Mother's Recipe #9

Home Baked Biscuits

For my older son, back when he was four, his grandmother(my mother) was no less than Mary Poppins or Fraulein Maria from the Sound of Music, who used to carry a magical bag full of limitless possibilities, when she came to spend the summer vacations with us in Abu Dhabi. She baked these with my son, as a summer activity suggested by the nursery, back in those days. She would knead the dough with magical expertise, opening the doors towards baking for me, erasing all my starting troubles. I made these using finger millet flour along with the traditional whole wheat flour. I used jaggery and some olive oil to balance the sugar and butter respectively. A pinch of cocoa powder to finger millet flour gives the cookies an irresistible dark chocolate colour for the MUD part  in the cookies!

Ingredients : (Amounts are given from experience and intuition ;)

• Whole Wheat Flour  - 1/2 bowl

• Ragi flour (finger millet) - 1 and 1/2 bowls

• Butter - 1/4 slab

• Olive oil - 3 tablespoons

• Jaggery - 1/2 bowl

• Cinnamon (powdered) - 1/2 teaspoon

• Vanilla essence - 1/4 teaspoon

• Baking powder - 1/2 teaspoon

• Soda bicarb - 1/2 teaspoon

• Cocoa powder - 1 teaspoon

• Mixed nuts (powdered) - 2 to 4 teaspoons

• Warm milk/ warm water - as needed to knead the dough.

Freestyle Method : 

1. Mix the flours, baking powder, soda bicarb and cocoa to a large mixing bowl.

2. Add jaggery, cinnamon, nuts and vanilla essence.

3. Add butter chunks and olive oil.

4. Knead roughly until the butter chunks melt.

5. Add warm water or warm milk and knead firmly into a ball.

6. Refrigerate for a few hours to let the dough rest.

7. Roll into sheets of roughly 5mm thickness 

8. Cut to any size and shape. If you do not have a cookie cutter, use the lid of any jar to cut perfect circular shapes.

9. Use a fork to make patterns if you wish. 

10. Preheat the oven for 2 minutes at 230 degrees. Then bake for 20 minutes at 230 degrees.

11. Let them cool down to get the golden crunchy bite!

#mothersrecipes #handcraftedwithlove #homebakedcookies #grandmumslove 

:: Mud Cookies ;) ::

:: Finished in minutes! ::

:: 3rd batch was perfectly golden :: 

Mother's Recipe #6

:: Mixed Vegetable Cutlets ::

Mother's Recipe #5

Tomato Saar

As a child, I remember being confused between tomato “Soup” and tomato “Saar”. I always wanted to have a thick creamy cheesy tomato soup but my mother used to make a thin spicy tangy tomato drink , with flavours of garlic and coconut, which I later came to know as “tomato saar”. I realised recently, its consistency is similar to rasam, but without the dal water and rasam masala. Must admit, this time I liked the Saar more than the soup!

Ingredients :

• Tomatoes - 4 - medium sized
• Grated coconut - ½ cup
• Garlic cloves - 3-4
• Dry red chilies - 3-4
• Curry Leaves - 5-6
• Mustard seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
• Cumin seeds -1/2 teaspoon
• Asafoetida - 1/4 teaspoon
• Dry mango powder - 1/4 teaspoon
• Oil
• Salt

Freestyle Method :

1. Blanch four medium sized tomatoes for 10 minutes in boiling water. Keep aside in cold water for a while and peel off the skin.
2. Let them cool down. Then blend them into a smooth puree.
3. Grind the grated coconut, 3 red chilies, cumin seeds and garlic in a separate blender jar.
4. In a pan, heat some oil for tempering. Add mustard seeds, then one dry red chilly, asafoetida and curry leaves and wait for it to sizzle and crackle.
5. Add the coconut chili garlic paste to the pan. Sauté until the garlic loses its rawness.
6. Add the tomato puree and some leftover water from the blanching of the tomatoes to let it simmer for a few minutes. Season with salt and dry mango powder. If required, pour through a sieve to get a smooth thin shiny consistency.
7. Garnish with fresh coriander.

