Way better than Canned - Fresh Mushroom and Broccoli Soup

This is a great recipe for a quick lunch - it takes about 8-10 mins in total to prepare this dish! Is that easy or what? And this is so much better than opening a can of mushroom soup and gulping that down! Really people - get your knives and pans ready. Let's make a great tasting soup in 10 mins!

Start with some fresh white mushrooms.

 

Chop them up roughly. No one is looking. And you're going to cook them anyway. 

  

Chop up some onions into small pieces. Add a tsp of oil to a pan, fry the onions. I also added a couple of cloves of garlic here - but if you don't like it, skip it. Again, no one's watching!

  

Add the mushrooms to the sauteed onions and cook for about 3-4 mins. 

  

Chop up some brocolli roughly. 

  

Add to the mushrooms. Cook for a min or until done. These do get cooked easily.

  

Now, take about 1 cup of milk. Hot milk. Almost boiling milk. Can you see the steam above the cup? Almost that steamy.

  

Add 2 tbsp of butter ( if you are thin and beautiful and still cholesterol free) or if you are like me, add the can't believe stuff..( No - I don't have cholesterol, but don't want any more love handles anywhere in my body!)

  

Add 2 tbsps of flour and 1/2 tsp of salt to the hot milk and butter and blend it all together well till the sauce thickens. 

  

Now to the sauce, add the cooked mushrooms and broccoli. Not all of it. Save a couple of spoons of the veggies and add the rest. The reason is that you can add these veggies to the soup later and they provide such beautiful bites while having the soup. 

  

Just a sneak peek inside the blender! Blend together well till its a nice smooth soupy consistency.

  

Move the soup back to the pan. Heat up for a min. Don't heat a lot as the soup will then turn very thick and become like a sauce! Add the veggies you saved to the soup. Believe me, those little chunks provide an excellent bit while having the soup. I love the little chunks of mushroom and broccoli. So awesome!

  

Serve hot with crackers. Can  you guess what kind of crackers I have here - this is actually Kakra..yeah..kakras! I did not have the regular crackers and had these instead. And boy oh boy, they taste great with the soup!

  

Here's our "Way Better Than Canned - fresh Mushroom and Broccoli soup!"

  

Here's another quick idea. If you have any kind of ravioli at home, prepare the ravioli as per direction. Heat up a little bit of soup for a few mins until it becomes a thick sauce - Add the sauce on top of the ravioli and add fresh chopped tomatoes and some Parmesan cheese - tastes divine! And its a beautiful variation from a regular marinara or alfredo sauces.

  

Enjoy. Peace out!

Spicy Baby Corn and Paneer Fried Rice!

Two of my favorite things - Baby Corn and Paneer - I can hear a few Amen's there!

This is more of a pepper fried rice - I put so much pepper in here - that I sneezed a couple of times while eating! LOL! But the taste was awesome - loved it!

Cut some baby corn lengthwise - if you are using them out of a can - please cut and wash about 5-6 times thoroughly  - that helps to take most of that preservative smell away. I used the canned baby corn and did the same.

Now if you are a person that does not like big chunks of veggies, chop the baby corn into small piece and follow the same for the other too. Either way, its still a great fried rice.

 

Then, add about a tsp of oil to pan. When hot, add the baby corn in there and stir fry separately for about 5 mins or until the corn is a little browned. This will also help eliminate all of that preservative smell from the can.  While stir frying, sprinkly some salt and add fresh ground pepper to this. No other seasonings required!

  

Cut the paneer lenthwise to match up with the baby corn. Fry the long slices in a tsp of oil similar to the baby corn - separately. Again, add a pinch of salt and black pepper to the paneer. Fry till brown.

  

Here's the sauteed paneer and baby corn - I could just eat these like this. But, my grand plan is to provide this hungry world with a beautiful plate of fried rice..so I will continue..

  

In the same pan, add about half an onion slit lengthwise and if needed some garlic and saute well.  Then, add about half a bell pepper again cut lenghtwise to go with the flow. 

  

You will have to have some rice cooked before all of this - did you do that yet?

Add the cooked rice to this and mix well. Now comes the kickers..

  

Add salt to the rice, enough to taste. Add red chilli flakes to the rice - I sprinkle about 2-3 times with the slot on my bottle - that's probably around 2 tsps. Add more if you want more heat ..but before that check out the next step too as we are adding more fire to this!

  

Now, add some fresh ground black pepper to the rice - this is what gives the fried rice such a beautiful flavor. Really. I mean it - it adds like a whole level of awesomeness to the whole thing! Try not to skip this if you are making this. And if you do, don't blame me..

  

Now, add the sauteed baby corn and paneer to the fried rice. Mix well. 

Now, if you like to make this fried rice a little more richer and tastier - add about half a can of coconut milk and cook covered in low heat. That also adds a whole lot of flavor and taste. But, I did not have any coconut milk and assumed its God's way of making me eat healthier (Ahem..mm..). But you have all the freedom to add that coconut milk and kick this up a few notches!

  

There's the rice all done. 

  

I served this with a quick chilli paneer and vegetable  - thanks to the instant Chings sauce mix. I know its a double paneer overload..but I literally had like 4 small pieces of paneer and did not want to save it for anything else. So, I just threw that in here!

  

Just another obsession shot!

  

Enjoy. Peace out!

Carrot Dosa

If its one of those weekdays and you have no idea what to make for dinner, you want to just scrape the left overs in your fridge but you already did that yesterday! (No - did not happen in our house yesterday! LOL!), this is probably a quick recipe to follow.

I like to make simple but different types of dosas like this one here - these are easy to make - and a serving of vegetable goes along with it in disguise. Moms - you can understand that!

So, here is our dosa of the day - Carrot Dosa.

Little bit of pre work needed here is that you have to soak rice for at least a couple of hrs before preparing the batter. Take about 2 cups of regular rice - I used our everyday basmati rice. Soak in hot water for 2-3 hrs. You can add toor daal to this if you want - then that would make carrot adai, which is another great option!

Grate a couple of carrots. Chop up 1-2 green chillies. And you need the rest of the ingredients here - some red chillies, jeera, coriander seeds, a little bit of black peppers, some chopped ginger.

 

Move the soaked rice to a blender and blend to a coarse consistency. 

 

Now add all the other ingredients to the coarse rice batter. Blend together well.

 

Blend well into a smooth batter.

 

Look at that color! Almost looks like carrot kheer - but definitely does not taste like kheer!

 

Now, just make dosas out of this batter immediately. You can make them like regular dosas.

 

Serve hot immediately with plain ol' coconut chutney and sambar. Or with just molaga podi. Or with Sugar..or with whatever you like.

 

How easy and nice is that? A bit of advice though - eat this hot. Do not let this cool and then eat - they kind of become tough when its cold, because its just rice batter.

 

Enjoy. Peace Out!