A 10 minute meal: Easy Dhal Recipe

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Jane

I really appreciate this lovely lentil Toor Dhal especially considering we were only introduced to each other about 5 years ago. I love the taste, mild and nutty, and I love that it doesn’t need pre-soaking before cooking and mashes down really nicely. Of course, it brings back memories of… my mother-in-law visiting us in Perth and her delicious cooking. Sambars, sabzis (vegetable dishes), biryani and her elaborate crab curry. That was also the time that I was due to have my first baby. Yes, that’s another memory altogether!

Anyway I think my mother-in-law must have found my kitchen rather inadequate at the time for cooking the kinds of dishes she is use to. During that trip I was convinced to go out and get a Hawkins pressure cooker, among other things. I am so glad I did! 5 minutes in the pressure cooker!! So a quick and easy meal for our family is dhal and rice with a sabzi (vegetable dish) for the adults. And fortunate for me this meal is also a firm favourite with the kids.

Often I’ll make dal towards the end of the week and chuck in whatever vegies I have in the fridge that need using up. This time I added a handful of cherry tomatoes and silverbeet from the garden and 1/4 zucchini. Cook it in the pressure cooker and dinner is ready in 10 minutes or less.

Dhal

1 cup toor dhal
leftover vegetables eg. diced tomato, sliced carrot, 1/2 diced zucchini, handful shredded silverbeet
1-2 tablespoons Shan dal curry powder (my shortcut and a family favourite in regards to taste)
1-2 tablespoons ghee or oil
several fresh curry leaves
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 clove garlic, crushed

1. Add the toor dhal, curry powder, chopped vegetables and 3 cups of water to the pressure cooker. Close the lid and bring to full pressure. Cook on low heat for 5 minutes. Allow to cool gradually. Add salt to taste.
2. To make the tarka, heat the oil in a small pan and add the mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds start popping, add the garlic and curry leaves. When the garlic has browned remove from the heat and add to the dhal mixture.
3. Serve with rice, a big dollop of Greek yoghurt and sliced cucumber.

Family Favourite Chicken Curry

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Jane

This is probably the curry dish I cook the most frequently for my family. Miss K would even say it is one of her favourite meals. Amazing considering she wouldn’t eat any meat for the last couple of years. Even though it seems like a lot of ingredients, it’s really quite simple to make. Also the great thing about a chicken dish is that it cooks in about 20 to 30 minutes. My kids do prefer diced chicken but I’ve started making it with chicken pieces because I am jointing my own chickens now. Other kid friendly variations: I finely chop the onion rather than traditionally slicing it as it makes it easy for them to eat without noticing and I vary the spice level a bit. So hubby gets extra chilli (fresh or dried) sprinkled on his, of course.

Chicken Curry

2 to 3 tablespoons oil or ghee
1 medium onion diced
1 large garlic clove crushed
2 bay leaves
1 tsp finely grated ginger
1 3cm piece cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp crushed black pepper
2 green cardamon pods
500g diced free range chicken thigh or chicken pieces
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons garam masala
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground red chilli (adjust to taste)
1/2 teaspoon ground tumeric
salt to taste
1/3 cup natural yoghurt
2-3 medium sized tomatoes chopped or 200g or 1/2 tin diced tomatoes

1. Heat the oil or ghee in a large saucepan.
2. Add the onions, garlic, ginger, bay leaves and the whole spices and fry gently until the onion is golden brown on a medium heat.
3. Add the chicken pieces and lightly brown on all sides.
4. Add the ground spices, tomato and salt and cook until all of the water has evaporated and the oil/ghee appears on top of the mixture when stirred.
5. Add the yoghurt and cook until all of the water has evaporated.
6. Add 1/3 cup of water. Cover the saucepan and simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes until the chicken is tender.
7. Add additional water to achieve the desired thickness of gravy.
8. Garnish with fresh coriander before serving with rice and a vegetable dish.

School Holiday Idea: Easy Cookie Dough Recipe

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Jane

Well back here posting for the start of a New Year and yes my daughter is still on school holidays (vacation). So this recipe came about because she was bugging me, I mean asking me to make some dough so that she could use some new cookie cutters from Christmas. Her and her 2 yr old brother had a great time rolling out the dough, surprisingly with not much eaten along the way, cutting out the shapes and placing them on their trays. The trickiest part was waiting for the cookies to cool before eating after they came out of the oven. Enjoy!

