Bottle Gourd Curry

How do you make sure children are entertained these days?  If my children are not allowed to watch the TV, or to play on the computer or the ipod or any other electronic gadget they might have, how do I keep them busy?  They could spend a couple of hours reading as they both like reading, but you cannot expect an 8-year old and a 12-year old to be reading the whole day.  During school days it is all taken care of - they are at school for 8 hours and by the time they get home, they have to start on their assignments and the little time they have left, we spend watching some television or then just reading or talking or meeting old friends.  But during vacations, and especially when it is cold and snowing outside, how to keep them busy?  

We have some puzzle  games from the Thinkfun series and we suggested to them that perhaps they could start playing these again.  These used to play them a lot before, but they lose interest in their old games and so you need to renew that interest in them again.  My children could sit and play with these for hours together.  Then we also ordered some Meccano sets which is a good way to keep them occupied and also to use their imagination.  My son also expressed a desire to program games and so he has agreed to start learning JavaScript.  I am happy to say that yesterday there was no mention of being “bored” and they spent their day reading and playing with the games we got them.  In the evenings, they help me with the cooking and that is something else they both enjoy doing.  So I am happy to say bye to the TV and computer for the next few weeks.

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Serves: 6

Ingredients: 

4 cups bottle gourd, peeled and diced into cubes

2 tablespoons jaggery powder

2 tablespoons tamarind pulp

Salt to taste

4 cups water

Grind to a coarse paste:

4 tablespoons fresh coconut gratings

4 teaspoons mustard seeds

2 tablespoons roasted Bengal Gram Dal

½ teaspoon asafoetida

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

3 red chillies

 For the Seasoning:

2 tablespoons sunflower oil

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

A sprig of curry leaves

Method:

1. Boil the four cups of water and add the bottle gourd to it.  
2. Let it boil on low flame for 15 minutes or until the pieces are tender.  
3. Drain all but ½ a cup of the water and now add the cooked bottle gourd pieces and water to the vessel along with the jaggery and tamarind pulp.  Simmer for 3 minutes.  
4. Now add the ground paste and simmer for 10 minutes on low flame.  
5. In a separate vessel heat the oil and when it is hot, add the cumin seeds and curry leaves.  
6. Pour this mixture over the bottle gourd curry and serve hot with rice or chappatis.

Rajasthani Lentils

Lentils are a staple diet in India.  Since a lot of Indians are vegetarians, lentils are a good source of protein and included in the diet. At home we try to have red meat only once a week.  For the rest, we try to divide the meals between chicken, fish, veggies and lentils.  It is not a hard and fast rule, but just a guideline we have.  And lentils and fish go very good together - usually if there is a dal at home, I try to accompany it with some fried fish or grilled fish.  

Red Gram, Black Gram, Green Gram & Bengal Gram

The below recipe is very simple using the minimal of ingredients and/or spices.  You can use only three of the below four lentils if you do not have them all or you can use also just two of them.  You could also omit the chilli powder from the recipe if you want to keep it bland. 

Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients:

20 grams red gram dal
20 grams black gram dal
20 grams green gram dal

20 grams Bengal gram dal

Salt to taste

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

2 tablespoons sunflower oil

½ teaspoon red chilli powder

1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 cups water 
1 tablespoon coriander leaves, cut
1 tablespoon coconut gratings

Method:

1. Wash and mix all the dals and soak for one hour.  
2. Add salt and turmeric and water to the dals.  Cook till dals are tender.  
3. Mash to blend with the liquid.  Remove from fire.  
4. Heat oil separately in another vessel and add the cumin seeds when oil is hot.  
5. Add the red chili powder and now add the dal mixture to this.  
6. Garnish with coriander leaves and coconut gratings.  Serve hot with rice.

Bitter Gourd Curry

This morning at work, I met all my colleagues and wished everyone a happy New Year.  It was nice - new year, new beginnings.  And what are the new beginnings?  Forgetting and forgiving everyone for what they have done last year and moving on?   Starting anew?  Often we have heard this quote from A.Pope – “To err is human; to forgive is divine”.  Personally for me, I think I can forgive easily, but never forget.  But if I cannot forget, how could I claim that I forgive?  We ask God for forgiveness – many of us make confessions and then ask forgiveness.  But if just making confessions and then asking forgiveness is all it takes, wouldn’t that be too easy?  Are we not required to make amends towards the person we have inflicted wrong against?  If forgiveness is sincere and we truly repent what we have done and sincerely try to overcome our faults, would we be forgiven?   

Bitter Gourd used below in the dish, is a vegetable not all of us like.  I have eaten this vegetable only twice in my entire life.  But after cooking the dish below, I think I have fallen in love with this rather ugly vegetable.  The medicinal properties of this vegetable are many and are often used by diabetics.  I am also using jaggery in the recipe which is a type of sugar made from sugar cane or date palms.  You can find it in most Asian stores.  Fenugreek, another seed used in this recipe, has many medicinal properties.  

