Dhokla

Another favorite dish rather breakfast of mine. It is super easy and super fluffy and everyone at my house loves it. No need to say, it is the most famous Gujarati Dish.

Ingredients:

Besan/Chickpea Flour - 1 Cup
Sooji/Rava - 1 Tablespoon
Curd - 1/2 Cup
Eno - 1 Small Pouch or a teaspoon
turmeric - A pinch
Ginger - Green Chilly paste - 1 teaspoon or to taste
Hing/Asafoetida - a pinch
Salt - to taste
Sugar - 1 teaspoon
Green Chillies - 2
Mustard Seeds/Rai - 1/2 teaspoon
Sugar water - 1 Tablespoon of sugar dissolved in a 3/4 cup of water.
Coriander leaves - To garnish

Method

To the curd add turmeric,salt,ginger green chilly paste and mix well. To this add the besan and Sooji and mix well into  a thick  batter consistency. Ensure it has no lumps. Let the batter sit for 15 - 20 minutes

This mixture can be made well in advance and stored in refrigerator.

Just before adding this to the plate for steaming, add the ENO salt and mix thoroughly in one direction and cook immediately.

Take the vessel in which you will be making your Dhokla and grease it lightly with oil. Put the steamer with water in the stove.

Now pour the batter into the greased vessel, put it in the steamer and steam it covered for 15 - 20 minutes.

While the Dhokla is getting done, Lets make the seasoning for this. In a Pan, heat some oil and add the mustard seeds and allow them to splutter.

Then add Green Chillies and Hing/Asafoetida and switch off the stove and add the sugar water.

Demould the Dhokla to a plate and add the seasoning on top of the Dhokla. Cut and Serve.

Tips

• I do not have a Dhokla Stand so I used a vessel which will fit into my Idly Pot. The idea is Take a bigger vessel with water and cook the dhokla in a smaller vessel which sits in the bigger vessel quite tightly.
• Before adding ENO salt, ensure that the vessel in which you are making Dhokla is Greased and the water in the Bigger pot is boiling. 
• The sugar water will ensure that the Dhokla is soft and spongy. 

Parwal Sabzi

 I am not sure how many of you know about this vegetable. As far as I am concerned, I saw it only after I got married. My hubby says it is quite famous in North India.

It looks like our Kovakkai, however, it tastes quite different than Kovakkai. My hubby says it is very healthy too. This was cooked by my hubby :-)

Parwal - The Vegetable looks like this

Ingredients

Parwal - 500 Grams (washed and cut into cubes)

Alo/Potato - 2 (Medium,peeled and cut into cubes)
Bay leaf - 1 

Onion- 1 (Big,Finely Chopped)

Chilly powder- 1 Tablespoon

Dhania Powder -Tablespoon

Turmeric Powder-1/4 Teaspoon

Salt and Oil

Ginger Garlic Paste - 1 Teaspoon

Method

In a non stick Kadai, add a tablespoon of oil and add the Parwal and toss it till it is 50% done. This would take about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, In another kadai add 2 tablespoon of oil, add the Bay leaf, Onion and saute till onion is done. Then add the potato and cook for 10 minutes.

Then add ginger garlic masala and all dry masala and saute for 2 minutes.

Then add some water and add the sauteed Parwal.

Cover and cook for another 10 minutes stirring in between and the Parwal Sabzi is ready.

You can have this with Rice or Roti.

Note

• While cooking Parwal sometimes you may get the seed. Don't throw it away. Cook it and eat it. 
• If you want to save time,you can also add boiled potatoes. 

Kesari/Sooji Halwa

Even though I don't have a sweet tooth, I feel like eating sweet usually at odd hours. SO Kesari is a sweet that can be made in a jiffy and with few Ingredients. I have also given the recipe to make Kesari with less amount of Ghee.

Ingredients

Sooji/Rava - 1 cup (Double Roasted)
Sugar - 3/4 cup or 1 Cup (Based on how sweet you wnat it)
Ghee- 1/2 Cup
Badam/Almond - 10
Water - 2 Cups
Kesari Colour - 1/2 Pinch

Method

 These days in market, we have the double roasted rava available. If not, take the regular rava and dry roast it in a kadhai for 5 minutes till the raw smell goes.

