Mexican Rice

This is an easy recipe with some leftover rice for a quick lunch box.

Ingredients:

Peppers - chopped into small cubes (1 /2 cup)

Onions - Chopped small (1/2 cup)

Beans - 1/2 can any type (I used cannellini, but black beans would be colorful n tastier)

Taco Bell or Ortega Seasoning Mix - 1 to 2 tsps

Garlic - 1 clove

cumin - 1/2 tsp

salt/chilli flakes(optional)

Oil - 1 tbsp

Cooked Rice - 2 cups

Method:

1. In a pan add oil and fry cumin, garlic lightly and red pepper flakes if using.
2. Then add chopped onions and peppers and cook until done.
3. Then add 1/2 can of canellini beans along with Taco seasoning, add 1/2 cup of water, mix well and let it cook for 5 mins on medium high heat. The gravy thickens gradually and finally add the cooked rice and mix well. Steam the whole mixture for 5 mins to have an aromatic and spicy mexican rice.

Chicken balls soup

This is a Healthy and family friendly soup, i saw this kind of meat balls soup in a TV show, but modified it to fit to our tastes.

Ingredients for Meat Balls

Minced Chicken - 1 lb

Grated Parmesan cheese - 3 tbsps

Bread slices - 2 (toast and grind to get chunky crumbs)

Egg - 1

Green chillies - 1 tbsp chopped (2 tiny chillies)

Mint - hand full chopped

Ginger - 1 tsp grated

Garlic - 1 tsp grated (1 big clove)

salt & pepper

For soup
Celery - 2 sticks chopped

Onion - 1 chopped

carrots/beans - about a cup chopped

Tomato - 1 cup chopped

Baby Spinach - 1 cup (2 hand fulls)

Chicken stock - 1 QT

oil - 1 tbsp

Corn starch - 2 tbsps

1 cinnamon,2 bay leaves, 3 cloves

Salt n pepper

Method:

1. First mix all the chicken meat balls ingredients.
2. Cover a baking tray with parchment paper and spoon out small balls with the help of 2 spoons, irregular shapes look good too. Wet the spoons with water to have smooth balls.
3. Preheat oven at 350 and bake the balls for 20 - 30 mins. Chicken balls are ready, kids ate most of the balls at this stage.
4. When the balls are baking start making the soup. In a big soup pot, heat some oil and drop in all chopped veggies except tomatoes, spices , salt pepper and fry for a little while, until onion turns translucent. Then add tomatoes and cook off. Dont add too much salt as we would be adding chicken stock which has good amount of salt.
5. Add chicken broth and 3 to 4 cups of water and bring everything to a boil.
6. Mix corn starch in a cup of water and mix it in this soup and stir constantly until the soup thickens with the cooked corn starch.
7. Finally add the chicken balls and spinach and boil for 5 mins.
8. There is no fixed measure for soups, as u can make it light or strong, thick or thinner, just upto you/your family's comfort level.
9. Serve it with some crunchy bread toast and enjoy it for lunch/dinner. Since the Soup and chicken have different flavours, every time you take a bite of chicken ball, you ll find it as a delicious variation to the soup.

Vegetable Soup n Garlic croutons

This is an easy and healthy soup with simple ingredients and yet is tasty and flavourful. The toasted croutons made with fatfree baguette slices, rubbed with garlic adds the most needy crunch and attraction for this soup. A long 2 feet baguet would be just enough for a couple with 2 small kids. This soup can be made really hearty with lots of ingredients like cannellini beans, pasta/noodles and any other favourite vegetables/meats your family likes.

This soup works like a miracle for my kids when they r sick with diarrhea, as it can be made without oils/fats and vegetables are well cooked and also bread is a very good diarrhea safe food. My kids love this soup and when everything sweet and fat is restricted, they would savor this dish with great excitment.

Ingredients:

Celery sticks - 2 chopped thin

Onion - 1 big chopped small

Carrots - 2 to 3 chopped small

Tomato - 1 big chopped

Bay leaves - 2

cloves - 2

Cinnamon - 2 , 1 inch pieces

Oil - 1 tbsp (optional)

Chicken or vegetable broth - 1 QT, I use Swanson broths with low sodium and 99% fat free.

