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).

Peanut chutney

Ingredients

Peanuts - 1C - roasted

Puttanalu - 1/2C - roasted

Chana dal - 2Tbsp

Urad dal - 1 Tbsb

Red Chilli - 10

Sesame seeds - 2Tbsp

Mustard - 1Tbsp

Cumin - 1Tbsp

Hing - 1Tbsp

Oil - To roast all the above

Tamarind paste - 1Tbsp

Onion - 1 finely chopped

Garlic - 6-8 cloves

Method

Roast the tadka ingredients in oil and let them all cool. 

Grind all the roasted ingredients together till a fine-coarse paste is formed.

Add onion and garlic to it and grind to a finer paste.

Mix in salt and tamarind paste. 

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.

Allam Pachadi

Ah, that quintessential Telugu pachadi, that makes everyone's mouth water. I cannot eat Pesarattu without Allam Pachadi, and I know many others in the family who love it to bits.

 

Cauliflower greens soup

 It always looked like such a waste... throwing away all those greens that come with the cauliflower head. I knew they had to be healthy, but never knew how to cook them.
A quick internet search landed me at this page, which inspired me to go make this soup.

Peperoni Arosto

Well, am not sure if this is really peperoni arosto, but this is my version of it, and it tastes pretty damn good.
Can be used as a topping on toasted garlic bread like a Crostini, or can be eaten with lavash crackers. I intend to use this in a pasta, to get a smoked bell pepper flavor next time. Another idea is to add this to a salad, with tons of feta cheese, and may be some pineapple cubes. If all else doesn't work out, you can slip in these smoked peppers into your mouth as it is!

This dish takes a long time to make, but is very easy, and can be made well ahead in time. I've noticed that it stays well in the fridge for up to a week.

Method -
1. Over roast full bell peppers at 200C for 30-45 min, till the skin blackens.
2. Once roasted, keep them in an airtight container for 10 min.
3. When the peppers are still hot, peel the skin off and chop coarse.
4. Mix in washed parsley , oregano, sea salt, red chili flakes, grated/chopped garlic and extra virgin olive oil.
5. Store in an airtight container for up to a week

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! :)

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Masala Karela Fry

Bitter gourd is one mysterious vegetable, in our house. I’ve never tried cooking with it, because it always looks complicated, but the two of us love it.

 

A simple Vegetable Stir-Fry

Stir-Fry… a word I shy away from, because of its Chinese food relationship. Yeah, I know its not really a Chinese only dish, but I’ve come to associate this dish with Chinese food and hence ajinomoto , something I detest with a passion.

But to go with the Grilled Tofu with Sesame Rice I made this stir-fry. The decision to make this was almost instant and hence this comes with absolutely no prior preparation. Whipped up in a jiffy and gobbled up much faster, this is one heck of an easy dish!

Sriracha Sauce

I haven’t heard or known about Sriracha sauce till I read the recipe on White on Rice’s blog, and I was set in my mind to try this one out the minute I finished reading the recipe. What's not to like in this recipe!

The base of this recipe is red chillies, so use as much as or little as you want. The more you use, the hotter your sauce is, obviously!

Avarekalu Usli

Avarekalu or Hyacinth beans is not very often found in Andhra Pradesh, but is almost a staple during its season in Karnataka.

Tumkur is the home to Avarekalu, Hyacinth beans or so am told. Growing up, we used to spend a couple of days in Tumkur, and gorge on this curry and other dishes made especially when these beans are in season. Such delight those deep-fried snacks made with these beans were...

Lemony Lentil Soup

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…

Palak Makhana

Or Popped Lotus seeds in a spicy spinach gravy!

Makhana or popped lotus seeds have intrigued me for a long time. I tried making a gravy with this once before but it didn’t work well, and that was the end of the Makhana story in my kitchen.

Till this evening.

Thotakoora Pachadi

Or Amaranth Greens Chutney.

What do you do when you have a lot of greens and you’d hate to not waste them? Well, South Indian housewives have been innovative in using seasonal greens in effective, healthy methods of cooking, one of which is Pachadi, which is what we call Chutney in Telugu.