Avocado Adventures

When you are a food blogger, people assume that you cook with fancy ingredients every day. And if you burst that bubble and admit that you just love cooking – and not necessarily exotic dishes, then they are so disappointed that you feel like you have let them down. So to make them feel better (and to prove to yourself that you are indeed a true foodie) you start rattling off words like porcini, Arborio rice, thyme, wasabi, emmental cheese, zucchini, asparagus, artichokes and the like in your head! Never mind that these are things that the average Indian has probably never heard of, forget tasted or cooked with. But you being a true gourmand have to have cooked with these strange-sounding and unfamiliar-therefore-gotta-be-delicious ingredients.

Fried... Sweet Potatoes and My Brains!

I’m a person not prone to hatred. I think I’m very tolerant and in fact, have been blamed for being too placid and non-judgmental.

So I’m kind of shocked to be experiencing a strange emotion. Hatred. I have discovered that I hate judgmental people. I really hate people who always take the moral high ground and make judgments about others around them. “Would you please take a look inside your own homes?”, I feel like screaming. But no, that would make me petty and vindictive… and I would be judged again! So I just seethe and fume and sometimes shed a tear or two. Everyone has a secret life, everyone has things that they would not like the world to know… and people have no right to be critical about how someone chooses to lead his/her life. More often than not, these upholders of morality and deciders of right and wrong do not even have the full picture! And yet… they go about on their high horses destroying lives, complicating relationships and interfering in situations where they are so not welcome!

And then, they try and prove how they are right because after all, they had your best intentions at heart. Oh how noble! I think I’m going to choke with remorse and fall at your feet…not! And if we do not appreciate their interference and give them a piece of our mind, they are all hurt and filled with righteous anger. I mean really. Haven’t they heard of the adage ‘Eavesdroppers seldom hear anything good of themselves’? It’s the same theory. You poke your nose into someone else’s mess, then be prepared to come out smelling bad! Ermm…. You get the picture.

As-good-as-meat (Veg) Shikampuri Kababs

I had been itching to try out some party snacks for long now, other than my standard Chicken Wings and Roast Chicken - which have still not made it to this blog, I realise. Damn! Actually I make those chicken dishes so very often that I have ceased to think of the recipes as blog-worthy. But other than chicken starters, I usually end up serving chips and peanuts to vegetarians... or pakodas. So when I called my friend G's vegetarian parents over for lunch, I wanted to serve them something new and interesting.

Trawling through my favorite blogs, I came across this amazing recipe for Hyderabadi Vegetarian Shikampuri Kababs on Escapades. The moment I read that it is a vegetarian version that tastes as good as the meat ones, I was hooked!

And the kababs totally lived up to the hype :) It was a runaway success. My guests polished off every crumb and were amazed that vegetarian kababs could taste so good and have such a rich texture and flavour! In fact the pictures on this post are of the 2 solitary kababs that I did not serve as they were from the first trial batch. So this recipe is a keeper for sure.

The Mini Meal series: Of Gyms, Diets and Size Zeroes!

I hate gyms. And I have always hated the idea of working out. My only other tryst with gymming was more than 5 years ago when I enrolled at a gym along with a bunch of office colleagues and paid a 3 month fee upfront. Yes, you guessed it right - I actually went for less than about a week! And no, there was no fee refund. So I surprised myself when I started going to the gym again about a month ago (thanks to G's company)... not in any effort to lose weight, but to have some form of exercise worked into my daily routine now that I am on a break from work and have a tendency to just vegetate for hours together reading a book, watching True Blood or surfing blogs!

So the fact that I have been (almost) regularly working out for a month now is really quite something! Though I have a sinking feeling that this enthusiasm may not last too long, I'm making the best use of it while it lasts. And a part of that effort is the decision to eat right. You see around the same time that I joined the gym, I read this book "Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight" by Rujuta Diwekar - the nutritionist who trains Kareena Kapoor and is said to be responsible for her "size-zero" frame!

