Banana Pancakes
We are back on the breakfast menu! And why should we not, breakfast has to be the most important and most energy giving meal to kick-start your day with. Today we bring you banana pancakes! The basic pancakes are very easy and simple to do and while I have added banana here, (mainly because I had some over ripe bananas lying at home :)) you can play with other flavours. Try apple and cinnamon or add berries in the mix or you can also add nuts to it. The beauty is that you can make the pancake mix in advance and store it in a jar and make the pancakes as and when you want to!
I have added eggs to the recipe, but once I was making for a Gujarati friend of mine who doesn’t eat eggs and they turned out to be as good. You loose on a little bit of fluffiness but it’s only marginal. So if eggs are not your thing, just leave them out!
Paneer Parantha/ Indian Bread stuffed with cottage cheese
Paneer or cottage cheese is the queen of a vegetarian Indian meal. If visiting an Indian home for dinner, 90% of the time paneer will be on the menu! Last night I thought of making paneer paranthas for breakfast today, but well there was no paneer at home! No problemo as far as you have milk at home! It’s very easy to make paneer at home and I made it at night itself. I seriously think that the ease with which it can be made at home is the reason why paneer is called ‘cottage cheese’.
I must have got around 100 gms of paneer from 500ml milk, which was sufficient to make 4 paranthas for the 2 of us. Also I used the whey left from making paneer to kneed the flour and it makes the paranthas very very soft!
Read more: Paneer Parantha/ Indian Bread stuffed with cottage cheese
Sooji Upma/ Rava Upma/ Semolina Upma
Sooji upma is a simple recipe that has travelled far from south India to every household in east, west and north
. I love it for its aroma, flavours and adaptability. Upma is also great way of adding veggies to your breakfast. Especially if you have kids who are fussy. In this recipe I have added only onion, tomatoes and potatoes. You can add capsicums, peas, carrots, beans and create your own veggie mix.
Enjoy!
Potato curry with Indian fried bread/ Aloo poori
Celebrations add zest to our lives. The very thought of a party or a festival adds a kick in the normal routine. I personally believe each day spent healthily and happily itself is a reason to celebrate. Last weekend, while returning from my morning jog I met a friend who generally asked me “what’s up for today…?” And my instant answer was “just celebrating Sunday”. So to make it a festive Sunday, we decided to prepare the celebratory food “poori aloo”.
Poori aloo is a delicious traditional breakfast food. It is included in most of the Indian restaurants menu and is normally served only during the morning hours. Blame the tempting flavor which persuades a lot of people to ditch their lazy weekend morning and plan a breakfast outing just for poori aloo.
Indian Bread stuffed with Carrot, Radish and Radish leaves
I love the cool weather not just for the chill it adds but more so for the fresh and colorful veggies it brings. The aroma of lovely fresh greens, carrots, radish freshens up some of my childhood memories. In fact, I got a chance to replicate one of those for the next generation in my family as well. My daughter had a republic day celebration in her school and she was supposed to take something similar to the Indian flag that's tricolor. Without any further ado, we decided to make tricolor paranthas just the way my mum used to make it during my school time. Saffron from carrot, white from radish and green from radish leaves went deliciously perfect for my creation.
Needless to say regarding the health quotient of this colorful recipe. It is packed with an immense range of healthful nutrients and works lusciously well for a perfect breakfast or may be as a part of lunch as my kids prefer it.
Read more: Indian Bread stuffed with Carrot, Radish and Radish leaves
Vegetable Poha
Colors add vibrancy to our lives and so does the colorful veggies. Biting the fresh carrots, smelling the fresh coriander and the very feeling of starting the day with healthy and vibrant veggies is just unmatchable. They are just the right ingredient for a delicious breakfast poha or chivda as my neighbor calls it. Definitely, it makes me feel happy and satisfied more so, when I see my kids and family relish it.
Poha or flattened rice flakes makes for a perfect breakfast or an evening snack all year long. It is light and can be as healthful as you want it to be. I don’t remember even a single week in our household going without having breakfast poha. In fact, people loved it when we served it as side snack during a small get together at our place last month. You might find it in thick and thin shapes in the grocery store. I personally prefer the thick one as it sails nicely through the cooking and still retains its shape till the end.
