Watermelon Lemon Chiller - A Summer treat!

I love watermelon - its my favorite summertime fruit - so refreshing to enjoy it on a hot summer day! The color and the texture just amaze me - one of nature's wonders according to me. I have also read articles recently that this fruit has a lot of health values when consumed regularly. Its quite filling and a few slices are sufficient to compensate a light lunch and contributes to a healthy diet. Yesterday, I picked up two mini locally grown organic melons from a local store and they were just awesome. It pretty much refueled my summer addiction. Everytime I cut this fruit, I go on eating and eating until I force myself to stop and store a few pieces in the fridge for others. Everytime the bowl comes out of the fridge, the madness begins :)

This is a quick summer beverage - Watermelon lemon chiller. Interestingly, a few simple additions to the juice enhance the naturally sweet flavor with a new twist. I've tried different variations like adding mint, lemon, sugar and salt etc to the extracted juice and everytime it comes out good and quite different. My daughter loves this lemon flavored watermelon juice. This summer I've made it a couple of times for her and she loves preparing it with me - A good holiday activity to keep her engaged.

Ingredients:

Seedless Watermelon cut into cubes - 3 cups
Sugar - 2 tbsp (adjust to your taste)
Lemon juice - 1 tbsp
Mint leaves a few
Sliced Lemon wedges - 2 or 3

Procedure:
Run the watermelon cubes in a blender and filter the juice through a strainer.
Add sugar, mint leaves and lemon juice and mix for 2 or 3 mins.
Take a glass, add crushed ice and fill with the juice. Drop a sliced lemon wedge and mix it well.

Perfect for a hot summer day!

Quick recipes - for busy days

I've been so behind in participating in any cooking-events lately. The moment I see an event announcement, I get all geared up and enthusiastic about participating, but my energy plunges down like a torn balloon as days go by. And by the time I realize, its already too late to contribute. This has become my habit in the last several months. I'm sure I missed quite a few interesting events that I could have contributed. So, now I'm into this resolution mood of participating in all cooking events, ok - atleast as much as I can, from now on. Don't know how long this energy will last, but atleast wanted to try.

So, after browsing through some of the great events hosted by some great bloggers, I started sorting by the end date and I noticed Mahimaa's 15 min cooking event is nearing its deadline. Ever since I saw her announcement, I've been thinking about participating in her event, because quick-meals are my preferred meals! So this was a perfect come back for me! But as usual I was delaying for no reason. Finally I'm all set to join the event! Thanks Mahimaa, for hosting this event! Here are some of the easy recipes that can be put together in a few minutes.

Purple Shake!

A perfect summer time shake with vibrant grape flavours and frozen yogurt. Long back I tasted Grape Milk Shake in a restaurant and fell for it right away. I thought the combination was quite unique and best of all, I loved the color. Since then, I've been making it at home. But the recipe has undergone some evolution and has now become a low-calorie version, but still offers the same great taste!

Ingredients (for 2 glasses):

• Grape Concentrate (Frozen/Undiluted) - 3 tbsp
• Vanilla Frozen Yogurt (non-fat) - 1 cup
• Water - 1/2 cup
• Low fat milk - 1 cup
• Lemon juice - 1 tsp (optional)

Procedure:

• Run all the ingredients in a blender or food processor until they form a nice frozen mixture. Serve immediately in glasses, topped with a scoop of frozen yogurt.

Corriander leaves with Gram flour - A different side dish!

Fresh herbs are a wonder to cook with! Nothing can beat the fresh smelling corriander leaves and their nice zingy color! Given a chance, I would add them to anything I cook. This dish is a dish that contains corriander leaves as the main vegetable iteslf! Quite an interesting recipe that I learnt from my friend, and have been a fan of this dish ever since I tasted it for the first time from her lunch box! After trying a few times I think I'm getting better in matching her taste. The key is to add the right amount of gram flour (besan). A very simple, yet tasty dish.

Ingredients:

• Chopped corriander leaves - 2 cups
• Garlic - 2 small pods
• Chilli Powder - 1/2 tsp
• Gram Flour - 1/2 cup
• Cumin seeds - 1 tsp

Procedure:

• Chop the corriander leaves and garlic finely. I run both of them together in a food processor for a few mins.
• Heat oil in a pan, season with cumin seeds. Once they pop, add chilli powder and salt in the oil. After a few seconds, add the corriander leaves and garlic and mix well.
• Add salt, cover and cook for 2-3 mins. Do not add water.
• Increase the heat, and add gram flour in batches until the mixture becomes without moisture. Don't add too much flour, or it may spoil the taste. I hope the picture gives an idea on the consistency.

Serve hot with Rice / Rotis.

Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Curry

Another of those quick and easy ones that I learnt from my same friend! Again, my first encounter with this dish was from her lunch-box and I've now made it quite a few times. I love pumpkin especially in a sweet form. This is a little different and I love the combination of Sweet and Spicy flavors.

