Veggie Pizza

My kids love home made pizza and it's been awhile since we ordered pizza from outside. It tastes yummy and we can customize the toppings as needed. I listed the ingredients I usually use, but you can replace them with your choice. Here is the recipe to make two thin crust pizzas...

Ingredients for Crust:   

• Unbleached/regular All Purpose Flour - 2 cups 

 

• Yeast - 1 packet

• Sugar - 1 tbsp
• Salt to Taste
• Water - to make batter
• Olive Oil - 1 tbsp

Ingredients for Toppings:   

• Crushed garlic (3 to 6 cloves per pizza)
• Black pepper powder
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pizza sauce (or tomato paste)

 

• Shredded Mozzarella Cheese or Mexican style blend cheese

    

• Onions
• Green/Yellow Peppers (Capsicum)
• Olives

     

• Mushrooms
• Artichokes(optional)

     

Pizza dough preparation:   

• Warm one cup of water and add little bit salt, 1 tbsp of sugar and 1tbsp of olive oil. Mix it well and then add 1 packet of Yeast (1/4 oz) and mix it again until the yeast is completely dissolved in the water. Keep it aside for couple of minutes.
• Add the warm water to the all purpose flour and mix it well. If the water is less, add more warm water(without yeast) and knead the dough. Keep it covered with wet cloth and keep it in warm place like oven/Microwave.
• Keep the dough in the oven/warm place for an hour or until the batter doubles.

Pizza preparation:   

• Take the pizza pan, apply olive oil to the surface with a brush.
• Optional: you can spread the all purpose flour on the pan and dust it. But my kids don't like the flour on the bottom of the pizza.

• Keep the pan aside. Now take half of the batter prepared above (for one pizza) onto a flat surface and press it with a rolling pin to make it into round shape.
• Place the pizza base on the pizza pan.
• Pour 2 tbsp of olive oil and spread it with a brush.
• Add tomato paste/pizza sauce and spread it evenly with a brush.

• Now sprinkle little bit salt, black pepper powder, and then add crushed garlic.

• Add the vegetables to the pizza (mushrooms, capsicum, onion, olives, artichoke etc)

• Spread shredded cheese.
• Preheat the oven for 375 F degrees and then place the pizza for 25 minutes. You can adjust the timing based on how crispy you want your pizza.
• Remove from the oven and serve hot.

Crispy Potato Salad

BBQ Nation's cajun potatoes' taste is the inspiration behind this post, but with a different twist. My kids love this snack and I too can't resist it. Today, I prepared this salad and kids emptied the plate in no time :-). btw, the pictures were taken almost 6 months back, and today, I got some time to prepare it again. So posting it while it is still fresh in my mind....here is the recipe....

Ingredients:    

• Baby potatoes
• Oil
• 1/2 cup Whole wheat flour 
• 1 tbsp Black pepper powder
• Salt
• 5 tbsp Mayonnaise
• 2 tbsp Tomato ketchup
• 1/2 Medium sized Onion 

• 1/2 tsp Mustard sauce (optional)
• Lettuce

Preparation:   

Wash baby potatoes and boil them in pressure cooker for one whistle. Make sure they don't get over cooked. Drain the water and keep them aside.

Add whole wheat flour, black pepper powder and salt to a a bowl.

Add water and make a smooth paste.

Dip the boiled potatoes in the above paste and deep fry them until golden brown.

Gently mash the potatoes with a flat spoon. If you want extra crispy potatoes, deep fry them again after mashing.

To prepare the sauce, add mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, mustard sauce and cut onion to a bowl and mix them with a spoon.

That's all, serve the crispy potatoes with the above sauce and lettuce.

Try it once... I'm sure your kids will ask for more. Enjoy fun time with kids....

Miriyala charu (Pepper rasam)

This is one of the light dishes which you can relish most ideally with rice... a traditional Andhra recipe. You can drink it like soup.... on a rainy day... or serve it hot for easing a runny nose. I got the recipe from my sister-in-law and I'm blogging it now.

And here is the source of curry leaves from my garden...

