Recipe : Vegetable Stir Fry (Vegan)

Since we are now trying to be a bit cautious about our weight, whenever we have over indulged ( by eating out, eating late, eating heavy, eating dessert), the next day I keep the food really light and healthy. so most Mondays end up being fruit or salad days.

One of B's favourite dishes are stir fry's. He loves the fact that the veggies remain crisp, so he doesn't crave something fried for texture.

You can use any combination of vegetables for a stir fry, but the crisper ones are what work best - cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, baby corn, capsicum, beans, carrots are all great options. I love adding mushrooms too for their deeper, earthier flavours.

Your seasoning, can be anything that you like, I am partial to garlic, black pepper, star anise and sichuan pepper in various combinations.

I also tend to use soya sauce for flavouring at the end, so I don't add any salt. You can use your choice of homemade dressings or ready made stir fry / oyster sauce or any combination of sauces that you like. I often add some drops of tabasco sauce, just to up the heat a bit.

While I was making this stir fry last night, husband promised to help with taking some photos. He was very excited with his new phone and its camera features, hence there are some whacky images, that did look interesting, so I'm going to add them at the end. Let me know what you think.

Stir fry's are one of the few rare dishes that i prep for completely before I start to cook. Most times, I keep chopping, washing, cleaning through the process. But given how quickly the veggies cook in this dish, I like to keep my mis-en-place ready before i start.

The order in which the veggies go into the pan is dependent on how long each one needs to cook to your level of doneness.

Ingredients :
1 large bowl of mixed chopped vegetables of your choice
(in this instance I used broccoli, red & yellow peppers, baby corn, cabbage and mushrooms)

 1/2 tsp olive oil
2 tbsp chopped garlic
1" ginger grated
1 tsp pepper pounded coarsely
5-6 Sichuan Peppers pounded coarsely
1 star anise pounded coarsely
soya sauce to taste
natural vinegar / lime juice to taste

Method:
Warm the pan on high heat and add the oil
Drop the chopped garlic and pounded spices into the hot oil and let them splutter and the garlic brown a bit.
Now add the mushrooms, broccoli, cabbage, baby corn and bell peppers in order (intervals depend on how well you want each one cooked)
Keep stir frying on high heat until done.
Take the stir fry out into a serving bowl and season with soya sauce, vinegar or sauce of your choice.

Your meal is ready

Below are some of the pictures B took, using the special effects on his phone.

And my favourites of the lot - The Kaleidoscope Effect

This post is also submitted for the Indiblogger & Borosil #BeautifulFood contest

Recipe : Roasted Pumpkin (Vegan)

When we visited Canada a couple of years ago for a cousins wedding, we had a BBQ at U Ossie & Aunty Aureen's house and one of my (many, many) aunts - Belinda (who hates being called "Aunty" by me cause it makes her feel "old" LOL) roasted some butternut squash which was amazingly tasty.

Seeing that we don't get a variety of squashes in India, I hadn't had the opportunity to try making this myself. Today though, I saw some lovely red baby pumpkins in the market and remembering this recipe, I picked one up.

Sadly for me, the pumpkin wasn't ripe enough, so the end product was missing the sweetness, but I think the flavours worked very well and I will ask for help to select a ripe pumpkin next time and retry this recipe.

I could have added some brown sugar to this while baking, but this week is diet week and sugar and sweeteners are off the menu.

Its quite easy to assemble and takes about 10 minutes to prep (depending on the size of your pumpkin) and then another 45 minutes in the oven that you can use to prepare the rest of your meal or just have a bath or a glass of wine while the pumpkin is roasting.

Ingredients :
1/2 kg ripe pumpkin or Squash
6-8 cloves garlic chopped
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder (you can also use all spice)
1 tsp chilli flakes
sea salt to taste
1/2 tsp of olive oil

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180C / 355F.
Clean and chop the pumpkin (you can retain the separated seeds for roasting)
Place the pumpkin pieces in an ovenproof bowl
Add the chopped garlic, cinnamon powder, chilli flakes, sea salt and olive oil.

