Casual Cognition

The creative part of me was fallow past few weeks. I am back here to just light the spark and see if it spreads the fire or dies off as a spark.  Okay now, stop getting irritated and move on to the content.  But do understand that the first paragraph of any blog is like Vijay’s punch dialogues before the fight scenes. They are inevitable.

Too bored to look for new topics, I am revisiting my old post “First attempt with a  Microwave Oven” with a different style. How to make upma in oven? It’s quite difficult. Read on!

The Recipe:

1. Oru cup MTR upma ready mix eduthu microwave high-la oru nimisham cook pannunga. Ipadi panrathala ravai nalla varupadum; upma nallaa varum
2. 2 cup vellam melparanjavayil cherthu, nallavannam elakki, 4 minute neram thei high vekkuka…
3. rendu tsp nei kani, refined kuragaiyalu leka sun flower nune kani vesi baga kalapandi
4. high nalli innu muru nimsha adige madu

Anthe!  Upma ready. App  Karri Patta add kar sakte ho, swaad or sughand ke liye.  Now you can serve the hot upma to your guests.

Now all you unmarried souls, this is for you. This is the effect of watching cookery programs in all possible languages. 

I am back to blogging after a while. Interestingly the category is cooking (again)  and interestingly it involves Capsicum (again). No No, It is not an obsession but purely co-incidental.

I took the recipe from NDTV GOOD TIMES and here is the outcome.

Needless to say, it was good to eat especially when it was raining outside and the temperature was low.

PS:  Look the picture closely with meticulous attention to identify the stuffed capsicums. I overdid the decoration and this looks more like a salad. There are totally 3 capsicums and spot them to know your concentration level. 

After few trials, I can say I can make a good tomato gravy (or chutney or thokku, whateva! Call it as you wish).  Today, I tried to add few capsicum and it really tasted good. So just thought I could share it, if it might help even one soul in this big world. Here it goes

Ingredients:

Chopped Tomato – 4
Chopped Onion – 1/2 of a big onion
Green Chillies – 2
Chopped Capsicum – 1/2 cup
Mustard, Jeera, Urid Dal, Bengal Gram Dal – 1/2 teaspoon each
Oil – 1-2 teaspoons
Curry leaves and coriander leaves – little

Procedure:

Heat oil in a vessel and add mustard, jeera, urid da and Bengal Gram dal.
Once the dal turns brown add onion, green chilli, capsicum and curry leaves and fry. Fry till the onion turns golden brown. Then add the chopped tomatoes and fry for 5 minutes. Add a pinch of turmeric and very little water and heat till the tomato boils. Then add 1 teaspoonful of MTR Sambar powder and 3/4 teaspoon fulls of salt and heat for another 3 minutes till the Tomato becomes mashy. Garnish with coriander leaves.

And here is the output from my war-room

I was prodigiously bored yesterday evening and wanted to do something instead of just idling over a TV show. I was thinking of all the possible options like decorating the house with something, cleaning, shopping and so on. My mind was too reluctant to go out. Eureka! I decided what I am going to do. It was to cook something in a Microwave oven that was lying untouched for the past two months since it was bought. The reason being, I don’t know how to operate the Oven.

Now the activity being decided I had to put an extra effort to learn the basic operation of the Oven. I took out the manual and read about timer, power knob, and etcetera, and was finally comfortable with switching on the equipment and setting right temperature and time. That’s it! I know how to make an Oven work. Now I need to know how to cook.

As it was the first time, I was not willing to take a deep plunge in the unknown territory. So I bought a MTR Upma Ready Mix. This is the easiest stuff to get my hands at. The MTR packet itself had the recipe. Now all that I got to do was to keep the mix in the oven, set the timer and mix it. Life seems to be easy. I managed to follow the recipe and yippee, my first dish in an Oven was ready after ten minutes.

The Recipe:

1. Take 1 cup of MTR Upma Ready mix and cook it on High for a minute. This will fry the suji.
2. Add 2 cups of Water to the above, mix it well and cook on High for 4 minutes
3. Add 2 tsp of Ghee or Refined vegetable/ Sunflower oil , mix it well and cook it on high for another 3 minutes.

The Upma is ready. You can add curry leaves for taste and décor.

Happy Cooking !