Pohe - The Perfect Breakfast Food

This is possibly one of the most popular breakfast items made in India. It is made quite frequently back home and we enjoy it a lot. There are many different recipe variations to make pohe found in various regions in India. Its probably as diverse as the different number of dialects, which is a very large number. The few names that its referred to are "batata poha", "bataka poha", "kanda pohe" and oh so many more. I remember getting off a bus once and seeing a small crowd of people enjoying a hot plate of pohe with some hot chai. Truly there is nothing more appetizing than a hot plate of pohe for breakfast.

The recipe below is inspired by my sister-in-law's preparation method. The use of fennel seeds and peanuts makes it delicious. Pair it with a cup of hot tea and enjoy your breakfast.

Ingredients
2 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp fennel/saunf/badishep seeds
pinch of asafoetida
1/8 tsp turmeric powder
1-2 green chillies (to taste)
1 medium onion, diced
5-6 curry leaves (optional)
1/4 cup peas, shelled (frozen or fresh). If frozen, rinse them and set aside
2-3 tbsp peanuts
1.5 cups pohe (pressed rice)
salt to taste
cilantro for garnish
lemon/lime slices to serve with

Method
Wash the pohe and set aside. The easiest way to do this is to take the pohe in a sieve or a colander, pour some water and let it drain away. Stir the pohe around to ensure that some of it doesn't remain dry. In a big pan, heat the oil. To this add the mustard and cumin seeds. Once they crackle, add the fennel seeds, asafoetida, turmeric powder, curry leaves, green chillies and onions. Cook the onions till the onion is cooked through. You can cook it till its transluscent or a little browned. The taste will vary a bit based on how long the onion has been cooked for. Do not brown it though. Then add the peanuts, stir for a couple of minutes. Then add the peas, cook for a minute. Add the pohe, stir and cook for a few minutes. The pohe should be damp when you add them to the pan. If they have dried out, add a little water to the pohe. Serve hot. Garnish with cilantro and serve a slice of lemon with the pohe. Addition of a little lime/lemon juice enhances the taste.

Tips
Add the salt and mix it into the pohe, itself before adding into the pan. This will ensure that the salt is mixed well throughout and some parts of it don't remain unseasoned.

Scrumptious Cake

Continuing with the cake theme, this is one of the best cake recipes that I have ever tried. It came out just like the ones that I used to bake with my  mom. I have these memories from when I was 6 or 7 years old. I used to sit in the kitchen with mom and help her mix all the different ingredients. I remember beating the eggs with a whisk and being thrilled to see the egg whites turn into foam. Each ingredient was handled individually and it used to seem like a long loving process. Moreover, we didn't have an oven, so my mom used to send me to get some sand from the garden and then bake a cake using that. And I used to wait quite impatiently for the cake to cool down before we could have a taste. It was a wonderful and magical time and I wish I could go back to those days. Baking this cake took me back to those days.

This is a recipe from the William Sonoma Cake book with some adjustments based on the ingredients I had and some modifications to the process.

Ingredients
1and 1/4 cups, plus 2 tbsp of all purpose flour (maida)
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter - room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup milk

Method
Grease a baking dish with some butter and dust with some all purpose flour. Preheat the oven to 350F.
Sieve all the dry ingredients together and keep aside. Sieve these ingredients a couple of times. In another bowl, whisk together the butter and sugar. Beat it till the butter is fluffy. Add one egg at a time to this and beat each egg into the mixture till it is nice and fluffy. Add the vanilla essence. Add one third of the dry ingredients to the batter and fold it in. Then add half of the milk and mix. Alternate between the milk and dry ingredients till they are all incorporated into the batter.
Bake the cake at 350 F for about 20 minutes. Use a knife and insert it into the center of the cake. If it comes out clean then the cake is ready. If not, bake for a few more minutes.
Take if out and  let the pan cool  on a wire rack for 10-15 mins. Then invert the pan onto the cooling rack and slide the cake out. Let the cake cool if you wish to ice it.

Tips
The cake should be completely cooled down before icing it. If the eggs are separated and the whites beaten separately before being added to the batter, the cake will be lighter. You can add the yolks after the butter and sugar. But fold in the egg whites after all the dry ingredients are incorporated into the batter.

Rava Cake - Eggless Semolina Cake

The first time I ate this was at a friend's place for brunch and I really loved the cake. My husband told me that this was a recipe made by his mom when he was growing up and he would love to eat this again. Later, when I was discussing this with my dad, he told me that he had eaten this cake as a child too. His grandmother used to make it and it brought back a lot of memories for him. Well, all this and the fact that the cake is absolutely delicious was just the motivation I needed to prepare this recipe. With the help of a recipe book called "Ruchira" and consulting my mom on the proportions and process, I made this cake for my husband's birthday this year. He enjoyed it thoroughly and I have made this cake a few times since then. It is an eggless recipe, so its perfect for those who don't eat eggs and would love to have a delicious cake to celebrate their special occasions.