Cookie Dough

60g butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 teaspoon milk
2/3 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup plain flour
hundreds and thousands (optional)

1. Cream butter and sugar together in a bowl.
2. Add the other ingredients and mix well to form a dough.
3. Roll out dough thinly and cut out shapes. Place on a greased tray. Brush with extra milk and dust with hundreds and thousands.
4. Bake in a moderate oven 8 to 10 minutes. Allow to cool on trays before removing.

Christmas Break

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Jane

Thank you to all those lovely readers who have popped in to have a read of my blog the last little while. All is quiet this end because I am taking time out to enjoy being with family and friends over this Christmas season. (And to tell the truth my daughter is on holidays and I seem to have even less time available than before to do non essential things like blogging.) Hoping to be back in the New Year with gusto!

So a very Happy Christmas and joyful New Year to everybody!

Gozleme with Feta and Silverbeet and Beetroot Leaves

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Jane

I came across this dish, Gozleme, when I was looking for a recipe to use up some left over feta from the fridge and freshly picked silverbeet and beetroot leaves from the vegie garden. Yes you can eat beetroot leaves! They have a mild, earthy taste. I picked some of my beetroot for the first time and didn’t want to let all those gorgeous edible leaves go to waste.

Gozleme is a traditional Turkish flat bread rolled out thinly, filled with a savoury filling, covered over and then cooked on a pan. My adaption to this was to make a pizza like dough with yeast. Since I don’t have a very successful history with making flat breads I wanted a bread that was easy to roll out and held together well when stuffed. It must have worked well because hubby reckoned it was the best flat bread I have made so far. The first time, I filled them with a silverbeet and feta mix and then later on did a mince filling. Though not a 30 minute meal, I think it will become something I cook every now and then.

Gozleme (makes 6)
Dough
1 cup atta flour (wholemeal)
1 1/2 cup plain white flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
Approx 200mL lukewarm water
1 3/4 tsp dried yeast

Filling
1 cup finely chopped silverbeet or spinach (no stems)
1 cup feta cheese or a mixture of feta and another cheese eg grated cheddar, ricotta
1/4 cup mint leaves
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 tblsp fresh oregano of 1 tsp dried oregano
2 chopped fresh green chilli (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Combine the warm water, yeast, flour, salt and oil for the dough in a large bowl. Mix to form a soft dough. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 5 minutes or until elastic. Cut dough into 6. Place on a greased baking tray. Cover with a clean tea towel. Stand in a warm, sunny place for 20 minutes or until dough doubles in size. (I took a shortcut for this step and did the dough in my bread maker.)
2. Pour boiled water over the spinach/ sliverbeet and leave for 1 minute. Drain well and then mix through the other filling ingredients.
3. Roll each piece of dough into a large rectangle. Place one-quarter of the filling over half of each rectangle. Season with salt and pepper. Fold dough over to enclose filling. Press edges together to seal.

4. Preheat a barbecue plate or pan on medium-high heat. Brush one side of each gozleme with 2 teaspoons oil. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes or until base is golden. Brush uncooked side with remaining oil. Turn over and cook for 2 to 3 minutes or until golden and crisp. Remove to a serving plate. Cut gozleme into quarters. Serve with lemon wedges.

I am joining in with Sizzling Tastebud’s Global Food Feast.

Banana Jam

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Jane

What to do when you have loads of ripe bananas to get through?

Make some banana jam, of course! Such a quick and easy recipe which can be served on almost anything I reckon. I had it on apple pikelets this morning for breakfast. Delicious!

Banana Jam

1/4 cup lemon juice
3 1/2 cup diced ripe bananas
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
2 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Dissolve the sugar in the water in a pot and bring to the boil.
2. Add the bananas and lemon juice and simmer for about 30 minutes or until thickened. It forms a thick, gooey paste. Stir in the cinnamon powder towards the end.
3. Pour into sterilised jars.

This recipe I found over at The Abstract Gourmet, a well known Perth food blogger. I just replaced the lime juice with lemon juice.

