Healthy Masala Oatmeal Upma

A great way to spice up your otherwise bland upma!

Having to get up in the morning to find your way into the kitchen and make your own cup of tea/coffee is such a boring way to start your day! To add on to that what if you have to get the breakfast ready before 7.30 AM. I so dislike this and for the same reason, mostly Pradeep leaves for office with just tea or tea with toast or a couple of fruits, although he prefers to start off the day with a healthy meal. Although I have, many times, displayed my unwillingness directly and indirectly to do that, some days you feel so lovey-dovey and wouldn't mind spending 30 min in the kitchen making a nice breakfast for him. So this recipe is the outcome of such a morning breakfast!

I had plans to cook suji upma, and started with spluttering the mustards. When I opened the kitchen cupboard to take suji, I saw some oatmeal in one of the containers, barely about 3/4th cup. There was a quick change of plan and thus I made oatmeal upma.

Ingredients

Quick cooking oatmeal - 3/4 cup

Onion - I medium, finely chopped

Carrots - 1/2 medium finely chopped

Olive oil - 2 tablespoon

Mustard seeds - a pinch

Urad dal - a pinch

Curry leaf - 1 spring

Turmeric powder - 1 pinch

Pepper - 1/2 teaspoon, freshly ground

Garam masala - 11/2 teaspoon

Lime - 1 juiced

Salt to taste

Sugar - 1 teaspoon

Water - enough to sprinkle to help cooking the oats

Coriander - to garnish

Preparation

Heal oil in a pan, splutter mustard seeds and add urad dal. Add the curry leaves, onions and carrots and cook for a couple of minutes, until onions are golden brown and carrots are almost cooked.

Add turmeric, pepper powder, garam masala and salt and fry until oil separates.

Add oatmeal and mix well to combine. Sprinkle water enough to wet the oatmeal (so that the upma is not too dry) and keep stirring for a couple of minutes. 

Add sugar and stir well. Switch off and squeeze the lime over the upma and mix well.

Garnish with coriander leaves and serve warm.

Healthy No Fuss Walnut Brownies

Healthy because it uses olive oil & no fuss because the batter ready in no time!

I feel this was the first greatest hit way back in 2010 when I first started baking. Pradeep likes brownies and he loves to pair it with vanilla ice cream. So once during my usual recipe hunt, I bumped into a real cool and easy recipe for walnut brownies. Since then it has been my go to recipe whenever we had to satiate out sweet tooth!

The best part of this recipe is that you need not beat the batter for a long time. Light hand mixing is all it requires! The original recipe calls for butter, however I have substituted olive oil for it. The recipe also had fudge topping, which I often skip when I make these black beauties often. It still has all purpose flour and sugar, so you can limit your portion intake.

Ingredients

All purpose flour - 1/2 Cup

Cocoa powder - 6 tablespoon

Brown sugar - 12 tablespoon

Walnuts - 1 Cup, slightly crushed

Eggs - 2, lightly beaten

Olive oil - 130-140 ml

Preparation

1. Preheat oven at 180 degree C.

2. Heat a sauce pan, mix together the oil and cocoa powder. Switch off when well mixed.

3. In a mixing bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Add in the sugar and beat with hands to combine. (this does not require vigorous beating, just light beating would do)

4. Add the cocoa mix and walnuts, blend in. 

5. Sieve in the flour and fold in, do not beat.

Cooking

6. Grease a baking pan and pour the batter in. Bake for about 25 minutes.

Serving

7. Let it cook completely. Cut into pieces and serve with ice cream or as it is.

Steamed Shrimp & Sausage Wontons

For my love for wontons and all things Chinese!

2 years of stay in Singapore has made me a wonton and dim sum addict! I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner and even as a mid day snack. We shifted base to India this February and since then I haven't had a sight of these or anything Chinese. Well, I remember going to a restaurant called Mings Palace at Gateway, but you cannot expect anything close to authentic Chinese here. 

So my urge to eat wontons grew day by day and last week, I finally went ahead and made it. I had some shrimps and a couple of sausages in my freezer which I had to use up. And that day we were having soup for dinner and I thought wontons would go well with that and could make the meal complete and filling; which it did! 

