Kimchee, vegan & with Gochujang

My love for kimchee has all begun since 2020, after I discovered K-dramas. I love how they eat Kimchee with everything and so I started making my own. 

There are multiple recipes on the internet on how to make vegan kimchee, and this recipe of mine is derived from all those - this one uses Gochugaru, the chilli flakes. 

Now that am in India, I noticed it is much easier to get access to Korean food items, and a friend got some Gochujang for us from Korea town near Ananthapur. I had to make kimchee with that, and the taste is totally different and yummier. 

Gochujang is also pre-fermented , so it acts like a starter to ferment the cabbages. Plus, since we are in warmer temparatures in India, the kimchee, as it is sitting on the counter, has fermented much quicker. I also choose to use the normal cabbage available in the grocery store for this recipe. But am sure it would taste better with the Napa cabbage too.

Here are all the references I used for this recipe - 

1. FoodbyJonister - Kimchee
2. FoodietakesFlight - This post has fermentation tips too.

Singapore noodles, Vegan

 

Notes - 

1. Soy sauce can be added, if you choose to,  along with sesame oil. 
2. Other vegetables to add - Spring onions, cabbage, more garlic, bok choy. 

Ramya's Pappu Chaaru - The Best!

My friend Ramya makes the best Pappu chaaru, EVER! 

She gave out a large portion when she made it last week and we relished it with rice and ghee. I always think I should attempt this dish, but this time, I took time to try out her recipe, and was able to create something in the ballpark. So here it is!

Ingredients, makes enough to last for 3 meals for two people

Toor daal - 3/4 cup
Tamarind Paste - 2 Tbsps of thick paste, mixed in water
Oil - 2Tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1Tsp
Cumin seeds + Garlic paste (coarse) - 1Tbsp (made from 5-6 mashed garlic cloves)
Chillies - 4-5
Curry leaves - 5-6
Veggies - 2C
Onion - 1, sliced
Coriander powder - 1Tbsp
Fenugreek powder - 1Tbsp
Jeera powder - 1Tbsp
Turmeric - 1Tsp
Salt - To Taste

Method

1. Boil the daal in the pressure cooker and mash it to a nice pasty texture
2. In a heated hollow bowl, add oil, when hot add jeera and mustard seeds. Let it splutter
3. Add onions, split green chilies, curry leaves
4. After the onions are fried a little, add all the veggies and a small pinch of fenugreek powder (very imp as it balances the tangy tamarind taste). Then add the coarsly crushed garlic and cumin paste.
5. Add turmeric and salt, close the lid for 1-2 min
6. Add the tamarind juice to this, and let the vegetables cook in this liquid for 8-10 min on a medium flame
7. Add cooked dal and some more water, bring it to a boil
8. Add the coriander and jeera powder, and let it boil for 5 min

Serve hot, with warm rice and ghee. 

Veggies to add

1. Dosakaya (yellow)
2. Drumsticks
3. Bottle gourd (Sorakaya)
4. Brinjal
5. Okra
6. Dondakaya
7. Chayote squash (seeme badnekaayi/seema vankaya)

Vegan Kimchi

Ever since I started watching Korean dramas during the pandemic and drooling at all the yummy food they lay out on the tables (almost every day has key scenes around food and people are around books most of the times, and I LOVE this!), I have developed this interest for Kimchi, and I have been making Kimchi fried rice and Kimchi ramen almost every week. This has now reached comfort food status for me. I had already been eating curd with a little Kimchi with it at night, so now I have three uses for Kimchi.

Buying Kimchi from the stores was not an option, especially during the COVID19 pandemic, because I did not have the time and bandwidth to stop at the aisles, look for a vegan Kimchi, look for its ingredients to ensure it is all natural etc. Also, store-bought Kimchi turned out to be too expensive for the frequency and quantities I was cooking these dishes. Hence the search for the perfect Kimchi recipe.

Notes -

1. Authenticity - I do not claim that this is the authentic version of Kimchi, I have developed this recipe after reading on multiple food blogs, and wanted a Vegan option. This recipe has worked for me for a while now, doesn't go bad, is spicy enough for our palette and refrigerates well for at least 2 months (that is the maximum one batch of Kimchi has stayed in my fridge).

Moong Dal Pakoda

Moong Dal - 1C, soaked for at least 1 hour

Green chill - 5-6

Garlic - 5-6 Cloves

Ginger - 1 inch piece

Spinach Leaves - a bunch

Coriander leaves - a bunch

Onion - Half, chopped fine

Jalapeno peppers - 2, chopped fine

Red chilli powder - 1 Tbsp

Amchoor powder - 2 Tbsp

Hing - 2 Tsp 

Salt - to taste

Method 

1. Grind half the soaked Moong Dal with the chilli, garlic and Ginger to a fine paste

2. Mix the powders and salt to this mixture

3. Mix in the chopped veggies and greens

4. Heat a pan with oil. Once heated , drop a spoonful of this mixture and deep fry.

5. Serve hot

Easy & Healthy Stir-Fry Noodles

Yeah, by now, it is known that I cannot cook something that doesn't a little health associated to it. That means, greens, fresh veggies, some protein etc.

