My Foodcourt turns 10! We are celebrating with the prize winning recipe for Microwave Borscht with Golay!

Yes! My Foodcourt turns 10 today! and a recipe for Microwave Borscht with Golay- to celebrate this decade long journey,the win and good food in general!

A Road trip, A Focaccia and A Soup

WARNING: This is one of the longest posts I have ever posted! Grab a cup of Tea and enjoy 🙂

The weather Gods are still unsure -whether to rain or not to rain? Meanwhile we ventured out on a Road trip to Bangalore ; more than almost a 2000km car drive to and from Nashik. We were a bit apprehensive about the road trip considering the ‘can’t sit in one place for a minute’ little one but decided to go anyway. Finger foods, drawing/coloring sets, car games, CDs later we were finally on the way to Bangalore. The back-seat of the car was turned into a mini bed for both the kids to play/eat/ sleep and enjoy.

We preferred the Nashik –Mumbai highway and then the Mumbai-Pune expressway  to the single lane and ‘boring’ Nasik-Pune highway upto Pune. It was a scenic drive especially through the clouds in Lonavala just before Pune, and then the lovely windmills near Belgaum on the Bangalore highway. The road is fabulous except for the last 50-60 km as you near Bangalore. We halted at Belgaum for the night at ‘ Hotel Adarsh Palace’ . The hotel was good, clean and serves one of the best breakfast I have had on a road trip. The little one was impressed with their mini-button idlis.

Except the 1-2 Kamat Upchar outlets and 1-2 coffe day outlets we didn’t see many Food stops post Belgaum. We had south Indian thali at the The Kamat Upchar on the Tumkur-Bangalore  highway(~60 Km from Bangalore). Not the best of meals but enough to feed weary travelers.

We were in Bangalore exactly for 1 and ½ days. I have been to Bangalore a couple of times earlier but haven’t seen the city and its surroundings in bits and pieces on each trip. We could successfully squeeze in half a day trip to Bannerghatta Zoo and the Lalbaugh gardens. The lad was thrilled to see the animals at the zoo and also commented that the road trip was worth the effort  The foodie that he is, he enjoyed the spicy-sour sweet succulent slices of ‘ Gini mooti (Totapuri) aam’ sold just outside the zoo.

The lalbuagh nursery as beautiful as it is was disappointing since I went there in search of Herbs and they don’t grow them. (Should have checked beforehand)

I got a chance to visit a Nature’s basket outlet in Indiranagar, Bangalore and I happily carried a few fresh herbs like Thyme and Rosemary, Avocados , instant Polenta and such items all the way to Nasik. Fresh Thyme and Rosemary are yet to make an appearance in the market here in Nashik, though my kitchen garden will grow them in a month or two- Fingers crossed.

We stopped over at Kolhapur for the night on our way back and don’t have much to write about the hotel ‘Sony Palace’ just 2 minutes off the highway.The drive through Lonavala was even more scenic on the way back. Glad to report that the little one not only survived the car trip but is eager to go on another trip!

The herbs survived the ride back home and were  immediately used in as many dishes as I could. The Rosemary urged me to bake a lovely warm Rosemary and Olive Focaccia.Some of the thyme went into a Roasted tomato and Thyme soup.; a perfect dinner combination for these ‘Rainy weather days’.

I have adapted the recipe for the Rosemary and Olive Focaccia from  a book ‘Baking- simple cookery series’ from my collection of cookbooks.

I have used some part whole wheat flour instead of total AP flour as  recommened in the recipe with great results. The soup was made using whatever ingredients were available, Thyme being the star ingredient.

Here’s the recipe for the Rosemary Olive Focaccia

Makes 2 Loaves

Ingredients:

700 gms strong white flour (I used 450 gms Maida/AP flour, 250 gms whole wheat flour and 3 tbsp Vital gluten)

pinch of salt

pinch of caster sugar

7g/ 2tsp instant yeast (I used AB Mauri)

450 ml warm water (or as required to make a soft elastic dough, I needed about 470 ml)

2 tsp chopped fresh Rosemary

75 gms pitted black olives roughly chopped

3 tbsp Olive oil (I used herb infused Olive oil- see note below)

For the garnish:

3 tbsp Olive oil (I used herb infused Olive oil- see note below)

Coarse sea salt for sprinkling

Fresh Rosemary for garnishing

Method:

Sift the Flours, salt and the sugar.

Stir in the yeast and Rosemary.

Make a well in the centre

Carefully pour in the warm water and Olive oil/herb oil. I need about 10-20 ml more water so add the water gradually.

Mix to a soft dough.

Turn out onto a well floured surface and knead for 10 mins.(Yeast Therapy 🙂 ) until smooth and elastic.

