Methi Chaman

I heard that these days in India, everyone is going crazy over this curry and are ordering this whenever they go to any restaurant. I got this recipe from my sister and this tasted excellent with chapatis. Do not attempt to eat this with Rice as it didn't go well with Rice.

Heating Methi in oil removes its sour taste and grated paneer will help. I didn't have enough time, so I just crushed paneer and added to the dish. This fills you up pretty quickly and keeps you out of hunger for long.

Ingredients

1 cup Methi, chopped

1/2 cup paneer, grated

1 onion, chopped

1/2 tsp ginger garlic paste

2 green chillies, chopped

2 tbsp watermelon seeds

1 tbsp coconut

1 tsp coriander powder

red chilli powder, little

2 tbsp oil

salt to taste

Method

1. Heat oil in a pan, and fry in this order.
2. First add green chillies, fry for a minute.
3. Next add onions and fry till brown.
4. Add ginger garlic paste and fry again for a minute.
5. Add methi and fry again (can add little water if needed).
6. Add paneer and fry till it becomes light brown.
7. Then add salt, red chilli powder, dhania powder and coconut powder. Mix everything well.
8. Make paste wtih watermelon seeds and add to the above mixture.
9. Add butter at the end and garnish with fresh cream.

Corn and Paneer Curry

While driving back home, I thought I will make Corn and Shimla Mirch curry. And I started the process by blending onion, green chillies etc and when the time came to cut veggies, I saw that I ran out of Shimla Mirch, the other day I made Shimla Mirch for the RCI event (recipe is coming soon), so I had to use Paneer. And the cooking time was reduced too as we don’t have cook Paneer for long. This curry was tasty with both chapathis and rice. We finished all at one go.

You’ll need…

1 cup paneer
1 cup corn
1 medium sized onion, chopped
½ cup yogurt
2 big green chillies
½ inch ginger
2 garlic pods
2 tbsp oil
a pinch of turmeric,
salt to taste
few coriander leaves
1 tbsp coriander powder
½ tbsp each of cumin and garam masala powder

1. Blend onion, green chillies, ginger and garlic (you can use ginger garlic paste too).
2. Heat oil in a pan and add corn and fry for 2 mins.
3. Add the blended mixture and cook until the curry leaves the sides of the pan.
4. Add turmeric, coriander powder, jeera powder, garam masala and mix.
5. Reduce the flame, add yogurt and cook for 5 mins.
6. Add paneer and coriander and cook for another 2 mins.

Serve hot. Instead of yogurt, if you add cream, it would be rich. Just for health reasons, I avoided it.

Stuffed Mini Bell Peppers

When I had gone to Harris Teeter to buy some groceries, I came across these mini peppers packed in all colors, red, orange and yellow. I immediately wanted to buy that packet but didn’t know what I am going to do with that. I used green and red peppers in cooking but I never used those other colors and I didn’t know how they taste. But, I took them thinking that I will make something out of them, something nice.

And I started thinking of various different things we can do with peppers, like steaming, stuffing or roasting them to add in various dishes but something struck my mind and I thought why not make mini stuffed bell peppers with potato stuffing. And that’s how I ended up making this dish. This can be used as a side dish with dal and rice or dal and chapattis. I can’t give the exact quantity of peppers or potatoes to use in this dish; see what works for you. Since I used the whole packet, I worked with 3 potatoes.

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Ingredients
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3 potatoes
a packet of mini bell peppers
3 or 4 green chillies
fresh coriander
coriander powder
amchur powder
red chilli powder
½ spoon ginger garlic paste
turmeric, a little
salt
paneer (optional)

1. Boil potatoes; peel off their skin and keep aside to cool.
2. Make two slits length-wise on peppers and remove the seeds from them.
3. Wash them and cook them in the microwave with little salt or 2 or 3 minutes or until soft.
4. Mash potatoes, add green chillies and add all the remaining and mix the whole mixture well.
5. Stuff the mixture into the peppers and shallow fry them in oil.
   
   These were so cool to eat; we actually skipped eating chapattis and ate just those. I read somewhere that these peppers are low in calories and high in Vitamin C and antioxidants.