So, this week was noodle mania week at home. I discovered Lotus Foods' Brown rice and millet noodles, and we love the consistency and taste of these.

This is an easy recipe that I made one weeknight.

Lo-Mein Noodles

Berry Crumble

I love a good crumble, the goodness of butter and toasted flour, the sweetness of the berries underneath and the overall package of decadence, though it can all be healthy... I was reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and saw a recipe for Crumble, and bingo. What I thought was a complicated dessert was actually a very simple one.

The recipe mentioned in the book uses white flour, and more sugar. I used this recipe, developed from various sources on the internet and this worked.

I ate the crumble a day after it was baked. The tartness in the raspberries was all gone, and it was delicious.

When I do this next, I'll not be using Raspberries or blackberries, though. Both these berries have seeds in them, which change the texture of the crumble. May be just Blueberries, apple or strawberries from the next time.

Puttanala chutney

I love Idli, and I love it with Sambar or with the Mangalorean pickle, Hindi. But some times I want to eat it with a nice peanut chutney or with the soft legumes chutney. Some times I want to eat it with the ginger chutney. So I've decided to make note of every interesting chutney I've eaten Idlis with. So I am never away from a great chutney :)

This is something I ate at a cousin's place in SFO. She put together this chutney in minutes, and it was a great breakfast.

Ingredients -

Pappulu or soft legumes - 1/2 C

Cashew nuts - 1/4 C

Green chilli - 4-5

Coriander - Washed
Garlic cloves - 4-5
Tamarind paste - 1 Tbsp
Salt, to taste

Instructions -

Mix all these ingredients together in a mixer grinder with enough water till they resemble a chutney like consistency.

Serve with hot idlis.

Pappu Chaaru

Over the past few months, I've taken a particular liking to Pappu chaaru, a simple, Andhra-dish, made with lentils and veggies. I hadn't eaten this before at all when I was in India, but once I ate this at a friend's place, I was hooked. I have to make it at least once a week and eat it with hot quinoa and ghee. Yeah, I know, it should be eaten with hot rice, but we do what we can do, no?

Here is the recipe that I've been using for this dish - Sailu's Food

Ingredients
Choice of veggies - 2 Cups (I use the frozen cut sambar-veggies, minus drumsticks. This is an assortment of eggplants, tomatoes, onions, carrots, French beans and okra. )
Cooked Dal - 1 C
Green chillis - 3-4
Turmeric powder - 1 Tsp
Tamarind paste - 2 Tbsp
Jaggery - 1/2 Tbsp
Water - 3-4 C
Salt - To taste

For the tempering
Ghee - 1 Tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1 Tsp
Cumin seeds - 1 Tsp
Garlic cloves - 4-5, chopped coarse
Red chills - 3-4
Hing - 1 Tsp
Curry Leaves - 5-6

Coriander leaves - 2 Tbsp

Instructions
Mix all the ingredients except tamarind paste and jaggery, together in a large pot, and bring it to a boil. Let the veggies cook on medium heat.
Add the tamarind paste and jiggery and continue cooking for another 10 min. Add salt to taste.

Heat the ghee, and add the seeds one by one, followed by garlic and red chillis and hing. Take off heat, and add the curry leaves. Once the spluttering ends, add this to the pappu chaaru and mix well.

Serve with hot rice.

Five Morsels of Love - A Review

Before we proceed into the post, here is a spoiler - I absolutely loved the book, Five Morsels of Love, from all perspectives - as a book lover, food blogger, food lover and a cooking enthusiast.  

I loved how brilliant the book feels in my hand - the weight, the texture of the paper, the fine details in the book's styling, everything is brilliant. This book feels like a true book-lover's dream come true. Really.  

Five Morsels of Love

Five Morsels of Love by Archana Pidathala

The fabric cover of the book sets the tone of the book. It makes you feel right at home with what the book is about. The words from the first page, with the photographs of the author, the subject and a few other family photos make you feel this is a book about family, and food.  

Zucchini Casserole

Baked tomatoes with garlic

Sometime last year, there was this chain-reaction-like thing. Everyone I knew was baking these tomatoes, and posting the pic on their timeline, and I could smell these beauties from within the comp. Yeah, that’s possible ;-)!

