Upma

I am not very sure why many don't like upma. It's quite nice if its well made. I remember the first time I tried making it. It turned out to be such a disaster that my colleague spat out every morsel that she had taken into her mouth. It's not that tough actually. It's only about adding the right quantity of water I suppose. While it needs Rava and water in 1:2 ratio, the great me had sprinkled water on it.. what would you expect than a disaster! :-P Anyway here's the tried, tested and simple recipe.

Cooking Time: 20 mins.

Ingredients:

1. Roasted Rava/Sooji - 1 cup

2. Water- 2 cups

3. vegetable of your choice. If you have none, onion and tomato should do just fine.

4. Green chillies -2

5. Tadka ingredients such as Mustard, Jeera, coriander leaves, curry leaves and oil/ghee

Method:

1. In a heavy bottom pan , put in the oil/ghee. Once it's heated, toss in all the tadka ingredients and then add the chopped onions and chillies and fry till it's pink in color.

2. Once this is done, add tomatoes and rest of the vegetables.

3. Add water and boil them all for few mins. Add salt, chilli powder as per taste.

4. Add the rava and stir it well. Close the pan and let it cook for 5 mins. Garnish this with coriander leaves.

You can also add lemon in the end to give it a little tangy taste. In case you prefer to color your upma, you can add turmeric before adding the rava.

Pongal

This is one of favorites.. ok wait.. I think I should stop saying things like this is one of my favorites cuz as you know by now that I give you recipes of my favorites or if it is easy to make only. You can make this for breakfast or for lunch.

There are two kinds of Pongals. One is sweet and the other is spicy. So here goes the recipe that serves for 2

Cooking time (for both): 10 mins

SPICY PONGAL

Ingredients:

1 cup rice

3.5 cups of water

salt and pepper to taste (I don't prefer pepper powder)

3 tbs ghee

Jeera

Curry leaves

4- 5 Chopped chillies

a pinch of turmeric

Method:

1 .Make the rice in cooker. Since, we are adding more water here, it will be a lil watery once it is done.

2. Put the ghee in a heavy bottom deep pan. Saut the jeera, curry leaves and chillies. Add turmeric and stir

3. Add rice, salt and pepper and mix it. Cook this for 2 minutes.

Serve this with raita or curd with a pinch of salt.

SWEET PONGAL

Ingredients:

1 cup rice

1.5 cups of water

1.5 cups of milk

3- 4 tbs of ghee

jaggery as per taste

Few dry fruits of your choice.

Method:

Method:

1 .Make the rice in cooker. Since, we are adding more water here, it will be a lil watery once it is done.

2. Put the ghee in a heavy bottom deep pan. Fry the dry fruits and melt the jaggery.

3. Add rice and mix it well.

POSSIBLE MISTAKES AND HOW YOU CAN RECTIFY:

1. If your Spicy Pongal is bland, mix salt and pepper powder in hot water and add it to the final Pongal.

2. If your spicy Pongal is too spicy, god save you! I am kidding :-) make sure you serve it with plain curd.

3. If your sweet Pongal is not sweet enough, melt the jaggery separately in water on the stove and add the final Pongal to this. Cook this for 2 minutes.

4. If your sweet Pongal is too sweet, add milk and cook it.

Variations of Dal

Second reason why I love dal is cuz you can make so many variations. I am listing a few below. You can try them individually or you can mix it all up! For these variations, the basic dal recipe is what I follow. I can assure that the taste of every variation will be different

WITH SAMBAR POWDER/GARAM MASALA POWDER

Along with chilli powder, add sambar powder or garam masala powder as well into the basic dal. You can add this with any of the below variations.

WITH ONIONS:

1. Follow the basic dal recipe itself. Add finely chopped onions into the cooker or fry them in ghee along with the other garnish/tadka ingredients.

2. You can also beat the onions and tomato in a mixer. Fry this along with tadka and then pour the cooked dal. But this takes longer time.