Ingredients:  

  For Charu/Soup:

• Tamarind - lemon size
• 2 Tomatoes
• 10 Garlic cloves
• 1/2 tsp Turmeric powder
• 1/2 tbsp Jaggery powder (brown sugar)
• Salt
• Curry leaves
• 4 to 6 cups water

 

For Charu Powder:

• 2 tbsp Toor daal
• 1 tbsp Pepper corn
• 1/2 tbsp Cumin/Jeera
• 1/2 tsp Methi/Fenugreek seeds
• 1 tbsp Coriander seeds (optional, not in picture)
• 2 dry red Chillies (optional, if you want more spicy rasam)

  
For Tadka/Tempering:

• 1/3 tsp Asafoetida
• 1 tsp Jeera
• 1/2 tsp Mustard seeds
• 2 dry Red chillies
• 1 tbsp Oil
•  Coriander leaves

Preparation:   

Soak tamarind in a bowl for 10 to 15 minutes.

Heat pan/kadai and add tool daal, pepper, jeera, methi seeds and coriander seeds (red chillies if required). Stir the ingredients on low heat until toor daal turns golden brown.

 Make a powder of the above ingredients and keep it aside.

 

Extract tamarind pulp by adding more water. Cut tomatoes and crush the garlic. 

 

Add cut tomateos and mash them with hands (riped tomatoes are better). Now add crushed garlic, turmeric powder, salt, jaggery powder, curry leaves and charu powder to the taramind water and mix well.

  

Let it boil for 10 minutes and add chopped coriander leaves at the end to preserve the aroma.

Now heat oil in a tadka pan and add mustard seeds. When they splutter, add jeera, red chillies, more curry leaves and stir for few seconds. Add asafeotida and turn off heat.

Add this to charu and mix well. Serve it hot with rice and appadam/papad.

Methi Paratha

Today I harvested Methi and Coriander leaves from my garden. What a joy to harvest coriander leaves... the fresh aroma combined with the serene morning breeze forced me to take long deep breaths. And being a Saturday morning, no worries to prepare food in a hurry... and I get more time to take snaps... while enjoying my early morning cooking to the tunes of FM.

Few snaps of today's harvest before jumping into the preparation of Methi Parathas...

Ingredients:  

• 4 cups whole Wheat flour/atta
• 2 cups Methi/Fenugreek leaves
• 1 tbsp Oil
• 1 or 2 Green chillies, finely chopped
• 1 inch Ginger
• 1 tsp Red Chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp Turmeric powder
• 1 tsp Coriander powder
• 2 tbsp Sesame seeds
• 1 tsp Jeera
• 1/4 tsp Ajwain/carom seeds
• Salt
• Few strands of Coriander leaves
• Ghee

Preparation:   

Rinse the methi leaves, drain them, chop finely and keep aside. 

In a mixing bowl, add wheat flour, all the powders, jeera, ajwain, chopped chillies and grated ginger. 

Add the chopped methi leaves, sesame seeds and chopped coriander leaves.

Mix everything with required amount of water and 1 tbsp oil to knead into a dough.

Make medium sized balls from the dough and roll into parathas.

On a hot tava or pan, place the paratha and flip when one side is partly cooked.

Spread Ghee on this side and flip again to apply ghee on the other side.

 Cook the paratha until you see brown spots.

Serve it hot with Peanut chutney. But kids have to wait until the parathas cool down a bit...

My kids were over excited and showered me with their kisses. Methi parathas made my day :-)

Radish with roasted chana daal

Even though Radish has so many health benefits, its pungent smell keeps it away from kid's plate. But this simple recipe taught by my father makes it easy to convince kids to eat Radish. Feels good when my kids eat it like a snack. Hope your kids like it too...

Ingredients:  

• Small size Radish - 4
• One medium size onion
• 5/6 Garlic cloves
• 2 Green chillies
• Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric powder – 1/4 tsp
• Curry leaves
• Coriander leaves
• Asafoetida
• Salt
• Oil - 2tbsp
• Roaste Chana daal (pappulu/bhuna chana daal) 

Preparation:   

Wash, peel and grate radish and keep it aside.

In a Kadai/pan, heat oil, add asefotadia, cumin seeds, musturd seeds and urad daal. Add curry leaves and one green chilli(sliced).

Once the onions turn golden brown, add the grated radish, turmeric powder and salt. Mix well, close the lid and cook on medium flame until radish is cooked.

Grind roasted chana daal, garlic and one green chillie. Add this powder to kadai and stir fry for 5 to 10 minutes on low flame. Garnish with coriander leaves. Serve it with hot rice and ghee.