Masala Baby Potatoes
Potatoes have to be the most loved vegetable in Indian Cuisine. No chaat (snack) party is complete without a lot of potato dishes. The samosas, the kachoris, the pani puris... nothing would the same if you remove the potato from them. So today I thought of making a snack/ chaat with just potatoes. Not a stuffing, but purely as is. There’s actually very little room to go wrong with potatoes.
Wash them, cut them and toss them with spices. Yesterday when I went to my grocery shop, I saw a whole bunch of baby potatoes and that’s what inspired this dish.
Aaloo parantha/ Potato stuffed Indian bread
As soon as I wrote the recipe for methi parantha last week, I knew I have to do one for aaloo parantha. In my kitchen aaloo parantha presides over any kind of parantha. It’s the king. And since past few weeks we have been adding to the breakfast menu, I didn’t want to break the continuity either. As they say breakfast like a king; we need a king to do justice to it
Potato is a quintessential part of Indian cuisine, especially for a vegetarian. Breakfast, snack or main course – the menu is not complete without potato dishes!
Methi Parantha
It’s the season for greens. My neighbourhood grocery guy has a whole section in winters just for the leafy vegetables that are just so fresh and so bright this time of year. Yesterday I brought home a whole bunch of fenugreek. I cleaned it and kept it in the fridge for use later. My usual preparation with fenugreek leaves is to combine it with potato and prepare a dry vegetable fry. But today while thinking what to make for breakfast, I saw the whole bunch of fenugreek leaves – all cleaned and washed in my fridge and I decided to make methi paranthas or fenugreek Indian bread. Parantha is a flat Indian bread which may or may be stuffed with whatever you wish. For methi paranthas, the flour is kneaded together with fenugreek leaves. In case of stuffed paranthas, the stuffing is separate and is used when rolling the plain dough. I think I will soon give a recipe for a stuffed parantha as well but for now here’s the recipe for methi parantha.
Moong Daal Ke Cheele/ Savoury Crepes made with pulses.
It seems like we are doing a lot of breakfast lately. After Strawberry-Banana smoothie and Apple-Banana porridge, here comes a healthy moong daal crepe recipe or cheele as we know them in India. It’s interesting how we came about making these. My mother was visiting and I had soaked moong daal to make pakoras but then the healthy eating bug caught up and mom said, let’s make crepes instead! They make for a great breakfast but you can have them as an evening snack as well.
And you can experiment galore! Instead of daal, you can also use multigrain cheele by using a mix of flours for the batter; you can add vegetables of your choice... just grate everything together in the batter and cook as mentioned below.
Read more: Moong Daal Ke Cheele/ Savoury Crepes made with pulses.
Apple Banana Porridge
Making kids eat healthy is a herculean task! Ask my mother! As kids e and my sister were both very fussy and our mom had to come up with interesting stuff to make us eat healthy. I had a similar experience when I was babysitting for my niece last week. I had thought it would be easy – a lot of stories, some games and lots of good food. But at the food point, I faced the biggest challenge. Normally my sister takes care of the food part and I’m only concerned with games and stories. But this time I was on my own.
When I said porridge, I was greeted by what I would call “porridge face”. So I thought fruits and remembered the apple banana porridge mummy used to make. And then I decorated it with strawberries and pomegranate to make it look pretty and the porridge face went out the window! This recipe comes from my memory of the taste!
French toast
French toast in India is prepared in both savoury and sweet style. Yes it’s true! We Indian have modified the original sweet French toast to a savoury one by replacing sugar with salt, chilli powder and other spices. But given my weakness for all things sweet and the fact that breakfast is the only meal which allows for too much sweetness, I usually stick to the original sweet version. And this time I even made honey bread to get that extra sweetness!
Steamed Potato and Cheese Balls
These steamed potato and cheese balls were the inaugural dish of my new bright red steamerJ. Until now the use of steaming in cooking was limited to steamed veggies to go with grilled meat. This I could do with keeping the veggies on a colander and then atop a pot of boiling water. But now I want to go a step further; try momos and dimsums at home. That’s the why the new addition.
These potato and cheese balls make for a quick delectable snack. I have given them an Indian chaat flavour but I’m sure they will taste amazing with a mix of Italian herbs as well. Since it was just a trial, I made a small batch of around 12 balls and they were gobbled up before I knew!
