Bharwan Karela (Stuffed Bitter gourd)

I have made stuffed bitter gourd curry / bharwan karela many times before based on numerous recipes (one of my goto recipes) that I found on the internet. This time I wanted to try out something new and let my imagination dance to the tunes of my the-then culinary senses a little bit. I feared the worst of results but lo behold it turned out quite yummy. So here it is - my first (if i may, ahem-ahem) recipe invention added to this online cookbook ! Forgive my bragging !

Alaas, I have not taken photographs of the item as I was making it. Hope I don't become too lazy and update the post with pictures when I make them next.

Here is the recipe -

Cooking time : 30-45 mins

Ingredients :
4-6 Karela(Hindi) / Kalara(Oriya) / Bitter gourd(English)
1/4 th cup of tomato puree
1/3 rd cup of onion paste
1 tsp grated/paste Adrak(Hindi)/ Ada(Oriya)/ Allam (Telugu) / Ginger(English)
1 tsp grated/paste Lasun(Hindi)/ Rasuna(Oriya)/ Velluli(Telugu) / Garlic(English)
2 finely chopped green chillies (increase/decrease according to taste)
1/2 tsp jeera seeds
1/2 th tsp fennel (English)/saunf(Hindi)/pan mahuri(Oriya) seeds
1 tsp coriander powder
1/4 th cup of almond powder
Oil 
Salt according to taste
1 tsp Guda(Oriya) / Bellam(Telugu) / Jaggery(English) - Gives a nice flavor. Alternatively, this can be substituted with sugar

Method:
1. Wash and clean the bitter gourd. With a knife, scrape on the rough outer skin of the bitter gourd so that the ridges are a bit smoother.The aim is not to remove the outer skin completely though.
2. Partially slice the karela into two. We do not want to cut into 2 pieces completely. We want to put the stuffing inside and eat it as a whole karela. So cut the karela only half or three-fourths of the way.
3. Boil water enough to hold all the karelas. Add salt and turmeric powder to taste. Add the partially sliced karelas to this water and let it partially cook. Remove the partially cooked karelas from the water. We do not want to cook it completely as eventually we will be stuffing it and shallow frying it at the end.
4.  Scoop out the inner flesh along with seeds from the karelas. Grind this inner karela flesh to a fine paste.
5. In a pan, heat 2 tsp of oil. When its hot, add jeera and saunf and let it splutter but not blacken. Then immediately add the adrak, lasun, onion paste, tomato puree, the inner karela flesh paste that we made in Step 4, green chillies, salt and a little turmeric powder. The masala should taste a bit more salty and hot and spicy than normal to cut the bitterness of  karela. When it has cooked, you can smell a nice aroma of the spices and it should look a nice golden reddish-yellow colour. Then add the coriander powder, almond powder and guda. Mix all the masala well and remove from fire.
6. Stuff this masala in the scooped out middle portion of the karela. Lightly press together the two sides of the karela covering the stuffing completely.
7. Heat enough oil in a flat pan to shallow fry these stuffed karelas. On low to medium low heat, keep turning the karelas till they are completely done. Serve hot with rice. Enjoy !!!

Potala Tomato Khatta ( Parwal in a thick tomato gravy)

This is my mom's recipe. She makes this really yummy ! How I wish I could make this like her !

Here is the recipe -

Cooking time : 30 mins

Ingredients :
200gms Parwal(Hindi) / Potala(Oriya) / Potlakayya(Telugu)
3 big tomatoes
1 tsp grated/paste ginger
2 finely chopped green chillies (increase/decrease according to taste)
1/4 th tsp mustard seeds
1/4 th tsp jeera seeds
1/4 th tsp fennel (English)/saunf(Hindi)/pan mahuri(Oriya) seeds
1 big red chilly split into half
5-6 curry leaves
a pinch of hing
A little oil to deep fry the parwal
1-2 tsp oil for seasoning/tadka(Hindi)/chhunka(Oriya)
Salt according to taste
Sugar according to taste