Method:

1. In a deep soup pot, add oil and saute the dry spices, cinnamon, cloves and bay leaves for a min, followed by chopped onions, carrots, celery, salt and pepper - cook until they are half done.
2. If you want to make it fatfree, instead of oil fill the pot with 3 cups of water and add spices n vegetables and cook until they are half done.
3. If u want to add any meat, add it along with the veggies and cook.
4. Then add chopped tomatoes and fill the soup pot with chicken/veg broth and water, enough to make the amount of soup you want. For the vegetables i added, it almost made 3 QT pot soup. Finally adjust the salt and close the lid for 5 to 10 mins and it should be done. If you add tomatoes along with the vegetables, in the end you wont be seeing any tomato pieces, but some rolled up skins.
5. If you want to make this soup an all in one meal, you can add noodles or pasta along with the vegetables and cook until they are done. Its upto the cook to decide, when is the right time to add pastas, as each one has a different cooking time.
6. You can serve the soup topped with some tender celery leaves or any of your favourite herb. Dont forget to serve toasted croutons, rubbed with a fresh garlic, this bread is the most sought after ingredient in this dish.
7. For small kids, just chop up the croutons into tiny bread crumbs and drop them in the soup little at a time, so that they too enjoy the crunch in all the bread pieces.
8. My son, wanted some broccoli in this soup, so i just dropped tiny pieces into the very hot soup served in his bowl and left it for sometime, that heat was almost enough to cook the broccoli. If u want it little soft, microwave it for few more mins.

Pumper Nickel Veg sandwich

This is an easy sandwich, made with the dark pumper nickel rye bread which has a sweet flavour and is little distinct from our usual wheat breads. We had this bread for the first time in a fancy restaurant, where they seved some freshly baked assorted bread rolls with some butter (as starters) until our order arrives. We liked this bread so much that, we hungry couple ate up every bit of those breads and had to carry our actual meal home.

This dish has one of my favourite leaves Arugula, which replaced lettuce in my sandwiches since a long time. These leaves tastes like mustard with a pepper like spicyness. I fell in love with these leaves at first bite. Arugula can be eaten easily in salads, soups and sandwiches.

Ingredients:

Pumper Nickel bread - 2 or 3 slices

sauteed Onion, pepper slices - 1 to 2 Tbsps

Arugula leaves - hand full

Low fat cheese slice - 1

Method:

Actually there is nothing to say here, except saute'ing the onions and peppers in a little oil and salt, red pepper flakes(optional). I make this stuffing ahead a save in fridge for 3-4 days use.

Toast the bread and layer the fillers in any order and any quantity as sandwich is supposed to be ones personal recipe.

I should say this is a very healthy recipe as it has no much fats. I figured out this recipe for my husbands lunch box, as i dont want the bread to become soggy and wet with mayo/mustard etc by the time he eats. All the moisture u need for this sandwich is in the pepper-onion mix and the baby arugula gives a nice delicate crunch and mustardy taste. And ofcourse cheese always gives a nice creamy taste and balance in any sandwich.

Variations: For more hearty filling lunch, i make a simple omlette with the cooked eggs or chicken topped with the onion-peppers and all the same remaining stuff.

Vegetable Vermicelli

This is a one pot meal with everything you need in a meal, like vegetables, carbs and nuts. I made this for a quick dinner, as my kids love to eat this noodle type dish. Vermicelli is actually a pasta, which is thinner than sphagetti and thicker than angle hair pasta.

Here is all you need to make this dish, (I decided not to list salt, oil, turmeric as they go with almost every cooking, not to make my list bigger)

Ingredients:

Vermicelli noodles - 4 cups

Carrots - 2 medium (a cup shopped as long sticks)

Bell peppers - 1/4 big one (a cup shopped as long sticks)

Potato - 1 Medium (chopped long stickes)

Mushrooms - 6 chopped (a cup)

Onion - 1 medium (hand full, sliced length wise)

Tomato - 1/2 (hand full, thinly chopped)

Cumin - 1/2 tsp

cinnamon - 1 inch, cloves - 4

Ginger - 1/2 inch juliened

Cashews - hand ful split up

Black Pepper powder - 1/2 tsp

Green chillies - 7

Method:

1. In a deep pan, add 2 or 3 Tbsps oil and fry cumin, cloves, cinnamon, cashews, green chillies, ginger in a gentle flame, do not burn this stuff.
2. Later add 1/2 tsp turmeric, followed by onions, carrots and potatoes, cook for 4-5 mins, later add peppers and mushrooms as these guys need less cooking time than the other veggies. Finally add tomatoes, salt, pepper powder and mix well, cover the lid for 3-4 mins.
3. To save time we can boil water in another pan on the other stove as we cook veggies, or else just pour water in the veggies and let the whole mixture boil. Finally test the salt/spice taste of this water and add more if needed.
4. Now you can add the vermicelli and cook until done. Leave the dish a little moist so that the pasta flows easily on to the serving plates and also doesnt lump up soon. This dish has to eaten rightway for the right texture, or else as time passes the stuff solidifies and lumps up.
5. If u r making this dish ahead for friends or family, pasta can be cooked in a separate pan and added to the veggies mixture with right amount of water/moisture/oil in it to keep the pasta from sticking and lumping.
6. This dish can be made anytime of the day, breakfast, lunch or dinner..enjoy.

