1001 Quickie Breakfasts

Quickie Breakfasts
I've been a big fan of quick breakfast recipes, which can be cooked under five minutes. The trick is to use ready to eat food ( Bread/ corn flakes / puffed rice ) or preprocessed food ( Rice flakes/ couscous ) or leftovers ( idli / parota / pasta). Just flavour these and throw in some veggies , stir fry all together and your breakfast is ready in a jiffy. And this goes as my entry for  for Divya's Show me your breakfast event & The Singing Chef's Weekend Express Breakfasts.

Here are the model recipes for 1001 Quick breakfasts with detailed recipes and great photos

Priya's Aloo Poha
Padma's Atukulu Upma
Raaga's Mixed Vegetable Poha
Anuradha's different take on Rice flakes
Kanda Poha recipe with a writeup on rice flakes
Vanaja's Kurmura Ugrani
Laavanya's Idli Upma with a nice technique to crumble Idlis
Meena's Pasta Upma
Jasmine's Cuscous Upma
Mahima's Kothu Parota
Preeti's Cornflake Upma
Deepa's Bread Upma

Cook Once - Eat for a week recipes

Click the image on the left to see the cookbook. This cookbook explains how you can cook just once a week and get a load of piping hot, fresh recipes on the table, in minutes flat, throughout the week. All recipes in the following menu are listed in this cookbook.

 The key is to get the building blocks prepared and refrigerated. The full menu below can be built from the following building blocks

Cooked Dal,

Cooked rice,

Coconut – cumin- chili paste

Chappati dough and  

Yogurt.  Once these are done, all recipes below are minutes away !

 

Sample Breakfast / Dinner Menu

Mon. Chappati + Dal Butter Fry

Tue.  Lachcha Paratha + Masala Dal Fry

Wed. Dal parathas + Raita

Thu.   Variety Rice (Lemon Rice, Coconut Rice, Mint rice, Curd rice)

Fri.     Bread Upma

Sat. Malabar Paratha + Paruppu Masiyal

Sun. Oatmeal Porridge

 Sample Lunch Menu

Mon. Kulambu + Rice + Kootu + yogurt

Tue.  Peanut thogayal + Tambli + Rice +  yogurt

Wed. Rice + Paruppu masiyal + More kulambu + Yogurt

Thu. Paruppu Kootu + Rice + Podi + Thayir pachadi

Fri. More Sambar +  Rice + Kulambu

Sat. Aviyal + Kulambu + Rice + Coconut Thogayal + Yogurt

Sun. Sambar +  Kootu +  Rice + Yogurt

Simple Non-Veg Salads 1001

Non Veg Salads – A Primer:  A mix of ready to eat meats / sea food  with fresh veggies make easy, protein packed, filling salads. Almost any cured, ready to eat meat/ sea food can go into a salad. With a few simple rules, you can easily create delicious salads.

1. Check packaging to ensure that the base is ready to eat. 

2. Shake off excess water after washing fruits / veggies to avoid watering down your salad. Use a tissue to soak excess water.

3. Mix in the dressing just before serving as dressing makes salads soggy after a while.

4. If you plan to store the salad, do so without dressing.

5. Cut  veggies/ meats into uniform, bite sized pieces.

6. Always tear leaves, as cutting them would cause them to wilt.

7.  Avoid over stirring the salad, which makes it soggy. Instead add everything to a closed container and toss well to mix.
8.  Hollowed out fruit / vegetable halves / bowl shaped cabbage leaves  make great salad serving bowls .Palm sized cabbage leaves / grape    leaves make cute spoons.

Salad dressings with oil, however can have almost   100 calories per spoon. For low cal salads, choose dressings like lemon juice / yogurt / vinegar and replace the nuts with croutons as a garnish.

Classic Dressing: Soy sauce, oils, vinegar have been used as dressings for thousands of years. Creamy emulsions like vinaigrette & Mayonnaise are some of the more popular dressings.

 Full meal Salads:
When you add the following to any of the salads above, the salad becomes a full meal.

1. Half a handful of cheese (paneer, feta etc) : Cheese Salad.
2. Half a handful of cooked rice or half a handful of cracked wheat (Bulgur wheat) soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes. : Grain Salad.
3. A handful of cooked couscous / pasta   : Pasta/ Couscous Salad.
4. Half a handful of chopped and boiled potato: Potato Salad.
5. Half a handful of chopped bread: Bread Salad.

