Foxtail Millet & Basil Patties - Another recipe using this wonder grain

Foxtail Millet is clearly my best food discovery of 2013 so far. I've eaten it in place of rice, added it to salads, made tiffin items like upma, tomato 'baath' and it has never disappointed me. The best thing with this grain is that by controlling the extent of the cooking, you can get it mushier (to eat with the accompaniments you would eat rice with) or al dente enough with each grain separate (for salads). By cooking it to a mushier texture, you can also make these superbly textured and flavorsome patties. They don't have much of a taste by themselves so you'll have to add strongly flavoured ingredients to make these delicious patties - which is why I've chosen basil, garlic, onions and cheese. But go ahead and try your own flavour combinations.

A few nutritional pointers about Foxtail Millets
It's naturally gluten free, so those who cannot eat wheat and wheat based products and don't want to eat rice for all your meals, this is a very nutritious alternative to providing the necessary carbohydrates in whole grain form.
It contains twice the iron of wholewheat and very rich in magnesium. Magnesium is known to reduce migraine attacks, reduces severity of asthma and keeps blood pressure under control.*
It also contains a good amount of silicon. "It contains 4 times the amount of silicon in whole wheat (160mg/100g) which is required for hair growth, blood circulation, protection from mental fatigue, arthritis and infection.*
[*Source: Laugh With Health: Your Complete Guide to Health, Diet, Nutrition & Natural Foods, Manfred Urs Koch]
The high fiber and protein content make sure that you stay full for a long time after eating millets. 
This grain is extremely diabetic friendly, so if you are cooking for diabetics in your family, make sure you stock up on this grain at home. I will go ahead and say that is the best alternative to quinoa available in India, locally grown and wont cost you an arm and leg and a huge carbon footprint that it takes to import the grain from the other end of the world. 

Do read my story Superfoods in your Backyard published in Mint this week!

Recipe for Foxtail Millet & Basil Patties

Ingredients
3/4 cup foxtail millets
1/2 cup roughly chopped basil
2 cloves garlic, grated
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup breadcrumbs 
1/2 cup coarsely grated cheddar or any other hard cheese
1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper (or more as per taste)
1 tsp salt
2 green chillies, finely chopped (optional)
2 tbsp olive oil or any other cooking oil

Directions

1. Rinse the millets in water, place it in a container that will fit in the pressure cooker and add 1 3/4 cup of water to it. Pressure cook for 2 whistles and on sim for 5-7 minutes. Once the cooker is cool enough to open, remove the millets, mash with a spoon and keep aside.
2. To the mashed millets, add all other ingredients and mix well with fingertips.
3. If you want to make this gluten free, omit breadcrumbs and use 2 medium potatoes, boiled and mashed instead.
4. Divide this into 6-8 balls and flatten on your palm to make patties as shown in the photos and keep in one layer on a plate.
5. At this stage you could cover the plate with cling film and refrigerate for few hours until you need to make them.
6. Grease a non stick tava, once moderately hot, place the patties in one layer. Once the bottom side turns golden brown, turn to the other side and cook for another 5 minutes until crisp and golden.
7. Serve immediately with ketchup, chutney or marinara sauce.
8. Omit the chillies if you are sharing this with young kids :)

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Lasagna Verde with roasted vegetables and tomato-mushroom sauce

If there is one country I want to visit, it is Italy. For its wine, its food and the culture. La Cucina Italiana...I find beauty in this food. The vibrant colours, flavours that burst in your mouth tantalizing your taste buds, the freshness of simple ingredients like a raw tomato, fresh mozzarella cheese and locally extracted olive oil, just writing about these is making my mouth water. And how can I leave out Basil? There is NO aroma dearer to me that that of a freshly plucked sweet Italian basil leaf crushed between my finger tips. It transports me to the romance of that far off land. 

Needless to say, when I got the chance of growing my own little vegetable and herb garden, I pleaded, blackmailed, sweet-talked friends into getting me basil seeds when they were coming from abroad. This was the first thing I wanted to grow. And now, I have 4 Indian varieties and 3 other varieties for cooking purposes (Sweet, Thai & Lemon Basil) For those who don't have generous friends like mine, Namdhari's in Bangalore sells freshly packed sweet basil, so fresh that when i get back home from the shop with a packet of basil in my shopping bag, the car smells like i'm in a basil field. Namdhari's also sells basil saplings at very reasonable costs. The kind of sunshine we get in India, it is not a tough one to grow at all.

Coming back to this recipe, lasagna was one of the things I was always scared to make. While I make regular pasta almost twice a week, this was more of a fear of the unknown or the mental block to cooking a dish that has a number of steps. This was my second attempt and except for the pasta sheets which could be more cooked that they were, the tastes in each bite were quite beautiful. Next time, I want to roll out my own pasta sheets. Lasagna sheets should be the easiest pasta to make by hand, given that we are good at rolling out the thinnest of rotis!

