This is another saabudana item thats favourite among everybody... In fact there are quite a few children who love to fast because they get to eat all such yummy items :) (including me :D)


Ingredients
1 cup saabudana
1/2 cup groundnut powder
3-4 green chillies
1/2 spoon jeera
4 spoon corriander leaves
2 medium sized potatoes
1/2 spoon sugar
Salt to taste
Oil/ghee/butter

Method

• Soak Saabudana in 1/4 cup water for at least 2-3 hours
• Boil potato till its completely cooked and can be mashed
• Add jeera powder, salt, sugar, groundnut powder, finely chopped chillies and corriander leaves to saabudana and mix well
• Add mashed potato to this mixture and form the sticky dough of this mixture
• Take the round ball of this dough and make thalipith out of it.
  (For those who don't know how thalipith is done on - apply little oil, ghee or butter to the tawa and press the ball on the tawa to form the round chapati like item sticking to the tawa - little movable because of oil)
• Cook on low-medium flame with lid on the tawa for one side cooking
• When its brown from the side thats sticking to the tawa flip the thalipith and cook it on the other side without lid
• Cut the thalipith in quarters and serve with curd chutney/curd/butter

Notes
You can use red chilli powder instead of green chillies if you don't have them in stock. It tastes little different and is another variant.
Also as discussed earlier in Sabudana Wada recipe, soaking sabudana in correct amount of water is also important to get soft khichadi
I used half spoon corriander powder this time because i didn't get fresh corriander but offcourse it tastes and looks nicer with corriander leaves

These days its so hard to get big brinjals in hyderabad.. so this time when i went to pune i got couple of them from pune, for my fav recipe - kaap. I have already posted the bengali style of this here. But today i prepared it our style - saraswat style.. The main difference is with bengali style the bhaja melts in mouth as its completely fried and soft, but in our style its crispier outside and soft inside.. I love Brinjal kaap the most in all other kaaps :)


Ingredients
1 Big Brinjal
Red Chilli Powder
Turmeric Powder
Salt to taste
Rava
Oil

Method

• Cut Brinjal into round medium thick pieces
• Marrinate with these pieces with salt and keep aside for 5-10 min
• Marrinate with turmeric and red chilli powder
• Heat the tawa and put little oil
• Take rava in dish and keep each piece of marrinated brinjal in it to cover it with rava on both sides
• Shallow fry it this covered pieces on low-medium heat till it turns brown

Notes
Fry on low-medium flame so that brinjal is well cooked and outer rawa coating is crispy
For better results use fine rawa. Sadly i didn't find fine(barik) rawa here so used bombay rawa that one gets in big bazzar
Also same recipe can be used to prepare banana(raw), potato kaaps

I had been trying to bake cake since I bought microwave.. But it wasn't successful attempt.. Infact couple of times it turned out as hard as cookies and poor ajoy had to suffer.. Now today that my mom and dad were coming I thought I might experiment cake on them.. :) But this time it came out well and I was surprised because ingredients used were same. Later when I was talking to Mom I came to know the reason. Here is how I prepared it


Ingredients
1 cup maida
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
20 Dates seeds removed
1 spoon baking powder
Nuts to garnish

Method

• Grind milk, dates and sugar well to form the paste
• Mix oil to the above paste
• Sieve together maida and baking powder atleast 2-3 times
• Mix sieved maida and baking powder spoon full at a time with the paste formed.
• Grease the microwave safe pan with oil and put in butter paper at bottom
• Add the above formed mixture to the pan
• Garnish it with nuts
• Preheat microwave to 200C
• Bake the cake by keeping pan on the lower rack and in Microwave convection mode - 200C, 180W, 20min

Notes
Sieving maida and baking powder together is must, infact I didn't know this earlier and thats the reason cake turned out to be cookie
You might want to keep dates and milk mixed together say overnight so that its easy to grind it. (I am always impatient so I just grind it and its sometimes very difficult)
I have samsung 108STF model of microwave. Cooking temperature and power depends on the microwave. You might need to experiment on that little to get the perfect result for you

Gobi Manchurian, one of the best indianised chinese dish.. I tried to prepare this today and it turned out quite well. I didn't have chinese vegetables hotel guys use and I don't even know where can I get them, so I made gobi manchurian completely indianised. And here is the recipe