Tomato Saar can be eaten with rice as a light meal. In that case, the sieving process can be skipped. But I prefer to have it as a warm but fresh summer drink just like rasam, giving a subtle sour spiced satisfaction!

Mother's Recipe #4

Sheer Khurma/ 

Shevaya Kheer/ 

Semiya Payasam 

(Vermicelli Pudding)

This month, I thought of trying another simple dish, my mother used to make often on festive days - Shevaya Kheer. With the flavour of Vishu lingering from the week before, I thought why not Semiya Payasam! But then because of the Eid context last week, I finalized my plan on making Sheer Khurma.

These three dishes are pretty much the same thing, just with different consistencies of milk. While Sheer Khurma has a thick rich and creamy form, Shevaya Kheer has slightly more but thinner milk and Semiya Payasam has a lot more milk giving it a pourable consistency. Ingredients are all the same. Just a dash of the local cultural touch makes the difference.

In fact I remember my mother saying, “Lets make Sheer Khurma” for that one Eid holiday we used to get back when I was in India. She used to tell me that it's just a thicker version of the Shevaya Kheer, but sounds a lot more “royal”! Hence it seemed perfect for Eid-Ul-Fitr.

Ingredients :

• Milk - 1 litre (thick, full fat)
• Vermicelli/ Semiya - 1 cup
• Dates - 3-4
• Nuts (Almonds and Cashews) - 5-6 each
• Raisins - a handful
• Cardamom - 3
• Sugar/ Jaggery - about 2 tablespoons
• Ghee - 2-3 teaspoons
• Rose water - ½ teaspoon

Freestyle Method :

• On a hot pan, roast the dates and raisins with ghee and keep aside when aromatic and marinated.
• In the same pan, roast the vermicelli, crushed cardamom and finely chopped nuts until golden brown.
• Add milk + the dates and raisins mixture to the same pan.
• Let the vermicelli cook in the boiling milk. Keep stirring so that the vermicelli does not stick to the bottom of the pan. Let the milk thicken.
• Add sugar/ jaggery and rose water. Continue stirring.
• Turn off the heat when the vermicelli looks thick and wormy and the raisins are juicy and plump.
• Let it cool and garnish with more nuts.
• When warm, it can be eaten as breakfast and when cold, it can be served for dessert.

Of course, a themed plating is a must! After watching too many episodes of my favourite MasterChef Australia, I keep serving those fancy plates of food, telling my family about how I'm more into “Sophisticated Flavours” ;)

But secretly, later on, I added a lot more milk and more sugar to the Sheer Khurma and served it as Payasam to my very very sweet “payasam people” from the south ;)

Mother's Recipe #3

Egg Fried Rice

This recipe is not a trial but a pure dedication. I have made this dish about a thousand times till date…probably once a week for the past twenty years for myself and for my boys! This is the simplest recipe, but this one deserves the first place in my heart. This is the first dish my mother actually taught me, the first that I made as a teenager. This is a survival dish for those super hungry times, in the middle of school projects, vacations, architectural submissions and of course has been my '5 am bento box saviour recipe' for years!

I am sure all my best friends from school must be remembering my mother’s famous egg fried rice in my steel tiffin box. My vegetarian friend, who secretly started eating eggs, was because of this egg fried rice!!!

Even my children’s friends have begun to love it, sharing it from their lunch boxes. My only regret remains, that because of his egg allergy, my husband has never got to taste this recipe. I always tell him, one day, the aroma of my egg recipes will help him get rid of his allergy!

