A [very] long post, a pretty salad, and... awards!

For one glorious day, all kinds of weight-watching, calorie-counting, gymming, non-snacking and salad-chomping was put on hold.

It was the Malayali New Year, Vishu, my favourite festival of the year!

Come April, and the whole of Kerala wears a festive look in anticipation of Vishu and Easter. The schools are closed for summer, mango and jackfruit trees are laden with fruit, and most importantly, every garden, backyard and bend in the road greets you with an explosion of sunshine yellow: the konna flowers that bloom only during this time of the year. You see the konna tree laden with festoons of brilliant yellow, and you know Vishu is just around the corner!

So, last Friday, P and I switched off our alarms at the crack of dawn, and stumbled out of the bedroom, our eyes still tightly shut, across to our puja corner, so that we might open our eyes to this:

An auspicious sight to begin the New Year, in the hope that the rest of the year turns out equally good. Figurines of all our favourite gods for divine presence throughout the year, fresh fruit and rice (denoting fresh produce of the harvest) for prosperity, new clothes, gold and money for good fortune and riches. All these in the ethereal glow of a traditional lamp lit with ghee. Of course, had we been back home, this tableau would have included a giant jack-fruit and ripe mangoes from our backyard, and an excess of the konna flowers, which we didn't have here in the US. 

After breakfast, cooking ensued. The house was filled with the smell of coconut oil and curry leaves. Coconut in all its glory- freshly ground with green chillies and cumin for avial, dry-roasted and ground with other spices for sambhar, fried with mustard seeds and curry leaves for elissery, and coconut milk for payasam… you get the drift! (Sorry, no photographs, I was too busy cooking and eating!)

Vishu was indeed a grand affair. But now that it has come and gone, and the excesses of the day are threatening to form a fresh layer of fat around my waist, it is time to detox! And what better way to detox but to go back to chomping down some crunchy veggies again?!

I call it my Ultimate Summer Veggies Ribbon Salad. I know, complicated name, huh? Thankfully, the salad itself isn't as complicated- all you need is some fresh, colorful summer vegetables, and a peeler.

(Wasn't the best photo I took, but i somehow like how the light from the window falls on the veggies- sort of like the vegetables lined up like a prisoners' drill and the peeler hovering over them like a jailer!)

May I take the opportunity to introduce you to my trusty peeler, Mr Spuds? A little cockeyed, but still my hero, nevertheless! ;)

Of course, you could do this in one-tenth of the time using your food processor, but I just happen to luurve hangin’ out with ol’ Mr Spuds!

UH, dunno if I can say the same about Spuddy here, though! :P  

Anyways, job done, and you have a bowl of colourful ribbons that attack your eyes with all the subtlety of a brilliantly-hued rainbow.

Now, for the dressing. Many a lovely salad has been brought down by the wrong dressing. It would be a crime to use something heavy like mayonnaise or sour cream for a salad that so great in its own right. What you need is just the right amount of tart and spice that will lift the natural flavours of the vegetables without bogging them down with gloopy dressing. So, I went with a vinaigrette of lemon juice and olive oil, with salt, pepper and just a hint of cumin at the end. Why cumin? Because that was the one ingredient that went well with all the veggies I had. If you make this with a completely different set of vegetables, go ahead n change the ingredients in your dressing too! 

Summer Veggies Ribbon Salad with Lemon-Cumin Vinaigrette

3 cups of vegetables of your choice, in thin long ribbons. (I used green, red and yellow peppers, carrots, asparagus and cucumber)

3 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

½ teaspoon cumin powder

Salt and pepper to taste

 

1. Mix the lemon juice, salt, pepper and cumin together in a bowl, and drizzle in the olive oil slowly while stirring the mixture with a whisk/fork until an emulsion is formed. 
2. Toss the festooned vegetables together, and pour just enough dressing onto it to cover all the vegetables lightly. 
3. If making the salad in advance, prepare the vegetables and vinaigrette separately and toss together just before serving 
4. Garnish with some whole cumin (for crunch) and serve. Enjoy!  

