ಕೃಷ್ಣಾವಲಂ

ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಗೆ ಬೆಳ್ಳುಳ್ಳಿಗೆ ಬೇರೆ ಬೇರೆ ಹೆಸರುಗಳಿವೆ. ಕೆಲವೊಮ್ಮೆ ಮನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ನಾವು ಕೆಂಪು ಗೆಡ್ಡೆ , ಬಿಳೀದು ಅಂತ ಹೇಳಿದ್ದ ನೆನಪು ಇದೆ. ಇತ್ತೀಚೆಗಷ್ಟೇ ಕೃಷ್ಣಾವಲಂ ಅಂತಹ ಒಂದು ಪದ ಕೇಳಿದೆ. ಇದ್ದು ತುಳಸೀದಾಸರ ಅಭಂಗ್-ಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಕೂಡ ಉಲ್ಲೇಖವಾಗಿದೆಯಂತೆ. ಹೆಸರೇನೋ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿದೆ ಅನ್ನಿಸಿತು.

ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಗೆ ಕೃಷ್ಣಾವಲಂ ಅಂತ ಹೆಸರು ಹೇಗೆ ಬಂದಿತು?
ವಿಷ್ಣುವಿನ ನಾಲ್ಕು ಕೈಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಇರುವ ಅಸ್ತ್ರಗಳ ವಿವರಣೆ ಇದ್ರಲ್ಲಿ ಸಿಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯವಾಗಿ ವಿಷ್ಣುವಿನ ಕೈಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಶಂಖ, ಚಕ್ರ, ಗಧಾ ಹಾಗು ಕಮಲ ಇರುವುದನ್ನು ನೋಡಿರಬಹುದು. ಈ ಒಂದು ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ನಾಲ್ಕನ್ನೂ ನೋಡಬಹುದು.
೧. ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಯನ್ನು longitudeನಲ್ಲಿ ಕತ್ತರಿಸಿ, ಮಧ್ಯದಲ್ಲಿನ ವಾಟೆ / ತಿರುಳನ್ನು ತೆಗೆದರೆ ಅದರಲ್ಲಿ ಶಂಖುವಿನ ಆಕಾರ ಕಾಣಿಸುತ್ತದೆ.
೨. ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಯನ್ನು ಅಡ್ಡವಾಗಿ ಕತ್ತರಿಸಿದರೆ (slice) , ಚಕ್ರಾಕಾರ ಕಾಣಿಸುತ್ತದೆ.
೩. ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಯನ್ನು ತಲೆ ಕೆಳಗೆ ಮಾಡಿ ಮೊಳಕೆ / ತೆನೆ ಬರುವ ಕಡೆಯಿಂದ ಕೈಯಲ್ಲಿ ಹಿಡಿದುಕೊಂಡರೆ ಗಧೆಯ ಆಕೃತಿ ಕಾಣ ಸಿಗುವುದು.
೪. ಇನ್ನು ಕಮಲ. ನೀವು ಬಹುಶಃ ಇದನ್ನ ರೆಸ್ಟೋರಂಟುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಸಲಾಡ್ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಂಡಾಗ ಗಮನಿಸಿರಬಹುದು. ಲಾಂಜಿಟ್ಯೂಡಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಹಲವು ಸಲ್ಲ ಅರ್ಧ depth ಕತ್ತರಿಸಿ, ಅದರ ಪದರಗಳನ್ನು ಬಿಡಿಸಿದರೆ ಕಮಲದ ಆಕೃತಿಯನ್ನು ನಿರ್ಮಿಸಬಹುದು.

ಇರಲಿ. ಹಾಗೆ ಹಿಂದಿನ ಅಭಂಗ್ ಹಾಡುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಕೆಲವು ಗ್ರಂಥಗಳಲ್ಲಿಯೂ ಕೂಡ ಇದರ ಉಲ್ಲೇಖ ಇದೆ ಎಂದು ಕೇಳಿ ಅಚ್ಚರಿಯಾಯಿತು.

