The salad month has changed my habit. It has made me look for protein in every meal I take and I am not able to shake off this habit. I know its good for me, but in how many different ways can a vegetarian get protein in her meal, tell me?
And that is how I decided to make soups as a mid-evening meal , before I have a light dinner to keep me full and supply protein to me. A regular chick pea soup sounded very boring to me. It had to have a zing in it, and that’s how Sriracha sauce and pesto get into this recipe.
Hyderabad is pretty cold these days, and the evenings are spent with me sitting in the balcony with my laptop, teeth chattering all the time... and still enjoying the chilly weather. [Did I mention that Winter is my favorite time of the year?]
But then, there is nothing better than a nice bowlful of soup, no? At all times, no? With or without bread, no? :-)
Here it is... my first soup of the season.
I picked the basic idea of making a soup with sweet potato and cauliflowers from Manifest Vegan's soup, but I didn't follow the same recipe. I wanted something that was quick and easy.
Or just Nimbekai Saaru , for us Mangaloreans. Before I go further , these are the mugs Siri gave away for her Blog-o-anniversary. Cute, no? :-)
Now to this soup…
May is here, which means summer is here too. Well, am a huge fan of summers in India, but all that is because of the abundance of water melons and mangoes. Those are the ONLY bright spots in Indian summers, if you ask me. Its hot, humid sometimes, and you cannot live without a fan, or in some people’s cases ACs.
Its an ordeal to enter the kitchen, and a bigger one to stand near the stove and make anything. But then, that shouldn’t stop us from eating good food, right? :-) So yeah, GoodFood has a good collection of chilled soups this month, and I decided to pick one of them for tonight’s dinner.
This is a healthy soup, flavoured only by the garlic and onions in it. If you want, you could add a dash of lime juice to spruce up the soup, or add more mint leaves to get a zing into it. I had it just as it is, and loved it the way it is.
Now, having Tomato soup on a cold evening is nothing new. [By the way, Hyderabad is undergoing a serious identity crisis. Its like its trying to be both Shimla and Hyderabad at the same time, what with the temperatures hitting 10 Celsius and all!]
I had a nice fennel bulb at hand, something whose flavour I absolutely love and wanted to preserve in the dish I make. And then I also wanted to have the tangy taste of the tomatoes in the soup. Which is why I decided to not blend the fennel with the tomato, and preserve it as it is, and roast the tomatoes which ensures that they are cooked and yet the flavour remains intact.
Roasting the tomatoes also happens to be my favourite way to cook a tomato, because of its ease in cooking and the ash-flavour mixed with the tanginess.
I used some basic herbs to give some flavour to this soup, you can change these herbs to suite your taste. Also, instead of topping the coriander leaves as garnish, I let the soup cook with these leaves for a while to ensure that there is a faint coriander smell to the soup. You can opt to use it as garnish too.
Ingredients
Tomatoes , medium sized – 4
Fennel bulb – 1, cleaned and chopped as fine as possible
Garlic cloves – 8-10, chopped fine
Dried Oregano – 1/2 tsp
Dried Basil – 1/2 tsp
Red Chilli flakes – 1/2 tsp
Ground pepper – 1/2 tsp
Coriander leaves – a bunch
Salt – To taste
Olive oil – 1/2 tbsp
Instructions
Pierce a fork into the tomatoes and hold them on the open flame of the stove. Tilt and twist the fork to ensure that all sides of the tomato is getting roasted. After a while, you will hear pop sounds, and the skin of the tomato like it is having blisters. This means, the tomato is cooked.
Repeat this for all the tomatoes. Let them cool, and peel off the skin of these tomatoes.
Blend them in a mixer-grinder to make a tomato puree.
In a pan, heat the oil, and sauté the chopped fennel and garlic . Add the rest of the ingredients to this, and let the fennel cook/sauté.
Add the tomato puree, some water and salt to taste, and let this boil. Add the chopped coriander leaves, and let the soup cook with the leaves in it.
Top with pepper and serve hot.
