Typical Oriya meal

Shanthi a blogger friend is hosting an event to honor foods from different states. Since I have a site dedicated to Oriya food, I feel its apt to have a posting dedicated to it. Shanthi great idea and keep up the good work. I am posting links to my old posts here for her event.

A typical Oriya meal consists of rice, dalma, 1 vegetable or non-vegetarian curry (with gravy), 2 or 3 dried curries or bhajas and a khatta. No Oriya meal is complete without sweets though. Usually the sweet is kheer or mitha dahi or some paneer based sweets. All food is cooked fresh and women in the household spend 3-4 hours in the kitchen for each meal...

So here is a medley of dishes dedicated to Oriya meal and to the State Special event.

Rice : could be plain rice or jeera rice or fried rice (depending on the occasion)




Dalma : there are several version of dalma. I think each family has its own speciality. The dalma tastes different depending on the combination of vegetables, dal and spices. Here is a simple one with dal and eggplant and potatoes.


Some curries that I love are :
Ghanta :




Patua :


Chatu Rayee or mushroom in mustard sauce:

Khatta is nothing but a sweat and sour dish. Its very common in a meal. Even I usually have something in the refrigerator that I use as a side dish. The famous khattas are Dahi Baingan and Tomatoes Khatta and Amba Khatta



Also would like to thank Shanthi for passing on the the Scrumptious Blog Award.




This is a blog award given to sites that:
Inspire you
Encourage you
May give Fabulous information
A great read
Has Scrumptious recipes
Any other reasons you can think of that make them Scrumptious!

The rules are:Put the logo on your blog or post.Nominate at least 7 blogs
Let them know that they have received this Scrumptious award by commenting on their blog.

All blogger friends, please accept this award. You have both encouraged me and inspired me to put this blog together. Heartfelt thanks to Shanthi for passing it on.

So Happy Ganesh chaturthi and God bless friends...

Baingan Ambila

This post is a few weeks late. I have a big backlog of work since I am back from vacation. On the day of Rakhi, I was running late in the evening to get sweets and Rakhi gift for my daughter. I knew she was looking forward to a special treat too. There was no time to make anything too special, so tried this Eggplant Sweet and Sour side dish.... It was such a hit with her, though she didn't really touch the eggplant, but happily slurped on the curry.

Ambila is a typical Oriya side dish. It is enjoyed with Rice, dalma and mixed vegetable curry. You can make ambila with mixed vegetables like Carrots and Radish too, but my pantry had only eggplants...

Ingredients

8 small eggplants
1/2 cup jaggery (less or more depending on the sourness of Imli)
1 tablespoon of Imli paste
handful of curry leaves
2 red chilies
1 tablespoon of panch phutana
1 table spoon fried Jeera and fried Methi powder
1 table spoon of oil
1/2 tea spoon turmeric powder
salt to taste

How to

Slit the small eggplants. Put them in a pan with a little water, salt and turmeric powder and cook until the eggplant softens (about 10 min). Keep aside when done.
Heat oil in a pan. Add panch phutana.
When they start to crack add curry leaves and red chilies.
Add 1 cup water, jaggery and imli paste and mix well.
Once the jaggery is is dissolved, add salt and jeera and methi powder.
Add the boiled Eggplant and cook for a few minutes.

Serve hot or cold. This stays fresh in the refrigerator for a week.

Janmasthami Bhog

Happy Janmasthami everyone. It was a lovely Day celebrating Krishna's birthday. Even my daughter tried fasting for a few hours in the morning. I had started when I was 8 years old and it was nice to see her attempting it too....
Back home lots of items are made for Krishnastami. In my (Aei) grandma's place, at least 20 + items are made. My aunts cook all day (we have a big joint family) for the puja and feast at night. But my mother-in-law being a working woman who lived in Bengal had a different recipe for all fast days. She would make a simple chana dal, puris and fried vegetables. Here is an adaptation of her puja meal.

I am sending the chana Dal for the Festive food event conducted by Purva and Priti.

Chana Dal

1 cup of Chana dal washed and soaked for 3-4 hours
1 tea spoon Turmeric powder
1 tea spoon Chili powder
1 tea spoon whole Cumin Seeds
2 tea spoon garam masala powder
couple of Bay leaves
handful of Raisins
handful of fresh coconut (optional)
1-2 green chilies
1 table spoon ghee
Salt to taste

How To

Boil the Dal with turmeric powder, chili powder, bay leaves and salt. Once it is nearly cooked, take off the heat.
Heat the ghee in a pan. Add Cumin seeds and green chilies. Once it sputter, add the chana dal and boil again. Add garam masala and raisins.
Add a handful of fresh coconut before serving.

