Healthy Food

T for Tomato Soup

Food, Healthy Food / By / July 25, 2021
T cover pic

In these troubled times, it’s very important to stay healthy. Improving your health will help boost immunity. Additionally, staying at home gives us very little opportunity for exercise so we need to stay fit by having a healthy diet. I try in my many small ways to eat nutritious food and yet make them tasty. This is such an example.

Fond Memories

Weirdly, some of my happy memories of sipping warm tomato soup are those aboard a speeding train. Trips on trains meant it was vacation time. Nowadays, due to time constraints and other factors, majority of my recent travel are via flights but my favorite way to travel is still trains. Seated at a window, watching the world flash by while being gently rocked by the chugging train are some of by best memories. Playing card games, eating packed lunch on paper plates and claiming the upper berth for sleep. Then came those rare trips on Rajdhani and Duronto where they serve food which, in those days, seemed exotic. Part of that was steaming cups of tomato soup with soup sticks. That tangy soup coupled with colorful view outside the window was the perfect combination.

Nostalgia aside, here’s my mom’s tomato soup recipe.

Ingredients:

Tomatoes – 6

Carrot (optional) – 1

Garlic – 4/5 cloves

Water – 4 cups

Oil – 1 tsp.

Salt – to taste

Sugar – 2 tsp.

Butter – 1 tsp.

Pepper – 1 tsp.

Method:

  1. Boil the tomatoes and carrot with 2-3 cloves of garlic with 4 cups of water in a cooker for 2-3 whistles.
  2. Mash the tomatoes, carrot and garlic through a strainer.
  3. In a pan, heat the oil. Chop and add the remaining 2 cloves of garlic. Fry till aromatic.
  4. Add the strained broth and add salt and sugar.
  5. Cook on high heat till the broth boils. Adjust taste and switch off heat.
  6. Serve the steaming soup in 2 bowls garnished with ½ tsp. butter and ½ tsp. pepper per bowl.

Tip: Optionally, for step 2, you may blend the whole boiled broth in a mixer.

Best had on a cold winter evening, but it is still a filling evening meal along with a couple of toasted breads.

Photo sourced from internet

This post was written for Blogchatter A2Z challenge; Day 20 – Letter “T”.

H for Healthy & Hearty Stew

Food, Healthy Food / By / July 25, 2021
Stew

This is a dish I have come across very recently owing to a special set of circumstances. I needed to eat healthy for a while but as you know or rather, I believed, anything healthy can’t be really tasty and anything too tasty is never good for your health. Or, is it? Well, this dish certainly proved me wrong. This stew has it all – vegetables, pulses, protein, and taste.

Mom’s Kitchen

This is straight from Mom’s kitchen. When in doubt (unlike Hermione who goes to the library), I ask Ma (my mom). She gave me this recipe which is super easy but is healthy, hearty and tasted good with very little spices.

Without further ado, here’s the recipe for chicken stew.

Ingredients:

Chicken – 100gms.

Beans – 50gms.

Peas – 1/2 cup

Cabbage – 75gms. (a chunk)

Masoor or yellow moong daal – 1 tbsp.

Ginger – 1” piece

Garlic – 1-2 cloves

Onion – 1 medium

Tomato – 1 small

Salt – to taste

Pepper – 1 tsp.

Butter – 1 tsp.

Method:

  1. Cut the chicken into cubes and chop up all the vegetables.
  2. Put the chicken, vegetables, and the daal in a pressure cooker. Add salt and 1 cup water.
  3. Cook for 1 whistle on high and 1 whistle on low.
  4. Once pressure is released, open up the cooker and give it a stir to mix it. Ladle into a bowl.
  5. Sprinkle pepper and add butter to the hot stew. Serve hot.
The Ingredients

This will be enough for 2 people for one meal. It’s an enriching dish which will fill your stomach and leave you with a warm, fulfilled glow. Have it on a rainy day or just a day when you feel like eating light and healthy.

This post was written for Blogchatter A2Z challenge; Day 8 – Letter “H”.

B for Baked Vegetables

Food, Healthy Food, Italian Cuisine / By / July 26, 2021

I love cooking, I really do, but sometimes when I am too tired after a workday I feel like taking a shortcut to cooking. Again, I am a huge foodie, but those foodie tendencies are more inclined towards non vegetarian food or desserts. I am not a fan of vegetables in general and do not eat most vegetables. The ones I do eat, I need to make them more interesting once in a while to keep myself interested. Out of these 2 proclivities was born the idea of baked vegetables.

This is an – almost – healthy dish with lots of vegetable and is easy to make at home. Its delicious to eat and brings a twist to boring, everyday vegetables.

Which Cuisine?

This is essentially an Italian dish. However, I have never been to Italy and don’t really have a connection per se. Italian is simply a cuisine I love and Italy is a country on my bucket list. In fact, had in not been for the pandemic, I would have had visited Italy last October. Be that as it may, here goes my simple but lovely recipe for baked vegetables.

Ingredients:

Carrot – 1 medium, chopped

French Beans – 100 gms., chopped

Peas – ½ cup

Cauliflower – ½ of a medium sized, diced/cut into half florets

Potato – 1, diced

Garlic – 4/5 cloves, chopped

Flour – 1 tbsp.

Milk – 2 cups

Salt – to taste

Pepper – 1 tsp.

Red chilli powder – 1 tsp.

Oregano powder – 2 tsp.

Thyme powder – 1 tsp.

Cheese – 1.5 cup, grated

Butter – as required

Oil – 2 tsp.

Method:

  1. Boil the chopped carrots, french beans, peas, potato and cauliflower with a pinch of salt in a saucepan till they are about ¾ cooked; al-dente. Drain them once done.
  2. Meanwhile, let’s prepare the white sauce which brings the whole dish together.
    1. For the white sauce, heat 2 tsp. oil in a frying pan. Add chopped garlic and sauté till you get the nice fried garlic smell. Then add a knob of butter (~1tbsp.).
    1. Once the butter melts, add the flour and keep mixing so that it doesn’t form lumps.
    1. Now add in the milk and keep sauteing to avoid lumps.
    1. Once the sauce starts to thicken, add in salt, pepper and red chilli powder, thyme and oregano and mix.
    1. Add ¼ cup cheese and mix.
    1. Adjust taste and take it off the heat.
  3. Grease a baking tray with butter. Preheat oven for 5 minutes at 180 °C.
  4. Add half of the boiled veggies to the baking tray like a layer. Ladle the white sauce over the veggies. Sprinkle half the grated cheese. Repeat for a second layer.
  5. Bake the entire thing for 15 minutes, making sure the cheese has melted and become slightly golden brown.
  6. Garnish with red chilli flakes and oregano. Baked vegetables is ready!
Ingredients
White sauce preparation
Preparing for baking – layering
Ready to bake!
Presenting…Baked Vegetables a la Nils!

This may sound like a lot of steps but I just broke it down for ease of understanding. It really is quite simple to make and is pretty fast. Please try out and let me know how it turns out!

This post was written for Blogchatter A2Z challenge; Day 2 – Letter “B”.