Edible diyas for Diwali... yeah...eat them!

Happy Diwali !!!!!!!

I would like to wish all my readers a very happy Deepavali…. Wishing everyone lots of happiness, joy and prosperity.

Diwali is the festival of lights, the celebration of good over evil…light over darkness. Deepavali as it is also called ....means a row of lamps. These lamps are usually made with clay and some women at home make them with ‘aata’ or roti dough.

When I saw the recipe for these edible coconut diyas, I fell in love with them and promised to make them on diwali….here is the recipe. I used orange food colour to give them that earthen clay hue.

The recipe doesn’t fill the diyas with anything, so I put in a small dollop of soft sweet khoya as symbolic ghee with a sliver of almond for the wick.

I also decorated them with ‘hundreds and thousands’ - tiny coloured sugar balls. I tried decorating them with silver vark, but it got messy....

So here's wishing all my readers all the happiness in the world.... my advise is ....make lots of sweets, share them with all your family and friends, eat them too and have a joyous time!

This is going to Vee of Past Present and Me for the wonderful event JFI special series: The festive series...

This is also going to Meeta's Monthly Mingle for Traditional Feasts.

Peanut ladoos for navratri, contribute for Feed-a-hungry-child and a meme

These ladoos are so easy and are great for kids to learn and make.

But first I want to put in a plea to keep contributing to ‘feed a hungry child’ as there are still a few days left for the fund raising drive. Even though the fund-drive goal of raising 3, 360 dollars has been crossed, we can contribute more to feed more mouths.

(FHC): feedahungrychild.org is a not-for-profit charitable organization formed in a collaborative effort of the like-minded people from all around the world. It aims to replace the empty plates of the underprivileged children and replace them with ones of food. While FAHC addresses the holistic needs of each children it supports, it believes illiteracy, malnutrition, and other concerns can only be addressed when hunger is appeased.

Join the fight against global poverty…. Help feed children one by one…

Please chip-in and contribute here, or here or go to the FHC website...

And now onto the easy-peasy laddoo recipe:

What you need:

- 350 gm peanut butter (crunchy – if you want bits of nut, smooth – if you want a smooth texture)
- 250 gm khoya (make a semi-hard dough with full cream milk powder and milk and microwave it for 10 minutes on low, cool and grate finely)
- 200gm brown icing sugar (can use normal icing sugar too, and reduce the amount if you find it too sweet)
- 1 tsp elaichi (cardamom) powder
(This amount made 50 ladoos of 2.5 cm diameter (average size for a ladoo) )

What you need to do:
1.) Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl thoroughly. Shape into round ladoos.

Tips:
-Use splashes of milk to moisten a dry mixture, that is becoming to difficult to combine.
- If the mixture is too wet and gooey (which it will hardly be), you can use dry dessicated coconut to make the mixture pliable.

Verdict: These ladoos look and taste exactly like besan (gram flour) laddoos in texture and 90% in taste, so they are great for when fasting from grains. You just get a peanutty taste instead. Also, there is no ‘extra’ ghee I added this time and they tasted great; the only fat comes from the peanut butter. Plus, I looooved making them because of how easy they were to make. They are really good for kids to make too.

See how I made them last year for Navratri, the recipe is pretty much the same, except I didn’t put ghee this time.

This is going to Vee of Past Present and Me for the wonderful event JFI special series: The festive series...

This is also going to Viji of Vcuisine for the wonderful event RCI Tamil Festive Series...

Now for my first meme that Sweet Sig tagged me for:

4 Places I’ve lived:

- Kisumu, Kenya
- New Delhi, India
- Selebi- Phikwe, Botswana
- Gaborone, Botswana

4 Jobs I’ve had / (wish I could have)

- Computer Technician Attachee / Interior Decorator
- Systems Analyst Junior / Coolest restaurant-in-town owner and chef
- Assistant Computer Lecturer (in parallel with 2) / Flower Bouquet Designer(I’m gonna do this when I’m old and grey anyway)
- Computer Engineer / Pencil, Pastel and Oil Painter

4 Favorite places I’ve holidayed:

1. Venice – I was in awe of all the canals dotted with the beautiful houses, the islands and the awesome Italian food. And people, Venice is sinking… hope the engineers can save it in the nick of time.
2. Vienna – Oh this city is truly musical, the opera we went to was to-die-for… and they played all the famous classical numbers especially my fav ..Mozart… there was even a Pavarotti look a like with a ballerina…sigh….
3. Cape Town – was amazing… with all the history and unique flora and fauna, vineyards and wine….Robin island where Mandela spent 26 (?) years.
4. Pongundam near Kottayam – This is a huge rubber plantation… my sin-in-law’s in-law’s place. It was breath-taking and beautiful. And my SIL’s MIL made such yummy food for us…

4 Favorite foods

1. Homemade corn pizza (with bits of paneer)
2. Pasta Recco – at our fav Italian restaurant, I don’t even bother looking at their menu…
3. Chilli Gobhi Dry - Also at out fav south Indian restaurant…. I’m trying really hard (with the help of my mum) to recreate this dish at home… and when I told this to a fellow blogger friend, she loved it too… will post it soon
4. Tie between Appam-stew and Onam sadya(incl parip payasam) – Coz after consuming both relishes, it induces a zombie reaction in the body, where we drift towards the next closest place to lie down and drift into slumber land.