The number of steps can seem intimidating, but the sauce can be made ahead, the vegetables roasted ahead of time. What remains is the grated cheese and the assembly, which is hardly time consuming. 

This for me is a perfect weekend dinner paired with a very simple salad and a glass of red wine. I made this for our little impromptu dinner with Nandini & Ajit and they offered me constructive feedback like starting the layering with some watery sauce at the bottom of the pan so the steam from it will cook the upper pasta layers as it bakes in the oven. I have incorporated in the recipe.

The components
Around 9 sheets of lasagna
Tomato Sauce
Roasted vegetables
Grated Cheese ( I used Britannia's Pizza cheese)
Baking tin / glass bakeware
Some more fresh herbs


Making the tomato sauce
8 large tomatoes
5-6 cloves of garlic
1 medium onion
1cup finely sliced button mushrooms
Salt
Handful of fresh basil leaves, finely sliced
1/4 cup red wine (optional)


Place 2 litres of water in a 4L pot. Bring to a boil. Slit crosses on top of tomatoes and gently put them in boiling water. Once the water comes back to a boil, switch off the flame and cover for 5 minutes. Fish out the tomatoes from hot water at the end of 5 minutes, place it in a bowl to get cool. Peel the skins, finely chop and keep aside.

In a large wok, heat 1 tbsp olive oil on a low flame. Before oil gets hot, throw in finely chopped garlic cloves and finely chopped onion. Saute on a medium flame for 4-5 minutes, before adding finely sliced mushrooms. Add 1/4 tsp of sea salt, 1/2 tsp of freshly ground black pepper, any fresh herbs of your choice (I've used fresh basil) and saute till the mushrooms and onions are soft.

At this stage add the finely chopped tomatoes kept aside from earlier step. Add a pinch of salt and bring to a simmer. Add red wine and allow to simmer for 5-7 minutes until it all comes together like a sauce. Check for seasoning and adjust as per your liking. If you find this a little too sour, add a fat pinch of sugar and boil it till sugar dissolves (around 2 minutes). Remove the sauce into a bowl and keep it aside.


For the roasted vegetables
1 medium eggplant
2 large red bell peppers

Slice the eggplant into 1 cm thick slices. Toss with 1 tbsp olive oil and 1/4 tsp of sea salt. Arrange on a greased foil lining a baking sheet.

Bake at 180 C for 25-30 minutes, until soft.

Slice the red bell peppers (1/2" width), toss with 1 tbsp olive oil, sprinkle a pinch of salt and bake similar to the eggplant, until soft but not mushy (around 20 minutes)

Grated Cheese
Place the block of cheese in the freezer for 10-15 minutes. Grease the grater with fingers dipped in olive oil. Grate up to one cup cheese and keep aside. Mozzarella or Cheddar or a mix of both, is fine.

Assembling
Lightly grease a 9X4 or 9 X5 ovenproof pan (glass or tin). Spread 2-3 tbsp of tomato sauce at the bottom with 2 tbsp of water and keep aside.
Bring a large wide pan of water to boil. Add a fat pinch of salt to this. Keep the lasagna sheets ready.
When the water starts to boil, dip the lasagna sheets in boiling water, one at a time for 2 minutes each. Remove and do the first layer in the baking pan, two sheets length wise side by side and one cut to size to place horizontally where the pan is exposed.
Cover this layer with 1/4rd of the sauce and 1/4 th of the cheese. Sprinkle some dried / fresh herbs, freshly ground black pepper over this.
Boil 3 more lasagna sheets, one by one and layer on top of this as explained above.
Cover with a layer of roasted vegetables and 1/4th of the sauce thinly spread in the gaps.
Boil the last three lasagna sheets, layer as explained above.
Pour all of the remaining sauce, any vegetables left over from the previous layer, all the remaining cheese, fresh herbs and some black pepper.

This can be covered and kept aside for a while if you have made this ahead of serving.
Otherwise, place the baking pan in a preheated oven at 180C. Bake for 30 minutes until the pasta is cooked through and cheese melted.

Cut into 6 servings and serve hot with a light salad on the side.

Food Shopping
Lasagna sheets are available in most supermarkets, or you can try and make your own by making pasta dough, rolling it out into thin rotis and cutting them to fit the shape of your pan.
Herbs, both fresh and dried are available at most supermarkets. Keya's or Fabindia for dried herbs and Namdhari's for fresh are my personal preference.