Pat the olives dry on a kitchen paper, and then gently knead into the dough.

Put in a well oiled bowl, cover with a clingfilm and leave to rise for about 1½  hrs. or it has doubled in size(mine was overflowing from the bowl)

Turn out the dough and knead again for a minute or two.

Divide into half and roll out each piece into a 10 inch (25.5 cm) circle.

Transfer to oiled baking sheets and cover with oiled clingfilm/ foil and leave to rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200^oC.

Using the finger tips make deep dimples all over the dough.

Drizzle with the oil (I used herbed oil)and sprinkle with the sea salt.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until risen and golden. My old oven took almost 10-12 minutes more.

Cool on a wire rack and garnish with sprigs of Rosemary.

Grind over or sprinkle black pepper just before serving.

Recipe for the Roasted Tomato and Thyme soup

Ingredients:

7-8 tomatoes halved lengthwise

1 onion sliced

2-3 garlic pods

4-5 small sprigs of fresh Thyme

2 tbsp herb infused olive oil oil (or just olive oil) and a few drops more for garnishing.

1 carrot peeled and cubed

Coarse sea salt to taste

Black pepper to taste

½ tsp of brown sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200^oC.

Place the tomatoes on the baking sheet, cut side up along with the onions, garlic pods and Thyme twigs.

Drizzle the herb infused olive oil (or just olive oil)

Sprinkle some coarse sea salt and pepper  over the tomatoes.

Roast  the tomatoes for about 30 mins.

Meanwhile Place water in a pan and boil the carrot cubes along with a sprig of Thyme till just soft ( 10 mins.)

Drain and cool the carrot cubes but do not discard the water.

Cool the Roasted tomatoes, onions and Garlic.

Carefully remove the Thyme sprigs.

Remove the skin from the tomatoes (or alternatively sieve the pulp later)

Blend the roasted Tomatoes, sliced onion, garlic along with the cooked carrot.

Transfer the pulp to a large pot.

Adjust to a soupy consistency using the carrot stock (or vegetable stock)

Add the brown sugar and adjust the seasoning.

Bring to a boil and turn off the heat.

Serve hot garnished with the herb and chilli infused olive oil along with  a warm bread.

(You may alternatively garnish with Cheese of your choice)

I served the Soup with the Rosemary & Olive Focaccia.

Note : Herb Infused Olive Oil

Warm about 1 cup Olive Oil (not necessarily Extra virgin). Add chopped fresh herbs like Rosemary, Basil, Thyme, Parsley.

Add 2-3  peeled garlic cloves.

Add ½ – 1 tsp of Chilli flakes.

Keep aside for 1 a day.

Strain out the  herbs and garlic ( I like to keep the chilli flakes)

Store in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks. ( Mine usually gets over in a week)

I use it on breads, pizzas, soups, dips or for salad dressings.

Tomato Saar

Tomato Saar is a quintessential Maharashtrian preparation, also a ‘must have’ dish for most of our festive fares.

Tomato is paired with coconut and then tempered with a few spices to make a sweet-spicy-tangy ‘soup’ usually as an accompaniment to steamed rice, although it can also be served like a soup on its own.

Every Maharashtrian household has a ‘unique’ recipe for Tomato Saar.  This recipe is my mom’s and I have followed exactly as she makes it. (I am surprised that after all these years I have missed blogging about it here on My Foodcourt!)

In other news, after my earlier rant about the camera, the DSLR is finally home and being played with. I am still discovering the unlimited features, so you will soon see a lot of my ‘discoveries’ with the same either here on the blog or on the FB page here.

Back to my mom’s recipe for Tomato Saar:

(This makes about 13-14 cups of saar)

Ingredients

9-10 medium sized ripe red tomatoes

3/4^th  cup fresh grated coconut

2 ½ tsp grated jaggery (or more according to sweetness desired)

½ tsp red chilli powder (optional)

Salt to taste

For the tempering:

2 tsp Ghee/oil (homemade ghee tastes the best)

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp cumene seeds

1/4 tsp asafetida (a pinch)

1-2 dry red chillies broken into pieces

10-12 curry leaves torn into pieces with hand

Chopped coriander leaves for garnishing

Method:

Cook the tomatoes in a pressure pan until soft and they lose their ‘rawness’ (one whistle and then 5 mins on sim)

Meanwhile grind the coconut to a fine paste using little water.

Once the tomatoes are cooked, cool and remove skin and chop off the head.

Grind the tomatoes along with the coconut to a smooth paste. The coconut and tomatoes should blend together.

You can sieve the paste through a mesh at this stage. I like to skip this step and directly use the paste as it is.

Add sufficient water to the paste to bring it to a soupy consistency.

Add the jaggery,salt and chilli powder and bring it to a boil.

