Kale and Lentils

Kale and calcium 3

Remember the kale I chopped up for fried kale, South Indian version?
Well, that one bunch chopped up was too much for just the fried spinach...there's only HD (Hubby Dearest) and me at home now so I had to do something with the last four cups. (Didn't know I would get so much from one bunch of kale that cost 78 cents).
Though I've been making spinach dishes with it,and saying it reminds me of spinach, it belongs to the cabbage family.

So, here's my third kale dish (similar to our pappu kurak, dal bhaji shaak or parrupu keera), and it's my fourth entry for Sangeeth Raghunathan's Eat Healthy-Calcium Rich contest.

4 cups chopped kale
1/2 cup toor dal.
1 medium tomato
1/2 medium onion, chopped and dried.
Haldi, chilli powder, salt to taste.

Kale needs to be cooked well so I cooked it in the pressure cooker with the haldi, tomato and toor dal.
After the pressure cooker cooled and I opened it I let it simmer for a while on the stove.
After it had thickened to stew like consistency, I added the chilli powder and fried onion.
This was HD's favorite of all 3 kale dishes.

TIL/ SESAME SEED LADDU

Til is the ingredient listed as the highest source of Calcium by the USDA. 3.53 ozs or 100 gms by weight contains 975 mg of calcium!
As soon as I read that, I started a search for recipes using a lot of til.
The ones I found on the Net were for til chikki.
Then I thought of the festivals and my mother's recipes and came across this easy, 'quick as you can grind' one.
So this is my third entry for Sangeeth's Eat Healthy: Calcium Rich contest.
(anyone guessed by now I'm trying to win the cash prize for my 'end world hunger program', that this blog was started for?).
This is the old entry in my cookbook in 1978, word for word.

Clean, wash and dry 1 cup til.
Fry till it splutters.
Grind coarse.
Add 3/4 cup jaggery.
Mix well.
Shape into balls

What can be easier than this?
It is so easy it got me heading for the kitchen.

Here are my notes to add to the old recipe.

(I used black but please use brown til).
Fry stirring constantly till you will see little bits of til literally start jumping in the pan.
Grind coarse.
Add 3/4 cup grated jaggery...I had to heat the lumps of jaggery to get them warm and then slice with a knife.
Remember jaggery in the microwave heats from the inside out so do not overheat.
(I know they used to pound everything in India,and that made it come together, but the warm jaggery shaved off the lumps is fine and pliable. If it isn't heat very slightly.
Mix well the ground til mixture and shape immediately.
I liked the one I made with a little ground cardamom added to it but HD (Hubby Dearest) liked the traditional one better.
It tastes good.

Janmashtami/Krishna Jayanthi in my mother's house

Before I came to the States , under my mother's direction, I noted all the festivals we celebrated and the food that was made for each. Up to then, I had only been interested in eating all that great food but suddenly the responsibility was shifting to my shoulders. I had to know what to do, my mother said. How grateful I am to her that she gave me all that information. I look at those notes and think of her life, lived in devotion to God and after that, to cooking. My father's family could trace their ancestry back to Lord Krishna and in his hometown of Krishnagiri there is a temple to Lord Krishna, purported to be there since the conception of the village. Janmashtami was celebrated as the day before Krishna's birth as he was born at mid-night...the day after was Krishna Jayanthi. On Krishna Jayanthi, we had things with til, which was favored by Krishna. Besides the til/sesame seed dishes: laddus, murku, jeera laddu, hing laddu (yes hing), a plate would be placed in the puja room with Krishna's favorites: curd, milk, butter, ghee, buttermilk, cream. The one item not to be forgotten on this day was beaten rice (atakalu or pohe), as this was what Krishna's poor friend Sudama brought to him as a gift and what was enjoyed tremendously by Krishna. Now I see recipes for pohe kheer etc on the Internet, but we soaked it, mixed it with curd and salt and offered it that way. Lord Vishnu in his avatar of Krishna gave us the Bhagavad Gita which contains all the wisdom we need to live good lives. When I left home for the first time, my mother gave me a small copy of the Bhagavad Gita and said, "Even if you don't pray, it is okay. Just read this daily."
I did and slowly the wisdom of the words penetrated my modern mind and sank in. So, on this Krishna Jayanthi day, in the midst of our modern lives, I wish that all of us would have an attitude of appreciation for even the smallest gift and the humility to express thanks even if it something we don't want/need. While this is the duty of the recipient, it is also the duty of the giver not to give something inappropriate just to get rid of it.
“A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return” Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.

