Weekly Menu -- Week of March 29th

I started the weekly menu series and promptly forgot about it. However each week when I have to think what to cook or do grocery for I feel it would be nice to have a menu to resort back to. So I am initiating this series again for my own good. This series will loosely have the dishes cooked for or during the week starting Monday and ending Thursday night and will be updated Friday evening.

I know it will not be updated every week but even once in a while will help me in future to plan a work week menu

Bengali style Mixed Vegetable -- a mixed veggie dish with pumpkin, green beans, some radish and a little potato. Simple, spiced with panchphoron and cooked in Mustard oil

Mushroom Olu -- With a box of mushroom and potatoes this was enough for two meals. Was best with the tortilla that we pack for lunch

Beans with besan -- This was from Delhibelle and brought a nice change to my regular bean sabzi. Added a little potato and was enough for two packed lunches

Masoor Dal -- you cannot go wrong with this. This time around I tempered with Kalonji and not PanchPhoron

Lightly fried bitter gourd -- simple fried bitter gourd.

Chicken -- My neighbor Aunty has just started catering in small amount. When I heard this I promptly ordered some chicken and she sent so much that it sufficed for 4 meals

Doi Dim -- Eggs in Yogurt sauce for one week night dinner

And some paneer for S, stir fried with whatever veggie.

Palak Paneer -- Paneer in a Spinach gravy

Palak Paneer

My elder daughter is a recent convert. I mean she is almost a convert from a non-vegetarian to a vegetarian. She refuses to eat most fish except salmon. She doesn't want to eat meat on two consecutive days.She eats her eggs with no enthusiasm.

In a family like ours, this creates a difficult scenario. All the more because she has gone from a "no-fuss" eater to a somewhat "finicky" eater these days. She doesn't like to have just Dal & Rice or just veggies and rice either. In our family "finicky" eaters are assuaged with an omlette on the side and will eat anything with that option. This doesn't work with S though. She eats her broccoli and carrots with a dip but when served with rice all she wants is Paneer.

Her Didun(my Mom) is party responsible for this. When she was visiting last year and Big Sis S refused to eat fish or meat, my Mom in a mode of panic that the child is not getting any protein took to feeding her Paneer. And not any store bought Paneer either. Every other day my Ma would make a little chhana or chhena(home made paneer) just for her and then she would shape them in small flat discs, fry them to a golden brown and make delicious gravy with them. This is a Bengali favorite and is called "Chhanar Dalna".The homemade paneer is super soft and soaks up the delicious slightly sweet gravy in which it sits, making it anyone's delight.

With Didun back in India, such delicacies are a luxury and though my Ma insists that I could take time out and make some "home made chhana" and chhana'r dalna for Big Sis S, I pretend not to listen and go buy Paneer instead.

Big Sis S has complied and eats this store bought paneer. She has Paneer on most week days and then she takes a Paneer Pualo for lunch almost one day every week. At school when her teacher asked her what she was having for lunch, she figured she didn't know English of Panner and so said it was chicken instead. With Paneer (Indian Cottage Cheese) and a bowl of plain yogurt as the incentive, she pretty much eats all other veggies on her plate.

Everyone has a Palak Paneer recipe and I myself have tried and tweaked several. This tweaked version of the old favorite is the the one I love most. It is nice and creamy and comes with all the goodness of green spinach and white paneer. S too eats it up without a murmur about the greenery.

Palak Paneer

Prep: Cut almost 12 oz of Paneer in small cubes. There were about 28-30 paneer cubes.

