We love Palak/ Spinach and if you follow my recipes, you would know that I always try to find new ways of making spinach. Sometimes, with meat, chicken and so many types of different daals or making palak in different kinds of dry curries as well.
After all those I felt making Palak ka parantha for breakfast would be a great idea. We love methi parantha and the recipe was simple and great, so I decided to use the same recipe for Palak parantha.
The good thing with palak parantha is that the kids enjoy eating it too with yogurt and it makes a great and healthy breakfast. Its a great option for lunch too and you can conveniently eat it on diets as well.
Belonging to Northern west part of India, I grew up eating more of Moong, Masoor and chana daal. Toovar daal was either used to accasionally make sambhar or my mom’s Saturday Night khichdi. Believe it or not, my mom made khichdi every Saturday night and I always tried hard to get an answer to this question. The standard reply to my question was that my Dad enjoyed “Bhuni khichdi” or “pan fried khichdi” for breakfast every Sunday morning, therefore Khichdi had to made for Saturday dinner. Though I loved Sunday pan fried Khichdi, I still could never fall in love with the original Khichdi.
Coming back to Toovar daal. So, after I got married, I found so many different ways of cooking Toovar daal since down south, they cook a lot of Toovar daal. Isn’t it a blessing getting married to someone from a completely different state or region because you both are accustomed to eating similar flavors yet so many varieties add to your table in zoom. Its just amazing. All you need if you get married to someone different from you is keep an open heart, open mind and a pallet that is open to new foods and experiments. At least, thats what Mr. Parveez and I did.
Once when I revisited my hometown, I went to a restaurant and tried “Hari daal”… Now, with the flavor I did realize that its Toovar daal but what amazed me the most was to see my younger son, who was 4 that time, loved the daal and didn’t fuss. Of course, the restaurant owner didn’t share the recipe except confirming that it was Toovar daal. After I returned home, to USA, I still had the daal in mind and decided to trying to make it.
This daal is pretty easy to make and the best part is that because everything is blended, its easier for your kids to eat and enjoy the flavors. I always notice my boys taking coriander leaves, onions or tomatoes out of their daal but with this they enjoy the flavor and eat everything too.
I belong to Rajasthan and I love almost all dishes that are from Rajasthan. Though Jodhpur, my home town is very popular for its Laal Maas, but its also very well known for its “asli ghee mein bani dishes”. One of my all time favorite is Malai Kofta. My home town, Jodhpur has some super amazing small restaurants that serve super delicious Malai Kofta. These restaurants are so small that they will never show up on a google map, but a true Jodhpuri knows how to get around and satisfy their taste buds.
Growing up, I loved going to all those restaurants, it was just so much fun and now, every time I visit my hometown, I revisit all these restaurants for the love of my hometown food. this is the closest I could get to the Malai Kofta flavor of Marwar.
Green beans is a family favorite for us. I normally made green beans with potatoes until, I decided that a lovely vegetable like these beans deserves to be served by itself. I also make potatoes and green bean filling for my famous puff pastry. They always come out nicer than the plain potato ones. in fact, these were the puff pastries I made, when initially I started making puff pastries.
And then of course the curry with potato has always been the easy and go to curry. But Mr. Parveez isn’t a big fan of potatoes and he loves green beans. So I tried experimenting with this curry and it came out super fab. I have since then even tried to make it in a few different ways to get them in more flavors. This is one of the easiest and the fastest way to make them. It goes great as a side vegetable or main and tastes amazingly delicious with phulka or poori.
“Har Khana kuchh kehta hai…Kuchh meethi yaadein…kuchh kisse…har bachpan ke unchuhe hisse…”
Every dish has a story…some beautiful memories…some childhood stories that you remember with every flavor….This dish belongs to my better half’s, Mr. Parveez’s hometown, Bengaluru. The name has been derived from Tamilian word “Chaaru” that stands for curry.
Living in USA, we Indians learn how to substitute few ingredients with what we have back home to what’s available in our grocery store. So, one day I found a new addition to our local grocer’s Veggie section. Like a little happy child in candy land, I called up my husband informing him about the drumstick leaves, asking him if they can be used.