4 Places I’d rather be

- On a looooong drive with M (hubby) where we talk and talk and talk.
- Playing with my son, and going to see the bho-bhos (dogs)
- Touring the world
- Doing something creatively fun (painting, cooking, crafty things).

4 bloggers I like to tag

Wanted to tag Musy, and Lakshmi(Yum), but they’ve already done this meme…

- Manisha
- Bee
- Arun
- Viji

Please take it up only if you wish to...

Creamy Stuffed Tomatoes

Tomatoes.. I gotta have a bunch in my refrigerator no matter what. Plus they act as a contingency for other cooking plans and recipe disasters. In fact I always find my family members wondering why they appear in every dish I make. Heck, I could throw them into my green salad, who cares if its not green anymore. Contingency because, when I’m in one of those what-do-I-make confusion states or when I’m just cooking for myself, I settle down for a plain good old tomato and black pepper sandwich. Nothing beats that!

So when JFI for April was tomatoes hosted by RP of My Workshop, I jumped up and was like… tomato sandwich? Nah…..I decided on Creamy Stuffed Tomatoes because its so different and my beloved tomato stands out in the sauce like a lovely setting sun in the sky. My, am I getting poetic today or what? I swear it the tomato effect!!!

This recipe is truly a fusion recipe and a first for my blog! Really, my mum takes all the credit for this lick-your-fingers invention. She intended to make her stuffed green peppers and because I had accidentally chopped up her small hand picked dainty peppers in my salad, she decided to take revenge on my stash of tomatoes. The sauce came along with some further tweaks to the recipe and we sat down licking our fingers and laughing on our little veggie war!!!

Ingredients

10-12 medium sized tomatoes cored
Note: Tomatoes that are called ‘Globe’ type are medium-sized, firm, juicy, and like ‘beefsteak’ variety are good raw or cooked. We need tender ones for this recipe and a slight pogginess in the tomatoes disqualifies them from this dish.











Find single serving sized tomatoes to use since we want to stuff them and serve them whole. To core a tomato, use the tip of a sharp knife or peeler to make a shallow cut all around the stem end, and then pop out the core. Scoop out the seeds and the pulp with a grapefruit spoon.

Filling:
2 medium sized potatoes boiled and mashed
75g khoya/paneer
Salt to taste
½ tsp Chilli powder

Sauce:
2-3 tblsp ghee/oil
1 tsp jeera
1 cup (250ml) white sauce or roux
1 large onion finely chopped
100ml tomato puree
Salt to taste
Chilli powder
Pinch of turmeric (to give it a creamish color)
½ tsp dhania powder


1. Combine well the ingredients for the filling. Fill into the deseeded and cored tomatoes. The paneer/khoya can really be excluded if desired, but I feel they add a softness to the filling mixture.

2. Saute the jeera and onions in the ghee until the onions are golden. Add the tomato puree and all the spices except the roux and sauté for a further few minutes. Add the roux when the onions and puree are well cooked with the spices.

Note: To avoid the roux being lumpy, when combining with the milk, it is important that the milk be added very hot and in small quantities to the roux while stirring, to ensure proper mixing.

3. Arrange the stuffed tomatoes in a baking tray. Preferably they should be served in the same casserole/tray. Pour over the creamy sauce and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for 15-20 minutes to allow the tomatoes to absorb all the moisture.

4. Serve piping hot with Naan or a plain parantha. Its great with a plain phulka too!!

Peanut Ladoo

I usually make this during navratri... they can be made on any occasion really and they are so easy to make...

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup peanut butter (crunchy)
3/4 cup icing Sugar (can put 1 cup if you want more sweet)
1 cup khoya (grated finely)
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
5 tbsp ghee (enough to moisten the peanut mixture)


Add all the ingredients (ghee, peanut butter, sugar, coconut and khoya) in a wok on medium flame and combine everthing togethor until mixed well and sugar has melted. The mixture should not get runny. When it cools down a bit but still very warm, make round balls.

Can decorate with silver vark, or a little bit of coconut or have just like that.