Spinach Veggie soup

My laptop caught a virus and fell sick a fine morning and it took a week of heroic efforts from my husband and his friend to bring it back to pristine health. Thanks to 'draft' option in the Blogger, I was able to retrieve all the posts that I had completed a week ago. So after a long gap, here comes Spinach Veggie soup to recover any kind illness. Oh come on, Man or machine - soup is the best healing food

I have to admit that I was never crazy about soups. Almost all of my encounters with soups were in the form of ready-made soups, which have dried vegetables in it. I felt these flavours taste the same. Only the colors were different.

I love fresh vegetables. 99% I buy fresh vegetables only. No frozen or tinned stuffs. Now, weekly once you can find a soup in my dinner menu. No more store bought soups. I started making my own chunky fresh veggie soups. I love to have chunks of vegetables in my every spoon. Easy to make, hearty to eat.

Last week, I tried the spinach vegetable soup for my birthday dinner party. Oh, everybody like it.

Ingredients : Serves - 4 person 1 cup --- Chopped vegetables*** 1 no --- Medium size onion 2 no --- medium size Roma tomatoes 2 tbsp --- Butter (optional) / Olive oil 1 cup --- spinach Salt and ground pepper to taste *** Combination of vegetables will be great for the soup Carrot, beans, potatoes, peas, celery. Method : --- Maximum try to use fresh vegetables than the frozen or canned one. --- In a sauce pan add the butter and turn the heat to medium. --- Saute the onions until it turns translucent. Add all the vegetables and cook, until tender. --- Meanwhile in a pan cook the whole tomato and the spinach leaves with a cup of water. After few minute, the skin tomatoes will shrink and cracks. --- Take the tomatoes out, cool them and take the skin off. --- Now, we go to the other pan which is cooking vegetables. Check whether the vegetables are cooked, once done turn the heat off. --- In a blender, put the tomatoes, cooked spinach with the water and few cooked vegetables less than half quantity and blend it. --- Turn the heat on, take the sauce pan which is having the cooked vegetables, add the tomato mixture from the blender. The blend mixture give the thickness and texture to the soup. --- Add 3 cups of water to the mixture and cook for 10 minutes. You can increase or reduce the water accordingly depending upon the soup consistency. --- Now its time to give little taste to the soup, add freshly ground pepper and salt, cook for 2-3 minutes. --- Turn off the heat and serve warm with bake pakodas.

Food Mela

We  conducted one more food mela last Thursday. This food mela is a part of a fund raising program for the construction of a free hospital in Coimabatore, India for Women and Child care. The 'Shiva Shantha Mother and Child Health Centre' is run by volunteers who are devotees of Swami Shanthanada Saraswathi. In addition to providing service at the hospital they also frequently conduct rural health camps and vaccination campaigns
This hospital had its humble origin as a single room clinic around 20 yrs ago and now being expanded as a 3 storey building to provide full range of health care services for pregnant women and new born children.

 CLINIC - 20 years ago

MODEL OF THE HOSPITAL

HOSPITAL BEING CONSTRUCTED - FEB 2009

As usual I cooked some of our favorite dishes for the food mela dinner
**Start with appetizer - Spinach cheese swirls
**Main course :
 -- Adai served with Green chutney
 --Sambar Rice with oven roasted Taro root curry
 -- Appalam for a crunchy bite
 -- Curd rice with Mango pickle
**Dessert - double layer chocolate cake

One of our friend's son was so happy playing with Wii games. And another kutty girl, she was playing with all the soft toys which I had. Everybody enjoyed the food and had a very good time. Also generously contributed for the good cause.
We both are very thankful to all who helped us to keep this work moving.

To know more about this organisation you can visit us here http://shivanjali.in/ . If you would like to give us a hand to help them please contact us.

Potato Pasta basket

Last week I tried a whole lot of new recipe.

Its totally a different one... I experimented a little and combined 2 recipes into one.
Some times you have to do experiment with food and others with your new innovations (like what I m doing with my Hubby)

First recipe : baked-macaroni-and-cheese-cupcakes
Second Recipe : Eggs in basket
(To check the both the recipes, click here : First and Second )

When I saw the recipes in Food network show, I liked both. Wanted to something different like these recipes. Did bit research to make it as vegan recipe and after some time, decided to combine both in to one. Since both had meat and eggs in it.

Ok let me tell you what I did in my “ Potato Pasta Basket “.