Method :
1. Wash and clean the tomatoes. Chop and grind the tomatoes in a blender into a smooth puree.
2. Put this tomato puree to boil in a saucepan on low-medium heat.
3. Wash and clean the parwal. Cut the tips off and split the parwal into 2 equal halves.
4. Heat a little oil in a wok / kadhai for deep frying the parwal halves. As a healthy alternative, you can also shallow fry the parwal in a covered pan. Deep frying does wonders to the taste though. :)
5. Keep the parwal halves aside on a paper towel to let the excess oil drain out.
6. When all the parwal is fried, drop these into the boiling tomato puree. The final consistency of the tomato puree should be like neither too thin nor too thick sauce. Basically, it should be as you would like your gravy to be.
7. Add salt according to taste.
8. Add a teaspoon of sugar to cut the sourness of tomatoes. You can adjust the sugar too according to taste.
9. Remove this parwal in tomato gravy when it is all cooked.
10. Heat 1-2 teaspoons of oil for seasoning/tadka. You will know the oil is hot enough when a mustard dropped in it pops immediately. The oil should not be too hot so that fumes form. Then the tadka will burn.
To this just enough hot oil, add the mustard seeds, jeera seeds, fennel seeds, red chilly, ginger paste, curry leaves, green chillies and hing. Fry till the ginger is cooked right. Immediately, transfer this content to the parwal-tomato curry and cover it. This is the important part. You want the gravy to catch all the flavour and fragrance of the tadka and not let it vanish into air !

Tangy parwal curry in a tomato based gravy is ready. This has a slight khatta-a hint of meetha kind of taste.  Hope you like it!

Low fat Eggless Cake

To get off the mark, Kuchh meetha hojaye !

I baked this cake about 4 months ago for my son's 2nd birthday. I was just too lazy to blog it then. Anyways, better late than never.

Now, here's the story. I had always been looking for the perfect eggless cake with the right texture and which is low fat too. I found my eureka moment when I stumbled upon this blog by Sailaja. It is a no-frills, simple cake that bakes in a jiffy. I followed Sailaja's recipe to the t and then added my decorations. For the sake of completeness, the recipe is as follows -

Preparation Time : 10 min                                                              
Baking Time : 35 min

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup curd
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsps baking powder
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C/390F for 10 min. Grease and flour an 8"-9" baking pan.
2. Cream the sugar and curd till the sugar dissolves. Add baking soda and baking powder to this and leave it for 3 minutes. After sometime, bubbles will form in the mixture.
3. Add oil and vanilla essence and mix properly.
4. Add in the flour little by little mixing continuously so that we get a uniform homogeneous mixture.
5. Pour in the batter into an 8" round baking pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 min at 200C/390F.     
6. Then reduce temperature to 175C/350F and bake for 20 min. To test the doneness, prick a toothpick into the cake and it should come out clean. Bake for some more time if the toothpick has some wet cake ingredients stuck to it.
7. Overturn the cake on to a cooling rack and let it cool completely.

I baked 2 of these cakes and made a layered cake. For the decoration, I used store bought Pillsbury vanilla frosting. I applied a bit of frosting between the 2 cakes and the rest all around the cake. For the spiral shape, I just poured Hershey's chocolate syrup from the bottle moving my hand in a spiral motion.

The cake turned out soft and yummy. All of us enjoyed it. Hope you would too.

About my kitchen

Hi there !

Welcome to my kitchen !

I hope you enjoy browsing through  my cookbook. Please do leave behind your comments. I would love to  hear... um.. err.. read (lol!)  from you.

I am just the cook next door as anyone else. And here I have an online cooking blog as thousands of others out there. But I still consider my cookbook is unique in that it basically consists of a blend of Oriya(from a state named Orissa in East India) and Andhra(from a state named Andhra Pradesh in South India) cuisine. I belong to a small community of people who are originally from places on the Andhra-Orissa border. Some refer to this community as Sishti-Karnalu and some prefer to call them Telugu-Patnaik. Our customs and traditions are a happy amalgamation of those prevalent on both sides of the border. Quite naturally, people adopt and adapt to customs depending on where they live. Probably, thats how I am as happy with a dalma and santula as I am with a sambar or rasam and  a spicy hot curry. 

Having said that, I have been lucky (because of our occupations) to have had the opportunity to taste all kinds of cuisines from all over the world. So, I do experiment once in a while with my husband as my guinea pig. The experimental results range from absolute disasters to okie-okie to fantastic. I add the fantastic ones to this cookbook.

Now, here we are with a collection of the everyday recipes that is cooked in any kitchen passed through generations but done my way. It is my belief that every recipe turns out in a special way that is unique to your magic hands. So even if the ingredients are the same in two dishes, it would taste different when made by two different people. This is also a collection of all those experiments referred from other blogs(I have been and want to stay honest to all the borrowed recipes) that became an instant hit in my kitchen. This is a collection of some recipes that I think are my own inventions !!

I would be glad if my blog helps brings in a new taste into your kitchen. I hope this cookbook will be something that I can pass on to my son and daugter some 20-30 years later. I am excited about starting this blog and hope I can keep the momentum going on forever...

Sooo... Keep reading ! Keep cooking ! Keep blogging ! Keep smiling ! 

Yours truly