I had some cold soup and it tasted great too. So I guess, that's another option
Leek was something I’ve only read about being used in soups. Every time I see a recipe which had leek in it, I’d imagine an onion like taste for a spring-onion like vegetable and carry on reading the recipe. Until last week.
Most recipes I read about leeks in soups also had spinach leaves in it. I leafed through my new soup cook book , and came across some without spinach too, but that was for another day. Here is a recipe I concocted , with some inspiration from one of the recipes from this book -
Ingredients
Leek – 1 stalk, washed and cut into 1 inch wide pieces
Spinach leaves – 1 bunch, washed and chopped
Onion – Medium sized , chopped fine
Garlic cloves – 4-5, chopped/crushed
Sage – 1 tbsp
Olive oil – 1 tbsp
Sea salt – To taste
Boiling water – 1 cup
Instructions
In a deep pan, heat the olive oil, and sauté the crushed/chopped garlic. Once the entire kitchen is filled up with the aroma of this sautéed garlic, add onions to this, and sauté this too.
When the onions are close to getting pink, add sage and sauté a bit more. Now add the leek, and the spinach leaves, and sauté them all together. At this point, the oil we initially used is not enough to for all these vegetables, but there is no need to add more oil. The idea is to half-sauté and half-boil these vegetables.
Pour the boiling water, and let the vegetables boil till they are tender. Add some salt, and let this cool.
Once this mixture is a little cool, blend this into a paste using a hand blender.
Put this back on the stove, add more water to suit the soup consistency and bring it to a boil.
Serve hot, with crushed pepper for garnish.
I made this soup entirely out of intuition and based on the vegetables I had in the fridge. The idea was to use similar tasting veggies and make something healthy. The minute I saw the diced pumpkins and sweet potatoes, I decided to curry them with traditional Indian curry spices. And since I was making this as part of an Italian themed meal, I added some Italian herbs afterwards and sautéed onions to top it up. At the end of it, it tasted like a medley of Indian curry with some spices, but very tasty. :-)
Ingredients
Sweet Pumpkin - cleaned, peeled and chopped - 2 Cups
Sweet potato - cleaned, peeled and chopped - 2 cups
Coriander powder - 1 tbsp
Cumin powder - 1 tbsp
Red chilli powder - 1 tbsp
Turmeric - a pinch
Garlic cloves - 8-10
Red onion - Diced - 1 cup
Spring Onion - cleaned and chopped - 1 cup
Dried Thyme - 1 tbsp
Dried Rosemary - 1 tbsp
Dried Sage - 1 tbsp
Olive oil – 2 tbsp
Sea Salt – To taste
Fresh mint, for garnish
Instructions
In a deep pan, heat one tbsp oil and sauté the pumpkin and sweet potato pieces with all the powders. Let this be on medium heat for 5 mins. Add some water and close the lid of the, and let the vegetables cook.
After 10-15 mins, when both the vegetable pieces are cooked thoroughly, you can either mash them or blend them with a blender to resemble a thick puree.
In another small pan, sauté the onions and garlic with the dried herbs. Let this be on heat till the onions are golden brown.
Add some water to the puree, and get it to a desired consistency. Add salt to taste. Once this soup reaches the boiling point, stir in the sautéed onions. Garnish with fresh mint sprigs and serve hot.
Turns out its not really a alone weekend for me then.
The husband has decided to make guest appearances amidst all his travels, and I have plans lined up with friends. But then, when isn’t that the case! :) (I know… even at times when I feel that I need some time for myself, I cannot but think how lucky I am to be blessed with so many friends, that I can never be lonely. Alone yes, lonely, never! :) )
Since guest appearances have to be honoured with something special always, and since this particular guest also has all meals of his day this weekend planned out, I did not want to overwhelm his stomach with anything heavy. Not making anything wasn’t an option, coz I still had to eat. And cooking for one is not really fun if you have to do it 5 times in the same week. So I decided to go with something light on the stomach.
Now, Hyderabad is not as chilly as I would’ve liked it to be, but people say its quite cold. The first time this season I felt the chill was when I was having dinner with a friend in a roof-top restaurant. She said she was cold, and I said it was quite pleasant. (Oh well… I am someone who has stayed out in the night at 10 PM in Seattle with nothing on me except a thin T-shirt and linen shorts , on what was the coldest night that week. I didn’t even have cash or a mobile phone at hand, but that’s another story. And yes, I lived to tell the tale.)
