Stuffed Tomatoes - Open Sesame II

Stuffed Tomatoes with herbed bread and olives


Finally managed to make the post on the last day of the event. By now I guess everyone would be familiar with what 'Open Sesame' is. Otherwise click here.
The answer to my riddle was 'Tomatoes' - the king of vegetables. With its cute crown it actually is a king right? My Riddle goes like this -




I think I am a pleased woman since I blush so much
I am so soft and shiny to your delicate touch
But look what I have for relatives, so different with no common string
one used for smoking, one for hotness, one used to refer idler and one referred as veggie's King
I am not what you refer to me most often
I am 'fruit' of labour but never called one
so I am neither a wolf nor a peach in the scale of one to ten
but then why do you think I am called one as so?
I can go green with envy, or completely red with anger
A little crown on my head makes my walk look like a swagger
You cant do without me in your day to day cooking
Tell me what veggie I am without too much thinking.

In Indian cuisine there are very few recipes that does'nt use this vegetable. As soon as I cracked the riddle (only the second time :)) I decided that I should try something special with tomatoes. After many research through all the food recipes, I fixed my mind on the following recipe.But it took till the last day to actually make the dish and post this recipe.
The recipe is very simple and it takes only a few minutes to prepare excluding the baking time

For Stuffing:

2 slices of whole wheat bread
a handful of chopped olives, green or black
2 tsp choped garlic
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tblsp parmesan cheese or any cheese of your choice. 2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper


Method
Preheat the oven to 375F or 200C
Toast 2 bread slices and cut into 1 inch cubes.
Mix all the stuffing ingredients and leave aside for 10 mins till the bread pieces soak up the liquid.
Take 3 ripe and firm tomatoes.Slice the crown part and keep aside.
Carefully remove the pulp using a paring knife, taking care not to poke the tomatoes.
Discard the seeds and just add the chopped pulp to the stuffing mixture.
Rub the inner sides with a pinch of salt and pepper.
Stuff the tomatoes, rub the outer part with olive oil.
Replace the crown Place in a baking dish and bake for 30-35 mins



Since we love mozzarella chesse I topped it with some shredded mozzarella after 30 mins and baked for another 7-8 mins.
You can avoid this part if you want.









I served it for dinner with a bowl of bell pepper - mint-couscous.







OK one more final picture..:)


If you like the post, picture and of course the dish please vote for me in 'Open sesame'

Chicken , Tofu Fajita Wraps

Chicken Fajita Wraps


Nowadays it seems that each and every post of mine is linked to one or the other eventin the food blog world.This shows either the number of events is more or I have become so lazy that these events keeps me going. The later is very true.
This is one such event where the theme is my favorite too - Chicken. Though Iam a big fan of Non-veg especially chicken, I have blogged only one or two dishes based on it.I made chicken several times this month for lunch and dinner for guests, but never found the time and patience to click some pictures.Finally last week I made a simple and quick dinner with the few tortilla wraps and managed to take a few shots of those.

Here is the recipe.



Slice some onions and peppers (any colors, I used red ,yellow and green) into thin strips








Slice 2 chicken breasts into thin strips.Marinate them with chili powder, 1 tblsp lemon juice, 1 tsp cumin powder, 1 tsp of dried oregano, some chopped garlic and salt.marinate it for
minimum of 20 mins.



Method
Add 2 tblsp of olive oil in a pan, Add the marinated chicken strips , toss and turn the chicken pieces, allowing them cook well for atleast 10 mins. Remove the chicken pieces and keep aside. Add the sliced onion and peppers in the same pan and stir fry till the onion is browned and caramelized.

Assembling:

Warm the tortilla in a pan. spread the chicken pieces , spread the stir fried onion-peppers, add 2tbsp of fajita sauce or salsa.(I used store bought ones) Finally top it up with some lettuce and a dollop of sour cream or yogurt.I used the later.Fold it into wraps.

Wrap the bottom of the fajitas with a thin strip of aluminum foil to hold it together.


These Fajita wraps are going to Chicken - My Favorite


Tofu wraps

The tortilla package I bought had 8 of them and the instructions told not to refrigerate them for more than 4 days.Since I used only 4 of them I decided to do an other Fajita wrap this time with Tofu.



Squeeze the water from the tofu ,cut into cubes and marinate with 2 tsp of soy sauce, 1 tsp of chilli powder, 2 tsp of chopped garlic and salt for aleast 20 mins. Add it in a hot pan with 2 tblsp of oilve oil. Toss and turn for 10 mins, until the tofu is cooked through.




Rest of the ingredients , and assembling is the same as in chicken fajita recipe above.


Since both Tofu and chicken are rich in Protein, these Fajitas also goes to Sangeeths
'Eat Healthy - Protein rich'



Check out an other yummy protein rich recipe here ,

Paruppu Urundai Kuzhambhu/Lentil dumplings in spiced tamarind sauce

Most authentic Tamil recipes uses tamarind. Be it sambhar, kuzhambhu, kootu or rasam tamarind plays a major role in Tamilian cuisine .
Any tamarind based sauce with a main ingredient and without dhal is called 'Kuzhambhu' ('z' is pronounced as 'lha'). The name varies as per the main vegetable or ingredient added to it like poondu kuzhambhu or kathirikai kuzhambhu etc., I think we can just start a whole event on just kuzhambhu varieties alone :) .But I hate when people call anything and everything 'curry' when certain dishes has its own name .
Anyways while growing up the typical lunch menu for a week in my household would go something like this. Tuesday and Friday - sambhar , Saturdays - kuzhambhu with any dried beans like mochai, black channa, karamani/black eyed beans, Mondays would be any vegetable kootu/mor kuzhambhu , wednesday - seafood/any veggie kuzhambhu and sundays will definitely be a feast with Non-Veg.
Coming from a family that has kulambhu for atleast 3 days in a week JFI - Tamarind was a delight to participate.
Here is an authentic recipe for parrupu urundai kuzhambhu.
The lentils are soaked , grinded, made into balls and steamed.Then these are added to the spicy boiling sauce.Though the ingredients and the recipe looks lengthy its worth the effort.
This kuzhambhu served with rice and keerai /greens poriyal makes a perfect meal.



