Celery, Carrot, Lettuce, Cauliflower Salad

After long last I finally made my own lunch (almost a week)! Have been superbusy getting my visa in order, and have just been eating cooked meals at home or a plate of fruit in the office canteen. Why now? Because I was dying to try out my celery. We get orange+celery juice in many juice shops, but for some reason I've never seen celery being sold at the supermarket or veggie vendors. So, when I saw some at Nature's Basket, I immediately grabbed some!

Celery, Carrot, Lettuce, Cauliflower Salad

Ingredients:

• 3 large stalks of celery (including leaves)
• 1/2 icebery lettuce
• 1 red carrot
• Handful of cauliflower florets

Dressing:

• Juice of half a lime/lemon
• Tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon madras curry powder
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

The Kidney Bean Salad

Kidney beans are a good source of cholestrol-lowering fiber, they're cheap, and are available all year round. You do have to wash them well, and then soak in water for at least 8-12 hours. But then the upside is that you dont need to cook them! They look soft to the touch after an overnight soak, but start to cook them and they will actually harden and take a hell of a time to be completely cooked. Why bother cooking at all?! They're perfectly edible raw.

The Kidney Bean Salad

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups of kidney beans, presoaked overnight
• 1 cup carrots
• 2 cups green cabbage
• 2 cups green peppers
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 1 lime
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 4 leaves of sage
• Handful of mint leaves
• Salt, per taste

To make:

Drain the kidney beans.

Chop your veggies fairly small.

Mix in with the kidney beans.

Add the salt, curry powder, lime juice, sage and mint leaves, along with the oil.

Let it marinate for an hour or so before eating.

Pepper and Tomato Upma

My mom, seeing that I hadn't eaten anything till 11 am today, was nice enough to make a batch of upma for me today. However, I did supervise the cooking - since she usually loves to cook stuff for much longer than I would like, and does not put in quite as much veggies as I would like. I added green peppers, carrots, and tomatoes this time.

Pepper and Tomato Upma


Ingredients:

• 1 cup semolina or an upma premix
• 1 green pepper
• 1 carrot
• 1 tomato
• 1/2 onion
• 1 large green chilli
• 1/2 cup of water
• Teaspoon of vegetable oil
• Half a lime

To make:

• In a pan, gently dry roast the semolina/upma premix for a minute or two.
• In another pot, heat the oil and saute the onions and the chilli.
• Add the roasted semolina and cook for approximately 7-10 minutes.
• Once the semolina is cooked, turn off the gas and add the chopped up vegetables.
• Serve immediately with lashings of lime juice.

Mixed Veggie Salad with Rosemary and Sumac

A very simple salad with finely chopped baby carrots, tomatoes, beets, peppers, and seasoned with fresh rosemary.

Rosemary and Mixed Veggie Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 beetroot
• 1 green tomato
• 3-4 baby carrots
• 1 green pepper
• 1 red pepper
• 3-4 sprigs of rosemary (about a tablespoon of rosemary leaves)
• Teaspoon of olive oil
• Teaspoon of sumac

To make:

• Chop all the veggies finely into roughly the same size.
• Make a dressing of the rosemary, olive oil and sumac.
• Pour over the salad.

Entered into Smitha's Best Foods You Ate Giveaway:

Broccoli, Carrot, and Pepper Upma

A favorite breakfast dish of mine is Upma, or savory semolina porridge. I generally spike it with tons of veggies I am dying to get rid of. In this case, some broccoli, carrot and green pepper.

Broccoli, Carrot, and Pepper Upma

Ingredients:

• 1 cup semolina or an upma premix
• 1 cup broccoli
• 1/2 cup carrot
• 1/2 cup green peppers
• 1 large green chilli
• 1 cup of water
• Teaspoon of vegetable oil
• Half a lime

To make:

• In a pot, gently dry roast the semolina/upma premix for a minute or two.
• Add oil and water to the roasted semolina and cook for approximately 7-10 minutes.
• Once the semolina is cooked, add the chopped up vegetables.
• Stir for half a minute and turn off the gas.
• Serve immediately with lashings of lime juice.
  
  

Coconut Rice and Carrot Sambal

Continuing with my South Indian culinary adventure, I made carrot sambal and cocunut rice for dinner last night.

Coconut rice is typically made in the south of India, where coconuts are aplenty. There, they typically add coconut milk or shards of fresh coconut to rice and cook the rice as usual. I had neither fresh coconut shavings, nor coconut milk. But I did have plenty of my coconut chutney from my morning order of dosas and wadas. Seemed like a shame to toss out the perfectly good coconut chutney that came with my order.

To make your own coconut chutney, blend together one cup fresh coconut, 2 green chillies, piece of ginger. Temper mustard seeds, chilli, and curry leaves for a minute and add that mixture to your coconut paste.

Since I did use more coconut than rice, the result was more a coconut risotto with a creamy texture and very heavy to eat.

I am especially proud of my carrot sambal, which is unbelievably easy to make and tastes great! Indian Sambals, unlike their Thai cousin, are not a sauce, but rather a dry condiment-like addition to a dish. The sweetness of the carrots, combined with the mustard and chillis in the sambal go really well with the heavy creaminess of the coconut and starchiness of the rice.

Coconut Rice

Ingredients:

• ½ cup rice
• ¾ cup coconut chutney
• Tablespoon of coconut oil
• 1 cup water

To make:

Add all the ingredients in a pot and cook for 15-20 minutes, or till the rice is done. I stopped cooking when the rice was done but there was still a little liquid left in the pot.

Carrot Sambal

Ingredients:

• 1 carrot
• 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 1 green chilli
• 5-10 curry leaves
• Teaspoon of oil

To make:

• Grate the carrot and chop the chilli finely.
• In a small pan, add a little oil.
• Once the oil is heated, add the mustard seeds, curry leaves, and the chilli.
• Temper for one minute and then add the carrot.
• Turn off the gas after a minute. Mix well and serve hot.

Tangy Carrot and Peppers Soup

The tang comes not from limes (my favorite ingredient), but from tamarind paste. Since I did have some lying around the house, I decided to use tamarind and also finish off my, rather crinkly, carrots.

To make tamarind paste yourself, just let the tamarind soak overnight in some water and then squeeze the pulp out to make a thick paste. Something like this:

And as usual, you can have this soup raw. I've just heated it for a minute over the stove - but you can just as easily skip this step.

Tangy Carrot and Peppers Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 carrots
• 1 red pepper
• 1 teaspoon whole cumin
• 2 teaspoons of tamarind paste
• 1 cup water or as per desired soup consistency

To make:
Slice the carrots and pepper roughly.

Add the chopped veggies to a blender. Add the cumin and tamarind paste.  Add the water and blitz until it is smooth.

Transfer to a pot and gently heat it for a minute or two. Serve immediately.