Egg Masala

This is an interesting egg curry, unlike the usual tomato/tamarind based one. In a attempt to make an egg curry for chapathis, I tried this recipe from my own knowledge of masala curries and it turned out finger licking. This dish can be used for entertaining, as it goes good with biryanis, basmati or any indian style rotis/naas. I tried hard not to put any tomatoes in this dish, as i wanted it to taste and look different.

Ingredients:

Hard Boiled Eggs - 8

Onions - 3 cups (3 big size)

Green chillies - 6-8

Almonds - 1/4 cup (make fine paste)

Cashews - fist full (optional)

Mint - Hand full chopped

Lime Juice - 1/2 lime

Ginger Garlic paste - 2 Tbsps

Corriander powder - 4 tsps

Cumin powder - 3 tsps

Pounded Garam masala (1 Cardamon, 2 cloves, 1 Cm Cinnamon)

Oil - 3 tbsps

salt/Turmeric - as u prefer

Method:

1. In a pan add the oil and fry 1/2 tsp mustard and cashews followed by finely chopped onions and slit green chillies. After 3 mins or so, add the ginger and garlic pastes, turmeric, salt and saute. This stuff has to reduce considerably by constant stirring.
2. Once the onion mixture is nice n translucent add the corriander, cumin, mint and fry.
3. Add Eggs at this stage, followed by almond paste and cook everything with a cup of water as the almond paste tends to thicken quiet fast.
4. Finally add the pounded garam masala, mix well and cover the lid for few mins, so that the masala aroma gets into the curry.
5. Finally add lime juice, test the taste and adjust the salt according to your taste.
6. I like to sprinkle some fresh onions slices on top, as it brings out the masala flavour very well. I did not use any other herbs as i want just the mint flavour to be highlighted in this dish.
7. This dish tastes awesome with some basmati rice, veg fried rice and also naas/rotis.

Donda Fry

This is a "tasty, easy n good looking" way to cook dondakai, which i usually neglect to buy because of the time and efforts to chop this hard veg, as well as the long cooking time. But recipe cuts down all those efforts to half. In this recipe i chop the veg length wise into half, chopping is done. And coming to the cooking time, i use little more oil than we usually use, just for quick frying to avoid constant stirring on medium flame. Cook the veg on higher heat with good amount of oil and add the taste makers in the end.

Herez all you need for this fry.:

Donda kai - 3 cups chopped

Gram flour (basin, ground chana dal) - 1/2 cup

Cumin powder - 1 tsp

Dhani powder - 2 tsp

Turmeric - 1/2 tsp

Chilli powder/salt - 1 tsp (upto u)

garlic - thinly chopped 1 tbsp.

Oil - 2 to 3 TBsp

Mustard - 1/2 tsp

Curry leaves - 1 stem

Method:

1. Heat a wide skillet which can accommodate almost all the veggies on its base. The skillet is an important choice for frying all veggies uniformly and to save cooking time. Add oil, let some mustard splutter and drop in all the cut veggies along with turmeric.
2. Fry them for 5 mins and cover the lid partially. Dont let the steam drops fall into the pan.
3. Keep frying until the veggies are well cooked. Then add salt - stir, add dhania powder, cumin powder and let them fry in the little oil seeping out of the veggies, at this stage if u dont see any oil in pan, pls add more and let the spices fry in it. Once thats done, add garlic and cook with lid covered for 2 mins.
4. Now add the gram flour, curry leaves and let the flour fry along with vegetable until you get the fried flour smell, about 5 to 8 mins on medium heat.
5. Finally add red chilli powder, saute for a min or 2 (the chilli powder i use is my mom made, she fries the red chillies with cumin, dhania and sends it to grinder. So i need not fry the chilli powder in curries). If u are using raw chilli powder make sure you add it ahead along with the dhania powder.
6. Serve with dal/rasam and rice.
7. My Son, a picky vegetable eater certified this dish as "Delicious".