ಅಂದಿನಿಂದ , ಹಲವುಕಡೆ ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಯನ್ನು ಕೃಷ್ಣಾವಲಂ ಎಂದು ಕರೆದಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

ಏನೇ ಹೇಳಿ , ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಗೆ ಕೃಷ್ಣಾವಲಂ ಅನ್ನೋ ಹೆಸರು ಇಷ್ಟವಾಯಿತು. ಇನ್ನು ಮುಂದೆ ನಾವು ಈರುಳ್ಳಿ ತಿನ್ನೋದಿಲ್ಲ ಅಥವಾ ಈರುಳ್ಳಿ ನಡೆಯುತ್ತೆ ಪರವಾಗಿಲ್ಲ ಅನ್ನೋರಿಗೆ, ಕೃಷ್ಣಾವಲಂ ಉಪಯೋಗಿಸುತ್ತೇವೆ ಅಂತ ಹೇಳಬಹುದು 🙂

ಚಿತ್ರ : ಅಂತರ್ಜಾಲ ಕೃಪೆ

My version of wonton soup (veg)

Happy Chinese New Year!

I have heard the name, wonton soup, before and was curious how it looks and making it at home. On our recent visit to one of the shopping malls, I noticed a Chinese restaurant with a glass window where they make dough and fillings and people can watch from outside. That increased my curiosity of the way they make it. I noticed a wonton soup at a recent potluck at my workplace. Oh Well! I thought. This was the time to venture further and make one at home. The only problem was, the version of Wonton Soup I had heard was made of shrimp etc., which is not appropriate for me.  So tried something similar at home, with vegetables and other ingredients, a bit Indianized with spices and such. I can’t compare to original, since I don’t quite know how the original looks or tastes, but this was somewhat a dinner meal for me.

Ingredients:

• Dough preparation:
  • 5 tbsp All purpose flour
  • 1 tsp   Coriander powder
  • 1 tsp   Olive oil
  • Salt – as per your taste
  •  Warm water : as appropriate to mix dough
• For Dough filling:
  • Potato – 1 medium sized or large (boiled and smashed)
  • Carrot – 1 shredded and squeezed the juice out (do not throw away the juice, it can be used for soup)
  • Coriander leaves (Cilantro leaves)
• for Soup:
  • 1 tsp  Olive Oil
  • 1 tsp  Mustard Seeds
  • 1 tsp  Cumin seeds ( Jeera )
  • 1 tsp  Red Chilli powder
  • #2      Green Chillies ( if required )
  • Salt ( as per taste )
  • Spring onions ( as much as you need )
  • Spinach leaves ( as much as you need )
  • frozen peas (half a cup)

Preparation:

• Dough:
  • Add some oil to a bowl of all purpose flour, add other ingredients listed above and mix well. Use water sparingly as you go. It should go too soggy, and not too dry either. Leave the mix for about half hour to settle in.
  • 

 

• Dough filling for Wonton:
  • Boil Potato and smash it completely, drain out all the water
  • Shred the Carrot and squeeze/drain out all the juice into a vessel
  • Mix potato, shredded carrot, and Cilantro
  • Add some salt and spices – chilli powder / nicely cut green chillies,  coriander powder, Ginger, pepper powder, and such.
  • Ensure this mix need to be almost dry as well, so no water content. If you feel it is a bit soggy, you can sprinkle a bit of all purpose flour so it gives a binding texture.

• Rolling Dough:
  • Take the dough, kneed it once
  • Make small balls to roll them and make flats
  • on a lightly sprinkled flour surface, roll each one to round or squares of about approx. 3 inches diameter / side, use some flour if you feel the flour sticks to the surface or to the rolling pin.
  • Add a bit of filling and fold the wontons by hand as in this image below. Do not use more flour while rolling / folding wontons, the folds might come off while boiling in the water otherwise.
    
    
    

• Soup:
  • Place a vessel on a cooking range, add a 1 tbsp of Oil, and let it heat a bit
  • Add mustard seeds and Coriander seeds ( if available)
  • Add hot peppers (chillies), peas and fry a bit. Add the drained carrot juice collected before. You may put chopped onions, ginger and any other vegetables you may choose to. Really, it is for your taste. 🙂
  • pour water to 3/4th of the vessel and let it to boil
  • Add all those filled wontons to the boiling water, and let it cook for about 8-10 minutes. Wontons cooked softer the better it would taste.
  • Stir occasionally, but watch out to not break the wontons.

Vegetarian version of wonton soup is now ready to pour into a bowl and enjoy the sip.