And every blog I go to talks about making pumpkin soup to beat the chill… and yes, I got piqued. Pumpkin is something I have not worked with before. I have never tasted a pumpkin, and I do not even know how to say if it is ripe enough or not. But this morning at the vegetable market, I saw Shal, my friend buy a slice of pumpkin. I asked her what she did with it, and she went on to give me options on what all you can do with it. And that’s how I got thinking. I asked the vendor to cut me a slice of ripe pumpkin and got home thinking about what to make with it, and what herbs would go well with this. Oh yes, I have been thinking about what should get into this soup since morning, and by evening I had a pretty good idea. I know, I know… the processor is kinda slow that way :).
It had to be something spicy, something with stuff I had at home and had to adhere to the weekend rule. The rule that says -
Thou shalt not spend more than 30 mins in the kitchen on a weekend.
So I grabbed the stuff I had in the fridge, and in my kitchen garden (yeah, I am a big show-off that way :-P ) and got to work.
Since just a soup isn’t enough to feed two people for dinner, I also decided to make some salad. And since the garden largely supports the Thai theme, that was what it had to be.
The guest who also happens to be my alpha, beta and only tester , testified that he loved both the soup and the salad. The spices were just-enough and he loved the blend and taste of pumpkin. So then, pumpkin is here to stay in the household afterall.
Thai Pumpkin Soup
Ingredients
Pumpkins – diced and cubed – 2 cups
Onion – small sized, sliced – enough to fit in 1/2 cup
Garlic cloves – diced – 6
Turmeric – a pinch
Cumin seeds – 1 tbsp
Red chilli – 1
Olive Oil – 1 tbsp
Thai Basil leaves – 10-12 – shredded
Lemon Grass – 1 stalk
Diced Coconut – 1/4 cup (or coconut milk)
Coriander seeds – 1 tbsp
Onion – small sized, sliced – enough to fit in 1/4 cup
Red chilli - 1
Salt – to taste
Instructions
Microwave the pumpkins at full power for 2 mins, so that they are slightly cooked and do not take a long time to cook on the stove.
Heat oil in a pan, and sauté the onions, garlic, cumin and red chilli in it. Add the microwaved pumpkin pieces to this , sprinkle turmeric and cook for about 5 mins, or till the pumpkin is roasted/cooked. Once cooked, remove this from heat and let it cool.
In a blender, mix the onion slices, coconut, coriander, another red chilli and the roasted/cooked pumpkin till it becomes into a pulp. You might have some coconut pieces even after the pulp is all done, let them be as is.
Heat this on the stove in the pan again. Knot the lemon grass stalk and put it in the pulp mixture. Add half the basil leaves to this and salt to taste and bring this pulp to a boil. You can add water to dilute it and suit your consistency.
Garnish with the remaining basil leaves, and serve hot. This recipe make 2 big cups of pumpkin soup.
Cucumber salad (with Thai dressing)
Ingredients
Cucumber – peeled, cut into 1 inch long sized pieces – 1
For the dressing
Juice of half a lemon
Soya sauce - 1/2 tsp
Roasted peanuts – crushed – 1/4 cup
Red chilli flakes – 1/2 tsp
For the Garnish
Green pepper & Oregano – enough to sprinkle on the salad
Coriander (Cilantro ) leaves – Just a handful
Instructions
Mix all the ingredients for the dressing and pour it on the cucumber pieces. Toss and garnish. Serve cold.
I had a good day today, met a friend and her adorable daughters in the evening, and generally had a lot of time for myself, to think, to introspect and to wonder about life… But then one of the inevitable things in life is food, and like everyday of this month, I had to make something for myself, yet another meal-for-one. Seriously, thinking of a new meal every single day is tiresome even for a foodie like me, especially if the meal has to fit in what-I-think-is-healthy-bucket. Phew!