Ingredients
1 medium sized Gobi
5 spoon corn floor
4 spoon maida
2 spoon red chilli powder
3 spoon Garlic-ginger paste
3 spoon tomato ketchup
1 beans
2 finely chopped green chillies
2 spoon hot and sweet tomato ketchup
Salt to taste
Oil

Method

• Chop the gobis to make eatable sized pieces
• Mix 4 spoon corn floor, maida, red chilli powder, 2 spoon garlic ginger paste and salt with water to form thick batter
• Heat oil on high flame
• Add gobi pieces to the batter so that the batter covers it from all sides
• Deep fry the pieces on medium flame till they are golden brown
• Heat Oil on low flame
• Add remaining garlic ginger paste and let it sputter
• Add in chopped onion, green chillies and let them cook
• Once onions are cooked and start turning little brown add in both ketchups
• Mix remaining corn floor with water and add it to the manchurian
• Garnish with finely chopped beans and green chillies

Notes
You can optionally use soya souce also but I didn't have that either
If you want to prepare this as gravy, add more corn floor with water to the gravy while mixing ketchups

Sabudana Khichadi is something very very tasty and typical maharashtrian dish.. I cook it very often and many times take it even for lunch because I just love it :) So here is how I prepare it.


Ingredients
1 cup sabudana
1 cup groundnut powder
1 tea spoon sugar
3-4 green chillies
3-4 spoons corriander leaves
1 spoon jeera
5 spoons grated coconut (optional)
Salt to taste
ghee

Method

• Soak Sabudana atleast for 3-4 hours with 1/4 cup of water
• Mix soaked sobudana, groundnut powder, sugar, salt, finely chopped green chillies and corriander leaves (finely chopped)
• Heat ghee in a pan
• Add jeera and let it sputter
• Add the sabudana mixed with other ingredients
• Cook by putting a lid on the pan, stirring the khichadi often and on low flame
• After around 5 min of cooking khichadi would be ready
• Garnish it with grated fresh coconut

Notes
Cooking on low flame is must, otherwise khichadi won't be soft.
Use thickes possible pan to prepare khichadi, or you can also try putting pan on tava, Since I have thick kadhai I don't use tava
Also as discussed earlier in Sabudana Wada recipe, soaking sabudana in correct amount of water is also important to get soft khichadi

Again this recipe is inspiration from bangalore. We use to go to restaurant called Treat on 80 feet road . The restaurant serves amazing food. I love the cucumber raita they make and when I tasted it I decided to make this at home. I was able to get the taste similar to their's. Raita goes with almost everything, its so easy to prepare and its so tasty that I sometimes like to eat it like a sweet dish - kheer after dinner :)


Ingredients
1 cup thick curd
1 cucumber
1/2 spoon jeera powder
Salt to taste

Method

• Grate the cucumber
• Add salt and jeera powder
• Mix with curd

Notes
Using thick curd is important as I do not throw the water that gets generated by cucumber after mixing it with salt. So If you do not have thick curd make sure you remove the water.

When I was in bangalore I started my cooking experiments with ready made masalas (not ready to eats :D). Now I have started using my own masalas (to be precised my mom made :D) for almost everything. But there is this one recipe which I still prefer and love with MTR Pulav masala.. It tastes awesome :) Over a period, I have made some changes compared to what the pack mentions it and here it is.


Ingredients
6 Cups of cooked rice
1 finely chopped onion
2 spoons of MTR Pulav Masala
1 spoon garlic-ginger paste
1/4 cup boiled muttor
4-5 spoons ground nuts
4-5 cashews
4 spoons ghee
Salt to taste

Method

• Keep 3 spoons of ghee in a pan for heating
• Add onion and groundnuts
• When groundnuts are half done add in cashews and garlic ginger paste
• When cashews turn brown add in pulav masala and let it cook for 1 min
• Add cooked rice and muttor and mix well
• Put in remaining 1 spoon of ghee on the pulav and place lid on the pan and let it cook on low flame for 2 min.
• Add salt, mix pulav well and again let it cook for 2-3 min

Notes
Add cashews later than groundnuts so that they don't burn as cashews turn brown faster than groundnuts.
Using Basamati rice gives nice aroma and taste to the Pulav