You might find it extremely funny to read, but I normally text and call him when I am at grocery store. I actually became pretty popular among workers at the store since they always see me clicking pictures and texting someone [my husband] and then come back to the section to pick what I clicked. I really don’t know what kind of husbands take their wives calls in one time because it never happens with me. I usually get a call back after 5 minutes, with a patent dialogue “phone was on silent” or “Dekha nahi” [I didn’t pay attention] or a text back saying “meeting”. And as much as I feel that he should attend me before the rest of the world, I let it go…LOLzzz… Not really, the poor guy works very hard and I know if it isn’t work, he would make sure he talks to me first.
Ohh sorry, the story took a sweet romantic turn, lets get back to the main story. So, I call him all happy that I found drumstick leaves and he got super excited and asked me to buy them.
Once home, he asks me to make this dish which we normally make with spinach [equally flavorful, though]. This dish is healthy and its great for diets or low carb diets. The good thing about this dish is that this two dishes in one. This dish gives out a dry dish and a liquid daal type dish that makes it easy to eat with Rice and parantha/phulkas.
With each bite, he remembered his childhood of how his mother prepared this from the fresh leaves plucked from the neighbor’s tree….childhood flavors stay for life.
After my successful experiments with chhole palak and Palak daal, I started working on more recipes and ways to feed greens to my little monsters. After all, no one can have too much of greens and none of us moms ever get tired of feeding healthy to our kids, in fact we never get tired of feeding/ over feeding our children. But, between all those over fed meals are times when we realize that they need to eat healthier and better and we work more towards nourishing their body.
My boys are pretty picky and not great fans of veggies. Basically, if they see no chicken/meat on the dining table, they feel their mom has enjoyed a free day or wasn’t really in a mood to cook…LOLzzz . I learnt one art pretty quick as a mother and that was that if you want your kids to eat veggies, you should not keep a substitute on the table and definitely, any kind of bribe doesn’t give a very good example. Like, I never promise them ice cream after dinner. What I do is, make a promise to cook anything they want for school lunch the next day. Our dinners mostly has these veggies, one reason being that dinners should be light and secondly, that’s the only meal we eat together as family. So, feeding vegetables that time cuts down my stress as Mr. Parveez handles the situation better.
Now, for kids who find it hard to gulp down veggies, its even more important to make dishes that look and taste great. Hence, the experiments and varieties. Your health is your most prize possession and so is the health of your family. Studies suggest that 80% of your health is from the food that you consume so, let that food be freshly cooked without preservatives from the “freezer aisle” of your grocery store or your favorite restaurant. These recipes are simple, quick and nutritious and so delicious that they will be a favorite in your family as much as they are in mine.
My Hometown had dishes like Aaloo palak and aaloo methi, but my mom never cooked all three together. I have never been much of a fan of “green leafy veggies”…A truth that I never share with my boys, though…LOLzzz. Like most kids, it was a hard job for my mom to feed the greens to me. I believe as a kid it was the fear that made me eat and as a teenager and young adult, it was just to not make her feel bad.
Honestly, sometimes when I think of it, I feel that we as parents don’t like experimenting much. I don’t mean everyone, but most of us. We follow the standard recipes passed on from generations and fail to understand that if we didn’t like it and expected changes, its the same with our kids. Its less of empathizing with the situation and dealing with it differently.
So, after I was married, one fine morning my hubby, who happens to be an excellent cook himself decided to surprise me with this “lovely sabzi” ….At first i was a little apprehensive, but then I didn’t want to fuss and make a big deal, so, with the same mindset to what I had for my mom’s greens, I tried it out.
To my surprise, I actually liked it. It has palak, methi and potatoes and I loved the flavors of this dish. Years later when I compared it to my mom’s I realized that it was the absence of whole masalas and powdered masalas that my taste buds enjoyed. Something we all fail to understand. Each one of us are born with different taste buds and its your taste buds that like certain flavors. For example, in Rajasthan we love parantha with aamras during Mango season. Where as, down south they enjoy bananas with parantha. So, for my taste buds, I prefer my green cooked with lighter spices and give out more flavors of the green.
Though even I make this dish now, it still tastes better when Mr. Parveez makes it. And now it’s a family favorite. Even my boys never fuss over this. A must try for all.