And now, for my favourite part of this post, which I've saved for the last….the AWARDs! I was thrilled to bits when I read Ankita’s comment in my last post saying that she had a bunch of awards waiting for me in her blog! Thank you SO much, Ankita! Being such a newbie-foodblogger, every comment, every follow and every award, means the world to me! :)

So, as per tradition, I need to spell out 7 facts about me. Here goes:

• I love experimenting in the kitchen but I have a mental block against randomly bringing two different cuisines together- you would never find me making/posting stuff like macaroni upma, or Thai-style lasagna. I feel like each cuisine has a definite allure of its own, and arm-twisting it to fit flavors from a completely different style just kills its spirit altogether!
• I’m a baker at heart. If I had it my way, I would be up to my earlobes in flour, eggs, butter and sugar from dawn to dusk, and spend the rest of the day eating what I made! Cakes, cookies, cupcakes, scones, crumbles, crisps, pies: these are the stuff my dreams are made of! But sadly, now that I’m in weight-watching mode, I’ve kept the baker in me on a tight leash. No more baking till I reach my weight loss goals!
• I heart potatoes. If the world was coming to an end, I’d lug home a sack of potatoes and roast them with garlic and rosemary for breakfast, lunch, dinner and all meals in between until judgement day. 
• Oh, actually, scratch the last one out- I’d probably save at least one meal a day to have my favourite dish in the whole wide world – Olan. It’s a keralite vegetarian dish in which beans and pumpkin are stewed together in spicy coconut milk gravy. Out.of.this.world! Gives me goosebumps to even think about it!
• Some women have shoe fetishes, some are crazy about bags. Me-I’m crazy about stationery. Drop me at a Staples outlet and I’d be like a kid in a candy store! Colourful post-its, felt pens, marker pens, fancy notebooks, clip boards, white boards, magnetic boards, I drool over them all! :)
• I’m a hopeless romantic when it comes to movies! Chick-flicks and Bollywood love stories rule my DVD collection and Netflix queue!
• Phew! Last one. This is much harder than I thought. Okay. I’m a HUUUGE Harry Potter fan. Way more than you can possibly imagine. I’ve read the entire collection at least ten times, and still read it religiously at least once a year. Hate the movies, though!

I’d like to pass on this award to some of my favourite food bloggers…

• Sangi
• Aipi
• Divya Vikram
• Shobha Shyam
• Food Diva
• Sensible Vegetarian 
• Preety
• The Healthy Diary 
• Shiva
• Sojo
• Akshayapaatram 
• Swathi 
• Mehjabeen
• Vijitha 
• Parita

Rules to claim and share these awards:

• Thank and Link the blogger who has given you the award.
• Copy and paste the Logos in your blog.
• Pass these on to 15 other Great Blogger friends
• Comment on the most recent post and let the nominated blogger know of the award

Phewww! That was such a long post! Till next time then, and bon appetit!

Fruit Salad with Green-tea Jelly

What? It's cloudy again? Weather gods, send us some sun please!

And to make things worse, its friggin' HOT! Which means, the option of sipping hot chai all day is pretty much out of the window. What i need on a day like this is something cool and refreshing, but bright enough to beat the gloom outside.

Like...oranges. Sweet, cool, refreshing but zesty and bright. Perfect.

But of course, you didn't come all this way to hear me tell you to go eat oranges. Oh, no. I've got something extra special for you, which is....(pregnant pause for effect)

Le GREEN TEA.

Full to choking with antioxidants and all good things in general. But lets face it, on its own it.tastes.like.HAY.
Which is is why we infuse it with a little mint. And later, a wee bit of honey and lemon juice to perk it up further.

And while we are waiting for the tea to steep, why not sprinkle soak some some gelatin and dissolve it in the hot tea? Pale, delicate, milky cubes of flavored green tea. Genius? Genius.

What next? Salad dressing. Easy peasy. Another tablespoon of honey, some orange zest, orange juice and freshly ground black pepper. Done.

Now for the real deal. Greens: Crunchy iceberg lettuce. Citrus: Orange (Duh!). Other fruit: Whatever you can fish out of your fruit basket- all i had was strawberries. And then, if you are a texture junkie like me, some granola, or toasted almonds for crunch. Pour dressing, toss and finally, top with cubes of green tea jelly.
Yu-hum.

Fruit Salad with Green-tea Jelly

For Green tea Jelly:
2 cups water
3-5 mint leaves
2 green-tea bag
1 and a half tbspn honey
Juice from half a lemon (the last two can be adjusted according to your taste)
2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

1. Boil water with the mint leaves, dip the teabags in the boiling water and allow it to steep for a few minutes.
2. In the meantime, sprinkle the gelatin in a little cold water and allow it to soak.
3. Discard teabags and mint leaves, and add the honey and lemon juice to the tea.
4. Add the gelatin to the hot tea and stir until mixed properly.
5. Pour the tea into a flat pan (I lined it with cling-film so that i could take jelly out easily)

For Dressing: 

I tbspn honey
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tbspn orange zest
1 teaspoon of fresh crushed pepper

1. Mix all the ingredients together

 For Fruit Salad:
1 cup chopped lettuce
2 oranges
5-7 strawberries
1/2 cup granola or toasted almonds

1. Chop lettuce; peel and segment oranges; halve strawberries
2. Mix the greens, fruits and granola together, pour dressing and toss. 
3. Top with green tea cubes before serving.