Fried Cauliflower

Deep fry the cauliflower, roll it in a bed of dhania powder and chili powder. Sprinkle salt and eat it hot. Yum! Do the same with thinly sliced potatoes or eggplant.







I am not sure if these 2 dishes count as fast food or feast food, but they are a treat. We enjoy these on fast days only - guiltless pleasures!


I had a nice lovely short break. I went to visit few friends and met few relatives too. My mom got to spend some precious time with her old childhood friend and she has a glow about her since she is back.

Kreativ award

I am so honoured to receive my Kreativ award from Ramya and Shubha.It is the Kreative blogger award, honouring favourite, creative blogs.Thanks a lot Ramya and Shubha!! You have made my day and I also feel humbled receiving this award....

The rules for this award are :

1. You must thank the person who has given you the award.

2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

3. Link to the person who has nominated you for the award.

4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.

5. Nominate 7 other Kreativ Bloggers.

6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.

7. Leave a comment on which of the blogs to let them know they have been nominated.



Rules 4, 5, 6 and 7 are really tough... How do I nominate only 7 ? I hate these confining rules... Hey but rules are rules and here I am...

7 things about me that you may or may not know and may or may not find interesting:

1)I love coriander and curry leaves... I feel I should have named my blog either one of them since i love the 2 so much.

2) I love chocolate - in any form... My favorite these days is the hot chocolate from Starbucks... The close 2nd is the hot chocolate from Williams Sonomo that you get only during Christmas.

3) I hate spinach. When I was pregnant, I used to buy them every week, leave in my refrigerator for the whole time and throw the wilted ones out before buying a new bunch. Somehow maybe the pregnant brain decided buying was as good as eating.

4) I work well under pressure... No I should say I procastinate and leave everything to the last minute and I pull it off at the end and feel very happy about my dealing with pressure bit.

5) I am good bathroom singer. If I dare sing outside the bathroom, my daughter and son come running to shut my mouth... If they are not around, others in the room walk out... Hmmm so much for my singing skills.

6) I am not a good cook. I love eating, but I think my kids and husband love it even more. I cook more out of compulsion, but love it when I see the satisfied smile on their faces. Also I love a well presented dish and will atleast try it if it looks pleasant.

7) I love baking and always like the way I get to enjoy time with the kids while doing it... It does add to the waistline though and no not all of those treats turn out blog worthy either...

7 friends I nominate are :

Sharmila of Kichu khon
Aruna of "The temptations"
Sweta of Bonne Nutrition
Shama of Easy2Cook Recipes
Shanti of Shanti KrishnaKumar's cookbook
Mangala Bhat of Recipe 24x7
Chitra of Ratatouille - Any one can cook

Friends, you do deserve this award more than me... Please accept and yes please feel free to bend the rules as you like.... I am off on a short trip. I will be enjoying this award and I hope you all do...

Vegetable Patua

Patua is a dish usally made by steaming/baking the items inside a leaf (like a banana leaf). Macha Patua (Fish) is most popular in Orissa/Bengal. While I had all the vegetables that goes inside a patua, I had no banana leaf to cook it in.

Ok, I didn't even make this dish. My mom made it last week and it was so good that we finished it off right away... Also she made it on a cooktop, but the same can be put in an oven and tastes great too... If you have the vegetables cut, this is an easy dish to put together and can be enjoyed on weekdays too.

Don't you think our authentic dishes are so healthy and easy to put together ? And I wonder why I don't make it often enough ?

Ingredients

1 cup of Eggplant - diced into small pieces
1 cup of cleaned/peeled red potatoes - diced (don't peel it, if you want to save time and some nutrients)
1/4 cup beans cut into small pieces
1/2 cup raw banana - cut into small pieces
1/4 cup raddish cut into small pieces
2-3 cups of fresh spinach - washed, cleaned and cut into large pieces

1 tea spoon Mustard seeds
1/4 tea spoon Cummin seeds
1/4 tea spoon poppy seeds
1-2 green chillies (to taste)
2-3 cloves of garlic (skip if you want it satvic)

Salt to taste
1 table spoon of Mustard Oil for cooking
handful of Badi

How To

Grind the mustard seeds, cummin seeds and poppy seeds with the green chillies and garlic. Add 2-3 table spoon of water and leave it aside for 10-15 min.

Heat a pan. Ad the mustard oil. Once the oil is hot, add all the vegetables and then top off with spinach and pour the mustard paste. Add Salt to taste and cover and let it cook on slow fire for 30-35 min.

After 1/2 hr, check if the vegetables is cooked, if not cook on high heat for few more minutes.

