Kitchen gardening

Spinach - Liver curry

For this curry you will require the following ingredients:

1. Spinach         :         6-7 bundles
2. Tomatoes      :         3
3. Onion            :         3
4. Gram flour     :         4 tablespoons
5. Rice powder  :        3 tablespoons
6. Ginger-Garlic paste
7. Chilli powder
8. Turmeric powder
9. Garam Masala powder
10. Oil
11. Salt to taste


Firstly, cut the spinach leaves (not the stems, branches). Boil them and put into mixer but do not add water. You will get a paste. Now add salt, chilli powder, rice powder and gram flour to this paste. Next you have to steam this paste. After you do this, cut the obtained cake like thing (that you get after steaming the paste, I cudn't get any other proper word, so I used 'cake') in desired shapes (generally they are cut into liver-shaped).

In a pan, fry cut onion slices, tomato pieces, ginger-garlic paste, garam masala powder, chilli powder, turmeric powder and salt. After these have fried very well, add the cut spinach cake pieces. Next add a little water in order to get a gravy like consistency. And there you are! The curry's ready! The taste will remind you of any animal's liver that you might have eaten in one of your non-veg meals.

My Extended Vegetable Garden

In our backyard, we had banana plants. Two inflorescences started coming up few months back. They grew  

 really slow. But we waited and waited. And see what we got. So many bananas! I prepared a tasty mouth-watering curry and we all ate it up! Do you folks know that there's an island in Egypt called 'Banana Island"?

            

Spices form an indispensble part of Indian cooking, especially mustard seeds. so i grew them too. In contrast to the bananas, the mustard plants are quite quick growing. The plant is too gregarious.

 

The yellow flowers against the green leaves, stems and pods makes a good color combination, pleasant to the eyes.

Here, in India, especially the Punjabis (in the north) prepare a curry out of mustard leaves, popularly called 'Sarson (mustard) ka Saag'.

 Fields of mustard over large areas of land give the impression of a yellow mattress and its simply awesome to watch one.

My Grown-up Kitchen Garden

Hello Everyone. Its been a long time since I blogged. The last time I told you about a recycled garden adjacent to my kitchen. There had been some growth (obviously!) in my plants. Let me first tell you about the tomato plants. The first 3 pics here was on shot in the third week of Jan. You can see the plant has started flowering. bright yellow flowers and tiny tomatoes growing up... The next one with strawberry-sized tomatoes, light green and hard, was shot just 10 days later. Growing really fast, indeed.

With the potatoes, I had been a little unlucky. Actually I cudn't resist myself from uprooting the two potato plants. I was anxious to see really big ones but I was expecting too much, too early. So I ended up with these cute little ones. But its okay 'coz small things are beautiful. I decided not to cook these and but just enjoy their cuteness.

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Clusters of white flowers had appeared on the coriander plants. Few corianders had also appeared but I forget to click them.





I had sprinkled mustard seeds just like that, not with the motive of actually sowing them. All of them growing together have created a mess here, you see.

Ah! I forgot the beans! But, you see, the beans appear sort of malnourished. No, they aren't diseased or something like that. What happened was that in the pot in which I had grown beans, I unknowingly dropped a corn seed probably. Aand maize plants, you know, absorb a lot of water and hence, my beans were deprived of water. So, they showed slow and stunted growth.






We got shifted to this new place, where we are presently, about 2 months ago in Febraury. Something really disappointing happened. We were waiting anxiously for the tomatoes to get ripened. We were about to pluck these but probably they were not destined to be ours. One fine morning, I wake up and what I see is all my tomatoes are gone! and I looked around to check who the thief was. and this was most surprising. On the neem tree nearby there were some monkeys. If you have watched the program 'Monkey Thieves'

Recycle Garden adjacent to your Kitchen

This is a small garden that i made with all materials which would have otherwise gone into trash. An earthern pot, in which we used to keep drinking water in the scorching summer last year, is gearing up for giving us some tasty beans. You can see two or three pods on the plant that have already appeared. There's also a cereal growing in it.

The blue plastic bucket became quite old and started fading and was also about to break and hence became unusable. But it now has some baby potatoes growing inside it.

An inverter at home, a thirsty one really. need to quench its thirst by giving it distilled water. So these green bottles are those used up distilled water bottles which i have made productive by growing fenugreek plants in one and tomatoes and coriander in the other.

It is a great satisfying experience to grow your own vegetables. You see them growing right from the time when they are tiny seeds. You take care no insect hurts them. You make sure that
they get water on item. You bring them up as if they were your own
children. it is quite exhilarating.

Vermicelli Veg Uppama

Ingredients:-

Vermicelli    -  1 cup

 Carrot        -   1 

Potato         -   1 

Peas         

Onions

Green chilies

Curry leaves 

Mustard seeds

Chana dal

 

Method:-

Fry vermicelli till it turns golden colour by adding  little ghee,and transfer it onto a plate.

Add oil in the pan, add mustard seeds. When the seeds split, add chana dal, chilies, onions, curry leaves one by one and fry it.

When they get fried, add carrot,  potato (small-sized slices) and peas.   

Fry the vegetables till they take a little brownish colour . Now add 1 and 1/2 cup water and salt to taste.

While the water is boiling, add vermicelli, mix well, reduce the flame and cook by covering  the lid for a few minutes. Check whether the vermicelli has boiled or not, mix and turn off the stove.

Serve hot with sambar  or as you wish.

Banana paratha

Ingredients:-

   1 Cup of wheat flour
   2  Ripe bananas
   Little jaggery
   Ghee
   Little milk

 Method :-
 
 Take wheat flour add salt and mix it
 Now add nice smashed banana pulp, and jaggery (optional) mix well and make dough.
 If the banana pulp is enough to make the dough, its not necessary to add milk.
 When i use very ripe bananas, i don't add milk and jaggery.
 Add ghee and knead the dough nicely .
 Keep aside 1/2 an hour covered.
 If you don't like jaggery, you can use 1 more banana  instead or the sweetness is upto you to decide.
 Half an hour later, knead the dough very well.
 You can make it as a  paratha or puri as your wish.
 Delicious parathas are ready.