Always check packing to ensure the base is ready to eat.

 

Sausage : Ground meat mixed with fat, flavouring, usually shaped into cylinders. Pork is most common, but beef, lamb, veal (calf meat), goat, turkey, chicken or game meats are also used. Corn starch, whey, Oatmeal or rice flour are also mixed in as fillers. Many sausages are cured / precooked and are ready to eat. Hundreds of sausage varieties exist. Sausages were invented as a way to preserve meat without refrigeration.

Corned beef : Beef cured with salt and is ready to eat. (Corn refers to the grainy salt crystals used for curing. Corned beef is mixed with pepper and smoked to produce Pastrami.

Prosciutto : Salted, air dried ham (dried for up to two years). It is ready to eat and is usually sliced into wafer thin pieces.

Salami – Fermented and air dried sausage.
Kippered Herring - Gutted, salted and smoked herring.

1001 Simple Veggie Salads

Salads – A Primer : Salad (from Latin salata : Salt) is usually a mix of various vegetables / fruits with seasonings. Almost anything can go into a salad. With a few simple rules, you can easily create delicious salads.
1. Choose fresh fruits/leaves/ veggies / sprouts.
2. Shake off excess water after washing fruits / veggies to avoid watering down your salad. Use a tissue to mop off excess water.
3. Mix in the dressing just before serving as dressing makes salads soggy after a while.
4. If you plan to store the salad, do so without dressing.
5. Cut fruit / veggies into uniform, bite sized pieces.
6. Always tear leaves, as cutting them would cause them to wilt.
7. Dipping chopped apples / banana / avocado in lemon juice prevents discoloration.
8. Avoid over stirring the salad, which makes it soggy. Instead add everything to a closed container and toss well to mix.
9. Hollowed out Fruit / vegetable halves, bowl shaped cabbage leaves, etc make great salad serving bowls .Palm sized cabbage leaves / grape leaves make spoons.
A handful of chopped fruits / veggies have only about 25 calories. Salad dressings with oil, however can have almost 100 calories per spoon. If you are weight watching, go in for low cal dressings like lemon juice / yogurt / vinegar and replace the nuts with croutons (toasted bread pieces) as a garnish.

Salad varieties :
Garden salad (# 010) has fresh seasonal vegetables as the base.
Green Salad (# 211) uses fresh leaves as the base.
Lentil Salads (#611) use soaked lentils as a base.
Bean Salads (#704) used cooked beans as the base.
Sprout Salads (#856) are built on sprouted beans.

Full meal Salads :
When you add the following to any of the salads above, the salad becomes a full meal.
1. Half a handful of cheese ( paneer, feta etc) >> Cheese Salad
2. Half a handful of cooked rice or half a handful of cracked wheat soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes. : Grain Salad
3. A handful of cooked couscous / pasta / : Pasta/ Couscous Salad.
4. Half a handful of chopped and boiled potato: Potato Salad
5. Half a handful of chopped bread: Bread Salad

Classic Salads :
Caesar Salad - Greens (romaine lettuce) with garlic and vinaigrette dressing. (recipe # 208)
Coleslaw – Shredded cabbage mixed with mayonnaise. (recipe # 186)
Panzanella - Italian salad in which chopped up stale bread is mixed with tomatoes, onions and vinegar.
Salad Nicoise - Italian salad with potatoes, olives, beans with vinaigrette dressing.
Waldorf Salad – American salad with apples, lemon juice, celery, walnuts, and mayonnaise.
Indians are not big fresh salad eaters. However, two unique Indian salads stand out – the Karnataka Kosambari ( soaked mung dal mixed with cucumbers, pepper and lemon juice) and the North Indian Kachumber ( A finely chopped mix of onions, tomatoes, chilies and lemon juice)

Classic Dressings : Soy sauce, oils, vinegar have been used as dressings for thousands of years. Creamy emulsions like vinaigrette & Mayonnaise are some of the more popular dressings.

1001 Quickie Dinners

1001 Quickie Dinners
For aspiring cooks, learning to cook rice is a basic survival skill. Thil is the single most important technique I'd recommend. Master this and you'll never have to worry about food again.

Once cooked rice is ready, you can eat it mixed with plain ghee as ghee rice, or with yogurt as curd rice or with a variety of pickles / podis. This is probably the simplest meal you can cook up. So if there is just one technique you learn, learn to cook rice !

