Paneer Stuffed Parwal

My husband is crazy about stuffed vegetables. My mom is the best cook in the world to prepare a stuffed veg item. She can almost stuff all vegetables. Be it Parwal( Pointed Gourd), Ridge Gourd, Bitter Gourd, Okra, Egg Plant, Raw Banana. So this dish is dedicated to my lovely mom.

Ingredients:
Parwal ( Pointed Gourd)

For Stuffing
250 gm Paneer
2 Potatoes
2 Onions
2 Green Chillies
1/2 tsp Jeera (Cumin) Powder
1/2 tsp Dhania ( Coriander ) Powder
Pinch of Aamchoor (Dry Mango) Powder
Salt
Turmeric
Oil


Preparation for Stuffing

Boil the potatoes and then peel it. Smash it .
Put little oil in pan. Cut onions, green chillies and fry  them in the oil.
Put little turmeric powder.
Add Jeera powder, dhania powder and aamchor powder.
Fry them add little salt.
Smash paneer like you do for bhurji ,mix it with smashed potatoes.
Put them in the masala . Fry it nicely.

Preparation of parwal

Wash all the parwal and dry them.
Cut it lengthwise , don't cut it completely. Just cut one side so that masala can be stuffed.
Put them in a pan with boiling water.Cook  them for 10 min till they are cooked but don't over cook them. Cool them.
Stuff the fried masala into them.
Heat oil in a pan and fry the stuffed parwal.
Turn both the side and fry them.
Now stuffed parwal is ready.
Note: This can be done with okra also.

There is a another recipe i had tried before I became a vegetarian. You can replace the paneer with fish. Just fry the fish, remove the bones and smash the flesh with potatoes and stuff them into parwal.

Vegan French Toast with Ripe Banana

This dish is inspired from top 10 street foods in US which was showing on TLC sometime back. I just modified some items to suit our Indian taste buds ...

After each festival I will have a bunch of ripe banana left in house. The only thing I knew to make from ripe bananas are malpuas which takes a lot of time. This recipe takes around 15 min and we can have this as morning snacks.

Ingredients:
Bread Loaf
2 cups  of Milk
1/2 cup  of Custard Powder
Ripe Bananas
Honey
Ghee or Oil

Preparation:

Heat a pan , put little of ghee(clarified butter).
Cut the banana into small pieces. Fry in little ghee.Keep aside.
In a bowl boil the milk, add custard powder and mix it properly.
Dip the bread pieces in the mixture and fry it in oil.
Cook it  until both sides are browned .
Take One loaf of bread , put a little of honey and then keep the bananas and on top  keep another bread.
Now the toast is ready , put little honey on top.
You can put little cream on it which i have not used.

This is a great snack for me as I can use ripe bananas in it.

Chhena Tarkari

As this is the first post of my blog, I am going to start with a typical Oriya dish. It’s called "Chenna Tarkari". It’s like a Paneer Curry but little different.

Ingredients:

For Chenna:

5 liter milk

1 table spoon lemon juice / vinegar

For Gravy:

2 potatoes

1 big onion 

3 pods garlic

1 tomato  

1/2 inch ginger  

1 teaspoon cumin seed  

1 teaspoon coriander seed  

2 bay leaves  

1/2 inch cinnamon  

2 cardamoms   

3 cloves  

1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder  

1 and a quarter table spoon gram flour  

200 ml any refined cooking oil  

Coriander leaves   

Chili powder to taste  

Salt  

Method to prepare chenna kofta:

Chenna is like a cottage cheese which is not as hard as paneer. To make chenna heat the milk to boiling point. Add the lemon juice/ vinegar and switch off the flame. Allow the milk to curdle for 10-15 mins.

Now strain the curdled milk in a muslin cloth and hang it for some time. Squeeze out the water. Don’t take out all the water like paneer; the chenna should be soft but not very watery. 

 Take the chenna. Add gram flour (besan) and knead it nicely. Make small balls and flatten them like kofta. Deep fry the koftas in oil and keep aside. (Do not add salt to the kofta).

Gravy preparation:

Grind the dry spices (cinnamon, cardamom and cloves), onion, garlic and ginger to a smooth paste. 

Cut the potatoes into the shape of cubes. Fry the potatoes and keep aside.

Heat oil in a wok. Add the ground masala, bay leaves, turmeric and chili powder. When the oil separates from masala add tomatoes. Reduce heat and stir till the tomato becomes tender. Now add the potato cubes and salt.

After sauteing for a minute add water and bring it to a boil ensuring the potatoes are cooked. Now add the kofta and simmer for a minute. Garnish with coriander leaves before serving.

 If you don’t eat onion and garlic then just do a slight change in gravy preparation. Grind cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, cashew and ginger. Add little asafoetida.

And if you don’t have cashews in house try using groundnut and sesame seeds they provide same taste as cashews. I do this when I am out of cashews. Even you can try with watermelon seeds (magaz).