After a long gap, Back again into blogging world to reinstate my passion for cooking

After nine (9) months of long gap (sounds like a gestation period) with too much of tough and unavoidable reasons, circumstances, here I’m back again into my passion ‘Blogging world’. Lots of interesting events have occurred within these 9 months.

In a very brief period of time, many things have transpired around me. Although busy in my own world and not being able to blog, silently I was closely observing all the forces of evolution in my periphery with utmost consciousness and presence of mind and continued my passion of cooking for myself and for the happiness of my loved ones around me.

At last, I am happy to return back to do my basics, i.e. Cooking for the sheer happiness of love for food and spreading it around….

I have been thinking what will be the best dish that I can work as my comeback recipe…well nothing special but as all of you know the essence of my cooking is simple but yet innovative healthy formula…

I am going to share the quickest and the simplest yet tasty dish that you can churn out is “Veggie Mélange Kadhi”

Don’t get skeptical by the name. You know the little “Fashionista” always looking for ways to do something stylish… It’s just in the name and not at all complicated :)

Ingredients

1. A bowl full of seasonal vegetables (I have taken Cauliflower, Peas, Carrots and a tiny bit of turnip)

2. One cup finely chopped Onion

3. Few Dry Red Chilly and few Curry leaves

4. ½ inch finely chopped Ginger

5. 3 Big pods of ginger finely chopped(if possible opt for the Chinese ginger for better aroma)

6. 1 liter of homemade butter milk (I usually use the butter milk churned during the process of making clarified butter at home). It usually light and tastes better than the usual yoghurt.

7. Half teaspoon of panch foron(five seed spice).

8. pinch of Asafetida.

9. 1 Table spoon of Gram flour.

10. Half tea spoon Turmeric .

11. Salt to taste.

12. Ghee (clarified Butter) as a cooking medium. I have specially used ghee in this because it gives a very good aroma…

Method

1. Slightly parboil the veggies (with little salt in it) to speed up the cooking process. Don’t overcook it as we have to retain the original color of the veggies.

2. Heat a Kadhai and pour a little amount of clarified butter and throw in the dry red chilli, curry leaves and panch phoron(Bengali 5-Spice). Let it splutter and then add chopped garlic, ginger and onion. Fry them till they turn golden.

3. Add in the veggies with turmeric, salt and ½ tsp chilli powder.Saute them till they turn slightly burn but don’t overcook them. We have to retain the crunchiness of the veggies.

1. Meanwhile take a bowl and mix the butter milk, gram flour and a pinch of asafetida and whisk it well to get rid of any lump. It will taste better if you can make the mixture as light as possible. You will have to add half cup water to balance the consistency. Add salt as per your taste to the mixture and blend it well and leave it to rest for a while.

2. In a separate frying pan, take 1/s tsp of clarified butter and add two broken dry red chilli along with ½ tsp of panch phoron. Once it starts crackling, add in the buttermilk mixture.

1. Let it boil on high flame for 10 minutes and keep stirring it randomly so that it doesn't stick to the sides.

2. You will see bubbles on top once it gets boiled properly and the kadhi will turn thick.

3. If the kadhi looks too thick than you can add little water to balance the consistency.

4. Let it simmer on low flame for 15-20 minutes before finally transferring the veggies into the pan and mixing all the ingredients together to give the final look for the “Veggie mélange kadhi”.