Ingredients : (Serves two extra hungry children)

• 2 -3 Eggs
• ½ Onion
• Cumin seeds/ Cumin powder - 1/2 teaspoon (Personally I like cumin seeds more than powder. But for some finicky boys, I add the powder, because they have some complaints about jeera rice, that “the seeds keep coming in the way of each tasty bite!” )
• Curry leaves - 6-7 (Better if freshly picked from the garden)
• Green chilly - 1
• Turmeric powder - ¼ teaspoon
• Ghee - 1 teaspoon
• Oil (groundnut/ olive/ sunflower) - 1 teaspoon
• Cooked Rice - 2 bowls (leftover rice works perfectly)
• Goda masala (Indian spice mix - optional)
• Fresh coriander for garnish
• Juice of ½ a lemon.
• Salt
• Black Pepper

Freestyle Method :

• Heat the oil in the pan. Add curry leaves, cumin seeds and green chilly. Let them dance in the oil. Add sliced onion. Let him join in the oiled dance until tired and transparent ;)
• Add cumin powder (if you're not using cumin seeds) and turmeric powder. Toss until uniformly coated on the onion.
• Break two eggs. Let them settle for a while and then toss them into a scrambled form. Wait until the eggs are cooked perfectly.
• Add cooked rice and mix. Add ghee, salt, pepper.
• Add that magical touch of the goda masala spice mix and let its aroma get infused with each grain of the rice.                                                                                                                       *Every year, my mother used to give me a jar of her special homemade goda masala mix. It adds that magical touch to absolutely any dish. I have only about a quarter jar of that masala still left with me. I am using it sparingly, as I have never found that exact mix in any shop even in India. It was her special secret recipe, which I have been trying to crack. Somewhere deep inside, I'm scared, what'll happen if that spice jar gets over? It's the last of my mother’s creations that I am holding onto like a child. That masala has pushed me into trying new dishes. I hope I can recreate the magic of that jar one day!
• Garnish the rice with the juice of ½ a lemon and some freshly chopped coriander. No dish is complete without this lemon-coriander duo!
• Fill it in the bento box/ tiffin box after letting the steam settle. Otherwise eat it up right away ;)

Cooking Time - less than 10 minutes (Rice should be cooked beforehand and cooled)

#mothersrecipe3  #eggfriedrice  #bentoboxrecipes  #tiffinbox 

Mother's Recipe #2

Finger Millet + Fresh Fruit Cake

This recipe is carried forward from my great grandmother, to my mother and now to me. This cake is not really a fancy dish, but a humble, no fuss, eggless sweet dish, made from the less used flours in the house, combined with seasonal fruits to add a much required freshness. The egg is replaced by yogurt. Hence the cake has a nice balance of sweet and tangy flavours. Cakes in those days were generally steamed in a double boiler as opposed to baking in ovens. Perhaps this method keeps the cake more moist.

My mother and my great grandmother used to make it with semolina + jowar/ sorghum flour with yogurt and fresh mango. I decided to add my own touch by using ragi/finger millet flour, which is rich in iron. I have used fresh strawberries for the “Valentine’s day” context ;)

Ingredients -

• Ragi/ finger millet flour - 1 and 1/2 cups
• Multipurpose flour/ Maida or Semolina - ½ cup
• Fresh fruit (strawberries) - 1/2 cup finely chopped fruit + 1 cup roughly chopped fruit for mashing into the batter.
• Butter - 1/3rd slab
• Baking powder and Soda Bicarb - 1 teaspoon each
• Sugar - ½ cup
• Jaggery - ½ cup
• Yogurt - 2 tablespoons
• Milk - ¼ litre
• Ghee - for greasing the baking tray
• Almonds/walnuts - about 6 Nos, if you like nuts.
• Fresh Cream - just a dollop.