In a small pan/kadai, heat the ghee/oil.

Add the mustard seeds.

Add the cumene seeds once the mustard seeds splutter.

Switch off the gas and add the asafetida, curry leaves and the red chillies.

Add this tempering to the saar.

Garnish with fresh chopped coriander leaves and serve with hot rice or just as it is like a soup.

Pepper away the Monsoon blues with this quick and simple Black pepper Rasam/soup

The medicinal uses of Black pepper are well known. It is one of the trusted home remedies for cold and cough. We have been surviving the Monsoon bug by adding this ‘natural antibiotic‘ to our day-to -day meals.

We are having this hot spicy Pepper Rasam/ soup almost every day to soothe our itchy throats; a soothing balm to ‘shoo’ away the Monsoon blues.

This is of course my Mother-in-law’s recipe and uses very few day-to-day ingredients; Black pepper-cumene seeds –some dried coconut and curry leaves. You can make a ready spice mix and store in an airtight container. Whenever you want to make the rasam just boil some lentils add the ready spice mix and viola! your ‘magic potion’ is ready in minutes

Here’s the recipe for Pepper Rasam/Soup

Things required:

¼ cup Toovar Dal (pigeon pea lentils)

8-10 Black pepprcorns

~2 tsp Cumene seeds

~ 1 tbsp dried coconut grated

4-5 curry leaves

Pinch of turmeric and few drops of oil to cook the Lentils

Salt to taste

1 tsp homemade ghee

Method:

Pressure cook the dal with ~ 2 ½ cups  of water, a pinch of turmeric and 3-4 drops of oil.

In a pan dry roast black peppercorns, cumene seeds, dried coconut and curry leaves one by one.

Cool and coarsely grind the spices in a mortar and pestle.

Heat ghee in a deep pan.

Add the spice mix.

Add the cooked dal along with the water. Adjust the consistency of water to your liking.

Season with salt and boil for few minutes.

Serve piping hot.

Notes:

You can adjust the spices to your taste, it is a very forgiving recipe.

You can skip the ghee if you don’t want it, just mix the spices and the dal and boil together.

If you plan to serve this as a clear soup, let the soup stand for a few minutes and then just pour out the liquid. You can use the leftover dal to make some dal parathas or sambar

You can zest up the soup with a dash of lime juice

Veg Soup for the Soul

This is one of my favourite soups. Simple and Easy to make…Simply delicious.

 

 

No specific measurements, just add your favourite veggies                                 

I have used :  

Green Beans (handful) ends trimmed,

1 Beetroot  peeled

1 Small cabbage

2 Small onions

2 Small Tomatoes

8-10 Stalks+leaves Spinach

1/2 Small fresh Bottlegourd peeled

(You may add Carrot, Cauliflower etc)

 

Chop the veggies roughly. Steam/Pressure cook till the veggies are just cooked.( Don’t overcook)

Run for a few minutes in the blender till smooth. Strain or don’t strain through a sieve(I haven’t).

Add 1tsp butter to a pan. Add some part of the pulp to it.(Refrigerate the leftover pulp to be used later)

Add sufficient water to make a soupy consistency(to your liking). Add salt, little sugar and freshly ground black pepper powder. Bring it to a boil. Serve piping hot.

Spinach-Carrot soup and Stuffed Dinner Rolls

I love having different types of soups for dinner. Many times we have some soup teamed up with sandwiches or a pizza or a burger for dinner- a welcome change from our regular Daal-Chawal .

I am tempted to buy Fresh green spinach leaves (Palak) and fresh orange-red carrots every time I visit the market.

This time I cooked the two together to make this scrumptious Spinach- Carrot soup– a treat for all the Popeye’s in the world

We also had some very soft and fresh dinner rolls from our local bakery. I stuffed them with some potato-beetroot-mushroom filling (usually my choice of filling depends on the vegetables available in my fridge) to make these lovely looking appetizing stuffed rolls.

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Spinach Carrot soup recipe

For about 3-4 servings

_____________________________________________________

 1 bunch Spinach (Palak) –keep the stems as far as possible

2-3 carrots peeled and grated

1 onion skin removed and cut into half

1 large potato boiled (optional)

1 tsp butter/ margarine

½ tsp sugar

White/green pepper powder

Salt to taste 

Blanch spinach and onion together. Cool and blend in a food processor along with the boiled potato.(I add the boiled potato to give thickness to the soup.You can avoid adding the potato if you like and use cornflour to thicken the soup)

Heat butter/margarine in a pan.

Add grated carrots, sauté for a few seconds.

Pour the spinach puree over it.

Add water(used for blanching) to adjust the soup to the desired consistency. Boil for few minutes.

Add salt, sugar, pepper powder and boil one last time.

