Chinese Cabbage Stir Fry

Chinese Cabbage is quite a versatile vegetable.  Its a longish with a light green colour leaf.  Why I call this vegetable versatile - because it can be used for soup, for frying noodles, for stir fry, and call also be used as a wrapper for meat steam.

Lets look at my simple stir fry

Ingredients.

1 medium size chinese cabbage - wash and
3 garlic - chopped
1 onion - chopped
1 tsp ginger garlic paste
salt to taste

Method

1. Wash and drain the cabbage.
2. As the stems are a little hard,  slice fine the stems.  Chopped roughly the leaves.
3. Heat oil
4. Once hot add in chopped garlic, saute till fragrant
5. Add in chopped onions - saute further till the onions are soft.
6. Add in the ginger garlic paste
7. Add in the stems first - saute for a few minutes.
8. Add the leaves stir well and cook till done.

Optional - you can add chicken slices, prawns, dried shrimps or even anchovies to give the added oomp.. You can add them with the ginger garlic paste.  I like both with or without.

Steam Prune(Dates) Cake

I brought along some dates from Qatar.  So I thought of making some cakes with it and I remember making this cake long before I started to blog.  It is easy and all it takes about 1 1/2 hours and the cake is done.  Lets enjoy the cakes.

Recipe courtesy of Resipi.Net

Ingredients
250 gm butter
2 cups of self raising flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 big tin  or 1/3 if using small tin of condensed milk
20 prunes
5 prunes (slice fine) - i omitted this.
5 eggs

Method

1. Boil water in a steamer
2. Beat butter, sugar and condensed milk till mix well
3. Add egg one at a time. Mix well
4. Stir in the prunes. mix well.
5. Add flour a little by little stir till mix well.
6. Add in the blended prunes mix well.  Do not over mix.
7. Grease pan with butter & line with grease paper, pour in the batter and steam for about 1.5hrs.  Cover the pan with tin foil to avoid water dripping into the batter.
8. If you like you can decorate with some prunes on the batter.

Hints

• If you need to refill the steamer, ensure it is with hot water so that the steaming continues.
• You can add have a mixture of half cup brown sugar and half cup sugar to give an added colour to the cake.

Instant Takkali Rasam @ Instant Tomato Rasam

2 -3 medium size tomatoes - chopped finely
2 tsp of ginger garlic paste
1 small onion - slice fine
1 red chilli - slice fine
1 tsp mustard seeds
sprig of curry leaves
1/2 tsp of turmeric powder
1 tsp jeera powder

 Method
chopped the tomatoes into small pieces (or you may blend the tomatoes)
heat oil, once hot add in mustard seeds.
after the spluttering, saute onion till onions soft
next add ginger garlic paste, fry for a few seconds.
add in red chilly and tomatoes - saute for a few minutes.
cook the tomatoes till they are soft and mushy, cover if you wish but keep stirring to avoid burning
add 4 cups of water. cook on medium to high fire for till it starts to boil.
add in turmeric and jeera powders, salt to taste, curry leaves. let it boil for a few more minutes.
remove from fire and ready to serve.

Sothi

Sothi is a simple and easy dish.  I have always used fresh coconut milk, though have known people making them out from instant coconut milks and evaporated milks.

coconut milk from about 1coconut approximately 8 cups- make sure it is not so thick nor so thin.
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 onion - chopped finely
1 red chilly - sliced
1 tsp of ginger garlic paste
sprig of curry leaves
1 tomato - chopped small
1 tsp turmeric powder
salt to taste

1.  Heat a pot. once hot, add in fenugreek, when it starts to splutter.
2.  Add in the onions, saute for a few mins till soft.
3.  Add in tomatoes, ginger garlic paste and chilly. Saute further till the tomatoes are soft.
4.  Once the tomatoes are soft, add in coconut milk, add in turmeric powder and salt to taste
5.  On slow fire, let the coconut milk to boil slowly.  
6.  Make sure it does not start to break into oil lumps.  Stir, slowly add in curry leaves and remove from fire.