Toss or stir till it is all well combined.
I used my hands and gave all the pieces a light massage with the spices.
If you feel the pumpkin isn't sweet enough, add a bit of brown sugar too.

Roast in the oven for 30-55 minutes.
(if you have cut your pumpkin into chunks, it will take closer to 55minutes, if you have sliced it fine, it should be done in around 30 minutes - ripeness of the pumpkin is also a factor in how long it will take to cook)
Serve hot

Kim's Tips for Leftovers :
While, I was roasting the pumpkin in the microwave, I placed the seeds in an ovenproof glass lid and slid it under the wire rack on which the pumpkin dish was placed. The roasted seeds can be lightly seasoned and eaten as a healthy snack or tossed into salads where they provide fibre and crunch.

If you don't feel like eating leftover roasted pumpkin for a second meal, give the pumpkin a whiz in the food processor until finely blended. Add some chicken or vegetable stock (till you get your desired consistency) and bring to a boil with some fresh herbs and cream to garnish.

You can even mix the roasted pumpkin pieces into a green leafy salad for an alternate texture and a sweet flavour that goes well with bitter leaves.

Kim's Tips:
While I piled all the pumpkin into one dish (given the limited size of my microwave oven), the better spaced the pumpkin pieces are, the better will be the caramelisation of the pumpkin.

The skin adds fiber to the dish, but you can remove it if you prefer.

This post is also being submitted for Round 2 of the Indiblogger & Borosil #BeautifulFood Competition

Borosil Contest #BeautifulFood

As most of you who follow my blog know, I was one of the bloggers shortlisted for Round 2 of the Indiblogger and Borosil "My Beautiful Food" Contest

So for Round 2, I had to serve food in the dishes sent to me by Borosil.

There was such excitement at home when the parcel from Borosil & Indiblogger finally arrived. We had been waiting a couple of days, the rains in Ahmedabad had played spoilsport and the roads were inundated, making life difficult for the poor courier delivery guys. Mum and I have been baking and serving dishes in Borosil Glassware for ages and she had been hoping to see the new designs before she left the city.

Everything was beautifully and securely packed and all the fragile glass articles reached me safely via Mumbai - Navi Mumbai - Baroda. That is some really great quality packing.

However, mums & my first reaction on looking at the dishes was "but these are so small!" Neither of us is comfortable cooking in small quantities, we tend to cook large meals and love feeding people. And if we have 4 people coming over for a meal, I will end up cooking about at least 6-8kgs of food. I think this trait has been passed down through my nana's genes. We are more comfortable cooking in large quantities than small ones, although most of the time these days mum and I are cooking for 1-2 people for daily meals, but in this case we serve/paroso onto the plate directly from the kitchen.

So yes, it was a huge challenge to cook in these dishes. But once I started cooking in them, I realised that while they looked small, they did carry a lot of volume 1/2-1kg of food in the serving dishes and a little more than 500 ml in the awesomely cute Baby Gourmet Bowls.

The first opportunity that I got to use these dishes, was the very same evening, since a friend had arrived from Delhi and I served an Andhra style Meal for dinner.

There was a spicy Chicken 65, Kebabs (as starters) Parathas, Biryani, mixed vegetables and a mutton curry, with a salad and some accompaniments.

I was struck by how my accompaniments (Pudina Chutney, Raita, Mirch ka Salan) mirrored the colors of the Indian Flag and used the Borosil Glasses to emphasise the colours

The centrepiece of course was the biryani and I think that transparent glassware, shows Biryani at its best where you can admire all its colours and layers.

Over the following week, I used the dishes to serve whatever was made at home (the contest was an incentive) whenever I remembered to use the dishes and click pictures.

Even something as simple as steamed corn with a chilli-garlic vinaigrette looked so lovely in the Borosil dishes.

And the Baby Gourmet Bowls made my simple tomato soup, look so posh!

The glassware in all these pictures was part of the hamper sent to me as a prize for Round 1 and can be bought on myborosil.com

My Favourite Foods

There are some foods that are my absolute favourites. When I say absolute favourites, I mean, that I can eat them anytime, no matter how full I am or what time of the day or night.