Ingredients
1.5 cups fine rava or semolina
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
1 cup yogurt
1/2 cup clarified butter/ghee
1/8 tsp cardamom powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
few strands of saffron (optional)
2-3 tbsp raisins (optional)
a pinch of salt

Method
Beat the yogurt and sugar together till the sugar is dissolved. To this add the milk, salt, ghee, baking soda, rava and beat this together. Then fold in the raisins and saffron strands. Keep this mixture aside overnight or at least for 5-6 hours. Then preheat the oven and bake if for 20-30 mins at 350F. Use a knife or skewer and pierce the center of the cake with it. If it comes out clean then the cake is ready. The photos here are of two different cakes. One cake was prepared with saffron but without raisins. The other one was prepared without saffron and with raisins.

Tips
If the yogurt is slightly sour, it will enhance the overall flavor of the cake. You can add the saffron strands to a tsp of warm milk and stir them in the milk to release the golden color of the cake.

Vangi Bhaat - (Spicy Eggplant Rice) in a Jiffy

This is my quick version of Vangi Bhaat. Now, this is a dish I had never eaten in India and I am not very sure what the authentic version tastes like. However, I can state that the substitute presented here is definitely very tasty and a quick preparation too. The way this recipe was cooked up was that I had bought an eggplant and was finding it difficult to decide on a preparation method. Finally, my husband suggested Vangi bhaath. He has eaten the authentic version of vangi bhaat, but he was not sure of how its prepared and wasn't much help when it came to the recipe. So, of course I turned to the internet. All the recipes I found had instructions to make the required masala from the basic ingredients. Well, it was nearing lunch time and I had nothing to show for my efforts so far, so I decided to wing it. And we were both very happy with the end result.

Definitely a good recipe to have up your sleeve when you need to prepare a meal in a jiffy.

Ingredients

1 Large eggplant/ 4-5 small eggplants - sliced into strips.
1/8 tsp mustard
1/8 tsp jeera/cumin seeds
1/2 tsp split urad daal (peeled)
pinch of asafoetida
couple of pinches of turmeric powder
1 tbsp oil
green chillies to taste - chopped
5-6 curry leaves
1 tsp sambar masala
1 tsp rasam masala
1/2 tsp tamarind paste (can be varied to taste)
salt to taste
2 cups cooked rice

Method
Heat the oil. To this add the mustard and cumin seeds. Once they being to crackle, add the hing/asafoetida, urad daal and curry leaves. Add the turmeric powder and then the eggplant strips. Add a little salt at this time. It will help with the cooking process. Once the eggplant is cooked and softened, add the masalas and tamarind paste. Cook for a couple of minutes. Finally add the rice and mix it well with the cooked eggplant mixture. Adjust the seasoning. Serve hot along with some yogurt.

Tips
It doesn't really matter what kind of eggplant you use for this recipe. Also, you can cut it into cubes instead of strips, but it will take longer for the cubes to cook. I used readymade store bought masalas. You can increase the masala proportions to make it spicier.

Panha - A Refreshing Raw Mango Drink

This is one of the most refreshing summer drinks and always takes me back to those long summer vacations spent at my maternal grandmother's place. She used to make pitchers of "panha" during summer along with other summer drinks like "taak" and "limbu sarbat". This is also a great accompaniment to the "kairi chi daal". I made panha this summer and realised that it is a very simple recipe. I shall definitely be making it every summer from now on. The main ingredient for this is the raw mango (kairi) and as its available only during early summer, this is a seasonal drink. Its definitely a bit late to find raw mangoes now but do try it the next time you bring raw mangoes home.

Ingredients
1 large/ 2 medium green mango - must be raw
salt to taste
jaggery to taste - depends on how tart and sour the mango is
a couple of pinches of cardamom powder
a few strands of saffron
1-2 cups of water - depends on how much pulp you get from the mango

Method
Pressure cook the mango. I cooked it till I heard 1 whistle. Once the mango cools, peel the skin and discard. Scrape the pulp off the mango and discard the seed. To this pulp add the jaggery, salt, cardamom powder and the saffron strands. Add about half a cup of water and blend all these ingredients together. Increase the amount of water and adjust the salt and jaggery based on the kind of consistency you want. You will also need to adjust the salt and the sweetness based on how sour the mango is.

In the Instant Pot you would cook it for 3 minutes on manual mode, high pressure and then let the pressure release naturally.

Tips
A friend gave me a tip that if the skin of the mango is a bit tough and not very sour, then its best to peel the mangoes before cooking them. That will prevent the drink from any bitterness. You can substiture jaggery with sugar. Brown sugar has molasses and will have a taste closer to jaggery, but if you don't have brown sugar use regular white sugar. If the raw mango is not very sour, you may need to add some lemon or lime juice to adjust the tartness.

Blueberry Smoothie

I enjoy smoothies, for breakfast, as desserts or even as an occasional meal. There was a smoothie shop right around the corner from where I worked and I was regular visitor. I remember my afternoon trips to the smoothie shop very fondly. Most often than not, after browsing through the menu, I used to end up selecting one of the berry smoothies. These days, I enjoy making these berry smoothies at home. The following smoothie recipe is perfect with a dollop of vanilla icecream.

Ingredients
1 cup vanilla yogurt
1 cup frozen blueberries
1 banana
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup crushed ice
vanilla ice cream (optional)

Method
Blend together all the ingredients except for the ice cream. If its too thick, add a little more ice or orange juice. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.



Tips

If you do not have flavored yogurt, you can use regular yogurt.