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Roasted eggplant soup and the hate-list from my childhood

Some twenty years ago, if someone told me 'It's kathrikkai (eggplant) soup for dinner' I'd have won the 100 metre sprint. Yeah, eggplant was probably the only vegetable in my hate-list. Sometimes my tongue would itch after I ate a piece of this, so I hastily assumed that I'm allergic to eggplant and lost no time in informing all concerned about this significant development in my life!
The other two food items that didn't impress me with their strong tastes were asafoetida and gingelly oil. My grandmom would use 'katti-perungayam' (asafoetida cake) which was broken into tiny pieces, and a couple of small bits soaked in water in a small ceramic pot, ready to tip into any waiting sambar, rasam or kozhambu. Sometimes, a small chunk of this asafoetida would fall into the sambar and guess who's plate it would land into? Yours truly of course, and this bitter gooey smelly thing was enough to spoil my taste for the rest of the meal.
Gingelly oil or 'nalla yennai' - oil extracted from sesame seeds yet not exactly the taste of sesame oil used in Chinese cooking, is another favourite in Tamil homes. Used with thuvaiyals, used to light brass lamps and to mix molagai-podi, the spice powder had with idlis and dosais has a golden yellow almost amber colour and a distinct smell.  In my younnnger days, my mom / granny had standing instructions from me that there would be no gingelly oil smeared on my idlis and the molagaipodi should be mixed in regular refined oil, not the 'smelly' oil.
Today, all of the above has reversed. May be my tam-bram genes are finally expressing themselves or I'm just growing up. I love eggplant, the big variety, which I use to make at least ten different things from all cuisines of the world. Type 'eggplant' in the search field on this blog, and you'll find at least ten results (I hope)
Asafoetida I cannot live without, in fact I have some four types of these in my pantry - LG Katti Perungayam, yes, the very same I loved to hate, Vandevi compounded asafoetida, Goldie's pure asafoetida granules and LG asafoetida powder. That should say it all.
Gingelly oil, I make sure I never run out - for the lamps we light everyday, for the idli / dosais we eat at least once a week and for the kozhambu / thuvaiyals we eat around once a fortnight.
How things change!
So coming back to what I said, if someone told me Brinjal Soup - I'd say ' God's must be crazy to give you such an idea' but today, the new and improved me, is making such stuff for a low-carb, healthy soup. I must say I got the inspiration for this from a column in The Hindu, but the recipe is entirely my own.

Recipe for Roasted Eggplant Soup
Makes two generous bowls

Ingredients
1 globe eggplant, medium sized (around 350 grams)
3 medium tomatoes
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced thinly
5 small cloves garlic
Some oil to smear on eggplant
1 tsp olive oil
3 cups water / vegetable stock
1 tsp salt or salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp dried basil
Olive oil

Directions
Smear the eggplant with some oil and roast directly on the flame, turning sides*. In under 7 minutes, the skin will be completely charred and the eggplant softened right through. Keep aside to cool. Peel the skin, chop flesh roughly and keep aside.
One by one, pierce the tomatoes with a fork and grill on open flame, until entire skin is charred. Each tomato will take around 2-3 minutes. Peel when cool enough to handle. Chop roughly, discarding the seeds.
In a small wok, heat 1 tsp olive oil. Fry the garlic cloves and onion slices on medium heat, till golden and soft.
In a blender, puree the eggplant, tomato and softened onion-garlic to a fine paste, using water / vegetable stock as required. Season with salt, pepper. Bring this to a simmer in a pot, adding dried basil at this stage.
Remove in bowls, topping with some olive oil and freshly crushed black pepper. I topped mine with some Cajun seasoning for a nice kick.
Serve with soup sticks for a light dinner or with a nice foccassia bread and pasta for a complete Italian meal.

It was a yummy soup with deep adult flavours, a nice farewell to the lovely winter we experienced in this new city! I have a feeling, this soup will taste good chilled too.

*If you don't have access to an open flame, use the method described in the recipe from The Hindu

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Couscous with roasted vegetables - Happiness in minutes

Sorry, sorry, sorry - for this long absence from the blog. Each time I thought it was time to get back here, something would come up and I would think that deserved more priority. Now I realize, that with a baby on hands, baby will always be priority, but I've got to assign some degree of priority to other things in life as well, blog included.

Today was a nearly perfect day - with things going as planned, rains generously hitting the city, water crisis in the house somewhat better, chores getting done before schedule and one dirty window sill cleared of pigeon droppings, and me managing to catch 2 episodes of Jeeves and Wooster in the afternoon while Atri was sleeping. And hey, the little boy entertained himself with a kitchen towel, a tomato and a cooker-vessel. Was that a sign??

If so many nice things in one day could not propel me to start posting on this beloved food blog, then probably nothing could. Besides, what I cooked this evening for supper turned out so colourful and camera friendly, especially to a person behind the camera who off late has been clicking just her baby.

