use bread of your choice.

Apple - 1/2 - thinly sliced

Strawberry - 2 - thinly sliced

Pineapple - one slice (cut the pineapple horizontally) thinly sliced

Dates - 2 nos Finely chopped

Almonds - 3 nos Finely chopped

Cashew - 3 nos Finely chopped.

Butter - 2 table spoon

Ghee - 2 table spoon

Jam - flavour of your choice. I used blackcurrant flavoured jam

you can replace strawberry with thinly sliced banana and add any dry fruit of your choice like raisins/pistachio/walnuts 

Method

• Chop the fruits and nuts as shown in the picture below.

• Over a slice of bread spread 1 table spoon of butter and arrange the fruits over the butter spread.
  
• Now spread Jam on another slice of bread.
  
• Carefully place the bread applied with Jam over the fruit filled slice of bread. Spread 1/2 table spoon of ghee on the top layer.
  
• Heat the tawa. To check just sprinkle water on tawa and it should sizzle, be careful if it causes a lot of steam (which means tawa is over heated)
• Now place the ghee applied side on the hot tawa and press down the bread with a wooden spatula. Leave it for 2 mins.
• Apply 1/2 table spoon of ghee on other side.
• Now turn over the bread slice carefully as the fillings might spill.
  
• Press down nicely with wooden spatula and allow it to get toast for 2 min.
  
• Remove bread from tawa and serve hot. The crispy bread with juicy fruits filling will be the  nicest combination ever.