I wasn’t in a great mood to eat food, I had the awesome Banaganapalle mangoes at hand, as a life-saver if I were to get really hungry at night and so I decided to make something super light for dinner. Like a soup. I could’ve had Maggi, but since the food-revolution in the household which started a couple of years back, all packaged food is
Yday, I had tweeted asking for suggestions for a meal-for-one, and one of the suggestions I got from Kishi was this easy no-fuss-meal.
Now, while tidying up the grocery unit over the weekend (yeah, an annual activity in the household), among a zillion items that I already have 2-3 sachets/packets of, I also found a packet of kidney beans (rajma). In an attempt to get to them sometime this week, (God alone knows how , I am meeting friends every single day of the week, and yet I plan for dinner at home every single day!) I soaked them to soften them. So I read the recipe from the link above, made a quick mental math on what ingredients I actually have handy, and gave it my own spin. Here it is…
Ingredients
Red Beans – 100 gms , soaked overnight and pressure-cooked till soft
Spring Onions – 4-5, chopped
Garlic – 5-6 cloves, chopped or crushed in a mortar-pestle
Tomato – 1 , cut into medium sized chunks
Olive oil – 1 tbsp
Herbs like Oregano, Thyme, Rosemary, Basil – 1 tsp each
Paprika Powder – 2 tsp (depending on how spicy you want it to be)
Sea salt – a pinch, or per taste
Mexican Seasoning – Optional, I use the ones from Keya
Instructions
In a deep-bottom pan, heat the olive oil, and slightly roast the garlic and onion pieces in it. Put in half the amount of boiled red beans to this, and roast it slightly. Now add the tomato pieces to this mixture, and let it cook for 5 minutes on a medium flame.
Now add the herbs to this mixture, and mix well, so that the veggies and beans take in the flavour of the herbs. Add the salt, and paprika powder to this, and close the pan with the lid, and cook for another 5 minutes on medium flame.
Turn off the stove and let this mixture cool for a bit.
Now, mix these well enough in a mixer with the remaining beans and just a little water. The resulting paste should be thick enough.
Transfer the contents from the mixer into the pan and add some water to this. Now boil the contents. Add the paprika powder and salt again to suit your taste, and add a pinch of the seasoning, if required.
Bring this thick mixture to a boil, garnish with onions, garlic and coriander leaves.
Serve hot as it is or with toasted bread, or garlic bread.
Optional – You can add more water to this if you like, but since the whole purpose of eating the bean soup is to get as many proteins as possible, I made it very thick.
J, a very good friend of mine at work got me her big book on Soups and motivated me to try some from them. I’ve had the book with me for a while, and all I did was to turn the pages and sigh tiredly. The whole idea of going through the elaborate process of making the soup for the just the two of us was very tiring, but the photographs in the book were just luring me to try one of these. One weekend we were having friends over for dinner, and I had just the mood to do something new. One thorough look into the book told me that I have been tired for the wrong reason, coz the recipes in the book were just simple.
I picked up the most simple yet interesting one, and tried it. In spite of my doubts on its taste, the guests loved the soup. :)
Ingredients
1 Zucchini, washed and chopped. Preferably green colored one
1 Onion, diced into medium sized pieces
4-5 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp curry powder (I used Priya Koora Karam podi)
2 tbsp olive oil, for frying the Zucchini
1 cup vegetable stock
Some Italian herbs like Oregano and sage(optional)
Procedure
1. Put a medium sized pan on the stove and pour olive oil in it. Wait till the oil heats up and put in the onions into it
2. After a while, put in the crushed garlic cloves and sauté a bit
3. Add the zucchini pieces and sauté more till just enough. You can add the herbs at this point
4. Let this mixture cool down, and blend in a mixer or a hand blender. The puree should not be too soft and should still retain very small zucchini pieces, and the green color
5. Put a medium sized saucepan on the stove, and heat this puree in it.
6. If the mixture is too thick, add the stock water and mix well and bring to a boil
7. Serve warm
The original recipe did not have the garlics, but I wanted to experiment with them and it just added to the taste. Also, the recipe says that this soup tastes better when it is served chilled. So try that option too.
