Cherry tomatoes Rasam

Spicy rasam with a sweet undertone
I love rasam. And as I am typing this, I just remembered that there are tons of tomatoes beggiing to be turned into rasam for me. Till now, rasam for me meant something I got at our local restaurant or some failed attempt I tried to make by copying recipe from behind of a rasam powder packet. but this is definitely my go to and must have recipe. I have blended 2 different recipes together and come up with my own. And thanks to my friend R who has been sending my rasam by the bucketloads. I made my rasam with cherry tomatoes and it was a little sweet to taste. Use roma tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes.
Recipe:
Rasam powder:
3/4 cup corriander seeds
1/4 cup black peppercorns
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 TBS chana da
1/2 TBS toor dal
1/8 tsp fenugreek seeds
3 dry chillies
2 sprigs curry leavs
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
dry roast all the ingredients seperately and grind them fine. Store in an airtight container in freezer for months. You will need around 2 tsp for 2-3 tomatoes.
Rasam:
10 cherry tomatoes, you can use 2 roma tomatoes
6 peppercorns
2 cloves garlic for grinding
1 tsp cumin seeds for grinding
2 cloves garlic for grinding
2 green chillies for grinding
1 tsp cumin seeds for tempering
1 tsp mustard seeds for tempering
oil for tempering
1 sprig curry leaves
cilantro
1" tamarind pulp
salt and sugar for taste
2 tsp rasam powder, add more later if desired
Procedure:
Boil and mash the tomatoes coarsely. Blend in blender along tamarind pulp. Coarsely grind garlic, peppercorns, green chililes and add to tomatoes. I like my rasam pulpy so i never strain. But otherwise strain. Boil this liquid in a pot and add the rasam powder. Heat other kadai and add oil to it. The add mustard seeds, cumin, garlic and curry leaves for tempering. Add this to the boiling rasam. Add salt and sugar to taste. Garnish with cilantro leaves.
Serve hot with rice or have it as it is as a soup.
Enjoy
Dipti

Hearty Chicken Noodle Soup...or stew

Almost a stew but not quite so a hearty soup...
I love chicken noodle soup. My fav is the one that someone else makes for me..:) But then that is true for any kind of meal.:) Chicken noodle soup is supposedly very good for your body especially when you are down with cold, flu and similar things. So i decided to make "my own recipe". I searched the internet high and low for different recipes, read quite a few books on soups and finally came up with my own version of Chicken Noodle Soup. I had warned S that this was a stomach-filling-as-good-as-any-meal soup but still he had to go and call it a stew. Though in hindsight, if it had been a little thicker, it would have been a hearty stew instead of a hearty soup. Well I liked it though and duckie loved it.
I made my own broth for this soup.
Recipe:
for the broth:
6 cups water
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
carrot trim ends
onion trim end
celery stalks
peppercorns, bayleaf, rosemary stalks
chicken pieces w/ or without bones.
Boil all the above ingredients together till the broth reduces to about 4 cups and the chicken is cooked. Discard the veggie bits and ends along with the chicken bones if any.
Soup:
4 cups chicken broth
2 carrots diced
1/2 onion diced
handful of peas
veggies like celery, beans, corn , bell pepper around 1/2 cup
rosemary 1 tsp finely chopped
black pepper and salt to taste
1/4 cup egg noodles or spaghetti
Boil all the above ingredients together till the noddles and veggies are cooked through and serve hot w/ or w/o a blob of butter. This soup is full of all the goodness of the veggies and chicken. Best cure for a sad wintry day.
Enjoy
Dipti!

Sweet Corn Chicken Soup

Go to any Indo-Chinese restaurant and Sweet corn chicken soup is one of the most ordered thing on the menu. Go to any Chinese restaurant and you wont find any such soup on the menu. Egg drop soup yes. Chicken noodle soup yes. Sweet Corn Chicken soup definetly NO. So, after coming to the US, this was one of the first things I surfed on the internet for and called up my mom for. After a lot of trial and error, a little luck and lots of force feeding (forcing my hubby S), I finally got lucky with my recipe. I prepare this soup whenever its cold outside or I / my hubby have cold or whenever I cook indo-chinese food. The best part- my little duckie loves it too. He, ofcourse, eats the chicken first and then I have to make him finish the rest of the soup.

Recipe:

1 skinless chicken breast, cooked (either pressure cooked or boiled)
1 can 16oz cream of sweet corn. (I use del monte)
1 can chicken broth -use same quantity as the sweet corn( I use swanson-I use the salt free and fat free product)
1/2 tsp ginger-garlic paste
2 eggs well beaten
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Preparation:
Heat a soup pan and when warm enough add cream of sweet corn to it, and then add the broth. Mix well and add ginger-garlic paste and chicken to it. Let the mixture come to a rolling boil. Then add the eggs slowly and keep on mixing with an egg whisk. The eggs get cooked and form a stringy mixture. Let it cook a little, add water per the consistency you need, add salt and turn of the flame. Serve hot with a dash of pepper, garnish with soy sauce, vinegar/green chillies and see those sniffles vanish.

Tomato Saar

First of all, can you see the steam rising from the bowl?? I took this picture when the saar was very hot and ofcourse the day was very cold, so it helped. Tomato saar is a typical maharashtrian dish. Like its counterpart rasam, it is mainly eaten with steaming hot rice and ghee (clarified butter). My mom adds coarsely ground pepper to this and we had it whenever we had a bad case of cold.

There are many variations to this saar. The basic being coarsely chopped tomato and ground coconut bits.

For my variation, I used canned tomato soup (Campbells ...the very best) and instead of coconut bits, I used coconut milk (the canned variety). That gave my saar a little thickness and creamy taste.

Personally, I loved this variation of tomato saar. S made faces while eating/drinking it. My little duckie was kind of skeptical of it at first but after first 2-3 spoons, he realized that I wasnt tricking him into something nutritious and he had more. So it was a good midday snack for him.

Anyways I called up my mom, told her the tip about using campbell's soup as the base instead of the traditional chopping dicing boiling of tomatoes, she loved the tip.

Recipe:

1 can campbell's tomato soup

1/4 can coconut milk

chopped cilantro

2 pinches coarsely ground black pepper

1/4 tsp fresh ginger

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

1tsp ghee (clarified butter)

salt to taste

1/4 tsp jaggery

pinch of asafoetida

Take the regular soup pan and warm it up. Add the entire can of soup + 1 can plain water. Add one pinch of coarsely ground black pepper. Let it come to a boil. Add salt to taste and jaggery. Now add COCOnut milk to the mixture stirring it continously. After it mixes properly, turn off the flame and let it rest. Take another small kadai and heat it up. Use this for tempering the saar. Add the ghee to this kadai. Add asafoetida, cumin seeds, ginger and black pepper in quick succession. Add this mixture to the saar mix and mix properly. Garnish with cilantro and serve hot.

This tomato saar is excellent with hot rice or even as it is like soup. The consistency of this should be little thinner than tomato soup and the final taste should be salty-sweet with hint of balck pepper and ginger