For the Urundai/dumplings:
Ingredients:
1 cup Toor dhal
1 medium onion finly chopped
1 tblsp chopped coriander leaves
2 red chilies
1/4 tsp sombhu/fennel seeds
1/2 tsp jeera seeds

Method.

Soak the dhal in water for 2-3 hours
Roast the red chillies, sombhu and jeera in a medium flame for few minutes.
Add them to the soaked dhal and grind coarsly. Make sure its not watery.

To the grinded dhal add choped onion, garlic , salt and coriander leaves.
Make it into lime sized balls and the steam it using the idli plates for 10 mins.
Cool the dumplings.

For kuzhambhu:

Ingredients
1 medium onion
5-6 garlic cloves
1/2 inch ginger finely chopped
2 medium tomatoes
lemon sized tamarind ball soaked in water or 2 tsp of thick tamarind paste soaked in 1/4 cup water.

To Grind:
2 tsp coriander seeds
10 red chillies
1/2 tsp jeera
1/4 tsp sombhu/fennel

Dry fry all the above in a pan and grind it to a powder.
Alternatively you can also add water and grind it to a paste.

For Tempering
Mustard - 1/2 tsp
fenugreek /vendhaiyam - 1/2 tsp
few curry leaves


Method:
Chop the onion garlic and ginger, and tomatoes keep aside.
Add a few tblsp of oil and add the tempering ingredients.When the mustard pop add the chopped onion garlic and ginger and fry well.
Add the tomatoes when the onion is golden brown.
When the tomatoes turn into a pulp add the tamarind water, salt , the grinded masala and turmeric powder.Add 3 cups of water and allow it boil for 10 mins.
Now add the steamed lentil balls /urundai's and allow it to boil for another 7-8 mins.
Allow it to rest for atleast one hour before serving.The sauce thickens as it cools.
If the sauce is watery break one or two dumplings and dissolve in the sauce.





This delicious kuzhambhu goes to the JFI event hosted by Sig with the theme as Tamarind for this month.


Click here for another kuzhambu recipe that uses black eyed peas

This dish also goes to this months "Eat Healthy - Protein rich" event by Sangeeth

Stuffed Chilli Bhajji's and a late dinner

I love Bhajji and I make it quite often with different veggies and egg. I have never heard of Bhajjis with stuffings until I saw few posts on the food blogs.Whenever I see a post on this dish I bookmark it to try the next time when I tend to make some. But as usual it has been months and months and it never happened.This months Sia's MBP - street food event which originated in the spicecafe gave me a nice push to try this dish. Back in chennai , Bhajji being one of the all time favourite street food our trips to the marina beech (or any beech ) has never been completed without stuffing our tummy with these hot and spicy goodies. So I started digging around my bookmarks and patrolling the blogs and finally settled down on Sia's recipe.

I made the stuffing using the variations suggested by Sia.The only change I made is
added 1/ 4 cup rice flour instead of 1 tblsp.I also cut the chillies before frying as my chillies were big and my kadai didnt fit the whole one.
I chose banana peppers and removed the seeds from it, the result turned out great.
I also made some onion bhajji as u see in the picture with the left over batter

I made it as a snack, but unfortunately that day hubby came very late from work and also my kid didnt allow me to cook dinner. We had it as a side dish for hot steaming rasam and white rice .Though it was a late dinner we enjoyed our food thoroughly.

Express Breakfast

Egg Scramble with Mixed veggies and mint.

The title says it all. This was our breakfast this sunday.

We had planned to go around brussels this sunday but got up very late to make an elaborate breakfast.Feeding my kid and getting him ready to go out is a huge task nowadays.So just entered the kitchen and chopped up all the left over vegetables (wiped my fridge clean except some tomatoes).I stir fried all the vegetables, added the beaten egges, and scarambled them with salt, pepper and some chopped mint.The mint gave the scramble a fresh taste.A bowl of egg scramble with glass of freshly squeezed orange juice made us kickstart our sunday morning.

I added onions, green chillies, greeen peppers , yellow peppers, mushrooms and some spring onions, and stired them in the same order.You can add any coloured peppers, zucchini, carrots or any vegetables you want.Iam sending this as an entry to the WBB-Expressbreakfast event hosted by Raaga - The singing chef.

BTW I had received an award from 'Vegetable Platter'.She thinks my blog is Yummy.Iam very delighted to post this in my blog

Since I browse all the blogs randomly, I think all blogs are yummy in their own way.So I pass it on to all the fellow food bloggers :)

Iam not sweets person, but I too have my favorites...

• toblerone chocolate


• carrot halwa with vanilla icecream


• chocolate cake with chocolate icing


• gulab jamun

Since eggs are packed with protein this dish goes to Sangeeth "Eat Healthy- Protein rich" event