From the second recipe I took only the potato part. Grated some potato squeezed out all the waters from it. And made the basket in Muffin tray and baked it first.
And then instead of Eggs, I put boiled pasta, cheese, spinach and cherry tomatoes inside my baked potato.
Baked again as Gaida did in her first recipe.

End result, tadaaan …. Lovely colorful cheesy crispy potato basket with pasta with veggies in it.

Try this out and pls do write your comments to me !!!

My Experiment with Pizza

Two months earlier I wanted to do my own Pizza from the scratch. One fine day I did Pizza and found my base was not cooked properly. After a week I tried and the result was same. I was little upset and wanted to give up the pizza making.

My hubby always encourages me, asked me to give one more try. So I started doing all research on the dough making process. Result of my research was yeast reproduction. Yeast is a vital ingredient in baking breads and Pizzas. The articles I read were all insisting on one point - activating the dry yeast. Once again I tried and took more care while doing the yeast activation part. Maintained the lukewarm temperature and added little sugar. This time it was very good as like we buy it from outside.

I have made Pizza's around 5 - 6 times since my first attempt and now i am very comfortable with the dough making process.  My latest Pizza was a Spinach pizza that I made for a food mela that we conduct last week. More on the food mela here.

Did you all know? Yeast is a living fungi.

It is responsible for leavening the dough and imparting a delicious yeast fermentation flavor to the product.

Man used yeast before he knew how to write. Hieroglyphics suggest that the ancient Egyptian civilizations were using living yeast and the process of fermentation to cause their bread to rise over 5,000 years ago.

Invention of the Microscope, identified Yeast is an living micro organism which is responsible for fermentation. Commercial baker's yeast are produced in 20th century only.

There are many types of yeast used in baker's yeast, Nutritional yeast, Brewer's yeast etc.

Baker’s yeast is one of the type which we all familiar with.
Baker’s yeast is produced from the genus and species of yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Saccharomyces, refers to “saccharo” meaning sugar and “myces” meaning fungus.
The species name, cerevisiae, is derived from the name Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture.

Yeast cell is approximately equal in size to a human red blood cell and is spherical to ellipsoidal in shape.
Since it is very small in size, 1 gram of baker's yeast contains 30 billion yeasts cells.

Yeast reproduction is called as 'budding', during which a new bud grows from side of the old or existing cell wall. This bud breaks away from the mother cell to form a separate cell. This process will take place up to 12-15 times.

During Commercial production, yeast is grown in controlled condition with help of sugar medium. In this conditions yeasts cell reproduces every two to three hours.

To know how yeast are produced pls click here http://www.dakotayeast.com/yeast_functions.html

Phyllo Pastry

I did not complete any work yesterday. There were a couple of posts still half way, sometime later I wanted to draw, after few attempts dropped it. Totally all my thoughts were jammed with too many things, so started cleaning my fridge. Had some left overs in lot of big containers. Also had small qty of Mozzarella, feta cheese, Phyllo sheets, Spinach and some vegetables.

Tadaan, idea ! Why can't I make Spanakopita triangles ??? Immediately went to Chef In You to look for the recipe. My god DK has used varieties of cheeses. I'm not having that much and moreover don't want to include that much amount of cheese, I m not a fitness freak, but still !!!

In my own style along with Spinach, i included one carrot, one small potato, 2 stems of Celery and 1/2 cup peas and made delicious Spanakopita triangles.
If you have Pastry sheet at home then you are the king, we can do any sweet or savory using it.

Ok, let see the brief history of Pasty sheet :

'Phyllo' dough originated in Greece, meaning 'Leaf', often referred to as a baked good that holds a filling to create a recipe. Still used in traditional Greek cuisine, especially in deserts and appetizers.

Its a light dough made out of flour, oil and water, commonly used as a pastry in Greek and also in Middle Eastern recipes.
Eleventh-century Turkish used an early form of it to create layered breads and with the rise of the Ottoman Empire, phyllo-based pastries became a jewel of Turkish cuisine. Machines for producing filo pastry were perfected in the 1970s,

The dough is simple enough to use in its chilled state. It is too delicate to handle, if exposed much time to open air then it will become brittle. Each sheets are to be separately greased enough to get a nice flaky pastries. Too much filling inside will become soggy and all the ingredients are to be carefully added,

Phyllo dough is easy to roll up and create layers within the food; this is one of the reasons why it is such a popular ingredient in many appetizers and desserts.
For more information, pls check the below sites :
http://www.blogger.com/goog_1745786101
http://www.ehow.com/about_4571452_fillings-phyllo-pastry.html