The Nanak brand of Paneer I usually buy is pretty soft by my standard and I don't fry them. If your paneer is hard sitting in the refrigerator microwave for a few seconds to make it soft or if your paneer is the tough variety, fry lightly and dunk in salted warm water

Start Cooking:

In a deep bottomed frying pan heat Oil

Add 1 clove of garlic chopped, 4 slit green chillies, 1/2 cup chopped red onion and saute

When the onion is translucent add 1 tomato coarsely chopped

Fry for a couple of minutes till tomato softens

Add 4 cups of blanched baby spinach(I used baby spinach you can also use regular spinach)

Add salt and saute til the spinach wilts and softens

Cool the above mix and make a paste in the blender. Do not add water while doing this. This is referred to as the spinach puree and used in a later step

Heat a little Oil in the pan

Add 1 tsp of Whole Cumin Seeds/Jeera

When the spice pops add 1/4 cup of chopped red onion

Fry with 1/4 tsp of sugar. Sugar helps to caramelize and the onions turn a reddish brown in color

Add the spinach puree that you made

Saute for a couple of minutes

Add 1 tsp of Ginger paste, 1 tsp of Cumin Powder/Jeera Powder, 2 tsp of Corriander Powder/Dhania Powder, 1/4 tsp of Red Chilli Powder and salt

Mix the masala and saute for some more minutes (about 3-4 minutes)

Add 1-2 tsp of Kasoori Methi and mix well

Add 1/2 cup of 2% Milk + 1 cup of water, mix well with all the masala and let it simmer

When the gravy comes to a boil add the Paneer pieces and let the gravy simmer at low heat for 10-15 minutes (approx. timing). By this time the gravy should be thick and creamy and there should not be any raw smell

I sometimes add very little sugar at this point as it suits my taste. You can also add 1/2 - 1 tbsp cream to this dish at this point which I don't

Just before taking it off the heat sprinkle 1/4 tsp of Garam masala powder and add 1/4 tsp of Ghee. Mix well and delicious creamy palak paneer is ready to serve

This goes very well with Roti or Naan and even with a Rice dish


Trivia:The ruling aristocracy in India from 1500 until the mid 19th Century was of Turkic, (Central Asian), and Persian origin, and it was they who introduced paneer to India.

In Bangladesh and eastern India, two kinds of cheese are commonly found: ponir (a hard paneer) and chhana or chhena (a soft paneer). Ponir is a salty semi-hard cheese made in villages across Bangladesh, and Orissa and West Bengal in India. Its sharp flavor and high salt content contrasts with the softer, milder chhana/chhena. (And I always thought Bong way of saying Paneer was Ponir !!!)

Pasta in casa Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce

I first heard about the Earth Hour from the monthly schedule my daughter's school sends out beginning of each month. I loved the way the school took initiative and even had a lights out at 10:00 toady morning.

I had also received a mail from Anna of Morsels and Musings. She said
" I would like to throw a challenge out to all bloggers to take part in an Earth Hour food blogging event and cook a recipe that
- you can enjoy by candle light and
- has a low carbon footprint (ie made from locally sourced ingredients and minimal packaging)"

I wanted to make my tiny contribution by participating in the event. Switch off your lights and vote. More here



Now the second part of this blogging event does throw a small challenge because often times ingredients I buy is not necessary locally produced which I need to overcome but the first one is not even close to a challenge.

You see I have grown up in a country where Power shortage is a part of the culture and so candles are more of a necessity than an aromatic tool for any romantic experience.

When I was small, very small maybe a kindergartner we lived in a beautiful mountain town in India. It has grown to be a holiday destination now but eons back it was just a pretty mountain town with a breathtaking view of the Kanchenjunga, beautiful orchids, fresh air and best catholic schools.

But come dusk and the sun plunged behind the snow peaked Himalayas it wasn't the best place to be. The power situation was so bad that on most days all you could see on lighting a lamp was the thin red filament of the bulb. The voltage would be back to normal only after 9:00 in the night. Studying by the light of the Kerosene lamp or lantern had become the norm and most days we would have dinner by this light.

Later we moved to the plains of Bihar (India). Scenery changed but the power scenario remained same. Instead of low voltages there were power cuts now. It could be a scheduled outage, a random one, a teaser where lights would go on & off in 10 min intervals, anything that could titillate the minds of electric supply guy

Power cuts or loadshedding as we called it were not very welcome on hot summer afternoons but the evening loadshedding was very much enjoyed by us kids. Soon after sun down the smoking hot terrace would be soaked with buckets of cool water preparing it for the hot night. As son as the neighborhood plunged in darkness me, my cousins and some of our neighbor friends would run to the wet terrace for hours of made up games.