Remove from the fire.

Serve with Fried crushed Badi at the time of serving....

Updated
Here is a link to Sharmila's site who makes awesome Badis and awesome Bengali food. I have never made Badis at home, but mom and mil get me a batch every summer...

As I learnt from my blogger friends, patua is called Paturi in bengal. Ofcourse the fish one is more popular in Orissa and Bengal. The parsis have a similar fish dish called patrani machhi...

Cherries anyone ?

Aren't you tempted by these cherries ? I saw them in Costco in the beginning of summer and picked a box of it. I guess we ate half of the sweet yummy juicy cherries in 2 days... The rest just sat and sat. But how much of cherries can you eat ? And they do go bad soon...

So I tried 2 dishes with it. The 1st was a glaze that I had seen on Food Network. It was so simple, it was done in 5 min. The 2nd one I tried was a cherry crisp. The cherry crisp wasn't such a success - at least it didn't look good and felt kind of chewy! So I tried again, with a store bought crisp mixture. Again, not so good. The final one is what I have posted and tasted real good...

Cherry Glaze

Ingredients

1 cup of pitted cherries
1/2 cup water
2-3 tablespoon of sugar

How To

Get the water to boil. Add the cherries and sugar and let it simmer for 5 minutes or until the cherries are soft. Let it cool and pour on your vanilla ice cream and enjoy...

Cherry Crisp

I had Crisp for the 1st time last year. My husband's colleague had come for dinner and had made blueberry crisp for my mother-in-law since he knew she was vegetarian. It tasted so good that it was finished flat out. I asked him for the recipe and he of course had approximate measurements. One of the thing he had added was clove, which my mother-in-law loved, while I wasn't so fond of it. I have tried cherry crisps several times this year. The following recipe worked...

Ingredients
1 cups pitted sour cherries
1/4 cup brown sugar (add more if the cherries are not sweet)
2 tablespoons whole wheat flour

1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 tea spoon baking powder
1/4 tea spoon cinnamon + elaichi powder (I usually have these 2 ground together in my pantry)
1/8 cup butter at room temperature


How To
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray 2 ramekins with non-stick cooking spray.
In a medium bowl, mix the cherries, 2 table spoon wheat flour and brown sugar.
Evenly distribute the cherry mixture into 2 ramekins.
Combine the oats, 1/2 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder and butter together. Crumble evenly over the cherry mixture.
Sprinkle the elaichi and cinnamon powder.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Enjoy warm with ice cream or eat a spoonful just like that....

So let me know if you have any other suggestions for cherries ? Those big boxes of cherries still tempt me in the stores!

Fish Cutlet

My mother-in-law is the queen of cutlets. She is an awesome cook, and she probably knows at least 50 different kinds of cutlets. Fish cutlet is an all time favorite for everyone in the family. My son who doesn't eat fish usually chomps on these happily.

Usually I take an dish and try to find a easier way to make it or a healthier way to make it. But some how I can't get myself to make fish cutlets any other way. So it is one of those very few dishes that I make that is labor intensive, but I feel well worth it... What say you ?

Ingedients
2 pounds of fish fillet (I use tilapia fillet)
1/2 tea spoon of Turmeric powder
1 tea spoon of Chili powder
1/2 cup Vinegar
4 large Potato boiled and skin peeled off and mashed
1 large Onion finely chopped
4-5 large garlic cloves minced
1 tea spoon of garam masala (optional)

handful of raisins
1 spring of mint leaves cut finely
Bread Crumbs - as needed
Salt to taste
1 cup of Besan
Oil for deep frying


How To

Marinate the fish with little turmeric powder, chili powder, vinegar and salt, overnight.

Then the next day you can fry the fish (the usual shallow fry of fish or broil it in the oven on each side for 5 min). The broiling works well for cutlets, since the fish is fried at least 2 more times after this and leaves no fishy smell....

In a nonstick pan fry Onion and garlic for 2 minutes. Then add the fish and fry for a few minutes. Add the garam masala and mashed potatoes and salt to taste. At the end add the mint leaves and raisins and mix well and take off the stove and let it cool.

In a separate bowl, take the besan, a pinch of salt and pinch of garam masala and mix well. Add water to make a thick batter and mix well to ensure there are no lumps.

After the fish mixture cools, take small portions and shape into oval cutlets. Dip them in besan batter then roll them in bread crumbs and keep aside. This makes about 20-25 cutlets.

I usually keep the cutlets in the refrigerator and deep fry as many as you need just before serving them. The cutlets stay fresh in the fridge for about 4-5 days before deep frying.

Enjoy these cutlets with mint chutney or else enjoy with Amba Panna...