 

 

 

Ashgourd Dumrot / kashi halva

After a previous failure of getting sweet dumrot kashi halva into a bitter one close to a decade ago, we tried another time this time. Did not expect anything specific outcome, except wanted to give another try since we had a lot of ashgourd (white pumpkin) available. I mean a lot, we bought a whole big ashgourd a week ago. We used it for regular curries, but how much, so turned this into a sweet yummy halwa.

 

Ingredients:
Grated Ashgourd (white pumpkin)  : about 3 cups
Sugar : about 1.5cups
Milk : 3 tbsp
Elaichi (cardamom) : about 5
Cashew nuts : about 10
Saffron : a few strands
Ghee : 1/5 cup

Preparation:

Grate white pumpkin, squeeze and drain out the water. Oh! no, you don’t need to throw and waste this pumpkin water. It can used to drink as-is with added salt/pepper, or use in other curries, rasam, etc. Add saffron to 3 tbsps of milk and let it soak for about 10 mins.

Keep a skillet on the stove. Oh please! turn the stove ON too! Add 3 tablespoons of ghee and heat it. Add cashews and fry till they turn light brown and keep the mixture aside.

Keep a thick bottom vessel on the stove. Heat 3-4 tablespoons of ghee. Add grated pumpkin. Fry/boil it for about 10 minutes while stirring, until all the remaining water content from the vessel evaporates. Keep adding ghee while stirring. You should get the aroma of ghee while frying. raw smell of white pumpkin should go away.  Add saffron / milk mix and keep stirring the contents. Add sugar, 5 tblspoons of ghee and stir again for another 10 minutes until the entire contents become one big lump.  While adding milk content, if you choose to, you can add a cup khova (milk cream), though optional, this would add some fat/taste and increase quantity.  🙂  Did I say, ensure to turn the stove Off all this done?

Add fried cashews to the mixture and keep it aside.

Either Serve it hot or cold a little later.

 

halva

Came across a basic recipe somewhere and added some other ingredients to my likes. We have tried this out for about 4 times. The taste and its stay-abouts have been improved ever since.  It was a little raw the first time and turned out much better yesterday. It is a Persian delicacy originally, and I customized it further with other ingredients. Best part is , the house keeps the aroma for a few days after making this delicacy, just like baking bread or a pizza.

Ingredients:

• Rice flour   – 3cups
• Sugar – 1.5 cups
• Rose water or/and fresh rose petals – 1 cup
• Saffron – about 20 strands
• Elaichi (cardamoms)  – 3 elaichis powdered
• Dry fruits – crushed almonds and cashews
• Butter – 1.5 cups
• Oil – half a cup
• Water – 1.5 cups

Utensils:

• Vessel for sugar syrup.
• A thick bottom larger vessel for flour.
• Wooden scoop

Preparation steps:

1. Make a sugar syrup – Pour water, sugar, rose water and saffron in bowl and boil till sugar melts
2. On another stove, Place a thicker vessel to melt butter, pour oil and let it heat up.
3. When the oil/butter is hot and melted, pour one half of crushed nuts, stir a bit, pour the rice flour and keep stirring for about 10-15 minutes till it turns into a thick paste. (“keep stirring”)
4. Now the interesting part – be careful and don’t hurt yourself at this step – “pour the hot sugar syrup into the flour and keep stirring. Pouring hot sugar syrup over flour makes the mix steam up. Just be careful and stay away from the steam as much as possible, and still keep stirring.
5. Keep stirring the mix for another 15-20 minutes while it turns from lighter color tending towards darker yellow or a brown tinge. (Color also depends on the color of the sugar as well, so watch out for lighter to darker color trend)
6. Prepare a plate with a layer of ghee or butter.
7. Pour the hot mix to this plate,tap flatten the content on the plate. Design/decorate with spoon as you desire. sprinkle the remaining crushed nuts over.
8. Let it cool down to the room temperature and serve.

It feels sooo good to take a bite and that melts into the throat. you will feel this to be tempting to keep eating it until you empty out the plate. Trust me, Try it out.

 

TomChAp salad

Two nights ago, I thought it was too late for me to eat cooked dinner, so quickly made something and asked my girls to give a name. A few names came up, and the best was “TomChAp Salad” .