The upturned indigo sky with its bright canopy of stars looked brighter in the dark. The house across the street with flickering candle flames and shifting silhouettes looked mysterious. The ordinary became enchanting and the evening magical.

The mothers and the aunts chatted across balconies, news was exchanged and gossips whirled in the thick humid air of darkness. When I look back I see how the small neighborhood connected and bonded over those power cuts

If the power still refused to come back late in the night we would have dinner by the smoky lights of darkening lanterns. Later mattresses would be rolled out on the now cool terrace, the mosquito net set up and we would go to sleep to the strains of whatever played on the local radio station and beneath the deep indigo sky

Courtesy Wiki: India is the most energy efficient country ?

Gradually we grew up and the loadshedding lost its charm. We grumbled about the heat, the mosquitoes, the TV show missed and in all hated the prospect of a power cut. Global warming was then not a reality and we didn't realize the limited power that we were consuming was actually benefiting the earth.

An hour of Lights Out will be a shocker for my little girl this Saturday and I am sure she is going to complain some. But hopefully by the end of it she will see the fun that comes along with it and the impact we made

Now to the food. For this event I chose my much loved once every other week Pasta Dish. I am not a huge Pasta fan and have it mostly for convenience. This particular dish is quick, can be done with limited locally grown(and a few not) ingredients, can be had lukewarm(so no need to use the microwave) and not much mess so you can safely have it in the dark.

I do not like my Pasta drenched in sauce either. When I found this sun-dried tomato sauce recipe in NY Times, I tweaked it around a lot and that resulted in this delicious Pasta dish which has since been a family favorite and given that the family rarely unanimously agree it is a big deal.

So here is my Whole Wheat Penne in a home made Sun-dried Tomato Sauce for the Earth Hour 2009: blogging event


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Pasta in homemade Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce

To Make the Sauce

Soak 1 cup of Sun Dried Tomatoes in 1-2 cups of hot water for 15-20 minutes

Heat Olive Oil in a pan

Add 2 - 3 fat cloves of garlic coarsely chopped and 2 cracked Dry Red Chili, saute till you get a nice smell. Careful don't burn the garlic

Take the soaked sun dried tomatoes out of water and add them to the pan

Saute for a minute and add roughly chopped 1 Roma tomato and fry for a minute or two

Add half of the water in which the sun-dried tomatoes were soaked and cook till the tomato softens and the water almost dries up

Add salt

Cool the above mix and puree in a blender. You may need to add rest of the soaked sun-dried tomato water to make a smooth thick paste

This is the sauce which you will use for the pasta. You can also store this sauce upto a week which I often do.

Cook Pasta

Cook 1 packet of Barilla Plus Multi Grain Penne according to package direction. Add 4-5 sun dried tomatoes chopped or minced to the pasta water while cooking.

Do not throw away the pasta water(the cooking liquid) after draining, store for use in next step. Leave pasta wet

Bring everything together

Heat some more Olive Oil in a heavy bottomed deep pan

Add 1/2 red onion chopped and saute till onion turns a nice pink color and is soft

Add 2 green chillies finely chopped(optional), 1/4 tsp or less of ground nutmeg and then 1 cup of thinly sliced mushroom. Saute for a couple of minutes

Add 1 cup of soy granules and mix well.((You can also add minced meat instead. With minced meat you may need to fry for a little more time) Note: I used the Indian brand of soy granules. Soy granules are made from non-genetically modified soybeans

Add a little of the reserved pasta water and let it cook till the soy granules soften

Add the tomato sauce that you have made and mix well. If your sauce is like a thick paste you need to add a little of the pasta water at this point. Add required amount of salt and let it simmer till the sauce has reduced and is moist but no longer in liquid state

Add 1 tsp of paprika

Add the cooked pasta and mix well. You may need to drizzle a little olive oil at this point to bring everything together. Saute the pasta for 2-3 minutes till the sauce is beautifully amalgamated with the pasta

Serve garnished with parsley. Light a candle and enjoy it with lights out