Ingredients

For the wrap

All purpose flour - 1 Cup

Salt to taste

Water enough to knead the flour into dough 

For the filling

Shrimps - a dozen, cleaned, deveined, and cooked with a bit of turmeric powder and salt

Chicken sausage - 3, 4 inch length, cut into small bite size pieces, cooked

Onion - 1 medium, finely chopped

Garlic - 6 cloves, crushed

Dried red chilies - 2, crushed

Olive oil - 2 tablespoons

Preparation

1. Make the dough for the wrap (roti dough consistency) and form about 10, 1 inch balls out of it. Roll out the dough into a neat circle of about 3 inch diameter. Keep aside.

Cooking

2. Heat oil in a sauce pan. Add onions and fry until golden brown. Add the garlic and chilies; saute for a while. Add the cooked shrimp and sausage, mix well to combine. Switch off the stove.

3. Hold the rolled out wrap in your palm, in a conical way and put the mix in it. Bring together the edges to cover the filling and twist to lock. Repeat the process for the rest

4. In a steamer (I used idli maker), place the wraps and cook. It should be done in about 10 min or as per your steamer settings.

Serving

5. Serve with ketch up, or if you aren't lazy like me, with the spicy tomato chili sauce, which is the authentic way to eat this.

Improvisation Ideas

You can go totally experimental with the filling idea. Next time I am even thinking of spicing up the wrap; what say?

Healthy Vegetable Quiche

Healthy because I used a whole wheat crust and vegetable filling

December, till now, has been packed with events, at home as well as work. Things mostly kept me busy on all working days and I was happily lazy, sleeping most of the time and having fun with friends on weekends! And yes, I have been cooking quite a lot. The facts that it has been easily 9 days since I blogged was actually hitting on me and today I just made up my mind to put up a post that I have been holding back for a while now. It took me a great deal of determination to put together this blog again and I am not not planning to let this go to sleep mode this time!

Vizag Navy Ball got over leaving behind the realization that I have put on weight! Yes, now officially, I belong to the healthy lot (I am sure my old buddies would have hard time digesting this fact). Seeing all those beautiful youngsters walking the ramp for Navy queen, it really had me thinking that I am good the way I am but may be a few pounds less. No, I haven't taken an oath as such, nor have I decided to go on a weight loss new year resolution but yes, I am deliberately trying to make healthier versions of the dishes I love to eat. So probably, you will see many healthy dishes along with some not so healthy ones.

So the other day, after my work, I was sort of too hungry and quite unlikely that day I didn't have any snacks in store. When I am hungry, being tired is not something that will hold me back from cooking, so I diligently spent some time browsing for recipes and bumped into quiche recipe. The original recipe called for all purpose flour crust and butter, however, as I wanted something that would make me (and my hubby) feel less guilty I made my own experiments and to say the least, the output was yum!

Ingredients

Whole wheat flour - 1 Cup

All purpose flour - 1/4 Cup

Olive oil - 100 gm

Cooked mixed vegetables - About 1 Cup (I had some leftover carrot and potatoes stir fry, which I used along with a bunch of spinach leaves lightly tossed in a heated pan about 1/2 a minute or so)

Chicken sausage - 1 of 4-5 inch length, sliced and cooked (optional)

Low fat shredded mozzarella cheese - 10 tablespoon

Eggs - 2 beaten

Water as needed

Salt to taste

Sugar to taste

Preparation

1. In a bowl mix cooked vegetables and sausage (if adding). Keep aside. I did not add salt to the filling because the stir fry and sausage already had salt in it.

2. Prepare the crust by mixing together the flours, salt, sugar and olive oil with enough water until it forms a firm enough dough which can be rolled out (like as you would for roti)

3. Make 1 inch balls and roll it out. Using a lid or a sharp vessel top of about 3 inch diameter, cut the rolled out dough, so as to give it neat edges.

Cooking

4. Preheat oven at 180 degree C.

5. Line a muffin pan with muffin lines/paper cups and keep the cut out rolled dough in each mold. This recipe would make about 5-6 quiches.

6. Spoon out the beaten eggs equally into the molds followed by the filling. Top with cheese (about 1 1/2-2 tablespoon cheese for each quiche.

7. Pop it in the oven and bake for about 15 min or until the cheese melts and crust is firm. 

Serving

8. Serve hot as am evening snack or starter for parties!

I loved it and this dish doubles as an easy way to use up your veg or non veg leftovers!