My Tea Website

Yuhoo finally, its up and running,

Our tea website

www.nutrichai.com

A real small venture started out by my friend and me. It has taken us a while to get the website going. Its still not absolutely ready, as we would be adding new things slowly and steadily. But I would love to get all your opinions and offcourse if any one wants to order some good Indian tea.

Thanks and more later

Enjoy.

Hot Sprout Chaat.

We all know how healthy sprouts are, but I always forget to soak them. So now whenever I make any of the lentils, I always soak extra. That takes care of the forgetting part.

Personally both my husband and I do not enjoy raw sprouts. We love it slightly sauted and spiced up. So I usually make it as a "garam chaat" or hot bowl of sprout salad. Its quick and great for packed lunches too. Rich in proteins and vitamin C sprouts are an excellent food choice and the possibilities to cook with them is endless.

Add it to curd to make raita

Add it to wraps or sandwiches.

Add it to a salad.

Boil it and stuff it in paranthas.

well I guess I have opened the pandoras box, we have to just keep looking.

So here is the quick recipe I made

You will need:

• 1 cup Black chana sprouts.*
• 1 cup Green Moong sprouts.*
• 1/2 red sweet onions diced
• 1 tomato diced
• salt to taste
• 1/2 tsp red chilly powder
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp chopped green chillies.
• 1/2 tbsp of butter

You have to :

1. Heat the butter in a saute pan.
2. Add the chopped green chillies. Add the onion and saute.
3. Once the onions turn transparent, add the diced tomatoes. Saute.
4. Add the sprouts along with the spices. mix everything up, cover and cook for 5 minutes.
5. Remove the cover and saute on high for another 2 minutes or till any excess water dries up.
6. add the lemon juice.

* To make sprouts: Soak lentils like green moong, black chana, black eyed pea in water overnight. Drain the excess water and tie it up in a cloth or a paper towel. keep the cloth or towel wet and keep sprinkling water on them till you see the small shoots coming out. Store in the fridge.

Enjoy.

Marble Cake

Life is full of the unexpected. A lot of you'll would agree to that I am sure. I had given up all hopes of getting back any of my pictures or data, that went down with the crashed hard drive. But my husband's colleague came in as saviour, and restored almost 40 gigs of the data !. What more all my pictures are safe and sound, just the way I had last seen them. Yipppeeeee!!!!!

Now I can post all my previous recipes with pictures.......

But as of now, I am going to post the cake recipe I made to say thank you. Since my husband was going to take it to work and then give it to his colleague, I did not want to do anything fancy.

As a young kid, my mom use to bake marble cakes for us. Simple, buttery with the perfect blend of cocoa and vanilla. So I decided on that.

I took my recipe from here. The recipe called for cake flour, but I substituted that for some all purpose flour and cornstarch. Here goes the recipe.

You will need

• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 1/4th cup all purpose flour
• 6 tbsp of cornstarch
• 1 cup milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

You have to

1. In a large bowl, with electric mixer at low speed, beat sugar and butter until blended. Increase speed to high, and beat until light and fluffy.
2. Add flour, milk, baking powder, vanilla, salt, and eggs; beat at medium speed until well mixed. Increase speed to high, and beat batter 4 minutes longer
3. Remove about 2 1/2 cups batter to a medium bowl. With a wire whisk or fork, beat cocoa into batter in medium bowl until well blended.
4. Grease a 10 inch springform pan. (Here a 9 inch would have also worked well). Alternately spoon vanilla and chocolate layers into prepared pan.
5. With a large spoon, cut and twist through batters to obtain marbled effect.Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
6. Cool cake in pan, and on a wire rack, for 10 minutes.
7. Remove cake from pan, and cool completely.

Cut into pieces and serve. It tastes great with a cup of tea, coffee or simply a glass of cold milk.

Note: I found this great tip, if a recipe calls for cake flour follow this

1 cup cake flour= 3/4th cup all purpose flour + 2 tbsp of corn starch.

A Crashed Laptop,some lost pictures and HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

image source: http://www.pcgeekdom.com/2006_02_01_pcprojects_archive.html

Scene 1: I get back and I am all excited to update my blog with all the latest posts.

Scene 2: I plug my camera to upload all the yummy pics of Masala idly, Sev puri and a yummy birthday cake. Save it.

After a gap of three hours.

Scene 3: I turn my laptop on, and get this blue screen with a weird message. Don't understand word of it, and try to reboot it again.

Entry of my husband. (office laptop in hand)

Husband: "what happened? what's that message?

Me: i don't know, all I was doing was uploading some pics.

Husband reads message, googles it on his laptop and gives his verdict.

Husband: Our hard drive just crashed. We will loose all data.

Me: what? what about the pictures?

Husband: I think we will loose all that. (repents), why dint we back up all this? A mistake.

Both of us (specially me), extremely sad.

As of now: Laptop is back with a new hard drive. And husband's colleague is trying to retrieve data. Hope he succeeds.

Well so that has been my story for the last three days. Pictures are the most priced possessions and we have seem to have lost all that. But I am hopefull.

As for the pictures for my blog, my husband suggests I make all that again and take new pictures. I guess that is a possibility.

So I guess that is that. I have to update my blog from here onwards, and forget about the old stuff.

Will get on with it soon. Some cooking over the weekend and some new pictures.

Till then

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE TO ALL.

Vande mataram.

Gujrati kadi

This is all time staple, at any gujrati household and my personal favourite too. Whats more, is that its super simple to make. The meal is complete with a simple potato curry, chapati, rice, and curd.

Personally I prefer this kadi to the punjabi kadi that everyone relishes at my mom's place. I feel there is to much work involved in that one. Maybe when I am up for it I will make it once and l post the recipe here. But right now its simple kadi recipe. Quick and real simple.

You will need

• Curd- 1/2 cup
• Gram flour (beasn)- 1 tbsp
• Water- 1-2 cups
• Gur- 1/2 inch pieces
• Sugar- 1 tbsp (approx)
• Salt- to taste
• Turmeric powder- a pinch

For the tempering

• ghee- 1 tbsp
• curry leaves- 3-4
• ginger- chopped
• green chillies- 2-3 slit from the center.
• Mustard seeds- 1/2 tsp
• cumin seeds- 1/2 tsp
• cloves- 2-3
• cinnamon stick- 1/2
• whole red chilly-1
• bay leaves- 1-2
• asefotida or hing- 1/2 tsp
• Red chilly powder- 1/2 tsp
• Cumin and cilantro (jeera dhania) powder- 1/2 tsp

For the garnish

• chopped cilantro
• lemon juice

You have to

1. In a saucepan mix together the curd and the gram flour to a paste.
2. Add water and mix it well. Put it to simmer.
3. Add salt, turmeric, gur and a few of the curry leaves. Let it simmer till the mixture begins to boil.
4. Heat ghee in a separate pan. Add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, cloves, cinnamon and hing.
5. Once they begin to splutter, add the curry leaves along with the green chillies and the chopped ginger.
6. Once you begin to get the aroma of all the spices add the red chilly powder and the jeera dhania powder.
7. Add all this to the simmering curd and besan mixture. Add the sugar. Taste the kadi. If its not sweet, you might want to add some more sweet.
8. Let it simmer for 5-10 mins more.
9. Add some lemon juice and garnish with cilantro.
10. Serve hot with rice.

Yummy.

There are a lot in ingredients, but trust me its really simple to make.

Enjoy!