There is no recipe to this awesome dish, and there is no decided way in which you can use this too. I have mashed the baked tomatoes and used them as a dip when we feasted on a Mediterranean-type dinner. This goes well with garlic bread, or with bread sticks too. One time, I mashed it well, and used it as a pasta sauce. Then, there are a zillion times these tomatoes didn’t even make it out of this tray. I stood at the kitchen counter and polished off all of them in one go, many times! :)

Here’s how we make this -

1. Cut the tomatoes into halves along the spine and arrange in a bake-safe dish.
2. Crush garlic pods and insert into the tomatoes. ( I inserted an average of 3 thick pods for two halves).
3. Sprinkle sea-salt and pepper generously. Drizzle virgin olive oil more than generously on these halves.
4. I used my herbed olive oil, and even topped the halves with some of those herbs.
5. Preheat the oven to 200 C, and bake this for 60-90 min at 120 C or 140 C. (depends on the oven, I had to bake for 90 min). The key is to get a heavenly smell in the kitchen! 😄

Masala Chick Peas Sundal

Hey there! Those 2 visitors of mine, that still have hope that I might've posted something new :-)

So, I've done some introspection and realized that the reason for me not blogging is the pressure on getting hits and hence the need to shoot great pics, and socialize this on various sites. In all this time that I haven't blogged, I realized that I search my blog for various recipes that I wanted to make one more time! That was the eureka moment for me! I wasn't enjoying food photography, and I was pressurized into taking good food shots! So...

The Meal Algorithm V2.0 will not attempt at any of those above items! Am not going to be bothered about the various sites and my photo getting listed there. In fact, I might not even shoot with my SLR anymore. Phone camera, Insta with tags for me to be able to search them, Tweet at the same time to let interested folks know, and last and least, if you are interested, you can subscribe to the feed which will send you the post as soon as I post it.
This means that I only have to write down the ingredient list, shoot with my phone camera and post it on this blog and Insta. I should be good and done! Lets see how long it lasts! :)

Do one of these, and you'll be notified everytime I post a recipe - Subscribe to the RSS feed, follow me on Instagram or Twitter.

Rivaayat, a revival

That is the theme of the food festival running at Kanak, Trident Hotels, Hyderabad. This is a revival of traditional recipes and styles of cooking, intended to take you on a trip down the memory lane, to remind you of the food cooked in your family kitchen. That’s how I felt as I was sampling some dishes here.

 

One thing that I always notice at 5-star restaurants or food festivals is how vegetarian food is taken for granted. There are just one or two dishes in the menu for vegetarians, and almost of them are either corn or paneer based. One of the main reasons I stopped enjoying food in restaurants around Hyderabad is that I stopped finding stuff that interested me, stuff that I’d love to eat and lick my fingers after eating. Well, I had that experience here, at Kanak.

How to make healthy Bisibele-Bath with Poha

Bisibele-bath is almost a staple in South-Indian households, especially Kannada kitchens, I feel. There is something about this sambar-rice that we all love, and the fact that it is healthy also, adds to the allure.

For a while now, I’ve been experimenting with poha, how to make various South Indian main course items with this lighter version, so that I still get to eat the comfort food, but with less carbs.

Eggless bread pudding

A couple of days ago, something very delectable appeared on my FB feed. HaathiTime was craving carbs, and posted a very yummy photo of the bread pudding she made. And that’s it. It was like madness creeping onto me. I HAD TO TRY IT!

The recipe she posted had egg, so I had to make it eggless, and so I had to customize the recipe a bit. And then, this pregnant friend of mine at work had been asking me to bake her something , and so where others at work. I thought, why not make a big batch of bread pudding and serve everyone I know at work! :)

Fresh Vegetarian lasagna, and a lot of fun!

Tell me which self-proclaimed-kitchen-goddess doesn’t dream of making fresh pasta. Well, moi aussi.
But this post is not about fresh pasta. This is about fresh lasagna, the easier one of the lot!

Couple of days ago, a friend invited a bunch of us, girlfriends over for lasagna in the evening. The evening was fun, full of laughter, conversation and great food. And I sat there and marveled as she counted her recipe of making fresh lasagna sheets. So simple, and I hadn’t tried it yet!

Weekend Herb Blogging : Instant Oats & Spinach idli

I might not be really South Indian in my dinner preferences (if you ignore the constant craving for coconut oil), but when it comes to breakfast, idli is an ever-favourite.

I remember how I craved and dreamt about idlis during my stay in Hong Kong and heaved a sigh of relief once I spotted a Udupi hotel (and chitchatted with a waiter in Tulu and beamed with happiness talking about it with Dad, but that’s another long story) , which then became our weekend breakfast spot for as long as we were there! And only after spotting Idlis and Sonamasuri rice did I extend my trip to a month … such is the love for idlis!

Huliogare, Mangalore style

Or Pulihora/Chitrannam, as Telugus like to call it. No, there is no equivalent for this in Hindi, because this is a South Indian main course dish, served as one of the items in a large meal at weddings or at festivals. However, this recipe is for the Mangalorean version of Pulihora/Huliogare.

Hummus, the Ethiopian way

Hummus is a beauty that goes well with almost anything – bread, rotis, or as a dip, and is an all-time favourite even in our highly-Indian-food-loved household.

When I soaked the chick-peas the other night, I had something else in mind… trying out the Ethiopian Hummus.
Now, I haven’t eaten that before or even heard about it, had it not been for a friend who messaged me on my FB page asking for a recipe for this. Some reading up pointed me to some recipes and the story behind Berbere mix, and this link which had a good recipe.