Gajar Ka halwa aka Carrot Halwa

Do you feel that you are not able to make anything special for the family due to the hectic routine? This is a simple dessert you can make and bring smile on the face of your dear ones. Try once :)

Preparation:-

Wash and clean the carrot and grate them completely. Keep a kadai on the stove and heat it. Pour the ghee and once the ghee becomes hot fry the cashews and raisins and keep it aside. Now saute the grated carrot in the same kadai till the raw taste of the carrot disappears. Pour the milk in this mixture and allow it to boil. Make sure the level of the milk should be little bit high than of carrots. Cover the kadai and stir in between. After the level of the milk almost reduced to half just put sugar  and powdered cardamom and mix it. Stir it till all the milk gets absorbed and switch of the flame. Garnish it with fried raisins and cashews and ready to serve.

S. No	Items Required	Quantity	Comments
1	Red Carrot (big)	3
2	Ghee	3 tbsp
3	Cashew & Raisins	As required	Optional
4	Sugar	7 tbsp / as required
5	Milk	3 cups
6	Cardamom powder	1/2 tsp	Optional

Tips:-

Use thick milk for better taste.

Prepare in slow to medium flame always.

Beat the Monday blues with beaten rice - Poha

Poha for 2 Adult and 1 Kid

A healthy breakfast for a healthy family. Yes as per doctors the Indian breakfast Poha is very healthy. Let’s see how to prepare a simple poha on a monday morning.

S. No	Items required	Quantity
1	Poha	2 cup
2	Dried red chilly	1
3	Musturd seeds	1 tsp
4	Curry leaf	1 spring
5	Peanuts	15
6	Turmeric	a pinch
7	Green Chilli	1
8	Onion	1 small
9	Tomato	1 small
10	salt	As required
11	Sugar	1 tsp
12	Oil	1tsp

Preparation :- 

Wash and soak the beaten rice with water and drain it and keep it aside. The beaten rice should not get very soft so drain the water when it becomes little soft.

Add 1 tbsp oil in a kadai and fry the peanuts till it’s done and keep it aside in a tissue paper. In the same kadai splutter mustard seeds and add dried red chilli and curry leaves. Add the chopped onion and saute till its soft. Add green chilli, tomato and saute till tomatoes are soft. Add turmeric and salt in the mixture. Add the soaked and drained poha to this mix and stir well. Add the fried peanuts and sugar into this. Switch off the flame and cover the poha for a minute. Now prepare your tea and enjoy with poha and sauce. 

Tips:- 

Cut small pieces of potato or Paneer and fry it after the peanuts are done. This can also be mixed with poha for better taste. You can put peas as well. But do it if you have time, may be on a weekend :)

A Sunday morning with Idli and sambar

Idli and Sambar

S. No	Items Required	Quantity
For Idli
1	Idli rice	1 cup
2	Urad Dal	1/2 cup
3	Cooked Rice / Beaten rice	1/4 cup
For Sambar
1	Toor Dal	1 cup
2	Onion	1
3	Tomato	1
4	Green chilli	2
5	Carrot	1
6	beans	3
7	Drumstick	2
8	Lauki	A small piece
9	Tarmaid	small piece
10	Musturd seeds	1 pinch
11	Dried Red chilli	1
12	Curry Leaves	1 spring
13	Hing	1 pinch
14	Turmeric powder	1/2 tsp
15	sambar powder	1 tbsp
16	coriander powder	1 tsp
17	Coriander leaves
18	Oil	2 tsp
19	Salt	As required

To prepare Idli you need to plan a day before if you are not buying a readymade mix. To make the idli batter soak 1 cup of Idli rice and ½ cup of the urad dal in water for overnight or minimum of 8 hours.

Grind the mix and add cooked rice at the end and make a fine paste with little water. The consistency of the idli  batter should be thick else it will lead to a sticky idli and which will not taste good.Pour the mix into a container and add required salt and stir it. Cover it and keep it for 8 hours/overnight for fermentation. The more it get fermented the more fluffy and soft idli you will make J.

Once the mix is fermented pour the mix into idli maker or cooker and steam. The idli is ready.

Now the sambar preparation. For saving time the sambar can be prepared without any vegetable also. Here I have included some vegetables which we can cut easily and that makes your sambar tastes good as well.

First put the tamarind in a bowl with little water and keep aside. Pressure cook the toor dal and mash it and keep it aside, in the meantime finish all the vegetable cuttings. Keep the cooker on the gas stove and pore 1 tsp oil to it. Put the sliced onion and stir it till it becomes soft and add green chilli, curry leaves and tomato also. Stir it for a minute and add carrot, beans, lauki, drumstick etc (whatever vegetable you want to put).Stir it for a minute and then add turmeric powder, coriander powder, sambar powder , salt as mentioned in the above table. Pressure cook vegetable and once done open the cooker and mix the mashed daal with the vegetable. Squeeze out the tamarind pulp and water and pour it to the cooker. Let the sambar boil for a minute. Switch of the flame and keep it aside.

In a small pan add oil, musterd seeds, dry red chilly and curry leaves and make it splutter for a minute. Put some hing in the mix and pour this seasoning into the sambar. Put some coriander leaves also on the top.

The sambar preparation looks lengthy but it is very simple and trust me it will not take more than 15 minutes to do this. You can prepare tea also parallel.

Tips :-

1.       Soak toor dal at night itself so that morning it will get cooked fast.

2.       Cut the vegetable at night if you have time.

3.       Buy fresh idli mixes from genuine shop to avoid grinding at home.

4.       Prepare chutney instead of sambar if your family agrees J