It's a simple couscous and veggies, one plate dish - very high on the health quotient and surprisingly high on taste factor too....in short it is a speedy way to make ourselves happy at dinner time. You can choose any variety of squash on hand as an addition along with any number of fresh herbs as a garnish. I used what I had on hand and the result has turned out superb. Next time I will also consider throwing in some eggplant wedges to roast along with the other veggies. I have added Nutrela granules to up the protein content, but it is optional.

Couscous with roasted vegetables
Makes one generous plate
Time taken - Under 30 minutes, but under 5-7 minutes of active time

Ingredients
1/2 cup couscous
2 tbsp Nutrela granules
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 - 2 cups boiling hot water

1 tbsp olive oil
4-5 fat cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
1 medium carrot - peeled, cut into diagonal slices
1/2 medium beet - peeled, cut into diagonal slices
1 medium green bell pepper - cut into strips
1 small onion - peeled, cut into thick slices
1/4 cup shredded cabbage
Handful of frozen peas
2-3 green chillies, whole
1 tsp dried oregano (I used one sachet of oregano seasoning that comes in with pizza delivery)
Fresh basil leaves and freshly ground black pepper to garnish




Directions
Place the couscous, Nutrela granules and salt in a large bowl and pour a cup and a half of boiling water on the top. Mix with a fork, cover and let it sit for 5 minutes. If it gets too dry, add some more water, cover and wait a few more minutes, before fluffing up with a fork. Keep aside.

In a large skillet, heat a tbsp or more of olive oil. Throw in smashed garlic cloves, let them turn light brown on a medium flame. Next add all veggies except frozen peas (if using fresh shelled peas, then add that in along with the rest). Turn them around on a medium-high flame for 2-3 minutes. The veggies must not overcrowd the skillet - let them be spread out in a layer as they get roasted on a low to medium flame for 7-10 minutes.

Season with salt, pepper and oregano. You can add some chilli flakes for extra spice.

Spread the couscous on a large plate and transfer the roasted veggies over it. Flavour with some extra virgin olive oil on top, fresh basil leaves and more freshly cracked pepper.

Dig in.

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Baby Carrots and Thyme

That is a shot glass!

The day before, in Godrej's Nature Basket, I found some infant carrots :) (Smaller than baby carrots) Some were smaller than my little finger and thinner! I couldn't resist buying a bag full of them. Also on the offer were fresh herbs at under Rs.5 a pack - another irresistible deal - so brought 2 packs of basil, one each of thyme and oregano. While basil is available in most supermarkets all the time, this is the first time I found thyme and oregano, fresh...

Carrot as small as thyme :)

Right there, I knew I wanted to roast the cutie carrots whole with loads of fresh thyme and garlic. I also threw in some onion layers which were promptly devoured as soon as they came out of the oven as they has crisped into brown DELICIOUS chips.

Nothing much of a recipe here, the pics will tell you all :)


How to roast carrots?

Preheat oven to 200 C.

Scrub and wash the carrots well. Wipe dry. Slice off the tops and any hairy tails. Line a roasting tin with foil. Put in the thin carrots as it is, and halve the slightly thicker ones vertically.

From a small bunch of fresh thyme, remove the leaves and add to carrots. Add some stalks as it is too. Chop 4-5 garlic cloves into big pieces and add to tin. I also added layers of one medium onion, but this is optional. Salt the carrots and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and mix everything well with hands.

Bake for 40-45 minutes at 200 C. Remove the whole stalks of thyme and serve as a side or use in a wrap or sandwich (like below).

The thyme-carrot combination was fantastic but could try this out with any of your favourites like rosemary or oregano.

In the pic above, you'll see that the babies have shrunk considerably and the tin looks quite empty. That's because I took the pic after eating quite a few of them. And you don't see any onions either - as they were the most yummy bits!

"Ain't I such a pretty sandwich?"

While I ate most of the roasted carrots and garlic straight from the roasting tin last evening, the ones saved were used in a sandwich for breakfast this morning.

Just bread, roasted carrots and loads of fresh basil leaves and some freshly ground black pepper. We had this with some Mild Tabasco (Green Pepper) to counter the sweetness of the carrots.
I also added a sliced boiled egg to my sandwich. This is the hubby's :)

Loved this simple sandwich. You could use a cheese spread or mayo to spread on the slices before assembling, but this tasted divine to me as it is!

This is my entry to Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Jugalbandi

Tags: baby carrots, roasting, vegetable sandwich, basil sandwich, basil, Saffron Trail, Recipe, Food, Indian food blog, Healthy eating, Healthy living, Mumbai, India

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