City of Gosnells Multicultural Food Fair

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Jane

Probably my favourite local event for the year has to be the Multicultural Food Fair. 50 food stalls, thousands of people, live music, face painting (that one is the kids’ favourite) and the company of good friends on one evening. What hubby and I enjoy doing is trying a few different dishes especially ones that don’t get cooked at home. This year we tried the following in the midst of juggling kids though the crowds, getting the baby to sleep eventually and having a very long line up for the face painting.

First was an Asian style crepes- crunchy, paper thin crepes filled with melted cheese. That filling choice was because I bought it originally for the kids to eat and well they only had a few bites each. If I had been buying it for us I would have gone for the more unhealthy but more popular filling choice of chopped strawberries and melted chocolate. Yum!

We also tried the Lebanese chicken kebabs (A wrap with seasoned meat, salad and hummus in it) which had the yummiest homemade pickled cucumber. I love how the flavours you get at some of the stalls are more representative of the food that would be cooked at home rather than in restaurants.

We also had Roti Jala (lace pancake) with a chicken curry. The roti was like a pancake with the mixture poured onto the pan in a lace like pattern. Something I might try cooking at home sometime. This stall said that it was promoting Singaporean Indian food. There was actually a lot of Indian stalls overal, more than there has been in past years. I think there can be to some extent because Indian cuisine is so diverse. Plus hubby and I don’t mind!

The last thing we tried at this year’s food fair was a sweet taro and sweet potato roll in a crisp, thin batter. Sorry people not sure what it was called. But if anyone knows, please tell me. It was really gorgeous looking with the layers of white, orange and red as you bit into it. Now taro is a vegetable that is not readily available in Australia but is quite common elsewhere.

Last but not least we finished the night with Gulab Jamuns, so freshly made they melted in your mouth. Now I am not a huge Gulab Jamun fan, often they are too sweet for me. but if all Gulabs Jamuns tasted like these I would be a convert. Delicious!

One thing I found, despite the multitude of Indian food stalls there were very few serving flat bread like roti, paratha, puri etc. Most had rice. True that most Aussies would associate having a curry with rice rather than bread. But bring on the Indian street food I say! My daughter had decided that she wanted to eat paratha but the only one I found serving it were using pre-made parathas. Disappointing especially when there is a lot of yummy recipes to choose from in this regard.

While it was great to see an event like this so well attended I do think us Aussies have a way to go in being familiar with other cuisines and incorporating them as part of our own food. Case in point, the most popular stall by far this year was the Spiral Spud. A fancy version of chips, a potato cut into a spiral shape, stuck on a stick and deep fried. Come on people get into some real food!

Carrot and Orange Soup

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Jane

Carrots get eaten a lot in our home, either raw (nothing like being able to give your kids a chunk of peeled carrot when they are complaining of being hungry) or cooked. One of the cheapest vegetables to buy, available all year round here and a good source of vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, vitamin K, beta-carotene, fibre, potassium and thiamine. What’s not to love about them!

So when I came across this recipe I thought it was an interesting way of preparing a very familiar vegetable. Soups also make a quick and easy meal. Serve with fresh, crusty bread.

Carrot and Orange Soup

750g (1 lb 10 oz) carrots sliced
1 large potato, peeled and sliced
500mL (2 cups) vegetable or chicken stock
1 teaspoon chopped fresh ginger
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup natural yoghurt
1 handful chopped coriander leaves

1. Place the carrots, potato, stock and ginger into a saucepan, bring to the boil. Cover and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Leave the soup to cool slightly, then puree until smooth, adding the orange juice in the process.
2. Re-heat the soup. Sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper and top with a dollop of fresh yoghurt and coriander leaves.

Rosemary Stanton Healthy Eating for Australian Families Murdoch Books(2007).

The Family Review
Ok the kids didn’t eat a lot. Not sure if that’s because they didn’t like it or they were just full up from eating a lot throughout the day. Personally I found the taste of the orange juice in it a bit overpowering which a stack of black pepper and coriander could not compensate for. I do like carrot soup so next time I might just use a tablespoon or two of the orange juice instead.

Spiced Vegetable Pulao with Almonds

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Jane

Pulao is a flavoured rice dish, where rice and whole spices are fried in ghee and then cooked in a broth. A pulao may contain a variety of vegetables and meat depending on the local cuisine. I love a good pulao because it is a simple and easy one pot dish which cooks in approx 15 minutes. Can’t get better than that! This recipe for pulao, though containing a long list of spices, is actually mild on the chilli factor. Delicious served with lamb and mint raita!