Serve hot with breadsticks or toasts or bread rolls.

You can garnish with some grated cheese when serving this soup to kids.

Note: To preserve the green colour of the spinach, don’t cover the pan while blanching. Boil for 10 minutes and immediately immerse the blanched leaves in cold water. (Don’t discard the water used to blanch the spinach.Use it for diluting the soup or for making dal or Roti dough)_________________________________________________________ 

Stuffed Dinner Rolls recipe

For 8-10 rolls 

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 8-10 Dinner Rolls

2 large potatoes boiled, peeled and grated

1 beetroot boiled, peeled and grated

7-8 button mushrooms cleaned and chopped

1 tomato chopped

1 onion finely chopped

2 tsp green Jalapeno sauce (readily available, you can use green chili sauce also)

3-4 greenchillies finely chopped

2 cheese cubes grated (optional)

~ 2 tbsp tomato ketchup

1 tsp butter 

Heat butter in a pan.

Add the chopped onion,green cillies and fry till translucent.

Add the mushroom and sauté till the water from the mushroom evaporates.

Add chopped tomatoes and cook till they become mushy.

Now add the grated potato and beetroot.

Add salt, mix nicely and remove from fire.

Mix in the tomato ketchup and grated cheese.

Cut the dinner rolls horizontally without cutting through.

Spread as much filling as you can evenly and grill for few minutes.

Serve hot.

Coriander Soup

From incessant torrential downpour the Monsoon has shifted gear and we now have light showers. That must be sounding like a weather update to you J

The wet rainy weather is just perfect for a hot piping Coriander soup, which we had for dinner last night.

Photographing soups is quite challenging for me J and you can see that the result doesn’t make justice to the Coriander soup…It is much more tempting and tastier than it looks in the photo!__________________________________________________________                                                            Coriander Soup recipe

Serves : 4-5

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½ cup carrots, peeled chopped and finely chopped

½ cup Cauliflower finely chopped

(Or veggies of your choice)

½ cup Paneer (cottage cheese) finely cubed

½ cup chopped coriander leaves (don’t discard the stems)

~ 6-7 cups water

1 tsp Black/White pepper powder

2 tsp White Vinegar

Salt as per taste

Boil water and add the chopped carrots and cauliflower.

Nicely wash and add the Coriander stems to the water.

Add salt.

Cover and cook till the veggies are almost done.

Remove the coriander stems.

Add the Paneer cubes and the chopped coriander leaves.

Boil for 2-3 minutes more.

Season with Pepper powder and white Vinegar.

Serve piping hot.

 

Coriander soup and Spaghetti in mushroom tomato sauce -for our dinner last night

Carrot Soup

Still no respite from the incessant rains here! After a break of exactly 1 & ½  days, Mr.Monsoon has reported back to work.

I follow a food routine during this season:

1.This is the season, when I indulge in my favourite fries, bhajjis, samosas etc.. to brighten(???) these wet ,gloomy, lazy days( that’s my excuse).

2.Then Guilt visits me and I am suddenly reminded of words such as nutrition, fat,health etc…

3.Then I follow a strict diet of nutritious healthy foods like veggies, soups etc…to cancel out the not so healthy munchies.

On one such guilt trip,a hot piping nutritious Carrot soup is what I made to cancel out the not-so- nutritious treats I have indulged in!!

Carrots- Storehouse for Vitamin A (beta carotene) are good in any form for elders as well as for children. Infact, my little son is very fond of carrots ,just like Bugs bunny (Now you know where both of them get their energy from!)

So here’s a soup for all you mothers too who are constantly in search for different recipes to make your kids eat their veggies. The goodness of Carrots flavoured with some spices and garnished with coriander        makes this soup irresistible to the palate.

I have mostly followed the original recipe from Sanjeev Kapoor, with some changes to suit my taste.The original recipe also had garlic, which I did not add and I reduced the amount of fresh green coriander leaves.

Serves 4:

Ingredients:

5 carrots roughly chopped

10-15 sprigs of fresh coriander leaves

2 Bay leaves

1tsp peppercorns

1 medium sized Onion chopped

½ tsp white pepper powder

2 tsp butter

Salt to taste.

Method:

Chop fresh coriander leaves finely and reserve the stems.

Heat butter in a deep pan, add bay leaves, peppercorns, onion, and sauté for two minutes.

Add carrots, coriander stems and 5 cups of water and bring to a boil.

When the carrots are completely cooked, remove them and put in a blender to make a coarse puree.

Boil and reduce the stock slightly and strain.

Take the puree in a deep pan and add strained stock to reach the desired consistency. Bring to a boil again.

Add white pepper powder dissolved in a little water.

Add salt to taste.

Garnish with finely chopped fresh coriander leaves.

Serve piping hot.