WITH POTATOES, CARROTS & BEANS:

1. Peel and chop the carrots, beans, potatoes and add them into the cooker along with dal. You can also add onions with this.

WITH PALAK

1. Palak doesn't take time to cook. You can chop it and then fry it with tadka or add it into the cooker with dal. It adds a beautiful flavour by itself.

2. You can also beat the palak along with onions in the mixer and then add it into the cooker along with the dal. I don't add turmeric along with this because palak will anyway make this green.

WITH JAGGERY:

1. Exclude tomatoes from the Basic dal recipe. Add jaggery.

I assume that by now you would have got the drift. Dal is like making candles. Nothing can ever go wrong. Every mistake or experiment will turn out to be new and nice! But remember how to rectify them from the "Basic Dal" recipe.

My favourite - Basic Dal

I love dal. You can have it with practically everything. Rice, Roti, Dosa or you could just have a cup of dal if you are on diet. It is high in proteins and tastes good too! Here's my recipe that serves 2 people:

Time it takes: 15 mins

Ingredients:

I cup dal

one pinch turmeric

2 tomatoes

4 - 5 green chillies cut in the center

Salt and chilli powder as per your taste.

2 tbps Oil/ghee

few pods of garlic (optional), curry leaves, Jeera, mustard and chopped coriander

Method:

1. Put 1 cup of dal with 1.5 cups of water (actually quantity of water depends on how thick you want it. You can add more at any point) with tumeric, finely chopped tomatoes and the green chillies into the cooker and cook it for 4 to 5 whistles.

2. In a heavy bottom pan, add ghee, saute the garlic, jeera, mustard seeds and curry leaves. Once it starts to smell good (trust me, you will identify the smell), pour the cooked dal from the cooker and add salt and chilli powder. Stir and cook for 7 mins.

3. Top it with chopped coriander leaves

I suggest you check the taste before you say you're done. It might just end up salty/spicy or bland. The thing about dal is that you can always rectify mistakes.

POSSIBLE MISTAKES AND HOW YOU CAN RECTIFY:

1. If it's bland, duh! add some salt and chilli powder.

2. If it's too salty, add more water and boil it more.

3. If it's spicy, once it's cooked, squeeze lemon into it. But do not reheat after adding lemon. It will make it bitter.

How it all began...

Ok so here's my story.. I got married this year in May. When I met my husband for the first time before marriage, for some reason, I lied to him and said," oh yeah.. I enjoy cooking. In fact I am good at it".. while on the contrary, I couldn't even identify/differentiate vegetables, dals and spices. Hey! but in my defense, I always knew that tomatoes are not vegetables.

I once had apple milkshake and thought it was banana milkshake. I am serious.. I am not making this up! Although I did complain to my friend that the milkshake I was having tasted a lil weird.

This is one of the most finest example to show you how bad my taste buds and culinary skills were.

I must admit one very important thing. I love to eat. If you ever saw me, you might not agree cuz I am not plump as one would imagine a food lover to be. I love to watch cookery shows on TLC and Master Chef on Starworld. But trust me, the only effect such shows have on me is getting me hungry. Unlike many enthusiasts, I have never felt like cooking or trying some new recipe. I'd instead tell my darling mum to make it or just have it at a restaurant.

Marriage changes life.. it is a 360deg change. For those who are married, you will probably associate well with whatever I just said. Viola! my journey in the kitchen which i fondly wanna call as the "food lab" began after I got married cuz few times I was in a situation where I had cook. After all, I had lied to my husband about my non existing skills at cooking!

These days, I seem to have gotten better. Very strangely, I can make up recipes in my head or read up on the net, simplify them and it turns out just fine. I am not gloating but honestly, It surprises me that I can actually stir up something in my lab and then try my experiments on my dear lab rat called husband.

I am too lazy to invest time on cooking which is probably why my recipes are simple and they never consume time. I thought that it would a good idea to share them with people who are first timers just like me :-)