This Biryani is very close to my heart. This recipe was shared by Mr. Parveez, some 4 years ago and since then it has been a family favorite. My younger son calls it “Mogli Biryani”, since he feels that Mughlai is very close to”Mogli”, and I am sure somewhere he also believes that this recipe came in from the Jungle book…LOLzzz.
Mr. Parveez came across an article about Mughal migration and food and thats when he learnt that the initial use of spices in Biryani was actually white pepper and not the chilies. Though with time, chilies made a very special place in the Biryani recipes and no Biryani recipe seem to be complete without them, but that wasn’t the way it all started.
Black pepper has a very strong flavor and if you use it often, you would know that using black pepper even little more than required makes the taste of a dish bitter, therefore you need to be careful when handling that spice. Unlike, black pepper, white pepper is easier to handle and does not add bitterness if slightly over used.
This dish has flavors from the Middle east. it isn’t too spicy so it matched perfectly with Mirch ka saalan or Baghare Baingan or khatte Baingan. I have made this for my son’s school party for teachers and it was a big hit. You can use regular chicken cut to medium or small size pieces, though I preferred using chicken legs. It doesn’t change the taste but definitely enhances the look. I have used green chilies, but from the article that I read, it wasn’t a requirement so, the use is optional. Also the garnishing with boiled eggs is completely optional. You can also use cashews, and/or almonds to garnish if you feel like.
For the huge variety of Biryanis that I have cooked, I sometimes feel I should make a separate section for “Hyderabadi Biryanis”. The city is as popular for Biryanis as much as its for Falakhnuma Palace. Talking about Falakhnuma palace, though I am from the state of Forts and Palaces, Falakhnuma happens to be one palace that I would want to visit only because my favorite actor, Salman Khan had his sister married there and that’s when I was in love with the interiors.
Hyderabad does excite me for food, not just Biryanis but Haleem and samosas too. I love watching food shows and one such had details of a famous joint who cook their Haleem all day in nuemerous different large size pots only to last 2 hours. Its that popular and I am sure super delicious. Hyderabad has at least 20 kinds of different Biryanis but I think its more for the Hyderabadis to understand and for the rest of the world, its just Hyderabadi Biryani. I love to cook the different recipes of Hyderbadi Biryani. They are all so distinct from one another that tasting them is any Biryani lover’s dream come true.
Each Biryani is so distinct and as much as I read more, the ingredients that makes each Biryani stand out are so simple and yet make the Biryani so exclusively delicious.
This Biryani is very delicious and the flavor of Fenugreek adds a very different taste to the Yakhni. This Biryani actually is one of my older son’s favorite Biryanis, who loves kebabs and honestly isn’t a big fan of Biryani. This is a great recipe for people who enjoy their Biryani spicy or masaledaar. It tastes best with Dalcha and Onion Raita. Since, the Biryani is high in spices, you would want to serve it with something that mellows down the spice level.
Lucknow food is food of the Nawabs and I love the Kebabs, curries and of course, the Biryani. Lucknowi Biryani uses a lot whole masalas and requires the chicken to be marinated in whole spices, powdered spices and Yogurt.
I have been to Lucknow once, with my parents in 2002. Though we didn’t stay for too long, but few days were enough for me to love the flavors and food from Lucknow. I wasn’t a complete cook back then and as much as I loved the food, I wasn’t so keen about doing a research to find out or look for recipes and try them out. Its much later, few years ago when I decided to get on the band wagon of cooking varieties of Biryani and started my journey of getting minute details about everything, is when I discovered the details about the Lucknowi Nawabi Cuisine.
This particular recipe happens to be one of the most old and original recipes from the Khansamas of the Nawabs. There were a few books in Urdu that described the times of Nawabi culture and traditions and how posh the era of Nawabs were and how beautifully and exclusively served food and how delectable the food used to be. The article gave an idea of how the Khansamas marinated the meat/ chicken and the ingredients they used and following the notes, I came up with the recipe as close to the original.
I have also tried making Lucknowi seekh and Galouti kebab and if you check the Kebab section, you will find the recipes for them. This Biryani doesn’t use tomatoes, but uses a lot of coriander leaves, mint leaves and green chilies.
This Biryani is one of my family’s favorite. This was my first dish from Lucknow and from there on, its been pretty regular in our house. This is a wonderful recipe. Like I say for most recipes, Please read the complete recipe properly before you try this out. Its a sure hit.
