Beet, feta and water amaranth salad

Sometimes, one ingredient can be such an inspiration for a whole recipe to be built around it. Feta cheese for us is one such ingredient. Neither S nor I can resist the intense saltiness and rich flavour of feta. That so much salt isn't good for our health is easily forgotten when we lay our hands on this one cheese. I for one will willingly compensate with a salt free meal, if I have to, but never miss an opportunity to bite into this salty bit of heaven.
A few weeks ago we went shopping in the recently opened Hypercity supermarket in Inorbit Mall at Hitech City. This supermarket in Malad, Bombay was our favourite weekend haunts to stock up of food stuffs and we were so glad to find an outlet here. This is one place where foodies and non-foodies can easily go overboard buying all kinds of stuff to last several months.
We go in with a list of some five items, needlessly take the HUGE shopping cart thinking that we make our toddler sit in while we browse around peacefully. In the end the best laid plans go to dirt. Atri is in my arms, the shopping cart is full of items we never imagined that we wanted and three of the five simple items on my list were not in stock that day :) Such is life!

So we managed to pick some Danish brand feta cheese on that visit and with beets sitting in the fridge, the idea for a simple salad was tossing around in my mind. Later that day, some local greens called Ponnaganti / ponnanganni / water amaranth made their appearance from cart vendor and happily joined the salad party. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm only too happy to try out the local greens in all kinds of dishes - along with vegetables, in dals and in salads. So what if I don't find the endives and rockets of the world, or the ones i do find are all wilted for want of a home, I'm happy to substitute them with locally available greens, saving on all the food miles and reducing my carbon footprint . Cooking 'glocal' is the way to go, isn't it?

Here's the recipe for this very simple salad.


Beet, feta and water amaranth salad
Serves 2

Ingredients
2 large or 3 medium beets
100 grams of feta cheese
1 cup washed, picked and towel dried water amaranth leaves
Dressing
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic
Freshly cracked black pepper

Directions
Pressure cook whole beets. I generally cook it for 3 whistles and then leave it on sim for 7-10 minutes. Remove when cooled. Slide off the skins. They'll come off very easily. Dice into medium sized cubes and keep refrigerated until it's time to use them.
Crumble / dice feta into small cubes.

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients for dressing. I did not use salt in this as the salt in feta makes up for it. Add the beets, greens and feta. Toss with a gentle hand so as not to get the feta all mashed up. Serve chilled with soup or pasta.

Notes
More about ponnaganti koora from the ENVIS website
Useful resource - The ENVIS centre on medicinal plants has listed a huge variety of species with vernacular names and medicinal benefits making it easy for us to identify new plants.
I learnt a recipe for ponnaganti koora from my neighbour where it is cooked with split moong dal with a light tadka. This made a delicate tasting accompaniment to rotis.

A bunch of fresh water amaranth

Water amaranth also features on some other food blogs -

• Anjali in her blog Annaparabrahma does a stir fry using these Honegone greens (that's what its called in Kannada)
• Srivalli does a stuffed paratha with these greens 
•  Talimpu has a recipe similar to the one given to me by my neighbour, the one with moong dal

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Announcing my other blog and the Aunt inspired soup series

Heartfelt thanks to your warm, kind and soothing words. I do feel glad I shared my feelings with my blog sisters - you are a wonderful bunch of people. And now I keep my promise of sharing with you my positivity blog - I've called it The Feel Good Blog. Every little thing that makes me feel good, everything I'm grateful for will go in here. It's just two posts old, so you haven't missed too much. Please bookmark this site and I would love you to share with me all things that make you smile. It's my little endeavor to share happiness and the feel-good feeling that we can all do with.


So much for my health conscious cooking, I wonder why I was so step-motherly to soups until now. It's just like when you never get down to doing something, it's so out of your mind anyway. My soup reminder came when I was at my mom's place for a while. My mom gave me the gossip that Aunt G has been making soup each evening at 6 - and each day it's a new soup, something like Soup of the Day in those nice little cafes. This was enough to spike my interest. And when she said yesterday's Soup of the Day was Cucumber soup, I told her let's go, check on Aunt G now!

My mom's sister and my granny live a couple of buildings away, and it goes without saying that when I'm there, I drop by my aunt's house in the evenings to catch up on what's happening (what's cooking rather). She's one of the most innovative cooks in the family and she's always upto something interesting in the kitchen. At least most the times, lets say! So that evening, it was a tomato-carrot-lentil soup. OK, so I stole the lentil idea for my soup from her, but hey mine is a more exotic combination. See below.

By the way, if you end up trying my recipe below, please tell me if you didn't go WOW on seeing the colour of the soup, when it came out of the blender! Do NOT forget.

Just to show you the colour - Yeah I know the photo is terrible, but blame it on the lack of practise, the steam and the shaky hand.

Soup of the Day - 1
Category - Soup, Quick dinner, No fat
Time to table - Under 20 minutes
Serves - One greedy person

Ingredients
1 cup packed spinach leaves, washed thoroughly
1 medium beet, peeled and cubed
1 small carrot, cubed
1/2 cup cooked yellow lentils (tur dal)
1 medium tomato, quartered
Seasonings - see below


Directions

1. In a pan, place 1/2 cup water. Bring to a boil, throw in the beets and carrots. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, till the veggies are nearly tender. Then add in the spinach leaves and tomatoes, covering and cooking for another 2-3 minutes.
2. Drain the veggies and let cool. Reserve the drained liquid.
3. In a blender, puree the tender veggies, cooked lentils till very smooth.
4. Remove this in the same pan with the reserved liquid, add some water to thin out the soup if you wish. Bring to a simmer.
5. Serve into a large soup bowl. Season with lots of pepper, pinch of salt and some lemon zest (and a dot of Amul butter too)

Nutrition notes

• My aunt likes to add some milk in the end to most soups, to give them a creamy taste and also to get an interesting colour. However I am against mixing dairy with green leafy vegetables as it makes iron absorption difficult.
• The lentils gave a nice body and an different dimension of mellowed out taste to the soup. You can use any leftover cooked lentils, or anything you've reserved in the freezer.
• In my opinion, lemon zest gives a nice flavour when beets are used, as they give a sharp edge to the metallic taste of beets and spinach.
• A trial proved that people who start their meal with a low cal soup, ended up consuming 20% less in the entire meal. This kind of reduced food (calorie) intake over a period of time, can help reduce weight or maintain lost weight. This is actually true in my case. I had this soup for dinner with two slices of whole wheat bread, toasted, and I had no appetite to eat any more.

Coming up soon are more healthy soups. I've already made 3 different types this week - yoohoo!!!

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