Alu Palak/Potato Spinach Curry

Other day when we were watching the soccer finals, hubby asked me if I knew why Holland dress color was Orange. I was like may be it was a color from their flag or a random color that they chose. Honestly, I did not know the answer. Then he told me that Dutch were the first ones to make orange carrots!
I laughed and said Carrots were supposed to be orange and what was it that they had to make specially. He then said that carrots were originally in purple color and the Dutch made the first orange carrots. I did not buy that. How could they even make an orange carrot from a purple carrot and even if they did what happened to the original purple carrot? They should have co existed right? How could a new invention totally eliminate an existing breed of carrots? There were so many questions in my mind and I quickly did a google search to find the answers.

To my surprise what my hubby said was true. Dutch created the orange carrots in honor of the House of Orange, the Dutch Royal Family. They created this by cross breeding pale yellow with red carrots and not from purple carrots. Hmm...so carrots existed in red and yellow colors too other than purple. Reading few more results I learned that carrots existed in purple, white, red and yellow colors. So what happened to all those now? I have seen a purple cabbage but never a purple carrot.

I have never seen a carrot any in any other color other than orange. May be I have seen some red carrots in India. We call them gajar. You can read more facts about the on carrots here. Well.... it was interesting to know about the different colors that carrots were/are available.

Okay, coming to the recipe part, it is not a carrot recipe. I just thought the carrot story was interesting to share.



Ingredients:

• Potato: 1
• Spinach (chopped): 1 cup
• Tomatoes(small): 1
• Onion(large): 1/2
• Salt as required
• Green Chillies: 3
• MDH Kitchen king masala or any curry powder: 1 tsp

Seasoning:

• Oil: 2 tbsp
• Mustard seeds: 1 tsp
• Cumin seeds: 1 tsp
• Turmeric powder: 1/4 tsp
• Curry leaves: 3
• Asoefetida(hing): a pinch

Procedure:

1. First chop the onions, potatoes and tomatoes into small pieces and keep aside.
2. Finely chop the spinach.
3. Add oil to a pan and when the oil is heated, add the seasoning ingredients in the order mentioned.
4. When the seeds start spluttering, add the chopped onions, add salt and cook until they turn golden brown in color.
5. Now add the potatoes and 1/2 cup of water and let the potatoes cook well.
6. when the potatoes are like half cooked, add the spinach and cover the pan with a lid and cook for few minutes.
7. When the potatoes are cooked well, add the tomatoes, green chillies and the kitchen king masala.
8. Add another 1/2 cup of water,cover with the lid and cook for another 5 minutes.
9. Make sure that you add tomatoes only after the potatoes are cooked. Potatoes do not cook well in the tomato gravy.
10. Remove the lid, mix well and adjust the salt.
11. Serve with roti or steamed rice.

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Quinoa salad with spinach, black beans and chickpeas

Have been hearing a lot about "quinoa - the super grain" lately and wanted to give it a try. Quinoa is not actually a grain. It is the seed of a plant that is closely related to species such as spinach and beets. You can read more about quinoa here. I bought them and they have been sitting in the pantry for a while now waiting for their turn. I never ate or cooked quinoa before.

I also had some left over canned black beans and canned chickpeas that I had to use.

There was also some baby spinach waiting for its turn. Before all these get spoiled I wanted to use them and combined them all and cooked with quinoa. The result was just wonderful!!!

Quinoa by itself did not have any taste, but with all the added ingredients the super grain did taste good. I served it along with some home made humus.

Ingredients:

Quinoa: 1 cup
Chick peas: 1/4cup
Black Beans: 1/4 cup
Baby Spinach(chopped): 1/4 cup
Tofu( grated) : 4 tsp
Salt as required.
Pepper: 1 tsp
Lime juice: 1 tsp
Olive oil: 2 tsp
Red pepper flakes(optional)

Procedure:

1. Cook quinoa in a rice cooker with 2 cups of water(quinoa to water ratio is 1:2)
2. Add olive oil to a pan and add the chopped spinach, chickpeas and the black beans. Cook them in olive oil  until the spinach becomes soft.
3. Now add the cooked quinoa to the pan, add salt and pepper. Mix well.
4. Add the lime juice and mix.
5. Add the grated tofu on top and serve.
6. Optionally you can add some red pepper flakes  on top to make it spicy.

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Spinach Rice

This is a simple recipe to make use of any left over spinach or left over rice.





Ingredients:

Cooked Rice: 1 cup

Carrots: 2

Spinach: 1 cup

Soy sauce: 1 tbsp

salt as required

pepper: 1/2 tbsp

oil

Lemon juice(optional) : 1/2 tsp

Procedure:

Finely chop carrots and spinach.

Heat oil in a pan, add the finely chopped carrots and spinach and let them cook well.

Now add the cooked rice, salt, soy sauce and pepper and mix well.

Add lemon juice and mix again.

Serve with raitha.

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