Spiced Vegetable Pulao with Almonds
(If you don’t have whole spices on hand, add an extra teaspoon of garam masala to the recipe instead at Step 3.)

3 tablespoons of ghee* or oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 medium onion finely chopped
3 whole cloves
1 tsp crushed black pepper
2 bay leaves
2.5cm/ 1 inch cinnamon stick
2 whole green cardamon
1 cup basmati rice
1 tsp garam masala
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
salt to taste
2 cups finely diced vegetables (eg potato, carrot, capisicum, peas, beans)
1/4 cup sultanas
1/4 cup unsalted cashews or almonds
2 cups water

1. Heat the ghee or oil in a large saucepan and add the cumin seeds. Then add the onion and whole spices and fry until golden brown.
2. Mix in the rice and fry for 2 minutes.
3. Stir in the ground spices (garam masala, nutmeg), salt, vegetables and the nuts and sultanas.
4. Pour in the water. Reduce heat to low. Cover the saucepan with the lid and cook for 10 to 15 minutes until the rice and vegetables are tender and the water is absorbed. Do not stir while cooking. Turn the heat off and leave for at least 5 minutes before serving.

* Ghee is clarified butter and is great for cooking at high temperatures. It adds a nutty flavour to recipes and can be found in most major supermarkets. I store mine in the fridge but it can be kept at room temperature for several months.

Tips for cooking this dish for young children and fussy eaters:
I try to leave out the whole spices when I am serving up the rice to my kids. If I don’t they are pretty good at picking them out. The whole spices do go quite soft so kids shouldn’t choke on them if they get missed. I also use a small amount of crushed black pepper in making it now instead of whole peppercorns which do have a kick if eaten. The nuts would be optional too depending on the age of your children. Mr 2 year old loves nuts and loves picking them out of his rice to eat. It’s a job convincing him to eat the rest of the pulao on his plate before he can have more nuts.

Miss 5 year old is going through a fussy stage at the moment with eating. Recently we came to a compromise that if the vegetable ingredients for this dish are limited to diced peas and carrots she will eat it. So if your children are less adventurous eaters, keeping it simple might help.

A Just Desserts Falafel

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Jane

Can’t believe this was my first time making falafel especially as they are so simple to cook. And yummy too! If you are not familiar with falafel, they are a fried ball or patty made from ground chickpeas and/or fava beans. Falafel is usually served in pita bread, which acts as a pocket and then topped with salads and sauce.

The inspiration for having a go at this dish came from watching an episode of the American food show Top Chef Just Desserts. It’s about a group of talented, up and coming pastry chefs competing against each other in some crazy, demanding and entertaining challenges for some grand prize. In this episode, the elemination challenge was to make an elegant dessert based on savoury food dishes like mashed potato and gravy and pizza. Just sounds weird! The chef that was eliminated for that round lost on a dessert she made incorporating the flavours of falafel. Apparently her cake just tasted like garlic! So anyway I wanted to have a go at making some to find out if they really do taste mostly of garlic. Fortunately garlic is not the defining taste in them! Still no plans to put chick peas or garlic in a dessert… yet.

Falafel

2 (400g) tins chickpeas
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander
2 teaspoons ground cumin
oil, for deep frying

1. Blend all the ingredients together until the mixture forms a rough paste. Cover and set aside for 30 minutes.
2. Shape heaped tablespoons of the falafel mixture into balls. Squeeze out any excess moisture. Heat the oil in a deep, heavy based pan and lower the falafel into the oil in batches of 4 or 5. Cook for 3-4 minutes each batch. When well brown, remove and drain the oil on paper towels.
3. Serve with flatbread, hummus and salad.

The Big Reveal

I served these falafel with my own homemade flatbread (recipe to come in another post ) and spicy beetroot dip. Delicious!

Confession Time: Ok I admit that my falafel do not look like round balls. I have an aversion to deep frying- all that oil! So I shallow fried mine which meant that the shape was more like a small patty. Still tasted great! Shallow frying also means I don’t have to watch them as closely when cooking. An important consideration because dinner prep normally involves me trying to feed the baby, encourage pack up time or at least no more mess creation, sort out squabbles and somehow cook all at once.