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Serves 4

Ingredients:

4 Bitter Gourd

2 medium sized potatoes

4 tablespoons tamarind pulp

4 tablespoons jaggery powder

Salt to Taste

2 tablespoons sunflower oil

1 teaspoon mustard Seeds

Roasted and ground paste

½ teaspoon asafoetida

½ teaspoon turmeric

1 cup water

Toast and grind to a coarse paste the following:

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon black pepper seeds

2 teaspoons fenugreek seeds

2 tablespoons sesame seeds

4 tablespoons Bengal Gram Dal

A sprig of curry leaves

6 tablespoons of dry coconut gratings

 Method:

1. Wash, de-seed and slice the gourds.  
2. Salt them and keep them aside for 30 minutes.  Wash and cut into cubes.  
3. Wash, peel and slice the potatoes.  
4. Heat oil in a pan.  When hot, add the mustard seeds.  
5. When the mustard splutters, add the gourd, the potatoes, the turmeric and asafoetida. 
6. Sauté this on medium flame until they are tender, approximately 10 minutes.  
7. Now add the tamarind pulp, jaggery and salt along with 1 cup water and simmer on low flame for about 5 minutes.  
8. Add the ground paste and stir well.  
9. Simmer for another five minutes till it is well blended.  Serve hot with chappatis.

Chocolate Walnut Pudding

With the New Year just gone by, the one thing you hear everywhere, and these days see it on the statuses of several of your "on line friends" is about their new year resolutions.  And of course if you have record of their previous years resolution, you will see it is almost the same.  Which goes to show us that the old resolution failed and this is the 2nd, 3rd or in some instances even the 4th attempt at making it successful. But does this qualify us to be failures or just very resilient?  

I am guessing the top New Year resolutions of all time would have something to do with loosing weight (at least that is what I choose every year...and still am resilient about it to choose it yet again), maybe for many quitting smoking and for many others spending more time with the family. Personally, I have stopped making resolutions publicly.  The one secret resolution I always have and never accomplish is to loose weight - but then, when you love to cook, you are bound to eat what you make and hence very difficult to accomplish this resolution.  Perhaps I should resolve to exercise everyday - and then automatically I would have the resolution of loosing weight too accomplished...that seems better.  But on second thoughts, maybe resolve to exercise every other day seems more realistic.  And definitely the below recipe is no help in getting anywhere close to getting my weight down - chocolate puddings being my weak point after all. 

Mixed flours

Preparation Time: 1 hour

Serves 6

Ingredients:

 1 cup sifted flour

2 tablespoon cocoa powder

2 teaspoon baking powder

¾ cup granulated sugar

½ teaspoon  salt

½ cup semi skimmed milk

Roasted Walnuts

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 tablespoons melted butter

1 cup broken walnuts

¾ cup brown sugar

¼ cup cocoa powder

1 cup hot water

Method:

1. Sift together flour, baking powder, granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons cocoa and salt.  
2. Add milk, butter and vanilla essence to the mixture above.  
3. Roast the nuts till brown in colour.  Mix them into the above mixture.  
4. Pour into greased cake pan.  
5. Mix the brown sugar and the ¼ cup cocoa.  
6. Sprinkle over the batter in the pan.  
7. Pour hot water over the entire batter evenly.  
8. Bake in a pre heated oven (180 degrees C) for 45 minutes.

Hot water on the pudding

Sprinkled cocoa & sugar

Egg Nest

There are days when trying to find something suitable to cook for children can be a real hassle.  However, with spaghetti and noodles you can never go wrong. The dish below is surprisingly simple and easy to make and tasty too.  My 8-year old daughter prepared the dish under my supervision - so she just loved eating what she had made. Of course getting her brother to eat something his sister made is an entirely different story - sibling rivalry.  But after explaining to him that it was my instructions and my menu and she was the one who was just "stirring" in everything, he agreed it was a good dish.  Sometimes with the war we have at our house between the two children, I think my husband and I could be good negotiators of peace in the Middle East because if you can negotiate a peace at our house, you can negotiate it anywhere. 

Preparation Time:  10 minutes

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

2 eggs, hard boiled

200 grams egg noodles

1 chicken soup cube

1 carrot, grated

1 teaspoon garlic chilli sauce

2 tablespoon tomato sauce

1 red onion medium sized , minced

Salt to taste

1 tablespoon corn oil


Method:

1. Heat oil in pan.  
2. When hot, sauté onion in oil and fry for 2 minutes on medium heat.  
3. Slide in noodles, soup cube, grated carrot and garlic-chilli sauce.   
4. Pour approximately two cups hot water to cover the noodles and cook on simmer point till they expand. 
5. Turn off heat and swirl in tomato sauce.   
6. Transfer to a serving dish.  Shell and serve the hard boiled eggs on top of the noodles.