Fried kale, South Indian version

Kale and Calcium 2

This is my second entry for Sangeeth Raghunathan's Eat Healthy.Calcium Rich contest.

Remember the last kale dish in which I only used the smallest leaves.
Well, here's what I did with the rest of the great big, calcium-rich bunch I had.
I washed them thoroughly, following my mother's rule of, 'wash everything thrice'. I removed a few stalks/spines from the largest leaves. I placed the leaves one on top of the other and rolled them up like a very large cigar and chopped them finely and then chopped them the other way pretending for a few minutes I was one of those big chefs on a cooking show. Later I felt I should have chopped the kale even finer.
Four sites I visited researching kale stated the spine of each leaf had to be removed, but my leaves were fresh and the stem reminded me of Indian dantu kuraku/dantachey bhaji ( spinach witha thick stalk;similar to the kale spine) that we cook with the stalks, so I just chopped the stems into half inch pieces.
Here's the rest to the recipe.

4 cups finely chopped kale and stalks.
1 large onion finely chopped.
4 large garlic cloves chopped or sliced (I put in about 10 whole cloves.)
1/2 tsp rai (mustard seed)
1 1/2 tsp split urad dal (white lentil)
3 red chillies
1 tsp red chilli powder (to taste)
Salt to tast.
2 Tbsp olive oil.

Heat oil. Add rai, when it splutters add urad dal. Let it brown and add red chillies
Fry for one minute.
Add chopped onion and garlic and fry till onion is light brown.
Add chilli powder and fry for another minute.
Remove all this and place in a bowl.
Put spinach into pan and let it fry on medium...don't add any water.
You can do this step in the microwave...put spinach in a bowl and mic. for three minutes...stir and microwave for another three.
When soft (kale takes a little longer to cook than normal spinach and hence the fine chop), add salt.
Like spinach, kale becomes one third the amount.
Add seasoning/onion mixture and mix well.
Serve hot.
The kale gave this spinach dish a great flavor and it's a great way to get the calcium we all need.

Oven Roasted Kale

KALE AND CALCIUM 1

I have never made anything with kale much less given any thought to this frilly cousin of cabbage. Sangeeth Raghunathan's e-mail informing us of her Eat Healthy: Calcium contest led to research on the Internet on calcium rich foods and turned up the fact that kale is a rich source of calcium. Here's my first entry.

This is also my entry for SnackoRama's Sunday Snacks Event.
Don't have kale in your area? No worries. Use baby spinach leaves. I have used the whole small leaves for this picture but you can chop up the whole bunch of kale and use it. This is a delicious and nutritious snack/appetizer/starter.

This is also my entry for Easycraft of Simple Indian Food's, 'WYF: Salads/Starters/Soups event'.

A new ingredient is a challenge and fires up my slow engine. so I decided to get to know kale better. According to the USDA database 3.53 ozs of kale (100 gms by weight) has 135 mg of calcium which is high, as 3.53 ozs is 1/2 cup packed kale by volume.

Further research turned up lots of recipes with kale (who knew so many people cooked with kale...one learns something new everyday). I finally picked one American recipe and came up with two of my own.

I set off for the local grocery store hoping to find kale...the store not only had kale but I got the freshest, hugest bunch and fell in love with the fragrance from it. Can't think what it reminded me of, though.

The frilly, light green leaves, free of yellow edges and no holes are obviously the best kind to get...I picked medium sized and small leaves as the best bunch because reading all those recipes had told me kale can be pretty tough.