Freestyle Method -

• Take one bowl for the dry ingredients. Sieve all the flours. Add powdered sugar and powdered jaggery into the bowl. Add baking powder and soda bicarb.
• Into another bowl - (the wet bowl) - add butter, roughly chopped strawberries and yogurt. Mix well.
• Add the dry mix to the wet mix . Stir firmly with a spatula adding milk as required. Then blend with a hand mixer till a dosa-batter consistency is achieved.
• Add finely chopped fruit and nuts towards the end. No mixing after this process.
• Grease the baking tray with a few drops of ghee. Pour the magical potion into the tray. With ragi flour, the batter gets a nice light brown “chocolatey” colour, without the cocoa! That's a victory! The boys think it's chocolate cake ;) I understood the whole point of using the less used flours in such dishes. No one can pinpoint our underlying healthy intentions!
• Preheat the oven for 10 minutes at 200 degrees.
• Bake the cake for 40 minutes.
• Take the toothpick test to see if you need another 5 minutes of baking or not!

Finally, I coated the cake with some fresh cream and thinly sliced strawberries to give a chic makeover to this rustic recipe from the villages of the western coast of India, where my great grandmother used to live.

My mother was a great cook and a quick learner, who became the favourite student of my great grandmother. I have become the student now! Everyone says, my personality is a combination of my mother's and my great grandmother's.  Thus these recipes have found a way of reaching out again, this time through me!

#yearofthemillet #milletcake 

:: Finger Millet + Fresh Fruit Cake::

Mother's Recipe #1

Cilantro Bites

My mother would have been 65 today. To continue a celebration of her heavenly birthdays here on earth, today I open the chapter to my mother's recipes to be tried out this year.

My sister and I often talk about what we miss the most from our mother. It’s the food she cooked so effortlessly! As a little girl, I used to sit in my mother’s lap and take a close look at her hands. Her hands always told me stories of garlic and coriander! Her fingers had some magic…of knowing how much of any ingredient goes into a recipe. She never followed any recipe books or cooking shows. Whatever she cooked used to be something learnt from her mother and later from my great grandmother, with a touch of her own innovation.

I used to help her in the kitchen. She would say, “Let me do my quick freestyle cooking. You can finish the dish with your artistic plating.” We made a great team!

I want to keep her legacy alive, to seek her blessings in what I do and to pass on her recipes to the next generation, so that my boys continue to remember her through food. Hence as a part of my new year resolutions, I have decided to recreate twelve of my mother’s simple recipes, one for each month.

I begin this month with one of her favourites and mine - “Cilantro Bites" or "Kothimbir Wadi”. This is a savoury snack made with coriander/cilantro, gram flour and sesame seeds. The hero ingredient here is coriander, which is generally used  as a garnish in most dishes.

Ingredients: (Amounts are from experience and intuition :)

• Coriander – 1 full fresh bunch
• Gram flour - 2-3 tablespoons per batch
• Ginger - one blob
• Garlic - 4-5 cloves
• Peanuts - a handful
• Green chilly - 2 maybe
• Sesame seeds - 2 teaspoons
• Turmeric - 1/2 teaspoon
• Coriander powder - 1/2 teaspoon
• Asafetida - 1/4 teaspoon
• Salt - less is more!

Freestyle method :

• Wash the fresh coriander under running water and chop it finely. Avoid thick stems.
• Mix sieved gram flour and water to form a smooth batter of dosa consistency and add the chopped coriander to it.
• Roast the peanuts and sesame seeds separately on a dry pan on the side.
• Grind a mixture of ginger, garlic, green chilly and the roasted peanuts.
• Add the mixture to the batter along with coriander powder, turmeric, asafetida and the roasted sesame seeds.
• Mix well to an uttappam consistency.
• Steam it on a double boiler for about 20minutes.
• Allow the coriander “cake” to cool.
• Cut into bite sized squares. Alternatively, it can be rolled into cylinders for steaming and then cut into round pieces.
• Pan fry until golden brown.
• Optionally, season with curry leaves, grated coconut.
• Keep one batch aside for that neat 'MasterChef- style plating' and the perfect Instagram shot.
• Allow the other batch to be gobbled up in minutes by the boys!

:: Cilantro Bites ::