A variety of one pot meals
The trick to cook a thousand varieties of rice is simplicity itself - Mix flavouring and goodies along with rice and cook everything all at once, in a single pot. You now have a full fledged meal ready in the same time it takes to cook rice.

Mind you, this is not how traditional recipes are cooked. In most recipes, rice is cooked separately, the flavouring and vegetables are cooked separately and mixed together.

But when everything is cooked together under pressure, the flavours deeply penetrate the rice and result in a tastier dish ( This is the secret behind the technique of 'Dum' where food is cooked in a sealed pot ). You also need just one vessel to feed a crowd.

I taught this technique to my office staff ( all bachelors) and they have now taken to throwing parties, with a minimal kitchen boasting of one gas stove, one knife, one pressure cooker, one ladle and 10 plates !

I use this technique extensively while travelling. I pack a portable gas stove and a pressure cooker in the boot. Feeding up to 12 people is possible in under 20 minutes. One of my fondest memories is cooking Chicken Biriyani for 4 people in 15 minutes in the biting icy mountain breeze on top of Valparai. ( Cooking at high altitudes takes forever - but not so with a pressure cooker!).


Feeding an army on the move
Interestingly, this is exactly how cooks used to feed armies on the move. The last thing you want to do is to make starving, bad tempered soldiers wait for hours for their food !

Take a huge vessel, place a smaller vessel inside, Fill the space between vessels with hot coals. Add rice, flavouring, meat , vegetables and water in the inner vessel. Seal both vessels and string up an array of such vessels between eleplants. The food gets cooked on the move and as soon as the army camps, hot food is ready to be served, As each vessel can feed over a hundred men, it is a snap to feed a large army with very few cooks.

Feeding 20 guests in 20 minutes
You can use the same technique to feed a crowd. A 7 liter pressure cooker can feed 12-14 people. If you have say 25 guests, all you need is two pressure cookers and two piping hot varieties of rice is ready in 20 minutes. And the best thing is that you can spend time with your guests and not in the kitchen.

Just choose a recipe from the table (A handful or rice on cooking becomes three handfuls and is usually sufficient for one person.). Take as many handfuls of rice as there are guests, cook up the flavouring and goodies, add rice and water and you are done. This can even be done beforehand. Then all you need to do is to put the cooker on the stove. that's it. Nothing is more impressive than feeding a crowd with virtually no equipment. The cleanup is real simple too !

Using the Pressure Cooker
The easiest, fastest and fool proof way to cook rice is to use a pressure cooker.

A pressure cooker has four parts. The vessel, a lid, a rubber ring which fits into the lid, giving a airtight seal and a weight, which is inserted into the spout of the lid. On heating, water becomes steam, filling the cooker. Not able to leak out, the pressure builds up and food is cooked in this pressurised steam. After a while when the pressure rises above a preset value, the steam pushes the weight up and escapes with a loud hiss. This is the first ' whistle'. With the venting of steam, the pressure drops and the weight drops back into position on its own. The process repeats itself, and soon we have the second whistle. The time taken for two whistles is usually enough to cook rice.

Get someone to show you how to use a pressure cooker. It will take a couple of minutes and it
is a skill well worth learning !

In a pressure cooker, add a cup of rice. Add two cups of water. Close the cooker , and cook on medium heat for two whistles. Turn off the stove and wait for around 15 minutes for the steam to settle. You can now open the pressure cooker. If the rice is overcooked, add a little less
water the next time. If undercooked, add a bit more. By trial and error you’ll know exactly how much water to add. Most households stick to one variety of rice.

Tips

Presoaking rice for around 30 minutes in water makes it softer.

Rinsing rice in water before cooking it makes it less prone to stick together.

Cook in steam, not in hot air. To remove all air in the cooker, do not fit the weight on top of the cooker till you see a stream of steam coming out of the top hole. This means that the cooker is now completely filled with steam and all air has been driven out. Now place the weight and cook on medium heat for two whistles.

After cooking it takes 10-15 minutes for the steam to settle. To check if the steam has subsided, lift the weight a bit. If steam does not hiss out, it means it is safe to open the cooker.

Never fill up the pressure cooker over half way. Rice expands to nearly thrice its volume on cooking. This goes to Archana's One dish meal event.

For detailed recipes, check out the following
Model Recipes:
Manjula's Mixed vegetable rice video
LG's Lentil Rice
Cham's Vegetable Biriyani
Pongal
Solai's Sambar Rice
Bhavani's Tomato Rice