Home again I couldn't resist, putting my kale into water (above picture) and going back to the computer to refresh my mind about the recipe I had picked to try.

It is Stepahanie Gallagher's recipe with my adaptations from the site About.com:cooking for kids.

Heat the oven to 350...make sure one rack is on the lowest level.

Take the smallest leaves, wash and dry them.

(I just used six leaves for the experiment).

In a bowl, mix one Tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp apple cider vinegar, salt and chill powder.

(Stephanie's recipe said to sprinkle with coarse salt before serving, but I had none).

Toss the leaves to coat them and placed them on a baking tray.

Bake them for 10 mins.

Take them out, turn them over and bake for another five.

The leaves have to crisp, like chips to the touch.

Remove, cool a few seconds and dig in...it is so.o.o.o good.

Proof of how good it was, came when HD (Hubby Dearest), who approaches new dishes as warily as a mongoose approaches a cobra, said, "What's this?"

"Try it," I coaxed.

He picked one leaf up with that...'I'm in trouble if I do and I'm in trouble if I don't', look he gets, took a bite of it and then said in surprise, "This is good!"

(As if all my experiments end in disaster...some do, not all).

The cherry on my sundae of happiness came a few minutes later...I took a picture, put the camera away and turned...the last three leaves were gone!!! High praise indeed!

This is an excellent appetizer or just a side dish that adds crunch to a meal and as Gallagher who created it said, excellent for kids (without the chilli powder).

She took the leaves apart, tore then into bite size pieces, then tossed them in the mix. I liked my way better, stem and all but I wouldn't do this with the big leaves.

Try it...you'll be amazed at the taste and result.

New recipe for celebrating India's 61st Independence Day.

New Recipe for celebrating India's 61st Independence Day Celebrations.

Take three parts sacrifice...what parents do to raise their children, what soldiers do for their country.

Add three parts purity...in thought, action, words.

Layer with three parts growth...create a garden of beauty, support farmers, preserve the environment.

To all this add the essence of the 24 spokes of the blue Ashoka Chakra.

The following is quoted from the site oneindia.com The Chakra signifies that there is a life in 'Movement' and 'Death' in stagnation.

Wonderful Qualities of the Twenty Four Spokes :

1. Love 2.Courage 3.Patience 4.Peacefulness 5.Magnanimity 6.Goodness 7.Faithfulness 8.Gentleness 9.Selflessness 10.Self-control 11.Self sacrifice 12.Truthfulness 13.Righteousness 14.Justice 15.Mercy 16.Gracefulness 17.Humility 18.Empathy 19.Sympathy 20.Spiritual knowledge 21.Moral Values 22.Spiritual Wisdom 23.The fear of God (Live as if you know there is a higher power than you). 24.Faith or Belief or Hope

Take one helping each day.

Let this recipe be part of our internal make up and let change begin with you...one individual and watch it spread in ripples. This is my recipe for Independence Day and my wish that everyone understand what the Indian flag represents.

This is also my submission for Pooja’s My Creative Ideas.

BEST OF BLOGS...AUGUST 2008

My two cents worth...again.
Last month, I spent a couple of hours each day exploring cooking blogs.
It is addictive, and before I know it I visit anywhere between five to ten, and become lost in reading recipes, forgetting the original one I'm looking for.
I click on leads and interesting recipes, always taking a minute or two to pause for a first impression. I reiterate though I'm not an expert on how to set up great blogs, I do know what looks attractive, and information presented accurately and informatively with ease of access.
So by the time, I'm ready to post this, I'm sure of the blog I wish to name..

This month's choice for best of cooking blogs is Cynthia Nelson's TASTES LIKE HOME.
Her site is attractive, with excellent layouts, her photographs outstanding, and her archived album slide shows with detailed how-to instructions on recipes, a very nice touch for someone trying to figure out a new recipe with unknown ingredients. Cynthia e-mails her recipes promptly upon request. Overall, she exemplifies my ideals of an outstanding and generous fellow blogger reminding me of an old, favorite saying,
"It is not what you do but how you do it that counts."