Finndian fast food

Weeks are flying by..I have noticed that on some very busy weeks I cook only once and eat that same soup for many days, which is not very inspiring!

I have spotted some good recipes on Vihreä Lanka, the weekly newspaper of the Green Party of Finland. I wanted to try the pea sundal because I had never tried making sundal, even if many other Indian recipes are familiar to me. This recipe you could call "student food", because it basically doesn't cost much - a 500g bag of Finnish organic peas cost 0,88€ in the supermarket.

As I am curious to see what the more authentic recipes included, I did some research and instead of just adding curry powder, as the first recipe suggested, I went for this one at SpicyTasty:

Green Peas Sundal

Ingredients:

* Dry Green Peas : 1 cup
* Onion : 3tbsp (finely chopped)
* Green chili : 3 to 4
* Garlic :1
* Ginger : 1/4″
* Cumin seeds : 1/4tsp
* Coconut : 2 tbsp (optional)
* Salt : required to taste

For Seasoning:

* Oil : 1tbsp
* Mustard Seeds : 1 tsp
* Urad dal : 1tsp
* Whole red chili : 2
* Curry leaves : 6 to 8

Method of Preparation:

1. Soak the dry green peas overnight in a warm water.
2. And pressure cook the soaked green peas with water and little salt for 2 whistle in medium flame.
3. After that strain the water and keep the coked peas aside.
4. Now grind the chopped onion, cumin seeds, ginger, garlic and green chilies in to a thick paste.
5. Heat oil in a pan add mustard seeds, urad dal after it sputter add the whole red chili and ground masala fry them till the raw smell goes off from the masala or fry them for like 4 to 5 minutes.
6. Now add the curry leaves mix it all together and add the drained & cooked green peas.
7. Stir well and let it stand in the heat for upto 4 minutes in low flame.
8. Remove from heat and sprinkle with some coconut (shredded) if you want.


I followed the recipe otherwise, except I used just a normal kettle for boiling the peas (took like 30 minutes) and I didn't have urad dal, so I left it out. I also reduced the chili - I put just one red chili from my mum's garden, as they were quite hot, but I added some chili powder in the end as it wasn't spicy enough to my taste..so if you like it hot, use many chilis! Since my mixer is not working so well for small quantities, I could get as fine results as in the original recipe.

However, this was a very easy and tasty recipe, I think I'll do it again! It works as snack or a side dish, or as a main dish, as I prepared it together with boiled barley. So this is quite a satisfying mix between the Finnish ingredients and Indian spices and Indian way of preparing the dish. I hope to stroll one day on the long beaches in Chennai where they sell sundal as a snack :)

PS. If you have some good recipes for Indian vegetarian dishes or good blogs/websites with Indian recipes, please send me the links to the comment box! :)

Easter food

I have been spending my Easter at my parents' as usual, and cooking some vegetarian food for myself and my family :) Here's some good stuff I tried for the 1st time: the whole family had as a starter hallomi salad with citrus fruits and some home-made herb baguette. As a main course they had some meat and I had Indian tarka dhal and potatoes. Tasty!

This recipe is originally from the Finnish household magazine (Pirkka 4/2010) but as I saw after a little searching, there are many recipes for making a halloumi salad. Halloumi, salty hard cheese from Cyprus, is really delicious when grilled and it doesn't melt too much, as feta does. This is worth giving a try, everyone liked it!

Halloumi salad with citrus fruits (5 servings)

1 grapefruit
1 orange
1 yellow bell pepper
150 g thin green beans
250 g halloumi cheese
lettuce (in the original recipe 150 g ready-made package, but I used just chopped iceberg salad, around 200-300 g)
1 dl mixed seeds (pumkin, sunflower, sesam seed, roast if you like)
(pea sprouts)

Dressing
0,5 dl olive oil
2 tbsp balsamico vinegar
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp mustard
a pinch of salt
a pinch of black pepper

Peel and section the grapefruit and the orange with a sharp knife, remove the white membranes between the segments. Cut them into small pieces. Chop the bell pepper. Boil the beans in hot water for some minutes and let cool. Tear the lettuce into small pieces. Chop the halloumi into small slices and fry on a pan in a drop of olive oil.
Mix all the ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl or a jar and shake well. Place on a big platter the lettuce, citrus fruits, bell pepper and drizzle the dressing on it. Place the halloumi on top of the salad and decorate with some seeds (and pea sprouts, if you like). Serve immediately.

Very often during the Christmas and Easter meals I end up eating some sort of a "meatloaf" made of red lentils and vegetables, but now I wanted to turn the usual red lentils into something else. I searched for a dhal recipe, because I like the savoury, subtle taste of the Indian dish - or is it Indian, as I can find recipes of it also on Pakistani, Nepali and Bangladeshi websites..? Well, it seems to be most of the time a side dish, but it worked just fine as a main course too :)

I took the recipe from Indian Snacks:

Tarka dhal (1-2 servings as a main dish, 3-5 as side dish)

1/2 cup red split lentils
3 cup water
1 teaspoon level salt
1 small onion chopped
3 cloves garlic finely chopped
4 tablespoon melted ghee (or just oil)
1 pinch turmeric
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 small tomato
2 teaspoon chopped coriander


Check the lentils for stones and wash them in several changes of water or until the water starts to run clear. Put the lentils into a saucepan with the water and salt and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer uncovered for around 10-20 minutes - at least my lentils are soft quicker that in the original recipe. At the end of boiling you should have a pale mashy mixture.

While the dal is cooking fry the onion and garlic in the ghee until the onions are pale brown. Be careful not to burn the garlic as this will add a bad flavour to the dish. Add the turmeric and garam masala to the onions and cook for a few more seconds.

Stir the onion mixture into the cooked lentils. Serve hot sprinkled with chopped tomato and green coriander.

I ate this with smashed potatoes instead of usual rice, a good combination with the salad :)