Before all you readers baulk and run away from my blog, let me assure you I have no intentions of being a Size Zero! But Rujuta Diwekar's entire fitness mantra had me hooked. It is not about starving or "dieting", but eating balanced meals and eating every 2 hours in the day. So that means, other than your regular 3 meals, you need at least 3 "mini-meals". And this is the regimen I have been trying to follow for me as well as Sid. Of course this means that Sid ends up lugging a bag full of big and little boxes to work containing roti-subzi, fruits, nuts, salads and rolls or sandwiches! But who said keeping fit was easy??! :D

So anyway, this whole regimen now means I have to think up of new and innovative, yet quick and easy mini-meals everyday. And what better way to record them than on the blog? So here is the first in my series of Mini Meals...

Mushroom Rolls

Ingredients:
Button Mushrooms - 200gms
Onions - 1
Garlic - 8 cloves
Soy sauce - 1/2 tsp
Tomato sauce - as per taste
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Rotis - 2

Wash , clean and quarter the button mushrooms and thinly slice the onion. Chop the garlic cloves finely or mince them if you like. In a pan, heat 1 tbsp of Olive Oil and fry the garlic till golden brown. Add the mushroom and saute for 5min. Sprinkle some salt and pepper and continue to cook till there is no water left in the pan released by the mushrooms.

Divide the mushrooms into 2 or 3 portions, add the raw sliced onions, a bit of soy and tomato sauces and roll them up into the rotis. Use a toothpick to keep them in place or just wrap them up in aluminium foil for a take-away Mini Meal.

Karele ke Pakode - a Mom-in-law special!

The moment you say karela (bitter gourd) half the people I know cringe. It is a much-maligned vegetable and very few people can really handle the bitterness of karela, me included! And so the bitter gourd almost never found a place in my shopping basket or refrigerator. That is, until my mom-in-law arrived...

Mom makes some really amazing bitter gourd fry that I have tasted earlier... it's really simple. Grate away the skin, slit the gourds in the middle and de-seed if you like, cut each bitter gourd into 2-inch pieces, and stuff with dry masala (salt, coriander powder, cumin powder, aamchur, pepper). Then tie up the pieces with some string so that the masala doesn't fall out of the slits, and shallow fry in about 4-5tbsp of oil. Voila! You have this amazing side dish of spicy fried bitter gourd!

But I'm sure every household has some version of this. However, this post is not about the Karela fry. Now I have you confused, don't I? Ok, it is about the skin of the bitter gourd. Yes, go back and read the first line... that dark green ridged skin that we grate away? Now just save that for my mom-in-law's mind-blowing bitter-gourd skin fritters. Yes, you heard me right! Tikkis or pakoras made with karele ka chilka :)

Fritters made with the skin of Bitter Gourds

Ingredients:

Bitter gourd skin - grated - 1/2 cup
Besan (Gram flour) - 1 cup
Cooking soda (Meetha soda) - 1/2 tsp
Ajwain - 1 tsp
Coriander seeds - 1 tsp
Finely sliced onions (optional) - 1 small
Green chillies - 2
Salt
Pepper
Coriander leaves
Oil - 1/2 cup


Squeeze out the water from the grated bitter gourd skin. Make sure you dont grate the skin too finely otherwise it will just be a mush. Add the besan, salt, pepper, ajwain and soda and mix well. Lightly crush the coriander seeds and sprinkle. Slice the green chillies into small pieces and add along with the pepper. You can also add some finely sliced onions and fresh coriander leaves. Splash a little water and mix all these ingredients together to form a light dough. Take small amounts of this mixture and pat into flat round shapes.

Now take these tikkis/pakoras and shallow fry them in a frying pan with 1/2 cup of vegetable oil.


The way I like it:

Garnish with fried onions or fresh coriander leaves and serve hot and crispy with some sweet chilli sauce or tomato sauce. Great as a tea time snack or as an accompaniment with rice and rotis.

I totally lost count of how many I devoured!! And yes, it took a lot of self control to not gobble them up immediately and click these pictures instead, much to my mom-in-law's amusement!