Ingredients:

• Pumpkin - 2 cups (cut into cubes)
• Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
• Fenugreek seeds - 1/4 tsp
• Chilli Powder - 1/2 tsp
• Garam Masala - 1/2 tsp
• Jaggery - 2 tbsp

Procedure:

• Heat oil in a pan, season with mustard and fenugreek seeds.
• Add the pumpkin cubes, chilli powder, garam masala and salt.
• Cover and cook for 5 - 7 mins. Pumpkins usually cook faster and release lots of moisture. So, don't add water.
• Add the jaggery and cover for a couple more mins. Increase the heat and stir periodically until the water completely evaporates and pumpkins are soft and tender.

I enjoy this with Rice and Sambar.

Spicy Green Buttermilk

Its summer time and I can't ignore buttermilk! I made this over the weekend after a tiring day. If you are a spice lover, this buttermilk version is for you. Ofcourse, you can also make a less spicy version of the same recipe, by altering the spices. I enjoy it as medium spicy.

Ingredients:

• Curd / Yogurt - 1 cup
• Water - 3 cups
• Cumin powder - 1/4 tsp
• Asafoetida - 2 pinches
• Ginger - 1 inch
• G.chillies - 2 small
• Curry leaves - 3
• Corriander leaves - 1 tbsp (chopped)
• Salt - as required.

Procedure:

• Grind everything together in a blender except the curd. You can add some water to make it a smooth paste.
• Then add the curd, remaining water and blend for a few mins.
• Serve chilled, garnished with curry leaves.
  

All these entries go to Mahimaa's 15 min cooking event and EC's WYF - Quick Meal event.

Caramel Mocha - A coffee delight

How many of you are coffee lovers? I'm sipping my hot coffee right now. Can you smell it? There's a fantastic aroma originating from my kitchen now. Its late afternoon, dark outside and raining. Enjoying coffee on a rainy day is one of those simple pleasures of life. I have always noticed myself in an elated state whenever I enjoy my coffee. I am usually an incoherent amoeba until my first cup of coffee. But a dose of caffeine does magic to my mind and body. Complicated things seem to be simplified after a cup of coffee! It gets me going for the day. Fortunately, we both are coffee lovers and my hubby makes coffee much better than me. Since he's an early-morning person, he makes it every morning and I usually wake up smelling the aroma of freshly brewed coffee filling our house. His coffee has been a big hit in our friends circle and parties at our house never end without his yummy coffee.

One of my best experiences every time I visit India is enjoying that wonderful filter coffee at my hometown, I can even taste it when I close my eyes! Especially when I go home after a long time, that familiar coffee smell with which I grew up makes me feel so comfy! Though we still make our traditional filter coffee at home everyday, it didn't take a long time for us to get used to the coffee here. The first time we had coffee after coming to the states was at North Carolina. It was our first week in this country and our friends took us to this coffee shop in our neighborhood. We ordered and after a while, the girl came back with a big white cup (actually, its a bowl!) with a dark liquid in it. It took a few mins for us to realize that was it! It was watery, bitter and had a wierd flavor added to it (we later learnt it was hazelnut!). It was just shocking to know that coffee could be so different from country to country! We couldn't take more than two sips and had to dump the rest. We still feel so sorry for it, as my friends had paid for it. But surprisingly we adapted pretty quickly, perhaps there was no other choice in our work places. Nowadays I enjoy every flavor of it like latte, mocha etc. and I get fascinated with those fancy blended coffee at starbucks.

Well, last weekend I thought I deserved a pat on my back after finishing up my long pending pantry re-arranging project. I wanted coffee but I was also in a mood to prepare something elaborate (just coffee, not dinner!). So I made this Chocolate Caramel Mocha which I always relish. I've made this several times and keep tweaking with some variations everytime. This time I added a pinch of cinnamon powder and it tasted great! If you are a coffee lover, this is a treat for you!

Ingredients: (for 2 cups of Mocha)

• Instant Coffee Powder - 2 tsp
• Caramel - 1 tbsp
• Chocolate Syrup - 1 tbsp
• Water - 1 cup
• Sugar - 1 tsp
• Cinnamon powder - 1/2 tsp
• Hot milk - 1 cup
• Whipped cream - Optional.

Procedure:

• Heat the water in a pan. When its about to boil, add coffee powder, sugar, caramel, chocolate syrup and cinnamon powder. Stir until everything is completely dissolved. Remove from heat.
• If you have the patience, whip up the hot milk for a min or two until it forms foam on the top. This just gives that extra kick, but even otherwise it tastes great!
• In two serving glasses, fill up half of the glasses with the coffee mixture, then fill the remaining with the hot milk seprating the foam. Top it up with foam and whipped cream. Sprinkle with instant coffee powder and cinnamon powder.

There you go! Delicious Chocolate Caramel Mocha is ready!

Rava Laddus and a Click

Its friday.. My mind always gets a little lazy at this time of the week no matter how busy I am. Just the thought of friday makes me feel lethargic and sluggish. So, just in an effort to increase my productivity I decided to manage a few hours in the kitchen today. I knew I had plans to participate in quite a few events and its only a couple of days left but I've no idea what to make. I was glancing through various cookbooks from my shelf and found quite a few interesting recipes. But most of them required ingredients that I don't usually stock in my pantry. It required a mini visit to the grocery store. That was a good reason for me to postpone those dishes for some other time.

