herbs, spices & a bit of madness ;)

Phew!!! Back after a long break on my blog :). Feels good to connect back. Me sitting alone in y room(without my 5 year old mini chef disturbing me is a bliss. Will try to share her video sometime :)

So what's special today? Was thinking what to post since I am back after a longtime. Finally made up my mind to post something apt for the season. It's hot in Bangalore. Last week when I went to More Mega Shop, I happened to get some Naval Oranges thinking that we can eat it in 2 to 3 days. Ok 6 is not too much of oranges for 3 people.
Day 1 Oranges are on dining table waiting to be consumed.
Day 2 I could feel oranges pleading please eat.
Day 3 Enough is enough :@. People are lazy to peel and eat. I have a solution. Let me make the Orange Squash for summer. Tadha!!! Here is the orange squash ready. Made this without preservatives to check what would be the shelf life of these squashes without preservative. Trust me they way we are consuming it would get over  in couple of days.

Here we go on how to make the squash

Ingredients

• 6 big Naval Oranges (this will yield around 500 to 600 ML of juice)
• 2 medium sized lemon juice
• 1 to 1.5 cup of sugar*
• 1 to 1.5 cup of water

Method

• In a thick bottom pan add sugar and water and boil well till it thickens a bit. 
• Add lemon juice and boil for 1 to 2 minutes and switch off the stove and allow the sugar syrup to cool completely
• While sugar syrup is cooling, peel oranges and extract the juice from oranges. I used the manual hand juicer which is quite comfortable. If you don't have the juicer no worries use your mixer. 
• Once the you have the juice ready and strain well to remove any traces of seeds.
• Now add this juice to the sugar syrup and mix well. store in sterilized bottle in fridge

Serving

• Add one part of the orange squash/concentrate to 3 parts of water. 
• You can also add some mint leaves. Serve chilled

Note

• Adjust the sugar quantity depending on the sweetness of the oranges
• To get the rich orange color you can add few strands of saffron crushed to the juice mix
• I made this juice 15 days back and it's still good. In case you want to increase the shelf life u can use preservative.

White Sauce

Ingredients

Method

Red Sauce

Ingredients

3 medium sized Tomatoes
1 medium-sized green Capsicum
2 medium sized Onions
Salt and Pepper to taste
Oregano
2-3 tsp of oil

Method

• Cut the tomatoes, capsicum and onions into small cubes.
• In a nonstick pan, add oil. Once it is heated add the onion and capsicum, saute well.  Once onions are transparent, add tomatoes, salt and pepper cook till tender.
• Switch off and let it cool.
• Once cooled, grind into fine paste.

Now comes the toughest part of preparing the vegetables.

Ingredients

2 medium sized Eggplants
5-7 tbsp cooking oil (non-flavored oil)
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, grated

Method

• Cut eggplants into round slices of equal thickness
• Roast it on a pan or a grill on low flame till it is golden in color. If you like it crispy, you may coat it with bread crumbs before roasting.
• Repeat above steps for all the eggplant slices

Arranging in baking tray

• Pre-heat your oven at 180 DC.
• Grease an oven-safe container (about 8 * 8 inches) with little bit of olive/ vegetable oil.
• Place a layer of eggplant. Ensure that there are no gaps
• Top it with white sauce and a handful of grated cheese.
• Now arrange the second set of eggplant.
• Top it with red sauce and a handful of grated cheese.
• Place the last set of eggplant. Cover with rest of the cheese.
• Bake in pre-heated oven for 30-40 minutes/ till it is light golden in color :)

Enjoy this with garlic bread.

This is an amazing sweet - Rasgulla stuffed inside khoya... Tastes yummy.
Not sure how the name Kheer Kadam has been associated with this....
Here we go on how I prepared it :)

You need 16 rasgullas of medium size.

Refer to my recipe of Rasgulla

Outer Layer of Khoya

Method

1. Mix sugar and khoya. Make balls similar to a pingpong ball's size (almost the size of a lemon)
2. Press it to form small plate shape.
3. Now place the rasgulla in this and close it evenly from all sides till rasgulla is hidden inside :)
4. Follow the step 3 process for rest of rosagulla 
5. Serve chilled/immediately.

I followed this recipe from "Manjula's Kitchen"

Ingredients

6 Cups of Full fat Milk
2 TBSP of Lemon Juice
1 TBSP of water
For Sugar Syrup
1 Cup of Sugar
2.5 cups of water
For Outer Layer of Khoya
1.5 cups of khoya (mava)
2 TBSP of sugar

Here we go

1. Boil Milk in a thick bottom pan
2. Once it starts boiling add lemon juice mixed with 1 tbsp water
3. Filter out all the water and retain the paneer. Wash well in cold water till the lemon smell goes.
4. Drain all water from paneer and knead well. To check if the consistency is correct, take a small ball, keep it on your palm and rub using thumb. If you are able to make a ball without crack then the paneer is done
5. Now make small balls.
6. Simultaneously, boil sugar and water in a wide mouthed vessel till sugar dissolves. 
7. Now add paneer balls.
8. Cover the vessel and cook for 10-15 minutes. Ensure there is enough space inside as these rasgullas would become almost 2.5 times the original size. 
9. Serve chilled