Heat the ghee and roast the almonds and keep it aside. In the same ghee roast the rava nicely.

Meanwhile boil the water separately (The ratio of Rava to Water is 1:2).Add the kesari colour mixed with few drops of water.

Once the rava is roasted add the boiling water and stir it. then add the sugar and cook it. Decorate with Roasted almonds.

Low Ghee Version

In a vessel, boil water (2 cups of water for 1 cup of rava), to that add the rava. Cook it to 90%.

Then add the sugar and stir it continuously.Stir it well and then add kesari colour. Then roast some cashew/Almonds/Raisins in ghee. Add the cashew/almond/raisin along with ghee to the rava mixture and cook for another 5-8 minutes so that the Rava is cooked in Ghee. 

Tips

• The rava should be 3/4th cooked before adding the Sugar. The rava will not get cooked once we add sugar
• You can use cashew and raisins to decorate it,however, I prefer almonds so I used it.

Caramel Custard

This is my Mom's favorite dish. So whenever I make this, she eats like a kiddo. This recipe is very simple and needs very few ingredients.

As I made it exclusively for my mom this time, the caramel is very less in the picture. However, if you use the measurements I have given in the recipe, you will get enough caramel sauce.

Ingredients

Caramel
Sugar - 20 grams
Water - 2-4 Tablespoon

Custard
Egg - 3
Vanilla Essence - 1 Tablespoon
Sugar - 50 grams
Milk - 500 ml

Method

For Caramel
In a Pan, add the sugar and add little water. Add just enough water to get the sugar wet. Stir it continuously.till it turns into light brown colour and immediately pour into the tray the custard is to be made.
The process will take only couple of minutes, so keep a close watch or else the sugar will get burnt.

For Custard
Blend egg,sugar,milk and vanilla essence using a whisk or hand blender. Ensure there is no lumps. Then pour this mixture into the tray which is coated with caramel.

Bake it in the oven for 45 minutes at 150 C. Refrigerate and serve with fruits or ICe Cream.

Donuts
Donuts...Hmmmm... Tell me one person who does not like this...Whenever I visit CCD I never leave without tasting Donuts.. I always thought I was baked and found that it is  deep fried only couple of years ago.

I learnt how to make this dish from Menu Rani Chellam's TV show. I miss her show these days.

When I made this and gave it to my Dad he just could not believe that I made it from the scratch.. He thought that I bought the Donut base (Don't know whether they sell it) and applied chocolate sauce and gave him. It was that yummy !!!

As most of us in our house are not Egg fans I try to make my recipes Eggless, however, if you want you can always add egg as I would give a shine and binding.

Ok now to the recipe.

Maida/All purpose Flour - 1 Cup
Yeast - 1 Teaspoon
Sugar - 1 Teaspoon
Salt - a Pinch
Luke warm Milk - as required

Method

I used Dry active yeast. So the first step for me was to activate the yeast. Click here to find out how to activate Yeast.

In this recipe I used milk to activate the Yeast.

Then add the Yeast milk and lukewarm milk and make a soft dough. Set aside for 5-10 minutes.

Then dust a clean surface with All purpose flour. Using a rolling pin flatten the dough.

I rolled it to make 1/2 inch thick flat dough. Then using a cutter (I used a round shaped vessel and bottle cap) cut them into circles and in each circle make a small circle in the centre. (For this I used Bottle cap).

In a greased baking tray, place these donuts and cover it with a wet kitchen towel. Covering it with wet towel prevents it from drying

Leave it for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, it would have doubled in volume.

In a kadai, heat some cooking oil and fry these donuts. Please remember the oil should not be too hot. It should be just hot. SOme else, your donuts will burn and will not get cooked.

After cooling the donuts you can glaze with chocolate sauce or just some powdered sugar.

If you have noticed, the number of donuts for glazing went down as My hubby started eating the donuts even before I could glaze it.

Look at my post on How to Do Chocolate Glazing