Finally after a lot of reasearch and thinking, I decided to close my cookbook and make my own favorite Rava Laddus. It was a good decision:) Laddus came out phenomenal! Sweet and soft with those yummy flavors. I have a liking for laddus since childhood and that liking still continues. Our Deepavali wasn't complete without rava laddus. Grandma used to make it delicious and I've managed to follow her traditional recipe many times. About a few months before, I tasted these laddus from a friend and it had a slightly different flavor, I just loved it! The secret ingredient was coconut! Adding just a little bit of coconut gave it a different twist and I fell for it right away. Since then I've been modifying my grandma's recipe just by adding a little coconut to it. I like all kinds of laddus, but rava laddus are the only ones that I have tried making at home. May be beacuse of the simple ingredients and the straight-forward method.

This recipe goes for Mythreyees's Sweet Series: Chikki and Laddu event.

Ingredients

• Rava - 1 cup
• Sugar - 1 cup
• Cardamom pods - 5
• Cashews - 10
• Shredded Coconut - 2 tbsp
• Ghee - 2 tbsp
• Milk - 3 tbsp

Procedure

• Heat the pan and dry roast the rava until nice aroma comes. Set aside.
• Remove the skins from cardamom and take just the seeds out. Grind them together with sugar to a fine powder. Mix them with the rava.
• Heat 1 tsp ghee in a pan and roast the cashews. Add this to the rava mixture.
• In the same pan, add another tsp of ghee and fry the coconut until they become golden brown. Add to rava mixture.
• Mix together well and start making the laddus by adding a little ghee and warm milk to each laddu while making it so that the ball holds on tight.

I also managed to make Honey Lemonade, a refreshing and healthy drink for summer. I often make this at home as my daughter just loves honey! The recipe is quite simple. Mix 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup honey in a pan. Heat until the honey dissolves fully. Cool and then add 4 cups of cold water, a few ice cubes and a pinch of salt. Mix well and serve chilled.

This entry goes for EC's AFAM:Lemon as well as Jai and Bee's CLICK event.

Honey Lemonade

Mango Fruit Punch

It's so much fun when I discover a new recipe to add to my blog. When my sister told me about this recipe over phone, it sounded delicious and I had the sense of the taste pretty much. One of the great things we all sisters possess in common, is the passion for sharing recipes! If we happen to try out a new recipe and if the end result is impressive, we can't wait to share with each other! Its an enjoyable moment. Its even more enjoyable to share the secrets of doing little twists and tweaks to the original recipe and make it even more delicious! After we all sisters came away from our home, the curiosity for learning new recipes has grown in each one of us. Obviously, the more you get involved in cooking, the more the curiosity for learning grows! Also, each one of us are happening to meet so many friends, attend parties, read magazines, which are sources for countless new recipes. Sharing recipes has always been fun! And honestly, that has been one of the key motivating factors for me to start on this blog venture. What a way to share and learn recipes! I originally thought my blog would atleast be useful to share recipes among our sisters and immediate family members, which can avoid explaining over phone and writing them down everytime. I never ever thought this would grow beyond what I imagined! Just the feel of it is so exciting!

Alright, about this recipe... As I said, this is a recipe that I learnt from my sister. She told that she made this once for a potluck party. I tried this yesterday and we just loved it! She is absolutely right, this is a great potluck dish. So simple to make, and you can either serve it for a drink or for a dessert. Mango being my favorite fruit, I was happy to see Mango Mania started by Meeta. I see mangoes everywhere these days! It calls upon my forgotten passion for mangoes. This is one good dessert that makes me indulge into that passion!

Ingredients

• Mangoes - 2
• Mango Pulp - 1 can (850 gm)
• Diced mixed fruits like apple, pineapple, grapes (avoid bananas as it will become too soggy) - 1 cup
• Milk - 2 cups
• Sprite - 1/2 litre

Procedure:

• If you do not wish to use canned mango pulp, you can make pulp from about 4 fresh mangoes, by blending them to a puree. You can add 1 cup of water while blending.
• Peel and dice the mangoes, set aside.
• Mix the mango puree, diced mangoes and diced mixed fruits with milk in a large bowl. Soak this overnight in fridge well covered.
• Add sprite, ice cubes before serving.

Honeydew Mint smoothie

I learnt this from my younger sister who lives in California... She made this once when she had visited us this winter. It was awesome! I especially liked the honeydew-mint combination as it brings out a unique flavor. The mild mint flavour with a little sour taste... very good!

On a busy morning, I take this for breakfast to save time (I prepare it the previous night and regregirate). A good and easy way to have a few servings of fruits.

Ingredients:

Ripen Honeydew - half

Honey - 2 tbsp

Milk - 1/4 cup

Limejuice - 1 tsp

Yogurt - 2 tbsp

Mint leaves - 4

Procedure:

1.Remove the seeds and skin from honeydew and cut them into cubes.

2.Blend everything in a blender to a smoothie .

Serve Chilled.