Bitter Gourd Chinese Style

1 medium sized bitter gourd - remove seeds and cut to small thin slices.
1 onion - chopped fine
3 garlic
1 tbs of anchovies
1 tbs of dark soya sauce
2 tsp of light soya sauce - depends on the salt content of the light soya sauce
a dash of sesame oil.

• Pound garlic and anchovies
• Heat oil
• add pounded garlic anchovies, stir fry for a few seconds till aromatic
• Add in the onions - stir till soft.
• Add in the bitter gourd - stir till the gourds are soft.
• Add in the soya sauces and sesame oil. Mix well and serve hot.

Pavakai Kootu @ Bitter Gourd in Thick Gravy.

I just love pavakai or bitter gourd.....so much so i made two different style of pavakai for lunch, one with a chinese flavour and the other indian with one long bitter gourd.  Although I generally liked the small, darker version of pavakai for these dishes I used the longish with lighter colour ones.

Pavakai Kootu @ Bitter Gourd in Thick Gravy.

1 medium sized bitter gourd - halved, remove the seeds, cut into very thin slices.
1 onion - sliced
2 tsp ginger garlic paste
1 dry chilly
1 tsp mustard seeds
a sprig of curry leaves
1/2 tsp of tumeric powder
1tsp of garam masala
1/2 tsp of currry powder
juice from 1/2 lime
to grind the following : - 3tbs of shredded coconut, 1tsp of coriander seeds and I tsp of cumins - grind to a fine paste
salt to taste

• Heat oil, once hot, add mustard seeds,once it starts to splutter, add onion, saute till soft, add ginger garlic paste and curry leaves.
• Add in bitter gourd, stir fry till done, add salt, tumeric powder, garam masala and curry powder.  Stir well.
• Add the grinded paste,mix well.
• Remove from fire and add lime juice from half lime.
• Serve hot. 

Sri Lankan Porridge

I fell in love with this dish the first time I tried them and all thanks to my colleague at school, Mrs Fathima.   She shared this lovely dish for our morning break...

Now this is the interesting part of working in a multi cultural environment - you get to try many different dishes.  It has whole wheat, rice and everyday indian spices.  On the way back from school, I got to grocery and looked for hareesh - its Qatari for whole wheat...gosh this is the first time I am venturing into this wheat...

Did I try the recipe immediately, nope I did not get to try them immediately - it was a few days later that I actually made them.  Lets look at the ingredients and get fancy.

Ingredients

I cup of whole wheat
1/2 cup of basmati rice
1tsp garlic ginger paste
1 tomato - diced
2 chicken cube
1/2 a chicken - chopped small (I used chicken thighs)
2 carrots - diced
spring onions - chopped
1 tsp fenugreek
1 sprig of curry leaves
1 cup coconut milk/milk
salt to taste

* dry roast the following spices and grind to powder - dry chilly, cardamon, cinnamon, cumin, pepper corn.

Wash and soak overnight whole wheat.  Next boil with rice, remove froth, till soft, add the rest except the grinded powder.  cook till all well mushy and soft and thick...add salt and dry roast spices and milk, cook till well.

Banana Cake

I was suppose to post these recipes before taking off from Qatar, but never got to it...Too many things to do in between

A good pick from http://masak-masak.blogspot.com/

Banana Cake

3 bananas - approximately 227grams (mashed)

3 beaten eggs
170gm sugar
227 plain flour
1 teaspoon soda bicarbonate
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (118ml) melted butter or oil
1 teaspoon vanilla essence I use banana essence instead.

• Butter and flour the cake tin. Mash the bananas in a measuring cup. If you like pieces of bananas in your cake, leave some bigger pieces intact.  I blend the bananas as I dont like the lumpy pieces.

• Mix the egg and sugar in a bowl until it is well mixed with a hand beater.
• Sift the flour, soda bicarbonate and salt together.
• Add mashed banana and mixed egg to flour mixture and mix together with the hand beater. Pour into the prepared cake tin.
• If using the round ring cake mould, bake for 40 minutes at 180C. I used a loaf pan which took about 50 minutes at 180C. Test the middle of the cake to check if it's cooked before removing from the oven.  I too used a loaf pan...it turned out perfectly well.