I looked puzzled, and asked where did Tom and Chap come from. They said, you see Tomato, Channa (soaked and microwave fried garbanzo beans) and microwave Apple cuts as main ingredients and that make it up. I had umpteen other ingredients added of course.

It was a nice light dinner for the night. natural protein, natural sugar, natural fiber, natural carbs and some colors rich food for dinner and feels lighter too .

To make this, just kept the thoughts spontaneous and added the ingredients i wanted.

1. One Tomato – sliced
2. Half apple – sliced to thin pieces, kept it in microwave for 1 minute
3. Chana (Garbanzo beans) – soaked for a day (it was not planned, but was on kitchen counter, and i picked a handful) , microwave in a ceramic bowl/plate for 2 minutes – it becomes a bit crispy.
4. Spicy mixture (had some on the counter)
5. Raw Almonds – a handful.
6. Chilli powder – a pinch
7. Salt – if you wanted for taste – not required otherwise.

Steps:

• Arrange Tomato slices on a plate
• Put a handful of microwaved garbanzos
• add a handful of raw almonds,
• add microwaved apple slices
• sprinkle a pinch of chilli powder ( or according to taste)
• a bit of salt and the mixture.

Feel free to be creative and more ingredients – viz., cilantro (cut) , chaat masaala powder, amchur powder, and so on.

Enjoy a plate for dinner – it is lighter and feels lighter though has required protein, natural sugars, and some carbs.

 

 

Assorted Bonda

Made this Bonda back in July this year. We started off with some bonda, and turned out and ended up with Bondas, and several flavors of bajjis. It was a great evening.

Meals…

A good meal completes with an association with ragi muddhe. It is a beautiful combination. I love the ragi muddhe any day. I know there are some who haven’t heard about this food, and they wouldn’t prefer to eat due to its color. Don’t go by the color, look for the healthy benefits the ragi muddhe would have. 🙂

Pizza adventure …

….after quite a long gap, we tried the pizza again at home.

We had tried once before as listed here and had turned out ok back then.  We amended a few things this time and turned out great. We still followed the recipe listed as in previous scope with some twists

 

3 cups of all purpose flour with 2 teaspoons of cumin seeds (jeera), olive oil, yeast, and some flavored chutney as prep’d as follows’:

Green chutney
a bunch of coriander leaves
a bunch of mint leaves
2-3 green chillies
few slices of onion
Jeera
grated ginger

blend all the above in a mixer grinder. add 1-2 table spoons  of this paste to the dough. Mix well as indicated recipe in previous post.

Place the kneeded dough warm for over an hour. I kept it in our cooking range oven. It would look like this at the end of an hour

 

Roll it to the the pizza pan. I didn’t use the Rolling pin this time, rather stretched by hands.

 

Used part of the dough to make little buns, but they didn’t really turn out great, though the inside texture turned out great but the exterior was crunchy and not as soft as bun. but Tasted great though. we realized, if added ajwain, would have tasted like om-biscuits as we called in our childhood in Bangalore.

 

Tomato sauce:

Prepared Tomato sauce at home. Method:

start with 2-tablespoons of olive oil in a vessel heated on cooking range. add mustard seeds, jeera, Onions, 1-2 green chillies, 3-4 tomatoes thoroughly fried. add few cloves and black pepper for that spicy feeling, a bit of chilli powder, if requird. Salt according to taste. No, we didn’t add salt at all. get them to boil. cool and blend in mixer grinder.

Bake the crust slightly so it would be easier to apply the ketchup / tomato sauce and add toppings. Apply ketchup / tomato sauce and add toppings.

 

 

 

Now bake for 15 to20 minutes at 425 deg.

 

 

throwing in a few almonds on top wouldn’t hurt, I think.  Feels good to bite those almonds with pizza

Make slices as appropriate and relish hot. add crushed red chillies and anything else you would prefer for toppings. It turned out to be think crispy crust pizza with great number of vegetable toppings. No, we didn’t add the cheese. Couldn’t find a cheese with no Sodium content in it, and hence skipped it.

 

 

….. an experimentation for not being able to eat pizza outside being on Sodium diet  

 

I do not know the calories this would add, but I am good to eat the entire pie of this size

Fruit bowl

Oats n’ Fruits again, but with new additions explored :)