Bean Sprouts Sandwich

There is something about sprouting beans that makes me feel incredibly cold-blooded.

They are these hardy little buggers when you first meet. You soak them in water and wait all night until they go all soft on you. And then, more moisture, more tender loving care, until they are ready to sprout into these fragile minuscule little plantlings. It's intense, you know. Like watching someone giving birth. And then -you sit down and chomp them down by the mouthful.


See what I mean? Or is it just me? Did i just gross you out?

Anyways, moving on....Tomatoes.

This might be the time to add a little disclaimer here. Don't get me wrong, i love tomatoes. I love them roasted, cooked, sun-dried, mashed, sauced, ketchup-ed and in any possible form, but raw. There is just something about red, fresh, juicy tomatoes that makes my taste buds want to revolt and throw up in agony.

So, make that oven-roasted-till-they-are-shrivelled-and-dead tomatoes.Dry caramalized goodness. Yum!



I'd had this vision of a delicate and dainty canapé, an assemblage of bean sprouts, dressed down with  lemon juice, salt and pepper, resting on a slice of perfectly roasted tomato. Ideal finger food for a kitty party. Or a book club meeting. Or wherever bored ladies congregate,try to eat without messing their lipstick, and drink wine with their pinkie finger sticking out.

And lovely it was, except that it took me five full minutes to try and transport it to the near vicinity of my mouth without squishing the tomato and dropping my carefully assembled sprouts all over my face. So much for lady-like pursuits.


A quick change of plans. The aforementioned canapé, now sandwiched between two slices of Mumbai Pav, topped with a dollop of -hold your breath- pomegranate raita! The sweet bite of the pomegranate and creaminess of greek yogurt with the lemony mouthful of sprouts -Stroke of genius, if i may say so myself! :)

One perfect bite!

Bean Sprouts Sandwich

Moth beans, sprouted

Tomatoes

Lemon Juice

Coriander leaves

Greek yogurt/ hung curd

Fresh pomegranate

1.Soak moth beans overnight, drain excess water and keep moist until they sprout.

2.Slice tomatoes that throw them into the oven at 400F until they are roasted completely

3.Toss sprouted beans with lemon juice, salt, pepper and oodles of finely chopped coriander

4.For the yogurt dressing, add pomegranate seeds to greek yogurt. (Squeeze some of the pomegranate so as to release some of its fresh juices into the curd) Season with salt, pepper and chat masala (optional).

5. Stack up the layers between the slices of a halved bun/pav and take a wholesome bite!

Note:I haven't given exact measurements as this is such a forgiving recipe that you can hardly go wrong. Add, subtract or replace ingredients and flavour more or less according to your taste. It'll be great anyways! :)

Orange- Mint Cucumber Salad

Okay! Here we are, Day 1 of my big fat MakeOver!

Of course, i wanted something super-special for the first day... So, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the superbly cool, incredibly charming...

CUCUMBER! (Drumroll, please!)

Oh! no, no, please don't go deflating like a balloon on me, you really have no idea how cool a vegetable this is, both literally and metaphorically!

I've heard cucumbers being praised to the heavens and then dragged down to the pits by nutritionists and weight watchers, and I do admit it that its more or less just plain H20 in there, with limited nutritional value, but what I adore this cutie veggie for is that it is the perfect blank canvas to just load the flavours on! Stack it up between two slices of bread or stir it up with some thai peanut sauce, anything and everything goes well with the humble Mr Cucumber!

And while we are at it, why don't we dress him up with some orange juice? A dash of mustard for spice? And of course, a sprinkling of mint to keep it fresh and clean.

Now, how bad can that be..

Pair it with spicy curry, rich meat or flavoured rice- But for weight-watching me, its going to be a huge bowl of it for dinner tonight! :D

Orange-Mint Cucumber Salad

Medium Sized cucumbers - 2

Orange Juice* (Fresh juice or bottled) -1/4 cup

Yellow Mustard -1 tbsp.

Honey -2 teaspoons

Salt -I tsp.

Pepper -1 tsp.

Mint leaves –I bunch

Chop cucumber into thin even slices and keep aside

Mix rest of the ingredients well together and add salt and pepper to taste.

(To make this a vinaigrette, drizzle extra virgin oil slowly into the dressing while whisking in quickly with the other hand so that an emulsion is formed)

Pour the dressing into the bottom of the serving bowl and add sliced cucumbers on top.

Finish off with a good amount of fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped

Mix well and serve! :)