Good food doesn't just satisfy the stomach, its a feast for all the senses.

Visual - it is well presented and beautifully colored without any excess oil or synthetic colors to mar the view.

Kinesthetic - every grain or every bite is just as it should be whether it is the soft smoothness of a rasmalai or a finger dipped in chocolate ganache or buttercream icing or a spicy meet mirsang or the feel of a well set paneer.

Auditory - The crunch of a papad or the crack of a creme brulee.

Olfactory - the aroma of freshly baked bread, piping hot samosas out of the frying pan, the opening of a dum biryani, they all fill the house with such a wonderful aroma, that it is impossible to resist the temptation to dig right in.

Gustatory - And of course, the ultimate test of great food is the taste.

Any food that satisfies all the 5 senses makes for a delectable experience, which leaves me on a complete high. A high on life. So which would be my most zestful food experiences?

5. Chocolate - whether a Cadbury's Dairy Milk Silk or a a Jar of Nutella or a Box of Merci

4. A Great Steak - For me, a Perfect Steak is medium rare. Its cooked just enough, but still has a lovely meaty taste to it and is nice a soft when you bite into it. Just team up a well marinated steak with some Melted Herb Butter and some gorgeous mashed potatoes and it can transport me to heaven.

3. Creme Brulee - The best Creme Brulee's that  have ever eaten were at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in Dubai and at the Surya Mahal (Udaivilas Palace) in Udaipur.

2. A Great British Fry Up - The Classic British Breakfast or Eggs, Bacon, Sausages, Toast, Grilled Mushrooms, Baked Beans with maybe some Waffles and Pancakes thrown in for Good Measure and a Lovely Hot Mug of Steaming Coffee!  What's not to love? Its a Perfect Start to the Day, but I can also have it for Lunch or Diner or as a Midnight Snack.

1. My Numero Uno Zest Inducing Food, no Prizes for Guessing is Biryani!
Lucknowi, Mughlai, Malabar, Pakistani, Awadhi, Andhra, Calcutta. The style just doesn't matter. It just needs to be beautifully fragrant rice paired with a delicious well marinated meat, all cooked together to the perfect point. a perfect Biryani is never oily or over colored. Ranging from plain white to bright orange, the colour doesn't matter as long as it tastes yum!

The Best Food is Exciting, Enervating, Energising and Zestful.

So what are YOUR Favourite Foods?

This post is a part of the #ZestUpYourLife activity in association with TATA Zest and BlogAdda.com

Black Food - #WhatTheBlack

Black as a colour in food is often associated with being burnt. As a child, my sister went through a phase where she would assiduously remove every bit of black from her food before she would even begin to eat. Given that mustard and jeera were standard ingredients in the tadkas at home, it often took her longer to pluck out the black grains, than to actually eat her food.

So can black be beautiful in food?

Of course it can!

Case in Point :

1. Chocolate - Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, bitter chocolate, chocolate cake, chocolate ganache, chocolate biscuits, Black Forest Cake  - they all come in various shades of black and each one is more delicious than the other.

2. Squid Ink - Squid Ink is rapidly gaining popularity or at least curiosity, ever since the Masterchef Australia series started airing on Indian TV. We normally used to discard all of the black bits when cleaning squids, but now it is being used to colour pasta to great acclaim in some parts of the world.

3. Spices - What would an Indian kitchen be without spices? Pepper, cinnamon, cloves, All Spice, Mustard, kala til, kalonji, are all an essential part of Indian cooking and yes, they are all black! Then you also have Vanilla Beans and Licorice (Mulethi) which have very strong flavours, but are much loved.

4. Black Rice - a beautiful nutty rice from Manipur which is excellent in kheers.

5. Some of the most expensive ingredients in the world (excepting saffron) are also black - think Caviar and Black Truffles.

Even common foods like cabbage, mushrooms, potatoes, brinjals come in shades that are almost black, so can you honestly say that black = burnt?

This post is a part of #WhatTheBlack activity at BlogAdda.com